USA > Mississippi > The pioneers, preachers and people of the Mississippi Valley > Part 18
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24
334
PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE
reckless men make a detour, and gain the brush at some distance, where they conceal their prisoners, and then resolve to return and have a bout with the Indians in camp. It is understood by previous arrangement that they are to ride in as if they were all Indians, and enter into an amicable conversation with any parties about the fires, in order that they may gain all the information possible. Sitting quietly on their saddles, every man with his hand on the trigger of his rifle, they coolly ride into the camp as agreed. They have an agreeable chat of fifteen or twenty minutes with the Indian warriors, who are loitering around the fires ; when an old chief sitting upon a log, whispers to his friends that there is something suspicious about these men ; they don't scem Indians. Wells overhears the remark; the spies discharge their rifles each into the breast of an Indian, and then putting spurs to their horses, and lying down on their necks so as to present less mark for their enemy's fire, they ride full speed into the forest, whooping and hallooing as if they were demons. The Indians however, grasp their rifles and deliver their fire, in confusion and bewilder-
ment. Yet before the spies have got beyond the circle of the firelight McLennan is shot shrough the shoulder, and Wells, receiving a bullet in his arm, loses his rifle. May, a third man, was taken prisoner; the others, after a dangerous and fatiguing journey,
335
OF THE MISSISSIPPI.
arrived safely at camp. And this was a funny freak ; an amusing adventure; a specimen of the sport relished by the rugged Borderers of that old day.
McLennan was the fleetest runner in Wayne's army; doubtless one of the fleetest that ever lived. It is told of him on good authority, that when the army was encamped at Greenville, he took a short run, and sprang over a camp wagon which rose, with its cover on, just nine feet from the ground.
Captain Wells, the chief of this band of daring men, met an appropriate fate in a characteristic manner. Long after Wayne's expedition, during the Indian hostilities in 1812, he held the official position of interpreter to the Miami nation. The Pottawatomies had surrounded the American garrison of Fort Dearborn, where Chicago now stands; and Wells, whose niece was wife to the commander, Major Heald, had gone thither with the intention of aiding the troops to escape to Fort Wayne. But he was excessively obnoxious to the Pottawatomies, who were also much enraged at finding that the gar- rison of Fort Dearborn had destroyed their powder, instead of delivering it up as was agreed. A little after the garrison, according to a sort of capitula- tion between the officers and chiefs, had set out on their journey to Fort Wayne, the irritated Potta- watomies attacked them. Wells, seeing instantly that there was no hope, and knowing that if
336
PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE
he were taken prisoner, he would be subjected to long and dreadful tortures, wetted powder and blackened his face in token of defiance, and mount- ing his horse, began to pour out on the Indians all the abusive and insulting terms he was master of. This, as he had intended, soon irritated them to such a pitch that one of them shot him down from his horse, and then springing upon him like a beast, cut him open, tore out his heart and ate it.
And now I come to the last portion of my subject. In the early years of the present century there sud- denly arose from the midst of peace and security, a danger that threatened anew the existence of the country, by aiming at the disruption of its territory. This was the result of certain plans of a man who had served with credit in the Revolutionary war, rising to the rank of colonel; of a singularly acute, and shrewd intellect, fascinating address, perfect courtesy of manner, profoundly acquainted with human nature, a quick reader of the faults and follies of all about him, as haughtily and unscrupulously ambitious as Lucifer himself; long a most able and successful politician; once Vice-President, after failing of the Presidency itself only by a few votes; fallen however, in consequence of that failure in the esteem of his party ; the deliberate and delighted murderer of the greatest statesman our country ever boasted ; but now an outlaw by proclammation, quite bank-
337
OF THE MISSISSIPPI.
rupt in fortune and in political hopes, and ready for any design, how bad or desperate soever, which ex- hibited any chance of regaining wealth and power. For between fame and notoriety, Aaron Burr seems to have no choice.
