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 21
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It was a prairie country, with groves here and there, and the Indians were in a piece of timber on rising ground, since known as Battle Island, about three and a half miles northeast of the modern Upper Sandusky. Simon Girty, Matthew Elliot and Alex- ander McKee, the renegades, were with the Indians (about 200 in number), the chief of whom was Cap- tain Pipe, a noted Delaware. There were also two companies of white men from Detroit, under Captain William Caldwell, in the grove. On the whole, Craw- ford's force was much (perhaps 150) superior in num- ber.
Though composed, in good part, of the most wretched material, Crawford's command charged on the grove, when ordered, and the Indians fled. But once the command was in the shelter of the trees, they sat down. It was a time for most earnest pursuit of the enemy, but instead of taking any advantage of the gain they had made, these worthless vagabonds allowed the enemy to rally and draw a line around the sheltering grove.
During that night and all day on the 5th, the In- dians fired from the grass, as opportunity offered, and toward night of the 5th, they were reinforced by 140 Shawnees.
At sight of these fresh warriors, the hearts of the Pittsburg mob turned to water. They still out-num- bered the enemy, but fighting armed warriors was very different from tomahawking bound women and chil-
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dren, and at 9 o'clock at night, on the 5th, Crawford formed his men in a body, and began a retreat that quickly degenerated into a panic. Singly and in squads, the whites scattered over the prairie, and it is likely that the whole mob would have been destroyed but for the efforts of a lieutenant known as John Rose, but who was really Baron de Rosenthal, of Russia. He, by heroic efforts and example, rallied 300, and keeping them in order, beat off the enemy and escaped. Yet even so they would not have escaped but for the eagerness of the Indians in pursuing the stragglers.
Among the stragglers who very nearly escaped were Col. Crawford and Dr. John Knight. Both of them were captured on the 7th. They were taken to Upper Sandusky (the Old Town), thence to a Dela- ware town on the Tymochtee, and at 4 o'clock on the afternoon of June IIth, 1782, Crawford was tied to a stake for torture. He had begged Simon Girty, whom he well knew, to save him, but Girty said it was im- possible. He also implored the Delaware chief, Captain Pipe, to spare his life, or at worst, shoot him. To this, Captain Pipe replied that if Williamson had been taken it might have been done, but the Indians were exasperated by the slaughter at Gnadenhutten, and nothing could now prevent his death by torture.
Crawford was naked. His hands were bound firmly behind his back, and from the thongs on his wrist a stout rope led to the foot of the post-a sap- ling, peeled down. This rope was long enough to allow him to walk freely around the post. When he was secured, the Indians fired their guns, loaded with powder only, against him till his skin was full of
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burned powder grains from his feet to his neck. They punched and beat him with blazing faggots from a fire that was some distance from the circle around which he could walk. They showered red coals over him until at every step his feet were placed upon hot em- bers. Finally he fell to the ground, where he was scalped, and then hot coals were piled against the place from which his scalp had been removed. This drove him to his feet once more, but after circling about the post again he fell and expired.
He had been under torture but two hours. As compared with the Iroquois, who often tortured their victims through three days, these Delawares were mer- ciful.
Dr. John Knight was a witness of the tragedy. When it was ended he was sent in charge of one Indian toward another village, to be burned, as they told him. But the fact that he was guarded by but one Indian, and that he readily escaped from his guard, makes credible the story that he was allowed to escape in order that he might tell how the red men had avenged the slaughter of Gnadenhutten.
A stone monument has been erected on the east bank of the Big Tymochtee creek, near Crawford, Wyandot county, Ohio, by the Pioneer Association of the county, to commemorate the death of Crawford.
It is recorded that the burning of Crawford created "a profound sensation"-"it excited the greatest hor- ror"-throughout the country. The people who had condoned the merciless slaughter of ninety-four inno- cents at Gnadenhutten were horrified to think the In- dians would take revenge on the leader of an ex-
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pedition that went to the Sandusky Plains to repeat the work done at Gnadenhutten.
The burning of Crawford was, however, but the beginning of the revenge taken by the Indians. John Slover, one of the guides, was also captured but es- caped (he rode and ran naked through the wilderness, with no food but berries and two crawfish to Wheel- ing). He was present at several councils of the In- dians where the Gnadenhutten massacre was discussed, and heard the Indians resolve to take no more prisoners while the war lasted.
