I found a small booklet in which was pasted several articles. This appears to have perhaps been published in the New Vienna paper. The first article is entitled “The American Indian” and was written by Martha B. Hildebrand. The first few lines have “crumbled away.” The following is the remainder of the article as written. No accounts of events have been historically proven. Any terms are as they appear in the article:
There is no knowledge of any Indian village having existed in its limits. On many farms near New Vienna have been found flints and arrowheads, curiously shaped stones, with which the squaws crushed the Indian corn, stone axes and many implements of warfare.
Deserted Camp is a historic spot and is situated where a portion of Starbucktown is located about three miles northeast of Wilmington on Todd’s Fork. General Logan with his forces among whom were Daniel Boone, Major Simon Kenton, Judge McMains and Colonel Robert Patterson entered Clinton County near Lynchburg, now Highland County, passed East of the sites of Martinsville, Morrisville, and west of New Antioch, and encamped for the night at this point, since known as the Deserted Camp. Sometime during the night a Frenchman deserted to give notice to the Indians of the near approach of the Kentuckians.
The fact of this desertion was soon ascertained. The army was aroused and put in action. The race for the Indian village was closely contested, but the deserter, having the advantage in the start, retained it to the end.
When Logan arrived at the village the Indians were aroused and evidently trying to make their escape. The deserter had given notice of the approach of the Kentuckians, but not in time to enable them to get away. Their villages were burned and their fields laid waste. Twenty warriors were killed, seventy or eighty taken prisoners and the women and children left a precarious supply of miserable food.
The Frenchman who deserted Logan’s army had been taken prisoner by General Clark in one of his campaigns in Illinois under such circumstances as plainly showed that he and the Indians were not on opposite sides. He claimed to be their prisoner, not their ally. He was permitted to accompany the army to Kentucky where he remained two years then he joined the forces of Logan and accompanied him to the crossing of Todd’s Fork. The camp then and there made a controlling call for the Deputy Surveyor for Colonel Anderson, the principal surveyor of the lands reserved by the State of Virginia for the officers and soldiers, for three years’ service in the Virginia lines on continental establishment.
Five military surveys call for this spot. All call for the beginning at Logan’s encampment in October 1786 where a man deserted from him.
