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 46
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417
SLAUGHTER RENEWED AT SMOKY ISLAND.
The whole massacre leaves a stain of deepest dye on the page of American history. It was simply atrocious and execrable-a blistering disgrace to all concerned; utterly without excuse and incapable of de- fence. It damns the memory of each participator "to the last syllable of recorded time." All down the ages the "massacre of the Inno- cents" will be its only parallel. We must go to the Thugs of India or. the slaughterers of African Dahomey for its superior.
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£18
OUR WESTERN BORDER.
SKETCH OF SIMON GIRTY, THE "WHITE SAVAGE."
The outlawed white man, by Ohio's flood,
Whose vengeance shamed the Indian's thirst for blood ; Whose hellish arts surpassed the redman's far ; Whose hate enkindled many a border war, Of which each aged grandame hath a tale
At which man's bosom burns, and childhood's cheek grows pale.
From the Spring of 1778-when Girty, in company with Matthew Elliott, Alexander McKee, and other well-known tories, fled from Fort Pitt to the British Indians-down to General Wayne's battle of the Fallen Timbers, in '94, where the power of the western tribes was utterly and forever broken, no name on the whole frontier was so wide- ly known or so universally dreaded as that of Simon Girty-the " White Savage," as he was styled by the missionary Heckewelder. Scarce a scalping party, maraud or massacre occurred during those troublous times, that was not blamed on the Girtys-for there were three brothers of the family, all operating and influential with the western Indians. The hated name was a terror in every pioneer's cabin, and the mere mention of it would cause woman's cheek to blanch, and children's hair to stand with fear.
For a score of years Simon Girty was the Raw-head-and-bloody-bones of the border. That he was not so cruel and debased as represented ; that many of the frontier stories and traditions of him were absolute fictions, and that frequently enormities which were perpetrated by his two brothers, George and James, were falsely charged on Simon, is now; in the light of subsequent facts not then known, sure and certain. There is so much stuff and mystery concerning him in the old border books, that it is difficult to come at the exact truth, but, after a pains- taking research, we think the following sketch, in which " naught is extenuated and naught set down in malice," comes nearer the truth than anything that has yet been published.
Simon Girty, Sr., was an Indian trader, regularly licensed by the Colony of Pennsylvania, and plying his perilous and vagabondish voca- tion among the western savages. He was a vulgar, violent old cur- mudgeon of an Irishman, and said to have been so besotted with liquor as to have turned his wife's love to hate, and to have been killed by her paramour. He left four boys : Thomas, Simon, George and Fames. Some time during Braddock's war, in 1755, the last three were made
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SKETCH OF SIMON GIRTY
captive by the Indians ; but Thomas, who was the best and most re- spectable of the brood, always remained quietly at home, on a little run emptying into the Allegheny, near Fort Pitt, and called to this day " Girty's Run."
Simon was adopted by the Indians under the name of Katepacomen, and became, in dress, language and habits, a thorough Indian, and was ever after much enamored of their free, wilderness lite, with all its un- shackled liberties and absence of restraints. George was adopted by the Delawares ; became a fierce and ferocious savage, and is said, after a long career of outrageous cruelties, to have been cut off in a drunken broil. James was adopted into the Shawnee tribe; soon grew depraved, and became a cruel and blood-thirsty raider on the Kentucky border, sparing not even women and children from the horrid torture.
It was an old and true border saying, that you could never make a white man out of an Indian, but could very easily make an Indian out of a white man. There is something in the unsettled, free-and-easy life of the wild woods which possesses very strong and almost irresist .. ible fascinations, and we have already shown that many of the white captives restored by the savages to Bouquet-even women and chil- dren-refused to leave their Indian relatives. When compelled, how- ever, to return to their old homes, they parted amid the most touching tears and sobbings, many afterwards escaping back to those who had so tenderly adopted and cared for them. Of this number was young Simon, but being forcibly returned to the settlements, he took up his home near Fort Pitt.
