USA > Ohio > The picturesque Ohio : a historical monograph > Part 6
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"Belmont County, Ohio, was the scene of several of the most daring adventures of this far-famed borderer. Once while hunting, Wetzel fell in with a young man who lived on Dunkard Creek, and was persuaded to accompany him to his home. On their arrival they found the house in ruins and all the family murdered, except a young woman who had been bred with them, and to whom the young man was ardently attached. She was taken alive, as was found by examining the trail of the enemy, who were three Indians and a white renegade. Burning with revenge, they followed the trail, until opposite the mouth of Captina, where the enemy had crossed. They swam the stream, and discovered the Indian camp, around the fires of which lay the enemy in careless repose. The young woman was apparently unhurt, but was making much moaning and lamentation. The young man, hardly able to restrain his rage, was for firing and rushing instantly upon them. Wetzel, more cautious, told him to wait until daylight, when there would be a better chance of success in killing the whole party. After dawn the Indians prepared to depart. The young inan selecting the white renegade, and Wetzel the Indian, they both fired simultaneously, with fatal effect. The young man rushed forward, knife in hand, to re- lieve the mistress of his affections, while Wetzel reloaded and pursued the two surviving Indians, who had taken to the woods until they could ascertain the number of their enemies. Wetzel, as soon as he was dis- covered, discharged his rifle at random, in order to draw them from their covert. The ruse took effect, and taking to his heels, he loaded as he ran, and suddenly wheeling about, discharged his rifle through the body of his nearest and unsuspecting enemy. The remaining Indian, seeing the fate of his companion, and that his enemy's gun was unloaded, rushed
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forward with all energy, the prospect of prompt revenge being fairly be- fore him. Wetzel led him on, dodging from tree to tree, until his rifle was again ready, when suddenly turning, he fired, and his remaining en- emy fell dead at his feet. After taking their scalps, Wetzel and his friend, with their rescued captive, returned in safety to the settlement.
"In the year 1782, after Crawford's defeat, Lewis went with a Thomas Mills, who had been in the campaign, to get his horse, which he had left near the place where St. Clairsville now stands. At the Indian springs, two miles from St. Clairsville, on the Wheeling road, they were met by about forty Indians, who were in pursuit of the stragglers from the campaign. The Indians and the white men discovered each other about the same mo- ment. Lewis fired first and killed an Indian, while the Indians wounded Mills in the heel, who was soon overtaken and killed. Four of the Indians then singled out, dropped their guns, and pursued Wetzel. Wetzel loaded his rifle as he ran. After running about half a mile, one of the Indians having gotten within eight or ten steps of him, Wetzel wheeled round and shot him down, ran and loaded his gun as before. After running about three-quarters of a mile further, a second Indian came so close to him that, when he turned to fire, the Indian caught the inuzzle of his gun, and, as he expressed it, 'he and the Indian had a severe wring.' He, however, succeeded in bringing the muzzle to the Indian's breast, and killed him on the spot. By this time he, as well as the Indian, was pretty well tired out; yet the pursuit was continued by the two remaining Indians. Wetzel, as before, loaded his gun and stopped several times during this latter chase; when he did so the Indians treed themselves. After going something more than a mile, Wetzel took advantage of a little open piece of ground over which the Indians were passing, a short distance behind him, to make a sudden stop for the purpose of shooting the foremost, who got behind a little sapling which was too small to cover his body. Wetzel shot and broke his thigh. The wound, in the issue, proved fatal. The last of the Indians then gave a little yell, and said, 'No catch that man, gun always loaded,' and gave up the chase, glad, no doubt, to get off with his life."
In 1779 Stephen Collins, of Halifax County, Virginia, "long hunter of deer-skins," who had for years followed his uncertain calling in the wild region west of the Blue Ridge, with five of his brothers (only one unmarried) and a brother-in-law, removed to
"A MOUNTAIN TARN."
