USA > Kentucky > History of pioneer Kentucky > Part 13
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26 Hening, Vol. IX, p. 561.
27 Laws of North Carolina, Vol. XXIV, p. 223. William Bailey Smith, John Williams, James Kerr and Orandatus Davis were Hen- derson's associates on the commission.
28 Clarke MSS., Vol. L. Correspondence of Walker and Jefferson. 29 Summers, History of Southwest Virginia, p. 699.
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it is twelve miles out of course. Kentucky and Tennessee were to engage in many a quarrel over this imperfect boundary ; even today the status of the region between Walker's line and 36° 30' is undefined.
The completion of the survey of the southern boundary of Kentucky was not reached until 1780. Coming as it did in the same year as the erection of two new counties in Kentucky, 1780 is a date to be remembered as one in which an important step was taken for the greater sta- bility and orderliness of the government.
In the early part of 1781, Clarke was created a briga- dier-general commanding the Virginia troops in the west and having his headquarters at Louisville. Virginia, in taking this action, had designed that neither he nor the Kentucky militia should be idle. Her eyes were still turned to the far-off fields. In the preceding autumn her statesmen had formed a plan for the capture of Detroit and for relieving His Most Gracious Majesty of quite a little of his northern territory. Clarke was instructed to gather by March 15th a force of two thousand militia at Louisville and be ready in the spring to proceed north- ward.30 But it so happened that the rendezvous was not made until late in the summer and the expedition never made at all. There were many reasons for this.
The British, in the prosecution of their plan for in- vading the south were now, thanks to General Green, engaged in an unprofitable war in Virginia. Before Clarke could go west again it became necessary for him to help defend his home. He entered the Continental army and served till the danger seemed averted. Spring had already gone when he at length was free to turn his attention west- ward. He was to have the aid of the Pennsylvania militia
30 Clarke MSS., Jefferson to Clarke, January 19, 1781.
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as well as of his own State. Colonel Laughrey was to command them and meet him at Wheeling. The rapidity of Laughrey's movements may be inferred from the fact that, although Clarke did not reach Wheeling until July, he found Laughrey not yet arrived. Clarke reached Wheeling with a respectable force, but their wholesale de- sertion warned him to proceed. He hastened on to Louis- ville. Laughrey reaching Wheeling and finding Clarke gone, sent five men ahead to overtake Clarke and tell him that they needed supplies. The five were captured by the Indians and disclosed Laughrey's plans and his weakness. Laughrey was ambushed at Island No. 54; sixty-four of his men were killed and forty-two made prisoners.31
Clarke, disappointed in Laughrey's aid, could not suc- ceed in raising the Kentucky militia. The Kentuckians firmly and disrespectfully refused to go against Detroit. Clarke had alienated them by his Illinois campaign, his establishing of Fort Jefferson and by a late regulation requiring the militia to serve on board a patrol boat he had established on the Ohio.32 The settlers were willing enough to fight Indians, but were not ardent over the prospect of rowing a heavy boat up and down the Ohio on the very meagre chance of encountering a foe. The boat soon ran ashore at the mouth of the Beargrass and suspicion was not lacking that the stranding was encour- aged by the crew. Kentucky, in truth, had enough and more to do in engaging her land foes. In March, Captain Tipton, Captain Chapman and Colonel Lynn were killed in the Beargrass, and Captain Whittaker, attempting to avenge the loss, was ambushed and lost heavily. In April,
31 Clarke MSS., Vol. X, p. 513.
32 Clarke MSS., Vol. XXIX. Deposition of John Mitchell. This boat had seventy oars and was equipped with cannon.
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while Squire Boone and the inhabitants of his station were removing to Louisville, they were attacked and scattered by the Indians. Colonel Floyd, with thirty mounted men, attempting to retaliate, was himself ambushed and lost one-half his force. McAfee's Station and Montgomery's had both been attacked and suffered great loss. Kentucky did not need to look to Detroit for trouble.
Added to Laughrey's defeat and the attitude of Ken- tucky came the news that the Chickasaws had risen, were besieging Fort Jefferson, and would certainly take it unless Clarke hurried to its relief.33 Clarke lost no time in start- ing ; when he arrived he found that the Indians were led by a Scotchman named Colbert and had attempted more than once to storm the fort. Only the use of cannon had pre- . vented the loss of the post. The siege had been going on for several days before Clarke's arrival and continued a few days more. The Indians, however, ultimately became disheartened and retired. Fort Jefferson was abandoned soon after ; it should never have been occupied.
