History of Van Wert and Mercer counties, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers, Part 7

Author: Sutton, R., & Co., Wapakoneta, Ohio, pub
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Wapakoneta, Ohio : R. Sutton
Number of Pages: 878

USA > Ohio > Mercer County > History of Van Wert and Mercer counties, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers > Part 7
USA > Ohio > Van Wert County > History of Van Wert and Mercer counties, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers > Part 7

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SUBSEQUENT MILITARY MOVEMENTS UPON OHIO SOIL.

For the purpose of subjugating the hostile Wyandots, Delawares, and Shawunese, who were unreconciled to English rule, and who had outraged humanity by their brutality towards the frontier settlers, having bar- barously murdered many of them and carried their wives and children into captivity, General Gage, commander-in-chief of the British troops in North America, decided, in 1764, to organize two armies, to be com- manded respectively by Colonels Bradstreet and Bouquet.

COLONEL BRADSTREET'S EXPEDITION.

In pursuance of this purpose Colonel Bradstreet, with a force of twelve hundred men, in August, sailed up Lake Erie, by way of Sandusky Bay, to Detroit, which had been besieged by Pontiac for many months, con- fining the garrison to their ramparts. After relieving Detroit, he returned by way of Sandusky Bay to Niagara. " Israel Putnam, who figures in our Revolutionary history as a Major-General, and as one of the most distinguished men of those " stirring times," served as Major, command- ing a battalion of provincial troops in the Bradstreet expedition.

COLONEL BOUQUET'S EXPEDITION.

Colonel Bouquet's army of fifteen hundred men, composed of two hundred Virginians, seven hundred Pennsylvanians, and six hundred English regulars belonging to the Forty-second and Sixtieth regiments, was organized at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, arrived at "Fort Pitt" Septem- ber 17, and marched from thence for the Upper Muskingum River (now called Tuscarawas) October 3, reaching said stream on the 15th of said month, at a point within the present limits of Tuscarawas County, and proceeded at once to erect a temporary fort. Here (says the historian of the expedition ) " Indian chiefs and warriors of the Senecas, Delawares, Sbawanese, and others, numbering in all nearly fifty, inct Colonel Bou- quet October 17, and sued for peace in the most abject manner. Turtle- Heart, Custaloga, Beaver, and another chief or two, were the speakers, who, in their harangues, vehemently accompanied with wild gesticula- tions, asserted that they had been unable to restrain their young men. who had participated with those of other tribes in the acts of barbarity charged, and generally palliated the conduct of the Indians towards the white settlers." They pledged themselves, however, in conclusion, to restore all captives, which had been previously demanded of them by . Colonel Bouquet, who had doubtless authoritatively charged home upon them their perfidy and cruel barbarities, their violated engagements, their treachery, and brutal murders of traders and frontiersmen, their unfaithfulness to all the promises they had made, their untrustworthy- ness, their baseness generally, concluding with the affirmation that their crimes merited the severest punishment.

We also learn from the official account of the expedition, that, by ar- rangement, Col. Bouquet met them again on the 20th of October, when, after reiterating the charges against them, he notified them that many

of the friends and relatives of those that had been massacred or captured by them, accompanied the expedition, and that they would not consent to a peace with them until full satisfaction was rendered, by the restora- tion of all captives under their control, or by making satisfactory arrange- ments for their return to their homes and friends at the earliest practical period. Moreover, he emphatically impressed upon them that his army would not leave their country until they had fully complied with every condition contained in any treaty or arrangement he would make with them, because their oft-time violated obligations, their repeated acts of perfidy, their general faithlessness, their oft-told falsehoods, their for- feited honor in numerous cases, had rendered them so infamous as to be wholly untrustworthy.

" The temper of the foregoing address," says a writer in the Historical Record, " was such as to extort a promise from those chief's to secure the restoration promptly of all whites held in captivity by their people." And it was then and there agreed that they would meet again in twelve days, at the junction of the Tuscarawas and White-woman (now called Walhonding) rivers, when and where the Indians were to ." surrender all the prisoners now held by them, whether they were men, women, or children; whether they were English, French, African, or American; or whether they were adopted, or married, or living in any other condition among them."

