USA > Tennessee > The civil and political history of the state of Tennessee from its earliest settlement up to the year 1796 : including the boundaries of the state > Part 13
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Some of the emigrants who came down the Tennessee in boats in the beginning of this year remained at Red River, as is be- fore stated, with the intention to settle there. Among them were a number of persons by the name of Renfroe and their connections, Nathan Turpin and Solomon Turpin. . Not long afterward, in the same year, 1780, in the month of June or July, the Indians, a party of Choctaws and Chickasaws, came and broke them up, and killed Nathan Turpin and another man at the station. The residue attempted to run off to the bluff where Nashville now is. Some of the women and children were con- ducted under the care of the Renfroes, who intended to return for their property. They went to the station on Red River with some others from the bluff, got possession of the property they had left there, and were returning to the bluff. They en- camped at night about two miles north of Sycamore, at a creek now and ever since called Battle Creek. In the morning Joseph Renfroe, going to the spring to drink, was fired upon by the Indians, who lay concealed in the bushes. He died instantly. They then broke in upon the camp, and killed old Mr. Johns and his wife and all his family. Only one woman, by the name of Jones, escaped. Henry Ramsey, a bold and intrepid man who had gone from the bluff, took her off and brought her to the bluff. Eleven or twelve other persons were there at the time of the attack, who were all killed. The Indians ripped up their beds, and took all the horses and other movable property, and went off toward the south.
The Chickasaws had the undisputed claim to the territory on the west of the Tennessee. Upon this territory Clarke had made a settlement eighteen miles below the mouth of the Ohio on the east side of the Mississippi. Offended at this treatment, the Chickasaws, till then neutral, become allies of the British Nation, and were so at the time when this mischief was perpe- trated. Capt. Robertson made peace with them in 1782. In the fall of the same year another party of Indians came and stole horses and were pursued by Leiper with fifteen men, who overtook them on the south side of Harpeth, near where Ellison
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lately lived, not more than three miles toward Pisgah to the west. They were encamped in the night, and the evening was wet. Leiper and his men fired upon them, wounded one, got all the horses they had stolen, and all their baggage, and returned. In the same year (1780) the Indians killed negro Jim, left by Col. Henderson in a boat at the Clover Bottom; also a young man in the same boat. At the same time they took George, a negro man of Absalom Tatom's; also they wounded and took Jack Civil, a mulatto; killed Abel Gower and Abel Gower, Jr., and John Robertson, the son of Capt. James Robertson. Col. John Donaldson had gone up the river to the Clover Bottom with two boats for the purpose of bringing away the corn that himself and others had raised the summer before. They had laden the boats with the corn and had proceeded a small dis- tance down the river when Col. Donaldson recollected that he had neglected to gather some cotton which he had planted at the lower end of the field, and accordingly asked of his compan- ions to put to, for the purpose of picking a part of it. They urged that it was growing late, and that they ought to go on; he waived using any authority, and had scarcely landed before the people in the other boat were attacked by a party of Indians who lay in ambush to intercept the boats on their return. The fire of the Indians was fatal. All were killed except a free ne- gro and one white man, who swam to shore and wandered many days in the woods before he reached the bluff. A little dog about the time of cock-crowing in the morning after the defeat, warned the inhabitants of the station by barking. A boat put out and brought to the floating boat. On examining it a negro who had gone up with the party was found dead. His chin had been eaten by the dog. From these appearances the conclusion was that the rest of the party were killed. Col. Donaldson, however, had escaped to Mansco's Station. A free negro, son of Jack Civil, who was in the boat, was taken prisoner by the In- dians.
In the summer of this year (1780) at the place where Ephraim Foster, Esq., now lives, Philip Catron riding from Freeland's Station to the bluff, was fired on by the Indians and wounded in the forepart of the breast so that he spit blood, but he re- covered. In the same summer, as Capt. John Caffrey and Dan- iel Williams were rising the bank going toward the bluff, the
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Indians fired upon them, wounding Caffrey in the thigh and Williams in the knee with two balls. They escaped to the bluff. In the fall of this year the Indians fired upon Taylor and others near the bluff, to the south-west. After much time and care he was recovered. In this summer Robert Gilkey sickened and died. He was the first man of the settlers that died a natural death. Soon afterward a negro of Mrs. Gilkey's was fired upon by the Indians at the place where Mr. Whitesides's office now is. The negro was dangerously wounded, but recovered. Philip Conrad, in the spring, was killed by the fall of a tree at the place where Bass's tan-yard now is. In this year a man of the name of Michael Stoner first discovered the lick which has ever since been called Stoner's Lick. Stoner's Lick Creek, which runs through it, received its name from the same circumstance. In the fall of this year the hunters supplied the inhabitants with meat by killing bears, buffaloes, and deer. A party of twenty men went up the Caney Fork as high as Flinn's Creek and returned in canoes with their meat in the winter. While in the woods they killed one hundred and five bears, seventy-five buffaloes, and eighty and more deer. Some of the inhabitants, however. failed to obtain the subsistence which was expected from this source, and others had lost their crops by a fresh in July, and such persons were in distress for want of provisions. The multiplied disasters and dangers which every moment threatened the small body of settlers with destruction at length began to dishearten them. A considerable part of them went this year to Kentucky and Illinois. In the winter the emigra- tion was stopped by the want of horses, and all the inhabitants were collected into two stations.
