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 and further into the forest, and the tribes followed them. By doing nothing more than burning the harvest fields and ruining the important springs, the whites were slowly but surely conquering the trans-Ohio country. By such a process one river valley after another was deserted, until, when the first legalized settlement was made in Ohio—at Marietta, in 1788—the Muskingum, Scioto and Miami valleys were practically deserted by redskins. Little as the Indians relished the new settlement at Marietta, they paid practically no attention to it but kept their eyes on the populated valleys of Kentucky, where their enemies of so many years' standing had settled, held their own, and then carried fire and sword northward. In October 1788 Governor Arthur St. Clair wrote the Hon. Mr. Brown of Danville, Kentucky, to give warning of the Indian war that seemed imminent; "The stroke, if it falls at all, will probably fall upon your country," he wrote. And the Indian War of 1790 was