USA > Mississippi > The westward movement : the colonies and the republic west of the Alleghanies, 1763-1798 with full cartographical illustrations from contemporary sources > Part 6
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 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51
Such was the varied complexion of the emigration which Burke had perceived that it was impossible to withdraw, and against which Gage's proclamation was to be so fruitlessly directed. Instead of threats, these people needed protection and the service of a stable government. This population, as Franklin argued, was now become, in part at least, " so ungov- erned and lawless " that nothing but some sort of subjection to the forms of government could prevent an Indian war. There was a tendency, in all considerations of the government abont America, to delay, but Franklin's urgency and arguments at last
57
VANDALIA.
prevailed, and on August 14, 1771, the king, in couneil, ap- proved the Walpole grant. The immediate result was that Hillsborough, who in the beginning was desirous of pushing the advocates to larger demands than they thought prudent, and apparently with a purpose in this way to compass their ultimate discomfiture, now resigned in disgust. After this, Franklin's reply, having accomplished its purpose, disappeared from the book-stalls. The effect in America was only the beginning of new delays. A message was at once sent to Sir William John- son, who instructed Croghan to cause " the different nations and tribes to be made acquainted that it was His Majesty's pleasure to form a new colony or settlement in Ohio."
This movement had been sedulously watched in Virginia, not only by those who sought the cover of a Virginia patent to these same lands, but there is some reason to believe it had been observed by Dunmore in no friendly spirit to the claims of the soldiers. In the following spring (1773), Dunmore and Washington had planned a journey beyond the mountains, but the governor went finally alone. In an interview which he had with Crawford, the governor promised to issue to Wash- ington a patent for lands at the mouth of the Kanawha. "in case the new government did not take place before he got home." Washington, meanwhile, had found much discourage- ment in all his Ohio plans. Crawford was obliged to inform him that he had to work hard to keep squatters off the property which had been surveyed for him, and that nothing but hiring men constantly to occupy a claim was sufficient to prevent intruders building houses upon it.
We find Washington accordingly prompted to turn to other claims, which the proclamation of 1763 had reserved for the participants in the war, and he thought for a while of the pos- sibilities of patenting lands in Florida, amid those " scorching and unwholesome heats" of which Franklin had of late been writing.
Meanwhile, the new Company of the Ohio was nurturing larger views, and on May 6, 1773, the king in council extended the bounds of the projected government, now spoken of as Vandalia, to the line of the Kentucky River. Already the brothers McAfee were preparing to take squatters' rights along this stream, near where Frankfort now stands, whither the
58
THE KENTUCKY REGION.
traces of the buffalo had led them, through the uninhabited limestone region. Not far from the same time, Captain Wil- liam Thompson, an agent for the war elaimants in Pennsylvania, had sent a party along the Kentucky, and these had reported that the lands were the finest they had ever seen, and likely soon "to sell at twenty-five shillings an aere."
The attractive aspect of this country was now well under- stood, adorned as it was with broad-leaved trees without under- brush, with ripening grass beneath the shade showing blue to the distant eye, with the earth teeming from a fertility that was constantly nurtured by the deeay of the underlying rock, and with occasional broad stretches, where the trees had been burned and vast herds of buffalo roamed.
This extension of the grant had rendered the month of the Kanawha more central than before, and strengthened the opinion which Washington had held, that it was the natural seat for the new government. Towards the middle of May, it became common talk in Pittsburg that Dunmore had granted patents for the two hundred thousand acres due to Washington and his comrades in the neighborhood of the Kanawha, and Croghan wrote to Wharton about it and said, " It is creating great confusion on the frontier, both among the whites and the Indians." The tribes had been taught to look upon the pro- jected colony as an alternative which could be turned to their advantage in the recompense they expected for their lands. The Shawnees, in particular, were aroused, and considered the Virginia claims inimical. Frontiersmen so experienced as Dr. Walker were advocating an escape from conflict with the Cherokees by turning their thoughts to western Florida. This large grant of the soldiers, already recognized, as we have seen, by the Walpole Company, produced new difficulties by its very extent. With an eye to improvements, Washington sought to have it surveyed so as to include as mneh tillable ground as pos- sible. He soon discovered from the reports which he received that he must secure it in at least twenty different localities, unless he was content to inelnde contiguonsly large unproduc- tive mountain areas. It is not easy from Washington's letters always to distinguish which of these western lands he had patented as a private venture from his claims either under the Dinwiddie or the later royal proclamation. By July, 1773,
59
BULLITT AND LOUISVILLE.
he had certainly got such hold of more than twenty thousand acres of these Ohio valley lands as to warrant an advertisement of them in the Maryland Journal. These lands were among the first surveyed, and he describes them as " by the beautiful hand of nature almost fit for the scythe." To render them more attractive to settlers, he represents that in due time the land carriage to them by the Monongahela route would be reduced to a few miles.
