History of the city of Columbus, capital of Ohio, Volume I, Part 14

Author: Lee, Alfred Emory, 1838-; W. W. Munsell & Co
Publication date: 1892
Publisher: New York and Chicago : Munsell & Co.
Number of Pages: 1202

USA > Ohio > Franklin County > Columbus > History of the city of Columbus, capital of Ohio, Volume I > Part 14

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

In 1770, or thereabonts, Logan removed to the Mingo town, on the banks of the Ohio, which took his name. He was there when the border troubles of 1774 broke out, and in the councils of his people advised forbearance." The Shawnee chief Cornstalk had sent his own brother only a short time anterior to the Wheel- ing tragedies to escort some Pittsburgh traders. Determined to provoke hostilities, Connolly undertook to seize this friendly Indian, and in the attempt to do so wounded one of his companions.

Further outrages were scarcely necessary to provoke the hostilities desired, but they were not spared. After some hesitation which made the crime deliberate

HISTORY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBUS.

and the more atrocious, the Cresap party, led by Captain Daniel Greathouse, as- cended the river to carry out its meditated designs against the Mingo village. The method of this procedure stamps its perpetrators with the brand of cowardice. The Indian lodges were on the Ohio side of the river, the Greathouse company took its position on the side opposite. Unsuspicious of harm, a party of five men, one or two women and a child, crossed from the lodges, and by direction of Great- house were offered rum. Three of the men became intoxicated ; the others, and the women, on refusing to drink, were shot. The three who were stupefied with liquor were then tomahawked. Only the child, a tender female infant, was spared. Hearing the firing, the Indians at the lodges sent over two men in a canoe to see what was the matter. These were shot as soon they landed. Several more Min- goes then crossed at a point lower down, and were received with a volley which killed most of them. The survivors fled.

Among the victims of this massacre were Logan's brothers and a sister. He vowed vengeance. While he brooded on the unspeakable wrong done him, all the savage impulses of his nature rose within him, and took possession of his soul. From a counselor of peace and a pattern of gentleness, he was transformed into an unrelenting fury. Such was the beginning of the Dunmore War.

Roaming among the white settlements on the upper Monongahela, the en- raged chief, accompanied by eight chosen warriors, soon had his belt dangling with scalps. The Shawnees and all the Mingo bands took the field, recruited by some Delawares, Cherokees and Wyandots, although these tribes refused to take part as such. Soon eries of distress went up all along the border. Connolly and his fellow miscreants had aroused a tempest which they could not allay. At the hands of one of his captives Logan dictated a letter written in gunpowder ink and tied to a war-club. It read :

"CAPTAIN CRESAP :- 20 What did you kill my people on Yellow Creek for? The White people killed my kin at Conestoga a great while ago, and I thought nothing of that. But you killed my kin again, on Yellow Creek, and took my cousin prisoner. Then I thought I must kill too, and I have been three times to war since. But the Indians are not angry - only myself.

CAPTAIN JOHN LOGAN."

The legislature of the Virginia colony being in session, steps were immedi- ately taken to protect the settlements and chastise the Ohio Indians for resenting the outrages they had suffered. A preliminary foray was made into their country by a band of Virginians who assembled at Wheeling, in July, under Colonel Mc- Donald, marched to the Muskingum, and destroyed several villages. This exploit only precipitated a general conflict. To force this to an issue, and crush the In- dians on their own ground, Lord Dunmore, Governor of Virginia, organized an expeditionary army in two divisions, one of which assembled, under his own di - rection, at Fort Pitt, the other at Camp Union, now Lewisburg, in Greenbriar County, Virginia, under General Andrew Lewis. These columns were to unite, under Dunmore, at the mouth of the Big Kanawha, and from thence strike the Shawnees at the center of their power in the Scioto Valley. Lewis's division con . tained three regiments, in all eleven hundred men, mostly hardy woodsmen. One of the regiments was led by Lewis's brother, Colonel Charles Lewis, another by Colonel William Fleming, the third by Colonel John Fields. A fourth was being recruited under Colonel Christian. Fields and the Lewises had served under Braddock.

ADVENT OF THE WHITE MAN.