In pursuance of the above agreement, Col. Bouquet, on the 25th of October, reached the " Forks of the Muskingum" (now Coshocton), and then and there made preparation for the reception of the prisoners. The Indians, realizing the necessity of keeping faith with the stern and determined commander of such a large army, brought in, from day to day, numerous captives, so that when the general meeting was finally held, on the 9th of November (being some days later than the time first agreed upon), two hundred and six captives were delivered, and pledges given that about one hundred more, still held by the Shawanese, and whom it was impracticable to have present on so short a notice, would be surrendered during the next spring. Hostages were taken for the fulfilment of this part of the arrangement (for it was not a formal treaty ), which (although some of the hostages escaped) secured the delivery of the additional captives, numbering about one hundred, at " Fort Pitt," on the 9th of the following May.

The scene at the surrender of the prisoners, in the midst of this far- of western wilderness, far beyond the limits of the white settlements, was one that human language is too feeble to portray-which the pen of the historian and of the ready writer coukl not adequately describe- which the genius of the painter would utterly fail to present on canvas- which the skill of the renowned sculptor would be unable fully to exhibit in marble, and which could not fail to have stimulated into the most lively exercise all the variety of human passions, and, exceptionally, all the tender and sympathetic feelings of the human heart !

"There were seen," says the aforenamed authority, " fathers and mo- thers recognizing and clasping their once captive little ones ; husbands hung around the newly-recovered wives; brothers and sisters met, after long separation, scarcely able to speak the same language, or to realize that they were children of the same parents! In those interviews there was inexpressible joy and rapture; while in some cases, feelings of a very different character were manifested by looks or language. Many were flying from place to place, making eager inquiries after relatives not found, trembling to receive answers to their questions, distracted with doubts, hopes, and fears; distressed and grieved on obtaining no infor- mation about the friends they sought, and, in some cases, petrified into living monuments of horror and woe on learning their unhappy fate !

" Among the captives brought into camp was a woman with a babe, a few months old, at her breast. One of the Virginia Volunteers soon recognized her as his wife who had been taken by the Indians about six months before. . She was immediately delivered to her happy husband. Hle flew with her to his tent and clothed her and his child with proper apparel. But their joy, after their first transports, was soon checked by the reflection that another dear chill, about two years old, taken captive at the same time with the mother, and separated from her, was still missing, although many children had been brought in. A few days after- wards a number of other prisoners were brought to the camp, among whom were several more children. The woman was sent for, and one,

HISTORY OF VAN WERT AND MERCER COUNTIES, OHIO.

supposed to be hers, was presented to her. At first sight she was uncer- tain, but, viewing the child with great earnestness, she soon recollected ity features, and was so overcome with joy that, literally forgetting her nursing babe, she dropped it from her arms, and, catching up the new- found child, in an cestasy pressed it to her bosom, and, bursting into tears, carried it off, unable to speak for Joy, while the father, taking up the infant its mother had dropped, followed her in no less transport of affection and gratitude."

Albach says that " in many cases strong attachments had grown up between the savages and their captives, so that they were reluctantly surrendered, some even not without tears, accompanied with some token of remembrance."

Colonel Bouquet having accomplished his purposes, broke up his camp at the " Forks of the Muskingum" on the isth day of November, and, after a march of ten days, arrived at " Fort Pitt." His expedition was generally regarded as preeminently successful. His large army of well-equipped soldiers, led by a determined commander, struck terror into the hearts of the savages. They saw that resistance would be vain, and hence readily yielded to the conditions submitted to them. The results secured were the restoration to their friends of more than three hundred captives, a treaty of peace the next year, made with Sir William Johnson at the German Flats, and comparative exemption in the entire Northwest, for about ten years, from the horrors of Indian warfare.

The success of Colonel Bouquet's expedition secured him immediate promotion to a Brigadier-Generalship, and he was also highly compli- mented by the Legislative Assembly of Pennsylvania; also by the House of Burgesses of Virginia, and by his Majesty's Council of the same Colony, as well as by Governor Fauquier.

General Henry Bouquet was a native of Rolle, a small town in the canton of Vaud, Switzerland, near the borders of Lake Geneva. He was born in 1719, and died at Pensacola, Florida, late in the year 1765. IIe was a man of sense and of science, of education, of ability, and talents. Ile was a subordinate in the Forbes expedition against Fort Du Quesne, in 1758. General Bouquet had a command while yet a very young man, in the army of the King of Sardinia, and passed through several of " the memorable and ably-conducted campaigns that monarch sustained against the combined forces of France and Spain."

AN ACT OF THE BRITISH PARLIAMENT.

