USA > Ohio > Brown County > History of Clermont and Brown Counties, Ohio, from the earliest historical times down to the present, V. 1 > Part 12
USA > Ohio > Clermont County > History of Clermont and Brown Counties, Ohio, from the earliest historical times down to the present, V. 1 > Part 12
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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
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burned Omee and retreated without offering battle. A large detachment in pursuit burned five other towns and over twen- ty thousand bushels of corn. With orders to destroy, the militia scattered to plunder and chase those that lured them on. When their time came, the Indians under Little Turtle fell upon and annihilated the unsupported company of regu- lars. Three days later, October 21, the militia of a second detachment fled from their place and another defeat was suf- fered. The main purpose of destroying food and shelter was accomplished, but the revenge obtained by the Indians. through the disobedience of one party of militia and the panic, not to say cowardice, of another, was extremely dis- tressing. In self-defense, the delinquents threw the blame on General Harmar. A searching inquiry disclosed the truth. But the vindicated General refused to trust his reputation again with those whose love of plunder was stronger than their sense of duty.
The campaigns of 1791 were made more determined from the East by the massacre of twelve people on Sunday, Jan- uary 2, in their homes at Big Bottom on the Muskingum, thirty miles above Marietta, by a band of some twenty-five or thirty Delawares and Wyandots. A suggestion that the appalling sacrifice was needed to rouse men to action savors of cruel mocking. But there was a fatuous, secure indiffer- ence in the East toward western perils. What had happened was far away-too far to be exciting. People foolish enough to go to the Indian Country must expect trouble. The Indians should not be provoked. Besides, the treaties were in force with them, except the very bad, who could not be so many as some thought. Even President Washington wrote that the depredating banditti was probably not more than two hun- dred-mostly Shawnees. General Putnam, whose son was among the slain, reported the massacre to Congress and to the President. This was awful and much nearer home. The murderers should be apprehended and punished. Governor St. Clair, who was at Philadelphia to confer with Congress and Washington, should have three thousand troops and be vigilant.
Major General St. Clair returned to Cincinnati. The Ken- tucky Board of War was authorized to do their utmost.
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A force of eight hundred mounted men under General Charles Scott and Colonel James Wilkinson marched from the mouth of the Kentucky on May 23, directly to the Wea village of Ouiatenon on the Wabash, now eight miles below the city of Lafayette. The towns around were burned and a few Indians were killed or captured. A second mounted force of five hundred rifles under Wilkinson, now a General, started on July 20 from Fort Washington and struggled through the swamps and swollen streams of a wet season to Ke-ne-pa- com-a-qua on the Eel River about six miles up from the Wabash and in the present neighborhood of the city of Lo- gansport, where the usual scenes of burning and wasting with some capturing were enacted. The war was waged for sub- mission or extirpation.
To accomplish this St. Clair's plan was a chain of forts to be maintained over a road to be opened from the mouth of the Licking to the Fork of the Maumee; that is, from Fort Wash- ington to Fort Wayne. The plan flanked the malign influ- ence at Detroit. With the help promised promptly ready for a summer campaign, the tremendous undertaking would have succeeded. But the Eastern officers did not come till Septem- ber 7th, and some of their men still later. They came without money and ahead of their stores. The men recruited for the service had yet to be drilled. The militia were equally defi- cient. It was the first expedition in force under the new gov- ernment. All that has been told of subsequent frauds in the commissary and quartermaster departments was fully repre- sented in that equipment. The harness was of rotten leather. The chains broke like pewter. The spades and mattocks bent with the first use. The edge of the axes crumbled with the first stroke on hard wood. The powder was weak and the pork was strong. Apparently nothing had been inspected, and . anything had been thought good enough for the government by swindlers in the East who deserved hanging as much as the Indians needed shooting. The energy, the ingenuity, the real genius of St. Clair was established by the subsequent investi- gation beyond all dispute. Scarcely more than two-thirds of the promised force appeared. In September the army built and occupied Fort Hamilton on the site of that city. Fort Jefferson, five miles south of Greenville, in Darke county, was
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made defensible by October 24th. If the militia had been dis- missed till spring and the regulars put in winter quarters all might have gone well. But the orders from the Secretary of War contained this sentence: "The President enjoins you, by every principle that is sacred, to stimulate your operations in the highest degree, and to move as rapidly as the lateness of the season and the nature of the case will possibly admit." With such orders St. Clair moved on. After leaving garrisons for the forts and guards for the trains, only fourteen hundred men were left when the sick general was lifted from his horse, where the army camped, November 3d, on a stream in the southwestern part of Mercer county. The customary orders to prevent a surprise were given. The fatal omission in the performance of the orders was covered by the death of those responsible. The battle that came with the morning is known in mournful memory as St. Clair's Defeat. Stricter attention to orders might have lessened the loss : but we know now that the movement was ill fated before it left the East. Details of the disaster may be found on a thousand pages ; but no ac- count is just that fails to place. much of the responsibility on those who ignored or belittled the power of the Indian country and then urged precipitate action with inadequate means. For every man on the firing line with such a foe, two more were required to maintain the road by which they could be fed and kept in the hostile wilderness and the winter at hand.
