JESSE HUGHES

     Border Settlers, begun in 1896, has been written under adversity during such time as could be spared from keeping the traditional wolf from the door.  The volume is a growth from an original design to write a biography of Jesse Hughes, the great Indian Scout of Western Virginia.  Whatever its merits, it is the product of an incentive to place in tangible form some of the unpublished records, history and traditions of the pioneers of the most interesting region of our entire western border.  In some instances widely scattered authorities have been drawn from, in the belief that a complete, though condensed history so far as practicable, was desirable.  Comparatively, the printed record meagre; but the field was found rich in unchronicled lore.       

     Nowhere in the Anglo-Saxon conquest of the New World is there a territory so fraught with dramatic tragedy, personal prowess and adventure, as the Trans-Allegheny.  For more than twenty years, embracing the Revolutionary struggle, amid the dark mazes of this mighty wilderness, the Red and the White warriors met in deadly conflict.  It was a warfare cruel, fierce and unrelenting; where mutual wrongs and implacable race hatred ever whetted anew the murderous scalping knife and rendered unerring the aim of the deadly rifle.  The sombre dales of the Monongahela and the deep glens of the Kanawhas' witnessed many a tragic scene.  The set purpose to found new homes in the wilderness was met with a grim determination to maintain those homes long established to the westward, by holding, if possible, this natural barrier against the invader.

     By instinct and training the contestants stood fairly matched.  Baring the torture stake, the status of the "Advance guard of civilization," was scarce above that of the Red guard of barbarism.  The isolation of the settlers' cabins was responsible for the many dreadful massacres of innocence; while the segregation of the Indians alone secured them from the ravages of a like warfare.  When the opportunity afforded, entire families, bands and villages were ruthlessly destroyed.  The wolf and the vulture ever hovered in the wake of the Red and the White forayer.  The war whoop and the border yell were alike synonymous of death: - a call for the carrion creatures to assemble in feast.

     The antipathy of the Indian for the "Long Knives" was well founded.  Nowhere in the early annals can we find such reckless dare-devil bravery as displayed by the Virginia frontiersman; where every settler was a warrior.  And nowhere has the chronicler dealt more unfairly with the memory of the forest ranger.  If zeal in the extirpation of the Indian is to be considered a virtue, then many of these bordermen were entitled to canonization.  Jesse Hughes and his two noted brothers: - the peers of Boone, Brady, Kenton, the McColloughs', Wetzels' and the Zanes', have but small space in the annals, while the names of others of scarce less ability are practically unknown.  In the present work, many of the deeds of these scouts are, for the first time, made public.

     Pathos and tragedy are the component parts of the early history of this region.  Domestic life held but little cheer. The warrior-settler engaged so constantly in scouting and the chase, was not only necessarily improvident, but his meagre wages for military services were often in arrears.  On the wife and the mother devolved the heavier burden of providing for the family. It was not enough that she spin and manufacture clothing, but the "corn patch" and the "truck patch" were usually the product of her toil, aided, perhaps, by the children.  Unceasing danger and hardships were her portion, and her worth has never been appreciated.

     A descendant of one of the oldest and most noted pioneer families of the upper Monongahela, writes me.

     "In writing the record of the wilderness heroes, do not forget that it was our old grandmothers who cooked for all the people around open wood fires when they attended church in their cabin homes: that there were as many noble women as there were noble men, true heroines, who with but few pleasures to mitigate the monotony of their hard, arduous lives; they toiled without murmur or complaint.  Their courage, industry, patience and self-denial, were the beautiful as well as the pathetic side of the pioneer life in those trying days.  They were the real foundations of the great civilization of our land.  Do not forget our grandmothers."

     This is true; and the historian has failed to recognize the actual part of these grandmothers in the settlement and development of the Trans-Allegheny.  When life in the boundless woods threatened to revert husband, father and son to hopeless barbarism, it was their influence which checkmated the seductive "call of the wild."   PEACE  TO  THEIR  MEMORY.

     The following is a list of the names of men for whose military records search was made among the archives of the War Department, and the Pension Office, Washington, D. C. With the exception of a few soldiers of the War of 1812, which are so designated, all were for services during the Revolutionary War, either Continental Troops or State Militia; which latter included frontier scouts or rangers.  Many of these never applied for pension; some dying before the pension laws covering their case were enacted.  The prospect of a record through the widow's claim was an incentive for the examination.  I am indebted to Laura Gertrude Rogers, of Washington City, for the splendid results obtained, which are fully set forth in the course of this volume. It was found that not a few of the bravest defenders of the border were left entirely without the pale of any pensioning legislation.

     Baily, Capt.  Minter; Bent, Belt or Broadbelt, James (War 1812); Biggs, Lieut.  Joseph; Bonnett, Jacob; Bonnett, Lewis; Bonnett, Peter; Bozarth, Cap.  John (War 1812); Bozarth, George (War of 1812); Brake, Jacob; Brown, John; Bush, Jacob; Bush, John; Butcher, Paulcene. Carpenter, Christopher; Carpenter, Jesse;

     Carpenter, John; Connells, Col.  John (War 1812); Cotteral, Thomas; Cutright, John; Cutright, Benjamin; Cutright, Peter.

     Davisson, Hezekiah; Dorman, Timothy; Drennen, Thomas; Duval, John P. Flesher, Adam;

     Flesher, Henry; Forenash, Jacob.

     Green, George; Gregory, Capt.  Joseph.

     Hacker, John; Hacker, William; Hall, Joseph; Hess, Hezekiah (1776-1812); Hicks, Sotha; Hinzman, Henry; Hughes, Jesse (for widow's claim); Hughes, Elias; Hughes, Thomas; Hughes, Job;

Hughes, Charles, Hughes, Charles (War of 1812); Hughes, David (War of 1812); Hughes (any name Volunteer from Licking Co., Ohio. War 1812); Hurst, William; Hurst (any name); Hurst, John (War of 1812); Hurst, Daniel (War of 1812); Hurst, William (War of 1812).

    Jackson, John; Jackson, George; Jackson, Edward; Jackson, Henry; Jenkins, Bartholomew.

     One John Pringle was a settler on Chaplin's Fork, Kentucky, in 1780.  He came with a fleet of three boats from the Wappatomaka, and in an encounter with the Indians, led by Simon Girty, Pringle's boat alone escaped.  He married Rebecca Simpson, a sister to a John Simpson, from whom she inherited slaves in 1825. 

     Samuel Pringle settled permanently on the Buckhannon, and was prominent in the border wars.  From sworn statements preserved in the Government Pension Office, it would appear that, Samuel Pringle was at one time during the Revolution, captain of a band of scouts, but as no claim for pension on account of his Revolutionary service was made, we find no actual record of his military career.  His wife, Charity Cutright, was the daughter of Benjamin Cutright, and a sister of John Cutright, Jr., the noted scout of the Buckhannon.  A family tradition has it that Samuel and Charity were married before the fugitive brothers made residence in the Sycamore, where Mrs. Pringle joined her husband in 1767, guided by a path blazed by John when he first sought the settlements.  Another account says they were not married until after the return of the brothers to the Wappatomaka, although a warm attachment had sprung up between the young couple, while the deserters were at Looney's Creek in 1762.  It is more than probable that the marriage was consummated during the brief stay of Pringle at Looney's Creek, and that the devoted wife actually traversed the wilderness path to her absent husband.

     The children of Samuel and Charity were William, John, Samuel, Elizabeth and another daughter whose name is not recalled.  Their descendants are numerous in the Buckhannon country,  while some are scattered through sections of Ohio and Indiana.

     The claim that the Pringles, as soldiers in the Royal Army, only came to America during the French and Indian wars, can not be accepted as fact.  It is not probable that such men would have deserted and fled to a wilderness fraught with known dangers with which they were unqualified to cope.  Border Colonial troops, as in the Patriot Army of the Revolution, chafed at restraint and discipline, and often deserted.  The Pringles evinced a consummate skill in woodcraft, not attributable to the raw European soldier.

     It is a remarkable coincidence that a William Pringle resided in Philadelphia, who had two sons named John and Samuel, born in 1728 and 1731 respectively.

     It is not improbable that this family removed to the Virginia border and that the sons were identical with those of later renown.

     Momentous events were destined to follow in the wake of these wilderness refugees.  In the autumn of 1768, several adventurous and prospective settlers under the guidance of Samuel, visited the region of the Pringle refuge, and so well pleased were they, that the following spring they returned, selected lands, cleared small fields, planted crops and built cabins preparatory to bringing their families.  After the crops were "laid by," the men returned to the settlements, and in the fall when they came back to harvest their corn, they found it entirely destroyed by buffaloes.  This delayed the removal of the families, or at least a greater part of them, until the winter of 1770.

     With Pringle's band of prospectors of 1769, came a youth of about nineteen - Jesse Hughes.  He was of Welsh extraction, slight in his proportions, and light and active in his movements. He possessed a form as erect as that of an Indian, and had endurance and fleetness of limb that no man of his day surpassed. His height was about five feet and nine inches, and his weight never exceeded one hundred and forty-five pounds.  He had thin lips, A narrow chin, a nose that was sharp and inclined to the Roman form, little or no beard, light hair, and eyes of that indefinable color that one person would pronounce grey, another blue, but which was both - and neither.  They were piercing, cold, fierce, and as penetrating and restless as those of the mountain panther.  Said one who knew him: "Hughes had eyes like a rattlesnake." It has been averred, and without contradiction, that Jesse Hughes, like the famed "Deaf Smith" of Texas, could detect the presence of an Indian at a considerable distance by the mere sense of smell.  He was of an irritable, vindictive, and suspicious nature, and his hatred, when aroused, knew no bounds.  Yet it is said that he was true to those who gained his friendship.  Such was Jesse Hughes in character and appearance when he arrived in that country destined to become his future home, and where he became the noted hunter, the great scout and famous Indian fighter of Northwestern Virginia.

     In an interview with an intelligent and reputable lady, now deceased, who, in her childhood, had known Jesse Hughes, and had been intimately acquainted with some of his family, I was given this vivid description of the characteristics and personal appearance of the great Indian fighter:

     "Hughes' countenance was hard, stern and unfeeling; his eyes were the most cruel and vicious I ever saw.  He was profane and desperately wicked.  He was very superstitious, and a firm believer in witchcraft.  He told horrible stories of how witches would crawl like spiders over the naked bodies of babies, causing them to cry out from pain and misery; and he would conjure to counteract the witches, and offer incantations to overcome their evil influence.  His temper was fierce and uncontrollable, often finding vent in the abuse of his family.  In a drunken brawl near West's Fort, he and a Mr. Stalnaker nearly killed lchabod Davis, his neighbor, leaving the unconscious victim for dead.  Hughes fled from the settlement, but returned after Davis recovered.  He never worked, but spent his time in hunting and scouting.  His clothing was colored in the ooze made from the bark of the chestnut oak; he would wear no other color, this shade harmonizing with the forest hues and rendering him less conspicuous to game and Indians.  When scouting, his dress consisted only of the long hunting shirt, belted at the waist, open leggins, moccasins, and a brimless cap; or a handkerchief bound about his head.  Thus dressed, he was ever ready for the chase, or the trail of the Indian foe."  

     When further questioned as to his traits of character, the lady bluntly closed the interview by saying, "I would not tell all I know about Jesse Hughes for this much gold," designating the amount she could hold in her doubled-hands.  "There are," she continued, "too many of his descendants living about here." Nor could she be induced to speak further on the subject.

     His mode of dress, as above described, has been amply verified from other sources.  When Indian incursions were expected, Jesse Hughes wore his hunting shirt both day and night, without regard to weather.

     Mrs. Catharine Simms-Allman remembered that when she was a little girl, Jesse Hughes came to her father's house on Hacker's Creek, one mile below West's Fort, early one morning, and ordered them to run to the fort.  Upon that occasion his dress consisted of the hunting shirt and moccasins only.  He was riding a pony without a saddle, and mounted her mother behind him, and with one of the children in his arms, galloped to the fort.  This incident occurred while Hughes lived at the mouth of Jesse's Run.

     At the end of his cabin, Hughes erected a "lean-to," where at all times he kept his pony ready for instant use in case of an Indian alarm.

     Of the pioneers who came with Pringle into the Buckhannon country, Withers says:

     "The others of the party (William Hacker, Thomas and Jesse Hughes, John and William Radcliff and John Brown) appear to have employed their time exclusively in hunting, neither of them making any improvement of land for his own benefit. Yet they were of considerable service to the new settlement.  Those who had commenced clearing land, were supplied by them with an abundance of meat, while in their hunting excursions through the country, a better knowledge of it was obtained, than could have been acquired, had they been engaged in making improvements.

     "In one of these expeditions they discovered and gave name to Stone Coal Creek, which flowing westwardly, induced the supposition that it discharged itself directly into the Ohio.  Descending this creek, to ascertain the fact, they came to its confluence with a river, which they then called, and has since been known as the West Fork.  After having gone some distance down the river, they returned by a different route to the settlement, better pleased with the land on it and some of its tributaries, than with that on Buckhannon." 

     The hunters evidently returned to the settlement by way of Hacker's Creek.  The Indian name for this stream signifies "Muddy Water."

     It is astonishing when we realize how little there is recorded of the actual border life of Jesse Hughes, and other noted scouts of Northwestern Virginia.  Especially is this true when we remember that Mr. Withers wrote his Chronicles of Border Warfare in the midst of the very scenes of some of the most daring escapades and bloody achievements of border strife; and

this, too, while many of the principal actors in the tragedies were still living.  It is but natural that we should expect a reasonably complete record of local events; but, unfortunately we find the record as preserved for us woefully deficient.  A careful perusal of the excellent work in question, reveals the fact that a greater part of that section of it which deals with local affairs is not so complete, nor are the events so carefully portrayed, as is that part which treat matters pertaining to more distant localities.  It cannot be denied that the first part of the volume, which sets out the general history of the more distant settlements, is more complete, more concise, and far more minutely written than the latter portion, which is largely local. Dr. Thwaites recognized this deficiency.  In the Editor's Preface to the revised edition he says: 

     "The weakness of the traditional method is well exemplified in Withers' work.  His treatment of many of the larger events on the border may now be regarded as little else than a thread on which to hang annotations;***"

     There must have been a cause for this deficiency, which becomes very apparent when we read Dr. Lyman C. Draper's Memoir of Withers, and the letter from Mr. Bond set out below.  Dr. Draper tells us that:

     " * * * Mr. Withers got nothing whatever for his diligence and labor in producing it [Border Warfare], save two or three copies of the work itself.  He used to say that had he published the volume himself, he would have made it much more complete, and better in every way; for he was hampered, limited and hurried - often correcting proof of the early, while writing the later chapters."

     The letter from Mr. Bond is in response to an inquiry, and

is as follows:

                                  "LOST CREEK, W. VA., January 23, 1898.

Mr.  L. V. MCWHORTER,

     MASON, OHIO.

DEAR SIR:

     "Your letter received, and in reply will say; I am a grandson of William Powers, one of the men who got up Border Warfare; William Hacker was the other. This work lay dormant in their hands for many years.  Hacker passed away first. Powers purchased Hacker's interest in the work, and it lay in his hands until 1831, when Joseph Israel, an editor in Clarksburg, bought the manuscript and arranged for its publication by employing Alexander Scott Withers to prepare it for the press.  Accordingly Mr. Withers took up the work, and after he had it about half completed some friend told him that he was likely to get nothing for his labor, and that Israel was poor and could not raise the amount of money agreed upon.  Mr. Withers did not want to leave the work in that condition and said, 'I will dispose of it in some shape.' So he ran through the most notable and prominent features, leaving the balance entirely out.

     "Now from this time on you and all others will see that the second part of Border Warfare is rather incomplete and scattered as compared to the first part of the volume.

     "This is the history that my grandfather gave me of the work from his own lips.  My grandfather lived on a farm adjoining Jane Lew [West Fort], about three miles from Withers' office, and was there several times while Withers was preparing the work, and he told me these things himself.

     "I am the only man that can give this history, as I am the only one living who took any account of these things.  I am now in my eighty-second year.

     "In regard to Jesse Hughes, my grandfather told me that they had hunted Indians together, and were in the volunteer company pursuing the Indians on the Little Kanawha, when John Bonnett was killed; that Jesse was the best trailer among the whites and could trail with any Indian on the border.  Jesse's brother Ellis was also a noted scout. While he could not trail with Jesse, he was the greater with the rifle, and could hit an Indian under any and all circumstances within the range of his rifle.  He was a dead shot.

     "When hunting, Ellis could get more game than Jesse at long range, but at the end of the day Jesse would have as much, but he would get it by slipping upon it unawares.  In this, as in trailing Indians, he had no equal."

                                     Yours truly,

                                             LEVI BOND.

     Here, then, we have the solution to the mystery of the incomplete and defective character of the history in question. This very apparent fault is lamentable.  It is the incidental details that give interest to local history.  There is little wonder that Mr. Withers became discouraged and lost interest in his noble but arduous task.  A less energetic and patriotic man would have dropped the work entirely when it became apparent that there would be no compensation for his labor.  All honor to Mr. Withers!

     There is considerable mention of Jesse Hughes in the annals of Virginia, particularly in the early settlement of Northwestern Virginia, particularly those portions relating to the Indian wars of the period.  But taken all together there is not enough to give the reader any accurate idea of Hughes and the important part he played in the settlement of the central regions of the present State of West Virginia.  It will, however, aid the reader much when combined with what has been preserved herein and published for the first time.  For this reason I have decided to reproduce in this chapter the extended reference to him found in the History of the Early Settlement and Indian Wars of Western Virginia, by Dr. Willis DeHass, Wheeling, 1851.  Another reason for this quotation is that this work is so very rare that it cannot be consulted by the average reader.  It is a work of high order and has been an authority for more than half a century.  A few references to Hughes from other sources will be found in this

chapter.

                            JESSE HUGHES

     "One of the most active, daring and successful Indian hunters in the mountain region of Virginia, was Jesse Hughes.  He has not inappropriately been styled the Wetzel of that portion of the state, and in many respects, certainly was not undeserving of that distinctive appellation.  Jesse Hughes possessed in an imminent degree the rare constituents of courage and energy.  These qualities, so essential in those days of savage warfare, gained for him the confidence of the sturdy men for the post by whom he was surrounded, and often induced them to select him for the post of leader in their various expeditions against the enemy. Many are the tales of adventure which the people of West Fork and Little Kanawha relate of this notable personage.  A few of these we have collected and now give.

     "Hughes was a native of the region to which his operations were chiefly confined.  He was born on the headwaters of the Monongahela, and grew to manhood amid the dangers and privations which the people of that section of Virginia endured during the long years of a border warfare.  Early learning that the rifle and tomahawk were his principal means of maintenance and defense, he became an adept in their use and refused to acknowledge a superior anywhere.  Passionately devoted to the wood, he became invaluable to the settlements as hunter and scout. A man of delicate frame, but an iron constitution, he could endure more fatigue than any of his associates, and thus was enabled to remain abroad at all seasons without inconvenience or detriment.  Many were the threatened blows which his vigilance averted, and numerous lives of helpless settlers his strong arm reached forth to save.  The recollection of his services and devotion is still cherished with a lively feeling of admiration by the people of the region with which his name is so intimately associated.  

     "The following incidents illustrative of his career, we derive from sources entitled to every credit.  The one which immediately follows is from an old and intimate friend of Hughes (Mr.  Renick of Ohio), to whom it was communicated by the hero himself, and afterwards confirmed by Mr. Harness, who was one of the expedition.  The time of the incident was about 1790.

     "'No Indian depredations had recently occurred in the vicinity of Clarksburg, and the inhabitants began to congratulate themselves that difficulties were finally at an end.

     "'One night a man hearing the fence of a small lot, he had a horse in, fall, jumped up and running out saw an Indian spring on the horse and dash off.  The whole settlement was alarmed in an hour or two, a company of twenty-five or thirty men were paraded, ready to start by daylight.  They took a circle outside of the settlement, and soon found the trail of apparently eight or ten horses, and they supposed, about that many Indians.  The captain (chosen before Hughes joined the company) called a halt, and held a council to determine in what manner to pursue them.  The captain and a majority of the company were for following on their trail: Hughes was opposed, and he said he could pilot them to the spot where the Indians would cross the Ohio, by a nearer way than the enemy could go, and if they reached there before the Indians, could intercept them and be sure of success.  But the commander insisted on pursuing the trail.  Hughes then tried another argument: he pointed out the danger of trailing the Indians: insisted that they would waylay their trail, in order to know if they were pursued, and would choose a situation where they could shoot two or three and set them at defiance; And alarming the others, the Indians would out-travel them and make their escape.  The commander found that Hughes was like to get a majority for his plan, in which event he (the captain) would lose the honor of planning the expedition.  Hughes, by some, was considered too wild for the command, and it was nothing but jealousy that kept him from it, for in most of the Indian excursions, he got the honor of the best plan, or did the best act that was performed.  The commander then broke up the council by calling aloud to the men to follow him and let the cowards go home, and dashed off full speed, the men ail following. Hughes knew the captain's remark was intended for him, and felt the insult in the highest degree, but followed on with the rest.  They had not gone many miles until the trail ran down a ravine where the ridge on one side was very steep, with a ledge of rock for a considerable distance.  On the top of this cliff two Indians lay in ambush, and when the company got opposite they made a noise of some kind, that caused the men to stop: that instant two of the company were shot and mortally wounded.  They now found Hughes' prediction fully verified, for they had to ride so far round before they could get up the cliff, that the Indians with ease made their escape.

     "'They all now agreed that Hughes' plan was the best, and urged him to pilot them to the river where the Indians would cross.  He agreed to do it; but was afraid it might be too late, for the Indians knew that they were pursued and would make a desperate push.  After leaving some of the company to take care of the wounded men, they put off for the Ohio river, at the nearest point, and got there the next day shortly after the Indians had crossed.  The water was still muddy, and the rafts that they crossed on were floating down the opposite shore. The men were now unanimous for returning home.  Hughes soon got satisfaction for the insult the captain had given him: he said he wanted to find out who the cowards were; that if any of them would go, he would cross the river and scalp some of the Indians.  They all refused. He then said if one man would go with him, he would undertake it; but none would consent.  Hughes then said he would go and take one of their scalps, or leave his own.

     "'The company now started home, and Hughes went up the river three or four miles, keeping out of sight of it, for he expected the Indians were watching them to see if they would cross.  He there made a raft, crossed the river, and encamped for the night.  The next day he found their trail, and pursued it very cautiously, and about ten miles from the Ohio found their camp.  There was but one Indian in it, the rest were out hunting.  The Indian left to keep camp, in order to pass away the time, got to playing the fiddle on some bones that they had for the purpose.  Hughes crept up and shot him, took his scalp and made the best of his way home.

     "The following characteristic anecdote goes far to illustrate the great discernment and instantaneous arrangement of plans of this shrewd and skillful Virginia hunter.    

     "It is a general belief that the Indian is exceedingly cunning; unrivalled in the peculiar knowledge of the woods, and capable, by the extraordinary imitative faculties which he possesses, to deceive either man, beast or fowl.  This is true to a certain extent; but still, with all his natural sagacity and quick perception of a native woodman, the Indian warrior falls short of the acquired knowledge of a well trained hunter, as the following case serves to illustrate.  Jesse Hughes was more than a match at any time for the most wary savage in the forest.  In his ability to anticipate all their artifices, he had but few equals, and fewer still, superiors.  But, to the incident.

     "At a time of great danger from the incursions of the Indians, when the citizens of the neighborhood were in a fort at Clarksburg, Hughes one morning, observed a lad very intently fixing his gun.  'Jim', said he, 'what are you doing that for?' 'I am going to shoot a turkey that I hear gobbling on the hillside,' said Jim.  'I hear no turkey,' said the other.  'Listen,' said Jim: 'there, didn't you hear it? Listen again.' 'Well,' says Hughes, after hearing it repeated, 'I'll go and kill it.' 'No you won't, said the boy, 'it is my turkey; I heard it first.' 'Well,' said Hughes, 'but you know I am the best shot.  I'll go and kill it, and give you the turkey.' The lad demurred but at length agreed. Hughes went out of the fort on the side that was farthest from the supposed turkey, and passing along the river, went up a ravine and cautiously creeping through the bushes behind the spot, came in whence the cries issued, and, as he expected, espied a large Indian sitting on a chestnut stump, surrounded by sprouts, gobbling, and watching if any one would come from the fort to kill the turkey.  Hughes shot him before the Indian knew of his approach, took off the scalp, and went into the fort, where Jim was waiting for his prize.  'There now,' says Jim, 'you have let the turkey go.  I would have killed it if I had gone.' 'No,' says Hughes, 'I didn't let it go;' and, taking out the scalp, threw it down.  'There take your turkey, Jim, I don't want it.' The lad was overcome, and nearly fainted to think of the certain death he had escaped, purely by the keen perception and good management of Jesse Hughes.' 

