USA > Missouri > Centennial history of Missouri (the center state) one hundred years in the Union, 1820-1921, Volume I > Part 52
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MISSOURI'S INDIAN WARS
"In this design, however, they were anticipated by the savages, who, well arnied with rifles and other weapons, attacked them furiously in the night. Wm. T. Cole (commonly called Temple Cole), Patton and Gooch were killed in their blankets at the first fire. Murdock slipped under the bank of the creek near by, leaving Stephen Cole alone to con- tend with the enemy. Two Indians closed upon him. One of them stabbed him in the back from behind, the other encountered him in front. Cole, a very powerful man and a good fighter, wrested the knife from the hand of the Indian in his front and plunged it into his heart. He then turned upon his other assailant and was about to finish him, when all the other Indians threw themselves upon him, and having to contend against too great odds, he cut his way through them and saved himself by flight, favored, of course, by the darkness, and after an arduous journey of three days and nights on foot-for he had been compelled to leave his horse in the hands of the Indians-he succeeded in reaching the · island and Fort Clemson. Murdock did not return to the island for several days.
"Organizing another party, Cole returned to the scene of the fight and buried his dead comrades, all of whom had been scalped and otherwise mutilated. The body of the Indian he had killed was also found. Some years afterwards the skulls of the murdered men were found, and thereafter the locality was known to the settlers as 'Skull Lick.' There is no name better known in the history of the Boone's Lick country than that of Capt. Stephen Cole. It was he who, in 1812, built Cole's Fort, the first county seat of Howard county, and it was for him Cole county was named. He was killed by the Indians on the plains in 1824 while engaged in the Santa Fe trade.
"In 1811 the Indians had committed some outrages in the Boone's Lick settlements, in Howard county, and over near the Mississippi, on the Salt and Cuivre rivers, in Pike and Lincoln. It was suspected that the perpetrators were the Indians of. the Missouri. Gen. Wm. Clark, then in command of this department, made every exertion to detect them, but, as the American forces were not yet organized, he did not succeed. Indian forays from the north were repeated, and during the year 1812 from Fort Madison (on the Illinois bank of the Mississippi, a little below the mouth of the Des Moines) to St. Charles settlers were murdered and their homes destroyed by the savages.
"At last Gov. Benjamin Howard went to St. Charles and ordered Col. Kibbe, who commanded the militia of that county, to call out a portion of the men who were in requisition to march at a moment's warning. He organized a company of rangers for continuous service, with Capt. James Callaway, a grandson of Daniel Boone, as captain. This company was made up principally of St. Charles county men, all hardy woodsmen, active, skillful and bold. At intervals this company scoured the country from Salt river to the Missouri, and performed invaluable service.
"Gov. Howard also established a small fort on the Mississippi in St. Charles county, which was garrisoned by a company of regulars from Bellefontaine, under the command of a Lieut. Mason, and for him was called Fort Mason. Fort Clemson, on Loutre island, was built at the same time. Throughout the settlements the pioneers themselves built a number of block houses, or so-called forts. There was Daniel M. Boone's Fort, in Darst's Bottom, St. Charles county ; Howell's Fort, on Howell's prairie; Pond's Fort, on the Dardenne prairie, a little southeast of the site of Wentzville; White's Fort, on the Dog prairie; Hountz's Fort, eight miles west of St. Charles; Zumwalt's Fort, near O'Fallon; Castlio's Fort, near Howell's prairie; Kennedy's Fort, near Wright City; Callaway's Fort, near Marthasville, and Wood's Fort at Troy. But for these establishments and Gov. Howard's preparations it is probable that the whites in this part would either have been driven out of the country or exterminated.
Montgomery County Tragedies.
"The first victim of the Indian War of 1812 in Montgomery county was Harris Massey, a boy of 17, who was killed here, at the Loutre Lick, in the spring of 1813. In the previous winter his father, Thomas Massey, had left the shelter of Fort Clemson, where he had settled in 1809, and come to the Lick, having leased the land from Col. Nathan Boone. Massey had built a cabin on the north side of the little stream known as Sallie's Branch, and had cleared a small field on the south side. This field is now the site of the village of
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CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF MISSOURI
Mineola. Young Massey was killed under the following circumstances: His father had gone up the Loutre to examine some Indian 'signs' that had been discovered the previous evening. When he left he set Harris at work to plow in the little field. He directed the boy to tie his rifle to his back while at work, and, if the Indians appeared, to fire on them at once. After a time the boy, as is presumed, grew weary of carrying the gun, and set it against a tree near the cleared ground. About 10 o'clock a band of Sac Indians slipped down Sallie's Branch and, crawling under the bank, approached within 100 yards of the boy. Two Indians fired and the boy fell. With savage yells the 'noble red men' sprang out and, running up to the body, offered it every indignity. They tore off the scalp, and then mutilated the body in a manner not to be described.
