University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER VIII.

RENEWAL OF INDIAN HOSTILITIES.

Convinced that the Indians would, on the breaking up of
winter, make increased efforts to retrieve past losses, and also
to avenge the death of their slaughtered chief, the whites lost
no time in erecting new stockades, repairing old ones, and
making such other preparations for repelling the enemy, as
lay within their power.

But the settlers were not alone busy. Congress having
witnessed the success of England in buying up the savages,
determined to strike an effective blow against the allies,
hoping thereby, to deter them from further acts of violence
on the frontier. With this view, an expedition was ordered
against the confederated tribes, of such force as would
strike terror to their midst, and restrain them from further
aggression. Three thousand troops were to be furnished
by Virginia,—twenty-seven hundred from east of the mountains,
and three hundred from the west. Fifteen hundred
of these were to strike the Ohio by way of the Kanawha
valley, while the others were to assemble at Fort Pitt, and
thence proceed to effect a junction at Fort Randolph.[64] From
this point the united force was to march against the Indian
towns. Col. Morgan was directed to make every suitable
arrangement for provisioning this large number of men.
Whilst these preparations were making, General McIntosh,
who had been appointed to the command of the western
division, in place of General Hand, advanced across the

mountains with five hundred men, and proceeding to the
mouth of Beaver, twenty-eight miles below Pittsburg, erected
Fort McIntosh.[65] This was considered a most favorable
position for a body of troops to intercept parties of Indians
on their way against the settlements of Virginia and Pennsylvania.
The effect was very soon perceptible throughout
the entire frontier.

Before proceeding with the projected invasion, it was
thought prudent to convene the Delaware Indians, at Pittsburg,
and obtain their consent to march through their territory.
This was done the 17th of September, 1778, by
Andrew Lewis and Thomas Lewis, commissioners on the part
of the United States, and signed in presence of Lach.
McIntosh, Brigadier-general, commandant of the western
department; Daniel Brodhead, Colonel of the 8th Pennsylvania
regiment; William Crawford, Colonel; John Gibson,
Colonel 13th Virginia regiment, and several others.

In the course of the following month, General McIntosh
assembled one thousand men at the newly erected fort, and
marched into the enemy's country. The season was so far
advanced that the troops only proceeded about seventy miles
and halted on the west bank of the Tuscarawas river. Here,
on an elevated plain, it was concluded to build a stockaded
fort, which was named Fort Laurens, in honor of the President
of Congress. It was garrisoned with one hundred
and fifty men, and left under the command of Colonel Gibson,
and the army returned to Fort Pitt. The other branch of the
expedition, intended to be assembled at the mouth of the
Kanawha, was never collected, the increasing demand for men

in the east doubtless rendering it difficult to raise the number
demanded. Although no opposition was made to the progress
of the army under General McIntosh, as the hostile
Indians were hardly aware of his presence, before he had
again retreated; yet in January following, the Shawanese
and Wyandotts collected a large body of warriors and invested
the fort, cutting off all intercourse with Fort McIntosh, and
suffering no one to go in or to come out; watching it so
closely that it became very hazardous to procure either wood
or water.

Colonel Stone having most faithfully described this siege in
the wilderness, we will follow his account:—

"The first hostile demonstration of the forest warriors was
executed with equal cunning and success. The horses of the
garrison were allowed to forage for themselves upon the
herbage, among the dried prairie-grass immediately in the
vicinity of the fort, wearing bells, that they might be the
more easily found, if straying too far. It happened, one
morning in January, that the horses had all disappeared, but
the bells were heard, seemingly at no great distance. They
had, in truth, been stolen by the Indians, and conveyed away.
The bells, however, were taken off, and used for another purpose.
Availing themselves of the tall prairie-grass, the Indians
formed an ambuscade, at the farthest extremity of which they
caused the bells to jingle as a decoy. The artifice was successful.
A party of sixteen men was sent in pursuit of the
straggling steeds, who fell into the snare. Fourteen were
killed upon the spot, and the remaining two taken prisoners,
one of whom returned at the close of the war, and of the
other nothing was ever heard.

Towards evening of the same day, the whole force of the
Indians, painted, and in the full costume of war, presented
themselves in full view of the garrison, by marching in single
files, though at a respectful distance, across the prairie.
Their number, according to a count from one of the bastions,
was eight hundred and forty-seven; altogether too great to
be encountered in the field by so small a garrison. After
this display of their strength, the Indians took a position
upon an elevated piece of ground at no great distance from
the fort, though on the opposite side of the river. In this

situation they remained several weeks, in a state rather of
armed neutrality than of active hostility. Some of them
would frequently approach the fort sufficiently near to hold
conversations with those upon the walls. They uniformly
professed a desire for peace, but protested against the encroachments
of the white people upon their lands; more
especially was the erection of a fort so far within the territory
claimed by them as exclusively their own, a cause of
complaint, nay, of admitted exasperation. There was with
the Americans in the fort an aged friendly Indian, named
John Thompson, who seemed to be in equal favor with both
parties, visiting the Indian encampment at pleasure, and
coming and going as he chose. They informed Thompson
that they deplored the continuance of hostilities, and finally
sent word by him to Colonel Gibson that they were desirous
of peace, and if he would present them with a barrel of flour,
they would send in their proposals the next day. The flour
was sent, but the Indians, instead of fulfilling their part of
the stipulation, withdrew, and entirely disappeared. They
had, indeed, continued the siege as long as they could obtain
subsistence, and raised it only because of the lack of supplies.
Still, as the beleaguerment was begun in stratagem, so was it
ended. Colonel Gibson's provisions were also running short,
and, as he supposed the Indians had entirely gone off, he
directed Colonel Clark, of the Pennsylvania line, with a
detachment of fifteen men, to escort the invalids of the garrison,
amounting to ten or a dozen men, back to Fort McIntosh.
But the Indians had left a strong party of observation lurking
in the neighborhood of the fort, and the escort had proceeded
only two miles before it was fallen upon, and the whole
number killed with the exception of four, one of whom, a
captain, escaped back to the fort. The bodies of the slain
were interred by the garrison, on the same day, with the
honors of war.[66] A party was likewise sent out to collect the
remains of the fourteen who had first fallen by the ambuscade,
and bury them.

The situation of the garrison was now becoming deplorable.
For two weeks the men had been reduced to half-a-pound of
sour flour, and a like quantity of offensive meat, per diem;
and for a week longer they were compelled to subsist only
upon raw hides, and such roots as they could find in the circumjacent
woods and prairies, when General McIntosh most
opportunely arrived to their relief."

The fort was evacuated and the position abandoned. Thus
ended the disastrous occupancy of Fort Laurens, in which
much fatigue and suffering were endured, and many lives lost,
but with no material benefit to the country.