USA > Ohio > The history of the state of Ohio; from the discovery of the great valley, to the present time > Part 20
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"Why out of my power ?" inquired the colonel. " Have any of" the Moravian Indians been killed or hurt since we came out. here ? "
" None," Wingenund answered. " But you first went to their- towns on the Sandusky, and, finding them deserted, you turned on your path towards us. If you had been in search of warriors only, you would not have gone to their deserted settlements. Our spies watched you closely. They saw you when you were mus- tering your forces on the other side of the Ohio River. They saw you cross the river. They saw where you encamped for the night. They saw you turn off from the direct path here, towards the de- serted Moravian towns. They knew that you were going out of your way. Your steps were constantly watched, and you were suffered quietly to proceed, until you reached the spot where you. were attacked."
Colonel Crawford was now in utter despair. He had no ad -. ditional plea to present. In doleful accents he inquired :
"And what do they intend to do with me ?"
Wingenund replied, "I tell you with grief. As Williamson, with his whole cowardly host, ran off in the night at the whistling: of our warriors' balls, being satisfied that he had now no Moravians. to deal with, but men who could fight-and with such he did not. wish to have anything to do; I say that, as he has escaped, and the Indians have taken you, they will take revenge on you in his stead."
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" Is there no possibility," inquired Crawford, in anguish, “of preventing this ? Can you devise no way of getting me off? You shall, my friend, be well rewarded if you are instrumental in sav- ing my life."
" Had Williamson," the humane and intelligent chief rejoined, " been taken with you, I and some of my friends, by making use of what you have told me, might perhaps have succeeded in saving you. But, as the matter now stands, no man would dare to inter- fere in your behalf. The King of England himself, were he to come to this spot, with all his wealth and treasure, could not effect this purpose. The blood of the innocent Moravians, more than half of them women and children, cruelly and wantonly murdered, calls loudly for revenge. The relatives of the slain, who are among us, cry out for vengeance, and stand ready to inflict it. All the nations connected with us cry out revenge! revenge! The Shawanese, our grand-children, have asked for your fellow pris- oner, Dr. Knight, and on him they will take vengeance. The Moravians whom you went to destroy having fled, instead of avenging their murdered brethren, the offense is become national, and the nation itself is bound to revenge it."
" My fate is then fixed," added Colonel Crawford, " and I may prepare to meet death in its most dreadful form."
"I am sorry," the chief replied, " that I cannot do anything for you. Had you regarded the Indian principle, that as good and evil cannot dwell together in the same heart, so a good man ought not to go into evil company, you would not now be in this lamentable situation; you see now, when it is too late, and after Williamson has deserted you, what a bad man he must be. Nothing now remains for you but to meet your fate like a brave man. Farewell, Colonel Crawford - they are coming; I will re- tire to a solitary spot."
As the noble chief left the room, with his eyes filled with tears, the savage warriors came in to lead their victim to his execution. The awful scene which ensued is minutely described by Dr. Knight, who was compelled to witness it all. It is too revolting to be transferred to these pages. The victim was bound to a stake, and for two hours was exposed to every variety of torture which the most demoniac ingenuity could devise. A throng of savages, men, women and boys were yelling their delight, as they vied with each other in their attempts to inflict the most exquisite torture.
-
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At length welcome death came to the relief of the sufferer; but not until the mangled remains had lost every vestige of humanity.
Simon Girty, the Tory, was present at the execution, and it is said that he seemed to watch the progress of the awful spectacle with as much zest as the most ferocious of the savages. Colonel Crawford, in the extremity of his agony, implored Girty, with whom he was personally acquainted, to shoot him. There are some indications that Girty would have saved the captive if he could; but his savage allies watched him jealously. Had he not assumed to be delighted with the execution, he would have drawn down upon his own head the same destruction which the captive was enduring. The spot where Crawford suffered was but a few miles west of Upper Sandusky.
