USA > Mississippi > The westward movement : the colonies and the republic west of the Alleghanies, 1763-1798 with full cartographical illustrations from contemporary sources > Part 8
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In the year 1773, following this organization, Boone headed a party and started west. He had with him the first women and children who had passed the Cumberland Mountains. They passed beyond all civilization after they had tarried for a brief interval among a few families settled west of the Holston and
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COLONEL HENDERSON.
along the Clinch River, the other principal fork of the Ten- nessee. It was in September, 1773, when Boone and his adventurous families were joined by a band of hunters, and the company numbered eighty when a few weeks later (October 10) they were attacked in Powell's valley by the Indians. In the fight they lost enough to discourage them, and so turned back to the settlements on the Clinch. It was now apparent that an Indian war was coming, and in the following spring (1774) the signs of it were everywhere, as has been depicted in the pre- ceding chapter. There were at the time various stray wanderers, hunters, and surveyors, pursuing devious ways, or squatted here and there throughout this remoter country. Now that Lewis, as we have seen, had been ordered with the Virginia forces down the Kanawha, and since the gage of war had been ac- cepted, Boone was sent to thrid this country and give warning. He and his companions found Harrod, MeAfee, and their com- pany just beginning a settlement at the modern Harrodsburg. After Boone's caution, they abandoned their purpose. Other parties of whites, which they encountered, were informed of their danger. Boone's farthest point was the rapids of the Ohio. After an absence of sixty days and more, during which he had covered over eight hundred miles, he returned to his friends on the Clinch.
Lewis's victory at Point Pleasant in October, 1774, rendered the navigation of the Ohio comparatively safe, and opened the way for easy transportation to the regions of the lower Cum- berland and Tennessee. The blow which the savages had received proved enough to paralyze them for a while, and Ken- tueky, at this particular juneture, owed much to this respite. The new opportunity encouraged a movement which for a time promised to regulate the western emigration on a more extended scale than had been before attempted. The reports which Boone had made of this western region had aroused many, among others Colonel Richard Henderson, a Virginian, now about forty years old. It was under his direction that a com- pany had been formed in North Carolina to buy land of the Indians and establish a colony beyond the mountains. In the early days of 1775, Martin, with a party of eighteen or twenty. had built some cabins and a stockade at what was later known
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as Martin's Station, about fifty miles beyond the Clinch River hamlet. The McAfees, about the same time, began a settle- ment on Salt River. Benjamin Logan had in another region begun a fort, to which the next year he brought his family. On March 18, James Harrod and a party of fifty reoccupied the ground which he had abandoned on Boone's warning in 1774.
This reoccupation of the region was in progress when Hen- derson and eight other North Carolinians, on March 17, 1775, at Sycamore Shoals on the Watauga, concluded a treaty with the Cherokees, by which they acquired the Indian title to about one half of the modern State of Kentucky and the adjacent part of Tennessee lying within the southerly bend of the Cumberland. The ceded territory was bounded by the Ken- tucky, Holston, Cumberland, and Ohio rivers, and received the name of Transylvania, - the particular grounds for bestow- ing which name, beyond its apparent meaning, are not known. The negotiation was not a sudden dash of business, for twelve hundred savages looked on and increased the usual Indian deliberation. They heard the speeches on both sides. One harangue, at least, from the Indians was a mournful protest against the white man's encroachments. The purchaser's blan- dishments at last prevailed, and for £10,000 worth of goods the instrument conveying not far from eighteen million acres of territory received the assent of Oconostota, an aged chief. The Raven and The Carpenter, other head men of the tribe, also joined in the conveyance. Two days later, the Watauga asso- ciates, with less regard for the royal proclamation than before, by the payment of £2,000 worth of merchandise, converted their existing lease into a purchase, and threw their interests into the general scheme.
