USA > Ohio > The biographical cyclopaedia and portrait gallery with an historical sketch of the state of Ohio. Volume I > Part 2
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The way being now apparently open for settlements, in the Spring of 1766 several families from Maryland and Virginia crossed the mountains, and, selecting for themselves the most attractive and fertile tracts on the Monongahela River, erected cabins, and began to clear and plant their land. The Indian titles to these lands had not been extinguished, and the right of domain belonging to the original possess- ors was not respected. It was natural that, under such circumstances, the Indians should feel aggrieved. By the French they had nearly always been treated with courtesy, and their rights respected, but by these English, as they designated all who spoke that language, they were evidently about to be robbed and driven from their homes. Their agent protested against the conduct of these squatters, and General Gage, then commander-in-chief of the British forces in the American colonies, issued his proclamation denouncing their conduct; but they simply bade him defiance, and, fearless alike of the hostility of the Indians and the commands of the military authorities, they took up land wherever they chose, and . occupied it.
Two years afterward (1768) Sir William Johnson, the British agent for treating with the Indians, bought of the Iroquois, whose main territory lay within what is now the State of New York, whatever right that, the most warlike of all the Indian tribes, had to any portion of the great tract of country north- west of the Ohio River. Deputies of the Six Nations, the Delawares, and the Shawanese were also present at this transaction, and ceded their rights in the same territory. The first point to be determined
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was the boundary-line which was to define the Indian lands of the West from that time forward. This line, the Indians, upon the Ist of November, stated should begin on the Ohio, at the mouth of the Ten- nessee River ; thence go up the Ohio and Allegheny to Kittanning; tlience across to the Susquehannah ; whereby the whole of the territory south of the Ohio to which these nations had any claim was transferred .
to the British. One deed for a part of this land was made on the 3d of November to William Trent, agent for twenty-two traders, whose goods had been destroyed by the Indians in 1763. The tract con- veyed by this instrument was between the Monongahela and the Kanawha, and was named by the traders Indiana. Two days afterward a deed for the remaining Western lands was made to the king, and the price agreed on paid down. These deeds were made upon the express agreement that no claim should ever be based on former treaties, and they were signed by the chiefs of the Six Nations for themselves, their allies and dependents, the Shawanese, Delawares, Mingoes of Ohio, and others; but the Shawanese and Delaware deputies present did not sign them. On this treaty, in a great measure, rests the title by purchase to Kentucky, Western Virginia, and Western Pennsylvania; and the authority of the Six Na- tions to sell that country rests on their claim by conquest. But, besides the claim of the Iroquois and the Northwest Indians to Kentucky, there was also a claim made by the Cherokees; and their rights were recognized in a treaty made with them two years subsequently. Their claim, however, to all the lands north and east of the Kentucky River was purchased by Colonel Donaldson, but for whom does not clearly appear.
The grant of the great Northwestern confederacy was now made, and white settlers could hencefor- ward go into the territory ceded, and feel that the government would accord them protection. A new company was organized in Virginia, called the "Mississippi Company," and a petition sent to the king for two and a half millions of acres in the West. Among the signers of this petition were Francis Light- foot Lee, Richard Henry Lee, George Washington, and Arthur Lee-the last named of whom was the agent for the petitioners in England. The application was referred to the Board of Trade on the 9th of March, 1769, and after that nothing more is known of it. But immigrants, mostly from Virginia and Maryland, began to people the head-waters of the Ohio, and as early as 1770 settlements were formed on the Kanawha and in Eastern Kentucky. Among those whom the fertile fields of the West attracted from their Eastern homes was Captain Michael Cresap, afterwards well known in border history. He was born in Frederick, now Allegheny County, Maryland, in 1742. His father, Colonel Thomas Cresap, on ac- count of the hospitality displayed by him toward the friendly Indians of Pennsylvania and Virginia, received from them the name of " Big Spoon ;" and from constant intercourse with them at his father's house, the son became thoroughly acquainted with their disposition and character. Early in the Spring of 1774 he engaged six or seven active young men to accompany him to the wilderness of the Ohio, and there he entered upon the business of laying out claims, clearing lands, and erecting houses. He built what is believed to be the first cabin in the Western country of hewed logs, with a shingle roof nailed on. Thirty years later a voyager descending the Ohio mentions it as an evidence of rapid improvement and growth that he saw four shingled cabins between the Kanawha and the Scioto!
