His Campaign against Piqua.

He appointed the mouth of the Licking as the place of meeting.  Thither he brought the troops from the Falls in light skiffs he had built for the purpose, leaving behind scarce a handful of men to garrison the stockade.  Logan went with him as second in command.  He carried with him a light three-pounder gun; and those of the men who had horses marched along the bank beside the flotilla.  The only mishap that befell the troops happened to McGarry, who had a subordinate command.  He showed his usual foolhardy obstinacy by persisting in landing with a small squad of men on the north bank of the river, where he was in consequence surprised and roughly handled by a few Indians.  Nothing was done to him because of his disobedience, for the chief of such a backwoods levy was the leader, rather than the commander, of his men.

At the mouth of the Licking Clark met the riflemen from the interior stations, among them being Kenton, Harrod, and Floyd, and others of equal note.  They had turned out almost to a man, leaving the women and boys to guard the wooden forts until they came back, and had come to the appointed place, some on foot or on horseback, others floating and paddling down the Licking in canoes.  They left scanty provisions with their families, who had to subsist during their absence on what game the boys shot, on nettle tops, and a few early vegetables; and they took with them still less.  Dividing up their stock, each man had a couple of pounds of meal and some jerked venison or buffalo meat. [Footnote:  McAfee MSS.; the Bradford MS. says six quarts of parched corn.]

All his troops having gathered, to the number of nine hundred and seventy, Clark started up the Ohio on the second of August. [Footnote:  This date and number are those given in the Bradford MS. The McAfee MSS. say July 1st; but it is impossible that the expedition should have started so soon after Bird’s inroad.  On July 1st, Bird himself was probably at the mouth of the Licking.] The skiffs, laden with men, were poled against the current, while bodies of footmen and horsemen marched along the bank.  After going a short distance up stream the horses and men were ferried to the farther bank, the boats were drawn up on the shore and left, with a guard of forty men, and the rest of the troops started overland against the town of Old Chillicothe, fifty or sixty miles distant.  The three-pounder was carried along on a pack-horse.  The march was hard, for it rained so incessantly that it was difficult to keep the rifles dry.  Every night they encamped in a hollow square, with the baggage and horses in the middle.