When a successful termination of the negotiation seemed certain, and a week before the deed was signed, Boone started under Henderson's direction to open a trail to the Kentucky, blazing and clearing a way which eventually was known as The Wilderness Road. It formed a connection between Cumber- land Gap and the remoter borders of the new colony. He was attacked on the way (March 25), losing some men, but push- ing on to a level bit of ground, with sulphur springs near by, he halted. Here, on April 18, he began a fort which took the name of Boonesborough. It served for the protection of the
,
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BOONESBOROUGH.
score of companions which he had with him. Henderson later joined the little post, adding about thirty new men for the garrison, and, to give life to the movement, opened a land office. On May 23, there was a meeting of delegates in the fort. This assem- bly adopted some laws, including 2 2 one for improving the breed of 11 2 horses, and stands for the first legis- 2 3 lative body which was ever held be- W. yond the mountains. Henderson, as the moving spirit in this action, IN 1 9 was credited with having "epito- S mized and simplified the laws of England." The population at that time throughout this district was . 5 variously estimated at from one 2 2 hundred and fifty to three hundred, 2 2 4 including land jobbers, squatters, RIVER. and domiciled settlers, with as yet BOONESBOROUGH FORT. but few women among them. These scattered knots of people had such [From James Hall's Sketches of His- tory, Life, and Manners in the West, Philadelphia, 1835. There were block- houses at the angles (1 is Colonel Hen- derson's, with his kitchen at 3). At the corners and at the gates (9) were stockades (2 2, etc.). The intervals were filled with cabins, presenting blank walls to the enemy.] contact with the old plantations as could be made through the more easterly hamlets on the Watauga, Nollichucky, and Clinch rivers. They formed a wedge of civiliza- tion, thrust between the Cherokees on the one hand and the Shawnees on the other. Adventurous spirits among them were pushing reconnoissances along many a tributary strean of the principal rivers. It seems pretty clear that if there was an excess of Scotch and Teutonic blood in this body of pioneers, there was a preponderating influence of English spirit. This dominant mood kept the varied racial impulses to a single purpose, and at a convention held at Pittsburg, May 16, 1775, it gave an unmistakable support to the revolt which was now gaining head on the seaboard. Just before this, one Charles Smith found rebellious sentiments prevalent in this region, and advised Dartmouth that the coming of eight or ten thousand Irish in one year, " uncultivated banditti," was in large part the source of such disloyalty. That English
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SOUTH OF THE OHIO.
minister obtained much the same advice from the Bishop. of Derry, who told him that nearly thirty-three thousand " fanati- cal and hungry republicans " had gone thither within a few years. The over-mountain country was doubtless attracting a fair share of this rampant overplus of Ireland.
In the autumn of 1775, there were marks of a determinate future in this pioneer life. Boone, mueh to the colony's loss, had gone back to North Carolina during the summer, and now in September returned to his stockade with his wife and chil- dren. There were in his train the families of various others, who like himself were seeking new homes. The influence of all this was most fortunate.
There was, meanwhile, a purpose in the older communities to hold the course of the Ohio against any force which the troublous times might array. In September, the Virginia militia had taken possession of Fort Pitt, and outposts were established at Fort Henry (Wheeling) and at Point Pleasant.
Henderson's scheme, with its fendal tendencies, was proving inopportune. He was, as one observer said, "a man of vast and enterprising genius," but an exaeting domination made him enemies. Some who had been his adherents petitioned the Virginia Assembly to be relieved of the oath of fealty which he had exaeted. The proprietors under his grant met in Sep- , tember, 1775, and memorialized Congress for admission to the united colonies. They claimed a title to their lands acquired in open treaty " from immemorial possessors." They appealed for countenance to Jefferson and Patrick Henry, but got no encouragement.
Dunmore, who had now become active on the royal side, was as impatient of Henderson's projects as the patriots were, and fulminated a proclamation against him for his contempt of the royal prohibitions, and for affording "an asylum for debtors and other persons of desperate circumstances." Governor Tryon, of North Carolina, who had himself been ambitions of territorial dignities and a baronetcy, was as prompt as Dunmore in launching his disapprobation. The obstacles on all sides were more than Henderson could overcome, and his project was abandoned, though there was later, as we shall see, an effort made in Congress to effect some equitable provision for his out-
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INDIAN DEPARTMENTS.
lay. "His scheme," says John Mason Brown, " was the last appearance on American soil of the old idea of government by lords proprietor. It was too late for success."
In April, 1775, Dunmore had threatened to incite a servile insurrection in the east; and in May he informed the home gov- ernment that he was planning to arouse the western Indians.