A maddened host thereafter swept the whole fron- tier, and parties went well into the interior of Vir- ginia and Pennsylvania, passing between frontier forti- fied posts in order to fall with greater success on un- suspecting farmers.
Of these raids but one need be described-that at Brayan's Station, standing a few miles northeast of Lexington, Ky., which resulted in the slaughter at Blue Licks. In July the British gathered a body of Indians and rangers numbering more than a thousand. These under Capt. William Caldwell, who had opposed Craw- ford at Upper Sandusky, started for an attack on Wheeling, Va., but hearing that George Rogers Clark . was leading a command into the Indian country, they hastily returned to defend their homes. They learned, later, that the report was false, but the Indians, for the most part, were disbanded. A party of about 300, however, went to Kentucky, and arrived at Bryan's Station, on August 16th, 1782. It appears, however, that some scouts reached that neighborhood on the 15th, and were discovered by the white lookouts.
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YORK ON LAKE ONTARIO. This plate was engraved in 1812. A portion of a block-house in foreground.
Mississippi Valley.
Foreseeing from the actions of the scouts that an attack impended, the first care of the whites was to get a supply of water, and this was obtained by the women and girls, who went to the spring, laughing and chatting, as usual, although they were within range of a number of Indian guns, and knew it. The Indians, being anxious to keep their presence unknown in order to surprise the fort, later on, did not molest the women.
But when the attack was made early on the 16th, it failed utterly. The Indians tried to decoy out the garrison by sending a small party to feign an attack and retreat on one side while the main body prepared to storm the other. The whites pretended to fall into the trap, and sent a party in pursuit, but the main body of the garrison gathered where the real storm impended, and repulsed it with a deadly volley.
A rescuing party that was brought by messenger from Lexington was repulsed by the Indians, but when attempts were made to fire the station, during the night of the 16th, they failed, and during the next forenoon the Indians withdrew, "angry and sullen at their dis- comfiture."
In the meantime the settlers from Lexington, and nearby forts, (Bryan's was the frontier settlement), had been gathering, and, 182 in number, they were soon on the Indians' trail. The leaders saw by the tracks that the Indians outnumbered them, but they followed the trail as far as the Blue Licks, on the banks of the Licking River.
From this point a number of Indians were seen on the rocks, on the further bank, and the settlers gathered
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to consider what they should do next. Boone, the ablest fighter of them all, advised that a halt be made until another detachment, coming from Login's Sta- tion, as they knew, should arrive. The men in the com- pany who had been most successful in fighting Indians agreed with Boone, but Major Hugh McGarry, a blat- ant bully, was for crossing immediately. McGarry had been with a successful raid that George Rogers Clark had led to the Indian towns, the previous year, but had well-nigh wrecked it by an insubordinate dash from the main command, while yet it was on the Ohio. His vanity was his most conspicuous characteristic, and to display his physical courage he spurred his horse into the river, waved his hat with a theatrical flourish above his head, and "called on all who were not cow- ards to follow him."
Of course the others "just had to" follow him. On the further side was an open forest. An advance guard of twenty-five was thrown out ahead. The In- dians were soon seen, and galloping forward till within sixty yards of the enemy, the settlers dismounted.
Boone, in command of the left wing, opened the fight, and steadily drove the enemy back. But the Kentuckians were outnumbered so greatly that in a few minutes the Indians had killed nearly all the ad- vance guard; and then they enveloped the right wing, which was crushed in on the center. Col. Trigg, who commanded the right wing, was killed, and a little later, Col. Todd was mortally wounded. As he fell from his horse with the blood gushing from his mouth, a panic seized a majority of the settlers, and almost to a man they fled back to the river.
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On the home side of the river, some of the men who had wished to wait for reinforcements, made a stand under the lead of a man named Netherland, and, by cool fire, so covered the retreat, that the Indians did not follow up their victory, as they might have done.