The Assembly of North Carolina, in May, 1780, engaged by a public act in the form of a resolution to give to the officers and soldiers in its line, on continental establishment, a bounty in lands in proportion to their respective grades, to be laid off in the western country in what is now called West Tennessee, to all such who were then in service and should continue to the end of the war, or such as from wounds or bodily infirmities have been or shall be rendered unfit for service, and to the heirs of such who shall have fallen or shall fall in defense of the country. There never was a bounty more richly deserved or more ungrudgingly promised.
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In the year 1781, on the 15th of January, an attack was made on Freeland's Station by forty or fifty Indians in the still hour of midnight. Capt. James Robertson had, in the evening be- fore, returned from the Kentucky settlements, and having been accustomed, whilst on the road, to more vigilance than the other residents of the fort, he heard the noise which the cautious say- ages made in opening the gate. He arose and alarmed the men in the station, but the Indians had got in. The cry of "Indians" brought Maj. Lucas out in his shirt. He was shot. The alarm being general, the Indians retreated through the gate, but fired in at the port-holes through the house in which Maj. Lucas lived. In this house they shot a negro of Capt. Robertson's. These were the only fatal shots, though not less than five hun- dred were fired into the house. It was the only one in which the port-holes were not filled up with mud. The whites, only eleven in number, made good use of the advantage they pos- sessed in the other houses of the fort. Capt. Robertson shot an Indian, which soon caused the whole party to retreat. The moon shone brightly, otherwise this attack would probably have succeeded. The fort was once in possession of the Indians. They found means to loosen the chain on the inside which con- fined the gate, and they were superior in point of numbers. The Indians received re-enforcements from the Cherokee Na- tion. They burned up every thing before them: immense quan- tities of corn and other produce, as well as the houses, fences, and even the stations of the whites. The alarm was general; all who could get to the bluff or Eaton's Station did so, but many never saw their comrades in those stations. Some were killed sleeping; some were awakened only to be apprised that their last moment was come; some were killed in the noonday, when not suspicious of danger; death seemed ready to embrace the whole of the adventurers. In the morning when Mansco's Lick Station was broken up, two men who had slept a little later than their companions were shot by two guns pointed through a port- hole by the Indians. These men were David Goin and Patrick Quigley. Many of the terrified settlers removed to Kentucky, or went down the river. A few nights afterward Mrs. Dunham sent a small girl out of the fort to bring in something that she wanted, and the Indians being there, took hold of the child and scalped her, but they did not kill her, and she is still alive. Mrs.
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Dunham, hearing the cries of the child, advanced toward the place where she was, and was shot by one of the Indians and wounded dangerously, but not mortally. She lived many years afterward, and at length died, but never perfectly recovered her health.
In the spring of the year 1781, on the second day of April, a numerous party of Cherokees came in the night and lay in am- bush. In the morning three of them came and fired at the fort on the bluff and ran off. Nineteen horsemen in the fort mount- ed their horses and followed them. When they came to the branch over which the stone bridge now is, they discovered the Indians in the creek and in the thickets near it. They rose and fired upon the horsemen; the latter dismounted to give them battle, and returned their fire with great alacrity. Another party of Indians lay concealed in the privy and brush and cedars near the place where Mr. De Mumbrune's house is, who were ready to rush into the fort on the back of the combatants. The horses ran to the fort and left their owners on foot. Hearing the firing, those in the fort closed the gates. Such of the nine- teen as were left alive retreated to the fort. Several of them were killed on the spot-namely, Peter Gill, Alexander Buchan- an, George Kennedy, Zachariah White, and Capt. Leiper. Others of them were wounded-namely, James Manifee and Joseph Moonshaw. At the place where the stone house of Cross now stands, Isaac Lucas had his thigh broken by a ball, and being left by his comrades who ran into the fort, the In- dians rushed upon him to take his scalp. One of them running toward him and being at a short distance, Lucas, having his gun charged, fired upon and shot him through the body, and he died instantly. The people in the fort, in order to save Lucas, kept up a brisk and warm fire upon those parties of Indians who at- tempted to get to him, and finally succeeded in drawing them off, when he (Lucas) was taken and brought into the fort by his own people.
