that something serious must have prevented their return, reconnoitered
the movement of the Indians as they moved from their camp to despatch
their two prisoners, and fired upon them at the moment they were about
to put their sentence into execution.

About this time a new element began to exasperate and extend the ravages
of Indian warfare, along the whole line of the frontier settlements. The
war of Independence had already begun to rage. The influence and
resources of Great Britain extended along the immense chain of our
frontier, from the north-eastern part of Vermont and New York, all the
way to the Mississippi. Nor did this nation, to her everlasting infamy,
hesitate to engage these infuriate allies of the wilderness, whose known
rule of warfare was indiscriminate vengeance; without reference to the
age or sex of the foe, as auxiliaries in the war.

As this biographical sketch of the life of Boone is inseparably
interwoven with this border scene of massacres, plunderings, burnings,
and captivities, which swept the incipient northern and western
settlements with desolation, it may not be amiss to take a brief
retrospect of the state of these settlements at this conjuncture in the
life of Boone.




CHAPTER VII.

Settlement of Harrodsburgh--Indian mode of besieging and
warfare--Fortitude and privation of the Pioneers--The Indians attack
Harrodsburgh and Boonesborough--Description of a Station--Attack of