It may not be generally known, and yet be a fact worth recording, that the British Parliament, in the year 1774, passed an act making the Ohio River the southwestern boundary of Canada, and the Mississippi River its western boundary, thereby attaching the Northwest to the province of Quebec, as it was called, thus placing the territory that now consti- tutes the State of Ohio under the local administration of said province. Some historians give 1766 as the time of the aforesaid parliamentary enactment.

For ten years after the celebrated Bouquet expedition, the settlers on the western frontiers of the colonies of Virginia and Pennsylvania en- joyed comparative immunity from the marauding excursions and mur- derous raids of the western savages, and from the barbarities previously and subsequently practised by the Ohio Indians. That decade of peace, however, may be fairly judged to have been more the wholesome result of the instructive lessons taught by Colonel Bouquet and of his large, well-equipped and formidable army than of the action of the English l'arliament above named (even if said act was passed in 1766), or of any other cause or combination of causes whatever. When the army of the gallant Bouquet started on its long western march, "the wilderness was ringing with the war-whoop of the savage, and the frontiers were red with blood"_when the return march was ordered the signs of the times were anapicious, promising a long season of peace and quietude to the courageous frontiersmen of those "heroic times," and those hopeful indi- rations were, in a good degree, realized during the haleyon years of the succeeding decade.

COLONEL. M'DONALD'S EXPEDITION.

As has been already intimated the ten years that immediately followed the Bouquet expedition (from 1764 to 1774) was a period of comparative peace on both sides of the Ohio River. What might be appropriately

called "a state of war" between the Ohio Indians and the Western fron- tiersmen, did not exist at any time during that decade. It is true some ontrages were perpetrated by the Indians that provoked some acts of retaliation on the part of the whites, daring "those piping times of peace;" but taken all in all, those ten years may be properly styled the haleyon decade of the latter half of the eighteenth century, as between the civilized white men east of the Ohio, and the savage red men west of it.

While, however, it was yet early spring-time, in 1774, rumors of threat- ened horse-stealing raids, and of contemplated hostile visits by the Indians into the frontier settlements, were rife. The border settlers were in a painful state of distrust, of doubt, uncertainty, and apprehen- sion, which culminated in fully arousing the partially smothered hostility mutually cherished by the two hostile races towards each other.

On the 16th of April, 1774, a large canoe, owned by William Butler, a well-known and leading merchant or trailer of Pittsburgh, with a number of white men in it, was attacked by three Indians (supposed Cherokees), while it was floating down the Ohio River, near Wheeling, and one of the men was killed. This outrage soon became known, and was followed at once by wild, but generally believed rumors of further contemplated Indian atrocities. It will readily be seen how news of such an outrage, with the accompanying and probably exaggerated reports, would fall upon the ears of the already highly excited and inflammable frontiersmen, many of whom had, probably, for good cause, been long nursing their hatred of the Indian. The outrage, as might have been expected, was promptly succeeded by retaliation, for it was only a few days thereafter when a number of Indians that were going down the Ohio River in a boat were killed by some white men who alleged the murder of one of Butler's men as the provocation and their justification. It has been often asserted and extensively published, that Captain Michael Cresap, of border and Revolutionary fame, had command of the murderers of these friendly Indians. We do not think the charge clearly established, but whatever may be the fact on that point, it is probable that the atrocity was perpetrated at the instigation of Dr. John Connolly, who was at this time commandant, under Virginia authority, at the " Forks of the Ohio;" the fort at that time being called Fort Dunmore, in honor of the usurping Governor of Virginia. The frontiersmen about Wheeling being generally Virginians and Marylanders, naturally and easily became victims of the malign influence of the artful, designing Connolly, a tool of Dunmore's, who was always ready to do his bidding. Captain Cresap recognized Connolly's authority, and was in correspondence with him. Connolly sent an express to Cresap, which reached him April 21st, informing him "that war was inevitable; that the savages would strike as soon as the season permitted." This message, says Brantz Mayer, was the "signal for open hostilities against the Indians, and resulted in a solemn and formai declaration of war on the 26th of April, and that very night two scalps were brought into camp." Upon the receipt of the letter from Connally, on the 21st, "a council was called at Wheeling, of not only the military there then, but all the neighboring Indian traders were also summoned for consultation on the important occasion, result- ing as above indicated."

