History of Greene County, together with historic notes on the northwest and the state of Ohio, Part 17

Author: R. S. Dills
Publication date: 1881
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 1037

USA > Ohio > Greene County > History of Greene County, together with historic notes on the northwest and the state of Ohio > Part 17

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connected with the left wing of the Dunmore army, who were then, or subsequently became, honorably identified with the history of our country, were its gallant commander, General Andrew Lewis; Gen- eral Isaac Shelby, a lieutenant then, afterwards the 'hero of King's Mountain ;' Colonel Charles Lewis, who gave up his life for his country on the battlefield of Point Pleasant, also, Hon. Andrew Moore, who served Virginia many years in both branches of our national legislature with honor to himself and credit to his State.

" The right wing of the Dunmore army reached the Ohio River by way of ' Potomac Gap,' about the first of October; and the left wing, under command of General Lewis, encamped at the mouth of the Kanawha River near the same time, where he soon received a dispatch from Lord Dunmore, changing the place of the junction of the two wings of his army to the vicinity of the Indian towns on the Scioto, near the 'Pickaway Plains.' Meanwhile Dunmore, with his com- mand, went down the Ohio to the mouth of the Hock-Hocking River, and there built ' Fort Gower.' From thence he marched his army up said river through the territory that now constitutes the counties of Athens, Hocking, Fairfield, and portions of Pickaway, and encamped on Sippo Creek, a tributary of the Scioto, within a few miles of the Shawanese towns, where he erected some entrenchments, naming his encampment 'Camp Charlotte.'

" General Lewis intended to start with his command towards the Indian towns on the Scioto on the 10th of October, to join Governor Dunmore, but at sunrise on that day he was unexpectedly attacked by about one thousand chosen warriors, under the command of Cornstalk, the celebrated Shawanese chief, who had rallied them at the Old Chil- licothe town, on the Scioto, near the 'Pickaway Plains,' to meet the army of General Lewis, and give them battle before the two corps conld effect a union. The battle lasted all day, and terminated with the repulse of Cornstalk's warriors, with great slaughter on both sides. It has been generally characterized by historians as 'one of the most sanguinary and best fought battles in the annals of Indian warfare in the west.' Seventy-five officers and men of Lewis's army were killed, and one hundred and forty were wounded. The loss was, probably, equally as great on the part of the Indians, who retreated during the night.

" General Lewis was reinforced to the extent of three hundred men, soon after the battle, and then started upon his march of eighty miles, through the wilderness, for the Indian towns on the Scioto, arriving within four miles of ' Camp Charlotte' on the twenty-fourth of Octo-

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ber. IIis encampment, which was named Camp Lewis, was situated on Congo Creek, a tributary of Sippo Creek, near the southern ter- mination of the 'Pickaway Plains,' and within a short distance of the Old Chillicothe town.

" The principal chiefs of the Indians on the Scioto met Lord Dun- more at 'Camp Charlotte,' and agreed with him upon the terms of a treaty. Cornstalk, who had been defeated by General Lewis, was present, and, being satisfied of the futility of any further struggle, was especially anxious to make peace, and readily obtained the assent of the chiefs present to it. The Mingoes were not a party to the treaty, but remained rebellious; whereupon Captain Crawford was sent, with a small force, against one of their towns on the Scioto, which they destroyed, and took a number of prisoners, who were not released until the next year. And it is a noteworthy fact, too, that Logan, the great Mingo Chief, would not attend the council at .Camp Charlotte.' He could not be prevailed upon to appear, and in any way make himself a party to the treaty. Dunmore greatly desired his presence and acquiescence, at least, if he could not secure his approval of the terms of the treaty. To this end, he sent Colonel John Gibson as a messenger to the Old Chillicothe town, across the Scioto, where Logan usually spent his time when not 'on the war- path,' to ascertain the reasons for his absence, and, if possible, to secure his presence.

"Logan was found, but he was in a sullen mood. At length, becom- ing somewhat mollified under the gentle and persuasive manipulations of Gibson, and from the effects of freely administered 'fire-water,' he moved from the wigwam in which this preliminary interview was held, and, beckoning Dunmore's messenger to follow, 'he went into a solitary thicket near by, where, sitting down on a log, he burst into tears, and uttered some sentences of impassioned eloquence, charging the murder of his kindred upon Captain Michael Cresap.' Those utterances of Logan were committed to paper by Colonel Gib- son immediately on his return to 'Camp Charlotte,' and probably read in the council and in the presence of the army. And this is substan- tially the history of the famous speech of Logan, until it appeared in the Virginia Gazette, of date February 4, 1775, which was published in the city of Williamsburg, the then seat of government of the colony of Virginia. Its publication was, doubtless, procured by Dun- more himself. It was neither a speech, an address, a message, nor a promise to assent to, or comply with, the provisions of a treaty, but simply the wild, excited, passionate utterances of a blood-stained sav-

