USA > Mississippi > A history of the Mississippi valley, from its discovery to the end of foreign domination. The narrative of the founding of an empire, shorn of current myth, and enlivened by the thrilling adventures of discoverers, pioneers, frontiersmen, Indian fighters, and homemakers > Part 16
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They were strong. Indians never were braver. Here was the best fight ever made by our red men. Two white colonels were killed and one wounded. The whites became discouraged under the prolonged as- saults of the red men. As the sun went down defeat stared them in the face.
But when they would have wavered Gen. Lewis sent Capt. Evan Shelby, with his Watauga men, under the bank of the Kanawha to a ravine, through which
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MAJ. GEN. WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON. From an original portrait by Lambdin
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Mississippi Valley.
they were able to flank and get in rear of the Indians. And then when Shelby opened fire there, the Indians fled in spite of the storming Cornstalk.
The white men lost seventy-five killed and 140 wounded. The Indians lost only thirty-three killed, so far as known, but they were disheartened.
Among the men who took part in this fight was one Benjamin Harrison, whose name is not unknown to American history. He was a captain under Lewis. Isaac Shelby, afterward Governor of Kentucky, was a lieutenant of the company of Capt. Evan Shelby, his father. James Robertson was a sergeant in this com- pany, and all its members came from the Watauga country.
Lord Dunmore had taken his force down the Ohio to the Hockhocking River, where he built a wooden fort. Thence, after Lewis won the battle of Point Pleasant (as the fight at the mouth of the Kanawha was called), Dunmore marched to the Scioto, camping on Sippo Creek, about eight miles from the modern town of Westfall, O. There he met Cornstalk and made peace.
Cornstalk, with all his eloquence, strove to rouse the Indians to another battle. He taunted and im- plored, and finally proposed that they kill their women and children, and then fight until they themselves died free, rather than yield before the advancing whites; but nothing could move them. With the feeling that he was the chief of a band of cowards, he met Dun- more. He accepted Dunmore's terms, but he did it "with words and bearing that roused the admiration even of the Indian haters among the whites."
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To this conference Logan refused to come. He "disdained to be seen among the suppliants." But he was willing, for the sake of his people, that peace should be made. John Gibson, an interpreter with Lord Dunmore (Gibson was a general in the war of the Revolution), was sent to the Indians, at their re- quest, during the negotiations. Logan met Gibson, took him a little away from the other Indians, sat down among the bushes near the camp, and there, "af- ter shedding abundant tears," dictated the message that is one of the most striking outbursts of red oratory known to the annals of the race :
"I appeal to any white man to say if ever he en- tered Logan's cabin hungry, and he gave him not meat ; if ever he came cold and hungry, and he clothed him not. During the course of the last long and bloody war Logan remained idle in his cabin, an advocate for peace. Such was my love for the whites that my countrymen pointed as they passed and said, 'Logan is the friend of the white men.' I had even thought to have lived with you, but for the injuries of one man. Col. Cresap, the last spring, in cold blood, murdered all the relations of Logan, not even sparing my women or children. There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of any living creature. This called on me for revenge. I have sought it. I have killed many. I have fully glutted my vengeance. For my country I rejoice at the beams of peace. But do not harbor a thought that mine is the joy of fear. Logan never felt fear. He will not turn on his heel to save his life. Who is there to mourn for Logan? Not one."
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L
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. From a portrait published in the "Portfolio" in 1818.
XIII
THE HOME MAKERS IN KENTUCKY.
The Story of Pennsylvania and Boonesborough-The Frontier Forts and Frontier Houses Described-The Old Fashioned Log-Rolling and Other Bees-The Deckhard Rifle-Frontier Clothing-Contrast Be- tween the Dominant People of Louisiana and Those of the Ohio Watershed-A Government Established at Boonesborough.
When Lord Dunmore dictated peace to the Indians on the bank of the Scioto, he opened wide the road for the home-seekers who had thronged to the passes of the Alleghanies. In cowing the Indians he had strengthened Virginia's claim to lands west of the mountains far more than the Quebec Bill had injured it. The story of the home-makers who came to the wil- derness, after this war ended, is, therefore, now to be told.