St. Clair's army had attempted the impossible. The fact is plainly admitted between the lines of the Congressional in- vestigation that thoroughly vindicated the commanding gen- eral. But even more in his favor is found in the fact that "he still retained the undiminished esteem and good opinion of Washington." Additional proof of the sad mistake of all is found in the action of Congress that more than doubled the preparation for the war. Aside from the question of failure, the physical condition of St. Clair made his resignation im- perative. A curious but not unusual instance of Washing- ton's thorough method of reaching accurate judgments is found in a paper written by his own hand concerning a new commander. The name of every one possible or proposed for the place was written with "Remarks" keenly but justly stating the character, habits, achievements and probable per-
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formance of each. The result of this searching analysis, that left nothing for personal sentiment or forgetful chance, was the selection of Anthony Wayne, who had been with him in Forbes' expedition to capture the Forks of the Ohio, as a boy of thirteen, thirty-four years before. Four regi- ments of infantry and a regiment of cavalry with ample supplies were authorized. In April, 1792, Wayne was ap- pointed "Commander in Chief of the Army of the United States." In May he was "enjoined that another defeat would be inexpressibly ruinous to the reputation of the Govern- ment." The only request from Washington was that the campaign should not begin until the "Legion" was filled up and properly disciplined. In June he was at Pittsburgh to organize his army. When the recruits began to arrive they were placed in a camp twenty-seven miles down the river, beyond the reach of whisky: "Which baneful poison is pro- hibited from entering this camp." The winter passed with constant drill. In January, 1793, the Secretary of War warned Wayne that public sentiment was extremely adverse to a con- tinuance of the Indian War, a peace commission was named and Wayne was again warned against offensive operations. On St. Patrick's Day, when twenty-five hundred men were in the camp, the Indians purposely permitted to be present were astonished by the accuracy of both drill and target practice. In May the force was moved to Camp "Hobson's Choice," by Cincinnati.
With their victory over St. Clair the Indians became more insolent and the white frontier more deplorable than ever. Amos Wood and his son were killed across the river from Dover and Major William Riggs lost his life close by the present town hall in Milford. Such was the danger of cross- ing the border of Old Clermont in 1792-93. Several peace messengers were shot under their white flags. Meanwhile Wayne recruited and drilled without ceasing. Forts Wash- ington, Hamilton, St. Clair, and Jefferson were stocked with supplies that had been inspected with a vigor which brought contractors to their knees before a man without mercy for dis- honesty. In September, 1793, the Secretary of War ordered Wayne to proceed with all caution as another defeat "would be pernicious in the highest degree." On October 17th, the
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army was advanced. On the same day Lieutenant Lowry with ninety men in charge of twenty wagons loaded with grain and one with stores was attacked about seven miles south of Fort St. Clair, which was about a mile west of Eaton, in Preble county. Lowry and thirteen others were killed, and about seventy horses taken from the wagons so hastily that the grain was left unharmed. The army went into winter quarters at Fort Greenville in Darke county with much an- noyance to the supply trains that came from Cincinnati, eighty miles to the south. In December, 1793, a detachment went forward and on Christmas Day occupied the scene of the great defeat. After gathering the bones of the slain from the ground a fort was built and called Fort Recovery, be- cause the field had been recovered. When word of this came to General Wilkinson, commanding at Fort Washington, he gathered a force of volunteers to finish the gathering and burial of the dead. On June 30th following, Fort Recovery was the object of a determined attack of a mixed force of In- dians and Canadians. that cost the defenders twenty-two killed and thirty wounded.
