USA > Ohio > History of Ohio; the rise and progress of an American state, Volume Two > Part 6
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The expedition thus ended at Wakotomica, whence it returned across the country to Wheeling, which was reached in the middle of August. The Virginians brought with them three hostage chiefs, who were sent on to Williamsburg, where they were released at the peace made the succeeding fall. The results of this predatory raid were not, in a material way, all that had been expected. But it struck terror to the Shawnees who now abandoned all their settlements on the Musk- ingum and fell back to the Scioto.
But not alone were the Ohio tribes goaded to a state of fury over the frontier atrocities. The waves of war sentiment rolled across the Ohio and swept the country of the Iroquois and when their chiefs learned of the wanton acts committed by the whites upon their race on the borders of the Beautiful River they were ready to spring to arms, and they signified to Sir William Johnson their desire to hold a council with him, without delay, in order to consider the crisis that threatened their trans-Ohio brothers and involved themselves. The request was granted and by the seventh of July nearly six hundred Indians of the Six Nations assembled
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at Johnson Hall. Seldom had the big men and the braves of the confederacy gathered amid such feelings of apprehension and agitation. Seneca and Cayuga orators addressed the lord of Johnson Hall, reciting their grievances, the infringement of the terms of the Stanwix treaty by the whites who ruthlessly ignored the limits prescribed and invaded the Indian confines; the lawless acts of numberless traders; the unmerited atrocities on the Ohio; and the impending war against their Ohio dependents; had the Indians no rights the white man was bound to respect?
Two days later Sir Johnson made reply, speaking for two hours with all the persuasiveness of his eloquence and with the fire and animation of an Indian orator, for he was more than equal to them in his power and manner. He assured the chiefs that the outrages of which they complained were the acts of a few lawless individuals and not of the English government, which would take prompt measures to ferret out and punish the guilty parties. At the same time, he reminded them that they themselves were not wholly without blame and they too, must keep in restraint their own people and prevent their being led astray by the wily Shawnees. When Johnson had ceased speaking, pipes and tobacco were distributed among the Indians, who adjourned to meditate upon what they had heard.
Never again did they hear the voice of the great brother, "Warraghiyagey, Superintendant of affairs," ever their friend, for scarcely had his audience dispersed when Sir Johnson, an invalid for many years, over- taxed by his earnest and prolonged appeal, was seized with a fatal attack of his disease, and in a few hours
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passed forever from the scenes of his eventful life. The Indians of the great convention, who had just listened like children to his fatherly voice were dumb- founded and thrown into the greatest confusion and doubt. Sir William Johnson for a score and a half of years had been the most dominant figure in the Indian affairs of the colonies and the Northwest, while his services in behalf of the Crown, as a major general in the colonial forces, and a member of the provincial council, had been most conspicuous. In the French and Indian War and during Pontiac's conspiracy, it was due almost solely to him that the Six Nations were mainly restrained from throwing their influence against the English. His intimate knowledge of the languages, customs, and tempera- ment of the Indians, his lordly appearance, accom- plishment of manner, generosity, patience, honesty and fair-dealing, gave him uninterrupted sway over the Six Nations and other tribes. Moreover Sir William was allied to their people by the ties of kinship for the mother of his children was Molly Brant, sister of Thayendanegea, or Joseph Brant, the foremost chief of the Iroquois confederacy. But their illus- trious patron, friend and adviser was gone.
Colonel Guy Johnson, son-in-law of Sir William, and his deputy superintendent of Indian affairs, at once hastened to calm the perturbed spirits of the assembled tribesmen, assuring them that his Majesty the King of England would see that their interests and rights would still be cared for. The funeral of Sir William was attended by the Indians in a body, who "behaved," adds Sir Guy in his letter to the Earl of Dartmouth,
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"with the greatest decorum and exhibited the most lively marks of real sorrow." The day after the burial the tribesmen held their "ceremony of condolence" over the grave. It was a pathetic and dramatic occasion. Impressive and heart-felt addresses, em- phasized by the giving of wampum strings, were made by their chief speakers, one of whom, addressing Guy Johnson, said "Since it has pleased the Great Spirit to take from us our great brother Warraghiyagey, we now speak in the name of our whole Confederacy and dependents, expressing our thanks that, agreeably to our former request to Sir William Johnson, we now see you taking care of our affairs. We earnestly expect you to take due care of them as that great man did, who promised you to us; and we now desire that you will send these our words to the great king, who, we hope, will regard our desires, and approve of you as the only person that knows us and our affairs, that business may go on as it did formerly. Otherwise, in this alarming time of trouble, without your care and attention, our affairs will fall into great confusion, and all our good works will be destroyed." Sir Guy Johnson succeeded to the office of Superintendent of Indian affairs and John Johnson, son of the late William succeeded to the vast estates of his father.
