USA > Ohio > History of Ohio, covering the periods of Indian, French and British dominion, the territory Northwest, and the hundred years of statehood > Part 10
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In February, 1778, Daniel Boone and twenty-seven others were captured at the Blue Lieks, and carried to Detroit, where all were detained as prisoners save Boone, whom the Indians adopted and married to the widow of a fallen warrior. While he was playing Indian in Ohio the famous campaign was planned against Vineennes.
Early in 1778, Congress determined to make a campaign against Detroit, in order to stop British intrigue in the west and relieve the border of Indian hostilities. An army of two converging columns was planned, each fifteen hundred strong, one to advance by the Kanawha, and the other from Pittsburg. To the command of the latter division was assigned Gen. Lachlan McIntosh, of Georgia, an able officer, experienced in fighting Southern Indians and the Span- ish of Florida. Recently he had become involved in a quarrel with President Gwinnett, of the Georgia eouneil, concerning a luckless invasion of Florida, and in the inevitable duel that followed Gwin- nett lost his life. To quiet the dissensions in Georgia, MeIntosh was transferred to the north. In the spring of 1778 he was able to advanee with about five hundred men, and at the mouth of Beaver river erect the fort which bore his name. The southern column was never organized, and the whole enterprise failed. The maintenance of an army of three thousand men at that distance from the coast, at an estimated eost of over $600.000, was beyond the power of the states.
Before this, George Rogers Clark had planned an expedition against the posts in the Illinois country, and spies he sent there had reported a possibility of sueeess, as the French inhabitants were not warm in support of Great Britain. Seeking help in Virginia, secretly, he found that little could be given him, but Thomas Jeffer-
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son and others promised to induce the legislature to reward with grants of land the men he might enlist. He was given the commis- sion of colonel, and a little money and military supplies. After struggling with many difficulties and discouragements, all the time keeping his object a secret, he came down the river from Pennsyl- vania with one hundred and fifty soldiers and some families of set- tlers, part of whom made the first homes of white people at Louisville. There he met a small party of Virginians that had come over the Wilderness road, but most of them turned back home when told of the campaign proposed. Clark was much encouraged, however, by receiving news of the French alliance. This would give him prestige at his destination, where the population was almost entirely Creole. With abont two hundred men Clark set out from Louisville June 24th, on his daring campaign. He had no trouble in surprising and capturing Kaskaskia and its powerful fort, commanded by a French- man, Philip Rocheblave, and St. Philips and Cahokia likewise, and he gained the confidence of the French so thoroughly that they enlisted under his flag, and a French priest arranged a revolt of the people at Vincennes and the hoisting of the American colors without Clark's assistance. All that country, in the summer of 1778, was organized as the county of Illinois, of the state of Virginia, with the consent of the inhabitants.
The center of the British power for the whole of the province of Quebec, northwest of the river Ohio, was Detroit, which Clark was far from approaching. His was rather a flank movement, while the direct campaign was to be made by the Continental army. In the midst of this activity Hamilton was not idle. While Clark was mov- ing against the Mississippi river posts, Boone, a prisoner in the Scioto valley, discovered that a large expedition of Shawanees and Manmees was about to invade Kentucky, under the command of Capt. Daign- ian de Quindre, a Detroit partisan. Boone made his escape, and in August, during the delay of the anticipated invasion, made a raid into the Scioto valley to Paint Creek. He was able to return just in time to aid his neighbors in the defense of Boonesborough during a ten days' siege by De Quindre's force. Then followed the famous expedition of Simon Kenton and two friends into Ohio to capture horses. George Clark alone escaped, and Kenton, a famous hunter, runner and wrestler, tall, light-haired, like a Norseman, generally kind, but sometimes a very Berseker, was carried about among the Ohio towns, condemned to torture. Though saved from death by Simon Girty and the Mingo chief, Logan, he was cruelly abused and compelled to run the gauntlet eight times.
