USA > Ohio > History of Ohio; the rise and progress of an American state, Volume Two > Part 12
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Where bulwarks high are strong to shield, And their proud flag above them floats, O, not amid war's pageantry Where pæans of glory rung,
Were those brave soldiers doom'd to die, They fell all lonely and unsung.
Such were the opening scenes of the American evolution in the Ohio country. While the fires of dependence were sweeping the seaboard colonies, e trans-Allegheny west and the more distant north- est was in the powerful and almost undisputed pos-
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session of Great Britian. This vast territory from th forks of the Ohio to its mouth at the Mississippi an thence north to the Great Lakes was almost solel inhabited by the Indians, with the few and far betwee French settlements, which had, since the French an Indian War, become British garrisons and supply post
But this great background was to be the arena Revolutionary scenes fully as potent, if not so specta ular, as those being enacted in the valleys of the S Lawrence, the Hudson and the Susquehanna. It w not only the policy of England to hire Hessians fight its battles on the Colonial front, but also its mce dastardly scheme to subsidize the savages of the web and bribe them to assault and massacre the colon 1 settlers on the western frontier.
The commanders of the British posts at the wet and northwest spared no effort or means to instigæe the tribesmen against the Americans. They arme, sent forth and directed the bloody and mercil s expeditions of the redmen. Hamilton at Detroit ws the chief instigator and plotter of the savage warfde and won the opprobrious title of "the hair-buye" because of the incentives and rewards he offered ile redmen for white scalps. In all this he acted not only with the knowledge but direct orders of the Canad n authorities and the department at London for coloral affairs, at the head of which was Lord George German It remained for some brave and sagacious Amerien leader to comprehend the immeasurable importace of checking and destroying the British power in c northwest and of conquering that territory for ne
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olonial confederacy. The man to conceive that idea, lan and carry out its execution was George Rogers Clark.
Before entering upon the recital of Clark's remark- ble campaign we must note some events transpiring Kentucky and Ohio. We left the backwoodsmen f the Kentucky settlement unsuccessfully struggling or independent government. But independent gov- rnment was not so necessary to the existence of the ommunity as was the commodity of salt. Its trans- ortation from the east, accomplished only by horse- ack, was cumbersome and expensive. There were 3 we have noticed, rich salt springs at the Lower lue Lick on the Licking River, to which the Kentucky ettlements must resort for saline supplies.
Early in January (1778) a party of thirty salt-makers 1g ft Boonesborough, under the guidance of Daniel m loone, for the springs just mentioned. The work cil ad progressed satisfactorily when early in February, der cover of the falling snow, the salt camp was art Iddenly surrounded by a party of one hundred Ohio uy hawnee Indians, commanded by the Shawnee chief d Mack Fish, and guided by two Canadian scouts, to the English employ, and it is claimed accompanied nad + James and George Girty, then in the service of olo Ingland.
The salt-makers, outnumbered by the foe, were sily made prisoners and the jubilant redmen, with ortabone and his party, started on their return, having infr their destination Detroit, that they might there for oliver to Hamilton their captives and receive his
rma neri
-
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promised reward which was twenty pounds or $100.0 apiece for American prisoners received by him aliv and well.
It was a long and tedious journey, across the Oh river in a buffalo-hide boat, and then through the fore wilds in the cold of winter. A stop was made at litt Chillicothe, about three miles above the prese Xenia. Here a jollification was held by the India: over the success of their expedition; and here Boo and sixteen of his companions, were selected for the superior qualities and adopted, with the usual cer- monies, into the Shawnee tribe; Boone was initiated as a "son" into the family of Black Fish, who gal his captive the name of Sheltowee, or Big Turtle.
It was the last of March when the warriors wil their marketable captives, accompanied by Boo: and his "father," Black Fish, reached Detroit. Ha :- ilton was greatly pleased with the opportunity f meeting the most famous and intrepid backwoodsma of the day, Daniel Boone, and offered Black Fish o less than $500.00 for this prize prisoner. But Blak Fish would not sell and with his "son" returrd "from the flats of Michigan, covered with bru - choken forest, to the rolling valley of the Mians, with its hillsides clothed in their rich, open wods of maple and beech, then just bursting into bloon"
At little Chillicothe, the home of Black Fish, Bode simulating contentment, entered into the Indian le, engaging in their games, hunts and activities asif fully reconciled to his Shawnee adoption. Thus le spring passed when the Indians began preparati as for an invasion of Kentucky and an attack on Boors-
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orough. For this campaign not only the Shawnees, ut the Mingoes, Ottawas, and many Delawares began assemble until Boone saw "four hundred and fifty f the choice warriors of the west, painted in the most xquisite war style, and armed for battle." He rembled for the fate of his home in Kentucky.
