USA > Illinois > Cook County > Chicago > Discovery and conquests of the Northwest, with the history of Chicago, Vol. I > Part 22
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The few sparse settlements in Kentucky already made, still maintained their ground, although constantly men- aced by Indians on the war path, while the Alleghanies interposed serious barriers between them and any succor from the parent State in case of an attack.
No attempt had yet been made at settlement on what might with propriety then have been called the Indian side of the Ohio, except the Moravian settlements. These had been in progress on the Muskingum river since 1762. Christian Frederic Post (the same who in 1758 executed the heroic mission to Fort Pitt) and his co-worker, John Heckwelder, at that time set up a taber- nacle there for worship. The missionary spirit was the incentive to their enterprise, but to facilitate their work in this direction, they purchased small parcels of land of the Indians, made an opening in the forest, planted fields of corn, and soon they were surrounded with plenty. The celebrated David Ziesburger joined them in a few years, and the towns of Shoenbrun, Gnadenhutten and Salem were built within an area of
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238
Fort McIntosh Built.
ten miles, near the present site of New Philadelphia, in Tuscarawas county, Ohio.
This could not be called a white settlement, yet it represented Christian civilization, as developed by the teachings of the Moravian missionaries, whose heroic faith had been inherited from the martyr Huss. Since that remote period this remarkable people had been disciplined by a school of three centuries of persecution, during which time their courage had become the admi- ration of the Protestant world. They had ever been in its van breaking up the fallen ground, ready to be tilled by more effeminate Christians.
Their attempts on the Muskingum had thus far been a success, but unhappily for them they still held to the doctrines of non-resistance, with unshaken faith that God's providence would safely lead them through the dangers that surrounded them.
However plausible or practicable such a theory might be in times of peace, it became a fatal illusion when the fires of revolution kindled along the Atlantic should shake the border into fury, as was soon to be the case. When the center is disturbed, how much more is the circumference agitated !
The borders of Pennsylvania and Virginia were now daily becoming more exposed to dangers, as the British emissaries among the Indians excited them to take the war path, and the Continental Congress passed a resolution to send a force into the interior, with a view of taking Detroit, the western supply depot, where the Indians obtained the means wherewith to keep up the war.
In May, 1778, while the expedition of Clark was about starting on its mission, Brigadier General Lachlin McIntosh, of the Continental Army, was placed in command of the Western Department, with his head- quarters at Fort Pitt. The following October, at the head of a small force of regulars and militia, he descended the Ohio and built a fort thirty miles below Fort Pitt, which was named Fort McIntosh. This was the first stockade ever built by Americans on the northern side of the Ohio.
239
Siege of Fort Laurens.
For prudential reasons, probably for the want of means, the Continental Congress now instructed him to abandon the original design against Detroit, but in lieu thereof, to make an incursion into the interior for the purpose of overawing the Indians. With this intent he took up his march at the head of 1, 000 men, intending to attack Sandusky, but on reaching the Muskingum he encamped, and concluded to defer the attack against the objective point till the coming spring. Here he built Fort Laurens, so named in honor of the President of the Continental Congress. He left Colonel John Gibson in command of the post with 150 men, and returned with the main body to Fort Pitt.
All these movements were reported to the English commander at Detroit, who, as might be expected, at once laid his plans to capture the audacious Americans, who had dared to make a stand in the heart of the country.
It will be remembered that Francis Vigo, the Spanish trader of St. Louis, who arrived at Kaskaskia in Janu- ary, brought information to Clark that Hamilton had weakened his forces by sending away large detachments against the frontiers, and that Clark, taking advantage of this incautious movement, had marched against Vin- cennes and taken it, It may therefore be inferred that Fort Laurens was the decoy duck which gave Vincennes to the Americans.
Late in January, 1779, the threatened attack was made on the fort, and kept up till March with desperate resolution. The garrison successfully resisted every assault of their besiegers, though they environed the post by means of their numbers, and gave them no respite either by night or day.