     "Jesse Hughes, as we have already stated, was often of invaluable service to the settlements along the upper Monongahela, by advising them of the approach of Indians.  On one occasion, a considerable body of the common enemy attacked a fort near Clarksburg, and but for the energy and fearlessness of Hughes might have reduced the frail structure, and massacred every one within it.  This daring man boldly went forth for succor, and succeeded in reaching a neighboring station in safety. Immediately a company of men left to relieve the besieged, when the Indians, fearing the superior numbers, retreated in haste.   

     "Hughes' scouting expeditions were not always confined to the extreme upper regions of the Monongahela.  He often visited the stations lower down, an spent much of his time at Prickett's fort, also at the stockade where Morgantown now stands, and many other settlements in the neighborhood.  He was a great favorite, and no scouting party could be complete, unless Jesse Hughes had something to do with it.  We regret that our limits will not allow us to give more incidents in his very eventful life."

     Mr. Luther Haymond, who is still living at Clarksburg, says that William Powers, while on his death-bed, told him that the incident of Hughes and the turkey never occurred at Clarksburg; that he knew the settlement from the beginning, and that the story was a mistake.  Powers had an impression that he had heard a similar story as occurring east of the mountains.  Mr. Haymond says that Powers was well posted on events happening on the frontier after his arrival.

     Mr. James Stanley Gandee, a son of Jesse's daughter Massie, often heard both his mother and his Aunt Rachel Cottrell tell the Hughes turkey story.  There never was any doubt about its authenticity.  As related by them, the occurrence was substantially the same as recorded by DeHass, but the place was West's Fort, instead of Clarksburg.  The lad who first heard the turkey and who was preparing to go shoot it, was James Tanner, a brother to Jesse's wife, and was then some fourteen or fifteen years of age.

     I was told by Mrs. Mary Straley, of Hacker's Creek, who had known Jesse Hughes and some of his family, that the boy who figured in the turkey story was Jim McCullough.  Mrs. Straley seemed to have no doubts regarding the credibility of the story, but did not state where it occurred.  She was well informed on the early history of the Hacker's Creek settlement, and was a woman of high integrity.

     It must be borne in mind that Jesse Hughes never took up a residence at Clarksburg, although he spent much of his time about the fort there.  His scouting expeditions extended all over the Virginia border and western Pennsylvania.

     That William Powers should have heard a similar story east of the mountains cannot militate against the authenticity of the Hughes' story.  Border lore abounds in such incidents.  J. Lewis Peyton gives the following on Jesse Hughes, evidently epitomized from DeHass:

     "One of the most active, daring and successful Indian hunters in the mountain region of Virginia was Jesse Hughes-sometimes styled the Wetzel of his portion of the State.  He was born on the headwaters of the Monongahela, Va., about 1768, and early became skilled in the use of the rifle and tomahawk.  He was a man of iron constitution, and could endure extraordinary privations and fatigue.  Many anecdotes are told of his encounters with the red men and of the invaluable services he rendered to the white settlements on the Monongahela.  Jesse Hughes was more than a match at any time for the most wary savage in the forest.  In his ability to anticipate all their artifices, he had few equals and no superiors.  He was a great favorite, and no scouting party could be complete unless Jesse Hughes had something to do with it."

     Jesse Hughes is mentioned frequently in Withers' Chronicles of Border Warfare, referred to hereinbefore, and which will be duly noticed in the course of this history.

     In Doniphan's Expedition, by William E. Connelley, there is a biographical sketch of Colonel John Taylor Hughes, a member of the expedition of Colonel Alexander W. Doniphan in the Mexican War.  Colonel Hughes became the historian of the expedition.  He was a gallant soldier, and was killed at the battle of Independence, Missouri, in the Civil War.  Of Colonel Hughes, the biographical sketch says:

     "His father was Samuel Swan Hughes, the descendant of Stephen Hughes and his wife Elizabeth Tarlton Hughes.  Stephen Hughes came to Maryland from Wales, probably from Carnarvonshire, but possibly from Glamorganshire.  The date of his arrival in America has not been preserved.  His son Absalom moved to Powhatan County, Virginia, where he intermarried with the daughter of a planter whose name was also Hughes, and whose Christian name was either David or Jesse-most probably Jesse. He lived on Hughes Creek, in that county, and was a man of character and influence; many of his descendants live yet in Virginia and West Virginia, and some of them live in other parts of the United States.  Joseph, the son of Absalom Hughes, married Sarah Swan.  He moved to Kentucky about the year 1790, and settled in Woodford County.  There his son, Samuel Swan Hughes, married Nancy Price, daughter of Colonel William Price, a Virginia soldier of the Revolution,"

     Jesse Hughes, who lived on the stream then known as Hughes Creek, in Powhatan County, Virginia, was related by blood to Stephen Hughes, and had preceded him from Wales to America.  The Hughes and Swan families were pioneer families in Virginia, and in their migrations they kept well together, members of them often intermarrying.  And from the intermarriage of Stephen Hughes with his kinswoman, the daughter of Jesse Hughes, in Powhatan County, Virginia, Jesse Hughes, the famous pioneer and woodsman of Western Virginia, was probably descended. 

     The date of the birth of Jesse Hughes is not known to be of record, and cannot be fixed with accuracy; and the place is also uncertain.  DeHass and Peyton agree as to the place; but Peyton alone gives the date.  Evidently they are both in error.  The citation heretofore made to the work of Withers shows that Jesse Hughes was an active hunter in the Buckhannon settlement in 1769. This was the first permanent settlement established on the waters of the upper Monongahela, and we find him there but one year later than the date given by Peyton as that of his birth. it is well nigh impossible that he should have been born on the waters of the Monongahela.  The Blue Ridge marked the western frontier of Virginia as late as 1763.  The few settlements scattered beyond that boundary towards the Ohio, the westernmost of which was on Looney Creek, a tributary of the James, were not permanent, and were almost all destroyed by the conspiracy of Pontiac.   

     Jesse Hughes was born about the year 1750.  It might have been a year earlier or later, though it is not probable that it could vary a year either way from that date.  As to the place of his birth, the evidence at hand indicates that it was east of the Allegheny Mountains, perhaps on the waters of the Wappatomaka of the Potomac.  Susan Turner Hughes, the widow of George W. Hughes, a descendant of Jesse Hughes, told William E. Connelley, October 6, 1902, at Henry, Grant County, West Virginia, that: "Old Jesse Hughes was born right over here on Jackson's River, close to the Greenbrier county-line. I have passed the place myself, in company with my husband, who pointed out the place, which is in a fine river bottom. He was born in the winter, and the wolves were starving in the woods because of the deep now. The night he was born they came into the yard and fought the dogs and ran them under the house and fought them there, and were only driven out by burning gunpowder on the hearth." Mrs. Hughes could not give the date of his birth, but said he was "A right smart chunk of a lad at the time of Braddock's battle."

     If Mrs. Hughes was right, Jesse Hughes must have been born in Allegheny County Virginia. Complete reliance cannot, however, be placed upon the information given by her; for some things which she related of Jesse Hughes, while they may be the local traditions of the country, could not be reconciled with known facts.  Her description of the man and his cruel and bloodthirsty course towards the Indians coincides perfectly with what is known to be true.  She said: "Old Jesse Hughes had eyes like a painter [panther] and could see at night almost as well as one.  He could hear the slightest noise made in the forest at a great distance, and he was always disturbed by any noise he could not account for.  He knew the ways of every animal and bird in the woods, and was familiar with the sounds and cries made by them.  Any unusual cry or action of an animal or bird, or any note or sound of alarm made by either, caused him to stop and look about until he knew the cause.  He could go through the woods, walking or running, without making any noise, unless the leaves were very dry, and then he made very little. He was as stealthy and noiseless as a painter, and could creep up on a deer without causing it any fright.  And he could outrun any Indian that ever prowled the forest.  He was as savage as a wolf, and he liked to kill an Indian better than to eat his dinner."

     If Jesse Hughes was born on Jackson's River, the shiftings common on the disturbed border must have caused his parents to move to the Wappatomaka settlements, for he came into western Virginia with hunters from that region.  Thomas Hughes, who was killed on Hacker's Creek by the Indians in April, 1778, was Jesse's father; but no record or tradition indicating that he had settled on this stream, has ever been found.  In 1781 a certificate was granted "Edmund West, assignee to Thomas Hughes, Senr., 400 acres on Sicamore Lick run, a branch of the West Fork [Harrison County] opposite Thomas Heughs [Hughes] junr's land, to include his settlement made in 1773, with a pre-emption to 1,000 acres adjoining." This is the earliest record that I have found regarding the settling of Thomas Hughes, Sr. on the upper Monongahela waters.  With some of the Radcliffs he settled on Elk Creek near Clarksburg, and his family still resided there in the fall of 1793.  A family tradition has it that when the Indians ambushed and killed their father, who was then quite old and bald-headed," Jesse and Elias solemnly pledged themselves "to kill Injuns as long as they lived and could see to kill them." Most terribly was that awful pledge redeemed.  It will be seen, however, that both had killed Indians before the tragic death of their father, which event intensified, if possible, their hatred of the Indians, but was not the cause in which this hatred originated.

     I have not been able to find any printed record showing that Jesse Hughes was an enrolled Spy or Ranger on the border.

     An inquiry to the Bureau of Pensions, Washington, D. C., elicited the reply that "a careful search of the Revolutionary War pension rolls fails to show a claim for any Jesse Hughes other than Survivor's File No. 9594." This was the Jesse Hughes, of Fluvanna County, Virginia, mentioned further on in this chapter.

     Jesse Hughes, the scout, died prior to the Act of Congress, June 4, 1832, pensioning the soldiers of the Revolution, and if his services were pensionable, his widow, who survived him several years, never applied for same.

     An inquiry made to the War Department failed to disclose any record of military enlistment by our Jesse Hughes.  This, however, is true of others who were contemporary with Jesse, and who were known to have regularly enlisted in some branch of the military.

     To a like inquiry to the Virginia State Library, Richmond, came the responses that, "neither the Muster Rolls of the State troops, nor the claims for Bounty Lands of that period, contain any record of the Jesse Hughes in question."

     The Thomas Hughes who accompanied Pringle's Band of settlers to the Buckhannon, in 1769, was Jesse's younger brother, born about 1754.  His inordinate passion for sport and adventure lured him to this Eldorado of the hunter.  He afterwards settled on the West Fork River, and was the same Thomas Hughes whom we find on Hacker's Creek, and who hastened to the rescue of the Flesher family when they were attacked by the Indians in 1784, near where the town of Weston now stands.

     The homestead register of Monongalia County shows that in 1781, Thomas Hughes was granted a certificate for "400 acres on the West Fork, adjoining lands of Elias Hughes, to include his settlement made in 1773." The records of 1780 show that Thomas Hughes assigned to Thomas John (?) his claim to 250 acres on Ten Mile Creek (Harrison County), "to include his settlement made in the year 1772." Whether this assignor was the senior or junior Thomas Hughes, is not known, but the logical inference is that it was the latter.  The date of the assignment is not of record.    

     Although Thomas Hughes, Jr., was one of the most capable and persistent scouts on the Virginia frontier, the only reference that we find to him in history, is his connection with the Flesher occurrence in 1784.

     In 1833 or 1834, Hughes applied for a pension, and we have a glimpse of his border life in the meagre record preserved in the government Pension Office at Washington.  Hughes was illiterate and his name always appears with the customary "X." His original application, or declaration with accompanying papers, has been destroyed, but from the fragmentary record we learn that he was a resident on the West Fork of the Monongahela in 1774, and from that year until 1779 he was, every year, actively engaged in scouting from the West Fork to the Ohio River, under Captain William Lowther.  His consummate skill in woodcraft, his bravery and caution, soon won for him a subaltern leadership.  He was subsequently commissioned a  Lieutenant of Indian Spies in Capt. Lowther's Company, a trust he did not resign until the spring of 1784.  After this, he continued on ranging excursions to the different forts until the close of the Indian War in 1795. During this service, he was stationed at West's Fort, and at Richards' Fort on the West Fork.

     In 1780, Lieutenant Hughes was riding a pathway about mid way between the West and Richards' Forts, when he discovered an Indian mounted on a horse, recognized to be that of Adam O'Brien's.  The Lieutenant sprang from his horse and fired at the Indian wounding him, when he fled.  Hughes was determined if possible to recapture the stolen horse, and in company with Alexander West pursued the Indian, tracking him by the blood.  They found the tracks of several Indians, but lost the trail entirely at the West Fork River.  It was supposed that the wounded Indian, perhaps dying, had been sunk in the river by his comrades.

     In the affidavit of John Cartwright (Cutright), who in 1834 testified for Hughes, it would appear that Hughes was in some regular military expedition against the Indians, from which he returned in 1784.  Cutright declares that after this, although he was stationed at the Buckhannon Fort, he and Hughes went spying and ranging together until 1795, and that Lieutenant Hughes lost much property through Indians.

     William Powers, Alexander West and Adam Flesher also testified for Hughes in his claim for pension, while John McWhorter, J. P., vouched for the integrity of these witnesses.

     W.G. Singleton, Special Pension Agent, who investigated Hughes' claim for pension, reported under date of January 2nd, 1835, "I understand from Hughes' Agent, James M. Camp, that his (Hughes) mind is entirely gone, and from other sources that he is a maniac and has been confined for years.  Christopher Nutter, William Powers and others tell me that he did good service, but was in no regular service, so therefore is not entitled to pension." Hughes was refused a pension on the grounds that his service was rendered in the Indian Wars, and not in the War of the Revolution. 

     The munificence of an appreciative and "grateful country" is pitifully portrayed in its sentiment toward this time-wrecked veteran of twenty years of incessant warfare.  As a scout Lieutenant Thomas Hughes was surpassed only by his two renowned brothers.  The life of the wilderness spy was arduous, and fraught with constant danger.  His wages were meagre and those who were thus employed throughout the long border wars, seldom laid up a sustenance for old age.

     Lieutenant Hughes died in October, 1837, in Jackson County, West Virginia, where he moved, perhaps, soon after the treaty of Greenville in 1795.  Mrs. Hughes died three months previous to the death of her husband.  They left only one child, Thomas, whom it appears was still living in 1854, aged seventy-one years.

     There is no family tradition that connects Charles Hughes who was engaged in the repulse of the Indians at West's Fort on Hacker's Creek in 1778, with the family of Jesse Hughes, though they were together in that engagement.  It is quite probable that two Hughes families, closely related, were represented in the pioneers who settled on Hacker's Creek, and the name seems to have disappeared from the settlement in that beautiful valley at an early date. 

     In 1781, a certificate was granted "William McCleery, assignee to James Hughes, for 400 acres on Spring Creek [tributary to the Little Kanawha] to include his settlement made in 1774." I know nothing of the antecedents of this James Hughes.

     In an early day one Edward Hughes, then a boy, came with some men from the Greenbrier settlements to the mouth of Morris Creek, since known as Hughes Creek, on the Great Kanawha.  I know nothing of this lad's parentage.  He seems to have been the only one of the name who came from Greenbrier with the party, who apparently were hunters.  They built a small fort on a cliff by the creek, where they could reach the water by letting down a gourd with a grapevine.  The boy experienced many hardships.  At one time he was left alone for several days at the fort, and subsisted on parched corn, and a few fish that he caught in the creek.  He was captured by the Indians while fishing on Peters Creek, a tributary of the Gauley River, now in Nicholas County, and was carried to the Indian towns on the Muskingum. He remained with his captors for more than two years, during which time he learned their language.  He ascertained that the Great Kanawha joined the Ohio somewhere below where they then were, and determined to escape.  He secreted a quantity of dried venison, and waited for a full moon.  He then fled to the Ohio River, where he constructed a raft of dry timber, and floated down to the mouth of the Great Kanawha.  During the voyage he never approached the shore, but when tired nature demanded a rest, he anchored his raft in mid-stream with a stone attached to a grape-vine.

     He abandoned his raft, and following up the Kanawha, and after much suffering reached the little fort on the cliff.  When he left the Indians he took with him a coat neatly made from a bear skin.  The fore-legs formed the arms, and the neck and head formed the collar and head-covering.  It was soft, pliable, and comfortable in the most stormy weather.  Edward Hughes married and settled near where Summersville, in Nicholas County, now is.  He never used intoxicants, and was devotedly Christian.  He was buried on the mountain side, overlooking the site of the little fort in which he had spent so many of his solitary days.

     In 1770, a Thomas Hughes, born in 1753, and who married Elizabeth Swan, settled on the west side of the Monongahela, near -the mouth of Muddy Creek, now Carmichaels, Green County, Pa.; but he was of another family, though perhaps a blood relation of Jesse's father.  Thomas Hughes, of Carmichaels, had a brother John, who was a Captain of the Pennsylvania Rangers during the Revolution.  He was killed by the Indians near Louisville, Kentucky, in 1780.  This family also hailed from Virginia.

     A Thomas Hughes resided in now Kanawha County, West Virginia, in 1791.

     A Thomas Hughes was Paymaster of the 7th Virginia Regiment from January 1, 1777, to May 1, 1778.  He received a military land bounty in 1783.

     It may be of interest to note that the Jesse Hughes of Fluvanna County, Virginia, previously referred to, in the spring of 1776, at the age of twenty, enlisted as a private in Roger Thompson's company of minute men, which was attached to Meredith's Regiment in eastern Virginia , and then to Morgan's riflemen in western Virginia.  In the fall of 1776, Hughes enlisted in William Pierce's Company of Harrison's artillery.  He fought at Monmouth and Newport, was stationed at Providence, and was discharged in 1779.  He volunteered as a lieutenant in Joseph Hayden's Company in 1780 and was at the battle of Camden. In 1781 he was drafted as a lieutenant of militia, but was seized with smallpox and did not join the army until the day after Cornwallis' surrender.  He was, no doubt, closely related to the ancestors of Jesse Hughes of pioneer fame, for the locality from which he enlisted is very near the ancestral home of the Hughes family. 

     The Muster Rolls in the War Department at Washington show that one Jesse Hughes served as a matross in Captain William Pierce's company, first Artillery Regiment, Continental Troops, commanded by Colonel Charles Harrison.  He was enlisted December 31, 1776, for three years, and was discharged December 20, 1779.  Neither his residence nor the place of his enlistment is of record.  This matross was the Jesse Hughes of Fluvanna County. In 1837, he was allowed a Bounty Land Warrant for three years' service as private in Continental line. The First Continental Artillery Regiment was assigned to the State of Virginia by Act of Congress approved October 3, 1780.

     In 1778, a Jesse Hughes, a matross in Col.  Charles Harrison's Virginia and Maryland Regiment of Artillery, Company No. I, was returned as "sick in Virginia," along with Sergeant John Hughes of the same company.  There were several other Hughes among the Virginia troops, but they have no place in this story.

     John Hughes, of Lancaster, Pa., under date of July 11, 1763, wrote to Colonel Bouquet an elaborate and detestable plan for hunting down the Indians with savage dogs, in the true Spanish way.  While this man was perhaps no relation to our hero, the two would probably have been in complete accord on the manner of procedure in dealing with the Indian question.

     In 1770 or 1771, Jesse Hughes was married to Miss Grace Tanner, and settled on Hacker's Creek, about one mile above where West's Fort was afterwards built, and at the mouth of a stream which has since been known as Jesse's Run.  Here he built his cabin on the site of an old Shawnee village.  This was embraced in a homestead certificate, issued in 1781 to "Jesse Hughes for 400 acres on Hacker's Creek, adjoining lands of Edmund West to include his settlement made in 1770."

     In this lonely cabin, standing, as it did, on the western outskirts of the most western and remote settlement on the Virginia frontier, this young couple experienced many thrilling adventures incident to border life in the virgin wilderness.  The wife possessed the sterling qualities of rugged and noble womanhood.  Endowed with that fearlessness and energy of character which a life of constant peril on the border engendered, she was admirably fitted for the companionship of her half-wild, yet renowned husband, whose savage temper was not conducive to domestic happiness.  It was in this cabin that they had a thrilling experience with a rattlesnake.

     One night Jesse was awakened from a sound sleep by feeling a living creature trying to work its way upward between his throat and the close-fitting collar of his homespun shirt.  The contact of a cold, whip-like body with his own, caused him to suspect instantly the nature of his bed-fellow, and fully aroused him to a sense of his danger.  With that rare self-control and presence of mind that served him so well in more than one instance of deadly peril, he softly spoke to his wife, waking, and telling her of the threatened danger, and directing her to get out of bed with their child, and remove the bed-clothing.  This she did so gently that the restless intruder, who was still endeavoring to force its broad flat head under the obdurate shirt-collar, was not disturbed.  The covering removed, with a single lightning-like movement, Jesse bounded to the floor several feet away.  A huge yellow rattlesnake fell at his feet.  With an angry whir-r-r-r it threw itself into the attitude of battle, but was soon dispatched.  The next morning Jesse went prospecting for snakes, and found in the end of a hollow log which was built into his cabin, five copperheads and one rattlesnake.

     From his advent into the Buckhannon settlement in 1769 to the year 1778, we find no mention of the name of Jesse Hughes in border annals.

     But it is not to be supposed that so restless and daring a man would remain inactive while such scenes of bloodshed were being enacted about him.  His insatiate passion for Indian blood precludes this idea, and investigation proves the fallacy and adds strength to the statement of Mr. Bond, that the chronicle of Withers is but a partial and fragmentary history.   

     While living on Hacker's Creek, and within rifle-shot of his own door, Jesse consummated a deed, which, for needless and unprovoked treachery, was scarcely surpassed by the Indians in all their ravages of the Virginia border.  He arranged a meeting with a friendly Indian for the ostensible purpose of spending a day in hunting.  To reach the place of rendezvous the Indian had to cross Hacker's on a "foot-log," a tree felled across the stream to form a means of crossing.  The time of meeting was appointed for an hour when the sun should reach a certain point above the treetops.  Long before that time Jesse stealthily repaired to the spot and concealed himself in a position which commanded an unobstructed view of the foot-log, and there awaited the coming of his unsuspecting victim. At the appointed hour the Indian issued from the deep tangle of the valley forest.  An eye gleamed along the barrel of the deadly rifle, the Indian reached the middle of the log, a report of the rifle reverberated through the valley, and the lifeless body of the Indian fell forward into the stream.

     Hughes claimed that the Indian approached in a suspicious manner, wary and watchful, and that he felt justified in killing him.  It is not at all probable that an Indian brought up amid the dangers of the wilderness, would traverse a forest path other than by with every faculty alert to hidden danger.  His very training would preclude this and his caution was no evidence that he intended treachery.  Had he meditated evil, he would more likely have followed the course pursued by Hughes.

     Not only did Hughes engage in Indian killings not chronicled by Withers, but he was a leader in the terrible massacre of the Bulltown Indians, an account of which must form a separate chapter of this narrative. 

     Many prominent writers insist that Dunmore's War was inevitable; the actual beginning of the Revolution, and that hostilities were precipitated by the murdering propensities of the Indians alone.  Not a few, however, charge that these conditions were created at the instance of Governor Dunmore and his lieutenant, John Connolly, who, for self-aggrandizement or as emissaries of the British Government, foreseeing the coming struggle, sought to engross the attention and resources of Virginia in a disastrous Indian War.  Pages have been written in support of these accusations, and it would redound to the honor of the Virginias could they be verified.  But it should be remembered that the conflict of 1774 was purely Virginia and Indian, waged on the Western Virginia border, and it is there that we are to look for the immediate, if not the primal, cause of the trouble.  It is noteworthy that the long list of murders committed on peaceable tribesmen in the white settlements east of the mountains, prior to the outbreak, did not provoke the war. Roosevelt summarily settles the cause and status quo of the Dunmore War in a single paragraph.

     "Nor must we permit our sympathy for the foul wrongs of the two great Indian heroes of the contest to blind us to the fact that the struggle was precipitated in the first place, by the outrages of the red men, not the whites; and that the war was not only inevitable, but was also in its essence just and righteous on the part of the borderers.  Even the unpardonable and hideous atrocity of the murder of Logan's family, was surpassed in horror by many of the massacres committed by the Indians about the same time.  The annals of the border are dark and terrible."

