fastnesses. Practically, it was the old story of a score of Kentucky raids into the "Indian side" of the Ohio over again. "You are the 'town-destroyer,'" was the cry of an old chieftain to President Washington, "and when that name is heard our women look quickly behind them and turn pale." But there was something more to be done on the Maumee than to make squaws turn pale! That would not keep back the murdering bands from the infant settlements along and below the Ohio.
This became plain so suddenly that the shock was felt throughout the East. In no way could the Northwestern Indians have struck home more quickly than by perpetrating the terrible Big Bottom Massacre. The New England colony which, led by Rufus Putnam, founded Marietta at the mouth of the Muskingum had, by January 1790, expanded in all directions.[1] One company of pioneers had ascended the Muskingum to Big Bottom, Morgan County, Ohio. At dusk, on the second night in January, 1791, a band of savages crossed the river at Silverheels Riffle above the
- ↑ Historic Highways of America, vol. ix, ch. 2.