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And it may be observed that no chapter of Ameri- can history is better worth the attention of young Americans than this, for these home-builders were em- phatically men who could and would work-the men after God's own heart, who had learned "the infinite conjugation of the verb to do."
Winsor notes in his "Westward Movement" that 25,000 Scotch-Irish Presbyterians arrived in the Del- aware from 1771 to 1773, and he adds that such of this element as came to the frontier had no better use for an Indian than to make of him a target for their rifles. Any study of the history of the region shows that settlers of the Ohio Valley were of Protestant extraction, and to a large extent Presbyterians. It is easy to see, now, that their kind of Presbyterianism, and their other isms, were not like modern views of Christianity. It is a matter worth consideration, be- cause, as Carlyle points out, a man's real creed, the one by which he lives, is the most important fact about him. But if these home-seekers were not men who obeyed the Sermon on the Mount, it promotes one's optimism to note that they were distinctly better men than the people who came to Virginia in 1609. They did not profess one thing and do another. They might and they did shoot the red men, but they did not preface the killing by publishing drivel about coming to the frontier "to recover out of the arms of the Devil a num- ber of poore and miserable soules."
In spite of their professions, the Virginians of 1609 had "no talk, no hope, no work, but to dig gold, re- fine gold, loade gold." The emigrant to the Ohio River frontier of Virginia had "no talk, no hope, no work"
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but to make a home; and that was the public profession as well as the creed of his heart that he expressed in his daily life. "God never intended this fair land to remain a wilderness," was his oral and written creed, and the one under which he acted. Church rites and ceremonies received very little attention during the days when the "boom was on."
The home-makers came to the frontier usually in small companies, but sometimes in single families. In- dividual men also came. They selected the bottom lands and low ridges covered over with giant walnuts, maples, oaks, sycamore, shell-bark hickory and other trees known to grow on rich soil, until all readily reached lands of the kind were taken up. The beech grove lands were held in less esteem.
Consider as a sample, and the best one of many such settlements, the founders of Boonesborough. During the years that Daniel Boone was going to and fro be- tween the hunting grounds of Kentucky and his home on the Yadkin, he was very well acquainted with Col. Richard Henderson, "one of the principal judges in North Carolina, a scholarly, talented man, eminent in the legal profession," (Thwaite's "Boone"). Boone's stories of the game and other evidences of the fertility of the Kentucky soil greatly interested Col. Henderson, and he eventually resolved to establish a colony in the new country. When the company was organized they adopted Transylvania as the name of the colony. After some delays, the chief of which was due to Lord Dun- more's war, a grand council was held (March, 1775,) at Sycamore Shoals, on the Watauga, with 1,200 Cher- okees, who were gathered there by Daniel Boone, as
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the agent of the Transylvania Company. When there, the Cherokees, "for $50,000 worth of cloths, clothing, utensils, ornaments and fire arms," ceded to Henderson "all the country lying between the Kentucky and Cum- berland Rivers; also a path of approach from the east, through Powell's Valley."
To show how far such bargains benefited the In- dians, Thwaites points out that the goods in bulk "filled a large cabin." When distributed "there was but little for each warrior, and great dissatisfaction arose. One Cherokee, whose portion was a shirt, de- clared that in one day, upon this land, he could have killed deer enough to buy such a garment," and yet the chiefs had given the land away for all time for such a trifling return. It "seemed to him a bad bargain."
Boone, with near thirty woodmen, was sent from the treaty grounds to clear a path to a spot on the Ken- tucky River. The trail thus made entered Kentucky by the Cumberland Gap, and came to be, at one time, the chief route south of the Ohio River. It was, in fact, traveled by more people, in war times, than the Ohio was. It was called the Wilderness Road.
As Boone's trail-making party traveled through the woods the rougher obstructions were cleared away in order to make a passable pack-horse route for others who were to come. At night the party slept without sentries, a fact that shows better than any other the intrepidity of their hearts. But one morning a band of Indians charged the camp at daylight, killed a negro slave (a few slaves came thus early to blight the land) and Capt. Twitty, besides wounding Felix Walker. Then the whites rallied and beat off the Indians, and
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they kept on to the site selected for Boonesborough, in spite of another attack, when two men were killed.