Starvation soon began to threaten them, but, happily for the besieged, the besiegers were in a similar pre- dicament, and the sanguinary contest now became a rivalship, not of courage and muscle only, but a trial of endurance under the pangs of hunger. While the enemy were thus beset with perplexity how to obtain provisions till they could press the siege to a successful issue by starving out the garrison, while they them-
240
Fort McIntosh Evacuated.
selves were gaunt with hunger, they proposed to Gibson, the commander, to raise the siege if he would give them a barrel of flour. The offer was promptly accepted, as a device to conceal the desperate straits to which the garrison was reduced. The flour was sent outside the palisade, and some meat with it, which the hungry Indians and their companions devoured like a pack of wolves, and vanished in the forest, taking their course for Detroit.
The last savage yelp soon died away with the retreat- ing foe, and silence took the place of the bedlam of war-whoops that had echoed about the place for two months. A runner skilled in woodcraft was now selected to hasten to Fort McIntosh with all possible dispatch, and obtain supplies. With the shyness of a fox venturing from his lair, the bold ranger left the fort and safely reached his destination, a distance of fifty miles, through an unbroken wilderness, when a band of scouts were immediately sent with provisions for the relief of the hungry garrison, in their frontier hermitage. Here they remained till the following August, when the fort was evacuated.
Fort McIntosh was evacuated soon afterward, which left no representation of American interests between Vincennes and Fort Pitt. With the exception of a part of the Delawares, all the Indians of the country now became active allies of the English. The Morav- ians, or praying Indians, as they were sometimes called, were, in accordance with their faith, neutral.
Their villages lay in the war path of their savage brothers, and when a hostile war party, returning from a successful incursion into the frontier settlements, dragged their wretched captives into their distant lodges in the wilderness, they often quartered on these apostate savages, who durst not refuse them shelter. On these occasions the griefs of the captives were always mitigated as far as possible by acts of kindness from their hosts, if such a name may be applied to the dispenser of an enforced hospitality.
Colonel Depuyster then commanded in Detroit as the successor of Hamilton, and seeing the danger of these
24I
Simon Girty and the Moravian Converts.
people, he mercifully interposed between them and the subtle hostility by which they were victimized by their neutrality from both sides, and ordered their removal to the neighborhood of Sandusky. This decree was enforced upon the unwilling Moravians by 200 Wyan- dottes under the command of British officers. Their crops were left standing in the field, ready for the har- vest, when they were forced away from their homes, to find new shelter and a precarious subsistence for the coming winter among their unfriendly brethren, who were only restrained from open hostility against them by the British officers.
Among the evil geniuses of the forest at that time was Simon Girty, a native of western Pennsylvania. When a boy he had been taken captive by the Indians, and adopted into the Seneca tribe. Among them he had won distinction as a forest ranger, and would gladly have spent his life with them, but when Bouquet made his successful expedition to the Muskingum, Girty, with other captives, was returned to civilization. The next year he rose to the rank of a commissioned officer in the Pennsylvania militia, but two years later deserted to the British, and joined the hostile Indians of the forest, with Elliot, * a tory of equal notoriety. Both of these became prominent leaders among the savages, Girty rivaling them in ferocity. His spite against the Morav- ian converts was unmeasured. While these unhappy exiles were being conducted from their homes on the Muskingum to Sandusky, some care had been taken to mitigate their woes, which so enraged Girty that it was with difficulty he could be restrained from assaulting them with a tomahawk after their arrival.+ Here they
* Commodore Elliot, of the U. S. Navy, was his nephew.
t The following account of the affair is copied from the American Pioneer, Vol. II, pp. 224 and 225, as a contribution to that valuable work by Mary Heckwelder, daughter of the celebrated Moravian missionary and historian. She was the first white child born in Ohio.
"BETHLEHEM, PA., February 24th, 1843.
" J. S. WILLIAMS, ESQ .:
"Dear Sir .- Yours of the 31st ult., to Mr. Kummen, postmaster at this place, has been handed to me. I have not been in the habit of making much use of my pen for a number of years; I will, however, at your request, endeavor to give you a short account of the first four years of my life, which were all I spent among the Indians, having since lived
242
The Victims Entrapped.
remained till February, when permission was given to a part of them to return to their homes on the Muskingum, to harvest their corn, which was still standing.
