USA > Ohio > The Ohio Valley in colonial days > Part 10
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*N. Y. Col. Doc., X.
CHAPTER VIII.
INDIAN WARS.
" While the sovereigns of France, England and Spain were signing the treaty of Paris (Febry roth, 1763), countless Indian warriors in the American forests were singing the war-song and whetting their scalping knives."*
We must look for the reason of this distressing state of affairs to the ignorance and arrogance of the English race. Their contact with other races has, even now, not yet taught them that these other races are as much creatures of the God whom all worship, as the English. They forget that the red Indian is a being who has, like everybody else, certain rights, which must be respected, if no bloodshed and ravage is desired.
In the days of which this chapter is to speak, the Indians were still a powerful factor in Colonial politics and required diplomatic treatment ; the more so as many tribes regretted to see the French overpowered. But British diplomatic acumen had been dulled by the victory and the English agents became now over-
*Parkman, Conspiracy of Pontiac.
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bearing, instead of conciliating the former allies of the French and making them firm friends of the con- querors. The dissatisfaction of the Ohio Indians, dating since the Albany conference in 1754, and since then smoothed over, revived and spread into all the tribes from Lake Superior to the Great Kanawha, and from the Alleghany mountains to the Mississippi. These sentiments of discontent grew with the injus- tice and neglect meted out to the Indians by the English, who thought that their friendship was now of no consequence, and curtailed the supplies of powder, etc., upon which the red man had learned to rely for gaining a livelihood.
Sir William Johnson had warned the Lords of Trade in August, 1762, of the uneasiness among the Indians and had stated, what he feared would be the consequences, giving at the same time his opinion on the best method of preventing an outbreak .* While still continuing his warnings, the first blow was struck by the Indians.
Pontiac, an Ottawa chief of great intrepidity and eloquence, who with his warriors had helped to de- feat Braddock in 1755, had gathered about him the dissatisfied members of the Chippeways, Miamis, Delawares, Shawanese and other tribes with inten- tion of driving the English from the territory west of the Alleghany mountains. We cannot help ad- miring the successful manner, in which he concealed his designs, when we consider the large number of
* Sir Wm. Johnson Papers.
167
In Colonial Days.
individuals necessarily cognizant of this conspiracy and the vast area affected by it.
A detachment of English troops, commanded by Lieutenant Cuyler and on the way to relieve Detroit, had been defeated, Sandusky had been destroyed, Forts St. Joseph at the mouth of the river St. Joseph, near the head of Lake Michigan, and Fort Michilli- mackinack had fallen into the hands of the Indian conspirators before the Ohio Valley proper was made to feel the disturbance. Fort Ouatanon, on the Wabash, a little below the present town of la Fayette, was taken by a stratagem on the Ist of June, 1763. It might perhaps be more appropriate to say the Eng- lish garrison of Ouatanon became the prisoners of the Indians by the careless arrogance of the command- ant, Lieutenant Edward Jenkins, who had walked into the Indian quarters unattended, for a confer- ence, and was immediately bound, whereupon the rest of the garrison surrendered without resistance .*
Presqu'Isle, on the shore of Lake Erie, followed with considerable loss of English lives, and this neces- sarily led to the fall of the neighboring little posts of Le Boeuf and Venango.
Le Boeuf had been built by the French when they first came to occupy the Ohio Valley in 1753. It stood on the south or west fork of French creek, almost surrounded by it and a small branch, of which it forms a kind of island. Four housest composed
* Parkman, Conspiracy.
+ " Built of wood stokadoed Triangularwise and has two Logg Houses in the inside." Deposition of Stephen Coffen, prisoner of the French since 1747, made January 10, 1754. N. Y. Col. MSS.
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the sides ; the bastions were of poles driven into the ground, standing more than twelve feet above it and sharp at the top, with port-holes cut for cannons and loop-holes for small arms. Eight cannons were mounted in each bastion and one four-pounder before the gate. In the bastions were a guard-house, a chapel, surgeon's lodgings and commandant's private store. It stood on the present site of Waterford, Erie county, Pennsylvania, and the Indian name of the place was Casewago .*
Venango, at the confluence of French creek and the Alleghany river, was still an Indian town when Washington passed through it on his mission to Le- Gardeur de St Pierre, the commander of the French at le Boeuf, in 1753. An English trader, Fraser, had established himself here and had been the first to suffer from the Gallic invasion. The forces sta- tioned at le Boeuf constructed here, about 1755, a fort or an outpost for the upper posts, and in 1855, it is said, the ruins of Fort Venango or Fort Machault were still visible at Franklin, Pennsylvania. It had been 400 feet square, with embankments eight feet high.+
Up to the latter end of May the Indians around Fort Pitt and the growing settlement there had re- frained from doing harm to the white intruders. It is true, they acted in a manner to excite suspicion, but it would not have done for an Englishman to
* Penna. Archives, XII, 387, and Penna. Col. Rec., V, 659.
