An Indian Talisman on Clark's Kentucky War Road
"I LOOK so grand that I want to say, 'Sir,' every time I speak to myself," and Obadiah Holman swaggered a little as he donned his equipment.
His coonskin cap was set atilt. Its short ringed tail was a tassel bobbing over his left ear. He wore a man's suit of fringed buckskin. He had shortened his "galluses" and hitched up his breeches to a very comfortable fit. Leggings added a picturesque touch to them. His shirt, which was worn outside like a coat, had a belt to hold in the fullness. Cut off a little at the bottom and fringed anew, and treated the same way at the cuffs, it had become exactly his size. Best of all, it wasnotnew.
When he appeared among the other scouts,his clothes had the same worn effect of a serviceable uniform that theirs did.
Doby glowed with pride when he considered the company he kept. What patriotic duties had not these scouts been in? What good work had not these uniforms seen?
He resolved with all the best that was in him to be worthy of the place Simon Kenton had given him with Johnson's Long Hunters—the Kentucky cavalrymen.
The War of 1812 was now all over. But who could forget the services of these men through that trying time? For the grizzled veterans all about him were Col. Richard Johnson's troopers, the bravest and boldest men in the West.
When William Henry Harrison, the governor of the Northwest Territory, the man who had won the battle of Tippecanoe in 1811, against the Indians, and so saved the Northwest to civilization, had later, in 1813, become so hard pressed in his struggle against Tecumseh's forces allied with that Indian's British friends, farther east near Detroit, it was the Kentucky regiment of Johnson's men whose furious valor broke the stout line of British regulars on the Thames River and who kept the Middle West from the clutches of old England.
A grateful country afterward made Colonel Johnson Vice-President of the United States.
Boys and men cheered the doughty Kentuckians wherever they appeared.
Said one of them to Doby: "That Indian chief Tecumseh was a smart man. He had more sense than most white men. He was a king, if ever a man was. When the natives in his absence ceded to the whites so much of the land around Fort Wayne, he was angry. He organized all the Western Indians into a confederacy whose plan was to drive the Americans out of the country. For he understood very soon the thing that it took the other Indians a long time to learn. That was, the English and American way of buying land.
"You see, the French, who came here first, met the Indians on terms of friendly equality. The Indians responded to this by offering hospitality. The French accepted it gratefully. The Indians passed the peace pipes and said: 'Our Great Spirit tells us to welcome our pale-face brothers. Our hunting-grounds are his.' And the happy-go-lucky Frenchmen made their best society bows and said, 'After you, kind friends, we will use them.' And they got along together first rate."
"Our folks don't want to share and sharealike with savages," declared Doby. "We want to buy the land outright."
"That's what makes the trouble," answered the old Indian-fighter, "savages do not know what buying land means. They never get our point of view. When we give an Indian 'fire-water' and a disgracefully small piece of money for his land, he thinks it is a present because we thank him for the chance to hunt on that land. He fully expects us to buy it again the next day and the next and the next. He thinks it is still his after all this so-called buying."
"He gives us a deed to it," said Doby. "Anybody can understand what a land title is."
"An Indian cannot. One day a white man, all smiles, comes to an Indian's land, gives him a tawdry present, juggles a piece of parchment, and shows the Indian how to make his mark among printed words which he cannot read. Next day, the white man, all frowns, says to the Indian, 'What d'you mean, making yourself to hum on my ground? Git out!' and he kicks him off. It makes the Indian mad."
The veteran wagged his beard and his sweeping curly hair like an old lion shaking his mane. "That's the real cause of the Indian uprisings. General Harrison, who is a just and far-seeingruler, has done his best to compel fair play on both sides. Between the greed of the whites and the treachery of the savages he hasn't had much luck."
"You fought with the other Long Hunters at New Orleans, didn't you?" asked Doby.
"At that battle we licked the British again. The treaty of peace had been signed, but word hadn't reached the South and we went at it and hammered the beef-eaters fair and hard. Ah, those were the good old times. Nothin' like it nowadays. Nothin' but a few odd jobs of rescue-work like this one we are on. No real fightin'."
Doby looked in true respect at his friends of many scars. His hand went up to his cap. He took it off in the presence of these patriots.
