settlers of the upper Holston to consider themselves as Virginians, not Carolinians; but at the north the effect was still more confusing, and nearly resulted in bringing about an intercolonial war between Pennsylvania and Virginia.
The Virginians claimed all of extreme western Pennsylvania, especially Fort Pitt and the valley of the Monongahela, and, in 1774, proceeded boldly to exercise jurisdiction therein.[1] Indeed a strong Party among the settlers favored the Virginian claim; whereas it would have been quite impossible to arouse anywhere in Virginia the least feeling in support of a similar claim on behalf of Pennsylvania. The borderers had a great contempt for the sluggish and timid government of the Quaker province, which was very lukewarm in protecting them in their rights–or, indeed, in punishing them when they did wrong to others. In fact, it seems probable that they would have declared for Virginia even more strongly, had it not been for the very reason that their feeling of independence was so surly as to make them suspicious of all forms of control; and they therefore objected almost as much to Virginian as Pennsylvanian rule, and regarded the outcome of the dispute with a certain indifference.[2]
For a time in the early part of 1774 there seemed quite as much likelihood of the Virginians being drawn into a fight with the Pennsylvanians as with the Shawnees. While the Pennsylvanian commissioners were trying to come to an agreement concerning the boundaries with Lord Dunmore, the representatives of the two contesting parties at Fort Pitt were on the verge of actual collision. The Earl’s agent in the disputed territory was a Captain John Conolly,[3] a man of violent temper and bad character. He embodied the men favorable to his side as a sort of Virginian militia, with which he not only menaced both hostile and friendly Indians, but the adherents of the Pennsylvanian government as well. He destroyed their houses, killed their cattle and hogs, impressed their horses, and finally so angered them that they threatened to take refuge in the stockade at Fort Pitt, and defy him to open war,–although even in the midst of these quarrels with Conolly their loyalty to the Quaker State was somewhat doubtful.[4]
The Virginians were the only foes the western Indians really dreaded; for their backwoodsmen were of warlike temper, and had learned to fight effectively in the forest. The Indians styled them Long Knives; or, to be more exact, they called them collectively the “Big Knife.”[5] There have been many accounts given of the origin of this name, some ascribing it to the long knives worn by the hunters and backwoodsmen generally, others to the fact that some of the noted Virginian fighters in their early skirmishes were armed with swords. At any rate the title was accepted by all the Indians as applying to their most determined foes among the colonists; and finally, after we had become a nation, was extended so as to apply to Americans generally.
The war that now ensued was not general. The Six Nations, as a whole, took no part in it, while Pennsylvania also stood aloof; indeed at one time it was proposed that the Pennsylvanians and Iroquois should jointly endeavor to mediate between the combatants.[6] The struggle was purely between the Virginians and the northwestern Indians.
The interests of the Virginians and Pennsylvanians conflicted not only in respect to the ownership of the land, but also in respect to the policy to be pursued regarding the Indians. The former were armed colonists, whose interest it was to get actual possession of the soil;[7] whereas in Pennsylvania the Indian trade was very important and lucrative, and the numerous traders to the Indian towns were anxious that the redskins should remain in undisturbed enjoyment of their forests, and that no white man should be allowed to come among them; moreover, so long as they were able to make heavy profits, they were utterly indifferent to the well-being of the white frontiersmen, and in return incurred the suspicion and hatred of the latter. The Virginians accused the traders of being the main cause of the difficulty,[8] asserting that they sometimes incited the Indians to outrages, and always, even in the midst of hostilities, kept them supplied with guns and ammunition, and even bought from them the horses that they had stolen on their plundering expeditions against the Virginian border.[9] These last accusations were undoubtedly justified, at least in great part, by the facts. The interests of the white trader from Pennsylvania and of the white settler from Virginia were so far from being identical that they were usually diametrically opposite.
The northwestern Indians had been nominally at peace with the whites for ten years, since the close of Bouquet’s campaign. But Bouquet had inflicted a very slight punishment upon them, and in concluding an unsatisfactory peace had caused them to make but a partial reparation for the wrongs they had done.[10] They remained haughty and insolent, irritated rather than awed by an ineffective chastisement, and their young men made frequent forays on the frontier. Each of the ten years of nominal peace saw plenty of bloodshed. Recently they had been seriously alarmed by the tendency of the whites to encroach on the great hunting-grounds south of the Ohio;[11] for here and there hunters or settlers were already beginning to build cabins along the course of that stream. The cession by the Iroquois of these same hunting-grounds, at the treaty of Fort Stanwix, while it gave the whites a colorable title, merely angered the northwestern Indians. Half a century earlier they would hardly have dared dispute the power of the Six Nations to do what they chose with any land that could be reached by their war parties; but in 1774 they felt quite able to hold their own against their old oppressors, and had no intention of acquiescing in any arrangement the latter might make, unless it was also clearly to their own advantage.
In the decade before Lord Dunmore’s war there had been much mutual wrong-doing between the northwestern Indians and the Virginian borderers; but on the whole the latter had occupied the position of being sinned against more often than that of sinning. The chief offence of the whites was that they trespassed upon uninhabited lands, which they forthwith proceeded to cultivate, instead of merely roaming over them to hunt the game and butcher one another. Doubtless occasional white men would murder an Indian if they got a chance, and the traders almost invariably cheated the tribesmen. But as a whole the traders were Indian rather than white in their sympathies, and the whites rarely made forays against their foes avowedly for horses and plunder, while the Indians on their side were continually indulging in such inroads. Every year parties of young red warriors crossed the Ohio to plunder the outlying farms, burn down the buildings, scalp the inmates, and drive off the horses.[12] Year by year the exasperation of the borderers grew greater and the tale of the wrongs they had to avenge longer.[13] Occasionally they took a brutal and ill-judged vengeance, which usually fell on innocent Indians,[14] and raised up new foes for the whites. The savages grew continually more hostile, and in the fall of 1773 their attacks became so frequent that it was evident a general outbreak was at hand; eleven people were murdered in the county of Fincastle alone.[15] The Shawnees were the leaders in all these outrages; but the outlaw bands, such as the Mingos and Cherokees, were as bad, and parties of Wyandots and Delawares, as well as of the various Miami and Wabash tribes, joined them.
Thus the spring of 1774 opened with every thing ripe for an explosion. The Virginian borderers were fearfully exasperated, and ready to take vengeance upon any Indians, whether peaceful or hostile; while the Shawnees and Mingos, on their side, were arrogant and overbearing, and yet alarmed at the continual advance of the whites. The headstrong rashness of Conolly, who was acting as Lord Dunmore’s lieutenant on the border, and who was equally willing to plunge into a war with Pennsylvania or the Shawnees, served as a firebrand to ignite this mass of tinder. The borderers were anxious for a war; and Lord Dunmore was not inclined to baulk them. He was ambitious of glory, and probably thought that in the midst of the growing difficulties between the mother country and the colonies, it would be good policy to distract the Virginians’ minds by an Indian war, which, if he conducted it to a successful conclusion, might strengthen his own position.[16]
There were on the border at the moment three or four men whose names are so intimately bound up with the history of this war, that they deserve a brief mention. One was Michael Cresap, a Maryland frontiersman, who had come to the banks of the Ohio with the purpose of making a home for his family.[17] He was of the regular pioneer type; a good woodsman, sturdy and brave, a fearless fighter, devoted to his friends and his country; but also, when his blood was heated, and his savage instincts fairly roused, inclined to regard any red man, whether hostile or friendly, as a being who should be slain on sight. Nor did he condemn the brutal deeds done by others on innocent Indians.
The next was a man named Greathouse, of whom it is enough to know that, together with certain other men whose names have for the most part, by a merciful chance, been forgotten,[18] he did a deed such as could only be committed by inhuman and cowardly scoundrels.
The other two actors in this tragedy were both Indians, and were both men of much higher stamp. One was Cornstalk, the Shawnee chief; a far-sighted seer, gloomily conscious of the impending ruin of his race, a great orator, a mighty warrior, a man who knew the value of his word and prized his honor, and who fronted death with quiet, disdainful heroism; and yet a fierce, cruel, and treacherous savage to those with whom he was at enmity, a killer of women and children, whom we first hear of, in Pontiac’s war, as joining in the massacre of unarmed and peaceful settlers who had done him no wrong, and who thought that he was friendly.[19] The other was Logan, an Iroquois warrior, who lived at that time away from the bulk of his people, but who was a man of note–in the loose phraseology of the border, a chief or headman–among the outlying parties of Senecas and Mingos, and the fragments of broken tribes that dwelt along the upper Ohio. He was a man of splendid appearance; over six feet high, straight as a spear-shaft, with a countenance as open as it was brave and manly,[20] until the wrongs he endured stamped on it an expression of gloomy ferocity. He had always been the friend of the white man, and had been noted particularly for his kindness and gentleness to children. Up to this time he had lived at peace with the borderers, for though some of his kin had been massacred by them years before, he had forgiven the deed–perhaps not unmindful of the fact that others of his kin had been concerned in still more bloody massacres of the whites. A skilled marksman and mighty hunter, of commanding dignity, who treated all men with a grave courtesy that exacted the same treatment in return, he was greatly liked and respected by all the white hunters and frontiersmen whose friendship and respect were worth having; they admired him for his dexterity and prowess, and they loved him for his straightforward honesty, and his noble loyalty to his friends. One of these old pioneer hunters has left on record[21] the statement that he deemed “Logan the best specimen of humanity he ever met with, either white or red.” Such was Logan before the evil days came upon him.
Early in the spring the outlying settlers began again to suffer from the deeds of straggling Indians. Horses were stolen, one or two murders were committed, the inhabitants of the more lonely cabins fled to the forts, and the backwoodsmen began to threaten fierce vengeance. On April 16th, three traders in the employ of a man named Butler were attacked by some of the outlaw Cherokees, one killed, another wounded, and their goods plundered. Immediately after this Conolly issued an open letter, commanding the backwoodsmen to hold themselves in readiness to repel any attack by the Indians, as the Shawnees were hostile. Such a letter from Lord Dunmore’s lieutenant amounted to a declaration of war, and there were sure to be plenty of backwoodsmen who would put a very liberal interpretation upon the order given them to repel an attack. Its effects were seen instantly. All the borderers prepared for war. Cresap was near Wheeling at the time, with a band of hunters and scouts, fearless men, who had adopted many of the ways of the redskins, in addition to their method of fighting. As soon as they received Conolly’s letter they proceeded to declare war in the regular Indian style, calling a council, planting the war-post, and going through other savage ceremonies,[22] and eagerly waited for a chance to attack their foes.
