USA > Ohio > History of Ohio; the rise and progress of an American state, Volume Two > Part 24
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had witnessed the slight figure gracefully and fearlessl moving across the open and ascending the gentl slope to the Zane cabin. Speedily "a long blac stream of the precious stuff was piled up in a littl hill in the center of the table; then the corners of th table-cloth were caught up, turned and twisted an the bag of powder was thrown over Betty's shoulder, and fastened about her waist.
Again she ventured forth, this time with her price less burden. The Indians now recognized the purpos of her errand and were no longer passive. Her succe: meant their doom. The rifles cracked and the bulle sped about her like hail; "scattering pebbles in he path, striking up the dust and ploughing little furrow in the ground." It was over in a moment; the spir of her bravery and patriotism shielded her from harn she reached the fort; the huge gate creaked and swun open and then closed upon one of the most hero acts in the annals of bravery.
The strange spectacle to which the besiegers ha just been witnesses was well calculated to dampe the ardor of their courage and create admiration fd the dogged grit of the garrison. But the painte warriors and their British allies continued the sieg keeping up an incessant fire the remainder of the day The bastion or "elevated tower" was the speci. object of their fire, for from it came the most deadl shots. It was occupied by Jonathan Zane and h sister Betty, who did the rapid loading while th brother did the effective firing. Betty Zane herse related in subsequent years how she would have 1 stop in her work, to pull out the splinters, drive
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into her hands and arms, as they were torn off the white oak logs by the bullets of the savages. The second night was made hideous with the yells of the Indians as they made assault upon the impregnable stockade. Bands of the frantic warriors would rush against the gate; with fire brands and bundles of hemp they sought to set fire to the palisades; the whistle of the bullet and the echo of the war-whoop added to the terror of the gloomy night.
The next morning Bradt and the chiefs counseled together as to further plans, when the news reached the invaders that a force of seventy frontiersmen was on the way to the relief of the fort. It would be rashness to continue the siege in the face of greater and renewed resistance.
Leaving one hundred of their number to lag behind :o scour and lay waste the country, the remainder of the army, on the morning of the 13th, retreated across he Ohio and encamped at Indian Spring, five miles rom the river, and the next day the vanquished avages took up the journey homeward.
It is perhaps due to the truth of history to here note that the question of the identity of the heroine of the "powder feat" has been raised by some his- orical writers, owing to the fact that in 1849 Mrs. ydia Cruger, then eighty-four years of age, who vas an inmate of the fort and a witness to the event, hade and published a statement that Molly Scott nd not Betsy Zane was the courageous carrier of he powder. Molly Scott lived to be eighty years f age and according to the testimony of J. F. Scott er grandson: "She has told me, and in my presence,
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many times, about the exploit of Betsy Zane carrying the powder in her apron from Col. Zane's dwelling to the Fort." There is no evidence whatever that Molly Scott ever claimed the honor attributed to her, on the contrary she always accorded it to Betsy Zane. Moreover, there is the trustworthy testimony of several who saw the feat that Betsy Zane was the true heroine and as to that there is not the least doubt.
It was a memorable siege, distinguished for the numbers engaged in the assault, the almost incom- parable bravery of the small garrison in defense, but above all else for the fortitude displayed by the women in the fort, to whom De Haas in his "Indian Wars of Western Virginia," pays the following glowing trib- ute, after describing the horrors of the second night's siege: "The women, during the whole of that long and perilous night, proved themselves heroines of no ordinary type. They stood at their posts like soldiers of a dozen campaigns, cooling and loading the rifles of their husbands, brothers and lovers. Such women were worthy the love and devotion of men like these. No timid shrieks escaped them; no maidenly fears caused them to shrink from their self-imposed and most onerous task. Such were the pioneer mothers of the west-women whose souls and bodies were so sorely tried in the fierce fire of our Indian wars. Through the whole of that long and terrible night, without food and without rest, did these brave and noble women stand to their duty, regardless of fatigue, but nerving their hearts to the contest, and animating the men with hope and courage. The Greek matron,
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OF AN AMERICAN STATE
who urged her son to the conflict, charging him to return with his shield or upon it, displayed no more zeal, devotion, and true courage, than these hero- women of the west. History is full of examples of female heroism. Israel had her Judith and Deborah, France glories in her Joan and Lavalette ;- two of hem unsexed themselves in the excitement of battle; ne ingloriously stained her hands in human gore; ind the other had nothing to lose by her successful efforts; but the western heroines, without the eclat of emale warriors, displayed more true courage through- ut the long and stormy days of our Indian warfare, nd exhibited more of the true spirit of heroism, than ny example in ancient or modern history."