It was in the middle of June, that the wily and daunt- :ss Boone, at the break of day, unseen and unheard, lipped from his wigwam and sped for the Ohio river, ver a route he well knew. For four successive days, t the rate of forty miles a day, with but one meal uring all that time, he stealthily picked his circui- bus way to the Blue Licks and thence on to Boones- orough, to the surprised and rejoicing settlers of hich he told the story of his captivity and gave the larm of the intended assault. He had been absent bur and a half months and his wife and children having given him up for dead had returned to the old Carolina lome on the Yadkin. !
Aided by the faithful residents of Boonesborough, mong whom Simon Kenton was now sojourning, noone made careful preparation for the expected siege. he enemy appeared-September 7th-four hundred arriors under Black Fish, and forty or fifty French- anadians, under Captain Du Quesne, with British nd French colors flying. They surrounded the stock- le and demanded its capitulation in the name of s Britannic Majesty. The threats of the besiegers ere spurned by the forty or fifty defenders of the rt. The siege lasted ten days; one of the most re- arkable in the history of savage warfare in the west. o he assault, in which all the treacherous tricks and S
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dashing surprises known to the redmen were attempted was in vain, and the baffled warriors, after the los of forty or fifty braves, suddenly disappeared in th night and began their retreat to their Ohio towns.
Boone's men picked up a hundred and twenty five pounds of flattened bullets that had been fire at the log sides of the stockade, and it is estimated an additional hundred pounds of lead were buried i: the slabs of only one of the bastions.
While the events just recited were transpiring o the lower Ohio and in the valleys of the Scioto an the Miamis, the Revolution was progressing in Easter Ohio. In this section, and later in other wester regions, three personages take prominent part. The were known as the "three white renegades," becaus of their despicable desertion from the American caus to that of Great Britain. This notorious triumvirat was Simon Girty, Mathew Elliott and Alexande McKee. With the first we have already become a( quainted; the other two deserve a brief introduction
Mathew Elliott, an Irishman by birth, had formerl resided in Pennsylvania, east of the Allegheny mour tains, and after the French and Indian War, took u his residence at Fort Pitt, whence he engaged quit extensively in the Indian trade. He was there en ployed when the war broke out between the Oh tribes and the Virginians. He participated in th war inaugurated by Lord Dunmore, and as we sav was with the Shawnees on the Scioto at the approac of Dunmore and acted as a messenger for the tribe to the Virginia army, carrying a flag of truce to th Virginia governor and asking terms of peace for th
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Cornstalk confederacy. After the treaty of Camp Charlotte, Elliott resumed his residence at Pittsburg, enewing his traffic with the Ohio Indians. In October, 776, when he was plying his business with the tribes- en on the Muskingum, Elliott was seized by a band f Wyandots and his goods confiscated. He escaped Detroit, where Hamilton, later treating him as a py-though it is believed there was a traitorous ompact between them-sent him as a prisoner to quebec, in which guise he was retained until late in 777. Released on parole or pretending to be, for i reality he had received a captain's commission from le British and was in their service-Elliott returned › Pittsburg where we find him in the spring of 1778. ll this time he was at heart a Tory and in sympathy ith the British, unscrupulous and deceitful, though ;suming loyalty to the Americans.
Alexander McKee, a native of Pennsylvania and r years a neighbor of Elliott, likewise was an Indian ader with headquarters at Pittsburg. He served deputy-Indian agent under Sir William Johnson om 1772 until the death of the latter in 1774. McKee id by his commerce with the Indians acquired con- derable wealth and much influence in and about ttsburg. But his allegiance to Virginia and the mericans was under suspicion and as early as April, 76, he had been put upon his parole, by the colonial Ithorities at Pittsburg, not to give any aid or comfort the British. "He must be an enemy to the United ates," wrote Commandant Arbuckle, from Fort andolph, to General Hand at Fort Pitt, "for the Menadier squaw and her friends, who are now at this 0
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garrison-(Point Pleasant)-say that he has engage his Indian friends to carry off his effects to their town which being accomplished, he would then make hi escape to Detroit."