+ Sargent, Braddock's Expedition, p. 41. Egle's Pennsylvania, 694, 1123.
In Colonial Days. 169
take any notice of it. The blow came sudden. " We have most melancholy Accounts here .- The Indians have broke out in several places and murdered Colonel Clapham and his Family; also two of our Soldiers at the Saw-mill, near the Fort, and two Scalps are taken from each man .... Last Night eleven Men were attacked at Beaver Creek* eight or nine of whom, it is said, were killed- And Twenty- Five of Macrae's and Allison's Horses, loaded with Skins, are all taken."+ The Delawares and Shawa- nese did not intend to be behind their red brethren on the lakes, in avenging themselves on the Eng- lish for more or less real and fancied wrongs, suffered at their hands.
Captain Ecuyer, in command at Fort Pitt, was able to keep the enemy out of this, by them so cov- eted stronghold. "The Savages have absurdly made a show of attacking Fort Pitt and some of the Posts below, but have not made any impression on the smallest post on that communication," writes Sir Jeffrey Amherst, July 23, 1763.}
In this part of the country the Indians fared even worse. Not only could they not make "any impression " on any post, but they even suffered de- feat. They had extended operations to the eastern side of the Alleghany river as far as Fort Augusta§
* Beaver creek empties into the Ohio below Pittsburg.
+ From Pennsylvania Gazette, No. 1798.
# N. Y. Col. Doc., VII, 529.
§ Now Sunbury, Pennsylvania.
22
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on the Susquehanna and other places outside the valley of the Ohio. But within the Ohio limits Fort Ligonier, on Loyalhannon creek, had been furiously attacked by Indians about the same time as le Boeuf and Venango to the north. They had been beaten after a hard day's fighting. Meanwhile troops were advancing from the east to take a hand in this Indian drama. They were commanded by Lieutenant- Colonel Henry Bouquet,* a Swiss officer of the Royal Americans, who had marched over this road with General Forbes a few years before. He met the foe near Bushy Run, about ten miles east of Pittsburgh, on the 5th and 6th of August, " engaged them from noon to night successfully, but returned at night to cover the provisions and the wounded. The next day the Indians surrounded the little army and advanced to the attack furiously, but Colonel Bouquet had made such a disposition to receive them, and the behavior of the troops was so firm and reso- lute, that the Savages gave way, had not the courage to support their attempt and were pursued for a con- siderable distance with great slaughter. The Eng- lish loss was 50 men killed and 60 wounded."+
A few days later, on the IIth of August, Colonel Bouquet could date his report to the Commander-in- Chief, Sir Jeffrey Amherst, from Fort Pitt, and say : " We Arrived here Yesterday without further Oppo-
* He had originally been an officer in the army of the King of Sardinia, joined the troops of Holland in 1755 and then the Royal Americans.
+ N. Y. Col. Doc., VII, 545.
I7I
In Colonial Days.
sition than Scattered Shots along the Road. The Delawares, Shawanese, Wyandots and Mingoes had closely Beset and Attacked this Fort from the 27th July to the First Instant, when they Quitted it to March against us."*
The country south of Fort Pitt and further down the Ohio was not allowed to remain undisturbed. The population of the intervales in the present West Virginia was still a thin one and scattered, but large enough to excite the bloodthirstiness of the Indians. Virginia had contributed her share for the protection of the frontier settlements by sending Colonel Adam Stephens with 400 to 500 militia to Forts Cumber- land and Bedford in the Potomac region, while a similar body of men under Colonel Lewist marched to the south western frontier for the same purpose, but could not prevent the butchering of the people living at the little settlement of Greenbrier and as- sembled at the fortified house of Archibald Glenden- ning.
Pennsylvania had done nothing to protect her fron- tiers and the people there, so that Sir Jeffrey Amherst cannot be blamed for writing : "What a contrast this [the sending of troops under Stephens and Lewis] makes between the conduct of the Pennsyl- vanians and Virginians, highly to the honor of the
* Extract from MS. Letter in Parkman, Conspiracy of Pontiac, 342.