While the expedition against and the siege of Fort Henry was in progress the Kentuckians were busily ngaged in a retaliatory invasion of Ohio. The attle of Blue Licks was fought on the 19th of August. In the next day, the retreating remnant of the Ken- ucky force, on their way from the scene of the terrible isaster to Bryant's Station, met Colonel Benjamin ogan at the head of three hundred men whom he ad enrolled for the rescue of Bryant's Station, but hich they failed to reach until after Caldwell and is force had withdrawn. On learning of the fatal sult at Blue Licks, Logan pressed forward to the attlefield to bury the dead and avenge their death the enemy should still be in reach. But the red arriors, flushed with victory and brandishing their :alps and trophies, had skurried to their Ohio homes. he field of battle presented to Logan's soldiers a
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horrible spectacle-all was still as the very deac that lay uncovered where they had fallen; "not a sound was to be heard but the hoarse cry of the vulture flapping her wings and mounting into the air, alarmec at the intrusion of man." The dead, mangled and disfigured by the tomahawk and scalping knife, were unrecognizable and undistinguished, all were alike consigned to a silent grave, the bodies of the dead being interred in long trenches and heaped over with stones and logs. The whole Kentucky country was aroused to action by the disaster of Blue Licks and at once the backwoodsmen looked, as they had so often looked before in hours of distress, to George Rogers Clark, who was stirred to his old-time energy at his post at the Ohio Falls (Louisville), where for many months he had been busy strengthening the fort and providing means to protect the Kentucky border.
One of these means was the construction of a "gun-
0 boat" to patrol the Ohio from Louisville to the mouth of the Licking, site of Cincinnati. This naval achieve- ment was a flat bottomed row boat manned by forty men and carrying two swivel cannon. An interesting correspondence concerning this gunboat passed be- tween Clark and the Virginia authorities, in which Clark asked for funds to defray the expense for the building of a "man of war." The governor of the state replied to Clark's request: "I am sorry to inform you that we have but four shillings in the (state) treasury, and no means of getting any more." But Clark built the boat. He promptly responded to the call that he raise and command a force that
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OF AN AMERICAN STATE
should proceed to the leading Indian towns on the Miami River, destroy the villages and chastise the savages.
The call for volunteers was extended throughout the Kentucky settlements and responses came from all directions. The Falls of the Ohio and Bryant's Station were selected as the places for the troops to meet and colonels John Floyd and Benjamin Logan were selected to command the two divisions as they should assemble. The last of October, both divisions met and united at the mouth of the Licking, where Clark took supreme command. His force numbered one thousand and fifty mounted riflemen. With jeeves, pack-horses, and supplies in abundance the army left the banks of the Ohio on November 4th and moving up the Miami Valley reached the Miami owns in six days. The enemy, apprised of the ap- ›roach of the Kentuckians, hurriedly fled to the voods, taking their squaws and children. Their light was too sudden to permit their carrying away ny property. There was nothing for Clark's soldiers o do but seize the "belongings" the Indians had left, urn the deserted cabins and great quantities of corn nd provisions.
From the writings of Father William Bigot, a learned 'rench priest, who resided for thirty years at Loramie, ow Berlin, on Loramie Creek, and who made a careful tudy of the history of that noted site, we learn that this campaign of Clark, when he reached Lower Piqua t the Great Miami, "he met a peaceful people and o damage was done them." From there he proceeded Upper Piqua, where there was an Indian fort which
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the Kentucky commander destroyed; thence he pro- ceeded to Loramie's store, which he surprised, plundered and burned; Pierre Loramie "escaped that night from the hands of his enemy and took refuge with the Shawnees at Wapaconatre, "(Wapakoneta). This Loramie's store was undoubtedly the British trading post, mentioned in Clark's official report, in which after describing the destruction of the first Shawnee towns reached, he says: "The British trading post at the head of the Miami and Carrying Place to the waters of the Lakes, shared the same (fate) by a party of one hundred and fifty horse commanded by Colonel Logan and property to a great amount was also de- stroyed; the quantity of provisions burnt far surpassed any idea we had of their stores."
