A GALLANT DEFENCE.

The relations between the Indians and the European colonists of America were, during nearly the whole colonial and much of the subsequent period, what we now suggestively entitle “strained.”  There were incessant aggressions of the colonists, incessant reprisals by the aborigines, while the warring whites of America never hesitated to use these savage auxiliaries in their struggles for territory and power.  The history of this country is filled with details of Indian assaults on forts and settlements, ambushes, massacres, torturings, and acts of duplicity and ferocity innumerable.  Yet every instance of Indian hostility has ended in the triumph of the whites, the advance of the army of colonization a step further, and the gradual subjugation of American savagery, animate and inanimate, to the beneficent influences of civilization.

These Indian doings are frequently sickening in their details.  The story of America cannot be told without them.  Yet they are of one family, and largely of one species, and an example or two will serve for the whole.  In our next tale the story of an Indian assault on the Daniel Boone stronghold in Kentucky will be told.  We purpose now to give the interesting details of an attack on Fort Henry, a small frontier work near where Wheeling now stands.

This attack was the work of Simon Girty, one of the most detestable characters that the drama of American history ever brought upon the stage.  He was the offspring of crime, his parents being irredeemably besotted and vicious.  Of their four sons, two, who were taken prisoner by the Indian at Braddock’s defeat, developed into monsters of wickedness.  James was adopted by the Delawares, and became the fiercest savage of the tribe.  Simon grew into a great hunter among the Senecas,—­unfortunately a hunter of helpless human beings as much as of game,—­and for twenty years his name was a terror in every white household of the Ohio country.  He is spoken of as honest.  It was his one virtue, the sole redeeming leaven in a life of vice, savagery, and cruelty.

[Illustration:  Indian attack and gallant defence.]

In the summer of 1777 this evil product of frontier life collected a force of four hundred Indians for an assault on the white.  His place of rendezvous was Sandusky; his ostensible purpose to cross the Ohio and attack the Kentucky frontier settlements.  On reaching the river, however, he suddenly turned up its course, and made all haste towards Fort Henry, then garrisoned by Colonel Sheppard, with about forty men.

The movements of Girty were known, and alarm as to their purpose was widely felt.  Sheppard had his scouts out, but the shrewd renegade managed to deceive them, and to appear before Fort Henry almost unannounced.  Happily, the coming of this storm of savagery was discovered in time enough to permit the inhabitants of Wheeling, then composed of some twenty-five log huts, to fly for refuge to the fort.