The Kentucky settlers called these men "Long Hunters" because they could stay out more weeks on hunting-trips than less stalwart backwoodsmen. "Long Knives" was the name the Indians gave them on account of the ferocious dirks they carried. Even Doby sported his stone knife in a formidable sheath.
Soft-hearted Simon Kenton had taken Doby along for a "lucky penny" or "pocket-piece" as a later time would have taken some entertaining child for a "mascot."
Like the other two dozen men in the group, Doby boasted a tomahawk swung on his hip.
"A tomahawk is wild and savage-looking," laughed one of the men, seeing how gingerly Doby handled the murderous thing, "but this one has been tamed. It will be used to chop kindling-wood and to cut brush, unless we get into a brash with redskins and you want to try its edge on a scalp."
Also Doby had a powder-horn swung over his shoulder. In the hollow of his left arm was as light a flintlock as that day afforded. It was possible for him to carry the weight of this weapon because, oh, joy of joys! between his knees was a Kentucky thoroughbred!
"No old nag to bring up the cows"—Doby was almost bursting with pride—"will do for a fellow who is going West to fight Indians. He needs a fast horse. This is one of the blue-grass best."
Every scout's saddle-bags carried rations for several days. They would not use their rifles for game, nor would they build a fire except at some station. They were traveling as light as possible, as fast as their mounts would allow, and with as little noise as they could.
"Boonesboro'll keep the wagon-train as long as the grub holds out. The pesky redskins 'ain'tgot a thing to do but to lay round an' besiege the stockade 'til the buffaler come. When the herds git here the redskins will follow the game north and the wagon-train can move again. Trouble is that folks in stockades can't git along without eatin', and these are plumb out o' vittles." And Simon Kenton, who had often gone hungry in the Indian country, gave a little sigh of sympathy. "It ain't likely that we will have a brash with Injuns hereabouts." Yet these sagacious scouts slept in their clothes, had no fires, and took turns, two at a time, doing sentinel duty. They rode, always, with guns primed and loaded and ready under their trigger fingers.
Their plan was to add their force to the small number of men in the train at Boonesboro and with a little food to bring them out to within reach of game and to escort them north to Cincinnati. The Indians generally fell back from any "Long Knives" train.
The scouts had crossed the Ohio River at Cincinnati, coming down, gathering a few more fighters as they went. Doby's father, a seasoned frontiersman, had gone with them because he was anxious to learn the prospects for buying farming land in this richest soil of all the States.
Now they were whirling down toward the Salt Lick Springs on the old Clark War Road of Indian raids. At first the famous path led them to the southwest.
Doby had ridden bareback from babyhood. He could "break" a colt or subdue a "fractious" mare, but never had he gone down any pike at the pace these Kentuckians set him as they tore away on their errand of mercy.
His legs clung to the saddle, his moccasins stuck to the stirrups, his hands grasped the bridle-rein as they flew. The scrambling up-hill over rough ground, the breakneck sliding down into valleys, were his delight. But when he saw the swollen Kentucky River that he must plunge into for the first of several times on its winding course, he could have screamed with hysterical excitement. He had no choice whether to go or to stay. His horse carried him with the others on a rush into the turbulent stream. The shock of the water and the sensation of leaving solid earth for this swirling danger shook his chest with heavy sobs.
There is a contagion of courage as well as of fear. He caught the spirit of his companions. By imitating them he was able to hold his horse's head at an acute angle to the bank, so that the constant up-stream effort kept theswimming animal from being swept down. He stayed abreast of the others and landed with them at the road on the opposite shore.
Then magnificent forests and open glades spun by them. They entered canebrakes, those bottom-land stretches of succulent sugar-bearing canes where wild turkeys scuttled in flocks before the sound of hoofs.
Simon Kenton smiled at Doby: "There ye be! Cane! Turkey! Kain tu'key! There's where we git our name."
One night when they stopped to rest, Doby discovered on a flat-faced boulder some crude outline pictures like the childish cartoons of first-reader pupils. There were round turtles, square horses, spindle-legged boys, moon faces, pigs with curly tails; just such things as he had drawn on his slate many a time. All had been cut or scraped in with a sharp point of stone or metal.
