USA > Ohio > History of Ohio; the rise and progress of an American state, Volume Two > Part 7
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We have followed Lord Dunmore to his entrance upon the Scioto Plains; we have encamped with
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General Lewis at the mouth of the Kanawha, without hindrance or interruption from the Indians, the objects of these warlike demonstrations. But the tribesmen, Argus-eyed and alert, were neither indifferent nor idle. The expedition of McDonald to Wakatomica had given them assurance of the hostile and aggressive intentions of the Virginians. They were well informed as to the vast preparations of Dunmore to invade their Ohio centers, and when, if not before, the columns of the armed pioneers began to move, Cornstalk, commander in chief of the Confederacy, gathered his braves, animated by rage and resentment, to meet the advanc- ing foe. It is claimed that the great chief, realizing the danger of resistance, and the superiority of numbers to be encountered, at first counselled peace rather than war, but the subordinate chiefs and the tribesmen, goaded on by the recent depredations, by the whites, upon their land and the late massacres of numbers of their tribes, were aroused to the greatest warlike ferocity.
Cornstalk summoned the braves from the tribes of the Ohio Confederacy; they were the chosen warriors of the Shawnee, Delaware, Ottawa, Wyandot, Cayuga, Miami, Mingo, and other tribes. Cornstalk's own people, the fierce Shawnees, were the most numerous and his mainstay; he was aided by some of the most famous and most skilled war leaders of his race; Elenip- sico, Cornstalk's son; Red Hawk, the Delaware chief; Scrappathus, the Mingo; Chiywee, the Wyandot; the Shawnees Black Hoof, Red Eagle, Blue Jacket, Packi- shenoah, the father of Tecumseh and the latter's son Cheeskau, elder brother of Tecumseh.
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The force of Cornstalk numbered some twelve hundred in number, practically man for man as to the army of Lewis. Every movement of each army, that of Dunmore and that of Lewis, had been stealthily watched by Cornstalk's scouts, "from the peaks of the Alleghanies, and the highlands along the Great Kanawha," and tidings of the advance of Dunmore to the Pickaway Plains and the march of Lewis to Point Pleasant promptly reached the council house of Cornstalk, in the valley of the Scioto. The king-chief had the craft of his race and the tact of a Napoleon. He saw the army of his enemy divided; Lewis is at Kanawha, Dunmore approaching the Scioto. If Lewis's division could be surprised and overwhelmed, the defeat of Dunmore would easily follow.
So Cornstalk, "mighty in battle and swift to carry out what he had planned, led his long file of warriors with noiseless speed, through leagues of tractless wood- lands to the banks of the Ohio." All day long that Sunday-October ninth-with catlike tread, the war painted savages moved toward the Ohio, and after sundown, halted in the dense forest in the valley of Campaign Creek, now the present site of Addison, Gallia County, Ohio. Here some eighty rafts had been previously prepared, others were quickly impro- vised and under cover of night, without a breath of noise, the hundreds of warriors began crossing the river and before morning all had been ferried to the southern bank at the location of "Old Shawnee Town," an old settlement of the Shawnees, distant about three miles above Point Pleasant. The path from their place of landing to Lewis' camp lay through a wild jungle of
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·hick underbrush, fallen trees and dense forest, which inder darkness of night concealed the snakelike advance of their columns. Before break of day they rested almost in sight of the enemy's camp and prepared for the attack. That same Sunday night that Cornstalk crossed the Ohio and that Girty bore the message of Dunmore to Lewis, the outposts of the latter reported hat there were no Indians within fifteen miles of the Point Pleasant encampment. The Virginians slept n supposed peaceful security.
Early on the morning of the tenth, before the sun nad peeped over the Virginia hills, two soldiers-some ay, James Robinson and Valentine Sevier, or, others ay, Joseph Hughey and James Mooney, perhaps the our-left the camp of Lewis and crept up the Ohio River bank in quest of game. When they had pro- :eeded about two miles they unexpectedly came in ight of the Indian force moving rapidly into position or the advance. The discovered savages fired upon he hunters, who fled back to communicate the intelli- ;ence that they had seen a "body of the enemy covering our acres of ground as closely as they could stand by he side of each other."