We hear no more of him until Dunmore's bloody war of 1774, brought about by the wanton murder of Logan's relatives at the mouth of Yellow Creek. In this campaign, in company with Simon Kenton, he served as hunter and scout, and subsequently acted as Indian agent. He also then became well acquainted with Colonel Crawford, and was a guest of his at the cabin on the Yough. Like the famous French- man, Joncaire, Girty never felt so much at home as in the woods and among the wigwams or council fires of Indians, where he could har- angue the assembled warriors of different tribes. At the outbreak of the Revolution he was a commissioned officer of militia at Pittsburgh, espousing the Patriot cause with zeal and serving it with fidelity until his desertion to the Indians from Fort Pitt, in March, 1778, with the notorious Matthew Elliott, Alexander McKee, and a squad of twelve soldiers. This tory defection, just at that unfavorable juncture, caused the greatest alarm along the entire frontier. We have already related at length the commotion it occasioned among the Delawares, then divided into peace and war factions.
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Why did Girty, an officer in the American service, desert to the Brit- ish? Most of the histories of the day say it was because he failed to get promoted to the regular army, or was mortified because one younger than he, and whom he thought not so deserving as himself, was advanced before him. From all the most reliable sources, we gather the true rea- son was, that Girty found himself looked upon at Fort Pitt with suspi- cion because he was known to be a tory at heart, and under the influ- ence of the mischievous and notorious Dr. Connelly, of Virginia, who had not only laid claim to all Southwestern Pennsylvania as a part of Virginia, but had enforced said claims by a series of violent and out- rageous proceedings, rending the whole section into warring factions, and even seizing and occupying Fort Pitt itself.
Be this as it may-and it is not at this late day of prime importance -Girty now headed his course for Detroit, and was captured by the Wyandots, but claimed by the Senecas as their prisoner, because he had once been adopted into their tribe. This claim, Leather Lips, a prom- inent and truculent old Huron chief, stoutly resisted, and the Mingoes were obliged to yield their point. On Girty's affirming that he had been badly treated at Fort Pitt because he was true to the King, and that being forced to leave the fort, he was now on his way to Detroit to join the British, he was released, and was soon after welcomed by the cruel Governor Hamilton, the "British Hair Buyer."
Girty was now just in his element. Talking several Indian languages, and employed by Hamilton in the Indian department, he was sent back to Sandusky to assist the savages in their harassing marauds against our border, and soon arose to a very bad eminence among them. He had never lost his relish for the free, untamed life of the forest. He was a true Indian in all his habits, longings and ambitions, and, like all apos- tates on whom the door of return is forever closed, soon became noted for his hate and desperate activity. He outdid the redskins themselves in the fierceness and cruelty of his wrath. When not ruthlessly worry- ing and harassing the frontier by his sudden forays and scalpings and torturings, he was ever busy, with diabolical hate and activity, in planning the destruction of the Moravians. He was their inveterate foe, and finally made Pomoacon, the Half King of the Hurons, the instrument of their forced abandonment of their three peaceful and flourishing towns on the Muskingum, and their removal, just on the eve of the Win- ter of 1781, to the inhospitable wilds and barrens about Sandusky .*
*To show Girty's violence when in liquor, as also his hatred to the Moravians, we quote from their missionary, Heckewelder, who, after the destruction of their towns on the Muskingum, had been forcibly removed to the Sandusky. Girty, on departing south on a scalping raid, had ordered a Frenchman to drive the Moravian teachers "the same as if we were cattle, and never to make a halt
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SKETCH OF SIMON GIRTY.
Girty, however, was not all, or always bad. Many of the atrocities committed by his brothers, George and James, were falsely blamed on him. He was a savage by taste and education, and conformed to In- dian usages, but it is known that he was his own worst enemy. Unfor- tunately inheriting a love for rum, it became his master. At such times he was cruel, vindictive and relentless. When sober he was a far better and kinder man.
Of Girty's personal courage, even to fool-hardiness, there is little question. He once had a quarrel with a Shawnee chief, caused, it is said, by some trade misunderstanding. While bandying words with each other, the Indian, by innuendo, questioned his opponent's courage. Girty instantly pointed to a half keg of powder, which happened to be at the camp, and snatching a fire-brand, called upon the chief to stand by him. The latter, at this strange hari-kari test of courage, hastily evacuated the premises.