The site selected, (Big Lick, just below the mouth of Otter Creek), was reached April 6. "The site was a plain on the south side of the Kentucky." As the par- ty entered the natural opening they startled a herd of 200 or 300 buffaloes "of all sizes," that "made off from the lick in every direction."
Naturally, their first care was to provide a shelter -one that would keep out Indian bullets as well as rain and snow. They marked off a rectangular piece of ground 165x250 feet large, and, although they were a long time completing the structure, at each corner of it they built a two-story house of squared logs. The upper story was made to project several feet beyond the walls of the lower, and it was floored with puncheons, (or split planks), thick enough to be bullet proof. In the parts of this floor that projected beyond the lower story they cut holes through which they could shoot down at an enemy beneath, and there were a plenty of port holes in the walls of these houses, to cover the space around and between them.
Between these corner houses, (called block-houses), and along the lines of the rectangle they built twenty- six log cabins, each about eighteen feet square. The outside wall of each was laid on the line of the rec- tangle, and was built up smooth and solid, (so that no Indian could climb it), to a height of twelve feet. It contained no door, window or other opening. The inner wall was eight feet high, and in this were cut two open- ings for windows, and one for a door. The roof was laid in a single flat slope from the outer to the inner
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wall, and was covered at first with bark, but afterwards with long shingles that were held in place with thick poles.
The rows of cabins did not quite reach the block- houses, a space being left so that if one of the rows was burned, the adjoining block-house, might be saved. But a palisade wall filled these spaces.
In the center of each of the long sides was a heavy, solid gate. Oneopened toward the river ; another inland. The gates were defended by rows of palisades. The loop holes of the block-houses commanded them, and so did loop holes in the adjoining cabins.
The Indians had but one hope of capturing a fort like that. The roofs were easily fired.
James Harrod and his associates built a fort like this at Harrodsburg beginning in March, 1775. In fact forts of the kind were scattered all over the region. In Imlay's "Topographical Description of the Western Territory" (published in 1793), is a "Map of Ken- tucky" by John Filson. It shows all the settlements and outlying posts and homes. The fortified stations are represented by marks well worth note.
But there were also many single cabins built in this region far beyond the protection of the forts. They were without exception of log walls. An ax and an auger were the only tools needed for building such a house. The logs were notched together at the corners. The rafters were held together and to the tops of walls by pegs driven through auger holes. Thick boards called puncheons, were split from logs and laid for floors, if any floor was laid. Round logs served to sup- port such a floor. Doors were made of puncheons also,
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Mississippi Valley.
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A PORTION OF FILSON'S MAP OF 1785, WITH HARRODSBURG.
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A History of the
and these were hung on wooden hinges, and barred at night with heavy pieces of timber. The doors were sometimes made in two parts, upper and lower, and it was the custom to open the upper half only, in trouble- some times in answer to a hail, because an enemy could not readily charge over the lower half. Windows were not put in, at first, because the home builder could de- fend but one aperture, but for years after peace came, the only window was a square hole, closed at night by a heavy puncheon shutter. Neither glass nor iron was used in those houses. The huge fireplaces were made of sandstone where it could be found; elsewhere of split sticks thickly covered with clay. The shingles on the roof were held in place by straight logs laid on each row; but it should be noted that the log house at first was roofed with bark. Says a journal written by one Calk, of Boone's early settlement, (Roosevelt), "we git our house kivered with bark and move our things into it at Night, and begin Housekeeping." That was on April 29, 1775.
The spaces between logs were filled with moss, or clay or both, but not always. There is a story of a man whose arm was severely bitten by a wolf because, as the hungry beast prowled near the cabin, at night, the man in his sleep happened to thrust his arm not only out of bed, but out through the space between the logs on a level with the bed. Another man lying with his head near such an opening had his scalp badly torn by a wolf.
In Mansfield's "Life of Dr. Daniel Drake" is a letter written by Drake to describe a Kentucky home built in the forest in 1788. It was one of a group of
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A PORTION OF FILSON'S MAP OF 1785, WITH LEXINGTON.
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Mississippi Valley.