General Lewis received the news like the well sea- oned Indian fighter that he was and lighting a pipe, t is reported, coolly ordered the troops in battle array nd in the gray of early dawn, they hastily unrolled rom the blankets that had wrapped them for the night nd sprang into line.
Colonel Charles Lewis with several companies was lirected to move toward the right in the direction of Crooked Creek. Colonel Fleming, with other com-
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THE RISE AND PROGRESS
panies, was instructed to proceed to the left up the Ohio. Lewis's force met the left of Cornstalk's column about half a mile from the Virginians' camp. Fleming's command found the Indian right flank at a greater distance up the Ohio Bank. Cornstalk's line of advance was more than a mile in front stretch, so drawn as to cut diagonally across the river point. By this tactic he had calculated upon pocketing General Lewis on the corner of the bluff between the Ohio and the Kana- wha. The first shock of the onslaught was favorable of the foe. Colonel Charles Lewis made a gallant ad- vance that was met by a furious response. The colonel was mortally wounded at almost the first fire of the enemy. He calmly marched back to the camp and died. His men, many of whom were killed, unable to withstand the superior numbers of the Indians at this point, began to waver and fall back. Colonel Fleming was equally hard pressed in his encounter. He received two balls through his left arm and one through his breast; urging his men on to victorious action he retired to the camp, the main portion of his line giving way.
General Lewis now began to fortify his position by felling timber and forming a breastwork before his camp. The fight was soon general, and extended the full front of the opposing armies. What a strange and awful scene was presented; one of mingled picturesque beauty and ghastly carnage on that October Monday morning. A host of forest savages, "a thousand painted and plumed warriors, the pick of the young men of the western tribes, the most daring braves between the Ohio and the great lakes" their brown
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athletic and agile bodies decked in the gay and rich trappings of war; their raven black hair tossed like netted manes in the fray as with glowering eyes and tense muscles they leaped through the brush and stood face to face with the white foe, the latter rigid with firm resolution and unwincing courage, fighters typical of the frontier; a primitive army equal in numbers to their assailants, heroes in homespun, and backwoods- men in buckskin, clothed in fringed leather hunting shirts and coarse woolen leggings of every color; they wore skin and fur caps, and slung over their shoulders were the straps of the shot-bag and the strings of the powder horn. Each, like his barbaric antagonist, car- ried his flint lock, his tomahawk and his gleaming scalp-knife. For that tragic tableau, quaint and dramatic, nature never made a more magnificent or peaceful setting. The hostile lines grappled in deadly conflict on the peak of land elevated by precipitate banks high above the Ohio, which swept by in majestic width, joined by the Kanawha that noiselessly crept its way amid a forest and hill-framed valley. The Ohio heights fretted the sky to the west, and the Virginia Mountains in the near eastern background were resplendent in the gorgeous drapery of early autumn. It was a landscape upon which nature had lavished her most luxuriant charms. It was a picture for the painter and the poet rather than the cold chronicler of history. No event in American annals surpasses this in the mingling of natural beauty and human violence. The brutal savage and the implac- able Anglo-Saxon were to exchange lives by gory combat in the irrepressible conflict between their races.
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It was nearly noon and the action was "extremely hot," says a participant. The Indians, who had pushed within the right line of the Virginians, were gradually forced to give way; the dense underwood, many steep banks and fallen timber favored their gradual retreat. They were stubbornly but slowly yielding their ground, concealing their losses as best they could by throwing their dead in the Ohio, and carrying off their wounded. The incessant rattle of the rifles; the shouts of the Virginians, and the war whoops of the redmen made the woods resound with the "blast of war." The groans of the wounded and the moans of the dying added sad cadence to the clash of arms. At intervals, amid the din, Cornstalk's stentorian voice could be heard as in his native tongue he shouted cheer and courage to his faltering men, and bade them "be strong, be strong." But their desperate effort did not avail, though exerted to the utmost.
