USA > Ohio > The picturesque Ohio : a historical monograph > Part 7
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They were a product of race, tempered by the exigencies of a life which was forced to win its innings under the constant pressure of danger. With a certain show of justice, they in- sisted that their raids upon the Indian villages were raids of re- prisal, for in the lexicon of the frontier a war of defense meant a war of extermination.
In their leather-belted hunting-shirts, furnished with sockets for tomahawk, knife, and pistol, with bullet-pouch, powder-horn, and hunting cup, thrown across a brawny chest, and carrying
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with ease and a certain careless grace a heavy rifle, the frontiers- men were picturesque and stalwart figures, admirably in keeping with the wild background of vine-shrouded trees and dim forest aisles in which history and fancy has framed them. They be- longed to the dense woodland solitudes, to the tangled wilder- ness, through which the wandering brooks and the shaded creeks found their way to "The Shining River."
CHAPTER V.
INDIAN CONFLICTS ON AND FOR THE RIVER.
W OLFE'S victory at Quebec, September the 4th, 1756, vir- tually won Canada for the English, although the actual surrender of the New France dates at Montreal, September the 8th, 1760.
Immediately after the surrender, Major Robert Rogers was sent to take formal possession of the forts upon the lakes in- cluded in the capitulation of Montreal. Before reaching Detroit the astute officer clearly understood that there was a dangerous enemy to placate, an offended and resistant power to conciliate, before the English could reap any of the fruitful results of victory.
On the south-west shore of Lake Erie, the present site of Cleve- land, Pontiac met the expedition. The opening speech of the Great Chief threatened a stormy ending; yet Rogers's thorough understanding of Indian character and Indian diplomacy secured for the English troops an unmolested passage to Detroit. The surrender of the fort was demanded, the lilies of France were low-
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ered from the flag-staff, and the cross of St. George was uplifted over the Key to the Western Lakes.
Neither the population of the town of Detroit, which, accord- ing to Rogers's estimate, amounted to about twenty-five hundred inhabitants, nor the Indian allies of the French living in numer- ous villages around and near the fort, offered any opposition to the change of rulers, except the opposition suggested in Pontiac's proud definition of the terms of settlement, and the significant warning that he would " drive out the English and shut up the door" if the terms which he had accepted at the council were violated.
In the interval between the capitulation of Montreal and the treaty of Paris (February 10, 1763), which finally adjusted some minor difficulties in the terms of peace, the Indians were ill at ease and restless. There were constant rumours of uprisings upon the frontiers. The strong hold the French still had in the . North-west was shown in the grand council at Pontiac's village that spring, when all the lake tribes were represented. That Pontiac believed in the final success of the French is beyond question, as is also the fact that the chiefs of the Algonquin Con- federacy accepted Pontiac's belief as an immediate reason for war.
To have a clear understanding of the complications upon the border, it is necessary to understand something of the situa- tion of the Indian tribes; and also the ties and the motives that influenced their alliances with the French, with the English, and with each other.
The Indians upon the Illinois, where LA SALLE had planted his colonies, were bound to the colonists by ties of blood, as well as of affection. Soldiers in the forts, traders in the Indian vil- lages, couriers des bois, who made their long and often solitary
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voyages through the lakes and rivers of the North-west, had taken their wives from among the tribes of the Illinois. These Indians were nominally Catholics, therefore the Church sanc- tioned their marriages. In religion, language, and affection their descendants were French. Thus it very naturally came about that even the most timid-those who, from motives of gain or policy, wished to preserve a strict neutrality between the dis- affected chiefs and their new rulers, the English-would not have betrayed the conspiracy of Pontiac if they had been trusted with full knowledge of his plans. Nor was this affiliation of the Illinois with the French an exceptional episode in the history of the lake tribes. It is true that LA SALLE had a wonderful influ- ence over the Indians with whom he was thrown in contact; and, doubtless, he did more than any one man has ever done to impress the savages with respect and admiration for the French character .* Yet it is no less true that from the advent of Cham- plain, to the death of Montcalm, the French leaders were the models, as they were the admiration, of the greatest of the In- dian chieftains.