Cap! Johnson
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A History of the
five and all were located so that "no house, in the event of being attacked by the Indians, would be unsupported by some other." When the parents of Drake moved into their cabin it was "one story high, without a win- dow, with a door opening to the south, a half finished wooden chimney, and a roof on one side only, but with- out any upper or lower floor." There was a puncheon door, however, and it could be secured by a stout bar. The sills for the floor were also in place, and Drake re- called his playing on the ground between these sills, while the father and mother stepped from one sill to another while arranging their scant household goods. He adds that each cabin had port holes in the walls. They always kept the axe and scythe under the bed to use in case of attack by Indians; and before opening the door in the morning the father always climbed up the log wall to an unchinked crack between the logs through which he peered to see whether any Indians were in waiting to rush into the house when the bar was removed from the door.
For descriptions of the furniture of those homes, the unfailing resource is Dodridge's "Notes." A table was made of split slab and supported by four round legs set in auger holes. Some three-legged stools were made in the same manner. Some pins stuck in the logs at the back of the house supported clapboards which served for shelves for the table furniture. A single fork, placed with its lower end in a hole in the floor, and the upper end fastened to a joist, served for a bedstead, by placing a pole in the fork with one end through a crack between the logs in the wall. This front pole was crossed by a shorter one within the fork,
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Mississippi Valley.
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A PORTION OF FILSON'S MAP OF 1785, SHOWING LOUISVILLE.
233
Louisville
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A History of the
with its outer end through another crack. From the front pole through a crack between the logs at the end of the house, (split) boards were put on which formed the bottom of the bed. Skins of animals, especially bear skins, made excellent substitutes for blankets.
A hollowed log-a round-bottomed trough-served for a cradle. They had the rudest furniture ever seen, but also the strongest. Fancy the possibilities before him who was rocked to sleep in a hollow log, and was taught to read, and imbibed ambition, by the flames of a roaring fire-place !
The furniture of the table consisted of a few pewter dishes, plates and spoons ; but mostly of wooden bowls, trenchers and noggins, (cups). If these last were scarce, gourds and hard-shelled squashes made up the deficiency. The iron pots, knives and forks were brought from the east side of the mountains on pack horses. When china ware came it was not liked because it dulled the edge of the scalping knife.
They had neither closets nor trunks. Their cloth- ing hung from pegs driven into the wall. All the pos- sessions of the entire family were under the eye of every visitor. This people did not cultivate the habit of concealment. They were frank and open-hearted.
But a more important-on the whole probably the most important-feature of the frontier was the bee habit-the custom of gathering in companies whenever opportunity offered. The individual settler girdled the trees on the patch of land he wished to clear, and when they were dead, he felled them. Then by build- ing little fires at intervals of twelve or fifteen feet along the trunks-fires of small sticks, oft replenished,
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ANDREW JACKSON. From a portrait by Jarvis, in 1815.
Mississippi Valley.
and held down by a chunk of a log called a nigger- head-the trees were divided into logs. A time came when the whole patch was strewn with charred logs, much too heavy for one man to handle alone readily, even with a team of horses; and yet it was necessary to pile them up and burn them before the land could be cultivated. To get those logs into a heap was the hardest physical toil known to the frontier, and yet for the frontiersmen it was literally a whooping joy. For food in huge quantities (and, if possible, rum in suffi- cient quantities), was procured by the land owner, and then the neighbors-all who lived within twenty miles-were invited to a log rolling bee. A man who was not invited felt seriously offended. By the dozen -sometimes by the score-they came to the new home. Those who could do so brought horses; some brought oxen, some brought their wives and children. In troops they flocked, to the log-strewn patch, and then with hilarity, energy and muscular exertion never sur- passed, if ever equalled, they dragged and flung the logs into heaps.
The children piled on the limbs and brush, and bringing brands from the fire-place in the house, started fires whose smoke darkened the heavens.
At noon the company ate dinner with a relish, now unknown, save only to a few (chosen of God to enjoy life), who sometimes go to the woods. For though only corn bread could be served with the wild meat, they had appetite and freedom from care.