     This sweeping attempt at vindication of the borderers, reeking with acrimony for the Indians, might be convincing, did it contain a single instance of a "massacre committed by the Indians about the same time," that even approached in horror the murder of Logan's family.  Our Indian conquests have all been "just and righteous" in the eyes of the average white man. Prof. Maxwell in discussing this topic, says:

     "* * * The first act of hostility was committed in 1773, not in West Virginia, but further south.  A party of emigrants, under the leadership of a son of Daniel Boone, were on their way to Kentucky when they were set upon and several were killed, including young Boone.  There can be no doubt that this attack was made to prevent or hinder the colonization of Kentucky.  Soon after this, a white man killed an Indian at a horse race.  This is said to have been the first Indian blood shed on the frontier of Virginia by a white man after Pontiac's War.  In February 1774, the Indians killed six white men and two negroes; and in the same month, on the Ohio they seized a trading canoe, killed the men in charge and carried the goods to the Shawnee towns.  Then the white men began to kill also.  In March [1774] on the Ohio, a fight occurred between settlers and Indians, in which one was killed on each side, and five canoes were taken from the Indians.  John Connolly wrote from Pittsburg on April 21, to the people of Wheeling to be on their guard, as the Indians were preparing for war.  On April 26, two Indians were killed on the Ohio.  On April 30, nine Indians were killed on the same river near Steubenville.  On May 1, another Indian was killed. About the same time an old Indian named Bald Eagle was killed on the Monongahela River; and an Indian camp on the Little Kanawha, in the present county of Braxton, was broken up, and the natives were killed.  This was believed to have been done by settlers on the West Fork, in the present county of Lewis.  They were induced to take that course by intelligence from the Kanawha River that a family named Stroud, residing near the mouth of the Gauley River had been murdered, and the tracks of the Indians led toward the Indian camp on the Little Kanawha.  When this camp was visited by the party of white men from the West Fork, they discovered clothing and other articles belonging to the Stroud family. Thereupon the Indians were destroyed.  A party of white men with Governor Dunmore's permission destroyed an Indian village on the Muskingum River."

     Here is a sinister array of aggressive crime on the part of the Indians, with justified retaliation by the whites. Unfortunately for its object however, the events are not given in chronological  order.   The killing of young James Boone and five of his companions, emigrants under the leadership of the elder Boone, had been preceded in Kentucky by desultory fighting between adventurous white men and Indians.  It is significant that John Findlay who was the first to enter the wilds of Kentucky, was never disturbed by the red man.  It was not until Boone, in company with Findlay and four others, in 1769, repaired to that region, and after spending several months in killing game, were they molested.  Boone and Stuart were surprised and captured.  Many writers insist that during their captivity, the camp of Boone and Stuart was broken up by Indians, and their companions killed, scattered, or returned home.  But it would appear from the investigations of others, among them Dr. Thwaits, that the returning prisoners found the camp and its occupants unmolested.  In the meantime they were joined by Squire Boone and Alexander Neely, whom Squire had found on New (Great Kanawha) River.

     The famous Long Hunters had already invaded this primeval wilderness and were slaughtering its teeming game by the thousands.  This wasteful destruction of their sustenance, a gift from the Great Spirit, enraged the Indians, and in consequence the aggressors, hunters and explorers met with armed resistance. The Long Hunters shot buffalo, elk and deer for their skins, and Indians for their scalps.

     Boone and his party were in reality Long Hunters.  During the summer of 1770 while encamped on the Red River, Alexander Neely killed and scalped two Indians whom he found at a Shawnee village on a tributary creek. 

     Stuart (also spelled Stewart) alone of the party was killed by the Indians, but whether prior or subsequent to the murder of the Shawnees by Neely, writers differ. Roosevelt declares that in the death of Stewart, "the Indians had wantonly shed the first blood."  But the elucidation by Dr. Thwaits is conclusive that Stuart was killed after four of Boone's party had left for the settlement and that "Neely, discouraged by his [Stuart's] fate, returned home."  This is positive evidence that Boone's party in reality "wantonly shed the first blood." It is  obvious that Neely killed the two Shawnees before he "became discouraged and returned home."

     The Indian killed at a horse race was a Cherokee, at Watauga, a settlement supposedly in Virginia, but located within the Cherokee lands, North Carolina.  Watauga, like the early Trans-Allegheny settlements, was outlawed, so far as State or Colonial Government was concerned.  The murder was committed at a friendly gathering of both Indians and whites, in celebrating the signing of a treaty between the Cherokees and the settlers of Watauga in 1772.  This crime has been excused on the grounds that the men implicated had lost a brother in the attack on Boone's emigrants in 1773. This is error, the friendly Cherokee was killed a year previous to the Boone tragedy.  In the face of these facts, who were the aggressors in Kentucky?

     No serious trouble with the Cherokees resulted from the Watauga outrage; nor was that nation involved in Dunmore's War. It is averred, however, that the attack on Butler's trading canoe, near Wheeling, in February, 1774, containing three white men, in which one of the party was killed and another one wounded, was by a few outlaw Cherokees.  If so, the act may have been provoked by the Watauga tragedy.

     The other occurrences cited by Mr. Maxwell are well known to the reader of border history.  Withers, states that the  Bull Town Massacre occurred in the summer of 1772.  The same authority fixes the death of Bald Eagle not only prior to this crime, but also to the Indian murder for which Capt. White was imprisoned at Winchester, and subsequently liberated by the infuriated populace.  This last crime, Kercheval states, occurred in 1768. This places the murder of Bald Eagle, according to Withers, previous to the settling of the Upper Monongahela in 1769, which is error.  The death of Bald Eagle evidently occurred between 1770 and the destruction of the Delaware Village on the Little Kanawha, in 1772, which was two years previous to the retaliatory and incipient outbreak of the few tribesmen on the Ohio.  Then came the ill-timed warning of the fiery Connolly and the "planting of a new war post and a solemn declaration of war" by Creasap and his followers at Fort Henry. Immediately Creasap's band made two attacks on friendly Shawnees on the Ohio, killing three and wounding two others.  The massacre of Logan's people swiftly followed, and the war was on.

     West Virginia points with pride to the tenth of October, 1774, when at Point Pleasant was fought the "First Battle of the Revolution,"  wherein "was the first blood shed in defense of American Liberty," in a "just and righteous" war.  This sounds well, but in reality the Dunmore War was one of conquest; its prelude a lurid chapter of aggressive wrong on the part of the whites which can reflect no halo of State or National glory.     

     The brutal murder of Bald Eagle is deserving of more than a passing notice.  His status, not only with his own race, but with the whites was high, and in his death is reflected the true character of the lawless ruffians who overran the Trans-Allegheny at this time.  Withers says of this crime:

     "The Bald Eagle was an Indian of notoriety, not only among his own nation, but also with the inhabitants of the North Western frontier; with whom he was in the habit of associating and hunting.  In one of his visits among them, he was discovered alone, by Jacob Scott, William Hacker and Elijah Runner, who, reckless of the consequences, murdered him, solely to gratify a most wanton thirst for Indian blood.  After the commission of this most outrageous enormity, they seated him in the stern of a canoe, and with a piece of journey-cake thrust into his mouth, set him afloat in the Monongahela.  In this situation he was seen descending the river, by several, who supposed him to be as usual, returning from a friendly hunt with the whites in the upper settlements, and who expressed some astonishment that he did not stop to see them.  The canoe floating near to the shore, below the mouth of George's Creek, was observed by a Mrs. Province, who had it brought to the bank, and the friendly, but unfortunate old Indian decently buried."

     Veech says that Bald Eagle was killed, perhaps, at the mouth of Cheat River; was found at Provance Bottom by Mrs. William Yard Provance, who had him buried on the Fayette (Pa.) shore.         

     The murder of Bald Eagle had a parallel of which the particulars were never chronicled.

     One Ryan and Eli Morgan, brother of David Morgan of border fame, killed an Indian named Cat Eye, and thrusting a corn cob into his mouth, propped him up in his canoe and sent him adrift on the Monongahela.  This crime was evidently one of the many committed by John Ryan, told by Withers:

     "At different periods of time, between the peace of 1765, and the renewal of hostilities in 1774, three Indians were unprovokedly killed by John Ryan, on the Ohio, Monongahela and Cheat Rivers.  The first who suffered from the unrestrained licentiousness of this man, was an Indian of distinction in his tribe, and known by the name of Capt. Peter; the other two were private warriors. And but that Governor Dunmore, from the representations made to him, was induced to offer a reward for his apprehension, which caused him to leave the country, Ryan would probably have continued to murder every Indian, with whom he should chance to meet, wandering through the settlements."

     To this long list of recorded murders suffered by the friendly tribesmen at the hands of the borderers in the two years preceding Dunmore's War, must be added the massacre of the thirteen at Indian Camp.  The summary is startling.  If we allow but four to each of the five families destroyed at Bull Town, which is a very low estimate, then the grand total of peaceable Indians, including many women and children, who fell victims to white fury on the extreme western border of Virginia, from Bull Town to Wheeling in the time mentioned, is fifty-eight.  This does not include those killed on the Wappatomaka by Judah, Harpold and others, nor the many slain throughout the settlements east of the mountains.  This number I have carefully computed from the meagre accounts at hand; but it is hardly possible that the Indian Camp Massacre was a solitary instance of unchronicled slaughtering by the whites.  It is significant that in every instance noted by the historian of the day, the killing was so open and flagrant that concealment was impossible.

      There could be but one sequel to this wanton, drunken saturnalia of crime. The ties of blood and clan are very strong in Indian systems of kinship and government, and the law of retaliation arises from these ties.  In addition to murder, the white settlers were constantly making inroads upon the lands of the tribes in utter disregard of treaty stipulations.  In view of these facts, it is a matter of wonder that hostilities were not commenced long before the outbreak actually occurred.  Surely were the Indians "slow to anger."

     But they were at last aroused; though not until their people had been wantonly murdered in plain view and under their own eyes in more than one instance by Greathouse and others.  Logan, "the friend of the white man," lost his entire family.  Then the warriors took up the hatchet, and the Trans-Allegheny was compelled to drain the bitter cup of its own filling.  For more than twenty years from the massacre of Logan's people, April 30, 1774, the border from Fort Pitt to the Falls of the Ohio suffered from Indian forays, the most sanguinary of which fell upon the Virginia frontier.  There were brief respites during this period, but no year went by without the striking of a blow -in most cases by the fierce Shawnee.  This warlike tribe was rendered still more implacable by the betrayal and brutal murder of their mighty leader Cornstalk (Keigh-taugh-qua) and three of his chiefs, his son Ellinipsico; Red Hawk and another whose name is unknown, at Point Pleasant in the "bloody year," 1777; and for which his avenging warriors swept with fire the wilderness settlements.  In this long interval of strife, as usual in warfare, the innocent suffered far more than the guilty.

     During this period, Jesse Hughes was the recognized chief of the Virginia scouts.  He lived in the center of the field of the border strife; yet it was in the year 1778 that his name appears in the annals of this war for the first time.  This, I believe, is the fault of the chroniclers rather than of inactivity on the part of Hughes.  There is little or no doubt that he was constantly engaged in war-like enterprises during the whole of this period of the silence of the annals.  A well-founded tradition says that he was in the Battle of Point Pleasant, which is more than probable.  A man of his propensities would not ordinarily remain inactive at home while such an undertaking as the invasion of the Indian country was being executed.  It is doubtful if any of the several expeditions against the Ohio Indians during the period mentioned was unaccompanied by Jesse Hughes.

     An Indian alarm in June, 1778, sent the settlers on Hacker's Creek and the adjoining country into West's Fort.  About the middle of that month, three women who were gathering greens in an adjacent field, were attacked by four Indians and a Mrs. Freeman was killed and scalped.  The Indians fired but one shot, but this and the screams of the women brought the men from the Fort. Several ineffectual bullets were sent after the warrior who was scalping Mrs. Freeman.  The Indians were driven off, and the firing gave warning to the men who were out of the fort at the time.  Among the latter was Jesse Hughes, who for once, seemingly, was without his gun.  The following account is from the work of Withers:

     "Jesse Hughes and John Schoolcraft (who were out) in making their way to the fort, came very near two Indians standing by the fence looking towards the men at West's, so intently, that they did not perceive any one near them.  They, however, were observed by Hughes and Schoolcraft who, avoiding them, made their way in, safely.  Hughes immediately took up his gun, and learning the fate of Mrs.  Freeman, went with some others to bring in the corpse.  While there he proposed to go and show them how near he had approached the Indians after the alarm had been given, before he saw them.  Charles and Alexander West, Chas.  Hughes, James Brown and John Steeth, went with him.  Before they had arrived at the place, one of the Indians was heard to howl like a wolf; and the men with Hughes moved on in the direction from which the sound proceeded.  Supposing that they were then near the spot, Jesse Hughes howled in like manner, and being instantly answered, they ran to a point of the hill, and looking over it, saw two Indians coming towards them.  Hughes fired and one of them fell.  The other took to flight.  Being pursued by the whites, he sought shelter in a thicket Of brush; and while they were proceeding to intercept him at his coming out, he returned by the way he had entered, and made his escape.  The wounded Indian likewise got off.  When the whites were in pursuit of the one who took to flight, they passed near to him who had fallen, and one of the men was for stopping and finishing him; but Hughes called to him, 'He is safe,--let us have the other,' and they all pressed forward.  On their return however, he was gone; and although his free bleeding enabled them to pursue his track readily for a while, yet a heavy shower of rain soon falling, all trace of him was quickly lost and could not be afterwards regained."

     The chagrin which Hughes felt for his failure to secure at least one of the two scalps that were almost within his grasp may be conjectured.  That his aim was not deadly, and his allowing the fallen Indian to escape because of his zeal to capture the fleeing Indian who baffled his pursuers by doubling on his track like a fox, was most humiliating to the pride of this renowned woodsman and his skilled companions. There was a superstition rife among the early settlers to the effect that if, in loading his rifle, the hunter accidentally let fall the bullet, and had to pick it up from the ground to put in his rifle, it would certainly miss the object shot at, no matter how careful and true his aim.  This was a common belief in the woods of Virginia and Kentucky as recently as thirty years ago. Perhaps Jesse dropped his bullet.

     Owing to its isolation and weakness, the Hacker's Creek settlement was a favorite point of attack by the Indians during  this period.  Withers says:

     "The settlement on Hacker's Creek was entirely broken up in the spring of 1779-some of its inhabitants forsaking the country and retiring east of the mountains; while the others went to the fort on Buckhannon, and to Nutter's Fort, near Clarksburg, to aid in resisting the foe and in maintaining possession of the  country."

Again, speaking of the year 1780, he says:

     "West's Fort on Hacker's Creek was also visited by the savages early in this year.  The frequent incursions of the Indians into this settlement in the year 1778, had caused the inhabitants to desert their homes the next year, and shelter themselves in places of greater security; but being unwilling to give up the improvements which they had already made and commence anew in the woods, some few families returned to it during the winter, and on the approach of spring, moved into the fort.  They had not been long here, before the savages made their appearance, and continued to invest the fort for some time.  Too weak to sally out and give them battle, and not knowing when to expect relief, the inhabitants were almost reduced to despair, when Jesse Hughes resolved at his own hazard, to try to obtain assistance to drive off the enemy.  Leaving the fort at night, he broke by their sentinels and ran with speed to the Buckhannon Fort.  Here he prevailed on a part of the men to accompany him to West's, and relieve those who had been so long confined there.  They arrived before day, and it was thought advisable to abandon the place once more, and remove to Buckhannon.  On their way the Indians used every artifice to separate the party, so as to gain an advantageous opportunity of attacking them; but in vain.  They exercised so much caution, and kept so well together, that every stratagem was frustrated, and they all reached the fort in safety."

     From the foregoing it would appear that West's Fort was abandoned not only in the fall of 1779, but also in the spring of 1780.  It was during one of these abandonments, perhaps the last, that the fort was burned by the Indians, and the settlers then built a new fort, but not on the site of the old.  It was located some five hundred yards or more from West's Fort, and about seventy-five yards east of where the Henry McWhorter house now stands. It was erected on a high bottom, or "flat," which at that time was rather marshy, and covered with beech trees. The building was constructed entirely of beech logs, and was locally known as "Beech Fort,"

     The daring feat of Jesse Hughes upon this occasion, so briefly alluded to by Withers, and doubtless referred to by DeHass, already quoted, was as follows:

     A large force of Indians had invested the fort and gathered up all the live stock in the settlement.  The despairing inmates could see the camp fires of the Indians, who, relying upon their superior numbers and the weakness of the garrison, failed to exercise that degree of vigilance and caution for which they are noted.  However, they posted sentinels about the fort and the fords of the creek and other passes, while the main body of warriors regaled themselves around the camp fires.  Hughes experienced great difficulty and much personal danger in  breaking through the Indian investment.  While gliding along a narrow path, he heard foot steps approaching.  He stepped aside, when nine warriors passed in Indian file; "so close" said Hughes, "that I could have punched them with my ramrod."

     When leaving the fort he told the inmates that if he succeeded in eluding the foe he would, upon gaining the hillside beyond the Indian encampment, "hoot like an owl." The hoot of the owl was a night signal in vogue with both Indian and scout.  In crossing the creek Jesse was compelled to wade through a deep eddy about half-way between the fort and the mouth of Jesse's Run, near where he would strike the trail.

     As time dragged, the forlorn and despairing band in the little fortress listened most eagerly for the signal of hope from the hillside.  How they must have rejoiced when at last through the darkness from afar there came across the night-shrouded valley the melancholy cry of the bird of shadow and gloom.  To them it meant succor and speedy rescue; but to the wily Indian it was ominous of approaching danger, and during the night they broke camp and disappeared.  When Hughes returned with the rescuing party not a warrior could be seen.

     The difficulty of this achievement can be better understood when it is known that the distance between the two forts was not less than sixteen miles, all a dense forest; and as the Indians were in the settlement in force, he must have avoided to some extent the beaten trail, thus making the passage far more laborious and hazardous.

     The frightful dangers that beset the path of Jesse Hughes on this heroic night-run were not confined to the hostile Indians alone.  The stealthy panther, noted for its fierce nature and proneness to unprovoked attack on human beings, lurked among the dense thickets on every hand.  Packs of gaunt gray wolves – huge timber wolves - the scourge of the wilderness, prowled the forest.  The Buckhannon or Hacker's Creek mountain at the point traversed by Hughes was infested with these savage brutes long after this incident.

     Once during the Indian incursions into this region the settlers on Fink's Run, a tributary of the Buckhannon, took refuge in West's Fort.  Why the settlers should, in this instance, have gone to West's Fort instead of the Buckhannon, which was only three or four miles distant, cannot be surmised, unless it was after the latter fort had been abandoned in 1782, when Captain William White was killed.  So precipitate had been their flight that they left some young calves penned from their dams.  This was not discovered until they had reached the fort, which was at least twelve miles from their homes, and was liable to lead to calamity, for should the stock escape the wasting hands of the Indians, the calves would starve and the cows be hopelessly ruined from inflamed udders.  In this dilemma, Jesse Hughes came to the rescue.  He volunteered to go and liberate the calves.  This was courting death, but he successfully accomplished it.

     On his return to the fort he crossed the mountain previously referred to, to the waters of the right fork of Buckhannon Run, now on the farm of the late G. W. Swisher.  Here seeing a deer, the instinct of the sportsman overcame the caution of the scout, and he shot and killed it.  Proceeding to flay it, he had just completed that work, when the report of a rifle rang through the forest, and the bullet passed through the crown of his coon-skin cap, scarcely missing his head.

     Snatching up his rifle and the reeking deerskin, he sped down the valley, towards the fort.  Reaching Hacker's Creek proper, the trail left the lowlands and striking the hill to the right, passed around the head of a small stream known as Redlick Run, and along the meandering ridge between Hacker's Creek and Jesse's Run.  Hughes did not slacken his pace until he reached the low gap in the ridge where Mr. Eben Post now lives.  Here the woods were open, and he paused and glanced back over the trail.

A quarter of a mile away three Indians were racing down the slope in hot pursuit.  A very large warrior was in the lead.  It was at this point in the race that Hughes first noticed that he was carrying the deerskin, showing that under certain circumstances the bravest may suffer from excitement and panic.  The first impulse of Hughes was to secrete himself and shoot the big Indian when he came within range, for he felt he had nothing to fear from the remaining two.  Being much more fleet of foot he could have reloaded and shot them at his leisure; for Jesse Hughes like his great contemporary, Lewis Wetzel, could load his rifle while running at full speed.  This, however, was not an unusual feat among the Virginia bordermen.  But fearing that the report of his rifle might draw others to the chase, and that he would be intercepted before he could reach the fort, he let discretion be the better part of valor, and again fled before his rapidly advancing pursuers.  Out the long ridge like a hounded stag the scout stretched himself to the trail, followed by the grim avengers of a hundred wrongs.

       "Fate judges of the rapid strife;

           The forfeit, death--the prize is life."

     There were yet several miles to be covered before the fugitive could hope to reach a refuge, and if other Indians should be lurking along the path his chances of escape were precarious in the extreme. Never before, perhaps, had the wonderful physical  endurance of the veteran scout been put to such a test; and like the wild Seri, impervious to fatigue, onward he sped; and onward came his relentless pursuers.  The hound-like tirelessness of the borderman enabled him to maintain the distance that was early established between him and the Indians.  He gained the fort in safety, carrying the deerskin that had so nearly cost him his life.

     The distance covered in this race for life was no less than nine miles, and it was over ground so rough that it must have taxed the endurance of the participants to the utmost.  The course followed was an old Indian trail, which was also used as a bridle path by the pioneers.  Few such races were run, even on the frontiers, and perhaps no other was so long and persistent; and winning it would alone entitle Jesse Hughes to a high rank in that host of pioneers who achieved fame on the border.

     In 1781, we find that Jesse Hughes and his brother Elias were members of Colonel Lowther's Company, which went in pursuit of the Indians who had captured Mrs. Alexander Roney and her son, and Daniel Dougherty, all of Leading Creek, Tygart's Valley.  The history of this foray and the incidents immediately preceding the connection of Jesse Hughes therewith, I quote from Withers:      

     "In the same month (April), as some men were returning to Cheat River from Clarksburg (where they had been to obtain certificates of settlement rights to their lands, from the commissioners appointed to adjust land claim, in the counties of Ohio, Youghioghany and Monongalia) they, after having crossed the Valley River, were encountered by a large party of Indians, and John Manear, Daniel Cameron and a Mr. Cooper were killed - the others effected their escape with difficulty.

     "The savages then moved on towards Cheat, but meeting with James Brown and Stephen Radcliff, and not being able to kill or take them, they changed their course, and passing over Leading creek (in Tygarts Valley), nearly destroyed the whole settlement.  They there killed Alexander Roney, Mrs. Dougherty, Mrs. Hornbeck, and her children, Mrs. Buffington and her children, and many others; and made prisoners, Mrs. Roney and her son, and Daniel Dougherty.  Jonathan Buffington and Benjamin Hornbeck succeeded in making their escape and carried the doleful tidings to Friend's and Wilson's forts, Col.  Wilson immediately raised a company of men and proceeding to Leading Creek, found the settlement without inhabitants and the houses nearly all burned.  He then pursued after the savages, but not coming up with them as soon as was expected, the men became fearful of the consequences which might result to their own families, by reason of this abstraction of their defense, provided other Indians were to attack them, and insisted on their returning.  On the second day of the pursuit it was agreed that

a majority of the company should decide whether they were to proceed farther or not.  Joseph Friend, Richard Kettle, Alexander West and Col. Wilson were the only persons in favor of going on, and they consequently had to return.

     "But though the pursuit was thus abandoned, yet did not the savages get off with their wonted impunity, When the land claimants, who had been the first to encounter this party of Indians, escaped from them, they fled back to Clarksburg, and gave the alarm.  This was quickly communicated to the other settlements, and spies were sent out to watch for the enemy.  By some of these, the savages were discovered on the West Fork, near the mouth of Isaac's creek, and intelligence of it was immediately carried to the forts.  Col. Lowther collected a company of men, and going in pursuit, came in view of their encampment, awhile before night, on a branch of Hughes' River, ever since known as Indian Creek.  Jesse and Elias Hughes-active, intrepid and vigilant men-were left to watch the movements of the savages, while the remainder retired a small distance to refresh themselves, and prepare to attack them in the morning.

     "Before day Col. Lowther arranged his men in order of attack, and when it became light, on the preconcerted signal being given, a general fire was poured in upon them.  Five of the savages fell dead and the others fled leaving at their fires, all their shot bags and plunder, and all their guns, except one.  Upon going to their camp, it was found that one of the prisoners (a son of Alexander Roney who had been killed in the Leadin creek massacre) was among the slain.  Every care had been taken to guard against such an occurrence, and he was the only one of the captives who sustained any injury from the fire of the whites.

     "In consequence of information received from the prisoners who were retaken (that a larger party of Indians was expected hourly to come up), Col. Lowther deemed it prudent not to go in pursuit of those who had fled, and collecting the plunder which the savages had left, catching the horses which they had stolen, and having buried young Roney, the party set out on its return march home-highly gratified at the success which had crowned their exertions to punish their untiring foe."

To the foregoing, Withers adds the following note:

     "As soon as the fire was opened upon the Indians, Mrs. Roney (one of the prisoners) ran towards the whites rejoicing at the prospect of deliverance, and exclaiming, 'I am Ellick Roney's wife, of the Valley, I am Ellick Roney's wife, of the Valley, and a pretty little woman too, if I was well dressed.' The poor woman ignorant of the fact that her son was weltering in his own gore, and forgetting for an instant that her husband had been so recently killed, seemed intent only on her own deliverance from the savage captors.  