This traitorous triad, Girty, McKee and Elliott had secretly been acting together and on the last da of March (1778) fled the vicinity of Fort Pitt and wer. directly to the Delawares on the Muskingum, and a the Moravian Records recite, came near changing th neutrality of that tribe to open hostility against th Americans.
When these white savages, "an ignoble trio of g( betweens and desperadoes," arrived in Goschochgun (Coshocton) a series of dramatic scenes ensued. Th fugitive emissaries of the British, joined by some twent deserting soldiers, Tory sympathizers, spread fals reports among the Delawares that the American troop in the east had been cut to pieces by the British an that Washington was killed; that Congress, the sitting at Yorktown, had ceased to exist; that the ren nant of the colonial troops was retreating west an would attack the Ohio tribesmen.
Great consternation prevailed among the Indian and Captain Pipe, friendly to the British and seekir this opportunity to overthrow his rival Captain Whi Eyes, urged the Delawares to seize the hatchet ar go upon the warpath against the Americans; "Go chochgung rang with the war song, rifles were cleane and tomahawks sharpened and the warriors painte their faces and selected their plumes." But Whi the Eyes plead for delay until the truth could be learned Meanwhile Heckewelder and a companion, John Sh
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bosch, hastened from the Moravian towns to Pittsburg, where they received confirmation of the news of the victories of the Colonists and the falsity of the reports of the renegade trio. Hurrying to Goschochgung, Heckewelder and Shebosch secured a reluctant hearing by the Delawares and contradicted the rumors of the Girty party; reassured the Delawares and aided by the earnest and eloquent appeal of White Eyes, who remained true to his friendship to the Americans, counteracted the mischief spread by the white traitors.
But it was a critical moment for the Delawares, the Moravians and the frontiersmen. Heckewelder has graphically described his mission to Goschochgung; his cold and disheartening reception by the hesitating and suspicious warriors; the counter speeches of Cap- tain Pipe and White Eyes; the wavering of the per- plexed savages and their final decision to remain on the side of the Long Knives. The foul plot to alienate the Delawares was frustrated.
At one of the meetings of the council, Heckewelder handed White Eyes a newspaper containing the account of Burgoyne's surrender; the captain held it aloft so the assembled braves might gaze upon it and said, "see my friends and relatives, this document contains great events; not the song of a bird, but the truth." He then gave Heckewelder his hand and welcomed him to the Delaware wigwam. The "horrid brood of refugees," slunk away and leaving the Delawares, proceeded westward, "inflaming the Shawnees and other tribes to a white heat of rapacity against the border settlements." Thence they continued on to Detroit. They were thereafter the aiders and abet-
a
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tors of the Indian and British incursions into Kentucky and Virginia. One of these raids, for example, was in May, when a number of Wyandots and Mingoes under Pomoacan, Half King of the Wyandots, crossed the Ohio and assaulted Fort Randolph at Point Pleas- ant. In this same month Congress, closely watching the Ohio events, resolved to raise two regiments from Virginia and Pennsylvania, to serve for one year, for the protection of the western frontier and for operation thereon.
CHAPTER IX. CLARK'S CONQUEST OF THE WEST
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W HILE the American Revolution in the Ohio country, during the spring and summer of 1778, was presenting the counter-plays of the Canadians and tribesmen, Moravians and frontiersmen, George Rogers Clark was, in the Illinois country, entering upon that remarkable con- quest, the recital of which is more suggestive of romance than staid history.
The disheartening gloom of Valley Forge had given way to the promise of brighter days for the Americans and the fickle goddess of victory was bestowing her gifts upon the Colonists in the East. Henry Hamilton at Detroit, Sir Guy Carleton, Governor-General of Canada, and even Lord George Germain, Colonial Secretary in the British Cabinet, clearly understood that the hopes of England, in this contest, lay peculiarly in the great Northwest; that territory bounded by the Ohio, the Mississippi and the chain of Great Lakes, a vast domain of two million four hundred thousand square miles, inhabited by countless savages and occupied at various points by British garrisons. That empire, larger than any European kingdom except Russia, must, at all events, be saved to England, what- ever might be the fate of the sea-board colonies.