The disturbed condition of the country was the chief drawback in effecting settlements in the West. The boundary-lines between Pennsylvania and Virginia west of the mountains were not well defined, and both colonies claimed jurisdiction of the territory about Fort Pitt. That post was then under the com- mand of Dr. John Connolly, Lord Dunmore's Vice-governor of Western Virginia. It was the principal station of the Indian traders, who seem to have used their influence with the Indians to secure their attachment to their respective colonies, and to alienate them, each from the other. But the chief cause of disturbance, perhaps, was the revolutionary spirit which was already separating the colonists into two parties, rebel and tory. The "Boston Tea-party," as it was named, had inaugurated a resist- ance, if not a rebellion, against British control in New England, and the Governors of Virginia and South Carolina were unable to withstand effectually the growing sentiment of independence in those provinces. A civil conflict séemed at any moment imminent. In many localities companies of troops were gathered to resist the encroachments of royalty. Congress issued proclamations and passed resolutions looking to an adjustment of their difficulties, and petitioning Parliament for redress; but it became evident to thoughtful minds that, sooner or later, the quarrel must be submitted to the arbitrament of the sword. It was accordingly the desire of the Earl of Dunmore to enlist the services of the Indians on the side
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of the king, and there can be little doubt that even now he was plotting with them for this purpose. Whether his plans miscarried, or what is called "Dunmore's Indian war" was a part of his deep-laid scheme, it is certain that the result was disastrous to the early settlements along the Ohio River, and not inimical to him.
The Western tribes had never been thoroughly placated, and the peace between them and the white settlers along the borders was at no period of long continuance. Whichever party was the aggressor, the fact remains that there was an interminable conflict. Every Indian regarded the white settler as his foe ; the white settler looked upon the Indian as the murderer of his neighbor, his family, or his friends; and this was especially the case along the frontiers where the two came into more frequent contact. The mode of attack on the part of the savages, who spared neither sex nor age, rendered reprisals upon the side of their enemies less blameworthy; though, to the disgrace of the colonists, barbarity was often repaid with like barbarity, and the mutilation of the dead was common on both sides. Indian war was a series of raids, in which the white victim was shot down or tomahawked and scalped at sight, or else carried off a prisoner, to be either adopted into the tribe of the captor or tortured to death with a pro- longed agony. And in this torture fiendish women took part with fiendish men.
Colonel Bouquet's expedition against the Indians in 1764 was so far successful that he compelled them to come to terms of agreement with the whites. For ten years this peace was sullenly observed ; or, if broken, it was by no general uprising, but by a series of marauding excursions by small parties of Indian adventurers, who rushed down upon the unsuspecting emigrants, slaughtered or captured them, drove away their horses and cattle, and burned their improvements. It is believed that the number of lives sacrificed during these ten years exceeded all those slain during the entire outbreak of 1774, including the battle of Point Pleasant.
To the cause of this outbreak it is well to advert. It has often been asserted that it was due to the slaughter of Logan's family or kin at the mouth of Yellow Creek-a massacre with which the name of Captain Cresap has long been associated. We think the cause can be traced further back. On the day following Colonel Bouquet's treaty an Indian killed the colonel's servant; but this wanton murder was disre- garded at the time, perhaps as having been done in a personal quarrel. During the ensuing Summer the savages slaughtered a white man upon the Virginia frontiers; the next year eight Virginians were butch- ered near the Cumberland Gap, and the peltries they had obtained brought to the Indian towns, where they were sold to Pennsylvania traders. Some time after, John Martin, a Virginia trader, with two com- panions, was killed by the Shawanese on the Hockhocking-only, it was alleged by Lord Dunmore, because they were Virginians, while at the same time they allowed one Ellis to pass, simply because he
was a Pennsylvanian. In 1771 twenty Virginians and their party of friendly Indians were robbed by savages of thirty-eight horses, with weapons, clothes, and trappings, which they delivered to certain traders in their towns. The same year, within the jurisdiction of Virginia, the Indians killed two remote settlers; and in the following year Adam Stroud, with his wife and seven children, fell beneath their tomahawks and scalping-knives on the waters of Elk River. Richards fell on the Kanawha ; and, a few months afterward, Russell, another Virginian, with five whites and two negroes, perished near the Cum- berland Gap, while their horses and property were borne off by the Indians to the towns, where they fell a prey to the Pennsylvania traders. A Dutch family was massacred on the Kanawha in June, 1773, and the family of Mr. Hogg and three white men were killed near the same locality early in April, 1774. Some Cherokees, who visited Schönbrunn in the Spring of the same year, murdered two white men on their return. Another white. traveler was killed with a tomahawk by the Senecas. Other slaughters also took place, which so incensed the white people in Virginia that they flew to arms, and killed in return (so it was reported) nine Senecas and wounded two, without having permission from the government to commence hostilities. The alarm soon became general, and a great part of the Shawanese engaged in the war, going out in small parties to murder the white people. The Senecas and Virginians also entered into the strife; but along the Ohio River, where the emigrants were forming their settlements, there were as yet few disturbances.