     "Another of the captives, Daniel Dougherty , being tied down, and unable to move, was discovered by the whites as they rushed towards the camp.  Fearing that he might be one of the enemy and do them some injury if they advanced, one of the men, stopping, demanded who he was.  Benumbed with cold, and discomposed by the sudden firing of the whites, he could not render his Irish dialect intelligible to them.  The white man raised his gun and directed it towards him, calling aloud, that if he did not make known who he was, he should blow a ball through him, let him be white man or Indian.  Fear supplying him with energy, Dougherty exclaimed, 'Loord jasus! and am I to be killed by white people at last!'  He was heard by Col. Lowther and his life saved."

     Captain William White and John Cutright were with Colonel Lowther on this occasion.  Christopher Cutright, son of John, gave me the following particulars of the affair, as received from his father.

     The whites discovered the Indians in camp in the evening, and they hid in a ravine until the next morning.  When it was about daylight, Mrs. Roney arose and replenished the fire, and at that moment the whites opened fire on the Indians, killing and mortally wounding seven of their number.  Young Roney was killed, and Dougherty, in his frantic attempts to convey to the attacking party his identity, exclaimed, "Can't ye sae that I'm a while mon?" When the whites rushed upon the camp, one of the Indians struggling in the agonies of death was recognized as Captain Bull, the founder of Bull Town on the Little Kanawha. Jesse Hughes seized the dying chieftain and dragged him through the camp fire so recently replenished by Mrs. Roney, "While he was yet kicking." Not satisfied with this, he then flayed from the thigh of the dead chieftain pieces of skin, with which he repaired his own moccasins which had become badly worn during the pursuit.  "Upon the return of the company to the settlements", said Mr. Cutright, "Hughes, as a joke, threw his moccasins with their ghastly patches into my mother's lap."

     The body of young Roney was sunk in the river, or creek, near the scene of his death, which occurred close where the Indian Creek schoolhouse now stands.

     Colonel Lowther was accompanied on this expedition by one of his sons, a lad about sixteen years old, who assisted in the attack on the Indian camp and its subsequent massacre.  Boys of those days had early schooling in the savage warfare of the border. 

     On the evening before the Leading Creek settlement was destroyed, Alexander West was at Friend's Fort.  Late in the evening, West and Joseph Friend were sitting on the porch and saw what West declared to be an Indian skulking near the fort.  West started to get his gun, but Friend detained him and declared the figure to be one of his "yaller boys." "Yaller boy the mischief!" exclaimed West, "It's an Injun." West and Friend had each a very fierce dog, and not altogether satisfied as to the identity of the stranger, they attempted to set them on the slave boy or Indian.  But the dogs flew at each other, and during the confusion that ensued, and while the men were engaged in separating the dogs, the unknown person whose mysterious movements had caused the uproar vanished into the nearby forest, and night coming on, the pursuit was abandoned.

     West ever alert and cautious, wished to alarm the settlers that night, but Friend insisted there was no danger and that they wait until morning.  West reluctantly acquiesced.  That night or early the next morning occurred the Leading Creek massacre.  Six families were destroyed.  When the news of the disaster reached West he became furious, and condemned himself for not acting upon his own judgment.  If he had, it is probable that the tragedy would have been averted.

     From the date of the Leading Creek massacre and the killing of Captain Bull on Indian Creek, to 1787, a period of six years, no mention is made of Hughes by the historians of his time.

     In 1787, we find the Indians again in the Hacker's Creek settlement.  The eldest daughter of Jesse Hughes was taken captive, and several of the settlers were killed.  This tragedy was only the sequel of that which directly preceded it, and so closely are the incidents connected that I give them both as set out by Withers. 

     "In September of this year, a party of Indians were discovered in the act of catching some horses on the West Fork above Clarksburg; and a company of men led on by Col. Lowther, went immediately in pursuit of them.  On the third night the Indians and whites, unknown to each other, encamped not far apart; and in the morning the fires of the latter being discovered by Elias Hughes, the detachment which was accompanying him fired upon the camp, and one of the savages fell.  The remainder taking to flight, one of them passed near to where  Col. Lowther and the other men were, and the Colonel firing at him as he ran, the ball entering at his shoulder, perforated him and he fell.  The horses and plunder which had been taken by the savages, were then collected by the whites, and they commenced their return home, in the confidence of false security.  They had not proceeded far, when two guns were unexpectedly fired at them, and John Bonnett fell, pierced through the body. He died before he reached home.  

     "The Indians never thought the whites justifiable in flying to arms to punish them for acts merely of rapine. They felt authorized to levy contributions of this sort, whenever an occasion served, viewing property thus acquired as (to use their own expression) the 'only rent which they received for their lands;' and if when detected in secretly exacting them, their blood paid the penalty), they were sure to retaliate with tenfold fury, on the first favorable opportunity. The murder of these two Indians by Hughes and Lowther was soon followed by acts of retribution which are believed to have been, at least immediately, produced by them.

     "On the 5th of December, a party of Indians and one white man (Leonard Schoolcraft) came into the settlement on Hacker's Creek, and meeting with a daughter of Jesse Hughes, took her prisoner. Passing on, they came upon E. West, Senr., carrying some fodder to the stable, and taking him likewise captive, carried him to where Hughes' daughter had been left in charge of some of their party. - Here the old gentleman fell upon his knees and expressed a fervent wish that they would not deal harshly by him. His petition was answered by a stroke of the tomahawk and he fell dead.

     "They then went to the house of Edmund West, Jun., where were Mrs. West and her sister (a girl of eleven years old, daughter of John Hacker) and a lad of twelve, a brother of West. Forcing open the door, Schoolcraft and two of the savages entered, and one of them immediately tomahawked Mrs. West. The boy was taking some corn from under the bed, he was drawn out by the feet and the tomahawk sank twice in his forehead, directly above each eye.  The girl was standing behind the door.  One of the savages approached and aimed at her a blow. She tried to evade it, but it struck on the side of her neck, though not sufficient force to knock her down.  She fell however, and lay as if killed. Thinking their work of death accomplished here, they took from the press some milk, butter and bread, placed it on the table, and deliberately sat down to eat, - the little girl observing all that passed, in silent stillness.  When they had satisfied their hunger, they arose, scalped the woman and boy, plundered the house, - even emptying the feathers to carry off the ticking, - and departed, dragging the little girl by the hair, forty or fifty yards from the house.  They then threw her over the fence, and scalped her; but as she evinced symptoms of life, Schoolcraft observed 'that is not enough', when immediately one of the savages thrust a knife into her side, and they left her.  Fortunately the point of the knife came in contact with a rib and did not injure her much.

     "Old Mrs. West and her two daughters, who were alone when the old gentleman was taken, became uneasy that he did not return; and fearing that he had fallen into the hands of savages (as they could not otherwise account for his absence), they left the house and went to Alexander West's, who was then on a hunting expedition with his brother Edmund.  They told of the absence of old Mr. West and their fears for his fate; and as there was no man here, they went over to Jesse Hughes' who was himself uneasy that his daughter did not come home.  Upon hearing that West too was missing, he did not doubt but that both had fallen into the hands of the Indians; and knowing of the absence from home of Edmund West, Jun., he deemed it advisable to apprise his wife of danger, and remove her to his house.  For this purpose and accompanied by Mrs. West's two daughters, he went on.  On entering the door, the tale of destruction which had been done there was soon told in part.  Mrs. West and the lad lay weltering in their blood but not yet dead.  The sight overpowered the girls, and Hughes had to carry them off. Seeing that the savages had but just left them, and aware of the danger which would attend any attempt to move out and give the alarm that night, Hughes guarded his own house until day, when he spread the sorrowful intelligence, and a company were collected to ascertain the extent of the mischief and try to find those who were known to be missing.

     "Young West was found, - standing in the creek about a mile from where he had been tomahawked.  The brains were oozing from his head, yet he survived in extreme suffering for three days.  Old Mr. West was found in the field where he had been tomahawked.  Mrs. West was in the house; she probably lived but a few minutes after Hughes and her sisters-in-law had left there.  The little girl (Hacker's daughter) was in bed at the house of old Mr. West.  She related the history of the transactions at Edmund West's, Jun., and said that she went to sleep when thrown over the fence and was awakened by the scalping.  After she had been stabbed at the suggestion of Schoolcraft and left, she tried to recross the fence to the house, but as she was climbing up, again went to sleep and fell back.  She then walked into the woods, sheltered herself as well as she could in the top of a fallen tree, and remained there until the cocks crew in the morning.

     "Remembering that there was no person left alive at the house of her sister awhile before day she proceeded to old Mr. West's.  She found no person at home, the fire nearly out, but the hearth warm and she laid down on it.  The heat produced a sickly feeling, which caused her to get up and go to the bed, in which she was found.  She recovered, grew up, was married, gave birth to ten children, and died, as was believed, of an affection of the head, occasioned by the wound she received that night.  Hughes' daughter was ransomed by her father the next year, and is yet living in sight of the theatre of those savage enormities."    

     Jesse Hughes and William Powers were also on the expedition with Colonel Lowther when Bonnett was killed.  They followed the Indians to the Little Kanawha River, where the two Indians were slain.  Bonnett, in utter disregard of West's remonstrance, had stepped aside from the party to a spring and had knelt there to get a drink. As he rose, he received the fatal shot.  The return march of the party was necessarily slow, encumbered with a dying man.  It is not likely that Bonnett was buried any great distance from where he was shot.

     Mr. Levi Bond heard his grandfather, William Powers, tell the incidents of this tragedy as follows: Three of the Indians were killed.  When they were fired upon in camp, only one of those who escaped had a gun.  The whites felt that on their retreat some one of their number would be shot by this Indian, and that the victim would in all probability be the one in lead of the party.  Bonnett declared that he had just as well die as any of them and stepped to the front.  Powers was placed at some distance in the rear, to guard against pursuit.  When he heard the gun report, he knew that some one of their party had been fired upon, and possibly killed.  He saw the fleeing Indian, but at too great a distance for a shot, so he gave chase.  Powers was a swift runner and gained on the warrior, who resorting to strategy, dodged and hid from his enemy.  After peace was declared, an Indian told of his shooting the white man at the

head of the party, and that he in turn was pursued by a "little white devil" and barely escaped.  Powers said, that in this expedition, as in all others, Jesse Hughes led in the trailing.

     The daughter of Hughes, who was captured at the time of the West tragedy, was his eldest child, Martha.  She was then fourteen years old.  When captured she was returning home from the house of John Hacker, where she had gone to get a pup. Hacker lived about four miles up the creek from where Hughes lived. Withers says she was "ransomed by her father the next year," but as a substance of fact she did not return home until 1790 and was a prisoner two years and nine months.  Her father secured her release at Sandusky Plains after the treaty of Fort Harmer, January 9, 1789, which made it possible to secure the release of Indian captives.

     There is a tradition current among Jesse's descendants in Jackson County, West Virginia, to the effect that another daughter, Nancy, was captured by the Indians and held in captivity three years.  In this short time she became thoroughly Indianized, and her father failed to recognize her when he went to bring her home.  Personal decoration, paint, rings on every finger and in her lip, a complete Indian dress, so changed her appearance that only the closest questioning in reference to the time and place of her capture enabled Hughes to determine her identity.  This is merely a distorted and fanciful version of Martha's capture.  Hughes recognized her as soon as he caught sight of her in the Indian country.

     The name of the Hacker girl, who figured in this tragedy was Mary.  Tradition says that she was stabbed seven times by an Indian, who was afterwards killed; his body ripped open, filled with sand and sunk in Hacker's Creek on the David Smith farm. Mary Hacker married a Mr. Wolf and settled on Wolf's Run in Lewis County.  She never fully recovered from the effects of the scalping and her death was caused from a nasal hemorrhage.

     Barring a few burnings at the stake, there is hardly a more pathetic tragedy in the annals of the border wars than the tomahawking at West's.  The despairing appeal of the old man, who with advancing age, had lost much of the nerve and energy of hardy manhood, the utter helplessness of Mrs. West, the pulling from beneath the bed of the little boy and his brutal tomahawking, the ineffectual attempt of the little girl at concealment and her instinctive efforts to evade the murderous blow - all this makes a scene of pathetic woe.  The long night of agony for the two little children cannot be fully imagined. Contemplation of the boy wandering aimlessly through the icy waters of the creek, with skull bared from scalping, his brains oozing from the ghastly wounds in his forehead, and chilled by the cold winds of December, is most heartrending.  The little girl dragged by the hair, falling to "sleep" when thrown over the fence, her awakening from the excruciating torture of the process of scalping, the relentless thrust of the murderous knife, the feeble and unsuccessful attempt to reach the house, the going to "sleep" the second time, the piteous turning to the solitude of the woods for shelter, the arrival at the house and curling down upon the warm hearth, the sensation of sickness and the climbing into the lonely bed make up a story that fills the heart with sadness.  It certainly must have been anything but comforting to Colonel Lowther, Elias Hughes and their followers, if they realized the situation, to reflect that to their over-zeal in protecting a few miserable horses by shooting two fleeing Indians, was this awful tragedy due.  And the greatest pity of all, retaliatory vengeance fell upon the innocent and helpless.  

     We come again to a period of several years, in which we hear nothing of Jesse Hughes.  This, however, is true of many of his noted contemporaries during the same interval.

     Jesse Hughes went hunting for service berries near his home on Hacker's Creek, and at the same time, two Indians were hunting for Jesse.  Finding a tree loaded with berries, he was soon ensconced among its branches regaling himself with the delicious fruit; when suddenly two warriors appeared under the tree and exultingly exclaimed that they "had him," and laughing at his predicament, called to him to "come down, give up; Injun no hurt." Realizing that he was trapped, and in order to gain time to formulate some plan of escape, he effected a nonchalant air, and requested that they would allow him to eat a few more berries before descending.  At the same time he began to break off small branches ladened with berries and toss them to his captors.  The Indians, desiring to take him prisoner, and wishing to show their good intentions towards him, complied, and were soon enjoying the rich fruit.  The tree stood on the brow of a steep bluff, or deep gully, and Jesse, with every faculty alert, cautiously and slowly drew the Indians away from the tree by skillfully dropping the branches further and further down the declivity.  At last getting them as far away as possible or prudence would allow, he suddenly leaped from the tree, landing in an opposite direction.  Before the astonished braves could fire upon him, Jesse had vanished like a flash over the brow of the bluff, and was soon lost to sight in the deep forest.  The Indians, knowing from experience the utter futility of pursuit, made no attempt to recapture him.

     A Mrs. Straley, who lived near West's Fort, related that when she was a little girl she went to hunt some sheep that had strayed from home, and getting lost on the West Fork, she remained all night alone in the wilderness.  Next morning, getting her bearings, she started home, and met Jesse searching for her.

     Somewhere on the waters of the West Fork River, two Indians were fired upon by the settlers, and one killed.  The other badly wounded, made off.  A party went in pursuit, and found him lying in a tangle of brush.  As they approached, he greeted them kindly, and the men were inclined to mercy, but Jesse Hughes who came up a little later, tomahawked and scalped the helpless warrior, accompanying his work with many profane expletives.  This was a distinct incident from the Morgan Indian tragedy at Pricket's Fort in 1779, referred to elsewhere in this volume.

     It was during this period that Jesse went very early one morning, to bring in a horse which had been in a pasture some distance from his cabin.

     He arrived at the edge of the field just as day was breaking.  Ever cautious, the wary scout paused to reconnoiter the premises before venturing into the open.  Peering through his leafy screen, Jesse saw his horse, a spirited black, flying across the field pursued by a young Indian.  The scout, who had on more than one occasion measured speed and endurance with fleet-footed warriors, was amazed and startled to see this Indian outstrip the frantic steed.  But, owing to the dread in which the horse of the white man held Indians, this wild runner could not seize or fasten upon the coveted prize.  It was yet too dark for Hughes to use his rifle with any degree of accuracy.  So, from his place of concealment, he watched this chase in the dusk of the departing night.  But the day grew, and soon the silence was broken by the crash of the scout's deadly rifle, and before the answering echoes had ceased to reverberate through the valley, the swiftest runner of the Monongahela was lying still in death. 

     One cannot but feel regret at the tragic death of this bronzed athlete, who was seemingly alone and bent on no bloody designs against the settlement.  Like the untamed Highlander, he had merely come  

               "To spoil the spoiler as we may,

                And from the robber rend the prey."

     He was apparently trying to collect in his own way the poor tithe regarded as justly his from the robber-like usurpers of his country.

     Indians sometimes came into the settlement alone.  It was not uncommon for a young brave to go singly in quest of horses or scalps.  If successful, his reputation as a warrior was assured. I have often heard the northwestern tribes narrate incidents of this nature.  The one shot through the shoulder by West in the field just south of the old Henry McWhorter cabin, near "Beech Fort,"  was a straggler of this kind.  This Indian, badly wounded made off, and as was afterwards learned by following his trail, he stopped at a spring on the hillside, on what is now the Nicholas Alkire farm, about two miles up Hacker's Creek, near the mouth of Life's Run, and bathed his wound.

     This spring has since been known as Indian Spring.  After dressing his wound, the Indian went perhaps a mile further, and crept into a cleft in the rocks, where his dead body was afterwards found.  This ridge-cliff, known as "Indian Rock," is on the farm now owned by Jesse Lawson, on Life's Run, a branch of Hacker's Creek.

     The settlers on the upper waters of the Monongahela often went in canoes and flat-boats to Fort Pitt, where they exchanged skins, furs, jerked venison, and other products of the wilderness for ammunition and necessaries.  Jesse Hughes and Henry McWhorter made a trip together.  One day they put ashore where a number of children were playing, among them a little Indian boy. The incident which followed I will give in McWhorter's own words.

     "The instant that Jesse caught sight of the little Indian boy his face blazed with hatred.  I saw the devil flash in his eye, as feigning great good humor, he called out, 'Children, don't you want to take a boat ride?' Pleased with a prospective glide over the still waters of the Monongahela, one and all came running towards the boat.  Perceiving Hughes' cunning ruse to get the little Indian into his clutches, I picked up an oar, and gruffly ordering the children away, quickly shoved the boat from the bank.  When safely away, I turned to Hughes and said, 'Now, Jesse, ain't you ashamed?' 'What have I done?' he sullenly asked.  'What have you done?  why, you intended to kill that little Indian boy.  I saw it in your every move and look, the moment you got sight of the little fellow.' 'Yes,' he said, 'I intended when we got into mid-stream to stick my knife in him and throw him overboard.' When I remonstrated with him about this, he said, 'Damn it, he's an Injun!' "

     Brutal?  Yes; but let us not deal too harshly with the memory of Jesse Hughes, whose only schooling was that acquired upon a bloody frontier.  Naturally such a training was void of sentiment.  It contained not the elements of charity or mercy. It was narrow, cramped and selfish.  It saw only the smouldering ruins of the settler's cabin, its scalped inmates; the helpless swept into captivity, with visions of the gauntlet and the torture stake.  The whites believed their own actions justifiable and in the interests of their civilization.  The conquest of a country has always brought about the possibility of barbarous conditions, and but comparatively few of our frontiersmen have possessed the sturdiness of purpose to avoid the inhuman actions prompted by them.

     But there were two sides.  The Indians were cruelly wronged. They were deceived, defrauded and treacherously dealt with. Their lands were encroached upon, in gross violation of solemn treaty rights.  Their game was destroyed.  Friendlies were shot down without provocation, and entire families and bands of hunters were murdered, in the fastnesses of their own domain. There were schemes promulgated, and I believe employed, by those high in authority, for the indiscriminate destruction of the Indians, far more hellish than those ever dreamed of by the wilderness warrior.  We should be just and place where they belong the various causes for the brutalities enacted on the border.

     George Jackson was captain of the first military company organized in the Buckhannon settlement.  The date of this organization and its object has been a matter of conjecture.  It is thought by some to have originated at the call of Col.  William Darke, when he recruited his "Hampshire and Berkeley Regiment" in the Spring of 1781.  This was an emergency regiment raised to oppose the invasion of Virginia by the British.  This regiment was at the siege of Yorktown and the surrender of General Cornwallis in the following October, and was one of the guard which conducted a contingent of the vanquished army to the prison barracks near Winchester, Virginia.

     It is not probable that Capt. Jackson participated in the campaign against Yorktown.  He recruited a company from the settlements in May, 1781, and joined General Clark at Fort Pitt in his attempted expedition against Detroit.

     The first military company at Buckhannon was a band of Indian spies, organized in 1779.  George Jackson was Captain of this body.  He is said subsequently to have had general command of the various bands of spies in the settlements, and was succeeded in this rank by Col.  Lowther.  Later, Jackson was a Colonel in the militia, and is inseparably connected with the early history of the Upper Monongahela.  He is mentioned by Withers on several occasions, and his memorable night run from Buckhannon to Clarksburg for assistance when some of the settlers were besieged in an out-house in 1782, was characteristic of the energy and daring courage that made him a leader among men.

     He was a member of the First Virginia Assembly in 1788 which ratified the Federal Constitution.  His long subsequent public career is of record and need not be repeated here.  He was an associate of the Hughes, but could not vie with them in Indian woodcraft.

     The two brothers of Jesse Hughes, Thomas and Elias, were both commissioned officers in Col.  Lowther's Company of Rangers and Spies, and from the following story, which was gleaned from a source worthy of credence, it would appear that Jesse was also a subaltern officer in the same company.

     Sometime in the early nineties, Colonel Lowther ordered Jesse Hughes to take such men as he deemed necessary and scout from the Buckhannon Fort by way of French Creek and the headwaters of the West Fork to the falls of the Little Kanawha; from which point, if no Indian sign was discovered, he was to proceed to the mouth of Leading Creek, up which stream he was to return to the settlements by way of Polk Creek.  Usually the scouts would strike the Ohio River near Wheeling, there construct a raft by which to descend the Ohio to the site of Parkersburg, examining all the Indian trails leading to the settlements.  If signs of Indians were discovered, they would immediately strike for the settlements and give warning of the threatening danger, but if none were found they would scout over the Indian warpath that followed up the Little Kanawha and Leading Creek on their return home.  This more northern territory, on the occasion of which I write, was doubtless patrolled by other efficient scouts residing on the Upper Monongahela.

     The route laid out for Jesse Hughes covered the several Indian trails leading from the Little Kanawha to the Upper Monongahela.  The principal path was up Leading Creek and down Polk Creek to the West Fork.  There were, however, a few less frequented and more secluded paths among the labyrinth of small streams flowing from the divide between the headwaters of the Little Kanawha and the West Fork.  One of these led up Oil Creek from the Kanawha and passed down the small stream known as "Indian Carrying Run" on the opposite side of the divide to the West Fork.  The distance between the headings of these two tributaries is only a few hundred yards and was known as "Indian Carrying Place." This was the only point where the Indians "portaged," or "carried" between the Kanawha and the Monongahela, hence the name.  The "Carrying Place" is on "Indian Farm," where Arnold Station now is.

     The war parties from Ohio, in their forays on the western Virginia border, never traveled by water.  The topography of the country and the nature of its streams precluded the idea.  By placing a few sentinels along the streams traversed, the settlers could have effectively guarded against surprise, and have easily intercepted the Indians in their flight.  Canoe voyages were doubtless resorted to on some of these western streams by the Indians when raiding the settlements east of the Alleghenies, prior to the settling of the Upper Monongahela.  At that period they were immune from pursuit west of the mountains, where the canoe would have been a safe and easy mode of travel.  The Little Kanawha from its mouth to the "portage" referred to, afforded a direct highway of some fifty miles.

     "Canoe Run," which flows into the West Fork about one-half mile below Roanoke, in Lewis County, derived its name from the scouts finding an Indian canoe moored under some willows in or near the mouth of this stream.

     "Indian Cap Run," which enters the river from the east, between Jacksonville and Walkersville, took its name from an Indian cap, or head-dress, found on the western trail near its source.

     In Walkersville, about one hundred and fifty yards from the forks of the river, and just above the road, a block of sandstone juts from the hillside, on which is carved "1780." The date is legible, though crudely executed.  It was found there by the scouts, who attributed it to Simon Girty.  But the handiwork could hardly be that of Simon Girty personally, who could neither read nor write.

     In the scouting expedition referred to, Jesse Hughes thought that a small party would be sufficient, and selected Alexander West to accompany him.  They traversed the route designated without finding an Indian sign.  They reported at Clarksburg, and in general council it was apparent that no Indians were lurking on the border.  Winter was fast approaching, and there was but little probability of further hostilities that Fall.  Colonel Lowther commended the scouts highly for their celerity and faithfulness, and dismissed them for the season.  Colonel George Jackson, who was present, also praised their splendid work.