The next morning Dr. Knight was placed under the care of his Indian guard, to be conveyed to the Shawanese town where he was to suffer the same death of torture which he had just wit- nessed. They traveled that day twenty-five miles on foot. The gnats in the night were exceedingly annoying. The doctor per- suaded the guide to loosen his bonds, that he might aid in building a fire to keep them off. The Indian complied with the request. While the savage was on his knees and elbows blowing the coals, Dr. Knight seized a club, and struck him over his head with all his strength, knocking him forward into the fire, but neither kill- ing nor stunning him.
The Indian, though severely hurt, sprang up, when the doctor seized his gun; but in his agitation he pulled back the cock with such violence as to break it. The Indian, however, expecting instantly to be shot, plunged, with hideous yellings into the woods. Dr. Knight, with the useless gun in his hands to intimidate his guard should he attempt to approach him, made the best of his way towards home. For twenty-one days he continued his flight through the wilderness, ever on the most careful watch lest he should encounter some wandering bands of his foes. All this. time he lived upon roots and berries, with occasionally young and. unfledged birds which he found in their nests.
About three hundred of the army kept together and were only slightly harassed, without being seriously attacked. Two hundred broke up in small parties, thinking that they could thus more easily conceal their trail and elude their foes. They perished almost to a man. Colonel Williamson reached his home in safety.
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Colonel Crawford is described by those who know him as a humane and worthy man. He was one of the first emigrants to the West, and was in the dreadful defeat of Braddock, in his march to Fort Duquesne. Washington commended him as a brave and active officer. He was an active soldier in the Pontiac War, and accompanied Lord Dunmore in his expedition to the Scioto. It is enough to make one's blood curdle in his veins to think of his awful fate.
In the month of April a Welsh family, of former opulence, em- igrated from Beaufort, South Carolina, to the Ohio Valley. The father of the household was dead. The widowed mother was accompanied on her long journey by two sons and a daughter. The whole party of emigrants who left Beaufort together, large and small, amounted to seventy souls. In a small vessel, they ran along the coast to Alexandria, in Virginia. This was a period when emigration across the mountains was in full flood, and Alex- andria was one of the principal starting points.
The road across the mountains was exceedingly rough, being mainly intended for pack horses; still, stout wagons could be dragged along. Here the party took wagons. There were log huts, called taverns, scattered along the route at the distance of fifteen or twenty miles from each other. A day's journey usually ex- tended from tavern to tavern. These log huts could not accom- modate with sleeping conveniences a large party. Many would sleep in their wagons, and cook their food on camp fires ; but they could generally, at these stations, find corn for their cattle, and meal and game if they needed such supplies.
As they toiled along, several of their party became discouraged by the hardships which they encountered. Steep and rocky hills were to be climbed with the greatest difficulty. Mountain torrents were to be forded. Vast morasses they waded through - the wheels of their wagons sinking to their hubs in the mire. Some began to doubt whether there were any lovely and fertile valleys beyond the awful barriers of the Alleghanies, and, in great des- pondency, they abandoned the enterprise and returned to Carolina.
The mother of this family was aged and infirm. One of her sons, who has given a very graphic description of their adventures, presents the following pleasing picture of a serene old age :
" My mother had been weakly on our journey, and at Freder- icktown was more seriously ill than I had ever known her before
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or since. She still lives, a monument of the Lord's mercy, and a bright illustration of the discipline of which the human mind is susceptible. She has been blind about eight years, and to my recollection she never complained of any thing, but trusted all to divine Providence. She now, at the age of ninety-five, waits her change with patience, is little or no trouble to any one, enjoys good health, a serene and sound mind, and the age of dotage seems never to have overtaken her. She never gives unnecessary pain or trouble to any one, and is pleased when, by repeating words which she learned when a girl, she can add to the happiness of the social circle. She has been a woman of strict economy and great industry, but never milked a cow, and perhaps never spun a thread in her life, and scarcely ever cooked, but was a great sewer and knitter. This she does now with great facility, saying that if she could not knit, she would be very unhappy. She is very little of her time without her knitting, except on first days, as she calls the Sabbath. She was always a member of the Society of Friends. . She is much delighted with hearing the Word or any religious book read."
