The westward movement : the colonies and the republic west of the Alleghanies, 1763-1798 with full cartographical illustrations from contemporary sources, Part 28

Author: Winsor, Justin, 1831-1897. cn
Publication date: 1897
Publisher: Boston ; New York : Houghton, Mifflin and Co.
Number of Pages: 622


USA > Mississippi > The westward movement : the colonies and the republic west of the Alleghanies, 1763-1798 with full cartographical illustrations from contemporary sources > Part 28


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As the months went on, the feeling in sympathy with the west increased. Jefferson wrote of Jay's project in January, 1787, as "a relinquishment of five parts out of eight of the territory of the United States ; an abandonment of the fairest subject for the payment of our public debts, and the chaining of those debts on our own necks." If, by virtue of this deser- tion of the west, he added, " they declare themselves a separate people, we are incapable of a single effort to retain them." In April, Harmar, at the rapids of the Ohio, found the question " the greatest subject of discourse," and the opinion prevailed there that, if the Spanish demands were met, it would be " the greatest of grievances." The Spaniards were warned that their


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THE NORTHWEST OCCUPIED.


obstinacy might throw the western people into the arms of England, who could offer them the St. Lawrence as an outlet. Brissot said that if Spain would only open the Mississippi, " New Orleans would become the centre of a lucrative com- merce." Brissot believed Spain would do this, except that she feared " the communication of those principles of independence which the Americans preach wherever they go."


By February, 1787, Jay's party in Congress showed signs of weakening, and later, when New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island deserted him, Jay abandoned all hope. But Spain was firm for an exclusive use of the river, and the time was only put off when the question would come to an issue. Virginia might resolve, as her Assembly did on November 12, 1787, that the free use of streams leading to the sea was guar- anteed " by the laws of God and man," but something more than legislative votes was necessary to secure the boon. There was a lingering suspicion that England, at the peace, had so readily yielded the western country because she was sure it would eventually involve the new Republic in controversy with Spain, and rumors of a coming conflict were, as it now turned out, constantly in the air. Harmar wrote in January, 1788, to the secretary of war: "I very much question whether the Kentucky and Cumberland people and those below will have the audacity to attempt to seize Natchez and New Orleans. I know of no cannon and the necessary apparatus which they have in their possession to carry on such an expedition." It was at the time evident that though Kentucky had something like a hundred thousand population, the wiser course for attain- ing success was to bide the time when Spain and western Europe were embroiled in a war.


The question, particularly in Virginia, entered into the dis- cussions over the adoption of the federal constitution, which, now that Massachusetts had adopted it, trusting to the future for amendments, was in a fair way to become the law of the land. Madison contended, in the debates in Richmond, that the constitution, by creating a strong government, would render the opening of the Mississippi certain. Patrick Henry doubted it much. "To preserve the balance of American power," he said, " it is essentially necessary that the right to the Mississippi should be secured." The distrust which Jay's purpose had


321


STEAMBOATS.


created was hard to eradicate. "This affair of the Mississippi," said Jefferson to Madison in June, 1789, " by showing that Congress is capable of hesitating on a question which proposes a clear sacrifice of the western to the maritime States, will with difficulty be obliterated." In a well-known letter which Rufus Putnam wrote to Fisher Ames in 1790, that leader of the Mari- etta settlement strove to show how nothing but necessity could wean the West from the East, while the seaboard towns must be the natural market for the western products ; but to preserve this mutual dependence, the Ohio region must be sustained by Congress in its demand for the free navigation of the Missis- sippi, and he urges Ames to press Congress to that conclusion.


A second factor in the Mississippi problem was some method, as already indicated, of stemming its current by artificial means. We have seen in the preceding chapter that, in 1784, Rumsey had gained the approbation of Washington for a me- chanical method of using setting-poles in pushing boats up- stream. Very soon after this, he had grasped a notion of using steam for power, as indeed William Henry of Lancaster had suggested to Andrew Ellicott as carly as 1776. Rumsey's new notion was to use this power in forcing water out of the stern which had been taken in at the bow, and in this way to propel the boat. In the autumn of 1784, the legislatures of Virginia and Maryland had granted him the exclusive use of the inven- tion in their waters. At the same time (November) he com- municated his plans to Washington, but they did not gain his full confidence. On March 10 of the next year (1785), he wrote to Washington : "I have quite convinced myself that boats may be made to go against the current of the Missis- sippi or Ohio rivers . . . from sixty to a hundred miles a day."