No more bitter or fierce contest in Indian warfare is recorded. The hostile lines though a mile and a quarter in length were so close together, being at no point more than twenty yards apart, that many of the com- batants grappled in hand-to-hand fighting, and toma- hawked or stabbed each other to death. The battle was a succession of single combats, each man sheltering himself behind a stump or rock, or tree-trunk. The superiority of the backwoodsmen in the use of rifles- they were dead shots, those Virginia mountaineers- was offset by the agility of the Indians in the art of hiding and dodging from harm. After noon the action in a small degree abated. The slow retreat of the Indians gave them an advantageous resting spot from
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whence it appeared difficult to dislodge them. They sus- tained an "equal weight of action from wing to wing."
Seeing the unremitting obstinacy of the foe, and fearing the final result if they were not beaten before night, General Lewis, late in the afternoon, directed Captains Shelby, Mathews and Stuart with their companies to steal their way under cover of the thick and high growth of weeds and bushes up the bank of the Kanawha and along the edge of Crooked Creek until they should get behind the flank of the enemy, when they were to emerge from their covert, move downward towards the river point, and attack the Indians from the rear.
The strategic maneuver thus planned was promptly and adroitly executed and turned the tide in favor of the colonial soldiers. The Indians finding themselves suddenly and unexpectedly encompassed between two armies and believing that the force appearing in the rear was the reinforcement from Colonel Christian's delayed troops, they were discouraged and dismayed, and began to give way. The appearance of troops in the rear of the Indians at once prevented the continu- ance of Cornstalk's scheme of fighting, namely, that of alternately attacking and retreating, particularly with his center, thus often exposing the advancing front of the Virginians to the mercy of the Indian flanks. The skirmishing continued during the after- noon, the Indians, though at bay, making a show at bravado. But their strength was spent, and at the close of the day under the veil of darkness they noise- essly and precipitately retreated across the Ohio and started for the Scioto towns.
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The battle of Point Pleasant was won. "Such a battle with the Indians, it is imagined, was never heard of before," says the writer of a letter printed in the government reports. But the day was dearly bought. The Americans lost a fifth of their number, some seventy-five being killed or fatally wounded, and one hundred and forty-seven severely or slightly wounded. Among the slain were some of the bravest Virginian officers, including Colonel Charles Lewis, Major John Field, Captains John Murray, James Ward, Samuel Wilson, and Robert McClannahan; and Lieutenants Hugh Allen and Jonathan Cundiff. The Indian loss was never definitely known for they cunningly carried off or concealed most of their killed, and secretly cared for their wounded. They lost probably only half as many as the whites. About forty warriors were known to be killed outright, or to have died of their wounds. Of the number of wounded no estimate could be made. Kercheval, the Virginian historian, who wrote his account of the battle from the reports of participants, puts the Indian loss in killed and wounded at three hundred, which is probably too great. While the Virginians lost many officers, strangely enough among the Indians no chief of importance was slain, except Packinshenoah or Pukeesheno, the Shaw- nee chief, and father of Tecumseh. No "official report" of this battle was made, or if so, probably not preserved.
The battle of Point Pleasant was the most extensive, the most bitterly contested, and fought with the most potent results of any Indian battle in American history. At the time it occurred it aroused world-wide interest. Not only English papers in the mother country but
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French and German newspapers on the continent published extended articles descriptive of the battle. It was purely a frontier encounter. The whites were Virginia Volunteers. The savages, the picked fighters of their tribes, led by their greatest warriors, were unaided by even a single white man. The significance of the battle was many fold and far-reaching. It was the last battle fought by the colonists while subjects under British rule.
The present writer in a monograph, published some ten years ago, assented to the claim that this was the first battle of the American Revolution, a claim that has led to much dispute and discussion. Our grounds for that view were that in this frontier contest the Virginians were fighting against the Indians, not merely from retaliatory motives, but in defiance of the Quebec Act, for they were proposing to invade the British royal domain-the Ohio country-then part of the province of Quebec, and attack the Ohio Indians who were the protected wards of England and consequently allies of Parliamentary power. Moreover did not the Virginians have for their ulterior result the privilege of settling across the Ohio in a territory they claimed to be part of their colony? In brief were they not as Virginians contending for colonial rights against the mother country? The unjust and usurping features of the Quebec Act were cause for one of the clauses of the Declaration of Independence. It is claimed, on the other hand, by many distinguished authorities that Dunmore, perhaps with, perhaps without, the conni- vance of the British powers, seeing the possible out- break of the Revolution, concocted this campaign in
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order to lead the Virginians into the horrors of an Indian warfare in order that the colonists might awake to the fact that in case of a rebellion they would have to meet the savage hordes of the Northwest, and such a contingency was calculated to deter them from taking steps toward independence.