Just what these lands were is not clear, but it is apparent that Washington had secured the favor of the royal governor, and was willing to profit by it to the exclusion of his war-time comrades, if his caution to Crawford to be disereet in speaking of the patents will bear that inference. Dunmore had said (September 24) that he did not intend to make any grants on the Ohio under the proclamation of 1763, but at the same time Washington believed the contrary, and that these grants were to be made below the Scioto, on the' supposition entertained at that time that the meridian of the Scioto was to be the western limit of Vandalia.
A certain Captain Thomas Bullitt, in company with one Hau- cock Taylor, was at this time moving down the Kanawha and the Ohio, locating prospective towns on a grant of over a thou- sand acres, awarded under the Dinwiddie proclamation, one of which included the present Charleston on the Kanawha. Bullitt was invested by the College of William and Mary, one of its prerogatives, with the authority to approve surveys, and had thus become conspicnous in these western movements, though there were complaints that when wanted, to give such approval, he was not always to be found. He was, as it seems, moving on about his own business, and as the summer wore on, Taylor and he had separated at the month of the Kentucky, and while Taylor went up that stream, making survey about the modern Frankfort, Bullitt went on to the rapids of the Ohio, and laid out the plot for a settlement where Louisville now stands, the first regular town mapping in Kentucky. The spot was not occupied till two years later, though, on a lot above the falls, John Cowan had built a log house in 1774.
Washington had instructed this same Bullitt in September, 1773, to survey for him a tract of ten thousand acres. as far below the Scioto as it may be necessary to go to get good
60
THE KENTUCKY REGION.
bottom-lands in one, two, or three lots. He had already bought out the rights of Captain Stobo and Lieutenant Van Braam, other soldiers of the recent war, which, added to his own claim for five thousand acres, made up the ten thousand held by him under the Dinwiddie proclamation. But the destiny of this Ohio country turned, it was thought, upon the future of the Walpole movement, and the delays in organizing the govern- ment of the colony on the spot - Dartmouth seems on May 17, 1773, to have offered Major Legge the governorship of some new colony on the Ohio, with a salary of £1,000 - were greatly embarrassing to Croghan, who at Pittsburg was acting, as we have seen, as its agent.
Haldimand had arrived in New York in July, 1773, to suc- ceed Gage in the chief command in North America. He was early made aware of the stream of settlers passing down the Ohio to the lower parts of that river, and Croghan had reported how Bullitt and others were " going down the river with num- bers of people to settle the country, which, they were informed by the king's message, was not to be settled." General Brad- street had not long before bargained with the Indians for a tract of three hundred thousand acres, but the Board of Trade had refused confirmation of an act " which cannot be reconciled with the spirit and intent of the king's instructions." Haldi- mand urged Sir William Johnson to take steps to stop such , infringements of the royal proclamation, but that Indian agent felt himself powerless, with no government on the river to en- force the prohibition. This lawless influx had begun here and there, as in Bradstreet's case, in private purchases from the Indians. Such clouded titles led Chief Justice Marshall, at a later day, when the United States sueceeded to the royal rights, to invalidate claims well earned by the hardships of pioneers.
By December, 1773, Croghan is representing " the emigra- tion as surprising. I am told [he says] that there can't be less than sixty thousand souls settled between Pittsburg and the mouth of the Ohio, - so that the policy of the people in Eng- land in delaying the grant of the new colony, in order to pre- vent emigration, answers not their purpose, as it does not prevent the settling of the country."
The delays further produced much discontent among the
61
WASHINGTON'S PLANS.
