USA > Pennsylvania > Westmoreland County > Old Westmoreland : a history of western Pennsylvania during the Revolution > Part 15
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Brigadier General Irvine was asked to take the com- mand and the principal men on the frontier agreed to fur- nish the provisions, not only for the volunteers, but for the regulars from Fort Pitt. The general agreed to lead the expedition if he should be satisfied with its size and equip- ment, and subscription papers were circulated for men, horses and food. Men of means who were too old for cam- paigning agreed to assist with horses and provisions.1 The time for starting was first set for early in August, but the summer being dry and the grist mills without water, flour could not be ground and a postponement was announced until September 20.
General Irvine informed the Pennsylvania government of the preparation on the border, at the same time intimat- ing that aid from the state and from Congress would be ac-
1 Washington-Irvine Correspondence, pp. 123, 124, 175; Pennsylvania Archives, First Series, vol. ix., p. 576.
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THE ABANDONED EXPEDITION.
ceptable. A conference was held between members of the Pennsylvania Supreme Council and members of Congress, which resulted in a recommendation to General Washing- ton, about the first of September, 1782, that the United States government should take part in a general campaign against the savages. At that time aggressive warfare had been suspended in the East and there was expectation of early peace with Great Britain. General Washington agreed that three expeditions should penetrate the Indian country, each to be composed of regulars, militia and volun- teers, and Congress voted to bear the expenses of the regu- lar contingents.
One expedition, to be commanded by Brigadier Gen- eral Irvine, was to move from Fort Pitt against the Wyan- dots and Delawares on the Sandusky river ; a second, under Major General James Potter, was to advance from Sunbury, Pa., into the Seneca land, in the Genesee valley, and a third was to be sent by the state of New York against the eastern Iroquois in the neighborhood of Oswego.2
Two companies of militia, one from York, and the other from Cumberland county, were sent to Westmore- land to guard its settlements while its own inen were absent in the Indian country. Detachments of Colonel Moses Hazen's "Canadian regiment," stationed at Lancaster and Carlisle, were ordered to march to Fort Pitt and join Gen- eral Irvine, who had at that post two companies of the Penn- sylvania line under Captains Samuel Brady and John Clark.
General Lincoln, the Secretary at War, proposed that Irvine's force should aggregate 1,200 men, made up as fol- lows: regulars from Ft. Pitt, 150; detachment from Ha- zen's regiment, 200; Pennsylvania rangers, 60; Pennsyl- vania and Virginia militia, 300; frontier volunteers, 490. The day for setting forth on the campaign, October 8, was fixed by General Lincoln, and Irvine was assured that by that time Hazen's regulars and the militia from the middle coun- ties would be at Ft. Pitt. General Irvine immediately be-
2 Washington-Irvine Correspondence, pp. 133, 134, 181, 183; Pennsyl- vania Archives, vol. ix., pp. 626. 630, 635, 636.
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OLD WESTMORELAND.
gan his arrangements for operations on an enlarged scale, but when October 8 came he found himself short of the promised reinforcements. On that day he wrote to the president of Pennsylvania that no rangers had appeared, that the few militiamen who had arrived were miserably furnished, and that he could not understand why Hazen s men had been detained. Still, he was determined to pro- ceed if he could gather a force of 600 regulars and volun- teers, and he had sent an officer (Captain Brady) along the road to hasten Hazen's detachment. He had again post- poned the date until October 20.3
While preparations were making for this campaign the Indians came again against the border. At the beginning of September, 1782, Captain Andrew Bradt, with his com- pany of 40 Canadian rangers and 238 Indians, Wyandots, Delawares and Shawnees, set out from Upper Sandusky to attack Wheeling. That settlement was defended by a stockade, called Fort Henry, which contained one swivel gun. The weapon was a useful relic. It had been thrown into the Ohio river by the French when they evacuated Fort Duquesne in 1758, and had been recovered by the pioneers. It had been made and brought to America for service against the British flag, but never fulfilled its mission until used on the fort at Wheeling. Within the stockade, when the approach of the enemy was discovered, all the inhabi- tants of the settlement took refuge. There were 27 men in the place, but only 18 were fit for duty. Colonel Ebenezer Zane, the pioneer settler, commanded the little garrison.
