USA > Pennsylvania > Westmoreland County > Old Westmoreland : a history of western Pennsylvania during the Revolution > Part 4
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3 Notes and Queries, vol. ii., p. 274; Third Series, vol. iii (whole No. v.), p. 421; Memoirs of John Bannister Gibson, T. P. Roberts, Pitts- burg, 1890, pp. 20-21, 225.
37
THE SQUAW CAMPAIGN.
CHAPTER VI.
THE SQUAW CAMPAIGN.
It was apparent to General Washington and other pa- triots that the Indian uprising which the agents of Great Britain were organizing on the frontiers was a part of the general campaign for the subjugation of the rebellious col- onies. It seemed proper, under these circumstances, that the Continental Congress should take charge of the western defense, and it offered to take Fort Pitt under its care and provide a garrison at the continental expense. The offer was accepted by Virginia, and Captain Neville was directed to transfer the fort to the United States officer appointed to its command.
For this important place General Washington selected Brigadier General Edward Hand, whose brave and efficient work in the continental army led the commander to believe that he would do well in an independent command and would be an able defender of the border. Fighting British and Hessians on the seaboard and Indians in the western woods are two quite different things, as General Hand dis- covered in a short time.
Edward Hand was not a stranger at Fort Pitt, but dur- ing his earlier service there he had no experience in Indian warfare. He was a native of the County of Kings, Ireland, and was educated to be a physician. At the age of 23 he obtained the place of assistant surgeon in the Eighteenth Regiment of Foot, known as the Royal Irish, and in the spring of 1767 he accompanied the regiment to America.
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OLD WESTMORELAND.
He was stationed for a time in the Illinois country and afterward at Fort Pitt. In 1774 he resigned his commission and took up the practice of medicine at Lancaster, Pa. Soon after Lexington and Concord he interested himself in the raising of troops and was commissioned lieutenant colonel of Thompson's celebrated battalion of Pennsylvania riflemen, afterward the First Regiment of the Pennsylvania line. In March, 1776, Hand succeeded as colonel and under his command the regiment did gallant work in the battles of Long Island, Trenton and Princeton. On April I, 1777, Hand was rewarded for his really exceptional ser- vices by promotion to the rank of brigadier general, and soon thereafter General Washington further displayed his appreciation and confidence by assigning General Hand, then 33 years old, to the Pittsburg post, to defend the western border.
It was on Sunday, June 1, 1777, that General Hand arrived at Fort Pitt and took over the property from Cap- tain Neville. He led no force across the mountains. He was accompanied only by a few officers. His garrison con- sisted of but two companies of the Thirteenth Virginia, raised in and near Pittsburg and rather hard to manage. The larger part of this regiment was with Washington in New Jersey. Hand carried authority to call upon the militia officers of the frontier counties of Pennsylvania and Vir- ginia for assistance in whatever undertaking he might plan, but he found this assistance very unreliable.
In the East, Hand had been engaged in a system of warfare where it was never difficult to find the enemy, in large bodies, ready to stand up and fight. There the Amer- icans did most of the dodging. On the frontier the condi- tions were reversed. The enemy could not be found and yet seemed to be ever present. In small bands, often con- taining only three or four warriors, the savages entered the settlements at isolated places, struck quick but terrible blows, and then by night fled away into the forest. Where they had been was shown by dead bodies and ashes, but they left no trail that white men could discover. What
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THE SQUAW CAMPAIGN.
could either regular troops or militia do with such a foe? To General Hand the conditions were perplexing.
Many murders had been committed before Hand's ar- rival, but they became more numerous in the mid-summer and autumn.1 Colonel Hamilton, at Detroit, began, about June I, to equip and send out war parties to attack the set- tlements of Kentucky, Virginia and Pennsylvania. Toward the end of July he reported to his superior at Quebec that he had sent out 15 parties, consisting of 30 white men and 289 Indians, an average of only 21 in each band.2 These Indians were chiefly Wyandots and Miamis from North- western Ohio and Shawnees from Southern Ohio. At the same time parties of Senecas invaded the Pennsylvania settlements from Western New York. Beside the bodies of many of the victims of these raids were found the proc- lamations by Hamilton, offering protection and reward to all settlers who would make their way to any of the British posts and join the cause of the King.