The literature on this subject is extensive and con- fusing. One side is represented by Brantz Mayer in his volume on Logan and Cresap, wherein he says: "It was probably Lord Dunmore's desire to incite a war which would arouse and band the savages of the west, so that in the anticipated struggle with the united colonies the British home-interest might ulti- mately avail itself of these children of the forest as ferocious and formidable allies in the onslaught on the Americans." To this Roosevelt in his "Winning of the West," replies: "The war was of the greatest advan- tage to the American cause; for it kept the north- western Indians off our hands for the first two years of the Revolutionary struggle; and had Lord Dunmore been the farseeing and malignant that this theory supposes, it would have been impossible for him not also to foresee that such a result was absolutely inevi- table. There is no reason whatever to suppose that he was not doing his best for the Virginians; he deserved their gratitude; and he got it for the time being. The accusations of treachery against him were after- thoughts, and must be set down to mere vulgar rancor unless, at least, some faint shadow of proof is advanced.'
To our mind Roosevelt states the better argument the Janus-face theory concerning Dunmore, in the light of all surrounding circumstances, appears ridicu
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lous and puerile. Lord Dunmore may have been capable of duplicity, but he was not a simpleton. Whatever the understanding may have been between Lord Dunmore and the royal authorities, or between the Indians and the British powers, or whether there was any explicit understanding at all, in either case, that battle represented the initial bloodshed between the allies of the British and the colonial dependents. Had Cornstalk been the conqueror in that battle, the whole course of subsequent American history might have been different. It is difficult to believe that the colonists would have been stunned to inaction by the blow of defeat at Point Pleasant and the further fear of an extended and horrible warfare on their western borders, but in the event of Cornstalk's success it is more than likely that the Ohio northwest country would have remained the great western province of the British power and the United States would have been restricted to the domain east of the Alleghanies. Such is the view of Hinsdale in the "Old Northwest" and Roosevelt in the "Winning of the West."
"This battle," says Colonel John Stuart, in his histor- cal memoir, "was, in fact, the beginning of the revolu- ionary war, that obtained for our country the liberty ind independence enjoyed by the United States-and hi good presage of future success; for it is well known hat the Indians were influenced by the British to ommence the war to terrify and confound the people, before they commenced hostilities themselves the fol- owing year at Lexington. It was thought by British oliticians, that to excite an Indian war would prevent combination of the colonies for opposing parliamen-
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tary measures to tax the Americans. The blood, therefore, spilt upon this memorable battlefield, will long be remembered by the good people of Virginia and the United States with gratitude."
Virgil A. Lewis, says in his History of West Virginia, "To the student of history no truth is more patent than this, that the battle of Point Pleasant was the first in the series of the Revolution, the flames of which were then being kindled by the oppression of the mother country, and the resistance of the same by the feeble but determined colonies. It is a well known fact that emissaries of Great Britain were then inciting the Indians to hostilities against the frontier for the purpose of distracting attention and thus preventing the consummation of the union which was then being formed to resist the tyranny of their armed oppressors. It is also well known that Lord Dunmore was an enemy to the colonists, by his rigid adherence to the royal cause and his efforts to induce the Indians to cooperate with the English, and thus assist in reducing Virginia to subjection. It has been asserted that he intention- ally delayed the progress of the left wing of the army that the right might be destroyed at Point Pleasant. Then, at the mouth of the Great Kanawha River, on the 10th day of October, 1774, there went whizzing through the forest the first volley of a struggle for liberty which, in the grandeur and importance of its results, stands without a parallel in the history of the world. On that day the soil on which Point Pleasant now stands drank the first blood, shed in defence of American liberty, and it was there decided that the decaying institutions of the Middle Ages should not
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prevail in America, but that just laws and priceless liberty should be planted forever in the domains of the New World. Historians, becoming engrossed with the more stirring scenes of the Revolution, have failed to consider this sanguinary battle in its true import and bearing upon the destiny of our country, forgetting that the colonial army returned home only to enlist in the patriot army, and on almost every battlefield of the Revolution represented that little band who stood face to face with the savage allies of Great Britain at Point Pleasant."
