Source: History of Pioneer Kentucky, R.S. Cotterill, Johnson & Hardin, Cincinnati, 1917.
There were, in truth, in 1750 but three places in Kentucky where the
red men dwelt. These were the extreme west of Kentucky, where the
Chickasaws lived in savage independence on the cliffs of the Mississippi;
a small section of ground opposite the mouth of the Scioto River,
occupied by a Shawnese town; and an isolated town in Central Kentucky.
The record of the last of these is at once the most interesting and the
least known. In 1745, Chartier, a French trader, met and traded with the
Shawnese Indians at the Falls of the Ohio (Draper, MSS. Life of Boone,
Vol. II, p. 169). Setting out from the Falls in company with a predatory
band of Indians, his company soon encountered two traders whom they
despoiled of their goods, amounting to about 1600 pounds in value.
Continuing their journey southward, they settled on a small stream that
was afterwards named Lulbegrud Creek (Lulbegrud Creek was so named by
Boone). Here they laid out a town to which they gave the name Eskippakithiki.
Though the town has long since disappeared, the present
name, Indian Old Fields, preserves the memory of the ancient post (the
site of the old town is some fifteen miles from the present town of
Winchester). Dwelling in the heart of the bluegrass region and at a
distance from both kinsman and foe, the exiled Shawnese prospered and
grew apace. But after two or three years the warriors of the Six Nations
learned of the trespassers on their hunting grounds.
From that hour the life of the Shawnese was one of danger and fear; the Iroquois
harassed them incessantly. The northern Shawnese meanwhile sent reiterated requests
for their wandering brethren to return to the tribe, but they were
reluctant to leave Kentucky. Finally, worn out by Iroquois attacks, the
exiles began their journey out of the land. Numbering four hundred and
fifty, they traveled down the Lulbegrud, the Red, the Kentucky, and the
Ohio, to the Tennessee. Ascending the Tennessee to Bear Creek they met
and wantonly attacked the Chickasaws. That warlike tribe speedily punished
and expelled the intruders, who fled to the Creeks of the south.
In 1748 the remnant of the tribe took up anew the journey to the Ohio Shawnese.
They tarried for awhile on the Cumberland River in Tennessee until
attacked by the unforgiving Chickasaws. Reduced to two hundred and fifty
they set out again down the Cumberland, having their women and children
in canoes and the warriors traveling on guard along the bank. They reached
the Ohio, but on account of the heavy rains were unable to ascend it.
Stopping at the Wabash they were persuaded to join the Indians at Kaskaskia.
After a stay here of two years they were, in 1762, taken home
by the Ohio Shawnese. Eskippakithiki at one time was a town of considerable
size. It was a market and a neutral meeting place for the northern and
southern Indians. In the period of its prosperity and after its abandonment,
it was visited frequently by white traders, among whom the rollicking John
Finley was conspicuous. It was at Eskippakithiki that the venerable Shawnese
chieftan, Black Hoof, was born. He accompanied the tribe on all its
wanderings, and years afterwards when Kentucky was settled and himself an
old man, he revisited his old home, identified its landmarks and related its
history.