McIntosh, meanwhile, eould collect only a thousand men, and perforce abandoned the long march to Detroit. He did much good, however, by treating with the Indians. In September, 1775, he suc- ceeded in bringing together at Fort Pitt the mutually hostile chiefs
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of the Delawares, White-Eves, Killbuck and Pipe, and an elaborate treaty was made, of great historical interest. For the purpose of proving the friendship of the United States, there were guaranteed to the Delaware nation and its heirs, "in the fullest and most ample manner," all the territorial rights defined by former treaties, and it was agreed that the Delawares should invite other tribes to join with them to form a confederacy and State, with the Delawares at the head, which should have a representative in the Continental congress. This proposition was the one most favorable to the Indian ideas of national dignity and independence ever made. Perhaps it was so favorable because the Iroquois had just shown their deadly hostility to the United States by the famous massacre of Wyoming (July, 1778), in which American Tories were more savage than their red allies. Under the authority of this treaty MeIntosh advanced into Ohio over the great trail in October without opposition, and built a stockade on the Tuscarawas river, near the month of Sandy creek. This he named in honor of his friend, Henry Laurens, of South Caro- lina, and garrisoned with 150 men under Col. John Gibson. Thus, while Clark was establishing a Virginia county in Illinois and Indiana, through the favor of the French, MeIntosh made a lodg- ment in the British domain for the purpose of building up a Dela- ware state, subordinate to the United States.
There had already been an encroachment of frontiersmen on the northwest banks of the Ohio, in spite of all the hostilities. It is said that there were improvements below the Hockhocking as early as 1776. In the latter part of 1778 there were at least a dozen settle- ments on the west side of the Ohio, some of them with considerable population. Adventurers appropriated the salt springs in what is now Mahoning county, selling the product at six dollars a bushel. At Mingo Bottom was a notable settlement under the domination of one Ross, and at Mercertown the little settlement had elected two justices of the peace and were attempting to live under legal forms though in illegal possession of the land. The presence of these "squatters" gave the Indians warrant for hostilities, and Colonel Harmar, commanding on the Ohio, sent a detachment to remove the pioneers. Sixty of them signed a petition for permission to remain over winter, and some made a show of armed resistance. Ross and a few others were seized and imprisoned, but he was again in possession of his elaim in a short time, and in the following years many new "squatters" built their cabins in the northern Ohio valley and marked their claims with tomahawks on the trees.
McIntosh's advance was too late to make a diversion in favor of Clark. Earlier in the same month Hamilton had collected a force of British regulars and Detroit Freneh, nearly two hundred strong, to drive ont the daring Kentnekians. Going in boats across the end of Lake Erie and up the Manmee, they descended the Wabash to
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Vincennes, and compelled the surrender of Captain IIelm, who was left alone by the fickleness of his Creole militia. Not venturing further on account of the approach of winter, Hamilton waited at Vincennes, while his Indian allies confronted the American advance from the east, capturing seventeen men at Fort Laurens, and reduc- ing the garrison almost to the point of starvation. But Fort Lanrens was reinforced, and the indomitable Clark, daring the impossible, set out from Kaskaskia, waded for mile after mile through the icy floods of the Wabash, and forced the capitulation of Hamilton and his troops at Vincennes, February 24, 1779.
For a while, therefore, the military of the United States held por- tions of the Northwest territory against the British, but a glance of the map will show how comparatively small these possessions were. The occupation was not long continued in the east. Fort Laurens was abandoned by the starving garrison in August, 1779, and even Fort McIntosh was evacnated. Clark's western posts were occupied by a few Americans in all three years, until the latter part of 1781, when they too were abandoned for lack of sustenance. Within this time (1780) the French inhabitants (under La Balme) made an expedition of their own against Detroit, but got no further than the Maumee river, where the Indians fell upon and destroyed the party.
