Chronicles of Border Warfare / or, a History of the Settlement by the Whites, of North-Western Virginia, and of the Indian Wars and Massacres in that section of the Indian Wars and Massacres in that section of the State

The venerable Mark L. Spotts, an intelligent and long-time resident of Lewisburg, West Virginia, writes, in December, 1890: “I had an old and particular friend, Mr. Thomas Matthews, of this place, who, many years ago, conceived the idea of preparing and publishing a revised edition of Withers’s Border Warfare, and no doubt had collected many facts looking to such a publication; but the old man’s health gave way, he died, and his widow moved away, and what became of his notes, I can not say––perhaps destroyed.”––L. C. D.

Footnotes for Introduction: Chapter 1

The author errs somewhat in his review of the voyages of the Cabots. In 1497, John set out to reach Asia by way of the north-west, and sighted Cape Breton, for which the generous king gave him £10 and blessed him with “great honours.” In 1498, Sebastian’s voyage was intended to supplement his father’s; his exploration of the coast extended down to the vicinity of Chesapeake Bay.––R. G. T.

This refers to the explorations of Jacques Cartier. But as early as 1534 Cartier sailed up the estuary of the St. Lawrence “until land could be seen on either side;” the following year he ascended the river as far as the La Chine rapids, and wintered upon the island mountain there which he named Mont Real. It was in 1541 that he made his third voyage, and built a fort at Quebec. The author’s reference, a few lines below, to a “Spanish sailor” in the St. Lawrence, is the result of confusion over Cartier’s first voyages; Cortereal was at Newfoundland for the Portuguese in 1500; and Gomez for Spain in 1525.––R. G. T.

The author wrote at too early a date to have the benefit of Parkman’s researches. La Salle had probably discovered the Ohio River four years before the voyage of Joliet and Marquette.––R. G. T.

It is said, that Georgia, at an early period of her colonial existence, endeavored by legislative enactment to prevent the importation of slaves into her territory, but that the King of England invariably negatived those laws, and ultimately Oglethorpe was dismissed from office, for persevering in the endeavor to accomplish so desirable an object. It is an historical fact that slaves were not permitted to be taken into Georgia, for some time after a colony was established there.

Footnotes for Introduction: Chapter 2

“If a learned man of Tobolski or Pekin were to read some of our books, be might in this way demonstrate, that the French are descended from the Trojans. The most ancient writings, he might say, and those in most esteem in France, are romances: these were written in a pure language, derived from the ancient Romans, who were famous for never advancing a falsehood. Now upwards of twenty of these authentic books, affirm that Francis, the founder of the monarchy of the Franks, was son to Hector. The name of Hector has ever since been preserved by this nation; and even in the present century one of the greatest generals was called Hector de Villars.

“The neighboring nations (he would continue,) are so unanimous in acknowledging this truth, that Ariosto, one of the most learned of the Italians, owns in his Orlando, that Charlemagne’s knights fought for Hector’s helmet. Lastly, there is one proof which admits of no reply; namely, that the ancient Franks to perpetuate the memory of the Trojans, their ancestors, built a new city called Troye, in the province of Champagne; and these modern Trojans have always retained so strong an aversion to their enemies, the Greeks, that there is not at present four persons in the whole province of Champagne, who will learn their language; nay, they would never admit any Jesuits among them; probably because they had heard it said, that some of that body used formerly to explain Homer in their public schools.”

Proceeding in this manner, M. de Voltaire shows how easily this hypothesis might be overturned; and while one might thus demonstrate that the Parisians are descended from the Greeks, other profound antiquarians might in like manner prove them to be of Egyptian, or even of Arabian extraction; and although the learned world might much puzzle themselves to decide the question, yet would it remain undecided and in uncertainty.––Preface to the Life of Peter the Great.

In a small work entitled “Ancient History of the Six Nations,” written by David Cusick, an educated Indian of the Tuscarora village, frequent mention is made of the actual presence among them, of Tarenyawagua, or Holder of the Heavens, who guided and directed them when present, and left rules for their government, during his absence. Several miracles performed by him are particularly mentioned. It likewise speaks of the occasional visits of Angels or ‘agents of the Superior power’ as they are called by Cusick; and tells of a visitor who came among the Tuscaroras long anterior to the discovery of America by Columbus. “He appeared to be a very old man, taught them many things, and informed them that the people beyond the great water had killed their Maker, but that he rose again. The old man died among them and they buried him––soon after some person went to the grave and found that he had risen; he was never heard of afterwards.”

In confirmation of this tradition among the Indians, the following somewhat singular circumstance related by Mr. Carver, may with propriety be adduced:

While at Grand Portage, from the number of those who were there and the fact that the traders did not arrive as soon as was expected, there was a great scarcity of provisions, and much consequent anxiety as to the period of their arrival. One day, Mr. Carver says, that while expressing their wishes for the event, and looking anxiously to ascertain if they could be seen on the Lake, the chief Priest of the Kilistines told them that he would endeavor in a conference with the Great Spirit, to learn at what time the traders would arrive: and the following evening was fixed upon for the spiritual conference.

When every preparation had been made, the king conducted Mr. Carver to a spacious tent, the covering of which was so drawn up as to render visible to those without, every thing which passed within. Mr. Carver being seated beside the king within the tent, observed in the centre a place of an oblong shape, composed of stakes stuck at intervals in the ground, forming something like a coffin, and large enough to contain the body of a man. The sticks were far enough from each other to admit a distinct view by the spectators, of what ever passed within them; while the tent was perfectly illuminated.

When the Priest entered, a large Elk-skin being spread on the ground, he divested himself of all his clothing, except that around his middle, and laying down on the skin enveloped himself (save only his head) in it. The skin was then bound round with about forty yards of cord, and in that situation he was placed within the ballustrade of sticks.

In a few seconds he was heard to mutter, but his voice, gradually assuming a higher tone, was at length extended to its utmost pitch, and sometimes praying, he worked himself into such an agitation as to produce a foaming at the mouth. To this succeeded a speechless state of exhaustion, of short duration; when suddenly springing on his feet, and shaking off the skin, as easily as if the bands with which it had been lashed around him, were burned asunder, he addressed the company in a firm and audible voice: “My Brothers, said he, the Great Spirit has deigned to hold a talk with his servant. He has not indeed told me when the traders will be here; but tomorrow when the sun reaches the highest point in the heavens, a canoe will arrive, the people in that canoe will inform us when the traders will arrive.”

Mr. Carver adds that on the next day at noon a canoe was descried on the lake at the distance of about three miles,––completely verifying the prediction of the High Priest, in point of time. From the people on board this canoe they learned that the traders would be at the portage on the second day thereafter, at which time they actually did arrive.

Indian traditions by Cusick.

Footnotes for Introduction: Chapter 3

It is said that the nerves of an Indian do not shrink as much, nor shew the same tendency to spasm, under the knife of the surgeon, as the nerves of a white man in a similar situation.

A Narraganset, made prisoner by Maj. Talcott in 1679, begged to be delivered to the Mohicans that he might be put to death in their own way. The New Englanders complying with his request, preparations were made for the tragical event. “The Mohicans, formed a circle, and admitting within it as many of the whites as chose to witness their proceedings, placed the prisoner in the centre. One of the Mohicans, who had lost a son in the late engagement, with a knife cut off the prisoner’s ears! then his nose! and then the fingers off each hand! after the lapse of a few moments, his eyes were dug out, and their sockets filled with hot embers!! All this time the prisoner instead of bewailing his fate, seemed to surpass his tormentors in expressions of joy. At length when exhausted with loss of blood and unable to stand, his executioner closed the tragic scene by beating out his brains with a tomahawk.”––Indian Wars, by Trumbull.

Indians consider the running of the gauntlet, as but the ceremony of an introduction; and say that it is “like the shake hands and howde do, of the whites.”

While performing this tour, Tecumseh carried a red stick, the acceptance of which was considered a joining of his party––Hence those Indians who were hostile to the United States, were denominated Red Sticks.

Pope has very finely expressed the leading articles of religion among the Indians in the following lines.

Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor’d mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;
His soul proud science never taught to stray
Far as the Solar Walk or Milky Way;
Yet simple nature to his hope has giv’n,
Behind the cloud-topt hill an humbler heav’n;
Some safer world in depth of woods embrac’d,
Some happier island in the wat’ry waste;
Where slaves once more their native land behold,
No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold.
To BE, contents his natural desire,
He asks no angel’s wing, no seraph’s fire:
But thinks admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company.

The author’s summary of Indian character is for the most part excellent, and in accord with more recent conclusions. See Chap. I. of The Colonies, in “Epochs of American History” (Longmans, 1892.)––R. G. T.

Gen. George Rogers Clark, an early and careful observer, scouted the idea advanced by Noah Webster, in Carey’s American Museum, in 1789, that these extraordinary Western military defenses were the work of De Soto. “As for his being the author of these fortifications,” says Clark, “it is quite out of the question; they are more numerous than he had men, and many of them would have required fifty thousand men for their occupancy.”––L. C. D.

Indian traditions, by Cusick.

This description, written by Withers in 1831, still holds good in the main. The mound, which proves to have been a burial tumulus, is now surrounded by the little city of Moundsville, W. Va., and is kept inclosed by the owner as one of the sights of the place. The writer visited it in May, 1894.––R. G. T.

George Rogers Clark, who was repeatedly at Cahokia during the period 1778-80, says: “We easily and evidently traced the town for upwards of five miles in the beautiful plain below the present town of Kahokia. There could be no deception here, because the remains of ancient works were thick––the whole were mounds, etc.” Clark’s MS. statement; Schoolcraft’s Indian Tribes, IV., p. 135.––L. C. D.

This mound was used, at least in part, for burial purposes. Nearly fifty years ago, when the writer of this note explored this remarkable artificial elevation of eighty feet in height, he found in the excavation numerous beads of shell or bone, or both, ornaments of the dead buried there.––L. C. D.

This proves nothing. A silver medal of John Quincy Adams’s administration, evidently presented to some Indian chief was, in 1894, found in Wisconsin, twelve feet below the surface. Iron and silver tools and ornaments, evidently made in Paris for the Indian trade, have been found in Ohio and Wisconsin mounds. It is now sufficiently demonstrated that the mound-builders were the ancestors of the aborigines found in the country by the first white settlers, and that the mounds are of various ages, ranging perhaps from three hundred to a thousand years. Various Reports of the Bureau of Ethnology go into the matter with convincing detail.––R. G. T.

Jacob Wolf, in digging a well on Hacker’s creek, found a piece of timber which had been evidently cut off at one end, twelve or thirteen feet in the ground––marks of the axe were plainly distinguishable on it.

Footnotes for Chapter 1

King Shingiss was a famous village chief, “a terror to the frontier settlements of Pennsylvania.” A brother, and later the successor of King Beaver, his camp was at the mouth of Beaver Creek, which empties into the Ohio twenty-six miles below “the forks” (site of Pittsburg). Christopher Gist visited him November 24, 1750. In 1759, when Fort Pitt was built, Shingiss moved up Beaver Creek to Kuskuskis on the Mahoning, and finally to the Muskingum. The land about the mouth of Beaver Creek is called “Shingis Old Town” in the Ft. Stanwix treaty, 1784.––R. G. T.

The numbers here set down and those given below, are as they were ascertained by Capt. Hutchins, who visited the most of the tribes for purpose of learning their population in 1768.

A tradition among the Delawares says that formerly the Catawbas came near one of their hunting camps and remaining in ambush at night sent two or three of their party round the camp with Buffalo hoofs fixed to their feet, to make artificial buffalo tracks and thus decoy the hunters from their camp. In the morning the Delawares, discovering the tracks and supposing them to have been made by buffaloes, followed them some time; when suddenly the Catawbas rose from their covert, fired at and killed several of the hunters; the others fled, collected a party and went in pursuit of the Catawbas. These had brought with them, rattle snake poison corked up in a piece of cane stalk; into which they dipped small reed splinters, which they set up along their path. The Delawares in pursuit were much injured by those poisoned splinters, and commenced retreating to their camp. The Catawbas discovering this, turned upon their pursuers, and killed and scalped many of them.

John Peter Salling, sometimes spoken of as Peter Adam Salling, was, if not of German birth, of German descent. With his brother Henry, he early settled in the forks of James River and North Branch, in the southern part of what is now Rockbridge county, Va. The details of his early explorations in the West are involved in doubt, but that he had such adventures there seems no good reason to doubt. It will be noticed that Withers omits the date; some writers have placed it at about 1724, but the probable time was 1738-40. His descendants told Draper (about 1850) that the family tradition was, that Salling and a son were employed by the governor of Virginia to explore the country to the southwest; and when near the present Salem, Roanoke county, they were captured by Cherokees and carried to the Ohio River––one account says by way of the Tennessee, another by the New (Great Kanawha), their boat being made of buffalo skins. They appear by this tradition to have escaped, and in descending the Mississippi to have fallen into the hands of Spaniards. The son died, and the father was sent in a vessel bound for Spain, there to be tried as a British spy; but the Spaniard being captured by an English vessel, our hero was landed at Charleston, whence he reached his frontier home after an absence of over three years. This story differs in many details from the one in Kercheval’s History of the Valley of Virginia, and also that in Withers’s text, above. Salling kept a journal which was extant in 1745, for in the Wisconsin Historical Society’s library is a diary kept by Capt. John Buchanan, who notes that in that year he spent two days in copying a part of it. In Du Pratz’ History of Louisiana (London, 1774), Salling and one John Howard are said to have made this trip in 1742, and the authority is said to be a Report of the Government of Virginia. But Salling must have returned home by 1742, for his name is in the roll of Capt. John McDowell’s militia company, and he was probably in the fight with the Indians (Dec. 14) that year, in which McDowell lost his life. In 1746, we found Salling himself a militia captain in the Rockbridge district of Augusta county. In September, 1747, he was cited to appear at court martial for not turning out to muster––and this is the last record we have of him. Descendants, named Sallee, now live in Kentucky and Tennessee.––R. G. T.

John Lewis, the father of Gen. Andrew Lewis, was probably of Welsh descent, and born in 1678 in County Donegal, Ireland. About 1716 he married Margaret Lynn, of the famous Lynns of Loch Lynn, Scotland. In a dispute over his tenancy (1729), he killed a man of high station,––some say, his Catholic landlord,––and fled to Portugal, whence in 1731, after strange adventures, he emigrated to America, and was joined there by his family. Fearing to live near a sea-port he established himself on the frontier, in the Valley of Virginia, two miles east of the present site of Staunton. His house was of stone, built for defense, and in 1754 it successfully stood an Indian siege. Lewis was colonel of the Augusta county militia as early as 1743, presiding justice in 1745, and high sheriff in 1748. In 1751, then 73 years of age, he assisted his son Andrew, then agent of the Loyal Company, to explore and survey the latter’s grant on Greenbrier River. It was because the old man became entangled in the thicket of greenbriers, that he gave this name to the stream. He died at his old fort homestead, February 1, 1762, aged 84 years. Some accounts state that he was a Presbyterian; he was, however, an Episcopalian.––R. G. T.

Lewis soon afterwards obtained leave from Governor Gooch to locate 100,000 acres of land in separate parcels on the waters of the Shenandoah and James rivers; and when he would go out in search of good land to locate, Mackey would accompany him to hunt buffalo. The former amassed a large estate, while the latter lived and died in comparative poverty.

As Col. John Lewis had no son Samuel, probably Thomas Lewis, the elder brother of Andrew, though near-sighted, may have engaged in buffalo hunting.––L. C. D.

Of the origin of Benjamin Borden, Sr. (the name was mispronounced Burden, on the frontier), little is known. He was probably from New Jersey, and early became a fur trader on the Virginia frontier; later he was in Lord Fairfax’s employ as a land agent. As such, he visited Governor Gooch and obtained from him several valuable tracts––one of them (October 3, 1734), Borden Manor, on Sprout run, Frederick county; another, 100,000 acres at the head of the James, on condition of locating thereon a hundred families. At the end of two years he had erected 92 cabins with as many families, and a patent was granted him November 8, 1739, for 92,100 acres. He died in 1742, before further development of his enterprise. His son Benjamin succeeded to his vast estate, but died of small-pox in 1753. In 1744, he married the widow of John McDowell, mentioned on the next page, who had been killed in the Indian fight of December 14, 1742.––R. G. T.

The daughter of John Patton subsequently became the wife of Col. W. Preston, and the mother of James Patton Preston, late a governor of Virginia.

––––

Comment by L. C. D.––This note of Mr. Withers, derived from Taylor’s sketches (mentioned below), is erroneous both as to Patton and Preston. Col. Patton’s first name was not John, but James, as both the records and his own autograph sufficiently attest. Neither did John Preston, nor his son Col. Wm. Preston, marry Col. Patton’s daughter, but John Preston married his sister. Miss Elizabeth Patton, while crossing the Shannon in a boat, met the handsome John Preston, then a young ship carpenter, and an attachment grew out of their accidental meeting. But as Miss Patton belonged to the upper class of society, there was a wide gulf between their conditions, and a runaway match was the only way out of the difficulty. Gov. James Patton Preston was named after his grand-uncle. James Patton was born in County Londonderry, Ireland, in 1692. For many years he was a prosperous navigator, and crossed the Atlantic twenty-five times with “redemptioners” for Virginia; he was also an officer in the royal navy in the wars with the Netherlands. Having obtained a grant of 120,000 acres above the Blue Ridge, he himself settled in Virginia in 1735. A man of wealth, enterprise and influence, he was a justice, sheriff, Indian treaty commissioner, and finally county lieutenant of Augusta. In 1755, he was killed by Indians while conveying ammunition to the borderers.

Capt. John McDowell was of Scotch descent, and born in Ulster, Ireland, but in early manhood came to America, settling first in Pennsylvania, and then the Virginia Valley (autumn of 1737). He at once became one of Benjamin Borden’s surveyors, and for five years made surveys on Borden’s Manor. Becoming a captain in the Augusta militia, he was ordered to go out against a party of Northern Indians who, on the war-path against the Catawbas, had taken in the Virginia Valley on their way, and annoyed and plundered the white settlers. The savages were overtaken on the North Branch of James River, some fifteen miles from McDowell’s place, and an engagement ensued (Dec. 14, 1742), in which McDowell and seven others lost their lives. The Indians escaped with small losses. This was the first battle between whites and Indians, in the Virginia Valley.––R. G. T.

This incident is well authenticated. See the deposition of Mrs. Mary Greenlee, preserved in the famous Borden land suit, among the court records of Augusta county, Va. Mrs. Greenlee was the sister of Capt. John McDowell, and among the very earliest settlers of that part of Augusta, now Rockbridge county. Mrs Greenlee’s deposition is published in full in Peyton’s History of Augusta County, Va. (Staunton, Va., 1882), pp. 69-74.––L. C. D.

The late Charles A. Stuart, of Greenbrier, son of Col. John Stuart, after the appearance of Hugh Paul Taylor’s sketches over the signature of “Son of Cornstalk,” published in the Staunton Spectator of August 21, 1829, over the signature of “Son of Blue Jacket,” a brief criticism, in the nature of some corrections regarding his own family, to this effect: That Mrs. Jane Paul was no relative of Mrs. Margaret Lewis, wife of Col. John Lewis; that her first husband, Mr. Paul––not John, but probably Hugh Paul––was apparently from the north of Ireland––their son Audley Paul was born before the migration of the family to Pennsylvania; Mr. Paul, Sr., it is said, became the pastor of the Presbyterian congregation of Chester, in that province; but as Chester was a Quaker settlement, it is more likely that he located in some Presbyterian community in that region, and there must have died. Mrs. Paul, for her second husband, married Col. David Stuart, also from Ireland, by whom she had John Stuart and two daughters. Mrs. Stuart’s grandchild, Charles A. Stuart, resided many years in Augusta, representing that county in the State senate, subsequently removed back to Greenbrier county, where he died about 1850, at the age of about sixty-five years. He was a man of sterling qualities.––L. C. D.

The following table exhibits a list of the several counties west of the Blue ridge––the counties from which each was taken––when established––their area in square miles––population in 1830, and amount of taxation for the same year.

Counties.	From what taken	When formed.	Area.	Popula- tion.	Taxa- tion.
Augusta,	Orange,	1738	948	19,925	6,734
Alleghany,	Bath, Botetourt and Monroe,	1822	521	2,816	526
Bath,	Augusta, Botetourt and Greenbrier,	1791	795	4,068	865
[47] Brooke,	Ohio,	1797	202	7,040	1,136
Berkeley,	Frederick,	1772	308	10,528	3,356
Botetourt,	Augusta,	1770	1057	16,354	3,809
Cabell,	Kanawha,	1809	1033	5,884	629
Frederick,	Orange,	1738	745	26,045	9,396
Greenbrier,	Botet’t & Montg’ry,	1778	1409	9,059	1,716
Giles,	Montgomery, Monroe and Tazewell,	1806	935	5,300	541
Grayson,	Wythe,	1793	927	7,675	537
Harrison,	Monongalia,	1784	1095	14,713	1,669
Hampshire,	Augusta & Fred’k,	1754	989	11,279	2,402
Hardy,	Hampshire,	1786	1156	5,700	2,633
Jefferson,	Berkeley,	1801	225	12,927	4,721
Kanawha,	Greenb’r & M’tg’ry,	1789	2090	9,334	1,453
Lewis,	Harrison,	1816	1754	6,241	630
Logan,	Giles, Kanawha, Cabell & Tazewell,	1824	2930	3,680	245
Lee,	Russell,	1793	512	9,461	789
Monongalia,	District of W. A’g’ta,	1776	721	14,056	1,492
Monroe,	Greenbrier,	1799	614	7,798	1,158
Morgan,	Berkeley and Hampshire,	1820	271	2,702	546
Montgomery,	Fincastle,	1777	1089	12,306	1,666
Mason,	Kanawha,	1804	904	6,534	915
Nicholas,	Kanawha, Greenbrier and Randolph,	1818	1431	3,338	373
Ohio,	District of W. A’g’ta,	1776	375	15,590	1,968
Preston,	Monongalia,	1818	601	5,144	441
Pendleton,	Augusta, Hardy and Rockingham,	1788	999	6,271	1,120
Pocahontas,	Bath, Pendleton and Randolph,	1821	794	2,542	405
Randolph,	Harrison,	1787	2061	5,000	644
Russell,	Washington,	1786	1370	6,717	739
Rockingham,	Augusta,	1778	833	20,663	5,056
Rockbridge,	Augusta & Botetourt,	1778	680	14,244	3,276
Scott,	Lee, Russell and Washington,	1814	624	5,712	503
Shehandoah,	Frederick,	1772	767	19,750	4,922
Tyler,	Ohio,	1814	855	4,308	757
Tazewell,	Russell & Wythe,	1799	1305	5,573	727
Washington,	Fincastle,	1777	1754	15,614	2,918
Wythe,	Montgomery,	1790	1998	12,163	2,178
Wood,	Harrison,	1799	1223	6,418	1,257
				–––––––	–––––––
			Total,	378,293	76,848

Little and Big Sewell mountains, dividing Fayette and Greenbrier counties, seem to perpetuate the name and memory of this early and adventurous pioneer. Col. John Stuart states, that Sewell’s final settlement was forty miles west of his primitive one, and on a creek bearing his name originating in Sewell mountain, and flowing into Gauley. Col. Preston, in his Register, gives September, 1756, as the date of Stephen Sewell’s death by the Indians, and Jackson’s River as the locality.

Mrs. Anne Royall, in Sketches of the History, Life and Manners of the United States, (New Haven, 1826), p. 60, who visited the Greenbrier country in 1824, gives the name of Carver as Sewell’s companion. “These two men,” says Mrs. Royall, “lived in a cave for several years, but at length they disagreed on the score of religion, and occupied different camps. They took care, however, not to stay far from each other, their camps being in sight. Sewell used to relate that he and his friend used to sit up all night without sleep, with their guns cocked, ready to fire at each other. ‘And what could that be for?’ ‘Why, because we couldn’t agree.’ ‘Only two of you, and could you not agree––what did you quarrel about?’ ‘Why, about re-la-gin.’ One of them, it seems, was a Presbyterian, and the other an Episcopalian.”––L. C. D.

An error as to date. King George’s proclamation was dated Oct. 7, 1763. For full text, see Wisconsin Historical Collections, XI., pp. 46 et seq.––R. G. T.

Thomas King, one of the ablest of the Iroquois chiefs, related an incident at an Indian conference held at Easton, Pa., Oct. 18, 1758, which may explain why the Indians evinced so much hostility against the Greenbrier settlements. “About three years ago,” said Chief King, “eight Seneca warriors were returning from war, with seven prisoners and scalps with them; and, at a place called Greenbrier, they met with a party of soldiers, not less than one hundred and fifty, who kindly invited them to come to a certain store, saying they would supply them with provisions. Accordingly they travelled two days with them, in a friendly manner, and when they came to the house, they took their arms from the Senecas. The head men cried out, ‘here is death; defend yourselves as well as you can,’ which they did, and two of them were killed on the spot, and one, a young boy, was taken prisoner. This gave great offense; and the more so, as it was upon the warrior’s road, and we were in perfect peace with our brethren. It provoked us to such a degree that we could not get over it. He wished the boy returned, if alive; and told his name, Squissatego.” See Hazard’s Penna. Register, V., p. 373; and Penna. Records, VIII., pp. 197-98.––L. C. D.