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age, given, as near as remembered by Colonel Gibson, and which con- sisted, in part, of slanderous allegations, based on misinformation, against Captain Michael Cresap-charges known by every officer at 'Camp Charlotte' to be unfounded-allegations that have been persis- tently propagated to the present time, to the detriment of the fair fame and memory of an injured patriot, a valuable, enterprising, adventurous pioneer on the western frontiers, and a brave soldier and gallant officer in the Revolutionary army, who died a patriot's death while in the service of his country !

"Colonel Gibson, knowing that Captain Cresap had not participa- ted in any way in the murder of Logan's kindred at Yellow Creek, immediately after the close of the very spirited recital of his injuries, corrected Logan's impressions as to Cresap's guilt, but the half-frantic :

savage persisted in the false charge he had made, or at least declined to withdraw it, and Colonel Gibson felt bound to put Logan's words on paper, as near as he could, just as they were spoken. Soon after Logan's speech, as it was called, was published in Williamsburg, it was republished in New York and elsewhere, and its further republi- cation by Thomas Jefferson, in his 'Notes on Virginia,' in 1784, as a specimen of aboriginal eloquence, gave it still greater currency, and, tacitly, an apparent indorsement of the charge it contained against Captain Cresap. But Mr. Jefferson published it without any reference to the truth or falsity of said charge, but to disprove the statements of Buffon and Raynal, who alleged the inferiority of Americans, and charged that there was a natural tendency to physical, mental, and moral degeneracy in America !

"Colonel (afterwards General) Gibson was a man of talents, and abundantly capable of executing the agency attributed to him in this matter. IIe enjoyed the confidence of General Washington, who, in 1781, intrusted him with the command of the 'Western Military Department.' General Gibson was Secretary of Indiana Territory, and sometimes acting Governor, from 1800 to 1813, and held other positions of honor. Ile died near Pittsburgh, in 1822. Most of the foregoing facts are obtained from the sworn deposition of General Gibson himself, and from the corroborative statements of General George Rogers Clark, Colonel Benjamin Wilson, Luther Martin, Esq., Judge John B. Gibson, and other gentlemen distinguished for talents and veracity.

" During the summer of 1774 Logan acted the part of a murderous demon ! He was a cruel, vindictive, bloody-handed savage! He took thirty scalps and some prisoners during the six months that intervened

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between the time of the unjustifiable, wanton, unprovoked murder of his friends at Yellow Creek, and his interview with Colonel Gibson ! He had had his revenge! To quote his own vigorous language, ' he had fully glutted his vengeance!' And nothwithstanding he had indulged his savage propensities even to satiety, one would suppose, he nevertheless subsequently engaged in other hostile crusades against the frontiersmen, one of these being the murderous expedition into Kentucky which resulted in the capture of Ruddell's and Martin's Stations, and the taking of many prisoners! He also went on a simi- lar mission to the Holston River settlements, in 1779. Logan was a savage, but had been friendly to the whites. After the brutal murder of his friends, the frontiersmen east of the Ohio River, and the red men west of it, assumed an attitude of intense hostility towards each other, the latter embracing every opportunity to rob, capture, and murder the former, and those outrages were met by the white settlers in a determined spirit of retaliation and revenge! The conduct of Logan, therefore, was not surprising! The fact that he was a savage is the best plea that can be offered in mitigation of his enormities! And he had great provocation, too !

"Logan, after the murder of his kindred and friends, in 1774, gave way, in a great measure, to intemperance and vindictiveness, and became a sullen, harsh, cruel, drunken vagabond. His acts of bar- barity finally brought him to a violent death on the southern shore of Lake Erie, between Sandusky Bay and Detroit, in 1780, at the hands of one of his own race !

" Colonel Michael Cresap, upon the breaking out of the Revolu- tionary war, in 1775, raised a company of volunteers at the call of the Maryland Delegates in Congress, and became their commander. He promptly marched to Boston, where he joined the Continental army of General Washington. His health, however, soon failed, and he attempted to return to his home in Maryland, but when, on the 12th of October, he reached New York, he found himself too feeble to proceed further. Daily declining, he died October 18, 1775, in the thirty-third year of his age, and was buried the day after his death, with military honors, in Trinity churchyard. A widowed wife and four children survived him. Thus died, in early manhood, the gallant soldier, the pure patriot, the cruelly defamed pioneer, the meritorious Revolutionary officer, the greatly maligned and unjustly assailed Cap- tain Michael Cresap !