It is difficult to reconcile all the conflicting statements circu- lated and vouched for by Rumsey and his rival, John Fitch, each claiming priority in the use of steam. It is certain that in March, 1785, Fitch, who had traveled much in the western country, and was countenanced by Hutchins, professed with some little reserve to Patrick Henry that his knowledge of the northwest was not equaled by that of any other man, and that he intended to put his knowledge to use in the construction of a map of that region, which he soon actually executed, cutting


322


THE NORTHWEST OCCUPIED.


SLake of The Woods.


B


L. SUPERIOR


C


F


G


Falls of St Anthony


IHURON


D


L. MICHIGAN


An high plain


E


H


ERIE


I


L


MISSISSIP


LLINOIS R


M


Ohio


River


P


N


R


NOTE. - The above cut is a sketch from Fitch's map. The dot-and-dash line is the boundary on Canada. The dash line defines the western part of Pennsylvania. The dot lines show the bounds of the proposed States under the ordinance of 1784. There are various legends on the map in the places indicated by the capital letters, this : -


A. A map of the northwest parts of the United States of America.


B. The several divisions on the N. W. of the Ohio is the form which that country is to be laid off into States according to an ordinance of Congress of May the 20th, 1785.


C. The author presents this to the public as the production of his leisure hours, and flatters himself that altho' it is not perfect, few capital errors will be found in it. He has not attempted to take the exact meanders of the WATERS, but only their general course. In forming this map he acknowledges himself to have been indebted to the ingenious labours of Thomas Hutchins and Willm M'Murray, Esqrs. But from his own surveys and observations he was led to hope he could make considerable improvements on those and all that have gone before him. How far he has succeeded is now submitted to the impartial public by their very hble servt, JOHN FITCH.


323


FITCH'S MAP.


the copper himself, and working off the copies in a hand-press of his own construction. He had hopes that, by traversing the country and selling his maps, he could obtain what money he needed to carry out a project which seems very soon afterwards to have entered his mind. He later claimed that when the conception of using steam to propel a boat against the current of the western waters dawned upon him, he had not heard that any one had ever broached the idea. The scheme, when he advanced it, did not altogether commend itself to those who had had experience with the Ohio and Mississippi currents, and Jacob Yoder, who, it appears, was the first to take a boat with merchandise to New Orleans, had expressed his distrust. Fitch, with his earnest vigor, set to work on a model, and before long had it afloat on a little stream in Pennsylvania. It was a boat propelled by paddle-wheels. On August 29, he wrote to the president of Congress that he had invented a machine to facili-


D. To THOMAS HUTCHINS, Esqr., Geographer to the United States. Sir : It is with the greatest diffidence I beg leave to lay at your feet a very humble attempt to promote a science of which you are so bright an ornament. I wish it were more worthy your patronage. Unaccustomed to the business of engraving, I could not render it as pleasing to the eye as I would have wished. But, as I flatter myself, will be easily forgiven by a gentleman, who knows how to distinguish between formu and substance in all things. I have the honr to be, sir, your very hble servt, JOHN FITCH.


E. The falls of Niagara are at present in the middle of a plane about five miles back from the summit of the mountain, over which the waters once tumbled, we may suppose. The action of the water in a long course of time, has worn away the solid rock and formed an immense ditch which none may approach without horror. After falling perpendicular 150 feet (as some have computed) it continues to descend in a rapid seven miles further to the Landing place.


F. Copper ore in great abundance found here.


G. The falls of St. Anthony exhibit one of the grandest spectacles in nature ; the waters dash- ing over tremendous rocks from a height of about forty feet perpendicular.


H. From Fort Lawrance and theuce to the month of Sioto, a westerly course to the Illinois is generally a rich level country abounding with living springs and navigable waters ; the air pure and the climate moderate.


I. This country has once been settled by a people more expert in the art of war than the pres- ent inhabitants. Regnlar fortifications, and some of these incredibly large are frequently to be found. Also many graves or towers, like pyramids of earth.


J. Pioria's wintering ground.


K. On the Miamis are a large number of Indian towns, inhabited by Shawanoes, Delawares, Mingos, &c.


L. The lands on this lake are generally flat and swampy ; but will make rich pasture and meadow land.


M. From Fort Lawrance to the mouth of Yellow Creek and northward to the waters of Lake Erie is generally a thin soil and broken land.


