USA > Ohio > History of Ohio; the rise and progress of an American state, Volume Two > Part 17
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I T was the last of May (1779)- some authorities, especially Withers, erroneously state July-that Colonel John Bowman, of Harrodsburg, he, who had sent out the spying embassy under Kenton, he previous autumn, perfected his plans for a raid upon the Shawnee center of Chillicothe, or Oldtown on the Little Miami, about three miles above Xenia. Bowman decided "to command in person this first egular enterprise to attack, in force, the Indians beyond the Ohio, ever planned in Kentucky." Accord- ngly the most formidable force that had up to that ime been assembled for an Ohio raid rendezvoused at he mouth of the Licking, site of Covington, Ky. The ttle army numbered nearly three hundred men, ivided into companies under captains Benjamin ogan, Silas Harlan, Levi Todd, John Holder, and Villiam Harrod.
These frontier fighters were volunteers not only from .entucky, but the Ohio Valley as far up as Redstone, n the Monongahela. With George Clark and William Thitley as pilots and George M. Bedinger as adjutant nd quartermaster, the cavalcade, for they were ounted, crossed the Ohio and pushed rapidly on to ld Chillicothe-called in the Draper Manuscripts Little hillicothe, located on the Little Miami, three miles orth of the present town of Xenia-within a mile of hich they arrived in the early night, without having armed the enemy. It was planned that Captain Logan With one-half the force should turn to the left and march I.If way around the town, while Colonel Bowman com- landing the remainder should take the right; both (lumns were thus in silence and darkness, to encircle
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the town. Logan executed his orders and concealing his men in the high grass, awaited the arrival of Bowman. Daylight appeared, but Bowman did not. For some unexplained cause the commander-in-chief fell short of his appointment.
The Shawnee warriors, one hundred strong, under their chiefs, Black Fish, Black Hoof and Black Beard rallied to the council-house, as a fortress, while the two hundred squaws and children were hurried into the woods along a pathway not occupied by the assailants. Logan ordered his men to occupy the deserted huts, which they did under fire from the Indian stronghold. The situation determined Logar to move directly to the attack of the cabin, in which the warriors had taken refuge, and ordering his mer to advance, he was already marching on the foe, wher he was overtaken by an order from Colonel Bowman to retreat. It is supposed this order of retreat wa given because a false report was started among th soldiers that Simon Girty and a hundred Shawnee from the Indian village of Piqua, twelve miles distant were marching to the relief of Black Fish.
There was nothing for Logan to do but obey th orders of his superior, and retreat was directed. ] disorganized the soldiers, who, after setting fire t the thirty or more huts as they fled, scattered to th woods, while the Indians sallied forth to give battl
A curious incident occuring in the retreat of th Kentuckians during this encounter, is related in th Draper Manuscripts. In the advance of Bowman men into the village, a party of the front colum: under heavy fire from the Indians, took refuge in a
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mpty cabin. When the order to retreat came they ere "put to it" as to how they could leave the cabin nd retire without receiving the volleys of the Indians ow pressing upon their place of refuge. Finally, ays Draper's account,-written from letters and iaries of those who participated in the event-a novel lan was hit upon; each one provided himself with a lank torn off the door or floor of the cabin, and holding upon his back slantingly so as to protect his body om the bullets of the savages, started on the run. his "movable back work-rather than breastwork- roved amply sufficient to save the lives of all."
Captains Logan and Harrod succeeded in partially llying the retreating men and in charging the pur- ting savages, who boldly returned the enemy's fire til they saw their chief Black Fish fall, mortally ounded, when the savages in turn took to flight. It as-say the Draper Manuscripts-in a well-planned Marge of Major Bedinger with a party of forty or ty of the backwoods soldiers, (mostly Mononga- lians) of the expedition, that Black Fish was mortally pounded; the Indians were seen to hurriedly place 1eir fallen chief upon a horse, with a faithful warrior jounted behind him, and then flee toward their town.
was observed that Black Fish was dressed in a autiful white shirt richly trimmed with brooches d other silver ornaments; and from white prisoners 110 subsequently escaped or were liberated, it was certained that the brave Shawnee chief expired as entered the town.