Dr. Connolly, then at Pittsburg, had already been instructed by Dunmore " to endeavor to ineline the Indians to the royal cause," and Connolly succeeded so far as to induce the tribes to transmit a large belt to the governor. While Connolly was doing this he was in correspondence with Washington, and learned from him " that matters " on the seaboard " were draw- ing to a point." As the summer wore on, Connolly found that the same sort of danger as on the coast - which in June had driven Dunmore on board a British frigate at York - grew apace along the frontiers.
On June 30, the Continental Congress had set up three In- dian departments : the northern, including the Six Nations and tribes at the north; the southern, embracing the Cherokees and other tribes farther towards the Gulf ; while the middle department had its central point at Pittsburg. Here three commissioners, later appointed, were expected to deal with the tribes and counteract the sinister efforts of the royalists. Dun- more, who had expected at this time to meet Indian delegates at Fort Pitt, so as to ratify the treaty which he had made in 1774 at Camp Charlotte, found it prudent not to trust himself on such a mission. The Virginia Assembly sent instead James Wood, with Simon Girty as guide, to seek the Indians and keep them quiet. Their efforts were effective enough to induce the tribes (October) to decide for neutrality.
The outbreak near Boston in April had precipitated the inev- itable. A band of hunters, encamping on a branch of the Elk- horn in the Kentucky wilds, hearing of the act of war on Lexing- ton green, gave that name to the spot on which they were, and the name survives in Kentucky, as in Massachusetts, to attest the brotherhood of the hour. It was another manifestation of this fraternal sympathy which made Franklin bring forward his plan of confederation. The same sympathy prompted Thomas Paine to say that "nothing but a Continental form of gov-
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SOUTH OF THE OHIO.
ernment can keep the peace of the Continent." It gave the Tories of the frontiers occasion to feel the coercive power of the men who were shaping the political views of the West in a con- vention at Pittsburg. It made Michael Cresap enlist his old companions of the frontiers, and march them to Boston.
A narrative of Connolly has been preserved, which shows his movements during the summer and autumn. He had been in Boston, and had there planned with General Gage - who had ar- rived in that town in May, 1774 - a movement which Dunmore had hoped to assist in carrying out. In November, he was in Williamsburg in conference with Dunmore, now sheltered on his man-of-war. It was then arranged that Connolly, accompanied by Cameron and Smyth, - who has left an account in his Trar- els, - should make a " secret expedition to the back country," going in a flatboat up the Potomac, and thence passing by the Ohio, Seioto, and Sandusky to Detroit. They started on No- vember 13. It was expected that a considerable force would gather at Detroit, some coming from the Illinois. In the spring this little army was to advance by Presqu'Isle to Pittsburg and crush the rebellion thereabouts. Leaving a garrison here, it was intended to take and fortify Fort Cumberland and seize Alexandria, to which point Dunmore was to come with a fleet. A successful result would have cut off the southern colonies 'from the northern. They had provided that if Pittsburg suc- ceeded in resisting, the force should fall down the Mississippi, collect the garrison at Fort Gage (Illinois), and on reaching New Orleans take transports to Norfolk, where Dunmore would await them.
The plan soon miscarried through Connolly's sending a letter of effusive Toryism to Pittsburg, and the later recognition of him at Hagerstown on November 19, 1775, by an officer just from the American camp before Boston, who had seen him on his recent visit to that vicinity. While being conducted east, he managed at Fredericktown, in Maryland, to write to McRae, who was in Pittsburg, telling him of his capture, and that their " scheme " must fail, and directing McRae to go down the river, warning by messenger the commander at Detroit and in the Illinois, and then to descend the Mississippi and return by water to Virginia.
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INDIANS IN WAR.
Connolly's companion, Smyth, managed to escape, but was recaptured, and found to be bearing other letters from Con- nolly, further attesting his intrigues.
The arrest of Connolly probably deferred for two years the active participancy of the Kentucky settlers in the war on the western borders. There were lying along the western frontiers from New York to the Mississippi, at this time, a body of Indians that might perhaps have furnished ten thousand braves to any hostile movement which enlisted their sympathies. As it turned out, there was little Tory influence for these two years brought to bear upon them, and Zeisberger and Kirkland, by their missionary efforts, held in restraint at least the western Iroquois and the Delawares.
