the valley of Red River, a tributary of the Kentucky, and built a cabin on a creek which they called Lulbegrud, which forms the eastern boundary of Clark county, and passed some time in hunting and exploring the adjacent territory. That they were not illiterate or obscure men, is shown, not only from the fact that the descendants of several of them were afterwards conspicuous for their capacity and public services, but from the circumstance of the naming of the creek upon which they located their camp, which appears as such on the map of Filson of 1784, as also, upon those of the present day. There is no page of American history more full of romance than this incident. The name was evidently adopted from Dean Swift's 'Gulliver's Travels,' first published in 1726, in which it is spelled Lorbulgrud, and designated by the author in the text as the capital of Brobdingnag, which, he says, was in California, and that it was situated in the interior 3,000 miles from the Pacific coast. It was long a puzzle to me how these crude hunters came to select it and it was not solved until the following deposition of Daniel Boone was found in comparatively recent years, of record in the county clerk's office of Clark county, of which Winchester is the county seat:

'Deposition of Daniel Boone; from original in Deposition Book No. 1, page 156, Clark county, Kentucky:

The deposition of Daniel Boone, being of lawful age, taken before us, the subscribing Commissioners, the 15th of September, 1796, being first duly sworn, deposeth and sayeth that in the year 1770, "I encamped on Red river, with five other men, and we had with us for our amusement the History of Lemuel Gulliver's Travels,' wherein he gave an account of his young Master Grumdelick carrying him on a market day to a town called Lulbegrud. A young man of the company called Alexander Neely came to camp one night and told us he had been to Lulbegrud and had killed two Brobdignags at the capital. And further deponent sayeth not.

(Signed) "D. BOONE." "A singular coincidence in the case is that

the creek to which this name was given is just about 3,000 miles from the Pacific coast, which Swift indicates as the distance thence of the capital of Brobdingnag.

"An additional item of interest in this connection is that the identical copy of Swift's works which afforded amusement to these pioneers entombed in the forest and canebrakes of Kentucky, and liable to be at any time subject to the attack of Indians, which later proved fatal to most of them, is to be found in the library of Col. R. T. Durrett of Louisville, in an excellent state of preservation. It consists of two duodecimo volumes bound in calf and illustrated with numerous excellent copperplate engravings, and bears. the following title: The Works of Dr. Jonathan Swift, Dean of St. Patrick's, accurately revised in twelve volumes; adorned with copperplates with some account of the Author's life and notes historical. By John Hawkesworth, LL. D., London. Printed for C. Bathurst, T. Osborne, W. Bowyer, J. Hinton, W. Strahan, B. Collins, J. Rivington, R. Baldwin, L. Davis, C. Reymers and L. Dodsley, 1756.'"

From the number of names given above for whom "Swift's Travels" were printed one may imagine that the publishing business was in 1756, as in 1910, a possibly hazardous one and that these gentlemen named above desired, so far as they might, to divide the responsibility among a number, thus lessening the financial pressure upon each in the event of a failure. But that is apart from Boone's deposition and Lulbegrud creek. The latter still sends its placid waters on their course under the same curious but almost classic name in Clark county, and the little volumes repose in Colonel Durrett's library, mute testimonials to the correctness of Daniel Boone's deposition.

A comrade of Boone, Clark and the other pioneers who blazed the way for civilization. in Kentucky, was Simon Kenton, and it may

be of interest to note here that three counties of the State are honored by the names of these three brave men. Kenton was truly a ScotchIrishman, his father being an Irishman and his mother a Scottish lady. He was born in Fauquier county, Virginia, April 13, 1755. Owing to the poverty of his parents, he secured but little education, but this fact did not prevent his playing a manly part in the struggles of the early settlers of Kentucky to redeem that fertile country from the savages and make it a fitting home for the thousands who were to come after him. Though he could spell no better, perhaps, than Daniel Boone, he was a precocious youth and like so many before and since his day, he was at sixteen deeply in love with a young woman of his vicinity. Unfortunately for Kenton, fortunately, perhaps, for Kentucky, the course of true love did not run smoothly for him, and he suffered the mortification of seeing a rival win the object of his affections. Men were rather primitive in those early days and Kenton, driven to despair by his failure to win the object of his affections, forced a quarrel and a fight upon his rival whom he left dying, as he supposed, at the end of the conflict. He fled horrified, to the wilderness of Kentucky, which he reached after much difficulty. Once again among his fellowmen, and fearing the awful hand of avenging justice, he changed his name to Simon Butler. Before reaching Before reaching Kentucky to which he did not immediately come, he met and became acquainted with Simon Girty, who was afterwards to become the wickedest and most blood-thirsty renegade who ever led the Indians against the whites.