Thwaites in the essay on Clark in his Western His- tory, notes the strongholds of the English in the North- west as follows: "At Detroit, Mackinac, Vincennes, Kaskaskia, and Cahokia, were small forts built of logs. These structures had originally been erected by the French fur-traders to protect their stocks of goods, and in times of danger served as rallying-points. When the English took possession they were considerably
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strengthened, and under this remodelling some of them came to be formidable fastnesses in a wilderness where besiegers were chiefly savages, without artillery. As a rule, the curtains were guarded at the four corners by solidly built blockhouses, serving as bastions, these houses being generally two stories in height and pierced for rifles and cannon. One or more of the curtains were formed by the rear walls of a row of log-cabins, the others being composed of palisades, great logs standing on end, the bottoms well buried in the ground and the tops sharp-pointed; around the inner edge of these wooden ramparts, the roofs of the cabins formed a gallery, on which crouched those of the defenders who were not already engaged in the block- houses. The heavy-timbered gate, with its massive forged hinges and bolts, was guarded with particular tenacity. In the event of the enemy forcing this, or making a breach in the curtains by burning or scaling the palisades, the blockhouses were the last towers of refuge, around which the contest was waged to the bitter end."
The Indians it should be noted did not build forts. Their mode of warfare did not admit of the use of enclosed defenses.
It was given to George Rogers Clark, the "Washing- ton of the West," then a young man of twenty-six, to rescue this domain, so coveted by England, from the latter's possession. Clark's well matured plan was that of a courageous general and a farseeing statesman. With a proper military force he proposed to descend the Ohio, proceed by the river or land to
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Kaskaskia, and thence march to Detroit by way of the chief British strongholds, capturing each as he advanced.
It was late in December (1777) that Clark submitted his bold and patriotic project to Governor Patrick Henry and his counsellors, Thomas Jefferson, George Wythe and George Mason. They endorsed the sagacity and bravery of the scheme but neither the Continental Congress nor the Virginia Legislature could supply the necessary money or furnish the five hundred troops required by Clark. The campaigns in the East and South absorbed the soldiery and sinews of war which the Continental powers had at command. But Vir- ginia, ever the head and front of the Revolution, must somehow promote this effort to deprive England of its western province, a large portion of which Virginia claimed as its exclusive property.
With the approval of the legislature, Governor Henry gave Clark the commission of colonel and authority to raise seven companies, each of fifty men, who were to enlist as militia and paid as such. These soldiers were to be enrolled solely from the frontier counties west of the Blue Ridge, "so as not to weaken the people of the sea coast region in their struggle against the British." They were to be paid by Vir- ginia and as a further incentive or reward, it was agreed that in the event of success each private volun- teer would be given three hundred acres of land,- officers in greater proportion-"out of the lands which may be conquered in the country now in the possession of the Indians."
t
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Some twelve hundred pounds in the depreciated Continental paper money was voted Clark by the Legislature for this enterprise, which was really the individual undertaking of the colonel, rather than a state or national effort. The progress and result of this heroic campaign has been recited innumerable times by American authors, notably in detail by Consul Wilshire Butterfield; with inexhaustible research by William H. English, and with graphic terseness by Theodore Roosevelt; but doubtless the most accurate accounts are found in the "Memoir" of Colonel Clark and the "Journal" of Captain Bowman.
Colonel Clark succeeded in raising only about one hundred and fifty men, whom he divided into three companies, placed respectively under Captains Joseph Bowman, second in command, Leonard Helm, and Williams Herrod. Each of these officers had seen frontier service and had been associated with Clark in his Kentucky exploits.
