Monette, John W. History of the Discovery and Settlement of the Valley of the Mississippi, by the Three Great European Powers, Spain, France and Great Britain, and the Subsequent Occupation, Settlement, and Extension of Civil Government by the United States, Until the Year 1846, in two volumes, Volume II . New York: Harper and Brothers, Publishers, 1846. [format: book], [genre: history]. Permission: Schingoethe Center for Native American Cultures, Aurora University
Persistent link to this document: http://lincoln.lib.niu.edu/file.php?file=monette2.html

with an autograph intended for "Simon Kenton." Yet he was not unskilled in the strategy of the hunter and the frontier soldier.

[A.D. 1771.] At the age of sixteen, an unfortunate encounter, in which he supposed his antagonist mortally wounded, caused him to fly from the settlements, where law and order prevailed, to the remote West, where these restraints were unknown, and where obscurity might be a sure protection from the demands of law and justice. Hence, leaving his father's house and the victim of his just vengeance, he fled west of the mountains, traveling on foot all night, and lying concealed all day, living upon the most scanty forest fare, in constant fear of pursuit, until he reached the settlements upon the head waters of Cheat River. Here, almost perished with fatigue and hunger, and fearing discovery, he assumed the name of Simon Butler, and friendless, destitute, and unlettered, sought a bare subsistence by daily labor as a menial. At length, after months of arduous toil, he succeeded in supplying himself with a rifle, when he entered upon the hunter's life, and, in company with a party of hunters in a canoe, descended the Monongahela to Fort Pitt. Having secured the favor and patronage of Simon Girty, a man of talent and influence in the fort, he became special hunter for the garrison. ^[37] Here, having frequent intercourse with the friendly Indians, who then mingled freely among the whites, he learned to speak several dialects of the Indian tongue; and Yeager and Strader, two of his hunting companions, were already familiar with the Indian language. At this early date did Kenton become acquainted with the language of those who were to be his deadly foes in subsequent times.

In company with Yeager and Strader, Kenton set out down the Ohio, floating in a canoe, and visiting the Indian towns as they passed along in quest of the "cane lands" of Kentucky, of which they had heard much as a region abounding in game. At length, late in the autumn, they found themselves at the

Previous page

Next page