Such were the events that prevented Clarke from car- rying out his long-cherished desire for an expedition against Detroit. It was, perhaps, as well for the American cause and his own fame that he was not enabled to begin it. The conquest of Detroit would have been a far dif- ferent undertaking from that of Kaskaskia and Vincennes. The two latter posts had been feeble and indifferent or friendly, but Detroit was hostile and manned by English- men. The capture of it would have called for the best efforts of a great general and an enthusiastic army. That Clarke, supported by a rabble of disgruntled frontiersmen, would have encountered great obstacles goes almost with-
33 Cal. Va. St. Papers, Vol. I, p. 382.
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out saying. Clarke resigned himself to the inevitable and proceeded to utilize his energies in fortifying Fort Nelson. His success in this only rendered him more unpopular in Kentucky, where a strong and insistent demand was being made that forts should be built to protect the Licking and the Kentucky rather than the Beargrass. By advice of the Virginia Council in June, 1780, frontier forts in the west were to be built at the mouth of the Kanawha, the Big Sandy and the Licking. For the garrison of the fort on the Licking, fifty men were to be raised from Ken- tucky and Colonel Crockett's regiment was to march thither from Virginia. In all there were to be one hundred and fifty men in the fort and Clarke was to have the chief command as in all western matters. In September, Crockett received orders to proceed westward, but the fort on the Licking was never built. Much to the disgust of the Ken- tuckians, Clarke gave his entire time to fortifying Louis- ville, and, either through inability or disinclination, stead- ily disregarded the clamor of the Kentuckians for the building of the other forts. While this controversy was going on as to whether the land should be protected from the ever-present Indian or the remote Englishman, the Revolutionary war came to a sudden and unexpected close. Yorktown put an end to Clarke's plans, defensive or offen- sive, against the British, and rendered the Kentuckians, so they vainly thought, secure against Indian war for the future. Kentucky had taken little interest and less part in the Revolution. The Kentuckians cared little, probably knew little, of the merits of the dispute; they were seem- ingly as little concerned with the results. They were Ken- tuckians first and Virginians afterwards. They were intensely interested in rendering their own homes safe from
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the Indians, but were profanely unwilling to fight Eng- land for the sake of an abstraction. When Clarke con- quered the Illinois, only a handful of Kentuckians were with him; when the frontiersmen engaged Tarleton at King's Mountain, Kentuckians were conspicuously absent. But no leader, no matter how mediocre or unpopular, ever proposed an expedition against the Shawnese and failed to find enthusiastic support among the Kentuckians. The question of defending Kentucky and of repulsing or de- stroying her Indian foes was a vital matter among the pioneers. They were absorbed in Kentucky ; no foreign affair, no matter how important in itself, could be appre- ciated among them as long as their own homes were endan- gered. A clear conception of this fact will do much toward rendering plain the seemingly inexplicable actions of the Kentuckians of the next decade.
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THE YEAR OF SORROWS.
T HE surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown in October, 1781, actually closed the Revolution in the seaboard States. There followed a year of truce, during which both combatants rested on their arms, exhausted by past endeavors and hopeful of a lasting peace. For seven mis- erable years and more the colonists along the Atlantic had striven desperately, body and soul, against foreign in- vaders and domestic foes. In the course of that time they had, after infinite striving, succeeded in keeping their land inviolate and themselves a nation ; they had captured two armies on land and well-nigh shipwrecked the power of England on the sea. They had done more. They had struck at and destroyed in New York the powerful Iro- quois Confederacy which had clung so long and faithfully to the English. Yet they had not come unscathed from the contest ; towns had been burnt and countrysides har- ried by their enemies. There had been Camdens and Val- ley Forges without number. Their soldiers had gone into the war destitute and emerged with conditions unimproved. The credit of the nation was destroyed and treason was abroad in the land. Surely if past misfortunes were any indication of deserts to come, the Atlantic States merited, as they secured, a time of peace and of prosperity.
