History of Coshocton County, Ohio, its past and present, 1740-1881, Part 36

Author: Hill, Norman Newell, jr., [from old catalog] comp; Graham, A. A. (Albert Adams), 1848-; Graham, A. A., & co., Newark, O., pub. [from old catalog]
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Newark, Ohio, A. A. Graham & co.
Number of Pages: 854

USA > Ohio > Coshocton County > History of Coshocton County, Ohio, its past and present, 1740-1881 > Part 36

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).

Monday, October 22, the army, accompanied by the Indian deputies, recommenecd its march, as Bouquet wished to show that he was determined to enforce his demands. They marched nine miles down the Tuscarawas, and went into camp. This was their fourteenth camp since leaving Fort Pitt, and was within a few miles of the east line of Coshocton county. The next day (Octo- ber 23) the army crossed the present boundaries of this county, marching sixteen miles and camping about seven miles cast of the present site of the town. This camp must have been in Lafayette township, very near the line between

it and Oxford. Here Bouquet remained until the 25th, when he continued his march a little more than six miles, camping within a mile of the forks of the Muskingum.

Judging this to be as central a position as he could find, he resolved to tix himself here until the object of his mission was accomplished. He ordered four redoubts to be built, erected several store-houses, a mess-house, a large number of ovens, and various other buildings for the recep- tion of the captives, which, with the white tents scattered up and down the banks of the river, made a large settlement in the wilderness, and filled the Indians with alarm. A town with nearly two thousand inhabitants, well supplied with horses, cattle, and sheep, and ample means of defense, was well calculated to awaken the gloomiest anticipations. The steady sound of the ax day after day, the lowing of cattle, and all the sounds of civilization echoing along the banks of the Tuscarawas within the very heart of their territory, was more alarming than the resistless march of a victorious aniny ; and anx- ious to get rid of such unwelcome companions, they made every effort to collect the prisoners scattered among the various tribes.

Bouquet remained here two weeks, occupied in sending and receiving messengers who were charged with business relating to the restoration of the captives. At the end of this time two hundred and six, the majority of them women and children, had been received in camp. A hundred more still remained in the hands of the Indians; yet, as they soleninly promised to restore them in the spring, and the leafless forest and biting blasts of November, and occasional flur- ries of snow, reminded Bouquet of the coming on of winter, he determined to retrace his stops to Fort Pitt.

These two weeks, during which the prisoners were being brought in, were filled with scenes of the most intense and often painful excite- ment. Some of the captives had been for many years with the Indians, recipients of their kind- ness and love; others had passed from chiklhood, to maturity among them, till they had forgotten their native language, and the past was to them, if remembered at all, like a half-forgotten dream. All of them-men, women and children-were

211

HISTORY OF COSHOCTON COUNTY.

dressed in Indian costume, and their hair ar- ranged in Indian fashion. Their features also were bronzed by long exposure to the weather ; so that they appeared to have passed more than half way to a pure savage state. As troop after troop came in, the eager look and inquiries of those who had accompanied the army to find their long-lost families and kindred made each arrival a most thilling scene. In some instances, where the separation had been only for a short period, the recognition was instantaneous and mutual, and the short, quick cry, and sudden rush into each other's arms, brought tears to the eyes of the hardy soldier. In others, doubt, agony, fear and hope, would in turn take posses- sion of the heart, and chase each other like shadows over the face, as question after question was put, to recall some event or scene familiar to both, till at last a common chord would be touched, when the dormant memory would awake as by an electric touch, a flood of fond recollections sweep away all uncertainty, and the lost one be hurried away amidst cries and sobs of joy. Sometimes the disappointed parent or brother would turn sorrowfully away and, with that hope deferred which makes the heart sick, sadly await the arrival of another group. But the most painful sight was when a mother recognized her own child, which, however, in turn, persisted in looking on her as a stranger and coldly turning from her embrace, clung to its savage protector; or when a mutual recognition failed to awaken affection on one' side, so entirely had the heart become weaned from its early attach- ments.