At Fort Pitt, Kenton fell in with John Strader and George Yeager, with whom he journeyed southward as far as the mouth of the Kentucky river, returning later to the Kanawha where they fished and hunted until the spring of 1773, when Yeager was killed by the Indians while lying in camp with his

companions. Kenton and Strader, almost in a state of nudity, fled to the forest, where they wandered in a starving condition for six days, at the end of which time they reached the Ohio river, where they met a party of hunters from whom they received food and other assistance. In 1773, Kenton joined a party, en route to the surveying camp of the Bullitt party. Finding this finally deserted, they concluded that the Indians had murdered the surveyors, and returned to Virginia with Kenton as guide. Kenton subsequently returned to Kentucky and became a scout and guide of inestimable value to those conducting expeditions against the Indians, or going out to meet marauding parties of the latter. During the Miami Indian war, which covered the period of his second return from Kentucky, he had acted as a spy for Lord Dunmore and General Lewis, performing active and useful service. Receiving an honorable discharge, he came back to his old camp on the Big Sandy river in Kentucky, where he fell in with one Thomas Williams, and, together, the two journeyed to a point near what is now Washington in Mason county, where they built a camp, cleared up ground and planted corn which they had received in exchange for furs sold to a French trader. The claim is made and probably correctly, that as a result of this planting Kenton and Williams ate the first roasting ears ever grown and eaten in Kentucky by white men.

While performing an act of service to unfortunate men who had lost their possessions by the overturning of their canoe, the camp of Kenton and Williams was plundered by Indians who captured with it a hunter named Hendricks, whom they burned at the stake after the pleasant savage custom of the day. Later, in company with Michael Stoner, Kenton quitted this camp and proceeded to Hinkson's station in what is now Bourbon county.

Subsequently Kenton, known to his associates as Butler, learned that the rival whom

he thought he had killed in Virginia, was not killed after all, but was very much alive and living happily with the young wife who had been the cause of the difficulty which had driven Kenton into exile. Kenton continued. his useful services to the people until there. was no longer any danger from the Indians. Like Daniel Boone, he made entries of land, but these two pioneers and genuine fighting men, knew more about Indian warfare than of the intricacies of the land laws of their day, and subsequently saw much of the land they had entered and which they supposed was their own, pass into the hands of others, leaving them nearly as poor, in all save experience, as when they first came into the primeval wilds.

Judge Lucius P. Little in his "Life of Ben Hardin," says that in 1825 Kenton came to Frankfort while the legislature was in session. "Seventy years old, poor, in tattered garments, mounted on a poor horse, the old pioneer entered the state capital, a stranger. He came seeking from the state that he had assisted so largely in reclaiming from the Indians, a release of some of his mountain lands from taxes. While wandering about the streets, a desolate, lonely old man, General Fletcher, the representative from Montgomery county, met and knew him. He lost no time in having him decently clothed and kindly entertained. Kenton quickly became the object of great and hearty attention. He was taken to the capital while the legislature was in session, placed in the speaker's chair and introduced as the second greatest adventurer of the west to a crowded assembly of legislators, judges, officers of government and citizens. The simple-hearted old man called it 'the proudest day of his life.' His lands, it is needless to say, were released."

It is not within the proposed scope of this work to give a complete resume of the attacks by the Indians upon the Kentucky outposts

and the defense against them. It is the rather proposed to move on rapidly to the events connected with the later history of the state. So many were the incursions of small parties of Indians into the new settlements that an intimate relation of the incidents of each would carry this story far beyond the bounds set for it.