There were settlers on both New and Holston rivers prior to 1756––Vause, Stalnacker and others on New River; and Stephen Holston, at least, on the river bearing his name, which was known as such anterior to April, 1748, when Dr. Walker, in his Journal of 1750, refers to it by that designation. But William Campbell did not settle on Holston until 1767; Wm. Preston settled in 1769; Evan Shelby and family in 1771; and, while Daniel Boone passed through that country as early, it is believed, as 1760, he never “settled” there.

A further notice of Stephen Holston, or Holstein, seems fitting in this connection. He was of an adventurous turn, and prior to 1748 had, during a hunt, discovered the river named after him. It was after this discovery that he settled on the Little Saluda, near Saluda Old Town, in South Carolina, where, in the summer of 1753, a party of Cherokees returning from a visit to Gov. Glen, at Charleston, behaved so rudely to Mrs. Holston, in her husband’s absence, as to frighten her and her domestics away, fleeing several miles to the nearest settlement, when the house was robbed of utensils and corn, and two valuable horses were also taken. Holston and some of his neighbors settled on Holston’s River, in what subsequently became Botetourt county: soon after this, they constructed canoes, and passed down the Holston into the Tennessee River, through the Muscle Shoals, and down the Ohio and Mississippi as far as Natchez. Returning from this notable adventure, his name became fixed to the noble stream which he discovered, and upon which he made the primitive settlement. His location on Holston was at the head spring of the Middle Fork; his log cabin was on the hill side some thirty rods from the spring. In 1774, one Davis occupied the place, and related that Holston had left several years before that date. On the breaking out of the Indian war in 1754, he seems to have retired with his family to Culpeper county, which was then not exempt from Indian forays; and Holston, about 1757, was captured by the Indians. But in due time he returned to the Holston country, served in the battle of Point Pleasant in 1774, on Christian’s campaign against the Cherokees in 1776, and was reported in service in 1776 or 1777. As we hear no more of him, he probably did not long survive after this period.––L. C. D.

The first name of Walden was not Thomas––Elisha Walden was his proper name. He was a son-in-law of William Blevins, and both Walden and Blevins lived, in 1774, at the “Round-About” on Smith’s River, two miles east of what is now Martinsville, Henry county, Virginia. He was then about forty years of age, nearly six feet in height, a rough frontiersman, and a noted hunter. He and several others, in 1761, penetrated into Powell’s Valley, naming Walden’s Mountain and Walden’s Creek, and proceeded on through Cumberland Gap to Cumberland River, and a few miles beyond to the Laurel Mountain, where meeting a party of Indians, they returned. In subsequent years, Walden settled on Holston, about eighteen miles above Knoxville, where he was residing in 1796; a few years later, he removed to Powell’s Valley, but soon after migrated to Missouri, where he lived hunting up to extreme old age. Save what is related from Haywood’s Hist. of Tennessee about the trip of 1761, this information was communicated to the writer in 1849, by Maj. John Redd, of Henry county, Va., who personally knew the old hunter very well.––L. C. D.

A curious misconception, this. Some of the founders of Marietta acquired in 1788 a large tract west and north of their own, and as a private speculation organized the Scioto Company. Joel Barlow, the poet, was sent to Paris to negotiate the sale of the lands. To the “Society of the Scioto,” formed by him there, he sold three million acres, and France was deluged with rose-colored immigration pamphlets written by Barlow. In February, 1790, six hundred Frenchmen––chiefly professional men and small artisans from the large towns, with not an agriculturist among them––arrived in Alexandria, Va., en route for the Scioto. They found that the Society, not having paid for its lands, had forfeited its rights, and deeds granted to the intending settlers were void. Five hundred finally went west, and founded Gallipolis. Poor, not knowing how to work the soil, and simple folk with no notions of independence, they suffered from famine, Indians, and yellow fever. They finally repurchased their lands, and upon the cessation of the border war gained some strength; but Gallipolis was never more than a weakling until Americans and Germans came in and put it on its feet.––R. G. T.

Footnotes for Chapter 2

This is misleading. The author has told us, in the preceding chapter, of several attempts of English coast colonists to make transmontane settlements, quite apart from thought of ousting the French. Englishmen had no sooner landed in America than they attempted to cross the Western mountain barrier. Ralph Lane made the attempt in 1586, Christopher Newport and John Smith in 1606, and Newport himself in 1607. John Lederer, a German surgeon exploring for Governor Berkeley, of Virginia, reached the top of Blue Ridge in 1609, but did not descend the western slope. Two years later, Abraham Wood discovered the Great Kanawha. It is possible that the French Jesuit Le Moyne was on the Alleghany River as early as 1656. La Salle was probably at the Falls of the Ohio (Louisville) in 1669. But it was not until about 1700 that French and English fur-traders met in open rivalry on the Ohio. It was with no thought of the French that Governor Spottswood, of Virginia, passed over the Blue Ridge in 1714. The situation in short, was this: The English colonists early wanted the over-mountain country watered by the Ohio, but were too weak at first to hold for agricultural settlement lands so far from home, in the face of a savage foe. The French wanted the valley solely for the fur trade, but Iroquois opposition long kept them from entering; when at last they were able to do so, the English colonists had also grown strong enough to move in, and then ensued the long and bloody struggle in which New France fell.––R. G. T.

In the journal (drawn up for the inspection of Gov. Dinwiddie) of the events of his mission to the commander of the French forces on the Ohio; this was the first of those splendid acts of a public nature, performed by Gen. Washington.

Only five companies of the first Virginia regiment served on Braddock’s campaign––hence there was no second regiment, nor any Colonel Russell engaged in that service; there was, however, at this period, a Colonel or Lieut.-Colonel William Russell, who emigrated from England when a young lawyer, to Virginia, about 1710, and settled in Culpeper, and by the readjustment of county lines he was thrown into the new county of Orange. He was a man of much prominence, and at one time was high sheriff of Orange; and apparently lieutenant-colonel of militia, and as such, in the early part of the French and Indian War, did some frontier service, though rather advanced in years at the time. In 1753, he was sent as a commissioner to pacify the Indians in the region where Pittsburg was subsequently located. He died October 18, 1757, aged about seventy-two years. His son of the same name served with reputation at the battle of Point Pleasant, and during the Revolutionary War, retiring at its close with the brevet rank of brigadier-general.––L. C. D.

It has already been stated that Col. John Lewis’s eldest son was Thomas, not Samuel.––L. C. D.

Capt. John McDowell was killed in an engagement with the Indians, in December, 1742, and of course could not have served under either Andrew or Charles Lewis.––L. C. D.

James Smith, afterwards Col. Smith of Bourbon county in Kentucky, was then a prisoner at du Quesne. He says that the Indians in council planned the attack on Braddock’s army and selected the ground from which to make it––that the assailants did not number more than 400 men, of whom but a small proportion were French. One of the Indians laughed when he heard the order of march in Braddock’s army, and said “we’ll shoot them down all as one pigeon.” Washington beheld the event in fearful anticipation, and exerted himself in vain with Gen. Braddock, to alter the order of march.

It is evident that the author never saw the site of Braddock’s defeat, just below the mouth of Turtle Creek, for his description is quite inaccurate. June 30, 1755, the army, which had been following the Ohio Company’s road from Will’s Creek, via East Meadows, crossed the Youghiogheny and proceeding in a devious course struck the head of Turtle Creek, which was followed nearly to its mouth, whence a southern course was taken to avoid the steep hills. Reaching the Monongahela just below the mouth of the Youghiogheny, they crossed (July 9) to the west side, where there is a long, narrow bottom. Nearly opposite the mouth of Turtle Creek, and about four miles below the first crossing, hills again closely approach the west bank, and the east side becomes the more favorable for marching. Here, only eight miles across country from Fort Duquesne, Braddock forded the second time, and in angling up the rather easy slope upon which is now built the busy iron-making town of Braddock, Pa., was obliged to pass through a heavily-wooded ravine. This was the place of the ambuscade, where his army was cut to pieces. Indians from the Upper Lakes, under the leadership of Charles Langlade, a Wisconsin fur-trader, were the chief participants in this affair, on the French side.––R. G. T.

This statement about Capts. Grant and Lewis having taken part in the battle of the Monongahela, is altogether a mistake. It must have originated in some traditional account, and become confused in some way with Grant’s defeat, three years later, in which Maj. James Grant and Maj. Andrew Lewis both took a prominent part. There is no record of any Capt. Grant in Braddock’s army. Andrew Lewis, though a major, was still in command of his company, and at the time of Braddock’s defeat was on detached service. Gov. Dinwiddie, writing to Maj. Lewis, July 8, 1755, says: “You were ordered to Augusta with your company to protect the frontier of that county;” and, in a letter of the same date, to Col. Patton, the Governor adds: “Enclosed you have a letter to Capt. Lewis, which please forward to him: I think he is at Greenbrier.” Capt. Robt. Orme, aide-de-camp to Gen. Braddock, in his Journal appended to Sargent’s History of Braddock’s Expedition, states under date of April, 1755, that the Virginia troops having been clothed, were ordered to march to Winchester, for arming and drilling, and then adds: “Capt. Lewis was ordered with his company of Rangers to Greenbrier river, there to build two stockade forts, in one of which he was to remain himself and to detach to the other a subaltern and fifteen men. These forts were to cover the western settlers of Virginia from any inroads of Indians.”––L. C. D.

The MS. Journal of Col. Charles Lewis, in possession of the Wisconsin Historical Society, covering the period from October 10 to December 27, 1755, is an unconsciously eloquent picture of the hardships of life on the Virginia frontier, at this time.––R. G. T.

After the capitulation of Fort Necessity, and while some of the soldiers of each army were intermixed, an Irishman, exasperated with an Indian near him, “cursed the copper-coloured scoundrel” and raised his musket to shoot him. Gen. Lewis who had been twice wounded in the engagement, and was then hobbling on a staff, raised the Irishman’s gun, as he was in the act of firing, and thus not only saved the life of the Indian, but probably prevented a general massacre of the Virginia troops.

Congress had given to Gen. Stephens, and some others (whose senior Lewis had been in former services) commissions as Major Generals.

Thomas Bullitt was a native of Prince William county, Virginia. He was appointed an ensign in Washington’s first Virginia regiment, July 20, 1754, and promoted to a lieutenancy on October 30th following. It is said that he served in Braddock’s defeat; but the records of the Virginia officers present do not include Lieut. Bullitt’s name. He was, perhaps, with Capt. Lewis in the Greenbrier country, or on some other detached service. In May, 1756, he was stationed at Winchester; in July following, in command of Fort Frederick, on Jackson’s River, and in November of that year, in command of Fort Cumberland. He was in active service in 1757, and early the next year we find him a captain; as such, he distinguished himself in checking the enemy and saving many of the fugitives at Grant’s defeat, and shared in Gen. Forbes’s successful expedition in the capture of Fort Du Quesne. In May, 1759, while guarding with one hundred men, fifteen wagons loaded with provisions for the westward, he was attacked and defeated by a strong party of French and Indians, losing thirty-five of his party killed and prisoners and all his wagons. In 1760, he was appointed a surveyor of a district bordering on the Ohio, and had much to do in early Kentucky exploration and surveys, making an early location and survey at the Falls of Ohio in 1773. In September, 1775, he was appointed adjutant-general of all the Virginia forces; and on the 9th of December following, he aided Colonel Woodford in defeating Capt. Fordyce and party at the Great Bridge. In March, 1776, Congress appointed him deputy adjutant-general of the Southern Department with the rank of lieutenant-colonel, and advanced him in May following to the full rank of colonel. He died while yet in service, in 1778.––L. C. D.

The French destroyed Fort Duquesne in November, 1758. During the winter following, Fort Pitt was erected by the English troops. In his Journal of a Tour to the Ohio River (1770), Washington says of it: “The fort is built on the point between the rivers Alleghany and Monongahela, but not so near the pitch of it as Fort Duquesne stood. It is five-sided and regular, two of which next the land are of brick; the others stockade. A moat encompasses it.” Fort Pitt was invested by the Indians during Pontiac’s War (1763). It was fully garrisoned until 1772, when a corporal and a few men were left as care-takers. In October of that year, the property was sold, and several houses were built out of the material. In the course of the boundary dispute between Pennsylvania and Virginia, the latter colony took possession of the ruins, through Lord Dunmore’s agent there, John Conolly.––R. G. T.

The author overlooks the settlement made by Christopher Gist, the summer of 1753, in the town of Dunbar, Fayette county, Pa., two or three miles west of the Youghiogheny and some seventy miles northwest of Will’s Creek; the site was doubtless selected by him in his trip of 1751-52. Washington, who visited him there in November, 1753, on the way to Fort Le Boeuf, calls it “Gist’s new settlement,” but the owner’s name for his place was “Monongahela.” It was the first settlement of which there is record, upon the Ohio Company’s lands. Gist induced eleven families to settle near him; and on his journey home, in January, 1754, Washington met them going out to the new lands. The victory of the French over Washington, at Fort Necessity, in July, led to the expulsion from the region of all English-speaking settlers. The French commander, De Villiers, reports that he “burnt down all the settlements” on the Monongahela (from Redstone down), and in the vicinity of Gist’s.––R. G. T.

This trail was a continuation of the famous “Warrior Branch,” which coming up from Tennessee passed through Kentucky and Southern Ohio, and threading the valley of Fish Creek crossed over to Dunkard’s Creek and so on to the mouth of Redstone Creek.––R. G. T.

In Col. Preston’s MS. Register of Indian Depredations, in the Wisconsin Historical Society’s library, it is stated that Robert Foyle, wife and five children, were killed on the Monongahela in 1754. Gov. Dinwiddie, in his speech to the Virginia house of burgesses in February, 1754, refers to this barbarous affair, giving the same number of the family destroyed; and the gazettes of that period state that Robert Foyle, together with his wife and five children, the youngest about ten years of age, were killed at the head of the Monongahela; their bodies, scalped, were discovered February 4th, and were supposed to have been killed about two months before.––L. C. D.

In 1750, the Ohio Company, as a base of operations and supplies, built a fortified warehouse at Will’s Creek (now Cumberland, Md.), on the upper waters of the Potomac. Col. Thomas Cresap, an energetic frontiersman, and one of the principal agents of the Company, was directed to blaze a pack-horse trail over the Laurel Hills to the Monongahela. He employed as his guide an Indian named Nemacolin, whose camp was at the mouth of Dunlap Creek (site of the present Brownsville, Pa.), an affluent of the Monongahela. Nemacolin pointed out an old Indian trace which had its origin, doubtless, in an over-mountain buffalo trail; and this, widened a little by Cresap, was at first known as Nemacolin’s Path. It led through Little Meadows and Great Meadows––open marshes grown to grass, and useful for feeding traders’ and explorers’ horses. Washington traveled this path in 1753, when he went to warn the French at Fort Le Boeuf. Again, but widened somewhat, it was his highway in 1754, as far north as Gist’s plantation; and at Great Meadows he built Fort Necessity, where he was defeated. Braddock followed it in great part, in 1755, and henceforth it became known as “Braddock’s Road.” The present National Road from Cumberland to Brownsville, via Uniontown, differs in direction but little from Nemacolin’s Path. For a map of Braddock’s Road, see Lowdermilk’s History of Cumberland, Md., p. 140, with description on pages 51, 52, 140-148. Ellis’s History of Fayette Co., Pa., also has valuable data.

The terminus of Nemacolin’s Path was Dunlap’s Creek (Brownsville). A mile-and-a-quarter below Dunlap’s, enters Redstone Creek, and the name “Redstone” became affixed to the entire region hereabout, although “Monongahela” was sometimes used to indicate the panhandle between the Monongahela and the Youghiogheny. In 1752, the Ohio Company built a temporary warehouse at the mouth of Dunlap’s Creek, at the end of the over-mountain trail. In 1754, Washington’s advance party (Capt. Trent) built a log fort, called “The Hangard,” at the mouth of the Redstone, but this was, later in the year, destroyed by the French officer De Villiers. In 1759, Colonel Burd, as one of the features of Forbes’s campaign against Fort Duquesne, erected Fort Burd at the mouth of Dunlap’s, which was a better site. This fort was garrisoned as late as the Dunmore War (1774), but was probably abandoned soon after the Revolutionary War. The name “Redstone Old Fort” became attached to the place, because within the present limits of Brownsville were found by the earliest comers, and can still be traced, extensive earthworks of the mound-building era.––R. G. T.

Cross Creek empties into the Ohio through Mingo Bottom (site of Mingo Junction, O.). On this bottom was, for many years, a considerable Mingo village.––R. G. T.

This statement, that Capt. Audley Paul commanded at Redstone, and of his attempting to intercept a foraging Indian party, can not possibly be true. There was no fort, and consequently no garrison, at Redstone in 1758. It was not built ’till 1759, and then by Col. James Burd, of the Pennsylvania forces. James L. Bowman, a native of Brownsville, the locality of Redstone Old Fort, wrote a sketch of the history of that place, which appeared in the American Pioneer in February, 1843, in which he says: “We have seen it stated in a creditable work, that the fort was built by Capt. Paul––doubtless an error, as the Journal of Col. Burd is ample evidence to settle that matter.” Col. Burd records in his Journal: “Ordered, in Aug. 1759, to march with two hundred of my battalion to the mouth of Redstone Creek, to cut a road to that place, and to erect a fort.” He adds: “When I had cut the road, and finished the fort,” etc.

The other part of the story, about Capt. John Gibson commanding at Fort Pitt in “the fall of 1758,” is equally erroneous, as Gen. Forbes did not possess himself of Fort Duquesne till Nov. 25th, 1758, within five days of the conclusion of “fall” in that year; and Gen. Forbes commanded there in person until he left for Philadelphia, Dec. 3d following. There is, moreover, no evidence that Gibson was then in service. The story of his decapitating Kis-ke-pi-la, or the Little Eagle, if there was such a person, or of his beheading any other Indian, is not at all probable. He was an Indian trader for many years, and was made prisoner by the Indians in 1763, and detained a long time in captivity.

Gibson could not by any such decapitating exploit, have originated the designation of “Big Knife,” or “Big Knife warrior,” for this appellation had long before been applied to the Virginians. Gist says in his Journal, Dec. 7th, 1750, in speaking of crossing Elk’s Eye Creek––the Muskingum––and reaching an Indian hamlet, that the Indians were all out hunting; that “the old Frenchman, Mark Coonce, living there, was civil to me; but after I was gone to my camp, upon his understanding I came from Virginia, he called me Big Knife.” Col. James Smith, then a prisoner with the Indians, says the Indians assigned as a reason why they did not oppose Gen. Forbes in 1758, that if they had been only red coats they could have subdued them; “but they could not withstand Ash-a-le-co-a, or the Great Knife, which was the name they gave the Virginians.”––L. C. D.

––––

Comment by R. G. T.––See note on p. 77, regarding erection of early forts at Redstone. James Veech, in Monongahela of Old, says, “We know that the late Col. James Paull served a month’s duty in a drafted militia company in guarding Continental stores here [Fort Burd] in 1778.” The term “Big Knives” or “Long Knives” may have had reference either to the long knives carried by early white hunters, or the swords worn by backwoods militia officers. See Roosevelt’s Winning of the West, I., p. 197.

Footnotes for Chapter 3

Father of Dr. Archibald Alexander, sometime president of Hampden Sydney College in Virginia, and afterwards a professor at Princeton in New Jersey.

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Comment by L. C. D.––He was the grandfather of Dr. Alexander.

The attacks on the Roanoke settlement, mentioned by Withers, occurred in June and July, 1755 (not the spring of 1757, as he states); that on Greenbrier, in September following; and the expedition against the Shawnees did not take place in 1757, but in February and March, 1756. Diaries and other documents in the Wisconsin Historical Society’s library prove this. Dr. Draper estimated that Lewis’s force was about 263 whites and 130 Cherokees––418 in all. The several companies were officered by Peter Hogg, John Smith, William Preston, Archibald Alexander, Robert Breckenridge, Obadiah Woodson, John Montgomery, and one Dunlap. Two of Dr. Thomas Walker’s companions in his Kentucky exploration of 1750, were in the expedition––Henry Lawless and Colby Chew. Governor Dinwiddie had stipulated in his note to Washington, in December, 1755, that either Col. Adam Stephen or Maj. Andrew Lewis was to command. Washington having selected the latter, dispatched him from Winchester about the middle of January, 1756, with orders to hurry on the expedition. To the mismanagement of the guides is attributed much of the blame for its failure. The interesting Journals of Capt. William Preston and Lieut. Thomas Norton are in the possession of the Wisconsin Historical Society.––R. G. T.

But Gallipolis was not settled until 1790, as has been previously shown. Withers confounds the modern French town of Gallipolis, whose residents were the sad victims of Indian outrages rather than the abettors of them, with the old Shawnee town just below the mouth of the Scioto (site of Alexandria, O.). This fur-trading center was a village of log huts built by the French for the accommodation of their Shawnee allies, and was a center of frontier disturbances.––R. G. T.

Preston’s Journal does not lay much stress on Hogg’s delay. Norton’s Journal, speaking of Hogg, says, “common soldiers were by him scarcely treated with humanity,” and he seems to have regularly overruled and disobeyed Lewis. There was much rancor in camp, and Norton writes of the Cherokee allies, “The conduct and concord that was kept up among the Indians might shame us, for they were in general quite unanimous and brotherly.”––R. G. T.

This expedition was sent out under the auspices of Gov. Dinwiddie––Fauquier did not become governor until 1758. No countermanding orders were sent.––L. C. D.

Audley Paul was first lieutenant in Preston’s company.––L. C. D.

Withers, deriving his information from Taylor’s sketches, was misled as to any intention of establishing a fort at the mouth of the Kanawha; and also as to Paul’s, or any one else’s proposition to cross the Ohio, and invade the Shawnee towns. The only aim was, to reach the Upper Shawnee town.––L. C. D.

––––

Comment by R. G. T.––“Upper Shawnee town” was an Indian village at the mouth of Old Town Creek, emptying into the Ohio from the north, 39 miles above the mouth of the Great Kanawha.

If such a journal ever existed, it passed into the hands of Gov. Dinwiddie, or possibly to Gov. Fauquier; but no reference to it is found among the Dinwiddie Papers, as published by the Virginia Historical Society; nor in the Calendar of State Papers, published by the State of Virginia. It is to be remarked, however, that few of the records of that period have been preserved by that State.––L. C. D.

Shortly after, M’Nutt was appointed governor of Nova Scotia, where he remained until the commencement of the American revolution. In this contest he adhered to the cause of liberty, and joined his countrymen in arms under Gen. Gates at Saratoga. He was afterwards known as a meritorious officer in the brigade of Baron de Kalb, in the south––he died in 1811, and was buried in the Falling Spring church yard, in the forks of James river.

Preston’s MS. Register of the persons of Augusta county, Va., killed, wounded, captured by the Indians, and of those who escaped, from 1754 to May, 1758, is in the Wisconsin Historical Society’s library. It is to be regretted that Col. Preston, whose opportunities were so good, did not continue the Register till the end of the Indian wars. It is a most valuable document as far as it goes, and supplies many dates and facts hitherto involved in doubt and obscurity.––L. C. D.

Seybert’s Fort was situated on the South Fork, twelve miles northeast of Franklin, in Pendleton County. At the time of this invasion, there was a fort located on the South Branch, garrisoned by Capt. James Dunlap and a company of rangers from Augusta county. Preston’s Register states, that on the 27th of April, 1758, the fort at which Capt. Dunlap was stationed, was attacked and captured, the captain and twenty-two others killed; and, the next day, the same party, no doubt, attacked Seybert’s Fort, killing Capt. Seybert and sixteen others, while twenty-four others were missing. Washington, at the time, placed the number as “about sixty persons killed and missing.”

A gazette account, published at Williamsburg, May 5th ensuing, says: “The Indians lately took and burnt two forts, where were stationed one of our ranging companies, forty of whom were killed and scalped, and Lieut. Dunlap and nineteen missing.”

Kercheval’s History of the Valley gives some further particulars: That Seybert’s Fort was taken by surprise; that ten of the thirty persons occupying it, were bound, taken outside; the others were placed on a log and tomahawked. James Dyer, a lad of fourteen, was spared, taken first to Logstown, and then to Chillicothe, and retained a year and ten months, when as one of an Indian party he visited Fort Pitt, and managed to evade his associates while there, and finally reached the settlements in Pennsylvania, and two years later returned to the South Fork. It is added by the same historian, as another tradition, that after the fort had been invested two days, and two of the Indians had been killed, the garrison agreed to surrender on condition of their lives being spared, which, was solemnly promised. That when the gate was opened, the Indians rushed in with demoniac yells, the whites fled, but were retaken, except one person; the massacre then took place, and ten were carried off into captivity.