In these cases the joy of the captors knew no bounds, and the most endearing epithets and caresses would be lavished upon the prisoner. But when they saw them taken away, torrents of tears attested their sincere affection and grief. The attitude of intense interest, and the exhibi- tions of uncontrollable sorrow of these wild children of the forest, on one side, and the ecstatic joy of the white mother as she fokled her long-lost child in her arms, and the deep emotion of the husband as he strained his recovered wife to his bosom, on the other, combined to form one of the most moving, novel spectacles ever wit- nessed in the American wilderness. One of the

captive women had an infant three months old at her breast, born in the Indian's wigwam. . L Virginia volunteer instantly recognized her as his wife, stolen from his log-cabin six months previous, and rushing forward he snatched her to his bosom and flew with her to his tent, where, tearing off the savage costumes of both, he clothed them in their proper garments. After the first burst of joy was over he inquired after his little boy, two years old, who was carried off the same time she was made prisoner; but she could give no tidings of him. A few days after another group of prisoners arrived, in which was a child whose appearance answered to the de- scriptions of this little fugitive. The woman was sent for and the child placed before. She looked at it a moment, and shook her head. But the next moment the powerful maternal instinct triumphed, and recognizing in the little savage before her her long-lost child, she dropped her babe, and snatching him to her bosom burst into a torrent of tears. The husband caught the babe from the ground on which it had fallen and both hurried away to his tent. The poor Indian mother watched their retreating forms, and then burying her face in her blanket sobbed aloud.

A scene equally affecting occurred between an aged mother and her daughter, who had been carried off nine years before and adopted in a distant tribe. Though the latter had passed from childhood to womanhood in the forest, and differed from other young squaws only in the tint of her skin, which her wild life could not wholly bronze, the eyes of the parent, sharpened by maternal instinct, instantly recognized the features of her child in the handsome young savage, and called her by name, and rushed forward to embrace her. But the latter, having forgotten her native lan- guage and name, and all her childhood's life, looked on wondering, and turned, frightened, from the proffered embrace, to her Indian parent. The true mother tried in every way to recall the memory of her child and awaken recognition, but in vain. At length, despairing of success, she gave way to the most passionate grief. Colonel Bouquet had been a silent witness of the painful interview, and, moved at the grief of the mother, approached her, and asked if she could not recall some song with which she used to sing

215

HISTORY OF COSHOCTON COUNTY.

her child to sleep. Brightening at the sugges- tion, she looked up through her tears, and struck a familiar strain, one with which she used long ago to quiet her babe. The moment the ears of the maiden caught the sound her countenance changed, and as the strain proceeded a strange light stole over her features. All stood hushed as death, as that simple melody floated out through the forest, and watched with intense interest the countenances of the two actors in this touching scene. The eager, anxious look of the mother as slie sang, and the rapidly changing expression of the captive's face as she listened, awoke the pro- foundest sympathy of Bouquet's manly, generous heart, and he could hardly restrain his feelings. Slowly, almost painfully, the dormant memory awoke from its long sleep; at length the dark cloud that covered the past rent asunder, and the scenes of childhood came back in all the fresh- ness of their early spring time, and the half wild young creature sunk in joy on her mother's bosom.

Some of the children had been so long with their captors that they looked upon them as their true parents, and cried bitterly on being sepa- rated from them. Stranger still, the young women had become so attached to their savage yet kind husbands, that, when toll they were to be given up to their white friends, they refused to go; and many of them had to be bound and brought as prisoners to camp. Repelling all ad- vances, and turning a deaf ear to entreaties, they besought Bouquet to let them return to their for- est homes. The promise that they should take their half-breed children with them could not change their wishes. 'On the other hand, the Indians clung to them with a tenacity and fond- ness that made the spectators forget they were looking upon savages. It was pitiful to see their habitual stoicism give way so completely at the thought of separation. They made no effort to conceal their grief; and the chieftain's eye that gleamed like his own tomahawk in battle, now wept like a child's. His strong nature seemed wholly subdued, and his haughty bearing changed to one of humility as he besought the white man to treat his pale-faced wife tenderly. Ilis wild life suddenly lost all its charms, and he hung round the camp to get a sight of her whom,

though she was lost to him, he still loved. He watched near the log building in which she was kept, leaving it only to bring from the forest pheasants, wild pigeons, or some delicacy, and lay it at her feet. Some of the young captive wives refused to be comforted, and using that sagacity they had acquired in their long sojourn with the Indians, managed to escape from their friends, and joining their swarthy lovers fled with them to the forest, where they remained in spite of all efforts to recover them.

The American wilderness never presented such a spectacle as was here exhibited on the banks of the Muskingum. It was no longer a hostile camp, but a stage on which human na- ture was displaying its most attractive and noble traits; or rather a sublime poem, enacted there in the bosom of the wilderness, whose burden was human affection, and whose great argument the common brotherhood of mankind.