While Connolly was arranging in Virginia for this north- western movement, Colonel Henry Hamilton, formerly a cap- tain in the fourteenth regiment, had been put by Carleton in command of Detroit. This town and its dependencies stretched up and down the river, with a population mainly French and perhaps two thousand in numbers. Only four days before Con- nolly left Williamsburg, Hamilton had reached (November 9, 1775) his post. He soon made up his mind that it was simply a question whether he or the Virginians should first secure the alliance of the savages. There is little doubt that either side, British or Americans, stood ready to enlist the Indians. Already before Boston the Americans had had the help of the Stockbridge tribe. Washington found the service committed to the practice when he arrived at Cambridge early in July. Dunmore had taken the initiative in securing such allies, at least in purpose, but the insurgent Virginians had had of late more direct contact with the tribes, and were now striving to secure them, but with little success. It was evident, with Ham- ilton in command at Detroit, and with the lurking enmity sub- sisting between the savages and the frontier pioneers, that in the end a conflict must come.
Had Dunmore's plan been successful at the north, a counter plan, which we shall see was developed later, might earlier have found a body of British troops with Indian allies march- ing from the Gulf, up through the country of the Creeks and
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SOUTH OF THE OHIO.
Chickasaws, and gaining their assistance in an attack upon the back country of Virginia and Carolina.
To make any such project effective, it was necessary for the English agents among the Indians to accustom the tribes to a policy quite different from that which had fostered dissensions among them, in order to turn their savage wrath from the colonial borders. The political revulsions on the seaboard had convinced the British commanders in America that instead of repelling the Indians from the Appalachian border, as of old, it was become politic to mass them and hurl them against it. This change of front in the Indian agents created some suspi- cion in the savage breast. The Creeks particularly were wary, and some of them had already lent assistance to the rebellious colonists.
Of the thirty thousand to thirty-five thousand warriors which it is estimated there were at this time living east of the Mis- sissippi, there were nearly ten thousand among the southern tribes which Stuart was intriguing to combine. Among them the Cherokees, a mountain folk, had lost something of their old prominenec through their long wars. They had been forced by the Creeks to make common cause with them in land treaties with the English, having in this way joined them in June, 1773, at Augusta (Georgia) in ceding something like two million acres on the Savannah, stretching towards the Oconee. In this 'way the two tribes had striven to liquidate, by what they re- ceived for the lands, the claims against them of the English traders.
The Chickasaws were less numerous, but they maintained their old reputation as hard fighters. The Catawbas, who in times past had so defiantly stood their ground against the Iro- quois, were now reduced so much as to be of little moment in any enumeration. The Choetaws were nearest the Spaniards, and a ruder people than the other tribes ; but the Creeks were certainly the most powerful of all. Early in 1772, they had resisted all importnnities of the northern tribes to make com- mon cause with them; yet for some years they had given the borderers of Georgia and Carolina much ground to dread their treacherous savagery. They had, however, been quiet since October, 1774, when they had been forced to a peace. Under Stuart's instructions, the personal assiduity of his lieutenant
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HOSTILE CHEROKEES.
Cameron was doing much to band all these southern tribes in the British interest, though Cameron himself felt some com- punctions in urging them to actual conflict. The Americans, by an intercepted letter, learned that the British agents had been instructed to maintain " an immediate communication with our red brothers," through Florida.
The British ministry had planned an attack on Charleston (S. C.) for the early summer of 1776, and Germain had di- rected Stuart, in conjunction with the loyal borderers of Caro- lina, to time an Indian rising so as to produce a distraction among the rebellious Carolinians at the same time. Stuart formed, as the ministry intended, a double base at Mobile and Pensacola ; he carried thither a supply of ammunition, to be conveyed thence into the Indian country, and so make up to the tribes the resources from which they had been cut off by the attitude of the revolting Georgians and Carolinians. It was a game at which both sides could play, and Wilkinson, the Ameri- can commissary, was doing what he could to secure the neu- trality, if not the active aid of the savages, by a rival distribu- tion of rum and trinkets, - a measure that before long Germain was asking Stuart to copy. That agent, coursing through the up-country, says that he encountered on the Tennessee River several boats, conveying settlers from the Holston to river sites as far down the Mississippi as Natchez, whither, it was no un- usual complaint at this time, persons flying from justice be- took themselves, mingled with others who fled from the turmoil which the war was creating on the seaboard. Stuart thought that the present exodus was helped by the promised neutrality of the Creeks and Cherokees.
