USA > Ohio > History of Ohio, covering the periods of Indian, French and British dominion, the territory Northwest, and the hundred years of statehood > Part 9
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Conolly, alarmed by the result of his war orders, sought to throw the blame on Cresap, and held councils with the Delawares and Iro- quois, who, with similar diplomacy, repudiated the deeds of their young men. The Shawanees, making no promises, boldly charged Conolly with deception. Meanwhile Dunmore was preparing an army to recover the ravaged territory, and in earnest of what should come, Col. Angus McDonald, of a family eonspienous to this day in the Shenandoah valley, commanding four hundred men, marehed to Wheeling, built Fort Fineastle, and guided by Jonathan Zane and others, advaneed to the Shawanee town of Wakatomiea on the Mus- kingum, which with the others was burned, and the eornfields laid waste. The expedition then retired to Wheeling, having met with no serious resistance.
Lord Dunmore himself organized a force of about fifteen hundred men at Pittsburg, whenee he planned to go down the Ohio and unite with the left wing of his army, under Gen. Andrew Lewis, at the mouth of the Great Kanawha. Lewis, a veteran of the Braddock campaign, now a general of Virginia troops, with about twelve hun- dred men, ineluding a large number of frontiersmen, and sneh famous leaders and scouts as Daniel Boone, George Rogers Clark, Michael Cresap and Simon Kenton, advanced from his rendezvous at Lewis- burg, Va., to the mouth of the Great Kanawha, to meet the governor, but instead of finding the expected support, after considerable delay received an express from Dunmore by the hand of Simon Girty,* advising him that the two wings of the army should eross the Ohio separately, effeet a junetion and march against the Seioto villages. As Lewis had left some of his volunteers behind as garrisons, on the understanding that the two wings would unite east of the Ohio, the change in plan inereased his danger if the enemy should attack. At the time the despatch was received, the baekwoodsmen raised in Fin- castle, as the Virginia border county was called, were delayed and had not yet caught up with the main column. Though the officers of the army deelared by resolution that Dunmore was in their belief
* Girty was the son of an Irish trader, and was reared by the Indians who killed his father. He was with the colonists in this war, but when the col- onie's made war on Great Britain, he became a Tory and a leader of Indians for the British.
CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF OHIO.
actuated by "no other motive than the true interests of the country," afterward there was severe criticism of the failure to unite, and it was charged directly that Dunmore hoped for the destruction of Lewis' army. Said one of the officers: "It was evidently the intention of the old Scotch villain to cut off General Lewis' army." To support this view it is pointed ont that the first Continental congress met a week before Lewis marched from Lewisburg, and that Conolly and Dunmore had been exerting themselves to bring on war between Pennsylvania and Virginia, as well as an Indian outbreak that would endanger the homes of the border people, and discourage the hope of independence of Great Britain.
The Indians, under the command of Cornstalk, had closely watched and harassed Lewis's movements, and when the white command encamped at Point Pleasant, the warriors concentrated on the Ohio side of the river, intending to attack when the Virginians crossed or lead them into ambush at some fitting place in the interior. But on account of the long delay of the white troops, the Indians, being nearly at the end of their supplies, were compelled to take the offen- sive. They crossed above the camp, on the night of October 9th, abont one thousand strong, and attacked on the morning of the 10th, with the purpose of driving Lewis's troops into the forks of the Kanawha and Ohio and into the rivers. It was a soldierly plan of battle, and gallantly and determinedly carried on. Only the great heroism of the little Colonial army, the flower of the frontier hunters and fighters, saved it from extermination by a smaller force led by an abler general. The battle raged without much advantage from sunrise to about noon, when the flank attack of the Indians was repulsed and they were flanked successfully in turn, and it became possible to bring the whites into a connected line. Then the colonials pushed forward, and a fight from tree to tree continued until dark, when Cornstalk retreated across the river without molestation. It was one of the greatest battles fought against whites by the red men, and about the only considerable engagement in which the whites did not outnumber the Indians two to one or more. According to the best anthorities the Indian loss in life was about forty, while the cas- nalties of Lewis's command were seventy-five dead and one hundred and forty wounded, a total of twenty per cent of his force engaged. Among the killed and wounded were seventeen officers, including Col- onel Lewis, brother of the general, and Colonel Field ; while the red men lost none of their chiefs, though these were at the front, and their voices, it is said, were often heard urging the warriors, "Be strong, be strong !"