Still another tradition preserved by Kercheval, says the noted Delaware chief, Killbuck, led the Indians. Seybert’s son, a lad of fifteen, exhibited great bravery in the defense of the fort. Killbuck called out to Capt. Seybert, in English, to surrender, and their lives should be spared; when young Seybert at this instant, aimed his loaded gun at the chief, and the father seized it, and took it from him, saying they could not successfully defend the place, and to save their lives should surrender, confiding in Killbuck’s assurances. Capt. Seybert was among the first of those sacrificed. Young Seybert was among the prisoners, and told the chief how near he came to killing him. “You young rascal,” laughingly replied Killbuck, “if you had killed me, you would have saved the fort, for had I fallen, my warriors would have immediately fled, and given up the siege in despair.”––L. C. D.

The name is Renick. Robert Renick, who was killed on the occasion referred to, was a man of character and influence in his day. His name appears on Capt. John Smith’s company roll of Augusta militia as early as 1742; and four years later, he was lieutenant of a mounted company of Augusta militia. Instead of 1761, the captivity of the Renick family occurred July 25, 1757, as shown by the Preston Register, which states that Renick and another were killed on that day––Mrs. Renick and seven children, and a Mrs. Dennis, captured; and the same day, at Craig’s Creek, one man was killed and two wounded. The Renick traditions state that Mrs. Renick had only five children when taken; and one born after reaching the Indian towns; and corrects some other statements not properly related in Withers’s narrative of the affair.––L. C. D.

In 1763-65, the great Shawnee village just below the mouth of the Scioto (site of Alexandria, O.), was destroyed by floods. Some of the tribesmen rebuilt their town on a higher bottom just above the mouth (site of Portsmouth, O.), while others ascended the Scioto and built successively Old and New Chillicothe.––R. G. T.

Where Ballard Smith now resides.

Further particulars of this captivity are in Royall’s Sketches of History, Life, and Manners in U. S. (New Haven, 1826), pp. 60-66.––R. G. T.

Carpenter’s son (since Doctor Carpenter of Nicholas) came home about fifteen years afterwards––Brown’s youngest son, (the late Col. Samuel Brown of Greenbrier) was brought home in 1769––the elder son never returned. He took an Indian wife, became wealthy and lived at Brown’s town in Michigan. He acted a conspicuous part in the late war and died in 1815.

––––

Comment by L. C. D.––Adam Brown, who was captured as mentioned in the above text and note, was thought by his last surviving son, Adam Brown, Jr., whom I visited in Kansas in 1868, to have been about six years old when taken; and he died, he thought, about 1817, at about seventy-five years of age. But these dates, and his probable age, do not agree; he was either older when taken, or not so old at his death. The mother was killed when the sons were captured, and the father and some others of the family escaped. The late William Walker, an educated Wyandott, and at one time territorial governor of Kansas, stated to me, that the Wyandotts never made chiefs of white captives, but that they often attained, by their merits, considerable consequence. It is, however, certain that Abraham Kuhn, a white prisoner, grew up among the Wyandotts, and, according to Heckewelder, became a war chief among them, and signed the treaty at Big Beaver in 1785; and Adam Brown himself signed the treaties of 1805 and 1808, and doubtless would have signed later ones had he not sided with the British Wyandotts, and retired to Canada, near Malden, where he died.

It is highly probable that this foray took place in 1763. During this year, as features of the Pontiac uprising, bloody forays were made on the more advanced settlements on Jackson, Greenbrier, and Calf Pasture rivers, and several severe contests ensued between whites and Indians. Captains Moffett and Phillips, with sixty rangers, were ambuscaded with the loss of fifteen men. Col. Charles Lewis pursued the savages with 150 volunteers raised in a single night, and on October 3rd surprised them at the head of the South Fork of the Potomac, killing twenty-one, with no white losses. The spoils of this victory, beside the “five horses with all their trappings,” sold for £250. This was the most notable of the several skirmishes which took place on the Virginia frontier, that year.––R. G. T.

Perhaps this affair is that related by Capt. William Christian, in a letter dated Roanoke, Oct. 19th, 1763, as published in the gazettes of that day––there are, at least, some suggestive similarities: “Being joined by Capt. Hickenbotham, with twenty-five of the Amherst militia, we marched on Tuesday last, to Winston’s Meadows, where our scouts informed us, that they had discovered a party of Indians about three miles off. Night coming on, prevented our meeting them; and next day, being rainy, made it difficult to follow their tracks. As they were on their return, Capt. Hickenbotham marched to join Capt. Ingles down New River. I, with nineteen men and my ensign, took a different route in quest of them. We marched next day on their tracks until two hours before sunset, when we heard some guns, and soon afterwards discovered three large fires, which appeared to be on the bank of Turkey Creek, where it empties into New river. Upon this we immediately advanced, and found they were on an island. Being within gun-shot, we fired on them, and loading again, forded the creek. The Indians, after killing Jacob Kimberlain, a prisoner they had with them, made but a slight resistence, and ran off. We found one Indian killed on the spot, and, at a little distance, four blankets shot through, and very bloody. We took all their bundles, four guns, eight tomahawks, and two mares. They had several other horses, which being frightened by the firing, ran off and were lost. The party consisted of upwards of twenty Indians. By the tracks of blood, we imagined several of them were wounded.” This affair occurred Oct. 12th.––L. C. D.

Footnotes for Chapter 4

At Dickenson’s fort in 1755.

When the Indians were most troublesome, and threatening even the destruction of Winchester, Lord Fairfax who was commandant of the militia of Frederick and Hampshire, ordered them out. Three days active exertion on his part, brought only 20 in the field.

Rather rangers, who seem to have been enlisted to serve a year, and were re-engaged when necessary.––L. C. D.

Peter Williamson had singular adventures. When a boy he was kidnapped at Aberdeen, and sent to America, for which he afterwards recovered damages. It is said that he passed a considerable period among the Cherokees. He instituted the first penny post at Edinburgh, for which, when the government assumed it, he received a pension. His Memoirs, and French and Indian Cruelty Examplified, were works of interest. He died in Edinburgh in 1799.––L. C. D.

Col. James Smith was born in Franklin county, Pa., in 1737; was captured by Indians in 1755, remaining in captivity until his escape in 1759. He served as ensign in 1763, and lieutenant under Bouquet in 1764; he was a leader, for several years, of the Black Boys––a sort of regulators of the traders who, the Black Boys thought, supplied the Indians with the munitions of war. As the troubles with the mother country began, Smith was selected for frontier service, and held civil and military positions––captain in the Pennsylvania line; then in 1777 as major under Washington; in 1778, he was promoted to the rank of colonel of militia, and led an expedition against the Indian town on French Creek. In 1788, he removed to Kentucky; served in the early Kentucky conventions, preparatory to State organization, and also in the legislature. He did missionary work in Kentucky and Tennessee, and preached among the Indians. He wrote a valuable account of his Indian captivity, republished a few years since by Robert Clarke & Co., Cincinnati, and a treatise on Indian warfare, besides two controversial pamphlets against the Shakers. He died in Washington county, Ky., in 1812, aged about seventy-five years.––L. C. D.

Captain Simeon Ecuyer, like Bouquet, was a native of Switzerland; he did good service on the frontiers, especially in the gallant defense of Fort Pitt in 1763. He became disgusted with the bad conduct of his soldiers, especially the grenadiers, and begged leave to resign. “For God’s sake,” he implored Bouquet, “let me go, and raise cabbages.”––L. C. D.

Henry Bouquet was born at Rolle, in the canton of Berne, Switzerland, in 1721, and at the age of seventeen he entered into the service of the states general of Holland; subsequently engaged under the banner of Sardinia, and distinguished himself at the battle of Cony. In 1748, he was a lieutenant-colonel in the Swiss guards, in the service of Holland. At length, in 1756, he entered the English army, serving in the Royal Americans, and co-operated with Gen. Forbes on the campaign against Fort Du Quesne, repulsing an attack of French and Indians on Loyal Hanna. He afterwards served in Canada, and was sent for the relief of Fort Pitt, when beleagured in 1763. While marching on this service, he signally defeated the Indians at Bushy Run, after a two days’ engagement, in August of that year, and relieved Fort Pitt. In 1764, he led an expedition against the Ohio Indians, compelling them to sue for peace. He died at Pensacola, September 2, 1765, of a prevailing fever, in the prime of life, at the age of forty-four years. He had attained the rank of general.––L. C. D.

The following song was soon after composed by Mr. George Campbell (an Irish gentleman who had been educated in Dublin,) and was frequently sung in the neighborhood to the tune of the Black Joke.

Ye patriot souls who love to sing,
What serves your country and your king,
In wealth, peace, and royal estate;
Attention give whilst I rehearse,
A modern fact, in jingling verse,
How party interest strove what it cou’d,
To profit itself by public blood,
But justly met its merited fate.

Let all those Indian traders claim,
Their just reward, in glorious fame,
For vile, base and treacherous ends,
To Pollins in the spring they sent
Much warlike stores, with an intent,
To carry them to our barbarous foes,
Expecting that nobody dare oppose
A present to their Indian friends.

Astonished at the wild design
Frontier inhabitants combin’d,
With brave souls to stop their career,
Although some men apostatized
Who first the grand attempt advis’d,
The bold frontiers they bravely stood,
To act for their king, and their country’s good
In joint league, and strangers to fear.

On March the fifth, in sixty-five,
Their Indian presents did arrive,
In long pomp and cavalcade,
Near Sidelong-hill, where in disguise,
Some patriots did their train surprise,
And quick as lightning tumbled their loads
And kindled them bonfires in the woods;
And mostly burnt their whole brigade.

At Loudon when they heard the news,
They scarcely knew which way to choose,
For blind rage and discontent;
At length some soldiers they sent out,
With guides for to conduct the route,
And seized some men that were travelling there
And hurried them into Loudon, where
They laid them fast with one consent.

But men of resolution thought
Too much to see their neighbors caught
For no crime but false surmise;
Forthwith they join’d a warlike band,
And march’d to Loudon out of hand,
And kept the jailors pris’ners there,
Until our friends enlarged were,
Without fraud or any disguise.

Let mankind censure or commend,
This rash performance in the end,
Then both sides will find their account.
’Tis true no law can justify
To burn our neighbors property,
But when this property is design’d
To serve the enemies of mankind,
Its high treason in the amount.

The following extract from the Pennsylvania Gazette of November 2d, 1769, details the circumstances of this transaction.

“James Smith, his brother and brother in law, were going out to survey and improve their land, on the waters of the Youghogany.––Expecting to be gone some time, they took with them their arms, and horses loaded with necessaries; and as Smith’s brother in law was an artist in surveying, he had also with him the instruments for that business. Travelling on their way and within nine miles of Bedford, they overtook and joined in company with one Johnson and Moorhead, who had likewise horses packed with liquor and seed wheat––their intentions being also to make improvements on their lands. Arrived at the parting of the road near Bedford, they separated, one party going through town for the purpose of having a horse shod; these were apprehended and put under confinement.––James Smith, Johnson and Moorhead taking the other road, met John Holmes of Bedford, to whom Smith spoke in a friendly manner but received no answer. Smith and his companions proceeded to where the two roads again united; and waited there the arrival of the others.

“At this time a number of men came riding up, and asked Smith his name. On his telling them who he was, they immediately presented their pistols, and commanded him to surrender or he was a dead man. Smith stepped back and asking if they were highwaymen, charged them to keep off; when immediately Robert George (one of the assailants) snapped a pistol at Smith’s head; and that (as George acknowledged under oath) before Smith had offered to [87] shoot. Smith then presented his gun at another of the assailants, who was holding Johnson with one hand, while with the other he held a pistol, which he was preparing to discharge. Two shots were fired, one by Smith’s gun, the other by the pistol, so quick as to be just distinguishable, and Johnson fell. Smith was then taken and carried to Bedford, where John Holmes (who had met him on the road, and hastened to Bedford with the intelligence) held an inquest over the dead body of Johnson. One of the assailants being the only witness examined, it was found that “Johnson had been murdered by Smith,” who was thereupon committed for trial. But jealousy arising in the breasts of many, that the inquest was not so fair as it should have been, William Deny, (the coroner of Bedford county) thought proper to re-examine the matter; and summoning a jury of unexceptionable men, out of three townships––men whose candour, probity, and honesty are unquestionable, and having raised the corpse, held a solemn inquest over it for three days.

“In the course of their scrutiny, they found the shirt of Johnson, around the bullet hole, blackened by the powder of the charge with which he had been killed. One of the assailants being examined, swore to the respective spots of ground on which they stood at the time of firing, which being measured, was found to be 28 feet distance from each other. The experiment was then made of shooting at the shirt an equal distance both with and against the wind, to ascertain if the powder produced the stain; but it did not. Upon the whole the jury, after the most accurate examination and mature deliberation, brought in their verdict that one of the assailants must necessarily have done the murder.”

Captain Smith was a brave and enterprising man. In 1766, he, in company with Joshua Horton, Uriah Stone, William Baker and James Smith, by the way of Holstein, explored the country south of Kentucky at a time when it was entirely uninhabited; and the country between the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers, to their entrance into the Ohio. Stone’s river, a branch of the Cumberland and emptying into it not far above Nashville, was named by them in this expedition.

After his acquittal from the charge of having murdered Johnson, he was elected and served as one of the board of commissioners, for regulating taxes and laying the county levy, in the county of Bedford. [88] He was for several years a delegate from the county of Westmoreland, to the General Assembly of Pennsylvania; and in the war of the revolution was an officer of merit and distinction. In 1781 he removed to Kentucky and settled in Bourbon county not far from Paris; was a member of the convention which set at Danville, to confer about a separation from the state of Virginia, in 1788, from which time until 1799, with the exception of two years, he was either a delegate of the convention or of the General Assembly of Kentucky.

––––

Comment by L. C. D.––It would seem from Col. Smith’s own statement, that his removal to, and settlement in, Bourbon county, Ky., was in 1788.

Footnotes for Chapter 5

Now spelled Buckhannon.––R. G. T.

Sycamores, which attain gigantic proportions, are given to rotting in the lower portions of the trunk, and chambers eight feet in diameter are not uncommon. In the course of a canoe voyage down the Ohio, in the summer of 1894, I frequently saw such cavities, with the openings stopped by pickets or rails, utilized by small bottom farmers as hog-pens, chicken-coops, and calf stalls.

L. V. McWhorter, of Berlin, W. Va., who has kindly sent me several MS. notes on Withers’s Chronicles (all of which will be duly credited where used in this edition), writes: “The aged sycamore now (1894) occupying the site, is the third generation––the grand-child––of that which housed the Pringles. It stands on the farm of Webster Dix, who assures me that it shall not be destroyed. A tradition held by his descendants has it, that when John Pringle went back to the South Branch for ammunition, Charity, the wife of Samuel, who was left behind, started immediately for the wilderness home of her husband, and found him by the path which John had blazed for his own return.”––R. G. T.

This early and meritorious pioneer was born near Winchester, Va., Jan. 1, 1743, figured prominently in the Indian wars of his region, and served on Col. G. R. Clark’s Illinois campaign of 1778; he died at his home on Hacker’s Creek, April 20, 1821, in his 82d year.––L. C. D.

Its Indian name signified “Muddy Water.”––R. G. T.

We have already seen (p. 74, note), that Gist settled at Mount Braddock, Fayette county, in 1753, and that eleven families joined him in January, 1754. There is a tradition that settlers were in the district even before Gist. It has been shown that the Gist settlements, and others in the lower Monongahela, were burned by the French in July, 1754. The English borderers fled upon the outbreak of disturbances, and did not return until about 1760-61, when confidence had been restored.––R. G. T.

Both Van Meter and Swan afterwards served under Col. G. R. Clark––at least, on the Kaskaskia campaign; Swan commanded a company on Clark’s Shawnee campaign of 1780, and Van Meter on that of 1782. The latter moved to Kentucky in 1780; settled in Hardin county, Ky., Nov. 16th, 1798, in his seventy-sixth year.––L. C. D.

––––

Comment by R. G. T.––This note, written by Dr. Draper a few days before his death (Aug. 26, 1891), was probably his last stroke of literary work.

These gentlemen were descendants of a Mr. Zane who accompanied William Penn, to his province of Pennsylvania, and from whom, one of the principal streets in Philadelphia, derived its name. Their father was possessed of a bold and daring spirit of adventure, which was displayed on many occasions, in the earlier part of his life. Having rendered himself obnoxious to the Society of Friends (of which he was a member,) by marrying without the pale of that society, he moved to Virginia and settled on the South Branch, where the town of Moorfield has been since erected. One of his sons (Isaac) was taken by the Indians, when he was only nine years old, and carried in captivity, to Mad river, in Ohio. Here he continued ’till habit reconciled him to his situation, when he married a squaw, became a chief and spent the remainder of his life with them. He was never known to wage war against the whites; but was, on several occasions, of infinite service, by apprising them of meditated attacks of the Indians. His descendants still reside in Ohio.

The brothers, Ebenezer, Silas and Jonathan, who settled Wheeling, [95] were also men of enterprise, tempered with prudence, and directed by sound judgment. Ready at all times, to resist and punish the aggression of the Indians, they were scrupulously careful not to provoke them by acts of wanton outrage, such as were then, too frequently committed along the frontier. Col. Ebenezer Zane had been among the first, to explore the country from the South Branch, through the Alleghany glades, and west of them. He was accompanied in that excursion by Isaac Williams, two gentlemen of the name of Robinson and some others; but setting off rather late in the season, and the weather being very severe, they were compelled to return, without having penetrated to the Ohio river. On their way home, such was the extremity of cold, that one of the Robinsons died of its effects. Williams was much frost bitten, and the whole party suffered exceedingly. To the bravery and good conduct of those three brothers, the Wheeling settlement was mainly indebted for its security and preservation, during the war of the revolution.

Joseph Tomlinson surveyed a claim at the mouth of Grave Creek, about 1770, but did not settle there until 1772. His cabin was the nucleus of the present Moundsville, W. Va.––R. G. T.

John Doddridge settled in Washington county, Pa., on the Ohio River a few miles east of the Pennsylvania-Virginia state line, in 1773; his son, Joseph Doddridge, was the author of Notes on the Settlements and Indian Wars of the Western Parts of Virginia and Pennsylvania, 1763-83, a valuable antiquarian work. The names of Greathouse and Baker became execrable through their connection with the massacre of Chief Logan’s family, in 1774. Leffler and Biggs attained prominence in border warfare.––R. G. T.

“At an early period of our settlements, there was an inferior kind of land title, denominated a tomahawk right. This was made by [97] deadening a few trees near a spring, and marking on one or more of them, the initials of the name of the person, by whom the improvement was made. Rights, acquired in this way, were frequently bought and sold.”––Doddridge’s Notes on Western Virginia.

William Lowther was the son of Robert, and came with his father to the Hacker creek settlement in 1772. He soon became one of the most conspicuous men in that section of country; while his private virtues and public actions endeared him to every individual of the community. During the war of 1774 and subsequently, he was the most active and efficient defender of that vicinity, against the insidious attacks of the savage foe; and there were very few if any scouting parties proceeding from thence, by which the Indians were killed or otherwise much annoyed, but those which were commanded by him.

He was the first justice of the peace in the district of West Augusta––the first sheriff in the county of Harrison and Wood, and [98] once a delegate to the General Assembly of the States. His military merits carried him through the subordinate grades to the rank of Colonel. Despising the pomp and pageantry of office, he accepted it for the good of the community, and was truly an effective man. Esteemed, beloved by all, he might have exerted his influence, over others, to the advancement of his individual interest; but he sought the advancement of the general weal, not a personal or family aggrandizement. His example might teach others, that offices were created for the public good, not for private emolument. If aspirants for office at the present day, were to regard its perquisites less, and their fitness for the discharge of its duties more, the country would enjoy a greater portion of happiness and prosperity, and a sure foundation for the permanence of these be laid, in the more disinterested character of her counsellors, and their consequently, increased devotion to her interests.

The Spaniards at New Orleans, from the first settlement of the country west of the Alleghany Mountains, sought to attach it to the province of Louisiana. Knowing the powerful efficacy of gold, in producing such results, they dispensed it with a liberal hand, to such as made New Orleans their market. The attachment of the first settlers, to the free institutions of our country, baffled every attempt to detach them from it.

––––

Comment by R. G. T.––The Spanish conspiracy was, in the main, “baffled” by the prompt action of our general government. George Rogers Clark and several other leading Kentuckians were quite willing to be “detached,” for a consideration. The fact is, that at first the sense of national patriotism was weak, west of the Alleghanies; the eighteenth century had closed before efforts at separation from the East were commonly regarded as treason. The interests of the Western people apparently were centered in the south-flowing Mississippi; they seemed to have at the time little in common with the East. So long as Spain held the mouth of the river, many Western leaders thought it not improper that the West should ally itself with that power; when our government finally purchased the Spanish claim, the Western men had no further complaint. See Roosevelt’s treatment of the Spanish conspiracy, in his Winning of the West, III., ch. iii.––R. G. T.

Footnotes for Chapter 6

Mr. Jefferson, in his Notes on Virginia, represents this as happening at Grave creek, which empties into the Ohio from the south eastern, or Virginia side of this river, twelve miles below Wheeling. Those who lived near at the time and are supposed to have had the best opportunity of ascertaining the fact, say that it happened near the mouth of Captina, a creek sixteen miles below Wheeling, and on the Ohio side.

––––

Comment by R. G. T.––What is called the “Captina affair” happened April 27th, at Pipe Creek, emptying into the Ohio from the west, fourteen miles below Wheeling, and six above Captina Creek. Two friendly Shawnees were killed here by a party commanded by Michael Cresap, of Redstone, who at the time was in the neighborhood of Wheeling, surveying and clearing farms for new settlers. Cresap and his men, among whom was George Rogers Clark, then a young surveyor who had a claim at the mouth of Fish Creek, thereupon started out to destroy Chief Logan’s camp, at Baker’s Bottom, opposite the mouth of Yellow Creek, fifty-three miles up the Ohio, and forty miles west of Pittsburg by land; but as Logan was a well-known friend of the whites, they became ashamed of their project, and marched on across country to Fort Redstone. Meanwhile, as will be seen in due course, others were preparing to destroy Logan’s band, and on April 30th occurred that infamous massacre which Logan wrongly believed to be Cresap’s work.

Capt. Bull was a Delaware chief whose original village of Oghkwaga was on Unadilla Kiver, an eastern branch of the Susquehanna, in what is now Boone county, N. Y. He had been the prime mover in an attempt to interest the Delawares in Pontiac’s conspiracy (1763). In March, 1764, a strong party of whites and friendly Indians were sent out to capture him, by Sir William Johnson, English Indian superintendent in New York. After a sharp struggle, Bull and a number of his adherents were captured and conveyed in irons to New York City, where they were imprisoned for a time, but finally discharged. The Delaware towns on the Unadilla having been burned, Bull and five families of his relatives settled what the whites called Bulltown, on the Little Kanawha. This was at a salt spring about a mile and a quarter below the present Bulltown P. O., Braxton county, Va. Capt. Bull and his people were inoffensive, and very friendly to their white neighbors, as our author says.––R. G. T.

Adam Stroud lived on Elk River, a few miles south of Indian Bulltown. The massacre of his family––his wife and seven children––occurred in June, 1772. Shawnees were the murderers, and not Bull’s people.––R. G. T.

Mr. McWhorter writes me that two others were Jesse Hughes and John Cutright (corruption of Cartwright?), both of them settlers on Hacker’s Creek. Hughes was a noted border scout, but a man of fierce, unbridled passions, and so confirmed an Indian hater that no tribesman, however peaceful his record, was safe in his presence. Some of the most cruel acts on the frontier are by tradition attributed to this man. The massacre of the Bulltown Indians was accompanied by atrocities as repulsive as any reported by captives in Indian camps; of these there had long been traditions, but details were not fully known until revealed by Cutright upon his death-bed in 1852, when he had reached the age of 105 years. Want of space alone prevents me from giving Mr. McWhorter’s narrative of Hughes’s long and bloody career. “Hughes died,” he says, “in Jackson county, W. Va., at a date unknown to me, but in very old age. While he was a great scout and Indian trader, he never headed an expedition of note. This no doubt was because of his fierce temperament, and bad reputation among his own countrymen.” In studying the annals of the border, we must not fail to note that here and there were many savage-hearted men among the white settlers, whose deeds were quite as atrocious as any attributed to the red-skins. Current histories of Indian warfare seldom recognize this fact.––R. G. T.

Lord Dunmore’s War (1774) was a natural outgrowth of the strained relations which had long existed between the savages and the white colonists in their midst. As our author has made clear, minor hostilities had broken out here and there ever since the Pontiac uprising, but there had been no general campaign since Bouquet’s treaty in 1764. Affairs had come to that pass by the early spring of 1774, that diplomacy was no longer possible, and an Indian war was inevitable. It was merely a question of detail, as to how and when. The immediate cause of precipitation––not the cause of the war, for that lay deeper––was the territorial dispute over the Ft. Pitt region, between Virginia and Pennsylvania. Dunmore, as royal governor of Virginia, had several reasons for bringing matters to a head––he was largely interested in land speculations under Virginia patents that would be vitiated if Pennsylvania, now becoming aggressive, should succeed in planting her official machinery at Ft. Pitt, which was garrisoned by Virginia; again, his colonists were in a revolutionary frame of mind, and he favored a distraction in the shape of a popular Indian war; finally, it seemed as though a successful raid by Virginia militia would clinch Virginia’s hold on the country and the treaty of peace that must follow would widen the area of provincial lands and encourage Western settlements. April 25, 1774, he issued a proclamation in which, after reference to Pennsylvania’s claims, it was asserted that Ft. Pitt was “in danger of some annoyance from the Indians,” and he called on his local military commandant, the fire-eating Dr. John Connolly, “to embody a sufficient number of men to repel any insult.” Connolly, evidently as part of a preconcerted plan, at once (April 26) issued a circular letter to the excited borderers, which was well calculated to arouse them, being in effect a declaration of war against the Indians. The very next day occurred the Pipe Creek affair, then came the Logan tragedy at Baker’s Bottom, three days later, and at once the war was on at full-head.––R. G. T.

