 | [104] CHAPTER VI. Chronicles of border warfare, or, A history of the settlement by the whites, of north-western Virginia, and of the Indian wars and massacres in that section of the state |  |
[104] CHAPTER VI.
In the year 1774, the peace, which had subsisted with
but little violation since the treaty of 1765, received an interruption,
which checked for a while the emigration to
the North Western frontier; and involved its infant settlements
in a war with the Indians. This result has been attributed
to various causes. Some have asserted that it
had its origin in the murder of some Indians on the Ohio
river both above and below Wheeling, in the spring of
that year. Others suppose it to have been produced by
the instigation of British emissaries, and the influence of
Canadian traders.
That it was not caused by the murders at Captina,
and opposite the mouth of Yellow creek,[1]
is fairly inferrible
from the fact, that several Indians had been previously
murdered by the whites in a period of the most
profound tranquillity, without having led to a similar issue;
part of the friends or countrymen of those, who had been
thus murdered.
At different periods of time, between the peace of
1765, and the renewal of hostilities in 1774, three Indians
were unprovokedly killed by John Ryan, on the Ohio,
Monongahela and Cheat rivers. The first who suffered
from the unrestrained licentiousness of this man, was an
Indian of distinction in his tribe, and known by the name
of Capt. Peter; the other two were private warriors. And
but that Governor Dunmore, from the representations
made to him, was induced [105] to offer a reward for his
apprehension, which caused him to leave the country,
Ryan would probably have continued to murder every
Indian, with whom he should chance to meet, wandering
through the settlements.
Several Indians were likewise killed on the South
Branch, while on a friendly visit to that country, in the
interval of peace. This deed is said to have been done
by Henry Judah, Nicholas Harpold and their associates;
and when Judah was arrested for the offence, so great was
the excitement among those who had suffered from savage
enmity, that he was rescued from confinement by
upwards of two hundred men, collected for that especial
purpose.
The Bald Eagle was an Indian of notoriety, not only
among his own nation, but also with the inhabitants of
the North Western frontier; with whom he was in the
habit of associating and hunting. In one of his visits
among them, he was discovered alone, by Jacob Scott,
William Hacker and Elijah Runner, who, reckless of the
consequences, murdered him, solely to gratify a most wanton
thirst for Indian blood. After the commission of this
most outrageous enormity, they seated him in the stern
of a canoe, and with a piece of journey-cake thrust into
his mouth, set him afloat in the Monongahela. In this
situation he was seen descending the river, by several, who
supposed him to be as usual, returning from a friendly
hunt with the whites in the upper settlements, and who
expressed some astonishment that he did not stop to see
mouth of George's creek, was observed by a Mrs. Province,
who had it brought to the bank, and the friendly,
but unfortunate old Indian decently buried.
Not long after the murder of the Bald Eagle, another
outrage of a similar nature was committed on a peaceable
Indian, by William White; and for which he was apprehended
and taken to Winchester for trial. But the fury
of the populace did not suffer him to remain there awaiting
that event.—The prison doors were forced, the irons
knocked off him and he again set at liberty.
But a still more atrocious act is said to have been soon
after perpetrated. Until then the murders committed,
were only on such as were found within the limits of white
settlements, and on men & warriors. In 1772, there is
every reason to believe, that women and children likewise
became victims to the exasperated feelings of our
[106] own citizens; and this too, while quietly enjoying
the comforts of their own huts, in their own village.
There was at that time an Indian town on the Little
Kenhawa, (called Bulltown) inhabited by five families, who
were in habits of social and friendly intercourse with the
whites on Buchannon and on Hacker's creek; frequently
visiting and hunting with them.[2]
There was likewise residing
on Gauley river, the family of a German by the
name of Stroud.[3]
In the summer of that year, Mr. Stroud
plundered, and his cattle driven off. The trail made by
these leading in the direction of Bulltown, induced the
supposition that the Indians of that village had been the
authors of the outrage, and caused several to resolve on
avenging it upon them.
A party of five men, (two of whom were William
White and William Hacker,[4]
who had been concerned in
previous murders) expressed a determination to proceed
immediately to Bulltown. The remonstrance of the settlement
generally, could not operate to effect a change in
that determination. They went; and on their return, circumstances
justified the belief that the pre-apprehension
of those who knew the temper and feelings of White and
Hacker, had been well founded; and that there had been
some fighting between them and the Indians. And notwithstanding
that they denied ever having seen an Indian
in their absence, yet it was the prevailing opinion, that
they had destroyed all the men, women and children at
Bulltown, and threw their bodies into the river. Indeed,
confirmatory of this opinion; and to have then
justified the deed, by saying that the clothes and other
things known to have belonged to Stroud's family, were
found in the possession of the Indians. The village was
soon after visited, and found to be entirely desolated, and
nothing being ever after heard of its former inhabitants,
there can remain no doubt but that the murder of Stroud's
family, was requited on them.
Here then was a fit time for the Indians to commence
a system of retaliation and war, if they were disposed to
engage in hostilities, for offences of this kind alone. Yet
no such event was the consequence of the killing of the
Bulltown Indians, or of those other murders which preceded
that outrage; and it may be hence rationally concluded,
that the murders on the Ohio river did not lead to
such an event. If however, a doubt should still remain,
that doubt is surely removed by the declaration of Logan
himself. It was his family that was killed opposite Yellow
creek, about the last of April; and in the following
July (after the expedition against the Wappatomica towns,
under Col. McDonald) he says, "the Indiens are not angry
on account of those murders, but only myself." The fact
is, that hostilities had commenced before the happening
of the affair at Captina, or that near Yellow creek; and
these, instead of having produced that event, were the
consequence of the previous hostile movements of the Indians.
[107] Those who lived more immediately in the neighborhood
of the scene of action at that time, were generally
of opinion, that the Indians were urged to war by the instigation
of emissaries from Great Britain, and of the
Canadian traders; and, independently of any knowledge
which they may have had of the conduct of these, circumstances
of a general nature would seem to justify that
opinion.