CHAPTER IV. DUNMORE'S WAR
T HE expedition of Col. Angus McDonald, which was only partially successful, was but the forerunner of more momentous events. Lord Dunmore had already resolved to send forth a force of Virginia militia that would effectually overwhelm and bring to submissive terms the confed- erated Ohio tribesmen. Just what motives severally actuated Lord Dunmore in his aggressive and zealous determination in this matter will be inquired into later on. For the present, however, it should be explained that Virginia fought this war wholly unaided by Penn- sylvania or indeed any other colony. It will be recalled that Virginia through her original and amended char- ters, claimed that her boundaries extended from the Atlantic coast across all intervening land to the sea on the west, though by the International treaty of 1763, the English colonial possessions ceased at the Mississippi, the unexplored country west of that river having been ceded to Spain. This last adjustment, therefore, still left Virginia claimant of the strip to the Mississippi, embracing the southern half of Ohio and the section of Pennsylvania then in dispute. The Virginians had protested against the Quebec act of 1763 and now came a more vigorous dissent to the second Quebec act, which passed Parliament in June, 1774. This act, so obnoxious to the colonists in general and Virginia in particular, an act which drew forth in Parliament one of the most famous invectives of the Earl of Chatham, who pronounced it "cruel, oppressive and odious" and "calculated to finally lose his Majesty the hearts of all Americans," provided a government For the Province of Quebec, embracing the domain west
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and north of the Ohio, known later as the Northwest Territory, thereby virtually extending the ancient limits of Canada.
The act of 1774 sanctioned therein the Catholic religion and the administration of the French civil law. This arbitrary and-to the American colonists- offensive jurisdiction covered the scattered western traders' posts and more firmly than ever excluded any control over it or interest in it by the sea-board colonies. The Virginians had stronger designs on this territoy than the Pennsylvanians, for the former sought not only unrestricted trading privileges therein, but also, what was more detrimental to the Indians, rights of settlement. The Pennsylvanians desired that the Indians be left in undisputed and undisturbed posses- sion of the trans-Ohio empire, to the end that the fur trade, extensive and lucrative to Quaker provincials, might be undiminished. Hence the interests of the two adjoining provinces, east and south of the Ohio, were adverse, and Pennsylvania, naturally more peace- able in the character of her people, allowed the pugna- cious Virginian to enter the fight practically unaided.
Another element now comes into the play in the current of events and influences the actions of Lord Dunmore. The rumblings of the approaching Ameri- can Revolution began to reverberate in the valleys of Virginia. The week before Christmas (1773) the Boston patriots, disguised as Indians had boarded the importing ships and cast the chests of taxable tea into the sea. It was the fuse that exploded the mine Exciting events rapidly followed. Parliament passer the Boston Port Bill, by which the town and harbo
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of Boston were to be closed to foreign commerce on and after June I (1774).
When the news of this odious act of Parliament reached Williamsburg, the Virginia House of Burgesses, among the members of which were George Washington, Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson, aroused to indig- nation over the oppression of the mother country, adopted a resolution of protest and designated the first of June as a day of fasting, prayer and humilia- tion, because of the heavy calamity threatening their colonial rights. On learning of this independent action, Lord Dunmore summoned the Burgesses in the Council Chamber where, says Irving, he made the following laconic speech: "Mr. Speaker and gentlemen of the House of Burgesses; I have in my hand a paper, pub- lished by order of your House, conceived in such terms as reflect highly upon His Majesty and the Parliament of Great Britain, which makes it necessary for me to dissolve you and you are dissolved accordingly." It was the end of the meetings of the House of Burgesses, as such, though many of the members met the next day, as Virginians, to take measures looking to the convening of a general congress of the colonies.