Of John Findlay (so he signed his name), “the precursor and pilot of Daniel Boone to Kentucky,” but little is known and less has been published. Apparently he was a native of the north of Ireland. In early life he emigrated to the neighborhood of Carlisle, Cumberland county, Pa., a district almost wholly settled by Scotch-Irish Protestants. In February, 1752, we find him a trader among the Shawnees; the following year, he was robbed and driven off. It is probable that he served in the Pennsylvania frontier militia from the opening of the French and Indian War (1754). Boone met him on the Braddock campaign (1755), and they became fast friends. Findlay had already (1752) been in Kentucky as far as the Falls of the Ohio, in the course of his ramblings as a trader, and inspired Boone with an intense desire to seek this El Dorado of the West. It was in 1767, when settled near the head of the Yadkin River, that Boone first tried to reach Kentucky by way of the Sandy, but failed. In the winter of 1768-69, Findlay, now a peddler, with a horse to carry his traps, appeared at Boone’s cabin on the Yadkin, and the two old comrades had a happy time rehearsing their various adventures during the thirteen years of separation. An expedition to Kentucky was agreed upon, and the party set out from Boone’s cabin, May 1, 1769; it was composed of Findlay, now advanced in years, Daniel Boone, the latter’s brother-in-law, John Stuart, and three Yadkin neighbors, Joseph Holden, James Mooney, and William Cooley. The story of their expedition through Cumberland Gap, and their long hunt, is now familiar to readers of Western history. Their principal camp was probably on Red Lick Fork of Station Camp Creek. In December, Stuart and Boone were captured by Indians, but escaped early in January (1770), and on rejoining their comrades on Rockcastle River found that Daniel’s brother, Squire, had arrived with fresh horses and traps from the North Carolina home; and with him was Alexander Neely, whom Squire had found on New (Great Kanawha) River. Findlay, Holden, Mooney, and Cooley now elected to return home, leaving the others to spend a longer period in Kentucky; Findlay took the left-hand road through the West Virginia settlements, to Pennsylvania, and the others, turning to the right, wended their way to North Carolina through Cumberland Gap. Not long after this, Stuart was killed by Indians, while alone in the woods, and Neely, discouraged by his fate, returned home. The story, often copied from Withers, that Neely was killed by a wolf, is erroneous. As for Findlay, he appears to have again become an Indian trader in Western Pennsylvania; for late in 1771 he is reported to have been robbed of $500 worth of goods, by a Seneca war party raiding the Youghiogheny district. There is a tradition that not long after this he “was lost in the wilds of the West.” Holden and Cooley spent the rest of their days on the Upper Yadkin. Mooney was killed at the battle of Point Pleasant (1774).––R. G. T.

The Boones and five other families set out from their homes on the Yadkin, Sept. 25, 1773. In Powell’s Valley they were joined by forty people under Boone’s brother-in-law, William Bryan. While the main party were slowly advancing through the valley, a small squad, under Boone’s oldest son, James, went on a side expedition for flour, cattle, and other supplies. With these they had nearly caught up to the advance, when, not knowing they were so near, they camped on the evening of October 9 a few miles in the rear. Early in the morning of the 10th, a small band of Shawnees and Cherokees, who were nominally at peace with the whites, fell upon and, after cruel tortures, slaughtered them. In Dunmore’s speech at Fort Pitt, this tragedy in Powell’s Valley was alluded to as one of the chief causes of the Indian war of 1774. At the Camp Charlotte treaty (October, 1774), some of the plunder from this massacre was delivered up by the savages. After the tragedy, the greater part of the Kentucky caravan returned to their homes, but the Boones spent the winter of 1773-74 at a settlement some forty miles distant, on Clinch River. During the Dunmore War, Boone was active as an Indian fighter.––R. G. T.

The leader of this party was Capt. Thomas Bullitt. He was born in Fauquier county, Va., in 1730; was one of Washington’s captains at the Great Meadows (1754), and fought gallantly with Braddock (1755) and Forbes (1758); in 1763, was made adjutant-general of Virginia; during the early part of the Revolution he held the same office in the Southern Department of the United States, but resigned in 1776 because not promoted; he died in Fauquier county, in 1778. The project of Franklin, Walpole, and others to found the Colony of Pittsylvania, with its seat at the mouth of the Great Kanawha, greatly stimulated Western land speculation, and there was a rush of those holding military land warrants to locate claims. Lord Dunmore’s agent at Fort Pitt, Dr. John Connolly––with whom his lordship was doubtless in partnership––had large interests of this character, and Bullitt went to the Falls of the Ohio (1773) to survey lands for him. Bullitt had a surveyor’s commission from Williams and Mary College, but Col. William Preston, county surveyor for Fincastle county––in which Kentucky was then included––declined to recognize any but his own deputies. Preston carried his point, and the lands were re-surveyed the following year (1774) by his deputies. Bullitt had laid off a town on this Connolly survey; but the Revolution soon broke out, Bullitt was otherwise engaged, Dunmore was deposed, Connolly was imprisoned, and the scheme fell through. In 1778, George Rogers Clark camped at the Falls on his way to the Illinois, and the garrison he established there grew into the town of Louisville. With Bullitt’s surveying party in 1773, were James Douglas, James Harrod, James Sodousky, Isaac Hite, Abraham Haptonstall, Ebenezer Severns, John Fitzpatrick, John Cowan,––prominent names in later Kentucky history,––and possibly others. George Rogers Clark was probably with the party during a part of its canoe voyage down the Ohio, but seems to have gone no farther than Big Bone Creek.––R. G. T.

This was done by a party of men from the Monongahela, under the guidance of James Harrod; by whom was built the first cabin for human habitancy ever erected in Kentucky. This was on the present site of Harrodsburg.

These are the Pipe Creek and Baker’s Bottom affairs, respectively mentioned on pp. 134, 149, notes. Yellow Creek, opposite Baker’s Bottom, empties into the Ohio 51 miles below Pittsburg; Wheeling is 91 miles below Pittsburg, and Pipe Creek 104.––R. G. T.

There is some difficulty in fixing on the precise time when these occurrences happened. Col. Ebenezer Zane says that they took place in the latter part of April, and that the affair at Captina preceded the one at Yellow creek a few days. John Sappington, who was of the party at Baker’s, and is said to be the one who killed Logan’s brother, says, the murders at that place occurred on the 24th of May, and that the skirmish at Captina was on the day before (23rd May.) Col. Andrew Swearingen, a presbyterian gentleman of much respectability, one of the early settlers near the Ohio above Wheeling, and afterwards intimate with those engaged at both places, says that the disturbance opposite Yellow creek preceded the engagement [113] at Captina, and that the latter, as was then generally understood, was caused by the conduct of the Indians, who had been at Yellow creek and were descending the river, exasperated at the murder of their friends at Baker’s. Mr. Benjamin Tomlinson, who was the brother-in-law of Baker and living with him at the time, says that this circumstance happened in May, but is silent as to the one at Captina. These gentlemen all agree in the fact that Logan’s people were murdered at Baker’s. Indeed Logan himself charges it as having been done there. The statement of Sappington, that the murders were caused by the abusive epithets of Logan’s brother and his taking the hat and coat of Baker’s brother in law is confirmed by Col. Swearingen and others; who also say that for some days previous, the neighborhood generally had been engaged in preparing to leave the country, in consequence of the menacing conduct of the Indians.

––––

Comment by R. G. T.––The date is now well established––April 30. Withers is altogether too lenient, in his treatment of the whites engaged in this wretched massacre. Logan, encamped at the mouth of Yellow River, on the Ohio side, was a peaceful, inoffensive Indian, against whom no man harbored a suspicion; he was made a victim of race hatred, in a time of great popular excitement. Joshua Baker, who was settled opposite him on Baker’s Bottom, in Virginia, kept a low grog-shop tavern, and had recently been warned not to sell more liquor to Indians. Daniel Greathouse lived in the vicinity––a cruel, bloodthirsty fellow, who served Connolly as a local agent in fomenting hatred of Indians. It will be remembered (p. 131, note) that Cresap’s party were intending to strike the camp of Logan, but that they abandoned the project. In the meantime, probably without knowledge of Cresap’s intent, Greathouse had collected a party of 32 borderers to accomplish the same end. Logan’s camp seemed too strong for them to attack openly; so they secreted themselves in Baker’s house, and when Logan’s family, men and women, came over to get their daily grog, and were quite drunk, set upon them and slew and tomahawked nine or ten. The chief, standing on the Ohio bank, heard the uproar and witnessed the massacre; he naturally supposed that the murderers were led by Cresap. From a friend of the whites, Logan became their implacable enemy, and during the ensuing war his forays were the bloodiest on the border. We shall hear of him and his famous speech, later on.

It was then that Westfall’s and Casinoe’s forts were erected in Tygart’s valley,––Pricket’s, on Pricket’s creek,––Jackson’s on Ten Mile, and Shepherd’s on Wheeling creek, a few miles above its mouth. There were also others established in various parts of the country and on the Monongahela and Ohio rivers. Nutter’s fort, near to Clarksburg, afforded protection to the inhabitants on the West Fork, from its source, to its confluence with the Valley river; and to those who lived on Buchannon and on Hacker’s creek, as well as to the residents of its immediate vicinity.

June 20, Col. William Preston, having charge of the defenses of Fincastle county, authorized Capt. William Russell to employ two faithful woodsmen to go to Kentucky and inform the several surveying parties at work there, of their danger. June 26, Russell replied, “I have engaged to start immediately on the occasion, two of the best hands I could think of––Daniel Boone and Michael Stoner; who have engaged to reach the country as low as the Falls, and to return by way of Gasper’s Lick on Cumberland, and through Cumberland Gap; so that, by the assiduity of these men, if it is not too late, I hope the gentlemen will be apprized of the imminent danger they are daily in.”

Boone and Stoner journeyed overland to Harrodsburg, where Col. James Harrod and thirty men were making improvements and laying out the town. The thrifty Boone secured a good lot, hastily built a claim cabin, and proceeded on his tour. At Fontaine Blue, three miles below Harrodsburg, the two scouts found another party of surveyors, whom they warned; and in going down the Kentucky River came across Capt. John Floyd’s surveying party,––eight men, who had left Preston’s house for Kentucky, April 9,––who agreed to meet them farther down the river. But circumstances prevented a reunion, and Floyd’s band penetrated through the wilderness on their own account, and had a painful journey of sixteen days’ duration before reaching Russell’s Fort on Clinch River. Meanwhile, Boone and Stoner descended to the mouth of the Kentucky, and thence to the Falls of the Ohio, and found more surveyors at Mann’s Lick, four miles southeast. Indians were making bloody forays through the district, and the scouts had frequent thrilling adventures. Finally, after having been absent sixty-one days and travelled 800 miles, they reached Russell’s on the Clinch, in safety. Russell was absent on the Point Pleasant campaign, and Boone set out with a party of recruits to reinforce him, but was ordered back to defend the Clinch settlements. He was busy at this task until the close of the war. He was present at the Watauga treaty, March 17, 1775; later that year, he led another band to Kentucky, and early in April built Fort Boone, on Kentucky River, “a little below Big Lick,” the nucleus of the Henderson colony.––R. G. T.

The party numbered about four hundred men. The line of march was about ninety miles in length, as estimated by the zig-zag course pursued.––R. G. T.

They were Jonathan Zane, Thomas Nicholson and Tady Kelly. A better woodsman than the first named of these three, perhaps never lived.

Doddridge locates Wapatomica “about sixteen miles below the present Coshocton.” Butterfield (History of the Girtys) places it “just below the present Zanesville, in Logan county, Ohio, not a great distance from Mac-a-cheek.” For localities of Indian towns on the Muskingum, see map in St. John de Creve Coeur’s Lettres d’un Cultivateur AmÉricain (Paris, 1787), III., p. 413.––R. G. T.

John Hargus, a private in Capt. Cresap’s company, while stationed as a vidette below the main army, observed an Indian several times raising his head above his blind, and looking over the river. Charging his rifle with a second ball, he fired, and both bullets passed through the neck of the Indian, who was found next day and scalped by Hargus.

Logan was the son of Shikellemus, a celebrated chief of the Cayuga nation, who dwelt at Shamokin, and always attached to the [118] English, was of much service to them on many occasions. After the close of Dunmore’s war, Logan became gloomy and melancholy, drank freely and manifested symptoms of mental derangement. He remained some time at Detroit, and while there, his conduct and expressions evinced a weariness of the world. Life he said had become a burden to him, he knew no more what pleasure was, and thought it had been better if he had never existed. In this disponding and disconsolate condition he left Detroit, and on his way between that place and Miami, is said to have been murdered.

See p. 149, note, for account of the massacre.––R. G. T.

Footnotes for Chapter 7

He is said to have committed some offence, in the upper part of South Carolina, which rendered him obnoxious to the laws of that colony, and to evade the punishment for which, he had fled to the wilderness and taken up his abode in it.

Lewis Wetzel, the son of a German settler on Wheeling Creek, some fourteen miles above its mouth, was born about 1764. He and his brothers Martin, Jacob, John, and George became famous in border warfare after the close of the Revolution; the annals of the frontier abound in tales of their hardy achievements. Martin and Lewis were the heroes of most remarkable escapes from Indian captivity; John was also famous as an Indian fighter; and Jacob’s name will ever be connected with the exploits of that other great border scout, Simon Kenton. But of all the brothers, Lewis achieved the widest celebrity, and two biographies of him have been published: by Cecil B. Hartley (Phila., 1860), and by R. C. V. Meyers (Phila., 1883).––R. G. T.

Now Shenandoah.

The northern wing was composed of men from Frederick, Berkeley, and Dunmore (afterwards Shenandoah) counties, and Col. Adam Stephen was placed in command. With this wing went Lord Dunmore and Major John Connolly. Counting the forces already in the field under Maj. Angus McDonald and Capt. William Crawford, this levy numbered some twelve hundred men. Among them, as scouts, were George Roger Clark, Simon Kenton, and Michael Cresap.––R. G. T.

Lewis was colonel of the militia of Botetourt county. Camp Union (so called because several bodies of troops met there) was on the Big Savannah or Great Levels of Greenbrier River; the town of Lewisburg now occupies the site.

In Dunmore’s letter to Andrew Lewis, dated July 12, he directed him to raise a sufficient body of men, and proceeding to the mouth of the Great Kanawha there erect a fort; if he deemed best he was to cross the Ohio, proceed directly to the Indian towns, and destroy their crops and supplies; in any event he was to keep communication open between Fort Wheeling and Fort Dunmore (Pittsburg). It is evident that his lordship then contemplated no separate expedition of his own, for he talks of sending Major Angus McDonald’s party and a new levy to Lewis’s assistance. But he changed his mind, and August 30 wrote to Lewis directing that the latter meet him at the mouth of the Little Kanawha. Lewis replied through Col. William Preston that it was now too late to change his plans; he should proceed at once with the levy just summoned, to the mouth of the Great Kanawha, and there await further orders.––R. G. T.

This cape was called Point Pleasant, and is now occupied by the West Virginia town of that name.––R. G. T.

This is misleading. On September 6, Col. Charles Lewis, with his Augusta troops, numbering about six hundred, were detached to proceed to the mouth of the Elk, and there make canoes for transporting the supplies to the mouth of the Great Kanawha. This body had in charge a drove of 108 beef cattle, and 400 pack-horses laden with 54,000 lbs. of flour. Field’s company soon followed this advance.––R. G. T.

Saturday, the 10th, Clay and Coward were sent out to hunt deer for Field’s company, on the banks of the Little Meadow. Then occurred the incident related by Withers. The Indian who escaped, hurried on to the Shawnee towns and gave them their first notice of the approach of the army. Alarmed at this incident, Field hurried and caught up with the advance under Charles Lewis. The text reads as though he had hastened back to Andrew Lewis, who had not yet left Camp Union.––R. G. T.

Col. Andrew Lewis marched out of Camp Union the 12th, with about 450 men. These consisted of Fleming’s Botetourt troops, three companies of Fincastle men under Capts. Evan Shelby, William Herbert, and William Russell, the Bedford men under Thomas Buford, and Dunmore men under Slaughter. They had with them 200 pack-horses laden with flour, and the remainder of the beeves. Col. William Christian, who arrived at Camp Union the day Andrew Lewis left, was ordered, with the rest of the Fincastle men, to remain there, to guard the residue of the provisions, and when the brigade of horses sent to the mouth of the Elk had returned, to hurry every thing forward to the mouth of the Great Kanawha. Five weeks were thus consumed in transporting the troops and the supplies a distance of 160 miles through the tangled forest, to Point Pleasant, where the main army, upwards of 1,100 strong, had arrived, quite spent with exertions, on the 6th of October.

When Christian left Camp Union for the front, Anthony Bledsoe, with a company of Fincastle men, was detailed to remain behind with the sick, while the base of supplies at the mouth of the Elk was placed in charge of Slaughter. As will be seen, Christian arrived too late to engage in the battle of Point Pleasant.––R. G. T.

When Lewis arrived at Point Pleasant (October 6th), he found awaiting him in a hollow tree dispatches from Dunmore, brought by Simon Kenton and two companions, directing him to join his lordship at the mouth of the Big Hockhocking, where the governor’s northern wing, under Major Crawford, was building a stockade. But Lewis’s men were spent, and pens had to be built for the cattle, and shelter for the stores, so no move was made. On Saturday, the 8th, came a further message from the governor, who was still at the Big Hockhocking. Lewis replied that he would join him there as soon as the troops, food supply, and powder had all reached Point Pleasant. His men were angry at Dunmore’s interference, and argued with Lewis that it was sixty miles by river and over half that by land, to Dunmore’s camp, whereas it was less than either to the hostile towns which they had started out to attack; and to turn aside from this purpose was to leave open for the hostiles the back-door to the frontier settlements of Virginia. The 9th was Sunday, and these sturdy Scotch-Irish Presbyterians spent the day in religious exercises, listening to a stout sermon from their chaplain. On the morrow, they were surprised by the Indians, as the sequel relates.––R. G. T.

James Mooney, of Russell’s company, and Joseph Hughey, of Shelby’s. They were surprised at the mouth of Old Town Creek, three miles distant. Hughey was killed by a shot fired by Tavenor Ross, a white renegade in Cornstalk’s party.––R. G. T.

Few officers were ever more, or more deservedly, endeared to those under their command than Col. Charles Lewis. In the many skirmishes, which it was his fortune to have, with the Indians he was uncommonly successful; and in the various scenes of life, thro’ which he passed, his conduct was invariably marked by the distinguishing characteristicks of a mind, of no ordinary stamp. His early fall on this bloody field, was severely felt during the whole engagement; and to it has been attributed the partial advantages gained by the Indian army near the commencement of the action. When the [127] fatal ball struck him, he fell at the root of a tree; from whence he was carried to his tent, against his wish, by Capt. Wm. Morrow and a Mr. Bailey, of Captain Paul’s company, and died in a few hours afterwards. In remembrance of his great worth, the legislature named the county of Lewis after him.

An active, enterprising and meritorious officer, who had been in service in Braddock’s war, and profited by his experience of the Indian mode of fighting. His death checked for a time the ardor of his troops, and spread a gloom over the countenances of those, who had accompanied him on this campaign.

A half-mile up the Big Kanawha.––R. G. T.

From MS. journals and letters in possession of the Wisconsin Historical Society, it appears that the conduct of the battle was as follows: Andrew Lewis, who as yet thought the enemy to be but a scouting party, and not an army equal in size to his own, had the drums beat to arms, for many of his men were asleep in their tents; and while still smoking his pipe, ordered a detachment from each of the Augusta companies, to form 150 strong under Col. Charles Lewis, with John Dickinson, Benjamin Harrison, and John Skidmore as the captains. Another party of like size was formed under Col. Fleming, with Captains Shelby, Russell, Buford, and Philip Love. Lewis’s party marched to the right, near the foot of the hills skirting the east side of Crooked Creek. Fleming’s party marched to the left, 200 yards apart from the other. A quarter of a mile from camp, and half a mile from the point of the cape, the right-going party met the enemy lurking behind trees and fallen logs at the base of the hill, and there Charles Lewis was mortally wounded. Fleming marched to a pond three-quarters of a mile from camp, and fifty rods inland from the Ohio––this pond being one of the sources of Crooked Creek. The hostile line was found to extend from this pond along Crooked Creek, half way to its mouth. The Indians, under Cornstalk, thought by rushes to drive the whites into the two rivers, “like so many bullocks,” as the chief later explained; and indeed both lines had frequently to fall back, but they were skillfully reinforced each time, and by dusk the savages placed Old Town Creek between them and the whites. This movement was hastened, a half hour before sunset, by a movement which Withers confounds with the main tactics. Captains Matthews, Arbuckle, Shelby, and Stuart were sent with a detachment up Crooked creek under cover of the bank, with a view to securing a ridge in the rear of the enemy, from which their line could be enfiladed. They were discovered in the act, but Cornstalk supposed that this party was Christian’s advance, and in alarm hurried his people to the other side of Old Town Creek. The battle was, by dark, really a drawn game; but Cornstalk had had enough, and fled during the night.––R. G. T.

During the day, a messenger had been dispatched to hurry on Christian, who with 250 men was convoying cattle and powder. In the early evening, fifteen miles from Point Pleasant, this rear party was found, toiling painfully over the wilderness trail. Christian at once left his property in charge of a small party, and arrived in camp by midnight.––R. G. T.

Most of the killed and wounded, on both sides, were shot in the head or breast, which indicates good marksmanship. The Indians, though skillful marksmen, did not exhibit sufficient mechanical knowledge to enable them properly to clean their guns, and thus were at some disadvantage.

The statistician was at work in those days, as now, for we learn from an old diary that at Old Town Creek were found by the white victors, 78 rafts with which the Indians had crossed the Ohio to the attack, the night of October 9-10; and on the battlefield during the 10th and 12th, were collected 23 guns, 27 tomahawks, 80 blankets, and great numbers of war-clubs, shot-pouches, powder-horns, match-coats, deer-skins, “and other articles,” all of which were put up at auction by the careful commissary, and brought nearly £100 to the army chest.––R. G. T.

Such were Redhawk, a Delaware chief,––Scoppathus, a Mingo,––Ellinipsico, a Shawanee, and son to Cornstalk,––Chiyawee, a Wyandotte, and Logan, a Cayuga.

The first recorded foray of Cornstalk was on October 10, 1759, against the Gilmore family and others, on Carr’s Creek, in what is now Rockbridge county, Va. “The Carr’s Creek massacre” was long remembered on the border as one of the most daring and cruel on record. He was again heard of during the Pontiac conspiracy, in 1763, when he led a large war-party from the Scioto towns against the Virginia frontier. Both at Muddy Creek, and the Clendenning farm near Lewisburg, on the Levels of the Greenbrier, the marauders pretended to be friendly with the settlers, and in an unguarded moment fell upon and slew them. Other massacres, in connection with the same foray, were at Carr’s Creek, Keeney’s Knob, and Jackson’s River. The story of the captivity of Mrs. Clendenning and her children, who were taken to the Shawnee towns on the Scioto, is one of the most heartrendering in Western history. In 1764, Bouquet raided these towns, and Cornstalk was one of the hostages sent to Fort Pitt in fulfillment of the terms of the treaty, but later he effected his escape. Nothing more is heard of this warrior until 1774, when he became famous as leader of the Indians at the battle of Point Pleasant. Cornstalk’s intelligence was far above that of the average Shawnee. He had, before the Dunmore War, strongly counseled his people to observe the peace, as their only salvation; but when defeated in council, he with great valor led the tribesmen to war. After the treaty of Fort Charlotte, he renewed his peace policy, and was almost alone in refusing to join the Shawnee uprising in 1777. Late in September, that year, he visited his white friends at Fort Randolph (Point Pleasant), and was retained as one of several hostages for the tribe. Infuriated at some murders in the vicinity, the private soldiers in the fort turned upon the Indian prisoners and basely killed them, Cornstalk among the number. Governor Patrick Henry and General Hand––the latter then organizing his futile expedition against the Shawnees––wished to punish the murderers; but in the prevalent state of public opinion on the border, it was easy for them to escape prosecution.––R. G. T.