The relative situation of the American colonies and
the mother country, is matter of general history, and too
well known to require being repeated here. It is equally
well known too, that from the first establishment of a
over the Natives, greater than the Anglo-Americans were
ever able to acquire; and that this influence was frequently
exercised by them, to the great annoyance, and manifest
injury of the latter. France and England have been long
considered as natural enemies; and the inhabitants of their
respective plantations in America, entertained strong feelings
of jealousy towards each other. When by the treaty
of Paris, the French possessions in North America (which
had not been ceded to Spain,) were transferred to Great
Britain, those feelings were not subdued. The Canadians
still regarded themselves as a different people. Their national
prejudices were too great to be extinguished by an
union under the same prince. Under the influence of
these prejudices, and the apprehension, that the lucrative
commerce of the natives might, by the competition of the
English traders, be diverted from its accustomed channels,
they may have exerted themselves to excite the Indians to
war; but that alone would hardly have produced this result.
There is in man an inherent partiality for self, which
leads him to search for the causes of any evil, elsewhere
than in his own conduct; and under the operation of this
propensity to assign the burden of wrong to be borne by
others, the Jesuits from Canada and Louisiana were censured
for the continuation of the war on the part of the
Indians, after it had been terminated with their allies by
the treaty of 1763. Yet that event was, no doubt, justly
attributable to the erection of forts, and the location of
land, in the district of country claimed by the natives, in
the province of Pennsylvania. And in like manner, the
origin of the war of 1774 may fairly be charged to the encroachments
which were then being made on the Indian
territory. To be convinced of this, it is necessary to advert
to the promptitude of resistance on the part of the
Natives, by which those encroachments were invariably
met; and to recur to events happening in other sections
of the country.—Events, perhaps no otherwise connected
with the history of North Western Virginia, than as they
are believed to have been the proximate causes of an hostility,
eventuating in the effusion of much of its blood;
bearing on its prosperity and advancement.
In the whole history of America, from the time when
it first [108] became apparent that the occupancy of the
country was the object of the whites, up to the present
period, is there perhaps to be found a solitary instance, in
which an attempt, made by the English to effect a settlement
in a wilderness claimed by the Natives, was not succeeded
by immediate acts of hostility on the part of the
latter. Every advance of the kind was regarded by them,
as tending to effect their expulsion from a country, which
they had long considered as their own, and as leading,
most probably, to their entire extinction as a people. This
excited in them feelings of the most dire resentment;
stimulating to deeds of cruelty and murder, at once to
repel the encroachment and to punish its authors. Experience
of the utter futility of those means to accomplish
these purposes, has never availed to repress their use, or
to produce an acquiesence in the wrong. Even attempts
to extend jurisdiction over a country, the right of soil in
which was never denied them, have ever given rise to the
most lively apprehensions of their fatal consequences, and
prompted to the employment of means to thwart that aim.
An Indian sees no difference between the right of empire
and the right of domain; and just as little can he discriminate
between the right of property, acquired by the actual
cultivation of the earth, and that which arises from its appropriation
to other uses.
Among themselves they have lines of demarkation,
which distinguish the territory of one nation from that of
another; and these are of such binding authority, that a
transgression of them by neighboring Indians, leads invariably
to war. In treaties of purchase, and other conventional
arrangements, made with them by the whites, the
validity of their rights to land, have been repeatedly
recognized; and an infraction of those rights by the
Anglo-Americans, encounters opposition at its threshold.
The history of every attempt to settle a wilderness, to
which the Indian title was not previously extinguished,
and massacre.
That the extension of white settlements into the Indian
country, was the cause of the war of 1774, will be
abundantly manifested by a recurrence to the early history
of Kentucky; and a brief review of the circumstances connected
with the first attempts to explore and make establishments
in it. For several reasons, these circumstances
merit a passing notice in this place. Redstone and Fort
Pitt (now Brownsville and Pittsburgh) were for some time,
the principal points of embarkation for emigrants to that
country; many of whom were from the establishments
which had been then not long made, on the Monongahela.
The Indians, regarding the settlements in North Western
Virginia as the line from which swarmed the adventurers
to Kentucky, directed their operations to prevent the success
of these adventurers, as well against the inhabitants
of the upper country, as against them. While at the same
time, in the efforts which were made to compel the Indians
to desist from farther opposition, the North Western Virginians
frequently combined [109] their forces, and acted
in conjunction, the more certainly to accomplish that object.
In truth the war, which was then commenced, and
carried on with but little intermission up to the treaty of
Fort Greenville in 1795 was a war in which they were
equally interested, having for its aim the indiscriminate
destruction of the inhabitants of both those sections of
country, as the means of preventing the farther extension
of settlements by the whites.[5]
When Kentucky was first begun to be explored, it is
said not to have been claimed in individual property by
any nation of Indians. Its extensive forests, grassy
plains and thick cane brakes, abounding with every variety
of game common to such latitudes, were used as common
hunting grounds, and considered by them, as open for all
who chose to resort to them. The Cherokees, the Chickasaws,
the Cataubas, and the Chicamaugas, from the south
east; and the Illinois, the Peorias, the Delawares, the
Mingoes and Shawanees from the west, claimed and
exercised equal rights and privileges within its limits.
When the tribes of those different nations would however
meet there, frequent collisions would arise between them;
and so deadly were the conflicts ensuing upon these, that,
in conjunction with the gloom of its dense forests, they
acquired for it the impressive appellation of "the dark
and bloody ground." But frequent and deadly as may
have been those conflicts, they sprang from some other
cause, than a claim to exclusive property in it.
In the summer of 1769, Daniel Boone, in company
with John Finley (who had previously hunted through
the country) and a few other men, entered Kentucky, and
travelled over much of its surface, without meeting with
Boone and John Steward (one of his companions,) while
on a hunting excursion, were discovered by a party of
Indians, who succeeded in making them prisoners. After
& returning to their old camp, found that it had
been plundered, and their associates, either killed or taken
into captivity. They were shortly after joined by a brother
of Daniel Boone and another man, from North Carolina,
who were so fortunate in wandering through the wilderness,
as to discover the only, though temporary residence
of civilized man within several hundred miles. But the
Indians had become alarmed for the possession of that
country; and fearing that if Boone and Steward should be
suffered to escape to the settlements, they might induce
others to attempt its permanent occupancy, they sought
with vigilance to discover and murder them. They succeeded
in killing Steward; but Daniel Boone and his
brother, then the only persons left (the man who came out
with the younger Boone having been killed by a wolf,) escaped
from them, and soon after returned to North Carolina.
