USA > Kentucky > The history of Kentucky, from its earliest discovery and settlement, to the present date, V. 1 > Part 27
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195
CAUSES OF THE ATTACK ON BRYAN'S STATION.
Samuel South, one of the boys already mentioned as bearing the news of the killing of Jennie Gass, near the station, to Captain Estill, afterward became quite eminent as a soldier and politician of Eastern Kentucky. He represented Madison county for fourteen successive years, from 1800 to 1813, inclusive, and was chairman at different times of almost every impor- tant committee of the Legislature organized to transact its business; and at one time was defeated by Henry Clay, for speaker of the House, by but one vote. He was colonel in command of one of the regiments in Hopkins' campaign in 1812.
About the roth of August, a band of Indians made a raiding expedition in the vicinity of William Hoy's station, five miles south of Richmond, Mad- ison county, and capturing two boys, recrossed the Kentucky with their pris- oners. Captain John Holder gathered a party of men from his own station, and increased the number by recruits as he passed by McGee's and Strode's stations, to seventeen in all. He came up with the Indians near Upper Blue Licks, and attacked them with spirit; but finding them in much stronger force than he expected, and fearing that they might flank and overpower his party, he quietly withdrew. with the loss of four men killed and wounded.
1 On the night of August 14th, Bryan's station was invested by an Indian army of over five hundred warriors, under the lead of the noted white rene- gade, Simon Girty. Of the causes and forebodings which preceded this most eventful invasion of Kentucky, the following is a lucid and interesting account : 2
"The most potent, perhaps, of all the immediate causes that led to the attack on the Kentucky settlements in 1782, and to the battle of the Blue Licks, was the malignant activity of the renegade Simon Girty.
"The atrocities attributed to Girty, or immediately associated with his name, exceed the horrors of even savage barbarity. To his bloody imagi- nation the tomahawk and scalping-knife were but the toys of war; and the slaughter of captives, without distinction of age or sex, the merest matter of course. His delight was in the prolonged torture of his victims, and he seemed to enjoy a double pleasure in the exquisite torment of the sufferer, and the frenzied cruelty of the Indians, whom he knew only too well how to excite.
"His rude and bold nature had received a sinister education, and he seemed marked from his infancy to be the scourge of the frontier.
"Simon Girty was one of four sons of an Irish emigrant settled in Penn- sylvania-a vicious and drunken wretch, who was killed by his wife's para- mour. The four boys were captured in early childhood by a war party, and three of them permanently adopted an Indian life. 3 George became a Delaware, and continued with them until his death. He is said, on the
I Marshall, Vol. I., p. 131 ; McClung, p. 62.
2 Oration of Colonel John Mason Brown, at the Centennial of the Battle of Blue Licks.
3 Perkins, Western Annals, p. 170-1, note ; Campbell, Biographical Sketches, p. 147.
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HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
authority of one well informed, to have lost every trait and habit that marks the white man, and to have become an absolute savage. His fidelity to his adopted people never wavered; indeed, he knew no other kindred, and he surpassed the native Indian in that skill and cunning which is peculiarly his own. He appears to have been very brave, and to have fought the whites with skill and distinction at the Kanawha, at Sandusky, and at the Blue Licks. Tradition has rated him as a mere Indian, and he has escaped the execration that attaches to his brother's name.
"James Girty was adopted by the Shawanees. He passed in his earlier life repeatedly between the camp and war-path of the Indian and the fron- tier rendezvous of most abandoned whites. He imbibed all the worst vices. of both races, and exaggerated them in the fury of an unbridled lust for carnage. His delight was to devise new and lingering tortures for captives, and to superintend their application.
" Even after disease had destroyed his power of walking, he would cause. captive women and children to be forced within his reach, that he might hew them with his tomahawk. His life stands unrelieved by a single good deed or a single savage virtue. Once he pretended to warn some whites against an impending attack, but it seems probable that some cunning design was hidden behind it. It may be, as some have insisted, that much of the infamy that has been accorded Simon Girty belongs properly to his brother James. If it were possible to test the traditions which have come down to us, perhaps an impartial judgment might absolve the more famous rene- gade from many a crime that has been laid to his charge. For Simon Girty showed intellectual qualities, and at times was kindly beyond his brothers or the other renegade whites. He remembered Kenton as an ancient friend, and saved his life. In other instances he showed an almost pity. But it was in each case in his earlier life as a warrior, and before the year 1778.
