alone or
with two or three associates. An army of such men would have been wholly
valueless.

Brady and his Scouts.

Another man, of a far higher type, was Captain Samuel Brady, already a
noted Indian fighter on the Alleghany. For many years after the close of
the Revolutionary war he was the chief reliance of the frontiersmen of
his own neighborhood. He had lost a father and a brother by the Indians;
and in return he followed the red men with relentless hatred. But he
never killed peaceful Indians nor those who came in under flags of
truce. The tale of his wanderings, his captivities, his hairbreadth
escapes, and deeds of individual prowess would fill a book. He
frequently went on scouts alone, either to procure information or to get
scalps. On these trips he was not only often reduced to the last
extremity by hunger, fatigue, and exposure, but was in hourly peril of
his life from the Indians he was hunting. Once he was captured; but when
about to be bound to the stake for burning, he suddenly flung an Indian
boy into the fire, and in the confusion burst through the warriors, and
actually made his escape, though the whole pack of yelling savages
followed at his heels with rifle and tomahawk. He raised a small company
of scouts or rangers, and was one of the very few captains able to
reduce the unruly frontiersmen to order. In consequence his company on
several occasions fairly whipped superior numbers of Indians in the
woods; a feat that no regulars could perform, and to which the
backwoodsmen themselves were generally unequal, even though an overmatch
for their foes singly, because of their disregard of discipline.
[Footnote: In the open plain the comparative prowess of these forest
Indians, of the backwoodsmen, and of trained regulars was exactly the
reverse of what it was in the woods.]

So, with foray and reprisal, and fierce private war, with all the border
in a flame, the year 1781 came to an end. At its close there were in
Kentucky seven hundred and sixty able-bodied militia, fit for an
offensive campaign. [Footnote: Letter of John Todd, October 21, 1781.
Virginia State Papers, II., 562. The troops at the Falls were in a very
destitute condition, with neither supplies nor money, and their credit
worn threadbare, able to get nothing from the surrounding country
(_do_., p. 313). In Clark's absence the colonel let his garrison be
insulted by the townspeople, and so brought the soldiers into contempt,
while