This pioneer family consisted of the aged mother, two sons - one twenty-one years old, and one eleven - and a sister, twenty- two years old. There also accompanied them a half brother, married, with a family of small children and a colored servant woman. They soon built their rude cabin, consisting of one room, twenty-four by eighteen feet, fronting the north. At one end were placed two beds, and upon shelves made of thin strips of boards, was displayed the household store of dishes of pewter and tin. By a short ladder an ascent was made to the loft above. Split- bottom chairs, three-legged stools, a looking-glass, eight inches by ten, a spinning wheel, shovel and tongs, with certain farming im- plements, completed the furnishing of the domicil.
Still it was not rapid work constructing the cabin. They had little money, and not much strength. Laborers were not to be had, and they had no money to pay them, could they have been obtained. So the work gradually progressed as best it could, erecting the chimney, laying the floors and putting in the tables, made of logs split in two through the middle. These puncheons seem to have been of universal use, forming floors by laying the round side of the log upon the ground; making doors by a little shaving off of the curved side. It was found in the Spring that the
"OUR CABIN" IN THE WILDERNESS,
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chimney was in danger of toppling over; but they had few tools and little experience, so they braced it as well as they could with poles. The prevailing winds from west to east swept through the crevices of the cabin with one advantage - that of clearing it of smoke. Their sleep was sound and refreshing. Indeed, the nights seemed but about a minute in length. The beds were of leaves or straw ; the blankets, or cadders as they called them, were sim- ilar to the rag carpets now used for kitchen floors. "I well remember," says one, "the delight with which we received a new cadder, especially if there were some stripes of bright red."
The evenings of the first Winter were rather lonely and dull. They had few books, and having had no harvest had nothing about which to busy themselves, as in after winters. Borrowing from a neighbor that wonderful allegory of the Bedford Tinker, the Pil- grim's Progress, they devoured its contents with eagerness. This, added to the Bible, George Fox's Journal, Barkley's Apology, and a few other books of like stamp, constituted their library. Yet there was an influence imparted by the perusal of such volumes, calculated to strengthen the character and form a taste for substan- tial reading.
" Our Sundays, or First Day, as my mother, being one of the Society of Friends, chose to term it, I well remember. On removing to the West we carried part of a barrel of flour and a jar of white pure leaf lard, made in Carolina. On Sunday morn- ing, and at no other time, from these materials were made short biscuit for the breakfast, rolled carefully in balls by my sister, and placed around the edge of the skillet and baked before the fire." The pleasure of the gourmand at Delmonico's, or at the tables of kings, was very small compared with that of these hungry, healthy occupants of the lonely cabin. And the reserving of the nicest and best for Sunday by these far-away frontiersmen had a savor of reverence in it that was certainly delightful.
The cabin of 'our settlers was in the midst of a thick forest. Tall trees swayed in the breeze, sometimes threatening to come crashing down upon the cabin. And as the fierce wintry blast swept through their tops, the mournful requiem was often heard, saddening the half-sleepy inmates by its cadences. By degrees, however, the giant trees were prostrated, and the hand of civiliza- tion and opulence has replaced the old log cabin by the stately mansion of brick. The howl of the panther and the wolf, the I6
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approach occasionally of the bear in somewhat unpleasant prox- imity to the settler's cabin, added much to the disagreeableness of their situation. Smaller animals and venomous reptiles were quite unwilling to resign possession of the country. Many days were spent in hunting these annoying intruders, and it was only by the combined efforts of increasing numbers that their haunts were broken up. The mutual aid required for protection against sav- age men and savage beasts did much to foster a spirit of harmony and affection among the early pioneers of the West.
" The arrival of a bag of meal would make a whole family rejoicingly happy " and grateful then, when a loaded East India- man will fail to do it now, and is passed off as a common busi- ness transaction, without ever thinking of the Giver - so inde- pendent have we become in forty years ! Having got out of the wilderness in less time than the children of Israel, we seem to be even more forgetful and unthankful than they.
"When Spring was fully come, and our little patch of corn, three acres, put in among the beech roots, which at every step contended with the shovel-plough for the right of soil, and held it too, we enlarged our stock of conveniences. As soon as bark would run (peel off) we could make ropes and bark boxes. These we stood in great need of, as such things as bureaus, stands, wardrobes, or even barrels, were not to be had. The manner of making ropes of lime bark was to cut the bark in strips of convenient length, and water-rot it in the same manner as rotting flax or hemp. When this was done, the inside bark would peel off and split up so fine as to make a pretty considerably rough and good-for-but- little kind of rope. Of this, however, we were very glad, and let no ship owner with his grass ropes laugh at us.