The settlers at and in the vicinity of Wheeling, and along the Ohio River, were doubtless inveigled into the commission of hostile acts towards the Indians, by the inflammatory appeals to them by Connolly, whose influence over them was of vicious tendency. He was an ambitious intriguer, a mere instrument in the hands of Dunmore; and the war of 1774 is fairly traceable to a large extent, to his intrigues, exciting ap- peals, and machinations.

Brantz Mayer says that " the day after the declaration of war by fre- sap and his men, under the warning authority of Connolly's message. some canoes filled with Indians were deseried on the river, keeping under cover of the island, to sereen themselves from view. They were imme- diately pursued and overtaken fifteen miles below, at or near the mouth of Captina Creek, where a battle ensued, in which an Indian was taken . prisoner, a few were wounded on both sides, and, perhaps, one slain. On examination, the canoes were found to contain a considerable quantity of ammunition and warlike stores, showing that they were on the war- path' in earnest." Captain Cresap is generally supposed to have come manded the pursuing party, but his biographer, Rev. John J. Jacob,

HISTORY OF VAN WERT AND MERCER COUNTIES, OHIO.

emphatically declares that he was not present. This affair occurred April 27th.

On the 30th of April, a force of twenty or thirty men, led by Captain Daniel Greathouse, went up the Ohio River to the mouth of Yellow Creik, above the present city of Steubenville, and there, accompanied by circumstances of great perfidy and atrocity, murdered ten Indians, some of whomprere the kindred of Logan, the celebrated Mingo chief. This act was the more dastardly because committed against men, women, and children who were known to cherish no hostile purposes toward the whites! After these occurrences, it was manifest to the most hopeful friends of peace that an Indian war was inevitable! As might have been anticipated, the savagey at once furiously took the war-path! Parties of them, with murder in their hearts, scoured the country east of the Ohio River, and made hostile raids into the settlements, and laid them waste! Men, women, and children were murdered and scalped ; the brains of infants were dashed out against the trees, and their bodies were left exposed, to be devoured by birds of prey and by the wild beasts of the forest ! Terror, gloom, excitement, consternation pervaded all the border settlements !

Upon the representations made to Governor Dunmore of outrages that clearly indicated a hostile disposition of the Indians toward the whites and a determination to make war upon them, that functionary promptly commissioned Colonel Angus McDonald, and authorized him to organize the settlers on the Youghiogheny and Monongahela rivers for the de- fence of the frontiers.

Lord Dunmore, knowing Michael Cresap to be a man of courage, en- ergy, and force of character. personally tendered him a captain's commis- sion, with a view to the immediate enlistment of a force of co-operation with the troops rapidly organizing by MeDonald, west of the Alleghenies. Captain Cresap accepted the commission, and entered upon his duties promptly. Such was his popularity, that more than the required com- plement of men were recruited in a very short time, and at once marched to join the command of MeDonald, the ranking officer of the expedition. The combined forees, numbering four hundred men, after a dreary march through the wilderness, rendezvoused at Wheeling, some time in June. The invasion of the country of the Ohio Indians was their pur- pose. In pursuance of their object, they went down the Ohio in boats and canoes to the mouth of the Captina Creek, and from thence they pursued their march to the Indian towns at and near the month of the Wakatomika Creek (now Dresden), a point about equidistant from the present city of Zanesville and the town of Coshocton, both on the Mus- kingum River, Jonathan Zane being the chief pilot of the expe lition.

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About six miles from Wakatomika, a force of forty or fifty Indians, lying in ambush, gave a skirmish, in which two of McDonald's men were killed, and eight or nine wounded, while the Indians lost one or more in killed, and several wounded. When McDonald arrived at the chief Wakatomika town, he found it evacuated, and the whole Indian force were in ambuscade a short distance from it, which being discovered, the Indians sued for peace. A march to the next village, a mile above the first, was effected, and a small skirmish ensued, in which some blood was shed on both sides. The result was the burning of the towns, and the destruction of their corn-fells. There was the usual perfidy on the part of the Indians, and really nothing substantial was accomplished, when the expedition returned to Wheeling, taking with them three chiefs as captives, or hostages, who were sent to Williamsburg, the seat of the colonial government of Virginia. This expedition was designed only to give temporary protection to the frontier settlers, and was preliminary to the Dunmore expedition to the Pickaway Plains, or " Old Chillicothe" towns, near the Scioto, later in the year.