And finally we cite Mr. Bancroft, who in his History of the United States, speaking of the victory won at the battle of Point Pleasant, thus remarks: "The results inured exclusively to the benefit of America. The Indians desired peace; the rancor of the white people changed to confidence. The royal Governor of Vir- ginia and the Virginian army in the valley of the Scioto nullified the act of Parliament which extended the province of Quebec to the Ohio, and in the name of the King of Great Britain triumphantly maintained for Virginia the western and northwestern jurisdiction which she claimed as her chartered right."
The fate of the Northwest Territory was at stake in that battle though no British soldier participated therein. Surely America has no more historic soil than the ground of the Kanawha and Ohio point- reddened that October day by the blood of savage warriors and frontier woodsmen. The battle of Point Pleasant, as might easily be imagined, inspired many a poetic mind and several rhyming accounts of the event were produced, some by poetasters who partici-
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pated in the contest; as a sample we give a few stanzas from one preserved in the Draper manuscripts :
Brave Lewis our Colonel, an officer bold, At the mouth of Kanawha did the Shawnees behold. On the tenth of October, at the rising sun The armies did meet and the battle begun.
One thousand, one hundred we had on Ohio, Two thirds of this number to the battle did go, The Shawnees nine hundred, some say many more, We formed our battle on the Ohio shore.
Like thunder from heaven our rifles did roar, Till twelve of the clock, or perhaps something more, And during this time the Shawnees did fly, Whilst many a brave man on the ground there did lie.
From twelve until sunset some shots there did fly, By this kind of fighting great numbers did die, But night coming on, the poor Shawnees did yield, Being no longer able to maintain the field.
Forty brave men on the ground there did lie, Besides forty more of our wounded did die, Killed and wounded on the Ohio shore, Was one hundred and forty and perhaps something more.
What the Shawnees did lose we never did hear, The bodies of twenty did only appear, Into the Ohio the rest they did throw, The just number of which we never did know.
Cornstalk's warriors, dejected over the signal success of the "Long Knives," began their retreat, the long, wearisome march of eighty miles, through the lonely wilderness to their towns on the Pickaway Plains. There the conquered but unsubdued chief called a council of his people to consult on what was to be done. He upbraided the other chiefs for their folly in not accepting his previous advice to make peace and avoid
THE PICKAWAY PLAINS
Map of the Darby and Pickaway Plains, scene of Dun- more's encampment; the "Reconciliation" treaty; site of Logan's home, Cornstalk's Town and the Grenadier Squaw's Town, and present City of Circleville.
Darby Plains
Circleville
Logan' Cabin
Pold Chillicothe
RIVER
Creek
Camp Charlotte
Scippo
Grenadier Squaws Town
Pickaway
Plains
Congo Cr 40
. Lewis meets Dunmore
F Col Lewis
Camp
ns
ne
01
Hyh Lands
Cornstalks Town
THE RISE AND PROGRESS
wple we give a few stanzus ДИЈАЛЯ КАМАНІЯ АНТ manuscripts :
wel che I affle begun.
Cel we bad on Ohio, hor to the battle did go, ho red, some say many more, ilo Ohio shore.
lane ous rifles did roar, or perhaps something more, Te Le Ricer did fly, mo vo the ground there did lie
de shots there did fly, M Viers &thương Linkt numbers did die, Todas on the noor Showes did yield,
Jud la soothing mo
Camalli wanmuy denned over the signal succe kun, " bon theo retreat, the loneli bank imgin nik, drrough the lonely -- -- the Pickaway Plain Der To sonuna Int subdued chief called. concludo the wu cograh ou what was to be don de odes shlefe for their folly in no advice to make peace and avoid
"Darby Plains
Circleville
High Lands
Logan's Cabin
RIVER
Creek
Camp Charlotte
SCIOTO
Grenadier Squaws Town
Pickaway
Plains
Congo Cr 40
· Lewis meets Dunmore
Col. Lewis Camp
Old Chillicothe
Cornstalks Town
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