Cornstalk, having failed to ent off one wing of the invaders of Ohio, retreated into the forests, and Dummore, after building a stock- ade just above the mouth of Hockhocking, called Fort Gower, ascended the Hocking river without resistance and encamped on:
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Sippo creek, in view of the Pickaway plains. Offers of peace hav- ing been received from Shawanee chiefs, Lewis was ordered to remain where he was, but that commander had no disposition so to do, and advaneed into Ohio as far as Congo creek, within striking dis- tanee of Chillicothe, the principal Shawanee village." The Vir- ginians, led by Lewis, were for destroying these Indian homes. Dun- more, to enforce his ofders for a halt, was compelled to draw his sword on the impetuons victor of Point Pleasant, and it was with difficulty that Lewis restrained his men from attacking Dunmore and his Indian escort. Cornstalk, meanwhile, was asking his head men in council what they desired to do. He had not advised the war, but had done his best to repel invasion. Now he proposed, as a test of sentiment, to kill all the women and children and fight until every warrior was dead, but receiving no answer, he struek his tomahawk in a post, and declared he would go and make peace, which received hearty approval.
The council that was held by the earl of Dunmore, at Camp Char- lotte, is one of the most famous in American history, not only for the presence of Cornstalk, who impressed his hearers as a man of grand and majestic presence, and an orator surpassing any they had ever heard,; but also for the delivery by letter of that remarkable address of Logan's, that Thomas Jefferson declared was unsurpassed by any passage in the orations of Demosthenes, Cicero, or any orator of Europe. Logan refused to attend the council, but John Gibson, the interpreter, in later years a general under Washington, visited him, and the Indian chief, after sitting silently in tears for some time, delivered the speech which Gibson wrote down and recited to the council. Jefferson endeavored to embellish it, and his version is the one that was for many years printed in the school books of the race that conquered. The earlier version, probably nearest correct, deserves to be quoted :
"I appeal to any white man to say that he ever entered Logan's cabin but I gave him meat ; that he ever came naked but I clothed him. In the course of the last war# Logan remained in his eabin an advocate for peace. I had such an affection for the white people, that I was pointed at by the rest of my nation. I even should have lived with them, had it not been for Colonel Cresap, who last year cut off in cold blood all the relations of Logan, not sparing women and children. There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of any human creature. This called on me for revenge. I have sought it- I have killed many, and fully glutted my revenge. I am glad that there is a prospect of peace, on account of the nation ; but I beg you will not entertain a thought that anything I have said proceeds from
* This was at the present site of Westfall, near Circleville .- Taylor's Ohio.
+ Such was the description of Colonel Wilson, of Dunmore's staff.
* War of 1763-64.
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fear. Logan disdains the thought. He will not turn on his heel to save his life. Who is there to mourn for Logan ? No one!"
This speech put upon Cresap forever the stigma of the Yellow creek murders, in spite of his protestations and the probability of his innocence of the actual deed. At the council, after Logan's speech was read, Clark taunted his friend with being so important a man that all the great deeds were charged to his account, and Cresap swore he had a mind to avenge Logan by tomahawking Greathouse .*
Dunmore seems to have made an arrangement with the Shawanees confirming the Ohio river as a boundary. Then the earl retreated, with no permanent gain but a fort at Point Pleasant. Fort Gower was not occupied again by American troops until Josiah Harmar came there in 1790.
Next year Dinnore was to meet the Indians at Pittsburg for a treaty, but by that time the new order of things in America had too far progressed to leave him power in affairs. Even as his army marched back, the officers held a meeting at Fort Gower and adopted resolutions of sympathy with the Continental congress. They had been three months in the wilderness, and feared their service under an English nobleman and representative of the crown might be mnis- interpreted. Their resolution, framed in Ohio, November 5, 1774, and afterward published in the Virginia Gazette, foreshadowed the declaration of independence :
"Resolved, That we will bear the most faithful allegiance to his Majesty, King George the Third, whilst his Majesty delights to reign over a free people ; that we will at the expense of life and everything dear and valuable exert ourselves in support of the honor of his crown and the dignity of the British Empire. But as the love of liberty and attachment to the real interests and just rights of America out- weigh every other consideration, we resolve that we will exert every power within us for the defense of her just rights and privileges ; not in any precipitate, riotous or tumultuous manner, but when regularly called forth by the unanimous voice of our countrymen."