"Mr. Massey's family at the house were in plain view of the tragedy. Ann Massey, one of the daugliters, seized the dinner horn and blew one blast after another upon it. This seemed to disconcert the Indians and they soon fled. Mr. Massey heard the horn and hastened home. The Indians had not taken his horses, and he succeeded in making his way with his family to Fort Clemson, distant by the nearest trail eighteen miles. A party went out and buried the mangled body of the boy on the hillside, a little south of where he fell. Thereafter, for nearly two years, there was no attempt at settling the country back of the river by the islanders. They preferred to remain quietly under the protection of the fort.
. "In the spring of 1814 occurred the next tragedy. A young man named Daniel Dougherty was killed by the Sac Indians at the Big spring, in the southern part of the county. He belonged to the colony on the island, and volunteered to go up to a saltpeter cave on Clear creek (about four miles southeast of Danville) to procure some saltpeter for making powder. At that time the pioneers made their own powder. As he did not return at the appointed time the colonists became uneasy, and Jacob Groom and Wm. Stewart volunteered to go in search of him.
"From Mrs. Lurinda Snethen, a daughter of Jacob Groom, I have obtained the par- ticulars of the adventures of her father and his companion on this occasion. It seems they set out from the island on horseback, taking the trail to the cave by way of the Big spring. Groom had formerly lived at the spring and knew the locality well. A quarter of a mile north of the spring, and 100 yards north of 'Possum Branch, as the two men were riding along, Stewart suddenly called out: 'Lord! Jake, look at the Indians!' Sure enough, there they were, only 100 yards in front, half of them mounted, all of them painted and armed- a swarm of them.
"The two scouts turned and fled. The Indians pursued them, yelling and shooting with rifles and bows. Crossing 'Possum Branch Groom's horse jumped with a mighty leap and the saddle turned, Groom's feet being out of the stirrups; but he clung to the horse, con- trived to unfasten the girth and let the saddle fall. As they emerged into the clearing near Groom's cabin at the spring the Indians gave them a volley of bullets and arrows. Both horses were badly wounded, and Stewart received a bullet in his ankle. A mile south, the Indians still in pursuit, Stewart's horse fell from loss of blood. Groom stopped and took Stewart up behind him, or else he must have perished.
"Luckily, both men reached the island in safety. There was, of course, great excite- ment, and pickets were at once put out and all the outlying settlers warned in. Capt. Clem- son prepared the fort for an attack, but it did not come. In a few days Capt. Callaway's rangers came out and found the body of Dougherty half way up the hill from the Big spring and buried it. The Indians had scalped and mutilated it, and it presented a sad spectacle. Jacob Groom lived to become an honored citizen of the country, and was for two terms a member of the Missouri legislature.
Captain James Callaway.
"But the most serious casualty that befell the settlers during the war was the defeat and death of that gallant spirit, Capt. James Callaway, and a portion of his company of rangers, at the junction with the Loutre of a small stream called the Prairie Fork, in the southern part of Montgomery county, March 7, 1815. I think I have stated that Capt. Callaway was a son of Flanders Callaway and a grandson of . Daniel Boone. Distinguished for his intelligence, fortitude and courage, he was selected to command the company of rangers by Gov. Howard, and up to the time of his death was one of the most active,
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MISSOURI'S INDIAN WARS
daring and efficient scouts in the service, and occupied a prominent position in the affairs of this district. He had been in many an Indian fight, and in August, 1814, he com- manded the Missourians who formed a part of the force of Maj. Zachary Taylor that went against the British and Indians at the Rock Island. He bore a gallant part in the brave but unsuccessful assault on the strong, cannon-crowned intrenchments at that point, and. on the American retreat he covered and protected the rear.