[20]

The following gentlemen, with others of high reputation in private life, were officers in the battle at Point Pleasant. Gen. Isaac Shelby, the first governor of Kentucky, and afterwards, secretary of war;––Gen. William Campbell and Col. John Campbell, heroes of King’s mountain and Long Island;––Gen. Evan Shelby, one of the most favored citizens of Tennessee, often honored with the confidence of that state;––Col. William Fleming, an active governor of Virginia during the revolutionary war;––Gen. Andrew Moore of Rockbridge, the only man ever elected by Virginia, from the country west of the Blue ridge, to the senate of the United States;––Col. John Stuart, of Greenbrier;––Gen. Tate, of Washington county, Virginia;––Col. William McKee, of Lincoln county, Kentucky;––Col. John Steele, since a governor of Mississippi territory;––Col. Charles Cameron, of Bath;––Gen. Bazaleel Wells, of Ohio; and Gen. George Matthews, a distinguished officer in the war of the revolution, the hero of Brandywine, Germantown, and of Guilford;––a governor of Georgia, and a senator from that state in the congress of the United States. The salvation of the American army at Germantown, is ascribed, in Johnston’s life of Gen. Green, to the bravery and good conduct of two regiments, one of which was commanded by General, then Col. Matthews.

[21]

In order to get a clearer view of the situation, a few more details are essential here. For several days after the battle of Point Pleasant, Lewis was busy in burying the dead, caring for the wounded, collecting the scattered cattle, and building a store-house and small stockade fort. Early on the morning of October 13th, messengers who had been sent on to Dunmore, advising him of the battle, returned with orders to Lewis to march at once with all his available force, against the Shawnee towns, and when within twenty-five miles of Chillicothe to write to his lordship. The next day, the last rear guard, with the remaining beeves, arrived from the mouth of the Elk, and while work on the defenses at the Point was hurried, preparations were made for the march. By evening of the 17th, Lewis, with 1,150 men in good condition, had crossed the Ohio and gone into camp on the north side. Each man had ten days’ supply of flour, a half pound of powder, and a pound and a half of bullets; while to each company was assigned a pack-horse for the tents. Point Pleasant was left in command of Col. Fleming,––who had been severely wounded in the battle,––Captains Dickinson, Lockridge, Herbert, and Slaughter, and 278 men, few of whom were fit for service. On the 18th, Lewis, with Captain Arbuckle as guide, advanced towards the Shawnee towns, eighty miles distant in a straight line, and probably a hundred and twenty-five by the circuitous Indian trails. The army marched about eleven miles a day, frequently seeing hostile parties but engaging none. Reaching the salt licks near the head of the south branch of Salt Creek (in the present Lick township, Jackson county, O.), they descended that valley to the Scioto, and thence to a prairie on Kinnikinnick (not Kilkenny) Creek, where was the freshly-deserted Indian village referred to above, by Withers. This was thirteen miles south of Chillicothe (now Westfall). Here they were met, early on the 24th, by a messenger from his lordship, ordering them to halt, as a treaty was nearly concluded at Camp Charlotte. But Lewis’s army had been fired on that morning, and the place was untenable for a camp in a hostile country, so he concluded to seek better ground. A few hours later another messenger came, again peremptorily ordering a halt, as the Shawnees had practically come to terms. Lewis now concluded to join the northern division in force, at Camp Charlotte, not liking to have the two armies separated in the face of a treacherous enemy; but his guide mistook the trail, and took one leading directly to the Grenadier Squaw’s Town. Lewis camped that night on the west bank of Congo Creek, two miles above its mouth, and five and a quarter miles from Chillicothe, with the Indian town half-way between. The Shawnees were now greatly alarmed and angered, and Dunmore himself, accompanied by the Delaware chief White Eyes, a trader, John Gibson, and fifty volunteers, rode over in hot haste that evening to stop Lewis, and reprimand him. His lordship was mollified by Lewis’s explanations, but the latter’s men, and indeed Dunmore’s, were furious over being stopped when within sight of their hated quarry, and tradition has it that it was necessary to treble the guards during the night to prevent Dunmore and White Eyes from being killed. The following morning (the 25th), his lordship met and courteously thanked Lewis’s officers for their valiant service; but said that now the Shawnees had acceded to his wishes, the further presence of the southern division might engender bad blood. Thus dismissed, Lewis led his army back to Point Pleasant, which was reached on the 28th. He left there a garrison of fifty men under Captain Russell, and then by companies the volunteers marched through the wilderness to their respective homes, where they disbanded early in November.––R. G. T.

[22]

This is not the view of students in our own day, coolly looking at the affair from the distance of a hundred and twenty years. There now seems no room to doubt that Dunmore was thoroughly in earnest, that he prosecuted the war with vigor, and knew when to stop in order to secure the best possible terms. Our author wrote at a time when many heroes of Point Pleasant were still alive, and his neighbors; he reflected their views, and the passions of the day. That it was, in view of the events then transpiring, the best policy to turn back the southern army, after the great battle, and not insist too closely on following up the advantage gained, seems now incontrovertible.––R. G. T.

[23]

Butterfield’s History of the Girtys (Cincinnati, 1890) is a valuable contribution to Western history. Simon, James, and George Girty were notorious renegade whites, who aided the Indians against the borderers from 1778 to 1783; Simon and George were similarly active in the Indian war of 1790-95.––R. G. T.

[24]

Upon leaving Pittsburg,––where the governor held a council with several Delaware and Mingo chiefs, to whom he recited the outrages perpetrated by the Shawnees since Bouquet’s treaty of 1764––the northern division divided into two wings. One, 700 strong, under Dunmore, descended the river in boats; the other 500 went across the “pan-handle” by land, with the cattle, and both rendezvoused, September 30th, at Wheeling, 91 miles below Pittsburg. Next day, Crawford resumed his march along the south bank of the Ohio, to a point opposite the mouth of Big Hockhocking, 107 miles farther down. Here the men, the 200 bullocks, and the 50 pack-horses swam the Ohio, and just above the Big Hockhocking (the site of the present Hockingport) erected a blockhouse and stockade, which they called Fort Gower, in honor of the English earl of that name. A part of the earthwork can still (1894) be seen in the garden of a Hockingport residence. Dunmore’s party, in 100 canoes and pirogues, arrived a few days later. While at Fort Gower, he was joined by the Delaware chiefs, White Eyes and John Montour, the former of whom was utilized as an agent to negotiate with the Shawnees––R. G. T.

[25]

This was William McCulloch.––R. G. T.

[26]

The authority for this is Stuart’s Indian Wars, p. 56. Abraham Thomas, in his Sketches, relates that the governor, placing his ear at the surface of the river, said he thought he heard the firing of guns; and Thomas, then a young militiaman, was asked to do likewise, and reported that it was the rattle of musketry. The distance across country to Point Pleasant was but twenty-eight miles, but by the river windings was sixty-six. These anecdotes have been related as proof that Dunmore desired Lewis beaten. White Eyes had notified the governor that a conflict was expected, though he had reported a much smaller Indian army than Lewis’s; hence his lordship had no fear of the result. Had he known that the opposing forces were equal in number, and that the whites had been surprised, he doubtless would have sent relief. Knowing the Shawnee warriors were away from home, fighting Lewis, whom he had reason to suppose was very well able to handle them, he determined to advance inland to the deserted towns on the Scioto and destroy their houses and crops. He was upon this errand when met and stopped by the messengers of peace.––R. G. T.

[27]

The two wings of the white army had about the same strength––1100 under Dunmore, and 1150 (after leaving Point Pleasant) under Lewis. The fighting quality was also the same, in both. It is to be remembered that in the army under Dunmore there was very little discontent at the issue, and at the close of the campaign the men heartily thanked his lordship for his valuable services in behalf of the people. They did this, too, at a time when they knew from Eastern news received in camp, that the Revolution was near at hand, and Dunmore must soon be fighting against them in behalf of his royal master.––R. G. T.

[28]

Dunmore had, through White Eyes, summoned the Shawnee chiefs to treat with him at Fort Gower (not Gore), but they had declined to come in. He then set out, October 11th, to waste their towns on the Scioto, as previously noted, leaving the fort in charge of Captain Kuykendall (not Froman), with whom remained the disabled and the beeves. Each man on the expedition carried flour for sixteen days. Just after the Point Pleasant battle, Lewis had dispatched a messenger to his lordship with news of the affair; Dunmore’s messenger to Lewis, with instructions to the latter to join him en route, crossed Lewis’s express on the way. The messenger from Lewis found that his lordship had marched up the Big Hockhocking valley for the Scioto, and hurried after him. The governor was overtaken at the third camp out (west of the present Nelsonville, Athens county, O.), and the good news caused great joy among the soldiers. October 17th, Dunmore arrived at what he styled Camp Charlotte (on the northern bank of Sippo Creek, Pickaway county, eight miles east of Chillicothe, in view of Pickaway Plains), and here the treaty of peace was concluded.––R. G. T.

[29]

Doddridge’s Notes says that the camp was surrounded by a breastwork of fallen trees, and an entrenchment, and Roosevelt’s Winning of the West follows him. But Dr. Draper was distinctly told (in 1846-51) by two survivors of the campaign, Samuel Murphy and John Grim, that Withers’s account is correct; and this is confirmed in Whittlesey’s Fugitive Essays. In the center of the field, a building of poles was erected, in which to hold the council; around this, the army encamped. A large white oak having been peeled, Dunmore wrote upon it in red chalk, “Camp Charlotte,” thus honoring the then English queen.––R. G. T.

[30]

Logan was the Mingo chief, the massacre of whose family at Baker’s Bottom, the previous April, has already been described. He had just returned (October 21) from a foray on the Holston border, bringing several scalps and three prisoners, when the trader Gibson and the scout Simon Girty were sent to him by his lordship.––R. G. T.

[31]

Colonel Benjamin Wilson, Sen. (then an officer in Dunmore’s army, and whose narrative of the campaign furnished the facts which are here detailed) says that he conversed freely with one of the interpreters (Nicholson) in regard to the mission to Logan, and that neither from the interpreter, nor any other one during the campaign, did he hear of the charge preferred in Logan’s speech against Captain Cresap, as being engaged in the affair at Yellow creek.––Captain Cresap was an officer in the division of the army under Lord Dunmore; and it would seem strange indeed, if Logan’s speech had been made public, at camp Charlotte, and neither he, (who was so materially interested in it, and could at once have proved the falsehood of the allegation which it contained,) nor Colonel Wilson, (who was present during the whole conference between Lord Dunmore and the Indian chiefs, and at the time when the speeches were delivered sat immediately behind and close to Dunmore,) should have heard nothing of it until years after.

––––

Comment by R. G. T.––Withers thus shortly disposes of the famous speech by Logan, which schoolboys have been reciting for nearly a hundred years as one of the best specimens extant, of Indian eloquence. The evidence in regard to the speech, which was undoubtedly recited to Gibson, and by him written out for Lord Dunmore’s perusal, and later “improved” by Jefferson, is clearly stated in Roosevelt’s Winning of the West, I., app. iii.

[32]

The reason for the attack was, that the Mingoes were implacable, and Dunmore had learned that instead of coming into the treaty they purposed retreating to the Great Lakes with their prisoners and stolen horses. This Mingo village was Seekonk (sometimes called the Hill Town), 30 or 40 miles up the Scioto. Crawford left Camp Charlotte the night of the 25th, and surprised the town early in the morning of the 27th. Six were killed, several wounded, and fourteen captured; the rest escaping into the forest. Crawford burned several Mingo towns in the neighborhood.––R. G. T.

[33]

In remarking on the appearance and manner of Cornstalk while speaking, Colonel Wilson says, “When he arose, he was in no wise confused or daunted, but spoke in a distinct, and audible voice, without stammering or repetition, and with peculiar emphasis. His looks while addressing Dunmore, were truly grand and majestic; yet graceful and attractive. I have heard the first orators in Virginia, Patrick Henry and Richard Henry Lee, but never have I heard one whose powers of delivery surpassed those of Cornstalk on that occasion.”

Footnotes for Chapter 8

Chief among the fomenters of disorder were the renegades Simon Girty, Matthew Elliott, and Alexander McKee. The dastardly deeds of this trio are fully set forth in Butterfield’s History of the Girtys, an important work to all students of the annals of the West during the Revolutionary War.––R. G. T.

James Harrod’s father emigrated from England to Virginia, about 1734, and was one of the first settlers on the Shenandoah, in the Valley of Virginia. One of his sons, Samuel, accompanied Michael Stoner on his famous Western hunting and exploring trip, in 1767; another, William, born at the new family seat, at Big Cove, in what is now Bedford County, Pa., served with distinction under George Rogers Clark. James, born in 1742, was twelve years old when his father died, leaving a large family on an exposed frontier, at the opening of the French and Indian War. In November, 1755, a raid was made on the Big Cove settlement, by the Delaware chief Shingiss (p. 45, note), but the Harrods were among the few families who escaped unharmed to Fort Littleton. When James was sixteen years of age he served with his brother William on Forbes’s campaign, and very likely saw further service during that war. In 1772, when he had attained wide celebrity on the border as an adept in woodcraft, he helped William settle on Ten Mile Creek, a tributary of the Monongahela; and in 1773 he and several other explored Kentucky, returning home by way of Greenbrier River. We have seen (p. 152, note) that he was surveying the site of Harrodsburg in 1774, when warned by Boone and Stoner. Retiring with his men to the Holston, he and they joined Col. Christian’s regiment, but arrived at Point Pleasant a few hours after the battle of October 10. Returning to his abandoned Kentucky settlement March 18, 1775, a fortnight before Boonesborough was founded, he was chosen a delegate to the Transylvania convention, and became a man of great prominence in the Kentucky colony. In 1779 he commanded a company on Bowman’s campaign, and the year following was a captain on Clark’s Indian campaign; declining a majorship, he served as a private on Clark’s campaign of 1782. He was a member of the Kentucky convention (at Danville) of December, 1784, and at one time represented Kentucky in the Virginia legislature. In February, 1792, having made his will, he set out from Washington, Ky., with two men, in search of a silver mine reported to be at the Three Forks of the Kentucky. No more was heard of him or his companions, and it is still the belief of the family that the latter murdered him. He was survived by his wife and a daughter, and left a large landed estate. Harrod, although unlettered, was a man of fine presence and many sterling qualities, and made a strong impress on his generation. He is still remembered in Kentucky as one of the worthiest pioneers of that state.––R. G. T.

The company––successively called The Louisa Company, Henderson & Co., and The Transylvania Company––was composed of Col. Richard Henderson, Col. John Williams, Thomas Hart, Col. David Hart, Capt. Nathaniel Hart, Col. John Luttsell, James Hogg, William Johnston, and Leonard Henley Bullock.

Henderson’s paternal great-grandfather was a Scottish immigrant, and one of his grandmothers was Welsh. The family settled in Hanover County, Va., where Richard, son of Samuel Henderson, was born April 20, 1735. Samuel moved with his family to North Carolina, in 1745, and became sheriff of Granville County. Richard had the education of a rural youth of good station, and became a lawyer. In 1767 he was appointed one of the two associate justices of the superior court of the colony, and served with great credit for six years, when the court was abolished. During professional visits to Salisbury, Henderson heard frequently––chiefly through the brothers Hart––of the exploits of Boone, and the latter’s glowing reports of the beauty and fertility of Kentucky. Relying implicitly on Boone’s statements, these four men energetically resolved to settle the country. In the autumn of 1774, Henderson and Nathaniel Hart visited the Cherokees to ascertain if they would sell their claims to Kentucky, and receiving a favorable reply agreed to meet the Indians in treaty council at the Sycamore Shoals, on Watauga River. On their return home, they were accompanied by a wise old Indian (Little Carpenter), and a young buck and his squaw, delegates to see that proper goods were purchased for the proposed barter. These goods were bought in December at Cross Creek, now Fayetteville, N. C., and forwarded by wagons to Watauga.

Boone was then sent out to collect the Indians, and when the council opened (March 14, 1775) had twelve hundred assembled at the Sycamore Shoals––half of them warriors. The council proceeded slowly, with much characteristic vacillating on the part of the Indians; but on the third day (March 17) the deed of sale was signed to what came to be known as “the great grant:” The tract from the mouth of the Kentucky (or Louisa) River to the head spring of its most northerly fork; thence northeasterly to the top of Powell’s Mountain; thence westerly and then northwesterly to the head spring of the most southerly branch of the Cumberland; thence down that stream, including all its waters, to the Ohio, and thence up the Ohio to the mouth of the Kentucky. The Indians were conscious that they had sold what did not belong to them; and Dragging Canoe and other chiefs were outspoken in their opinion that the whites would have difficulty in settling the tract. The Indians were much dissatisfied with the division of the goods. These “filled a house” and cost £10,000 sterling, yet when distributed among so many greedy savages each had but a small share. One warrior, who received but a shirt for his portion, said he “could have shot more game in one day on the land ceded, than would pay for so slight a garment.”

Governors Martin, of North Carolina, and Dunmore, of Virginia, issued proclamations against the purchase, as contrary to the royal proclamation of 1763. But those who were present at the treaty––among them such prominent borderers as Daniel Boone, James Robertson, John Sevier, Isaac Shelby, Felix Walker, the Bledsoes, Richard Callaway, William Twitty, William Cocke, and Nathaniel Henderson––were heedless of such proclamations, and eager to become settlers under the company’s liberal offer made to them on the spot: for each man who assisted in the first settlement, and went out and raised a crop of corn that year, a grant of 500 acres for £5 sterling, clear of all charges.

Boone, as the company’s agent, started out at once (March 10) with twenty men, soon reinforced to thirty; with their hatchets they blazed a bridle path over Cumberland Gap, and across Cumberland, Laurel, and Rockcastle rivers, to the banks of the Kentucky, where, after a running fight with the Indians, they arrived April 1, and founded Boonesborough. Henderson, at the head of thirty men conveying the wagons and supplies, arrived at Boonesborough April 20; with him were Luttsell and Nathaniel Hart. May 23, there met at Boonesborough the Legislature of Transylvania, in which sat eighteen delegates from the little group of four frontier forts, all established at about this time––Harrodsburg, Boiling Springs, and St. Asaph’s (or Logan’s Station), lying some thirty or more miles southwest of Boonesborough, the capital of this little western colony. Withers does not mention this first legislative assembly held in the Mississippi Valley. It is an interesting and suggestive episode in American commonwealth-building, and deserves careful study. Roosevelt gives it admirable treatment, in his Winning of the West. The journal of the convention is given at length in the appendix to the second edition of Butler’s Kentucky; Hall’s Sketches of the West, i., pp. 264, 265; Louisville Literary News-Letter, June 6, 1840; and Hazard’s U. S. Register, iii., pp. 25-28. Henderson’s MS. Journal is in the possession of the Wisconsin Historical Society, and has never yet been published.

Virginia and North Carolina did not favor an independent government in Kentucky, and annulled the title of the Henderson company––but Virginia (1795) granted the proprietors in recompense 200,000 acres on Powell’s and Clinch rivers.

We hear little more of Richard Henderson, in pioneer history. In 1779, he was one of the North Carolina commissioners to extend the western boundary between that State and Virginia. During the winter of 1789-90 he was at the French Lick on Cumberland, where he opened a land office. His last public service was in 1781, when a member of the North Carolina house of commons. He died at his country seat in Granville County, N. C., January 30, 1785, in his fiftieth year. Two of his sons, Archibald and Leonard, attained eminence at the bar of their native State.––R. G. T.

Among Dr. Draper’s manuscripts I find this succinct review of the aboriginal claims to Kentucky: “There is some reason to suppose that the Catawbas may once have dwelt upon the Kentucky River; that stream, on some of the ancient maps published a hundred years ago, was called the ‘Cuttawa or Cawtaba River.’ But that tribe of Indians, so far as we know, never laid any claim to the territory.

“It would appear from the historical evidences extant, that the Shawanoes were the earliest occupants of Kentucky of whom we have any certain knowledge. Colden, the primitive historian of the Iroquois Confederacy, informs us, that when the French commenced the first settlement of Canada in 1603, the Five Nations, who then resided near the present locality of Montreal, were at war with the powerful Adirondacks, who at that time lived three hundred miles above the Three Rivers, in Canada. The Iroquois found it difficult to withstand the vigorous attacks of their enemies, whose superior hardihood was to be attributed to their constant devotion to the chase, while the Iroquois had been chiefly engaged in the more peaceful occupation of planting corn. Compelled to give way before their haughty foes, the confederates had recourse to the exercise of arms, in order, if possible, to retrieve their martial character and prowess. To raise the spirits of their people, the Iroquois leaders turned their warriors against the Satanas or Shawanoes, ‘who then,’ says Colden, ‘lived on the banks of the lakes,’––or, as other historians assert, in Western New York, and south of Lake Erie,––and soon subdued and drove them out of the country. The Shawanoes then retired to the Ohio, along which and its tributaries they planted numerous settlements. Some of them, however, when driven from Western New York, seem to have located somewhere on the Delaware, for De Laet, in 1624, speaks of Sawanoos residing on that river.

“The Jesuit Relations of 1661-62, allude to their residence in the West under the name of Ontouagannha or ChaoÜanons; they seem to have been the same as were called Tongorias, Erighecks, Erieehonons, Eries, or Cats, by the early missionaries and historians; and the same, moreover, known in the traditions of the Senecas as Gah-kwahs, who resided on Eighteen Mile Creek, a few miles southwest of Buffalo, in Western New York, which the Senecas still call Gah-kwah-gig-a-ah Creek, which means the place where the Gah-kwahs lived. In 1672, the Shawanoes and their confederates in the Ohio Valley met with a disastrous overthrow by the Five Nations at Sandy Island, just below the Falls of Ohio, where large numbers of human bones were still to be seen at the first settlement of the country. The surviving Shawanoes must then have retired still farther down the Ohio, and settled probably in the western part of Kentucky; and Marquette, in 1673, speaks of their having twenty-three villages in one district, and fifteen in another, all lying quite near each other: At length the Shawanoes departed from Kentucky, and seem to have gone to the upper part of the Carolinas, and to the coast of Florida, and ever after proved a migratory people. They were evidently ‘subdued,’ as Colden, Evans, and Pownall inform us, and the decisive battle was fought at Sandy Island, where a vital blow was given to the balance of power on the Ohio, which decided finally the fall of Kentucky with its ancient inhabitants.

“It was this conquest that gave to the powerful Iroquois all the title they ever acquired to Kentucky. At the peace of Ryswick, in 1697, their right to their western conquests was fully acknowledged; and at the treaty of Lancaster, in Pennsylvania, in 1744, they ceded to Virginia all their lands west of that colony. In 1752, the Shawanoes and other western tribes, at Logstown on the Ohio, confirmed the Lancaster treaty, and sold their claim to the country south of the Ohio; and, at the treaty of Fort Stanwix, in 1768, the Six Nations made a new cession of their claim to Kentucky as low as the Cherokee or Tennessee River. Up to this period, the Cherokees never so much as thought of contesting with the Iroquois their claim to the Kentucky country; for some of the visiting Cherokees, while on their route to attend the Fort Stanwix treaty, killed game for their subsistence, and on their arrival at Fort Stanwix, tendered the skins to the Six Nations, saying, ‘They are yours, we killed them after passing the Big River,’ the name by which they had always designated the Tennessee. But probably discovering that other Indian nations were driving a good business by disposing of their distant land rights, the Cherokees managed to hatch up some sort of claim, which they, in part, relinquished to Virginia, at the treaty of Lochaber in 1770; and when Col. Donelson ran the line the following year, the boundary was fixed, at the suggestion of the Cherokee deputies, on the Kentucky River as the south-western line, as they delighted, they said, in natural landmarks. This considerably enlarged the cession, for which they received an additional compensation.

“In 1772, the Shawanoes made no claim to Kentucky; and at the treaty of Camp Charlotte, in October, 1774, they tacitly confirmed their old sale of that country in 1752, by agreeing not even to hunt south of the Ohio. Thus, then, we see that the Iroquois had twice ceded their right to Kentucky as low as the Tennessee River, and twice received their pay; the Shawanoes had disposed of their claim, such as it was, and received for it a valuable consideration; and the Cherokees, finding it profitable to lay claim to some valuable unoccupied region, sold their newly assumed right to the country south and east of Kentucky River. Their claim, if indeed it rises to the dignity of a claim, south and west of the Kentucky, was fairly purchased by Henderson and Company, and thus with the subsequent purchase by treaty, of the Chickasaws, of the strip between the Tennessee and Mississippi, the Indian title to the whole Kentucky country was fully and fairly extinguished.”––R. G. T.

The first attack occurred the morning of March 25, when the party were encamped near the head of Taylor’s Fork of Silver Creek. Capt. Twitty and Felix Walker were severely wounded, and a negro servant killed; Twitty subsequently died from his wound. The other attack was on an outlying company, probably on Tate’s Creek; this occurred the 27th, and “Thomas McDowell and Jeremiah McFeeters were,” Boone wrote to Henderson, “killed and sculped.”––R. G. T.

The purchase of Henderson and company, was subsequently declared by the legislature of Virginia, to be null and void, so far as the purchasers were concerned; but effectual as to the extinguishment of the Indian title, to the territory thus bought of them. To indemnify the purchasers for any advancement of money or other things which they had made to the Indians, the assembly granted to them 200,000 acres of land, lying at the mouth of Green river, and known generally as Henderson’s grant.

