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The next man to settle there was Jessie Perry. He settled two miles above America. No one else now came for about two years. The nearest settlement was about forty miles off, being about Jonesborough. We had no communication with the outside world, there being no post office nor mail carriers. Our meal was pounded or ground in a little hand mill. If we wanted meat, a deer, bear or turkey could be had, or fish if we preferred it. Our food was plain, but the kind that makes people strong and healthy. Flour and sugar could not be got, and coffee was unknown in the western world.

In the year 1807 Thomas Clark settled and built his house on the mound where Mound City now stands. A man by the name of Humphrey was the next to come. He settled where Caledonia now is. Solomon Hess next came and located at the mouth of what was afterward called Hess bayou. A man by the name of Kennedy, I now forget his given name, was living on Clark's place near the mound at the time of the massacre. George Hacker was the first to settle on Cache River, stopping there I think in 1806. His place as about six miles from the mouth of the river. John Shaver settled there soon after him. Rice Sams and William Sams located there a year or two before the war of 1812. These were all that had settled in that wilderness prior to the war of 1812. up to this time and for several years afterward we had no elections, neither did we pay any taxes, which is very different, I suppose, from what you are doing there now.

The war now caused emigration to that country to cease for several years. The Indians became very troublesome, so much so that for self-protection it was necessary that the citizens should come together. My father's house was accordingly selected as the best place to make a defense. It was accordingly changed to a block house, and the settlers nearly all 'forted" up there. The Indians had a regular crossing about one mile above our house, and it was here that old Tecumseh crossed the Ohio River when he went South to incite the Creeks and other tribes to go to war. The crossing was at the mouth of a little creek about one mile above America.

Thomas Clark remained at the mound until February 1813, when he and his wife, Kennedy and his wife, and their son about twelve years old, William Phillips and Miss Phillips, his sister, were all massacred by the Indians. John Shaver was there at the time and received a very bad tomahawk wound in the forehead, but succeeded in making his escape and brought news of the massacre t our fort. A company of men, of whom my father was one, then went to the mound and buried all the victims that could be found. William Phillips and his sister having got into the river, were not found for some time afterward. he was found holding fast to a root, where he had jumped in, while she was found a half mile below lodged in a drift pile. None of the bodies were mutilated except that of Mrs. Kennedy and she was found to have been most terribly treated. Being pregnant, she was disemboweled, the infant taken and hung upon the corner of the house.