The Indians were not disappointed in their expectations.
The description given of the country by the
Boones, soon led others to attempt its settlement; and in
1773, six families and about forty men, all under the
guidance of Daniel Boone, commenced their journey [110]
to Kentucky with a view of remaining there. Before
they proceeded far, they were attacked in the rear by a
party of Indians, who had been observing their movements;
and who in the first fire killed six of the emigrants
and dispersed their cattle. Nothwithstanding that,
in the engagement which ensued upon this attack, the
assailants were repulsed, yet the adventurers were so
afflicted at the loss of their friends, and dispirited by such
serious and early opposition, that they abandoned their
purpose for a time, and returned to the inhabited parts of
Tennessee.[7]
The Indians elated with their success in defeating this
first attempt at the settlement of Kentucky, and supposing
that the route pursued by the party which they had driven
back, would be the pass for future adventurers, determined
on guarding it closely, and checking, if possible, every
similar enterprise. But while their attention was directed
to this point, others found their way into the country by
a different route and from a different direction.
The Virginia troops, who had served in the Canadian
war, had been promised a bounty in Western lands. Many
of them being anxious to ascertain their value, and deeming
this a favorable period for the making of surveys, collected
at Fort Pitt in the fall of 1773; and descending the
Ohio river to its falls, at Louisville, proceeded from thence
to explore the country preparatory to a perfection of their
grants.[8]
About the same time too, General Thompson of Pennsylvania,
commenced an extensive course of surveys, of
the rich land on the North Fork of Licking; and other
individuals following his example, in the ensuing winter
the country swarmed with land adventurers and surveyors.
So sensible were they all, that these attempts to
appropriate those lands to their own use, would produce
acts of hostility, that they went prepared to resist those
acts; and the first party who took up their abode in Kentucky,
no sooner selected a situation for their residence,
than they proceeded to erect a fort for their security.[9]
The conduct of the Indians soon convinced them that
their apprehensions were not ill founded; and many of
them, in consequence of the hostile movements which
were being made, and the robberies which were committed,
ascended the Ohio river to Wheeling.
It is not known that any murders were done previously
to this, and subsequently to the attack and repulse
of the emigrants who were led on by Boone in 1773. This
event happened on the tenth day of October; and it was
in April the ensuing year, that the land adventurers retired
to Wheeling. In this interval of time, nothing
could, perhaps, be done by the Indians, but make preparation
[111] for hostilities in the spring. Indeed it very
rarely happens, that the Indians engage in active war during
that they were for some time ignorant of the fact
that there were adventurers in the country; and consequently,
they knew of no object there, on which their hostile
intentions could operate.—Be this as it may, it is certain
that, from the movements of the Indians at the close
of the winter, the belief was general, that they were assuming
a warlike attitude, and meditating a continuance
of hostilities. War was certainly begun on their part,
when Boone and his associates, were attacked and driven
back to the settlement; and if it abated for a season, that
abatement was attributable to other causes, than a disposition
to remain quiet and peaceable, while the country was
being occupied by the whites.
If other evidence were wanting, to prove the fact that
the war of 1774 had its origin in a determination of the
Indians to repress the extension of white settlements, it
could be found in the circumstance, that although it was
terminated by the treaty with Lord Dunmore, yet it revived
as soon as attempts were again made to occupy
Kentucky, and was continued with increased ardour, 'till
the victory obtained over them by General Wayne. For,
notwithstanding that in the struggle for American liberty,
those Indians became the allies of Great Britain, yet when
independence was acknowledged, and the English forces
withdrawn from the colonies, hostilities were still carried
on by them; and, as was then well understood, because of
the continued operation of those causes, which produced
the war of 1774. That the Canadian traders and British
emissaries, prompted the Indians to aggression, and extended
to them every aid which they could, to render that
aggression more effectually oppressive and overwhelming,
is readily admitted. Yet this would not have led to a
war, but for the encroachments which have been mentioned.
French influence, united to the known jealousy
of the Natives, would have been unavailingly exerted to
array the Indians against Virginia, at the commencement
of Braddock's war, but for the proceedings of the Ohio
company, and the fact that the Pennsylvania traders represented
the object of that association to be purely territorial.
to involve them in a contest [112] with Virginians
at a later period, but for a like manifestation of an intention
to encroach on their domain.
In the latter end of April 1774, a party of land adventurers,
who had fled from the dangers which threatened
them below, came in collision with some Indians, near the
mouth of Captina, sixteen miles below Wheeling. A slight
skirmish ensued, which terminated in the discomfiture of
the whites, notwithstanding they had only one man
wounded, and one or two of the enemy were killed.
About the same time, happened the affair opposite the
mouth of Yellow creek; a stream emptying into the Ohio
river from the northwest, nearly midway between Pittsburg
and Wheeling.[10]
In consequence of advices received of the menacing
conduct of the Indians, Joshua Baker (who lived at this
place) was preparing, together with his neighbors, to retire
for safety, into some of the nearer forts, or to go to
the older and more populous settlements, remote from
danger. There was at that time a large party of Indians,
encamped on both sides of Yellow creek, at its entrance
into the river; and although in their intercourse at
Baker's, they had not manifested an intention of speedily
commencing depredations, yet he deemed his situation in
the immediate contiguity of them, as being far from secure,
and was on the eve of abandoning it, when a party
of whites, who had just collected at his house, fired upon
and killed some Indians, who were likewise there.—Among
them were the brother and daughter of the celebrated
chief, Logan.[11]
In justification of this conduct it has been said, that
on the preceding evening a squaw came over from the encampment
and informed Mrs. Baker that the Indians
meditated the murder of her family on the next day; and
that before the firing [113] at Baker's, two canoes, containing
leave the opposite shore. Under these circumstances, an
apparently slight provocation, and one, which would not
perhaps have been, otherwise heeded, produced the fatal
result. As the canoes approached the shore, the party
from Baker's commenced firing on them, and notwithstanding
the opposition made by the Indians, forced them
to retire.
