The Indians were faithful to the stipulations of the capitulation; and treated their prisoners with as much kindness both on their way, and after their arrival at Chillicothe, as their habits and means would admit.  The march was rapid and fatiguing, occupying three days of weather unusually cold and inclement.

The captivity of twenty-eight of the select and bravest of the Kentucky settlers, without the hope of liberation or exchange, was a severe blow to the infant settlement.  Had the Indians, after this achievement, immediately marched against Boonesborough, so materially diminished in its means of defence, they might either have taken the place by surprise, or, availing themselves of the influence which the possession of these prisoners gave them over the fears and affections of the inmates, might have procured a capitulation of the fort.  Following up this plan in progression, the weaker station would have followed the example of Boonesborough; since it is hardly supposable, that the united influence of fear, example, and the menace of the massacre of so many prisoners would not have procured the surrender of all the rest.  But, though on various occasions they manifested the keenest observation, and the acutest quickness of instinctive cunning—­though their plans were generally predicated on the soundest reason, they showed in this, and in all cases, a want of the combination of thought, and the abstract and extended views of the whites on such occasions.  For a single effort, nothing could be imagined wiser than their views.  For a combination made up of a number of elements of calculation, they had no reasoning powers at all.

Owing to this want of capacity for combined operations of thought, and their, habitual intoxication of excitement, on the issue of carrying some important enterprise without loss, they hurried home with their prisoners, leaving the voice of lamentation and the sentiment of extreme dejection among the bereaved inmates of Boonesborough.

Throwing all the recorded incidents and circumstances of the life of Boone, during his captivity among them, together, we shall reserve them for another place, and proceed here to record what befell him among the whites.

He resided as a captive among the Indians until the following March.  At that time, he, and ten of the persons who were taken with him at the Blue Licks, were conducted by forty Indians to Detroit, where the party arrived on the thirteenth of the month.  The ten men were put into the hands of Governor Hamilton, who, to his infinite credit, treated them with kindness.  For each of these they received a moderate ransom.  Such was their respect, and even affection for the hunter of Kentucky, and such, perhaps, their estimate of his capability of annoying them, that although Governor Hamilton offered them the large sum of a hundred pounds sterling for his ransom, they utterly refused to part with him.  It may easily be imagined,