Boone set out from Boonesborough, June 13, 1775. He left the settlement in a state approaching anarchy; there were several good men in the district, but the majority were shiftless wanderers who would brook no exercise of authority. The buffalo were fast moving westward, and all game was now getting scarce––“hunt or starve” was the motto of the hour. A diarist (Capt. Floyd) estimated that there were then a total of 300 people in all the Kentucky settlements––not reckoning “a great many land-jobbers from towards Pittsburg, who go about on the north side of Kentucky, in companies, and build forty or fifty cabins a piece on lands where no surveying has yet been done.” Among the best of the numerous arrivals, were George Rogers Clark, Simon Kenton, Benjamin Logan, and Whitley, who came to be very prominent characters in Kentucky history. Boone, with his wife and daughters, and twenty-one men, arrived at Boonesborough September 6 or 7. “My wife and daughters,” writes Boone, “were the first women that ever stood on the banks of Kentucky river.” Mrs. McGary, Mrs. Hogan, and Mrs. Denton arrived at Harrodsburg the 8th of September, and were the first white women in that settlement. With the arrival of these families, and fresh fighting men, the Kentucky colony began to take on a permanent air, and thenceforward there was better order.––R. G. T.

In the winter of 1776-77, McClelland’s Station and Logan’s Station, (indifferently styled Fort or Station) were abandoned because of Indian attacks, and the settlers huddled into Boonesborough and Harrodsburg––although possibly Price’s settlement, on the Cumberland, maintained a separate existence throughout the winter. There were at this time not to exceed a hundred and fifty white men in the country, available for active militia duty. As during January and February, 1777, the Indians were quiet, confidence was restored in some degree, and during the latter month, Logan, with his own and some half dozen other families, left Harrodsburg and re-occupied Logan’s Station. Thus far, each settlement had chosen its own military leader, and discipline was practically unknown. March 5, under order and commissions from Virginia, the militia of Kentucky county were assembled and organized at Boonesborough, Harrodsburg, and Logan’s Station, with George Rogers Clark as major, and Daniel Boone, James Harrod, John Todd, and Benjamin Logan as captains.––R. G. T.

This foray took place March 6––not the 14th, as in the text––at Shawnee Springs, four miles north-east of Harrodsburg. The whites––James Ray, William Ray, Thomas Shores, and William Coomes––were sugar-making, when attacked by about seventy Shawnees, under Black Fish. William Ray was killed, and Shores taken prisoner. James Ray outran his pursuers and gave the alarm. The unsuccessful attack on the incomplete fort of Harrodsburg occurred early the following morning, the 7th. Other brief attacks on Harrodsburg, were on March 18 and 28.––R. G. T.

A small detachment from Black Fish’s party made a dash on workers in the Boonesborough fields, the day after the Harrodsburg fight––killing a negro, and wounding several whites.––R. G. T.

This assault on Boonesborough occurred the morning of Thursday, April 24. The Indians numbered about one hundred. Boone was wounded, and very nearly lost his life, in a sortie. The story of the fight abounds with instances of heroism on the part of both women and men.––R. G. T.

It occurred throughout Friday, May 30. The Indians are reported to have numbered fifty-seven.––R. G. T.

Those who went out early in the morning to milk the cows, were Mrs. Ann Logan, Mrs. Whitley, and a negro woman. They were guarded only by William Hudson, Burr Harrison, John Kennedy, and James Craig. The women and Craig escaped into the fort unharmed; Kennedy, with four balls in his body, contrived also to escape; Hudson was killed outright, and Harrison fell wounded. He was supposed by friend and foe to have been killed. The story of his final rescue by Logan, is related by Withers below. As told to Dr. Draper, by Capt. Benjamin Biggs, and as recorded in Whitley’s MS. Narrative, in possession of the Wisconsin Historical Society, the story in Withers is substantially correct. It is said that Logan rolled a bag of wool before him, and thus approached Harrison under cover; then making a rush towards the latter, he picked him up in his arms and dashed successfully into the fort. These accounts make no mention of Martin’s intervention. Harrison died of his wounds, June 13.––R. G. T.

Benjamin Logan was by birth a Virginian; and at the age of fourteen was left by the death of his father, to provide for his mother and her other children, and with the other cares of a family upon his infant hands. He discharged the duties thus devolving on him, with the utmost fidelity; and having provided amply for the support of his mother, and placed the other members of her household in eligible situations, he removed to the Holstein, married, purchased land, and commenced making improvements. From thence he went to Kentucky, where he spent the balance of his life, in the discharge of every social and relative duty, with credit to himself and advantage to the community. He was a delegate to the Virginia legislature from the county of Kentucky in 1780; was soon after commissioned county Lieutenant, (then the highest military title in the militia of a county) and in the various battles, as well as in the many skirmishes, which he fought with the Indians, his conduct and bearing were such, as fully established for him the reputation of a brave, skilful, prudent and meritorious officer. In private life, and in his intercourse with his fellow men, his whole course was distinguished by the most uncompromising honor, and expanded philanthrophy. The heroic adventure, by which he saved his wounded comrade, from the tomahawk, the scalping knife, and from fire, was but one of many such exploits, whereby he achieved good to others, at the most imminent hazard of his own life.

This was the name given to the station of Logan.

Whitley’s MS. Narrative and Cowan’s MS. Diary, in the Wisconsin Historical Society’s library, say that Logan left alone during the night of June 6. Logan returned to his fort on the 23d, having travelled almost incessantly, and brought news that relief would soon come. Soon after Logan’s expedition to the Holston, other messengers were sent to the East, clamoring for help––McGary and Hoggin to Fort Pitt, and Smith to the Yadkin; and twice Harrod vainly went forth to meet expected troops. But the Continental army was hard pressed in those days, and despite the rumor on the coast that Kentucky was in a sad way, it was long before relief could be sent.––R. G. T.

Bowman arrived at Boonesborough the first of August, with two companies from Virginia, under Capts. Henry Pauling and John Dunkin––the latter being soon succeeded by Isaac Ruddell. The force numbered 100 men. August 25, while six of Bowman’s men were on their way to Logan’s, they were attacked by Indians, two being killed and one wounded. Before escaping, the Indians left on the body of one of the men, several copies of a proclamation addressed to Clark and Logan in person, by Lieut.-Gov. Henry Hamilton, at the head of the British forces at Detroit, offering immunity to repentant rebels.––R. G. T.

See pp. 79, 80, note, for origin of the term “Long Knives.”––R. G. T.

Edward Hand was born in Ireland. He came to America in 1774 as a surgeon’s mate in the Eighth (Royal Irish) Regiment, and soon settled in Pennsylvania as a physician. When the Revolution broke out he joined a Pennsylvania regiment as lieutenant colonel, and served in the siege of Boston. In April, 1777, he was appointed brigadier-general in the Continental army, and the first of June assumed command of Fort Pitt. Lieut.-Gov. Henry Hamilton, of Detroit, under orders from London, was actively engaged in stirring up the Northwest Indians to forays on the Virginia and Pennsylvania borders, thus harrying the Americans in the rear. Hand, in whose charge was the frontier from Kittanning to the Great Kanawha, determined on an aggressive policy, and in February, 1778, undertook a campaign against the savages. An open winter, with heavy rains, prevented the force of about 500 men––chiefly from Westmoreland county––making satisfactory headway. Finally, the expedition was abandoned when it had proceeded no farther than Mahoning Creek. From the fact that this first American movement against the savages, during the Revolution, resulted only in the capture of non-combatants, in the almost deserted villages, it was long known as “the squaw campaign.” Hand was a competent officer, but was much pestered, at Fort Pitt, with the machinations of tories, who were numerous among the borderers. Succeeded at Fort Pitt in 1778, by Brig.-Gen. Lachlan McIntosh, Hand in turn succeeded Stark in command at Albany. We find him, in 1779, actively engaged on Sullivan’s campaign against the New York Indians, and in 1780 he became adjutant general. A member of congress in 1784-85, he was in 1790 a member of the constitutional convention of Pennsylvania, and died at Rockford, Lancaster County, Pa., September 3, 1802––R. G. T.

See p. 172, note 2, for sketch of life and death of Cornstalk.––R. G. T.

Footnotes for Chapter 9

This “year of the three sevens,” as it was called, was long known as “the bloody year” of border history.––R. G. T.

General Hand was commandant, and George Morgan Indian agent, at Fort Pitt. Runners from the Moravian towns on the Tuscarawas and Muskingum rivers, in Ohio, frequently came into the fort during the summer, with dispatches for either of these officials. The Delawares, as a nation, were friendly throughout the year. The hostiles were chiefly composed of Wyandots and Mingoes, but with them were a few Shawnees and Delawares.––R. G. T.

The first fort at Wheeling was built in the summer of 1774, by order of Lord Dunmore, under direction of Majors William Crawford and Angus McDonald. It stood upon the Ohio bank about a quarter of a mile above the entrance of Wheeling Creek. Standing in open ground, it was a parallelogram of square pickets pointed at top, with bastions and sentry boxes at the angles, and enclosed over half an acre. It ranked in strength and importance, next to Fort Pitt. Within the fort were log barracks, an officers’ house, a storehouse, a well, and cabins for families. A steep hill rises not far inland; between the fort and the base of this hill the forest had been leveled, and a few log cabins were nestled in the open. Such was Wheeling in 1777. At first the fort had been called Fincastle, for the Ohio Valley settlements were then in Fincastle County, Va.; but upon the opening of the Revolution the post, now in Ohio County, was named Fort Henry, in honor of the first state governor of Virginia.––R. G. T.

News came to Fort Pitt, early in August, that an Indian attack in force, on Wheeling, might be expected at any time. Says the Shane MSS., “White Eyes came to Fort Pitt and told them the Indians were going to take Wheeling home.” August 2d, Gen. Hand wrote to David Shepherd, lieutenant of Ohio County, warning him of the perilous situation, and ordering him to leave his own fort, six miles from Fort Henry, and to rally at the latter all the militia between the Ohio and Monongahela,––the “pan-handle.” Shepherd did this, and by the close of the month Fort Henry was, as he said, “Indian proof.” But the non-arrival of the foe caused a relaxation of vigilance. Nine companies were allowed to go home, and by the last day of August only two companies remained in the fort, those of Capts. Joseph Ogle and Samuel Mason.––R. G. T.

Shepherd to Hand, Sept. 15, 1777: “By the best judges here ... it is thought their numbers must have been not less than between two and three hundred.” The Shepherd, Hand, Shane, and Doddridge MSS., in the library of the Wisconsin Historical Society, throw much light on this episode.––R. G. T.

The Indians made their appearance on the night of August 31st––not September 1st, as in the text. The incident here related occurred at about sunrise of September 1st. Andrew Zane, young John Boyd, Samuel Tomlinson, and a negro, set out to hunt for the horses of Dr. James McMechen, because the latter wished that day to return to the older settlements, either on the Monongahela, or east of the mountains. Boyd was killed, but his companions escaped––Zane, by leaping from a cliff, the height of which local tradition places at seventy feet.––R. G. T.

De Hass, in his History of the Early Settlement and Indian Wars of West Virginia,––a conscientious work, which depends, however, too closely on traditions,––says (p. 225), “out of the fourteen, but two escaped.”––R. G. T.

Among the survivors was Ogle who, like Mason, hid himself in the bushes until nightfall enabled him to return to the fort.––R. G. T.

As a matter of fact, the Indians made no attack on the fort at this time, being content with the success of their ambuscade. After throwing up some rude earth-works and blinds, scalping the dead whites, killing all the live stock within reach, and setting fire to the outlying cabins, they retired across the Ohio in the night, and dispersed. Their loss was one killed and nine wounded; the whites lost fifteen killed and five wounded. The next day (September 2), the whites buried their dead, and unavailingly scoured the country for Indians.

Tradition has made sad havoc with the records, in regard to this first “siege” of Wheeling. Some of the deeds of heroism related below, by Withers, were incidents of the second siege––September 11, 1782, seven years later; but most of them are purely mythical, or belong to other localities. Perhaps no events in Western history have been so badly mutilated by tradition, as these two sieges.––R. G. T.

This statement of Withers, that Simon Girty was at the siege of Wheeling, was long accepted as fact by Western historians. But it is now established beyond doubt, that neither Simon nor his brothers were present at that affair, being at the time in the employ of Indian Agent Morgan, at Fort Pitt. For details of the evidence, consult Butterfield’s History of the Girtys, passim.––R. G. T.

[163] The notes furnished the compiler, mention particularly a Mrs. Glum and Betsy Wheat, as performing all the duties of soldiers with firmness and alacrity.

––––

Comment by R. G. T.––Withers derived his information from traditional notes in the possession of Noah Zane, son of Ebenezer.

After the affair at Wheeling, September 1, the Indians returned home. But soon thereafter, Half King, head chief of the Wyandots, set out with forty of that tribe to again harry the Wheeling country. On the morning of the 26th, Capts. William Foreman with twenty-four men, Ogle with ten men, and William Linn with nine, started from Fort Henry on a scout. Linn was ranking officer, although there was little discipline. Foreman was a new arrival from Hampshire County, enlisted to go on Hand’s intended expedition. They intended crossing the Ohio at Grave Creek, 12 miles below, and proceeding 8 miles farther down to Captina. At Grave, however, they found that the Tomlinson settlement (nucleus of the present Mound City, W. Va.) had been abandoned, and sacked by Indians, and no canoes were to be had. They camped for the night, and the next morning (the 27th) started to return along the river bank, to Wheeling. Linn, apprehensive of Indians, marched along the hill crest, but Ogle and Foreman kept to the trail along the bottom. At a point where the bottom narrows because of the close approach of the hills to the river––a defile then known as McMechen’s (or McMahon’s) Narrows––they were set upon by Half King’s party, awaiting them in ambush. Foreman and twenty others were killed, and one captured. The story about Linn’s gallant attack on the Indians from his vantage point on the hilltop, is without foundation. His party helped to secrete a wounded man who escaped in the melee, and then put off in hot haste for home. It was not until four days later, when reinforcements had arrived from Fort Pitt, that Colonel Shepherd ventured from the fort to bury the dead. In 1835, an inscribed stone was set up at the Narrows, to commemorate the slain.––R. G. T.

Footnotes for Chapter 10

Lachlan McIntosh was born near Inverness, Scotland, March 17, 1725. With his father, and 100 others of the Clan McIntosh, he emigrated to Georgia in 1736, in the train of Oglethorpe. The party founded New Inverness, in McIntosh County. Lachlan entered the Colonial army at the opening of the Revolution, and rose to be brigadier-general. In a duel with Button Gwinnett, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, he killed the latter. General McIntosh was at the siege of Savannah in 1779, was a prisoner of war in 1780, a member congress in 1784, and in 1785 a commissioner to treat with the Southern Indians. He died at Savannah, February 20, 1806.––R. G. T.

The distance below Pittsburg is 26 miles. See p. 45, note, for notice of Shingiss Old Town, at this point.––R. G. T.

The distance, according to the shore meanderings of the U. S. Corps of Engineers, is 263 miles; the mileage of the channel would be somewhat greater.––R. G. T.

See p. 176, note, for notice of Grenadier Squaw’s Town, near Chillicothe.––R. G. T.

See p. 137, note, for notice of Jesse Hughes; also, Peyton’s History of Augusta County, p. 353.––R. G. T.

These war parties largely emanated from the Detroit region. Lieutenant-Governor Hamilton, the British commander at Detroit, writing to his superior, General Haldimand, September 16, 1778, mentions incidentally that he sent out small parties of Miamis and Chippewas, August 5, and September 5 and 9; these were but three of dozens of such forays which he incited against the Virginia and Pennsylvania borders, during that year.––R. G. T.

This reference is to Lieut.-Governor Hamilton, whom George Rogers Clark called “the hair-buying general.”––R. G. T.

Gen. George Rogers Clark was born November 19, 1752, near Monticello, Albemarle County, Va. At the age of twenty he was practicing his profession as a surveyor on the upper Ohio, and took up a claim at the mouth of Fish Creek. In 1774, he participated as a captain in Dunmore’s campaign against the Shawnees and Mingoes. Early in 1775, Clark went as a surveyor to Kentucky, where he acquired marked popularity, and in 1776 was elected as “a delegate to the Virginia convention, to urge upon the state authorities the claims of the colony for government and defense.” He secured the formation of the new county of Kentucky, and a supply of ammunition for the defense of the border. In 1777, Clark, now a major of militia, repelled the Indian attacks on Harrodsburg, and proceeded on foot to Virginia to lay before the state authorities his plan for capturing the Illinois country and repressing the Indian forays from that quarter. His scheme being approved, he was made a lieutenant-colonel, and at once set out to raise for the expedition a small force of hardy frontiersmen. He rendezvoused and drilled his little army of a hundred and fifty on Corn Island in the Ohio river, at the head of the Falls (or rapids), opposite the present city of Louisville. June 24, 1778, he started in boats down the Ohio, and landed near the deserted Fort Massac, which was on the north bank, ten miles below the mouth of the Tennessee; thence marching across country, much pressed for food, he reached Kaskaskia in six days. The inhabitants there were surprised and coerced during the night of July 4-5, without the firing of a gun. Cahokia and Vincennes soon quietly succumbed to his influence. Lieut.-Governor Hamilton, on hearing of this loss of the Illinois country and the partial defection to the Americans of the tribes west and southwest of Lake Michigan, at once set out to organize an army, chiefly composed of Indians, to retake the Illinois. He proceeded via the Wabash and Maumee, with eight hundred men, and recaptured Vincennes, December 17.

The intelligence of this movement of Hamilton was not long in reaching Clark at Kaskaskia, and he at once set out for Vincennes to recapture it. The march thither was one of the most heroic in American military annals. Hamilton surrendered to him, February 25, and was forwarded to Virginia as a prisoner. Early in 1780 he established Fort Jefferson, just below the mouth of the Ohio, and later in the season aided in repelling a body of British and Indians who had come to regain the Illinois country and attack the Spaniards at St. Louis. Leaving Colonel Montgomery to pursue the enemy up the Mississippi, Clark, with what force could be spared, hastened to Kentucky, where he quickly raised a thousand men, and invaded and laid waste the Shawnee villages, in retaliation for Capt. Henry Bird’s invasion (see p. 262, note).

Later, he was engaged in some minor forays, and was appointed a brigadier-general; but his favorite scheme of an expedition to conquer Detroit miscarried, owing to the poverty of Virginia and the activity of the enemy under Brant, McKee, Girty, and other border leaders. In 1782 Clark led a thousand men in a successful campaign against the Indians on the Great Miami. This was his last important service, his subsequent expeditions proving failures. His later years were spent in poverty and seclusion, and his social habits became none of the best. In 1793 he imprudently accepted a commission as major-general from Genet, the French diplomatic agent, and essayed to raise a French revolutionary legion in the West to overcome the Spanish settlements on the Mississippi; upon Genet’s recall, Clark’s commission was canceled. Later, he sought to secure employment under the Spanish (see p. 130, note.) He died February 18, 1818, at Locust Grove, near Louisville, and lies buried at Cave Hill, in the Louisville suburbs. In his article on Clark, in Appleton’s Cyclop. of Amer. Biog., i., pp. 626, 627, Dr. Draper says: “Clark was tall and commanding, brave and full of resources, possessing the affection and confidence of his men. All that rich domain northwest of the Ohio was secured to the republic, at the peace of 1783, in consequence of his prowess.” Cf. William F. Poole, in Winsor’s Narr. and Crit. Hist. Amer., vi., pp. 710-742. While due credit should be given to Clark for his daring and successful undertaking, we must not forget that England’s jealousy of Spain, and shrewd diplomacy on the part of America’s peace plenipotentiaries, were factors even more potent in winning the Northwest for the United States.––R. G. T.

Footnotes for Chapter 11

Called by the English, Fort Sackville.––R. G. T.

From Clark’s Journal: “January 29.––M. Vigo, a Spanish subject who had been at Post St. Vincents on his lawful business, arrived and gave us intelligence that Governor Hamilton, with thirty regulars and fifty volunteers and about 400 Indians, had arrived in November and taken that post with Capt. Helms and such other Americans who were there with arms, and disarmed the settlers and inhabitants.”––R. G. T.

Forty-six men, under Lieut. John Rogers, went with the artillery and stores, in a large galley or batteau, called the “Willing.” The distance to Vincennes by land, was a hundred and fifty miles.––R. G. T.

The originals of the correspondence between Clark and Hamilton are, with much other MS. material relative to the movements of Clark, in possession of the Wisconsin Historical Society. Hamilton’s letter, in a neat, scholarly hand, ran:

“Lieutenant Governor Hamilton proposes to Colonel Clark a Truce for three days, during which time he promises, there shall not be any defensive work carried on in the Garrison, on Condition Colo^l.. Clark shall observe on his part a like cessation from any offensive Work––

“He further proposes that whatever may pass between them two and any persons (mutually agreed upon to be) present, shall remain secret, till matters be finally concluded––

“As he wishes that whatever the result of their conference may be the honor and credit of each party may be considered, so he wishes to confer with Colo^l. Clark as soon as may be––

“As Colo^l. Clark makes a difficulty of coming into the Garrison, L^t. G. Hamilton will speak with him before the Gate––

Henry Hamilton.

“Feb^y. 24^th. 1779––Fort Sackville––”

Clark’s gruff reply, in rugged, but not unclerical chirography, was as follows:

“Colonel Clark’s Compliments to M^r. Hamilton and begs leave to inform him that Co^l. Clark will not agree to any Other Terms than that of M^r. Hamilton’s Surrendering himself and Garrison, Prisoners at Discretion––

“If M^r. Hamilton is Desirous of a Conferance with Co^l. Clark he will meet him at the Church with Capt^n. Helms––

“Feb^y. 24^th., 1779.

G. R. Clark.”––R. G. T.

Hamilton, in a letter of July 6, 1781, contained in the Haldimand Papers, in the British Museum, gives what he calls “a brief account” of his ill-starred expedition. See Roosevelt’s Winning of the West, passim.––R. G. T.

On the Tuscarawas River, about ten miles north of the present New Philadelphia, O., and a mile south of what is now Bolivar, Tuscarawas County. At the time Withers alludes to, it was garrisoned by 150 men under Col. John Gibson.––R. G. T.

Simon Girty and seventeen Indians, mostly Mingoes. Withers confounds this raid with the more formidable siege in February and March. In the January assault, Girty’s band ambushed Capt. John Clark, a sergeant, and fourteen men, returning to Fort Pitt from convoying provisions to Fort Laurens. Two whites were killed, four wounded, and one taken prisoner. In February, came an attacking party of a hundred and twenty Indians (mostly Wyandots and Mingoes), led by Capt. Henry Bird, of the Eighth (or King’s) Regiment; with him were Simon Girty and ten soldiers. The enemy arrived February 22, but remained in hiding. The next day Gibson sent out a guard of eighteen men, despite warnings of the enemy’s presence, to assist the wagoner in collecting the horses of the fort. All the party were killed and scalped, within sight of the fort, save two, who were made prisoners. The fort was then openly invested until March 20, when the besiegers withdrew, torn with dissensions and short of supplies. See Butterfield’s Washington-Irvine Correspondence for further details.––R. G. T.

Not to be confounded with George Rogers Clark, of Kentucky.––R. G. T.

The bodies of these men were found to have been much devoured by the wolves, and bearing the appearance of having been recently torn by them. With a view of taking revenge on these animals for devouring their companions, the fatigue party sent to bury their remains, after digging a grave sufficiently capacious to contain all, and having deposited them in it, they covered the pit with slender sticks, bark and rotten wood, too weak to bear the weight of a wolf, and placed a piece of meat on the top and near the center of this covering, as a bait. In the morning seven wolves were found in the pit, and killed and the grave then filled up.

Boone had left Boonesborough January 8, in charge of thirty men, to make salt at the Lower Blue Licks, on Licking River. They carried with them, on horses, several large boiling pans, given to the settlement by the government of Virginia. So weak was the water there, that 840 gallons were necessary to make a bushel of salt, against ninety at the Kanawha salines, and forty at Onondaga. While the salt-makers were at work, two or three others of the party served as scouts and hunters; generally, Boone was one of these. This day (Saturday, February 7) Boone started out alone with his pack-horse for a supply of game, which usually was plenty in the neighborhood of the salt licks; Thomas Brooks and Flanders Callaway, his fellow scouts, were taking another circuit. Having killed a buffalo, Boone was on his way home in the afternoon, with the choicest of the meat packed upon his horse. Snow was falling fast, and he was ten miles from camp, when discovered by four Indians, outlying members of a large party of Shawnees under Munseka and Black Fish, who had taken the war-path to avenge the murder of Cornstalk (see p. 172, note. 2). Benumbed by cold, and unable easily to untie or cut the frozen thongs which bound on the pack, Boone could not unload and mount the horse, and after a sharp skirmish was captured, and led to the main Indian encampment, a few miles away. Boone induced his fellow salt-makers to surrender peaceably the following day (February 8); the number of prisoners was, including Boone, twenty-seven––two scouts and two salt-packers being absent. After a ten days’ “uncomfortable journey, in very severe weather,” says Boone, in which they “received as good treatment as prisoners could expect from savages,” the party arrived at Little Chillicothe, on Little Miami––so called in contradistinction to Old Chillicothe, on the Scioto. Boone’s strong, compact build caused the Indians to call him Big Turtle, and under that name he was adopted as the son of Black Fish, who took a fancy to him; sixteen of his companions were also adopted by other warriors. The ten who were not adopted were, with Boone, taken on a trip to Detroit (starting March 10), guarded by forty Indians under Black Fish. The ten were sold to Lieut. Governor Hamilton and citizens of Detroit, for £20 each, the usual price for American prisoners. Boone remained in Detroit until April 10, during which he was treated with great courtesy by Hamilton, who offered Black Fish £100 for him, but the latter declined and took the great pioneer home with him; but Boone himself was given by Hamilton a horse and trappings, with silver trinkets to give to the Indians. At Little Chillicothe, Boone was kindly treated by Black Fish, and little by little his liberty was extended. June 16, while the family were making salt on the Scioto, preparatory to another expedition against Boonesborough, Boone escaped on the horse given him by Hamilton. After many curious adventures, in the course of which he swam the Ohio, he safely reached Boonesborough, June 20, having traveled, he estimated, a hundred and sixty miles in four days. Boone’s wife and family, supposing him dead, had returned to their old home in North Carolina, but Boone himself remained to assist in the defense of Boonesborough against the impending attack, of which he had brought intelligence.––R. G. T.

