Contents ▼▲
Front Matter At Boonesborough Beginning of the Story Boone on the Yadkin Boone Moves his Family Ready for the Journey What we Wore Driving Cattle and Sheep Camping at Nightfall The Long Halt Jimmy Boone Goes to Clinch Murder of Jimmy Boone A Time of Mourning The Faint-hearted Return A New Home Making Moccasins Tanning Leather Governor Dunmore Our Home on the Clinch Household Duties Attacked by a Wildcat Fighting the Wildcat Boone and Father Return The Wilderness Road Building the Forts Boonesborough Gathering Salt Boonesborough Precautions Our Home in the Fort Ready for Cooking Furnishing the House The Hominy Block The Supply of Water Sports Inside the Fort Wrestling and Running Religion of the Indians Indian Babies Colonel Callaway Arives News from Eastern Colonies Venturing Outside the Fort Dividing the Land Who Owned Kentucky? Ready to Build a Home Billy's Hard Lot Preparing Flax Spinning and Soap Making Broom Making More Indian Murders Indian "Signs" Woodcraft and Hunting Pelts Used as Money Petition of the Settlers Making Sugar Building Fences Capture of the Girls My Willful Thoughts Finding the Trail The Pursuit The Story Told by Jemima Elizabeth's Heroism Rescuing the Girls Alarm Among the Settlers Indians on the Warpath The First Wedding The Wedding Festivities The Brides Home The Housewarming Attacks by the Indians Besieged by the Savages In the Midst of the Fight The Assault by the Indians Failure of the Assault Watchfulness of the Indians The Sortie My Father Wounded Our Wounded

Hannah of Kentucky - James Otis




Indians on the Warpath

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

"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.