Chapter 10

PAOLI AND FRENCH LICK
OR THE TWO POST

French Lick and Paoli have so long and so uniformly acted together that the reader will pardon me for one chapter that treats them as one place. It is now, more than ninety years since a fort at Half Moon Springs and a fort at French Lick protected the first settlers. Father Nathan Pinnick told me that during the Indian scare about 1812 he was employed to patrol the country between the two forts and keep a sharp lookout for indications of Indian depredations on the white settlers. The most of the people living near Half Moon Fort were genuine North Carolina Quakers. They were averse to war and deeming prudence the better part of valor they remained near the fort during the threatened Indian Massacre period and related many exciting adventures. The first deer he killed on his arrival was near the creek about one mile west of Paoli. He also had an experience with a bear almost exciting as that of Jim Wilson, related in a former chapter. He discovered the bear near a sink hole, before he could get a shot bruin sneaked into his den out of sight.

The hunter followed cautiously down into the sink. He heard the growl of the bear in a recess above a shelving rock. He saw the gleam of the fiery eye balls of the beast. He held in his hand his trusty rifle, and carefully leveling the gun he fired. The place was filled with smoke. There was not a growl nor a groan from the chamber where the bear had taken refuge. The first indication received of the result of the shot was blood flowing down in a stream near the hunter's feet.He soon dragged a three hundred pound bear from the cave and that evening ate bear meat for supper. Father Pinnick was a bold, daring man, and even courted danger in patrolling the lonely trail between French Lick and Paoli, at a time when the Indians threatened a war of extermination. He told me that while the Quakers remained close about the Half Moon Fort he had no trouble in selling at an advanced price all the venison hams he brought into camp. He acknowledged that he got the greatest scare of his life on the trail between the two forts. He was returning from the French Lick to the Half Moon Fort one evening shortly after the assassination of William Charles. He was a little later that evening than common, treading the trail all alone as the evening shades fell about his pathway. He stopped, he listened with breathless silence thinking he might have heard the stealthy tread of an Indian. As he stood there alone in the dense forests a wild scream rent the air. His hair stood on end and his knees almost knocked together. The rustle of wings above his head caught his ear just in time to see a large owl leaving his perch for safer quarters. Father Pinnick hastened into camp and reported all quiet on the line. French Lick and Paoli leaned on each other in the infancy of civilization, Business relations have held them together for years, and now a railroad binds them together with bars of steel.

I never board a train to or from the springs but I see the business men of Paoli going or coming. Many hold property in both places, and soon, we trust, electric cars will pass and repass every hour in the day. Since writing this chapter on the two forts and the relation of the people in the two settlements I visited the half Moon Spring and the site of the fort. It lies about four miles southeast of Paoli on the lands of Adolphus Braxtan. i viewed the big springs and tried to imagine how it must have looked when the first white settlers gazed on its pure, deep, clear water as it rose up from unknown depths in the earth. The fountain arises from an aperture in the ground, the pool is about forty feet across and the stream flows off in a westerly direction.

On the east side the opeing is circular, forming a half-circle. On the west side where the water enters the channel that carried it away, it is nearly straight so it forms a beautiful pool in a half-moon shape, and from this perculiarity it received it peculiar name, the Half Moon Spring. The water is cold and pure; it must have charmed the daring emigrants who quenched their thirst and rested beneath the grand old trees that stood thick in all the valley.

So here they built their camp fires, and then looked about for game to satisfy their hunger. Proceeding south about half a mile they found plenty of deer. The animals were remarkably tame and the hunters soon had enough venison for supper and breakfast. On the next morning they proceeded to the spot where game was so abundant on the evening before. They found paths leading from every direction and centering at a certain spring. It soon developed that the waters of this spring was impregnated with minerals and that the deer came to lick the water and the wet rocks about the place. These settlers named the place "The Lick." And shortly afterwards they named the creek that has its source in the Half Moon Spring "Lick Creek," and it has borne the name ever since.

Joseph Hall, an old gentleman of seventy-six summers, accompanied me to the place. He is a man who has been familiar with the place from his childhood. While Mr. Hall did not witness what took place in the very earliest days of its settlement, he is yet able to give some traditional history and point out the spot where the Half Moon fort stood. I walked with him and stood on this important spot of earth. I imagined how the block house surrounded by a ditch and perhaps further protected by timbers set in the ground making a fence some eight or ten feet high.

This place of refuge must have given security to the emigrants who gathered in the sure defense on the alarm being given that the Indians were coming. Then I went back with Joe and gazed once more into the green waters, whose depths have never been fathomed. Then Joe went off into tradition about a man once riding into the spring and lost his gun and his horse, and barely escaped with his life. Then I put on the wings of imagination and manufactured the following story: About ninety years ago some twenty-five hunters had made this place their headquarters, some half dozen had their wives with them and new cbins were going up and corn patches being cleared. Emigrants from North Carolina and some from Kentucky were arriving almost every day and received a warm welcome from the settlers. One afternnon there arrived a bold looking man, he wore buckskin pants and a cap made from a coon skin, the tail of the coon standing up like a ockade. He rode a fine horse and carried a long rifle. After saluting the settlers the newcomer before dismounting rode boldly into the spring to water his horse.

The animal turned a somersault, landing the hunter about the center of the great pool. The man swanm out but the horse and gun went down out of sight. The horse was drowned and all effort to recover the gun failed. Down deep in the depths of the Half Moon Spring that gun remains, perhaps never to be redeemed from its resting place in the hidden depths of one of nature's most beautiful fountains of pure cold water. Nothing remains now to indicate that this beautiful spring (the source of Lick Creek) was ever the property of the Red man, save a few Indiana arrow heads scattered over the fields nearby, and the dim outlines of an old Indiana fort a few miles lower down the stream. Domestic animals have superseded the wild beast and civilized man holds in his strong hand the everlasting possession of a new world.