+ Colonel Andrew Lewis commanded in the Sandy Point expedition, 1774, and was a brigadier-general during the War of the Revolution.
# Parkman, Conspiracy, 383.
I 72
The Ohio Valley in Colonial Days.
latter, but places the former in the most despicable light imaginable."* It required Bouquet's march and the victory at Bushy Run to show to the Pennsylva- nians, that the savage foe could be checked in his bloody proceedings, but the operations of James Smith, Armstrong and others, took place east of the Ohio Valley limits.
The success at Bushy Run allowed Bouquet to take possession of Fort Pitt without further contest and to follow up his warfare against the Indian set- tlements beyond the Ohio and near the Muskingum. The appearance of Bouquet and his army in this neighborhood spread terror and awe among the na- tive tribes, who now reluctantly surrendered the white captives made during the disturbance.+
* N. Y. Col. Doc., VII, 546.
+ Historical Account of Bouquet's Expedition, 1764, reprinted by Robert Clarke & Co., Cincinnati, 1868.
CHAPTER IX.
NORTH AND WEST OF THE OHIO RIVER.
The first white man to erect a dwelling in Ohio was the Moravian missionary, Christian Frederic Post, known to be a sagacious and able man, who had great influence among the Indians ; he was sent in 1751 and 1758 by the Governor of Pennsylvania on a mission to the Delawares, Shawanoes and Min- goes living then on the Ohio and its northern tributaries, a territory which, after its acquisition by the treaty of Paris, was declared Crown land by King George's proclamation of October 7, 1763. This proclamation forbade the King's "loving sub- jects " to make purchases of land from the Indians or to form settlements "westward of the sources of the rivers which fall into the sea from the West and North-West."* The royal proclamation gave as reason for this policy, that it was necessary to con- vince the Indians of English justice by preventing irregularities, and it may be that in 1763, this was thought to be a good and sufficient reason.
Royal proclamations and orders had, however,
* London Magazine, 1763, pp. 541, et seq.
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The Ohio WValley
little weight with the settler and the hunter, who lived principally by the products of the chase, and who, by penetrating into the tabooed regions, had helped to bring on the Indian war of 1764. This war had put a stop to the enterprises of the Ohio and the other land companies which were now re- vived under a plan to buy out the French settlers in the Illinois country .* But the scheme proved infeas- ible and the earlier projects were all merged into " Walpole's Grant," later called the " Colony of Van- dalia." The Lords Commissioners for Trade and plantations were opposed to this scheme, fathered by Thomas Walpole, and reported against it.+ A recent writer on this point; says: "Such in clear and specific terms was the cold and selfish policy, which the British crown and its ministers habitually pursued towards the American Colonies."
Lord Hillsborough, as Secretary of State, had ap- proved and recommended to the King for confirma- tion the treaty made at Fort Stanwix in 1768, by which the boundary line between the Colonies in America and the Indians was settled. The territory west of that line was acknowledged to be Indian property. This was not always considered an obstacle in English eyes preventing the issue of a patent,§
* Bigelow's Franklin, I, 537; II, 112.
+ Appendix F.
# Dr. W. F. Poole in Chap. IX, The West, Winsor's Narrative and Crit- ical History, Vol. VI.
§ N. Y. Col. Doc., VII, 913, " An Indian conveyance of the soil is un- necessary."
175
In Colonial Days.
but it seems Lord Hillsborough had what was most likely then called " old-fashioned ideas" on the sub- ject, for it was then, as to-day, an accepted truth, that the Indian had no rights, which a white man was bound to respect. We can, therefore, hardly call it a " cold and selfish policy" if the Secretary of State recalls the principle of confining the western extent of settlements to the boundary line established by treaty, especially as the English ministers had been warned that " the affairs of land are more imme- diately interesting and alarming to the Indians than any thing else."*
Lord Hillsborough further says in the above-quoted report, that the object of colonizing in North America had been to improve and extend commerce, and that if the western wilderness were invaded by settlers the fur trade would suffer. This is truly a selfish policy, but it was not so much ministerial as de- manded by the dealers in American goods scattered all over England, while the policy of the people living in the Colonies was no less selfish. They were all concerned either in trade or in lands; that is, in the pursuit of gain, and, therefore, were opposed to all limitations by the government, without considering that though these limitations might be inconvenient to a few adventurous traders and pioneers, the weal of the community demanded them.