While engaged in this labor on the 6th of March, a company of borderers came to them in an apparently friendly spirit, and proposed to them to remove to Pitts- burg for safety, and with oily words enticed them to give up their arms and go into two houses to remain for the night. This done, Williamson, the leader of the band, took counsel with his comrades as to the fate of the entrapped victims.
All in favor of sparing their lives were ordered to step forward.
in Bethlehem nearly all the time. My acquaintance or knowledge of them and their history is chiefly from books, and what I heard from my father and other missionaries.
" I was born April 16th, 1781, in Salem, one of the Moravian Indian towns on the Muskingum river, State of Ohio. Soon after my birth, times becoming very troublesome, the settlements were often in danger from war parties, and from an encampment of warriors near Gnaden- hutten; and finally, in the beginning of September of the same year, we were all made prisoners. First, four of the missionaries were seized by a party of Huron warriors, and declared prisoners of war; they were then led into the camp of the Delawares, where the death song was sung over them. Soon after they had secured them a number of warriors marched off for Salem and Shoenbrun. About thirty savages arrived at the former place in the dusk of the evening, and broke open the mis- sion house. Here they took my mother and myself prisoners, and hav- ing led her into the street and placed guards over her, they plundered the house of everything they could take with them and destroyed what was left. Then going to take my mother along with them, the savages were prevailed upon, through the intercession of the Indian females, to let her remain at Salem till the next morning, the night being dark and rainy and almost impossible for her to travel so far. They at last con- sented on condition that she should be brought into the camp the next morning, which was accordingly done, and she was safely conducted by our Indians to Gnadenhutten.
"After experiencing the cruel treatment of the savages for some time, they were set at liberty agaln; but were obliged to leave their flourish- ing settlements, and forced to march through a dreary wilderness to Upper Sandusky. We went by land through Goshachguenk to the Wal- holding, and then partly by water and partly along the banks of the river, to Sandusky creek. All the way I was carried by an Indian woman, carefully wrapped in a blanket, on her back. Our journey was exceedingly tedious and dangerous; some of the canoes sank, and those that were in them lost all their provisions and everything they had saved. Those that went by land drove the cattle, a pretty large herd. The savages now drove us along, the missionaries with their families usually in the midst, surrounded by their Indian converts. The roads were exceedingly bad, leading through a continuation of swamps.
"Having arrived at Upper Sandusky, they built small huts of logs and bark to screen them from the cold, having neither beds nor blankets, and being reduced to the greatest poverty and want; for the savages had by degrees stolen everything both from the missionaries and Indians, on
243
Massacre of the Moravians.
Of the ninety men who composed the party, only eighteen stepped forward, leaving seventy-two in favor of killing them.
This decision was immediately made known to the unhappy victims, when the unexpected decree was re- plied to with earnest entreaties that their lives might be spared; but lamentations and supplications were unavailing to the iron-hearted scouts. They however, postponed the execution of the sentence till morn- ing, to give them time to prepare for death in their accustomed spirit of devotion. The night was spent by the victims in prayer and singing, while their execution- ers stood guard outside to prevent escape. In the morning all was ready on both sides. The Moravians were tranquil, and their executioners unrelenting, and the work began.
Through apertures in the walls of the building the muzzles of the guns were pointed, and the shooting was continued till the last faint groans of the victims had died away in silence, and all were prostrated, as was supposed, into a pile of lifeless corpses. But beneath the ponderous weight of dead bodies a youth of sixteen managed to find his way through an aperture in the floor, and escape thence into the woods. Another boy also escaped after being scalped, and both lived to tell the tale of woe which had whelmed ninety-four of their countrymen in death.
To the credit of our government be it said that Williamson's band were not in the continental service, and that their bloody work was execrated throughout the country.
Border life, in those days, furnishes inexhaustible material for romancers and poets, as well as historians,
the journey. We lived here extremely poor, oftentimes very little or nothing to satisfy the cravings of hunger; and the poorest of the Indians were obliged to live upon their dead cattle, which died for want of pasture. " After living in this dreary wilderness, in danger, poverty and dis- tress of all sorts, a written order arrived in March, 1782, sent by the governor to the half king of the Hurons, and to an English officer in his company, to bring all the missionaries and their families to Detroit, but with a strict order not to plunder nor abuse them in the least.