Burr's plans were masked by a pretended enter- prise for colonizing a large tract of wild lands among the distant rivers and marshes of upper Louisiana, in which he held a nominal interest under the Spanish grant to the Baron de Bastrop. His actual design he most probably never fully revealed to any person. But the common belief is well founded that he in- tended to attack the Spanish possessions, and to earve out for himself some principality or magnificent estate somewhere in the West, between the Missis- sippi River and the Isthmus of Darien. Whether his empire was to be Mexico, Texas, or Louisiana, and how far his scheme included the territory of the United States, will probably never be known.
Burr visited the West in two successive years, 1805 and 1806; winning friends and partisans every- where, and by that strange personal magnetism which was, perhaps, his most remarkable character- istic, becoming especially a favorite among the ladies. Upon his second visit, however, he was arrested at the suit of Col. Joseph Hamilton Daviess, then U. S. attorney ; who, almost alone among the whole population of Kentucky, was profoundly ecn-
15
338
PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE
vinced of the treasonableness of Burr's designs. Daviess is famous as an orator ; but far more deserv- ing of renown, it seems to me, is the impregnable moral courage and lofty rock-like steadfastness to luis convictions which he showed in the series of vigorous endeavors he made under circumstances the most discouraging, to insure the trial of a man whom he be- lieved a criminal. He was one of the very few federal- ists in Kentucky; and as such, all his public acts were of course bitterly censured, and his motives continually questioned. In the present instance, however, the bold attorney had not only to stand up under the weight of this political odium, which his powerful shoulders had already easily supported for years, but under the accumulated storm of obloquy, indignation, and ridicule, which was liberally hurled against him from all sides, for his persevering attacks upon a man of national reputation, whose personal and political friends filled Kentucky, and who num- bered among those who were either his very partners in crime, or his zealous followers in a supposed jus- tifiable political enterprise, numbers of the influential citizens of the District.
Did the occasion permit, an interesting account might be given of the exciting legal contest which began on the third of November, 1806, before the United States District Court, of which Harry Innis, previously a fellow-intriguer of Benjamin Sebastian
339
OF THE MISSISSIPPI.
with the Spaniards, was judge. A motion by Daviess, for process to bring Burr up to answer a charge of misdemeanor in organizing a military expedition within the United States, against a friendly power, opened the case. The motion was denied, but was granted a short time afterward, at Burr's own re- quest. Twice, a day was fixed for the trial, and each time the resolute attorney found himself, to his keen mortification, obliged to ask an adjournment on account of the absence of an essential witness. The second time Daviess requested the Court to keep the jury impannelled until he could bring up the recusant by capias ; and while Burr, who had, on the former occasion made a dignified and most telling address to the Court, remained silent, Daviess was opposed by Henry Clay, Burr's counsel ; and for hours to- gether these celebrated orators battled with each other upon the legal question, but illuminated and pointed their arguments with brilliant rhetoric and sharp and personal assaults and rejoinders, which held the crowded court-room in the profoundest silence.
Innis refused to keep the jury without business ; and Daviess, to gain a little time, sent to them an in- dictment against the absent witness, John Adair, which they found not a true bill. He then moved to compel his attendance by attachment, but was again baffled ; and the case going to the grand jury,
340
PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE
with the witnesses then present, Burr was triumph- antly acquitted by the throwing out of Daviess' bill. The friends of the victorious plotter gave a splendid ball in Frankfort in honor of the occasion, and Daviess' friends, rallying, followed it by another in his honor.
Burr had only secured the services of Clay by a most sweeping and enormous falsehood. He assured him in the strongest and broadest terms that he neither entertained views, nor possessed friends nor means intended or calculated to disturb the govern- ment in any manner whatever; and that he had signed no military commission, and owned no mili- tary stores or weapons; and to this vast lie he pledged his honor. The tremendous impudence of the fabrication will appear, when it is remembered that his military preparations had begun four months before, and that at the very moment of making it, the advance of liis army, organized, armed, and pro- visioned, was on Blennerhassett's island, on thic frontiers of Kentucky; or even descending the Ohio.