     While out, the scouts had noted that the beech mast in the bottoms and low hills about the head of French Creek was heavy, and that the region was full of bear.  A hunt was planned by the two scouts and the colonels.  Hughes and West then proceeded to West's Fort, and sent a dispatch to notify the Buckhannon settlement of the result of their scouting.  Within a few days they were joined at West's by the two officers, and the next day the company left for the hunting grounds.  The first night they stayed at an old Indian camp, known to Hughes only, who had been there on previous occasions.  Here they saw an abundance of deer, which at that time held no attraction for them.  The next morning they crossed the divide to French Creek, where they found all the bear sign reported by the scouts. The ground had been scratched over for miles, such as they had never seen before; but the sign was all old, and not a bear could be found.  They had evidently gone to the rough mountainous regions of the Kanawha, the Holly, and the Buckhannon for winter quarters, as very few bear wintered in the more open hills of the West Fork.

     Hughes and West desired to follow the bear, but it was necessary for Colonel Jackson to return home, and reluctantly they decided to accompany him.  They recrossed the mountain and spent the night at their former camp.  The deer, so unattractive the evening before, now engaged their attention, and they determined to spend the day shooting.  They divided their party: Hughes and West were pitted against the two colonels.  They were to hunt for a wager, the prize being all the deer skins taken.  No fawns were to be counted, and if a shot failed to bring down the game it was to deduct one from the party who fired it.  All bullets in the shot-pouches were counted, and for these the hunter must account at the close of the day.  It was agreed that the two officers were to hunt below, while the scouts were to hunt above the camp.

     Everything arranged, the hunt began, and in the evening when the game was tallied and the bullets all accounted for, the score stood nineteen for Hughes and West, and twenty-one for the colonels.  The next morning the game was skinned, such venison selected as was desired, and the camp broken.  It was then suggested that the stream, on a branch of which they were encamped, was yet unnamed, and it was unanimously agreed that it should be called "Skin Creek," in commemoration of their remarkable hunt.  As Jesse Hughes had piloted them to the camp, and to him alone was known the sylvan retreat, they called this tributary "Hughes Fork." These names they still bear.

     Afterwards, Joseph Hall, who came from England, and who was a corporal in Lord Dunmore's expedition in 1774, acquired title to a tract of land on Hughes Fork, including the camp site.  Hall learned that Jesse Hughes also claimed this land by "tomahawk improvement." He met Hughes in Clarksburg and enquired regarding his claim, offering to pay him for any right he might hold to the land.  Hughes replied, "I did have a claim to that land; I camped there two or three times, and had a great hunt.  I marked some trees expecting to acquire a title to the land.  But I have," he continued, "more of such claims than I have use for; and I hear, Joe, that you now have a wife, and will need the land." Hall told him that he not only had a wife, but also a little curlyheaded boy.  Hughes rejoined, "In that case, I would give the land to the boy if I had a patent for it." He then described the old Indian camp - a spring, and a beautiful location for a house.

     Joseph Hall's son, Jonathan, settled on this land in 1820. Ten years later he cleared the site of the old camp, near which he built a new residence.  The fire hearths of the camp, three in number, were unearthed by the plow.  They were about two rods apart, and in the form of a triangle.  They indicated long use, the ashes and burned stone extending considerably below the surface.  Nearby were two dark spots in the soil, each about sixteen feet in diameter.  These proved extremely fertile, the corn growing much more luxuriantly there than on the surrounding soil.  The unearthing of the old camp was witnessed by Jonathan Hall's sons, the youngest of whom, John Strange Hall, is still living, and occupies the ancestral homestead.  To Mr. Hall I am indebted for most of the particulars contained in this chapter.  

     Alexander West's son, Charles, settled on Hughes Fork of Skin Creek, on land said to have been "tomahawked" by his father during this hunt.

     Some time prior to the close of Indian hostilities on the border, Henry Jackson, the great land surveyor, who executed several of the large surveys in (now) central West Virginia, received warrants for thirty-five thousand acres, to be laid off in five thousand acre tracts.  This was the celebrated Bank's Survey, destined in after years, like many others of that day, to figure prominently in the Courts.

     A surveying party consisted of the surveyor, two chain-bearers, a "marker," and a cook, who helped as "packer;" also two hunters, who supplied the camp with meat and acted as scouts. Such an outfit was a recognized scouting party in time of Indian hostilities, and was often attended by regular Spies or Rangers employed by the State or Federal government.

     Jackson selected a new field for his operations, and pitched camp on Leading Creek in (now) Gilmer County.  He arrived there in the evening, and marked a black gum tree for a corner.  He then set his compass and noted that the line determined on would cross the creek three times.  After this he rested for the day. Supper over, Jesse Hughes, one of the hunters, announced that he and his comrade would go down the creek about two miles to a famous lick and kill a deer for breakfast. Before starting they heard the howl of a wolf.  This was answered by another in the general direction of the lick, but apparently some distance apart.  The calls were repeated occasionally and seemed to approach each other.  Jackson declared these were Indian signals, and that they must return at once and alarm the settlements.  Hughes rebelled.  He would not "run from Injuns until he saw Injuns to run from." He then added that he could approach the lick from the bluff and see any object near it without danger of discovery.  Jackson reluctantly permitted Hughes and his companion to go, but first exacted a promise that they would not fire, no odds how fair an Indian mark they might see.  If the signals heard were from Indians it was evident that others were in the immediate vicinity, and it was of the utmost importance that the presence of the whites be kept secret.  The scouts set out, and soon returned with the intelligence that two Indians were watching the lick, armed with bows and arrows. The whites returned to West's Fort that night, and spread the alarm. 

     The Indians evidently discovered signs of the surveying party and its hasty retreat, for they passed by the immediate settlements and committed depredations on Cheat River, carrying off some plunder.  Colonel Lowther had his scouts and rangers out watching, and succeeded in intercepting the Indians in their retreat, killed a few of them and recovered the stolen property.

     Jackson never went back to complete his work. In due time, however, the Bank's Survey was properly returned, neatly plotted, and showing the crossings of the chief streams.  It was forwarded to the Governor, who issued the patent.  In later years Lewis Maxwell became owner of the Bank's Survey, and spent years in search of Jackson's beginning corner.  Finally the place was located where the three crossings of the creek were visible, but no marks of survey were ever found there.  However, in following one of jackson's imaginary lines, a tree was found with an old "line mark." This, Maxwell claimed, had been placed by Jackson.  In the meantime, later patents for the land had been discovered, and Maxwell brought suit for possession.  The case was tried at Glenville, Gilmer County, and lasted two weeks, consuming the entire term of court.  The main point involved was the identity of Jackson's beginning corner, although many other points were contested.  The defense offered to prove that the mark found on "Jackson's line" was one of Jesse Hughes' tomahawk claims, antedating the Bank's Survey; but the Hughes' claim had never been carried into grant, and the court ruled against the introduction of such testimony.  The case was decided for the defense.

     Mr. J. S. Hall was present at the trial, and after the case was settled, Mr. Enoch Withers, an attorney for the defense, told Mr. Hall that there was an old veteran of Jackson's party still living, who could point out the exact spot of the gum tree corner, but it was not to the interest of the defense to divulge his name.

     Henry Jackson told the particulars of the survey and scare by the Indians to his young nephew, George Jackson Arnold,  a grandson of Col.  George Jackson, who figured in the Skin Creek hunt.   

     When forts were built along the Ohio, Indian incursions into Virginia became less frequent.  The garrisons of these forts and the settlers who gathered about them created a demand on the settlements on the Western Monongahela for beef and milk cows.

In 1791 we find Jesse Hughes with Nicholas Carpenter, in his ill-fated enterprise undertaken to supply this demand at Fort Harmer at the mouth of the Muskingum.  The ensuing brief account of this occurrence is taken from Withers.

     "In the month of September, Nicholas Carpenter set off to Marietta with a drove of cattle to sell to those who had established themselves there; and when within some miles from the Ohio river, encamped for the night.  In the morning early, and while he and the drovers were yet dressing, they were alarmed  by a discharge of guns, which killed one and wounded another of his party.  The others endeavored to save themselves by flight; but Carpenter being a cripple (because of a wound received some years before) did not run far, when finding himself becoming faint, he entered a pond of water where he fondly hoped he should escape observation.  But no! both he and a son who had likewise sought security there, were discovered, tomahawked and scalped.  George Legget, one of the drovers, was never after heard of; but Jesse Hughes succeeded in getting off though under disadvantageous circumstances.  He wore long leggins, and when the firing commenced at the camp, they were fastened at top to his belt, but hanging loose below.  Although an active runner, yet he found that the pursuers were gaining and must ultimately overtake him if he did not rid himself of his encumbrance.  For this purpose he halted somewhat and stepping on the lower part of his leggins, broke the strings which tied them to his belt; but before he accomplished this, one of the savages approached and hurled a tomahawk at him.  It merely grazed his head, and he then again took flight and soon got off.     

     "It was afterwards ascertained that the Indians by whom this mischief was effected, had crossed the Ohio river near the mouth of the Little Kenhawa, where they took a negro belonging to Captain James Neal, and continued on towards the settlements on West Fork, until they came upon the trail made by Carpenter's cattle.  Supposing that they belonged to families moving, they followed on until they came upon the drovers; and tying the negro to a sapling made an attack on them. The negro availed himself of their employment elsewhere, and loosening the bands which fastened him, returned to his master."

     The following more elaborate description of the foregoing tragedy is given by Hildreth.

     "The year 1791 was more fruitful in tragical events than any other during the war, in the vicinity of Marietta.  After that period the attention of the Indians was more occupied with the troops assembled on the borders of their own country, or already penetrating to the vicinity of their villages.  The United States troops stationed at the posts within the new settlements, drew a considerable portion of their meat rations from the inhabitants of the western branches of the Monongahela, about Clarksburg, especially their fresh beef.  Several droves had been brought from that region of the country in 1790 and '91 and sold to Paul Fearing, Esq., who had been appointed Commissary to the troops. A considerable number of cattle, especially milk cows, were also sold to the inhabitants of Marietta.  Among those engaged in this employment was Nicholas Carpenter, a worthy, pious man, who had lived many years on the frontiers and was well acquainted with a forest life.  He left Clarksburg the last of September, with a drove, accompanied by his little son, ten years old, and five other men, viz: Jesse Hughes, George Legit, John Paul, Barns, and Ellis.  On the evening of the 3rd of October, they had reached a point six miles above Marietta, and encamped on a run half a mile from the Ohio, and since called 'Carpenter's run.' The cattle were suffered to range in the vicinity, feeding on the rich pea vines that then filled the woods, while the horses were hoppled, the leaves pulled out from around the clappers of their bells, and turned loose in the bottom.  After eating their suppers, the party spread their blankets on the ground and lay down

with their feet to the fire.  No guard was set to watch the approach of an enemy.  Their journey being so near finished, without discovering any signs of Indians, that they thought all danger was past.

     "It so happened that not far from the time of their leaving home, a party of six Shawanese Indians, headed as was afterwards ascertained, by Tecumseh, then quite a youth, but ultimately so celebrated for bravery and talents, had crossed the Ohio river near Bellville, on a marauding expedition in the vicinity of Clarksburg.  From this place they passed over the ridges to 'Neil's Station,' on the Little Kenawha, one mile from the mouth, where they took prisoner a colored boy of Mr. Neil, about twelve years old, as he was out looking for the horses early in the morning.  It was done without alarming the garrison, and they quietly proceeded on their route, doing no other mischief; pursuing their way up the Kenawha to the mouth of Hughes' river, and following the north fork, fell on to the trail from Clarksburg to Marietta.  This took them about three days. There was no rain, and the leaves so dry that their rustling alarmed the deer, and they could kill no game for food.  Their only nourishment for that period was a single tortoise, which they divided among them, giving Frank, the black boy, an equal share.  As he was much exhausted and discouraged, they promised him a horse to ride on their return.  These circumstances were related by Frank after his escape.

      "Soon after leaving the north fork of Hughes' river, they fell onto the trail of Carpenter's drove, and thinking it made by a caravan of settlers on their way to the Ohio, they held a short council.  Giving up any further progress towards Clarksburg they turned with renewed energy and high spirits upon the fresh large trail, which they perceived had very recently been made.  So broad was the track made by the cattle and four or five horses that they followed it without difficulty, at a rapid pace all night, and came in sight of the camp fire a little before daylight.  Previous to commencing the attack, they secured Frank with leather thongs to a stout sapling on the top of an adjacent ridge.  The trampling of the cattle and the noise of the horse bells greatly favored the Indians in their approach, but as there was no sentinel there was little danger of discovery.  Tecumseh, with  the cautious cunning that ever distinguished him posted his men behind the trunk of a large fallen tree, a few yards from the camp, where they could watch the movements of their enemies.

     "At the first dawn of day Mr. Carpenter called up the men, saving they would commence the day with the accustomed acts of devotion which he had long practiced.  As the men sat around the fire, and he had just commenced reading a hymn, the Indians rose and fired, following the discharge with a terrific yell, and rushed upon their astonished victims with the tomahawk. Their fire was not very well directed, as it killed only one man, Ellis from Greenbrier, and wounded John Paul through the hand.  Ellis instantly fell, exclaiming, 'O Lord, I am killed!' The others sprang to their feet, and before they could all get their arms which were leaning against a tree, the Indians were among them.  Hughes, who had been an old hunter and often in skirmishes with savages, in his haste seized on two rifles, Carpenter's and his own and pushed into the woods, with two Indians in pursuit.   He fired one of the guns, but whether with effect is not known, and threw the other away.  Being partly dressed at the time of the attack his long leggins were only fastened to the belt around his waist and were loose below, entangling his legs, and greatly impeding his flight.  To rid himself of this a encumbrance he stopped for a moment, placed his foot on the lower end, and tore them loose from his belt, leaving his legs bare from the hips downward. This delay nearly cost him his life. His pursuer then within a few feet of him, threw his tomahawk so accurately as to graze his head.  Freed from this impediment he soon left his foe far behind.  Christopher Carpenter, the son of Nicholas, now living in Marietta, says he well remembers seeing the bullet holes in Hughes' hunting shirt after his return.

     "In the race the competitors passed near the spot where Frank was concealed, who described it as one of the swiftest he had ever seen.  John Paul, who had been in many engagements with the Indians, escaped by his activity in running.  Burns, a stout, athletic man, but slow of foot, was slain near the camp after a stout resistance.  When found a few days after his jack knife was still clasped in his hand, and the weeds trampled down for a rod or more around, showing he had resisted manfully for life.  George Legit was pursued for nearly two miles, overtaken and killed.  Mr. Carpenter, although a brave man, was without arms to defend him and being lame could not run rapidly.  He therefore sought to conceal himself behind some willows, in the bed of the run.  He was soon discovered, with his little boy by his side.    His captors conducted him to the spot where the black boy had been left, and killed both him and his son.  What led to the slaughter, after they had surrendered, is not known.  He was found wrapped in his blanket, with a pair of new Indian moccasins on his feet, and his scalp not removed.  It is supposed that these marks of respect were shown him at the request of one of the Indians whose gun Carpenter had repaired at Marietta the year before, and had declined any compensation for the service.  He was by trade a gunsmith.  This circumstance was told to C. Carpenter, many years after, by one of the Indians who was present, at Urbana in Ohio. It is another proof of the fact, that an Indian never forgets an act of kindness, even in an enemy.    

     "Tecumseh and his men, after collecting the plunder of the camp, retreated in such haste, that they left all the horses, which had probably dispersed in the woods at the tumult of the attack.  They no doubt feared a pursuit from the rangers at Marietta and Williams' station, who would be notified by the escape of their prisoner, Frank, who in the midst of the noise of the assault contrived to slip his hands loose from the cords, and hide himself in a thick patch of hazel bushes, from which he saw a part of the transactions.  After the Indians had left the ground, he crept cautiously forth, and by good fortune took the right direction to Williams' station, opposite to Marietta.  A party of men was sent out the next day, who buried the dead as far as they could then be found.  Frank returned to his master, and died only a few years since."  

      Colonel Joseph Barker assisted in burying the bodies of Carpenter and his men.

      From the foregoing it would appear that Hughes had adopted the Indian mode of dress so popular with the half-wild hunters and scouts in the latter years of the Indian wars on the Virginia border.  Tradition says that Hughes was surprised by the Indians near the Buckhannon Fort when entangled with loose leggins, and with difficulty effected his escape.  Doubtless this story had its origin in the Carpenter occurrence.

      A single instance illustrative of Hughes' wonderful fleetness and dexterity with his rifle will demonstrate to what a fearful strait he must have been reduced that he should in his flight cast aside a loaded gun.  After he had moved from Hacker's Creek, and was an old man, he returned on a visit.  A Mr. Bailey, of Freeman's Creek, then a lad, remembered seeing him and witnessing the feat at a house-raising on Broad Run, in what is now Lewis County.  When the house was completed the assembled young men engaged in athletic sports, hopping, jumping and foot-racing, as was customary in those days.  One athlete excelled all competitors in fleetness, and the old scout offered to run with him.  The conditions of the race stipulated that Hughes with empty rifle in hand was to have ten paces the start of his adversary; and if successful in charging his piece before caught he was to be declared winner.  Arrangements were accordingly made, and after the contestants had been properly placed, the signal was given and they sprang forward.  One was an aged man, on whose visage the "shadows of the evening" were settling.  The other, strong in the prime of youth, exulted in the mounting vigor of manhood.  Swift was the race, but the chief of the Monongahela scouts proved himself.  He charged his rifle, and whirling about, could easily have shot his rival before being caught.

     The following traditional sequel to the Carpenter tragedy is an extract from a manuscript by the late Mr. S. C. Shaw, of Parkersburg, West Virginia.  Mr, Shaw spent considerable time in collecting traditions from old papers and the descendants of the border pioneers.  He died only a few years ago.

     "At the first volley from the guns of the Indians, Carpenter and three of his men fell dead.  Hughes, the only one to escape death, was slightly wounded, but by his extraordinary activity and fleetness succeeded, after a long and at times close chase, in making his escape to Neal's blockhouse at the mouth of the Little Kanawha.  The colored boy, Frank, whom the Indians had taken prisoner and tied to a tree with deer sinews during the attack, succeeded with his teeth in severing his bonds, and though closely pursued made his escape to the fort.  When Hughes and the boy appeared at the blockhouse and told the story of savage cruelty and murder, Isaac Williams,  a noted scout, immediately took charge of a party which started in pursuit of the Indians. Arriving at the scene of the tragedy, they found the body of Carpenter and his three men lying by their camp fire, scalped and mutilated.  They buried their dead and struck the trail of the Shawnees leading towards the river.  Owing to a heavy rain, they lost the trail somewhere near the point on which St. Mary's, the county seat of Pleasants County, now stands, and  the pursuit was abandoned.  Williams' party, consisting of Jesse Hughes, Malcomb Coleman, Elijah Pixley and James Ryan, now held a council of war and unanimously agreed to avenge the death of Carpenter and his party on the first Indians that fell in their way.

     "Williams led his party of avengers across the Ohio at a ford near Willow Island and immediately took up their silent march towards the head of Shade River, where they learned from the scouts belonging to the Bellville blockhouse, a small party of Shawnees were encamped on a hunt.  The scouts went into camp on the Little Hocking, early that evening, leaving one man on guard to be changed at midnight; and rested until two o'clock in the morning, when, after a hasty meal of dried venison and parched corn, they again took up the line of march.  Arriving within three miles of where they had been told the Shawnees were camped, Williams and his party went into hiding beneath a mass of thick undergrowth lining a small stream between two wooded hills.  Soon after being here ensconced the report of fire arms nearby startled them.  Peering through the branches of their bushy canopy the scouts silently listened and waited.  A few minutes later a large buck broke cover on the hillside and came bounding down the slope in a straight line for the thicket in which they were concealed.  The scouts supposed that the Indians were in pursuit, and were fearful that the buck would bring about their discovery.  Fortunately for them, while the game was fifty yards away, a rifle rang out on the still morning air, and the buck sprang high and fell dead.  An instant later three Indians ran down the hill, and began dressing the carcass.  From their head dress, and general appearance, the scouts recognized them as Shawnees, and knew that they were near the camp for which they were looking. The whites remained motionless and were undiscovered by the Indians, who, after completing their task, moved off with their spoils.  The whites kept in hiding all day with one of their number constantly on the lookout.

    "On the banks of the Shade River, three miles distant from the hiding place of the whites, was a small creek which emptied into the larger stream.  A huge rock stood back fifteen or twenty yards from the bank, and in front, and between it and the river, stood four brush wigwams.  The Indians had brought three of their squaws with them to cure the meat, and with them three Indian lads, ranging from four to eleven years of age.  The band of warriors or hunters consisted of four men.  That night about midnight the scouts approached within two or three hundred yards of the Indian camp when Jesse Hughes went forward to ascertain their exact number and location.  Hughes soon returned with the information given above, having arrived at this knowledge from the number of lodges and the equipment about the lodges.  When Hughes reported, Williams divided his forces, sending Hughes with two men to follow under the bank of the creek until opposite the camp; and then followed by the remaining hunter, Williams cautiously crept up until he was directly behind the rock referred to.  The cry of the whippoor-will was Hughes' signal that his force was in position, and a minute later Williams and Pixley crept from behind the rock and up to the nearest wigwam.  So silent was their approach that even the keen-eared Shawnees had no suspicion that an enemy was near.  The moon was in the full and even under the shade of the trees objects were plainly discernable.  Williams and Pixley waited near the first wigwam until they saw Hughes, Coleman and Ryan close up to another, then raising his hand as a signal, dashed into the wigwam with a fearful yell, and before the sleeping Indians could spring to their feet, they were upon them.  The scouts had rushed with tomahawk in hand, and almost in a second two Indian warriors and a squaw were tomahawked.  While this tragedy was being enacted, Hughes and his companions were holding another carnival of death within a few yards.  Yells and cries of pain rent the air, and instantaneously the remaining Indians were out of their wigwams with weapons in their hands.  Heretofore the whites had refrained from using their rifles, but after they had exterminated the occupants of two wigwams first attacked, they sprang out with their rifles, and before the panic-stricken Indians could recover their presence of mind, the rifles of the whites began to crack, and at each shot an Indian fell.  Nine of the party were killed.  The remaining Shawnee yelled with terror and fled to the forest. Fearing an ambuscade, the scouts quickly reloaded their guns and then looked over the field of battle.

     "One little Indian boy, not over four years old, was discovered concealed under a pile of furs and hides in a corner of one of the wigwams, where he had crawled when the whites made their attack.

     "Although doubtless frightened at the sight of the first white faces and heavy beards he had ever seen, the boy did not so much as whimper when Pixley picked him up and was about to dash him against a tree.  Hughes, near Pixley at the time, begged him to spare the boy; but Pixley, whose brother and son had been killed and scalped by the Shawnees several months before, at first refused to spare him, but after a good deal of persuasion Hughes at last succeeded in getting possession of the lad.

     "Four horses, a large amount of fresh meat, a lot of furs and three good rifles were found and taken possession of.  The dead Indians were scalped, the horses loaded with the captured plunder, and then fastening the Indian boy securely to the back of one of them, the scouts began their retreat.  They followed the banks of the Shade River to its mouth, at what is today the town of Murrayville.  From that point, they travelled several miles up the Ohio to a ford where they crossed, and arrived at the Beliville blockhouse.  The little Indian prisoner was taken away a few days later by Jesse Hughes, and an old manuscript says that he lived many years among the whites in a settlement called Builtown, dying at the age of nearly one hundred years, a devout Christian, greatly loved and respected in his community."

     The date (1785) and some of the details as given in the original unabridged version of this tradition are so conflicting, and the story of Hughes saving the little boy, an act so foreign to his known nature, serve to cast doubt on the story.  Some parts of it may be true; evidently much of it is untrue.  It was published in the Pittsburg Post several years ago, and copied by the press, and is given for what it is worth.

     It is said that the colored lad's name was Frank Wykoff, and that he was caught by the Indians one mile above Neal's Fort while fishing at the mouth of the Little Kanawha; that his captors tied his hands behind him, and packing a heavy load of food and utensils on his shoulders, compelled him to keep pace with them.  But it is not probable that the Indians were encumbered with utensils or much food on a war expedition.

     The companions of Jesse Hughes in this traditional expedition of revenge and plunder were well known on the Virginia frontier.  In February, 1793, we find that Malcom Coleman, Elijah Pixley and James Ryan, accompanied by Coleman's son John, left the fort at Belleville, Ohio, in a canoe on a hunting trip up Big Mill Creek, in what is now Jackson County, West Virginia.  They camped at or near where Cottageville now stands, and in a few days had all the venison and bear meat their canoe would carry.  Their return home was delayed by the freezing of the creek.

Pixley and young Coleman returned overland to the fort for a small supply of flour or meal and salt, expecting to return in the forenoon of the third day.  On that fatal morning, the elder Coleman and Ryan rose early and prepared breakfast.  While returning thanks at the beginning of the meal they were fired on by a band of Indians in ambush, and Coleman was instantly killed.