General Hand had not studied the situation long when he made up his mind that there was but one way to fight the Indians; that was to invade their country and destroy their towns and provisions. The Ohio tribes were not nomadic. They had permanent villages of rude huts and grew great crops of corn, beans and pumpkins. These products were stored in large cabins or in earth silos. The hardest blow to the savages was to burn their cornfields or to destroy their garnered stores. Left without food for the winter, they were driven to the chase for subsistence, and found no time for the warpath.
Hand decided to gather a large force of militiamen, to descend the Ohio river as far as the mouth of the Big Kanawha and to march thence overland against the Shaw- nee towns on the Scioto. Letters were sent to the militia commanders of Westmoreland and Bedford counties, in Pennsylvania, and of all the frontier counties of Virginia,
1 Washington-Crawford Letters, Crawford to President of Congress, April 22, 1777; Pennsylvania Archives, First Series, viii., pp. 549, 550.
2 The Westward Movement, Winsor, Boston, 1897, pp. 111, 127.
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OLD WESTMORELAND.
from the Monongahela to the Kanawha, asking them to muster their men for the expedition. Hand appealed to the revolutionary governments of both states, and they directed their officers to respond to the calls. The project was even formally endorsed by the Continental Congress. In spite of all these efforts, the expedition was a failure.
Hand expected 500 men from Westmoreland and Bed- ford, who were to assemble at Pittsburg, and 1,500 from Western Virginia, who were to gather at two points, Fort Henry, at Wheeling, and Fort Randolph, at the mouth of the Big Kanawha.8 His expectations were unreasonable. He did not take into account the drained and distressed con- dition of the border. The hardiest and most adventurous young men of this region had gone away to the East to fight the British. Most of those who remained in the scat- tered settlements felt that they were needed at home, to protect their own families, exposed daily to the raids of savage warriors. The Indians were penetrating to the Ligonier Valley, and even occasional outrages were perpe- trated as far east as Bedford.
It seems that no men were furnished by Bedford county, and Colonel Lochry,4 of Westmoreland, raised only 100, who marched to Fort Pitt. On October 19, 1777, General Hand left Fort Pitt and went down the river to Wheeling. There he remained about a week, waiting in vain for the assembling of a considerable body of Virginians. Only a few poorly equipped squads appeared. Hand then gave up the project and returned in disgust to Fort Pitt. The largest body of volunteers rallied at Fort Randolph, where it waited for two or three weeks without hearing a word from Hand, and then dispersed."
3 Ft. Pitt and Letters from the Frontier, Dariington, Pittsburg, 1892, pp. 226, 227. Chronicies of Border Warfare, Withers, pp. 151, 152. Notes and Querles,' Third Series, vol. ii., Letter of Jasper Ewing to Jasper Yeates. Frontier Forts, vol. Ii., p. 326.
4 The system of county lieutenants, modeled after Virginia, was es- tablished in Pennsylvania in March, 1777, under the new state consti- tution. The county lieutenant was the commander of the county militia and held the rank of colonei. The Supreme Exeentive Council appointed Archibald Lochry county lieutenant of Westmoreland on March 21, 1777.
5 Ft. Pitt, p. 228; Washington-Irvine Correspondence, Butterfield, Madison, WIs., 1882, p. 11. Pennsylvania Archives, First Series, voi. vi., p. 68. Frontier Forts, vol. ii., p. 244.
4I
THE SQUAW CAMPAIGN.
During October and November, while Hand was try- ing to form his army for the invasion of the Indian country, many raids were made in Westmoreland county. Near Palmer's Fort, in the lower end of the Ligonier Valley, II men were killed and scalped, and a few days later four children were killed within sight of the fort. Three men were killed and a woman was captured within a few miles of Ligonier. A band of Indians, led by a Canadian, made a fierce attack on Fort Wallace, a stockade about a mile south of Blairsville, but the white leader was killed and the assailants were repulsed. The marauders were pursued by a party of rangers, led by the celebrated Captain James Smith, who overtook the savages near Kittanning, killed five of them and triumphantly returned to the settlements with the five Indian scalps. The snow put an end to the inroads, as the Indians would not expose themselves to the certainty of being trailed in the snow.6
About Christmas General Hand learned that a British expedition, by lake from Detroit, had built a magazine at the mouth of the Cuyahoga river (within the present con- fines of Cleveland) and had stored there arms, ammunition, clothing and provisions, to be used by the Indians on the opening of spring. He saw another chance to do some- thing for the frontier, and prepared to lead an expedition for the destruction of this magazine. He sent out calls for "brave, active lads" to assemble at Fort Pitt. He required that each man be mounted and provided with food for a short campaign. He promised to furnish ammunition and a few arms. As an incentive for enlistment, the General announced that all the plunder would be sold, and the cash proceeds divided among the members of the force. It was not until February 15 that about 500 horsemen were at Pittsburg ready for the adventure. A considerable body of them was from the Youghiogheny, under command of Colonel William Crawford. This was a formidable force and General Hand was sanguine that at last he should ac- complish something."