Captain Bradt's force crossed the Ohio and paraded before Fort Henry in the evening of Wednesday, Septem- ber II. The captain displayed the British flag and de- manded a surrender. The demand was rejected, and soon afterward firing was opened at long range. At midnight the savages attempted to carry the stockade by storm, but were repulsed. The French swivel gun was used with good effect, as the Indians were very much afraid of any sort of a cannon. Two more futile assaults were made before day-
3 Pennsylvania Archives, vol. ix., p. 648.
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THE ABANDONED EXPEDITION.
light, and the besiegers then retired to a distance and kept up a steady firing during the day. Captain Bradt sent a negro to the fort with a second but unavailing demand for surrender, and during Thursday night a fourth desperate ei- fort was made to storm the stockade. The brave riflemen again repulsed the savage horde, and shortly after dawn the discouraged assailants withdrew and recrossed the Ohio river. Among the fort's defenders one man had been wounded in the foot.4
After the failure at Wheeling about 70 of the Indians, anxious for scalps and plunder, cut loose from the main body of the marauders and went against the blockhouse of Abraham Rice on Buffalo creek, within the present town- ship of Donegal, Washington county. From 2 o'clock in the afternoon of September 13 until 2 o'clock the following morning that blockhouse was successfully de- fended by only six men. They killed four of the Indians and lost one of their own number, George Felebaum, who was shot in the brain while peering through a loophole. The savages killed many cattle and burned a barn. On their return toward the Ohio river they met and killed two set- tlers who were going to Rice's relief. This was the last invasion of Western Pennsylvania by a large body of In- dians.5
At Ft. Pitt General Irvine's preparations had been made and he was anxiously awaiting the arrival of Hazen's regulars, when, on October 23, he received from Phila- delphia information that the Indian war was at an end and that his expedition was countermanded."
The cessation of Indian depredations, which had been carried on with terrible results for six years, was the work of General Sir Guy Carleton, who had recently been ap- pointed commander-in-chief of the British forces in Ameri- ca. He was a humane man, and had never approved the
4 Washington-Irvine Correspondence, pp. 312, 397; Pennsylvania Ar- chives, vol. ix., p. 638; Western Annals, p. 405.
5 Western Annals, p. 406; Historical Collections of Pennsylvania, p. 661; Frontier Forts, vol. ii., pp. 404 to 410.
6 Washington-Irvine Correspondence, p. 134.
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OLD WESTMORELAND.
employment of savages. Soon after his appointment to the supreme command he was shocked by the burning of Crawford and other American prisoners at Sandusky, and orders were conveyed to all British officers engaged on the border to exert their efforts to prevent further outrages by their red allies.
It is interesting to read the reply of Captain Alexander McKee, at that time a British agent among the Shawnees on the Great Miami and Mad rivers, to the letter which lie received in regard to the Indian cruelties. "It is true," he wrote, "they have made sacrifices to their revenge after the massacre of their women and children, some being known to them to be perpetrators of it, but it was done in my ab- sence or before I could reach any of the places to interfere. And I can assure you, sir, that there is not a white person here wanting in their duty to represent to the Indians in the strongest terms the highest abhorrence of such conduct. as well as the bad consequence that may attend it, to botlı them and us, being contrary to the rule of carrying on war by civilized nations."
General Carleton's protest against cruelties was soon followed by more radical action. He sent an order to the officers in command at Niagara and Detroit to cease entire- ly the sending out of Indian parties against the American frontiers and to act only on the defensive. This order reached DePeyster, at Detroit, late in August, and he at once sent couriers to the British officers at the Indian towns in Ohio to stop all incursions. The runner sent to Upper Sandusky reached there too late to stop Captain Bradt, who had already marched against Wheeling.
General Washington, in quarters at Newburg-on-the- Hudson, did not learn of General Carleton's action until September 23, when he immediately wrote to the authori- ties in Philadelphia to stop the expeditions at Sunbury and Fort Pitt.7
General Lincoln, on September 27, wrote to Generals
7 Washington-Irvine Correspondence, p. 135; l'ennsylvania Archives, vol. ix .. p. 641.
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THE ABANDONED EXPEDITION.
Hazen and Irvine that the expedition was off. The letter to Hazen reached that officer promptly and he returned with his command to Lancaster. The letter to Irvine was not sent by express rider, as it should have been, but was en .. trusted to some person traveling on private business. The bearer lingered by the way and was making little progress toward Ft. Pitt, when Captain Brady, riding in quest of Hazen's detachment, found the bearer of the letter at some wayside inn. Thus it was that the countermand reached General Irvine so late.ª
The last stroke in the border war of the Revolution was inflicted by the Americans. While General Irvine was making ready to invade the Indian country from the east- ward, General George Rogers Clark was preparing a sin- ilar movement from Kentucky. Correspondence passed be- tween these officers for the purpose of securing simultane- ous action. Clark's plan was to ascend the Great Miami and strike the Shawnee towns at the time when Irvine was operating against the Wyandots and Delawares. Early in October General Irvine sent a messenger down the Ohio river to Clark with the information that the Fort Pitt expe- dition would move on October 20, and Clark arranged to cross the Ohio from Kentucky at the same time. Wash- ington's countermand held Irvine, but it was too late to stop Clark.