Colonel Angus MeDonald was of Scotch parentage, if he was not him- self a native of the Highlands of Scotland. He lived near Winchester, Frederick County, Virginia, upon, or near, to the possessions carly ac- quired in "the valley," and which was then, and is still, known as "Glengary," name in honor of the ancestral clan to which the ancient McDonalds belonged in the Highlands of Scotland. Some of Colonel MeDonakl's descendants, in the fourth generation, are still living near to, or upon, these domains of the earlier Mc Donalds.

LORD DUNMORE'S WAR.

The summer and early autumn of 1774 resounded with the din of prop- aration of war, in various portions of Virginia, having in view the raising of armies, ostensibly for the purpose of subjugating the hostile Ohio Indians. Governor Dunmore organized an army numbering about fif- teen hundred men, in the northern counties, principally in Frederick. Hampshire, Berkley, and Dunmore (now Shenandoah), which assembled on the banks of the Ohio River, above Wheeling; while, at the same time, by arrangement, General Andrew Lewis raised over a thousand men in the southern counties, for the same purpose, which rendezvoused at Camp Union, on the Greenbriar River. The two armies were to form a junction at the mouth of the Kanawha. Baueroft says "these armies were composed of noble Virginians, who braved danger at the call of a royal governor, and poured out their blood to win the victory for western civilization." Three companies that served in the MeDonald expedition to the Muskingum, immediately upon their return in July, entered the army of Lord Dunmore, and formed a part of the right wing thereof, which was directly under his immediate command. They were com- manded respectively by Captain Michael Cresap, Captain James Wood, and by Captain Daniel Morgan, who all subsequently figured as officers in our Revolutionary war, the last named being the distinguished Gen- eral Morgan of heroic fame, while Captain James Wood reached high military and civil positions, having served as governor of Virginia from 1796 to 1799. Among others of the Dunmore army who afterwards attained to more or less distinction as military commanders, and whose names, to the present time, are " household words" in the West, were Colonel William Crawford, General Simon Kenton, General John Gibson, and General George Rogers Clark. Among those connected with the left wing of the Duumore army, who were then, or subsequently became, lan- orably identified with the history of our country, were its gallant com- mander, General Andrew Lewis; General Isnac Shelby, a lieutenant then, afterwards the " hero of King's Mountain;" Colonel Charles Lewis, who gave up his life for his country on the battle-field of Point Pleasant ; also, Hon. Andrew Moore, who served Virginia many years in both branches of our national legislature, with honor to himself and credit to his State.

The right wing of the Dunmore army reached the Ohio River, by way of " Potomac Gap," about the first of October ; and the left wing, under command of General Lewis, encamped at the mouth of the Kanawha River near the same time, where he soon received a dispatch from Lord Dunmore changing the place of the junction of the two wings of his army to the vicinity of the Indian towns on the Scioto, near the " Picka- way Plains." Meanwhile, Dunmore, with his command, went down the Ohio to the mouth of the flockhocking River, and there baiit - Fort Gower." From thence he marched his army up saut river, through the territory that now constitutes the counties of Athens, Hocking. Fair- field, and portions of Pickaway, and encamped on Sippo Creek, a trib- utary of the Scioto, within a few miles of the Shawanese towns, where he erected some entrenchments, naming his encampment " Camp Char- lotte."

General Lewis intended to start with his command towards the Indian towns on the Scioto on the 10th of October, to join Governor Dunmore, but at sunrise on that day he was unexpectedly attacked by about one thousand chosen warriors, under the command of Cornstalk, the cele- brated Sbawanese chief, who had rallied them at the old Chillicothe town, on the Scioto, near the " Pickaway Plains," to meet the army of General Lewis, and give them battle before the two corps could effect a union. The battle lasted all day, and terminated with the repulse of Cornstalk's warriors, with great slaughter on both sides. It has been generally characterized by historians as " one of the most sanguinary and best fought battles in the annals of Indian warfare in the west.' Seventy-five officers and men of Lewis's arusy were killed, and one hun- dred and forty were wounded. The loss was, probably, equally as great on the part of the In-lians, who retreated during the night.

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History of Van Wert and Mercer counties, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers, Part 7

Author: Sutton, R., & Co., Wapakoneta, Ohio, pub Publication date: 1882 Publisher: Wapakoneta, Ohio : R. Sutton Number of Pages: 878

Author: Sutton, R., & Co., Wapakoneta, Ohio, pub
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Wapakoneta, Ohio : R. Sutton
Number of Pages: 878