Christian's regiment not being ready, Lewis set out with the others on the eleventb of September, and was piloted by Captain Mathew Arbuckle, an experi- enced woodsman, through the trackless forest. All the supplies and munitions hud to be borne by pack animals, which clambered with difficulty over the steep un- trodden mountains, and through their narrow defiles. After a toilsome march, the column arrived, about the sixth of October, at the mouth of the Kanawha. Dun- more was not there; he had changed his plans. Having marched up the Potomac to Cumberland, and thence across the mountains to Fort Pitt, he floated his divi- sion in canoes and barges down the Ohio and landed it at the month of the Big Hockhoeking. From this position, which he fortified, and called Fort Gower, he sent to Lewis a command to march across the country and join him near the Pick- away villages.21 Lewis was preparing to eross the river in compliance with this order, when suddenly, on the tenth of October, he was attacked by about a thousand Indians, mostly Shawnees, led by the great chief Cornstalk. This force had descended the Seioto from the Piekaway Plains, shrewdly intending to inter- eept and crush Lewis before he could unite with Dunmore.

The battle raged from early morning until past noon, and did not entirely cease until after sundown. At the first onset the Indians drove baek the regiments under Charles Lewis and Fleming, and advanced from point to point, adroitly availing themselves of the shelter of the trees and logs. Above the din of the rifles Cornstalk's voice was heard calling to his warriors, "be strong ! be strong!" He was seconded, it is said, by Logan, Red Hawk, Ellinipsico, and other celebrated chiefs. By precipitating Fields's regiment upon the Indians while they were driv- ing the other two, Lewis obliged them, in turn, to retire. They drew off sullenly and took up a new line, covered with fallen trees and driftwood, extending across the point from the Ohio to the Kanawha. They held this line stubbornly until dark, and then retreated. Thus ended one of the most skillful and obstinate battles fought with the whites by the Western Indians. It has passed into history as the battle of Point Pleasant. It cost Lewis a loss of seventyfive officers and men killed, and one hundred and forty wounded. Among the killed were Colonels Charles Lewis and Fleming. As the Indians threw many of their dead into the river, and bore off their wounded, their loss is not known.

While Lewis was fighting, Dunmore was advancing up the valley of the Hock- hocking. He followed the river to the point where the town of Logan now stands, then crossed the divide and halted on the banks of Sippo Creek, about seven miles southwest of the present city of Circleville. Here he drew up his forces, in the woods, surrounded his position with parapets and ditches, and gave it, in honor of the young queen of England, the name of Camp Charlotte. As he approached this position, he was met by a white man named Elliott bearing a message from the Shawnees proposing submission, and asking for an interpreter through whom they could communicate. Pursuant to this request, Dunmore appointed Colonel John Gibson, who set out to confer with the chiefs at their lodges.

Meanwhile Lewis brought forward his division and encamped on the banks of Congo Creek, a few miles southwest of Camp Charlotte. He had been reinforced by three hundred men under Colonel William Crawford, and was eager to avenge his Point Pleasant losses. Despite his commander's negative, and the pending ne- gotiations for peace, he was determined to fall upon the Shawnee villages, and was

HISTORY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBUS.

only dissuaded from so doing when Dunmore, going to him in person, drew his sword, and threatened to kill him if he did not obey orders. Incensed at this, Lewis and his men accused Dunmore of intending an alliance with the Indians against the colonists, who were then on the point of revolt against British author- ity. There seems to have been no ground for this accusation. Dunmore was very much disliked by the Virginians, and was the last of their governors by royal appointment. Their prejudices against him were easily excited, and were prob- ably the only real basis for their suspicions. On the other hand he certainly de- serves great credit for having refused to tolerate a useless and perfidious massacre of the Indians after be had begun to treat with them.

The negotiations with the chiefs at Camp Charlotte were conducted with con- siderable formality and caution. Mr. Joseph Sullivant, of Columbus, remembered hearing the occasion described in his boyhood by the famous woodsman, Simon Kenton, who was, at the time of the narration, a guest at the house of Mr. Sulli- vant's father. Kenton claimed to have been an eyewitness of the proceedings at Camp Charlotte. The approach of the Indians to the treaty ground, he stated, was the most imposing sight he ever saw. Over five hundred warriors came rid- ing over the prairie in single file, and full paint, each one's face stained half red and half black. Asked by young Sullivant what this signified, Kenton replied that it meant that the braves were equally for peace and for war, and indifferent as to which should be the outcome. But this was only for effect; they really wanted peace. ??