Little Chillicothe was for the most part destroyed fire and the adjacent crops were laid waste. The
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frontiersmen, having had nine men killed and a few wounded, returned to the Ohio with one hundred anc sixty-three Indian ponies and other plunder, chiefly silver ornaments and clothing, amounting in all to the value of $160,000, Continental money, "each mai getting goods or horses to the amount of about $500,' in the same paper valuation. The method of distri bution was as follows: The plunder was sold at auctio and any soldier of the expedition could bid in th property to the amount of $500. If the bidder bough in excess of that, he paid the difference in money, less, he was entitled, from the general surplus, a amount in money to make good his share.
It was an inglorious victory, though "the newspape of the day regarded the expedition as an undoubte success." One of the best summaries of Bowman campaign is that recently published by Danske Da ridge in the life of George Michael Bedinger. Drap closes his recital of the expedition by saying: "Th ended the celebrated campaign of 1779-a campaig it should be remarked, the real history of which h been but imperfectly understood. Made at so ear a day, and not as fortunate in its results as some its successors, it is not strange that its true charactt should have been misconstrued or undesignedly m represented. Bowman, when too late to retrieve is error, seems to have felt keenly the miscarriage f £3 the expedition, and to have given himself up to (- spondency and inaction. Nor is it at all certain, tht he should be made the scapegoat for the failure of the enterprise. The numbers engaged were amy sufficient, the officers confessedly brave and ex e- a
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enced; and withal, they reached the Indian town tirely undiscovered; they evidently found less than s full quota of warriors there, and the plan of attack emed proper and judicious. And notwithstanding 1 these auspicious circumstances, superadded to their eat superiority of numbers, the campaign was well- gh a total failure.
Many of the participants in this campaign had been ldiers in the Revolution and were fresh from the mps and battle fields of the East, having fought in 1e early encounters of the colonists against the British; lajor Bedinger, for instance, had been with Dunmore i the Ohio campaign and had taken part in the siege Boston.
Logan was easily the hero of the expedition while Olonel John Bowman, who was a brother of Joseph bwman, one of the chief captains under George Rogers Cark in the Illinois conquest, barely escaped damage rt his otherwise deserved reputation for sagacity and bavery in Indian warfare. D r
This expedition of Bowman, however, while it left te fierce forest warriors in no "degree daunted or c ppled," struck consternation throughout the tribes ad impressed the British authorities with the reali- z ion that the backwoodsmen of Kentucky were a fo of no trivial consideration. Indeed this raid upon t .: Shawnee center on the Little Miami, was not w hout its immediate effect, for it checked, in another garter, the movements of the British and Indians. ptain Henry Bird, following the abandonment of siege of Fort Laurens, had collected two hundred Lilians at the Mingo town and was about to start
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for an invasion of the Kentucky border when news o Bowman's strike at Chillicothe reached Bird's camp Quickly Bird's Indian force dissolved in a panic, man; hastening to defend their towns, now exposed, as the; supposed to the Kentuckians; some of the alarme tribesmen even advised making peace with the Amer cans.
The solicitude prevailing at Detroit is revealed b a letter of July 3, 1779, just after Bowman's exploi written by Captain D. Brehm to General Haldiman in which he reported that Captain Alexander McKe "of the Indians and commissary of the same, " arrive here the 3d instant and says "that the Chanes [Shay nees], Delawares and Sandusky Indians are so mu( frightened by the encroachment of the Rebells that ] doubts of their resisting them much longer, if no troo can be sent to co-operate with them," saying al "that their pretended Fathers [British] only ma a cat's paw of them, by setting them on when th can spare no men to support them; that they will a: must drop them and consequently must fall a sacrif if they do not in time take their [American's] advi and keep neutral. And Brehm adds: "All meals are taken to persuade the Indians to the contrary, al encourage them to fight, but they believe not furthr than they can see and fear acts stronger on them tha all the arguments that can be made use of to convire them of the enemy's ill designs against their lar's and so forth; they seeing themselves unable to disloce the enemy out of the forts in and near their coun y and the enemy's daily threats and cunning dispersins among them."
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The Girtys at this period, it is seen, were the prime prits in all Indian activities. James and George, Aswell as Simon, were much at Detroit, plotting mis- lef with Lernoult and subsequently with Major Ant Schuyler de Peyster, a Knickerbocker Tory from Vw York, placed in charge of Detroit in October by :h Canadian general, Frederick Haldimand. The hee Girtys, together with McKee and Elliott, appear cstantly here and there, directing or guiding the nauding excursions of the Ohio Indians.