N. From the mouth of Sioto to Fort Lawrance, between that line and the Ohio, the soil is tol- erable good ; but generally much broken with sharp hills.


P. From the Pennsylvania line to Great Sandy, and thence a southwesterly course to the Carolina line, is generally very poor land and very mountanous, rocky and broken.


Q. The Kentucky country is not so level as it is generally represented to be, there being a range of hilly land, running thro' it N. E. & S. W. ; also very deep valleys on the larg streams.


R. Ironbanks, settled in the year 80 and evacuated the same year.


The original map, from which this sketch is made, is in Harvard College library, and I have heard of but one other copy. A photograph of it, nearly full size, was taken for the late Judge C. C. Baldwin of Cleveland.


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THE NORTHWEST OCCUPIED.


tate internal navigation, and laid his plans before that body. In September, he outlined his scheme to the American Philo- sophical Society, and eight or ten weeks later, on December 2, he offered a model for their consideration.


Meanwhile, Fitch had petitioned the Virginia Assembly for aid in pushing his invention, and Governor Henry entered into a bond with him, by which Fitch agreed that if he could sell a thousand copies of his map at six shillings each, he would exhibit his steamboat in Virginia, giving " full proof of the practicability of moving by the force of a steam engine . . . a vessel of not less than one ton burthen." This agreement was dlated on November 16, 1785, and Fitch was to forfeit £350 if the conditions were not fulfilled. The maps were not sold, and he lost the aid of Virginia. He successively asked, but without avail, similar assistance from Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New Jersey. He had had before this, in September, an interview with Gardogni. To induce the Spanish minister to patronize the scheme, he had set forth the future of the west under the influ- enee of such an invention, and had given him a copy of his map. He had intimated, also, an alternative project of working his paddles by horses. Gardoqui sought first to secure an exclusive right to Spain in the results, and to this Fitch would not agree. Hle now resorted to forming a company in Philadelphia, where lie had received the aid of a Dutch mechanic, Voight by name, and in the summer of 1786, he made some experimental trips with a new craft on the Delaware, attempting, on July 20, to ' nse a screw, and doing better a week later with paddles. This furthered his plan of subscription, but when Franklin offered him a gratuity, instead of a subscription, he confesses he was stung to the quick. In December, 1786, he printed in the Columbian Magazine a description of his boat, with a eut of the little eraft, and this still more animated the public interest. A new vessel, forty-five feet long, with upright paddles, was com- pleted in the following May, 1787, and on August 22 he made an exhibition of it on the Delaware for the delectation of the members of the federal convention. This gave him some addi- tional notoriety, and he announced a scheme of building a boat for lake use with two keels. He proposed, also, to edge its wheels with spikes, so that in winter it could be run on the ice at thirty miles an hour.


325


FITCH AND RUMSEY.


Though there is some discrepancy in evidence as to the date, it would seem that his final success was achieved in the spring of 1788, when he moved a vessel called the " Perseverance," of sixty tons burthen, for eight miles on the Schuylkill. Brissot, who saw the experiment, says that the power was exerted by "three large oars of considerable force, which were to give sixty strokes a minute." In July, he used stern paddles in a trial on the Delaware, and went twenty miles. Notwithstand- ing this, Fitch did not escape ridicule from the incredulous, and Brissot expresses some indignation "to see Americans discour- aging him by their sarcasms."


The now active rivalry of Rumsey added personal bitterness to the controversy between them, as shown in a pamphlet which was printed. Rumsey, being as impecunious as his antagonist, had sought in the same way to get the assistance of the legis- latures of some of the States. He claimed in his memorials that his boat could make twenty-five to forty miles a day against a strong current, using for the power a current of water taken in at the bow and ejected at the stern.


When Rumsey memorialized the Virginia Assembly in 1785, the project was thought chimerical, and gained no attention till Washington, to whom he had disclosed his method, gave him a certificate. It was not till the early winter of 1787 that he made a public trial of a boat, eighty feet long, on the Poto- mac, making three miles an hour on December 3, and four miles on December 11.


While Fitch was, by his experiments, creating some enthusi- asm in Philadelphia in 1788, Rumsey was making promises in England, and foretelling the possibility of crossing the ocean in fifteen days. He died of apoplexy four years later (Decem- ber 23, 1792), a disappointed man. Some abortive attempts had been made in Scotland by Miller in 1788, and by Syming- ton in 1800, to solve the problem, but the first real success did not come till 1807, when Fulton ran the " Clermont " on the Hudson, and when, two years later (November, 1809), the " Ac- commodation " steamed from Montreal to Quebec in thirty-six hours of actual progress, having anchored on three nights.