Apprehensive of treachery, Dunmore permitted not more than eighteen war- riors to enter his enclosures at a time, and these were required to deposit their weapons outside. Chief Cornstalk spoke for his people. Colonel Wilson, of Dun- more's staff, said of this Indian's appearance and oratorical gifts : " When he arose he was no wise confused or dannted, but spoke in a distinct and audible voice, without stammering or repetition, and with peculiar emphasis. His looks while addressing Dunmore were truly grand and majestic, yet graceful and attractive. I have heard many celebrated orators, but never one whose powers of delivery sur- passed those of Cornstalk on this occasion. "

The Mingoes sullenly refused to take any part in the council. Kenton told- Sullivant that their chief, Logan, was not only not present, but not believed to be anywhere near. On the other hand Colonel Gibson declares in an affidavit ap- pended to Jefferson's Notes that while he was conferring with Cornstalk and other chiefs at the Indian lodges, Logan came and took him aside and delivered to him a speech nearly the same as that reported by Jefferson ; and that upon returning to camp the deponent, Gibson, delivered this address to Dunmore.

Writing at Circleville in 1838, Mr. Atwater says: " Though he (Logan) would not attend on Dunmore's council in person, yet, being urged by the Indians, who were anxious to be relieved from Dunmore's army, he sent his speech in a belt of wampum, to be delivered to Earl Dunmore by a faithful interpreter. Un- der an oak on the farm of Mr. Wolf this splendid effort of heart-stirring eloquence was faithfully delivered by the person who carried the wampum. The oak tree under which it was delivered to Lord Dunmore still stands in a field, seven miles from Circleville, in a southern direction. An interpreter delivered it, sentence by sentence, and it was written as it was delivered. Its authenticity is placed beyond

ADVENT OF THE WHITE MAN.

the shadow of a doubt, and it of right belongs, and forever will belong to the His- tory of Ohio. " 23

On the other hand Kenton told Mr. Sullivant that he had never heard of such a speech until months after the treaty. He was positive that no such speech was made. But Kenton's knowledge of all that took place at the council may not have been quite perfect. It is just as well to let the beautiful tradition stand, and thereby preserve to the literature of the wilderness one of its brightest gems.

Of Logan's address three versions, substantially the same, have been preserved. One of these, taken from a letter of February 4, 1775, from Williamsburg, Virginia, found its way into the American Archives : another, also extracted from a Virginia letter, was published in New York, February 16, 1775. The third is Mr. Jefferson's, published in 1781-2, and seems to be most authentic. It reads :

I appeal to any white man to say if ever he entered Logan's cabin hungry, and be gave him not meat ; if ever he came cold and naked, and he clothed him not. During the course of the last long and bloody war Logan remained idle in his cabin, an advocate for peace. Such was my love for the whites that my countrymen pointed as they passed, and said, Logan is the friend of the white men. I had even thought to have lived with you, but for the in- juries of one man. Colonel Cresap, the last spring, in cold blood and unprovoked, murdered all the relations of Logan, not even sparing my women and children. There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of any living creature. This called on me for revenge. I have sought it ; I have killed many ; I have fully glutted my vengeance. For my country I re- joice at the beams of peace. But do not harbor a thought that mine is the joy of fear ; Logan never felt fear. He will not turn on his heel to save his life. Who is there to mourn for Logan ? Not one.

Taken in connection with the circumstances which are said to have inspired it, this is one of the most pathetic deliverances in all literature. In brevity, sim- plicity and directness of appeal, as well as in the immortality of its thoughts, it bears a striking resemblance to Abraham Lincoln's dedieatory address at Gettys- burg.

Owing to the refusal of the Mingoes to participate in the negotiations, a force was dispatched by Dunmore to destroy their villages at the Forks of the Seioto, meaning the junetion of that river with the Whetstone, at which now stands the eity of Columbus. One of Dunmore's officers mentioned this expedition in his diary, a publication of which was seen by Mr. Joseph Sullivant, and is referred to by him in his address before the Franklin County Pioneer Society in 1871. Mr. Sullivant thus describes in that address the location of the Mingo towns against which he believes the Dunmore expedition to have been sent, and narrates some of the events which took place at the time they were attacked :

There were three Indian encampments or villages in this vicinity ; one on the high bank near the old Morrill House, one and a half miles below the city, from which the party was sent out to capture my father and his party, on Deer Creek, in 1795; one at the west end of the Harrisburg bridge ; and the principal one on the river below the mouth of the Whet- stone, near the Penitentiary where formerly stood Brickell's cabin, and now (1871) stands Hall and Brown's warehouse.

