“Don’t ask me any more and I’ll tell you the whole thing,” he had just said, while wiping the perspiration from his brow.  His face was worn; his beard ragged and unkempt; his appearance suggestive of extreme fatigue.  “It was this way:  Colonel Crawford had four hundred and eighty men under him, with Slover and me acting as guides.  This was a large force of men and comprised soldiers from Pitt and the other forts and settlers from all along the river.  You see, Crawford wanted to crush the Shawnees at one blow.  When we reached the Sandusky River, which we did after an arduous march, not one Indian did we see.  You know Crawford expected to surprise the Shawnee camp, and when he found it deserted he didn’t know what to do.  Slover and I both advised an immediate retreat.  Crawford would not listen to us.  I tried to explain to him that ever since the Guadenhutten massacre keen-eyed Indian scouts had been watching the border.  The news of the present expedition had been carried by fleet runners to the different Indian tribes and they were working like hives of angry bees.  The deserted Shawnee village meant to me that the alarm had been sounded in the towns of the Shawnees and the Delawares; perhaps also in the Wyandot towns to the north.  Colonel Crawford was obdurate and insisted on resuming the march into the Indian country.  The next day we met the Indians coming directly toward us.  It was the combined force of the Delaware chiefs, Pipe and Wingenund.  The battle had hardly commenced when the redskins were reinforced by four hundred warriors under Shanshota, the Huron chief.  The enemy skulked behind trees and rocks, hid in ravines, and crawled through the long grass.  They could be picked off only by Indian hunters, of whom Crawford had but few—­probably fifty all told.  All that day we managed to keep our position, though we lost sixty men.  That night we lay down to rest by great fires which we built, to prevent night surprises.

“Early next morning we resumed the fight.  I saw Simon Girty on his white horse.  He was urging and cheering the Indians on to desperate fighting.  Their fire became so deadly that we were forced to retreat.  In the afternoon Slover, who had been out scouting, returned with the information that a mounted force was approaching, and that he believed they were the reinforcements which Col.  Crawford expected.  The reinforcements came up and proved to be Butler’s British rangers from Detroit.  This stunned Crawford’s soldiers.  The fire of the enemy became hotter and hotter.  Our men were falling like leaves around us.  They threw aside their rifles and ran, many of them right into the hands of the savages.  I believe some of the experienced bordermen escaped but most of Crawford’s force met death on the field.  I hid in a hollow log.  Next day when I felt that it could be done safely I crawled out.  I saw scalped and mutilated bodies everywhere, but did not find Col.  Crawford’s body.  The Indians had taken all the clothing,