Unfortunately the first stroke fell on friendly Indians. The trader, Butler, spoken of above, in order to recover some of the peltries of which he had been robbed by the Cherokees, had sent a canoe with two friendly Shawnees towards the place of the massacre. On the 27th Cresap and his followers ambushed these men near Captina, and killed and scalped them. Some of the better backwoodsmen strongly protested against this outrage;[23] but the mass of them were excited and angered by the rumor of Indian hostilities, and the brutal and disorderly side of frontier character was for the moment uppermost. They threatened to kill whoever interfered with them, cursing the “damned traders” as being worse than the Indians,[24] while Cresap boasted of the murder, and never said a word in condemnation of the still worse deeds that followed it.[25] The next day he again led out his men and attacked another party of Shawnees, who had been trading near Pittsburg, killed one and wounded two others, one of the whites being also hurt.[26]
Among the men who were with Cresap at this time was a young Virginian, who afterwards played a brilliant part in the history of the west, who was for ten years the leader of the bold spirits of Kentucky, and who rendered the whole United States signal and effective service by one of his deeds in the Revolutionary war. This was George Rogers Clark, then twenty-one years old.[27] He was of good family, and had been fairly well educated, as education went in colonial days; but from his childhood he had been passionately fond of the wild roving life of the woods. He was a great hunter; and, like so many other young colonial gentlemen of good birth and bringing up, and adventurous temper, he followed the hazardous profession of a backwoods surveyor. With chain and compass, as well as axe and rifle, he penetrated the far places of the wilderness, the lonely, dangerous regions where every weak man inevitably succumbed to the manifold perils encountered, but where the strong and far-seeing were able to lay the foundations of fame and fortune. He possessed high daring, unflinching courage, passions which he could not control, and a frame fitted to stand any strain of fatigue or hardship. He was a square-built, thick-set man, with high broad forehead, sandy hair, and unquailing blue eyes that looked out from under heavy, shaggy brows.[28]
Clark had taken part with Cresap in his assault upon the second party of Shawnees. On the following day the whole band of whites prepared to march off and attack Logan’s camp at Yellow Creek, some fifty miles distant. After going some miles they began to feel ashamed of their mission; calling a halt, they discussed the fact that the camp they were preparing to attack, consisted exclusively of friendly Indians, and mainly of women and children; and forthwith abandoned their proposed trip and returned home. They were true borderers–brave, self-reliant, loyal to their friends, and good-hearted when their worst instincts were not suddenly aroused; but the sight of bloodshed maddened them as if they had been so many wolves. Wrongs stirred to the depths their moody tempers, and filled them with a brutal longing for indiscriminate revenge. When goaded by memories of evil, or when swayed by swift, fitful gusts of fury, the uncontrolled violence of their passions led them to commit deeds whose inhuman barbarity almost equalled, though it could never surpass, that shown by the Indians themselves.[29]
But Logan’s people did not profit by Cresap’s change of heart. On the last day of April a small party of men, women, and children, including almost all of Logan’s kin, left his camp and crossed the river to visit Greathouse, as had been their custom; for he made a trade of selling rum to the savages, though Cresap had notified him to stop. The whole party were plied with liquor, and became helplessly drunk, in which condition Greathouse and his associated criminals fell on and massacred them, nine souls in all.[30] It was an inhuman and revolting deed, which should consign the names of the perpetrators to eternal infamy.
At once the frontier was in a blaze, and the Indians girded themselves for revenge. The Mingos sent out runners to the other tribes, telling of the butchery, and calling on all the red men to join together for immediate and bloody vengeance.[31] They confused the two massacres, attributing both to Cresap, whom they well knew as a warrior;[32] and their women for long afterwards scared the children into silence by threatening them with Cresap’s name as with that of a monster.[33] They had indeed been brutally wronged; yet it must be remembered that they themselves were the first aggressors. They had causelessly murdered and robbed many whites, and now their sins had recoiled on the heads of the innocent of their own race. The conflict could not in any event have been delayed long; the frontiersmen were too deeply and too justly irritated. These particular massacres, however discreditable to those taking part in them, were the occasions, not the causes, of the war; and though they cast a dark shade on the conduct of the whites, they do not relieve the red men from the charge of having committed earlier, more cruel, and quite as wanton outrages.
Conolly, an irritable but irresolute man, was appalled by the storm he had helped raise. He meanly disclaimed all responsibility for Cresap’s action,[34] and deposed him from his command of rangers; to which, however, he was soon restored by Lord Dunmore. Both the earl and his lieutenant, however, united in censuring severely Greathouse’s deed.[35] Conolly, throughout May, held a series of councils with the Delawares and Iroquois, in which he disclaimed and regretted the outrages, and sought for peace.[36] To one of these councils the Delaware chief, Killbuck, with other warriors, sent a “talk” or “speech in writing”[37] disavowing the deeds of one of their own parties of young braves, who had gone on the warpath; and another Delaware chief made a very sensible speech, saying that it was unfortunately inevitable that bad men on both sides should commit wrongs, and that the cooler heads should not be led away by acts due to the rashness and folly of a few. But the Shawnees showed no such spirit. On the contrary they declared for war outright, and sent a bold defiance to the Virginians, at the same time telling Conolly plainly that he lied. Their message is noteworthy, because, after expressing a firm belief that the Virginian leader could control his warriors, and stop the outrages if he wished, it added that the Shawnee head men were able to do the like with their own men when they required it. This last allegation took away all shadow of excuse from the Shawnees for not having stopped the excesses of which their young braves had been guilty during the past few years.
Though Conolly showed signs of flinching, his master the earl had evidently no thought of shrinking from the contest. He at once began actively to prepare to attack his foes, and the Virginians backed him up heartily, though the Royal Government, instead of supporting him, censured him in strong terms, and accused the whites of being the real aggressors and the authors of the war.[38]
In any event, it would have been out of the question to avoid a contest at so late a date. Immediately after the murders in the end of April, the savages crossed the frontier in small bands. Soon all the back country was involved in the unspeakable horrors of a bloody Indian war, with its usual accompaniments of burning houses, tortured prisoners, and ruined families, the men being killed and the women and children driven off to a horrible captivity.[39] The Indians declared that they were not at war with Pennsylvania,[40] and the latter in return adopted an attitude of neutrality, openly disclaiming any share in the wrong that had been done, and assuring the Indians that it rested solely on the shoulders of the Virginians.[41] Indeed the Shawnees protected the Pennsylvania traders from some hostile Mingos, while the Pennsylvania militia shielded a party of Shawnees from some of Conolly’s men;[42] and the Virginians, irritated by what they considered an abandonment of the white cause, were bent on destroying the Pennsylvania fur trade with the Indians.[43] Nevertheless, some of the bands of young braves who were out on the war-path failed to discriminate between white friends and foes, and a number of Pennsylvanians fell victims to their desire for scalps and their ignorance or indifference as to whom they were at war with.[44]
The panic along the Pennsylvania frontier was terrible; the out settlers fled back to the interior across the mountains, or gathered in numbers to defend themselves.[45] On the Virginian frontier, where the real attack was delivered, the panic was more justifiable; for terrible ravages were committed, and the inhabitants were forced to gather together in their forted villages, and could no longer cultivate their farms, except by stealth.[46] Instead of being cowed, however, the backwoodsmen clamored to be led against their foes, and made most urgent appeals for powder and lead, of which there was a great scarcity.[47]
The confusion was heightened by the anarchy in which the government of the northwestern district had been thrown in consequence of the quarrel concerning the jurisdiction. The inhabitants were doubtful as to which colony really had a right to their allegiance, and many of the frontier officials were known to be double-faced, professing allegiance to both governments.[48] When the Pennsylvanians raised a corps of a hundred rangers there almost ensued a civil war among the whites, for the Virginians were fearful that the movement was really aimed against them.[49] Of course the march of events gradually forced most, even of the neutral Indians, to join their brethren who had gone on the war-path, and as an example of the utter confusion that reigned, the very Indians that were at war with one British colony, Virginia, were still drawing supplies from the British post of Detroit.[50]
Logan’s rage had been terrible. He had changed and not for the better, as he grew older, becoming a sombre, moody man; worse than all, he had succumbed to the fire-water, the curse of his race. The horrible treachery and brutality of the assault wherein his kinsfolk were slain made him mad for revenge; every wolfish instinct in him came to the surface. He wreaked a terrible vengeance for his wrongs; but in true Indian fashion it fell, not on those who had caused them, but on others who were entirely innocent. Indeed he did not know who had caused them. The massacres at Captina and Yellow Creek occurred so near together that they were confounded with each other; and not only the Indians but many whites as well[51] credited Cresap and Greathouse with being jointly responsible for both, and as Cresap was the most prominent, he was the one especially singled out for hatred.
Logan instantly fell on the settlement with a small band of Mingo warriors. On his first foray he took thirteen scalps, among them those of six children.[52] A party of Virginians, under a man named McClure, followed him: but he ambushed and defeated them, slaying their leader.[53] He repeated these forays at least three times. Yet, in spite of his fierce craving for revenge, he still showed many of the traits that had made him beloved of his white friends. Having taken a prisoner, he refused to allow him to be tortured, and saved his life at the risk of his own. A few days afterwards he suddenly appeared to this prisoner with some gunpowder ink, and dictated to him a note. On his next expedition this note, tied to a war-club, was left in the house of a settler, whose entire family was murdered. It was a short document, written with ferocious directness, as a kind of public challenge or taunt to the man whom he wrongly deemed to be the author of his misfortunes. It ran as follows:
“CAPTAIN CRESAP:
“What did you kill my people on Yellow Creek for? The white people killed my kin at Conestoga, a great while ago, and I thought nothing of that. But you killed my kin again on Yellow Creek, and took my cousin prisoner. Then I thought I must kill too; and I have been three times to war since; but the Indians are not angry, only myself.
“July 21, 1774. CAPTAIN JOHN LOGAN.”[54]
There is a certain deliberate and blood-thirsty earnestness about this letter which must have shown the whites clearly, if they still needed to be shown, what bitter cause they had to rue the wrongs that had been done to Logan.
The Shawnees and Mingos were soon joined by many of the Delawares and outlying Iroquois, especially Senecas; as well as by the Wyandots and by large bands of ardent young warriors from among the Algonquin tribes along the Miami, the Wabash, and the Lakes. Their inroads on the settlements were characterized, as usual, by extreme stealth and merciless ferocity. They stole out of the woods with the silent cunning of wild beasts, and ravaged with a cruelty ten times greater. They burned down the lonely log-huts, ambushed travellers, shot the men as they hunted or tilled the soil, ripped open the women with child, and burned many of their captives at the stake. Their noiseless approach enabled them to fall on the settlers before their presence was suspected; and they disappeared as suddenly as they had come, leaving no trail that could be followed. The charred huts and scalped and mangled bodies of their victims were left as ghastly reminders of their visit, the sight stirring the backwoodsmen to a frenzy of rage all the more terrible in the end, because it was impotent for the time being. Generally they made their escape successfully; occasionally they were beaten off or overtaken and killed or scattered.
When they met armed woodsmen the fight was always desperate. In May, a party of hunters and surveyors, being suddenly attacked in the forest, beat off their assailants and took eight scalps, though with a loss of nine of their own number.[55] Moreover, the settlers began to band together to make retaliatory inroads; and while Lord Dunmore was busily preparing to strike a really effective blow, he directed the frontiersmen of the northwest to undertake a foray, so as to keep the Indians employed. Accordingly, they gathered together, four hundred strong,[56] crossed the Ohio, in the end of July, and marched against a Shawnee town on the Muskingum. They had a brisk skirmish with the Shawnees, drove them back, and took five scalps, losing two men killed and five wounded. Then the Shawnees tried to ambush them, but their ambush was discovered, and they promptly fled, after a slight skirmish, in which no one was killed but one Indian, whom Cresap, a very active and vigorous man, ran down and slew with his tomahawk.[57] The Shawnee village was burned, seventy acres of standing corn were cut down, and the settlers returned in triumph. On the march back they passed through the towns of the peaceful Moravian Delawares, to whom they did no harm.
1. “American Archives,” 4th series, Vol. I., p. 454. Report of Penn. Commissioners, June 27, 1774.
2. Maryland was also involved, along her western frontier, in border difficulties with her neighbors; the first we hear of the Cresap family is their having engaged in a real skirmish with the Pennsylvanian authorities. See also “Am. Arch.,” IV., Vol. I., 547.
3. “Am. Arch.,” IV., Vol. I., 394, 449, 469, etc. He was generally called Dr. Conolly.
4. See _do_., 463, 471, etc., especially St. Clair’s letters, _passim_.
5. In most of the original treaties, “talks,” etc., preserved in the Archives of the State Department, where the translation is exact, the word “Big Knife” is used.
6. Letter of John Penn, June 28, 1774. “Am. Arch.,” IV., Vol. IV.
7. “Am. Archives,” _do_., 465.
8. _Do_., 722.
9. _Do_., 872.
10. “Am. Arch.,” IV., Vol. I., p. 1015.
11. McAfee MSS. This is the point especially insisted on by Cornstalk in his speech to the adventurers in 1773; he would fight before seeing the whites drive off the game.
12. In the McAfee MSS., as already quoted, there is an account of the Shawnee war party, whom the McAfees encountered in 1773 returning from a successful horse-stealing expedition.