This high-handed action of Governor Dunmore was in accordance with his character and official policy. Born as John Murray in Scotland in 1732, he was a descend- ant in the female line from the royal House of Stuart, the blood of the luxurious and imperious Charleses ran in his veins and he was a Tory of the Tories. He had been prominent in the House of Lords and was married to Lady Charlotte Stuart, who was closely related to many of the families of English nobility. In 1770 he
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was appointed colonial governor of New York, and two years later became the last colonial governor of Virginia. He naturally elected to stand loyally by his king in the clash between the Crown and the colonies.
But the dissolution of the House of Burgesses and the reprimand given its members did not deter the governor in his preparation for the war against the Ohio Indians and his efforts were not relaxed. Lord Dunmore held his allegiance as first due his king but he was also "eager to champion the cause of Virginia as against either the Indians or her sister colonies." The Burgesses early in May had authorized the gover- nor to enter upon this hostile expedition across the Ohio and spite of his position concerning the attitude of the colony respecting the acts of Parliament, the Virginians rallied vigorously to Dunmore's call for troops. The Virginians saw the clouds gathering in the east, but another storm in the west was howling over their frontier.
The militia system then in vogue in the colony, as may be learned from Jefferson's Virginia notes, pro- vided that in each county there should be a chief military officer, known as the County-Lieutenant, who should enroll the militia enlistments and have general supervision thereof. Below him in rank was a colonel, then a lieutenant-colonel, and lastly a major. A regi- ment consisted of five hundred men, or ten companies of fifty men each with the usual officers of captain, lieutenant, ensign and sergeants. In August the din of preparation for the coming campaign resounded throughout Virginia. An army for offensive operations was called for. Dunmore directed that this army
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should consist of volunteers and militiamen, chiefly from the counties west of the Blue Ridge, to be organ- ized into two divisions. The northern division, em- bracing the troops collected in Frederick, Dunmore (now Shenandoah) and adjacent counties, was to be commanded by Lord Dunmore in person; the southern division, comprising the companies raised in Botetourt, Augusta and adjoining counties east of the Blue Ridge was to be led by Colonel Andrew Lewis. The two armies were to number about fifteen hundred each; were to proceed by different routes, unite at the mouth of the Big Kanawha, and from thence cross the Ohio and penetrate the northwest country to the center of the Indian settlements, defeat the redmen and destroy their villages.
In the recital of the events to follow we draw for our authority from the "American Archives," "Thwaite's Documentary History of Dunmore's War," "History of the Battle of Point Pleasant," by Virgil A. Lewis, State Historian for West Virginia, "The Battle of Point Pleasant" by Mrs. Livia Nye Simpson Poffen- berger, Editor State Gazette, Point Pleasant, West Virginia, and notes taken by the writer during a per- sonal study of routes followed by the two armies in the campaign.
Lord Dunmore established his headquarters at "Greenway Court," the home of Lord Thomas Fair- fax in the Lower Shenandoah Valley. Here more than a thousand men were enlisted and formed into two regiments, one, known as the "Frederick County Regiment," under Colonel Adam Stephen, who had seen service under McDonald, Braddock, Forbes and
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Washington. By the last of August the Dunmore division began its march for the west, both regiments proceeding to Redstone, on the Monongahela, where they separated, Stephen's regiment, with the beef cattle, crossing the country to Wheeling, at the same time Crawford's men, accompanied by Lord Dunmore, marched to Pittsburg, where they were joined by the "West Augusta Battalion" of two hundred men under command of Major John Connolly.