Ryan was slightly wounded, but fled and in due time reached the fort.  A party immediately returned to the camp, only to find Coleman scalped and stripped of his clothing and the camp plundered.  This occurrence was strangely coincident with the Carpenter tragedy.

     When the Waggoner family,  on Jesse's Run, was massacred in May, 1792, it was Jesse Hughes who carried the news of the tragedy to West's Fort and alarmed the settlers.  Colonel John McWhorter, then a lad eight years of age was out hunting the cows not far from his father's home near the fort, when hearing the rustling of underbrush and lancing up, he saw Jesse, rifle –in-hand, running towards the fort.  As Jesse passed the astonished  lad he ejaculated, "Heel it to the fort, ye little devil; Injuns after ye'!" The little fellow did "heel it," endeavoring to keep pace with the scout, but to no purpose.  The fleet-footed trailer disappeared as suddenly as he came to view.

    This raid on the Waggoner family by Tecumseh and his two warriors, with its subsequent history, and the story of the tragedy as told by the Indians in after years, dimly reveals an incentive to these border forays not usually attributed to the Indian by the historian.  That these incursions were primarily of a partisan and revengeful nature, cannot be gainsaid, but that occasionally they were prompted by motives of a different character is also certain.  The carrying into captivity of small children over long and dangerous wilderness paths by the fierce warrior, is significant.  I have elsewhere spoken of the strong parental feeling which sways the Indian bosom.  The vacant seat at the fireside of the wigwam was as deeply mourned as in any home on earth.  A longing to repair the broken circle, often led to the adoption of a stranger by the bereaved family or tribe.  Preferably the adopted one was a child, although often grown or matured parties were acceptable.  To fill these vacancies, young children of likely appearance were kidnaped from the settlements.  That these adoptions were successful, we need only refer to the pathetic scenes enacted at the several treaties where these captives were surrendered.  Often it was necessary to force them from their foster parents.  The grief caused by these separations was always mutual.  The running of the gauntlet by the prisoner before his adoption was, to use their own phraseology, "like how do you do," a hearty but rough initiation into Indian society.

    The last traditional account that we have of Jesse Hughes as defender of the border on the Upper Monongahela was in the fall of 1793.  It was really the sequel of the following incident:    

     "In the spring of 1793, a party of warriors proceeding towards the headwaters of the Monongahela river, discovered a marked way, leading a direction which they did not know to be inhabited by whites.  It led to a settlement which had been recently made on Elk river, by Jeremiah and Benjamin Carpenter and a few others from Bath county, and who had been particularly careful to make nor leave any path which might lead to a discovery of their situation, but Adam O'Brien moving into the same section of country in the spring of 1792, and being rather an indifferent woodsman, incautiously blazed the trees in several directions so as to enable him to readily find his home, when business or pleasure should have drawn him from it.  It was upon one of these marked traces that the Indians chanced to fall; and pursuing it, came to the deserted cabin of O'Brien, he having returned to the interior, because of his not making a sufficiency of grain for the subsistence of his family.  Proceeding from O'Brien's, they came to the house of Benjamin Carpenter, whom they found alone and killed.  Mrs. Carpenter being discovered by them, before she was aware of their presence, was tomahawked and scalped, a small distance from the yard.

     "The burning of Benjamin Carpenter's house, led to a discovery of these outrages; and the remaining inhabitants of that neighborhood, remote from any fort or populous settlement to which they could fly for security, retired to the mountains and remained for several days concealed in a cave.  They then caught their horses and moved their families to the West Fork; and when they visited the places of their former habitancy for the purpose of collecting their stock and carrying it off with other property, scarce a vestige of them was to be seen-the Indians had been there after they left the cave, and burned the houses, pillaged their movable property, and destroyed the cattle and hogs."

     The following traditional account is still preserved by the descendants of the Carpenters on Elk River.

     Jeremiah Carpenter was born at Big Bend, Jackson River, in Bath County, Virginia, and was there taken prisoner by a band of Shawnees when but nine years old.  He lived with the tribe at Old Town, opposite the mouth of the Great Kanawha until he was eighteen, when he was exchanged and returned to Jackson River. From that place he moved to Elk River, in what is now Braxton County, West Virginia, settling about a quarter of a mile above Dry Run.  Into that region the Indians came every spring.

     Adam O'Brien had blazed a trail from the site of the present town of Sutton to the Salt Spring, the name by which the white people spoke of the Indian Bull Town.  O'Brien went there to make salt.  Bull Town being on the old Indian war trail, a party of two Shawnee warriors followed the blazed path made by O'Brien, to Elk River, and there saw chips floating down the stream, which to them was proof that settlers had erected buildings above.  They followed the river.  There were two brothers, Benjamin and Jeremiah Carpenter.  Benjamin's cabin was lowest on the river, at the mouth of Holly, twelve miles above Sutton.  The two Indians, one large and the other small, came first upon the cabin of Benjamin.  At the time, he was across the river burning logs in his clearing, assisted by his mother and little sister, who had come that day to visit him.  His wife was sick in bed, and the Indians tomahawked her, making no noise.  The big Indian took Carpenter's gun from the rack over the door, and seated himself in the corner of the cabin, the little Indian concealing himself on a bank above the house.  Carpenter came across the river to assist his wife if she should want any aid, and also to prepare dinner.  But he stopped at the river bank and took a deer skin from the water where it had been soaking in the process of dressing, and began work upon it.  While about this business the little Indian shot at him and missed him.  He ran to the house to get his gun, and as he reached up to take it down, the big Indian shot him in the side under the arm, and killed him.  They then scalped Carpenter, took his gun, powder-horn and shot-pouch, and left that region.   Carpenter's mother concealed her little girl in a hollow stump, and ran for her husband, but when he arrived at the cabin of his son, the Indians were gone.

     The following fall, at a fort on the West Fork of the Monongahela, possibly at Clarksburg, the Indians killed and devoured a cow belonging to Jesse Hughes.  They carried away with them a bell which the cow wore.  One afternoon they rattled this bell in the woods on the mountain-side above the fort.  Some said to Jesse Hughes that his cow was coming back.  He knew, however, that she had been killed, and replied that he wouId "make that bell ring for something in the morning."  That night he secreted himself in the woods on the mountain above the point where the bell had been heard the previous afternoon.  As soon as it was light enough to shoot, he again heard the bell, and cautiously made his way towards it.  He discovered two Indians, one large, the other small.  The big Indian was standing up with his gun ready for instant use, and the little Indian was walking about on his hands and knees, with the bell on his neck, rattling it in imitation of a cow browsing in the woods.  Hughes shot the big Indian, and the small one ran.  Jesse threw down his empty gun, seized that of the dead Indian, pursued and soon came up with the little Indian and shot him.  The gun carried by the big Indian and with which Hughes killed the little Indian, was the gun of Benjamin Carpenter.  The gun, powder-horn and shot-pouch were returned to the Carpenter family.   

     The story of this occurrence, as told by the immediate descendants of Jesse Hughes, is as follows: Hughes was visiting his parents on Elk Creek, near Clarksburg.  One evening the cow did not come home from the woods as usual, nor could she be found.  The next morning Jesse's mother heard the bell in the woods, and told her daughter to go and bring the cow home. Jesse, hearing the order, stepped into the yard and listening attentively to the bell for a moment, told his sister that he would go and bring the cow.  Taking his rifle, he went into the woods opposite to where the bell was still rattling, and making a circuit, came near the bell on the side furthest from the house. When getting near the object of his search, the odor of broiling meat was wafted to his nostrils.  The Indians had killed the cow, and had been roasting the beef over the camp-fire.  Cautiously advancing, he saw an Indian rattling the bell in such a manner as the noise produced by a belled cow when feeding.  The Indians had gone some distance from their camp towards the house, and were waiting to see if anyone would come to get the cow.  Hughes shot the Indian who was ringing the bell.

     In this version no mention is made of Jesse killing more than one Indian, nor of the big and little Indian and Carpenter's gun.  The last version is correct as to the place and circumstance of Jesse's exploit; but there is every reason to believe that the Carpenter version is correct in its relation to Carpenter and the two noted Indians. 

     Early in the nineties there were two Indians on the border who were well known to the rangers and scouts of Fort Harmer, and other posts on the frontier.  Hildreth, says of these famous warriors:

     "There were among these Indians two whose footprints were well known to the rangers.  One of them left a track eleven inches long, the other not more than seven or eight.  They were known as the big and little Indian.  They were men of great subtlety and caution; often seen together by the spies, yet never but once within reach of their rifles.  Joshua Fleehart, a noted hunter, and as cautious and cunning as any savage, got a shot at the big Indian as the two lay in camp below Bellville.  The ball cut loose his powder horn, which Joshua took as a prize, and wounded him in the side, but he escaped."  

     It is probable that these were the warriors killed by Hughes.  No mention of them is found in the border strife after this time. 

     The killing of Carpenter was cunningly planned and executed and they would have succeeded in their decoy with the bell, but for the keen discernment of Hughes.  Instead, they met a tragic death at the hands of this renowned scout of the Monongahela. 

     We now come to the closing scenes of the turbulent career of Jesse Hughes. The swirling storms of threescore years had swept his path, leaving on his brow the heavy touch of time's relentless hand.    His auburn locks were thin and grizzled. His lithe form was not so erect, nor his eagle eye so keen as in former years, when daring the dangers and fearful privations incident to border life, he traversed the deep forests of the Monongahela wilds, meeting and challenging the skill and endurance of the most wily of his hereditary foes. He had laughed at danger's toils, and played "toss up and catch" with death in a hundred daring adventure and always won. The great object of his life had been revenge.   With death ever at his elbow, he had successfully run the gauntlet of war, striking down in his passage the warrior, mother, and the child. And now, as the shadows were falling to the east, they thickened and became black, and the sunset of life was overcast with bitter disappointment, gloomy reflections, sorrow and despair.  Touching the pathetic ending of this remarkable borderman, judge R. S. Brown, in his Centenniel address delivered at Ravenswood, West Virginia, July 4, 1876, says:   

     "Jesse Hughes, brother of Thomas, before spoken of, was the son of Thomas Hughes who settled on the Monongahela River in 1776, and was soon after killed by the Indians, leaving a large and helpless family in the wilderness.  Jesse grew up in the school of hardship to be a brave, handsome, active man. The stories of the murder of his father and other kindred and friends embittered him against the Red Man, and terrible was the retribution he visited upon them. 

     "His name was a terror to the savage foe and a household word of comfort to the scattered settlers on the Buckhannon River, Hacker's Creek, and elsewhere where he visited with the brave and chivalrous spirit of the knight-errant to ward off the savage blow. Always on the alert and courting danger at every point, he pursued the savage with the pertinacity of a bloodhound and never stopped short of his prey.  Hughes' River, a large navigable stream north of us, was so named in honor of his exploits.  He was justly regarded as the peer of the Zanes, McColloghs and Wetzels.  A history of the deeds of this brave man in defense of his people would fill a volume.  When the Indians fell back Jesse Hughes followed them, first to the Muskingum, and then to the Wabash, and only after their complete surrender to General Wayne did he make peace.

     "He came back here and settled on the Sandy where Mr. J. S. Dilworth now lives near [Sandyville], where he obtained a patent for a piece of land. and made improvements. He was the first settler on that creek. He planted an orchard and cleared some land for a home in his old age; but after living there many years he found his land was long previously granted to John Allison, so Jesse Hughes, the hero of a hundred bloody battles in defense of his country and his race, like his great friends Simon Kenton and Daniel Boone,  was a homeless wanderer at the age of seventy-nine years. He went to live with his son-in-law, George W. Hanshaw, on the farm now owned by Mrs. W. S. Proctor. Worn out with toil and exposure and stung with the ingratitude of his countrymen, he wandered one day with his gun in the woods, and there, alone in a leafy grove, just on the run near where we are met, he died. He was buried here on the bottom but no stone marks the spot where reposes the dust of the brave pioneer."

     After the loss of their home, Jesse and his wife lived for a time with their son, Thomas, who resided on the Ohio just below Ravenswood.  Afterwards they made their home with their daughter, Nancy Agnes Hanshaw, who lived at the mouth of Turkey Run, perhaps on the site of Jesse's former home. Here Jesse died, as narrated by judge Brown in the last of September or the first of October, 1829. 

     In his old age he became very childish, and at every noise imagined that Indians were around. Then, taking down his rifle, he would go out and look for them. It was, perhaps, in one of these sallies against an imaginary enemy, that the old scout met death in the lonely, silent woods. His death was a fitting one. He had spent most of his career in the wilderness - a part of the wild savage life about him. Oft had he heard the reverberating echo of his deadly rifle answered by the moaning cadence of the sobbing wind, wailing in the gloomy forest a sad requiem over the dying warrior who had fallen a victim of his vengeance. Again had he listened in superstitious awe to the demoniacal shrieking of the mighty Manitou whirling and crashing in fury through the deep fastnesses of the sombre mountains, as if in protest against the withering hand of the pale-face lifted so unremorselessly against the red children of his wooded domain.

     At last, in the beauteous mellow of the Southern autumn day - in the dreamy haze of the soft Indian summer - there alone under the trees he loved so well, death came to the old woodsman.

     The grimness of the irony of fate is reflected in the closing career of this, the greatest of the pathfinders of western Virginia.  Of all the vast regions that he had been so active and ruthless in wresting from the rightful owners, not an acre did he possess.  His very grave is lost to the second generation of his family.  No one knows where Jesse Hughes was buried.  I have tried through every available source to locate the grave of the renowned scout, but without success.

     Jesse Hanshaw, his grandson and namesake (line of Nancy), was born in 1831, at the home where his aged grandfather had died two years before.  The cabin in which Mr. Hanshaw was born stood on the present site of the residence of W. S. Proctor, who still owns the farm.  The place at that time consisted of two cabins, and was known as "Beggar's Town." Mr. Hanshaw declared that his mother pointed out to him the place where his grandfather was buried, and that this was on their home-farm, now owned by Proctor, and above Turkey Run, on the upland in the old orchard. He believes that he might be able to locate the spot, though no stone marks the grave.  In 1893, while digging a post-hole near his residence, Proctor found a human skeleton, which may have been that of Jesse Hughes.  The location where this skeleton was found - on the high ground back of where the Hughes cabin stood - corresponds with that given by Mr. Hanshaw, as pointed out by his mother.

     There is an old burial ground between the road and the river, on the lower part of A. J. Rolif's farm, which adjoins that of Mr. Proctor, where repose the remains of some of the oldest settlers of that region, and it has been suggested that Jesse Hughes might have been buried there.  Another tradition says that he was buried near "Hughes' Eddy,"  below Ravenswood. But I am inclined to believe that Mr. Hanshaw is right in his location of the grave of the old scout.  There is no doubt that Mrs. Hanshaw knew where her father was buried, and her son should know, within a reasonable degree of accuracy, the location of the grave.

     After the death of Jesse Hughes, his wife lived with her daughter Massie, at Gandeeville, Roane County, (now) West Virginia, where she died in January 1842.  She was buried at Gandeeville, and at this writing her grave is shown only by a crude stone.  It is hoped that the numerous descendants of this pioneer mother will mark with an enduring and appropriate monument her last resting place, before it, like that of her renowned husband, is lost  to the world forever.

     A few years ago, the old rocking-chair that belonged to Mrs. Jesse Hughes was still preserved by some of her immediate descendants in Jackson County, West Virginia.  What became of this chair is not known to me, but it is, in all probability, still in possession of some of the family in that region.

     Mr. Samuel Alkire of Hacker's Creek, was once in possession of an old gun charger that belonged to his great-grandfather, Jesse Hughes.  This charger was finely carved from a prong of the antler of a deer, and evidently measured out death to more than one Indian in the wilds of the Monongahela. Unfortunately, this interesting relic, perhaps the last memento of the great scout, was lost about thirty years ago, by a squirrel hunter, on lower Hacker's Creek, which had been the theatre of the most turbulent scenes in the wild life of Jesse Hughes.

     THOMAS HUGHES, SENIOR -Settled on Elk Creek, in (now) Harrison County, (West) Virginia, and killed by Indians on Hacker's Creek in 1778.  It is not known where he was born, but the evidence is cogent that the most of his life was spent on the border, and that his removal to the Upper Monongahela was from the Wappatomaka.  The majority of the pioneers of the country in which he settled came from that region, and there is strong proof, in the birth of his son, Elias, that he resided there in 1757.

     It is not certainly known whom Thomas Hughes, Senior, married.  I have been unable to find any record touching that phase of his life.  Some of the older descendants of his son Elias think that his wife's maiden name was Baker.

     The number of children, their names, and the dates of their births, are not with certainty known.  The names of some of them, however, are known.

     JESSE HUGHES was born in 1750, settled on Hacker's Creek in 1771-72; married Miss Grace Tanner the year of his settlement there; became one of the most famous scouts and Indian fighters of all the west; moved to the Wabash in the fall of 1797 or 1798; moved thence to eastern Kentucky the following fall, exact location not known; moved thence to western Virginia in the following spring, and settled at the mouth of Turkey Run, in what is now Jackson County, West Virginia; afterwards settled on Sand Creek, same county, near where Sandyville was afterwards built; died at the mouth of Turkey Run, just above the town of Ravenswood, in the Autumn of 1829.

     THOMAS HUGHES, JUNIOR, was born about 1754; settled on the West Fork about 1775; was an active scout during the entire border wars, and was Lieutenant of a Company of Spies.  He afterwards settled in Jackson County, West Virginia, where he died in October, 1837.   His wife died three months previous.  Her name is unknown to me. They left one child, Thomas, born 1774, who was still living in 1854.

     ELIAS HUGHES was born in 1757, in now Hardy County, Virginia. He was called  "Ellis" Hughes by many of the early settlers, the name "Ellis" being applied as the result of the inattention of the pioneers to the exactness in speaking names.  He came to Harrison County while only a boy and grew up to be a scout and Indian fighter second only to his brother Jesse.  Was in Battle of Point Pleasant and subsequently commissioned a Captain of Spies.  He married Miss Jane Sleeth.  In 1797, moved to the Muskingum in Ohio, and the next year to Licking County, Ohio.  Was Captain of Militia and commissioned Second Lieutenant, Col.  Rennick's Regiment Mounted Ohio Volunteers, War 1812.  Died near Utica, Ohio, December 22, 1844.  His wife died in 1827.

     SUDNA, daughter of Thomas Hughes, Sr., married Colonel William Lowther, who settled on Hughes' River, and was a pioneer in Northwestern Virginia, and active in the protection of the settlers from the attacks of the Indians.

     JOB HUGHES -History of this son not known to me.  He married Mary Hamm, 1791, in Harrison County, (West) Virginia.  Died and was buried in Jackson County, now West Virginia.

     ANOTHER SON was killed by the Indians.  His name is not known, nor can it at this time be determined where or when the tragedy occurred, but it must have been on the western waters.   

     ANOTHER DAUGHTER, name not known to me, was married to Joseph Bibbee, who settled on the Ohio River below the present town of Ravenswood, in what is now Jackson County, West Virginia.

     A marriage license was granted in Harrison County, Virginia, in 1795, to William Bibby and Deborah Hughes.  William was a brother of Joseph Bibbee; Deborah may have been the daughter of

Thomas Hughes, Sr.  Tradition among the descendants of William Bibby, or Bibbee, in Jackson County, West Virginia, says that the Bibbee brothers either married sisters or cousins.  William Bibbee was a noted hunter and killed the last buffalo in now Jackson County, West Virginia.

     In the same year (1795) Benjamin Cox and Mary Hughes were married in Harrison County, Virginia.

                    DESCENDANTS OF JESSE HUGHES.

     MARTHA, born in December, 1773, captured by the Indians, December, 1787; returned from captivity, December, 1790; married Jacob Bonnett in 1792, a brother to John Bonnett who was killed on the Little Kanawha, and lived all her life near West's Fort, now Jane Lew, just below the main road and opposite the present Methodist Episcopal Church, where she died in December, 1834, and was buried at the old Harmony Church Cemetery on Hacker's Creek.  Her grave is marked by a plain sandstone slab, on which is the following inscription:

              MARTHA, DAUGHTER OF JESSE HUGHES

                   BORN DECEMBER, 1773

           MADE PRISONER BY THE INDIANS DEC., 1787

                 RETURNED FROM CAPTIVITY, 1790

                 MARRIED JACOB BONNETT, 1792

                       DIED DEC., 1834

                        AGED 61 YEARS.

     Martha left a long line of descendants on Hacker's Creek. Some of the best families of the valley, including the Bonnetts and the Alkires.  To the late Elias Bonnett, a grandson of Martha, and to his son, Henry G. Bonnett, I am especially indebted for some of the incidents in the life of Jesse Hughes.

     RACHEL, married William Cottrell; lived on Hacker's Creek near the mouth of Life's Run until the death of her husband, when she moved to Spring Creek, six miles from Spencer, Roane County, West Virginia, where she died; buried near Spencer.  The old Cottrell cabin of hewed logs is still standing on Hacker's Creek, just below the pike, and near the bridge spanning the creek, on the road leading up Life's Run.

     SUDNA, married Elijah Runner; lived and died near Sandyville on Big Sand Creek, Jackson County, West Virginia.          

     ELIZABETH, married James Stanley; lived and died on Mud Run, a tributary of Big Sand Creek, Jackson County, West Virginia.

     MASSIE, born on Hacker's Creek, in 1786 or 1787; married Uriah Gandee; lived for a time near Sandyville, Jackson County; in 1824 moved to where Gandeeville now is in Roane County, West Virginia; her husband died in 1855, when she went to live with her son, J. S. Gandee, where she resided until her death, May 30, 1883.  She was buried on the home farm near Gandeeville.

     NANCY AGNES, married George W. Hanshaw; lived at the  mouth of Turkey Run, above Ravenswood; later moved above the mouth of Straight Fork on Big Sand Creek, Jackson County.

     LOURANEY, married Uriah Sayre; lived at the mouth of Groundhog Run, on the Ohio River, in Meigs County, Ohio.

     THOMAS, lived on the Ohio River below Ravenswood, where he died.  I do not know who he married.

     WILLIAM, married a Miss Statts; lived and died on Mill Creek, three miles below Ripley, in what is now Jackson County, West Virginia.

     JESSE, married Susana Mock in 1800.  His history is unknown to me. 

     The above are the children of Jesse Hughes, the scout, ranger, pioneer, and famous Indian fighter.

     It is said that in size, features and complexion, William Hughes was almost an exact counterpart of his noted father.      

     Massie, the daughter of Jesse Hughes, who married Uriah Gandee, had twelve children, to wit: Sarah, Jesse, William, George, Cynthia, Grace, Lucinda, Samuel, Mary (who died when nine years old), a child unnamed that died in infancy, Martha, and James Stanley.  Of this family ten lived to maturity; but two are now living: Samuel, born February 24, 1824, and James Stanley, born July 27, 1832.

     The Gandee children, like those of many other post-pioneer families of Northwestern Virginia, were reared in the woods without the advantages of education.  James Stanley, the youngest, named for the husband of his Aunt Elizabeth, did not attend school more than ninety days all told.  He learned to write, and the rudiments of arithmetic, after his first marriage. He was married twice, and true to the traditions of his forest clan, reared many children to the honor of his country -twenty-one in all- eighteen of whom are still living.  Mr. Gandee has filled many positions of trust in his county, from constable to high sheriff, and was for several years president of his township Board of Education.  He laid out the town of Gandeeville on the old home farm in Roane County, West Virginia. 

   To Mr. Gandee, more than any other person, am I indebted for facts and incidents connected with the life of Jesse Hughes. Pertaining to genealogy and family history, Mr. Gandee is the best informed of any of the immediate descendants of the celebrated scout.  His opportunity for obtaining data regarding the biography of his grandfather was, perhaps, unsurpassed, by any person now living.  His grandmother made her home with his parents from 1827 until her death, January 1842, and his mother resided with him during the last quarter century of her life.    

                 DESCENDANTS OF ELIAS HUGHES.

     ELIAS HUGHES Married Miss Jane Sleeth.  I am unable to give the names of their children in the order of their ages, but will set them down as furnished by Mrs. Pansy Hall Thatcher, a descendant of Elias Hughes.  The names are as follows:

     Margaret (married Jones), Mary (married Foster), Susanna (married Leach), Sudna (married Marlin), Jane (married Hight) Sarah (married Davis), Kate (unmarried), Thomas, Henry, Job, Elias, David, John and Jonathan (the youngest).  Two others died while quite young.

     Mrs. L. Bancroft Fant, of Newark, Ohio, writes me that one daughter married ------ Ratliff.

     Records in the U. S. Treasury Department show that the pension due Elias Hughes at the time of his death was paid to his children as follows: Susanna Leach, Margaret Jones, Sarah Davis, John, Elias and Jonathan Hughes, and Sudna Marlin.