13. “Am. Archives,” IV., Vol. I., 872. Dunmore in his speech enumerates 19 men, women, and children who had been killed by the Indians in 1771, ’72, and ’73, and these were but a small fraction of the whole. “This was before a drop of Shawnee blood was shed.”
14. “Trans-Alleghany Pioneers,” p. 262, gives an example that happened in 1772.
15. “Am. Archives,” IV., Vol. I. Letter of Col. Wm. Preston, Aug. 13, 1774.
16. Many local historians, including Brantz Mayer (Logan and Cresap, p. 85), ascribe to the earl treacherous motives. Brantz Mayer puts it thus: “It was probably Lord Dunmore’s desire to incite a war which would arouse and band the savages of the west, so that in the anticipated struggle with the united colonies the British home-interest might ultimately avail itself of these children of the forest as ferocious and formidable allies in the onslaught on the Americans.” This is much too futile a theory to need serious discussion. The war was of the greatest advantage to the American cause; for it kept the northwestern Indians off our hands for the first two years of the Revolutionary struggle; and had Lord Dunmore been the far-seeing and malignant being that this theory supposes, it would have been impossible for him not also to foresee that such a result was absolutely inevitable. There is no reason whatever to suppose that he was not doing his best for the Virginians; he deserved their gratitude; and he got it for the time being. The accusations of treachery against him were afterthoughts, and must be set down to mere vulgar rancor, unless, at least, some faint shadow of proof is advanced. When the Revolutionary war broke out, however, the earl, undoubtedly, like so many other British officials, advocated the most outrageous measures to put down the insurgent colonists.
17. See Brantz Mayer, p. 86, for a very proper attack on those historians who stigmatize as land-jobbers and speculators the perfectly honest settlers, whose encroachments on the Indian hunting-grounds were so bitterly resented by the savages. Such attacks are mere pieces of sentimental injustice. The settlers were perfectly right in feeling that they had a right to settle on the vast stretches of unoccupied ground, however wrong some of their individual deeds may have been. But Mayer, following Jacob’s “Life of Cresap,” undoubtedly paints his hero in altogether too bright colors.
18. Sappington, Tomlinson, and Baker were the names of three of his fellow miscreants. See Jefferson MSS.
19. At Greenbriar. See “Narrative of Captain John Stewart,” an actor in the war.–_Magazine of American History_, Vol. I., p. 671.
20. Loudon’s “Indian Narratives,” II., p. 223.
21. See “American Pioneer,” I., p. 189.
22. Letter of George Rogers Clark, June 17. 1798. In Jefferson MSS., 5th Series, Vol. I. (preserved in Archives of State Department at Washington)
23. Witness the testimony of one of the most gallant Indian fighters of the border, who was in Wheeling at the time; letter of Col. Ebenezer Zane, February 4, 1800, in Jefferson MSS.
24. Jefferson MSS. Deposition of John Gibson, April 4, 1800.
25. _Do_. Deposition of Wm. Huston, April 19, 1798; also depositions of Samuel McKee, etc.
26. “Am. Archives,” IV., Vol. I., p. 468. Letter of Devereux Smith June 10, 1774, Gibson’s letter, Also Jefferson MSS.
27. _Historical Magazine_, I., p. 168. Born in Albemarle County, Va., November 19, 1752.
28. Military Journal of Major Ebenezer Denny, with an introductory memoir by William H. Denny (Publication of the Hist. Soc. of Penn.), Phil., 1860, p. 216
29. The Cresap apologists, including even Brantz Mayer, dwell on Cresap’s nobleness in not massacring Logan’s family! It was certainly to his credit that he did not do so, but it does not speak very well for him that he should even have entertained the thought. He was doubtless, on the whole, a brave, good-hearted man–quite as good as the average borderer; but nevertheless apt to be drawn into deeds that were the reverse of creditable. Mayer’s book has merit; but he certainly paints Logan too black and Cresap too white, and (see Appendix) is utterly wrong as to Logan’s speech. He is right in recognizing the fact that in the war, as a whole, justice was on the side of the frontiersmen.
30. Devereux Smith’s letter. Some of the evil-doers afterwards tried to palliate their misdeeds by stating that Logan’s brother, when drunk, insulted a white man, and that the other Indians were at the time on the point of executing an attack upon them. The last statement is self-evidently false; for had such been the case, the Indians would, of course, never have let some of their women and children put themselves in the power of the whites, and get helplessly drunk; and, anyhow, the allegations of such brutal and cowardly murderers are entirely unworthy of acceptance, unless backed up by outside evidence.
31. Jefferson MSS., 5th Series, Vol. I. Heckewelder’s letter.
32. Jefferson MSS. Deposition of Col. James Smith, May 25, 1798.
33. _Do_., Heckewelder’s letter.
34. “Am. Archives,” IV., Vol. I., p. 475.
35. _Do_., p. 1015.
36. _Do_., p. 475.
37. _Do_., p. 418.
38. _Do_., p. 774. Letter of the Earl of Dartmouth, Sept. 10, 1774. A sufficient answer, by the way, to the absurd charge that Dunmore brought on the war in consequence of some mysterious plan of the Home Government to embroil the Americans with the savages. It is not at all improbable that the Crown advisers were not particularly displeased at seeing the attention of the Americans distracted by a war with the Indians; but this is the utmost that can be alleged.
39. _Do_., p. 808.
40. _Do_., p. 478.
41. _Do_., p. 506.
42. _Do_., p. 474.
43. _Do_., p. 549.
44. _Do_., p. 471.
45. _Do_., pp. 435, 467, 602.
46. _Do_., pp. 405, 707.
47. _Do_., p. 808.
48. _Do_., p. 677.
49. _Do_., pp. 463, 467.
50. _Do_., p. 684.
51. _Do_., p. 435.
52. _Do_., pp. 468, 546.
53. _Do_., p. 470.
54. Jefferson MSS. Dep. of Wm. Robinson, February 28, 1800, and letter from Harry Innes, March 2, 1799, with a copy of Logan’s letter as made in his note-book at the time.
55. “Am. Archives.,” p. 373.
56. Under a certain Angus MacDonald, _do_., p. 722. They crossed the Ohio at Fish Creek, 120 miles below Pittsburg.
57. “Am. Archives,” IV., Vol. I., pp. 682, 684.
CHAPTER IX.
THE BATTLE OF THE GREAT KANAWHA; AND LOGAN’S SPEECH, 1774.
Meanwhile Lord Dunmore, having garrisoned the frontier forts, three of which were put under the orders of Daniel Boon, was making ready a formidable army with which to overwhelm the hostile Indians. It was to be raised, and to march, in two wings or divisions, each fifteen hundred strong, which were to join at the mouth of the Great Kanawha. One wing, the right or northernmost, was to be commanded by the earl in person; while the other, composed exclusively of frontiersmen living among the mountains west and southwest of the Blue Ridge, was entrusted to General Andrew Lewis. Lewis was a stalwart backwoods soldier, belonging to a family of famous frontier fighters, but though a sternly just and fearless man,[1] he does not appear to have had more than average qualifications to act as a commander of border troops when pitted against Indians.
The backwoodsmen of the Alleghanies felt that the quarrel was their own; in their hearts the desire for revenge burned like a sullen flame. The old men had passed their manhood with nerves tense from the strain of unending watchfulness, and souls embittered by terrible and repeated disasters; the young men had been cradled in stockaded forts, round which there prowled a foe whose comings and goings were unknown, and who was unseen till the moment when the weight of his hand was felt. They had been helpless to avenge their wrongs, and now that there was at last a chance to do so, they thronged eagerly to Lewis’ standard. The left wing or army assembled at the Great Levels of Greenbriar, and thither came the heroes of long rifle, tomahawk, and hunting-shirt, gathering from every stockaded hamlet, every lonely clearing and smoky hunter’s camp that lay along the ridges from whose hollows sprang the sources of the Eastern and the Western Waters. They were not uniformed, save that they all wore the garb of the frontier hunter; but most of them were armed with good rifles, and were skilful woodsmen, and though utterly undisciplined, they were magnificent individual fighters.[2] The officers were clad and armed almost precisely like the rank and file, save that some of them had long swords girded to their waist-belts; they carried rifles, for, where the result of the contest depended mainly on the personal prowess of the individual fighter, the leader was expected literally to stand in the forefront of the battle, and to inspirit his followers by deeds as well as words.
Among these troops was a company of rangers who came from the scattered wooden forts of the Watauga and the Nolichucky. Both Sevier and Robertson took part in this war, and though the former saw no fighting, the latter, who had the rank of sergeant, was more fortunate.
While the backwoods general was mustering his unruly and turbulent host of skilled riflemen, the English earl led his own levies, some fifteen hundred strong, to Fort Pitt.[3] Here he changed his plans, and decided not to try to join the other division, as he had agreed to do. This sudden abandonment of a scheme already agreed to and acted on by his colleague was certainly improper, and, indeed, none of the earl’s movements indicated very much military capacity. However, he descended the Ohio River with a flotilla of a hundred canoes, besides keel-boats and pirogues,[4] to the mouth of the Hockhocking, where he built and garrisoned a small stockade. Then he went up the Hockhocking to the falls, whence he marched to the Scioto, and there entrenched himself in a fortified camp, with breastworks of fallen trees, on the edge of the Pickaway plains, not far from the Indian town of Old Chillicothe. Thence he sent out detachments that destroyed certain of the hostile towns. He had with him as scouts many men famous in frontier story, among them George Rogers Clark, Cresap, and Simon Kenton–afterwards the bane of every neighboring Indian tribe, and renowned all along the border for his deeds of desperate prowess, his wonderful adventures, and his hairbreadth escapes. Another, of a very different stamp, was Simon Girty, of evil fame, whom the whole west grew to loathe, with bitter hatred, as “the white renegade.” He was the son of a vicious Irish trader, who was killed by the Indians; he was adopted by the latter, and grew up among them, and his daring ferocity and unscrupulous cunning early made him one of their leaders.[5] At the moment he was serving Lord Dunmore and the whites; but he was by tastes, habits, and education a red man, who felt ill at ease among those of his own color. He soon returned to the Indians, and dwelt among them ever afterwards, the most inveterate foe of the whites that was to be found in all the tribes. He lived to be a very old man, and is said to have died fighting his ancient foes and kinsmen, the Americans, in our second war against the British.
But Lord Dunmore’s army was not destined to strike the decisive blow in the contest. The great Shawnee chief, Cornstalk, was as wary and able as he was brave. He had from the first opposed the war with the whites;[6] but as he had been unable to prevent it, he was now bent on bringing it to a successful issue. He was greatly outnumbered; but he had at his command over a thousand painted and plumed warriors, the pick of the young men of the western tribes, the most daring braves to be found between the Ohio and the Great Lakes. His foes were divided, and he determined to strike first at the one who would least suspect a blow, but whose ruin, nevertheless, would involve that of the other. If Lewis’ army could be surprised and overwhelmed, the fate of Lord Dunmore’s would be merely a question of days. So without delay, Cornstalk, crafty in council, mighty in battle, and swift to carry out what he had planned, led his long files of warriors, with noiseless speed, through leagues of trackless woodland to the banks of the Ohio.
The backwoodsmen who were to form the army of Lewis had begun to gather at the Levels of Greenbriar before the 1st of September, and by the 7th most of them were assembled. Altogether the force under Lewis consisted of four commands, as follows: a body of Augusta troops, under Col. Charles Lewis, a brother of the general’s;[7] a body of Botetourt troops, under Col. William Fleming;[8] a small independent company, under Col. John Field; and finally the Fincastle men, from the Holston, Clinch, Watauga, and New River[9] settlements, under Col. William Christian.[10] One of Christian’s captains was a stout old Marylander, of Welsh blood, named Evan Shelby; and Shelby’s son Isaac,[11] a stalwart, stern-visaged young man, who afterwards played a very prominent part on the border, was a subaltern in his company, in which Robertson likewise served as a sergeant. Although without experience of drill, it may be doubted if a braver or physically finer set of men were ever got together on this continent.[12]
Among such undisciplined troops it was inevitable that there should be both delay and insubordination. Nevertheless they behaved a good deal better than their commander had expected; and he was much pleased with their cheerfulness and their eagerness for action. The Fincastle men, being from the remote settlements, were unable to get together in time to start with the others; and Col. Field grew jealous of his commander and decided to march his little company alone. The Indians were hovering around the camp, and occasionally shot at and wounded stragglers, or attempted to drive off the pack-horses.