. "Simon Girty became in his childhood a Seneca Indian. They were his people and his friends. Though he wandered back at intervals to the verge of the white settlements, and was even for a brief time Kenton's com- rade as a spy for Lord Dunmore's expedition, he returned again to his Indian life. His hatred of the whites seemed to be intensified when the Indian tribes took up the hatchet as allies of England, and after 1778 he carried on an unrelenting war. For such a man, stained with so many cruelties, abhorred and dreaded throughout the frontier, to return to his . race, or hope to live within the pale of civilization, was impossible.
" The peace with Great Britain left Girty no choice but that of the Indian life, so congenial to him, no occupation but that of war to the death. Other whites, too, had, like Girty, become identified with the Indians, and had shared in their barbarities. Elliott and McKee, who had traded with the Shawanees, cast their fortunes with Girty, and, like him, devoted every energy to stirring up the Indians to war. Apostates from civilization, they surpassed the barbarian in hatred of its virtues.
1
197
MURDER OF CHRISTIAN INDIANS.
"There were, therefore, abundant reasons why the year 1782 should have been signalized by a mighty effort against the Kentucky settlements. As has been seen, the leading Indians looked with dismay to their future; the renegade whites were desperate.
"But as often happens when affairs are ripe for great events, an occasion for revenge, and an argument for a great expedition, was furnished to the hands of Girty and his allies.
"During the preceding year an expedition of retaliation against the Wyandottes had marched from the Pennsylvania frontier. It was followed in the early spring of 1782 by one under command of Williamson, who chose to think that the Christian Indians upon the Sandusky, where the Moravian Mission had been established, were participants in the Wyan- dottes' forays. With a barbarity that might have shamed Girty, he caused forty men, twenty women, and thirty-four children, whom he had captured, to be murdered in cold blood. The awful deed was perpetrated with a formal deliberation that lent a more revolting horror to the tragedy. Will- iamson and his ninety men took a solemn vote, and but sixteen favored mercy. 1 The prisoners had been captured as they gleaned the poor rem- nants of their ravaged fields, planted under their missionaries' care, and cultivated as part of their education into a civilized life. And there they were murdered, 'all of them' (as the saintly Heckewelder tells us) 'defense- less and innocent fellow Christians.' 2
"The awful crime of Williamson and his party, far from exciting horror, roused only a frenzy of impatience to complete the work of extermination. Another expedition was at once organized against the towns of the Mora- vian Delawares and Wyandottes upon the Sandusky. It rendezvoused not far from Fort Pitt, on the 20th of May, and was commanded by Colonel William Crawford, the former trusted agent of Washington. Nearly five hundred men took part in it, all well armed and mounted; and the purpose of the march was ostentatiously declared : 'No Indian was to be spared, friend or foe ; every red man was to die.'
"The Indian chiefs, and Girty and his fellows, found a ready response to their cry for resistance and revenge. So well were their measures taken that they killed and captured the greater part of Crawford's command. Williamson, the murderer of the Moravians, escaped, deserting homeward before the crisis of the expedition. The torture of Crawford, his death at the stake, the fiendish laughter of Girty as he witnessed his agony and denied the wretched sufferer's prayers for speedy death, have come down to us in the narrative of an eye-witness. The dreadful story need not be here repeated. The fortitude of the dying soldier was as conspicuous as were his agonies prolonged and acute. He died bravely, and the story of
I A full and most pathetic account of Williamson's massacre will be found in Doddridge, Settie- ment and Indian Wars, pp. 250-1.
2 Heckewelder's Narrative, pp. 312-328.
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HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
his death is one of the most familiar examples of Indian barbarity. 1 These excesses of cruelty seldom failed to bring bloody retaliations.
"We may feel a pride in the fact that, although the brunt of Indian vengeance was borne by Kentucky, though her best blood paid the penalty of Williamson's crime and Crawford's error, no Kentuckian had lot or part in either. Neither expedition was suggested, organized, or promoted in any respect by the Kentucky settlers.
