It was a hazardous experiment with the rough jewels of those little minds.
They were still rather like diamonds rolling about on the bottom of
barbarian rivers than steadily set and mounted for the uses of civilization.
He fixed his eyes upon a lad in his fifteenth year, the commandant of the
fort of the morning, who now stood at the water edge, watching him with
breathless attention. A brave, sunny face;--a big shaggy head holding a
mind in it as clear as a sphere of rock-crystal; already heated with vast
ambition--a leader in the school, afterwards to be a leader in the
nation--Richard Johnson.
"Listen!" he cried; and when he spoke in, that tone he reduced everything
turbulent to peace. "I have brought you here to tell you of the battle of
the Blue Licks not because it was the last time, as you know, that an Indian
army ever invaded Kentucky; not because a hundred years from now or a
thousand years from now other school-boys and other teachers will be talking
of it still; not because the Kentuckians will some day assemble on the field
and set up a monument to their forefathers, your fathers and brothers; but
because there is a lesson in it for you to learn now while you are children.
A few years more and some of you boys will be old enough to fight for
Kentucky or for your country. Some of you will be common soldiers who will
have to obey the orders of your generals; some of you may be generals with
soldiers under you at the mercy of your commands. It may be worth your own
lives, it may save the lives of your soldiers, to heed this lesson now and
to remember it then. And all of you--whether you go into battles of that
sort or not--will have others; for the world has many kinds of fighting to
be done in it and each of you will have to do his share. And whatever that
share may be, you will need the same character, the same virtues, to
encounter it victorious; for all battles are won in the same way, all
conquerors are alike. This lesson, then, will help each of you to win, none
of you to lose.
"Do you know what it was that brought about the awful massacre of the Blue
Licks? It was the folly of one officer.
"Let the creek here be the Licking River. The Kentuckians, some on foot and
some on horse, but all tired and disordered and hurrying along, had just
reached the bank. Over on the other side--some distance back--the Indians
were hiding in the woods and waiting. No one knew exactly where they were;
every one knew they counted from seven hundred to a thousand. The
Kentuckians were a hundred and eighty-two. There was Boone with the famous
Boonsborough men, the very name of whom was a terror; there was Trigg with
men just as good from Harrodsburg; there was Todd, as good as either, with
the men from Lexington. More than a fourth of the whole were commissioned
officers, and more fearless men never faced an enemy. There was but one
among them whose courage had ever been doubted, and do you know what that
man did?
"After the Kentuckians had crossed the river to attack, been overpowered,
forced back to the river again, and were being shot down or cut down in the
water like helpless cattle, that man--his name was Benjamin Netherland--did
this: He was finely mounted. He had quickly recrossed the river and had
before him the open buffalo trace leading back home. About twenty other men
had crossed as quickly as he and were urging their horses toward this road.
But Netherland, having reached the opposite bank, wheeled his horse's head
toward the front of the battle, shouted and rallied the others, and sitting
there in full view and easy reach of the Indian army across the narrow
river, poured his volley into the foremost of the pursuers, who were cutting
down the Kentuckians in the river. He covered their retreat. He saved
their lives.