Captain Cresap and his party were still at work, opening up land, erecting cabins, and laying out claims for himself and his friends, when their work was brought to a sudden stand-still. A circular letter from Dr. Connolly was sent in April, 1774, by express messengers, to the inhabitants of the valleys,
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warning them to be on their guard for the reason that the Indians were very angry, and manifested so much hostility to their movements that he was apprehensive they would strike somewhere as soon as the season should permit, and enjoining upon them to prepare for the worst, and to retire to the forts. Captain Cresap received this letter about the 22d of April, accompanied by a confirmatory message from Colonel Croghan and Major McGee, Indian agents and interpreters, and he immediately broke up his camp and ascended the river to Fort Wheeling, the nearest place of safety.
While these transactions were taking place near the waters of the Kanawha, George Rogers Clark, afterward so celebrated in Western history, was organizing a company to lay out lands and effect a settle- ment in Kentucky. His men, to the number of eighty or ninety, met at the mouth of the Little Kanawha River, in order to descend the Ohio in a body. While there, reports were brought to them that the Indians had done some mischief, and that they had fired upon a party of hunters about ten miles below them; but the hunters had beat them back and returned to their camp. This, and the circum- stances detailed above, led them to believe that the Indians were bent on war. But as they were ready to establish their post and had every necessary store, they were determined to proceed. An Indian town on the Scioto, not far from its mouth, lay nearly in their way, and they resolved to cross the country and surprise it. But who was to command ? was the question. Few among them knew any thing of Indian warfare, and none of those who knew was competent. Captain Cresap was known to be not far away, and, as he had been experienced in a former war east of the mountains, he was proposed as their leader, and a messenger sent for him. Upon his arrival the matter was presented to him, but he immediately dissuaded them from it. He said that appearances were very suspicious, but that there was no certainty of a war; that he had no doubt of their success if undertaken, but that a war would at any rate be the result, and they would be blamed for it. He advised them to return to Wheeling to hear what was going forward; that a few weeks would determine; that it was still early in the Spring ; and that if they found the Indians were not disposed for war, they would still have full time to return and make their settlement in Kentucky. His counsel was followed, and in two hours the whole company were en route for Wheeling.
From this place Captain Cresap intended to return home; but while he was at the fort a report was. brought in that two Indians were coming down the river in canoes. Only a few days prior to this time William Butler, an Indian trader, taking no heed of Connolly's warning, had sent off a loaded canoe with goods for the Shawanese towns, and on the 16th of April it was attacked, forty miles below Pitts- burg, by three Cherokees, who waylaid it on the river. They killed one white man, wounded another, and the third made his escape, while the savages plundered the canoe of its more valuable cargo. Captain Cresap, deliberating whether war was actually begun, went up the river with his party to recon- noiter. They discovered a canoe of Indians keeping under shelter of an island, to screen themselves from observation. Deeming them to be on a hostile excursion, two of Cresap's men leveled their rifles and shot the Indians dead. Upon examining their canoe, it was found to contain a quantity of ammu- nition and other warlike stores, thus confirming their conjecture. This is the only circumstance in the whole history of the Indian war known as "Dunmore's " or "Cresap's " with which the latter can in the remotest degree be connected as having originated it; nor is there any foundation for the charge brought against him by Jefferson, in the first edition of his "Notes on Virginia," of being "infamous for the many murders he had committed on these much injured people." Much injured they undoubtedly were, but it is not known that Captain Cresap ever personally caused the death of a single Indian, and in the case just narrated his companions probably acted on their own responsibility, and without his orders.