What boy could resist such a challenge? "Must be some sort of a wilderness school near here," Doby thought as he whipped out his too ready knife. Using the tip of the hilt, for he dare not risk the precious point, he scratched a bird, to face another bird, something like a blue jay which was already drawn to perch in this menagerie.
"I'll have to do something to tell what my bird and the other fellow's bird are called," and he picked up a couple of fallen blue-jay feathers. With a paste of mud he added them, one to each bird, for a flaunting tail, grinning to think how surprised the children would be when they noticed this addition to their art-gallery.
Simon Kenton, coming up, seemed to regard this as a serious matter. "That pictur' is Injun writin'; lots of it hereabouts; every line and dot means somethin'; can't tell what the varmints 'll think of your sign," and he shook his head dubiously; but he would not let the boy try to erase it. "Better quit foolin' with it."
Doby was rather dismayed by this bit of indiscretion on his part. But in the rapid going of the next few hours and in the flurry of the wild-pig hunt which they allowed themselves when they came within hail of the station, he forgot his regrets.
At this station they gave themselves a hot pork supper and a good rest.
A Kentucky station was from the first settlement of that coveted State a spot full of romance, of danger, and of delight.
So fair was Kentucky, so rich, so promising, that native red men and immigrating white men were ever ready to fight for a piece of her fertilesoil. Never was she more beautiful than in those days when numerous battles caused her to be named the "dark and bloody ground."
Her stations, far apart, were built of log houses set in a hollow square to form a solid wall toward the open country. Tiny loopholes for rifles were the only windows on the outside walls. At each corner was a two-story blockhouse, or "flanker," set up in such a way with loopholes that the men inside could see and could cover with guns the outside fort walls without themselves being seen by the Indians. There were huge gates to these forts. They could defy and they did defy many a savage attack. They were snug places for emigrants to stop.
Doby employed his idle hour making a "shrieker." First he cut a willow whistle. On it he fastened the bladder of the slaughtered pig. Then he took an immense breath, blew into the whistle, and filled the bladder with air. When he could blow no longer he jerked it out of his mouth. The air from the bladder rushed back through the whistle with a hair-raising squeal.
Doby hopped in glee. But he dared not use it when they started again on the dangerous War Road. There was always the chance of attracting some foe.
"When we get inside the next station I'm going to give it one good blow, Injuns or no Injuns," he declared.
So far had they now come by the road southwest, south, southeast, and south again, that they were in the heart of Kentucky and approaching Harrod's station not far distant from Boonesboro.
At Harrod's they had meant to eat hot game and save their full saddle-bags for the wagon-train. But the sight of an Indian trading at the post made them pause and go into a consultation with the storekeeper.
A general store was kept in each of these stations. It dealt in every article a settler could want. Here a trapper, red or white, who never had any money could "swap" his furs for powder and coffee with a storekeeper who never had any money, either. Though powder and coffee were each a dollar a pound, neither the buyer nor the seller ever saw that dollar. Trading was the rule.
Doby paid little heed to anything except the Indian, who stood motionless beside a pile of 'coonskins which he had laid on a tobacco bale. Any boy would have known that Indian for a warrior. He wore a plain blanket. There were no feathers and no paint to be seen upon him,yet he looked the wild fighting-man. He was tall and straight, haughty of bearing, cruelly beautiful. He ignored the hunters with royal indifference while he waited for his goods to be packed.
As Doby eyed the savage he thought: "How handsome he is and how powerful! Perhaps Tecumseh had the same appearance."
Under the boy's admiring stare the Indian stood absolutely and perfectly still, minute after minute, minute after minute, until Doby became possessed of an impulse to test that stolidity, to shock that dignity. So he impishly blew into the pig's-bladder whistle. Its blast rent the air.
With snake-like quickness the Indian's hand shot out. He grabbed the whistle and hid it in his blanket. He offered a blue-jay feather in exchange. Doby felt indignant at this sort of trading and showed that he did, whereupon the Indian, who certainly had seemed to have neither paint nor feathers upon him, stuck the first feather and then a second one in the front of Doby's cap. In so doing he left a streak of paint on the boy's forehead. It was of the same shape and color as the feather.
