Note 17 — CHRONICLES OF BORDER WARFARE (continued 5)

John Bowman, of Harrodsburgh, was lieutenant of Kentucky County, and colonel of its militia. During the spring of 1779, there was a general desire to raid the unsuspecting Shawnees, in retaliation for their invasions of Kentucky, and Bowman decided to command in person this “first regular enterprise to attack, in force, the Indians beyond the Ohio, ever planned in Kentucky.” The company of volunteers of the interior rendezvoused in May at Harrodsburgh, and under Capts. Benjamin Logan and Silas Harlan marched to Lexington, where they met the Boonesborough company under Capt. John Holder, and another party under Capt. Levi Todd. At the mouth of the Licking (site of Covington, Ky.), the general rendezvous agreed on, they found a company from the Falls of the Ohio (site of Louisville), under Capt. William Harrod. Also in the little army, which finally mustered 297 men, including officers, were frontiersmen from Redstone Old Fort, and other settlements in the valleys of the Ohio and Monongahela. The Redstone men were on their way home, when they heard of the expedition, and joined it at the Licking; they had been on a visit to Big Bone Lick, and had a canoe-load of relics therefrom, which they were transporting up river. The force crossed the Ohio, May 28, just below the mouth of the Licking; 32 men remained behind in charge of the boats, leaving 265 to set out for the Shawnee town of Little Chillicothe, on the Little Miami, distant about sixty-five miles northeast. George Clark and William Whitley were pilots, and George M. Bedinger adjutant and quartermaster.––R. G. T.