An interval of quiet succeeded the happening of these
events; but it was as the solemn stillness which precedes
the eruption of an earthquake, when a volcanic explosion
has given notice of its approach;—rendered more awful
by the uncertainty where its desolating influence would
be felt. It was however, a stillness of but short duration.
The gathering storm soon burst over the devoted heads
of those, who had neglected to seek a shelter from its
wrath. The traders in the Indian country were the first
victims sacrificed on the altar of savage ferocity; and a
general massacre of all the whites found among them,
quickly followed. A young man, discovered near the falls
of Muskingum and within sight of White Eyes town, was
murdered, scalped; literally cut to pieces, and the mangled
members of his body, hung up on trees. White Eyes,
a chief of the friendly Delawares, hearing the scalp halloo,
went out with a party of his men; and seeing what had
been done, collected the scattered limbs of the young man,
and buried them. On the next day, they were torn from
the ground, severed into smaller pieces, and thrown dispersedly
at greater distances from each other.
[114] Apprized of impending danger, many of the
inhabitants on the frontiers of North Western Virginia,
retired into the interior, before any depredations were
committed, in the upper country; some took refuge in
forts which had been previously built; while others, collecting
together at particular houses, converted them into
temporary fortresses, answering well the purposes of protection,
to those who sought shelter in them. Fort Redstone,
which had been erected after the successful expedition
of General Forbes; and Fort Pitt, at the confluence of
the Alleghany and Monongahela rivers, afforded an asylum
in various parts of the country;[12] and every thing which
individual exertion could effect, to ensure protection to the
border inhabitants, was done.
Nor did the colonial government of Virginia neglect
the security of her frontier citizens. When intelligence
of the hostile disposition of the Natives, reached Williamsburg,
the house of Burgesses was in session; and measures
were immediately adopted, to prevent massacres, and to
restore tranquillity. That these objects might be the
more certainly accomplished, it was proposed by General
Andrew Lewis (then a delegate from Bottetourt,) to organize
a force, sufficient to overcome all intermediate opposition,
and to carry the war into the enemy's country.
In accordance to this proposition, orders were issued by
Governor Dunmore for raising the requisite number of
troops, and for making other necessary preparations for
the contemplated campaign; the plan of which was concerted
by the Governor, Gen. Lewis and Colonel Charles
Lewis (then a delegate from Augusta.) But as some time
must necessarily have elapsed before the consummation of
the preparations which were being made; and as much
individual suffering might result from the delays unavoidably
incident to the raising, equipping and [115] organizing
a large body of troops, it was deemed advisable to take
some previous and immediate step to prevent the invasion
of exposed and defenceless portions of the country.—The
best plan for the accomplishment of this object was believed
to be, the sending of an advance army into the Indian
country, of sufficient strength to act offensively, before a
confederacy could be formed of the different tribes, and
their combined forces be brought into the field. A sense
an hostile army, requiring the entire strength of every
village for its defence, would, it was supposed, call home
those straggling parties of warriors, by which destruction
is so certainly dealt to the helpless and unprotected. In
conformity with this part of the plan of operations, four
hundred men, to be detailed from the militia west of the
mountains, were ordered to assemble at Wheeling as soon
as practicable. And in the mean time, lest the surveyors
and land adventurers, who were then in Kentucky, might
be discovered and fall a prey to the savages, Daniel Boone
was sent by the Governor to the falls of Ohio, to conduct
them home from thence, through the wilderness; the only
practicable road to safety, the Ohio river being so effectually
guarded as to preclude the hope of escaping up it.[13]
Early in June, the troops destined to make an incursion
into the Indian country, assembled at Wheeling, and
being placed under the command of Colonel Angus McDonald,
descended the Ohio to the mouth of Captina.
Debarking, at this place, from their boats and canoes, they
took up their march to Wappatomica, an Indian town
on the Muskingum. The country through which the army
had to pass, was one unbroken forest, presenting many obstacles
to its speedy advance, not the least of which was
the difficulty of proceeding directly to the point proposed.[14]
To obviate this, however, they were accompanied by three
persons in the capacity of guides;[15]
whose knowledge of
the woods, and familiarity with those natural indices, which
so unerringly mark the direction of the principal points,
enabled them to pursue the direct course.—When they had
approached within six miles of the town, the [116] army
encountered an opposition from a party of fifty or sixty
Indians lying in ambush; and before these could be dislodged,
two whites were killed, and eight or ten wounded;—
one Indian was killed, and several wounded. They then
proceeded to Wappatomica without further molestation.[16]
When the army arrived at the town, it was found to
be entirely deserted. Supposing that it would cross the
river, the Indians had retreated to the opposite bank, and
concealing themselves behind trees and fallen timber, were
awaiting that movement in joyful anticipation of a successful
of the commanding officer, however, frustrated that expectation.
Several were discovered peeping from their
covert, watching the motion of the army; and Colonel
McDonald, suspecting their object, and apprehensive that
they would recross the river and attack him in the rear,
stationed videttes above and below, to detect any such
purpose, and to apprise him of the first movement towards
effecting it. Foiled by these prudent and precautionary
measures and seeing their town in possession of
the enemy, with no prospect of wresting it from them,
'till destruction would have done its work, the Indians
sued for peace; and the commander of the expedition
consenting to negotiate with them, if he could be assured
of their sincerity, five chiefs were sent over as hostages,
and the army then crossed the river, with these in front.
