USA > Massachusetts > Our western border : its life, combats, adventures, forays, massacres, captivities, scouts, red chiefs, pioneer women, one hundred years ago, containing the cream of all the rare old border chronicles > Part 2
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Harbison, Massy, Touching narra- tive of. 685 Harrod, James, Life and adven- tures of ... 505
Nurses a wounded Indian. 508 Mysterious death of .. 509 Hart, Silas, his son avenges him 745 Henry, Alexander, the trader 118
His adventures. 121
Higgins, the Ranger, Obstinate combat of. 641
Holland, Luke, his sagacity at trailing 647
Hubbell, Captain, Desperate at- tack on boat of. 604
Obstinate defence.
606
Hughes, Jesse, mountain hunter ...
Hurons, The.
6
669
Indians, Anecdotes of.
748
Introduction ..
1
Iroquois or Six Nations.
7
Jack, Captain, the wild hunter of the Juniata 56-109
Jesuit Pioneers 14 Johonnet, Jackson, Singular ad- ventures of .. 532
Johnson Boys, Remarkable ex-
ploits of ..
721
Johnson, Sir William, Baronet ... 243
Peculiar
education
of
his
daughters
245
Author's late visit to Johnson
Hall and Castle. 248
Kennan, the Ranger, his race for life .. 542
Gallantry 545 Kennedy, Peter, Combat and es- cape of .. 510
Kenton, Simon.
293
Remarkable adventures of. 301
Saved by Girty
809
Meets Logan 312
His last years.
315
Appearance of .. 318
Adventure with Wetzel.
325
Adventures with Ward and
Calvin
598
Kentucky in the olden time. 254
Kentucky, Women of.
273
His death. 55 Sports of. 290
Kentucky,
Adventures
of five
boys of.
725
-
INDEX. XV
Page.
Kirk, a lad, made to slay six In-
dians ..
747
Kirkwood, Captain Robert .. 546-675
Knights of Golden Horseshoe. ...
2
Knight, Dr. John, his wonderful escape. 468
Lewis, General Andrew 164
Little Turtle, a chief. 546
Logan, Benjamin 352 After battle of Blue Licks 284 Logan, the famous Mingo Chief .. 170
Death of ..
175
Logan, Captain, a Shawnee chief, 360 His romantic death 363
Logston, " Big Joe "
369
Machillimackinac, Fort, captured, 117 Marshall, Thos., and Jas. Girty ... 618 Mason, Mrs. George, kills one and frightens a score. 711
Massawomee Indians ... 6
May, John, Johnston, Flinn and Skyles, Adventures of .. 571
Merrill, Mrs. John, the " Long- Knife Squaw " .. 698
Miller, The Brothers, and their adventures ... 555-558 Minter, Captain John, his famous bear fight. 662 Mc Afee Brothers, Adventure of ... 379 Mcclellan, Robert, the Ranger .... '554 His life and extraordinary feats, 562 His later exploits. .. 566-571 Mccullough, John, Captivity of ... 204 McColloch, Major Samuel, at siege of Fort, Henry ... 520
McGary, Hugh, at Blue Licks. 277 His defence .. 283
Kills Moluntha. 360
McKee, Captain, deserts to the British 392
McManimy, Torture of. 227 McConnel's capture and revenge .. 377 Mills, Thos., riddled with bullets, 679 Moluntha, Murder of. 358
Montour, Catharine, alias Queen
Esther.
628
Moravian mission. 397
Towns destroyed. 400
75 Massacre of .. 403 Moredock, Colonel John, his terri- ble revenge. 633
Morgan, David, his desperate con- flict .. 385
Morgan, Levi, his stratagem for
Muldrow, how he found his neigh- Page.
bor.
664
Northwestern campaign
529
Ogilvie, Pleasant adventure of ..
639
One hundred years ago.
1-8
Pack-horseing.
052
Perry, Levi and Reuben, two lit- tle boys, in woods all Winter, 746
Pioneers, Life and customs of.