On July 26th General Scott reached Fort Greenville with sixteen hundred mounted Kentuckians, and two days later the re-enforced army started the march to the junction of the Auglaize and Maumee, where Wayne located a permanent base to which he gave the significant name of Fort Defiance. In pursuance of the policy ordered from the East, Wayne again offered peace. The victorious Little Turtle counselled peace with the "chief that never sleeps." The advice was re- jected. An evasive answer was given the messengers. With his chain of eight forts completely supplied and well garri- soned, Wayne marched in perfect order down the Maumee to- wards the "Fort Miami" that the Governor of Canada had built in that spring and summer on the Maumee, sixty miles south of Detroit, in flagrant violation of the Treaty of Paris. As seen by Americans, the purpose of that fort was to en- courage the Indians.
The foremost for battle were the proud Shawnees untamed by the misfortune of seventy years, and the descendants of the peaceful Delawares made malignant by much experience. Every tribe of the North and West was represented because
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of hate or fear or both. But worst of all were the whites who painted themselves a savage hue because they loved wicked- ness. On August 20, 1794, this implacable force of two thou- sand Indians and Canadians confronted Wayne's army, where its march was across the path of a tornado, from which the place was called the Fallen Timbers. Through this natural barricade, the quickly formed and thoroughly disciplined lines of battle charged like a "Whirlwind," as the Indians called the commander. The Red men gave way everywhere and could not be rallied. The fugitives fled by the fort and were amazed that the guns were not fired on their foe, and that the gates were not opened for their protection. The woeful conflict of more than forty years for the Beautiful River was finished in one fierce hour. The Battle of the Fallen Timbers, better known as Wayne's Victory, was and remains one of the de- cisive days in American History. Thenceforth the Ohio flowed unawed by barbarism and unafraid of savagery. The defeated asked for peace and protection. On August 3, 1795, the Treaty of Greenville was dictated by General Wayne to eleven hundred and thirty sachems and warriors. When it was signed, the Indian country on the Ohio passed away for- ever. .
The local results of that victory are the material for the next level to be attained in the progress of this history. Those results should have larger importance for worthy curiosity through even brief allusion to other events of that time. The significance of the chain of forts from the Ohio towards De- troit and the victory won by American arms reached the per- ception of the British again at war with France. , The peace of 1783 had lasted but ten years. Before justice should be- come a necessity, a conclusion was reached to evacuate the forts retained at the close of the Revolution. In the summer of 1796, Wayne had the proud satisfaction of raising the Stars and Stripes over Fort Miami and at Detroit. With that change the defeated but not subdued Indians ceased to hold the Ohio in their minds. They knew that their hunting ground would soon be a land of homes, and they wondered when and where they would wander next. Some even then sought safe- ty beyond the Mississippi and handed their treasured hatred from sire to son to vex greatly a troubled future, until the
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Plains could be compassed with steam and steel. Kentucky reached the dignity of statehood in 1792, with scant power to restrain the restless spirit, bent on finding or making a way with Spain to the Gulf, until Washington ordered Wayne to post a hindering guard at Fort Massac by the mouth of the Cumberland. But men studied problems then, that found a partial solution fifty years or more later in Mexico, and still farther explanation at Manila and Santiago. The time else- where was full of the lurid excitement of the French Revo- lution. The Reign of Terror reached the infamy of twelve hundred and eighty-five executions by the guillotine in Paris alone in the forty-six days that ended with the beheadal of Robespierre, July 28, 1794, the same day on which Wayne started his final march from Fort Greenville for the victory twenty-three days later that won the Indian country.
