for
absolute dominion over the western country. The ambitious projects of
her rebel children must be defeated, and they must be driven back beyond
the great watershed which they had crossed. The western waters were to
be preserved for the red allies of England, who supplied her merchants
with furs and peltries. The great "game preserve," as Roosevelt called
it, must not be invaded. Years before, a royal governor of Georgia had
written: "This matter, my Lords, of granting large bodies of land in the
back part of any of his majesty's northern colonies, appears to me in a
very serious and alarming light; and I humbly conceive, may be attended
with the greatest and worst of consequences; for, my Lords, if a vast
territory be granted to any set of gentlemen, who really mean to people
it, and actually do so, it must draw and carry out a great number of
people from Great Britain, and I apprehend they will soon become a kind
of separate and independent people, who will set up for themselves; that
they will soon have manufactures of their own; and in process of time
they will become formidable enough to oppose his majesty's authority."
This, "kind of separate and independent people," had now in fact and in
reality appeared, and were evincing a most decided inclination to "set
up for themselves" on the king's domain.

The task of faithfully portraying the heroic valour of this handful of
men who defended their stockades and cabins, their wives and children,
against British hate and savage inroad, is better left to those who have
received the account from actual survivors. In 1777, the entire army of
Kentucky amounted to one hundred and two men; there were twenty-two at
Boonesborough, sixty-five at Harrodsburgh, and fifteen at St. Asaphs, or
Logan's fort. Around these frontier stations skulked the Shawnees,
hiding behind stumps of trees and in the weeds and cornfields. They
waylaid the men and boys working in the fields, beset every pathway,
watched every watering place, and shot down the cattle. "In the night,"
says Humphrey Marshall, "they will place themselves near the fort gate,
ready to sacrifice the first person who shall appear in the morning; in
the day, if there be any cover, such as grass, a bush, a large clod of
earth, or a stone as big as a bushel, they will avail themselves of it,
to approach the fort, by slipping forward on their bellies, within
gun-shot, and then, whosoever appears first, gets the fire, while the
as