"On the 6th of March a band of some seventy-five or eighty Sacs and Foxes . (some say Sacs and Pottawatomies) came down near Loutre island and stole a dozen or more horses that were grazing on the mainland, and succeeded in escaping with them up Loutre creek. The next morning, being in the country, scouting, Capt. Callaway, with fifteen of his rangers, came upon the fresh Indian trail made by the horse-thieves. Following it rapidly up, at about 2 o'clock in the afternoon they came upon the Indian camp and the stolen horses, guarded by only a few squaws. All the men were absent. The squaws fled upon the approach of the rangers, and were not pursued. It seemed that the Indians had scattered and retreated altogether, for no well-defined trail could be found, and it was decided to discontinue the pursuit; so, securing the horses, Capt. Callaway started with them and his men southward down the Loutre valley for the island.
"Lieut. Jonathan Riggs, the second in command of the rangers, was an old Indian fighter and a man of caution and good judgment. His suspicions had been excited by the disappearance of the Indians, and he said to Capt. Callaway that they had dispersed in order to mislead them, and that they meant to swing around to the southward and, forming an ambuscade, intercept the rangers on their way to the island. His advice was, therefore, that the return march should be made by a different route. But Capt. Callaway believed that the Indians had left the country and would not again be seen. Accordingly, he dismissed the suspicions of Lieut. Riggs and proceeded with his men by the route over which he had marched out that morning.
The Ambush.
"At the crossing of Prairie Fork, a hundred yards or more from the Loutre, the little command was attacked. Three rangers-Parker Hutchings, Frank McDermid and James McMillin-were a hundred yards in advance with the recovered horses. Just as they reached the south bank of the stream a volley of deadly shots rang out from the Indian ambuscade, and all three fell dead from their saddles on the shore.
"Hearing the firing and the fierce war-whoops of the savages, Capt. Callaway and his twelve men dashed bravely up, but they, in turn, received a murderous fire from their ambushed foes, who were concealed in the timber on a hill in front. Capt. Callaway's horse was killed and he received a bullet through his left arm, escaping death at the instant by the ball striking his watch. He sprang from his horse and called out to his men : 'Cross the creek and charge them and fight to the death !' His men dashed forward and he essayed to follow by swimming the cold waters of the stream, then swollen to a considerable depth by recent rains and melting snow. Doubtless his wounded arm failed him, for when some of his men who had crossed looked back he was drifting and swimming down the strong and rapid current. Just then an Indian shot him in the back of the head, the ball lodging in his forehead, and he instantly sank.
"Lieut. Riggs and his comrades fought as best they could, but all their efforts availed nothing against a foe five times their number and well practiced, and at last the lieutenant gave the order to retreat. The rangers recrossed Prairie Fork, and, making a con- siderable detour, crossed it again. a mile above, and the next morning succeeded in reach- ing the island. Two of the men were detached and sent east to Wood's Fort, in Lincoln county.
"Of the sixteen rangers six were killed, viz .: Capt. Callaway, Parker Hutchings, Frank McDermid, James McMillin, Thomas Gilmore and Hiram Scott. The last named, and a comrade named Wolf, were left on the south bank of the stream when their com- rades recrossed. Wolf escaped to the island and was the first to bring the tidings of the disaster. Nearly every man in the party was more or less severely wounded, and every horse was struck. The loose horses of the settlers were of course lost. It was never certainly known that the Indians had more than one man killed. He was buried on the prairie, near the present site of Wellsville."
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CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF MISSOURI
A Mysterious Tomb in Pettis.
. A strange discovery made in Pettis county a few miles southeast of the present location of Sedalia was interpreted by the early settlers as evidence that the British were active in stirring up the Indian troubles in Missouri during the war of 1812. Several years after the war three Missourians, Joseph Stevens, Stephen Cole and William Ross, were hunting and exploring Central Missouri as far west as Knob Noster. They found near Flat creek what appeared to be an Indian mound of unusual construction. On one side a hole had been opened as if by the digging of wolves. The Missourians crawled through and found a room about eight feet square and six feet high. The roof was supported by logs. On one side of the room was the body of a white man, apparently an officer in full uniform, including a cocked hat, lace stockings, morocco slippers, gold lace along the seams of the coat and gold epaulets on the shoulders. The body was seated on a log. The flesh had mummified so that it looked like leather. . What attracted the hunters to the place was that the walls of the tomb arose several feet above the general surface of the ground. The logs which formed the roof ran up to a point. The walls and roof had been made of prairie sod cut deep. The tomb wa's protected from the rain and until the opening must have been practically fire proof. A gold headed cane was beside the body. The theory of the early settlers was that this man had been a British officer who had come into Missouri during the war of 1812 for the purpose of stirring up Indian troubles. A later visit was made to the place by Joseph Stevens and James D. Campbell. It was found that the roof had partly fallen in and that only the skeleton and clothes remained. The epaulets were carried away and melted into a large ball of gold equal to the metal in fifteen or twenty dollars. Gradually time effaced this tomb.