* * *
* " Respectfully yours,
"MARY HECKEWELDER."
.
244
Ferocity of Border Warfare.
for extremes in the bent of the human mind were brought into contact there, untrammeled by the re- straints of law, or even of society; and if examples of man's noblest nature were nurtured into being by the severe discipline of frontier privations, it is not strange that corresponding extremes of evil purposes should also be brought to the surface by the extremities resorted to to accomplish required results.
The war was contested with a stubborn courage on the part of the English, more for what the country was destined to be than for what it then was, and no means were left untried to secure the inheritance of nature which opened before their prophetic vision to the West. This disposition was contagious, and the roughest side of border life gathered force like a tornado when the innocent Moravians were murdered.
Here were unmeasured forests bespangled by a thou- sand streams, and further beyond them oceans of wild prairie, all awaiting the magic touch of civilization to re- produce the wonders of Europe on an improved plan. To accomplish this was worthy the ambition of the English, who with characteristic confidence in themselves thought they could do it better than their rebellious chil- dren. The ultimate fate of the Indians was not consid-
ered. That would take care of itself. Meantime, if their irrepressible dash, or even their ferocity, could be extemporized into use in order to bring about the desired result, the end justified the means, in their estimation, though it brought desolation and cruel death to the bor- ders of American settlements.
During the revolution the borderers had been wrought up to such a pitch of excitement that long after the army of Cornwallis had surrendered, and fighting had ceased between the American and British armies, the war was continued with unremitting severity on the frontiers.
Throughout the western portions of Pennsylvania and Virginia, every man, and even every boy, could handle a rifle with a dexterity seldom equaled by the trained soldiers of regular armies. Most of the British having been driven from the field after the surrender of . Cornwallis, the success of the revolution was no longer
、
245
.
Expeditions to Take Sandusky.
doubted, and the fertile fields across the Ohio, as future homes, now began to attract attention.
Under such auspices an expedition was planned in May, 1782, to march against Sandusky, take the place and seize upon the country. The enterprise was a pri- vate one, though it was approved by General Irvine, who then held command at Fort Pitt. Each soldier furnished his own horse and equipments at his own ex- pense, with no expectations of any other pay than what might result from the success of the adventure. The party numbered 480, among whom were most of the men who had partaken in the massacre of the Moravians a few weeks before.
They elected their officers by ballot, and their choice fell upon William Crawford, a man who had been a com- panion of the youthful Washington, when he was only a backwoods surveyor, unmindful of his future destiny.
Col. David Williamson was second in command, the same who had led the murderous expedition against the Moravians, from which it would appear that the con- sciences of the raiders was not sensitive as to the means to be used whereby the Indians should be conquered into submission.
Everything being in readiness, on the 25th of May the company dashed into the wilderness, each man well mounted and laden with twenty days' provisions. On the fourth day they reached Gnadenhutten, the scene of the late Moravian massacre. Here the bodies of the victims, men, women and children, lay without burial, in a horrible pile of decay, mingled with the ashes of the building, which was burnt over their lifeless remains. The fields of corn were standing, with no one left to har- vest them, and afforded ample provender for their horses.
Passing on in a westerly course, they soon came to the Sandusky plains, where Wyandotte county now is. Here they expected to find the Wyandottes in force, but in this they were mistaken. A voiceless solitude of prairie hazel brush and oak openings extended far and wide .* Not an Indian or a Britisher was seen, but slyly
* This was the condition of Wyandotte county as late as 1839, at which time the writer passed through it soon after the removal of the Indians.
246
The Retreat.
as the Thugs of India, the stealthy foe had dogged their trail, crawling around their camp at night, and fleet- footed messengers had reported their numbers, and the course they were taking ever since they had crossed the Muskingum.
Near the present site of Upper Sandusky the enemy was encountered, among whom were the notorious Simon Girty and Elliot. Crawford immediately took a shel- tered position in a grove, and succeeded in maintaining the supremacy during the action. The next day the fight was renewed, but Crawford still kept the savages at a respectful distance by means of his sharpshooters. The third day the Indians were reinforced by a company of British cavalry from Detroit. All hope of final vic- tory was now abandoned, and the retreat was com- menced at nine o'clock the succeeding evening. By . skillful skirmishing the Americans succeeded in getting outside the enemy's lines; and making a brief halt, to their dismay their commander was missing.