"Lord Dunmore, after negotiating with the Indians for peace, and for the restoration of prisoners and stolen property, returned to Vir-

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ginia, pursuing very nearly the route by which he came, leaving a hundred men at the mouth of the Kanawha, and a small force at ' Fort Fincastle,' afterwards called 'Fort Henry' (now Wheeling) ; also a limited number of men at the ' Forks of the Ohio,' for the protection of the frontier settlements. Fort Henry was named in honor of Patrick Henry, who became Governor of the colony of Virginia as the successor of Lord Dunmore, immediately after the latter's espousal of the cause of the mother country against the colonies, and of his ignominious flight from Williamsburg, in June, 1775, and taking refuge on board of a British man-of-war. .

" It may be recorded to the honor of Dunmore's officers that they were loyal to the colonies and patriotic to the core, which they made manifest when, at ' Fort Gowar,' at the mouth of the Hock-Hocking, while on their homeward march, they resolved, in view of the approaching rupture with England, 'that they would exert every power within them for the defense of American liberty, and for the support of America's just rights and privileges.'

ORGANIZATION OF ILLINOIS COUNTY.

" For the purpose of more effectually organizing civil government northwest of the Ohio River, after the conquest of the country by Colonel George Rogers Clark, the House of Burgesses of Virginia, in October, 1778, erected the county of Illinois out of the western part of Botecourt county, which had been established in 1769. Illinois county was bounded on the east by Pennsylvania, on the southeast and south by the Ohio River, on the west by the Mississippi River, and on the north by the northern lakes, thus making the territory that now constitutes the State of Ohio an integral portion of it. John Todd, Esq., was appointed County Lieutenant and Civil Commandant of Illinois county. He was killed in the battle of Blue Licks, August 18, 1782, and was succeeded by Timothy de Montbrun. The Mora- vian missionaries on the Tuscarawas, a few scores of Indian traders, and a small number of French settlers on the Maumee, made the sum total of white men at that time in what is now Ohio.

EXPEDITION OF GENERAL M'INTOSH.

"General Lachlin McIntosh, commander of the Western Military Department, made an expedition in 1778, with discretionary powers, from ' Fort Pitt to the Tuscarawas, with about one thousand men, and there erected Fort Laurens, near the present town of Bolivar, in

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Tuscarawas county. He garrisoned it with one hundred and fifty men, under command of Colonel John Gibson, and then returned to ' Fort Pitt.'

"The original purpose was to march his army to Detroit, or at least as far as the Sandusky Indian towns, but various canses prevented, and the campaign was comparatively fruitless. Not receiving rein- forcements as expected, and probably lacking in energy, and having no special capacity for Indian warfare, his expedition was a failure, and he resigned his command of the 'Western Military Department in February, 1779.

"General McIntosh was a Scotchman, born in 1727. His father's family, himself included, came with General Oglethorpe to Georgia in 1736 ; became Colonel of the First Georgia Regiment in the early part of the Revolutionary war; was soon made a Brigadier-General; killed Hon. Button Gwinnett, a signer of the Declaration of Inde- pendence, in a duel fought in 1777; commanded the Western army in 1778-9; was captured at Charleston, South Carolina, May 12, 1780; became a member of Congress in 1784, and an Indian com- missioner in 1785, and died in Savannah, Georgia, in 1806.

ERECTION OF FORT LAURENS IN 1778.

" Fort Laurens (named in honor of the then President of the Con- tinental Congress, Henry Laurens), was the first parapet and stockade fort built within the present limits of Ohio-Fort Gowar, and others previously constructed, being of a less substantial character. Disas- ters attended it from the beginning. The Indians stole their horses, and drew the garrison into several ambuscades, killing fourteen men at one time and eleven at another, besides capturing a number also. Eight hundred warriors invested it at one time, and kept up the siege for six weeks. The provisions grew short, and when supplies from ' Fort Pitt' had arrived within a hundred yards of the fort the garri- son, in their joyousness, fired a. general salute with musketry, which so frightened the loaded pack-horses as to produce a general stampede through the woods, scattering the provisions in every direction, so that most of the much-needed supplies were lost ! Although it was regarded very desirable, for various military reasons, to have a garri- soned fort and depot of supplies at a point about equi-distant from the forts on the Ohio River and the hostile Indians on the Sandusky Plains, yet so disastrous had been the fate of Fort Laurens, on the Tuscawaras River, that it was abandoned in August, 1779. Fifty

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years ago the Ohio canal was cut through it, and but little remains to show where this, the first of our military earthworks erected by the white race, stood. Though this stockade was constructed less than a hundred years ago, it is now numbered among 'the things that were, but are not !'