It was Clark's soldiers that destroyed the post, but they were under the command of Logan. The trading post was never rebuilt; Loramie left the Ohio country for a residence among the Western Indians. The Indians could not be prevailed upon to attempt an encounter with Clark; Alexander McKee endeav- ored to rally the Wyandot and Shawnee warriors for the defensive; but only a small number would join him and they were speedily scattered at the ap- proach of the Kentucky frontiersmen. Clark's fame as a conqueror, with a thousand determined, rifle- armed horsemen under him, was an antagonist the wiley warriors dared not encounter. There was no battle in the campaign; the loss of the Indians was ten scalps, seven prisoners and two whites recaptured; "after laying part of four days in their towns, " writes Clark, "and finding all attempts to bring them to
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a general action fruitless, we retired, as the season was far advanced and the weather threatening." The expedition "returned in triumph" and the Ken- :uckians "regained their self-confidence."
Alluding to this expedition, which ended forever all formidable Indian invasions of Kentucky, and to ts leader Clark, Justin Winsor, in his "Westward Movement" makes the comment, "it was the last brilliant dash of a man who, amid the whirls of dis- appointment, was soon to surrender himself to evil habits, and drop out of memorable history. He had low made the final rude onset against British power n the northwest, as he had made the first four years ›efore."
During the summer of 1782, a "fierce determination possessed the borderers to crush the red vipers" along he Sandusky River "and arrangements were made," eports Withers, "to invade the Indian country once hore as soon as the wheat and oats were harvested." A conference was held between members of the Penn- ylvania Supreme Council and members of Congress, which resulted in a recommendation to General Wash- igton that a general campaign against the savages hould be inaugurated. The Fort Henry siege empha- zed the necessity of such a campaign and Washing- on agreed that three expeditions should move simul- aneously on the Indians. One was to be sent by the tate of New York against the Iroquois in the neigh- orhood of Oswego; another was to proceed from unbury, Pennsylvania, into the settlements of the enecas in the Genesee Valley; a third, to be com- anded by General Irvine, was to move from Fort
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THE RISE AND PROGRESS
Pitt against the Wyandots and Delawares on the Sandusky River.
General Lincoln, then Secretary of War, proposed that Irvine's force should consist of twelve hundred men, regulars, rangers and volunteers and that the army should set forth on October 8th. But on that date no troops were forthcoming and after a wait of two weeks, General Irvine received word from Phil- adelphia that the Indian war was regarded as at an end, and his expedition was countermanded. But as we have seen, George Rogers Clark proceeded with- out hesitation or delay with his Kentucky expedition against the Indians on the Miami. But at the same time, as the Washington-Irvine correspondence amply reveals, General Sir Guy Carlton, who had recently been appointed commander-in-chief of the British forces in America, issued a manifesto ordering a ces- sation of Indian depredations, which had been carried on with such terrible results for six years. It was upon the knowledge of this action of Carlton that Washington countermanded the Indian expeditions proposed as above stated. Hassler in "Old West- moreland" takes evident satisfaction in stating that General Carlton's order concluded the Indian war of the American Revolution. He, of course, permits Clark's expedition to be carried through. But he truly claims that Carlton's action ended the incur- sions of the savages as the allies of Great Britain, "acting with British aid and under the direction of British officers," but it did not altogether stop the personal depredations of the Ohio savages; indeed those lawless raids were continued into the spring
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f 1783, when small parties of Shawnees and Wyandots rossed the Ohio and invaded with the tomahawk nd rifle, the border settlements of Pennsylvania. imon Girty was particularly active and persistent i keeping up the hostile raids of the warriors, a band whom he led from the Sandusky to within five miles :Fort Pitt, on the very day Lieutenant Colonel tephen Bayard, then temporarily in command of le post, was firing a salute in celebration of the con- mation of the news of peace between Great Britain id the United States. This raid, says Butterfield, as the last of Girty's border exploits during the merican Revolution; he "never again imbued his inds in the blood of his countrymen," but removing Detroit, remained in the pay of the British Indian epartment as an intrepreter.