The French Revolution may seem far from the land of Brown and Clermont, but we shall find close connections not far ahead. On October 19, 1790, the advance party made the first settlement of the emigrants from France at Gallipolis. In March, 1791, a band from Kentucky, directed by Nathaniel Massie, began a stockade at Manchester, that was occupied by the middle of the month and held through the war with- out a break, but not without danger. Massie, then twenty- eight years old, had a fair education, much talent and a noble reputation. He was an expert surveyor and had a commis- sion as deputy from Surveyor General Anderson. With no explicit statement, but judging from what happened, the main purpose of Massie's Station, on his part at least, was a secure base and convenient help for locating the land warrants that ' were confided to his care and skill. The settlements at Ma- rietta, about Cincinnati, at Gallipolis, at Massie's Station and a few people who hunted or raised vegetables under the guns of the protecting garrisons, and a few dispossessed but per- sistent tomahawk claimants on the Eastern Ohio, constituted the population of Ohio in 1795.
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Columbia, Cincinnati, and North Bend had a common pur- pose and a common danger ; and also a common jealousy that was only allayed by the selection of the central one for the site of Fort Washington, which established the supremacy of the Queen City of the Great Valley. Any other attempts, individ-
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ually or by companies, to possess the land were hindered by the fury that followed the reverses at Harmar and St. Clair's Defeat. The settlements then were little more than armed camps to guard the labor that planted and gathered or that fished and hunted. Fort Washington was, for the time, an extensive scientific structure surrounded by at least fifteen block houses from four to twelve miles distant. The total force outside the main garrison in 1791 was four hundred and eighty-five militia. The word militia as used there meant every male of sixteen years and upward, who was obliged un- der severe penalties to possess a rifle and six flints, a powder horn and half pound of powder, a priming wire and brush, a pouch and one pound of bullets and one pound of buckshot, which were to be carried with ceaseless caution on all occa- sions, whether to the clearing, at court or in church. The conditions at Fort Harmar were on a smaller scale, but under the same law. This utmost vigilance was the heavy price of a safety full of recent peril and future danger not to be for- gotten or ignored. One-fourth of the militia of Hamilton county perished in St. Clair's Defeat, after which, the bravest cowered before the awful chances of massacre or capture and torture that threatened every venture into the gloomy forest until Wayne's stern retaliation swept the savage fright away. As soon as strength could be renewed men went out to meas- ure and divide the conquest.
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CHAPTER VII.
WILLIAM LYTLE.
Homes as a Reward for Dangerous Duty-The Noble Idea and the Difficult Practice-The Difficulty Undertaken by Authorized Surveyors-General Massie and His Pupils- General Lytle-Lytle's Personal Narrative-Moving West -- Life in a Palisade-The Boy of Fourteen Kills a Buffalo and a Bear-Watching for Indians-A Volunteer When Sixteen-Fighting at Mac-o-chee-The Capture and Mur- der of Moluntha-Chasing Indians-Grant's Defeat.
Traditions of settlements before 1796 between the Little Miami and Eagle Creek or eastward short of the immediate protection of Massie's Station have curious interest ; but such claims do not stand the test of a patient comparison with es- tablished facts. Everything known conforms to the conclu- sion that there was no exception to the law that based the pos- session of the land upon military service for Virginia. "Tom- ahawk claims" based upon regulations to induce settlement were a source of much litigation in Kentucky, but not in Ohio, where there was no legislation for securing titles except by acts of Congress. Under those acts all possession was pre- ceded by a survey to fix the limits and secure a record that would perpetuate the reserved rights of the government and those acquired by the purchaser. The warrant for possession of a military tract did not depend upon a residence on the land. That would have been a prohibitory hardship to most of the far away soldiers of the Revolution.
The abstract idea of a broad farm in the land he had won and dedicated to liberty, where the ageing patriot should pass. - his days amid plenty was as fine and noble as the fruition proved difficult and disappointing. For a dozen years or more after the Revolution, the Indian refused to accept the plan that made him pay the price of patriotism. If the sol- dier had a home in Virginia, he was reluctant to risk his scalp for another in Ohio ; if he was needy, as was the rule, he could
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ill afford the expense of the long journey and doubtful chances. Therefore many threw their claims upon a broken market, where the fine old parchments were often sold for less than curio seekers are now willing to pay for those rare and faded tokens of long ago heroism, that are more significant of true glory than the grants of William the Conqueror ; although, by the lapse of time and the force of law, their intrinsic value is no more than the yellow leather that bears their honorable inscriptions.