The army started in three divisions. The bulk, consisting of Augusta men, under Col. Charles Lewis, marched on September 8th, closely followed by the Botetourt troops under Andrew Lewis himself.[13]
Field, with his small company, started off on his own account; but after being out a couple of days, two of his scouts met two Indians, with the result that a man was killed on each side; after which, profiting by the loss, he swallowed his pride and made haste to join the first division. The Fincastle troops were delayed so long that most of them, with their commander, were still fifteen miles from the main body the day the battle was fought; but Captains Shelby and Russell, with parts of their companies, went on ahead of the others, and, as will be seen, joined Lewis in time to do their full share of the fighting. Col. Christian himself only reached the Levels on the afternoon of the day the Augusta men had marched. He was burning with desire to distinguish himself, and his men were also very eager to have a share in the battle; and he besought Lewis to let him go along with what troops he had. But he was refused permission, whereat he was greatly put out.
Lewis found he had more men than he expected, and so left some of the worst troops to garrison the small forts. Just before starting he received a letter from the Earl advising, but not commanding, a change in their plans; to this he refused to accede, and was rather displeased at the proposal, attributing it to the influence of Conolly, whom the backwoods leaders were growing to distrust. There is not the slightest reason to suppose, however, that he then, or at any time during the campaign, suspected the Earl of treachery; nor did the latter’s conduct give any good ground for such a belief. Nevertheless, this view gained credit among the Virginians in later years, when they were greatly angered by the folly and ferocity of Lord Dunmore’s conduct during the early part of the Revolutionary war, and looked at all his past acts with jaundiced eyes.[14]
Lewis’ troops formed a typical backwoods army, both officers and soldiers. They wore fringed hunting-shirts, dyed yellow, brown, white, and even red; quaintly carved shot-bags and powder-horns hung from their broad ornamented belts; they had fur caps or soft hats, moccasins, and coarse woollen leggings reaching half-way up the thigh.[15] Each carried his flint-lock, his tomahawk, and scalping-knife. They marched in long files with scouts or spies thrown out in front and on the flanks, while axe-men went in advance to clear a trail over which they could drive the beef cattle, and the pack-horses, laden with provisions, blankets, and ammunition. They struck out straight through the trackless wilderness, making their road as they went, until on the 21st of the month[16] they reached the Kanawha, at the mouth of Elk Creek. Here they halted to build dug-out canoes; and about this time were overtaken by the companies of Russell and Shelby. On October 1st[17] they started to descend the river in twenty-seven canoes, a portion of the army marching down along the Indian trail, which followed the base of the hills, instead of the river bank, as it was thus easier to cross the heads of the creeks and ravines.[18]
They reached the mouth of the river on the 6th,[19] and camped on Point Pleasant, the cape of land jutting out between the Ohio and the Kanawha. As a consequence the bloody fight that ensued is sometimes called the battle of Point Pleasant, and sometimes the battle of the Great Kanawha. Hitherto the Indians had not seriously molested Lewis’ men, though they killed a settler right on their line of march, and managed to drive off some of the bullocks and pack-horses.[20]
The troops, though tired from their journey, were in good spirits, and eager to fight. But they were impatient of control, and were murmuring angrily that there was favoritism shown in the issue of beef. Hearing this, Lewis ordered all the poorest beeves to be killed first; but this merely produced an explosion of discontent, and large numbers of the men in mutinous defiance of the orders of their officers began to range the woods, in couples, to kill game. There was little order in the camp,[21] and small attention was paid to picket and sentinel duty; the army, like a body of Indian warriors, relying for safety mainly upon the sharp-sighted watchfulness of the individual members and the activity of the hunting parties.
On the 9th Simon Girty[22] arrived in camp bringing a message from Lord Dunmore, which bade Lewis meet him at the Indian towns near the Pickaway plains. Lewis was by no means pleased at the change, but nevertheless prepared to break camp and march next morning. He had with him at this time about eleven hundred men.[23]
His plans, however, were destined to be rudely forestalled, for Cornstalk, coming rapidly through the forest, had reached the Ohio. That very night the Indian chief ferried his men across the river on rafts, six or eight miles above the forks,[24] and by dawn was on the point of hurling his whole force, of nearly a thousand warriors[25] on the camp of his slumbering foes.
Before daylight on the 10th small parties of hunters had, as usual, left Lewis’ camp. Two of these men, from Russell’s company, after having gone somewhat over a mile, came upon a large party of Indians; one was killed, and the survivor ran back at full speed to give the alarm, telling those in camp that he had seen five acres of ground covered with Indians as thick as they could stand.[26] Almost immediately afterwards two men of Shelby’s company, one being no less a person than Robertson himself and the other Valentine, a brother of John Sevier, also stumbled upon the advancing Indians; being very wary and active men, they both escaped, and reached camp almost as soon as the other.
Instantly the drums beat to arms,[27] and the backwoodsmen,–lying out in the open, rolled in their blankets,–started from the ground, looked to their flints and priming, and were ready on the moment. The general, thinking he had only a scouting party to deal with, ordered out Col. Charles Lewis and Col. Fleming, each with one hundred and fifty men. Fleming had the left, and marched up the bank of the Ohio, while Lewis, on the right, kept some little distance inland. They went about half a mile.[28] Then, just before sunrise, while it was still dusk, the men in camp, eagerly listening, heard the reports of three guns, immediately succeeded by a clash like a peal of thin thunder, as hundreds of rifles rang out together. It was evident that the attack was serious and Col. Field was at once despatched to the front with two hundred men.[29]
He came only just in time. At the first fire both of the scouts in front of the white line had been killed. The attack fell first, and with especial fury, on the division of Charles Lewis, who himself was mortally wounded at the very outset; he had not taken a tree,[30] but was in an open piece of ground, cheering on his men, when he was shot. He stayed with them until the line was formed, and then walked back to camp unassisted, giving his gun to a man who was near him. His men, who were drawn up on the high ground skirting Crooked Run,[31] began to waver, but were rallied by Fleming, whose division had been attacked almost simultaneously, until he too was struck down by a bullet. The line then gave way, except that some of Fleming’s men still held their own on the left in a patch of rugged ground near the Ohio. At this moment, however, Colonel Field came up and restored the battle, while the backwoodsmen who had been left in camp also began to hurry up to take part in the fight. General Lewis at last, fully awake to the danger, began to fortify the camp by felling timber so as to form a breastwork running across the point from the Ohio to the Kanawha. This work should have been done before; and through attending to it Lewis was unable to take any personal part in the battle.
Meanwhile the frontiersmen began to push back their foes, led by Col. Field. The latter himself, however, was soon slain; he was at the time behind a great tree, and was shot by two Indians on his right, while he was trying to get a shot at another on his left, who was distracting his attention by mocking and jeering at him.[32] The command then fell on Captain Evan Shelby, who turned his company over to the charge of his son, Isaac. The troops fought on steadily, undaunted by the fall of their leaders, while the Indians attacked with the utmost skill, caution, and bravery. The fight was a succession of single combats, each man sheltering himself behind a stump, or rock, or tree-trunk, the superiority of the backwoodsmen in the use of the rifle being offset by the superiority of their foes in the art of hiding and of shielding themselves from harm. The hostile lines, though about a mile and a quarter in length, were so close together, being never more than twenty yards apart, that many of the combatants grappled in hand-to-hand fighting, and tomahawked or stabbed each other[33] to death. The clatter of the rifles was incessant, while above the din could be heard the cries and groans of the wounded, and the shouts of the combatants, as each encouraged his own side, or jeered savagely at his adversaries. The cheers of the whites mingled with the appalling war-whoops and yells of their foes. The Indians also called out to the Americans in broken English, taunting them, and asking them why their fifes were no longer whistling–for the fight was far too close to permit of any such music. Their headmen walked up and down behind their warriors, exhorting them to go in close, to shoot straight, and to bear themselves well in the fight;[34] while throughout the action the whites opposite Cornstalk could hear his deep, sonorous voice as he cheered on his braves, and bade them “be strong, be strong.”[35]
About noon the Indians tried to get round the flank of the whites, into their camp; but this movement was repulsed, and a party of the Americans[36] followed up their advantage, and running along the banks of the Kanawha out-flanked the enemy in turn. The Indians being pushed very hard now began to fall back, the best fighters covering the retreat, while the wounded were being carried off; although,–a rare thing in Indian battles–they were pressed so close that they were able to bear away but a portion of their dead. The whites were forced to pursue with the greatest caution; for those of them who advanced heedlessly were certain to be ambushed and receive a smart check. Finally, about one o’clock, the Indians, in their retreat, reached a very strong position, where the underbrush was very close and there were many fallen logs and steep banks. Here they stood resolutely at bay, and the whites did not dare attack them in such a stronghold. So the action came almost to an end; though skirmishing went on until about an hour before sunset, the Indians still at times taunting their foes and calling out to them that they had eleven hundred men as well as the whites, and that to-morrow they were going to be two thousand strong[37] This was only bravado, however; they had suffered too heavily to renew the attack, and under cover of darkness they slipped away, and made a most skilful retreat, carrying all their wounded in safety across the Ohio. The exhausted Americans, having taken a number of scalps, as well as forty guns, and many tomahawks[38] and some other plunder,[39] returned to their camp.
The battle had been bloody as well as stubborn. The whites, though the victors, had suffered more than their foes, and indeed had won only because it was against the entire policy of Indian warfare to suffer a severe loss, even if a victory could be gained thereby. Of the whites, some seventy-five men had been killed or mortally wounded, and one hundred and forty severely or slightly wounded,[40] so that they lost a fifth of their whole number. The Indians had not lost much more than half as many; about forty warriors were killed outright or died of their wounds.[41] Among the Indians no chief of importance was slain; whereas the Americans had seventeen officers killed or wounded, and lost in succession their second, third, and fourth in command. The victors buried their own dead and left the bodies of the vanquished to the wolves and ravens. At midnight, after the battle, Col. Christian and his Fincastle men reached the ground. The battle of the Great Kanawha was a purely American victory, for it was fought solely by the backwoodsmen themselves. Their immense superiority over regular troops in such contests can be readily seen when their triumph on this occasion is compared with the defeats previously suffered by Braddock’s grenadiers and Grant’s highlanders, at the hands of the same foes. It was purely a soldiers’ battle, won by hard individual fighting; there was no display of generalship, except on Cornstalk’s part.[42] It was the most closely contested of any battle ever fought with the northwestern Indians; and it was the only victory gained over a large body of them by a force but slightly superior in numbers.[43] Both because of the character of the fight itself, and because of the results that flowed from it, it is worthy of being held in especial remembrance.
Lewis left his sick and wounded in the camp at the Point, protected by a rude breastwork, and with an adequate guard. With the remainder of his forces, over a thousand strong, he crossed the Ohio, and pushed on to the Pickaway plains. When but a few miles from the earl’s encampment he was met by a messenger informing him that a treaty of peace was being negotiated with the Indians.[44] The backwoodsmen, flushed with success, and angry at their losses, were eager for more bloodshed; and it was only with difficulty that they were restrained, and were finally induced to march homewards, the earl riding down to them and giving his orders in person. They grumbled angrily against the earl for sending them back, and in later days accused him of treachery for having done so; but his course was undoubtedly proper, for it would have been very difficult to conclude peace in the presence of such fierce and unruly auxiliaries.