CHAPTER XV.


THE SOUTHWEST INSECURE.


1783-1786.


THE peace of 1783 had brought no better security south of the Ohio than had been attained on the north of it.


In May, 1782, just as the English cabinet was making up its mind to grant the independence of the eclonies, a Kentneky German, Jacob Yoder, had pushed off from Redstone on the Monongahela, in a big boat laden with flour, to risk the passage to New Orleans, and reap, if he could, some profit from his venture. He was fortunate. The Spanish authorities on the Mississippi were waiting then for the outcome of the war, and had no reason to stop this adventurous trader, who had sne- cessfully run the gauntlet of the Indians. He reached New Orleans in safety and sold his flour for furs. These skins he took to Havana, where he bartered them for sugar, which in turn he shipped to Philadelphia. With much money in his pocket, the result of his speculation, he reerossed the mountains to his Kentucky home.


1


Meanwhile, the negotiations at Paris were hurrying to a elose, and when it became known that by a secret provision of that treaty, England and the States, in order to reconcile their dis- cordant views, had agreed in any event to ignore the Spanish claim to territory above 31°, there was no chance of Yoder's venture being repeated, and such peaceful commerce soon gave place to stagnation on the river, only relieved by an occasional freebooting sally of the wild Cumberland frontiersmen, who wanted to get what sport and plunder they could ont of harrying the Spanish settlements along the river. Cruzat, commanding at St. Louis, complained to Robertson of these lawless acts ; but it was difficult to fasten responsibility anywhere, though the an- thorities at Nashborongh labored to prevent such incursions.


For twelve years or more to come, Spain was to be the covert


327


SPANISH HOSTILITY.


enemy of the new Republic. All this while she was seeking to lure any who would act in concert with her, both among the wild tribes of the southwest and among the almost as wild frontiersmen of the outlying settlements of the confederacy and the later Union. Events seemed at times distinctly fashioned for her advantage. The whites in Georgia and along the Ten- nessee were recklessly invading the Indian lands, and inciting them to retaliate. Before the Revolutionary War had closed, it had seemed plain to Governor Harrison of Virginia that bounds must be agreed upon to restrain the white squatters, and he and Governor Martin of North Carolina had con- sulted in November, 1782, about appointing commissioners to settle a line. When Pickering, in April, 1783, was planning a peace establishment, he had provided for the southwest only a modest quarter of the eight hundred troops which he destined to garrison the exposed posts, as a protection against the dan- gers to be apprehended from "the Indians and the Spanish." As early as May 31, 1783, a treaty had been made at Augusta with the Cherokees, and later (November) with the Creeks, by which the Americans secured the title to a tract of land west of the Tugaloo River, but the result failed to secure the ap proval of the great body of those tribes ; nor was the warlike faction of the Creeks won by other agreements, which had been made with the same tribe and the Chickasaws, in July and November. The Creeks and their Spanish backers were thus become a serious problem in the southwest.


The general peace of 1782 had been a vexations one to the court at Madrid. Spain had not secured Gibraltar, as she had hoped to do, and matters on the Mississippi, with the understand- ing that existed between England and her now independent colonies, were no less a disappointment. Lafayette, who in the spring of 1783 had been in Madrid, wrote thence to Livingston, the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, that he " could see that American independence gave umbrage to the Spanish ministry."


Before the war closed, Virginia had already pressed her claim to an extension to the Mississippi, where Clark had built Fort Jefferson, but North Carolina had never officially pushed her jurisdiction beyond the mountains till in May, 1783, her legislature by an act stretched her southern boundary by the parallel of 36° 30' likewise to the Mississippi. This enactment


328


THE SOUTHWEST INSECURE.


was not only a warning to Spain that her claim to the eastern bank of the Mississippi would be contested, but it also showed the people of the Holston and Cumberland valleys that they had not escaped the jurisdiction of the parent State in going westward to subdne the wilderness. Both of these settlements had steadily grown. There was perhaps a population of three thousand five hundred souls in the Cumberland district. The older communities along the Clinch and the Holston had begun to form some of those religions consolidations which the Metho- dist communion carries in its spreading circles, while the Scotch-Irish in southwestern Virginia and in the neighboring parts of Kentucky and Tennessee had set up the presbytery of Abingdon, an offshoot of the larger one of Hanover, which had been formed in 1749.