"In all the chronicles of those long years, from Finley's first journey in 1767 to the end of the Indian wars at the battle of the Thames in 1813, no instance, save McGary's killing of Moluntha, occurs where Kentuckians met the foe on other than equal terms and in fair fight. Hundreds of in- stances attest their equal readiness for single combat or contest of numbers, and almost every encounter brought death to the pioneer or his foe; but the escutcheon of Kentucky has never been tarnished with the blot of cruelty, nor her lofty courage soiled by massacre of the defenseless, or by indignity to prisoners of war.
"The excitement of Crawford's expedition, and the exultation that fol- lowed his defeat, enabled Girty and the chiefs to arrange with celerity and secrecy for a formidable incursion into Kentucky. The warriors were flushed with victory and mad with hate. An army of whites had already been destroyed, and the prestige of the Indian name restored by a victory in the open field, over a well-equipped force, commanded by a veteran and trusted officer. An achievement had crowned the Indian arms greater than the victory over Braddock or the successes of Pontiac and his allies. Here- tofore, ambuscade and surprise had been their reliance. Crawford's defeat and capture had shown that the Indian could defend his own country with equal numbers in the open field. The dream of Pontiac seemed realized ; the confederation which he had labored to organize seemed now accom- plished, and its mission at hand. The warriors of all that broad territory that stretched from the Ohio to the lakes, and extended from the Wabash on the west to Fort Pitt and the Alleghany river on the east, were united in counsel and in hope. The concerted action of the ablest chiefs gave direc- tion to a universal impatience for a march and an attack. The great league which Pontiac had once before formed, and which, in after years, was to be revived by Tecumseh. in the death struggle of the Indian power, was consolidated and ready for immediate action. No opportunity ever pre- sented itself to the Indian at once so full of hope and so stimulating to his patriotism.
"The chiefs, in passionate language, called for a march that was to recover their old hunting-grounds, and at the same time secure themselves from invasion.
"If the continued settlement of Kentucky were to be allowed without resistance, the fate of the North-west was only too plain; but could the vic-
I Western Annals, pp. 245-8.
199
GIRTY CALLS FOR RE-ENFORCEMENTS.
torious league sweep from the soil of Kentucky the scattered occupants that in seven years' time had dotted its isolated center, and exterminate the pioneers as Crawford had been defeated. then would the West be indeed regained, and the Alleghanies become once more the bound to the white man's intrusion, and the bulwark of the Indian's security.
"It was a large and bold design that inspired the able chiefs of the con- federated tribes. Their purpose was to regain Kentucky, and to hold the entire West from the gulf northward to the lakes; and that purpose must have succeeded but for the men whose bones lie buried here.
" The time for the decisive struggle was at hand. The opportunity was one which years might not again present. The fate of the West was to be tried. Conscious of the gravity of the enterprise, and fully competent for its organization and conduct, the war chiefs of the tribes omitted no precau- tions nor indulged any delays. Runners were sent out to the tribes to summon all who were willing to join in the great expedition that was to crush the Kentuckians and yield a rich booty of scalps and plunder. By the Ist of August the gathering began at the old town of Chillicothe. The response to Girty's call was prompt and general. The Shawanees, Cherokees, Wyandottes, Miamis, and Pottawattamies combined to swell the invading force, and in a few days more than five hundred warriors were on the march for Kentucky.
"It does not appear what was Girty's organization of his force or who were his lieutenants, but the conduct of the fight a few days later showed a discipline and control remarkable in such a sudden levy, drawn from so many different tribes. He was able to enforce such secrecy and rapidity of movement that no warning of his march preceded him; and, what is stranger still, had the power to restrain his men until the decisive moment of his mur- derous attack. It is to be presumed that McKee and Elliott were in the expedition. With a refinement of cruelty, the Kentuckians captured two years before at Ruddle's and Martin's stations, and who owed their lives to the interference of Colonel Byrd, were forced to accompany the march and witness the death of friends and kindred. They were spectators of miseries which they could not avert, and after an unwilling participation in the cam- paign were returned to their captivity. 1
"The march of Girty and his Indians took Kentucky by surprise. Not a note of warning had been given. A less adroit enemy might well have succeeded in escaping detection, for not a settlement was in existence in all the territory north and east of the south fork of the Licking. From the inouth of the Licking to Louisville, and as far southward as Leestown, a station on the Kentucky river one mile below the present site of Frankfort, not a single inhabitant was to be found. The pioneers had clustered, as has been already observed, in localities that lay within a radius of mutual im- mediate assistance. By a kind of natural selection, the first Kentuckians
I Collins, Vol. II., p. 327.
