the war came on and the dangers became more threatening, a great many of the settlers forsook their farms and betook themselves to more protected territory. Others remained, however, and Dillon tells us that "in the course of the spring and summer of the year remained, however, and Dillon tells us that "in the course of the spring and summer of the year 1812 blockhouses or picketed forts were erected throughout the Indiana Territory." The following year the military authorities built more. Of many of these no specific record remains but in various local chronicles a number are mentioned and the localities of some of them given. The very outpost of them all, if we except Fort Wayne, which was entirely isolated from the frontier, was Fort Harrison. In Sullivan County there was one about midway between New Lebanon and Carlisle, and one near the Wabash River some distance above Merom. In Knox County, we are told, forts were erected in every neighborhood, and five are specified in Widner Township. In Daviess County ten are mentioned, and in Jackson three, one of them at Vallonia. In the north part of Union were two and in Wayne three or four, one of these being about four miles west of Richmond and another a mile north of Washington. We also find tradition of several in Jefferson County.

An anecdote or two will show that amid these preparations for grim war the American sense of humor was not wanting. One of the stockades in Knox County was known as "Fort Petticoat," because, the men being absent in the army, its defense depended chiefly upon the women. In Jackson County when one of the forts was building four or five practical jokers, pretending to be Indians, tried to scare a green "Dutchman" in the woods but he showed fight in such deadly earnest that the jokers ignominiously fled.

The Rev. W. C. Smith, a settler of the Whitewater region, father of the historian W. H. Smith, describes in an interesting book of reminiscences ("Indiana Miscellany") to old log forts. The stockade consisted of "two rows of split timber, twelve to fourteen feet long, planted in the ground two-and-a-half or three feet deep. The timbers of the second row were so placed as to cover the cracks of the first. Small cabins were erected inside of the stockades for the accommodation of the families. Usually one blockhouse was built in each fort. The blockhouses were two stories high, the upper story projecting over the lower, say two feet, with portholes in the floor of the projection so that the men could see to shoot the Indians if they succeeded in getting to the walls of the blockhouse." Sometimes two of these blockhouses were built at opposite corners of the stockade in such a manner that the projecting story of each commanded two of the outer walls. Many of the blockhouses, built for temporary refuge in emergencies, had no stockade but were simply two-story buildings with portholes and the second story overhanging. Many of the residence cabins, also, were provided with portholes and built strongly for defense.