When a negotiation was begun, the Indians asked,
that one of the hostages might be permitted to go and
convoke the other chiefs, whose presence, it was alleged,
would be necessary to the ratification of a peace. One
was accordingly released; and not returning at the time
specified, another was then sent, who in like manner failed
to return. Colonel McDonald, suspecting some treachery,
marched forward to the next town, above Wappatomica,
where another slight engagement took place, in which
one Indian was killed and one white man wounded. It
was then ascertained, that the time which should have
been spent in collecting the other chiefs, preparatory to
negotiation, had been employed in removing their old
men, their women and children, together with what property
could be readily taken off, and for making preparations
for a combined attack on the Virginia troops. To
punish this duplicity and to render peace really desirable,
Col. McDonald burned their towns and destroyed their
crops; [117] and being then in want of provisions, retraced
his steps to Wheeling, taking with him the three remaining
hostages, who were then sent on to Williamsburg.[17]
The inconvenience of supplying provisions to an army
in the wilderness, was a serious obstacle to the success of
expeditions undertaken against the Indians. The want
of roads, at that early period, which would admit of transportation
in wagons, rendered it necessary to resort to
pack horses; and such was at times the difficulty of procuring
these, that, not unfrequently, each soldier had to
be the bearer of his entire stock of subsistence for the
whole campaign. When this was exhausted, a degree
of suffering ensued, often attended with consequences
fatal to individuals, and destructive to the objects of the
expedition. In the present case, the army being without
provisions before they left the Indian towns, their only
sustenance consisted of weeds, an ear of corn each day,
and occasionally, a small quantity of venison: it being impracticable
to hunt game in small parties, because of the
vigilance and success of the Indians, in watching and cutting
off detachments of this kind, before they could accomplish
their purpose and regain the main army.
No sooner had the troops retired from the Indian
country, than the savages, in small parties, invaded the
settlements in different directions, seeking opportunities
of gratifying their insatiable thirst for blood. And although
the precautions which had been taken, lessened the
frequency of their success, yet they did not always prevent
it. Persons leaving the forts on any occasion, were almost
always either murdered or carried into captivity,—a lot
sometimes worse than death itself.
Perhaps the first of these incursions into North Western
Virginia, after the destruction of the towns on the
Muskingum, was that made by a party of eight Indians,
at the head of which was the Cayuga chief Logan.[18]
This
hitherto, observed towards the whites, a course of conduct
by no means in accordance with the malignity and steadfast
implacability which influenced his red brethren generally;
but was, on the contrary, distinguished by a sense
of humanity, and a just abhorrence of those cruelties so frequently
inflicted on the innocent and unoffending, as well
as upon those who were really obnoxious to savage enmity.
Such indeed were the acts of beneficence which characterized
him, and so great his partiality for the English, that the
finger of his brethren would point to his cabin as the residence
of Logan, "the friend of white men." "In the
course of the French war, he remained at home, idle and
inactive;" opposed to the interference of his nation, "an
advocate for peace." When his family fell before the fury
of exasperated men, he felt himself impelled to avenge their
deaths; and exchanging the pipe of peace, for the tomahawk
of war, became active in seeking opportunities to
glut his vengeance.[19] With this object in view, at
the head of the party which has been mentioned, he
traversed the county from the Ohio to the West Fork,
before an opportunity was presented him of achieving any
mischief. Their distance from what was supposed would
be the theatre of war, had rendered the inhabitants of that
section of country, comparatively inattentive to their
safety. Relying on the expectation that the first blow
would be struck on the Ohio, and that they would have
sufficient notice of this to prepare for their own security,
before danger could reach them, many had continued to
perform the ordinary business of their farms.
On the 12th day of July, as William Robinson, Thomas
Hellen and Coleman Brown were pulling flax in a field opposite
the mouth of Simpson's creek, Logan and his party
approached unperceived and fired at them. Brown fell
and Robinson [119] unscathed, sought safety in flight.
Hellen being then an old man, was soon overtaken and
made captive; but Robinson, with the elasticity of youth,
ran a considerable distance before he was taken; and but
for an untoward accident might have effected an escape.
Believing that he was outstripping his pursuers, and
anxious to ascertain the fact, he looked over his shoulder,
but before he discovered the Indian giving chase, he ran
with such violence against a tree, that he fell, stunned by
the shock and lay powerless and insensible. In this situation
he was secured with a cord; and when he revived,
was taken back to the place where the Indians had Hellen
in confinement, and where lay the lifeless body of Brown.
They then set off to their towns, taking with them a horse
which belonged to Hellen.
When they had approached near enough to be distinctly
heard, Logan (as is usual with them after a successful
scout,) gave the scalp halloo, and several warriors
came out to meet them, and conducted the prisoners into
the village. Here they passed through the accustomed
ceremony of running the guantlet; but with far different
fortunes. Robinson, having been previously instructed by
Logan (who from the time he made him his prisoner, manifested
a kindly feeling towards him,) made his way, with
but little interruption, to the council house; but poor Hellen,
from the decrepitude of age, and his ignorance of
the fact that it was a place of refuge, was sadly beaten
before he arrived at it; and when he at length came near
enough, he was knocked down with a war club, before he
could enter. After he had fallen, they continued to beat
and strike him with such unmerciful severity, that he
would assuredly have fallen a victim to their barbarous
usage, but that Robinson (at some peril for the interference)
reached forth his hand and drew him within the sanctuary.
When he had however, recovered from the effects of the
violent beating which he had received, he was relieved
from the apprehension of farther suffering, by being
adopted into an Indian family.
A council was next convoked to resolve on the fate
most anxious inquietude. Logan assured him, that he
should not be killed; but the council appeared determined
that he should die, and he was tied to the stake. Logan
then addressed them, and with much vehemence, insisted
that Robinson too should be spared; and had the eloquence
displayed on that occasion been less than Logan is
believed to have possessed, [120] it is by no means wonderful
that he appeared to Robinson (as he afterwards
said) the most powerful orator he ever heard. But commanding
as his eloquence might have been, it seems not
to have prevailed with the council; for Logan had to interpose
otherwise than by argument or entreaty, to succeed
in the attainment of his object. Enraged at the pertinacity
with which the life of Robinson was sought to be
taken, and reckless of the consequences, he drew the tomahawk
from his belt, and severing the cords which bound
the devoted victim to the stake, led him in triumph, to
the cabin of an old squaw, by whom he was immediately
adopted.
After this, so long as Logan remained in the town
where Robinson was, he was kind and attentive to him;
and when preparing to go again to war, got him to write
the letter which was afterwards found on Holstein at the
house of a Mr. Robertson, whose family were all murdered
by the Indians. Robinson remained with his adopted
mother, until he was redeemed under the treaty concluded
at the close of the Dunmore campaign.
Mr. Jefferson, in his Notes on Virginia, represents this as happening
at Grave creek, which empties into the Ohio from the south eastern,
or Virginia side of this river, twelve miles below Wheeling. Those who
lived near at the time and are supposed to have had the best opportunity
of ascertaining the fact, say that it happened near the mouth of
Captina, a creek sixteen miles below Wheeling, and on the Ohio side.
