d with hickory withes and driven to the distant
Indian towns, there to be tortured with hideous cruelty and burned to
death at the stake. [Footnote: McAfee MSS. The last was an incident that
happened to a young man named McCoun on March 8, 1781.] Boon himself
suffered at the hands of one of these parties. He had gone with his
brother to the Blue Licks, to him a spot always fruitful of evil; and
being ambushed by the Indians, his brother was killed, and he himself
was only saved by his woodcraft and speed of foot. The Indians had with
them a tracking dog, by the aid of which they followed his trail for
three miles; until he halted, shot the dog, and thus escaped. [Footnote:
Boon's Narrative.]

Life of the Settlers.

During this comparatively peaceful fall the settlers fared well; though
the men were ever on the watch for Indian war parties, while the
mothers, if their children were naughty, frightened them into quiet with
the threat that the Shawnees would catch them. The widows and the
fatherless were cared for by the other families of the different
stations. The season of want and scarcity had passed for ever; from
thenceforth on there was abundance in Kentucky. The crops did not fail;
not only was there plenty of corn, the one essential, but there was also
wheat, as well as potatoes, melons, pumpkins, turnips, and the like.
Sugar was made by tapping the maple trees; but salt was bought at a very
exorbitant price at the Falls, being carried down in boats from the old
Redstone Fort. Flax had been generally sown (though in the poorer
settlements nettle bark still served as a substitute), and the young men
and girls formed parties to pick it, often ending their labor by an hour
or two's search for wild plums. The men killed all the game they wished,
and so there was no lack of meat. They also surveyed the land and tended
the stock--cattle, horses, and hogs, which throve and multiplied out on
the range, fattening on the cane, and large white buffalo-clover. At odd
times the men and boys visited their lines of traps. Furs formed almost
the only currency, except a little paper money; but as there were no
stores west of the mountains, this was all that was needed, and each
settlement raised most things for itself, and procured the rest by
barter.

The law courts were as yet very little troubled, each small community
usually enforcing a rough-and-ready justice of its own. On a few of the
streams log-dams were built, and