This was William Hancock, who had, like Boone, been adopted into an Indian family. Not so expert a woodsman as Boone, he had consumed twelve days in the journey from Chillicothe to Boonesborough, and suffered great hardships. He arrived at the fort July 17. In consequence of Boone’s escape, he reported, the Indians had postponed their intended attack for three weeks. The next day (July 18), Boone wrote to Arthur Campbell, lieutenant of Washington County, Va. (the Holston settlements, 200 miles away), that he expected the enemy in twelve days, and that the fort was prepared for a siege of three or four weeks; but relief would then be of infinite service.––R. G. T.

At the close of six weeks after Hancock’s arrival, Boone had become weary of waiting for the enemy, hence his expedition with nineteen men––not ten, as in the text––against the Shawnee town on Paint Creek, during the last week of August. It was the 5th of September when, undiscovered, he passed the Indian force encamped at Lower Blue Licks, and the next day arrived at Boonesborough.––R. G. T.

About 10 A. M. of Monday, September 7,––Withers places it a month, less a day, too early,––the hostiles crossed the Kentucky a mile and a half above Boonesborough, at a point since known as Black Fish’s Ford, and soon made their appearance marching single file, some of them mounted, along the ridge south of the fort. They numbered about 400, and displayed English and French flags. The strength of the force has been variously estimated, from 330 Indians and 8 Frenchmen (Col. John Bowman), to 444 Indians and 12 Frenchmen (Boone’s Narrative, by Filson). The English Indian department was represented by Capt. Isidore ChÊne, who had with him several other French-Canadians; there was also a negro named Pompey, who had long lived with the Indians, and served them as interpreter; the principal chiefs were, Black Fish, Moluntha, Black Hoof, and Black Beard.––R. G. T.

The garrison numbered, old and young, white and black, sixty persons capable of bearing arms; only forty, however, were really effective. Women and children, dressed and armed as men, frequently appeared upon the walls, to give an appearance of greater strength.––R. G. T.

This ruse of the Indians was discovered on Friday, the 11th. The garrison commenced its countermine immediately, and prosecuted the work for several days. The rival parties could hear each other at work underground. When the Indians had proceeded about forty yards, two-thirds of the distance from the river bank, successive rainstorms had so saturated the earth that sections of their tunnel caved in, and this it was that frustrated their scheme.––R. G. T.

When the Indians retired from before Boonesboro, one hundred and twenty-five pounds weight of bullets were picked up by the garrison, besides many that stuck in the logs of the fort. A conclusive proof that the Indians were not idle, during the continuance of the siege.

John Bowman, of Harrodsburgh, was lieutenant of Kentucky County, and colonel of its militia. During the spring of 1779, there was a general desire to raid the unsuspecting Shawnees, in retaliation for their invasions of Kentucky, and Bowman decided to command in person this “first regular enterprise to attack, in force, the Indians beyond the Ohio, ever planned in Kentucky.” The company of volunteers of the interior rendezvoused in May at Harrodsburgh, and under Capts. Benjamin Logan and Silas Harlan marched to Lexington, where they met the Boonesborough company under Capt. John Holder, and another party under Capt. Levi Todd. At the mouth of the Licking (site of Covington, Ky.), the general rendezvous agreed on, they found a company from the Falls of the Ohio (site of Louisville), under Capt. William Harrod. Also in the little army, which finally mustered 297 men, including officers, were frontiersmen from Redstone Old Fort, and other settlements in the valleys of the Ohio and Monongahela. The Redstone men were on their way home, when they heard of the expedition, and joined it at the Licking; they had been on a visit to Big Bone Lick, and had a canoe-load of relics therefrom, which they were transporting up river. The force crossed the Ohio, May 28, just below the mouth of the Licking; 32 men remained behind in charge of the boats, leaving 265 to set out for the Shawnee town of Little Chillicothe, on the Little Miami, distant about sixty-five miles northeast. George Clark and William Whitley were pilots, and George M. Bedinger adjutant and quartermaster.––R. G. T.

Without having seen an Indian, the expedition arrived in sight of Little Chillicothe, at dusk of May 29––Withers places the date two months ahead of the actual time. Capt. Logan had charge of the left wing, Harrod of the right, and Holder of the center. The white force now numbered 263––two men having returned to the boats, disabled; the Indians numbered about 100 warriors and 200 squaws and children. Black Fish was the principal village chief, and subordinate to him were Black Hoof and Black Beard.––R. G. T.

This was the council house, which was so stoutly defended that the white assailants were glad to take refuge in a neighboring hut, from which they escaped with difficulty.––R. G. T.

[20]

The chief cause of alarm, and the consequent disorder, was a false report started among the whites, that Simon Girty and a hundred Shawnees from the Indian village of Piqua, twelve miles distant, were marching to the relief of Black Fish. Order was soon restored, and when, fourteen miles out upon the homeward trail, Indians were discovered upon their rear, the enemy were met with vigor, and thereafter the retreat was unhampered. The force reached the Ohio, just above the mouth of the Little Miami, early on June 1. The “pack-horses” alluded to by Withers, were 163 Indian ponies captured in the Chillicothe woods; the other plunder was considerable, being chiefly silver ornaments and clothing. After crossing the Ohio in boats––the horses swimming––there was an auction of the booty, which was appraised at £32,000, continental money, each man getting goods or horses to the value of about £110. The Indian loss was five killed at the town, and many wounded; the whites had seven men killed. Little Chillicothe had been for the most part destroyed by fire, and its crops destroyed. The newspapers of the day regarded the expedition as an undoubted success.––R. G. T.

[21]

George W. Ranck: “April 1. Robert Patterson, at the head of twenty-five men, commenced a block house where Lexington now stands.”––R. G. T.

Footnotes for Chapter 12

L. V. McWhorter, of Berlin, W. Va., writes me: “A few years ago, the descendants of David Morgan erected a monument on the spot where fell one of the Indians. On the day of the unveiling of the monument, there was on exhibition at the spot, a shot-pouch and saddle skirt made from the skins of the Indians. Greenwood S. Morgan, a great-grandson of the Indian slayer, informs me that the shot-pouch is now in the possession of a distant relative, living in Wetzel County, W. Va. The knife with which the Indian was killed, is owned by Morgan’s descendants in Marion County, W. Va.”––R. G. T.

See p. 262, note, for account of Capt. Henry Bird’s attack on Fort Laurens.––R. G. T.

Mr. McWhorter says that this fort stood on an eminence, where is now the residence of Minor C. Hall. Upon the fort being abandoned by the settlers, the Indians burned it. When the whites again returned to their clearings, a new fort was erected, locally called Beech Fort, “because built entirely of beech logs––beech trees standing very thick in this locality.” Beech Fort was not over 500 yards from the old West Fort; it was “in a marshy flat, some 75 yards east of the house built by the pioneer Henry McWhorter, and still extant as the residence of Ned J. Jackson.” In the same field where Beech Fort was, “Alexander West discovered an Indian one evening; he fired and wounded him in the shoulder. The Indian made off, and fearing an ambuscade West would not venture in pursuit. Two weeks later, he ventured to hunt for the red man. Two miles distant, on what is now known as Life’s Run, a branch of Hacker’s Creek, the dead savage was found in a cleft of rocks, into which he had crawled and miserably perished. His shoulder was badly crushed by West’s bullet.”

Henry McWhorter, born in Orange County, N. Y., November 13, 1760, was a soldier in the Revolution, from 1777 to the close. In 1784, he settled about two miles from West’s Fort; three years later, he moved nearer to the fort, and there built the house of hewn logs, mentioned above, which “is to-day in a good state of preservation.” McWhorter died February 4, 1848.––R. G. T.

Alexander West was prominent as a frontier scout. Rev. J. M. McWhorter, who saw him frequently, gives this description of him: “A tall, spare-built man, very erect, strong, lithe, and active; dark-skinned, prominent Roman nose, black hair, very keen eyes; not handsome, rather raw-boned, but with an air and mien that commanded the attention and respect of those with whom he associated. Never aggressive, he lifted his arm against the Indians only in time of war.” West died in 1834. His house of hewed logs is, with its large barn, still standing and occupied by his relatives, about a mile east of the site of West’s Fort.––R. G. T.

L. V. McWhorter says: “The branch of Hacker’s creek on which John Cutright was wounded, is now known as Laurel Lick, near Berlin, W. Va.” For notice of Cutright, see p. 137, note.––R. G. T.

Footnotes for Chapter 13

Col. Reuben T. Durrett, in his Centenary of Louisville, p. 47, says that Louisville at this time consisted of Clark’s original block house, with eighteen cabins, on Corn Island, at the head of the rapids; a small fort at the foot of Third street, erected by Col. John Floyd in 1779; “a large fort on the east side of a ravine that entered the Ohio at Twelfth street, and a few rude log cabins scattered through the woods near the Twelfth street fort, all occupied by one hundred inhabitants, who had cleared and cultivated garden-spots around their humble cabins.”––R. G. T.

The expedition was sent out by Maj. A. S. De Peyster, then British commandant at Detroit. It was headed by Capt. Bird, with whom were Simon, James, and George Girty. The force, as rendezvoused at Detroit, consisted of 150 whites, and 100 Indians from the Upper Lakes; they carried two cannon. They were joined on the Miami by Capt. McKee, deputy Indian agent, and a large party of Indians, making the force of savages amount to 700.––R. G. T.

The original destination was Louisville, but en route the Indian chiefs compelled Bird to first proceed against the forts on the Licking.––R. G. T.

A station was a parallelogram of cabins, united by palisades so as to present a continued wall on the outer side, the cabin doors opening into a common square, on the inner side. They were the strong holds of the early settlers.

There seems to be abundant evidence that Bird, a competent officer, was humanely inclined; but he was quite in the power of his savage allies, who would brook little control of their passions. The number of prisoners taken at Isaac Ruddell’s was nearly 300; about fifty more were taken at Martin’s.––R. G. T.

The Indians had, contrary to Bird’s expostulations, wantonly slaughtered all the cattle at Ruddell’s Station, and this it was that caused the famine. With an abundance of food to sustain both prisoners and warriors, Bird might readily have carried out his purpose of uprooting nearly every settlement in Kentucky. There is nothing in his official report of the expedition, to warrant the statement that high water had any thing to do with the matter.––R. G. T.

Col. Daniel Brodhead was in command of the Eighth Pennsylvania Regiment. He succeeded McIntosh at Fort Pitt, in April, 1779.––R. G. T.

Brodhead set out from Fort Pitt, April 7, 1781, with 150 regulars; at Wheeling he picked up David Shepherd, lieutenant of Ohio County, Va., with 134 militia, including officers; besides these were five friendly Indians, eager for Delaware scalps.––R. G. T.

Salem, established by Heckewelder for his Indian converts, was on the west bank of the Tuscarawas, a mile and a half south-west of the present Port Washington.––R. G. T.

John Gottlieb Ernestus Heckewelder was born at Bedford, England, March 12, 1743. Coming to Pennsylvania in 1754, he was at first a cooper, but later became an assistant to Charles Frederick Post, the Moravian missionary. In 1771, he first became an evangelist to the Indians, on his own account, and spent fifteen years in Ohio, where he assisted in the work of David Zeisberger. He was a man of learning, and made important contributions to the study of American archÆology and, ethnology. The last thirteen years of his life were spent in literary work. He died at Bethlehem, Pa., January 21, 1823.––R. G. T.

Called in some of the contemporary chronicles, Goschocking.––R. G. T.

Withers here reverts to the Bird invasion in the summer of 1780, and the escape of Hinkstone from his British captors, related ante, pp. 295-98. Clark’s retaliatory expedition was made during August, 1780.––R. G. T.

Butterfield, in History of the Girtys, p. 121, places the white loss at seventeen killed, and “a number wounded;” and the Indian loss at six killed and three wounded. Clark’s nephew, Joseph Rogers, was killed on August 8, the day of the general engagement. Clark left Piqua, the 10th.––R. G. T.

I am informed by S. R. Harrison, of Clarksburg, W. Va., that the bodies of the victims were buried about five rods from the house, and “the graves are yet marked by the original rude stones.” Mr. Harrison continues, “This burial ground, and also where the house stood, had never been disturbed until March, 1888––a hundred and seven years after the massacre––when the ground about the site of the house was plowed; many interesting relics were turned up, among them a compass and sun-dial in a copper case. I myself found a number of relics among the charred ruins of the house.”––R. G. T.

As soon as the fire was opened upon the Indians, Mrs. Rony (one of the prisoners) ran towards the whites rejoicing at the prospect of deliverance, and exclaiming, “I am Ellick Rony’s wife, of the Valley, I am Ellick Rony’s wife, of the Valley, and a pretty little woman too, if I was well dressed.” The poor woman, ignorant of the fact that her son was weltering in his own gore, and forgetting for an instant that her husband had been so recently killed, seemed intent only on her own deliverance from the savage captors.

Another of the captives, Daniel Dougherty, being tied down, and unable to move, was discovered by the whites as they rushed towards the camp. Fearing that he might be one of the enemy and do them some injury if they advanced, one of the men, stopping, demanded who he was. Benumbed with cold, and discomposed by the sudden firing of the whites, he could not render his Irish dialect intelligible to them. The white man raised his gun and directed it towards him, calling aloud, that if he did not make known who he was, he should blow a ball through him, let him be white man or Indian. Fear supplying him with energy, Dougherty exclaimed, “Loord Jasus! and am I too be killed by white people at last!” He was heard by Col. Lowther and his life saved.

The Moravian Indians were originally from the Susquehanna River. They moved to the Tuscarawas River in 1772, under the missionaries Zeisberger and Heckewelder, who built two villages on the eastern bank of that river, on land set apart for them by the Delawares: SchÖnbrunn, about three miles south-east of the present New Philadelphia, in what is now Goshen township, Tuscarawas County, O., and GnadenhÜtten, lower down, in the outskirts of the present town of that name, in Clay township. The principal Delaware town, at that time, was some distance below, near the site of the present Newcomerstown; this was later moved to what is now Coshocton, at the confluence of the Tuscarawas and Walholding, which unite to form the Muskingum. At this time there was a Moravian village called Friedensstadt, on Beaver River, in what is now Lawrence County, Pa. In 1776 a new village for the accommodation of converts was established on the east bank of the Muskingum, two and a half miles below Coshocton, and called Lichtenau; William Edwards was the missionary in charge. In consequence of the disturbances on the border, SchÖnbrunn and GnadenhÜtten were deserted in 1777, and all the teachers returned to Pennsylvania save Zeisberger and Edwards, who gathered the Indians together at Lichtenau; but in the spring of 1778, GnadenhÜtten was re-occupied, with Edwards in charge. This was not for a long time, however, for in July we find Zeisberger, Heckewelder, and Edwards in charge of the union station at Lichtenau, the others being deserted. The spring of 1779 finds Edwards again at the resuscitated GnadenhÜtten, Zeisberger re-occupying SchÖnbrunn with a small party, and Heckewelder at Lichtenau. Later in the season Zeisberger began New SchÖnbrunn on the west bank of the Tuscarawas, in what is now Goshen township, a quarter of a mile from the present Lockport, and a mile and a quarter south of New Philadelphia; thither he removed his flock in December. In the spring of 1780, Heckewelder abandoned Lichtenau, and took his converts to the west bank of the Tuscarawas, where he established Salem, in the present Salem township, a mile and a half north-west of Port Washington. In the autumn the Moravian villages were in general charge of Zeisberger, who traveled from one to the other; Gottlob Senseman being in charge of New SchÖnbrunn, Edwards of GnadenhÜtten, and Heckewelder of Salem. It will thus be seen that at the time of the massacre, the Moravian villages were wholly in the valley of the Tuscarawas.––R. G. T.

Zeisberger and Heckewelder kept Brodhead continually informed, by letters, of the movements and councils of the hostiles. The position of the missionaries was one of exceeding delicacy, but the voluminous correspondence between them and Brodhead proves that the former were steadfast friends of the American colonies, and did effective service throughout the several years of disturbance on the frontier.––R. G. T.

Brodhead’s successful expedition against the Coshocton Indians, in April, 1781, led to preparations for a retaliatory foray. Headed by the renegade Capt. Matthew Elliott, a party of about 250 Indians,––mostly Wyandots, with chiefs Half King, Pipe, Snip, John and Thomas Snake, and others––assembled at GnadenhÜtten, for a talk with the Moravian teachers, preparatory to an expedition against Wheeling. They arrived August 17, and Zeisberger at once secretly sent a message of warning to Ft. Pitt, which threw the frontier into alarm, and caused the garrison at Wheeling to be fully prepared when the enemy appeared. A boy whom the Wyandots captured outside of Wheeling told them of Zeisberger’s warning, and when the unsuccessful war party returned to GnadenhÜtten (Sept. 2), vengeance was wreaked on the Moravians. The town was sacked that day, and the missionaries were kept as prisoners for several days. Finally they were released (Sept.6), on promise that they remove their converts from the line of the warpaths. September 11, the Moravians and their teachers left Salem in a body, with but few worldly goods, for most of their property had been destroyed by the Wyandots. They proceeded down the Tuscarawas to the mouth of the Walhonding, thence up the latter stream and Vernon River, and across country to the Sandusky, where they arrived October 1, and erected a few huts on the east bank of the river, about two and a-half miles above the present Upper Sandusky. Fourteen days later, the missionaries were summoned to appear before the British commandant at Detroit, Major De Peyster. Zeisberger, Heckewelder, Edwards, and Senseman left for Detroit, October 25. De Peyster questioned them closely, and finally released them with the statement that he would confer with them later, relative to their final abode. They reached the Sandusky, on their return, November 22. Meanwhile, the winter had set in early; and in danger of starving, a party of the Moravians had returned to the Tuscarawas to gather corn in the abandoned fields; while there, a party of border rangers took them prisoners and carried them to Fort Pitt. Brig.-Gen. William Irvine, then in command, treated the poor converts kindly, and allowed them to go in peace, many returning to their old villages on the Tuscarawas, to complete their dismal harvesting.––R. G. T.

Footnotes for Chapter 14

One hundred and eighty-six men, mounted, from the Monongahela settlements. Early in March, 1782, they assembled under David Williamson, colonel of one of the militia battalions of Washington County, Pa., on the east bank of the Ohio, a few miles below Steubenville. The water was high, the weather cold and stormy, and there were no boats for crossing over to Mingo Bottom. Many turned back, but about two hundred succeeded in crossing. The expedition was not a “private” affair, but was regularly authorized by the military authority of Washington County; its destination was not the Moravian settlements, but the hostile force, then supposed to be on the Tuscarawas river. It seems to have generally been understood on the border that the Moravian towns were now deserted.––R. G. T.

Contemporary accounts speak of a council of war, held in the evening, at which this question was decided. But a small majority voted for the butchery; Williamson himself was in the minority. Dorsey Pentecost, writing from Pittsburg, May 8, 1782 (see Penn. Arch., ix., p. 540), says: “I have heard it intimated that about thirty or forty only of the party gave their consent or assisted in the catastrophe.”––R. G. T.

Lineback’s Relation (Penn. Arch., ix., p. 525) says: “In the morning, the militia chose two houses, which they called the ‘slaughter houses,’ and then brought the Indians two or three at a time, with ropes about their necks, and dragged them into the slaughter houses where they knocked them down.” This accords with Heckewelder’s Narrative, p. 320, which says they were knocked down with a cooper’s mallet. The victims included those converts living at Salem, who had peaceably come in to GnadenhÜtten with their captors; but those at New SchÖnbrunn had taken the alarm and fled.––R. G. T.

Later authorities put the total number at ninety––twenty-nine men, twenty-seven women, and thirty-four children.––R. G. T.

Salem, New SchÖnbrunn and GnadenhÜtten were all destroyed by fire. The whites returned home the following day, with ninety-six scalps––ninety Moravians and six outlying Indians. It seems certain that a few hostiles were with the Moravians at the time of the massacre.––R. G. T.

David Williamson, as previously seen, was a colonel of militia in Washington County, Pa.; James Marshal, as county lieutenant of Washington, was his superior officer.––R. G. T.

The place of rendezvous was Mingo Bottom (the present Mingo Junction, O.), and the date May 20. It was the 24th before all were present. The volunteers numbered 480, of whom two-thirds were from Washington County; most of the others were from Fayette County, Pa., and a few from Ohio County, Va. In the vote for commander, William Crawford received 235, and Williamson 230. Four field majors were elected to rank in the order named: Williamson, Thomas Gaddis, John McClelland, and one Brinton. The standard modern authority for the details of this expedition, is Butterfield’s Crawford’s Expedition Against Sandusky (Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co., 1873).––R. G. T.

Col. David Williamson.––R. G. T.

His son John, his son-in-law Major William Harrison, and one of his nephews,––not two,––William Crawford. They were captured by the Indians and killed.––R. G. T.

Dr. John Knight, surgeon to the expedition. He was captured, and sentenced to death, but after thrilling adventures finally escaped.––R. G. T.

Wingenund.––R. G. T.

Colonel Crawford was then about fifty years of age, and had been an active warrior against the savages for a great while. During [245] the French war, he distinguished himself by his bravery and good conduct, and was much noticed by General Washington, who obtained for him an ensigncy. At the commencement of the revolution, he raised a regiment by his own exertions, and at the period of this unfortunate expedition, bore the commission of Colonel in the Continental army. He possessed a sound judgment, was a man of singular good nature and great humanity, and remarkable for his hospitality. His melancholy sufferings and death spread a gloom over the countenances of all who knew him. His son, John Crawford, and his son-in-law, Major Harrison, were taken prisoners, carried to the Shawanee towns and murdered.

––––

Comment by R. G. T.––Crawford was born in 1732, in Orange County, Va., of Scotch-Irish parentage. He made the friendship of Washington while the latter was surveying for Lord Fairfax, in the Shenandoah Valley, in 1749. Washington taught him his art, but in 1755 he abandoned it for a military life, and thenceforward was a prominent character on the frontier, often serving under Washington. From 1767 forward, his home was on the banks of the Youghiogheny, on Braddock’s Road. Crawford fought in Dunmore’s War, and throughout the Revolution did notable service on the Virginia border.

John Slover, one of the guides to the expedition, was among the best known scouts of his day, on the Upper Ohio. His published Narrative is a prime source of information relative to the events of the campaign.––R. G. T.

Thomas Mills.––R. G. T.

Lewis Wetzel, a noted Indian fighter. See p. 161, note.––R. G. T.

Footnotes for Chapter 15

L. V. McWhorter informs me that White, who was a prominent settler, was once with others on a hunting expedition, when they surprised a small party of Indians. They killed several, but one active young brave ran off, with White close at his heels. The Indian leaped from a precipice, alighting in a quagmire in which he sank to his waist. White, with tomahawk in hand, jumped after him. In the struggle which ensued, White buried his weapon in the red man’s skull. The victim’s father was among those who escaped, and for a long time––McWhorter says “several years”––he lurked about the settlements trailing White. Finally, he succeeded in shooting his man, within sight of the fort. Mrs. White was an eye-witness of the tragedy. McWhorter claims that Withers is mistaken in saying that White was “tomahawked, scalped and lacerated in the most frightful manner.” The avenging Indian tried to get his scalp, but an attacking party from the fort were so close upon him that he fled before accomplishing his object. McWhorter reports another case, not mentioned in Withers. One Fink was “killed by Indians in ambush, while letting down a pair of bars one evening, just in front of where the Buckhannon court-house now stands.”––R. G. T.

The council was held at Wapatomica, in June. There were present representatives of the Ottawas, Chippewas, Wyandots, Delawares, Shawnees, Munsees, and Cherokees. Simon Girty came with the Wyandots; Captain McKee was then a trader at Wapatomica.––R. G. T.

See the alleged speech in Butterfield’s History of the Girtys, pp. 190, 191.––R. G. T.

The Kentucky party was under Capt. William Caldwell, who wrote, “I crossed the Ohio with three hundred Indians and rangers.” Capts. McKee and Elliott, and the three Girtys were with the expedition. Caldwell crossed the river early in July, not far below the mouth, of Limestone creek––site of the present Maysville, Ky.––R. G. T.