Comment by R. G. T.—What is called the "Captina affair" happened
April 27th, at Pipe Creek, emptying into the Ohio from the west, fourteen
miles below Wheeling, and six above Captina Creek. Two friendly
Shawnees were killed here by a party commanded by Michael Cresap,
of Redstone, who at the time was in the neighborhood of Wheeling,
surveying and clearing farms for new settlers. Cresap and his men,
among whom was George Rogers Clark, then a young surveyor who had
a claim at the mouth of Fish Creek, thereupon started out to destroy
Chief Logan's camp, at Baker's Bottom, opposite the mouth of Yellow
Creek, fifty-three miles up the Ohio, and forty miles west of Pittsburg
by land; but as Logan was a well-known friend of the whites, they became
ashamed of their project, and marched on across country to Fort
Redstone. Meanwhile, as will be seen in due course, others were preparing
to destroy Logan's band, and on April 30th occurred that infamous
massacre which Logan wrongly believed to be Cresap's work.
Capt. Bull was a Delaware chief whose original village of Oghkwaga
was on Unadilla River, an eastern branch of the Susquehanna, in what
is now Boone county, N. Y. He had been the prime mover in an attempt
to interest the Delawares in Pontiac's conspiracy (1763). In
March, 1764, a strong party of whites and friendly Indians were sent
out to capture him, by Sir William Johnson, English Indian superintendent
in New York. After a sharp struggle, Bull and a number of
his adherents were captured and conveyed in irons to New York City,
where they were imprisoned for a time, but finally discharged. The
Delaware towns on the Unadilla having been burned, Bull and five
families of his relatives settled what the whites called Bulltown, on
the Little Kanawha. This was at a salt spring about a mile and a
quarter below the present Bulltown P. O., Braxton county, Va. Capt.
Bull and his people were inoffensive, and very friendly to their white
neighbors, as our author says.—R. G. T.
Adam Stroud lived on Elk River, a few miles south of Indian
Bulltown. The massacre of his family—his wife and seven children—
occurred in June, 1772. Shawnees were the murderers, and not Bull's
people.—R. G. T.
Mr. McWhorter writes me that two others were Jesse Hughes and
John Cutright (corruption of Cartwright?), both of them settlers on
Hacker's Creek. Hughes was a noted border scout, but a man of
fierce, unbridled passions, and so confirmed an Indian hater that
no tribesman, however peaceful his record, was safe in his presence.
Some of the most cruel acts on the frontier are by tradition attributed
to this man. The massacre of the Bulltown Indians was
accompanied by atrocities as repulsive as any reported by captives
in Indian camps; of these there had long been traditions, but details
were not fully known until revealed by Cutright upon his death-bed
in 1852, when he had reached the age of 105 years. Want of space
alone prevents me from giving Mr. McWhorter's narrative of Hughes's
long and bloody career. "Hughes died," he says, "in Jackson county,
W. Va., at a date unknown to me, but in very old age. While he was
a great scout and Indian trader, he never headed an expedition of note.
This no doubt was because of his fierce temperament, and bad reputation
among his own countrymen." In studying the annals of the border,
we must not fail to note that here and there were many savage-hearted
men among the white settlers, whose deeds were quite as atrocious
as any attributed to the red-skins. Current histories of Indian
warfare seldom recognize this fact.—R. G. T.
Lord Dunmore's War (1774) was a natural outgrowth of the
strained relations which had long existed between the savages and the
white colonists in their midst. As our author has made clear, minor
hostilities had broken out here and there ever since the Pontiac uprising,
but there had been no general campaign since Bouquet's treaty in
1764. Affairs had come to that pass by the early spring of 1774, that
diplomacy was no longer possible, and an Indian war was inevitable.
It was merely a question of detail, as to how and when. The immediate
cause of precipitation—not the cause of the war, for that lay deeper—
was the territorial dispute over the Ft. Pitt region, between Virginia
and Pennsylvania. Dunmore, as royal governor of Virginia, had several
reasons for bringing matters to a head—he was largely interested
in land speculations under Virginia patents that would be vitiated if
Pennsylvania, now becoming aggressive, should succeed in planting her
official machinery at Ft. Pitt, which was garrisoned by Virginia; again,
his colonists were in a revolutionary frame of mind, and he favored a
distraction in the shape of a popular Indian war; finally, it seemed as
though a successful raid by Virginia militia would clinch Virginia's hold
on the country and the treaty of peace that must follow would widen
the area of provincial lands and encourage Western settlements. April
25, 1774, he issued a proclamation in which, after reference to Pennsylvania's
claims, it was asserted that Ft. Pitt was "in danger of some
annoyance from the Indians," and he called on his local military commandant,
the fire-eating Dr. John Connolly, "to embody a sufficient
number of men to repel any insult." Connolly, evidently as part of
a preconcerted plan, at once (April 26) issued a circular letter to the excited
borderers, which was well calculated to arouse them, being in effect
a declaration of war against the Indians. The very next day
occurred the Pipe Creek affair, then came the Logan tragedy at Baker's
Bottom, three days later, and at once the war was on at full-head.—
R. G. T.
Of John Findlay (so he signed his name), "the precursor and
pilot of Daniel Boone to Kentucky," but little is known and less has
been published. Apparently he was a native of the north of Ireland.
In early life he emigrated to the neighborhood of Carlisle, Cumberland
county, Pa., a district almost wholly settled by Scotch-Irish Protestants.