* After this treaty Logan fell into a deep melancholy, from which he never revived. He declared frequently that life was a burden, and that it had been better he were never born. Like George Rogers Clark and other famous frontiersmen, he yielded to the seductions of strong drink. Finally, while sitting before a fire, somewhere along the Maumee river, his head between his hands, an Indian enemy stole upon him, and buried a tomahawk in his brain.
CHAPTER IV.
OHIO IN THE REVOLUTION.
THE QUEBEC ACT-THE ATTITUDE OF THE INDIANS-MURDER OF CORNSTALK-KENTUCKY RAIDS-GEORGE ROGERS CLARK AND HIS CAMPAIGNS-VINCENNES AND FORT LAURENS-BATTLE ON MAD RIVER-CESSIONS OF NORTHWEST TERRITORY-MORAVIAN REMOVAL AND MASSACRE-CRAWFORD'S INVASION.
T HE YEAR 1774 is memorable, not only for Dunmore's cam- paign and the first Continental congress, but for an ordi- nance of parliament extending the jurisdiction of the government at Quebec over Ohio and the Northwest. This "Quebec Act" had an important influence upon future events. It was a formal reiteration of the proclamation of 1763, a decree of the sovereign power that the Northwest was not to be the backyard of the colonies, or the field of their expanding energies, or a place of refuge from the petty tyrannies of colonial governors, but an Indian reserve, under the control of the Canadian military. It was to maintain this status of Ohio, also to cut off the importation of military supplies from Spain by way of the Ohio river, that Great Britain used the Indians against the western frontier through the war of the Revolu- tion. Another feature of the bill, fulfilling the pledges of the treaty of 1763, was that the French inhabitants of the West, as well as of Quebec, were assured of religious liberty and their accustomed judi- cial methods. This roused "a prodigious ery" in England, for "religious liberty" meant a Catholic province. "Does not your blood run cold," said Hamilton, "to think that an English parliament could pass an act for the establishment of arbitrary power and popery in such an extensive country ?" The American congress protested that the bill was but the first step in reducing "the ancient, free, Prot- estant colonies to the same state of slavery," and the Quebec bill was one of the evils complained of in the declaration of independence, but in language very much modified, because the colonists had found that
I-6
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their outery against "popery" kept the Canadians from joining in the Revolution.#
Within a few weeks after the battle of Lexington (June, 1775), the Iroquois nation renewed its ancient league with Great Britain, and turned against the insurgent colonials, under the leadership of the great Mohawk chief, Thayendanegea, better known as Joseph Brant, whose sister was the recognized wife of Sir William Johnson after the death of the first Lady Johnson. But before Conolly could effect his purpose of organizing the Ohio tribes, and marching to the support of Lord Dunmore, he was arrested and imprisoned. The Delawares had been kept from hostilities during the Dunmore war through the influence of Glickhegan and other Moravians and the famous White-Eyes, though there was a strong war party under the leadership of an Indian called Captain Pipe. This tribe and a large party of the Shawanees were for neutrality in the new war, and they heard with favor the representations made to them of the justness of the colonial cause by Benjamin Franklin and Patrick Henry, com- missioners appointed by Congress to take charge of the Indian affairs in the Ohio region. The commissioners met representatives of the Shawances and Delawares at Pittsburg, in the fall of 1775, and the couneil was enlivened by the spirited reply of White-Eyes to some Senecas who reminded him of the old subordination of his people to the Iroquois. He declared that he had thrown off the petticoats and was a man, and in behalf of his nation elaimed dominion of all the country west of the Alleghany. This determined attitude of White- Eyes, at the expense of his popularity with a large faetion of his people, is directly traceable to the influence of the United Brethren missions. When he returned to the Muskingum he was severely een- sured by Captain Pipe, who withdrew to his town on the Wahlhond- ing, and by the Muncie tribe, a relie of the ancient Andastes, who repaired to the Sandusky region, within the British influence. Neta- watwes, supported by White-Eyes, Killbuck and Big Cat, established a new capital at Goshgoshgunk (Coshoeton), and in 1776 the new Moravian colony of Lichtenan was established three miles below the forks at the head of the Muskingum. This was soon followed by the death of Netawatwes, but White-Eves, who succeeded him, continued to hold most of the Delawares in friendship for the Moravians and the United Colonies.