It was not long before the delusion which had so long obscured the Kentuckians, was thoroughly dis- pelled, and they did justice to the penetration and resolute perseverance of Daviess, whose reputation throughout the West rose to a higher pitch than ever. There are few public men who are not, at some period of life, called to pass through a similar ordeal
341
OF THE MISSISSIPPI.
of misunderstanding, perhaps almost ignominy. But to him who is in the right, the time of recompense always comes. The clouds do not always tarry about the mountain's side. They roll themselves up and shrink away in the sunshine, and the everlasting peak stands out in its grandeur, lifted high in the heavens, uninjured by the darkness that is past, and seeming even more magnificent at the withdrawal of its transient veil.
Burr, leaving Frankfort at the conclusion of the trial, joined his forces, descended the Ohio and Mis- sissippi, and was arrested and his men dispersed near Natchez. He was taken to Washington, the capital of the Mississippi Territory, and without diffi- culty found friends who gave bail in ten thousand dollars for his appearance at court. He appeared, moved unsuccessfully for a discharge, and apprehen- sive of the consequences of a removal before a higher court, fled away eastward by night.
On the 1Sth of February, 1807, late at night, Nicholas Perkins, register, and Thomas Malone, clerk of the court, are playing backgammon in their cabin, in the little village of Wakefield, on the western verge of Alabama, when a knock is heard at the door, and on opening it, two travellers inquire of Perkins the route to Col. Hinson's. While he answers that it is seven miles away, by a difficult path and over a dangerous creek, his companion
342
PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE
throws more pine-wood on the fire, and the blaze now enables the inquisitive register to observe that the speaker has a keen, striking face, and eyes that flash and sparkle with wonderful brilliancy; that he wears an old hat and coarse clothes, but remarkably handsome boots. The travellers ride on, and Perkins instantly assures his companion that the inquirer is Aaron Burr, and urges him to go with himself at once to Hinson's and procure his arrest. Malone declines. The register, hurrying off to the sheriff, one Brightwell, awakens him; and they set out at once for Hinson's, which they reach after a severe jour- ney. Perkins thinks best to stay in the woods, lest Burr should recognize him, and sends Brightwell into the house, who satisfies himself that they are right, but, for some reason, delays to take any steps for the capture. Perkins, after waiting shivering in the woods until he is tired, and hearing nothing of the sheriff, now makes the best of his way to Fort Stoddart, on the Tombigbee, commanded by Captain Edmund P. Gaines, where he arrives at sunrise. Gaines, on learning the news, at once sets out with a file of men, and about nine o'clock meets Burr, with his companion, together with Brightwell, the recreant sheriff, who seems to have been fascinated by Burr, and now to have been guiding him on the road to Pensacola ; from which port he would have sailed for Europe, to endeavor there to obtain new ineans for
343
OF THE MISSISSIPI.I.
his intended expedition. Notwithstanding the vehe- ment eloquence with which Burr denounced the proclamations and proceedings for his arrest, and the ingenious mode in which he enlarged upon the responsibility of stopping travellers, the straightfor- ward young soldier marches him to the fort, and retains him there for some time, while he prepares to send him prisoner to Virginia. During this time, Burr makes himself a favorite with an invalid bro- ther of the commander, with Mrs. Captain Gaines, an accomplished and lovely woman, daughter of Judge Harry Toulmin, and with every one he meets.
After some weeks, Gaines succeeds in forming an escort to his mind, consisting of Colonel Nicholas Perkins, who had eaused the arrest, two United States soldiers, and seven or eight men chosen by Perkins as especially reliable, energetic, and unse- ducible ; and after a long and most fatiguing journey, all the hardships and dangers of which Burr endured without a complaint, they reached the settled country of the Atlantic seaboard. While passing through Sonth Carolina, where Burr was still popular, and of which his son-in-law, Alston, was governor, he attempted to escape, leaping from his horse and appealing to the citizens whom he found assembled at a merry-making at one of the towns on the road. But Perkins, a tall and athletic man, seized Burr and flung him bodily into the saddle, and with one guard
344
PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE.