In this extension of her western jurisdiction North Carolina had not failed to reserve a certain tract of this territory for the use of the Indians ; but she had done it of her own option, and without consulting the tribes. This was an arrogant act, which the Creeks quickly resented.


The Kentucky settlements between the Cumberland and the Ohio had, in March, 1783, been divided by the Virginia authori- ties into three counties. The principal seat of local business was at first placed at Harrodsburg, but later at Danville. These settlements showed signs of civil regularity which did not prevail to the south of them, and invited renewed immi- gration. This in some part pursued the Virginia path by the Cumberland Gap, following what was known as the Wilderness Road, which, however, was but a mere bridle trace for pack- horses. The larger part of the migration floated down the Ohio from Pittsburg, which had just been formally laid out as a town by the agents of the Penns, with a population of about a thon- sand. As a rule, however, the Virginia emigrant struck the Ohio ninety miles below, at Wheeling, and thereby avoided some of the difficulties of the shoaler water between that point and Pittsburg. In either case they disembarked, as had been the custom from the beginning, at Limestone, and thence made their way over a well-beaten road to the valleys of the Licking and Kentucky, not failing to remark how the buffalo had de- serted their old traces, and taken to the less-frequented portions of the country. It is not easy to determine with accuracy the


329


McGILLIVRAY.


extent of this inflow during the years immediately following the peace ; but it has been reckoned as high as twelve or fifteen thousand a twelvemonth, with proportionate trains of pack- horses and cattle. These numbers included, doubtless, a due share of about four thousand European immigrants, who songht the States yearly.


Whenever these wanderers encountered the red man, it was not difficult for the new-comers to discover that, to the savage mind, the enforced transfer of allegiance from the English crown to the new Republic was a change that wronged and incensed the victims of it. To the military man, who was not an uncom- mon member of the new emigration and who had seen service under Bradstreet and Sullivan, this attitude of the Indian mind boded no little mischief.


The restless conditions of the tribes in the southwest offered to Miró, now the Spanish commander at New Orleans, an opportunity for conference and intrigue. The way was opened by the ceaseless endeavors of Alexander McGillivray to form a league of the southern tribes against the Americans, in order, with Spanish countenance and with a simultaneous revolt on the part of the northern tribes, to force the exposed settlers back upon the seaboard. The scheme was a daring one, and no such combination among the redskins had been attempted since the conspiracy of Pontiac. But McGillivray, with all his craft, had little of the powers of mind which the Ottawa chief had possessed, and his efforts fell short of even the temporary success which Pontiac had achieved. McGillivray was a half- breed Creek, whose mother was of a chief family of that nation. His father was a Scotchman. He had something of the Scotch hard-headedness, and had received an education by no means despicable. Adhering to the royal side in the late war, his property had been confiscated, and he was now adrift, harbor- ing hatred towards the `Americans, while he was not amiable towards the British, who had betrayed, as he claimed, himself and his race. As early as January 1, 1784, he had communi- cated with the Spanish commander at Pensacola, with a propo- sition for a Spanish alliance. He also intimated the possibility of detaching the over-mountain settlements from the confeder- acy, maintaining that the west contained two classes of discon- tents, who might well be induced to play into the hands of


330


THE SOUTHWEST INSECURE.


Spain. One of these included the tribes, indignant at the desertion of them by Great Britain. The other was the body of Tories now tracking over the mountains to begin a new career, mingled with runaways escaping the federal tax-gatherers.


On such representations Miró was ready in May, 1784, to hold conferences with these southwestern tribes. On the 22d, le met representatives of the Chickasaws, Alabamas, and Choc- taws at Mobile, and sanctioned a treaty of friendship and mutual support, while he enjoined upon them the necessity of refraining from taking scalps or otherwise maltreating their prisoners. On the 30th, he met McGillivray and a large body of Creeks, Seminoles, and Chickamangas at Pensacola, and entered into a like agreement. By the 6th of June, this half- breed chieftain was on his way back to the tribal centres, bear- ing promises of full supplies and munitions from the Spanish posts. The desultory conflict which followed through a course of years, known as the Oconce war, was on the whole a great disappointment to McGillivray, for he never succeeded for any length of time in making the Creeks and their abettors main- tain a solid front for the task which he had set.




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