But the time that brought peace to the eastern States brought little but disasters to the transmontane lands. Kentucky had remained careless, if not indifferent, while the eastern States were fighting for existence ; it was per- haps no more than fitting that now while the remainder of the land was given an opportunity for rest, Kentucky
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must needs struggle, unaided, for her life. The British, by reason of Cornwallis' surrender and the extermination of the Iroquois, were utterly unable to strike, even had they wished, at the Tidewater countries; they were better prepared than ever before to carry the war into Kentucky. They had clinched their hold on Canada and tightened their grasp on the northwest posts. From these positions they enjoyed and used every opportunity for inciting their Indian allies against Kentucky. The time, moreover, was opportune, for the Indians of Ohio and Indiana were alarmed by the prospect of peace and fearful for an ac- counting for past misdeeds. They readily lent themselves to the urgent plans of the English Governor of Canada, and so while the seaboard States were joyous in expecta- tion and possession of peace, Kentucky, alone, was ap- proaching the valley of the shadow.
Moved by the urgings and even the pleadings of the English, the Indians of the northwest, in the winter of 1781-82, planned for a grand assembly to mature plans for a joint expedition against Kentucky. The assembly was to meet in the summer at the Shawnese capital of Old Chilli- cothe and was to be attended by the chiefs and warriors of all tribes under the British influence; Shawnese, Mingoes, Delawares, Wyandots, and Pottawattomies were to be there from the north of the Ohio, and even the Cherokees from distant Tennessee were represented. In all the efforts to unite the Indians for this expedition, the Shawnese, as the most inveterate enemies of the Kentuckians, had taken the lead. All during the winter their runners were kept busy visiting the different tribes and urging upon them the necessity of prompt and decisive action. Such an appeal could not fail of success among the Indians ; not a tribe of them but had good reason for hating the Kentuckians.
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So the Shawnese found themselves leaders in a movement second only to that of Pontiac. All tribes were to meet at Chillicothe in August and march against Kentucky.
But neither the passions of the Indians nor the impa- tience of the English disposed them to wait until August to begin the war. A party of twenty-five Wyandots started on the warpath early in the spring. They crossed the Ohio River and made their way rapidly toward central Kentucky, appearing before Strode's Station on the first of March. Strode's was a small station of some thirty cabins settled entirely from Boonesborough and serving as an outpost of the older fort from which it was distant about ten miles. A part of its garrison at the time of the attack was gone to Boonesborough to help ward off an Indian attack that never came, but there happened to be within the fort several hunters from a neighboring post. The Indians, surprising the fort, succeeded in killing two men, but were unable to accomplish anything more. After a thirty-six hour siege, having destroyed all the sheep and cattle, they departed in high spirits just a few hours pre- vious to the return of the men who had gone to Boones- borough. The garrison, being too weak to pursue, had to content itself with burying the dead. The Indians pursued their way eastward and crossed the Kentucky several miles above Boonesborough. By accident or design one of the rafts on which they crossed the river was allowed to float down the Kentucky and was detected by the Boones- borough men on the nineteenth as it drifted past the fort. To them it was an ominous sign, indicating that Indians were near and in considerable numbers. They lost no time in sending word to Colonel Logan at Saint Asaph that trouble was brewing for Lincoln County. Logan, upon receiving the news, dispatched fifteen men to Estill's Station,
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with the injunction that Estill should take forty men and search for the Indians. Estill, in obeying these orders, left his own fort defenseless. Hardly had he started on his search before the Wyandots appeared around the fort, caught outside and killed one of the women and captured Monk, the negro slave of Captain Estill. Prodigious lying on Monk's part led the Indians to believe that the fort was well manned; they withdrew in some trepidation, taking Monk along. Immediately two boys were sent out from the fort to find Estill and tell him what had hap- pened. Estill, hearing this report, set out in hot pursuit with twenty-five of his men. On the morning of the twen- ty-second of March he overtook the Indians near the site of the present Mount Sterling.
The struggle that followed has become a memorable event in Kentucky history under the name of "Estill's defeat." 1 It was in fact more than defeat; it was anni- hilation. When Estill came up with the Indians they were just crossing a branch of Hinkston Creek known as Small Mountain Creek. As the white men came into view a sharp command from the Wyandot chieftain sent his fol- lowers quickly to cover and the battle began with the stream separating the opposing forces. The struggle was over a densely wooded field of eight or ten acres, and the method of fighting was one well suited to each side; it was from the beginning "every man to his man and every man to his tree." The numbers were equal of each force, but at the beginning of the fight Estill thought it expedient to de- tach Lieutenant Miller with six men to guard the horses. These took their station in the rear while the remaining eighteen pressed on against the Indians. The thick for-