183
Hardships of.
187
Woodcraft and hunting.
191
Weddings, frolics and amuse-
ments of.
193
Pioneer women
4-5
Of Kentucky.
273
Their trials and heroism.
685
Pipe, Captain.
389
Pitt, Fort, Guyasutha's siege of ...
148
Poe, Andrew and Adam, their fa- mous fight with Bigivot. 445
Andrew's tussle with a bull 447
His narrow escape ..
448
Pontiac, Conspiracy of.
112
Character of.
114
Messhawa, a noble chief ..
....
.577-585
Anecdotes of.
134
Fights with Tecumseh ..
597
Death of.
147
Point Pleasant, Battle of.
161
Purdy Family, Massacre of.
672
Ray, James, Adventures of. 740 Reynolds, Lieut., chaffing Girty .. 276
Gallantry of.
281
Rice's Fort, Attack on ...
528
Rose, Major John, at Crawford's
expedition
455
Schoolmaster attacked by wild cat, 383 Scarrooyaddy, Chief. 18 Scott, Frances, Wanderings of ..... 706 Scraggs, Widow, fierce attack on her cabin. 695
Sevier, Ruth, marries a Shawnee Chief. 717
Shawnees.
6
Six Nations
Slocum, Frances, the lost sister ... Slover, John, the guide, Capture 630 and adventures of .. 468
His escape and mad ride 471
Smith, Col. James, his captivity .. His marriage. 105 Takes a British fort. 107
Smith, Major, how he recovered his sweetheart. 667
St. Clair, Sir John.
46
St. Clair, General Ar.hur, his campaign and defeat. 537 - his life .. 678
.
xvi
INDEX.
Page.
St. Clair, Louisa, the dashing and beautiful 710
Stobo, Major Robert ..
26
Remarkable adventures of. 29
His escape from Quebec .. 31
Captures two ships 35
Thomas, Captain John, massacre
of family. 674
Tush Family, Massacre of. 673
Van Buskirk, Sad death of. 671
Van Campen, Major, his wonder- ful combat. 621
Vincennes, Capture of ..
495
Ward, Captain James, and the fat Dutchman. 619
Ward, Calvin and Kenton's adven- tures. 598
War Belt, legend of North Bend .. 500 Washington, George, his first visit to the West 17
To Venango .. 19
Hurled into the Allegheny and shot at 20
His first campaign.
23
Surrenders Fort Necessity
25
Sick on the march.
46-49
Conduct at Braddocks Fields ....
50
Page.
Wayne, "Mad Anthony," Cam- paign of. 547 Weiser, Conrade. 237 Wells, Capt. William, the Ranger, and daring exploits. 554-559
Wells, Jack, and his dream.
372
Wild white man and his story 665
Wetzel family.
319
Martin captured. 320
John's adventures.
321
As a boy
723
Jacob and Kenton. 325
Lewis the most daring and fa- mous .. 327
328
Captured when a boy ... Kills three savages in a running fight 329
Adventures of.
330
Death of.
342
Widow won at last.
716
Williams, The Isaac and Rebecca of West Virginia. 718 Williamson, David ... 403-7-16-450-8 White Eyes, a noble Delaware Chief. 389
Will Case on the border.
241
Zane, Betty, her famous gun-
powder exploit.
524
OUR WESTERN BORDER
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION.
Where are the sturdy yeomen Who battled for this land,
And trod these hoar old forests, A brave and gallant band ? They knew no dread of danger When rose the Indian's yell ; Right gallantly they struggled, Right gallantly they fell. From Allegheny's summit To the farthest western shore,
These brave men's bones are lying Where they perished in their gore. Their bones were left to whiten The spot where they were slain,
And were ye now to seek them They would be sought in vain .- The Pioneer.
ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO ! That is a large measure of time in America ! Compared with Egypt or Greece or Rome, our Republic is yet in its veriest infancy. The ivy-mantled abbeys and rook-haunted castles of England date from William the Conqueror, over eight hun- dred years ago. One century here sufficeth to give the stamp of hoary antiquity, and our nation is even now celebrating its first Centennial with as much swelling "pride, pomp and circumstance" as if it were its fiftieth.
Time, however, is not tested by periods, but by events. "Better," writes Tennyson, "fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay." Of how much value, then, is one year in America, where life is so intensi- fied ; where quick-thronging events so crowd and jostle each other, and where rapid development is such a very marvel that the wild dream of yesterday becomes the sober reality of to-day; where entire com- munities rise, as it were, like exhalations from the earth, and where the magic growth of Chicago and St. Louis may soon find parallel in some far city of the Plains or of the Pacific Slope.
2
2
8
story
an
OUR WESTERN BORDER.
One Hundred Years Ago, almost the entire vast and magnificent domain beyond the Alleghenies was an unbroken wilderness-an illimit- able ocean of verdure, sweeping over hill and dale in billowy undula- tions ; seamed here and there by dividing ridges, or cut into leafy rifts by abounding streams ; intersected only by devious Indian trails or buffalo paths; inhabited by swarthy and subtle savages, or infested by noxious serpents and prowling beasts of prey. Green intervals, dotted with browsing deer ; expansive savannas, cumbered with clumsy bison ; savage gorges; wild, sunless glens, or matted, luxuriant thickets, here and there broke the monotony of all this sylvan scenery.
What is now the Great West, was then the Unknown West-as mys- terious a region and as provocative of daring adventure as are to-day the unexplored wilds of Central Africa. If the hardy hunters who ventured into those vast solitudes brought not back with them stories of "Cannibals that each other eat; Of Anthropophagi and men whose heads Do grow beneath their shoulders," they did circulate many won- drous stories of the marvelous fatness and beauty of those vast wastes ; of the variety and prodigality of the vegetation-vines, grasses, woods, flowers and exuberant undergrowth; of the plenteous supply of every variety of noble game, and, especially, of the fierce and untamed sava- ges, who threaded the virgin forests ; who paddled their birchen barks on the full-banked streams, or who, hideous in paints, encountered them amid woodland glooms with horrid whoop and fierce assault.
Little more than a half century before, Spottswood, the spirited Gov- ernor of the Colony of Virginia, had endeavored to stimulate the slum- nering Livingstones of his day and district, by establishing what was called the Transmontane Order of the Knights of the Golden Horse- shoe, investing each of those who ventured beyond the mountains, with a miniature golden horseshoe bearing, the legend, " Sic jurat tran- scendere montes," or "Thus (or by this) he swears to cross the mount- ains." Equipping a company of horsemen, the adventurous Governor commenced his march in great pomp from Williamsburg, the then capi- tal of the colony. Pursuing their slow and devious way amid forests of majestic growth ; crossing bright streams of sparkling freshness ; passing by constant displays of leafy or floral exuberance, they finally climbed to the summit of the Allegheny mountains. But, that was the ultima thule of their explorations. They were, it is true, enchanted with the mag- nificent prospect which, from their rocky perch, burst upon their en- raptured vision, but they never reached the thither or sunset slopes of those mountains, but contented themselves with gazing, as did Moses from Mount Pisgah, at the affluent Canaan beyond. Even thirty years later there were but few, and those belonging to the "wild turkey
3
INTRODUCTION.
breed " of whom Boone and Kenton were such conspicuous members, who had advanced as far west as the Shenandoah Valley ; but it was not really until about 1760 that the prophetic line of Bishop Berkeley began to be realized :- " Westward the star of empire takes its way."