The governors of "New France" had made friends of the Western chiefs; and the French soldiers had heartily fraternized with their brave allies. The careless daring, the chivalry, the gayety, all those pronounced characteristics that brighten the camp and gild war, appealed at once to the pride, the imagina- tion, and the fealty of the savage warriors. The sentiment un- derlying the comradeship so frankly offered captivated fancies that had been fed upon the barbaric traditions of a brave, proud
* A story told by the Abbe Renaudot, in his " Relations," illustrates this sympathetic admiration of the Indians for the French: "A New York Hollander said to an Indian 'that the French were the slaves of their king; but that every Hollander was one of the masters in Holland.' 'If that is so,' replied the Indian, 'the slaves are of more value than the masters.' "'
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race. Their French comrades called them brothers, and treated them as brothers. The French king was their father. The splendour of his glory was reflected upon his children; and the child-like savage did not stint the measure of his admiration or his devotion. When Canada was lost to the French, there was the bitterness of sorrow, as well as of defeat, in the hearts of the Indians. This feeling runs through every sentence of Pon- tiac's reply to the address of the English officer sent to take possession of the forts. The first few sentences define the situation :
"Englishmen, you know the French king is our father. He promised to be such, and we, in return, promised to be his chil- dren. This promise we have kept. Englishmen, you have made war upon our father. You are his enemies. How can you have the boldness to venture here among his children? Do you not know that his enemies are ours? He is old, infirm-he has been sleeping. You have taken advantage of that to possess your- selves of Canada. But he will awaken. I hear him stirring now. He is asking for his Indian children. When he is fully awake he will destroy you utterly."
Any close study of the history of the North American Indian will force upon the unprejudiced student the irresistible convic- tion that the only race that has ever understood the Indian or treated him fairly was the French. Of all the peoples with whom the North American savage has been thrown in contact, the French alone never contemned or undervalued him. In some degree this is the outcome of a sympathetic and subtle similarity of traits. A likeness that is elusive and indistinct, but which is constantly brought out in the shading of individual character.
The Indian, like the Gascon, vaunts his prowess, and, like the
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Gascon, he recklessly faces death to make that vaunt of chal- lenge good. In both races there is the same desperate courage in assault; if fed with hope, the same endurance; if defeated, the same despairing hopelessness. Alike, they are easily stung to fierce effort by pride of race or devotion to a great leader. They will dare or die like heroes in the first onset of battle; yet if their collected ranks recoil, if their assault fails, they are easily thrown into wild confusion, and their defeat is soon assured.
The surrender of Canada to the English threw the tribes that were allied with the French into "the confusion of defeat." Un- happily for the security of the frontier, the English and the frontiersmen treated them with the scant ceremony which the Indian always resents. The English officers, regarding them as savages, treated them with careless contempt, as though they were the useless portion of the spoil of their recent conquest. Not knowing, or caring to know, any avenue to their favor, they took no pains to find one; not reckoning their value as allies, they provoked their hatred. Soldiers and traders alike were brutal. The French traders were ordered away from the stations upon the slightest pretexts ; and the English, who succeeded them, clinched their bargains with the strong hand. Delinquent debtors were treated to blows if the promised furs were not forthcoming at the appointed date; others who brought their peltries were made drunk, cheated, and then kicked out of the trading-house. The resentment of the Indian was deferred ; but, with the savage, an indignity suffered is a hate recorded.
When, in addition to their personal wrongs, the public wrong to the tribes, in the conditions which defined the boundaries of the country surrendered by the French at the Treaty of Paris, was added to the general count of grievances, when the Indians
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learned that all the lands east of the Mississippi, and as far south as the southern boundary of Georgia (the ownership of which had been vested in the Indian Confederacies of the West from time immemorial) was, by the Treaty of Paris, ceded to the En- glish, their rage equaled their hate. The warring confederacies were now ready to make peace with each other, that they might make common cause against the English. Owing to the in- fluence of Sir William Johnson with the Iroquois, the five origi- nal tribes of the Six Nations were allies of the English. These tribes, settled in Western New York and North-western Pennsyl- vania, had resisted the settlement of the "New France" on the upper bank of the St. Lawrence; and they still held bitter memories of successive wars with the French, in which they had sustained disastrous defeats. But with the Algonquin Con- federacy of the lake tribes and the Mobilian Confederacy of the South there were no reasons either of policy or friendship for their alliance with, or submission to, the English.