In February, 1752, we find him a trader among the Shawnees; the
following year, he was robbed and driven off. It is probable that he
served in the Pennsylvania frontier militia from the opening of the
French and Indian War (1754). Boone met him on the Braddock campaign
(1755), and they became fast friends. Findlay had already (1752)
been in Kentucky as far as the Falls of the Ohio, in the course of his ramblings
as a trader, and inspired Boone with an intense desire to seek this El
Dorado of the West. It was in 1767, when settled near the head of the Yadkin
River, that Boone first tried to reach Kentucky by way of the Sandy,
but failed. In the winter of 1768-69, Findlay, now a peddler, with a horse
to carry his traps, appeared at Boone's cabin on the Yadkin, and the
two old comrades had a happy time rehearsing their various adventures
during the thirteen years of separation. An expedition to Kentucky
was agreed upon, and the party set out from Boone's cabin, May 1, 1769;
it was composed of Findlay, now advanced in years, Daniel Boone, the
latter's brother-in-law, John Stuart, and three Yadkin neighbors, Joseph
Holden, James Mooney, and William Cooley. The story of their
expedition through Cumberland Gap, and their long hunt, is now familiar
to readers of Western history. Their principal camp was probably on
Red Lick Fork of Station Camp Creek. In December, Stuart and Boone
were captured by Indians, but escaped early in January (1770), and on rejoining
their comrades on Rockcastle River found that Daniel's brother,
Squire, had arrived with fresh horses and traps from the North Carolina
home; and with him was Alexander Neely, whom Squire had found on
New (Great Kanawha) River. Findlay, Holden, Mooney, and Cooley
now elected to return home, leaving the others to spend a longer period
in Kentucky; Findlay took the left-hand road through the West Virginia
settlements, to Pennsylvania, and the others, turning to the right,
wended their way to North Carolina through Cumberland Gap. Not
long after this, Stuart was killed by Indians, while alone in the woods,
and Neely, discouraged by his fate, returned home. The story, often
copied from Withers, that Neely was killed by a wolf, is erroneous. As
for Findlay, he appears to have again become an Indian trader in Western
Pennsylvania; for late in 1771 he is reported to have been robbed
of $500 worth of goods, by a Seneca war party raiding the Youghiogheny
district. There is a tradition that not long after this he "was lost in the
wilds of the West." Holden and Cooley spent the rest of their days on
the Upper Yadkin. Mooney was killed at the battle of Point Pleasant
(1774).—R. G. T.
The Boones and five other families set out from their homes on the
Yadkin, Sept. 25, 1773. In Powell's Valley they were joined by forty
people under Boone's brother-in-law, William Bryan. While the main
party were slowly advancing through the valley, a small squad, under
Boone's oldest son, James, went on a side expedition for flour, cattle,
and other supplies. With these they had nearly caught up to the advance,
when, not knowing they were so near, they camped on the evening of
October 9 a few miles in the rear. Early in the morning of the 10th,
a small band of Shawnees and Cherokees, who were nominally at peace
with the whites, fell upon and, after cruel tortures, slaughtered them.
In Dunmore's speech at Fort Pitt, this tragedy in Powell's Valley was
alluded to as one of the chief causes of the Indian war of 1774. At the
Camp Charlotte treaty (October, 1774), some of the plunder from this
massacre was delivered up by the savages. After the tragedy, the greater
part of the Kentucky caravan returned to their homes, but the Boones
spent the winter of 1773-74 at a settlement some forty miles distant, on
Clinch River. During the Dunmore War, Boone was active as an Indian
fighter.—R. G. T.
The leader of this party was Capt. Thomas Bullitt. He was born in
Fauquier county, Va., in 1730; was one of Washington's captains at the
Great Meadows (1754), and fought gallantly with Braddock (1755) and
Forbes (1758); in 1763, was made adjutant-general of Virginia; during
the early part of the Revolution he held the same office in the Southern
Department of the United States, but resigned in 1776 because not
promoted; he died in Fauquier county, in 1778. The project of Franklin,
Walpole, and others to found the Colony of Pittsylvania, with its
seat at the mouth of the Great Kanawha, greatly stimulated Western
land speculation, and there was a rush of those holding military land
warrants to locate claims. Lord Dunmore's agent at Fort Pitt, Dr. John
Connolly—with whom his lordship was doubtless in partnership—had
large interests of this character, and Bullitt went to the Falls of the
Ohio (1773) to survey lands for him. Bullitt had a surveyor's commission
from Williams and Mary College, but Col. William Preston, county surveyor
for Fincastle county—in which Kentucky was then included—
declined to recognize any but his own deputies. Preston carried his
point, and the lands were re-surveyed the following year (1774) by his
deputies. Bullitt had laid off a town on this Connolly survey; but the
Revolution soon broke out, Bullitt was otherwise engaged, Dunmore was
deposed, Connolly was imprisoned, and the scheme fell through. In 1778,
George Rogers Clark camped at the Falls on his way to the Illinois, and
the garrison he established there grew into the town of Louisville.
With Bullitt's surveying party in 1773, were James Douglas, James Harrod,
James Sodousky, Isaac Hite, Abraham Haptonstall, Ebenezer
Severns, John Fitzpatrick, John Cowan,—prominent names in later Kentucky
history,—and possibly others. George Rogers Clark was probably
with the party during a part of its canoe voyage down the Ohio, but
seems to have gone no farther than Big Bone Creek.—R. G. T.
This was done by a party of men from the Monongahela, under
the guidance of James Harrod; by whom was built the first cabin for
human habitancy ever erected in Kentucky. This was on the present
site of Harrodsburg.
These are the Pipe Creek and Baker's Bottom affairs, respectively
mentioned on pp. 134, 149, notes. Yellow Creek, opposite Baker's Bottom,
empties into the Ohio 51 miles below Pittsburg; Wheeling is 91
miles below Pittsburg, and Pipe Creek 104.—R. G. T.
There is some difficulty in fixing on the precise time when these
occurrences happened. Col. Ebenezer Zane says that they took place
in the latter part of April, and that the affair at Captina preceded the
one at Yellow creek a few days. John Sappington, who was of the party
at Baker's, and is said to be the one who killed Logan's brother, says,
the murders at that place occurred on the 24th of May, and that the
skirmish at Captina was on the day before (23rd May.) Col. Andrew
Swearingen, a presbyterian gentleman of much respectability, one of
the early settlers near the Ohio above Wheeling, and afterwards intimate
with those engaged at both places, says that the disturbance opposite
Yellow creek preceded the engagement [113] at Captina, and that the
latter, as was then generally understood, was caused by the conduct of
the Indians, who had been at Yellow creek and were descending the
river, exasperated at the murder of their friends at Baker's. Mr. Benjamin
Tomlinson, who was the brother-in-law of Baker and living with
him at the time, says that this circumstance happened in May, but is
silent as to the one at Captina. These gentlemen all agree in the fact
that Logan's people were murdered at Baker's. Indeed Logan himself
charges it as having been done there. The statement of Sappington,
that the murders were caused by the abusive epithets of Logan's
brother and his taking the hat and coat of Baker's brother in law is
confirmed by Col. Swearingen and others; who also say that for some
days previous, the neighborhood generally had been engaged in preparing
to leave the country, in consequence of the menacing conduct of
the Indians.