The spirit of the Indians had been broken by their defeat. Their stern old chief, Cornstalk, alone remained with unshaken heart, resolute to bid defiance to his foes and to fight the war out to the bitter end. But when the council of the headmen and war-chiefs was called it became evident that his tribesmen would not fight, and even his burning eloquence could not goad the warriors into again trying the hazard of battle. They listened unmoved and in sullen silence to the thrilling and impassioned words with which he urged them to once more march against the Long Knives, and if necessary to kill their women and children, and then themselves die fighting to the last man. At last, when he saw he could not stir the hearts of his hearers he struck his tomahawk into the warpost and announced that he himself would go and make peace. At that the warriors broke silence, and all grunted out approvingly, ough! ough! ough! and then they instantly sent runners to the earl’s army to demand a truce.[45]
Accordingly, with all his fellow-chiefs, he went to Lord Dunmore’s camp, and there entered into a treaty. The crestfallen Indians assented to all the terms the conquerors proposed. They agreed to give up all the white prisoners and stolen horses in their possession, and to surrender all claim to the lands south of the Ohio, and they gave hostages as an earnest of their good-faith.[46] But their chief spokesman, Cornstalk, while obliged to assent to these conditions, yet preserved through all the proceedings a bearing of proud defiance that showed how little the fear of personal consequences influenced his own actions. At the talks he addressed the white leader with vehement denunciation and reproach, in a tone that seemed rather that of a conqueror than of one of the conquered. Indeed, he himself was not conquered; he felt that his tribesmen were craven, but he knew that his own soul feared nothing. The Virginians, who, like their Indian antagonists, prized skill in oratory only less than skill in warfare, were greatly impressed by the chieftain’s eloquence, by his command of words, his clear, distinct voice, his peculiar emphasis, and his singularly grand and majestic, and yet graceful, bearing; they afterwards said that his oratory fully equalled that of Patrick Henry himself.[47]
Every prominent chief but one came to the council. The exception was Logan, who remained apart in the Mingo village, brooding over his wrongs, and the vengeance he had taken. His fellows, when questioned about his absence, answered that he was like a mad dog, whose bristles were still up, but that they were gradually falling; and when he was entreated to be present at the meeting he responded that he was a warrior, not a councillor, and would not come. The Mingos, because they failed to appear at the treaty, had their camp destroyed and were forced to give hostages, as the Delawares and Shawnees had done,[48] and Logan himself finally sullenly acquiesced in, or at least ceased openly to oppose, the peace.
But he would not come in person to Lord Dunmore; so the earl was obliged to communicate with him through a messenger, a frontier veteran[49] named John Gibson, who had long lived among the Indians and knew thoroughly both their speech and their manners.[50] To this messenger Logan was willing to talk. Taking him aside, he suddenly addressed him in a speech that will always retain its place as perhaps the finest outburst of savage eloquence of which we have any authentic record. The messenger took it down in writing, translating it literally,[51] and, returning to camp, gave it to Lord Dunmore. The earl then read it, in open council, to the whole backwoods army, including Cresap, Clark, and the other scouts. The speech, when read, proved to be no message of peace, nor an acknowledgment of defeat, but instead, a strangely pathetic recital of his wrongs, and a fierce and exulting justification of the vengeance he had taken. It ran as follows:
“I appeal to any white man to say if ever he entered Logan’s cabin hungry and he gave him not meat; if ever he came cold and naked and he clothed him not? During the course of the last long and bloody war, Logan remained idle in his camp, an advocate for peace. Such was my love for the whites that my countrymen pointed as I passed and said, ‘Logan is the friend of the white man.’ I had even thought to have lived with you, but for the injuries of one man. Colonel Cresap, the last spring, in cold blood and unprovoked, murdered all the relations of Logan, not even sparing my women and children. There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of any living creature. This called on me for revenge. I have sought it. I have killed many. I have fully glutted my vengeance. For my country I rejoice at the beams of peace; but do not harbor a thought that mine is the joy of fear. Logan never felt fear. He will not turn on his heel to save his life. Who is there to mourn for Logan? Not one.”
The tall frontiersmen, lounging in a circle round about, listened to the reading of the speech with eager interest; rough Indian haters though they were, they were so much impressed by it that in the evening it was a common topic of conversation over their camp fires, and they continually attempted to rehearse it to one another.[52] But they knew that Greathouse, not Cresap, had been the chief offender in the murder of Logan’s family; and when the speech was read, Clark, turning round, jeered at and rallied Cresap as being so great a man that the Indians put every thing on his shoulders; whereat, Cresap, much angered, swore that he had a good mind to tomahawk Greathouse for the murder.[53]
The speech could not have been very satisfactory to the earl; but at least it made it evident that Logan did not intend to remain on the war-path; and so Lord Dunmore marched home with his hostages. On the homeward march, near the mouth of the River Hockhocking, the officers of the army held a notable meeting. They had followed the British earl to battle; but they were Americans, in warm sympathy with the Continental Congress, which was then in session. Fearful lest their countrymen might not know that they were at one with them in the struggle of which the shadow was looming up with ever increasing blackness, they passed resolutions which were afterwards published. Their speakers told how they had lived in the woods for three months, without hearing from the Congress at Philadelphia, nor yet from Boston, where the disturbances seemed most likely to come to a head. They spoke of their fear lest their countrymen might be misled into the belief that this numerous body of armed men was hostile or indifferent to the cause of America; and proudly alluded to the fact that they had lived so long without bread or salt, or shelter at night, and that the troops they led could march and fight as well as any in the world. In their resolutions they professed their devotion to their king, to the honor of his crown, and to the dignity of the British empire; but they added that this devotion would only last while the king deigned to rule over a free people, for their love for the liberty of America outweighed all other considerations, and they would exert every power for its defence, not riotously, but when regularly called forth by the voice of their countrymen.
They ended by tendering their thanks to Lord Dunmore for his conduct. He was also warmly thanked by the Virginia Legislature, as well as by the frontiersmen of Fincastle,[54] and he fully deserved their gratitude.
The war had been ended in less than six months’ time; and its results were of the utmost importance. It had been very successful. In Braddock’s war, the borderers are estimated to have suffered a loss of fifty souls for every Indian slain; in Pontiac’s war, they had learned to defend themselves better, and yet the ratio was probably as ten to one;[55] whereas in this war, if we consider only males of fighting age, it is probable that a good deal more than half as many Indians as whites were killed, and even including women and children, the ratio would not rise to more than three to one. Certainly, in all the contests waged against the northwestern Indians during the last half of the eighteenth century there was no other where the whites inflicted so great a relative loss on their foes. Its results were most important. It kept the northwestern tribes quiet for the first two years of the Revolutionary struggle; and above all it rendered possible the settlement of Kentucky, and therefore the winning of the West. Had it not been for Lord Dunmore’s war, it is more than likely that when the colonies achieved their freedom they would have found their western boundary fixed at the Alleghany Mountains.[56]
Nor must we permit our sympathy for the foul wrongs of the two great Indian heroes of the contest to blind us to the fact that the struggle was precipitated, in the first place, by the outrages of the red men, not the whites; and that the war was not only inevitable, but was also in its essence just and righteous on the part of the borderers. Even the unpardonable and hideous atrocity of the murder of Logan’s family, was surpassed in horror by many of the massacres committed by the Indians about the same time. The annals of the border are dark and terrible.
Among the characters who played the leaders’ parts in this short and tragic drama of the backwoods few came to much afterwards. Cresap died a brave Revolutionary soldier. Of Greathouse we know nothing; we can only hope that eventually the Indians scalped him. Conolly became a virulent tory, who yet lacked the power to do the evil that he wished. Lewis served creditably in the Revolution; while at its outbreak Lord Dunmore was driven from Virginia and disappears from our ken. Proud, gloomy Logan never recovered from the blow that had been dealt him; he drank deeper and deeper, and became more and more an implacable, moody, and bloodthirsty savage, yet with noble qualities that came to the surface now and then. Again and again he wrought havoc among the frontier settlers; yet we several times hear of his saving the lives of prisoners. Once he saved Simon Kenton from torture and death, when Girty, moved by a rare spark of compassion for his former comrade, had already tried to do so and failed. At last he perished in a drunken brawl by the hand of another Indian.
Cornstalk died a grand death, but by an act of cowardly treachery on the part of his American foes; it is one of the darkest stains on the checkered pages of frontier history. Early in 1777 he came into the garrison at Point Pleasant to explain that, while he was anxious to keep at peace, his tribe were bent on going to war; and he frankly added that of course if they did so he should have to join them. He and three other Indians, among them his son and the chief Redhawk, who had also been at the Kanawha battle, were detained as hostages. While they were thus confined in the fort a member of a company of rangers was killed by the Indians near by; whereupon his comrades, headed by their captain,[57] rushed in furious anger into the fort to slay the hostages. Cornstalk heard them rushing in, and knew that his hour had come; with unmoved countenance he exhorted his son not to fear, for it was the will of the Great Spirit that they should die there together; then, as the murderers burst into the room, he quietly rose up to meet them, and fell dead pierced by seven or eight bullets. His son and his comrades were likewise butchered, and we have no record of any more infamous deed.
Though among the whites, the men who took prominent parts in the struggle never afterwards made any mark, yet it is worth noting that all the aftertime leaders of the west were engaged in some way in Lord Dunmore’s war. Their fates were various. Boon led the vanguard of the white advance across the mountains, wandered his life long through the wilderness, and ended his days, in extreme old age, beyond the Mississippi, a backwoods hunter to the last. Shelby won laurels at King’s Mountain, became the first governor of Kentucky, and when an old man revived the memories of his youth by again leading the western men in battle against the British and Indians. Sevier and Robertson were for a generation the honored chiefs of the southwestern people. Clark, the ablest of all, led a short but brilliant career, during which he made the whole nation his debtor. Then, like Logan, he sank under the curse of drunkenness,–often hardly less dangerous to the white borderer than to his red enemy,–and passed the remainder of his days in ignoble and slothful retirement.
1. Stewart’s Narrative.
2. “Am. Archiv.” Col. Wm. Preston’s letter, Sept. 28, 1774.
3. _Do_., p. 872.
4. Doddridge, 235.
5. See _Mag. of Am. Hist._, XV., 256.
6. De Haas, p. 161. He is a very fair and trustworthy writer; in particular, as regards Logan’s speech and Cresap’s conduct. It is to be regretted that Brantz Mayer, in dealing with these latter subjects, could not have approached them with the same desire to be absolutely impartial, instead of appearing to act solely as an advocate.
7. His eight captains were George Matthews, Alexander McClannahan, John Dickinson, John Lewis (son of William), Benjamin Harrison, William Paul, Joseph Haynes, and Samuel Wilson. Hale, “Trans-Alleghany Pioneers,” p. 181.
8. His seven captains were Matthew Arbuckle, John Murray, John Lewis (son of Andrew), James Robertson, Robert McClannahan, James Ward, and John Stewart (author of the Narrative).
9. As the Kanawha was sometimes called.
10. Whose five captains were Evan Shelby, Russell, Herbert, Draper, and Buford.
11. Born December 11, 1750, near Hagerstown, Md.
12. Letter of Col. Wm. Preston, September 28, 1774. “Am. Archives.”
13. Letter of one of Lord Dunmore’s officers, November 21, 1774. “Am. Archives,” IV., Vol. I., p. 1017. Hale gives a minute account of the route followed; Stewart says they started on the 11th.
With the journal of Floyd’s expedition, mentioned on a previous page, I received MS. copies of two letters to Col. William Preston, both dated at Camp Union, at the Great Levels; one, of September 8th from Col. Andrew Lewis, and one of September 7th (9th?) from Col. William Christian.