In the sketch of Simon Kenton, a notable instance of Girty's good- ness and kindness of heart is given at length. Through his importuni- ties also many prisoners were saved from death and torture. He was reported honest, and was careful to fulfill all his engagements. It was said of him that he once sold his horse rather than incur the odium of violating his promise. He was brave and determined, and it was his dearest wish that he might die in battle. Jonathan Alder, who was for many years a captive among the Indians, and had occasion to know the renegade well, said that Girty was a warm friend to many prisoners, and that he had known him to purchase, at his own expense, several boys who were prisoners, and take them to the British to be educated. Lyon, in his narrative of captivity, when a half-grown boy, says Girty was very kind to him, taking him on his knee and promising to have him well cared for. Mrs. Thomas Cunningham, of West Virginia-after
even for the purpose of the women giving suckle to their children." This Lavallie would not do; but treated the missionaries with great kindness, and kept them several weeks at Lower Sandusky, while a boat should be sent from Detroit for them. We now quote from Heckewelder, page 332 :- " We had become uneasy lest Girty should find us still here on his return from war. He did return and behaved like a madman on hearing that we were here, and that our conductor had disobeyed his orders. He flew at the Frenchman most furiously, striking at him, and threatening to sp.it his head. He swore the most horrid oaths respecting us, and continued in that way until after midnight. His oaths were all to the purport that he would never leave the house until he had split our heads in two with his tomahawk, and made our brains stick to the walls of the room. He had somewhere procured liquor, and would, atevery drink, renew his oaths, which he repeated until he fell asleep. Never before did any of us hear the like oaths, or know anybody to rave like him. He appeared like an host of evil spirits. He would sometimes come up to the bolted door between us and him, threat- ening to chop it to pieces, to get at us. No Indian we had ever seen drunk would have been a match for him. How we should escape the clutches of this white beast in human form no one could see ; nor how relieved from the hands of this wicked white savage, whose equal, we were led to believe, was (perhaps) not to be found among mankind."
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OUR WESTERN BORDER.
seeing her oldest boy tomahawked and scalped, and the brains of her little daughter dashed out against a tree, all in her very presence, was carried into captivity. She suffered untold agony during her long march to the Indian town, her only nourishment for ten days being the head of a wild turkey and a few paw-paws; but, after a long absence, she was returned to her husband through the intercession of Simon Girty, who, happening to pass her way, ransomed and sent her home.
And finally, as Colonel Thomas Marshall was floating down the Ohio in an ark, he was hailed by a man who said he was James Girty, and that he had been stationed there by his brother Simon to warn all boats of the danger from decoys. The Indians, James said, had become jealous of Simon, who deeply regretted the injury which he had inflicted upon his countrymen, and who wished to be restored to their society. Every effort would be made, by white men and children, to entice boats ashore; but they must keep the middle of the river, and steel their hearts against every attempt. This warning, by whatever motive, was of service to many families. Thus much of Simon Girty, and some things to his credit, showing that he was not always the inhuman mon- ster which old histories and traditions have painted him.
GIRTY MARRIES THE BEAUTIFUL KATE MALOTT.
We must consider Girty, then, as having a dual character, and as the uld Greek, sure of justice, appealed "from King Philip drunk to King Philip sober," a like appeal, in Girty's case, would probably have had the same effect. There was, besides, for many years, a streak of romance running through the renegade's life not yet known to the public or to history. It was communicated to us by Lyman C. Draper, a col .. lector and historian of perfect reliability.
In March, 1779, a family of French descent, by the name of Malott, left Maryland for Kentucky. At Fort Redstone, on the Monongahela, where it was general for all emigrants to take arks or boats for Ken- tucky, they were joined by some other families, and embarked in two boats, one of them, a stock boat, in front, under charge of Peter Malott, the head of the family. Mrs. Malott and her five children were in the rear boat, commanded by Captain Reynolds, an officer of the Revolution. Mrs. Reynolds and seven children, Mrs. Hardin and two children, and others, were also in this boat.
This Reynolds boat was attacked and captured by some twenty-five Indians of mixed tribes at the head of Long Reach, some forty miles below Wheeling. Captain Reynolds had been shot dead in the first on- set, and another man and a child of Mrs. Hardin were also killed. The
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GIRTY MARRIES THE BEAUTIFUL KATE MALOTT.