1 Boone MSS., Vol. XIII. Depositions of Joseph Proctor, David Lynch and Hazelrigg.
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ests intervening soon made it impossible for Miller to un- derstand how the battle was going. The contest was stubborn and desperate. The Wyandots fought with their characteristic fierceness and resolution, and under the di- rection of their chief executed a daring flank movement at the most critical moment of the battle. Their flanking party came upon Miller and his men as they were unsus- pectingly guarding the horses in the rear. The seven white men fled precipitately and ingloriously from the field. The battle now became a slaughter and ended in the death of Estill and all but five of his men. The same number of Indians remained alive, and with the withdrawal of the white men these, sullen and weary, set out on their long way home.
The effect of this battle was indescribable. Kentucky had never before been invaded by Indians capable of fight- ing so determinedly. The Kentuckians had tried the met- tle of the Wyandots and had to acknowledge defeat. Henceforth the very name spread terror over the land. The white dead had been left with the Indians, and Ken- tucky felt keenly the disgrace of this. Previously they had despised the Indians ; henceforward they were compelled to dread. Miller and his companions were held up to public obloquy, but to a dispassionate enquirer their ac- tions appear far from disgraceful. They had no way of knowing the fate of Estill and his men. The advance of the Indians indicated that the van of the white force had been destroyed. In such an event, it was certain death for them to stand their ground. It would have been of more than human courage to do otherwise than flee. Ap- parently, too, the Wyandots had satiated themselves with fighting, for only a few minor depredations followed
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Estill's defeat. During June and July Kentucky was unvisited by hostile Indians and the country enjoyed a short and delusive quiet. It was the calm that comes be- fore a storm; the two months' cessation of hostilities was necessitated by the preparations of the Indians for their proposed expedition against Kentucky. The tribes met at Old Chillicothe during the first days of August and aroused by every device known to Indian savagery the passions of their warriors for the work in hand. Ths Wyandots, in fact, needed no encouragement ; it was to be with them a matter of revenge. For in the spring of the year an expedition sent out from Fort Pitt had ruthlessly and in definance of the laws of God and man slaughtered the Mora- vian Indians of the Wyandots living on the Sandusky River. A second marauding expedition had fallen into their hands, and its leader, Colonel Crawford, had been burned after horrible barbarities. These things had roused the wrath and inflamed the passions of the Wyandots. Their white leader, Simon Girty, took a prominent part. in the deliberations, if such they can be called, at .Chilli- cothe. In an oration, second only in beauty and inten- sity of feeling to that of Logan's, he recited their wrongs and invoked their vengeance. Captain Caldwell of the British service was in command of the force that finally got under way for Kentucky ; Moluntha commanded the Shawnese and Girty went along as interpreter and quasi- commander of the Wyandots. Caldwell had with him some- thirty picked rangers, and his total force numbered about three hundred men. He moved down the Little Miami, crossed the Ohio, and made his way into Kentucky over the route used by Byrd two years before.2
2 De Peyster to Haldimand, Clarke MSS., Vol. X, p. 635.
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What was the power of Kentucky to resist an invasion so formidable? The highest officer in the land was Briga- dier-General Clarke, at that time with headquarters at Louisville. But he was thoroughly disgruntled over the failure of his Detroit campaign and remained sullenly aloof from things Kentuckian. His indifference, in truth, was so great as to merit and receive the sharpest of repri- mands from the Governor of Virginia before the close of the year.3 Of the three counties of Kentucky, John Todd commanded as county-lieutenant in Fayette, John Floyd in Jefferson, and Benjamin Logan in Lincoln. All these men were commanders of proven ability, but there is some evidence to indicate that there was not complete harmony among them. They had differed in regard to the location of the forts to be built by Virginia for the protection of Kentucky and to the advisability of the expedition against Detroit. The superior reputation of Logan as an Indian fighter did not, perhaps, increase his popularity with his brother officers. Logan, moreover, as senior colonel was the ranking officer in any joint enterprise. The military strength of Kentucky, as ascertained the previous sum- mer, was 1,236, of which number Jefferson furnished 354, Lincoln, 732 and Fayette, 150.4 In all probability the Kentucky militia, in August, 1782, did not number more than 1,500. No such number, however, could be gathered together at any one time for a definite purpose. The Ken- tuckians, as their leaders, were divided among themselves in regard to Virginia's war policy and the merits of their commanders.