Bouquet and his officers were deeply impressed, and could hardly believe their own senses when they saw young warriors, whose deeds of daring and savage ferocity had made their names a ter- ror on the frontier, weeping like children over their bereavement.

A treaty of peace having been concluded with the various tribes, Bouquet, taking hostages to se- cure their good behavior and the return of the remaining prisoners, broke up his camp on the 18th of November, and began to retrace his steps toward Fort Pitt. The leafless forest rocked and roared above the little army as it once more en- tered its gloomy recesses; and that lovely spot on the banks of the Tuscarawas, on which such strange scenes had been witnessed, lapsed again into solitude and silence. The Indians gazed with various and conflicting emotions on the lessening tiles-some with grief and desolation of heart because they bore away the objects of their deep affection, others with savage hate, for they went as conquerors.

A few, impelled by their affection for the pris- oners, refused to stay behind. Though warned by the officers of the danger they incurred in re- turning to the frontiers which they had drenched in blood-of the private vengeance that would be wreaked on them by those whose homes they had made desolate-they could not be persuaded to

213

HISTORY OF COSHOCTON COUNTY.

turn back. Thus, day after day, they moved on with the army, leaving it only to hunt for those who had so long shared their wigwams. Among these was a young Mingo chief, who could not be forced to leave a young Virginian woman whom he had taken for his wife. Neither persuasions nor the prospeet of falling a victim to the ven- geance of those whose friends he had slain coukl make him remain behind. He treasured the young pale-face in his fierce heart with a devotion that laughed at danger. His love was as un- tamable as his hate; and in his bosom the fires of passion glowed with an intensity found only in those who have never submitted to a restraint, and whose highest law is the gratification of their own desires. Silent and gloomy he accompanied the army, drawn irresistibly on by one sweet face that shut all other objects from his sight. She had left his wigwam forever, and he could no longer soothe her with caressing words and be rewarded by a gentle look; but he could hover round her path, and bring her those delicacies which he so well knew how to select. No knight in the days of chivalry ever exhibited a higher gallantry or more unselfish devotion than did this haughty young Mingo.

In ten days the army again drew up in the hit- tle elearing in front of Fort Pitt, and were wel- comed with loud shouts. The war was over, and the troubled frontier rested onee more in peace.

As a perusal of the details of this interesting expedition may have created a desire to know more of the man who conducted it, it is thought best to add the following .personal sketch of Col. Henry Bouquet :

He was born in Rolle, on the northern border of Lake Geneva, in the canton of Berne, Switzer- land, in 1719. At the age of seventeen he was received as a cadet in the regiment of Constant, in the service of the States General of Holland, and two years later obtained the commission of ensign in the same regiment. Subsequently he entered the service of the King of Sardinia, and distinguished himself first as a lieutenant and afterward as adjutant in the campaigns conducted by that Prince against the combined forces of Franch and Spain. He acquitted himself with much credit, and his ability and courage coming to the knowledge of the Prince of Orange, he en- | anticipated.

gaged Bouquet in the service of the Republic. He held rank here as Lieutenant Colonel in the Swiss Guards, formed at The Hague in 1748.

At the breaking out of the war between France and England, in 1754, he accepted a commission in the Royal American or Sixtieth British regi- ment, as Lieutenant Colonel, and embarked for America. His operations from this time to the date of his expedition against the Indians are involved in obseurity; little or nothing having been preserved except the fact that he was a subordinate in the Forbes expedition against Fort Du Quesne (Fort Pitt) in 1755.

After his successful Indian campaign in 1764, he went to Philadelphia, where he was received with distinguished kindness, and warmly wel- comed, especially by those whose friends he had reseued from the Indians. The Assembly voted him a complimentary address; while the Home Government, as a reward for his services, pro- moted him to the rank of Brigadier General, and placed him in command of the Southern Depart- ment of North America. He did not live long, however, to enjoy his honors, for, in the latter part of the year 1765, he died of a fever in Pensa- cola.

CHAPTER XXI.

COL. BRODIEAD'S EXPEDITION.

Causes of the Expedition-The Objective Point-March of the Army-Arrival at the Forks of the Muskingum-De- struction of Indian Villages-Return of the Army-War of Extermination - Col. Brodhead's Official Report - Bio- graphical Sketches of Col. David Shepherd and Col. Daniel Brodhead.

