Contents ▼▲
Front Matter At Boonesborough Beginning of the Story Boone on the Yadkin Boone Moves his Family Ready for the Journey What we Wore Driving Cattle and Sheep Camping at Nightfall The Long Halt Jimmy Boone Goes to Clinch Murder of Jimmy Boone A Time of Mourning The Faint-hearted Return A New Home Making Moccasins Tanning Leather Governor Dunmore Our Home on the Clinch Household Duties Attacked by a Wildcat Fighting the Wildcat Boone and Father Return The Wilderness Road Building the Forts Boonesborough Gathering Salt Boonesborough Precautions Our Home in the Fort Ready for Cooking Furnishing the House The Hominy Block The Supply of Water Sports Inside the Fort Wrestling and Running Religion of the Indians Indian Babies Colonel Callaway Arives News from Eastern Colonies Venturing Outside the Fort Dividing the Land Who Owned Kentucky? Ready to Build a Home Billy's Hard Lot Preparing Flax Spinning and Soap Making Broom Making More Indian Murders Indian "Signs" Woodcraft and Hunting Pelts Used as Money Petition of the Settlers Making Sugar Building Fences Capture of the Girls My Willful Thoughts Finding the Trail The Pursuit The Story Told by Jemima Elizabeth's Heroism Rescuing the Girls Alarm Among the Settlers Indians on the Warpath The First Wedding The Wedding Festivities The Brides Home The Housewarming Attacks by the Indians Besieged by the Savages In the Midst of the Fight The Assault by the Indians Failure of the Assault Watchfulness of the Indians The Sortie My Father Wounded Our Wounded

Hannah of Kentucky - James Otis




At Boonesborough

When a girl fourteen years old, who has never been to a real school, sits down to write a story, she ought to explain her boldness. More than two years ago my family came to Boonesborough over the Wilderness Road with Mr. Daniel Boone. We believed then that it would not be very long before the Indians would be driven out of Kentucky; but they are making even more trouble for us now than when we first came here.

[Illustration] from Hannah of Kentucky by James Otis

It may not seem possible that the Indians, who are surrounding our fort and forcing us to stay inside, could have anything to do with my writing what mother says will be a story such as the children on the other side of the mountains have never read. Yet, were it not for them, I should be at work in the flax field to-day rather than sitting here in the cabin. Mother says it will help to keep my mind from the dangers which beset us, if I tell how we happen to be in Colonel Boone's fort on this day of August in the year 1777.