They arrived on the night of August 15.––R. G. T.

The above incident is mentioned in none of the contemporary chronicles, and is probably fiction.––R. G. T.

The attack was begun early in the morning of the 16th, and continued with more or less vigor until about 10 A. M. of the 17th. Caldwell then withdrew his force “in a leisurely manner.” The attacking party lost five killed and two wounded, all Indians; the garrison lost four killed and three wounded.––R. G. T.

A hundred and eighty-two, under Col. John Todd. Pursuit was commenced on the 18th.––R. G. T.

The battle occurred at 8 A. M. of August 19, a short distance north of the Lower Blue Licks, on the Licking river, in what is now Nicholas County.––R. G. T.

The tendency among early Western chroniclers has been greatly to magnify the importance of Simon Girty. He was merely an interpreter on this, as on most other expeditions. Caldwell was in command. The British force now consisted of 200 Indians and 30 rangers. Some of the Indians had already left for their villages.––R. G. T.

The British rangers lost one of their number by death; of their Indian allies, ten were killed and fourteen wounded. Of the Kentuckians, about seventy were killed, several badly wounded, and seven made prisoners. Caldwell continued his leisurely retreat to Upper Sandusky, which he reached September 24, the Indians meanwhile dispersing to their several homes.––R. G. T.

Gen. George Rogers Clark gave this official report of his expedition against the Shawnees, in a letter dated Lincoln, November 27, 1782: “We left the Ohio the 4th instant, with 1050 men, surprised the principal Shawanese Town in the evening of the 10th, and immediately detached strong parties to different quarters; and in a few hours afterwards two thirds of the towns were laid in ashes, and every thing they were possessed of destroyed, except such as were most useful to the troops, the enemy not having time to secrete any part of their property. The British trading post at the head of the Miami and Carrying Place to the waters of the Lakes, shared the same by a party of 150 horse, commanded by Col. Logan, and property to a great amount was also destroyed: the quantity of provisions burnt far surpassed any idea we had of their stores. The loss of the enemy was ten scalps, seven prisoners, and two whites retaken; ours, one killed and one wounded.

“After laying part of four days in their towns, and finding all attempts to bring them to a general action fruitless, we retired, as the season was far advanced and the weather threatening. I could not learn by the prisoners that they had the least idea of General Irvin’s design of penetrating into their country. Should he have given them another stroke at Sandusky, it will more than double the advantages already gained.

“We might probably have got many more scalps and prisoners––could we have known in time whether or not we were discovered, which we took for granted until getting within three miles when some circumstances occurred that gave us reason to think otherwise, though uncertain.––Col. Floyd, with 300 men, was ordered to advance and bring on an action or attack the town, Major Wells with a party of horse being previously detached by a different route as a party of observation: although Col. Floyd’s motion was so quick as to get to the town but a few minutes later than those who discovered his approach, the inhabitants had sufficient notice to effect their escape to the woods by the alarm cry being given, and which was repeated by all that heard it; of course our party only fell in with the rear of the enemy.

“I must beg leave to recommend the militia of Kentucky whose behaviour on the occasion does them honour, particularly their desire of saving prisoners.”

The document is here given as found in Almon’s Remembrancer, xvi., pp. 93, 94; but it has of course been edited, after the fashion of that day, for Clark’s original letters abound in misspellings.––R. G. T.

[264] This heroine had but recently returned from Philadelphia, where she had received her education, and was totally unused to such scenes as were daily exhibiting on the frontier. She afterwards became the wife of Mr. McGlanlin; and he dying, she married a Mr. Clarke, and is yet living in Ohio.

See p. 224, note 1, for reference to confusion between the two sieges of Wheeling, and the over-statement of early border historians.––R. G. T.

Footnotes for Chapter 16

News of the preliminary articles of peace, which had been signed at Paris, November 30, 1782, did not reach Fort Pitt until May, 1783. In July following, De Peyster, British commandant at Detroit, gathered at that post the chiefs of eleven tribes as far south as the Great Miami and the Wabash, and informed them of the event.––R. G. T.

The treaty was held at Fort McIntosh, at the mouth of the Beaver, early in January, 1785. The tribes represented were the Wyandots, Chippewas, Delawares, and Ottawas. The commissioners were Arthur Lee, Richard Butler, and George Rogers Clark. Col. Josiah Harmar was in charge of the troops.––R. G. T.

L. V. McWhorter, well informed in the local traditions, writes: “When the Indian sprang into the house, with drawn tomahawk, he closed and for a few moments stood with his back to the door. Then, while cutting an opening through the wall, he asked Mrs. Cunningham how many men there were in the other house. She answered by holding up the extended fingers of both hands, indicating 10.”––R. G. T.

McWhorter: “Mrs. Cunningham related that the last she saw of her little daughter, was one quivering little foot sticking up over a log behind which she had been thrown.”––R. G. T.

McWhorter: “The cave in which Mrs. Cunningham was concealed is on Little Indian Run, a branch of Big Bingamon Creek, on which stream the tragedy took place. The cave is about two miles northwest of the site of the capture, and in Harrison County, W. Va.”––R. G. T.

McWhorter: “Mrs. Cunningham stated that an Indian stood over her with an uplifted tomahawk, to prevent her from crying out. At times, the whites were upon the very rock above their heads.”––R. G. T.

McWhorter says local tradition has it that the Indians remained in the cave a night and a day; they departed before daylight, during the second night. Mrs. Cunningham related that just before leaving, the wounded brave was borne from the cave by his fellows, and she never again saw him; her opinion was, that he was then dead, and his body was sunk in a neighboring pool.––R. G. T.

Mrs. Cunningham had been over three years with the savages, when she was taken to a great Indian conference held at the foot of the Maumee rapids, “at or near the site of the present Perrysburgh, Ohio,” in the autumn of 1788. Girty brought the attention of McKee, then a British Indian agent, to the matter, and McKee furnished the trinkets which constituted the ransom.––R. G. T.

See McKnight’s Our Western Border, pp. 714, 716.––R. G. T.

Superstition was rife among the Scotch-Irish borderers. McWhorter writes: “On the day before the capture, a little bird came into Mrs. Cunningham’s cabin and fluttered around the room. Ever afterwards, she grew frightened whenever a bird would enter her house. The fear that such an occurrence would bring bad luck to a household, was an old and widely-spread superstition.”––R. G. T.

Mary Moore afterwards became the wife of Mr. Brown, a presbyterian preacher in Augusta. Her brother James Moore, jr., still resides in Tazewell county; and notwithstanding that he witnessed the cruel murder of his mother and five brothers and sisters by the hands of the savages, he is said to have formed and still retain a strong attachment to the Indians. The anniversary of the burning of Mrs. Moore & her daughter, is kept by many in Tazewell as a day of fasting and prayer; and that tragical event gave rise to some affecting verses, generally called “Moore’s Lamentation.”

At the treaty of Au Glaize, Morgan met with the Indian who had given him this chase, and who still had his gun. After talking over the circumstance, rather more composedly than they had acted it, they agreed to test each other’s speed in a friendly race. The Indian being beaten, rubbed his hams and said, “stiff, stiff; too old, too old.” “Well, said Morgan, you got the gun by outrunning me then, and I should have it now for outrunning you;” and accordingly took it.

McWhorter: “Alexander West was with Col. William Lowther on this expedition. They followed the Indians to the Little Kanawha River.”––R. G. T.

Another case of border superstition is related to me by McWhorter. Alexander West had been doing sentry duty most of the night before, and on being relieved early in the morning, sat with his back to a tree and, rifle across his lap, fell to sleep. On awakening he sprang to his feet and cried, “Boys, look out! Some of us will be killed to-day! I saw the red doe in my dream; that is the sign of death; I never knew it to fail!” When Bonnett fell, it was considered in camp to be a verification of the “red sign.” Bonnett was carried by his comrades on a rude stretcher, but in four days died. His body was placed in a cleft of rock and the entrance securely chinked.––R. G. T.

Footnotes for Chapter 17

The “Wilderness Road” (or “trace”) was the overland highway through Cumberland Gap. It was sometimes called “Boone’s trace.” From North Carolina and Southern Virginia, it was the nearest road to Kentucky; to those living farther north, the Ohio was the favorite highway. While the river was an easier path, it was more dangerous on account of Indians: but travelers of the early period who had come down the Ohio, preferred returning east by the Wilderness Road to poling up stream. See Thomas Speed’s Wilderness Road, in the Filson Club publications (Louisville, 1886.)––R. G. T.

Col. William Christian, who served in Lord Dunmore’s War. He was killed in April, 1786. John May, writing to Governor Henry from Crab Orchard, Ky., April 19, says: “The Indians about the Wabash had frequently been on Bear Grass, and Col. Christian, in order to induce others to go in pursuit of them, has upon every occasion gone himself. And last week he with about twenty men crossed the Ohio, and overtook three Indians, whom they killed; but his men not obeying his orders, which were to rush altogether on them, he with three others only overtook the Indians, and was so unfortunate as to receive a mortal wound himself and Capt. Isaac Kellar received another.”––R. G. T.

The time for rendezvous was September 10, 1786 (letter of Col. Levi Todd to Governor Henry, August 29).––R. G. T.

Clark was roundly scored in contemporary accounts, for being much of the time under the influence of liquor. His futile expedition was against the Indians around Vincennes, while Logan’s party, which appears practically to have revolted from Clark, had a successful campaign against the towns on Mad River. See Green’s Spanish Conspiracy, ch. v., and Roosevelt’s Winning of the West, iii., passim.––R. G. T.

Col. Benjamin Logan to Governor Randolph, Dec. 17, 1786: “Sept. 14, 1786, I received orders [from Clark] to collect a sufficient number of men in the District of Kentucky to march against the Shawnee’s Towns. Agreeable to said orders I collected 790 men, and on the 6th of October I attacked the above mentioned Towns, killed ten of the chiefs of that nation, captured thirty-two prisoners, burnt upwards of two hundred dwelling houses and supposed to have burnt fifteen thousand bushels of corn, took some horses and cattle, killed a number of hogs, and took near one thousand pounds value of Indian furniture, and the quantity of furniture we burnt I can not account for.” The force was on duty “not above twenty-seven days ... and I would venture to say the expenses will be found to be very moderate.”––R. G. T.

William Lytle, born in Carlisle, Pa., September 1, 1770. He came to Ohio with his father, at the age of ten, and subsequently became surveyor-general of the Northwest Territory. His father served as a captain in the French and Indian War, and as a colonel in the Revolution, and headed a large colony to Ohio in 1780.––R. G. T.

This name is sometimes written Magery. It is the same individual who caused the disaster at the Blue Licks in August 1782.

The treaty with the Shawnees was negotiated January 30, 1786, at Fort Finney, near the mouth of the Great Miami, by George Rogers Clark, Richard Butler, and Samuel H. Parsons, commissioners. The treaty with the Wyandots, Delawares, Chippewas, and Ottawas was negotiated at Fort McIntosh, January 21, 1785, by Clark, Butler, and Arthur Lee. These treaties were of little avail, so long as British agents like McKee, Elliott, and Simon Girty lived among the Indians and kept them in a constant ferment against the Americans.––R. G. T.

The several states which, under their colonial charters had claims to territory beyond the Ohio River,––Virginia, New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts,––had (1781-84) relinquished their several claims to the newly-formed United States, and the Ordinance of 1787 had provided for this Northwest Territory an enlightened form of government which was to be the model of the constitutions of the five states into which it was ultimately to be divided. There was formed in Boston, in March, 1786, the Ohio Company of Associates, and October 17, 1787, it purchased from Congress a million and a half acres in the new territory, about the mouth of the Muskingum. Many of the shareholders were Revolutionary soldiers, and great care was taken to select only good men as colonists––oftentimes these were the best and most prosperous men of their several localities. Gen. Rufus Putnam, a cousin of Israel, and a near friend of Washington, was chosen as superintendent of the pioneers. Two parties––one rendezvousing at Danvers, Mass., and the other at Hartford, Conn.––arrived after a difficult passage through the mountains at Simrall’s Ferry (now West Newton), on the Youghiogheny, the middle of February, 1788. A company of boat-builders and other mechanics had preceded them a month, yet it was still six weeks more before the little flotilla could leave: “The Union Gally of 45 tons burden; the Adelphia ferry boat, 3 tons; & three log canoes of different sizes. No. of pioneers, 48.” The winter had been one of the severest known on the Upper Ohio, and the spring was cold, wet, and backward; so that amid many hardships it was the seventh of April before they arrived at the Muskingum and founded Marietta, named for the unfortunate Marie Antoinette, for the love of France was still strong in the breasts of Revolutionary veterans.––R. G. T.

Perhaps there never was a more strange compound derivative term than this. Being situated opposite to the mouth of Licking, the name was made expressive of its locality, by uniting the Latin word os, (the mouth) with the Greek, anti (opposite) and the French, ville, (a town,) and prefixing to this union from such different sources, the initial (L) of the river. The author of this word, must have been good at invention, and in these days of town making could find ample employment for his talent.

In 1788, John Cleves Symmes––uncle of he of “Symmes’s Hole”––the first United States judge of the Northwest Territory, purchased from congress a million acres of land on the Ohio, lying between the two Miami Rivers. Matthias Denman bought from him a square mile at the eastern end of the grant, “on a most delightful high bank” opposite the Licking, and––on a cash valuation for the land of two hundred dollars––took in with him as partners Robert Patterson and John Filson. Filson was a schoolmaster, had written the first history of Kentucky, and seems to have enjoyed much local distinction. To him was entrusted the task of inventing a name for the settlement which the partners proposed to plant here. The outcome was “Losantiville,” a pedagogical hash of Greek, Latin, and French: L, for Licking; os, Greek for mouth; anti, Latin for opposite; ville, French for city––Licking-opposite-City, or City-opposite-Licking, whichever is preferred. This was in August; the Fates work quickly, for in October poor Filson was scalped by the Indians in the neighborhood of the Big Miami, before a settler had yet been enticed to Losantiville. But the survivors knew how to “boom” a town; lots were given away by lottery to intending actual settlers, who moved thither late in December or early in January, and in a few months Judge Symmes was able to write that “it populates considerably.”

A few weeks previous to the planting of Losantiville, a party of men from Redstone had settled at the mouth of the Little Miami, about where the suburb of California now is; and a few weeks later, a third colony was started by Symmes himself at North Bend, near the Big Miami, at the western extremity of his grant, and this the judge wished to make the capital of the new Northwest Territory. At first it was a race between these three colonies. A few miles below North Bend, Fort Finney had been built in 1785-86, hence the Bend had at first the start; but a high flood dampened its prospects, the troops were withdrawn from this neighborhood to Louisville, and in the winter of 1789-90 Fort Washington was built at Losantiville by General Harmar. The neighborhood of the new fortress became in the ensuing Indian war the center of the district. To Losantiville, with its fort, came Arthur St. Clair, the new governor of the Northwest Territory (January, 1790), and making his headquarters here, laid violent hands on Filson’s invention, at once changing the name to Cincinnati, in honor of the Society of the Cincinnati, of which the new official was a prominent member––“so that,” Judge Symmes sorrowfully writes, “Losantiville will become extinct.” It was a winter of suffering for the Western Cincinnati. The troops were in danger of starvation, and three professional hunters were contracted with to supply them with game, till corn could come in from Columbia and other older settlements on the river.––R. G. T.

Col. Josiah Harmar’s militia were from Virginia, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania. He left Fort Washington (Cincinnati), October 3. At this time the Miami Indians had seven villages in the neighborhood of the junction of St. Joseph and St. Mary’s, which streams unite to form the Maumee. The village which lay in the forks of the St. Joseph and the Maumee, was the principal; one in the forks of the St. Mary’s and the Maumee, which was called Kekionga, had 30 houses; at Chillicothe, on the north bank of the Maumee, were 58 houses, and opposite these 18 houses. The Delawares had two villages on the St. Mary’s, 45 houses in all, and a town on the St. Joseph of 36 houses.––R. G. T.

A third expedition, under Maj. J. F. Hamtramck, went against the Wabash Indians, successfully destroyed several deserted villages, and reached Vincennes without loss.––R. G. T.

In his report to the Secretary of War, October 29, 1790, Governor St. Clair said: “I have the pleasure to inform you of the entire success of Gen. Harmar at the Indian towns on the Miami and St. Joseph Rivers, of which he has destroyed five in number, and a very great quantity of corn and other vegetable provisions. It is supposed that about two hundred of the Indians have likewise fallen in the different encounters that have happened between them and the detachment, for there has been no general action; but it has not been without considerable loss on our part.... Of the Federal troops, Major Wyllys and Lieutenant Frothingham and seventy-seven men; of the militia, Major Fontaine, Captain McMurtry, and Captain Scott, a son of General Scott, and seventy-three men, are among the slain.”––R. G. T.

Thirteen miles below Marietta.––R. G. T.

Eighteen miles above Marietta, and one above St. Mary’s, W. Va.––R. G. T.

Dunkard Creek flows eastward into the Monongahela. Fish Creek flows southwestward into the Ohio, emptying 113 miles below Pittsburg, and 58 above Marietta. A famous Indian war-trail ran up Fish and down Dunkard––a short-cut from Ohio to the western borders of Pennsylvania and Virginia.––R. G. T.

Soon after the establishment of Marietta, a rude wagon road was opened through the forest between that colony and Redstone (Brownsville, Pa.) This was the road Carpenter was following.––R. G. T.

With Gen. Richard Butler, who was killed in the final battle, second in command.––R. G. T.

[20]

Early in September, 1791. St. Clair had 2,000 men, fifty per cent less than had been promised him by the war department.––R. G. T.

[21]

Fort Hamilton, a stockade with four bastions, was on the Big Miami, 24 miles from Fort Washington (Cincinnati), on the site of the present Hamilton, O. Fort Jefferson, built of logs laid horizontally, was six miles south of the present Greenville, O. The army left Fort Jefferson, October 24.––R. G. T.

[22]

The army then numbered 1,400 men, and was encamped at the site of the present Fort Recovery, O., 55 miles away, as the crow flies, from the head of the Maumee, the objective point of the expedition.––R. G. T.

[23]

He lay sick in his tent, when the action opened, but arose and acted with remarkable courage throughout the fight. General Butler was acting commandant while St. Clair was ill, and was credibly informed by his scouts, the night before the battle, of the proximity of the enemy. But he took no precautions against surprise, neither did he communicate his news to his superior. Upon Butler’s head appears to rest much of the blame for the disaster.––R. G. T.

[24]

The Americans lost 37 officers and 593 men, killed and missing, and 31 officers and 252 men, wounded. See St. Clair Papers, edited by William Henry Smith (Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co., 1882), for official details of the disaster. For Simon Girty’s part, consult Butterfield’s History of the Girtys, passim.––R. G. T.

[25]

St. Clair arrived at Fort Washington, on his return, November 8––R. G. T.

[26]

This expedition under Gen. Charles Scott, one of the Kentucky committee of safety, was made in June, 1791, against the Miami and Wabash Indians. It was followed in August by a second expedition under Gen. James Wilkinson. In the course of the second campaign, at the head of 500 Kentuckians, Wilkinson laid waste the Miami village of L’Anguille, killing and capturing 42 of the savages.––R. G. T.

Footnotes for Chapter 18

Drake, in Aboriginal Races of North America (15th ed.), p. 616, cites the Waggoner massacre as “the first exploit in which we find Tecumseh engaged.” L. V. McWhorter sends me this interesting note, giving the local tradition regarding the affair: “John Waggoner lived on Jesse’s Run, more than two miles above its junction with Hacker’s Creek. While engaged in burning logs in his clearing, he was sitting upon a log, with a handspike lying across his lap. It was thought that Tecumseh mistook this tool for a gun, and was nervous. But three in number, the Indians had entered the district with some trepidation. Over Sunday, while the settlers were holding religious services in West’s Fort, the savages lay in a neighboring ravine. The dogs of the settlement barked furiously at them, and ran toward their hiding place, trying to lead their masters; but the latter supposed that the animals had merely scented wolves, hence paid no attention to them. Tecumseh was but thirty paces from Waggoner when he fired, and it is singular that he missed, for the latter was a large man and in fair view. Waggoner sprang up and started for his cabin, a short distance only, but when about fifteen yards away saw an Indian chasing one of the children around the house. Waggoner was unarmed; his gun was in the house, but he feared to enter, so ran for help to the cabin of Hardman, a neighbor. But Hardman was out hunting, and there was no gun left there. The screams of his family were now plainly heard by Waggoner, and he was with difficulty restrained from rushing back to help them, unarmed. Jesse Hughes carried the news into the fort, and a rescue party at once set out. Mrs. Waggoner and her three youngest children had been carried across the ridge to where is now Rev. Mansfield McWhorter’s farm, on McKenley’s Run, and here they were tomahawked and scalped. Henry McWhorter helped to carry the bodies to the fort, but made no mention of their being ‘mangled in the most barbarous and shocking manner.’”

The boy Peter, then eight years old, remained with the Indians for twenty years. The manner of his return, as related to me by Mr. McWhorter, was singular, and furnishes an interesting and instructive romance of the border. One Baker, one of John Waggoner’s neighbors, went to Ohio to “squat,” and on Paint Creek saw Peter with a band of Indians, recognizing him by the strong family resemblance. Baker at once wrote to the elder Waggoner, telling him of his discovery, and the latter soon visited the Paint Creek band, with a view to inducing his son to return home. But Peter was loth to go. He was united to a squaw, and by her had two children. In tears, she bitterly opposed his going. When finally he yielded to parental appeals, he promised her he would soon be back again. When the time for his return to the forest came, his relatives kept him under guard; when it had passed, he was afraid to return to his Indian relatives, having broken his word. Gradually he became reconciled in a measure to his new surroundings, but was ever melancholy, frequently lamenting that he had left his savage family. “Some time after his return to civilization,” continues McWhorter, “an Indian woman, supposed to be his wife, passed through the Hacker Creek settlements, inquiring for Peter, and going on toward the East. She appeared to be demented, and sang snatches of savage songs. Peter never knew of her presence, nor would any one inform her of his whereabouts. He was reticent about his life among the Indians, and no details of that feature of his career became known to his white friends.”

Tecumseh, who is said to have been born on Hacker’s Creek, possibly at a village near the mouth of Jesse’s Run, visited the white settlements there, after the peace, and told the whites of his experiences in connection with the Waggoner massacre.––R. G. T.

It must be acknowledged that many of these militia forays against the Indians partook of the nature of buccaneering. The spoils were often considerable. Clark, in his Kaskaskia campaign (1778), captured so much booty, in property and slaves, that he declares his men were made “almost rich.”––R. G. T.

In the spring of 1792, Major Trueman, Colonel Hardin, and Mr. Freeman were dispatched from Fort Washington by different routes, to open peace negotiations, but they were murdered by the savages. Gen. Rufus Putnam, aided by Hekewelder, the Moravian, succeeded in binding the Wabash and Illinois Indians to keep the peace. Later, Benjamin Lincoln, Timothy Pickering, and Beverly Randolph were ordered by the president to go to the Maumee to conclude a general treaty which Indians had declared their willingness to enter into. But the commissioners were detained at Niagara by sham conferences with Gov. John Graves Simcoe, of Canada, until the middle of July, when the Indians sent them word that unless they would in advance “agree that the Ohio shall remain the boundary between us,” the proposed “meeting would be altogether unnecessary.” The commissioners declined to accept this ultimatum, and returned home. Meanwhile, General Wayne was prosecuting preparations for an active campaign against the hostiles.––R. G. T.

On a plain near the old French-Indian-English trading village, called Logstown (just below the present Economy, Pa., on the north side of the Ohio, 18 miles below Pittsburg), Wayne’s army lay encamped from November, 1792, to April 30, 1793. The army was fancifully called the “Legion of the United States,” and the camp was known as Legionville. From here, Wayne proceeded to Cincinnati, and took up his headquarters in Fort Washington.––R. G. T.

Fishing Creek enters the Ohio 128 miles below Pittsburgh. At its mouth is now the town of New Martinsville, W. Va.––R. G. T.

This was an expedition made by Gen. James Wilkinson, second in command under Wayne, in December, 1793. He marched to the field from Fort Washington at the head of a thousand men, and left a garrison at the new fort.––R. G. T.

McWhorter says that the capture of the Cozad boys took place at the mouth of Lanson Run, near Berlin, W. Va. The boy who was killed was but six years of age; crying for his mother, an Indian grasped him by the heels and cracked his head against a tree,––a favorite method of murdering white children, among Indian war parties. “Jacob yelled once, after starting with the Indians, but was knocked down by a gun in the hands of one of the savages. When he came to his senses, a squaw was dragging him up hill by one foot. He remained with the Indians for about two years, being adopted into a chief’s family. He died in 1862, in his eighty-ninth year.”––R. G. T.

Thirtieth of June.––R. G. T.

The white loss, in killed, was 22, including Major McMahon.––R. G. T.

The force started August 8. Besides the regulars, were about 1,100 mounted Kentucky militia, under Gen. Charles Scott.––R. G. T.

Hence the popular name of the engagement, “Battle of Fallen Timbers.”––R. G. T.

Alexander McKee, the renegade, of whom mention has frequently been made in foregoing pages.––R. G. T.