holding his horse's bridle, and others urging the beast from behind, they hurried him onward out of reach. In the revulsion of his disappointment at this failure, Burr, ordinarily so inaccessible to fear or sor- row, for once gave way to a violent outburst of grief, and even wept like a child; and one of his guards, a kind-hearted man, wept with him. Burr was safely conveyed the remainder of the distance to Rich- mond; the story of his trial there, and his subse- quent varying fortunes, his obscure and evil life, his unhappy death, is sufficiently familiar to you. The moral of his career has often been recited, but it will bear a repetition. The lesson is simple, but fearfully important ; and its weight is not lessened by any cir- cumstance in the manners or the morals of our times. Burr was a man of splendid intellect, and of power- ful passions. He had both the magnificent machine, and vast motive power. But he was destitute of moral sentiment, or of religious feeling. He lacked the guiding and controlling hand that must measure the application of the force, and direct the working of the enginery. And without this, without the wise and just hand on engine and on helm, the magnifi- cence of the vessel only makes her ruin the sadder ; the power and speed of her movements only drive her with a more fearful crash upon the fatal rocks. Head without heart tends straight and fast to de- struction, and brings the awful fate of Aaron Burr.
Lecture VIII.
MANNA IN THE WILDERNESS;
OB,
THE OLD PREACHERS AND THEIR PREACHING.
15*
MANNA IN THE WILDERNESS ;
OR,
THE OLD PREACHERS AND THEIR PREACHING.
AFTER the defeat of the English forces before Fort Duquesne under the ill-fated Braddock, it was desired still to wrest that strong position from the grasp of the French, and General Forbes was placed at the head of an expedition to effect that object. It was thought fit, however, that he should be preceded by some person sufficiently able and experienced to bring over the minds of the indomitable inhabitants of the wilderness from the cause of the French to that of the English. The person selected for this hazardous enterprise was a Moravian missionary, Christian Frederick Post. He had long been labor- ing among the Delawares on the Susquehanna, and had acquired a thorough knowledge of the Indian languages, and of their habits and customs. He was calm, simple-hearted, intrepid, and accustomed to all the perils he had now to face. Confiding himself and his cause to the hands of his Great Master, he
847
3-18
PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE
betook himself to the forest, attended by a little com- pany of savages. His negotiation was eminently successful ; and though his life was threatened again and again, he succeeded in returning safely to the settlements. By the wise and skillful efforts of this man, the Indians were completely won over to the cause of the English. The fall of Fort Duquesne was the consequence; and the arms of the English were crowned with triumph.
After the close of the war, in 1761, Post re- turned to his labor among the Indians, crossed the Alleghany River, and found himself upon the Muskingum, in the now State of Ohio. Here he settled among the Delawares, whose language he knew, and among whose brethren he had already labored for many years. But the tribe among whom he now found himself, while a part of them were inclined to a peacable disposition toward the Eng- lish, were still in part exceedingly hostile; and he found great difficulties in his way. These, however, he serenely met and overcame. Having taken pos- session of a piece of ground allotted him, he proposed to erect a cabin, for the double purpose of a home and a school-house, that he might instruct the savages and their children. As he commenced clearing the timber from this ground, some of the Indians in- quired his intentions. He told them that a mission- ary must live, and in order to eat, he must raise corn.
349
OF THE MISSISSIPPI.
" Nay," said the Indians ; " the French priests with whom we are acquainted, to whose labors we have been accustomed, look fat and comely, and they raise no corn ; and if you be the servant of God, as you say you are, and as they say they are, your God will feed you, as he feeds them ; you can therefore have no large traet of ground to till. If you have a farm, other English will come and open farms, and then a fort must be built to defend you ; and then our lands will be taken away from us, and we shall be driven toward the setting sun." The logic of the Indians was excellent, and their power sufficient to sustain it. if it was not; Post had, therefore, to content himself with a small patch sufficient for a vegetable garden. Here, then, in company with the cele- brated IIeckewelder, he commenced his labors.