With 1,000 horsemen, General Clark crossed the Ohio at the site of Cincinnati, marched up the Great Miami and destroyed the two Shawnee towns of Lower and Upper Piqua, in what is now Miami county, Ohio. A detachment burned also the trading post of Peter Loramie and the ad- jacent Indian town, on the west branch of the Miami. The Indians had warning in time to hide the women and child- ren in the woods, but they saved none of their property and the Kentuckians carried away a great quantity of plunder. Ten Indian scalps and seven prisoners were taken, while two of the Kentuckians were mortally wounded.
General Carleton's order concluded the Indian war of
8 Washington-Irvine Correspondence, pp. 134, 184.
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the Revolution. That is, it ended the incursions of the sav- ages as the allies of Great Britain, acting with British aid and under the direction of British officers, but it did not al- together stop the depredations of some of the Ohio savages acting on their own account. Small bands of Shawnees, seeking revenge for General Clark's work of destruction, invaded the settlements in the spring of 1783 and inflicted considerable injury. In the autumn of 1782, however, the sorely harried borderers were encouraged to believe that their distresses were at an end, and with earnestness they participated in the observance of the first general Thanks- giving Day celebrated in the United States on the last Thursday of November.º
9 Pennsylvania Archives, vol. ix., p. 650.
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THE PEACE JOURNEY OF EPHRAIM DOUGLASS.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE PEACE JOURNEY OF EPHRAIM DOUGLASS.
The residents of the frontier, in the opening of 1783, were happy in the expectation of peace, when they were startled and distressed by a series of Indian depreda- tions. Several small parties of savages, in the latter part of March and the first week of April, invaded Westmore- land and Washington counties, struck severe blows and escaped quickly into the wilderness.
Four Indians appeared at a clearing in the valley of Brush creek, killed James Davis and his son in a field, took two other men captive and tried to break into the cabin, which was defended by a woman and an old man. One of the Indians tried to pry open the door with his gun, which he thrust in between the door and its frame. The man and the woman within seized the gun barrel and broke it loose from its stock, whereupon the Indians went away.1
In Washington county a man was killed within a mile of the new county seat on Chartiers creek, and a dozen per- sons were captured. Two of the prisoners, Mrs. Walker and a boy, regained their liberty, but the others were car- ried to the Shawnee towns on the headwaters of the Big Miami river.2
Some of the frontiersmen suspected tha't these raids were made by bands that had been out hunting all winter, and did not know of the peace made between Great Britain
1 Washington-Irvine Correspondence, p. 408; Pennsylvania Archives, vol. x., p. 22.
2 Pennsylvania Archives, vol. x., p. 167.
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and the United States, or of the orders issued by the British commanders. Fear was felt that the Indians might keep up the war without British support, and appeals were sent to Philadelphia for peace treaties with the savage tribes. On April 4 the Pennsylvania Council asked Congress to take some action to pacify the Indians, and on April 29 the request was repeated, with the statement that 40 per- sons had been killed and captured, since spring opened, on the Pennsylvania frontiers.
Two days later Congress voted to send a messenger into the Indian country to inform the tribes that the King of Great Britain had been compelled to make peace with the United States; that the British had agreed to evacuate the forts at Detroit and Niagara, leaving the Indians to take care of themselves, and that the United States desired peace with the Indians, but were prepared for vigorous action if the tribes should prefer war. To execute this hard and dangerous mission the Secretary at War, Major General Benjamin Lincoln, chose Major Ephraim Douglass, of Pittsburg.3
Ephraim Douglass was the son of Adam Douglass, a Scot, and was born in Carlisle, in 1750. At the age of 18 he went to Fort Pitt, where he worked for a few years as a carpenter. He afterward engaged in the Indian trade at Pittsburg and Kittanning in partnership with Devereux Smith and Richard Butler.