With Pontiac at the head of the Algonquin chiefs, with the sinoldering fire of the Cherokee war-which had been kindled by the aggressive spirit of the frontiersmen, who regarded the Indian as a wild beast that must be killed to clear the path- not yet extinguished, there was but little hope of peace or quiet upon the border. The Southern warriors were grimly waiting an opportunity to pay their newly made score; and it was with jealous eyes, clouded by the rankling soreness of defeat, that they watched the movements of the new neighbours defeat had forced upon their acceptance.
Everywhere traders and settlers were pushing their way into the newly acquired territory. Posts and block-houses were being builded upon the banks of the south-eastern tributaries of the
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Ohio-west of the route known to the tribes as the "Warrior's Road."*
"THE DARK AND BLOODY GROUND," which, by a tacit under- standing between the Northern and Southern Indians, had been reserved from habitation, and held as the wide-spread battle-field of the Nations; the dueling-ground, where wrongs were to be avenged and disputes settled; the place where the shock of war must be met, to protect the far distant villages, and which- when the tribes were at peace-was the free hunting-ground for all, was now beginning to be dotted by long lines of well- laden pack-horses, the advance guard of emigrants coming to settle upon the lands that had been held, from the earliest period to which their traditions dated back, as the common property of the Nations.
In utter disregard of Bouquet's proclamation from Fort Pitt, in 1772, which said : "The treaty of Easton, in 1758, secured to the Indians all lands west of the mountains for their hunting-grounds; wherefore I forbid any, and all, settlements from being made there"-the settlements were made. In the quaint statement of a Western writer: "The savages knew with whom they had to deal; they knew that every white man's fingers itched for the furs and the lands of the Indian; they had learned that each
* The Indian confederacies were subdivided into tribes, with their villages and bands of warriors; and also into distinct clans or families, who wore a device or emblem, known in the Algonquin language as Totems. Although branches of the different clans might belong to tribes speaking a different language and living in far distant villages, the tie of fraternity was always recognized. Each warrior was as proud of his Totem as any one of the warlike barons was of " The blazon o'er his towers displayed."
The nearness of kinship implied in the Totem forbade intermarriage ; consequently, as husband and wife were of different clans, the Totems were widely dispersed through each Nation. In many of the tribes the Totem, like the chieftainship, descended in the female line, either to a brother born of the same mother, or to a sister's son. The feeling of clan- ship was as strong among the tribes as it was among the Scotch clans in the time of Rob Roy. If a stranger sought shelter in a village, and found there any one wearing the Totem of his clan, he was sure of safety and assistance.
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new treaty was born of greed, and that it held within its folds the germ of a lie."
When the pack-horses were halted upon some uplifted mnount- ain ridge, or upon some rounded upland summit, it was not love for the beauty of this wild, rich nature that looked down upon the fertile glades inclosed within the steep declivities, but the eyes of Greed, which cast a covetous glance along the narrow bottom-lands that bordered the winding creeks, and spread into undulating meadows up to the rocky base of the steep and rugged hills. At every such view, Greed dreamed dreams of flocks and herds browsing upon the rich pastures, of waving fields of grain, of wind-blown rows of tasseled corn, of fruitful orchards upon the hillsides, now covered with wooded acres, whose growth outran the centuries that could be counted since the white man's coming.
Upon the borders of Pennsylvania the situation was as threat- ening as upon the western border of Virginia. The colony of hard-working, hard-fighting, hard-praying, and, as truth is best unveiled, occasionally hard-drinking as well as hard-thinking Scotch-Irish, who began their exodus from Scotland before the fall of the great Montrose and the 'death of Claverhouse, and who crossed the sea from the North of Ireland to Pennsylvania when the scepter fell from the dead hand of Cromwell, brought into the colony an element altogether different in spirit and action from any then existing there.
The sternest, most set, and determined of all this warlike contingent came over with John Preston, after the siege and loss of Derry made their stay in Ireland impossible.