Col. Lewis’ letter runs in part: “From Augusta we have 600; of this county [Botetourt] about 400; Major Field is joined with 40…. I have had less Trouble with the Troops than I expected…. I received a letter from his Lordship last Sunday morning which was dated the 30th of August at Old Towns, which I take to be Chresops, he then I am told had Col. Stephens and Major Conolly at his Elbow as might easily be discovered by the Contents of his Letter which expressed his Lordship’s warmest wishes that I would with all the troops from this Quarter join him at the mouth of the little Kanaway, I wrote his Lordship that it was not in my power to alter our rout…. The Indians wounded a man within two miles of us … and wounded another, from this we may expect they will be picking about us all the March.” He states that he has more men than he expected, and will therefore need more provisions, and that he will leave some of his poorest troops to garrison the small fort.
Col. Christian’s letter states that the Augusta men took with them 400 pack-horses, carrying 54,000 pounds of flour, and 108 beeves, they started “yesterday.” Field marched “this evening”, Fleming and his 450 Botetourt men, with 200 pack-horses, “are going next Monday.” Field had brought word that Dunmore expected to be at the mouth of the Great Kanawha “some days after the 20th.” Some Indians had tried to steal a number of pack-horses, but had been discovered and frightened off.
Christian was very much discontented at being bidden to stay behind until he could gather 300 men, and bring up the rear, he expresses his fear that his men will be much exasperated when they learn that they are to stay behind, and reiterates “I would not for all I am worth be behind crossing the Ohio and that we should miss lending our assistance.” Field brought an account of McDonald’s fight (see _ante_, p. 216), he said the whites were 400 and the Indians but 30 strong, that the former had 4 men killed and 6 wounded, the Indians but 3 or 4 killed and 1 captured, and their town was burnt. The number of the Shawnees and their allies was estimated at 1,200 warriors that could be put into one battle. The 400 horses that had started with the Augusta men were to return as fast as they could (after reaching the embarkment point, whence the flour was carried in canoes).
14. When the Revolutionary war broke out the Earl not only fought the revolted colonists with all legitimate weapons, but tried to incite the blacks to servile insurrection, and sent agents to bring his old foes, the red men of the forest, down on his old friends, the settlers. He encouraged piratical and plundering raids, and on the other hand failed to show the courage and daring that are sometimes partial offsets to ferocity. But in this war, in 1774, he conducted himself with great energy in making preparations, and showed considerable skill as a negotiator in concluding the peace, and apparently went into the conflict with hearty zest and good will. He was evidently much influenced by Conolly, a very weak adviser, however; and his whole course betrayed much vacillation, and no generalship.
15. Smyth’s “Tour,” II., p. 179.
16. “Am. Archives,” p. 1017.
17. _Do_. Stewart says they reached the mouth of the Kanawha on Oct. 1st; another account says Sept. 30th; but this is an error, as shown both by the “Am. Archives” and by the Campbell MSS.
18. Hale, 182.
19. Campbell MSS. Letter of Isaac Shelby to John Shelby, Oct. 16, 1774. A portion of this letter, unsigned, was printed in “Am. Archives,” p. 1016, and in various newspapers (even at Belfast; _see_ Hale, p. 187, who thinks it was written by Captain Arbuckle). As it is worth preserving and has never been printed in full I give it in the Appendix.
20. Stewart’s Narrative.
21. Smyth, II., p. 158. He claims to have played a prominent part in the battle. This is certainly not so, and he may not have been present at all; at least Col. Stewart, who was there and was acquainted with every one of note in the army, asserts positively that there was no such man along; nor has any other American account ever mentioned him. His military knowledge was nil, as may be gathered from his remark, made when the defeats of Braddock and Grant were still recent, that British regulars with the bayonet were best fitted to oppose Indians.
22. Some accounts say that he was accompanied by Kenton and McCulloch; others state that no messenger arrived until after the battle. But this is certainly wrong. Shelby’s letter shows that the troops learned the governor’s change of plans before the battle.
23. “Am. Archives,” IV., Vol. J., p. 1017; and was joined by Col. Christian’s three hundred the day after the battle.
24. Campbell MSS. Letter of Col. William Preston (presumably to Patrick Henry), Oct. 31, 1774. As it is interesting and has never been published, I give it in the Appendix.
25. Many of the white accounts make their number much greater, without any authority; Shelby estimates it at between eight hundred and one thousand. Smith, who generally gives the Indian side, says that on this occasion they were nearly as numerous as the whites. Smyth, who bitterly hates the Americans, and always belittles their deeds, puts the number of Indians at nine hundred; he would certainly make it as small as possible. So the above estimate is probably pretty near the truth, though it is of course impossible to be accurate. At any rate, it was the only important engagement fought by the English or Americans against the northwestern Indians in which there was a near approach to equality of force.
26. Campbell MSS. Shelby’s letter. Their names were Mooney and Hickman; the latter was killed. Most historians have confused these two men with the two others who discovered the Indians at almost the same time.
27. “Am. Archives,” IV., Vol, I., p. 1017.
28. _Do_., p. 1017. Letter from Stanton, Virginia, Nov. 4, 1774, says 3/4 of a mile; Shelby says 1/2 of a mile.
29. _Do_., Letter of Nov. 17th.
30. The frontier expression for covering one’s self behind a tree-trunk.
31. A small stream running into the Kanawha near its mouth. De Haas, p. 151.
32. Campbell MSS. Preston’s, letter.
33. “Am. Archives.” Letter of November 4, 1774.
34. Campbell MSS. Preston’s letter.
35. Stewart’s Narrative.
36. Led by Isaac Shelby, James Stewart, and George Matthews.
37. Campbell MSS. Preston’s letter.
38. “Am. Archives” Letter of November 4, 1774. It is doubtful if Logan was in this fight; the story about Cornstalk killing one of his men who flinched may or may not be true.
39. Hale, 199, the plunder was afterwards sold at auction for L74 4s. 6d.
40. These are the numbers given by Stewart, but the accounts vary greatly. Monette (“Valley of the Mississippi,”) says 87 killed and 141 wounded. The letters written at the time evidently take no account of any but the badly wounded. Shelby thus makes the killed 55, and the wounded (including the mortally hurt) 68. Another account (“Am. Archives,” p. 1017) says 40 men killed and 96 wounded, 20 odd of whom were since dead, whilst a foot-note to this letter enumerates 53 dead outright, and 87 wounded, “some of whom have since died.” It is evidently impossible that the slightly wounded are included in these lists; and in all probability Stewart’s account is correct, as he was an eye-witness and participant.
41. Twenty-one were scalped on the field; the bodies of 12 more were afterwards found behind logs or in holes where they had been lain, and 8 eventually died of their wounds. (See “American Archives,” Smith, Hale, De Haas, etc.) Smith, who wrote from the Indian side, makes their loss only 28; but this apparently does not include the loss of the western Indians, the allies of the Shawnees, Mingos, and Delawares.
42. _Smyth_, the Englishman, accuses Lewis of cowardice, an accusation which deserves no more attention than do the similar accusations of treachery brought against Dunmore. Brantz Mayer speaks in very hyperbolic terms of the “relentless Lewis,” and the “great slaughter” of the Indians.
43. Wayne won an equally decisive victory, but he outnumbered his foes three to one. Bouquet, who was almost beaten, and was saved by the provincial rangers, was greatly the superior in force, and suffered four times the loss he inflicted. In both cases, especially that of Bouquet, the account of the victor must be received with caution where it deals with the force and loss of the vanquished. In the same way Shelby and the other reporters of the Kanawha fight stated that the Indians lost more heavily than the whites.
44. The stories of how Lewis suspected the earl of treachery, and of how the backwoodsmen were so exasperated that they wished to kill the latter, may have some foundation; but are quite as likely to be pure inventions, made up after the Revolutionary war. In De Haas, “The American Pioneer,” etc., can be found all kinds of stories, some even told by members of the Clark and Lewis families, which are meant to criminate Dunmore, but which make such mistakes in chronology–placing the battle of Lexington in the year of the Kanawha fight, asserting that peace was not made till the following spring, etc.–that they must be dismissed offhand as entirely untrustworthy.
45. Stewart’s Narrative.
46. “Am. Archives,” IV. St. Clair’s letter, Dec. 4, 1774. Also Jefferson MSS. Dep. of Wm. Robinson, etc.
47. See De Haas, 162.
48. “Am. Archives,” IV., Vol. I., pp. 1013, 1226.
49. John Gibson, afterwards a general in the army of the United States. See Appendix.
50. Jefferson MSS. Statements of John Gibson, etc.; there is some uncertainty as to whether Logan came up to Gibson at the treaty and drew him aside, or whether the latter went to seek the former in his wigwam.
51. Jefferson Papers (State Department MSS.), 5-1-4. Statement of Col. John Gibson to John Anderson, an Indian trader at Pittsburg, in 1774. Anderson had asked him if he had not himself added somewhat to the speech; he responded that he had not, that it was a literal translation or transcription of Logan’s words.
52. Jefferson MSS. Affidavits of Andrew Rogers, Wm. Russell, and others who were present.
53. Clark’s letter.
54. See De Haas, 167.
55. These are Smith’s estimates, derived largely from Indian sources. They are probably excessive, but not very greatly so.
56. It is difficult to understand why some minor historians consider this war as fruitless.
57. John Hall; it is worth while preserving the name of the ringleader in so brutal and cowardly a butchery. See Stewart’s Narrative.
CHAPTER X.
BOON AND THE SETTLEMENT OF KENTUCKY, 1775.
Lord Dunmore’s war, waged by Americans for the good of America, was the opening act in the drama whereof the closing scene was played at Yorktown. It made possible the twofold character of the Revolutionary war, wherein on the one hand the Americans won by conquest and colonization new lands for their children, and on the other wrought out their national independence of the British king. Save for Lord Dunmore’s war we could not have settled beyond the mountains until after we had ended our quarrel with our kinsfolk across the sea. It so cowed the northern Indians that for two or three years they made no further organized effort to check the white advance. In consequence, the Kentucky pioneers had only to contend with small parties of enemies until time had been given them to become so firmly rooted in the land that it proved impossible to oust them. Had Cornstalk and his fellow-chiefs kept their hosts unbroken, they would undoubtedly have swept Kentucky clear of settlers in 1775,–as was done by the mere rumor of their hostility the preceding summer. Their defeat gave the opportunity for Boon to settle Kentucky, and therefore for Robertson to settle Middle Tennessee, and for Clark to conquer Illinois and the Northwest; it was the first in the chain of causes that gave us for our western frontier in 1783 the Mississippi and not the Alleghanies.
As already mentioned, the speculative North Carolinian Henderson had for some time been planning the establishment of a proprietary colony beyond the mountains, as a bold stroke to reestablish his ruined fortunes; and early in 1775, as the time seemed favorable, he proceeded to put his venturous scheme into execution. For years he had been in close business relations with Boon; and the latter had attempted to lead a band of actual settlers to Kentucky in 1773. Naturally, when Henderson wished to fix on a place wherein to plant his colony, he chose the beautiful land which the rumor of Boon’s discovery had rendered famous all along the border; and equally naturally he chose the pioneer hunter himself to act as his lieutenant and as the real leader of the expedition. The result of the joint efforts of these two men was to plant in Kentucky a colony of picked settlers, backed by such moral and material support as enabled them to maintain themselves permanently in the land. Boon had not been the first to discover Kentucky, nor was he the first to found a settlement therein;[1] but it was his exploration of the land that alone bore lasting fruit, and the settlement he founded was the first that contained within itself the elements of permanence and growth.
Of course, as in every other settlement of inland America, the especial point to be noticed is the individual initiative of the different settlers. Neither the royal nor the provincial governments had any thing to do with the various colonies that were planted almost simultaneously on the soil of Kentucky. Each little band of pioneers had its own leaders, and was stirred by its own motives. All had heard, from different sources, of the beauty and fertility of the land, and as the great danger from the Indians was temporarily past, all alike went in to take possession, not only acting without previous agreement, but for the most part being even in ignorance of one another’s designs. Yet the dangers surrounding these new-formed and far-off settlements were so numerous, and of such grave nature, that they could hardly have proved permanent had it not been for the comparatively well-organized settlement of Boon, and for the temporary immunity which Henderson’s treaty purchased from the southern Indians.