In 1776 Douglass was appointed by Congress quarter- master of the Eighth Pennsylvania regiment. He was captured by the British at Bound Brook, N. J., on April 13, 1777, and for more than two years was a prisoner in New York. After his exchange, much broken in health, he was made the assistant commissary for the department of Fort Pitt. In the autumn of 1781 he was sent on a dangerous mission alone into the Indian country of South- ern Ohio, and did not return until May, 1782. Major Douglass was a tall man, of great strength. His fearless-
3 Washington-Irvine Correspondence, p. 188; Pennsylvania Archives, vol. x., pp. 45, 46.
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THE PEACE JOURNEY OF EPHRAIM DOUGLASS.
ness, energy and persistence, added to his knowledge of the Indian country, recommended him to the Secretary at War.“
Douglass was accompanied on his journey by Captain George McCully, who had been associated with him in the Indian trade and had served with distinction in the Revolu- tion, and by a wilderness guide. These three men, well mounted and carrying a white flag, left Fort Pitt on June 7, 1783, and rode to the Sandusky river, where they ar- rived on June 16.5 They went to the principal town of the Delawares, where they were received with cordiality by Captain Pipe, the chief sachem. With him, for one reason and another, the messengers were compelled to remain for two weeks. The Indians were extremely punctilious in all matters of negotiations, either for peace or war, clinging to ancient forms with much solemn ceremony. While Cap- tain Pipe declared himself to be strongly in favor of peace, he declined to enter into a council on the subject until after Major Douglass had treated with the Wyandots and the Shawnees. This was because the Wyandots and the Shaw- nees had taken up the hatchet first and had forced the Dela- wares into the war.
The chief of the Wyandots along the Sandusky river was Dunquat, the celebrated Half-King, and he was away at Detroit, but his wife thought that he would soon come home, and persuaded Douglass to wait for him. Captain Pipe was kind enough to send a runner to the Shawnee towns on the Big Miami, asking their chiefs to come to Sandusky to meet the American agent. In five days this runner returned with the news that the Shawnees had just been called to Detroit, to attend a great Indian council with the British commander there.
Pipe now advised Douglass to go to Detroit and meet all the Indian chiefs in the British presence. Dunquat did not return at the time his wife expected him, and Pipe said
4 Biographical sketch of Ephraim Douglass, in Veech's Monongahela of Old.
5 See the official report of Douglass to the Secretary at War, Penn- sylvania Archives, vol. x., p. 83.
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that even the Half-King could not make peace with the Americans without the authority of the Wyandot great council, which had its seat in Canada, near Detroit. Doug- lass, therefore, decided to go to the British fort, and on the last day of June he and McCully set forth, in company with Captain Pipe and two other Delawares. The time spent by Douglass at Sandusky had not been wasted. He had talked much with Pipe and other chiefs, and had in- fluenced them to a friendly feeling toward the American states. He had likewise made a good impression among the old men and women in the Wyandot towns.
On the second day of their journey Douglass and his companions were met by Captain Matthew Elliott and three cther persons, sent by Lieutenant Colonel DePeyster, the commander at Detroit, to conduct the Americans to the British post. This Elliott was one of the tories who had fled from Pittsburg 'in the spring of 1778, and he and Douglass had formerly been acquainted. Elliott carried a letter from DePeyster, inviting Douglass to attend the Indian council at Detroit.®
Douglass arrived at the British post on July 4 and had a very civil reception. DePeyster lodged him well and treated him kindly. Douglass soon learned, however, that the British commander would not permit him to hold a conference with the Indian chiefs.
DePeyster pleaded that he had no authority from his government to permit such a conference. He objected, moreover, to some of the language in Douglass's letter of instruction. It would never do to allow the Indians to be told that the King of England had been compelled to make peace. Such a statement might lead the tribes to feel a dangerous contempt for the British power. Neither was DePeyster willing that Douglass should tell the Indians that the British had agreed to evacuate Detroit. He had no knowledge that such an agreement had been made. He advised Douglass to go down to Niagara and state the terms
6 Pennsylvania Archives, vol. x., p. 62.
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THE PEACE JOURNEY OF EPHRAIM DOUGLASS.
of his mission to Brigadier General Allan Maclean, who had greater authority in such affairs.
DePeyster did give material assistance to the object of Douglass's journey, by persuading the Indians to peace. On July 6 the great council was held in Fort Detroit. It was attended by the chiefs of II tribes, representing nearly all the Indians from the Scioto river to Lake Superior." To them DePeyster made a long talk, conveying the es- sential part of Douglass's message. He told the chiefs of the peace between Great Britain and the United States, and that he could no longer give them help in their war against the Americans. He announced that the Americans desired peace with the Indian tribes, and had sent Major Douglass to invite them to a treaty, and he advised all the Indians to cease their warfare against the United States.
This address had a good effect on the assembled sav- ages, and although they could liold no council with the American envoy, they surrounded his lodging and saluted him with pronounced expressions of friendship. On the day after the council Douglass and McCully left Detroit and traveled overland, through Ontario, toward Niagara. At that British post, which they reached in four days, Gen- eral Maclean raised the same objections as those offered by Lieutenant Colonel DePeyster. He would not permit Ma- jor Douglass to speak directly to the Iroquois chiefs, but on his own account and through Colonel Butler, the Indian superintendent, he informed the chiefs of the desires of the United States for peace with all the tribes.