" We made two kinds of boxes for furniture. One kind was of hickory bark with the outside shaved off. This we would take off all round the tree, the size of which would determine the cali- bre of our box. Into one end we would place a flat piece of bark or puncheon cut round to fit in the bark, which stood on one end the same as when on the tree.
"A much finer article was made of slippery elm bark, shaved smooth and with the inside out, bent round and sewed together where the ends of the hoop or main bark lapped over. A bottom was made of the same bark dried flat, and a lid like that of a com- mon band-box, made in the same way. This was the finest fur-
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niture in a lady's dressing room, and then, as now, with the finest furniture, the sewed side was turned to the wall and the prettiest part to the spectator.
" The privations of a pioneer life contract the wants of man almost to total extinction, and allow him means of charity and benevolence. Sufferings ennoble his feelings, and the frequent necessity for united effort, produced in him habitual charity, almost unknown in these days of luxury. We have now but little time left to think of good and still less to practice it."*
The spot chosen by our settlers was covered with forest, princi- pally beech, with a sprinkling of elm and ash. Although the land was very rich, the roots of the beech were very troublesome in the endeavor to cultivate it. Turnips they scraped and used with hickory nuts as fruit, and the timothy grass which they sowed produced a good crop. Corn meal made into mush, with milk, formed a staple article of food. But there was a serious trouble in getting corn into meal. Every expedient was resorted to; some- times pounding, sometimes grating it. The hard, laborious work of the hand-mill was welcomed, and when a mill turned by a horse was invented they were indeed happy.
Salt at five dollars a bushel was a luxury not often used. Candles were never seen in these rude log cabins, and the poor substitute of shelly hickory, only served to make darkness visible. The raising of flax soon became a very important branch of industry as the strong virgin soil could bear the drain caused by this plant.
Schools were infrequent in the new settlements, but we question if the boys of Ohio then did not apply their minds as vigorously to the study of books when they had the opportunity, as they had to the hard work of the pioneer's life, in the earliest days. One of them writes in his memorandum book, "I have in the last three days calculated, plotted, and written down fourteen pages of Gib- son's Conveying, besides plowing ten acres of corn. This I counted good work."
* American Pioneers, Vol. II. p. 449.
CHAPTER XIII.
BATTLES IN KENTUCKY.
BYRD'S EXPEDITION - SACKING OF RUGGLES STATION - INDIAN ATROCITIES - RESPONSIBILITY OF THE ENGLISH -SACK OF MARTIN'S FORT - THE AMBUSCADE - NEW ARMY ORGANIZED AT DETROIT - THE ATTACK UPON BRYANT'S STATION - HE- ROIC DEFENSE - DESCRIPTION OF THE FORT - HEROISM OF THE WOMEN - THE RE-ENFORCEMENT - THE AMBUSH - SIMON GIRTY DEMANDS SURRENDER - THE PIQUANT RESPONSE - RETREAT OF THE SAVAGES - DREADFUL SLAUGHTER AT THE BLUE LICKS - ESCAPE OF BOONE - HIS TESTIMONY.
THE SAVAGES were much elated by their recent victories, and were eager to be led to new triumphs. Governor Hamilton, of Detroit, was also annoyed, that his faithful allies should be assailed, almost beneath the walls of the British fortress, by armed bands from the south side of the Ohio River. He therefore organized quite a powerful army, of picked warriors, about six hundred in number, to destroy all the settlements on the Kentucky and Lick- ing Rivers. Nearly all these Indians were from the Valleys of the Sandusky and Little Miami.
The Governor, being resolved to make his force strong enough to accomplish its purpose, enlisted about twenty Canadians to accompany the savages, and furnished them with six quite for- midable pieces of artillery, and with skilled artillerists to man the guns. With these engines of war the strongest log fort could be easily battered down. The rush, then, of five hundred savages upon the feeble and defenseless garrisons, would soon silence all in death. The renowned Chieftain, Blackfish, was the Indian leader of the savage warriors. A British officer, Colonel Byrd, was entrusted with the general command of the expedition.