The abandonment of Fort Laurens, the death of White-Eyes in 1778, and the resignation of Indian Agent Morgan, whom the Dela- wares had called Tamanend (Tammany), in evidence of their love for him, left that nation at the mercy of the war party in Ohio. Kill- buck, the temporary chief, with a few who remained peacefully inclined among the warriors, were compelled to take refuge near Pittsburg, and the Moravian Indians were abandoned to their enemies. Yet, though they were accused, and probably with truth, of informing Pittsburg of the hostile movements planned by the British, the Moravians, concentrated at and near Gnadenhütten, on the Tuscarawas, were not seriously molested during 1780 and a great part of 1781. These were years memorable in their quiet chronicles for the arrival of a sister, Sarah Ohneburg, her marriage to John Heckewelder, and the birth (April 13, 1781), of their daughter, Mary .*
Meanwhile hostilities continued along the Ohio. In May, 1779, a party of three hundred Kentuckians, under the county lientenant, John Bowman, made a dash at the Chillicothe of Greene county, but
* This was said for some time to be the first white child horn in Ohio, but John Lewis Roth, son of another Moravian missionary, was born at Gnad- denhütten, July 4, 1773. History also records the fact that among the pris- oners recovered by Bouquet was a Virginian woman and her baby, born in captivity. Doubtless other white children were born earlier to white men connected with the trading posts, who married white women brought into Ohio as captives. In 1754, it is said, a child was born to a French officer and his white wife, at Fort Junandat.
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was repulsed by the Shawanees, losing nine killed. The Ohio river was the great channel of communication and transportation between Pittsburg, a military base of the Revolution and the friendly Span- ish of New Orleans, where Oliver Pollock was looking after the pur- chase of military supplies, in emergeney drawing on France and persuading the Spanish governor to cash his obligations. It was of course essential that the commandant at Detroit should guard this river with his savage soldiery, and such was the cause of many of the so-called massacres. Maj. David Rogers and seventy men, toiling up the river with powder and lead from New Orleans in the fall of 1779, were lured to shore near the mouth of the Licking, and while a few Indians pretended to offer the soldiers a chance to take scalps, a larger party closed in around them, and more than half the whites were killed.
The famous "hard winter" followed, in which rivers froze so com- pletely that animals died of thirst, and the snow was so deep that men could not hunt, much less make war. In a milder clime, how- ever, the Spanish of New Orleans began war on the British along the lower Mississippi and gulf coast.
Soon afterward Spain informed the United States, through Min- ister Jay, not only that she proposed to conquer and hold the Flor- idas, but that the United States had no rights on the Mississippi river, and Spain expected to make "a permanent conquest" of the lands between the AAlleghanies and the Mississippi reserved by the Royal proclamation of 1763. This would include Ohio and the country occupied by George Rogers Clark. From this time, though Spain made war on England apparently in aid of the United States, England was really an ally of the United States in saving the North- west from Spanish dominion.
Early in 1780, while General Washington was planning a cam- paign by Clark and Brodhead against Detroit, General Haldimand, in Canada, arranged for a combined movement that should at least take Kaskaskia from the Americans and St. Louis from the Spanish. The American campaign did not progress further than the sending of a party of scouts over Ohio toward Sandusky, which Brodhead hoped to marel against, but soon abandoned even that pro- ject for lack of soldiers. The British movement was earlier afoot and drew Clark to the Mississippi river. It was a great campaign, on paper, that Arent Schuyler de Peyster," the new commandant at Detroit, now entered upon. While General Campbell, from Pensa- cola, sailed up the Mississippi, Sinelair with fifteen hundred Indians would march on St. Louis, and another large body of Indians under Langlade would take Kaskaskia. To amuse Clark, meanwhile, a
* De Peyster was a New York tory, lately in command at Mackinac. He was popularly supposed to be less bloodthirsty than Hamilton, but the pol- icy of both was the same, as dictated by their superior officers.
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large war party, under Capt. Henry Bird, ineluding six hundred Indians, some Canadians, and a few pieces of artillery, with Elliott and the Girties and Chief Logan, marehed southward through Ohio, and other war parties traversed the state to the east. But in every direction the ambitious campaign collapsed. The Spanish suceesses in the south put an end to English aggression there, and the reluet- anee of the Indians to fight Clark saved St. Louis and Kaskaskia. Bird invaded the Lieking valley of Kentneky in June and captured two stoekades, and then suddenly retreated to Detroit, leaving his cannon at the trading post on the Miami.