The location of these villages I had from John Brickell, Jeremiah Armstrong and Jona- than Alder, who had been captives among the Indians. Alder was my visitor in my boy- hood, at my father's house and afterwards at mine, and I had many of the incidents of his life, as related by himself, which afterwards, at my suggestion, were written out. In his boy- hood Alder had been captured in Virginia by a marauding party of Indians, was brought into

HISTORY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBUS.

Ohio and adopted into a tribe, and when grown up married and lived among them. He lived on Big Darby, died there, and was well known to our earlier settlers.

In one of the personal narratives to which I have alluded he told me he had heard from the older men of this tribe that, in the fall of 1774, when all the male Indians of the upper village, except a few old men, had gone on their first fall hunt, one day about noon the vil- lage was surprised by the sudden appearance of a body of armed white men who immediately commenced firing upon all they could see. Great consternation and panic ensued, and the inhabitants fled in every direction. One Indian woman seized her child of five or six years of age, and rushed down the bank of the river and across to the wooded island opposite, when she was shot down at the farther bank. The child was unhurt amid the shower of balls, and escaped into the thicket and hid in a large hollow sycamore standing near the middle of the island, where the child was found alive two days afterward when the warriors of the tribe returned, having been summoned back to the scene of disaster by runners sent for the purpose. This wooded and shady island was a favorite place for us boys when we went swimming and fishing, especially when we were lucky enough to hook Johnny Brickell's canoe, and I have no doubt the huge sycamore is well remembered by many besides myself.

" This interesting incident," adds Mr. Sullivant, " connects our county directly with the old colonial times."24

Colonel William Crawford, who commanded the expedition against the Min- goes, thus describes it in a letter to Washington :

Lord Dunmore ordered myself and two hundred and forty men to set out in the night. We were to march to a town about forty miles distant from our camp, up the Scioto, where we understood the whole of the Mingoes were to rendezvous the next day in order to pursue their journey. This intelligence came by John Montour, son of Captain Montour, whom you formerly knew.

Because of the number of Indians in our camp we set out of it under pretense of going to Hockhocking for more provisions. Few knew of our setting off anyhow, and none knew where we were going to until next day. Our march was performed with as much speed as possible. We arrived at the town called Salt Lick town 25 the ensuing night, and at day- break we got around it with one-half our force, and the remainder were sent to a small vil- lage half a mile distant.

Unfortunately one of our men was discovered by an Indian who lay, out from the town some distance, by a log which the man was creeping up to. This obliged the man to kill the Indian. This happened before daylight, which did us much damage, as the chief part of the Indians made their escape in the dark ; but we got fourteen prisoners, and killed six of the enemy, wounding several more. We got all of their baggage and horses, ten of their guns, and two hundred white prisoners. The plunder sold for four hundred pounds sterling, besides what was returned to a Mohawk Indian who was there. The whole of the Mingoes were ready to start, and were to have set out the morning we attacked them. Lord Dunmore has eleven prisoners, and has returned the rest to the nation. The residue are to be returned upon his lordship's demand.

In the same letter Colonel Crawford thus summarizes the treaty concluded by Dunmore with the Shawnees :

First, they have to give up all the prisoners ever taken by them in the war with the white people ; also negroes and all of the horses stolen or taken by them since the last war. And further, no Indian for the future is to hunt on the east side of the Ohio, nor any white man on the west side ; as that seems to have been the cause of some of the disturbance be- tween our people and them. As a guarantee that they will perform their part of the agree- ment, they have given up four chief men, to be kept as hostages, who are to be relieved yearly, or as they choose.

After the treaty, Dunmore's army, twentyfive hundred strong, returned to the mouth of the Hockhocking, and thence to Western Virginia, where it was dis- banded.

ADVENT OF THE WHITE MAN.

As to the subsequent career and end of Logan, Mr. Taylor makes the follow- ing statements on the authority of Henry C. Brush, of Tiffin : " He wandered about from tribe to tribe, a solitary and lonely man. Dejected and broken-hearted by the loss of his friends and the decay of his tribe, he resorted to the stimulus of strong drink to drown his sorrow. lle was at last murdered in Michigan, near Detroit. He was, at the time, sitting with his blanket over his head, before a camp- fire, his elbow resting on his knees, and his head upon his hands, buried in pro- found reflection, when an Indian, who had taken some offence, stole behind him, and buried his tomahawk in his brains."2%

Accounts differing from this both as to the manner and place of Logan's death are given by other writers, one of whom claims that the old chief came to his end in the vicinity of Urbana, Ohio.