The boy's face flamed with anger, but when the watching Kenton said, "Make your manners, bub," Doby thrust his hand into the Indian's palm and said, "How?"
The Indian answered, "How?"
These two words were considered to be a complete conversation of the friendliest sort between any two members of the white and red races.
Calmly and instantly Kenton pushed the boy from the store into the midst of the hunters, who were hurriedly up and away. Night was closing in, but they increased their pace. Kenton told Doby: "Under his blanket that chief is rigged up for battle. He is buying guns and ammunition."
"A storekeeper will sell any Indian any amount of bullets to shoot any number of settlers, if the savage merely says he wants 'em for buffalo," thought Doby, in bitter contempt of that thing we call commercialism, which allows one man to sacrifice others for his own mercenary profit.
"To git through the varmints' stampin'-ground, we must use this dark night for to cover us," and Kenton glanced at the black clouds and at the occasional flashes of lightning. He listened to the wind in the trees. He stopped to consult the others and laid his ear to the ground, "for buffaler," he said.
For here the War Road, the Indian trail, and the Buffalo trace all coincided to run through a very long, narrow ravine.
They decided to risk the trip through the ravine. The byways were long and difficult. In the ravine there was danger of Indians in ambush, danger of a cloudburst, and danger of meeting the buffalo herds almost due on their annual migration north. But where was there not danger?
To these hardy soldiers danger was their bread and meat and they rejoiced in it. So when they felt no quake of earth from moving hoofs, they took the ravine at a run. They knew it was the sort of night when the war of fire and water in the air might frighten buffalo into a stampede; and Doby, blinking in the lightning, listened between thunderclaps for other noises.
They were nearing the southern end of the ravine, too far from the northern entrance to turn back, when they caught the far-away rumble of myriad pounding hoofs. They spurred ahead. If they could reach the plain and turn aside before the oncoming herds entered the ravine they were safe. Kenton put his hand on Doby's bridle and they ran for their lives straight toward the buffalo, which they couldnot see, but which they could hear plainer and plainer with every hurrying second.
The rangers ahead yelled triumphantly as one by one they gained the open and swerved in safety around to the east. Their shouts were drowned in a vast bellowing that grew so near it roared in their ears like heavy surf.
Kenton and Doby were bringing up the rear. Kenton's horse stepped into a hole and went down heavily. Doby's leaped ahead. After a few jumps he was able to check it. He wheeled and came back. Kenton had gained his feet, but his mount was doomed—a broken leg. There was no help for the poor brute but a merciful bullet. To this sad use unhappy Doby put his proud flintlock. To Kenton, who was badly jarred, he reached a firm hand and took him up behind.
Too late now to gain the plain, impossible to face the flying, panic-stricken hordes, there was nothing for it but to flee straight back over the course they had come.
To be overtaken was to be trampled down to earth, ground into fragments and totally destroyed. Oh, the irony of traveling for days and days through a country where the buffalo would have been harmless and then to meetthem in the one hour and the one place where they meant death to man!
Kenton, recovering himself under the prick of their danger, watched by the lightning flashes for an opening in the sides of the ravine. He soon saw a tiny brook trickling from a cleft. They bolted from the trace and stopped in it. Although it was only a tiny pocket set back and up from the sides of the bluff, it was enough to shelter them and their horse. In less than two minutes the herd came sweeping past below them.
All night long, under a stormy sky, they huddled in their covert and saw and heard and smelled the buffalo as they galloped past. All day long, through the clearing weather, they watched more buffalo and more buffalo—walking now. All night long again, under clear skies and brilliant stars, they listened to the stragglers sedately following behind.
The man and boy had food in their saddle-bags and water at their feet. The horse drank and helped himself to green stuff.
Kenton said: "Give the Injuns followin' the herds time to vamoose. Then we go on. Our folks won't hunt for us, 'cause they think we're wiped out."
"If we trail alone, do you suppose the Indians will scalp us—you and me?" quavered Doby. His bright dreams had been to win glory by defeating Indians in open battle. Never at any time had he planned to have them destroyhimon the sly.
"Think likely—yes," drawled Kenton. "Ye must git used to close calls. I've had 'em many and many a time. Don't wash yer face. That's yer big chance."