Whoever held such a claim, whether by service or pur- chase naturally desired to make the best choice possible. The difficulties of a personal inspection were so great that few cared or dared to make the effort. How much Massie knew of this condition must be inferred from what was done. If a shining angel had pointed the way, he could not have acted more directly. Others saw and resolved to share the chance when possible. He was the first and chief who fortified a base within the border of the land that had to be conquered be- fore their chance could expand. The story of that first little fort in the Virginia military lands belongs to Adams county, from which there is no intention of taking, but rather of ren- , dering, tribute. For, the animating influence of that brave be- ginning circled out and included much good for Old Clermont. The sheer audacity of Massie's move into the Indian coun- try attracted other courageous men whose descendants still maintain the ancient honor of their names. Besides those who came to stay, the cabins of Manchester held two transient youths who were there to study surveying under the expert Massie. One was Duncan McArthur, whose biography is a part of the story of the brilliant governors of Ohio. The other was William Lytle, quite well recovered from the wounds brought from Grant's Defeat. In 1828 amid the lux- ury of his famous home built near the scene of the boyish ad- venture of his first landing in Cincinnati, before a tree had been cut, he began a Personal Narrative, which, to the regret of every reader, was not finished. In all the notes and jour- nals that have come from that day, there is no more graphic view of border life and nothing more replete with the spirit of that time. Portions of it fitting the special needs of various writers have been frequently quoted. The purpose of this
a
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story is best served by presenting all from the first word to the last interrupted sentence.
A foreword about the herdity of his stock will apply in some degree to the Scotch-Irish people who were the frequent companions of his enterprising career. In the struggle of more than a hundred years for the possession and unity of the Ohio Valley, commencing with the massacres in the Alle- ghanies and culminating in the tragic death of the "The Sol- dier Poet" at Chickamauga, few names or none have had such continuous or honorable service as is found in the line of Lytle.
All the world two hundred years ago, with Europe in gen- eral and Ireland in particular, was not what a self-respecting journal of today would advertise as a desirable residence for anybody but the ruling class; and even they were obliged to put up with rickety thrones. There was not only a constant scarcity of convenience from pins to dining cars, but also a perpetual presence of vexations, which liberal historians have grouped into a class with the name of tyranny. All improve- ment in human happiness since then, and, in fact, all before, has been wrought by the dissatisfied. Of this sort, no equal number of square miles of sod has been more productive than the Emerald Isle, where inborn criticism of authority is so in- herent that the success of any party is a signal for the opposi- tion to emigrate. Among many who thus lived ill at ease were the Lytles, in Ulster, where they had come in remoter days to practice Presbyterian principles which had been incon- venient even in the glens of Scotland. Finding neither peace nor profit in the rude clash between the zealous faiths of the older Irish and the newer Scotch, one of the family took ship for America. Whether staying with former evils or going to other trials required the firmer nerve is still an open question ; for this happened in 1722, when the first dull George was king for many repenting Anglo Saxons. The emigrant Lytle went to the woods back of Philadelphia, where the winning of ยท the wilderness was one long dirge of toil with frequent ap- palling interludes by scalping bands.
Amid these strenuous conditions, where gunpowder ob- tained more care than the form of creeds, a son was born to the transplanted family in 1728, and named William, who be-
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came an Indian fighter by necessity and a captain by royal commission in his twenty-second year. Captain Lytle was not mustered with the main armies of the French and Indian War, but was assigned to the greater hazard of scouting the upper tributaries of the Ohio. A similar duty was performed in the Revolution, in which he was known as a colonel with a repu- tation at Fort Pitt that made him the leader in 1780, over the thousand fighting men and their families on sixty-three barges, who met the van of Byrd's Invasion of Kentucky op- posite the mouth of the Licking as told in the Narrative. It must be noted that this is the first authentic presence of white people on the site of Cincinnati. Yet writers not knowing the fact have made much ado about a more recent event. Cap- tain Lytle's share in that migration to the West was the pro- ceeds of his former home near Carlisle, Pennsylvania, from which he brought three sons, John, born August 8, 1766, Wil- liam, born September 1, 1770, Joseph, of short life, four daugh- ters and their mother, whose maiden name was Mary Steel.
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