Such was the state of Kentucky when Caldwell crossed the Ohio with his force of Indians and rangers. Passing
8 Clarke MSS., Vol. LII, Harrison to Clarke, October 17, 1782, p. 50.
4 Floyd to Clarke, Clarke MSS., Vol. LI, May 22, 1781, p. 53.
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down the Licking River until he was near Ruddle's Sta- tion, he, at Mill Creek, turned his course toward central Kentucky, and, after detaching a part of his force to distract the attention of the other forts, led the main body of his men to Bryant's Station, about five miles from Lexington, and placed them in hiding around it on the night of August 15th. Meanwhile the subordinate force had been doing its work well. On the tenth it had raided Hoy's Station in what is now Madison County, and had carried off two boys, one of whom was Hoy's son.5 They then retreated slowly and insolently toward the Ohio, with the hope that a force would be collected for pursuit, and thus leave fewer men to guard Bryant's. Their expecta- tions were realized. Captain John Holder in hot haste set out from his own station, and gathering volunteers as he passed Boonesborough, Strode's and McGee's followed rapidly with a force numbering sixty-three men. He reached the Upper Blue Licks on Licking River just as the Indians were disappearing in the distance on the trail to the Lower Blue Licks. Holder, in spite of his pre- cautions, ran into an ambuscade a mile below the Licks, and the defeat that followed is commemorated by the name- Battle Run-given to the stream near which the Indians were overtaken. After a period of confused and desperate fighting, Holder managed to extricate his force with but one man killed and three wounded. His retreat across the Licking left the Indians in possession of the field and added one more defeat to the already long list of the year's disasters.
The news of Hoy's Station and Battle Run reached Bryant's a little before the Indians encamped around it,
5 Shane MSS., Vol. II, p. 245.
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and, as Caldwell had hoped, the garrison began at once making preparations to march to the aid of their neigh- bors. All the night long, while the Indians lay hidden around the fort, the garrison of forty-four men was kept busy within making preparations for an early start next morning. Had Caldwell known of this he would have bided his time until the force had departed and had left the fort bare of defenders. But he had miscalculated and was under the impression that the relief company had already marched. So, when at sunrise one of the negro slaves, Jim, made his appearance he was fired upon and the shots made known to the garrison that the fort was invested.6 There was no further talk of marching; the men settled themselves grimly for the struggle before them. Yet the Indians, as often, did not choose to show their strength. Two men on horseback were sent out from the fort to seek help from Lexington and the Indians allowed them to depart unmolested; nor was any injury done to the women who went out and milked the cows nor to the negroes who carried in the water from the spring. The Indians, evidently, had no intention of unmasking their forces for the sake of capturing a few women or negroes. Elijah Craig who was in command of the fort determined to decoy the Indians into an attack ; he sent thirteen men about eight o'clock into the lane beside the fort to draw the fire of the Indians whom he suspected of being in ambush there. The Indians fired upon the men and immediately there was a rush to storm the fort. But a terrific fire from the alert garrison forced them to retreat in confusion. For the remainder of the day they contented themselves with burning the
& Boone MSS., Vol. XIII. Deposition of Joseph Fisklin, p. 74.
+
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stables and keeping up an uninterrupted yelling and fir- ing from a safe distance. In the meantime the two messengers sent to Lexington returned with the news that they had found, on reaching Lexington, all the avail- able men there already on the road to reinforce Holder, that they had overtaken them on the march and induced them to turn back to the relief of Bryant's. The Lex- ington men, in fact, followed close on the messenger and appeared near the fort at about one o'clock. In order to enter the fort it was necessary for them to pass through a cornfield down a narrow lane. In this corn- field the Indians lay in ambush silently until the entire mounted force was encompassed. Then they began a furious but ill-aimed fire. But the Lexington men for- seeing such an event, had at the first report spurred their horses to full speed and by dint of hard riding and rare good fortune managed to reach the fort without an in- jury. The garrison, not daring to open their gates, took them bodily, horses and riders, through their cabin doors. Meanwhile, some half dozen horsemen from Boonesborough and about thirty footmen from Lexing- ton came up and hearing the firing made for the lane. They quickly found themselves confronted by Indians in overwhelming numbers but with empty guns. This latter fact gave the white men an opportunity to escape and they took it in the swiftest and most informal manner. All escaped but six.
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