( sample of these "renegade" activities is a counter- "vnt to Bowman's raid, enacted in early October 179), in which month David Rogers, returning from Nv Orleans where he had been sent by the Virginians o supplies, moored his two keel-boats, carrying eenty men, on the Kentucky side about three miles jew the Little Miami. His temporary camp was rudenly attacked by a band of Shawnees, Mingoes, Vandots and a few Delawares, under the leadership If Simon Girty, George Girty and Matthew Elliott, "} had reached the Ohio the evening prior to the Prival of Rogers, and apprised of his approach had mrcsed the river and prepared for his arrival. It was : Merciless and prodigious slaughter, for forty-two or rade of the party, including Rogers himself, were he down and tomahawked in cold blood. The spoil nthe victors was "forty bales of dry goods, a quantity fim and fusees, together with a chest of hard specie." ist these scenes of blood and murder had however or16: mixture of comedy, grim colored though it may era: been. Among the wounded in Rogers' force a Captain Robert Benham, who was shot through
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both hips, the bones being shattered. Falling to t ground he managed to drag himself under the branch of a recently fallen tree and lay concealed and ha famished until the second day, when the Girty ba: had completed their looting and returned across t Ohio. Perceiving a raccoon descending a nearby tr he shot it hoping to devise some means of securi it and make a meal. The crack of his rifle was sponded to by the cry of a human voice, eviden produced by one not far off. Halloos followed al the helpless Benham was approached by a Kentuck member of Rogers' party. This Kentuckian had a) escaped from the encounter but with both arms brola by rifle balls of the enemy. His hands were theref useless. Collins in his "History of Kentucky" gi the entertaining details of the mutual and combird efforts of these two disabled men to assist one anothr. Benham having the perfect use of his arms, cod load his gun and kill the game with great readin's while his armless friend, whose name seems lostto fame, could kick the game to the spot where sat te "dislegged" shooter, who was able to dress the gale and roast the same before burning sticks which "disarmed" assistant would kick within reach of companion, who in turn fed the walking member this strange firm. Benham dressed his comra wounds with strips of their torn-up shirts. T method of getting water should not pass unrecord Benham took his own hat and placed the rim betve the teeth of his companion, who then waded into h Licking Creek up to his neck, dipped the hat it the water by sinking his head; the receptacle
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ied was borne to Benham who could do the rest. Tey thus lived several weeks, their wounds meantime lwly healing, until late in November they were able chail a boat passing down the Ohio which bore them (Louisville, where after a few weeks of nursing they covered from their injuries, and their strange ad- mature became one of the most unique stories of rtier life.
The early part of the year 1780 was a disastrous ul depressing one for the colonists in the American Rvolution, especially on the seaboard. While matters we progressing slowly in the north, Sir Henry Clinton, n the south, invested Charleston, which in April urendered to the British besiegers. Savannah was lady in the possession of the enemy and thus Gorgia and South Carolina seemed lost to the Ameri- as. This gave renewed courage to the British thorities at Detroit and their agents who were tire- e in their efforts to keep the Indians on the warpath. 3: if the American affairs were going badly in the Nv England and southern states, the frontiersmen ofPennsylvania, Virginia and Kentucky were sturdily 't ggling in the cause of their country amid the cors of savage warfare on the obscure battlefields f he Ohio interior:
"Those western pioneers an impulse felt,
Which their less hardy sons scarce comprehend: Alone, in Nature's wildest scenes they dwelt,
And fought with deadly strife for every inch of ground." s early as the middle of March the Indians began r customary depredations. A band of Munseys, hai &Delaware clan living to the westward," under their clesder, Washnash, attacked near the mouth of Captina
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Creek, a party of whites descending the Ohio in fla boats. Many men were killed, two of the boa captured and twenty or thirty prisoners taken, amor whom was the family, a wife and seven children, Peter Malott, who himself being in another bo escaped. One of the captured children of Malott w a handsome daughter, then in her teens, named Cat erine, who shortly thereafter became the wife of Sim Girty. The Indian band which made this foray a capture on their way home, on the Walhondir, stopped at the Muskingum quarters of the Delawar, from which place the news of the Munsey raid vi borne to Zeisberger, who at once reported it to Colo l Brodhead at Fort Pitt, an incident illustrating e constant friendliness of the Moravians for the Ame- de cans.