Stuart wrote to the colonial secretary that this apathy of these tribes did not disturb him, for he had no doubt that, when the pinch came, the savages could be induced to aid the British.
Early in 1776, Stuart had confidently reported that every- where the Cherokees were painted black and red for war, and that the rebels had succeeded in enticing only a few of their head men to meet commissioners at Fort Charlotte.
Nothing was stirring the southern tribes so effectually as northern emissaries, who brought tidings of a widespread pur- pose among the Indians beyond the Ohio to make common cause with the British against the colonial rebels. These mes-
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sengers also alleged that the French in Canada, appeased by the Quebec Bill, were assisting them. These northern dele- gates, particularly. the Delawares, assured their southern kins- folk that their fathers, the French, who had been long dead, were alive again, and were quite a match for the four or five thousand armed provineials which they had seen or heard of at Pittsburg and in other posts on the way.
There was indeed a long-cherished purpose, on the part both of the home government and of Carleton at Quebee, that the movement upon the southern frontiers should be supported by an equally hostile demonstration along the borders of Penn- sylvania and Virginia. The task of arousing these northern tribes, as it happened, was not so easy as to fire the southern Indians, for the lesson which Lewis had given them at Point Pleasant was not forgotten.
Hamilton, the new commander at Detroit, possessed of verbal instructions from Carleton, had reached that post in November, 1775, and it was soon a struggle between him, instructed to mass the Indians for a raid of the borders, and Morgan, the American agent for the Indians, whose task was to detach the Indians from the British interests. Morgan had succeeded Richard Butler in charge of the Indians of the middle depart- ment in the previous April, and found for his support at Pitts- burg a Virginia company under Captain John Neville. In June, he had sent messengers to the Shawnees and Wyandots to meet him in couneil, and in October, he got together some six or seven hundred Mingoes, Shawnees, and Delawares, and exaeted from them a promise of neutrality. Hamilton's influ- enee was too great with the Ottawas, Wyandots, Pottawatta- mies, and Chippewas for Morgan to prevail upon them to join in the pact.
The retreat of the Americans from Canada had made it pos- sible for Carleton in June to send word to the western stations that he no longer needed their help. This gave Hamilton the freedom he desired, and he notified Dartmouth that he and his Indians were ready for the contest. He says that an embassy from the eastern tribes to the great western confederacy had just been at Detroit with a belt, and that he had torn it before their faces. These messengers were an Englishman, a Delaware
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WATAUGA ATTACKED.
chief, and Montour, the half-breed. They had brought a copy of the Pennsylvania Gazette, and from this Hamilton had learned of the action of Congress on July 4, and how the Declaration of Independence had deelared his dependent braves " merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions," - a description which he knew how to reveal to his Indian allies.
Meanwhile, the savage confliet had been precipitated at the south. The Cherokees had decided upon war, and they had reason to count upon aid from the very tribes which Morgan was striving to eoeree. As early as May, 1776, Stuart had sent warning messages to the Watauga settlements, deelaring what they might expect if they encouraged rebellion. These colonists at once drew in their outposts, and sent to Virginia for rein- foreements. In June, the blow fell. The Powell valley com- munity was raided and broken up, and there was alarm through- out the various Tennessee settlements, now numbering perhaps six hundred souls. The main assaults were from two bands moving at the same moment, and counting, perhaps, three or four hundred each. The borderers fortunately had received warning of the point of attack from a friendly half-breed woman. The threatened neighborhoods had therefore ample time to draw their dependents within their stockades. Such a foree, " forted " at Eaton's Station, aroused by the devasta- tions of an approaching band, sallied on July 20, one hundred and seventy in number, and marched to confront it. The whites had encountered only a small party of savages, and, while returning, were near the Long Island Flats of the Holston, when the Indians, supposing them on the retreat, fell impetu- ously on their rear, but not before the borderers had time to deploy. A sharp contest followed and the enemy fled, only four of the whites being hurt.
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