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Kentucky. The writer has often heard his son (Judge Joel Col- lins, of Oxford, Ohio), tell the story of the transit over the mountains .* Two feather-beds, securely and tightly rolled, were slung on a horse and so arranged, one on each side, that the larger children could climb on to the secure perch when weary or footsore from the long march. The gentlest horses had pack-saddles made of two large split hampers, in each of which two children fitted. The pack-horses of rougher tempers car- ried corn-meal, bacon, salt, camp furniture, and the clothing of the entire party. In addition there was a horse for each woman. The five families had over twenty horses and some fifty head of cattle. The baggage-train was packed for the day's march while the women dressed the children and cooked the breakfast. The cattle were driven in the van, and the long train of horses came on in single file, two of the men walking behind to rearrange breaks and pick up any mischievous urchin who managed to slip out of the hampers. The party of brothers first settled at Bow- man's Station, on Dick's Creek, which they reached "in fairly good condition, although for most of the journey they had no meat except such game as the hunters could find, and to find any they had sometimes to make long excursions away from the rough trail upon which the cattle and horses must be kept." From the time of their arrival in Kentucky they "dressed in deer-skins, made their beds of buffalo-skins stretched on rough wood frames, with the woolly side up, and had for covering
" The stalwart figure and genial, kindly face of the " Old Judge " will be remembered by every student of Miami University, where, for so many years, he was custodian of the build- ings and superintendent of the grounds and lands In his youth a good soldier and a daring scout, from his sixteenth year he was in every battle where the collected force of Kentucky fought the Indians. He lived through the "hard times" of the West, a rough. rugged life of want and self-denial ; but the metal in the man was so fine that he had brought through it a character fashioned for all noble uses upon the anvil of adversity.
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a second buffalo-skin with the wool turned down." Their shirts were made from a species of nettle which were beaten to a lint that could be spun into yarn.
Indians were constantly prowling about the station, and occa- sionally a messenger or a hunter was shot and scalped near the fort. The Collins families had not been long in Kentucky before the brothers were called out with the militia, under General George Rogers Clark, to "make a raid into the Indian country on the north of the Ohio, and put down with the strong hand the skulk- ing varmints who were murdering peaceable settlers." The special provocation was the capture of Alexander McConnell, an express-rider from Lexington.
"The Indians shot his horse under him, tied his hands behind him, and drove him at a run to their hiding-place on the Licking. A scouting party from the station found the dead horse, and so we knew he was a prisoner. I was only a little fellow about eight years old, but I remember yet the rumpus at the station the week 'after his capture, when some of our men, who were in the field near by, saw a wretched object, with a few rags around him, coming towards them. They halted him with their rifles up at sight, when he called out, 'I amı Alec McConnell.' I never can forget how the women and we youngsters run, and how we crowded around after he had some- thing to eat, to hear his story. He had been with them three days when he got away. That third night, when the Indians were sleeping, he managed to slip his hands out of the thongs (he had mighty small hands), then he untied his legs from the stakes to which they were fastened, and got hold of the Indians' guns. One by one he pulled them over to him. He put one gun on each knee, with the muzzles almost touching the heads of the two nearest to him; then, as soon as he fired, he snatched up the loaded rifles one by one, and killed three more. He thought he marked some of the skunks that got away; but they run so fast he wasn't sure, and he had no time to lose looking, as they were all on the other side of the Ohio. He had to do his best to get over to this side before daylight. He picked out a splendid tomahawk and the best rifle, broke the locks of the others, and got back to the station without meeting either Indian or white man."
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In 1780, when General George Rogers Clark called out the militia for a "defensive raid to the Indian villages," Stephen Collins and his brothers went with the Lexington company. Clark's command consisted of two regiments. One, commanded by Colonel Ben Logan, assembled at Bryant's Spring, eight miles from Lexington, and marched down the Licking to its mouth; the other, commanded by Colonel Wm. Linn, marched from the falls, up the Ohio to the Licking. The transportation of artil- lery, provisions, and military stores was in skiffs, under charge of Colonel George Slaughter, with one hundred and fifty troops, raised in Virginia. The entire force consisted of one thousand men. They crossed the Ohio, 2d of August, 1780, and marched to the Indian towns with a six-pound howitzer, for which a way through the forest had to be opened. On the 6th they reached Chillicothe, on the Little Miami. The Indian town was aban- doned, and still burning. They arrived at Piqua, on the north bank of Mad River, on the 8th; had a severe fight with the In- dians; took the town, burnt it, and destroyed the growing corn. As Judge Collins told the story, Clark avoided an ambuscade by returning across the country by a different route, to their point of departure at the Licking. Soon after the Collins's return they moved to Lexington.
