him in the shoulder with the gun as he pulled the trigger; but the gun snapped, and a hunter ran out of the fort and shot the Indian.  The gates were closed, and the whites all ready; so the Indians abandoned their effort and drew off.  They had taken five scalps and a number of horses; but they had failed in their main object, and the whites had taken two scalps, besides killing and wounding others of the red men, who were carried off by their comrades.

After the failure of this attempt the Indians did not, for some years, make any formidable attack on any of the larger stations.  Though the most dangerous of all foes on their own ground, their extreme caution and dislike of suffering punishment prevented them from ever making really determined efforts to carry a fort openly by storm; moreover, these stockades were really very defensible against men unprovided with artillery, and there is no reason for supposing that any troops could have carried them by fair charging, without suffering altogether disproportionate loss.  The red tribes acted in relation to the Cumberland settlements exactly as they had previously done towards those on the Kentucky and Watauga.  They harassed the settlers from the outset; but they did not wake up to the necessity for a formidable and combined campaign against them until it was too late for such a campaign to succeed.  If, at the first, any one of these communities had been forced to withstand the shock of such Indian armies as were afterwards brought against it, it would, of necessity, have been abandoned.

    Indian Hostilities.

Throughout ’81 and ’82 the Cumberland settlers were worried beyond description by a succession of small war parties.  In the first of these years they raised no corn; in the second they made a few crops on fields they had cleared in 1780.  No man’s life was safe for an hour, whether he hunted, looked up strayed stock, went to the spring for water, or tilled the fields.  If two men were together, one always watched while the other worked, ate, or drank; and they sat down back to back, or, if there were several, in a ring, facing outwards, like a covey of quail.  The Indians were especially fond of stealing the horses; the whites pursued them in bands, and occasionally pitched battles were fought, with loss on both sides, and apparently as often resulting in the favor of one party as of the other.  The most expert Indian fighters naturally became the leaders, being made colonels and captains of the local militia.  The position and influence of the officers depended largely on their individual prowess; they were the actual, not titular, leaders of their men.  Old Kasper Mansker, one of the most successful, may be taken as a type of the rest.  He was ultimately made a colonel, and shared in many expeditions; but he always acted as his own scout, and never would let any of his men ride ahead or abreast of him, preferring to trust to his own eyes and ears and knowledge of