|  |
|
| |
Hannah of Kentucky - James Otis |
Within a week a messenger arrived from the Watauga settlements with the warning that the Cherokees were on the warpath there and were coming to drive us away.
It was only to be expected that, as man after man came in with word of what the Indians were doing, even the less timorous of our people should become alarmed, and there was such a panic in Boonesborough that it seemed as if the result might be that all our hopes of a settlement in Kentucky must come to naught.
Billy and I overheard a conversation in one of the watch-houses one day which gave us a better idea than ever before of why our people were so stubborn to remain in Boonesborough.
Colonel Boone was talking to Colonel Callaway, my father, and two or three other men, when John Floyd said: —
![[Illustration] from Hannah of Kentucky by James Otis](https://heritage-history.com/books/otis/kentucky/zpage122.gif "[Illustration] from Hannah of Kentucky by James Otis")
"I am as anxious as any other man to see my family in a place of safety; but if we leave the country now, there is hardly a settler who will remain, and all that we have fought and worked for will be as the wind. We can defend our selves here in Boonesborough until the savages have come to understand that we are not to be driven out, even though we are forced to slaughter for food every head of cattle we have brought over the mountains with so much of labor, and I'm for holding what we have bought with money and a willingness to shed our blood."
I dare not say how many visited our fort on their journey back to Virginia; but it really seemed as if all the people I had seen come over the Wilderness Road went down it again on their way to the Gap, and that we of Boonesborough were left alone in the country.
Yet, regardless of all this trouble, and anxiety, and fear, we gave our minds to more pleasant matters, for within three weeks after the girls had been rescued from the Shawnees, it was decided that Elizabeth Callaway and Samuel Henderson were to be married.