When the Indians fired upon the horsemen at the branch, the body which lay in ambush at De Mumbrune's rose and marched toward the river, forming a line between the combatants and the fort. When those from the bluff dismounted to fire upon the In- dians in the branch, and the firing on both sides actually com- menced, their horses took fright and ran at full speed on the
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south side of the Indian line toward the French Lick, passing . by the fort on the bluff. Seeing this, a number of Indians in the line, eager to get possession of the horses, left their ranks and went in pursuit of them, and at this instant the dogs in the fort, seeing the confusion and hearing the firing, ran toward the branch and came to that part of the Indian line which remained set unbroken, and as they had been trained to hostility against Indians, made a most furious onset upon them and disabled them from doing any thing more than defending themselves. Whilst thus employed the retreating whites passed near them through the interval made by the desertion of those from the line who had gone in pursuit of the horses .. Had it not been for these fortunate circumstances, the whites could never have retreated to the fort through the Indian line, which had taken post between them and the fort. Such of the nineteen who survived when . they retreated, would have had to break through the line, their own guns being empty, whilst those of the Indians were well charged. Amongst those who retreated toward the fort was Ed- ward Swanson, who was pursued by an Indian that overtook him, punching him with the muzzle of his gun in the back and drawing the trigger, when the gun suapped. Swanson laid hold of the muzzle, and wringing the lock to one side, spilled the priming from the pan. The Indian, looking into the pan and not seeing powder in it, struck him with the gun-barrel, the muzzle foremost. The stroke not bringing him to the ground, the Indian clubbed his gun and, striking him with it near the lock, knocked him down on all fours. At this time John Bu- chanon, the elder, father of the present Maj. Buchanon, rushed from the fort to the assistance of Swanson, who was about twenty yards from it. Here he discharged his gun at the In- dian, who, gritting his teeth, retired to a stump, upon which Buchanon and Swanson went into the fort. From the stump to which the Indian retired was a trail made by a body dragged along upon the ground, much marked with blood. The Indians retired, leaving upon the field the dead Indian whom Lucas had killed. Another they buried on the east side of the creek in a hollow north of the place where Mr. Hume now lives. The white people afterward dug him up. Many of the Indians were seen hopping on lame feet or legs. They got nineteen horses, sad- dles, bridles, and blankets, and could easily remove their dead
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and wounded. The white people could never learn the exact loss they sustained.
On the night of the same day in which this affair took place another party of Indians, who had not come up in time to be present at the battle, marched to the ground now occupied by Poyzer's and Condon's houses and lots and fired upon the fort for some time, till a swivel was charged with small rocks and pieces of pots and discharged at them, upon which they imme- diately withdrew.
A few days before the battle at the fort on the bluff, Col. Samuel Barton had followed a drove of cattle, wishing to kill one of them for beef. They passed near the head of the branch which extends from the stone bridge by Bass's tan-yard, and up- ward to the head. They passed near the spot at the head of the branch where the Indian lay in ambush. They fired upon and wounded him in the wrist. He ran with the blood streaming from the wound, and one of them followed him. One, Martin, ran from the fort to meet him, and seeing him join Barton the Indian in pursuit retired. At this time John Buchanon and his brother Alexander Buchanon were in Cross's field; they took a circuitous route and came into the fort on what is now the back part of the town of Nashville. Barton was in the fort disabled by this wound when the battle at Nashville took place.
In the summer of 1781 a party of Indians killed William Hood just on the outside of the fort at Freeland's Station. They did not at that time attack the fort.
In the same summer, between Freeland's Station and the French Lick, a party of Indians killed old Peter Renfroe and withdrew. In the fall of the same year they killed Timothy Terril, from North Carolina, and withdrew. In the same year the Indians killed Jacob Freeland as he hunted for deer on Stoner's Lick Creek, at the place where John Castleman now lives. There also, at another time, they killed Joseph Castleman, a son of John Castleman. At the same place lived Jacob Castleman, who went into the woods to hunt and was surprised and killed by the Indians.
