Tireless, watchful, cautious, and rapid, they covered great distances, and their stealth and the mystery of their coming and going added to the terror produced by the horrible nature of their ravages.

When pursued they dextrously covered their trail, and started homewards across a hundred leagues of trackless wilderness.

The pursuers almost of necessity went slower, for they had to puzzle out the tracks; and after a certain number of days either their food gave out or they found themselves too far from home, and were obliged to return.

In most instances the pursuit was vain.

Thus a party of twenty savages might make a war-trail some hundreds of miles in length, taking forty or fifty scalps, carrying off a dozen women and children, and throwing a number of settlements, with perhaps a total population of a thousand souls, into a rage of terror and fury, with a loss to themselves of but one or two men killed and wounded.
A Great War Band Threatens Kentucky Throughout the summer of 1781 the settlers were scourged by an unbroken series of raids of this kind.