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Beginning of Chapter 1: The Indians probably detected the approach of strangers long before the seven white men finally stepped out of the woods and into their camp. Many signs warned of their impending presence. For one thing, the spring of 1824 was even wetter than normal in central Indiana. Deer Lick Creek, where Chief Logan and his band had pitched their winter settlement, was usually a trickle that drained into Fall Creek before descending to the White River. Now it was swollen with the heavy rain that had fallen overnight and into the morning. The downfall saturated the thick-soiled forest of maple, sycamore, beech, and hickory in the valley of the White River, flooding the wilderness and turning much of it into a waterlogged swamp. Even if the white men made an attempt at stealth, which seems unlikely since they had been drinking heavily for some days, the splashing and sloshing of seven pairs of feet winding their way through the trees would have been audible. In addition to the conditions and to the drink, the dogs that lived with the Indians raised a din whenever strangers neared the camp. Later, some of the white men recalled that the presence of intruders at their camp made the Indians visibly uneasy, which is not surprising given that only two Indian men faced the seven whites. The small band of Indians—three men, three women, two adolescent boys, and two younger girls—had set up camp in the thinly settled wilds of Madison County four months earlier to hunt, trap, gather furs, and boil maple sugar when the sap rose in the spring. On this soggy Monday morning, only the Indian men known to the whites as Logan and Ludlow remained by the fires and kettles of the camp. The third, M’ Doal, was out on the forest trails, checking his network of traps for raccoons and other fur-bearing animals. So, the white men outnumbered the Indians by more than three to one. They may also have been intimidating for another reason—they were heavily armed. Some carried butchers’ knives, and each bore a Kentucky rifle, the lethal, long-barreled flintlock that was a frontier staple through the early 1830s.