Joel Collins's first school-master was John McKinney, better known in Kentucky as "Wildcat Mckinney." He had been disabled in the fight at Point Pleasant, in 1774, where he was one of the Virginia riflemen. He was shot through both thighs, and fell. His party were driven a short distance, and he was left lying about half-way between the combatants, who fought Indian fashion, from the cover of a tree. Mckinney made an effort to crawl back to the riflemen, when he was seen by an
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Indian, and 'another shot shattered his left arm so badly that the splintered bone stuck in the bark of a paw-paw bush to which he was holding. The Indians made a rush with their toma- hawks, but the Virginians came to his relief. Beating back the Indians, they carried him off safely. In the last part of this hand-to-hand fray he had two ribs broken by the stroke of a tomahawk. Thinking his fighting days were over, he took up the occupation of a school-master and came out to Kentucky. One morning in June the women of the station were up very early milking the cows, when Mrs. Collins called to her husband :
" Stephen ! Stephen ! run over to the school-house; some- thing 's the matter with the master."
Mr. Collins, with Joel at his heels, ran over without loss of time. The door was open, and Collins asked: "What's the matter?" Mckinney sung out: "It's an ugly baste tryin' to kill me; but I've got him purty well whipped." And he went on plugging away with his lame left hand into the side of an animal which he held doubled up in his right arm, and pressed against the table, although its teeth were clinched in his breast a little below his throat. Mr. Collins did his best to help him, but he insisted: "Wait until I get to the door, so you can see how to take the pesky thing's teeth out of me breast-bone." It took all Mr. Collins's knowledge of surgery to free the school-master. " Wildcat Mckinney" moved from Kentucky to Missouri in 1820.
Young Joel Collins began his career as an Indian fighter in 1791, in the expedition to the Indian towns on the Wabash. This gave him "a liking for the army," and he enlisted in the " pack-horse brigade," which was constantly on the march, tak- ing supplies to the advanced posts on the Miami. He was at
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Fort Hamilton when Little Turtle and his warriors struck the war-pole, and took the trail for Columbia. On their return they made a night attack on the " pack-horse brigade " encampment. There was severe and close fighting until daylight, when the guns from the fort were effective, and the Indians retreated. During the fight one of his comrades was badly wounded, and he would have been tomahawked and scalped had not Joel Col- lins brought him on his back to the shelter of the fort. To use the vernacular of the time, "he was a born soldier." Like the war-horse, "he smelleth the battle from afar," and the writer has often heard him say that "the deepest regret of his life was that he had not fought in the Revolution under Washington," a natural regret when one understands the times in which he lived. For although the Western pioneers were out of the way of the fight when the Revolution began, for them to stay out of the fray was wholly impossible. The blood of the men who fought at Derry was in their veins; and that blood never ran slowly or grew cold when burning powder scented the air. They were hundreds of miles away from the sea-board; but here and there a solitary hunter crossed the mountain-chain alone to join the rebels under Washington; or little groups of two or three fell together by the way, and marched steadily over the ridges and through the winding ravines, until, from the Blue Mountain Heights, they looked down upon the very center of the Old Dominion, that fair county of Albemarle, which was the birth- place of the most resolute soldier and daring leader who ever headed a foray into the Indian country.
