Skilled backwoodsmen scattered out, Indian fashion, but their less skilful or more panic-struck brethren, and all regulars or ordinary militia, kept together from a kind of blind feeling of safety in companionship, and in consequence their nimble and ruthless antagonists destroyed them at their ease.
Indian War Parties Repulsed.
Still, the Indian war parties were often checked, or scattered; and occasionally one of them received some signal discomfiture.

Such was the case with a band that went up the Kanawha valley just as Clark was descending the Ohio on his way to the Illinois.

Finding the fort at the mouth of the Kanawha too strong to be carried, they moved on up the river towards the Greenbriar settlements, their chiefs shouting threateningly to the people in the fort, and taunting them with the impending destruction of their friends and kindred.

But two young men in the stockade forthwith dressed and painted themselves like Indians, that they might escape notice even if seen, and speeding through the woods reached the settlements first and gave warning.

The settlers took refuge on a farm where there was a block-house with a stockaded yard.