To avenge this invasion and destroy the rendezvous of the British forees in the Miami valley, George Rogers Clark, having returned from Illinois, practically made himself dietator of Kentucky, and by vigorous measures collected a force of a thousand men. Early in August, 1780, they concentrated at the site of Cineinnati, one wing, under Col. Benjamin Logan, coming down the Lieking, and the other up the Ohio from the falls. The march into the Little Miami eoun- try was made with such precaution against surprise that no resistance was encountered, and when Chillicothe was reached, that Massie Creek town was found abandoned and in flames. On the Sth the army approached the Piekaway town on Mad river," where Simon Girty and one of his brothers, and several hundred warriors were eneamped. Clark with his main body erossed the river, while Col- onel Logan kept up stream to cross in the rear of the village, and did not get in the fight. The warriors were apparently taken by surprise by Clark's rapid advance, but while falling back toward their village, part of them, led by Simon Girty, gallantly contested the advance of the Kentuekians. From one account it appears that the red men made a determined stand in a prairie grown up with high weeds, and attempted to flank their enemy, compelling Clark to extend his line for nearly a mile. Girty afterward said that if he had had three hundred men he could have won a vietory. Finally Clark's eom- mand pushed its way up to the town, with the three-pounder cannon, dislodged the Indians in the blockhouse, and about sunset the Ken- tuekians had command of the field, the Indians having drawn off with a loss of six or eight killed. The loss of Clark's foree was sey- enteen killed and many wounded .; The straggling Indian town, stretehing for three miles along the river, was utterly destroyed, and the eorn fields devastated. The campaign was a decided sueeess, winning some months of quiet for Kentucky, and greatly inereasing the military fame of General ('lark.
* This was a famous Shawanee town, on the north side of Mad river, about five miles west of the site of Springfield, and was the birth-place of Tecum- seh.
+ This brief account of an important battle is based on Taylor's history, and the reports of McKey to Detroit, as quoted by Roosevelt.
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Though all these events fell far short of conquest of Ohio and the Northwest, it was already the settled policy of the states in revolution to claim and hold the country, by virtue of the ancient charters from sea to sea, and as necessary for protection from Indian hostilities. But at this period the policy of expansion threatened to dissolve the weak alliance of the states, instead of strengthening it. The trouble was mainly due to the enormous claims of Virginia, under the char- ter of 1609 to the "Company of Adventurers and Planters." Vir- ginia would hold Kentucky, and take Ohio and all the Northwest, under the description, "up into the mainland throughout, from sea to sea, west and northwest." Though this charter was annulled in 1624, though France for a long time held adverse possession, though Great Britain annexed the country to Quebec province, though Penn- sylvania, Maryland and North Carolina had been chartered in dis- regard of the charter of 1609, Virginia reasserted its validity in the west when she formed her first independent government, at the begin- ning of the revolution." Maryland immediately remonstrated, and made it the principal business of her statesmen to demand that the West should be dedicated to the people of all the states. The failure to agree about the future of Ohio delaved the declaration of independ- ence and postponed the completion of the Confederacy for several years.
Stoutly adhering to her claim, Virginia opened a land office for the sale of western lands in 1779, whereupon the other states pro- tested and the old land companies added their remonstrances. Though the settlement of Kentucky as a Virginia county was inevitable, attempted settlements north and west of the Ohio were broken up by the Continental military.
Congress appealed to the states to sacrifice their western claims for the common good, and avert dissensions that threatened to separate the people into warring factions. New York, claiming title through cession of the Iroquois conquerors, first yielded, on condition that the west should be for the common benefit of all states that should join the proposed confederacy. Congress thereupon in October, 1780, adopted the first great declaration regarding the future of Ohio and the Northwest. This was "a pledge on the part of congress that the lands ceded in pursuance of its recommendations should be disposed of for the common benefit of the United States : be settled and formed into distinct states, with a suitable extent of territory; and become members of the Federal union, with the same rights of sovereignty, freedom and independence. as the other states : that the expenses incurred by any state in subduing British posts, and in the acquisition
* An elaborate argument to show that Virginia had no title to the country west of the Alleghany mountains was made by Samuel Finley Vinton. of Gallipolis, in a fugitive slave case. tried at Richmond, Va., in December, 1845.
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and defense of the territory, should be reimbursed ; and that the lands ceded should be granted and settled agrceably to regulations to be afterwards agreed upon in congress."#
Congress postponed the acceptance of the New York cession to October, 1782, and this action was soon followed by propositions of cession from Virginia, Massachusetts and Connecticut. Virginia made conditions, asking Congress to guarantee her right to Kentucky, which Congress refused to do. Connectient also made conditions. But the necessity for union overwhelmed the disposition to dicker. and, leaving the various propositions to a committee of Congress, the first Union was completed, with all cessions unaccepted, by Mary- land signing the articles of confederation, March 1, 1781.