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HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
took and held the 'Bluegrass.' The law of heredity seems to continue that preference in their descendants. 1
"Girty, descending the Little Miami with his force, crossed the Ohio unobserved, and hastened along the war trace made by Byrd two years before, into Central Kentucky. Leaving it, however, as seems probable, near Mill creek, in what is now Harrison county, he passed rapidly to the west and south of Ruddle's station, skirting the western banks of Stoner and Cooper's Run. through Bourbon county, and, following the ridge which divides the waters of North Elkhorn from those tributary to the south fork of the Licking, suddenly appeared before Bryan's station. It was on the night of the 14th of August that Girty, with his nearly six hundred Indians, surrounded the station. Within its stockade were forty cabins, and, by rarest good fortune, every man of its garrison, of about sixty effective rifle- men, was fully prepared for immediate duty. Lexington also, where forty- four men could be mustered, was in like state of preparation. Girty's prime object was to destroy these two stations and exterminate their little garrisons. If that were accomplished, all Kentucky north of the Kentucky river was regained. The plan failed only because of his own too great promptitude.
"In order to draw the small companies of defenders from the protection of their stockades, Girty detached a party of Wyandottes, who rapidly pushed on to Hoy's station, on the south side of the Kentucky river, in what is now Madison county, a few hundred yards from the site of the village of Foxtown. They so timed their march that on the roth of August they com- mitted some depredations there and captured two boys, retreating in no great haste eastward and across the Kentucky river. Captain Holder, with a few men, pursued, and augmenting his force by small additions at McGee's and Strode's stations, continued to follow the retreating Wyandottes, sending the alarm in the meantime to Bryan's station and Lexington. Holder came up with the enemy at the Upper Blue Licks on the 12th of August, and was forced to retreat with loss. At the news of his defeat, which was received at Bryan's station on the 14th, it was resolved to march at daybreak on the morrow to relieve Hoy's station and assist Holder.
"Girty had expected that the news would have been received, and the march made on the 14th, and for that reason, when he surrounded the sta- tion, he thought to have the double advantage of an easy capture of the station and the non-combatants, and of cutting off its garrison in the open country.
" Had Girty's arrival been delayed but a few hours, his expectation would have been realized; for when, long after midnight, he surrounded the station, a busy activity was to be noted within the fort. Lights still burned, and fires glowed in every cabin, though the heat of midsummer was oppressive. The real cause of this unusual and unexpected wakefulness was the intended
I The first allusion to bluegrass, or English grass as it is there called!, as a distinctive growth, will be found in the proof quoted in the case of Darnall vs. Higgins, Hardin's Kentucky Reports, p. 52.
201
GIRTY AS AN ORATOR.
march of the men at the coming of dawn. The women were industriously repairing moccasins and cooking rations for their husbands and brothers. The men were molding bullets and putting in complete order their trusty rifles. Not a soul within the fort dreamed that six hundred Indians already lay around them and within gunshot.
" The dawn found Girty's preparations all completed and those within the station yet ignorant of their imminent peril. The gates were opened and the well-prepared pioneers started on their march. Fortunately for them, Girty's orders were only too well obeyed. A heavy fire was opened on them. Ten minutes more of delay would have secured for Girty his grand opportunity. But the alarm had been given, and the weight of the volley betokened the number of the assailants. The Kentuckians fell back in- stantly within their defenses. and all hope of surprise was lost to the Indian army. Bryan's station, if taken at all, was to be captured by assault and desperate fighting.
1 " Girty, in order to inflame the minds of the young warriors against the Kentuckians, called them around him, took an elevated stand, disengaged his arm from his blanket, assumed the attitude of an orator, and delivered the following address :
" 'Brethren, the fertile region of Kentucky is the land of cane and clover, spontaneously growing to feed the buffalo, the elk, and the deer. There the bear and the beaver are always fat. The Indians from all tribes have had a right from time immemorial to hunt and kill these animals. and to bring off their skins to purchase clothing, to buy blankets for their backs, and rum to send down their throats to drive away the cold, and rejoice their hearts after the fatigue of hunting and the toil of war. [Great applause from the warriors.] But. brethren, the Long Knives have overrun your country and usurped your hunting-ground; they have destroyed the cane, trodden down the clover. killed the deer and buffalo, the bear, and the rac- coon. The beaver has been chased from his dam and forced to leave the country. [Palpable emotion among the hearers.] Brothers, the intruders on your lands exult in the success that has crowned their flagitious acts. They are planting fruit trees and plowing the land where not long since were the cane-brake and clover-field. Was there a voice in the trees of the forest, or articulate sounds in the gurgling waters, every part of the country would call on you to chase away these ruthless invaders, who are laying it waste. Unless you rise in the majesty of your might and exterminate their whole race, you may bid adieu to the hunting-grounds of your fathers, to the delicious flesh of the animals with which it once abounded, and to the skins with which you were once enabled to purchase your clothing and your rum.'
