s wide river and on these clumsy transports must have required
considerable time. But before morning they were all on the eastern bank,
ready to proceed. Their route now lay down the margin of the river,
through an extensive bottom. On this bottom was a heavy growth of
timber, with a foliage so dense as in many places to intercept, in a
great measure, the light of the moon and the stars. Beneath lay many
trunks of fallen trees, strewed in different directions, and in various
stages of decay. The whole surface of the ground was covered with a
luxuriant growth of weeds, interspersed with entangling vines and
creepers, and in some places with close-set thickets of spice-wood or
other undergrowth. A journey through this in the night must have been
tedious, tiresome, dark, and dreary. The Indians, however, entered on it
promptly, and persevered until break of day, when, about a mile distant
from the camp, one of those unforeseen incidents occurred which so often
totally defeat or greatly mar the best concerted military
enterprises."[584:A]

Two soldiers setting out very early from the camp on a hunting
excursion, proceeded up the bank of the Ohio, and when they had gone
about two miles they came suddenly upon a large body of Indians, who had
crossed the river the evening before, and were now just rising from
their encampment and preparing for battle. Espying the hunters they
fired and killed one of them; the other escaping unhurt, ran back to the
camp, where he arrived just before sunrise, and reported that "he had
seen about five acres of ground covered with Indians as thick as they
could stand one beside another." It was Cornstalk at the head of an army
of Delawares, Mingoes, Cayugas, Iowas, Wyandots, and Shawnees, and but
for the hunter's intelligence they would have surprised the camp. In a
few moments two other men came in and confirmed the report, and then
General Lewis lit his pipe, and sent forward the first division under
his brother, Colonel Charles Lewis, and the second under Colonel
Fleming; the first marching to the right at some distance from the Ohio,
the bottom being a mile wide there; the second marching to the left
along the bank of the river. General Andrew Lewis remained with the
reserve to defend the camp. Colonel Lewis's division had not advanced
along the river bottom quite half a mile from the camp when he was
vigorously attacked in front, a little after sunrise, by the enemy,
numbering between eight