It will be observed that Congress refused to guarantee Virginia's title to Kentucky, and Virginia joined in the confederacy on the basis of the resolution of 1750, which did not admit her title to the con- quest of General Clark, but offered to remunerate her for the expense of the same. The real scope of Clark's conquest should be under- stood. It is often said that that gallant pioneer and brave soldier took possession of the Northwest, and by virtue of this England was forced to cede the land at the close of the war, because the United States already possessed it. For a typical statement of the doctrine, we may cite an able southern author: "At the suggestion and under the guidance of her distinguished citizen. Gen. George Rogers Clark, Virginia organized an expedition composed of Virginia soldiers, in Virginia pay, without assistance from the United States, expelled the British from the territory, and held it at the close of the war, in the name of the State."+
Clark's expedition was, it may be suggested, his own enterprise. sustained by the frontiersmen, as far up the river as Pittsburg. The distinctively Virginia troops deserted before he left Louisville. But as he held a commission from Virginia and organized the country he occupied as a Virginia county, Virginia has the honor of the con- quest. and her men of national spirit, like Thomas Jefferson, deserve eternal credit for sustaining the effort of the gallant western patriot. But the truth should be borne in mind, that the occupation would have been altogether impossible without the aid of the French and Spanish. Clark's success should be considered as one of the sequences of the French alliance with the United States, and the Spanish friendship for France. He could not have held the few posts he took, for a month, withont the countenance of the French and the financial support of the Spanish, both of which were given to the United States, though technically on the account of Virginia. Oliver Pollock, agent of the United States at New Orleans, and Vigo,
* The synopsis given by Salmon P. Chase. See Perkins' Annals of the West, p. 239.
+William R. Garrett, 'The South in Territorial Expansion."
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the Spanish merchant of the Illinois country, bankrupted themselves in raising funds for Clark, Pollock alone advancing $90,000 in specie. Furthermore, it is far from the fact to say that Clark "expelled the British from the territory." To the close of the war he was anxious to do that by taking Detroit, but was unable to collect a sufficient army. The Spanish went nearer the only important seat of British power when they destroyed the post at St. Joseph, Mich. But the British hold upon all the territory northwest of the river Ohio, except the Egypt of Illinois, and the vicinity of Vincennes, continued unshaken until after the close of the Revolutionary war.
In the fall of 1780 the campaign against Detroit was again pro- jected. Clark, commissioned a brigadier-general of Virginia, was authorized by Gov. Thomas Jefferson to organize an army to march by way of the Miami valley, and reinforcements for him were ordered by General Washington from Pittsburg. Colonel Daniel Brodhead, the successor of MeIntosh, was at the same time meditating an advance on Detroit by the great trail. Thus threatened, it was proper, from a military standpoint, that Major De Peyster should desire the Moravian settlement, with its abundant commissary, removed from a position where it would serve as a base of supplies for an invading army. While the British were impelled to destroy the Moravian missions, the Pennsylvania and Virginia frontiers- men were no less hostile. Though the Christian Indians were prae- tically allies of the Americans, they fed perforce the war parties of either side, and to that extent their settlement was, as the border rangers called it, "a half-way house for the British." The peace- loving people were the victims of circumstance, and altogether out of place in the path of war.
The premonition of disaster to the Moravians came in April, 1751, when Colonel Brodhead, to retaliate for a recent Indian raid east of the Ohio, marched from Wheeling with three hundred men, and destroyed the Delaware town at Coshocton, and another he called "Indaechaie." Prisoners were taken, of whom fifteen were executed and scalped as concerned in the murder of white captives in West Virginia, and twenty more were killed by the militia without orders. The frontiersmen were exasperated beyond all restraint. A sachem coming into the camp. on pledge of safety, was struck from behind and killed by Lewis Wetzel# or his brother. Brodhead marched to Newcomerstown, and though Killbuck had aided him in running down the hostiles, and the Moravians supplied his troops with food enough for their march back to the Ohio, it was with difficulty that the militia could be withheld from looting the villages. Brodhead
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