The settlement of Kentucky was a much more adventurous and hazardous proceeding than had been the case with any previous westward extension of population from the old colonies; because Kentucky, instead of abutting on already settled districts, was an island in the wilderness, separated by two hundred miles of unpeopled and almost impassable forest from even the extreme outposts of the seacoast commonwealths. Hitherto every new settlement had been made by the simple process of a portion of the backwoods pioneers being thrust out in advance of the others, while, nevertheless, keeping in touch with them, and having their rear covered, as it were, by the already colonized country. Now, for the first time, a new community of pioneers sprang up, isolated in the heart of the wilderness, and thrust far beyond the uttermost limits of the old colonies, whose solid mass lay along the Atlantic seaboard. The vast belt of mountainous woodland that lay between was as complete a barrier as if it had been a broad arm of the ocean. The first American incomers to Kentucky were for several years almost cut off from the bulk of their fellows beyond the forest-clad mountains; much as, thirteen centuries before, their forebears, the first English settlers in Britain, had been cut off from the rest of the low-Dutch folk who continued to dwell on the eastern coast of the German Ocean.
Henderson and those associated with him in his scheme of land speculation began to open negotiations with the Cherokees as soon as the victory of the Great Kanawha for the moment lessened the danger to be apprehended from the northwestern Indians. In October, 1774, he and Nathaniel Hart, one of his partners in the scheme, journeyed to the Otari towns, and made their proposals. The Indians proceeded very cautiously, deputing one of their number, a chief called the Carpenter, to return with the two white envoys, and examine the goods they proposed to give in exchange. To this Henderson made no objection; on the contrary, it pleased him, for he was anxious to get an indisputable Indian title to the proposed new colony. The Indian delegate made a favorable report in January, 1775; and then the Overhill Cherokees were bidden to assemble at the Sycamore Shoals of the Watauga. The order was issued by the head-chief, Oconostota, a very old man, renowned for the prowess he had shown in former years when warring against the English. On the 17th of March, Oconostota and two other chiefs, the Raven and the Carpenter, signed the Treaty of the Sycamore Shoals, in the presence and with the assent of some twelve hundred of their tribe, half of them warriors; for all who could had come to the treaty grounds. Henderson thus obtained a grant of all the lands lying along and between the Kentucky and the Cumberland rivers. He promptly named the new colony Transylvania. The purchase money was 10,000 pounds of lawful English money; but, of course, the payment was made mainly in merchandise, and not specie. It took a number of days before the treaty was finally concluded; no rum was allowed to be sold, and there was little drunkenness, but herds of beeves were driven in, that the Indians might make a feast.
The main opposition to the treaty was made by a chief named Dragging Canoe, who continued for years to be the most inveterate foe of the white race to be found among the Cherokees. On the second day of the talk he spoke strongly against granting the Americans what they asked, pointing out, in words of glowing eloquence, how the Cherokees, who had once owned the land down to the sea, had been steadily driven back by the whites until they had reached the mountains, and warning his comrades that they must now put a stop at all hazards to further encroachments, under penalty of seeing the loss of their last hunting-grounds, by which alone their children could live. When he had finished his speech he abruptly left the ring of speakers, and the council broke up in confusion. The Indian onlookers were much impressed by what he said; and for some hours the whites were in dismay lest all further negotiations should prove fruitless. It was proposed to get the deed privately; but to this the treaty-makers would not consent, answering that they cared nothing for the treaty unless it was concluded in open council, with the full assent of all the Indians. By much exertion Dragging Canoe was finally persuaded to come back; the council was resumed next day, and finally the grant was made without further opposition. The Indians chose their own interpreter; and the treaty was read aloud and translated, sentence by sentence, before it was signed, on the fourth day of the formal talking.
The chiefs undoubtedly knew that they could transfer only a very imperfect title to the land they thus deeded away. Both Oconostota and Dragging Canoe told the white treaty-makers that the land beyond the mountains, whither they were going, was a “dark ground,” a “bloody ground”; and warned them that they must go at their own risk, and not hold the Cherokees responsible, for the latter could no longer hold them by the hand. Dragging Canoe especially told Henderson that there was a black cloud hanging over the land, for it lay in the path of the northwestern Indians–who were already at war with the Cherokees, and would surely show as little mercy to the white men as to the red. Another old chief said to Boon: “Brother, we have given you a fine land, but I believe you will have much trouble in settling it.” What he said was true, and the whites were taught by years of long warfare that Kentucky was indeed what the Cherokees called it, a dark and bloody ground.[2]
After Henderson’s main treaty was concluded, the Watauga Association entered into another, by which they secured from the Cherokees, for 2,000 pounds sterling, the lands they had already leased.
As soon as it became evident that the Indians would consent to the treaty, Henderson sent Boon ahead with a company of thirty men to clear a trail from the Holston to the Kentucky.[3] This, the first regular path opened into the wilderness, was long called Boon’s trace, and became forever famous in Kentucky history as the Wilderness Road, the track along which so many tens of thousands travelled while journeying to their hoped-for homes in the bountiful west. Boon started on March 10th with his sturdy band of rifle-bearing axemen, and chopped out a narrow bridle-path–a pony trail, as it would now be called in the west. It led over Cumberland Gap, and crossed Cumberland, Laurel, and Rockcastle rivers at fords that were swimming deep in the time of freshets. Where it went through tall, open timber, it was marked by blazes on the tree trunks, while a regular path was cut and trodden out through the thickets of underbrush and the dense canebrakes and reed-beds.
After a fortnight’s hard work the party had almost reached the banks of the Kentucky River, and deemed that their chief trials were over. But half an hour before daybreak on the morning of the 25th, as they lay round their smouldering camp-fires, they were attacked by some Indians, who killed two of them and wounded a third; the others sprang to arms at once, and stood their ground without suffering further loss or damage till it grew light, when the Indians silently drew off.[4] Continuing his course, Boon reached the Kentucky River, and on April 1st began to build Boonsborough, on an open plain where there was a lick with two sulphur springs.
Meanwhile other pioneers, as hardy and enterprising as Boon’s companions, had likewise made up their minds that they would come in to possess the land; and in bands or small parties they had crossed the mountains or floated down the Ohio, under the leadership of such men as Harrod, Logan,[5] and the McAfees.[6] But hardly had they built their slight log-cabins, covered with brush or bark, and broken ground for the corn-planting, when some small Indian war-parties, including that which had attacked Boon’s company, appeared among them. Several men were “killed and sculped,” as Boon phrased it; and the panic among the rest was very great, insomuch that many forthwith set out to return. Boon was not so easily daunted; and he at once sent a special messenger to hurry forward the main body under Henderson, writing to the latter with quiet resolution and much good sense:
“My advice to you, sir, is to come or send as soon as possible. Your company is desired greatly, for the people are very uneasy, but are willing to stay and venture their lives with you, and now is the time to flusterate the intentions of the Indians, and keep the country whilst we are in it. If we give way to them now, it will ever be the case.”[7]
Henderson had started off as soon as he had finished the treaty. He took wagons with him, but was obliged to halt and leave them in Powell’s Valley, for beyond that even so skilful a pathfinder and road-maker as Boon had not been able to find or make a way passable for wheels.[8] Accordingly, their goods and implements were placed on pack-horses, and the company started again.[9] Most fortunately a full account of their journey has been kept; for among Henderson’s followers at this time was a man named William Calk, who jotted down in his diary the events of each day.[10] It is a short record, but as amusing as it is instructive; for the writer’s mind was evidently as vigorous as his language was terse and untrammelled. He was with a small party, who were going out as partners; and his journal is a faithful record of all things, great or small, that at the time impressed him. The opening entry contains the information that “Abram’s dog’s leg got broke by Drake’s dog.” The owner of the latter beast, by the way, could not have been a pleasant companion on a trip of this sort, for elsewhere the writer, who, like most backwoodsmen, appreciated cleanliness in essentials, records with evident disfavor the fact that “Mr. Drake Bakes bread without washing his hands.” Every man who has had the misfortune to drive a pack-train in thick timber, or along a bad trail, will appreciate keenly the following incident, which occurred soon after the party had set out for home:
* * * * *
“I turned my hors to drive before me and he got scard ran away threw Down the Saddel Bags and broke three of our powder goards and Abram’s beast Burst open a walet of corn and lost a good Deal and made a turrabel flustration amongst the Reast of the Horses Drake’s mair run against a sapling and noct it down we cacht them all again and went on and lodged at John Duncan’s.”
* * * * *
Another entry records the satisfaction of the party when at a log fort (before getting into the wilderness) they procured some good loaf-bread and good whisky.
They carried with them seed-corn[11] and “Irish tators” to plant, and for use on the journey had bacon, and corn-meal which was made either into baked corn-dodgers or else into johnny-cakes, which were simply cooked on a board beside the fire, or else perhaps on a hot stone or in the ashes. The meal had to be used very sparingly; occasionally a beef was killed, out of the herd of cattle that accompanied the emigrants; but generally they lived on the game they shot–deer, turkeys, and, when they got to Kentucky, buffaloes. Sometimes this was killed as they travelled; more often the hunters got it by going out in the evening after they had pitched camp.
The journey was hard and tiresome. At times it rained; and again there were heavy snow-storms, in one of which an emigrant got lost, and only found his way to camp by the help of a pocket-compass. The mountains were very steep, and it was painfully laborious work to climb them, while chopping out a way for the pack-train. At night a watch had to be kept for Indians. It was only here and there that the beasts got good grazing. Sometimes the horses had their saddles turned while struggling through the woods. But the great difficulty came in crossing the creeks, where the banks were rotten, the bottom bad, or the water deep; then the horses would get mired down and wet their packs, or they would have to be swum across while their loads were ferried over on logs. One day, in going along a creek, they had to cross it no less than fifty times, by “very bad foards.”
On the seventh of April they were met by Boon’s runner, bearing tidings of the loss occasioned by the Indians; and from that time on they met parties of would-be settlers, who, panic-struck by the sudden forays, were fleeing from the country. Henderson’s party kept on with good courage, and persuaded quite a number of the fugitives to turn back with them. Some of these men who were thus leaving the country were not doing so because of fright; for many, among them the McAfees, had not brought out their families, but had simply come to clear the ground, build cabins, plant corn, and turn some branded cattle loose in the woods, where they were certain to thrive well, winter and summer, on the nourishing cane and wild pea-vine. The men then intended to go back to the settlements and bring out their wives and children, perhaps not till the following year; so that things were in a measure prepared for them, though they were very apt to find that the cattle had been stolen by the Indians, or had strayed too far to be recovered.[12]
The bulk of those fleeing, however, were simply frightened out of the country. There seems no reason to doubt[13] that the establishment of the strong, well-backed settlement of Boonsborough was all that prevented the abandonment of Kentucky at this time; and when such was the effect of a foray by small and scattered war parties of Indians from tribes nominally at peace with us,[14] it can easily be imagined how hopeless it would have been to have tried to settle the land had there still been in existence a strong hostile confederacy such as that presided over by Cornstalk. Beyond doubt the restless and vigorous frontiersmen would ultimately have won their way into the coveted western lands; yet had it not been for the battle of the Great Kanawha, Boon and Henderson could not, in 1775, have planted their colony in Kentucky; and had it not been for Boon and Henderson, it is most unlikely that the land would have been settled at all until after the Revolutionary war, when perhaps it might have been British soil. Boon was essentially a type, and possesses his greatest interest for us because he represents so well the characteristics as well as the life-work of his fellow backwoodsmen; still, it is unfair not to bear in mind also the leading part he played and the great services he rendered to the nation.
