ed with
Logan's family. This Station was surrounded in the night. In the morning
an attack was made. Several persons were killed and others captured. A
girl who escaped spread the alarm; a messenger reached Logan's Fort, and
General Logan with a strong party pursued the Indians, defeated them and
recovered the prisoners.

CHAPTER XV.

News of Cornwallis's surrender--Its effects--Captain Estill's
defeat--Grand army of Indians raised for the conquest of
Kentucky--Simon Girty's speech--Attack on Hoy's Station--Investment
of Bryant's Station--Expedient of the besieged to obtain
water--Grand attack on the fort--Repulse--Regular siege
commenced--Messengers sent to Lexington--Reinforcements
obtained--Arrival near the fort--Ambushed and attacked--They
enter the fort--Narrow escape of Girty--He proposes a
capitulation--Parley--Reynolds's answer to Girty--The siege
raised--Retreat of the Indians.

In October, 1781, Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown. This event was
received in Kentucky, as in other parts of the country, with great joy.
The power of Britain was supposed to be broken, or at least so much
crippled, that they would not be in a condition to assist their Indian
allies, as they had previously done. The winter passed away quietly
enough, and the people were once more lulled into security, from which
they were again to be rudely awakened. Early in the spring the parties
of the enemy recommenced their forays. Yet there was nothing in these
to excite unusual apprehensions. At first they were scarcely equal in
magnitude to those of the previous year. Cattle were killed, and horses
stolen, and individuals or small parties were attacked. But in May an
affair occurred possessing more interest, in a military point of view,
than any other in the history of Indian wars.

In the month of May, a party of about twenty-five Wyandots invested
Estill's Station, on the south of the Kentucky River, killed one white
man, took a negro prisoner, and after destroying the cattle, retreated.
Soon after the Indians disappeared, Captain Estill raised a company of
twenty-five men; with these he pursued the Indians, and on Hinkston's
Fork of Licking, two miles below the Little Mountain, came within
gunshot of them. They had just crossed the creek, which in that part
is small, and were ascending one side as Estill's party descended the
other, of two approaching hills of moderate elevatio