Their first success was with a boat going downriver, and containing four men and two unmarried girls, besides a quantity of goods intended for the stores in the Kentucky towns.  The two decoys appeared on the right bank, begging piteously to be taken on board, and stating that they had just escaped from the savages.  Three of the voyagers, not liking the looks of the men, refused to land, but the fourth, a reckless fellow named Flynn, and the two girls, who were coarse, foolish, good-natured frontier women of the lower sort, took pity upon the seeming fugitives, and insisted on taking them aboard.  Accordingly the scow was shoved inshore, and Flynn jumped on the bank, only to be immediately seized by the Indians, who then opened fire on the others.  They tried to put off, and fired back, but they were helpless; one man and a girl were shot, another wounded, and the savages then swarmed aboard, seized everything, and got very drunk on a keg of whiskey.  The fates of the captives were various, each falling to some different group of savages.  Flynn, the cause of the trouble, fell to the Cherokees, who took him to the Miami town, and burned him alive, with dreadful torments.  The remaining girl, after suffering outrage and hardship, was bound to the stake, but saved by a merciful Indian, who sent her home.  Of the two remaining men, one ran the gauntlet successfully, and afterwards escaped and reached home through the woods, while the other was ransomed by a French trader at Sandusky.

Before thus disposing of their captives the Indians hung about the mouth of the Scioto for some time.  They captured a pirogue going up-stream, and killed all six paddlers.  Soon afterwards three heavily laden scows passed, drifting down with the current.  Aboard these were twenty-eight men, with their women and children, together with many horses and bales of merchandise.  They had but sixteen guns among them, and many were immigrants, unaccustomed to savage warfare, and therefore they made no effort to repel the attack, which could easily have been done by resolute, well-armed veterans.  The Indians crowded into the craft they had captured, and paddled and rowed after the scows, whooping and firing.  They nearly overtook the last scow, whereupon its people shifted to the second, and abandoned it.  When further pressed the people shifted into the headmost scow, cut holes in its sides so as to work all the oars, and escaped down-stream, leaving the Indians to plunder the two abandoned boats, which contained twenty-eight horses and fifteen hundred pounds’ worth of goods.

    Pursuit of the War Party.

The Kentuckians of the neighborhood sent word to General Harmar, begging him to break up this nest of plunderers.  Accordingly he started after them, with his regular troops.  He was joined by a number of Kentucky mounted riflemen, under the command of Col.  Charles Scott, a rough Indian fighter, and veteran of the Revolutionary War, who afterwards became governor of the State.  Scott had moved to Kentucky not long after the close of the war with England; he had lost a son at the hands of the savages, [Footnote:  State Dept.  MSS., No. 71, vol. ii., p. 563.] and he delighted in war against them.