ritish
invasion of the East from Kentucky and the Northwest during the
Revolution; while these Tennessee frontiersmen were destined soon
to set forth again to invade a new wilderness and at frightful
cost to colonize the Cumberland.

The little chain of stockades along the farflung frontier of
Kentucky was tenaciously held by the bravest of the race, grimly
resolved that this chain must not break. The Revolution
precipitated against this chain wave after wave of formidable
Indian foes from the Northwest under British leadership. At the
very time when Grifth Rutherford set out for the relief of
McDowell's Fort, a marauding Indian band captured by stealth near
the Transylvania Fort, known as Boone's Fort (Boonesborough),
Elizabeth and Frances Callaway, and Jemima Boone, the daughters
of Richard Callaway and Daniel Boone, and rapidly marched them
away toward the Shawanoe towns on the Ohio. A relief party, in
two divisions, headed respectively by the young girls' fathers,
and composed among others of the lovers of the three girls,
Samuel Henderson, John Holder, and Flanders Callaway, pursued
them with almost incredible swiftness. Guided by broken twigs and
bits of cloth surreptitiously dropped by Elizabeth Callaway, they
finally overtook the unsuspecting savages, killed two of them,
and rescued the three maidens unharmed. This romantic
episode--which gave Fenimore Cooper the theme for the most
memorable scene in one of his Leatherstocking Tales had an even
more romantic sequel in the subsequent marriage of the three
pairs of lovers.

This bold foray, so shrewdly executed and even more sagaciously
foiled, was a true precursor of the dread happenings of the
coming neighborhood of the stations; and relief was felt when the
Transylvania Fort, the great stockade planned by Judge Henderson,
was completed by the pioneers (July, 1776). Glad tidings arrived
only a few days later when the Declaration of Independence, read
aloud from the Virginia Gazette, was greeted with wild huzzas by
the patriotic backwoodsmen. During the ensuing months occasional
invasions were made by savage bands; but it was not until April
24, 1777, that Henderson's "big fort" received its first attack,
being invested by a company of some seventy-five savages. The
twenty-two riflemen in the fort drove off the painted warriors,
but not before Michael Stoner, Daniel Boone, and several others
were severely wounded. As he lay helpless upon the ground, his
ank