Eskippakithiki, The Last Indian Town in Kentucky - The Filson ...

Vol. 6 ] Ti e Filson Club History Quarterly 375
beyond the Allegheny Mountains, and with accounts of its rich
corn lands and herds of deer and buffalo, stories which were to
bear important fruit.
The red burghers of Eskippakithiki, taking the loyal French
view that their royal master, the King of France, would drive the
English into the sea, in the doing of which high values would be
set upon their arms and they .would be able to take many scalps
and rich pillage, decided to move nearer to the seat of war. So, in
1754, after the fall of Fort Necessity, and perhaps after gathering
their autumn crops, they joined the rest of the Shawnees in the
Scioto Valley, thus abandoning Eskippakithiki and Kentucky as
a residence of the red man forever. And this is how it happened
that Kentucky sent a body of troops to Braddock's Defeat, but
on the French side. Years afterwards Black Hoof told how he and
others, in that battle, had shot at Washington repeatedly, but
could not hit him; and how they inferred therefrom that he bore
a charmed life. This would be the end of the story of Eskippakithiki
had it not lingered in the memory of Findley and continued
to intrigue Boone.
FINDLEY LEADS BOONE TO KENTUCKY: The story of how
Findley led Daniel Boone and company to Kentucky has been
told so often and so well that a repetition is unnecessary. He
took them right to Eskippakithiki," whose stockades and most of
whose houses they found burnt to the ground, and they built a
camp under a giant sycamore on the Combs Fork of Lulbegrud,
near what is now the old Clay distillery mill dam. Lulbegrud is
not an Indian name. In a deposition in the Clark County clerk's
office--which had lain forgotten for almost a century until my
father, the late Judge William M. Beckner, of Winchester, rediscovered
it and passed it out to our historians--it is told with
charming simplicity, by Daniel Boone himself, how Lulbegrud got
its name. The book in which it is preserved is now labeled "Depositions,"
but was formerly known as "Processioners' Book," containing
depositions given in processioning land claims, a process.
of taking proof on the land in dispute. This deposition is given in
behalf of the claim of George Smith and is found on page 156. It
is as follows:
"The Deposition of Daniel Boone, being of lawful age, taken
before us, the subscribing Commissioners, this 15th day of September,
1796; being first Duly Sworn, Depo'seth and sayth that