Indians, eager to profit by the settlement. Croghan says that these anxious savages flocked by hundreds to Pittsburg, expect- ing food and gratuities. The leaders of the colony had promised their agent what was needed for this hospitable purpose, but they forgot their pledge, and Croghan complains that the Indians were " eating up what he had gathered for the winter's use of his family." To give the presents which were necessary, he says, he was forced "to pawn what little plate he had and some other valuable things."
While the company held back and left its agent in this unseemly plight, private enterprise revived with the spring (1774). During the winter Washington had been consider- ing a plan of bringing over two or three hundred Palatines to Alexandria, and passing them over the mountains to settle his lands. He sought information as to the best measures to that end, hoping to " give up indentures and make them freemen and tenants " as soon as they could raise a crop of corn. He proposed to remit their rent for four years if they took un- cleared land, and for two years if there was a house on it and five acres cleared. His inquiries did not encourage him. The Palatines preferred Pennsylvania with greater religious liberty, and did not look kindly upon the Episcopal tithes to be encoun- tered under Virginia rule. The restrictive navigation laws were also in the way, for these people were to be shipped from Holland, and outward cargoes for payment must ineur charges in England by transshipment there. This led Robert Adam to suggest that Washington might find it less burdensome to get Scotch or Irish, or even convicts and indented servants might be more handily found in Baltimore. By spring the obstacles seemed no less, and on May 1 we find the scheme laid aside. Washington had reckoned that he had land enough for three hundred families ; but the outcome of all his plans was that two small parties of servants and hired men went over the mountains, and were soon scattered.
In April, John Floyd led a surveying party down the Kana- wha, and did some surveying for Washington and Patrick Henry. Simon Kenton and a party were strolling near the lower Blue Licks. Both parties, however, soon discovered indications of the rising Indian war. During the early summer
62
THE KENTUCKY REGION.
(1774), James Harrod and a party of forty laid out in central Kentucky the town of Harrodsburg, not the earliest settlement of the future State, but the first to have in it, perhaps, the ele- ments of perpetuity, with all the initial flourish of a tomahawk elaim and a patch of corn.
The year wore out, and nothing was done to relieve the anx- iety either of Croghan or the soldiers. The king turned a deaf ear to the urgency for dispatching a governor to the new col- ony; and Dunmore dallied, as Washington alleges, for "other causes " than procrastination in considering the soldiers' grants. Political events strained the relations of the mother country and the colonies, and in April, 1775, the first gun at Lexington in Massachusetts pushed all into the limbo of forgotten things. While the news of the conflict near Boston was still fresh in London, Walpole did not despair (May 30) of those "better times on which the country now depends for its preservation."
1
CHAPTER V.
THE QUEBEC BILL AND THE DUNMORE WAR.
1774.
IN 1774, there came for the first time a sharp conflict be- tween Virginia and the home government as to jurisdiction over the territory north of the Ohio. The interpretation which Vir- ginia had always given to the very obscure definition of her bounds in the charter of 1609 had been long denied by France, and when that contested region was wrested from France, the peace of 1763 had limited its western extension by the Missis- sippi. The royal proclamation, which soon followed, had pre- vented the pushing of the settlements thither, but had not given it over absolutely to other jurisdiction. Ten years or more later, while Virginia was waging war against the savages there- abouts, to enforce her claim and protect her settled frontiers, the British Parliament strove to put a limit to her territorial pretensions in this direction by giving the Quebec government an absolute jurisdiction over the region. There were other purposes, both ostensible and latent, in this legislative move- ment, which were entered upon to curb not only Virginia, but the other seaboard colonies, in an inevitable westward march.
Ever since Carleton had been in command in Quebee, he had felt the necessity of yielding something more to the French Canadians than had been allowed by the capitulation at Mon- treal in 1760, and by the acts of 1763. He contended that a further concession could alone make them good British sub- jects, and that a guarded revival of French law, customs, and religion, while placating one hundred and fifty thousand Cath- olies of the province, -as Carleton counted them, though his estimate is probably much too large, - would not seriously impair the fortunes of four hundred Protestants, their fellow- subjects. In 1770, Carleton had gone to England, leaving in his place Cramahe, a Swiss Protestant in the English service.
64
THE QUEBEC BILL AND THE DUNMORE WAR.