Before departing from Pittsburg, Dunmore and his officers held conferences with some of the envoys of the Six Nations and of the Ohio tribes. Among the chiefs participating were, King Custaloga, Captain White Eyes, and Captain Pipe of the Delawares; Captain Pluggy and Big Apple Tree of the Mohawks; many speeches were made as reported in the American Archives; the Six Nations had sent representatives to the Ohio Shawnees in the endeavor to bring about a peace understanding and prevent the impending war between the Cornstalk Confederacy and the Virginians, but the efforts were in vain and Dunmore embarking from Pittsburg with some seven hundred men descended the Ohio in boats to Wheeling, whence the whole army, thirteen hundred strong, one hundred additional men having been received at Wheeling, in a flotilla of a hundred canoes, besides keel boats and pirogues, with George Rogers Clark, Michael Cresap, Simon Kenton and Simon Girty, as scouts and guides, moved down the river to the mouth of the Hockhocking River; a river so-called because signifying a bottle; the Shaw- nees have it, Wea-tha-kagh-qua-sepe, meaning "bottle river;" a further explanation is made by a writer in
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the American Pioneer (1842) who states it was learned from Big Cat, a Delaware Indian, that Hock-hock-ing signifies in the Indian tongue, a bottle or jug, or a gourd canteen, or any such vessel used for holding liquids, but properly a bottle. About six or seven miles northwest of Lancaster, there is a fall in the Hockhocking of about twenty feet; above the fall, for a short distance, the creek is very narrow and straight, forming a neck, while at the falls it suddenly widens on each side and swells into the appearance of the body of a bottle. The whole, when seen from above, appears exactly in the shape of a bottle with a long, narrow neck, from which the water gushes; and from this fact the Indians called the creek Hockhock- ing-or nearer to the Indian pronunciation, "Hockin- Hockin."
At this point-mouth of the Hockhocking-present site of Hockingport, a stockade was built, called Fort Gower, after Earl Gower, a personal friend of Dunmore in the British House of Lords. Dunmore left a garrison of one hundred men to care for Fort Gower and on October 11th, with White Eyes, the Delaware chief as an extra guide, resumed the line of march up the Hockhocking Valley, which he followed by way of the present town of Athens, thence to where the town of Logan now stands; from this point he struck a little south of west to the Pickaway Plains. It was now the middle of October and meantime events of intense interest and greatest import were transpiring in the Kanawha Valley of Virginia. .
We revert to the other division of Dunmore's army, the left wing or southern division under Colonel
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Andrew Lewis. This contingent was concentrated at "Camp Union," so designated because the troops were there to be united; it was on the Savannah or Big Levels about seven miles from White Sulphur Springs, on the site of the present town of Lewisburg, Green- brier County.
Andrew Lewis was well chosen for the part he was destined to direct in the stirring scenes before him for he was born in Ireland in 1720 and came with his father and brothers to Virginia in 1731. He had the temper and fighting qualities of his race to which was added the severe discipline of frontier life. In 1742 he was appointed captain of militia and ten years later colonel for his county, Augusta. He was with Washington at Fort Necessity, where he was wounded; we have already met him upon the disastrous Sandy Creek expedition (1756); he was also in Forbes army, in the Duquesne campaign and rendered conspicuous service for the British in the French and Indian War. He was appointed by the governor, commissioner to represent Virginia at the Treaty of Fort Stanwix, and acted in a similar capacity at the Treaty of Lochaber with the Cherokees. Washington, who knew Lewis well, had the highest regard for his military talent, his sterling character and unflinching courage.
Promptly on receiving orders from Dunmore, Colonel Lewis set in motion the activities for volunteer enlist- ments. Speedily the companies began to report at Camp Union, the place of rendezvous. These moun- taineer militiamen little reckoned what an historic experience was to be theirs. Every man was enrolling his name on a never to be forgotten scroll. From the
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valleys, hillsides and forest depths of the counties of Augusta, Botetourt and Fincastle there came the backwoods heroes, truly, says Mr. Virgil A. Lewis, "this army was the most remarkable body of men that had ever assembled on the American frontier." The Augusta County regiment was commanded by Colonel Charles Lewis, younger brother of General Andrew Lewis; this regiment numbering some four hundred, consisted of eleven companies, among the captains of which was John Lewis, son of Thomas Lewis, nephew of General Andrew and of Colonel Charles Lewis; the Botetourt regiment numbered four hundred and fifty men, under Colonel William Fleming, divided into eight companies, one being captained by John Stuart, whose "Narrative" of this campaign, written many years later, is one of the classic authorities relating to the subject; the Fincastle battalion, numbering three hundred and fifty men, was led by Colonel William Christian; in addition there were four independent companies, aggregating one hundred and fifty men, known respectively as the Culpepper Minute men, under Colonel John Field; the Dunmore County Volun- teers, Captain Thomas Slaughter; the Bedford County Riflemen, Captain Thomas Buford and the Kentucky Pioneers, Captain James Harrod.