GENERAL DANIEL BRODHEAD'S EXPEDITION.

"To guard against the recurrence of predatory incursions into the frontier settlements east of the Ohio River, and to avenge the cruel- ties and atrocious barbarities of the savages, General Daniel Brod- head, in April, 1781, organized a force of about three hundred effective men, at Wheeling, with which he marched to the Mus- kingum River. The result of this campaign was the taking of the Indian town situated at the 'Forks' of said river (now Coshocton), with all its inhabitants, and the capture of some prisoners at other villages. Among the prisoners taken were sixteen warriors who were doomed to death by a council of war, and accordingly dis- patched, says Doddridge, with spears and tomahawks, and afterwards scalped ! A strong determination was manifested by the soldiers to march up the Tuscarawas to the Moravian towns and destroy them, but General Brodhead and Colonel Shepherd (the second officer in rank), prevented this contemplated outrage. The famous Lewis Wetzel killed, in cold blood, a chief who was held as a hostage by General Brodhead ! Other atrocities were committed by the infuri- ated men on their return march, who were resolved to adopt the most sanguinary measures, if necessary, to prevent in the future the murderous incursions of the savages into the frontier settlements!

"The border wars of this period were prosecuted on both sides as wars of extermination, and the cruelties and barbarities perpe- trated by the Indians had produced such a malignant spirit of revenge among the whites as to make them but little less brutal and remorseless than the savages themselves ! Some of their expe- ditions against the Indians were mere murdering parties, held together only by the cominon thirst for revenge; and it is not likely that any discipline calculated to restrain that pervading feeling, or that would be efficient in preventing or even checking it, could in all cases have been enforced. It is certainly unfortunate for the reputation of General Brodhead that his name is thus associated with the murder of prisoners; but it is highly probable that he never sanctioned it, and could not have prevented it !

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"General Daniel Brodhead's home was in Berks county, Pennsyl- vania. He entered the Revolutionry army as a Lieutenant-Colonel, his commission bearing date July 4, 1776; was engaged in most of the battles fought by General Washington's army until early in 1779, when, on receiving a Colonel's commission, he was placed in command of the Eighth Pennsylvania Regiment. On March 5, 1779, he was appointed to the command of the 'Western Military Depart- ment.' (succeeding General McIntosh), with headquarters at 'Fort Pitt.' This position he retained until 1781, when he was succeeded by General John Gibson, who was himself succeeded by General William Irvine, September 24, 1781.

" In 1789, General Brodhead was elected Surveyor-General of Penn- sylvania, an office which he continued to hold until 1799, when he retired to private life. His death occurred at Milford, Pennsylvania, November 15, 1809. He was one of four brothers, who all rendered essential services during our Revolutionary struggle.

COLONEL ARCHIDALD LOCHRY'S EXPEDITION.

"In the early summer of 1781, Colonel Lochry, the County Lieu- tenant of Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania, was requested by Colonel George Rogers Clark to raise a military force, and join him in his then contemplated military movement against Detroit, and the .Indian tribes of the Northwest generally. The mouth of the Big Miami river was first named as the place of general rendezvous, but was, subsequently, changed to the 'Falls of the Ohio.' Colonel Lochry raised a force of one hundred and six men, who, on the 25th of July, 'set out for Fort Henry (Wheeling), where they embarked in boats for their destination.' They passed down the Ohio river to a point a few miles below the mouth of the Big Miami, where, having landed. they 'were suddenly and unexpectedly assailed by a volley of rifle- balls, from an overhanging bluff, covered with large trees, on which the Indians had taken position in great force.' The result was, the death of Colonel Lochry and forty-one of his command, and the cap- ture of the remainder, many of whom were wounded-some of the captured being killed and scalped, while prisoners! This occurred August 25, 1781, and such of the captured as were not murdered, died, or escaped, did not reach their homes again until after the peace of 1783, when they were exchanged at Montreal, and sent home, arriving there in May, 1783. The murder of prisoners was alleged to be in retaliation for the outrages committed by Brodhead's men a

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. few months before; and it has been said that this treatment of Lochry's men was one of the provocations for the brutal murder of the Moravian Indians, on the Tuscarawas, in 1782!