While at Fort Niagara, Douglass had a long private conversation with Joseph Brant, the celebrated war chief of the Mohawks, and did what he could to persuade Brant of the kindly intentions of the Americans toward the In- dians.
General Maclean urged Douglass to go to Quebec and confer with the governor general of Canada, but the major felt that he had fulfilled, as far as possible, the duties of his
7 Chippewas, Ottawas, Wyandots, Shawnees, Delawares, Kickapoos, Weas, Miamis, Pottawattamies, Plankeshaws and a few Senecas.
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OLD WESTMORELAND.
mission, and desired to return to the states. General Mac- lean sent him by boat to Oswego, whence Douglass jour- neyed, by way of Albany, to Princeton, N. J., where the federal government was then located, and made his report to General Lincoln.
This mission of Douglass effected complete peace on the frontiers. To his efforts were due the cessation of the Indian War of the Revolution on the borders of New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
[The End.]
INDEX.
Amberson, William, Pittsburg merchant, III.
Anderson, Isaac, soldier, 145. Armstrong, Ft., at Kittan- ning, 96, 103, IIO.
Armstrong, John. soldier, 53, 96.
Association of Westmoreland county, 15, 25.
Bald Eagle, Delaware chief, 71,94.
Ballantine, Alexander, 48.
Bane, Joseph, 164.
Barr, Ft., in Derry settlement, 117, 119, 121.
Barr, Robert, 116, 117, 119, I2I.
Bayard, Stephen, officer of the Revolution, 65, 96.
Beaver river, 42, 80.
Bedford county, 40, 49-53.
Beelor, Joseph, lieutenant of Yohogania county, Va., 113. Beeson, John, 164.
Beloved, Delaware war chief (See Wingenund).
Benham, Robert, 55, 58.
Big Cat, Delaware chief, 124, 153, 160.
Biggs, John, militia officer, 164, 169.
Big Runaway on the Susque- hanna, 68.
Bilderback, Charles, militia of- ficer, 157, 164.
Bird, Henry, British officer, 84, 85.
Blacklick creek, 26, 116, 118.
Blaine, Ephraim, merchant and army contractor, 62.
Boundary dispute between Pennsylvania and Virginia, 6, 7, 24, IIO, 113, 132, 135. Boyd, John, 62 Braddock road, 6, 8.
Bradt, Andrew, British of- ficer, 184, 185, 186.
Brady, James, brother of Sam- uel, killed bv Indians, 70.
Brady, John, officer of the Revolution, 70, 90.
Brady, Samuel, soldier and scout, 65, 70, 71, 89-94, 96, 106-108, 112-113, 183, 184, 187.
Brant, Joseph, Mohawk war chief, 144, 193.
Brinton, John, 164.
Brodhead, Daniel, officer of the Revolution, 68, 79, 83, 90,102, 105, 109, 110-114, 132, 149; colonel of the Eighth Pennsylvania, 65, 66; com- mander of the Western De- partment, 86, 88; expedition against the Senecas, 95-101; expedition against the Del- awares, 123-130; relieved of his command, 147.
Brokenstraw creek, 97, 99.
Brown, Basil, 55, 58-59.
Brown, Thomas, 55.
Brownlee, Joseph, killed by Indians, 180.
Brownsville, 55.
Bruce, William, 164.
Brush creek, 8, 170, 173, 181, 189. Buckaloons, Indian town on Allegheny river, 97.
Buckongahelas, Delaware war chief, 126.
Butler, John, tory leader in New York, 19, 92, 177.
Butler, Richard, trader and soldier, 19, 26, 62, 65, 69, 190. Caldwell, William, British of- ficer, 165, 166.
Cambray, Chevalier de, mili- tary engineer, 81, 82.
Campbell, Charles, militia of- ficer, 116, 118.
Campbell, John, trader and land owner, 10, 79.
Campbell, William, 139.
Canon, John, founder of Can- onsburg, 14, 135.
Carleton, Sir Guy, British gen- eral, 185, 186.
Carnaghan, John, Militia of- ficer, 15. Carnaghan's blockhouse, 29, 140.
(195)
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OLD WESTMORELAND.
Carpenter, John, his capture by Indians, 154.
Carson, Moses, 62, 69.
Cavet, James, leader on the frontier, 10, II.
Chartiers settlement, 6, 107, 112, 160.
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