ns to the Virginia Legislature,
complaining that the troops posted at the Falls were of no assistance in
checking the raids of the Indians, and asserting that the operations
carried on by order of the Executive for the past eighteen months had
been a detriment rather than a help. The utmost confusion and
discouragement prevailed everywhere. [Footnote: Va. State Papers, III.,
pp. 301, 331. Letter of William Christian, September 28th. Petition of
Boon, Todd, Netherland, etc., September 11th. In Morehead's "address" is
a letter from Nathaniel Hart. He was himself as a boy, witness of what
he describes. His father, who had been Henderson's partner and bore the
same name as himself, was from North Carolina. He founded in Kentucky a
station known as White Oak Springs; and was slain by the savages during
this year. The letter runs: "It is impossible at this day to make a just
impression of the sufferings of the pioneers about the period spoken of.
The White Oak Springs fort in 1782, with perhaps one hundred souls in it
was reduced in August to three fighting white men--and I can say with
truth that for two or three weeks my mother's family never unclothed
themselves to sleep, nor were all of them within that time at their
meals together, nor was any household business attempted. Food was
prepared and placed where those who chose could eat. It was the period
when Bryant's station was beseiged, and for many days before and after
that gloomy event we were in constant expectation of being made
prisoners. We made application to Col. Logan for a guard and obtained
one, but not until the danger was measureably over. It then consisted of
two men only. Col. Logan did every thing in his power, as County
Lieutenant, to sustain the different forts--but it was not a very easy
matter to order a married man from a fort where his family was to defend
some other when his own was in imminent danger.

"I went with my mother in January, 1783, to Logan's station to prove my
father's will. He had fallen in the preceding July. Twenty armed men
were of the party. Twenty-three widows were in attendance upon the court
to obtain letters of administration on the estates of their husbands who
had been killed during the past year."

The letter also mentions that most of the original settlers of the fort
were from Pennsylvania, "orderly respectable people and the men good
soldiers. But they were unaccustomed to Indian warfare, and the
consequence was that