During the four years of his absence, Carleton was in occasional consultation with the ministry about what seemed to him some needed transformation of the government of the province. This consideration was at times affected, and perhaps shaped, by petitions of the Canadians, not largely signed, and forwarded by Cramahé. They touched the restoration of the French laws and a rehabilitation of the Catholic religion.
While such questions were in abeyance, the revolutionary commotions in Boston did not fail to render of doubtful con- tinuance the loyalty of the seaboard colonies, now numbering probably, according to the most careful estimates, considerably under three millions of people. If such disaffection could not be stamped out, it became a question of restraining it by terri- torial bounds, and covertly if not openly. This danger had already delayed the entire fulfillment of the Vandalia project south of the Ohio. It was known that there was a tide of immigration rolling along the Ohio, and, in spite of the agree- ment at Fort Stanwix, threatening its northern banks. It was necessary, then, to find some barrier to check the current, lest it should buoy up and carry along the seething commotions of the seaboard. No such barrier was so obvious as that which the French had attempted to maintain in the recent war, - the line of the St. Lawrence and the Alleghanies. To make this barrier effective, it was necessary to consolidate, as far as possible, the region behind it in a single government. Murray and his suc- cessor, Carleton, had already urged an extension of their execu- tive authority from Quebec westward, and the opportune time had come for doing it, under an ostensible plea of regulating the fur trade of the region. If the traders were gratified by such professions, the debates and remonstrances show that the pro- posed reinstatement of the Roman Church and the suppression of English law drew out fervent opposition ; and there is, more- over, no evidence that the Canadians themselves, as a popula- tion, felt any elation over the prospect. This may have been due in some part to a latent sympathy among them with the revolutionary classes of the older colonies, - a sympathy with which Congress, as it turned out, blundered in an attempt to deal.
A new petition from Canada, dated February, 1774, and signed by only sixty-five persons, asked for a restoration of the
65
VIRGINIA AND PENNSYLVANIA.
" old bounds of Canada," over which the English and French had so long disputed, and the ministry in granting it were ensnared into the somewhat ridiculous acknowledgment of what they had formerly denied. To restore such limits, however, would please the Canadians and some fur traders, and became a good cloak for ulterior purposes respecting the seaboard colonies.
The jealousy of New York was aroused, and for a while it was uncertain if the western part of that province would not be sacrificed to the ministerial purpose. New York owed it to Edmund Burke that this territory was saved to its jurisdiction.
Immediate opposition naturally came from the Penns, whose proprietary rights would be curtailed, and from Virginia, whose royal governor, interested with many of her people in land schemes in the Illinois country, was already preparing for an invasion of the territory. The movement for a colony north of the Ohio, over which Franklin and Hillsborough had contended, had come to naught, much to the relief of Virginia; but here was a project seeking the active sanetion of Parliament, and likely to thwart any purpose which her royal governor might have of issuing patents to this very land.
Dunmore, the governor, was a man not easily balked. He had already taken possession of Fort Pitt despite the protests of Penn, and was determined to hold it as a gate to the over- river country of Virginia. This precipitate conduct had alarmed Haldimand, the military head of the continent, lest the distrac- tions of this intercolonial land-dispute should embolden the savages to take an advantage. Both sides arrested settlers engaged in vindicating their respective colonies, and the trouble had become so alarming in the spring of 1774 that surveyors of both sides were rushing to the contested region, and plotting their claims.
This dispute, serious enough in itself, was embittered by the craft of Connolly, the creature of Dunmore, and complicated beside by the diversity of individual claims, whether based on Indian deeds or tomahawk titles, or on the assertion of might against right. The spring of 1774 led to renewed negotiations between the colonies in the midst of mutual criminations. Penn offered the calculations of Provost Smith of the college at Philadelphia and of Dr. Rittenhouse, that Pittsburg was
66
THE QUEBEC BILL AND THE DUNMORE WAR.
at least six miles within the bounds which he claimed, and in May, James Tilghman and Andrew Allen, commissioners sent by Penn to Williamsburg, offered as a compromise a curved line for the western boundary, parallel to the tortuous course of the Delaware. Dunmore insisted that the five degrees of longitude should be measured on the 42° parallel, and that a meridian boundary line should be run at the western end of this measurement. Neither side would yield, and Dunmore continued to issue patents covering the controverted area.