Sir William Johnson, the Superintendent for In-
*N. Y. Col. Doc., VII, 913, " An Indian conveyance of the soil is un- neccessary."
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dian Affairs in the Northern Department, a man than whom probably no one else was better acquainted with Indian policy, had several years before Pontiac's war warned the authorities in the respective Colonies, not to exasperate the aborigines along the Ohio by too much land-grabbing At the Congress held at Albany, New York, in 1754, the Indians proposed the Alleghany mountains as the western boundary of the Colonies,* but the purchase made then by Penn- sylvania and the subsequent appearance of surveyors on the Juniata and Susquehannah, induced the Dela- wares, Shawanoes, Nanticokes and others settled in that vicinity, to withdraw either to Diohogo or to the Ohio. The hatred of the Delawares against the English had become so intense, that they swore to themselves never to leave off killing Englishmen as long as there was one of this nation living on their lands.+
George Croghan, Sir William's deputy, who had long lived and traded with the natives west of the Ohio river, suggested to the Lords of Trade in 1764,¿ that a natural boundary should be made be- tween the Indians and the English from the heads of the Delaware river in New York, to the mouth of the Ohio, in order to prevent a general defection of the Indians, which was always probable if the upper Senecas and a few other tribes settled near Detroit
* Sir William Johnson Papers, IV, 124.
+ Ib., 156. See, also, Appendix G.
# Ib., V, 603, 605.
5
In Colonial Days. I77
and Michilimackinack, while Shawanoes and Dela- wares sat on the "branches " of the Ohio.
The men in authority, hundreds of miles away from the " frontiers," paid no attention to the warnings of their agents, and Pontiac's war was the consequence of arousing the Indians' jealousies by encroaching too near upon them, by taking possession of the lakes and by stopping the distribution of ammunition, etc., among them .*
Can we, under these circumstances, call Lord Hillsborough's adverse report on the petition of Thomas Walpole, "cold and selfish policy?" The report did not meet with the approval of Doctor Ben- jamin Franklin, upon whose extended and vigorous reply to itt the Privy Council granted the prayer of the petitioners. The grant made provisions for se- curing to the Virginia soldiers, who had served in the French war, the lands promised for their respective services, but the breaking out of the Revolution stopped all further proceedings and the Colony of Vandalia died in its inception. Although this in- tended new colony was partly outside of the limits of the Ohio Valley, it requires mention here, for some flourishing towns in the same valley owe their prosperity to the scheme. George Croghan, when in London in 1764, reported that there was a talk in town about "settling a colony from the mouth of
* Sir William Johnson Papers, VII, 162.
+ Sparks' Franklin, IV, et seq.
23
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the Ohio to the Illinois."* This region had already a French settlement at Fort Chartres on the Kaskas- kias river, built in 1720, repaired in 1750, and finally abandoned in 1772.+
It was thought, that by the cession of territory made by the treaty of Paris, the country lying west of the Ohio to its mouth and up the Mississippi had become the boundary between the two nations late at war, and that as the French would undoubtedly settle on the west side of the Mississippi it might be good policy to purchase from the Indians the lands east of that river. ¿ But the French still had pos- session of their establishment in this coveted terri- tory and the proposition was made to capture Fort Chartres, as that would establish English authority among the savages with respect and safety.§ The expedition planned against the fort by Colonel Brad- street, did, however, at first, not meet with the ap- proval of the Indians, and when they finally withdrew their objection to the plan of dispossessing the French, they stipulated that the taking possession of the forts formerly held by the French should not be considered as a title for the English to possess the country, as they never had sold any part of it to the French.|
It is difficult to understand the Colonial Indian
* Sir William Johnson Papers, VIII, 202.
+ Stoddard, Sketches of Louisiana, 234.
# N. Y. Col. Doc., VII, 605.
§ Ib., 693.
| Ib., 781.
179
In Colonial Days.
policy of the English authorities. Traders, from whom the western Indians could draw their supplies of powder and other Indian goods, were not allowed to go from Detroit or Michilimackinack and there- fore, says Croghan in 1765, "I am of opinion the Indians will be supplied this year chiefly from the Illinois, which is all French property, and if trading posts are not established at proper places in that country soon the French will carry the best part of the trade over the Mississippi."* The proposition to take possession of the territory near the mouth of the Ohio, made by Colonel Bradstreet in 1764, had not yet been acted upon in 1766, when Sir William Johnson reported to the Lords of Trade on "the Artfull measures taken by the French in that (the Illinois) Country, for securing the Indians affections and engrossing the Trade, the better to accomplish which they have begun two settlements on the West side of the River above Fort Chartres, where they have already large Magazines for Trade and Presents, with able agents to carry on their designs, in which they will be farther aided by the French of Illinois and it is added that many of the latter are withdraw- ing from their old abode to the side occupied by the French."+ Sir William continued to urge the neces- sity of occupying the French posts in that distant part of the British dominions, although he saw how difficult it would be to keep them in case of a new
* N. Y. Col. Doc., VII, 788.