Thwaites describes this soldiery thus: "They were a rough, and for the most part unlettered folk, these Virginia backwoodsmen who formed Clark's little army of conquest. There was of course no attempt among them at military uniform, officers in no wise being distinguished from men. The conventional dress of the eighteenth century borderers was an adaptation to local conditions, being in part borrowed from the Indians. Their feet were encased in moccasins. Per- haps the majority of the corps had loose, thin trousers of homespun or buckskin, with a fringe of leather thongs down each outer seam of the legs; but many wore only leggings of leather and were as bare of knee
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and thigh as a Highland clansman; indeed, many of the pioneers were Scotch-Irish, some of whom had been accustomed to this airy costume in the motherland. Common to all were fringed hunting shirts or smocks, generally of buckskin-a picturesque, flowing garment reaching from neck to knees, and girded about the waist py a leathern belt, from which dangled the tomahawk and scalping-knife. On one hip hung the carefully scraped powder-horn; on the other, a leather sack, serv- ng both as game-bag and provision-pouch, although often the folds of the shirt, full and ample above the belt, were the depository for food and ammunition. A broad- ›rimmed felt hat, or a cap of fox-skin or squirrel-skin, vith the tail dangling behind, crowned the often tall and ilways sinewy frontiersman. His constant companion vas his home-made flint-lock rifle-a clumsy, heavy veapon, so long that it reached to the chin of the tallest nan, but unerring in the hands of an expert marksman, uch as was each of these backwoodsmen."
With this "army" and "a considerable number of amilies and private adventurers," Clark set out- May 12, 1778- from Redstone on the Monongahela. Iis "flotilla of clumsy flat boats, manned by tall iflemen," after touching at Pittsburg, floated down he Ohio. It was two weeks before the expedition eached the rapids, and camped upon "Corn Island," midstream, opposite the site of Louisville. Here a Lentucky company, under Captain John Montgomery, ras added to the "regiment," which still numbered, Il told, less than two hundred, for there were not a ·w deserters. Simon Kenton here joined Clark as his lost trusted woodsman and scout.
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On June 24th, the "flotilla" resumed its course with Ohio's current. On the north bank of the river, at the gate of Fort Massac, they moored their flat boats and disembarked to enter upon an overland journey to Kaskaskia, through a wilderness, dense with woods and brush, interspersed with streams and swamps, across prairies and level meadows, the entire route beset by wild animals and hostile savages. This little army in this unknown country was nearly a thou- sand miles from their base of supplies. Did any Con- tinental regiment in the East display such hardihood or patriotism? Reynolds in his "Pioneer History of Illinois," notes: "Clark's warriors had no wagons. pack-horses or other means of conveyance of their munitions of war or their baggage other than their robust and hearty selves," adding, "the country between Fort Massacre (Massac) and Kaskaskia at that day (1778) was a wilderness of one hundred and twenty miles, and contained, much of it, a swamp anc difficult road."
On the evening of the 4th of July, the invading force approached the Post of Kaskaskia, mainly inhabited by the French, its first settlers in the early days o French discovery. Clark's soldiers halted in the distant woods till after sunset and then, veiled in darkness silently crossed the river and encircled the settlement the people of which, French, Creoles and Indians, hac for the most part assembled in the large room of the stockade, runs the popular and oft repeated story, and were dancing and revelling after the French mirth loving fashion. Before anyone was aware the "town' was captured, for not a gun had been fired or a sentine
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disturbed, Clark unobserved entered the ball room and when discovered, with folded arms coolly announced to the startled revellers that they might dance on, "only to remember they were now dancing to Virginia and lot Great Britain."
Such in briefest terms is the "tale" of one of the nost romantically told incidents in the campaign of Clark. The picture of the Kaskaskia capture has been lone in graphic colors by many a writer, particularly y Henry Cabot Lodge in his brilliantly written "Story f the Revolution." But the testimony of the Draper Manuscripts robs the scene of much of its alleged omance. After repeating the event as usually por- rayed, Thwaites remarks: "It is a picturesque hero ale. One fastidious might say it smacked over much f melodrama; but I almost wish it were true, for ften sombre western history seems now and then to eed a lurid touch like this."
M. Phillip Rocheblave, a Frenchman, but the British ommandant of the post, was rudely awakened from is slumbers, in his official quarters, made prisoner and s such sent, under guard, to Williamsburg. At first onsternation and fear swept the people of the post- ne French were in mortal terror as the British officers ad made them believe the Americans were little etter than savage brutes and would outdo the Indians i inflicting untold indignities. The Indians in and bout the post were friendly to the British and liable to Immon the neighboring tribesmen and spring fiendlike pon the brave little army of Virginia. It required great ›urage, coolness, patience and tact on the part of Clark › calm the disturbed and diverse elements of hostility.
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