6 Pennsylvania Archives, First Series, vol. v., p. 741; vol. vi., p. 68. Frontier Forts, vol. ii., p. 236, etc.
7 Washington-Crawford Letters, pp. 66, 67.
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OLD WESTMORELAND.
The expedition followed the old Indian trail which descended the Ohio to the Beaver and then ascended that stream and the Mahoning toward the Cuyahoga. Snow covered the ground when Hand started, but rain soon began to fall, and continued for several days, making travel exceed- ingly difficult.
By the time the Mahoning was reached that stream had become excessively swollen and the crossing of its tributa- ries became more and more difficult. In some places the level valleys were covered with water for wide stretches The horsemen began to grumble, and Hand was just about to give up the expedition when the foot prints of Indians were discovered on some high ground. The tracks were followed until the Americans discovered a small village of huts in a grove. This was a village of the Wolf clan of the Delawares. A sudden attack was made, but the place con- tained only one old man, some squaws and children. The warriors were away on a hunt. The startled savages scat- tered in every direction through the woods, and all escaped except three. The old man and one of the women were shot down and another woman was captured. Some of the borderers tried to kill her, but she was saved by Hand and his officers.
This affair took place about where Edenburg is, in Lawrence county. The Indian woman told her captors that ten Wolf or Muncy Indians were making salt at a lick ten miles farther up the Mahoning. Hand sent a strong detachment to take these savages, while he went into camp, under most uncomfortable circumstances, at the Indian village.
The reported Wolves turned out to be four squaws and a boy. The borderers fell upon them as fiercely as if they were Indian warriors, and killed three of the squaws and the boy. The other squaw was taken prisoner. Some defense must have been made here by the Indians, as one of Hand's men was wounded. Another man was drowned during the expedition.
It was no longer possible, on account of the weather,
43
THE SQUAW CAMPAIGN.
to continue the campaign, and General Hand led his dis- pirited and hungry men back to Fort Pitt. His trophies were two Indian women. His formidable force had slain one old man, four women and a boy. On his arrival at Fort Pitt his work was generally derided by the frontiersmen and his expedition was dubbed the Squaw Campaign.8
This finished Hand as the defender of the frontier. He at once wrote to General Washington a request to be relieved of his command, his request was laid before Con- gress, and that body, on May 2, 1778, voted his recall.ยบ He could not fight Indians, but he attained distinction in other directions. He became adjutant general of the army of the United States before the close of the Revolution, was a member of Congress from Pennsylvania, and in 1798, when war was expected with France, he was made a major general in the Provisional Army. He died at Lancaster September 3, 1802.
8 Washington-Irvine Correspondence, p. 15. The Girtys, Butterfield, Cincinnati,/ 1890, p. 47.
9 Pennsylvania Archives, First Series, vol. vi., p. 461.
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OLD WESTMORELAND.
CHAPTER VII.
FLIGHT OF THE PITTSBURG TORIES.
The one event in the Revolutionary history of the border which had the most calamitous results was the flight of the tories from Fort Pitt in the spring of 1778. From the beginning of the struggle for liberty many partisans of King George were to be found on the frontier. Some of these were men who had been in the British service, most of them members of the Church of England. Others were animated by that natural reverence which many men feel for their sovereign. Many were adventurous and ambi- tious spirits seduced by the British promises of reward. There were some who did not believe that the Revolution would succeed, and others grew dissatisfied with the perils and the hard circumstances of frontier life in a time of war. A few were simply scoundrels, desiring turmoil and plunder. The failure of General Hand's two expeditions had much to do with the dissatisfaction with the American cause which developed on the border in the spring of 1778. During the winter the British had been in possession of Philadelphia, the American Congress had been driven to York, and Washington's army was reduced to a half-naked and half-starved remnant at Valley Forge. The cause of liberty languished, and there were many defections.