Appeals were made to Congress by the bordermen ir protection and John Dickinson, President of the Innsylvania Council, wrote Congress, April 29, 1783, (lling attention to the Indian "calamities" still bing perpetrated and asking Congress to inform them Ł authority that peace had been made with Great Fitain, "that the back country with all the forts," 1 thereby ceded to us; that they (Indians) must now epend upon us for their preservation," and unless ty cease their activities the American armies would e irpate them.
To carry this message to the savages, Congress appointed Major Ephraim Douglas, who, accompanied b Captain George Cully, set out from Fort Pitt, Jie 7, 1783. Carrying a white flag of peace, they roe to the Sandusky River, which they reached on
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June 16th. They visited the Wyandots, Shawnees and Delawares, conferring with Captain Pipe, and Dunquat, the Half-King. All then proceeded to Detroit where they were civilly received, on July 4 by de Peyster, who consented to an Indian council which was attended by the chiefs of eleven tribes representing nearly all the Indians from the Scioto to Lake Superior, viz., the Shawnees, Delawares, Wy andots, Miamis, Piankeshaws, Senecas, Kickapoos Weas, Chippewas, Ottawas and Pottawattomies. Long "talks" were had with chiefs to convince them th war was over and the Americans would insist on th peaceful behavior of the tribesmen. Douglas and Cully then proceeded to Fort Niagara, where the; met the Mohawk chief Joseph Brant, who was assure that the victorious Americans felt kindly toward an wished peace with the Six Nations.
CHAPTER XIX. THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY
T HE surrender of the British at Yorktown October 19, 1781, practically ended the war with the mother country, but the official negotiations required to bring about the results of peace moved slowly in those days when there were no telegraph cables, by which conversation could be conducted with the government at London, and no steamships by which documents could in a few days be speeded across the Atlantic. Franklin, Jay and Adams acted in behalf of the victorious young republic and the preliminary treaty was signed in Paris, November 30, 1782. The definite treaty re- ceived the signatures of the representative ministers at Paris, on September 3, 1783. Three months later Washington took leave of his officers at Fraunce's Tavern, his New York headquarters, and three weeks later resigned his commission as general of the army and retired to private life. We need not enter upon the details of that famous Peace Treaty of 1783, as only a few features bear upon our story.
By the Quebec Act of 1774, it will be recalled, the boundaries of the Province of Quebec were extended by England to the Mississippi River on the west and the Ohio on the south with prohibitive measures as to its settlement by the American colonists, and other oppressive features which were grievances the colonists inserted in their Declaration of Independence. By the treaty of peace resulting from the American Revolution, the boundaries of the new and independent republic were acknowledged to be Florida, then belonging to Spain, on the south; the Mississippi River on the west, the vast and unexplored country
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beyond being the possession of Spain; while the southern line of Canada, a line that could not then be absolutely fixed, was the northern extent of the United States. This gave the great "Northwest" territory to the new-born American nation of which Count d'Aranda who represented Spain in the treaty negotiations wrote, at the time: "The federal republic is born a pigmy," but prophetically added "a day will come when it will be a giant, even a colossus, formidable to these [European] countries." But the peace de- clared with England in the Paris Treaty was to be far from such in actual results.