It has been stated elsewhere that a statement had been sent to the Governor of Virginia, that Colonel Clark was neglecting the interior stations and concentrating his forces for the defense of Louisville alone. This was an error, perhaps excusable, as the pioneers were unequal to understanding the combinations in the mind of Clark. They defended stations singly and bravely; he proposed not only to defend them with equal bravery, but to carry the war into the enemy's country and strike them blows of such severity that they would. not again have the temerity to come within reach of the rifles of the Kentuckians. The pioneers fought detachments; Clark, a born soldier, fought the source of those detachments and so disintegrated them that they hesitated in their weakness to again risk themselves within the range of the riflemen of Kentucky.

Before concluding the story of the intermittent attacks by straggling Indians on the Kentucky settlements a reference must be made to any attack made by the Indians upon a party led by Col. John Floyd in Jefferson county, sixteen miles from Louisville. So serious had become the Indian attacks that Squire Boone, who had established a station upon Clear Creek in Shelby county, determined to abandon it and to remove to Beargrass near Louisville. While en route they were attacked by the Indians and dispersed with considerable loss on Long Run, eighteen miles from Louisville. Colonel Floyd, hearing of the disaster, hastily collected thirty men to pursue the Indians who, he supposed, would promptly retreat. His party was di

vided into two bodies, one commanded by himself; the other by Capt. John Holden. The Indians had not retreated as Floyd expected, but had remained near the scene of their outrage upon Boone's party. They led Floyd into an ambuscade of two hundred or more and killed, wounded and scalped more than half of the command, the latter bravely holding their ground until they were driven back by the tomahawk, and forced to retreat. Perhaps ten only of the Indians were killed. Colonel Floyd, while retreating on foot and nearly exhausted, was met by Capt. Samuel Wells, with whom he was not on friendly terms. Wells promptly dismounted, assisted Floyd to mount his horse alongside of which he ran, holding Floyd in the saddle. It seems wholly unnecessary to state, as others have done that from that day Colonel Floyd and Captain Holden were friends.

The author may be pardoned for a personal reference at this point. The scene of Floyd's defeat is in full view of the spot on which he was born; on that unfortunate field stands today a monument erected by the state of Kentucky in honor of the brave men who fell in that battle. During the War between the States, this same author fought over the ground on which the forces of Floyd had met their savage enemies, but in this contest it was not the whites aaginst the reds, but the "grays" against the "blues;" and the writer while in the ranks of the former, could look into the open doors of his boyhood home, only

a short distance away, and see, also, shells bursting over the ball-grounds of the school he had attended but a year before. It was a little bit hotter than any other ball game in which he had ever contested on those grounds and when the umpire called the game, on account of darkness, there was no protest from either the "Blues" or the "Grays." The score was nothing to nothing at the end of the ninth inning, and when the umpire so declared there seemed to be no one who was disposed to dispute his decision.

That the Indian depredations in Kentucky should be considered as having ended because they are to be no longer referred to herein, is not correct. They came many times afterwards, and did many deeds of violence, but their power had been broken, and their deeds were not of so serious a character as before. They never again held Kentucky in their grasp, and this narrative must hurry forward on the theory that no Indian will disturb or make. us afraid. There are hundreds of families in the state today whose forefathers met and overcome the difficult problems of the early settlement of the state and who are entitled to have recognition in any history of the commonwealth. That the author of this work leaves out of consideration in that respect, his own people, who dared Indian depredations and helped to make the state, must be a part of his explanation for passing on to other incidents connected with the earliest history of Kentucky.

In 1781, Virginia, the splendid old Mother. of States, offered to the acceptance of the Congress all the Northwest territory embraced within her charter, most of which had been won from the English and Indians by the genius of Clark, one of her vigorous sons, who, to the enthusiasm of the pioneer, united the genius of the soldier. This offer was accepted in 1784 when a formal deed of transfer was made and recorded. Marshall, in his history, says of this transfer:

"Thus, while emperors, kings and potentates of the earth fight, devastate and conquer for territory and dominion, the great state of Virginia peacefully and unconstrained made a gratuitous donation to the common stock of the Union of a country over which she had proposed to erect ten new states, as future members of the Confederation. And to her honor be it remembered, that the favorable change which took place in the state of public affairs from a doubtful contest to acknowledged independence, tainted not the purity of her motive, shook not the firmness of her purpose nor varied the object of her policy. She conceded the right of dominion while Kentucky remained her most remote frontier and the Ohio, instead of the Mississippi, her northwestern boundary. She had magnified herself and secured her place in the Union on which