Cahill's Escape, the killing of the George May party of surveyors
and escape of Hardin, and the scene of Col. John Floyd's fatal wound, were
... graphically grouped in a letter, in 1847, to the author of the first
edition of this work. It is to be regretted that the writer had not more
fully related the following, and also preserved the other incidents alluded
to:
·` If I could have taken the time, I might have given you many other
interesting particulars of the early times about Bullitt's Lick-when the
fires of an hundred salt furnaces gleamed through the forest, and the Wyandot
sat on Cahill's knob and looked down on five hundred men on the plain below.
I have sat in the fork of the chesnut oak to which Cahill was bound by the
Indians, while they procured his funeral pile out of the dead limbs of the
pitchpine that grows on the mountain's side-(they intended to burn him in
sight of Bullitt's Lick). Some oxen had been turned out to graze, and were
straggling up the hill side. The Indians heard the cracking of the brush,
and supposing it to be their enemies (the whites) coming in search of their
lost companion, darted into the thicket on the opposite side of the hill.
Cahill improved their ternporary absence-slipped his bonds, and escaped
in the darkness, and in a half hour arrived safe at the Licks. A company
was immediately raised, and made pursuit. They followed the trail of about
twenty Indians to the bank of the Ohio river, and saw the Indians crossing
on dead timber they had rolled into the river. Some shots were exchanged,
but no damage was known to be done on either side.
`'I have sat under the shade of the elm, about three miles north of Shepherds
ville, where Col. Floyd fell; and have a thousand times walked the path
Geo. May and his eompanions pursued, as they returned from making surveys
in the new county of Washington, when they were waylaid by some twelve Indians,
about a mile and a half above Shepherdsville, on the south side of Salt
river. The surveyors, including the elder May, were all killed but one-his
name was Hardin. He fled to the river bank, pursued by the Indians. There
was a small station on the opposite side, (called Brashear's station, I
think), about a quarter of a mile above the site of the present beautiful
watering place called Paroquette Springs. The men in the station, about
twentyfive in number, sallied out. Hardin ran under the river bank and took
shelter. The whites, on the opposite side, kept the Indians off of him with
their rifles, until a part of their eompany ran down and crossed at the
ford, (Shepherdsville), came up on the side Hardin was on, and drove the
Indians from their prey. May's fieldnotes of his surveys were presented,
and subsequently sustained by the supreme court of the commonwealth."