But the Kentuckians had already suffered fright- fully. Out of 182 men who went out into battle, sev- enty were killed during the fight, seven were taken prisoners, and twelve who escaped were badly wound- ed. And that, too, in a fight lasting about five minutes. Of the seven prisoners, four were burned at the stake to avenge Gnadenhutten-for it must be kept in mind that this raid was one of the many made to avenge Gnadenhutten. One other was condemned to torture, but when the Indians started him running the gauntlet, he turned on the nearest Indian and threw him to the ground. Then he pitched another over his head, after which he leaped on a log, flapped his hands on his sides, and crowed like a rooster. The Indians roared with laughter, and a chief at once adopted him as a son.
The enemy lost but twelve killed and fourteen wounded, according to their own account, in the entire raid. Of these, they said, seven were killed at the lick. It is reasonable to suppose that more Indians were killed than their report showed, but that was the se- verest blow the Kentucky frontier got in all its history.
And yet no one, save the unconsidered Quakers and Moravians so much as observed the fact that in- justice to an inferior race was unprofitable to a most frightful degree.
3II
CHARLES CORNWALLIS. (MARQUIS CORNWALLIS). From a portrait by Copley.
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XIX
THE FRONTIERSMEN AT KING'S MOUNTAIN.
Ferguson said He was in a Place from which all the Rebels outside of Hell" could not drive Him, yet an Inferior Force of Patriots, a Respectable Body of Prime Riflemen from the Holston in the Course of a few Minutes Captured all of His Force, and Killed and Wounded 389 of Them in Doing So-When Clark's Name was as Good as a Thousand Men.
Although it was fought to the eastward of the Al- leghany divide, the battle of King's Mountain (Octo- ber 7th, 1780), should have mention, because of the part taken by the men from the Holston region, and because it was one of the decisive victories of the war. Until 1778, the Southern States were not molested by the British forces, but late in that year, Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Campbell with 3,500 regulars cap-
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tured Savannah. A proclamation outlawing all who would not take up arms under the British standard followed, and soon Georgia was overrun by the British forces.
On June 13th, the worthless Gates (one of a dis- graceful list, far too long, of American officers who have obtained position by political influence), secured the command of the Southern Department, and was shamefully defeated by Lord Cornwallis at Camden on August 16th, 1780. But British success reached flood tide at Camden, and the ebb which began to run at King's Mountain, left the invaders stranded at Yorktown.
Cornwallis, while yet in South Carolina, detached Major Ferguson "to scout the highlands (even to the divide), and enlist" as many Tories as possible. Fer- guson took 200 British infantry and 1,000 Tories, "whom he drilled until" they were "excellent troops," by the British standard of the day, though they were deficient in one particular, as shall appear.
But, very unexpectedly, instead of finding Tories flocking to his standard, Ferguson found packs of Pa- triots-"dirty mongrels," he called them-gathering to drive him to cover. In fact the "mongrels" proved such efficient fighters that Ferguson's thoroughbreds were started on the run, and they did not stop until, on October 6, 1780, they were kenneled safely, (as they supposed), on top of King's Mountain.
"Well, boys, here is a place from which all the rebels outside of hell cannot drive us," said Ferguson, as on the morning of the 7th he surveyed his position.
And the facts seemed to warrant his confidence.
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He was on a knob of a ridge a half mile long, and 1,700 feet high above the sea. The ridge was covered with big pines, and obstructed with huge boulders. His men, now 1,125 in number, had been trained until they would obey orders. The force that had been chasing him was composed of undisciplined militia. And although Ferguson did not know it, there were not 1,000 of these militia men. On the face of these facts, ignonimous defeat did seem to await the Ameri- can force.
But there was one factor in the fight on which Ferguson had not counted; two factors, really, re- mained unconsidered. And to this day, in spite of oft repeated demonstrations of the vital importance of the matter, the first factor does not receive the considera- tion it deserves.
Ferguson had drilled his men until they would obey orders under all circumstances,-a most important matter-but he had overlooked the chief end of soldiers. He did not fully realize that soldiers are enlisted solely to kill other soldiers in battle. He had men who "could march to admiration," but they could not shoot. They were poor marksmen.
The Americans, to a man, had been trained to see with unwavering eyes through the sights of a rifle, and those of them who, under Shelby, Sevier and Col. William Campbell, had come from the backwoods, carried the Deckhard rifle, with a barrel three feet six inches long, and using a bullet running seventy to the pound-a most deadly weapon. Moreover, though undisciplined militia, and therefore liable to panic, they were now acting on the offensive, and were
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angered by the memory of the outrages that had been perpetrated by the British partisans. Ferguson had not considered the anger of these woodsmen. He had not understood the value of marksmanship.