On the 27th of April, the day subsequent to the affair just mentioned, Major Macdonald, on his return from the Kanawha River to Pittsburg, stopped at the house of Captain Cresap, and gave an ac- count of a skirmish that had happened between some Virginians and Indians, in which several were killed on both sides. While he was there another informant, Mr. Mahon, brought the intelligence that fourteen Indians, with five canoes, had called at his cabin when they were going down the river, and asked for provisions, which he refused, telling them at the same time of the killing of the two Indians, which they professed not to have heard. Upon this news Captain Cresap collected fifteen men, followed to observe their movements, and overtook them near the mouth of Captina Creek, where they had drawn up their canoes, and were making preparations against an attack, as a consequence of what they had heard.
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A battle immediately ensued, and the Indians retired after the loss of one man on each side. From their appearance and conduct this attack made upon these Indians was justifiable warfare; for it seems that they were not only well prepared for it, but expected it. Whether or not any of Logan's kinsfolks were engaged in this affray, it is certain that none of them was there "murdered in cold blood."
"On our return to camp," says General George Rogers Clark, "a resolution was formed to march the next day and attack Logan's camp on the Ohio, about thirty miles above us. We actually marched about five miles, and then halted to take some refreshments. Here the impropriety of executing the pro- posed enterprise was argued ; the conversation was brought forward by Cresap himself. It was generally agreed that those Indians had no hostile intentions, as they were hunting, and their party was composed of men, women, and children, with all their stuff with them. This we knew, as I myself and others present had been in their camp about four weeks before that time, on our descending the river from Pittsburg. In short, every person present, particularly Cresap, upon reflection, was opposed to the pro- jected measure. We returned, and on the same evening decamped, and took the road to Redstone. It was two days after this [April 30] that Logan's family were killed. And, from the manner in which' it was done, it was viewed as a horrid murder by the whole country. From Logan's hearing that Cresap was at the head of the party at Wheeling, it is no wonder that he considered Cresap as the author of his family's destruction."
But so far from Cresap's having had any hand in that transaction, Logan no doubt owed his own life to Cresap's counsel and influence. The affair at Yellow Creek, where Logan's kindred were killed, has always been looked upon as a "horrid " massacre. But the Indians encamped at Yellow Creek- even though accompanied by some of their women-were undoubtedly upon the "war-path." Their pretense was hunting. On the opposite side of the river was the cabin of Joshua Baker, who sold rum to the Indians, and, of course, received frequent visits from them. Captain Cresap, knowing their fondness for liquor, had particularly desired Baker to remove it, but, contrary to his advice, he still continued to sell it. Baker at length became alarmed for the safety of himself and family, and prepared to remove them and his effects to the interior settlements. But on the evening previous to the catas- trophe a squaw came over to Baker's house, and, by her crying, seemed to be in great distress. Upon being asked the cause of her distress, she refused to tell; but, getting Baker's wife alone, she told her that the Indians were going to kill her and all her family the next day ; that she loved her and did not wish her to be killed, and, therefore, told her what was intended, that she might save herself. In con- sequence of this information Baker got a company of men, to the number of twenty-one, to come to his house, and they were all there before morning. . A council was held, and it was determined that the men should lie concealed in the back room; that if the Indians came and deported themselves peace- ably, they should not be molested; but if otherwise, the men were to show themselves, and act accord- ingly. Early in the morning seven Indians, including three squaws, came over, unarmed, Logan's brother being one of them. They immediately called for rum, and all except Logan's brother became intoxicated. Meanwhile the white men lay concealed, except Baker, and two others who remained out- side with him. After some time Logan's brother took down a hat and coat belonging to Baker's brother- in-law, who lived with him, put them on, and, placing his arms akimbo, began to strut about, till, coming up close to one of the men, he aimed at him a blow, at the same time calling him a vile name. The white man parried the blow, and kept out of the Indian's way for some time, but finally, becoming irri- tated, seized his gun, and shot his persecutor just as he was making for the door. The other white men, hearing the noise, rushed out and killed the whole of them, excepting one child.