Governor Hamilton, at Detroit, sent many agents, red and white, to penetrate the border settlements, to circulate offers of pardon and reward and to organize the tories. In February and March, 1778, a daring and shrewd British
1
45
FLIGHT OF THE PITTSBURG TORIES.
spy visited Pittsburg and carried on his plotting almost under the nose of General Hand. A British flag was set up, for a short time, in the King's Orchard, which bordered the Allegheny river within gunshot of the fort, and there meetings were held by the disaffected among the soldiers of the garrison. Most of the tory gatherings in this neigh- borhood were at the house of Alexander McKee, at what is now called McKees Rocks. Another place of assembly was at Redstone, where a British flag flew during all of that winter.1
The tory leader at Pittsburg was Captain Alexander McKee, a man of education and wide influence on the bor- der. He had been an Indian trader, and for 12 years prior to the Revolution had been the King's deputy agent for Indian affairs at Fort Pitt. For a short time he had been one of the justices of the peace for Westmoreland county. He was intimately acquainted with most of the Indian chiefs and even had an Indian family in the Shawnee nation.2 In 1764 he received a grant of 1,400 acres of land from Colonel Bouquet, at the mouth of Chartiers creek, and he divided his time between his house in Pittsburg and his farm at McKees Rocks.
In the spring of 1776 McKee was found to be in cor- respondence with British officers in Canada, and he was put on his parole not to give aid or comfort to the enemies of American liberty, and not to leave the vicinity of Pitts- burg without the consent of the Revolutionary Committee. In February, 1778, General Hand had reason to suspect that McKee had resumed or was continuing his correspond- ence with the British authorities and was organizing disaf- fection, and he ordered the Captain to go to York, Pa., and report himself to the Continental Congress. For a short time McKee avoided compliance with this order on the plea of sickness, but not being able to shirk obedi- ence permanently, he decided to escape to Detroit and openly ally himself with the British cause.3
1 Deposition of John Green, Notes and Queries, Fourth Series, vol. i., p. 68.
2 Jones's Journal of Two Visits, under date of January 23, 1773.
3 American Archives, Fourth Series, vol. v., p. 815; Washington- Irvine Correspondence, p. 17.
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OLD WESTMORELAND.
About a year before this a young trader of the name of Matthew Elliott, who understood the Shawnee language, had been employed by the Americans to carry messages from Fort Pitt to the Shawnees and other Indian tribes to the westward, in the interest of peace. He had been made captive by hostile savages and carried to Detroit, where, after a short imprisonment, he had been released on parole. He returned to Pittsburg by way of Quebec, New York and Philadelphia, all then in British possession. He had been impressed by the show of British power in the East, in contrast with the miserable condition of the American forces. He became convinced that the Revolution would be a failure, and, on his return to Pittsburg, got into com- munication with McKee and others of the tory party.
Elliott is suspected of having poured into the ears of McKee a tale that he was to be waylaid and killed on his journey to York. It is certain that McKee heard such a story and believed it, and that it decided him in his plan to escape from Fort Pitt to the West.'
The flight of the tories took place from Alexander McKee's house during the night of Saturday, March 28, 1778. A hint of McKee's intention was given to General Hand early in the evening, and he ordered a squad of sol- diers to go to McKee's house Sunday morning and remove the suspected man to the fort. The soldiers were too late.
The members of the little party which fled into the Indian land in that rough season of the year were Captain McKee, his cousin Robert Surphlit, Simon Girty, Matthew Elliott, a man of the name of Higgins, and two negro slaves belonging to McKee.5
Girty was a Pennsylvanian, who had been captured by the Indians when II years old, kept in captivity for three years by the Senecas, and afterward employed at Fort Pitt as an interpreter and messenger. Until within a few weeks
4 George Morgan to Henry Laurens, March 31, 177S, MS. in the Pitts- burg Carnegie Library.
5 Morgan to Laurens, as in note 4; The Girtys, p. 50; Rev. A. A. Lambing, in Warner's History of Allegheny County, p. 83; Pennsyl- vania Archives, First Series, vol. vi., p. 445; Howe's Historical Col- lections of Ohio, edition of 1896, vol. i., p. 910.
47
FLIGHT OF THE PITTSBURG TORIES.
of the time of his flight he had been a faithful servitor of the American interests, and had participated earnestly in the Squaw Campaign under General Hand. In the absence of positive knowledge of the reason for his desertion, it must be presumed that he was tempted by McKee with promises of preferment in the British service.