For these reasons, it may be observed that the quiet teachings of the missionaries were more potent than the war of Dumore, in saving the struggling colonies from Indian war in the west for two years. It is also to be remembered that the influence of Kirkland. a Mora- vian missionary in the east, detached the Oneidas and Tusearawas from the war pact of the British and Iroquois. In these efforts for
* Winsor's "Westward Movement."
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peace the Delawares and the better part of the Shawanees had a tire- less and faithful co-worker in Col. George Morgan, Indian agent for the middle department.
But this work was not done by the Christian Indians without serious danger. In 1777 a hostile party of two hundred Wyandots, provoked by the refusal of the Delawares to take the war belt, descended upon the town at Coshocton. Then Glickhegan gained a remarkable victory by strategy hitherto unknown in Ohio. The visitors were stuffed with food at banquets, taken to visit the school- houses, and loaded with all the provisions they could carry. Pamo- acan, the chief, went home deelaring that the white brethren were his fathers, and the Delawares should rest in peace.
It was impossible, however, to counteract the intrigues of Henry Hamilton, lieutenant-governor of Quebec province south of the lakes. He was ordered in the fall of 1776 to enlist the Indians in the war of the British king against his rebellious subjects, and great councils were held at his headquarters, at Detroit, which were ominous to the safety of the colonial border. The Wyandots, lords of Ohio, needed little urging. The peace party of the Delawares and Shawanees could not restrain all their warriors. In the spring of 1777 Gov. Patrick Henry, of Virginia, determined to send an expedition to chastise a hostile band on the upper Scioto, but was dissuaded from the enterprise by the remonstrance of Colonel Morgan. At that time, according to Morgan, the county-lieutenants of Monongahela and Ohio seemed to have conspired to provoke Indian hostilities. Friendly Delawares had been fired upon, and there was danger that the foolish performances of a part of the white population, as uncontrollable as young Indian braves longing for the first scalp, would drive the red nations to war. White men, as well as Indians, were divided. A large proportion of the population, known as Tories, were ready upon opportunity to intrigue or fight in the British interest. Between them and the patriots, on the border and elsewhere, there was a conflict that lacked little, aside from scalping and the torture by fire, of resemblance to Indian warfare.
Another event at this period, fatal to peace, was the murder of Cornstalk, who, since the Dunmore war, had stood between the set- tlers of Kentucky and West Virginia and the thirst of the warriors for revenge. Cornstalk had gone from his Seioto home to Point Pleasant to warn the commandant that the Shawanees were being drawn into war, and his tribe must be protected, or he must vield his desires for peace. Thereupon Captain Arbuckle detained him as a hostage. Some days later Cornstalk was joined by his son, Ellinip- sico, anxious regarding his father's long absence. Next followed the killing of a ranger who went out hunting. Though Cornstalk was there for the express purpose of warning against such hostilities, the dead soldier's comrades, headed by Capt. John IIall, made a rush
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to kill him in revenge. To Ellinipsico, who was agitated for a moment, for he was young, the old chief said, "My son, the Great Spirit has sent you here that we may die together," and, turning, he calmly received the bullets of his murderers. His son, encouraged by such manliness, sat still, gazing ealmly at the mob until he was shot dead .*
By August, 1777, Hamilton, having formed a confederation of the Northwestern nations against the colonies, had sent out fifteen parties to ravage the frontier. With each he sent white officers and rangers. Many prisoners were carried to Detroit, and were there decently treated. But there were also bloody and horrible deeds, from which the white leaders did not seem able to restrain their sav- age raiders. Sealps carried to Detroit, were paid for, a shoeking, but not a new feature of war in America. In the early part of Sep- tember a party of Wyandots, Mingoes and Shawanees and Detroit rangers carrying the British flag, besieged Fort Henry, at Wheeling, and drawing out the garrison into an ambush, killed or wounded twenty-six. The few men who remained, under the leadership of Ebenezer Zane, were called upon by a British officer to surrender and acknowledge the sovereignty of the king, but they preferred to fight, and, aided by the heroie women who were with them, successfully withstood the assaults of the enemy.