From the hour of their arrival in the "City of Brotherly Love," detesting the Quakers almost as much as they hated the Church
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of England or of Rome, they drifted to the west and to the south, to the very outermost boundaries of Pennsylvania and Virginia. Tracing the waters of the Susquehanna and the Po- tomac to their sources, finding portages across the mountains to the head-waters of the Ohio, they builded their rude wooden citadels upon the extreme verge of the settlements, making for the cautious Dutch emigrants, who followed in their wake, a cordon of defense against the savages upon the border. Clothed with a prickly chain-armor of intolerant beliefs, pestiferous to touch and impossible for defense, believing in the extermination of the Indians in America as they had believed in the extermi- nation of papists at home, and as their New England co-relig- ionists believed in the extermination of witches and Quakers, these fighting sectarists were the advance guard of a fierce, en- croaching phalanx, which swept westward, clearing the path of civilization with the besom of extermination.
In their most distorted phase they were monsters of incar- nate wrath. In their highest expression of manhood, the world has seen nothing finer, either in character or action. At their worst, cruel and relentless murderers; at their best, they were unselfishly ready to suffer-yes, to welcome death-to save a friend, to establish a principle, to defend a right, or to support and uphold a cause. As if to preserve the contrasting extremes of a race that can best be defined by contrasts, history has sketched the portrait of Simon Girty, and has gilded with mar- tial splendour the story of Stonewall Jackson.
"Penn's policy," as unfolded in his personal dealings with the Indians of Pennsylvania, was eminently just; yet that same " policy," when directed by his successors, covered stupendous frauds in the transfer of Indian lands.
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These later purchases were made by the agents through the "Indian Yankees"-the border name for the Iroquois-of the Six Nations, who drove a thrifty trade in lands to which they had not the shadow of ownership. Beginning with the sales of the Delaware lands upon the head-waters of the Susquehanna, the Six Nations continued their fraudulent transactions, until, step by step, the Delawares and the Shawanese were driven back to the Ohio.
The only pretext for this usurpation of authority, was a long- ago conquest of the Delawares (or Tuscaroras) by the then Five Nations, when a final peace was made by the consolidation which introduced the Delawares as an equal power, through their adoption into the Iroquois confederacy, thus changing the num- ber from the "Five" to the " Six Nations."
After their forcible removal from Pennsylvania, the chief settlement of the Delawares was at Logstown, on the right bank of the Ohio, where their king's rule was overshadowed by the arrogant Iroquois sachem Tanacharisen. The Shawanese, originally from South-eastern Georgia and North-western Florida, came north in 1697, and removed from the Susquehanna to the lands upon the north-west tributaries of the Ohio about 1728, when they finally withdrew from the Iroquois confederation. Already allied with the Delawares, both soon formed an alliance with the Miamis.
Immediately after the treaty of Paris, February 10, 1763, the resumption of the interrupted efforts of the original "Ohio Com- pany" to fulfill the conditions of its charter provoked the ill-will and distrust of the Indians upon the Ohio. Organized (in 1748) by the Lees, the Washingtons, and other prominent Virginians, with whom were associated a syndicate of London merchants, its
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surveys, begun by Christopher Gist, south of the Ohio and east of the Kanawha, had been discontinued during the French and English war; as also had been the surveys of the Loyal Com- pany and the Greenbrier Company. But now there was a gen- eral movement westward, and all of these companies were act- ively pushing their interests, not only upon the head-waters of the Ohio, but their agents in London were asking for further concessions, and for fresh orders of instruction from the Colonial Government at Williamsburg.
All along the frontier the plantations, deserted during the war, were being reoccupied and cultivated. Pioneers were push- ing westward to build forts for coming emigrants. Traders were out among the Indian tribes passing from village to vil- lage collecting furs and skins.
Into this scene of general activity throughout the Ohio Valley sinister figures were crowding. Grim, sullen warriors gathered around every trading-post, waiting to exchange their peltries for weapons and ammunition. They haughtily turned from "excellent bargains in beads, hand-mirrors, and ornaments," which traders persuasively offered. They would have nothing but "powder and shot," or the gun which was to win for them the trader's goods. The Shawanese and the Delawares were clustering around Fort Pitt. Detached bands of the Miamis were hidden in the wooded dells and sheltered from sight in the forest-shrouded creeks along the banks of the "Beautiful River," watching every canoe and trading-boat that floated upon the "deep, shining water."
