Quoting again from Collins' History of Kentucky. The following story is presented for its interest. Tales of heroics are often embellished over the years as the story is passed from person to person. Did Big Joe actually engage in the following fight? Did it happen as he told the story? I'll leave it up to you the reader as Big Joe had quite a reputation! "Big Joe Logston - about the year 1790, an individual, known as "Big Joe Logston," removed from near the source of the north branch of the Potomac to Kentucky, and resided many years in the family of Andrew Barnett, in Greene county. He subsequently removed to Illinois. Big Joe seems to have been a rare chap. Mr. Felix Renick has given some anecdotes of him in the Western Pioneer, in which he says - "No Kentuckian could ever, with greater propriety than he, have said, 'I can out-run, out-hop, thrown down, drag out, and whip any man in the country.'" The following account is given by Mr. Renick of a desperate fight between Joe and two Indians: "The Indians made a sudden attack, and all that escaped were driven into a rude fort for preservation, and, though reluctantly, Joe was one. This was a new life to him, and did not at all suit his taste. He soon became very restless, and every day insisted on going out with others to hunt up the cattle. Knowing the danger better, or fearing it more, all persisted in their refusal to go with him. To indulge his taste for the woodman's life, he turned out alone, and rode till after part of the day without finding any cattle. What the Indians had not killed, were scared off. He concluded to return to the fort. Riding along a path which led in, he came to a fine vine of grapes. He turned into the path and rode carelessly along, eating his grapes, and the first intimation he had of danger, was the crack of two rifles, one from each side of the road. One of these balls passed through the paps of his breast, which, for a male, were remarkably prominent, almost as much so as that of many nurses. The ball just grazed the skin between the paps, but did not injure the breast bone. The other ball struck his horse behind the saddle, and he sunk in his tracks. Thus was Joe eased off his horse in a manner more rare than welcome. Still he was on his feet in an instant, with his rifle in his hands, and might have taken to his heels; and I will venture the opinion, that no Indian could have caught him. That, he said, was not his sort. He had never left a battle ground without leaving his mark, and he was resolved that that should not be the first. The moment the guns fired, one very athletic Indian sprang towards him with tomahawk in hand. His eye was on him, and his gun to his eye, ready, as soon as he approached near enough to make a sure shot, to let him have it. As soon as the Indian discovered this, he jumped behind two pretty large saplings, some small distance apart, neither of which were large enough to cover his body, and to save himself as well as he could, he kept springing from one to the other. "Joe, knowing he had two enemies on the ground, kept a look out for the other by a quick glance of the eye. He presently discovered him behind a tree loading his gun. The tree was not quite large enough to hide him. When in the act of pushing down his bullet, he exposed pretty fairly his hips. Joe, in the twinkling of an eye, wheeled and let him have his load in the part so exposed. . The big Indian then, with a mighty "ugh!" rushed towards him with his raised tomahawk. Here were two warriors met, each determined to conquer or die - each the Goliath of his nation. The Indian had rather the advantage in size of frame, but Joe in weight and muscular strength. The Indian made a halt at the distance of fifteen or twenty feet, and threw his tomahawk with all his force, but Joe had his eye on him, and dodged it. It flew quite out of the reach of either of them. Joe then clubbed his gun, and made at the Indian, thinking to knock him down. The Indian sprang into some brush or saplings to avoid his blows. The Indian depended entirely on dodging, with the help of the saplings. At length Joe, thinking he had a pretty fair chance, made a side blow with such force, that, missing the dodging Indian, the gun, now reduced to the naked barrel, was drawn quite out of his hands, and flew entirely out of reach. The Indian now gave an exulting "ugh!" and sprang at him with all the savage fury he was master of. Neither of them had a weapon in his hands, and the Indian, seeing Logston bleeding freely, thought he could throw him down and dispatch him. In this he was mistaken. They seized each other, and a desperate struggle ensued. Joe could throw him down, but could not hold him down. The Indian being naked, with his hide oiled, had greatly the advantage in a ground scuffle, and would still slip out of Joe's grasp and rise. After throwing him five or six times, Joe found that, between the loss of blood and violent exertions, his wind was leaving him, and that he must change the mode of warfare, or lose his scalp, which he was not yet willing to spare. He threw the Indian again, and without attempting to hold him, jumped from him, and as he rose, aimed a fist blow at his head, which caused him to fall back, and as he would rise, Joe gave him several blows in succession, the Indian rising slower each time. He at length succeeded in giving him a pretty fair blow in the burr of the ear, with all his force, and he fell, as Joe thought, pretty near dead. Joe jumped o him, and thinking he could dispatch him by choking, grasped his neck with his left hand, keeping his right free for contingencies. Joe soon found out that the Indian was not so dead as he thought, and that he was making some use of his right arm, which lay across his body, and on casting his eye down, discovered that the Indian was making an effort to unsheathe a knife which was hanging at his belt. The knife was short, and so sunk in the sheath, that it was necessary to force it up by pressing against the point. This the Indian was trying to effect, and with good success. Joe kept his eye on it, and let the Indian work the handle out, when he suddenly grabbed it, jerked it out of the sheath, and sunk it up to the handle in the Indian's breast, who gave a death groan and expired. "Joe now thought of the other Indian, and not knowing how far he had succeeded in killing or crippling him, sprang to his feet. He found the crippled Indian had crawled some distance towards them, and had propped his broken back against a log and was trying to raise his gun to shoot him, but in attempting to do which he would fall forward and had to push against his gun to raise himself again. Joe seeing that he was safe, concluded that he had fought long enough for healthy exercise that day, and not liking to be killed by a crippled Indian, he made for the fort. He got in about nightfall, and a hard looking case he was - blood and dirt from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, no horse, no hat, no gun, with an account of the battle that some of his comrades could scarce believe to be much else than one of his big stories, in which he would sometimes indulge. He told them they must go and judge for themselves. "Next morning a company was made up to go to Joe's battle ground. When they approached it, Joe's accusers became more confirmed, as there was no appearance of dead Indians, and nothing Joe had talked of but the dead horse. They however found a trail as if something had been dragged away. On pursuing it they found the big Indian, at a little distance, beside a log, covered up with leaves. Still pursuing the trail, though not so plain, some hundred yards farther, they found the broken backed Indian, lying on his back with his own knife sticking up to the hilt in his body, just below the breast bone, evidently to show that he had killed himself, and that he had not come to his end by the hand of an enemy. They had a long search before they found the knife with which Joe killed the big Indian. They at last found it, forced down into the ground below the surface, apparently by the weight of a person's heel. This had been done by the crippled Indian. The great efforts that he must have made, alone, in that condition, show, among the thousands of other instances, what Indians are capable of under the greatest extremities. © Copyright 20 Oct 2005, Sandra K. Gorin. Sandi's Puzzlers: http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~gensoup/gorin/puz.html SCKY Links: http://www.public.asu.edu/~moore/Gorin.html GGP: http://ggpublishing.tripod.com/