" When the Independence of the Colonies was secured, but few of these frontiersmen had won through the battles and the winter at Valley Forge. None of the survivors were above
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want. This poverty of the soldiers was imposed by circum- stances. The times were in fault. Continental money was worthless. Six years of service left them nothing. Maimed, ragged, and foot-sore, men returned to the little farms, where the outlying fields were wastes, and only the patches of corn around the cabins told the story of how brave women had fought the battle of life for their children during the long years of self- dependence. To quote from a trustworthy historian of the time:
" If want of provisions or other causes made a visit to a neighbour's necessary, a settler's wife must either take her children with her through the woods, or leave them unprotected, under the most fearful apprehen- sion that some mischief might befall them before her return. As bread and meat were scarce, milk was the principal dependence for the support of the family. One cow of each family was provided with a bell, which could be heard from half a mile to a mile, and in the mornings the mother placed herself in the most favorable position for listening to her cow-bell, which she knew as well as she did the voice of her child. She could detect her own even among a clamour of many other bells, thus man- ifesting a nicety of ear which, with cultivation, might have been envied by the best musicians.
* " If her children were small, she tied them in bed to prevent them from wandering, and to guard them from danger from fire and snakes; then, guided by the tinkling of the bell, made her way through the tall meads, and across the ravines, until she found the object of her search; happy on her return to find her children unharmed."
To glance for a moment at the position of the River Clearings, we find that the settlements of the Scotch-Irish from Bedford, York Pennsylvania, and Virginia, with a few families directly from the North of Ireland, soon extended from the Monongahela to the Ohio. Their route was the barely practicable road called Braddock's trail.
Uncertain of the boundaries of Virginia and Pennsylvania,
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few applied for land-warrants, although Lord Dunmore had opened offices for the granting of warrants within the bounds of what are now the four western counties of Pennsylvania. They were, however, afterwards recognized as actual settlers, and thus entitled to farms not exceeding four hundred acres.
At the close of Pontiac's War, in the fall of 1763-64, the stream of emigration was greatly enlarged. In the Historical Sketches of Western Presbyterianism, the author says:
" It was a remarkable circumstance that between Mr. Smith's congre- gations and the Ohio, and along up and down the river for thirty or forty miles below Pittsburg, there was early settled, or 'squatted' rather, a pe- culiar population, many of them from Eastern Virginia, well-suited from their habits and training as hunters, and from their adoption of the In- dian modes of warfare, to fight with the savages, and to act as a life-guard, as a protecting cordon, to Mr. Smith's people, and to the interior set- tlements.
In counting them up by families, he mentions in the Life Guard, " the Bradys, the Wetzels, and the Poes," then he goes 011 telling of "a glorious work of grace began and long continued in that vineyard which God had so strangely fenced around." He again singles out for special mention "Mr. Smith," whose "dress was always neat and becoming. His voice was remarkable alike for the terrific and the pathetic (the italics are preserved not inserted), and as Dr. Kirkland said of the celebrated Fisher Ames, 'now like the thunder, and now like the music of heaven,'" then he continues: "I never heard a man who could so com- pletely unbar the gates of hell, and make me look so far down into the dark, bottomless abyss." The historian, after further characterizing his pulpit hero as one who left "the cold ratioci- nations of logic far behind," grows facetiously comparative, and tells us of " old Colonel R-, of Virginia, who "used to say that
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he liked that preacher best who could make him wish that he could creep into an augur-hole before the preacher was done," and he clinches this with another indorsement: "Robert Morris, the great financier, who saved the credit of his country and ruined his own, once told Dr. Rush that he 'liked that kind of preaching that drives a man into the corner of his pew, and makes him think the devil is after him.' He would have been delighted with Mr. Smith." That we may have an opportunity to prove the authenticity of his anecdotal lore, he naively refers us to Haz- ard's Register, Vol. XII, page 249.
To give these fiery sectarists their due, they were a bold, hardy, simple-minded people; ready and willing to toil in the fields with their rifles within reach, and equally ready to listen "to the preaching of the Word" with the same rifles in their hands. One more story of their struggle with want and we will see that there was a full-hearted generosity in the composi- tion of these Irish "seceders," who are immortalized by Virginia's sweetest and truest poet, in three lines :-
"Upon their dinted shields, no crests ; No glittering orders on their breasts, But iron in their blood."
Mr. Smith had found a spiritual and faithful people, but they were too poor to pay a salary which would support his family. He, in common with all, must cultivate a farm. He bought one on the security of the salary pledged by his congregation.