About this time (March) we find the three Girti Simon, George and James, at Detroit, called thiter by de Peyster to counsel over the plans of furter sta border depredations. A general campaign of offense sanc operations was contemplated. The tide of emigrati cri from the East, down the Ohio, was constantly incres- samo ing. Flatboats, containing families seeking homesin 20 the Kentucky region, were often passing to the torn dans of Louisville, which had been originally founded by gtai George Rogers Clark and was later established byar defor act of the Virginia Legislature and which had 100g re some thirty cabins and nearly two hundred inhabitats noe ) one of whom was the Western hero, George Rot, bas Clark, who by direction of Thomas Jefferson, Gove o of Virginia, had erected a fort on the east side of h chang Mississippi River, five miles below the mouth of h going
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Ohio, upon the lands of the Chickasaws and Choctaws; t was named Fort Jefferson and marked the military dvance of the Virginians to the Father of Waters. Louisville was protected by two block houses and a tockade, called Fort Slaughter, after the colonel of hat name, who with one hundred and fifty Virginia roops garrisoned the growing station.
Louisville was an irritation to the British officers t Detroit; its growing strength was a menace to the ndians. Louisville, like Carthage of old, must be estroyed. De Peyster organized an expedition to xecute the decision to efface or capture Louisville. for this purpose Captain Henry Bird was selected as ommander with the three Girtys as guides and scouts. One hundred and fifty Canadians and British soldiers rere rendezvoused at Detroit, joined by one hundred ndians, "from the Upper Lakes." Carrying two small annon, they proceeded in boats, by way of the Maumee ortage and the Miami, to the mouth of the latter, hence they were to drop down the river to Louisville. rriving at the Great Miami, near the confluence of oramie's Creek, the Detroit force was augmented y no less than three-some say six-hundred Ohio dians-mostly Shawnees-under the guidance of aptain Alexander McKee.
Before leaving Detroit or any rate by the time ley reached the Miami, knowledge of the strength
: the Louisville station and its great distance from ny base of supplies or source of reenforcement, tused Colonel Bird and his renegade and Indian allies, , change the destination of the campaign; and instead going down the Ohio, they ascended the river to
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the Licking up which they proceeded to its forks, where the men and munitions of war were landed. Withers tells the sequel: Not far from the place of debarkation was Ruddell's Station, so called in honor of its first settler, Captain Isaac Ruddell-often spelled Ruddle-whose wife Elizabeth was sister to the brothers Joseph and John Bowman.
The "station" comprised at this time several fam- · ilies and many adventurers and was protected, like all such settlements, by a blockhouse; in this case bearing the impressive name "Fort Liberty." This station, McKee with two hundred of the Indians stealthily approached an'd surrounded almost befor the settlers were aware that the enemy were in the Kentucky country. Next day Bird and the remainde of his force reached the station and after a few shot at the stockade, Simon Girty was sent forward with a flag of truce, demanding the immediate surrender o the place. Captain Ruddell agreed upon the condition that the prisoners should be protected by the Britis. soldiers and not suffered to be mistreated or held b the Indians. This condition was accepted by Birc But upon the opening of the gates of the stockade i which were huddled the terror-stricken families, th savages rushed in "tore the poor children from thei mothers' breasts, killed and wounded many, " and mad captive the survivors, nearly three hundred in numbe Strange to relate, the next day, the Ohio Indians- but not the Lake Indians-released their prisoner to Captain Bird. All the cattle at the post were sho down by the uncontrollable savages, an act whic "in the end proved a serious affair." After Ruddell
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Station had been completely sacked and the prisoners isposed of, the Indians clamored to be led against Martin's Station, then only five miles distant. Bird efused to conduct them to further depredations nless they promised the prisoners should be under is safeguard. To this the Indians, for a time dissent- ng, finally agreed, with the concession from Bird that he plunder should be theirs. Martin's Station was asily encircled and it capitulated on the first summons, nd the prisoners and plunder divided as agreed.
