54/59 In the same way Shelby and the other reporters of the Kanawha fight stated that the Indians lost more heavily than the whites. The stories of how Lewis suspected the earl of treachery, and of how the backwoodsmen were so exasperated that they wished to kill the latter, may have some foundation; but are quite as likely to be pure inventions, made up after the Revolutionary war. In De Haas, "The American Pioneer," etc., can be found all kinds of stories, some even told by members of the Clark and Lewis families, which are meant to criminate Dunmore, but which make such mistakes in chronology--placing the battle of Lexington in the year of the Kanawha fight, asserting that peace was not made till the following spring, etc .-- that they must be dismissed offhand as entirely untrustworthy. "Am. |