At 3 o'clock in the afternoon of October 7, the Americans, 1,000 strong, dismounted around the foot of the mountain, and after tying their horses to the trees, looked to the priming of their rifles and prepared to climb three sides of the ridge. The north end was precipitous and was left unconsidered.
Led by Campbell and Shelby in the center, the Americans climbed up until the British saw them and opened fire, when they deployed behind trees and began to shoot also-continuing to advance, the while, from tree to tree, and rock to rock. The crack of the Ameri- can rifle was soon seen to speak of death to the British, and Ferguson ordered a charge with bayonets fixed.
The Americans fell back until the British host was well down the mountain side, when a band of back- woodsmen under Sevier opened fire on the British right flank.
Instantly the well-disciplined British soldiers turned on Sevier's men, but it was only to find another Ameri- can host firing on them from the rear, while the men under Shelby and Campbell turned on them instantly.
The British opened fire in return, but because they could not shoot well, they killed Americans only by chance and accident. And seeing that the British fired wildly, the Americans crept nearer, and fired as if at a herd of buffalo. Ferguson came riding a beauti- ful white horse along the crest of the ridge, and with shouts encouraged his men to withstand the Americans.
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SURRENDER OF THE TROOPS I'mmanded by Col Ferguson at
KUNGS MOUNTAIN 7th October TTO.
EXPL. W.ATION.
3. Cel Shellys Trips . Enemy shine previous
to bring survandre.
6. In Arriera
K Enowy in confusion
D. Maj Minstens.
LL. Length yourmys
E. Cal Hounbright
chrmoment soPeler.
1. Maj maniche's. .M. Col Fergusens Grave.
G. Col flereland's. N. Monument of felend .
A. Vol William's Chiede Dethere.
1. Maj AF Drui's.
. D. Cel Ferguson killed.
Route of the different Corps going into the Battle.
Engraved by W. Keenan Charleston.S.(". From a Drawing taken on the spot In Confiraham For Rangeys Annals of Teldieser
Branch of Clarks Fork
of
Bullocks Creek
PLAN OF THE ACTION AT KING'S MOUNTAIN.
HO
A
Mississippi Valley.
But he had come within range of men accustomed to killing deer on the run. He was shot dead, pierced, it is said, by no less than six bullets, and falling to the ground, his horse raced wildly down the mountain.
The end had come, the battle had been raging only a few minutes, but, brief as the time was, 389 of the British had been killed or wounded, out of the 1,125 that went into battle. Twenty escaped and the rest surrendered. The American loss was but twenty- eight killed, and sixty wounded.
The victory was the work of what the Kentuck- ians called "a Respectably Body of Prime Riflemen," but to this day our soldiers are drilled by the hour in marching, where a minute is devoted to target practice.
The battle of King's Mountain freed the Holston region from any fear of Tory invasion; and Yorktown followed on King's Mountain. But it did not free the Holston from Indian depredations. The Chero- kees had been incited by the British agents to renewed activity, while the British overran the country east of the Alleghanies.
The work that followed was thorough, but monot- onously like that of other attacks on Indian settlements. The white men, with corn, powder and lead only in their pouches, ranged free through the forests. "A thousand cabins were burned, 50,000 bushels of corn destroyed." But the Indians fled before the whites, and but twenty-nine red men were killed in the first raid, and thirty in the second. A third brought in a dozen scalps. But in the meantime so many red women and children had been taken prisoners that the Chero- kees sued for peace.
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It was in 1780, (May 26), that a party of 1,500 Indians and 140 British traders made an attack on St. Louis. They were sent "out by Lt. Gov. Sinclair, of Michilimacinac, and led by a Sioux chief named Wabasha. The affair lasted only a few hours, and no assault was made on" the fort. A few stragglers were killed and then the force fled back to the north. . Nothing of consequence was accomplished, but this assault was to be the first of a series intended to cap- ture New Orleans. The reason for the sudden flight of the Indians is found in the fact that they had learned, during the day, of the arrival of George Rogers Clark with a small body of men. The name of Clark was as good as a thousand ordinary men well armed.
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GEN. ISAAC SHELBY.
His remarkable career cannot be epitomized in this brief space. This portrait is by Durand.