"There were men within the station whose long experience of a frontier life fitted them for the emergency. Elijah Craig was in command, and with
I Bradford's Notes, Sec. 13.
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202
HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
him Robert and Cave Johnson and others-well-tried men. Though they were but sixty opposed to six hundred, no thought of anything but energetic fight was entertained. The little garrison was distributed along the stockade. The very children contributed to the defense, and while their mothers molded bullets which their fathers shot at the foe, they busied themselves in extinguishing the flames lighted by fire arrows from the Indian camp, and stimulated by the general display of courage, went from place to place with their buckets and gourds, playing their parts as became their parentage. Such, at five years of age, was the first lesson and service in war of William Johnson, who was afterward to save Harrison and the Western army by his relief of Fort Meigs, and to die-too early-from the exposure of the cam- paign of the Maumee.
"And such was the lullaby of that youngest infant there, who was in after years to share in large measure the honors of his State and nation, but whose proudest distinction it was that Richard M. Johnson commanded, in the final battle of the Indian wars, that regiment of Kentucky riflemen before whom the noble Tecumseh and the renegade Girty fell.
"The news sent out from Bryan's station on the morning of the 15th of August had not stopped at Lexington or Todd's station. It flew like the summons of the fiery cross throughout the settlements. By nightfall, Boone received the tidings at Boonesborough, and at early dawn was in motion with all his little force. With him in this, which was to be the old pioneer's last of all his fights, went his youngest boy-his Israel-destined to death in the coming battle, the father's last sacrifice on yonder mountain in the cause to which he had so devoted himself. Trigg, too, came up in haste from Har- rodsburg, bringing with him Harlan and McGary, and the men from across the Kentucky.
"Logan was warned at St. Asaph's, and with all possible rapidity collected such as could be drawn from the remoter settlements. The word had gone out that every fighting man was needed. The response to the call was in- stant and unanimous.
"During the 17th, Boone and Trigg, Harlan and McBride, and McGary and their men had reached Bryan's station. Enough men had hurried thither to swell the number to what the better account, on the authority of Boone, fixes at one hundred and eighty-one riflemen. Their rendezvous was not obstructed by the Indians. With a deep and subtle purpose Girty permitted them to pass unattacked into the station."
The builders of the fort had committed the common error of locating it apart from the spring which supplied the garrison with water. As a cun- ning strategy. the Indians had placed in ambush, in easy shot of this spring, a formidable body of warriors. Another party was to attack on the other side, and drawing the attention of the garrison in this direction, to create an opportunity for a successful assault from the ambushed force. The open- ing of the gate and the visit to the spring of a party of water-carriers, they
:
203
THE RUSE OF THE PIONEERS.
hoped would present this opportunity. The dilemma presented two evils, between which it was hard to choose.
The designs of the Indians were quickly penetrated by Elijah Craig and his veteran foresters; and after manning the gates, the bastions, and the loopholes to the best advantage, and repairing the palisades, the very grave question of a supply of water came up for action. They well divined the ambushed foe in easy range of the spring, and that almost certain death awaited any party of men who should expose themselves there; also, that the concealed warriors would not likely unmask until the continuous firing on the other side was returned with such warmth as to induce the belief that the feint was successful. The strategy of the Indians must be counteracted with more cunning strategy on the part of the whites. The latter fell upon this ruse : They called together all the women, and explained to them the improbability of injury being offered to them, until the firing had been returned from the opposite side of the fort, and urged them to go in a body to the spring, and each bring up a bucket of water. The gentle sex rather demurred, insisting that they were not bullet-proof, and that Indians had hitherto shown no distinction of delicacy between male and female scalps.
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