It was a motley gathering, that, on the Levels of Greenbrier in those August days. They were not the King's regulars, nor trained troops; they were not knights in burnished steel on prancing steeds; they were not cavaliers' sons from baronial halls; they were not drilled martinets; they were, however, determined, dauntless men, sturdy and weather-beaten as the
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mountain sides whence they came. Among these back- woods braves were many who had accompanied Bou- quet in his march to the Ohio towns; some had been with Washington in his discomfiture at Fort Necessity; some with Braddock in the Monongahela defeat; some with Forbes at the victory of Fort Duquesne; and still others with McDonald in the Wakatomica campaign. Roosevelt remarks "it may be doubted if a braver or physically finer set of men ever will get together on this continent," Virgil Lewis says "this army was not uniformed as such; a few of the officers on Colonial establishment, wore the regular military uniform, but far the greater number wore the individual costume of the Border; they were clad in the hunting-shirt with leather leggings; breeches of domestic make; and caps made from the skins of wild animals or knit from wool; each carried the long flint-lock rifle, or English muskets, with bullet pouches and quaintly carved powder horns, with tomahawks and butcher knife." They were undrilled in the arts of scientific warfare but were in physical power and patient endurance, unsurpassed, for they had been reared amid the open freedom and hardi- hood of backwood's life. Every man in one company of the Augusta troops was said to measure above six feet in his moccasins.
It was on September 8th, the cattle being corralled, the pack-horses laden, that the advance companies fell into line and began the march of over one hundred miles to the juncture of the Elk River with the Kana- wha,-or New River as it was also called-present site of Charleston, W. Va. It was a tedious push of two weeks time through forests, over rugged improvised
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roads, along streams and up and down steep elevations. They marched in long files through the "deep and gloomy wood," with scouts thrown out in front or on the flanks, to guard against surprise from Indians, who lurked throughout the woods, while axemen went in advance to clear a roadway over which they could drive the beef cattle and the pack-horses.
On the 21st, September, Colonel Fleming wrote in his daily account that they passed the "divide," when the valley began "to widen, the tulip, pawpaw, with leather wood and pea-vine and buffalo grass made their appearance, then appeared the sweet gum; and then the Great Kanawha, two hundred yards wide, made its appearance." Here they halted and built dug-out canoes or pirogues for the baggage transporta- tion upon the river, sixty miles to the Kanawha point. A portion of the army proceeded down along the banks of the Kanawha, while another section filed through the Indian trail, which followed the base of the hills, instead of the river bank, as it was thus easier to cross the heads of creeks and ravines.
On October 6th, their long and weary tramp was ended and the foot-sore troops of this quaint army-all except the contingent under Colonel Christian, which was delayed at the start and arrived later-encamped on Point Pleasant, the high triangular nose of land, jutting out on the north side of the Kanawha, where it empties into the Ohio. It was indeed a Point Pleasant; Mr. Virgil Lewis, in his History of West Virginia, portrays it with an artist's pen: "The site upon which the Virginia army encamped was one of awe-inspiring grandeur. Here were seen hills, valleys,
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plains and promontories, all covered with gigantic forests, the growth of centuries, standing in their native majesty unsubdued by the hand of man, wearing the livery of the season, and raising aloft in mid-air their venerable trunks and branches, as if to defy the lightning of the sky and the fury of the whirlwind. The broad reach of the Ohio closely resembled a lake with the mouth of the Kanawha as an arm or estuary, and both were, at that season of the year, so placid as scarcely to present motion to the eye. Over all, nature reigned supreme. There were no marks of industry, nor of the exercise of those arts which minister to the comforts and conveniences of man. Here nature had for ages held undisputed sway over an empire inhabited only by the enemies of civilization."
This was the point at which General Lewis expected to meet the division of Dunmore but he was keenly disappointed. Dunmore, as we have seen, was far away in the Ohio interior, he had changed his plans of operation. On the 9th, October, messengers, one of whom was Simon Girty, and the other Simon Kenton, arrived at Lewis's camp bringing the message from Lord Dunmore that bade Lewis cross the Ohio and from Fort Gower march directly to the Pickaway Plains and there join the army of his Lordship. General Lewis, deeply displeased at this change in the plans of campaign, arranged to break camp that he might set out the next day for the Plains, in accordance with the orders of his superior. But the unexpected hap- pened.
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