XX
FRONTIER HOME AND CIVIL LIFE IN WAR TIME.
A Memorable Picture in the History of the Mississippi was the Man who Walked Across the Mountains Driving a "Flea-Bitten" Grey Horse Loaded with Books-It was a Poor Man's Country, for No Great- er Capital was Necessary than Enough to Buy an Acre, a Hoe and a Rifle-A Consideration of Things that Shocked European Travellers-One of Col. William Campbell's Busy Sundays.
Of all the pictures of life on the frontier during the war of the Revolution, none pointed the way of the future Republic in better fashion than that of a young man who came from Princeton, New Jersey, and "walked through Maryland and Virginia, driving be- fore him an old 'flea-bitten' grey horse, loaded with a sack full of books." Samuel Doak was his name, and he was a teacher as well as a preacher. Following the
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blazed trails through the forest-covered mountains, he came at last to Jonesboro, and there settled, and in 1777 built a Presbyterian church. Doak believed with his congregation that the red men were heathen who ought to be driven from the fair land, as the heathen were driven from Canaan, and that when red men were killed, their souls went straight to the eternal torment to which they had been ordained from all eternity. Nevertheless he brought to the wilderness "a sack full of books," among which was one containing the Sermon on the Mount; and at worst any books were better than no books. Moreover he built a log school house that grew into Washington College, later on. There were many vagabonds on the frontier-shiftless hunter folks with no ambition beyond a full stomach, but the dominant portion of the people knew well the value of books. That is a matter well worth consideration in connection with the further fact that, as the frontier spread across the continent, school houses were always to be found in the battle line, until a time came when the people made boast that the first brick burned in this or that community were used in building a school house. That sack full of books on a flea-bitten grey horse with Doak afoot in order that the horse might carry a full sack, is a most memorable incident in the life of the Mississippi Valley.
The winter of 1779-80 was known as "the hard winter," for many years after it had passed. The whites in Kentucky and Tennessee had never seen such prolonged cold weather or such a depth of snow. Cat- tle and horses perished of the cold and starvation. The game became lean. Only scanty crops of corn
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had been raised, and what was harvested was eaten before spring came. A fort had been erected during the summer of 1779 at the Falls, (Louisville), and stores had been provided for the garrison. Some corn was held there by the merchants, who soon raised the price to $50 a bushel, and eventually to $175, in Continental money, which was worth then, and at that place, not far from twenty-five cents in coin per dollar. The lean breast of turkeys was sliced and eaten in place of bread with the meals of broiled and roasted venison, and the only satisfactory meals known throughout the winter were eaten when some lucky hunter found a bear in its den. For the bears were always fat.
Following the hard winter of 1779-80, the in- flux of population was extraordinary. No less than "300 large family boats arrived, during the ensuing spring, at the Falls," says Floyd's correspondence, quoted by Butler. Many other people, of course, came by the Wilderness road, through Cumberland Gap. One estimate says that more than 4,000 came in 1780.
On the whole the influx of people from the settled region east of the mountains is one of the important facts in the history of the Great Valley during the Rev- olution. The Indian raids drove many people from the frontier, but the immigration more than made up for the losses thus sustained. The weaklings who returned filled the East with the tales of the Indian raids, and their stories could scarcely have been exaggerations of the facts, simply because the human mind could scarcely imagine more dangerous conditions, in such a country, than those actually existing there. The life of no white person was safe for a moment when be-
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yond a fort's walls. The home seekers who came in the 300 family boats knew what they were to face when they left the Monongahela, and many of them began their experiences with red warriors while yet on the river. For the river was haunted by parties of hostile Indians in 1780, and for years after. It was a year later that Colonel Archibald Lochry and his command of 100 men were destroyed by Indians while coming down the river. Nevertheless immigration continued.
It was a people of the utmost courage, and the dominant portion of them were of the rarest energy. A few slaves were with the emigrants, but it was dis- tinctively a community of people who would work. Owners and slaves swung the axe and the hoe side by side in the forest and field. It was a condition of affairs that could not last long, for slave owners would necessarily come, at last, to look upon physical labor as ignoble; but it is the most important fact in the history of the United States that the Mississippi Val- ley has been prosperous and progressive in proportion to the way the dominant people in it have been willing to work.
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