Too often the fields which the pioneer planted with corn were
harvested by the Indian with fire. The hardest privations
suffered by farmers and stock were due to the settlers having to
flee to the forts, leaving to Indian devastation the crops on
which their sustenance mainly, depended. Sometimes, fortunately,
the warning came in time for the frontiersman to collect his
goods and chattels in his wagon and to round up his live stock
and drive them safely into the common fortified enclosure. At
others, the tap of the "express"--as the herald of Indian danger
was called--at night on the windowpane and the low word whispered
hastily, ere the "express" ran on to the next abode, meant that
the Indians had surprised the outlying cabins of the settlement.
The forts were built as centrally as possible in the scattered
settlements. They consisted of cabins, blockhouses, and
stockades. A range of cabins often formed one side of a fort. The
walls on the outside were ten or twelve feet high with roofs
sloping inward. The blockhouses built at the angles of the fort
projected two feet or so beyond the outer walls of the cabins and
stockades, and were fitted with portholes for the watchers and
the marksmen. The entrance to the fort was a large folding gate
of thick slabs.
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