Nor was that all. Though it was the heaviest of work their muscles were elastic, and as the sun went down behind the forest; and the squirrels leaped from
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tree to tree with mellow crash within sight of the house; and the cardinal and the oriole and the red start flamed and drifted among the leaves, these men ban- tered each other into wrestling matches and foot races, and the victor in each leaped on a stump, flapped his arms against his sides, and crowed like a rooster. If a fiddle could be had, they ended the lark with a "hoe- down"-a dance that made even the log-walled house tremble. When Jackson, the hero of these backwoods men, had beaten the invader at New Orleans, and the people of the city gathered to do him honor at a grand ball, he-tall and lank, and his wife, short and round- danced what a polished spectator called a "pas de deux." They danced a backwoods jig to the tune of "Possum up a Gum Tree"-to the intense delight and admiration of the riflemen who shot the invader out of the swamp.
At weddings (and there is scant record of unions without weddings), the neighbors made a bee, and built a house for the new couple in the course of a few hours after the ceremony was ended. And at night they put the young couple to bed with many a sly hint, as well as good wish.
They gathered to husk the corn and to make maple sugar. Whatever could be done well by companies, was done by them in companies. No more indepen- dent or self-reliant individuals were ever seen on our soil than these home-makers who peopled the Ohio watershed, and yet never was a better exhibit of the community spirit seen. Each was entirely able to shift for himself, but out of love for his neighbors, each made haste to lend a hand at every gathering.
Absolutely necessary to the outfit of every fron-
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MRS. ANDREW JACKSON.
Born Rachel Donelson, daughter of Col. John Donelson of Virginia. In this portrait she wears the head-dress in which she appeared at the ball herein described.
Mississippi Valley.
tiersman was the rifle. A gunsmith named Deckhard, living in Lancaster, Pa., at some unnamed period of the border, began making rifles of small bore in place of the smooth-bored musket in common use. The barrel was an iron tube at least thirty inches long, and usually three feet, six inches. The bore was rifled, had twisting grooves cut in it, and the bullet that fit the bore was a round pellet weighing seventy to the pound. In loading the rifle a well-greased linen patch was wrapped around the bullet. The patch fitted into the grooves, and the bullet was not mutilated like the modern rifle projectiles are. It was a remarkably ac- curate weapon, though one requiring more skill than a modern rifle, for, having a flintlock, there was a marked interval between pulling the trigger and the discharge of the bullet, an interval during which the rifle must be held on the target. But the iron-nerved men of the frontier had the skill. They shot running deer at a range of 150 yards. They killed geese and ducks, and even wild pigeons on the wing. Boys of twelve hung their heads in shame if detected in hitting a squirrel in any other part of the body than its head. Though the bullet was small, it was large enough for any game when fired by the men that knew how. One of the Zane brothers, who went with Gen. Butler down the Ohio in 1785, killed a buffalo that Butler called "a real curiosity for size." The animal was more than six feet tall when it stood erect. Its head, cut off with as little of the neck as possible, weighed 135 pounds.
A time came when the small bullet went out of fashion. Plainsmen, who had horses to ride, wanted a bore that would admit the thumb. But the Ken-
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tuckian, who had to "tote" his entire outfit, found the small bullet better ; five hundred rounds of ammunition weighed less than ten pounds. And in these last days the armies of the world are armed once more with small caliber rifles, to the entire vindication of the Boone class of frontiersmen.
Says Dodridge regarding the clothing :
"Amongst those who were much in the habit of going hunting, and going on scouts and campaigns, the dress of the men was partly Indian and partly that of civilized nations. The hunting shirt was universal- ly worn. This was a kind of loose frock, reaching half way down the thighs, with large sleeves, open before, and so wide as to lap over a foot or more when belted. The cape (a wide collar) was large, and sometimes handsomely fringed with a ravelled piece of cloth of different color from that of the hunting shirt itself. The bosom of this dress served as a wallet to hold a chunk of bread cakes, jerk (dried meat), tow for wip- ing the barrel of the rifle, or any other necessary for hunter or warrior. The belt, which was always tied behind, answered several purposes besides that of holding the dress together. In cold weather the mit- tens, and sometimes the bullet bag, occupied the front part of it. To the right side was suspended the toma- hawk, and to the left the scalping knife with its leath- ern sheath. The hunting shirt was generally made of linsey, sometimes of coarse linen, and a few of dressed deer skins. These last were very cold and uncomfort- able in wet weather. The (under) shirt and jacket were of the common fashion. A pair of drawers, or breeches and leggins, were the dress of the thighs and
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