they accomplished in the face of a savage foe surrounding their feeble
settlements, always alert and hostile, invisible and dreadful as the
visionary powers of the air. Until the treaty of Greenville, in 1795,
closed the long and sanguinary history of the old Indian wars, there
was no day in which the pioneer could leave his cabin with the
certainty of not finding it in ashes when he returned, and his little
flock murdered on his threshold, or carried into a captivity worse
than death. Whenever nightfall came with the man of the house away
from home, the anxiety and care of the women and children were none
the less bitter because so common.

[Illustration: MAP SHOWING VARIOUS LOCALITIES CONNECTED WITH EARLY
EVENTS IN THE LINCOLN FAMILY.]

The life of the pioneer Abraham Lincoln soon came to a disastrous
close. He had settled in Jefferson County, on the land he had bought
from the Government, and cleared a small farm in the forest.
[Footnote: Lyman C. Draper, of the Wisconsin Historical Society, has
kindly furnished us with a MS account of a Kentucky tradition
according to which the pioneer Abraham Lincoln was captured by the
Indians, near Crow's Station, in August, 1782, carried into captivity,
and forced to run the gauntlet. The story rests on the statement of a
single person, Mrs. Sarah Graham.] One morning in the year 1784, he
started with his three sons, Mordecai, Josiah, and Thomas, to the edge
of the clearing, and began the day's work. A shot from the brush
killed the father; Mordecai, the eldest son, ran instinctively to the
house, Josiah to the neighboring fort, for assistance, and Thomas, the
youngest, a child of six, was left with the corpse of his father.
Mordecai, reaching the cabin, seized the rifle, and saw through the
loophole an Indian in his war-paint stooping to raise the child from