Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 6).djvu/157

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KENTUCKY IN THE REVOLUTION
157

not pay Indians for bringing in British scalps, or praise them for their murderous successes and equip them for further service. As a brave American officer said, "Let this reproach remain on them"—and the people of the West will never forget the reproach, nor forgive! They remember, and always will remember, the burning words of Washington written more than ten years after the close of the Revolution: "All the difficulties we encounter with the Indians, their hostilities, the murder of helpless women and children along all our frontiers, results from the conduct of the agents of Great Britain in this country." There are today, in hundreds of homes of descendants of the pioneers in Kentucky, memories of the inhuman barbarities of British officers during the Revolution; these will never be forgotten, and will never fail to prejudice generations yet unborn. The reproach will remain on them.

At the outbreak of the war, chiefs of the Indian nations were invited to Pittsburg, where the nature of the struggle was explained to them in the following parable:

"Suppose a father had a little son whom