D URING the year 1780, frequent predatory ineursions were made into the frontier set- tlements east of the Ohio river, to the very seri- vus detriment of those settlements, whose growth was greatly impeded thereby. Naturally the people living on the frontiers were constantly in a state of feverish excitement and alarm, and would so remain as long as there was good reason to apprehend hostile and murderous raids into their communities. And of course while that condition of things existed but small prosperity to the exposed settlements could reasonably be

214

HISTORY OF COSHOCTON COUNTY.

As the winter of 1780-S1 wore away the shrewd and observing frontiersmen saw but little pros- pect of peace, tranquility and prosperity for the frontier settlements, and had but slight hopes that the savages would be at peace with them, unless a sanguinary policy was adopted and rig- orously pursued towards them, for self protec- tion. With the approach of spring there were unmistakable indications of an early renewal of hostilities, and these apprehensions soon turned ont to be well founded. During the carly spring of 1781, as was anticipated, marauding parties of · hostile Indians crossed the Ohio river at various points for purposes of plunder and murder, and frequently succeeded in executing their nefari- ous and brutal purposes.

Col. Daniel Brodhead was at this time Com- mander of the Western Military Department with headquarters at Fort Pitt, (now Pittsburgh). Learning of the growing disaffection of the un- civilized and unchristianized Delawares on the Muskingum toward the white settlers east of the Ohio, and also toward the American cause, as against Great Britain in the then pending revo- lutionary struggle; and knowing the losses the frontiersmen had sustained; the barbarities they had endured, the cruelties of which they had been the victims at the hands of the savages, and also seeing the then exposed condition of the weaker frontier settlements, he decided that the time had fully come when measures should be taken to guard against the future recurrence and to avenge the crueltics and atrocious barbarities of the savages. Accordingly he organized an ex- pedition composed of about 300 men, in part vol- unteers, at Wheeling, in April, 1781, to march against the Indians on the Muskingum. Col. David Shepherd was the second officer in rank, The Indian village of Goschachgunk, the second capital of the Delaware nation in Ohio, built on the site of Coshocton, on the left bank of the Muskingum, just below the junction of the Tus- carawas and Walhonding rivers, also called the "Forks of the Muskingum," was the objective point of the expedition.

Col. Brodhead's force, of 300 effective men, composed to a large extent of experienced Indian hunters, rendezvoused at Fort Henry, (formerly called Fort Fincastle, its name having been

changed in honor of Governor Patrick Henry, of the colony of Virginia,) situated in the then small village of Wheeling. The command was well officered, Col. David Shepherd, County Lieutenant of Ohio county, Virginia, having command of 134 men (probably the volunteer portion); the whole force being under the command of Col- onel Brodhead, who " was esteemed a successful commander in Indian warfarc."

This small army marched from Fort Henry in April, 1781, crossed the Ohio, and made a rapid march, by the nearest route, to the principal Delaware village upon the Muskingum, where the present town of Coshocton now stands. The army, reached the point of destination by a forced march on the evening of the 19th of April, 1781, (just one hundred years ago, at this writing,) completely surprising the Indians. Owing to high water, however, the Indians on the west side of the river escaped, but all on the east side were captured without firing a shot. Sixteen Indian warriors captured were taken be- low the town and killed by direction of a coun- cil of war held in the camp of Brodhead, being dispatched says Dr. Doddridge with tomahawks and spears, and afterwards scalped. The next morning an Indian called from the opposite side of the river for the " big captain," (as they called Brodhead,) saying he wanted peace. Brodhead sent him for his chief, who came over under a promise that he should not be killed. After he got over it is said that the notorious Indian fighter, Lewis Wetzel, tomahawked him! Some authorities represent that it was an older brother of Lewis Wetzel that committed this murder.

Another village, two and a half miles below, was also destroyed. This was Lichtenau, the Moravian village, abandoned the year before, at this time occupied by some straggling bands of uncivilized Delawares, who had named it In- donchaic. A strong determination was mani- fested by a portion of the soldiers to march to the Moravian towns up the river (Salem, Gna- denhutten and Schonbrunn) and destroy them, but Colonels Brodhead and Shepherd prevented this contemplated outrage.