The incomers soon recovered from the fright into which they had been thrown by the totally unexpected Indian attack; but the revengeful anger it excited in their breasts did not pass away. They came from a class already embittered by long warfare with their forest foes; they hoarded up their new wrongs in minds burdened with the memories of countless other outrages; and it is small wonder that repeated and often unprovoked treachery at last excited in them a fierce and indiscriminate hostility to all the red-skinned race. They had come to settle on ground to which, as far as it was possible, the Indian title had been by fair treaty extinguished. They ousted no Indians from the lands they took; they had had neither the chance nor the wish to themselves do wrong; in their eyes the attack on the part of the Indians was as wanton as it was cruel; and in all probability this view was correct, and their assailants were actuated more by the desire for scalps and plunder than by resentment at the occupation of hunting grounds to which they could have had little claim. In fact, throughout the history of the discovery and first settlement of Kentucky, the original outrages and murders were committed by the Indians on the whites, and not by the whites on the Indians. In the gloomy and ferocious wars that ensued, the wrongs done by each side were many and great.
Henderson’s company came into the beautiful Kentucky country in mid-April, when it looked its best: the trees were in leaf, the air heavy with fragrance, the snowy flowers of the dogwood whitened the woods, and the banks of the streams burned dull crimson with the wealth of red-bud blossoms. The travellers reached the fort that Boon was building on the 20th of the month, being welcomed to the protection of its wooden walls by a volley from twenty or thirty rifles. They at once set to with a will to finish it, and to make it a strong place of refuge against Indian attacks. It was a typical forted village, such as the frontiersmen built everywhere in the west and southwest during the years that they were pushing their way across the continent in the teeth of fierce and harassing warfare; in some features it was not unlike the hamlet-like “tun” in which the forefathers of these same pioneers dwelt, long centuries before, when they still lived by the sluggish waters of the lower Rhine, or had just crossed to the eastern coast of Britain.[15]
The fort was in shape a parallelogram, some two hundred and fifty feet long and half as wide. It was more completely finished than the majority of its kind, though little or no iron was used in its construction. At each corner was a two-storied loop-holed block-house to act as a bastion. The stout log-cabins were arranged in straight lines, so that their outer sides formed part of the wall, the spaces between them being filled with a high stockade, made of heavy squared timbers thrust upright into the ground, and bound together within by a horizontal stringer near the top. They were loop-holed like the block-houses. The heavy wooden gates, closed with stout bars, were flanked without by the block-houses and within by small windows cut in the nearest cabins. The houses had sharp, sloping roofs, made of huge clapboards, and these great wooden slabs were kept in place by long poles, bound with withes to the rafters. In case of dire need each cabin was separately defensible. When danger threatened, the cattle were kept in the open space in the middle.
Three other similar forts or stations were built about the same time as Boonsborough, namely: Harrodstown, Boiling Springs, and St. Asaphs, better known as Logan’s Station, from its founder’s name. These all lay to the southwest, some thirty odd miles from Boonsborough. Every such fort or station served as the rallying-place for the country round about, the stronghold in which the people dwelt during time of danger; and later on, when all danger had long ceased, it often remained in changed form, growing into the chief town of the district. Each settler had his own farm besides, often a long way from the fort, and it was on this that he usually intended to make his permanent home. This system enabled the inhabitants to combine for defence, and yet to take up the large tracts of four to fourteen hundred acres,[16] to which they were by law entitled. It permitted them in time of peace to live well apart, with plenty of room between, so that they did not crowd one another–a fact much appreciated by men in whose hearts the spirit of extreme independence and self-reliance was deeply ingrained. Thus the settlers were scattered over large areas, and, as elsewhere in the southwest, the county and not the town became the governmental unit. The citizens even of the smaller governmental divisions acted through representatives, instead of directly, as in the New England town-meetings.[17] The centre of county government was of course the county court-house.
Henderson, having established a land agency at Boonsborough, at once proceeded to deed to the Transylvania colonists entry certificates of surveys of many hundred thousand acres. Most of the colonists were rather doubtful whether these certificates would ultimately prove of any value, and preferred to rest their claims on their original cabin rights; a wise move on their part, though in the end the Virginia Legislature confirmed Henderson’s sales in so far as they had been made to actual settlers. All the surveying was of course of the very rudest kind. Only a skilled woodsman could undertake the work in such a country; and accordingly much of it devolved on Boon, who ran the lines as well as he could, and marked the trees with his own initials, either by powder or else with his knife.[18] The State could not undertake to make the surveys itself, so it authorized the individual settler to do so. This greatly promoted the rapid settlement of the country, making it possible to deal with land as a commodity, and outlining the various claims; but the subsequent and inevitable result was that the sons of the settlers reaped a crop of endless confusion and litigation.
It is worth mentioning that the Transylvania company opened a store at Boonsborough. Powder and lead, the two commodities most in demand, were sold respectively for $2.66-2/3 and 16-2/3 cents per pound. The payment was rarely made in coin; and how high the above prices were may be gathered from the fact that ordinary labor was credited at 33-1/3 cents per day while fifty cents a day was paid for ranging, hunting, and working on the roads.[19]
Henderson immediately proceeded to organize the government of his colony, and accordingly issued a call for an election of delegates to the Legislature of Transylvania, each of the four stations mentioned above sending members. The delegates, seventeen in all, met at Boonsborough and organized the convention on the 23d of May. Their meetings were held without the walls of the fort, on a level plain of white clover, under a grand old elm. Beneath its mighty branches a hundred people could without crowding find refuge from the noon-day sun; it was a fit council-house for this pioneer legislature of game hunters and Indian fighters.[20]
These weather-beaten backwoods warriors, who held their deliberations in the open air, showed that they had in them good stuff out of which to build a free government. They were men of genuine force of character, and they behaved with a dignity and wisdom that would have well become any legislative body. Henderson, on behalf of the proprietors of Transylvania, addressed them, much as a crown governor would have done. The portion of his address dealing with the destruction of game is worth noting. Buffalo, elk, and deer had abounded immediately round Boonsborough when the settlers first arrived, but the slaughter had been so great that even after the first six weeks the hunters began to find some difficulty in getting any thing without going off some fifteen or twenty miles. However, stray buffaloes were still killed near the fort once or twice a week.[21] Calk in his journal quoted above, in the midst of entries about his domestic work–such as, on April 29th “we git our house kivered with bark and move our things into it at Night and Begin housekeeping,” and on May 2d, “went and sot in to clearing for corn,”–mentions occasionally killing deer and turkey; and once, while looking for a strayed mare, he saw four “bofelos.” He wounded one, but failed to get it, with the luck that generally attended backwoods hunters when they for the first time tried their small-bore rifles against these huge, shaggy-maned wild cattle.
As Henderson pointed out, the game was the sole dependence of the first settlers, who, most of the time, lived solely on wild meat, even the parched corn having been exhausted; and without game the new-comers could not have stayed in the land a week.[22] Accordingly he advised the enactment of game-laws; and he was especially severe in his comments upon the “foreigners” who came into the country merely to hunt, killing off the wild beasts, and taking their skins and furs away, for the benefit of persons not concerned in the settlement. This last point is curious as showing how instantly and naturally the colonists succeeded not only to the lands of the Indians, but also to their habits of thought; regarding intrusion by outsiders upon their hunting-grounds with the same jealous dislike so often shown by their red-skinned predecessors.
Henderson also outlined some of the laws he thought it advisable to enact, and the Legislature followed his advice. They provided for courts of law, for regulating the militia, for punishing criminals, fixing sheriffs’ and clerks’ fees, and issuing writs of attachment.[23] One of the members was a clergyman: owing to him a law was passed forbidding profane swearing or Sabbath-breaking; a puritanic touch which showed the mountain rather than the seaboard origin of the men settling Kentucky. The three remaining laws the Legislature enacted were much more characteristic, and were all introduced by the two Boons–for Squire Boon was still the companion of his brother. As was fit and proper, it fell to the lot of the greatest of backwoods hunters to propose a scheme for game protection, which the Legislature immediately adopted; and his was likewise the “act for preserving the breed of horses,”–for, from the very outset, the Kentuckians showed the love for fine horses and for horse-racing which has ever since distinguished them. Squire Boon was the author of a law “to protect the range”; for the preservation of the range or natural pasture over which the branded horses and cattle of the pioneers ranged at will, was as necessary to the welfare of the stock as the preservation of the game was to the welfare of the men. In Kentucky the range was excellent, abounding not only in fine grass, but in cane and wild peas, and the animals grazed on it throughout the year. Fires sometimes utterly destroyed immense tracts of this pasture, causing heavy loss to the settlers; and one of the first cares of pioneer legislative bodies was to guard against such accidents.
It was likewise stipulated that there should be complete religious freedom and toleration for all sects. This seems natural enough now, but in the eighteenth century the precedents were the other way. Kentucky showed its essentially American character in nothing more than the diversity of religious belief among the settlers from the very start. They came almost entirely from the backwoods mountaineers of Virginia, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina, among whom the predominant faith had been Presbyterianism; but from the beginning they were occasionally visited by Baptist preachers,[24] whose creed spread to the borders sooner than Methodism; and among the original settlers of Harrodsburg were some Catholic Marylanders.[25] The first service ever held in Kentucky was by a clergyman of the Church of England, soon after Henderson’s arrival; but this was merely owing to the presence of Henderson himself, who, it must be remembered, was not in the least a backwoods product. He stood completely isolated from the other immigrants during his brief existence as a pioneer, and had his real relationship with the old English founders of the proprietary colonies, and with the more modern American land speculators, whose schemes are so often mentioned during the last half of the eighteenth century. Episcopacy was an exotic in the backwoods; it did not take real root in Kentucky till long after that commonwealth had emerged from the pioneer stage.
When the Transylvanian Legislature dissolved, never to meet again, Henderson had nearly finished playing his short but important part in the founding of Kentucky. He was a man of the seacoast regions, who had little in common with the backwoodsmen by whom he was surrounded; he came from a comparatively old and sober community, and he could not grapple with his new associates; in his journal he alludes to them as a set of scoundrels who scarcely believed in God or feared the devil. A British friend[26] of his, who at this time visited the settlement, also described the pioneers as being a lawless, narrow-minded, unpolished, and utterly insubordinate set, impatient of all restraint, and relying in every difficulty upon their individual might; though he grudgingly admitted that they were frank, hospitable, energetic, daring, and possessed of much common-sense. Of course it was hopeless to expect that such bold spirits, as they conquered the wilderness, would be content to hold it even at a small quit-rent from Henderson. But the latter’s colony was toppled over by a thrust from without before it had time to be rent in sunder by violence from within.
Transylvania was between two millstones. The settlers revolted against its authority, and appealed to Virginia; and meanwhile Virginia, claiming the Kentucky country, and North Carolina as mistress of the lands round the Cumberland, proclaimed the purchase of the Transylvanian proprietors null and void as regards themselves, though valid as against the Indians. The title conveyed by the latter thus enured to the benefit of the colonies; it having been our policy, both before and since the Revolution, not to permit any of our citizens to individually purchase lands from the savages.
Lord Dunmore denounced Henderson and his acts; and it was in vain that the Transylvanians appealed to the Continental Congress, asking leave to send a delegate thereto, and asserting their devotion to the American cause; for Jefferson and Patrick Henry were members of that body, and though they agreed with Lord Dunmore in nothing else, were quite as determined as he that Kentucky should remain part of Virginia. So Transylvania’s fitful life flickered out of existence; the Virginia Legislature in 1778, solemnly annulling the title of the company, but very properly recompensing the originators by the gift of two hundred thousand acres.[27] North Carolina pursued a precisely similar course; and Henderson, after the collapse of his colony, drifts out of history.
Boon remained to be for some years one of the Kentucky leaders. Soon after the fort at Boonsborough was built, he went back to North Carolina for his family, and in the fall returned, bringing out a band of new settlers, including twenty-seven “guns”–that is, rifle-bearing men,–and four women, with their families, the first who came to Kentucky, though others shortly followed in their steps.[28] A few roving hunters and daring pioneer settlers also came to his fort in the fall; among them, the famous scout, Simon Kenton, and John Todd,[29] a man of high and noble character and well-trained mind, who afterwards