The Ottawas, the Ojibways, and the Wyandots had gathered at St. Ignace, ready for the capture of Michilimackinac. Every fort on the lakes and the lake streams was surrounded.
Pontiac, with the bravest bands of the Algonquin Confed-
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eracy, was at his village opposite Detroit. The signal of general attack was to be given by Pontiac, and that signal was to be the capture of Detroit. A condensed extract best tells the story of the greatest of the chiefs :
"Among all the wild tribes of the continent personal mierit is indispen- sable to gaining or preserving dignity. Courage, resolution, wisdom, address, and eloquence, are sure passports to distinction. With all these Pontiac was pre-eminently endowed. He possessed commanding energy and force of inind. Capable of acts of lofty magnanimity, he was a thorough savage, witli a wider range of intellect than those around him, but sharing all their pas- sions and prejudices. His faults were the faults of his race; and they can not eclipse liis noble qualities, the great powers and heroic virtues of liis mind. His memory is still cherished among the remnants of many Algon- quin tribes, and the celebrated Tecumseh adopted hini for his model, prov- ing himself no unworthy imitator.
" During the war he had fought on the side of France. It is said that he commanded the Ottawas at the memorable defeat of Braddock.
"When the tide of affairs changed the subtle and ambitious chief trimmed his bark to the current, and gave the hand of friendship to the En- glish. That he was disappointed in their treatment of him, and in all the hopes that he had formed from their alliance, is sufficiently evident from one of his speechies.
"It was a momentous and gloomy crisis for the Indian race, for never before had they been exposed to such pressing and imminent danger.
"The English had gained an undisputed ascendency, and the Indians, 110 longer important as allies, were treated as mere barbarians, who might be trampled upon with impunity.
"Already their best hunting-grounds were invaded, and from the eastern ridges of the Alleghanies they might see, from far and near, the smoke of the settler's clearings.
" Goaded by wrongs and indignities, they struck for revenge and re- lief from the evil of the moment. But the mind of Pontiac could embrace a wider and deeper view. The peril of the times was unfolded in its full extent before him, and he resolved to unite the tribes in one grand effort to avert it. He adopted the only plan that was consistent with reason, that of
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restoring the French ascendency in the West, and once more opposing a check to British encroachment.
" Revenge, ambition, and patriotism wrought upon him alike, and he resolved 011 war. At the close of the year 1762 he sent out ambassadors to the different nations. They visited the country of the Ohio and its tribu- taries, passed nortlıward to the region of the upper lakes and the wild bor- ders of the River Ottawa, and far southward towards the mouth of the Mis- sissippi. Bearing with them the war-belt of wampum, broad and long, as the importance of the inessage demanded, and the tomahawk stained red, in token of war, they went from camp to camp, and village to village. Wherever they appeared the sachems and old men assembled, to hear the words of the great Pontiac. Then the head chief of the embassy flung down the tomahawk on the ground before them, and, holding the war-belt in his hand, delivered, with vehement gesture, word for word, the speech with which he was charged. It was heard everywhere with approbation, the belt was accepted, the hatchet snatched up, and the assembled chiefs stood pledged to take part in the war. The blow was to be struck at a cer- tain time in the month of May following, to be indicated by the changes of the moon. The tribes were to rise together, each destroying the English garrison in its neighborhood, and then, with a general ruslı, the whole were to turn against the settlements of the frontier.
" While thus on the very eve of an outbreak, the Indians concealed their design with the deep dissimulation of their race. Now and then some slight intimation of danger would startle the garrisons from their security. On one occasion the plot was nearly discovered. Early in March, 1763, Ensign Holmes, commanding at Fort Miami, was told by a friendly Indian that the warriors in the neighboring village had lately received a war-belt, with a message urging them to destroy him and his garrison, and that this they were preparing to do. Holmnes writes to report his discovery to Major Gladwyn, who, in his turn, sends the information to Sir Jeffrey Amherst, expressing his opinion that there has been a general irritation among the Indians, but that the affair will soon blow over, and that, in the neighbor- hood of his own post, the savages were perfectly tranquil. Within cannon- shot of the deluded officer's palisades was the village of Pontiac himself.
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