Indians secured much booty and no less than nineteen prisoners, whom they took, some to the Delaware and some to the Wyandot towns. The Malott stock boat was not captured. Mrs. Reynolds, being subse- quently taken to Detroit, succeeded, by her energy and the influence of ' Colonel De Peyster-the Governor after Hamilton's capture by General Clarke-in collecting her scattered family and returning East. Catha- rine Malott, the oldest daughter of the family, was in her fifteenth year at the time of the capture, and was carried to one of the Shawnee towns on Mad river. Simon Girty seems to have come across her on one of his circuits among the various Indian towns, and fell violently in love with her. This was about three years after her capture, and while her mother was known by Girty to be in Detroit for the purpose of collecting her family from captivity. Indeed, it is probable that Girty had been employed by Mrs. Malott to trace up, if possible, her lost children. However this may be, he found Catharine now grown and very pretty, and adopted into an Indian family. They refused to give the girl up, but on Girty's promising to bring her back after she had seen her mother in Detroit, he succeeded in getting Catharine away. Once in Detroit, he married her, with, it is probable, the mother's approval. One of the captives said she was "a right pretty girl ; reported to be the prettiest in Detroit." They had several chil- dren, and she survived her husband many years, and died at a very ad- vanced age. Peter Malott, the father, returned to Maryland, and Draper thinks married again, never having succeeded in getting his captured family together.
For some few years after this marriage Girty was comparatively quiet, attending to the cares of his growing family, and largely occupied in trading with the savages. He lived at various localities among them, chiefly at Girty's Point, on the Maumee river, five miles above Napo- leon. Quite a number of places in Ohio, however, bear his name. The ill-fated expeditions of General Harmar, in 1790, and of General St. Clair, in 1791, found him busy with his old associates, Elliott and Mc- Kee, in the council and in the field, and wielding much influence among the savage tribes. At their grand council, held after St. Clair's disas- trous and overwhelming defeat, Girty was the only white man permitted to be present, and his voice and influence were for continuing the war.
At St. Clair's defeat he was present, and took an active part, receiv- ing a severe sabre cut on the head. He is said to have found and recognized the body of General Richard Butler, second in command.
At another grand Indian conference, held in 1793, Girty still thun. dered for war, and was especially active in organizing and marshaling the forces against Wayne in 1793-4. He was present at the decisive
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OUR WESTERN BORDER.
battle of the Fallen Timbers, fought. the same year, which forever crushed the power of the confederate Indian tribes, and ended in the treaty of Greenville, which at last brought peace. Girty now sold his trading establishment on the St. Mary river, located at a place called Girty's town-now St. Marys-and went back to Detroit, where his growing family lived.
He seemed to be perpetually haunted by the fear of falling into Ameri- can hands; and when Detroit was finally yielded by the British, in 1796, and the boats, laden with our troops, came in sight, it is said he could not wait for the return of the ferryboat, but plunged his horse into the Detroit river and made for the Canada shore, pouring out a volley of curses, as he rode up the opposite bank, upon the American officers and troops.
He now settled quietly down on a farm near Malden, Canada, on the Detroit river, about fifteen miles below the city, and we hear no more of him until the war of 1812. During the invasion of Canada he fol- lowed the course of the British retreat, but returned to his family at Malden, and died in 1815, aged near seventy years, and totally blind. William Walker saw him at Malden in 1813, and describes him as being broad across the chest, with strong, round, compact limbs, and appa- rently endowed by nature with great powers of endurance.
Mr. D. M. Workman, of Ohio, says : "In 1813 I went to Malden and put up at a hotel kept by a Frenchman. I noticed in the bar-room a gray-headed and blind old man. The landlady, who was his daughter, a woman of about thirty years of age, inquired of me, 'Do you know who that is ?' pointing to the old man. On my replying ' No;' she re- plied, ' It is Simon Girty.' He had then been blind about four years. In 1815 I returned to Malden, and ascertained that Girty had died a short time previous. Girty was a man of extraordinary strength, power of endurance, courage and sagacity. He was in height about five feet ten inches, and strongly made."
Girty took to hard drinking some time after his marriage, and for several years he and his wife lived apart. Draper visited Canada and saw one of Girty's daughters and some of the grandchildren, as also other descendants of the Malott family, which likewise settled in West- ern Canada, and he writes us of them and of Girty, as follows: "They were fine, worthy people, and some of the females quite attractive and intel- ligent. Our border histories have given only the worst side of Girty's character. He had redeeming traits. He was uneducated-only a lit- tle above the average Indian, I infer. He did what he could, unless infuriated by liquor, when, as Heckewelder states, he was boisterous, and probably dangerous. He certainly befriended Simon Kenton, and
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GIRTY MARRIES THE BEAUTIFUL KATE MALOTT.
tried to save Crawford, but could not. In the latter case he had to dis- semble somewhat with the Indians, and a part of the time appear in their presence as if not wishing to befriend him, when he knew he could not save him, and did not dare to shoot him, as he himself was threat- ened with a similar fate."