The army then began its return, with some twenty prisoners, in charge of the volunteers, but it had gone but a short distance, when those-

215

HISTORY OF COSHOCTON COUNTY.

having the prisoners in charge killed them all except a few women and children, who were taken to Fort Pitt, and afterwards exchanged for an equal number of prisoners held by the Indians. On his return' march Colonel Brodhead met some friendly Delawares, who accompanied him to Fort Pitt and placed themselves under the protection of the United States.

Before leaving the valley of the Tuscarawas (then called Muskingum), Colonel Brodhead had an interview with the Rev. John Heckewelder and perhaps other Moravian missionaries who had been friendly to the frontier settlers and true to the cause of the colonists in their struggle with the mother country, and advised them and all of the Christian Indians, in view of their dangerous position, " between two fires," to break up their settlements and accompany him to Fort Pitt for protection. This advice they unfortun- antely declined to accept, and before the expira- tion of a year ninety-four of them were massacred in cold blood, at Gnadenhutten, by infuriated frontiersmen, under command of Colonel David Williamson, many of whose command had been of Colonel Brodhead's expedition to the Mus- kingum the previous year.

The settlements on the frontiers had suffered greatly from the Indians, and about this time the settlers came to the determination to arrest in future the marauding and murderous incur- sions of the savages. The time had come when they must make a vigorous defense of those set- tlements or abandon them. They must fight efficiently or be exterminated. It was a contest for life, for home, for wives and children. It was a battle between barbarism and civilization, between Paganism and Christianity. It is not surprising therefore that the border wars of this period were prosecuted on both sides as wars of extermination, and that the barbarities perpe- trated by the Indians had produced such a malig- nant spirit of revenge among the white settlers as to make them little less brutal and remorse- less than the savages themselves. Some of their expeditions against the Indians were mere mur- dering parties held together only by the com- mon thirst for revenge, and the malignant spirit of retaliation ; and it is not likely that any disci- pline calculated to restrain that pervading feeling

could, in all cases, have been enforced, however anxious the commander and a minority of his men might be. It is certainly unfortunate for the reputation of Colonel Brodhead that his name is thus associated with the murder of pris- oners, but it is highly probably that lie never sanctioned it, and could not have prevented it. It is clear however that the combined influence of Col. Brodhead and Col. Shepherd saved the Moravian Indians of the Tuscarawas Valley from the massacre that disgraced the soldiers of Col. Williamson the next year, and which their commander and eighteen of his men desired to prevent but could not! The killing of prisoners by the men of Col. Brodhead's expedition, in April, 1781, and the cruch murder of ninety-four Moravian Indians by Col. Williamson's com- mand, in March, 1782; succeeded in June, 1782, by the terrible torture and burning of Col. Craw- ford and others of his force, followed in August of the same year of the cruelties and barbarities of the Indians practiced towards Col. Lochry and all his command, amBushed, captured or killed, and some of the prisoners murdered in cold blood, well illustrate the spirit of the times and the sanguinary temper that controlled the whites and savages alike, on the fiery arena of the western border, at this period of fierce con- flicts and desperate deeds-deeds that were in such terrible harmony with those wild and thrilling days-heroic years on the western bor- der they have been called-years of barbarity, massacre, murder they were!

The following is Col. Brodhead's official re- port of his expedition to the Muskingum made to President Reed, of the Executive Council of Pennsylvania :

" PHILADELPHIA, May 22, 1781.

" SIR :- In the last letter I had the honor to ad- dress to your Excellency, I mentioned my in- tention to carry an expedition against the re- volted Delaware towns. I have now the pleasure to inform you that with about 300 men, (nearly half the number volunteers from the county), I surprised the towns of Cooshasking and Indao- chaie, killed fifteen warriers, and took upwards of twenty old men, women and children. About four miles above the town I detached a party to cross the river Muskingum and destroy a party of about forty warriors, who had just before (as I learned by an Indian whom the advance guard took prisoner) crossed over with some prisoners

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.

History of Coshocton County, Ohio, its past and present, 1740-1881, Part 36

Author: Hill, Norman Newell, jr., [from old catalog] comp; Graham, A. A. (Albert Adams), 1848-; Graham, A. A., & co., Newark, O., pub. [from old catalog] Publication date: 1881 Publisher: Newark, Ohio, A. A. Graham & co. Number of Pages: 854

Author: Hill, Norman Newell, jr., [from old catalog] comp; Graham, A. A. (Albert Adams), 1848-; Graham, A. A., & co., Newark, O., pub. [from old catalog]
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Newark, Ohio, A. A. Graham & co.
Number of Pages: 854