+ Ib., 816.
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war with France, and in September, 1767, he could report, that Fort Chartres was held by an English garrison.
Maps, mentioned in a previous chapter, speak of an old fort at the mouth of the Ohio, without giving its name. M. de MacCarty, the French officer com- manding at Fort Chartres in 1760, placed some Indians near Fort Massiac, in June, who abandoned this position in October of the same year, being menaced by a strong party of the enemy. He then caused the fort to be "terraced, fraized and forti- fied, piece upon piece, with a good ditch."* Was this the first settlement of Cairo, Illinois ?
In 1735 a Canadian, M. Vincennes, opened a trad- ing house on the Wabash, which was later called Post Vincent, but which we know to-day as the flour- ishing town of Vincennes. "Thus began the com- monwealth of Indiana."+ M. Vincennes was cruelly ·put to death by Chickasaw Indians in the following year, but the settlement did not die with its founder, growing with the necessary slowness of such enter- prises in the past ages. George Croghan, sent to the Western Indians with messages, arrived there in June, 1765, and found Post Vincent, "a French vil- lage of about 80 houses, and an Indian village of the Pyankeshas."? Further up the same river Wabash Frenchmen were settled at Ouiatanon,
* N. Y. Col. Doc., X, 1092.
+ Monette, I, 165; Bancroft, III, 346.
į N. Y. Col. Doc., VII, 780.
18I
In Colonial Days.
now Lafayette, Indiana, of whom with others at Post Vincent, Miamis, etc., Sir William complains as " sufficient to engross all the trade in them parts. "* He calls them " French familys of the worst sort."+
In a representation made by the Lords of Trade and Plantations upon the general state of Indian affairs and the establishment of posts on March 7, 1768,¿ they discuss the question of a new govern- ment or colony at the mouth of the Ohio river and point out that the great distance of this and two other Colonies in the Illinois country and at Detroit, would increase instead of lessening the expenses of the civil as well as military establishment, but in the main they are in favor of such undertakings. Not- withstanding this propitious report, Lord Hills- borough, as President of the Board of Trade and Plantations in 1772, disapproved of the Walpole scheme of colonization, as has been told above. At the same time he had been informed by Sir William Johnson, § that as the Kickapoos and Poutawatamies, incited by the jealousy of French traders, were con- stantly committing robberies and murders, the estab- lishment of some kind of authority on the Wabash was required, the more so perhaps, as the lawless colony of French there daily increased in numbers.
But the indecision of the home government delayed matters in this quarter. The Earl of Dartmouth,
* N. Y. Col. Doc., VII, 777.
+ Ib., 716.
# Ib., VIII, 19 et seg
§ Ib., 292.
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who had succeeded Lord Hillsborough as Colonial Secretary, was, in 1773, still in doubt whether a gov- ernment on the Ohio could be established, and required the assurance by Sir William Johnson that the Six Nations were unanimously in favor of the proposition. We may suppose that all steps for creating the new Colonial government were being considered with proper English slowness, when Michael Cresap's onslaught on some Ohio Indians imperiled the execution of the plan. The traders living in the country were driven away or murdered by the infuriated Shawanoes and it required all the skill of which Alexander McKee, Sir William John- son's deputy on the Ohio, and Captain Arthur St. Clair, then in command at Fort Ligonier, Pennsyl- vania, were capable, to prevent a general Indian out- break, which might have proved disastrous to the population west of the Ohio, characterized by Sir William as "dissolute fellows, united with debtors, and persons of wandering disposition, who have been removing from Pennsylvania and Virginia etc for more than ten years past into the Indian Country, towards & on the Ohio and had made a considerable number of settlements as early as 1765, when my Deputy [Croghan] was sent to the Illinois, from whence he gave me a particular account of the un- easiness it occasioned amongst the Indians, many of these emigrants are idle fellows, that are too lazy to cultivate lands & invited by the plenty of game they found, have employed themselves in hunting, in which
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