It is estimated that, between 1783 and 1790, fully fifteen hundred Kentuckians were massacred by Indians or taken captive to the savage towns; and the frontiers of Virginia and Pennsylvania furnished their full quota to the long roll of victims. It is impossible in so small a volume as this to mention all of even the principal incidents in the catalogue of assaults, heroic defenses, murders, burnings, torturings, escapes, reprisals, and ambushes which constitute the lurid annals of this protracted border warfare. The reader who has followed thus far this story of a strenuous life, will understand what these meant; to what deeds of daring they gave rise on the part of the men and women of the border; what privation and anguish they entailed. But let us not forget that neither race could claim, in this titanic struggle for the mastery of the hunting-grounds, a monopoly of courage or of cowardice, of brutality or of mercy. The Indians suffered quite as keenly as the whites in the burning of their villages, crops, and supplies, and by the loss of life either in battle, by stealthy attack, or by treachery. The frontiersmen learned from the red men the lessons of forest warfare, and often outdid their tutors in ferocity. The contest between civilization and savagery is, in the nature of things, unavoidable; the result also is foreordained. It is well for our peace of mind that, in the dark story of the Juggernaut car, we do not inquire too closely into details.
In 1785, goaded by numerous attacks on settlers and immigrants, Clark led a thousand men against the tribes on the Wabash; but by this time he had lost control of the situation, and cowardice on the part of his troops, combined with lack of provisions, led to the practical failure of the expedition, although the Indians were much frightened.
At the same time, Logan was more successful in an attack on the Shawnese of the Scioto Valley, who lost heavily in killed and prisoners. In neither of these expeditions does Boone appear to have taken part.
The year 1787 was chiefly notable, in the history of the West, for the adoption by Congress of the Ordinance for the government of the Territory Northwest of the River Ohio, wherein there dwelt perhaps seven thousand whites, mostly unprogressive French-Canadians, in small settlements flanking the Mississippi and the Great Lakes, and in the Wabash Valley. Along the Ohio were scattered a few American hamlets, chiefly in Kentucky. In the same year the Indian war reached a height of fury which produced a panic throughout the border, and frantic appeals to Virginia, which brought insufficient aid. Boone, now a town trustee of Maysville, was sent to the legislature that autumn, and occupied his seat at Richmond from October until January. While there, we find him strongly complaining that the arms sent out to Kentucky by the State during the year were unfit for use, the swords being without scabbards, and the rifles without cartridge-boxes or flints.