     JONATHAN HUGHES was born January 14, 1796, in Harrison County, Virginia, and came with his parents to Ohio in 1798.  In 1815 he was apprenticed to a carpenter and joiner in Mt.  Vernon, Ohio.  On June 9th, 1817, he married Lavina Davis, who was born June 14th, 1800.  They had five children: Clarinda, born December 7th, 1818; Louisa, born November 17th, 1820; James M., born March 31, 1827; Adaline N., born December 7th, 1829.  James moved to Indiana.

     Jonathan Hughes "never drank whiskey as a beverage, never tasted tobacco but once, never smoked a cigar, never voted the Democratic ticket but once, and that was for Jackson.  Mr. Hughes is a strong prohibitionist."

     Elias Hughes survived his two noted brothers, Jesse and Thomas, several years, and was among the last of the Virginia frontiersmen.  As a scout, he excelled in some respects either of his two brothers. He rose to the rank of captain and was the recognized champion rifle shot on the western waters.  Like many of his contemporaries, the border annals contain but little of his early life.   Withers mentions him in connection with four incidents only; three of these are quoted in the preceding pages of this volume, and the other will be given in the course of this sketch.  More is known of his subsequent life in Ohio, where he moved soon after the Treaty of Greenville.

     In many instances historians have dealt confusedly with his personality.  I have had occasion to mention that while his given name was Elias he was generally known as "Ellis." Under this double sobriquet he went through life to the grave and passed into history.  For even a vague conception of the deeds of this great borderman, various historical works must be consulted, where the reader becomes mystified by this diversity in his name.  Owing to these conditions, it has been deemed desirable to reproduce here in a concise form, all that could be gathered concerning his life.  Lewis says:

     "Belonging to General Lewis' army was a young man named Ellis Hughes.  He was a native of Virginia, and had been bred in the hot-bed of Indian warfare.  The Indians having murdered a young lady to whom he was very much attached, and subsequently his father, he vowed revenge, and the return of peace did not mitigate his hatred of the race.  Shortly after Wayne's treaty with the Indians in 1795, he forsook his native mountains, and in company with one John Ratcliff removed north of the Ohio, where they became the first settlers in what is now Licking County, in that State.  Hughes died near Utica, that County, in March, 1845, at an advanced age, in hope of a happy future, claiming and accredited by all who knew him, to be the last survivor of the battle of Point Pleasant.  He was buried with military honors and other demonstrations of respect."         

     The following paragraph is found in connection with the Battle of Point Pleasant:                                        

     "The admittedly last survivor of those who personally participated in this memorable fight was Mr. Ellis Hughes, one of the remarkable family of border settlers and Indian fighters of that name.  After Wayne's treaty, he and a neighbor, Radcliff, removed to Ohio, and were the first to settle in (now) Licking County.  Hughes died in 1845, near Utica, aged in the nineties."       

                        THE LAST SURVIVOR.

     "It is admitted by all that the last survivor of the battle of Point Pleasant was Ellis Hughes, who died at Utica, Ohio, in 1840, aged over ninety years." 

        The Last Survivor of the Battle of Point Pleasant. 

     "The assertion has been made, and I have never heard it disputed, that the last survivor of the battle of Point Pleasant was Ellis Hughes who died in 1840, at Utica, Ohio.  This is clearly a mistake.  There was certainly a soldier in that battle who survived Ellis Hughes several years, and who died in February, 1848, in that portion of Randolph County which became Tucker County in 1856.

     "Samuel Bonnifield was born April 11, 1752, where Washington City now stands.

     "In the summer of 1774 Samuel Bonnifield went on a visit to Fauquier County, Virginia.  At that time Governor Dunmore was preparing for a campaign against the Indians in Ohio, and Bonnifield joined the army, although he was not a citizen  of Virginia.  When the march began for the west, he found himself under General Lewis.  They marched to Lewisburg in Greenbrier County. Here Bonnifield first met Isaac Shelby, with whom he formed an intimate acquaintance, and of whom he afterwards frequently spoke.  The army proceeded to the mouth of the  Gauley, and from that point a portion made canoes and went by water to the Ohio.  Among these was Bonnifield.  His reminiscences of the battle of October 10, contain a few minor details which I have never seen published.  He relates that he and Isaac Shelby were behind the same log, and had, for some time, been trying to discover the spot from which occasional bullets had been coming which apparently had been fired at them whenever they showed themselves.  Finally Bonnifield made the discovery; but at that moment his gun was empty, and he therefore pointed out the head and face of an Indian some fifty yards distant, protruding from behind a log.  Shelby took careful aim, fired, and when the Indians yielded ground shortly after, they found the warrior lying behind the log, shot through the head.

      "None of the published accounts of the battle which I have seen mention the fact that the retreating Indians were observed while in the act of crossing the  Ohio.  Bonnifield speaks particularly of seeing them crossing in large numbers.  To him the sight seems to have furnished amusement; for he related with much merriment how a dozen or more Indians would set out from shore on a single log, how the log would roll and careen despite their efforts to steady it; how one by one they would fall off, and strike out swimming for the Ohio shore, while the log perhaps would float away without a passenger." 

     "Ellis" Hughes, of the foregoing citations, and Elias Hughes, the scout, were one and the same person.  In the Census of Monongalia County, Virginia, 1782, he is listed as Elias Hughes at the head of a family of five.  In the Census of Harrison County, Virginia, 1785, he appears as Ellis Hughes at the head of a family of six.  Both enumerations included parents.

    Elias Hughes came early to the western waters.  The record of homestead entries in Monongalia County, 1781, shows that he was granted "400 acres on West Fork [river] adjoining lands of James Tanner, to include his improvement made in 1770."  He assisted in the building of Nutter's Fort and was closely identified with the border wars, which intervened from the Battle of Point Pleasant to the Treaty of Greenville.  We get a glimpse of his career during this period, from the evidence which he submitted with his claim for pension as a Revolutionary soldier, heretofore unpublished.

     In his deposition, executed August 23, 1832, he states that as near as he could recollect he was then about seventy-five years old.  He entered the service at the commencement of the war, and was commissioned a captain of spies under Col. Benjamin Wilson, and served as such for about two years.  Col. Lowther then took command, and he was under him with the rank of captain for over a year; when it appears that Col. Lowther left the service.  Hughes was under the impression that the colonel resigned, but was not positive.  Col. George Jackson then took command of the scouts and Hughes continued in service until the close of the  war.

     Hughes states that when Col. Jackson assumed command, owing to some new arrangement in the disposition of the Indian spies, he did not retain his commission as captain.  According to  the then regulation, the services of the spies were no longer required in companies.  They were separated in bodies of two, and boundaries assigned over which they were to scout.  They met at certain points, reported their observations and carried any appearance of the enemy to the nearest stations.

     In his petition, Hughes was vouched for by Jacob Riley and Stephen McDougal, but he was not granted a pension.

     In 1834, Hughes made a second declaration, which is so fraught with historic interest that I give it in full:

"THE STATE OF OHIO

LICKING COUNTY

     "Personally appeared before me, the undersigned, a Justice of the Peace within and for the County aforesaid, Elias Hughes, who being duly sworn deposeth and saith that by reason of old age and consequently loss of memory, he cannot minutely enter into a detail of his services in the Revolutionary War.  Deponent saith, however, without fear of contradiction, that he served as a ranger and spy during the whole of the Revolutionary War, from the year 1775 to the year 1783, and also prior and subsequently thereto, that his first engagement against the Indians was at the battle of Point Pleasant on the Big Kanhawa in the year 1774, that his last services were performed in the year of Wayne's treaty with the Indians, in the year 1795 (as he thinks), in the neighborhood of Buchannon against a party of 22 Indians by pursuing them and giving the alarm to the settlement - that said Indians succeeded in getting off with Mrs. Bozarth (wife of John Bozarth) and two of the children as prisoners, who were delivered up to General Wayne after the treaty.

     "Deponent saith that after the declaration of war in 1775, he volunteered in the service in the Virginia States troops (he thinks), under one Captain James Booth under whom, to the best of his recollection, he continued to serve up to the year (in the spring) of 1778, when his father Thomas was killed by the Indians on Hacker's Creek, Va.  Deponent states that about that time one Stephen Ratcliff or Ratlift who held a commission as Captain (under Col. or Major Lowther) left the service and went back on to the south Branch of the Potomac. Deponent saith that he was then commissioned by Col.  Benjamin Wilson as a captain to supply the vacancy occasioned by reason of the said Ratcliff leaving the service.  Deponent states he well recollects that his commission was printed but by whom it was signed he cannot say, but under the impression that it was signed by the Gov. of Va.  Deponent states as he has before stated in his original declaration that he served not less than three years as captain of the Rangers or spies, that he may perhaps be mistaken (from the great length of time which has elapsed and from loss of memory which he is sensible has failed him very materially), in the order and disposition of arranging Col. Benj.  Wilson and Col. Wm.  Lowther as officers of the Rev. at the time he was so engaged and serving under them as aforesaid, he is, however, satisfied that they were the two principal leaders in the commencement of the Revolution in West Augusta Co., Va., and whether they did or did not at that time hold commissions under the Government as Col. or Major he cannot say positively (they have at least subsequently acquired those titles); he is satisfied however that they either assumed or had in fact such authority delegated to them by the Government that they took upon themselves the organization and disposition of the troops in that section of the country and of paying off the soldiers, recommending the appointment of officers, etc., and that he did in fact hold a commission and served as a captain in the Rev. for not less than three years as before stated.  (Deponent states on having his memory refreshed that he is mistaken in saying (as stated in his original declaration) that he was commissioned as captain at the commencement of the War, that it was not until the spring of 1778 (as he thinks).

     "Deponent states that from his youth, he always had a fondness for his gun and that his principal occupation was that of hunting from the time he was able to carry a gun up to the time of the Rev., that a number of years before the time of the Rev. (does not recollect the year) he removed with his father in the neighborhood of Clarksburg, Va., together with several other families, John Hacker, Wm.  Hacker, Samuel Pringle, Wm. Ratcliff, John Cutright & John Hacker with their families, that on the breaking out of war, his services being required, he of choice volunteered his services as he has before stated, that his name is mentioned in the Border Warfare, a work published by Alex.  Withers, at Clarksburg, 1831, and in which a part of his services is detailed (though not generally or particularly).  Deponent states that his services may be computed as follows, viz: as a private from the year 1775 up to the year 1778, as a captain, from 1778 up to the year 1781, and from the year 1781 up to the year 1783 as a private.  Deponent states he has sent on to Virginia in order to prepare the testimony of witnesses who served with him and by whom he expected to be able to prove his services both as a private and as captain in the service, but in consequence of the death of Alexander West and the absence of David Sleith, his most important witness, he has not been able to establish his services as satisfactorily as he expected to be able to do.  Deponent states positively from his own know ledge that he has actually served as above stated, that he did service faithfully during the whole of the Rev.  War without any interruption, and that he also served after the peace of 1783 up to the year of 1795.  Deponent states that he is unable to say whether he will be able to procure any further testimony in regard to his services than that which is attached to his original declaration, to wit, the testimony of Wm. Powers, Esq., and Jesse Lowther-that he does not know at this time of any person living within his knowledge (except David Sleith) whose testimony will be material.  Deponent states that for three years past, he has been entirely blind and from his limited means he is unable to be at further expense in order to establish his services.  He hereby proposes to submit to the Department his original and amended declaration with the testimony accompanying the same with a view that the same may be acted upon giving the department a discretionary power to grant him a pension as captain or private, as the evidence in the case may in their discretion seem to justify.                

                                                 his

                                            ELIAS X HUGHES                        

                                                 mark

"Sworn and subscribed to Dec. 5, 1834.    

                             M. M. CAFFER, Justice of the Peace."

     The foregoing declaration was followed by several lengthy testimonies among them one from Tarah Curtis, a clergyman, all speaking highly of Hughes as a man of veracity and whose statement could be relied upon.  Some of these affidavits are of more than passing interest, of which a full synopsis is here given.

     Under date of September 8, 1834, before John Mitchell, J. P., William Powers, of Harrison County, Virginia, states that he was then sixty-nine years old, and that he first became acquainted with Elias Hughes in 1774 at the building of Nutter's Fort, near where the town of Clarksburgh now is; that he thought Hughes was then seventeen years old, and resided with his father at a place now called Westfield, in Lewis County, Virginia.  From that time to 1796, he was more or less acquainted with Hughes, and for a portion of the time participated with him in the scenes of warfare then going on between the whites and Indians on the western frontier of Virginia.

     Powers could not state from personal knowledge of Hughes service from commencement of the Revolution, 1776 to 1783, as he was not in the same company of spies, but frequently met him in

connection with the discharge of his duties during that period. He states that he was present at one time in the spring of 1781, when Colonel Lowther with sixteen others, of whom Elias Hughes was of the number, returned to Clarksburgh with five Indian scalps, a great quantity of plunder and two prisoners, whom they had taken and rescued from the Indians.  Powers further states that after the peace between Great Britain and the United States in 1783, the war with the Indians did not subside for a number of years; consequently a force was necessary to be kept up for their mutual defense against the Indians.  He states that by this means he and Elias Hughes were thrown together on numerous occasions (from the year 1783 up to the year 1795), and he had an opportunity of forming a pretty good opinion of the character of Hughes as an Indian warrior; that he believes the country in those days did not contain a more vigilant, brave and efficient soldier; that from all that he had seen and heard of Elias Hughes, he was, when his services were needed to go on an expedition, at all times ready to go at a moment's warning.      

     September 10, 1834, Jesse Lowther, before John Davis, J. P. for Harrison County, Virginia, states that he was then sixty-one years old; born in Harrison County, Virginia, where he resided ever since, and was well acquainted with Elias Hughes from the time that he was capable of knowing any person, and the most that he could relate respecting said Hughes as an Indian warrior was information derived from his father, William Lowther, and others; that during the Revolution he was too young to participate in the scenes of warfare then going forward on the western frontier of Virginia.  Lowther states that he well recollected at one time that Elias Hughes was engaged with his father, William Lowther, then a Major, in March 1781, with fifteen others pursuing a party of fourteen Indians, who were then retreating from Randolph County, where they had been murdering and plundering a number of inhabitants.  His father and other men pursued the Indians from Arnold's Fort, sometimes called Lowther's Fort, to Indian Creek, a tributary of Hughes River, where they overtook and killed five of the Indians and returned with their scalps to said fort, having rescued two of the white prisoners, Daugherty and Mrs. Roney, whose son was accidentally killed during the attack on the Indians.  Mr. Lowther well remembered that the plunder taken from the Indians at that time, when shared to each man, amounted to l4 pounds 17s. 5d.; that amongst the plunder taken were nine guns, six silver half-moons, one whole moon and one war club and spear, a number of "Tom Hawks" and scalping knives, silver arm bands, earrings and nose jewelry, one cap containing 44 silver broaches, a number of (as he thinks) Kowaknick pouches (of otter skins) and paint bags.

     Lowther states that as far back as his recollection extends, and from information derived from his father and others, Hughes was from the first among the foremost to go forth against the Indians when his services were required, and understood that he was Captain of Spies, but at what period he could not tell.  He further states that he has been at Hughes' house in Ohio since he left Virginia, and is satisfied that he is the same identical Elias Hughes mentioned in his original declaration made in Licking County, Ohio, August 23, 1832, now here exhibited No. 4776.

     Mr. Davis, justice, adds that Jesse Lowther's statements are entitled to credit.

     In an affidavit, February 25, 1842, before John Moore, J. P., Licking County, Ohio, General Thomas W. Wilson, son of Colonel Benjamin Wilson, deceased, who figured prominently in the border wars of western Virginia, states that he was then 38 years old, and up to the time he was twenty-two years of age he continued to reside with his father in Harrison County, Virginia.  He had frequently heard his father relate many incidents relative to border warfare, in which Elias Hughes played part.  His father always spoke of Hughes in the highest terms, as a brave and efficient soldier and spy, and in whom he had the most implicit confidence; that from his peculiar sagacity and knowledge of the Indian character combined with his personal activity, Perseverance and bravery he ranked him amongst the foremost of the Rangers and Spies of his day.

     General Wilson stated that he had often heard his father say and Spies in that Hughes was appointed Captain of the Rangers in place of one Ratcliff, who was discharged, as he  understood, on account of his cowardice; that it was necessary for the safety of the country that said Ratcliff be removed, and Hughes appointed in his place; that said Ratcliff was a careless, trifling, cowardly dog and not to be depended upon.  Hughes received his appointment, as the General thought, on Sunday morning before daylight, and started upon the scout and pursuit of Indians, and thought it was the same trip that he returned with the scalps of seven Indians.

     The General had heard many circumstances and anecdotes told of Hughes by those of his acquaintances, in relation to his encounters and exploits among the Indians in the time of the Revolution, and that from the character given him by all he was highly distinguished for his bravery, and must have contributed much to the defense of the country during the war of the Revolution.

     The pursuit and defeat on Hughes River of the warriors who desolated the Leading Creek settlement in 1781 had no parallel on the western waters.  The number of Indians killed has been variously estimated.  Withers, as previously quoted, placed this loss at five, which number is confirmed by the testimony of Jesse Lowther, Gen. Wilson, who got his information from Col. Benjamin Wilson, states that the number slain was seven.  This tallies with the report of John Cutright, who participated in the affair.  The Indians were so adroit in their movements, that they were seldom anticipated, or punished in these border forays.     

     Comparatively few incidents in the Virginia frontier life of Elias Hughes have been preserved. I am indebted to Rev. Daniel G. Helmick for that which immediately follows:

     Elias Hughes and one Brown, for whom Brown's Creek in Harrison County, West Virginia, was named, were hunting in the vicinity of Lost Creek near the West Fork River, when Hughes shot and wounded an elk, which made off.  There was a rivalry between the two men as to their personal endurance; to settle which it was agreed that they give chase until the game was overhauled, or one, or both of the hunters ready to say "quit." They immediately started at a swinging trot, but the proverb that a "stern chase is a long chase" was to be amply verified.  Hour after hour went by with no let-up to that relentless trot.

     The quarry was finally overhauled on lower Turkey Run, or Peck's Run in (now) Upshur County.  Hughes did not suffer materially from this remarkable run; but not so with Brown.  The tendons of his lower limbs were badly strained, which contracting into corded knots, disabled him for several days.

     The memory of Elias Hughes in later years is inseparably connected with that of his kinsman and associate, John Ratcliff, who accompanied him to Ohio.  The following biographical sketch of these two bordermen is by Isaac Smucker:

                                OUR PIONEERS

                   Capt.  Elias Hughes and John Ratcliff.

                                   1798.

     "Elias Hughes and John Ratliff were our first settlers, and closed their lives here, hence their names are as much interwoven with the history of Licking County as is the name of General Washington with the history of the United States, or as are the names of the Presidents, Lincoln and General Grant, with the history of the late rebellion.  And to attempt the production of a history of our country without making Hughes and Ratliff prominent actors therein would manifestly issue in failure.

     "Elias Hughes was born near the South branch of the Potomac, a section of country which furnished Licking County many of its early settlers and most useful citizens.  His birth occurred sometime before Braddock's defeat in 1755.  Of his early life little is known, until in 1774, we find him a soldier in the army of General Lewis, engaged in the battle of Point Pleasant.  Gen.  Lewis, you are aware, commanded the left wing of the army of Lord Dunmore, who was then Governor of the Colony of Virginia, and successfully fought the distinguished Shawanese Chief, Cornstalk, who had a large force of Indians under his command.  One-fifth of Lewis' command was killed or wounded, but Elias Hughes escaped unhurt in this hard fought battle, which lasted an entire day.  At the time of his death, which occurred more than seventy years after the battle, he was, and had been for years, the last survivor of that sanguinary conflict.

     "We next find Hughes a resident of Harrison County, in Western Virginia, where his chief employment, during the 21 years that intervened between the battle of Point Pleasant and the treaty of Greenville in 1795, was that of a scout or spy, on the frontier settlements near to or bordering on the Ohio River. This service, which was a labor of love with him, he rendered at the instance of his State and of the border settlers that had been for a long time greatly harassed by the Indians, who had murdered many of the whites on the frontiers, their women and children included, under circumstances of atrocity but seldom paralleled.  Hughes' father and others of his kindred, and also a young woman to whom he was betrothed, had been massacred by them.  These acts of atrocious barbarity made him ever after an unrelenting and merciless enemy of the whole race of Red Skins, and in retaliation for their numerous butcheries his deadly rifle was brought to bear fatally upon many of their number in after years.  It is but an act of simple justice to the memory of this veteran pioneer, who was well known as an Indian hater, and an Indian killer, that the provocations he had, be fully presented, and properly understood.  Born and raised on the frontiers, among a rude and unlettered people, and untaught and wholly uncultivated and unenlightened as he was, it is not surprising that, under all these circumstances, considering, too, the horrid aggravation he had, he should have given rather full play to strong and malignant passions, and that he should have cherished, even to old age, the harsher and more revengeful feelings of his nature.  His vindictiveness or sense of justice led him to keep accounts about balanced between the whole race of red men and himself.  This he did fully, so long as the Indians maintained a hostile attitude towards the whites-perhaps a little longer.  He owed them nothing at the final settlement.

     "The treaty of Greenville, commonly called 'Wayne's Treaty,' made and ratified in 1795, terminated Indian hostilities, or rather the defeat of the Indians the previous year, by General Wayne, in the battle of the 'Fallen Timbers,' near the rapids of the Maumee, brought about that result, and hence scouts were no longer required.  Elias Hughes, like the Moor in Shakespeare, when he reached the conviction that 'Othello's occupation's gone,' now finding his services as a scout no longer in demand, surrendered his commission of Captain of scouts, and directed his attention to more pacific and less hazardous pursuits. And here it may be stated that he had been commissioned by that distinguished frontiersman, Col.  Ben Wilson, the father of our fellow citizen, Daniel Wilson, and of the late Mrs. Dr. John J. Brice, as a captain of scouts.

     "In 1796 Hughes entered the service, as a hunter, of a surveying party, who were about to engage in running the range lines of lands lying in part, in what is now Licking County.  The fine bottoms of the Licking were thus brought to his notice, and he resolved to leave his mountain home in the 'Old Dominion,' and locate himself and family on the uncultivated and more fertile lands of the Licking Valley, beyond the white settlements.  Accordingly, in the spring of 1797, he gathered together his limited effects, and with his wife and twelve children started for the mouth of the Licking, most of them going on foot, and the remainder on pack horses.  This point had been made accessible to footmen and horseback travelers by the location and opening in the year before, by Zane and others, the road from Wheeling to Maysville; and also of a road previously cut out from Marietta up the Muskingum River.  John Ratliff, who was a nephew of Hughes, came with his wife and four children, with the latter, and in the same manner to the mouth of the Licking.  Here they remained one year, and in the spring of 1798, both families, numbering twenty-one persons, moved in the same style to the 'Bowling Green,' twenty miles up the Licking from its mouth, and there made the first permanent white settlement in the territory now forming Licking County.  They erected their cabins near the mouth of the Bowling Green Run, about four miles below Newark, on the banks of the Licking, and about half a mile, or less, apart.  They found the 'Bowling Green' a level, unlimbered green lawn or prairie, and they at once proceeded to raise a crop of corn.  Whether the 'Bowling Green' was a natural prairie, or had been cleared by the Indians or some white persons, remains an unsettled question.  The nearest neighbors of Hughes and Ratliff, for two years, lived about ten miles down the Licking, one of whom was Philip Barrick, who, in 1801, moved up the valley and located near the 'Licking Narrows.'

     "The Hughes and Ratliff colony subsisted mainly on the meat of the wild animals of the forest, and on the fish caught and 'gigged' in the Licking, although a considerable crop of vegetables and corn was raised the first and subsequent years.  The elk and buffalo had disappeared, but bear, deer, wild turkeys and a great variety of the smaller game, as well as fish, were in such abundance as to supply the full demands of these early settlers.  Berries, wild fruits, nuts and other spontaneous productions of the earth also contributed for many years, in no inconsiderable degree, to the subsistence of the pioneer settlers.

     "Ratliff, in some particulars, was a different style of man from Hughes.  He was much more given to the peaceful avocations of life, and for one reared on the frontiers, had not been largely engaged in border warfare; although he as well as Hughes, was considerably devoted to the chase, to fishing, trapping, bee hunting, as well as to the pursuit of the ferocious animals of the forest, and the birds of prey that tenanted this wilderness.

     "In 1799, a son was born to Elias Hughes, and he was the only accession to the Bowling Green colony in that year.