In the spring of 1778 Hamilton's force of subordinate commanders was conspicuously strengthened by the arrival in Ohio of Alexander MeKee, Indian agent for the erown, who escaped from imprisonment at Pittsburg, or broke his parole, and brought with him Matthew Elliott, an Indian trader who had been negotiating with both sides, and "two of the name of Girty," one of whom is supposed to be Simon Girty, though tradition has him in command of the attack on Fort Henry. Simon Girty, who now returned to the forest to support the cause of his adopted fathers, the Seneeas, was thereafter the inveter- ate and mereiless foe of the American people. There is no darker name in the history of Ohio. The word picture of him left by a prisoner in the Indian country seems to justify tradition. "His dark, shaggy hair ; his low forehead, his brows contraeted and meet- ing above his short flat nose; his gray, sunken eyes, averting the ingenuous gaze, his lips thin and compressed, and the dark and sinis- ter expression of his countenance, to me seemed the very picture of a villain." +
* Roosevelt, though frequently insisting that the whites were justified in their wars, and were more sinned against than sinning, calls this a "brutal and cowardly butchery." "one of the darkest stains on the checkered pages of frontier history," and declares that "we have no record of any more infamous deed."
+ There were four Girtys-Simon. George. Thomas, and James-reared in different tribes after they had witnessed the burning of their parents at the stake. Simon was not incapable of human conduct. He left the Senecas
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According to the Moravian narrative these refugees from Pittsburg very nearly involved the Christian Indians in war. It was after the British occupation of Philadelphia, and MeKee and his companions assured the Delawares that General Washington had been killed and the American armies ent to pieces, that the Congress was to be hung, and the Americans no longer held any territory except the mountains, whence they were descending to kill the Indians without sparing women or children. The party of Captain Pipe was greatly encour- aged ; most of the Delawares prepared for the war path, and it was with some danger to his own life that White-Eyes secured a delay of ten days to hear from Morgan. Fortunately John Heckewelder was at Pittsburg when the messenger of the chief arrived, and he hastened back with news to dispel for the time the falsehoods of the conspira- tors. Though his people hardly dare shake his hand when they greeted him at Lichtenau, for fear of the war party, he was able to assure them of the unshaken friendship of their American brothers, and tell them of the surrender of the army of General Burgoyne. It appears from Heekewelder's narrative that the great event at Sara- toga, of date October 17, 1777, was first known in the Muskingum valley when he brought the word in February, 1778. The effect of the surrender was to strengthen the Indian peace party both directly and indirectly, for it was the signal for recognition of American inde- pendence by France, and the change of the French trading interest in the West to hostility to Great Britain.
At this time and for several years afterward the history of Ohio was closely associated with that of Kentneky, the land of the most western American settlements. A large part of the adventurous pioneers came to their selected homes in the "meadow land," down the Ohio river, but at the risk of death at the hands of hostile bands of Shawanees and Cherokees. It is a remarkable fact, due to this hostility, that the greater number of early settlers of the state across the river came by what Daniel Boone called the "Wilderness road," the great Warrior's trail through Cumberland gap, which the red men of the North and South had used for many years in their heredi- tary forays. This trail was continned north through Ohio along the Scioto, taking advantage of the water transportation on the way to form a desirable route to and from Sandusky bay on Lake Erie. In 1776, though in the midst of continual Indian hostilities, the Ken-
to live in western Pennsylvania, but being a tory, went to the Sandusky river and established a trading post. He is credited with saving Simon Kenton from torture. He was killed in 1813, in Proctor's defeat on the river Thames. James, adopted by the Shawanees, seems to have been an unmiti- gated monster in his Kentucky raids. George, reared by the Delawares, was a thorough Indian warrior all his life. These three were desperate drunk- ards, a common vice on the frontier. Thomas, on the other hand, after escaping from the Indians, became a good citizen .- See Perkins' Annals of the Northwest.
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tueky pioneers, led by George Rogers Clark, grew tired of govern- ment as an appendage of Fincastle county, Virginia, and in eonven- tion selected two delegates, one of whom was Clark, to treat with the Virginia government for organization as a separate county. This, it appears, was a compromise demand, not altogether agreeable to Clark, who urged the ereetion of an independent state. He was one of the delegates and was able to put so convineingly the independent atti- tude of the Kentuekians toward the war with England, that, to save the region for Virginia, the council spared the frontiersmen 500 pounds of powder, and the legislature erected the county of Ken- tucky in the fall of 1776. Following this eame the Indian out- break, general and vigorous after the murder of Cornstalk. A great part of the hostilities were directed against the settlements in Ken- tueky, for the purpose of their extermination, and were carried on to a considerable extent by the Shawances of the Miami and Mad river valleys, whose principal towns were Chillicothe, near the present site of Zenia: Piqua, seven miles west of Springfield, and Upper and Lower Piqua in what is now Miami county.
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