The seven renegades made their way through the woods, which they knew well, to the chief town of the Dela- wares, Coshocton, where they tarried several days and endeavored to arouse that tribe to rise against the colonists. Their efforts were thwarted by White Eyes. That remark- able savage had, during the winter of 1776-7, been elected chief sachem of the Delaware nation in the place of old Newcomer, who had died in Pittsburg. White Eyes had declared his friendship for the "buckskins," as he called the Americans, and he proved his sincerity with his life.
A great debate took place in the Coshocton council, Captain Pipe, an influential chief, haranguing the savages in advocacy of war, and White Eyes pleading the cause of peace. The oratory and character of White Eyes prevailed, and the tories departed to the Shawnee towns on the Scioto. There they were welcomed. Many of the Shawnees were already on the warpath and all were eager to hear the speeches of their friend McKee. James Girty, a brother of Simon, was then with the Shawnee tribe, having been sent from Fort Pitt by the American authorities on a futile peace embassy. He had been raised among the Shawnees, was a natural savage and at once joined his brother and the other tories.8
Governor Hamilton heard of the escape of McKee and companions from Fort Pitt and sent Edward Hazle to the Scioto to conduct the renegades safely through the several Indian tribes to Detroit.7 Hamilton received them cor- dially and gave them commissions in the British service. For 16 years McKee, Elliott and the Girtys were the mer-
6 Heckewelder's Narrative, p. 182; Schoolcraft's Indian Tribes, vol. vl., p. 300.
7 The Girtys, pp. 58, 59; Winning of the West, Roosevelt, vol. ii., pp. 4, 5.
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OLD WESTMORELAND.
ciless scourgers of the border. They were the instigators and leaders of many Indian raids and their intimate knowl- edge of the frontier rendered their operations especially effective. Long after the close of the Revolution they con- tinued their deadly enmity to the American cause and were largely responsible for the general Indian war of 1790-94.
McKee and his associates left behind them a band of tories organized among the members of the Thirteenth Virginia, of which a detachment was stationed in Fort Pitt. These rascals had formed a plot to blow up the fort and escape in boats by night. In some way this scheme was frustrated at the last moment, probably by the confession of one of the conspirators, and the explosion was prevented. Sergeant Alexander Ballantine and about a score of the traitors were able to get away in one of the large boats belonging to the post, and in the night of April 20 fled down the Ohio river. On the following day they were pursued by a large party of their comrades and were overtaken near the mouth of the Muskingum. Eight of the runaways es- caped to shore and were lost in the trackless woods, some were killed in conflict on the spot and others were returned as prisoners to Fort Pitt. They were tried by a court- martial, of which Colonel William Crawford was president.
The leaders were found to be Sergeant Ballantine, William Bentley and Eliezer Davis. Two of these. were shot and the other was hanged. Two other men were publicly whipped on the fort parade ground, each receiving 100 lashes on the bare back.8
The punishment of these men was almost the last act performed by General Hand before his departure for the East. For a time it put an end to the machinations of the tories at Pittsburg, but it marked the beginning of the most cruel and disastrous warfare since the uprising of the tribes under Pontiac in 1763.
8 Washington-Irvine Correspondence, p. 18; The Girtys, p. 53; Penn- sylvania Archives, Second Series, vol. iii., p. 189.
49
THE TORIES OF SINKING VALLEY.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE TORIES OF SINKING VALLEY.
One of the melancholy tragedies of the revolutionary frontier is connected with the effort of a band of tories to escape from Bedford county and join the British and Indians on the Allegheny river. While the tory plotting, which led to the flight of McKee, Girty and associates, was going on at Fort Pitt, during the winter of 1777-78, British agents were busy at many places on the western border seeking to corrupt the frontier settlers. During that winter these agents, from Niagara and Detroit, visited the lonely settle- ments of Bedford and Westmoreland counties, insinuating sentiments of discontent into the minds of the border farm- ers, assuring them that the American cause was sure to fail, and making glittering promises of reward for those who should join the cause of the King.
One of these agents, who spent the winter months in the valleys of the Alleghany Mountains, in what is now Blair county, but was then a part of Bedford, was success- ful in deluding a considerable band of ignorant frontiers- men by the most despicable methods.
The villain did not confine himself to the promises au- thorized by the British authorities, as endorsed by Governor Hamilton, of Detroit. These promises were that any man who deserted the American cause and joined the British should have 200 acres of land, on the conclusion of peace, and that any officer of the American forces should receive a corresponding commission under the King. The rascal
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