As to the stories told of Girty's heartless behavior at the prolonged tortures of his old friend Crawford, we are, like Draper, very skeptical. In our account of Crawford's sufferings, we have given what we could gather. Of Girty's courage and even recklessness there is ample testi- mony.
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OUR WESTERN BORDER.
CAPTAIN SAM. BRADY, THE DARING PARTISAN LEADER.
He knew each pathway through the wood, Each dell unwarmed by sunshine's gleam ; Where the brown pheasant led her brood, Or wild deer came to drink the stream.
Who in the West has not heard of Samuel Brady, the Captain of the Spies, and of his wonderful exploits and hairbreadth escapes ? A soldier from the first drum-tap of the Revolution, he commenced his service at Boston. He was in all the principal engagements of the war until the battle of Monmouth, when he was promoted to a captaincy and ordered to Fort Pitt to join General Broadhead, with whom he became a great favorite, and was almost constantly employed in partisan scouting. In '78 his brother, and in '79 his father, were cruelly killed by Indians. This made Captain Brady an Indian killer, and he never changed his business. The redman never had a more implacable foe, or a more re- lentless tracker. Being as well skilled in woodcraft as any Indian ot them all, he would trail them to their very lairs with all the fierceness and tenacity of the sleuth hound. We could fill pages with the mere mention of his lone vigils, his solitary wanderings, and his terrible revenges. His hate was undying ; it knew no interval-his revenge no surfeit. Day and night, Summer and Winter were all the same, if it gave him chance to feed fat his ancient grudge.
He commenced his scouting service about 1780, when he was only twenty-four years old, having been born in Shippensburg in 1756. A bolder or braver man never drew sword or pulled trigger. During the whole of the fierce, protracted and sanguinary war which ravaged the western border from 1785 to 1794, he was a dread terror to the savages and a tower of strength to the white settlers. His ubiquitous presence, backed by the band of devoted followers, who ever stepped in his foot- prints, was felt as a security everywhere. His the step that faltered not; his the eye that quailed not, and his the heart that knew never the meaning of fear. Many a mother has quieted the fears and lulled to sleep her infant family by the assurance that the rapid Allegheny, or the broad Ohio, the dividing lines between the whites and Indians, was safe because he there kept watch and ward.
But to begin at the beginning. When the company of volunteer rifle- men, of which Brady was a member, lay in the "Leaguer of Boston," frequent skirmishes took place. On one occasion, Lowden was ordered
-See page 426.
SHARP
CAPT. SAM. BRADY, THE DARING PARTISAN LEADER.
FB. Schell
427
CAPTAIN BRADY MAKES A SCOUT TO UPPER SANDUSKY.
to select some able-bodied men, and wade to an island, when the tide was out, and drive out some cattle belonging to the British. He con- sidered Brady too young for this service, and left him out of his selec- tion; but, to the Captain's astonishment, Brady was the second man on the island, and behaved most gallantly. On another occasion, he was sitting on a fence with his Captain, viewing the British works, when a cannon ball struck the fence under them. Brady was first up, caught the Captain in his arms and raised him, saying, with great composure, "We are not hurt, Captain." Many like instances of his coolness and courage happened while the army lay at Boston.
At the battle of Princeton he was under Colonel Hand, of Lancaster, and had advanced too far; they were nearly surrounded-Brady cut a horse out of a team, got his Colonel on, jumped on behind him, and both made their escape. At the massacre at Paoli, Brady had been on guard, and had laid down with his blanket buckled round him. The British were nearly on them before the sentinel fired. Brady had to run; he tried to get clear of his blanket coat, but could not. As he jumped a post and rail fence, a British soldier struck at him with his bayonet and pinned the blanket to the rail, but so near the edge that it tore out. He dashed on-a horseman overtook him and ordered him to stop. Brady wheeled, shot him down and ran on. He got into a small swamp in a field. He knew of no person but one being in it beside himself; but in the morning there were fifty-five, one of whom was a Lieutenant. They compared commissions; Brady's was the oldest; he took the com- mand and marched them to headquarters.
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