The facility with which these conquests were made xcited the Indian thirst for more and they urged an dvance upon Lexington and Bryant's Station. But bird realized he could not progress further, on the ontrary must hasten back, as his supplies were nearly xhausted and the infuriated savages had wantonly illed all the cattle they might have kept and eaten. 'he prisoners, between three and four hundred, were 1 danger of starving and besides Captain Bird reported ne rains were heavy and "rotted" his "peoples' feet." le moved rapidly as possible back to the Ohio, taking is Canadian soldiers in the boats, while the Indians ith the prisoners heavily laden with the plunder tarched across the country. The captives, whose rength gave out in bearing the burdens on the way, ere, after the Indian custom, tomahawked and then espoiled and thrown by the trail side. Having at- tined the Ohio side, the Indians dispersed to their llages, except the Lake Indians who with Bird and le troops returned as they came by the Miami and te Maumee, reaching Detroit, August 4th, 1780.
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This expedition was regarded by de Peyster as a master stroke and so far as actual results were con- cerned it was undoubtedly the most successful against the Kentucky settlements of any during the Revolution; and but for the "intractability" of the Indian allies still greater results might have been accomplished; but regarded from the point of its original purpose, the expedition was of course a signal failure.
In the expedition of Bird to the Kentucky settle- ments, we catch a glimpse, probably the last, recorded in history, before his death, of Logan, the famous Mingo chief. His biographer Brantz Mayer, gives the Draper Manuscripts as authority for the knowledge that Logan accompanied Bird, "appearing again to have cast aside his humanity, and to have engaged in the savage employment of scalping or at least of taking prisoners." Mayer continues: "Our Indiar. hero must have been well nigh fifty-five years of age and it may be supposed that so relentless and fitfu a life of natural impetuosity and artificial stimulus was drawing near its close. But his checkered caree: of crime, passion and occasional humanity, with al its finer features obliterated by the habitual use o: intoxicating drinks, was doomed to end tragically.'
Logan, the last few years of his life, had been more relentless and roving than usual. He had lived or the Scioto, at the mouth of the Olentangy ; at Pluggy' Town (Delaware); thence moved to the headwaters o the Mad River and later "pitched his tent" in the neigh borhood of Detroit. While at the last residence according to the Draper Manuscripts, shortly afte the return of Bird's force from the Kentucky foray
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Logan attended an Indian council at Detroit, and became wildly drunk, during which state "he pros- trated his wife by a sudden blow and she fell, apparently dead." Fearing the penalty for the supposed murder, he fled, and while traveling alone and "still confused by liquor and fear of vengeance," he was overtaken in the forest between Detroit and Sandusky, by a band of Indians, among whom was Todkahdohs, called "The Searcher," cousin or nephew to Logan. Bewildered and infuriated with liquor, the Mingo chief, exclaimed that "the whole party should fall beneath his weapon." Fearing for the party, Todkahdohs leaped from his horse, "leveled a shot-gun within a few feet of the savage and killed him on the spot." Logan's second or Shawnee wife survived the chief.
Many versions of the death of Logan have appeared in print, differing widely from each other, but the above, abbreviated from Draper, is doubtless the most authentic, as Mr. Draper received the statement from Dahganondo, also known as Captain Decker, as it was related to Dahganondo by the selfsame Todkahdohs; and Dahganondo, says Mr. Draper, "was a venerable Seneca Indian and the best Indian chronicler I have met with. His narratives are generally sustained by other evidence and never seem confused or improb- able." Dahganondo personally knew Logan, the Min- go chief. Todkahdohs, mentioned above, better known as Captain Logan, left children, two of whom Draper also met and interviewed.
Thus Logan, perhaps one of the best known of all Ohio's great chiefs, met with a tragic and ignoble end, "four miles south of Brown's Town, on the bank of
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a small creek upon the trail leading to Sandusky and his town on the Scioto." The place of his burial is not known, though it is frequently stated the Wyandots buried him near their Sandusky town. But his fame will not perish while the memory of his race is the heritage of the white man's literature. He had the traits of a lofty character, and Benjamin Sharp in the "American Pioneer" says: "My brother-in-law Captain John Dunkin, an intelligent man, had several conversations with him on the trip, his last journey. He said Logan spoke both English and French and he told Captain Dunkin that he knew he had two souls, the one good and the other bad; when the good soul had the ascendant, he was kind and humane; and when the bad soul ruled, he was perfectly savage, and delighted in nothing but blood and carnage."
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