Year after year went by with the salary unpaid. The last payment was due, and neither the preacher nor the elders could pay it. The case was laid before the people. Mr. Moore, who owned the only mill in the country, offered to grind their wheat (which was their currency), on the most reasonable terms.
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Wheat was abundant, but it could not be sold for more than twelve and a half cents per bushel, in cash; and they were com- pelled to bring salt across the mountains at an exchange of twenty-one bushels of wheat for one of salt. The people gave gen- erously of their grain, although some had to bring it from sixteen to twenty-six miles to the mill. In a month the flour was ready to go to market. After the service was over on Sunday (the only day in the week on which all the people were gathered together), the question was asked : "Who will run the flour to New Orleans ?" It was a perilous and daring venture. Many a boat's crew had gone down the river without even one of them returning to tell where the others had perished. The young men were silent, and the middle-aged stammered excuses, which all who shrunk from the undertaking must accept. At length one of the elders, tall, brawny, and white-haired, his face marked with the toil of nearly seventy years arose and said simply : "Here am I; send me." Pas- tor and people united in remonstrance, but the old man was firm. To keep their pastor and release his home from debt he was ready to brave danger and face death. Two young men were induced to go with him, and pastor and people together marched fifteen miles to the river to say "Godspeed" to the brave elder. A prayer was made, a hymn was sung, and the old Scotchman called out : "Untie the cable, and let us see what the Lord will do for us." Nearly ten months had passed without a word from Elder Smiley, when at last a Sunday came when the people found Father Smiley in his accustomed seat. After the services the people were told to come early in the week to hear the report from the sales. Monday the house was full, and after thanks had been given to God, the old man rose and told the story of his mission. He had sold his flour for twenty-seven dollars a
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barrel, and poured upon the table the largest pile of gold ever seen in the county.
The young men were paid a hundred dollars apiece, and Father Smiley was asked his charges. "He thought," he said, "that he ought to have the same sum as each of the others ;" but modestly added, "he had not worked as hard." When the money was counted there was enough to pay Mr. Smith's entire dues, to advance the sum of his next year's salary, give Father Smiley three hundred dollars, and then pay a dividend to each con- tributor of wheat.
Up to 1793 the frontier was a constant scene of hand-to-hand fights and Indian inroads. Gradually the savages had been driven back, until the Ohio River was the battle-line, across which, however, a daring chief would occasionally lead a wild raid through the wilderness tracts between the sparse settle- ments ; or a solitary warrior would come on a "still hunt" for scalps, and lurk in the wooded thickets, until some careless bor- derer, who had built his lonely cabin in the forest depths, away from the protecting block-house, gave the chance for which he was waiting.
The Indians loved "The White Shining River," and the tribes that had been driven from its neighborhood retreated to the upper waters of the Scioto and the Miamis, that the warriors might be free to renew the contest for its possession without the encumbrance of villages to protect ; and so, day after day, some- where on " The Beautiful River," a battle was fought, or a fatal bullet or whizzing tomahawk struck the invader of the hunting- grounds. In the cool, green recesses of the woods, a stealthy foe would sometimes stalk the frontiersman, who, in eager pur- suit of a startled deer, forgot to be watchful, forgot that he him-
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self was game to be hunted. Yet, even then, the odds were not altogether against the frontiersman, if, in the profound stillness, when he stopped to sight the game, a sudden snap of twig or bough, or even so small a thing as the fluttering rustle of a broken leaf, told the acute and listening senses of a danger to be averted or confronted. Even then, so ready was he in the game, so determined to triumph through some wily device, some trick of skill he had learned from the foe, some twist or turn of the hunter's or woodman's art, that-being warned-the odds were even. If it was too late for skill, it was never too late for daring. If the rifle snapped, or the flint failed, he would turn on his antagonist and face him as calmly as if he were proof against attack, knowing that a duel, without help or witness, had begun, and that one of the duelists would never leave the fateful glade.
The frontiersmen went down in many a hand-to-hand fight; yet despite their losses, they were in time the owners of Ken- tucky, and lords paramount of the river. They were men of determination as well as courage, accustomed to hardship, skilled in all the strategy of the border. They overmatched the Indian in bodily strength, and with his own weapons foiled him in the game of war.
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