But there was no time to look for him, for the victo- rious enemy were pressing upon their rear in overwhelm- ing numbers; and now while the defeated raiders are flying homeward, with the exultant foe in hot pursuit, the fate of Crawford will be told.
During the bewilderment of the night retreat Craw- ford had been cut off from the main body and captured, together with several others, among whom was Dr. Knight. Most of the captives were tomahawked with little ceremony, but Crawford, the Big Captain, as the Indians called him in derision, was reserved for an especial object on whom to satiate their vengeance. When brought to the place of execution, among the red demons who were assembled to take part in the revelry, was Simon Girty.
Nine years before, during his residence near Pittsburg, he had lived in the same neighborhood with Crawford, and the unhappy victim seeing him, a faint ray of hope flashed into his frozen heart as he was stripped naked and tied to the fatal stake.
There were the fagots, and vengeful hands to apply them, and there was Girty, his former neighbor,
247
Crawford Dies by Fire.
who had often sat at his table in the free and easy com- panionship peculiar to frontier men and hunters; but the face of the white savage was cold and forbidding. "Do they intend to burn me?" inquired Crawford of Girty. "Yes," was the reply. "I will take it all patiently," said the stoical colonel, and the work began.
His tormentors, with a keen discrimination, econo- mized the vital spark in their victim to the longest span, in order to make the most of him. For three hours he continued to breathe, while the whole surface of his body had been punctured with the burning ends of hickory sticks.
At last the voice of prayer was heard in low but audible words. A hideous squaw now, in the vain attempt to bring fresh tortures to the dying man, emptied a shovel of coals on his back as he lay pros- trate, face downward, but insensibility had come to his relief, and he manifested no sign of pain. Soon after- ward he arose to his feet, and walked around the post to which he had been tied, and again lay down for the last time. Dr. Knight was now taken away, and nothing more was known of his last moments, except what was gathered from those who took part in the fiendish work.
Dr. Knight was treated only as a prisoner of war, and ultimately was returned to his home.
According to Heckwelder, the Moravian historian of those times, Crawford was tortured in revenge for the barbarous work of Williamson's men a few weeks before, on which occasion forty-two women and chil- dren had shared the fate of the men in the indiscrim- inate butchery.
Perkins, author of the Western Annals, says that Crawford's command started into the forests with the avowed purpose of killing every red man, woman or child who came within the reach of their rifles. As much may be inferred from some of the cotemporary relations. But C. W. Butterfield, who has lately published a complete history of the whole expedition, taken from documents, manuscripts and tradition, has discredited the defamers of the expeditionists, and exon-
248
Peace Negotiations.
erates Crawford, at least, from any complicity in the slaughter of Gnadenhutten.
Here it is proper to say, however, that the horrors of Gnadenhutten served to soften the hearts of the hostile Indians toward the Christian Indians, and even the impervious Girty was no longer their enemy. These conditions would go to strengthen the theory that Crawford's awful fate was the result of the Moravian massacre, although he was innocent of any murderous design against the Indians, as Mr. Butterfield, his charitable biographer, has indicated.
"My country, right or wrong," is the best apology the historian can make for the style of warfare which had been waged against the Indians ever since 1774; when Cornstock and Logan raised the tomahawk in revenge for the unprovoked slaughters of Cresap, Great- house and others. And thus it was, that the frontiers of the colonies had been lashed into fury by the war, and could only be lulled into quiet by a permanent peace with England.
After fighting had ceased, and negotiations were opened for peace, the first point to be settled was, on what terms the Americans should treat, which, in fact, involved the chief point at issue. Nobody saw this in a clearer light than the American Commissioners them- selves. Jay, Adams, Franklin and Laurens, with a tenacity worthy their high calling, refused to treat in any capacity, except as a sovereign and independent nation. This was reluctantly conceded by England, and three other points only remained to be settled: The American rights to the fisheries of Newfoundland; their liability to indemnify tories for losses during the war; and the last and most important of the three, the western limits of the United States.
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