The Indians, observing this antagonism, and disappointed that the delay in the organization of the Vandalia colony had deprived them of purchase money for their lands, and fearing to lose them through occupation by rival claimants, grew troublesome along the frontier. One Walter Kelly had hutted his family on a creek up the Kanawha, eighty miles from a stoekade of the Greenbrier Company, which was the nearest support. Warnings, which were bringing nearly all the re- moter settlers under cover, were neglected, and Kelly's little home was devastated by ruthless Shawnees. But such was the fearlessness of the frontier that two brothers, Morris by name, soon occupied the same spot, and planted a family stock, where it flourishes to-day.
This baleful condition of the border was not altogether unwelcome to Dunmore. It gave the color of necessity to a ' proclamation (April 25, 1774) ordering the militia to be in readiness. By this force he might intimidate Pennsylvania, punish the Indians, and maintain the sovereignty of Virginia beyond the Ohio.
A few score men, land-grabbers and adventurers, had already assembled at the mouth of the Kanawha, and a hunting party sent out by them had been attacked by wandering Shawnees. As the spring wore on, these bold fellows at the Kanawha, animated by a desire for revenge, resolved on a sudden onset upon the Indian towns on the Seioto, in the disputed territory. They sought a famous frontiersman, Michael Cresap, and made him their leader. He had only recently moved to the upper Ohio from the frontier of Maryland. There was also in their number a young and daring spirit, George Rogers Clark, who
NOTE. - The map on the opposite page, based on information afforded by General Richard But- ler, is taken from Crèvecœur's Lettres d'un Cultivateur, vol. iii., Paris, 1783.
A/Vet C. de $ Jeption
SIOTO
Mamacamink A DA Puckflienofes AAA
DU
de Blue Jacket4
Maqueechaick: on compte V. 93 Miles au grand Rc sur la Riv de Hockhockin
Kifpoko
V de Pecowick A
-
Ç de Deer-
V de Waccachalla
V. de Chillichatée A
Alleman
AND
G.
ESQUISSE DU
SIOTO
-
C. de Buskinhas
C. de Phonovonit!
FL DD SIOTTO
font leur. Sel
Font: Salée C'est ici que les Skawanese
1
Ancien V. Shawanefe
Embou. du G. M.n.man
PLAINES
d'Ouastoro, aujourd'hui la parte occidentale ultramonte de la Virgule
Senter des Guerriers nanese quand ils vont à la Rivière de la Ronce Verte dans CL __
PLAINES
PLAINE
68
THE QUEBEC BILL AND THE DUNMORE WAR.
had been brought thither to look after a grant which he had obtained at Fish Creek. This body of borderers, with its impromptu organization, was further recruited at the site of the modern Wheeling by additional hotheads, with whom it mattered little whether the stories of murders, which were in- creasing, were of whites by savages, or of the Indian by the frontiersman, - and there was no dearth of either kind of tale. Ebenezer Zane, the principal settler of this spot, had made here a tomahawk elaim in 1769, where he was joined the next year by his brothers, Jonathan and Silas. There was at this date (1774) a number of log houses clustering about those of the Zanes.
The hotheads were counseled to be prudent by the leader of this settlement, and Cresap seemed inclined to be cautious, but the trepidation was too widespread for perfect restraint. One observer tells us that in a single day a thousand bewildered settlers crossed over the Monongahela towards the east, and the whole country was finally stripped of inhabitants, except they were " forted."
The war, if it came, was sure to have one advantage for the whites, and that was the single and unhampered purpose of Virginia to maintain her own, and this she was prepared to do without the aid of her neighbors.
Sir William Johnson, in New York, was doing his best to , hold back the Iroquois, but that part of these confederates which had advanced into the modern State of Ohio could not be restrained from making common cause with the Delawares and Shawnees.
Logan was one of these migrated Iroquois, and it was his fate to become the pivot of events. He had been bred at Shamokin, and had long been known as a friend of the English. A small camp of his family and followers, on the north side of the Ohio, crossing the river to get rum, was set upon and killed by some lawless whites. Indian runners spread the news of the massaere, and Logan was soon, with such a band as he could gather, spreading devastation along the Monongahela and Holston, - and Dunmore's war was begun.
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.