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




Our Home in the Fort

It was a positive relief to me, and I know it was also to mother, when we found that we were to have one of the cabins all to ourselves. I had thought we might have to share a house with some other family.

Colonel Boone's cabin was the same as ours, and what pleased me greatly, was the fact that it stood next door, with but the palisade of logs between; therefore Jemima and I would be together almost as much as when we lived on the Clinch.

No sooner were we in the fort than father and Billy set about making a fireplace and chimney, at the same time promising to lay a puncheon floor, for this new home of ours had nothing inside it save the earth beaten down hard. There were two square holes as windows, which I hoped some day to see covered with oiled paper or thin hide.

I could not help shuddering when I saw the many tiny holes in the side of the building facing the forest, for I realized that they had been made to shoot through. Already I could see in my mind father, mother, and Billy standing, rifle in hand, and peering through those loopholes to see a savage whom they could kill.

This has since been a reality many times, while I went from one to the other, carrying powder or bullets and cleaning the rifles when they became heated from rapid firing, for my father owned two spare guns in addition to those used by Billy and mother.