     "In the year 1801, an event of no inconsiderable importance transpired at the 'Bowling Green.' Two Indians came along one night and stole four horses.  They belonged to Elias Hughes, John Ratliff, John Weedman, a recent emigrant (from Pennsylvania), and a Mr. Bland, who lived at the mouth of the Licking, but who was at that time visiting Hughes.  In the morning after the horses were stolen, their owners determined to pursue and kill the thieves, feeling assured that they were Indians.  Weedman backed out, but Hughes, Ratliff and Bland, being well armed, started in pursuit.  They were enabled to follow the trail, readily tracking them through the grass and weeds.  Overtaking them on Owl Creek, they shot them.  Bland's flint did not strike fire, but Hughes' and Ratliff's did, and those Indians stole no more horses.  When the Indians were overtaken and it was evident that the horses would be recovered, Bland and Ratliff relented, and feeling less sanguinary than when they started on the pursuit, they suggested to Hughes to let the thieves escape, after the horses were obtained, but the latter was not that style of man.  He negatived their proposition in such emphatic terms, and in use of such forcible expletives of the profane order as were common among frontiersmen in those days, as to soon bring them to the determination with which they set out.  When Hughes said a thing must be done, and he could do it, or cause it to be done, it was done.  This was one of the cases--he had his way-they had agreed to kill the Indian horse thieves--and they did.  Hughes knew them and believed them to have been engaged in stealing horses and then returning them to their owners for a compensation in skins and furs.

     "This sanguinary transaction necessitated the erection of a blockhouse on the 'Bowling Green' as a means of protection against the infuriated friends of the defunct horse thieves, who were greatly incensed against those they suspected of killing them, but it never became necessary to defend it, the Indians finally deciding it inexpedient to assault it.  One evening, however, after the excitement had nearly subsided, two well armed Indians entered Hughes' cabin, and in a menacing manner introduced the subject of killing those Indians.  Mrs. Hughes seeing that trouble might be had with their visitors, quietly sent for Ratliff, who readily responded, rifle in hand.  Hughes, in those days always carried a butcher knife in his belt, and he also had a rifle at hand.  Bloody work seemed imminent, but the Indians, after remaining face to face with those veteran back-woodsmen all night, sometimes in rather spirited discussion, deemed it wise, in the early morning, to retire without any hostile act.

     "In 1802, Elias Hughes was elected captain of the first company of militia raised within the present limits of our county.  This company he commanded a number of years.  They had to go to Lancaster to attend battalion drills.  Captain Hughes had four children born to him after he settled at the 'Bowling Green,' making the sum total of his children sixteen.  Jonathan is the only one of the Sixteen now living in Licking County.  He was born in Harrison County, Virginia, in 1796, was brought to the mouth of Licking in 1797, and was two years old at the time of his father's removal in 1798 to the 'Bowling Green.' The older children had to walk, on their removal up the Licking, but Jonathan and his brother David (who also was too young to walk), were brought up in a salt sack thrown across a horse.  Jonathan was put in one end of the sack and David in the other, openings being first cut in the sack for their heads to go through.  The sack was then slung across the pack saddled horse, and a rider or two, with the other loading, put upon him and then started for the 'Bowling Green,' while the others walked or came up in  a canoe.  It would, indeed, be an interesting picture that gave us, on canvas, an accurate view of this original colony of emigrants while in motion.  Jonathan,the salt sack boy of 1798, is now more than seventy-six years old, and is the oldest settler of our county - emphatically, our Pioneer.

     "Ratliff's wife died in 1802, and was probably the first white adult person that died within the present limits of our county.  Ratliff married again, his second wife being the daughter of a pioneer by the name of Stateler, who lived near the mouth of the Rocky Fork.  He also raised a considerable family but none of them now live, if living at all, in our county.  He had a son in the army during the War of 1812, who, after his return from the army, removed to Louisiana.  He also had a daughter, Mary, who intermarried with a Mr. Evans. Some of the issue of this marriage, being grandchildren of John Ratliff, are still living in our county, principally, I learn, in Perry Township.  

     "Ratliff finally removed to the south side of the Licking near the mouth of the Brushy Fork, where he died about the year 1811. He, no more than Hughes, seems to have had much success in the acquisition of property.  Indeed, it is not probable that either of them ever had much ambition in that direction.

     "Capt.  Elias Hughes, on all other subjects except Indian warfare, was generally of a taciturn disposition, but he was fond of relating his exploits and successes as a scout; sitting up whole nights, sometimes, to relate to willing interested listeners his hair-breadth escapes and adventures, and the thrilling stories, heroic acts and deeds of renown in which he had borne a part.  He was unassuming, temperate, honest, mild-mannered, unpretending, unambitious, but firm, determined, unyielding, and some thought him vindictive.  When he resolved on a certain line of conduct he commonly pursued it to success, or failed only after a vigorous effort.  Fond of adventure, he displayed in border warfare, in battle, in pursuit of Indians, and in explorations of new countries, and in the pioneer settlement of them, the energy, bravery, self-sacrificing virtues, that so conspicuously distinguished the early pioneers of the Great West.

     "In the War of 1812, Capt. Hughes, notwithstanding his age, volunteered for the defense of Fort Meigs.  On the formation of a company for that service, he was elected to conduct the men to headquarters at Worthington for organization. At the election of company officers he was made a Lieutenant, the late General John Spencer being elected Captain.  He was patriotic to the core and so were his sons, not less than three of them being engaged in the same war.  One of them contracted disease while in the service of his country, of which he died.

     "Elias Hughes lived many years on the North Fork, a few miles above Newark, and also for several years at Clinton, in Knox County, from whence he removed to Monroe Township, near Johnston.  Here, in 1827, Mrs. Hughes died.  She had the qualities which admirably adapted her to discharge the duties of a pioneer wife and mother.  Her training had been in the Presbyterian faith, and the instruction to her children was in accord with it.  Upon her death, most of his children having married and removed from the county, Capt.  Hughes became a welcome inmate of the house of his son, Jonathan, who lived in Utica.  He, you remember, was introduced to you as the salt sack emigrant of 1798.

     "For many years Capt. Hughes was a pensioner, regularly receiving from his beneficent government the means to enable him to spend his declining years in the full enjoyment of all the blessings of life, kindly ministered unto by Jonathan and his family, with whom he spent the last seventeen years of his life.         

     "Capt. Hughes was the subject of more varied vicissitudes, adverse fortunes and experiences more diversified than usually fall to the lot of man, but he met them in the heroic spirit of those who are determined to encounter them successfully, and meet the stern realities of life like men.  Enduring as he did, for the last sixteen years of his life, the terrible affliction of total blindness, he was, of course, deprived of the enjoyment afforded by views of the glory and grandeur of the Creator's works, but he was resigned to this afflictive dispensation of Providence, feeling disposed to endure all meekly, calmly, patiently, and to trustingly, hopefully 'bide his time.'

     "In his declining years his attention was directed to religious subjects to which he gave much thoughtful and serious consideration, and for many years he cherished the cheering hopes of a happy future inspired alone by the Christian's faith.  He died in December, 1844, and was buried with military honors and other demonstrations of respect.  His age is not certainly known, but the best information obtainable makes him at the time of his death about ninety years old.

     "Such was the life and, career, thus imperfectly sketched, of one of the most remarkable men that ever lived in our county.  His was a life full of privations, adventures, hardships, toils, exposures, excitements, anxieties - a life providentially preserved through so many years of constant peril, and of exposures to unusual to hazards and dangers.  It is one of our chief duties, as a Pioneer Society, to preserve from the oblivion the recollection of the heroic deeds and achievements of  our pioneer settlers, and to keep fresh and green in our memories, and in the memories of those who are to come after us, the sufferings and noble deeds of the self-sacrificing men and women who first settled in these forests, erected cabins, cleared  the land, and converted the wilderness into fruitful fields, and made comfortable and pleasant homes for their descendants, the men and women of the present generation.  And none of all the meritorious pioneers of our county are better entitled to this service at our hands than Capt.  Elias Hughes and John Ratliff, and their wives and children, who composed the colony of twenty-one that made the first settlement in the territory that now forms Licking County."

     "In 1820 an Indian squaw of the Stockbridge tribe was shot near the county line, between Utica and Martinsburgh.  She was taken to Mt.  Vernon where she died.  One McLane shot her, and was sent to the penitentiary for it.  He and four others named McDaniel, Evans, Chadwick, and Hughes (not Elias) were engaged in chopping, when this squaw and others of the tribe came along and camped near them.  The diabolical proposition was made and accepted that they should play cards, and that the loser should shoot her.  McLane was the loser, and did the shooting.  His confederates, or at least some of them, were tried and acquitted.  In Norton's History of Knox County it is stated that 'Hughes shot this squaw, simply to gratify his hatred of the Indian race.' How an intelligent man, writing history could justify himself for making such a gross mistake, regarding a matter on which he could easily get correct information from a thousand residents of this county and of Knox, it is hard to conceive.  Elias Hughes had neither part nor lot in the matter, directly or remotely, but condemned the outrage in unmeasured terms.  He was not guilty, and this emphatic denial is deemed an act of simple justice to Mr. Hughes."

     Howe says Licking County, Ohio,

     "was first settled, shortly after Wayne's treaty of 1795, by John Ratliff and Ellis Hughes, in some old Indian cornfields, about five miles below Newark, on the Licking.  These men were from Western Virginia.  They lived mainly by hunting, raising, however, a little corn, the cultivation of which was left, in a great measure, to their wives."

     Howe gives the following account of the shooting of the Indian horse thieves:

     "Hughes had been bred in the hot-bed of lndian warfare.  The Indians having, at an early day, murdered a young woman to whom he was attached, and subsequently his father, the return of peace did not mitigate his hatred of the race.  One night, in April, 1800, two Indians stole the horses of Hughes and Ratliff from a little enclosure near their cabins.  Missing them in the morning, they started off, well armed, in pursuit, accompanied by a man named Bland.  They followed their trail in a northern direction all day, and at night camped in the woods.  At the gray of the morning they came upon the Indians, who were asleep and unconscious of danger.  Concealing themselves behind the trees they waited until the Indians had awakened, and were commencing preparations for their journey.  They drew up their rifles to shoot, and just at that moment one of the Indians discovered them, and instinctively clapping his hand on his breast, as if to ward off the fatal ball, exclaimed in tones of affright, 'me bad Indian! - me no do so more!' The appeal was in vain, the smoke curled from the glistening barrels, the report rang in the morning air, and the poor Indians fell dead.  They returned to their cabins with the horses and 'plunder' taken from the Indians, and swore mutual secrecy for this violation of law.

     "One evening, some time after, Hughes was quietly sitting in his cabin, when he was startled by the entrance of two powerful and well-armed savages.  Concealing his emotions, he gave them a welcome and offered them seats.  His wife, a muscular, squaw-like looking female, stepped aside and privately sent for Ratliff, whose cabin was near.  Presently Ratliff, who had made a detour, entered with his rifle, from an opposite direction, as if he had been out hunting.  He found Hughes talking with the Indians about the murder.  Hughes had his tomahawk and scalping-knife, as was his custom, in a belt around his person, but his rifle hung from the cabin wall, which he deemed it imprudent to attempt to obtain.  There all the long night sat the parties, mutually fearing each other, and neither summoning sufficient courage to stir.  When morning dawned the Indians left, shaking hands and bidding farewell, but in their retreat, were very cautious not to be shot in ambush by the hardy borderers.

     "Hughes died near Utica, in this county, in March, 1845, at an advanced age, in the hope of a happy future. His early life had been one of much adventure; he was, it is supposed, the last survivor of the bloody battle of Point Pleasant. He was buried with military honors and other demonstrations of respect."       

This was Elias Hughes of border fame.

     The pursuit and shooting of the Indian horse thieves by Hughes, "Jack" Ratliff and Bland, is given by Norton and is practically the same as Howe's version, but not so elaborate, and closes with this statement:

     "Our old townsman, Wm.  Mofford, informs us that when improving his farm on Mile Run, Wayne Township, he was clearing off ground on which to build his house, and he then plowed up the two Indians killed by Hughes, and also a rusty gun barrel, brass guard and other pieces of a gun, which had not decayed. This was in 1835, and Jacob Mitchel now (1862) has the old relics.

     "George Conkie gathered up the bones and buried them, and the house was built on the spot-the old Peck Place on Mile Run bottom, where Mrs. Acre now lives.  In early days there was a favorite camping ground for the Indians, about where these Indians were killed."

     Norton states that Hughes died in March, 1845.

     Among the Draper Manuscripts are the following communications from Col. Robert Davidson, in response to inquiries from Dr. Draper.  They are here published for the first time.

                                 "NEWARK, 10th March, 1850.

"MR.  LYMAN C. DRAPER.

"DEAR SIR, Yours of 23d Nov last to Mr. William Van Buskirk requesting information as to the adventures of his father John Vanbuskirk and others in the border warefare along the Ohio River at an early day has been handed the subscriber (as an old acquaintance of his fathers) by Mr. Wm.  Buskirk to reply thereto.  Last week I placed in the postoffice directed to you the Granville Intelligencer containing a detailed report of the desperate conflict of Adam Poe, his brother Andrew,  and others with the gigantic Indean, Bigfoot, and brothers, five in all July 1782 and next week look for the Newark Gazett of this place containing some notes of the adventures of Jno Van Buskirk written and published for your convenience and to do some justice to the memory of a very worthy man wom I always esteemed as one of the fronteere defenders when I was too young to defend my self.  

     "If you shall desire it, I can send you a more detailed account of Elias Hughes who at the age of 18 was in the battl at Point Pleasant October 10th, 1774 and continued from that, employed in hunting, spying, and killing Indeans until after Gen. Wains Treaty 1794 [1795].

     "You will pleas excuse my friend Wm.  Buskirk in not writing you.  In the first place he thought the information would come with a better grace from one of the early aquantances of his father than from him   He is a fine young man but reluctant to write would rather attend his saw mill a day than write an hour.  If you shall wish for any more on the subject the border wariors write to him.

                         Very respectfully yours, &c

                                             ROBT.  DAVIDSON.                 

Mr. Lyman C. Draper Esq

   Leverington

      Philadelphia County, Pa."

                                    "NEWARK, February 22, 1851  

     "I wrote some time past to know of jonathan Hughes where his father was born and to what religious denomination he entered But have not yet heard from him I presume he has been from home or by other means has not received my letter.  As to Elias Hughes, it is something uncertain but he considered himself 18 [years] of age when in the battle of Point pleasant, Mouth of Kanawa, under Colo.  Lewis - I am not positive as to the Religious denomination to which he inclined but think it was to the Methodist Episcopal Church.  His daughter in law Mrs. Jonathan Hughes was my informant as to his vengeance disposition not long after his death I was then (in addition to what I knew) endeavoring to collect more knoledge of his life and adventures for the purpose of writing the obituary notice which soon after appeared in the Newark Advocate which I sent last year.

     "When I saw Gen.  Thomas Wedsday last, he enformed me that he would [be]in Philadelphia this winter and that he intended to do himself pleasure of calling upon you-

     "If I shall soon hear from Mr. Jonathan Hughes I shall write again I should have remarked on the other side that I think Elias Hughes was born on the South branch of Potomac Va. and that his father at an early day moved thence to Harrison county, Va. and there was held [killed] by the Indeans.

     "Although I have been acquainted with Dr. Coulter many years I[t] was but lately I learned that he knew any[thing] about Capt.  Bready   But have not the least of his statements

                                  Very respectfully yours &c            

                                         ROBT.  DAVIDSON."

     "N. B. Since writing the foregoing Dr. Coulter informs me that he thinks Capt Bready was from 30 to 35 years of age when he died.

Lyman C. Draper Esq

  Leverington 

    Philadelphia County, Pa."

      "Died on the 22nd ult., Capt. Elias Hughes, aged ninety years, at the residence of his son, Jonathan near Utica, 0. He was buried with military honors by the military of the vicinity.

      "At an early day Thomas Hughes & family moved from the South Branch of Potomac to Harrison County, North-Western part of Virginia, where his son, Elias, became one of those extraordinary, active and daring spies and soldiers of the day.

     "At the age of eighteen, under the command of Col.  Lewis, he was in the battle of Point Pleasant, which continued from early in the morning until near night before the Indians gave way, October 10, 1774.  On returning home he joined a company of spies under Capt.  Boothe, for the protection of the then  exposed frontier settlements.

     "At one time, being out spying with a comerade, they examined the localities near the steep bank of a run, under smoke of rotten wood to keep off the gnats & lay down upon their arms for the night, their moccasins tied to the breech of their guns.  Some time after, hearing something like the snapping of a stick, & looking in the direction, saw at a distance three Indians approaching.  Instantly the whites sprung to their feet, leaped down the bank and over the run.  The Indians in pursuit, not knowing the place so well, fell down the bank.  The whites, hearing the splash, stopped an instant, put on their moccasins, raised a yell & put off at full speed, leaving the Indians to take care of themselves.

     "Capt. Boothe in time being killed by the Indians, Joseph Ratliff succeeded to the command, but lacking, as a soldier, the confidence of the men, left the country, and Hughes on a sudden emergency being appointed in his place, under Col. Lowther, put off in pursuit of Indians, found them, & returned with 6 or 7 scalps. (Date not known at present.) 

     "In June, 1778, three women were in the field near West's Fort picking greens, when they were fired upon without effect by one of a party of four Indians.  The women screamed and ran for the fort, and one Indian in pursuit speared Mrs. Freeman.  Being fired upon from the fort without effect, the Indians ran off in different directions.  They were soon pursued by Jesse Hughes, Elias & others.  After some time, at a distance they heard the howl like that of a wolf. They ran some distance in the direction and stopping at a suitable place, Jesse howled also.  He was answered, and two Indians were soon seen advancing.  An opportunity offering, Elias downed one, the other ran.  The whites pursued, but he running into a small hazel thicket and they round on each side to take him in the outgoing, he watching them ran the back way and escaped.  In the meantime he who had been shot recovered so much as to make off also, and a shower coming on prevented the pursuit by obliterating the blood on the track. 

     "In March, 1781, a party of 14 Indians, nearly depopulated the settlement upon Leading Creek (Taggart's Valley) and put off.  They were pursued unsuccessfully by a party from Clarksburg, but in the meantime, Col. Lowther & Capt. Hughes, learning by spies that the Indians had been seen near the mouth of Isaac's Creek, put off with a party of 17, and on an evening, Hughes being alone in advance for the purpose, discovered the Indians on a branch of Hughes' River, coolly putting up for the night, apparently not apprehensive of pursuit at that distance.

     "On the return to the party it became an object of interest, not to risk the lives of the prisoners, Mrs. Roney, her little son and Daniel Doherty; therefore, when it was thought the Indians might be sleeping, the Captain crawled near enough to discover the position of Mrs. Roney and Doherty, but saw nothing of the boy.  Before day the whole party, in perfect order, crawled close & fired upon the Indians, one only escaping.

     Mrs. Roney and Doherty were uninjured, but the boy, having been sleeping in the bosom of an Indian was killed by a ball after passing through the Indian's head.  The plunder sold the 17th of the month, produced a dividend of 14L. 17s. and 5d. to each one of the seventeen.

     "In September, 1785, Lowther, Hughes and others, in pursuit of a party of Indians who had stolen horses from near Clarksburg, slept near them on the third night, not knowing it.  Next morning the whites parted, taking different routes. Hughes & party, soon discovered the Indians, and fired upon them, killing one. The rest ran off in various directions, and one coming near Lowther's party was shot by the Colonel as he ran.  They then started for home, and before going far were fired upon, & John Barnet wounded so that he died before reaching home.

     "At another time (date not known) Hughes and party discovering a party of Indians, fired upon them.  The Indians ran in different directions: Hughes after one, was gaining upon him fast, in a piece of bottom land in which were no trees, when the Indian turning quickly about with loaded gun uplifted.  Hughes' gun was empty, & no tree to spring behind.  But instantly springing obliquely to the right and left, with a bound, & outstretched arm, flirted the muzzle of the Indian's gun one side, and the next moment had his long knife in him up to the hilt.

     "After Gen. Wayne's treaty, Capt.  Hughes & family settled upon the waters of the Licking, Ohio.  The Indians having, at an early day, killed a young woman whom he highly esteemed, & subsequently his father, the return of peace did not eradicate his antipathy.  In the month of April, 1800, two Indians having collected a quantity of fur on the Rocky Fork of Licking, proceeded to the Bowling Green, stole three horses and put off for Sandusky.  The next morning Hughes, Ratliff and Blair, going out for the horses, and not finding them, did not return to apprise their families, but continued upon their trail, and at night discovered the Indians' fire on Granny's Creek, some few miles N. W. of where Mt.  Vernon now stands; lay down for the night, and the next morning walked up to the Indians as they were cooking their morning repast.  At first the Indians looked somewhat embarrassed, proposed restoration of the horses and giving part of their furs by way of conciliation, to which the whites did not dissent, but were thinking of the whole of the furs and future safety of the horses.  It being a damp morning, it was proposed to shoot off all their guns and put in fresh loads.  A mark was made, Hughes ostensibly raised his gun to shoot, which attracted the attention of the Indians to the mark, and was a signal. Ratliff downed one, Blair's gun flashed, but Hughes turning quickly around, emptied his gun into the other Indian's head, setting fire at the same time to the handkerchief around it.  On returning, they kept their expedition a secret for some time.  Many more interesting incidents might be related, but not with desirable accuracy of the present day.

     "Capt.  Hughes' memory failed him considerably the last three or four years. Previously his eyesight failed him entirely, but partially returned again. With patience he waited his coming end, firmly believing that his Redeemer lived, and that through him he should enjoy a happy futurity." - COMMUNICATED.

     That Elias Hughes continued to murder Indians after going to Ohio is undeniable.  He once returned on a visit to the settlements on the Upper Monongahela, and some of his old acquaintances noticing his restless movements and constant watching on every side, said to him, "Ellis, I see you're still hunting Injuns."

"Yes, and I'll hunt 'em as long as I live." "Have you had any luck since leaving here?"  "Not much, but I know where there are fourteen guns hid in an old sycamore in my country."

     Through the kindness of Mrs. Pansy Hall Thatcher a lineal descendant of Capt.  Elias Hughes, I am enabled to give a personal description of the old scout, by two of his granddaughters, who were still living in Licking County, Ohio, in 1907.

     Elias Hughes was small in size, of light build, small hands and could wear a woman's shoe.  His hair was combed down smooth and cut off evenly at the shoulder.  His hair showed no signs of grey, even at his death.  His eyes were blue and his face was always clean-shaved.  He was eccentric in his dress, at all times wearing a hunting shirt and refusing to wear a coat.  This shirt was of blue trimmed in red, and with red fringe around the edge. He also refused to have a button on his hunting shirt, tying it with small pieces of tape.

     A family tradition says, that "Elias Hughes was lying asleep in the house, when he dreamed that his children were in danger. When he awakened, a friend, who was in the same house, was loading his gun.  Elias asked him what he was going to do.  He said, "I hear a wild turkey; I am going to shoot it." Elias said, "I will get your turkey for you." He went out and returned in a few minutes with the scalp of an Indian, whom he had found in his cornfield near where his children were playing.  The Indian had imitated the turkey's call in hopes of luring some one from the house."  

     This tradition may be the growth from Jesse Hughes' experience with the turkey at Clarksburg, and of David Morgan's remarkable dream and combat with the two Indians near Prickets Fort in 1779, cited elsewhere in this volume.  It is probable that Elias Hughes was connected with the revolting sequel of Morgan's battle, which might account in part for the story.

In 1782, Elias Hughes had an adventure with Indians in a cornfield on the West Fork River, but with different results from that of the foregoing tradition.

     "In August as Arnold and Paul Richards were returning to Richards' Fort, they were shot at by some Indians, lying hid in a cornfield adjoining the fort, and both fell from their horses.  The Indians leaped over the fence immediately and tomahawked and scalped them.

     "These two men were murdered in full view of the fort, and the firing drew its inmates to the gate to ascertain its cause.  When they saw that the two Richards were down, they rightly judged that Indians had done the deed; and Elias Hughes, ever bold and daring, taking down his gun, went out alone at the back gate and entered the cornfield, into which the savages had again retired, to see if he could not avenge on one of them the murder of his friends.  Creeping softly along, he came in view of them standing near the fence, reloading their guns, and looking intently at the people at the fort gate.  Taking a deliberate aim at one of them, he touched the trigger.  His gun flashed, and the Indians alarmed, ran speedily away."

     It is claimed that Captain Hughes could read and write, although his signature appears in his declaration for pension and other statements with an "X." This, however, may have been on account of his blindness at that time.  Like his brother, Jesse, Captain Hughes died in indigency.  His life had been devoted to the trail and the chase; and his wants measured only by his present needs, were supplied from the forest and streams.  For two-score years his supreme joy had been a saturnalia of blood, and not until the loss of his sight and when there were no more "Injuns to kill," did his thoughts turn to the "future life." Captain Hughes is buried near the center of the cemetery at Utica, Ohio.  At the interment crossed cannons were discharged over his grave, which is yearly decorated with flowers.  A gray, flat stone marks the last silent camp of the "Last of the Border Warriors."      

All data contained above was taken exclusively, verbatim - with editing out of non pertinent information- from L. V. McWhorter's "Border Settler's of Northwestern Virginia", copy obtained from the San Diego branch of the Church of Latter Day Saints' Family History Center.  The search for information on Jesse was long and difficult, but yielded excellent results. Much gratitude to McWhorter is owed by us all.