It will be remembered that the Licking River, flowing from the south, into the Ohio, enters that stream a few miles only below
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the point at which the Little Miami enters it, flowing down from the north. At this time there were several feeble settlements, which had been commenced not far from each other, along the Valley of the Licking.
It required a march of twelve days to descend the Valley of the Little Miami, cross the Ohio, and ascend the Valley of the Lick- ing to its south fork. This was accomplished with so much secrecy that the army reached Ruggles Station on the twenty-second of June, 1780, before any of the garrison had the slightest suspicion of its approach. The fort was a mere stockade, without artillery, and crowded with women and children. The feeble garrison could make no resistance, and at once surrendered to " the arms of his majesty," with the guarantee of their lives only.
The victorious savages, elated by such unusual success, quite regardless of the remonstrances of Colonel Byrd, seized all the inmates of the fort, as their prisoners, to be carried off in triumph to their wild haunts, there to be exposed to indignities, slavery or death, by all the varieties of demoniac torture. Three of the cap- tives, who made some slight resistance, were instantly tomahawked.
The British commander, a humane man, was very indignant at this outrage, and felt greatly humiliated by it. He was fighting, as he supposed justly, under the banners of his king, to put down unjustifiable rebellion. He had hoped to elevate his savage troops to respect the customs of civilized warfare. Instead of this, he found that the savages were dragging him down to participation in their demoniac deeds. All that he could say in extenuation of these atrocities, so dishonoring to the British arms, was, that it was utterly beyond his power to control the wolfish nature of his allies.
In reference to this horrible warfare, Mr. John W. Monette writes, in his interesting " History of the Valley of the Missis- sippi :"
" All the horrors of this war, without doubt, are to be ascribed to the inhuman policy of England, in employing the savages to murder the defenseless frontier settlements, because they were a portion of the revolted provinces. Thus the most powerful of civilized nations, and whose subjects are most active in dissemi- nating the gospel, prostituted her power and her resources to en- courage the most inhuman barbarities upon innocent women and children, and authorized the commandants of the western posts to
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pay the Indians a stipulated price for each scalp and each prisoner for the purpose of stimulating them to greater exertions against the helpless frontier people.
" Thus the scalps of the white man, and of his wife and children, under this diabolical policy, were, in the hands of the savages, a. current coin, which, at the British posts, served to purchase powder, arms, clothing and the other necessaries for savage comfort. This policy has been denounced and discarded invariably by the Govern- ment of the United States, which would not permit it among those Indians who chose to range themselves under its banners.
" This policy, pursued by this more than savage enemy, on the western frontier, had the effect of debasing many of the western people to the state of savage barbarity. It produced in them, that thirst for indiscriminate revenge against the Indians, which caused the commission of barbarities which the government could never approve. It was a war of mutual, but unavailing slaughter, devastation and revenge, over whose record humanity must drop a tear of regret. But that tear cannot efface its disgraceful history."
The Indians loaded themselves with the spoil of Ruggles Station, and then, leading their bound captives, demanded to be led to the next post, which was about five miles farther up the river.
It is said that Colonel Byrd was so affected by the atrocities he had witnessed, that he refused to go any farther. But he soon found that instead of commanding the savages, they commanded him. If he preferred to stay behind he could do so, and they could go without him. The Colonel, a proud British officer, was helpless, and was stung almost to madness, by the utter and con- temptuous disregard of his authority. In the humane endeavor to save life, he consented to a humiliating compromise. He agreed that the savages should have all the plunder, while he should have all the prisoners.
The ferocious band rioted along with war whoop and hideous yells till they reached the post called Martin's Fort. Here the same scenes were re-enacted, which had been witnessed at Ruggles' Station. The Indians seized all the plunder, and then they grasped the inmates, as captives, using them as beasts of burden, and loading them heavily with the spoils of their own dwellings. There were several other stations, farther up the river, entirely at the mercy of this band.
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