The Cooper Colony.
Settlement began in Howard county with the arrival of Colonel Benjamin Cooper and his family from Kentucky in 1808. Cooper laid up his log house two miles southwest of Boone's Lick. He had cleared some ground and had planted his first crop when Governor Meriwether Lewis notified him that he was on ground which still belonged to the Indians and that he must move eastward to some point below the mouth of the Gasconade. Cooper then settled on Loutre island as it has always been called. Loutre means "Otter" in English. The island took its name from the very attractive Loutre river which empties into the north side of the Missouri. The early French trappers found otter on the stream and bestowed the title. They are said to have trapped in that locality long before the settlement of St. Louis. The ground known as Loutre island is opposite the city of Hermann. As early as 1800 ten or twelve white families were living there. The Cooper family remained with the settlers on Loutre island until the spring of 1810 when the colonel with the Hancock, Thorp, Wolfskill, Ashcraft, Ferrill and Anderson families went back to the vicinity of Boone's Lick and formed a settlement in the Missouri bottoms of what became Howard county. Within two years there were several hundred people living there. The war of 1812 came on. Cooper and his neighbors realized the danger from Indian attacks. They built three forts which they called Fort Cooper, Fort Hempstead and Fort Kin- caid. Fort Cooper was southwest of Boone's Lick. Fort Kincaid was nine miles away to the southeast and Fort Hempstead was a little short of two miles north of
Courtesy Missouri Historical Society
CAPTAIN STEPHEN COLE'S FIGHT ON SPENCER CREEK Captain Cole fought his way out after three companions had been killed. He built Cole's Fort, and was one of the most noted Indian fighters in Boone's Lick Country.
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MISSOURI'S INDIAN WARS
Kincaid. Cole's Fort was on the south side of the river just east of Boonville. It was built that same year by Captain Stephen Cole. When they erected these forts in the vicinity of Boone's Lick the settlers organized a company of rangers with Sarshall Cooper as captain; Wm. McMahan, first lieutenant ; John Monroe, second lieutenant, and Ben Cooper, junior ensign. There were one hundred and twelve men in the company, the older having had experience in Indian fighting before they left Kentucky and Tennessee. The neighborhood was so well or- ganized that for three years, until the close of the war, the Indians were not able to surprise the settlements, scouts who went out continuously giving the alarms whenever bands appeared in the neighborhood. From three hundred to five hundred Indians came down on three occasions to attack the Boone's Lick set- tlers but were discovered by the scouts in time for the settlers to prepare. Gov- ernor Howard, as soon as he knew of the declaration of war, sent a messenger from St. Louis to Boone's Lick, advising the settlers of the danger that the Indians might attack and telling them to come down nearer to St. Louis if they wanted protection. The suggestion was declined, Captain Cooper wrote to the governor a letter showing the stuff of which the Boone's Lick pioneers were made :
"We have maid our Hoams here & all we hav is here & it wud ruen us to Leave now. We be all good Americans, not a Tory or one of his Pups among us, & we hav 2 hundred Men and Boys that will Fight to the last and we have 100 Wimen & Girls that will tak there places wh. makes a good force. So we can Defend this Settlement wh. with Gods Help we will do. So if we had a fiew barls of Powder and 2 hundred Lead is all we ask."
The Indians succeeded in driving away about two hundred horses and killed many cattle and hogs. The settlers "forted up" as the expression was in those days. That is to say, they took refuge in the forts. They were obliged to neglect their farms. The only corn and vegetables that could be raised was on a few small fields near the forts. This made it necessary to depend largely on bear meat and venison. Whenever parties went out from the fort to cultivate fields they were in force sufficiently strong to defend themselves. Some of the men and boys attended to the crops while others acted as scouts in the woods on every side. It was not unusual for a pioneer who was following the plow to carry his rifle slung over his shoulders.