It is quite foreign from our purpose to present a formal and precise chronicle of the gradual penetration of the pioneers into the western wilderness ; nor do we design to cumber and overload our work with details of Indian nations, customs and habits. All this would require whole volumes, and has been done fully and acceptably by others. What may be called the Heroic Age of Western Border Life and Strug- gle, is embraced in the last half of the 18th century, or to speak more definitely, from about the year 1760, after the capture of Forts Du- quesne and Niagara, down to the year 1794, when "Mad Anthony Wayne " forever broke the spirit and crushed the power of the Confed- erate Western Tribes at the battle of the "Fallen Timbers." Within the period thus limited, we may safely challenge all history, ancient or modern, to exhibit such a constant series of stubborn and desperate struggles. The turbulent times of the Robber Barons of Germany, or the bitter and violent feuds of the Scottish Border, furnish no parallels to the frequent forays and marauds ; to the innumerable acts of daring ; of cool, reckless courage and adventure ; of persistent tenacity of pur- pose, as are embraced in the chronicles and the unwritten traditions of the Pennsylvania, Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee frontiers. It was a fierce, dogged, savage and desperate struggle between two brave and jealous races ; the whites fighting for room and opportunity to live and thrive, and the reds for what they deemed their own soil and hunting grounds. "When Greek meets Greek, then comes the tug o' war," and every man who went out upon those borders carried his life in his hands ; liable, at any time, to be shot or tomahawked from every tree that could cover a lurking foe ; his home and family constantly exposed to the merciless attacks of a savage, wily and implacable enemy. Each knew well that it was " war to the knife, and the knife to the hilt," and worked, idled or slept with his trusty blade or rifle within easy grasp. It was generally the young, ardent and the adventurous, who thus boldly made haste to bid grim defiance to perils and to offer a standing chal- lenge to fierce and revengeful foes.
From this incessant exposure to imminent peril, there naturally grew up on the border a race of sturdy, reckless, rough-and-ready frontier- men to whom fear was absolutely unknown, and to many of whom the most thrilling passion of their lives was long, solitary hunts after In- dians whom they would track with the unswerving tenacity of the blood- hound and, when found, grapple with a most marvelous audacity and
4
OUR WESTERN BORDER.
doggedness. All their senses were on the alert ; trained to a wondrous skill and quickness with the keen tomahawk or the unerring rifle ; prac- ticed in every variety of wood-craft; they had an eye equal to the sava- ges themselves for detecting the minutest signs of an enemy, and for trailing him through the most bewildering woods and undergrowth to his very lair. We often shudder when, sitting by our quiet firesides, we read of the desperate combats between such mighty hunters as Ger- ard and Cummings and the ferocious lions, tigers, and other wild beasts, whose jungles they have gone long distances to penetrate ; but what are the fiercest and most infuriate of all animals that ever crouched to a leap, compared with the subtle and desperate American savage, perfectly at home in his native wilds ; with all his destructive wits, sharp- ened to an extraordinary acuteness ; taught from childhood to find life's highest honors in killing and scalping, and trained in every possible wile to lure or ensnare a foe. How truly the famous Poe, with his quaint and homely hunter's jargon, confessed to a common passion of the Border, when he said, with deepest feeling, " I've fout cats and bar and painter, and every other wild varmint of the woods, but Injuns beats them all ! Yes, Injuns beats them all !"
And think, too, of the heroic women !- the wives and mothers of .he pioneers. As one of their own number has said, " A good Provi- dence sent such men and women into the world together. They were made to match." It is said that war, if it lead to havoc, mourning and desolation, has also a tendency to excite the nobler and more heroic pas- sions of the soul. It is, in a measure, true, and the women of the scourged and harassed Border were-under their constant familiarity with danger in its most horrid and appalling forms-perfect paragons of nerve and fortitude. The annals of the West are absolutely brilliant with the most marvelous exhibitions of female heroism. They had not, like the men, the passions and excitements of the chase, but were left in exposed, isolated cabins, with all the cares and anxieties of the family upon them, and when these homes were suddenly invaded by the pitiless savages and themselves carried off into a hopeless captivity, were liable to see the brains of their young babes dashed out against the nearest tree, and their older children either killed or scalped before their eyes or scattered among various captors. How crowded are all our Border chronicles with the sickening horrors of settlers' cabins at- tacked and the women and children shamefully maltreated !
