By Harry Enoch
Contributing Writer
During Kentucky’s settlement period, the pioneers lost an incredible number of horses on the frontier. Some of them just ran off, but great numbers were taken during hostilities with Native Americans. According to Kentucky’s first federal judge, Harry Innes, 20,000 horses were carried off between 1783 and 1790. One of the pioneers said the Shawnee stole so many horses that it sometimes seemed the whites were raising them for the Indians. Another remarked, “The first moonlight night in March, you would hear the men hollering out, ‘Boys, put up your horses. If you don’t, the Indians will get them.’”
Though Indians were always blamed by the early settlers, whites were guilty of stealing horses too. As one of the pioneers later recalled, “They hung men for stealing horses after the treaty by Wayne—in numbers. It was all attributed to the Indians before.”
Stealing horses had long been a capital offense under Virginia law, which Kentucky adopted outright under our first constitution in 1792. Kentucky’s early court system was quite different from today’s. Until replaced by the circuit courts in 1803, the County Court of Quarter Sessions had jurisdiction over civil and criminal matters but could not try capital offenses. The latter were referred to a higher court, called the Court of Oyer and Terminer, which means “to hear and decide.” This court met three times a year in Lexington.