The war of Pontiac beginning in the following year, the two missionaries, warned of their danger by the simple-hearted Indian children of the forest, returned east of the mountains, and there remained for six years, when, together with David Zeisberger, they came back to the Muskingum, and laid the foundations of the town of Gnadenhutten, a memorable settle- ment of the good Moravians and their Indians. This was the first establishment of those devout and useful missionaries west of the mountains. Many an Indian's heart was won to the cause of the truth by their patience, constaney, and judicious humble
350
PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE
instructions ; and flourishing out-stations began to grow up all around them. During all the Revolu- tionary struggle, the Moravians were successfully laboring toward the conversion of the Delaware Indians. But the towns they occupied were unfor- tunately just upon the frontier, between the whites upon the one side, and the Indians upon the other. The Wyandots and Shawnees, fiercest of all the hostile tribes of the Northwest, in making incursions upon the frontiers of Virginia and Pennsylvania, must needs pass through the settlements of these Christian Indians; and the settlers in the western parts of those States, in attempting to make reprisals for the outrages perpetrated upon them, must also take the same road. They were thus feared and sus- pected by both parties ; and the British in the neigh- borhood of Detroit, at length determined that their settlements should be broken up, and, with or against their will, they must now be removed to the neighborhood of Sandusky. This they were loath to do, and would not voluntarily abandon their peaceful homes and firesides, their pleasant maize fields, and the sunny clearings around their comfortable rosi- dences. But they were forcibly taken away by command of the British officers. Nearly a hundred of them perished in the winter of 1781-2, in the neighborhood of Sandusky ; and the survivors re- solved to return to their old settlements, and there
351
OF THE MISSISSIPPI.
gather in their corn, which had been allowed to remain out during the winter.
A company of settlers from the western part of Pennsylvania about this time resolved on an excur- sion into the Indian territory for the purpose of punishing the Wyandots, who had been committing outrages within that State. About ninety of these men, under the command of one Col. Williamson, after two or three days' march from Fort Pitt, reached the peaceful settlements of our Christian Indians. The converts were abroad in the fields, men, women, and children, gathering in their corn. Seeing the white men approaching, and supposing them friendly, they came forward to meet them courteously, and cor- dially invited them to their homes. The whites told them that they had come for the purpose of convey- ing them for safe keeping to Fort Pitt. Some of the Indians had been there the preceding year, and had been treated with remarkable kindness by the com- mandant. To this proposition of the whites they therefore readily acceded, and collected themselves in the village. All the remaining Indians, who were scattered in various localities within a circuit of four or five miles, were also brought in. When they were all gathered together, they were put under a guard, and the question was then put by the colonel, "Shall these Indians be put to death or marched to Pittsburg ?" All in favor of sparing their lives
352
PIONEERS, PREACHERS AND PEOPLE
were ordered to step out two paces in advance of the line as the detachment stood. Only sixteen men of the whole ninety took the requisite step. The vote was for death. The intelligence was communi- cated to those humble and simple-minded people, now imprisoned and helpless within their own dwell- ings, and they were told that with the morrow's dawn they must all perish. They begged for life, but their prayer was unheeded, save by that Ear which is ever open to the prayers of all. The white men were deaf to their pleadings, and even to the wailings of women and the innocent entreaties of little children. And on the morrow that company of men, with your blood and mine in their veins, Anglo-Saxon men, took those people, five and thirty men, four and thirty women, five and forty little children, laid them out on blocks of wood, and stand- ing over them with their axes, clove their skulls in sunder ; one of the most atrocious, horrible, devilish deeds that was ever perpetrated upon the face of God Almighty's earth !
Fearfully enough was this black-hearted murder avenged by Him who watches the deeds of his reere- ant children. Next year these same volunteers fitted out another expedition. They marched this time five linndred strong, intending not only to burn and lay waste the territory of the hostile Indians, but also to destroy those of the inoffensive Christian Indians who
353
OF THE MISSISSIPPI.
yet remained. I am glad to say that most of them, diabolical miscreants as they were, fell victims either to the tomahawks of the hostile savages, or to the silent and unrelenting power of the wilderness. Col. Crawford, who had been an old friend and agent of George Washington, and was unwillingly and unwit- tingly made commandant of this last party, was burnt alive with peculiarly frightful torments, by the Wyan- dots, by whom he was taken prisoner.
The Moravian brethren were the first to bring the Word of Life and Truth into the vast region of the Mississippi Valley ; always of course excepting the old Jesuit Fathers and other Catholic missionaries who came with the French. There are yet, in the western country, and have been ever since the time of those atrocious murders, descendants of the Christian Indians, the converts of the Moravian brethren ; and I believe there are yet some white Moravians in the eastern part of the State of Ohio.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.