Comment by R. G. T.—The date is now well established—April 30.
Withers is altogether too lenient, in his treatment of the whites engaged
in this wretched massacre. Logan, encamped at the mouth of
Yellow River, on the Ohio side, was a peaceful, inoffensive Indian,
against whom no man harbored a suspicion; he was made a victim of
race hatred, in a time of great popular excitement. Joshua Baker, who
was settled opposite him on Baker's Bottom, in Virginia, kept a low
grog-shop tavern, and had recently been warned not to sell more liquor
to Indians. Daniel Greathouse lived in the vicinity—a cruel, bloodthirsty
fellow, who served Connolly as a local agent in fomenting hatred
of Indians. It will be remembered (p. 134, note) that Cresap's party were
intending to strike the camp of Logan, but that they abandoned the
project. In the meantime, probably without knowledge of Cresap's intent,
Greathouse had collected a party of 32 borderers to accomplish the
same end. Logan's camp seemed too strong for them to attack openly;
so they secreted themselves in Baker's house, and when Logan's family,
men and women, came over to get their daily grog, and were quite
drunk, set upon them and slew and tomahawked nine or ten. The
chief, standing on the Ohio bank, heard the uproar and witnessed the
massacre; he naturally supposed that the murderers were led by Cresap.
From a friend of the whites, Logan became their implacable enemy,
and during the ensuing war his forays were the bloodiest on the border.
We shall hear of him and his famous speech, later on.
It was then that Westfall's and Casinoe's forts were erected in
Tygart's valley,—Pricket's, on Pricket's creek,—Jackson's on Ten Mile,
and Shepherd's on Wheeling creek, a few miles above its mouth. There
were also others established in various parts of the country and on the
Monongahela and Ohio rivers. Nutter's fort, near to Clarksburg,
afforded protection to the inhabitants on the West Fork, from its source,
to its confluence with the Valley river; and to those who lived on
Buchannon and on Hacker's creek, as well as to the residents of its immediate
vicinity.
June 20, Col. William Preston, having charge of the defenses of
Fincastle county, authorized Capt. William Russell to employ two faithful
woodsmen to go to Kentucky and inform the several surveying parties
at work there, of their danger. June 26, Russell replied, "I have engaged
to start immediately on the occasion, two of the best hands I
could think of—Daniel Boone and Michael Stoner; who have engaged
to reach the country as low as the Falls, and to return by way of Gasper's
Lick on Cumberland, and through Cumberland Gap; so that, by
the assiduity of these men, if it is not too late, I hope the gentlemen
will be apprized of the imminent danger they are daily in."
Boone and Stoner journeyed overland to Harrodsburg, where Col.
James Harrod and thirty men were making improvements and laying
out the town. The thrifty Boone secured a good lot, hastily built a
claim cabin, and proceeded on his tour. At Fontaine Blue, three miles
below Harrodsburg, the two scouts found another party of surveyors,
whom they warned; and in going down the Kentucky River came across
Capt. John Floyd's surveying party,—eight men, who had left Preston's
house for Kentucky, April 9,—who agreed to meet them farther down
the river. But circumstances prevented a reunion, and Floyd's band
penetrated through the wilderness on their own account, and had a
painful journey of sixteen days' duration before reaching Russell's Fort
on Clinch River. Meanwhile, Boone and Stoner descended to the mouth
of the Kentucky, and thence to the Falls of the Ohio, and found more
surveyors at Mann's Lick, four miles southeast. Indians were making
bloody forays through the district, and the scouts had frequent thrilling
adventures. Finally, after having been absent sixty-one days and travelled
800 miles, they reached Russell's on the Clinch, in safety. Russell
was absent on the Point Pleasant campaign, and Boone set out with a
party of recruits to reinforce him, but was ordered back to defend the
Clinch settlements. He was busy at this task until the close of the war.
He was present at the Watauga treaty, March 17, 1775; later that year, he
led another band to Kentucky, and early in April built Fort Boone, on
Kentucky River, "a little below Big Lick," the nucleus of the Henderson
colony.—R. G. T.
The party numbered about four hundred men. The line of march
was about ninety miles in length, as estimated by the zig-zag course
pursued.—R. G. T.
They were Jonathan Zane, Thomas Nicholson and Tady Kelly. A
better woodsman than the first named of these three, perhaps never
lived.
Doddridge locates Wapatomica "about sixteen miles below the
present Coshocton." Butterfield (History of the Girtys) places it "just
below the present Zanesville, in Logan county, Ohio, not a great distance
from Mac-a-cheek." For localities of Indian towns on the Muskingum,
see map in St. John de Creve Cœur's Lettres d'un Cultivateur Américain
(Paris, 1787), III., p. 413.—R. G. T.
John Hargus, a private in Capt. Cresap's company, while stationed
as a videtto below the main army, observed an Indian several times
raising his head above his blind, and looking over the river. Charging
his rifle with a second ball, he fired, and both bullets passed through
the neck of the Indian, who was found next day and scalped by
Hargus.
Logan was the son of Shikellemus, a celebrated chief of the Cayuga
nation, who dwelt at Shamokin, and always attached to the [118] English,
was of much service to them on many occasions. After the close of
Dunmore's war, Logan became gloomy and melancholy, drank freely
and manifested symptoms of mental derangement. He remained some
time at Detroit, and while there, his conduct and expressions evinced a
weariness of the world. Life he said had become a burden to him,
he knew no more what pleasure was, and thought it had been better
if he had never existed. In this disponding and disconsolate condition
he left Detroit, and on his way between that place and Miami, is said
to have been murdered.
| [104] CHAPTER VI. Chronicles of border warfare, or, A history of the settlement by the whites, of north-western Virginia, and of the Indian wars and massacres in that section of the state | |