"Don't wash my face?" repeated Doby. "Don't wash my face!"
"The chief marked that paint daub an' set the feathers on ye for some reason. He liked that noisy whistle. 'Tis Injun nature to return a favor. Likely he stalked us when ye drew that pictur'. Blue jays may be his totem."
"O-oh!" breathed Doby. "O-oh! Will this mark save me? Will it save you?"
"Perhaps. Two guns won't amount to much if there 're Injuns in the ravine or the canebrake. We are in plain sight here; no use to try to hide."
They could not stay longer where they were in the cramped little hollow. They must follow the trace. There was no other way out. The doubly loaded horse stepped into the road; but he was uneasy. He snorted and backed about.
"Hold your face so the light will strike it. Turn from side to side so the blue in your cap will show," commanded Kenton.
Crows on a dead tree above the ravine shrieked something at them. Doby clutched the rein, for the bushes on the opposite bank had parted ever so little. Red of nostril, white of eye, the horse stood still and twitched his sensitive ears.
The crows called again. They circled widely. They returned to chatter a warning.
Kenton, who never was known to lose his self-control, said, calmly: "Go on. My gray curls will make a purtier scalp than your hank o' tow; 'f I don't fret, you needn't."
Doby went on. The horse needed constant petting and coaxing. The crows flapped and cawed, following a hiding something—an evil something moving near the trail. The horse quivered and shied at the unseen peril stalking him.
They reached the end of the ravine and descended into the canebrake of the bottom-land which led to the Kentucky River. Far away on the other side of the river they could see the stockade of Boonesboro.
"Could we signal the stockade?" faltered Doby.
"We'll be made into broth if we do," was the quiet reply.
Some Indians were cannibals. At this reminder, Doby's spine turned to water and he slumped into a heap. But Kenton caught him up and shook him forcibly with the words: "I once felt that-a-way myself. Ye can git used to 't. Keep right on. The cane's full of the pesky redskins."
"I don't see any," gasped Doby, in forlorn hope.
"Nary glimpse. Watch the crows. Show yer passport. They're there," declared Kenton.
When the horse found that he could not hang back, he bolted. Wilder and wilder his pace grew. Fear had seized him past all control.
Ever the canes, before, beside, behind their mad flight wavered for a wicked pursuing foe who peeped and ran.
Ever the crows in dread curiosity beat the air and croaked in apprehension.
Ever the boy, with his blue-jay feathers upright, clung to the saddle and lifted his white face so plainly marked, with an attempt at bravado.
As the ford came in sight and the trampled clearing at its edge showed an open space of ground they knew that the crisis was near.
EACH SAVAGE GIBED AT THE BOY'S PAINTED TALISMAN, BUT EACH OBEYED ITS MESSAGE
EACH SAVAGE GIBED AT THE BOY'S PAINTED TALISMAN, BUT EACH OBEYED ITS MESSAGE
What was that sound? Shrill and weird, cutting their ears, they caught the note of the pig's-bladder "shrieker"—Doby's whistle!
"Don't shoot," said Kenton. "Whatever happens—don't shoot—mind that—don't shoot!"
Then—from the canebrake on three sides of the clearing sprang the nimble-footed savages who had teased and outrun their horse. The painted bodies closed across the entrance to the ford. Paralyzed with fear, the sweating horse crouched.
The ears of Kenton and Doby were deafened with war-whoops, their nostrils sickened by dangling scalps. A horrid threatening dance swung round them. Tomahawks hurled past them. Color and noise, stench and motion, caught them in a hideous vortex. Each savage gibed at the boy's painted talisman, but each obeyed its message. They did not touch him.
Doby did not scream—he could not. Kenton never moved, resistance was futile. In a great swoop the Indians bore down upon them. They were covered with a shower of blue-jay feathers thrown by murderous fingers as with wild gestures and wilder laughter the Indians vanished into the canebrake to follow the buffalo north for more profitable hunting.
Surprised Boonesboro did not know what to make of the flurry. The sentries halloed from the "flankers," and the Long Hunters, who had never thought to see them again, swung wide the gates, and Kenton and Doby swam across to Boonesboro—the end of their trail.