being now twelve o'clock, the action continued with unabated severity.
The close underwood, the ravines and fallen trees, favored the Indians;
and while the bravest of their warriors fought from behind these
coverts, others were throwing their dead into the Ohio, and carrying
off their wounded. In their slow retreat, the Indians, about one
o'clock, gained a very advantageous position, from which it appeared to
our officers so difficult to dislodge them, that it was deemed
advisable to maintain the line as then formed, which was about a mile
and a quarter in length. In this position, the action was continued,
with more or less severity, until sundown, when, night coming on, the
Indians effected a safe retreat.[A]

[Footnote A: Official Report, xii. vol., Niles Register.]

McClung, in his valuable Sketches of Western Adventure, in describing
this sanguinary battle, speaks of the Indians fighting from behind a
breastwork; Stone, in his Life of Brant, says the Indians were forced
to avail themselves of a rude breastwork of logs and brushwood, which
they had taken the precaution to construct for the occasion. There must
be some mistake in regard to this breastwork, as it is evident from the
circumstances of the case, that the Indians could not, before the
battle, have erected one so near the camp without discovery; and after
the action commenced, it was too fiercely prosecuted for a rampart of
this kind to have been thrown up.

In regard to the number killed on either side, there is no very certain
information. Doddridge, in his Notes on the Indian wars, places the
number of whites killed in this action at seventy-five, and the wounded
at one hundred and forty. Campbell, in his History of Virginia, says
the number of whites who were killed was upwards of fifty, and that