But before this happened, two canoes, one with two and the other with five Indians, all naked, painted, and armed completely for war, were discovered to start from the shore on which their camp was. " Had it not been for this circumstance," says one of the narrators of the transaction, who was a par- ticipant in it (John Sappington), "the white men would not have acted as they did; but this confirmed what the squaw had told before." The white men, having slain those who were at the house, now drew up in line along the bank of the river to receive the canoes. The first one, containing two Indians, came near, when the white men fired and killed them both. The other canoe then went back. After this, two other canoes, containing eighteen warriors, attempted to land below Baker's cabin; but they were fired upon, and compelled to withdraw, with the loss of one of their number, after first discharging
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their rifles. "To the best of my recollection," says John Sappington, above referred to, " there were three of the Greathouses engaged in this business. I was intimately acquainted with Cresap, and know he had no hand in that transaction. He told me afterward himself, at Redstone Old Fort, that the day before Logan's people were killed, he, with a small party, had an engagement with a party of Indians on Captina, about forty-four miles lower down. Logan's people were killed at the mouth of Yellow Creek on the 24th of May, 1774; and the 23d, the day before, Cresap was engaged as already stated. I know, likewise, that he was generally blamed for it, and believed, by all who were not acquainted with the circumstances, to have been the perpetrator of it. I know that he despised and hated the Great- houses ever afterwards on account of it."
Mr. Sappington is mistaken as to the time, which is correctly given in connection with the quotation from General Clark's narrative. His statement was not made until twenty-six years after the event, and while his recollection is remarkably accurate in regard to details, it is slightly at fault as to dates. Sap- pington was the one who killed Logan's brother; but the Greathouses are implicated in the slaughter of the women. Had they been spared, there would be less reason for terming the affair a "horrid murder." Otherwise the transaction was a timely repulse of savage massacre and outrage. Had not the white men anticipated the Indians, the latter would have been the aggressors and the former the victims.
In consequence of these murders (the slaughter of the women, one of whom was Logan's sister, deserves no other name), Logan, a Mingo brave, began to "glut his vengeance." Between the first day of May and the pacification under Lord Dunmore at Camp Charlotte, in October, the number of victims slain by him in retaliation amounted to nearly thirty. Men, women, and children were indiscriminately butchered and scalped. The females were stripped and outraged. The men were slain, and knives, tomahawks, or axes left in the breasts they had cleft asunder. The brains of infants were beaten out, and their bodies left for the beasts of prey in the forests. If the slaughter at Yellow Creek was horrid, Logan's vengeance was even more so.
While these events were taking place, Captain Cresap had gone back to his old home in Maryland. There, hearing of the Indian outrages on the frontiers, his sympathies were enlisted on behalf of the settlers, and he speedily raised a company, with whom he marched to their assistance. When he reached the spot in Pennsylvania where Washington now stands, his advance was stopped by a peremptory and insulting order from Dr. Connolly, commanding him to dismiss his men and return. As the border war was already afoot, Connolly's order has a sinister appearance. He evidently desired to promote the interests of the British Government, and was willing to let the present mischief work to divert the atten- tion of the colonists from its proceedings. Be that as it may, Captain Cresap obeyed the order, returned home, and dismissed his men, with the determination never again to take any part in the Indian war, but to leave Dr. Connolly to fight it out as best he could. "This hasty resolution," says his biographer, Rev. John J. Jacob, " was, however, of short duration; for, however strange, contradictory, and irrec- oncilable the conduct of the Earl of Dunmore and his Vice-governor of Pittsburg may appear, yet it is a fact that on the 10th of June the Earl of Dunmore, unsolicited, and to Captain Cresap certainly unex- pected, sent him a captain's commission of the militia of Hampshire County, Virginia, notwithstanding his residence was in Maryland. This commission reached Captain Cresap a few days after his return from the expedition just mentioned ; and inasmuch as this commission, coming to him in the way it did, carried with it a tacit expression of the Governor's approbation of his conduct-add to which that, about the same time, his feelings were daily assailed by petition after petition from almost every section of the Western country, praying, begging, and beseeching him to come over to their assistance-it broke down and so far extinguished all Captain Cresap's personal resentment against Connolly that he once more determined to exert all his power and influence in assisting the distressed inhabitants of the West- ern frontier. He accordingly raised a company, and placed himself under the command of Major Angus Macdonald. His popularity at this time was such, so many men flocked to his standard, that he could not, consistently with the rules of an army, retain them in his company, but was obliged to transfer them, much against their will, to other captains."
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