32.  State Department MSS., No. 150, Vol.  I., p. 107.  Letter of Captain John Doughty.

33.  State Department MSS., No. 150, Vol.  I., p. 115.  Examination of John Leith.

34.  “Am.  Archives,” 5th Series, Vol.  I., p. 36.

35.  “The Olden Time,” Neville B. Craig, II., p. 115.

36.  “Am.  Archives,” 5th Series, Vol.  I., p. 111.

37. Do., p. 137.

38. Do., Vol.  II., pp. 516, 1236.

39.  When Cornstalk was so foully murdered by the whites; although the outbreak was then already started.

40.  Madison MSS.  But both the American statesmen and the Continental officers were so deceived by the treacherous misrepresentations of the Indians that they often greatly underestimated the numbers of the Indians on the war-path; curiously enough, their figures are frequently much more erroneous than those of the frontiersmen.  Thus the Madison MSS. and State Department MSS. contain statements that only a few hundred northwestern warriors were in the field at the very time that two thousand had been fitted out at Detroit to act along the Ohio and Wabash; as we learn from De Peyster’s letter to Haldimand of May 17, 1780 (in the Haldimand MSS.).

41.  On July 14, 1776.  The names of the three girls were Betsy and Fanny Callaway and Jemima Boon, See Boon’s Narrative, and Butler, who gives the letter of July 21, 1776, written by Col.  John Floyd, one of the pursuing party.

The names of the lovers, in their order, were Samuel Henderson (a brother of Richard), John Holder, and Flanders Callaway.  Three weeks after the return to the fort Squire Boon united in marriage the eldest pair of lovers, Samuel Henderson and Betsey Callaway.  It was the first wedding that ever took place in Kentucky.  Both the other couples were likewise married a year or two later.

The whole story reads like a page out of one of Cooper’s novels.  The two younger girls gave way to despair when captured, but Betsey Callaway was sure they would be followed and rescued.  To mark the line of their flight she broke off twigs from the bushes, and when threatened with the tomahawk for doing this, she tore off strips from her dress.  The Indians carefully covered their trail, compelling the girls to walk apart, as their captors did, in the thick cane, and to wade up and down the little brooks.

Boon started in pursuit the same evening.  All next day he followed the tangled trail like a bloodhound, and early the following morning came on the Indians, camped by a buffalo calf which they had just killed and were about to cook.  The rescue was managed very adroitly, for had any warning been given the Indians would have instantly killed their captives, according to their invariable custom.  Boon and Floyd each shot one of the savages, and the remaining three escaped almost naked, without gun, tomahawk, or scalping-knife.  The girls were unharmed, for the Indians rarely molested their captives on the journey to the home towns, unless their strength gave out, when they were tomahawked without mercy.