The Dunmore treaty proved to be but a truce. With the opening of the War of Independence at Lexington the following year," the intrigues of British agents were brought actively to bear upon the Indians to induce them to take sides against the colonists. Officially sustained in his pretensions by Governor Dunmore, Connolly, the Fort Pitt adventurer, assisted in these schemes. The Six Nations, except the Tuscaroras and Oneidas, allied themselves with the English. The Shawnees and Wyandots were inclined to do the same thing. The Delawares, under the influence of the Moravian missionaries, were nentral.

To promote good relations with the frontier tribes, and countervail the efforts to alienate them, the Continental Congress organized an Indian Department, in three divisions. In 1776 Colonel George Morgan, of Princeton, New Jersey, was placed over the middle division, including the Western Indians, with headquarters at Fort Pitt. This seems to have been a fortunate appointment. Morgan was a prudent man, widely and favorably known by the tribes in his department, and for nearly two years prevented, by conciliatory management, any general outbreak. His efforts, and those of the kind-souled Moravians were finally set at nanght by acts of cruelty which have planted in the western course of civilization indelible marks of infamy. One of these deeds of shame was the murder of the Shawnee chief Cornstalk while on a friendly visit to the stockade erected after the Dunmore invasion at Point Pleasant.2% Accompanied by Red Hawk, Cornstalk brought to that fort timely warning of the hostile disposition of his tribe, whereupon the com- mandant of the stockade, Captain Arbuckle, caused him and his companions to be seized and held as hostages. The captive chief's son, Ellinipsico, a brave young warrior, came innocently in search of his father, and was also detained. The next day; while two men trom the fort were hunting in the neighboring woods, one of them was killed by a party of hostile Indians. Enraged at this, the soldiers of the garrison fell upon their helpless captives and mercilessly slaughtered them. Arbnekle, it is said, protested against this deed, but was powerless to prevent it. The behavior of the Shawnees after that was just what such an act of perfidions butchery might be expected to provoke." Thenceforward until 1794 there was no peace along the border, anywhere from the Falls of the Ohio to Fort Pitt. For a time, Colonel Morgan and the Moravian Heckewelder managed to keep the Dela- wares from joining the English, but their pacific efforts, prejudiced by the further slaughter of nnoffending Indians, were finally overborne.

Early in 1778 General Laehlin McIntosh was appointed by Washington to command on the western frontier, and erected at the month of the Big Beaver a

100

HISTORY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBUS.

stockaded fortification bearing his name. Thence he marched into the interior the following autumn with a force of one thousand men, and erected upon the present site of Bolivar, in Tuscarawas County, another fort which, in honor of the Presi- dent of Congress, was named Fort Laurens. This work was garrisoned with one hundred and fifty men under Colonel John Gibson. In January, 1779, it was be- sieged by over eight hundred Indians, and had been reduced to great extremities when it was relieved by a second expedition under McIntosh. A few months later it was abandoned.

During the summer of 1779 Colonel John Bowman marched from Kentucky with a force one hundred and fifty strong, and attacked the Shawnees at Old Chil- licothe.30 The assault upon that place was to be made at daylight from different directions by two detachments, one of which was led by Bowman, the other by Captain Benjamin Logan. As usual in such cases, there was lack of cooperation, and the effort failed. The enemy then took the aggressive and surrounded Bow- man during his retreat, but he managed to cut his way out, and recrossed the Ohio. Some months later Colonel Byrd, a British officer, at the head of a band of Indians and Canadians, made a retaliatory raid into Kentucky.

During the summer of 1780 Colonel George Rogers Clark, who had two years before captured Kaskaskia and subdued the Illinois, organized an expedition against the Indians on Mad River. His force, about one thousand strong, assembled on the ground where Cincinnati now stands, and from thence pushed for Old Chilli- cothe, which was found deserted and burning. From thence a forced march was made to the Indian settlements at Piqua, which were attacked and dispersed. The town of Piqua was burned, and the cornfields around it laid waste. The expedi- tion then returned to the mouth of the Licking.31

Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.

History of the city of Columbus, capital of Ohio, Volume I, Part 14

Author: Lee, Alfred Emory, 1838-; W. W. Munsell & Co Publication date: 1892 Publisher: New York and Chicago : Munsell & Co. Number of Pages: 1202

Author: Lee, Alfred Emory, 1838-; W. W. Munsell & Co
Publication date: 1892
Publisher: New York and Chicago : Munsell & Co.
Number of Pages: 1202