One of the regulations of these "forted" communities was that any man assigned to guard duty who was found asleep must grind a peck of corn meal and present it to each widow in his fort. There were seven widows in the community which took shelter in Fort Hempstead. Besides the three principal forts of the Boone's Lick county there were a number of smaller forts. Settlers on the south side of the Missouri also felt the necessity of protecting themselves.
Victims in the Boone's Lick Country.
While the people of Boone's Lick country, by watchfulness, averted massacres and general engagements during the war of 1812, they did not escape individual tragedies. Major R. I. Holcombe visited this bloody, debatable ground, searched the records and talked with old settlers. In 1892 he published in the Globe- Democrat a circumstantial and thrilling account of the tragedies :
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"The first victims of the war in the Boone's Lick country were Jonathan Todd and Thomas Smith, of Fort Hempstead, who were killed by a band of Sacs and Foxes, in the western part of Boone county, in the spring of 1812. They were in search of some stray horses. While on their errand they came suddenly upon the Indians near Thrall's prairie, not far from the present boundary between Boone and Howard. The exact par- ticulars of the tragedy can never be known, but it seemed that the men made a brave defense. They must have retreated a mile or more, firing as they fell back and aiming well. The bodies of four dead Indians (some say six) were afterward found on their line of retreat. At last they were killed, both near together, at the point where they had halted for the final struggle. The Indians mutilated the bodies frightfully. They scalped them, cut out their hearts, cut off their heads and stuck them on poles by the side of the trail.
"The Indians, numbering perhaps 200, went eastward a few miles and crossed the Missouri, putting their rifles and other effects on small, crude rafts which they pro- pelled by swimming and wading behind them, the water being at a low stage, before the 'June rise.' Their object was doubtless an attack on the supposed unsuspecting settlers on the south side.
"But the next day after the killing of Todd and Smith rumors of the trouble reached Cole's Fort. and two very gallant young scouts, James Cole and James Davis, were sent out to investigate and report. They crossed the river and went some miles without seeing anything of a suspicious nature. They then started to return, and recrossed the river five miles below Fort Cole. Half a mile from the river they suddenly discovered the Indians between them and the fort. The savages at once set after them, but without. firing or yelling, fearing perhaps that the noise would alarm the people at the fort. The scouts set out for Johnson's 'factory,' a small trading post, 200 yards from the Missouri, on Moniteau creek, in what is now Moniteau county, a distance of fully twenty-five miles. It was a long chase and a hard one, the Indians following them and occasionally coming within gunshot. They reached the 'factory' at dusk, and the Indians immediately sur- rounded the establishment, but did not attack, intending, probably, to do so the next morning.
"Cole and Davis, undaunted by what they had passed through, determined to make another attempt to reach home. They planned to cross the Missouri and make their way up the river to the Howard county forts, and from thence back to Fort Cole. At mid- night they took up a plank from the floor of the 'factory,' crawled from under the build- ing, and made their way to the Moniteau creek, where they found a canoe in which they embarked and floated noiselessly down the stream. Just as they entered the river, how- ever, an unlucky stroke of the paddle against the side of the canoe betrayed them to some Indians on the bank, who started in pursuit in two captured canoes. The scouts were forced to return to the south side and hide in the brush till daylight.
"The Indians pursued them to Big Lick, in Cooper county. Here, being hard pressed, the scouts halted and waited until their pursuers came within 100 yards, when both fired and each killed an Indian. The Indians returned the fire, but without effect, and the brave fellows succeeded in reaching Cole's Fort in safety. The Indians skulked about in the country for a day or two, but did not offer to attack the fort and soon recrossed the river.
The Campaign Against the Miamis.
"At this time there were about 500 Miami Indians encamped near the present site of the town of Miami, in Saline county. They had come out from Ohio and Indiana a year or two previously, and were supposed to be friendly. But when the war broke out many of these rascals embraced the opportunity to steal from and plunder their white neighbors at the forts whenever they could. At last, in July, 1813, a band of them slipped down into the Howard settlements, and four miles northwest of Boonville killed a settler named Campbell Bowlin (Bolen), of Fort Kincaid. Bowlin and Adam McCord had gone from the fort to Bowlin's cabin and field to care for some flax that had long been neglected. The
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