The Mothers of our Forest Land, Such were their daring deeds. Their monument ! where does it stand? Their epitaph, who reads ? No braver dames had Sparta, No nobler matrons Rome,
Yet who or lauds or honors them E'en in their own green home ?
5
INTRODUCTION.
They had no respite from a wearing, consuming anxiety, except in the dead of winter, when the Indians generally lay quiet in their forest towns ; as soon, however, as the wild geese were seen steering their way to the north, or the frogs were heard piping in the ponds and marshes, then a great dread came over them. The poet has sung of Autumn, that the " melancholy days have come, the saddest of the year," but with women of the border, it was the Spring whose breezes came freighted with sadness. The customary harbingers of Spring to them were the appalling, blood-curdling yell of the stealthy savage, or the gleam of his thirsting and unsparing tomahawk. They regarded the budding of trees and the opening bloom of flowers with the most gloomy forebod- ings, and listened to the songs of the woodland birds as but the prelude to the shriek of assault. Then was the bark of the watch-dog at night, especially if their male protectors were absent, far more dismal than the cry of either wolf or panther, since it suggested the probability of lurk- ing redmen, and the fond, anxious mother would start from her troubled slumber, and, with ear attent and head uplifted, would listen, listen, listen for the sound of the distant war-whoop or the rude assault upon her barred, oaken door. Then, perchance, she would fall again into fitful, uneasy slumber, to dream of some murderous deed or horrid scalping. Oh, " we, in these piping times o' peace," may never know- most certainly can never realize, a tithe of the dreads, the privations, the sufferings and the untold and untellable horrors which the noble and heroic women of the West endured for many and many years of their lives. Surely, had not a constant familiarity with danger bred indiffer- ence to it, their lives would have been inexpressibly hard and intolerable.
It would be clearly impossible, as indeed it would be undesirable, to publish a full and detailed chronicle of all that was done or suffered by the pioneers and their families. We can only hope to give readers a true and impressive idea of border life and struggle, by carefully selecting salient events and personal adventures, each differing from the other in character and incident, but all, together, furnishing, as it were, a historical panorama of a half century of forays, marauds, mas- sacres and adventures, and narrated, so far as may be, in the chrono- logic order of occurrence, and connected together by a running com- mentary of explanation. By thus retaining only the cream of the various border books-most of which have long been out of print, and are exceedingly rare and costly; by adding many new sketches and adventures, known to a comparative few; by correcting the errors of the old, staple histories, and furnishing much new and original matter, we hope, within the compass of a portable book, to give a faithful idea of our western border as it was one hundred years ago.
6
OUR WESTERN BORDER.
And, first, it is a great but common error to suppose that the vast domain stretching west of the Alleghenies was thickly settled and occu- pied with Indians. The whole of Kentucky had not a single tribe resi- dent within its ample borders, but was used by the Catawbas, Chero- kees and Chickasaws to the south, and by the Delawares, Shawnees and Hurons to the north, as one common hunting and skirmishing ground. It was about the same with the western half of Virginia and eastern half of Ohio. Immense tracks of woodland-a very paradise for hunters-were left an utter solitude. Large parts of Michigan, Illinois and Tennessee were tenanted by wild beasts alone. In the whole vast region lying between the Atlantic and Mississippi, the Cumberland and Lake Superior, the entire Indian population, at the opening of the Revolution, scarce exceeded ten thousand warriors, of which the Six Nations of New York numbered about two thousand, the Delawares six hundred, the Shawnees five hundred, the Hurons or Wyandots about the same, the Miami tribes eight hundred, &c. Most of the Ohio In- dians, too, were but late comers, the Delawares and Shawnees having emigrated from Pennsylvania from 1730 to 1750, and the Hurons having moved down from the neighborhood of Detroit and the upper Jakes.