In New England the war ended, in fact; but in the trans-Allegheny country it was to continue in a desul- tory and fitful, and at times most sanguinary, way for some thirteen years yet to come. This continua- tion of the war was to be mainly by the Indians, acting as the allies and agents of Great Britain. In the fourth, fifth and sixth articles of the Paris Treaty (1783) it was agreed that the creditors on either side should meet with no lawful impediment to the recovery of the full value in sterling money of all bona fide debts contracted before the war; Congress was to recommend to the states that they provide for the restitution of all estates, rights and properties which had been con- fiscated from the British subjects. The treaty saic nothing as to indemnity or security by the United States for the enforcement of those provisions, while England agreed "with all convenient speed," tc withdraw all "armies, garrisons, and fleets from the said United States and from every post, place anc harbor within the same." Anticipating this feature
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of the final peace agreement, Congress in the summer of 1783 authorized Washington to arrange with the British officers to receive the posts, heretofore occupied by them, at Mackinac, Detroit, Niagara, Oswego, Osewegatchie (Ogdenburg), Erie, Point-au-Fer and Dutchman's Point, and incidentally the Ohio posts at the mouth of the Maumee and of the Sandusky. Washington at once dispatched Baron Von Steuben to execute this errand. But when, at Sorel, the Baron met General Haldimand, the British governor of Canada, and delivered his message, the British general diplomatically but emphatically stated that he had received no orders to "turn over the posts" in question and, as we shall see, they remained, without shadow of right, garrisoned by and in the possession of England until their evacuation in June, 1796, as one of the terms of the "Jay Treaty," made with the British government in the fall of 1794.
The unsupported pretention of England to this high-handed business was that the retention of the posts was in the form of a security for the payment by the Americans of the claims of the despoiled or creditor Loyalists. England's real motive was to continue the protection of her fur trade in the North- west, and to instigate the Indians to renewed hostilities against the western settlers, for Great Britain held to the hope that the American league of states would prove a "rope of sand" which would soon be torn asunder and then from the western posts might she regain a part at least of her lost territory.
The tribesmen, ever credulous of the blandish- ments of the agents of the Great Father beyond the
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sea, were assured of the friendship and aid of their former English allies, and were given to understand that they would be cared for. With this "moral" support at his back, the Indian was not slow in re- newing his protest against the occupation by the Americans of his beloved Ohio Valley. Indeed the Indian claim to this Ohio country was two-fold though conflicting. As already set forth, the Iroquois had always claimed it by right of conquest, a proprietary right, while their "tenants," the Ohio tribes, denied this assumption of the Six Nations and claimed the territory by both right of ownership and right of perpetual possession. Although England was now so profuse in her protestation of friendship and alle- giance to the Indian, she had utterly ignored them in the treaty of Paris and had failed to make any provision for either the Iroquois nation or the trans- Allegheny tribes. This serious and unjust neglect General Haldimand hastened in some measure to repair by offering the New York Mohawks a home on the Grand River in Canada, an offer accepted by the warrior tribe.
With these Indian claims to the Ohio country in mind we turn to others even more complex and prob- lematical.
Whatever might be the relation of the Indian to the territory in question, the relation of the colonies was a more pressing and direct one. The United States had wrested by conquest the Northwest Terri- tory from England. Where was the title to this vast domain described by Mr. Gladstone as "a natural base for the greatest continuous empire ever established
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by man"? Was it at the disposal of the National Government as common territory or did it belong distributively to the several states by reason of their original colonial charters? The latter persistently pressed their alleged rights. There were seven "claim- ant" states, a majority of the United States. Three of these, Georgia, North and South Carolina, each aying claim to the extensions of territory west to he Mississippi, do not enter into our discussion as hey do not intrude upon the Northwest Territory.
Before considering the four claimants to the trans- Allegheny country, we must pick up another thread n the proceedings of the Revolution. The very day hat the Continental Congress appointed a committee o draw up a Declaration of Independence, it also amed a committee to prepare a form of government. The report of the latter committee, a report known s the "Articles of Confederation," was adopted y Congress in 1777. The assent of every one of he thirteen colonies was required to bring the proposed onfederation into operation. By the end of 1779 ne articles were ratified by all the colonies except Maryland which held off until 1781. Before that time le success of the Revolution was assured and the roblem of the disposal of the Northwest Territory as already in debate. Maryland having no claim, rough its colonial charter, upon the territory in sue, demanded that the northwest should become iblic domain, the property of the new confederate ›vernment, and declared she would not subscribe the "articles" until that question was decided in :cordance with her position. The Continental Con-
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