COLONEL WILLIAMSON'S EXPEDITION.

" The wife of William Wallace, and three of her children, also John Carpenter, all of Washington county, Pennsylvania, were captured by the Indians in 1782, and carried off. Mrs. Wallace and her infant were found, after having been tomahawked and scalped! The fron- tiersmen were greatly exasperated, and at once organized an expedition of nearly a hundred men to pursue and chastise the murderers. On arriving at the Tuscarawas River, and finding the Moravian Indians there, in considerable force, gathering corn at the villages from which they had been forcibly removed, by British authority, the preceding autumn, to the Sandusky Plains, for alleged favoritism to the Ameri- can cause, the conclusion was soon reached that they had found the murderers of Mrs. Wallace and her child, and at once made prisoners of those at Gnadenhutten and Salem, to the number of ninety-six. The Indians at Shonbrun made their escape, on hearing of the capture of those at work at the other villages. It has been stated that some clothing was found with those Indians that was identified as that of the murdered friends of some of Williamson's men; but even if that were so, it did not prove that these Indians were the murderers, or had even aided or abetted the murderers.

"Colonel Williamson, on March 8, 1782, submitted the fate of his helpless captives to his excited men. The alternative was whether they should take them to 'Fort Pitt,' as prisoners, or kill them ! Eighteen only voted to take them to 'Fort Pit,' the others voted to butcher them, and 'they were then and there murdered in cold blood, with gun and spear, and tomahawk and scalping-knife, and bludgeon and maul!' Two only escaped ! There are many details of this atrocious massacre-this infamous butchery of an innocent people- but I omit them. History characterizes it as an atrocious and unquali- fied wholesale murder-as a terrible tragedy-a horrid deed ! Would that it could be blotted from our history! Colonel Williamson opposed the masscre, but could not control his men !

COLONEL CRAWFORD'S SANDUSKY CAMPAIGN.

"Soon after the return of the murderous expedition of Colonel Williamson, an expedition against the Wyandot villages, on the San-

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dusky Plains, was determined upon, their destruction being decmed essential to the protection of the frontier settlements east of the Ohio. Nearly all of Colonel Williamson's men volunteered, and recruiting went on so rapidly that by the 25th of May, four hundred and eighty men rendezvoused at the Mingo Bottoms, three miles below the present city of Steubenville. An election for commander of the expedition was held there, when it was found that Colonel William Crawford was elected, having received 235 votes, while 230 were cast for Colonel David Williamson. The latter gentleman was then promptly and unanimously chosen the second officer in rank. The entire force was composed of mounted men, who, following the ' Williamson trail' to the Tuscarawas, passed rapidly on to the Sandusky. On reaching a point three miles north of Upper Sankusky, and a mile west of the Sandusky River, within the present limits of Wyandot county, a bat. tle ensued (known as the battle of Sandusky, fought June 4-5, 1782), followed by the defeat of Colonel Crawford and the loss of over a hundred men in killed and prisoners. Colonel Crawford was captured and tortured to death in a slow fire, accompanied by circumstances of barbarity unparalelled in the annals of Indian warfare. Some his- torians have misapprehended the purpose of the Crawford campaign. i think it clearly established that the design was not the pursuit and chastisement of the Moravian Indians, but the destruction of the Wyandot villages of the Sandusky Plains, and for the reasons above stated. The details of this disastrous expedition are so well known to the general reader that I omit them.

" Colonel Crawford was born in Orange county, Virginia, in 1732 (now Berkley county, West Virginia). He and General Washington were of the same age and were intimate friends from early life until Crawford's death, both being engaged while young men in the same pursuit, that of land surveyors. Both were officers in Braddock's dis- astrous campaign in 1755-both were officers in General Forbes' army in 1758, which successfully marched against Fort Duquesne. Colonel Crawford served as a captain in Dunmore's war, in 1774-recruited a regiment for continental service-became Colonel of the Seventh Virginia Regiment-was in the Long Island campaign, also in the retreat through New Jersey, and participated in the battles of Tren- ton and Princeton. In 1778 he had command of a Virginia regiment in the vicinity of 'Fort Pitt,' and built Fort Crawford, sixteen miles above the ' Forks of the Ohio.' He also participated in the erection of Fort McIntosh and Fort Laurens, and rendered other valuable services. He removed to 'Stewart's crossings' (now Connelsville) in

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History of Greene County, together with historic notes on the northwest and the state of Ohio, Part 17

Author: R. S. Dills Publication date: 1881 Publisher: Number of Pages: 1037

Author: R. S. Dills
Publication date: 1881
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 1037