The Shawnee villages which Christian Post found in the upper Ohio valley were soon after abandoned, and the majestic Ohio, "strong without rage; without o'erflowing, full," swept onward from its head to its mouth, with scarce a hamlet along its woody margins to denote the abodes of human beings. On interior streams, however, as the Sciota, Muskingum, Wabash, Miami, &c., the villages of the redmen were more numerous. A significant reason is given for this. It is said that the same beautiful and abounding stream which the French so appro- priately called La Belle Riviere, was long previously known to some of the tribes which lived along its borders under the dread name of the River of Blood. It was no idle title. Tradition tells of many a san- guinary battle along the picturesque shores of this grand old river, over whose sylvan banks has so often trickled the crimson stream of Indian massacre.
When Virginia was first known to the whites, the Massawomees-so called by the Indians of East Virginia, to whom they were a constant source of alarm-were the most powerful confederacy of western tribes, and many a fierce and bloody fight are they reported to have had with the then Five Nations of New York, the most powerful combination of eastern tribes. It had, in the early times, been the fashion of these Iroquois, settled about the York lakes, to come down the Allegheny and Ohio in flotillas of canoes, and, moving thus swiftly and secretly,
- --
7
DESTRUCTION OF THE ERIE TRIBE.
having few impedimenta and little or no trouble about provisions, and leaving no trail either to betray their presence or indicate their line of retreat, they could thus swoop down like a tempest upon towns and villages within striking distances of the Ohio. For this reason the regions on both margins of that stream had long been unoccupied, and were only roamed over by hunting parties of various nations, the tribal villages generally lying from fifty to a hundred miles back, and being located at the forks of some tributary stream allowing easy canoe navigation in all directions.
These Six Nations, called Iroquois by the French and Mingoes or Mengwe by the Dutch, merit a somewhat more extended notice at our hands, since of all the savage tribes in America they stood foremost in war, in eloquence, in primitive virtues, and in all the arts of policy. They were the Romans of America, and were the proud conquerors of an immense extent of country, including even Canada itself, and it was through actual or alleged purchase from them that the English asserted title to all the land west of the Allegheny Mountains, the French claim- ing the same magnificent domain by right of discovery and prior possession. They consisted originally of five nations : the Mohawks, the Oneidas, the Onondagos, the Cayugas, and the Senecas, to whom a sixth, the Tuscaroras, from the south, were admitted in. The con- federacy thus formed was strong, close and harmonious, their am- bition and ferocious valor adding one domain after another, and sub- jecting to their dominion every tribe in the whole country worth con- tending with.
As De Witt Clinton truly remarked : "They are the Romans of America," and through the magic potency of union and concerted ac- tion, were able to accomplish wonders. It was among them, and at the time when they had arrived at the height of their power, that we must look for the highest type of the American Indian, such as he was before debauched and degraded by the contaminating influences of the debased trader and rum-seller. To give only one instance of the success of the Iroquois in the subjugation of other nations, we subjoin their traditional account of the total
DESTRUCTION OF THE ERIE TRIBE OF INDIANS.
The Eries were famed as the most powerful and warlike of all the Indian tribes. They resided at the foot of the great lake of the same name, at a place called Tu-shu-way, now the opulent city of Buffalo.
When the Eries heard of the close confederation formed between the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagos, Cayugas and Senecas, which went under the name of the Five Nations, they imagined it must be for
1
8
OUR WESTERN BORDER.
some mischievous purpose. Although confident of their superiority over any one of the tribes inhabiting the countries within the bounds of their knowledge, they dreaded the power of such combined forces. In order to satisfy themselves regarding the character, disposition and power of those they considered their natural enemies, the Eries resorted to the following means.
They sent a friendly message to the Senecas, who were their nearest western neighbors and styled the Warders of the Threshold of the Long House, inviting them to select one hundred of their most active and athletic young men to play a game of ball against the same number to be selected by the Eries, for a wager which should be considered worthy of the occasion and the character of the great nation in whose behalf the offer was made.
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