In the spring of the year 1782 a party of Indians fired upon three persons at the French Lick and broke the arms of John Tucker and Joseph Hendricks, and shot down David Hood, whom they scalped and stamped, as he said, and followed the
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others toward the fort. The people of the fort came out and re- pulsed them and saved the wounded men. Supposing the In- dians gone, Hood got up softly, wounded and scalped as he was, and began to walk toward the fort on the bluff, when, to his mortification, he saw standing upon the bank of the creek & number of Indians, the same who had wounded him before, making sport of his misfortunes and mistake. They then fell upon him again, and having given him in several places new wounds that were apparently mortal, they left him. He fell into a brush-heap in the snow, and next morning was tracked and found by his blood and was placed, as a dead man, in one of the out-houses and was left alone. After some time he recovered and lived many years.
After the attempt to take the fort at the bluff in 1781, the people were frequently disturbed by Indian irruptions and dep- redations. They made no corn in 1781, but in 17S2 they made some in the fields which had been cleared in 1780. The hostil- ities of the Indians were exercised upon those whom they found hunting, a number of whom they killed that year. In this year (1782) a house or two stood at a place called Kilgore's Station, on the north side of the Cumberland River, on the Red River, and on the south side of Red River, at the place now called Kil- gore's Station. There were two young men by the name of Ma- son, Moses Malding, Ambrose Malding, Josiah Hoskins, Jesse Simmons, and others. The two Masons had gone to a lick called Clay Lick, and had posted themselves in a secret place to watch for deer, and were near enough to reach them with their shot at the lick. Whilst in this situation seven Indians came to the lick. The lads took good aim, and fired upon and killed two of them, and then ran with all speed to the fort, where, being joined by three of the garrison, they returned to the lick, found the dead Indians, scalped them, and returned to the fort. That night John Peyton and Ephraim Peyton, on their way to Kentucky, called in at the fort and remained there all night. The Indians came in the night and took away all, or nearly all, the horses which were there. In the morning the people at the fort pursued them, and overtook them in the evening at a creek called Peyton's Creek, and fired upon them and killed one. The rest fled, and the pursuers retook all the horses. That night the latter came toward the fort and carelessly encamped, and the
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next morning proceeded on their journey. But in the mean- time the Indians had got between them and the station by a cir- cuitous route, and when the whites came near enough they fired upon them, and killed one of the Masons and Josiah Hoskins. The Indians then retreated with their spoils, and the people at Kilgore's Station broke up their establishment and joined those at the bluff. A little before this, but in the same year, at the same station, the Indians fired upon Samuel Martin and Isaac Johnson returning to the bluff. They took Martin and carried him into the Creek Nation. After residing there ten or eleven months, he came home elegantly dressed, with two valuable horses and silver spurs. Isaac Johnson escaped and came home. As Martin was the first and only man who had been profited by Indian captivity, and withal bore but an indifferent character, it was whispered that he had agreed with the Indians upon the time and place of attack to be made by them, and was a sharer in the plunder.
In the year 1782, and for several years afterward, the common custom of the country was for one or two persons to stand as watchmen or sentinels whilst others labored in the field; and even whilst one went to a spring to drink another stood on the watch with his gun, ready to give him protection by shooting a creeping Indian, or one rising from the thickets of cane and brush that covered him from view; and whenever four or five trere assembled together at a spring, or other places where bus- iness required them to be, they held their guns in their hands, and, with their backs turned to each other, one faced the north, another the south, another the west-watching in all directions for a lurking or creeping enemy. Whilst the people at the bluff were so much harassed and galled by the Indians that they could not plant and cultivate their corn-fields, a proposition was made in a council of the inhabitants at the bluff to break up the settlement and go off. Capt. Robertson pertinaciously resisted this proposition. It was then impossible to get to Kentucky, as the Indians were in force upon all the roads and passages which led thither; and for the same reason it was equally im- practicable to remove to the settlements on the Holston. No other means of escape remained but that of going down the river in boats, and making good their retreat to Illinois; and to this plan great obstacles were opposed, for how was the wood
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to be obtained with which to make the boats? Every day the Indians were in the skirts of the bluff, lying concealed among the shrubs, privy and cedar trees, ready to inflict death upon whoever should attempt to go to the woods to procure timber for building a boat. These difficulties were all stated by Capt. Robertson. He held out the dangers attendant on the attempt on the one hand; the fine country they were about to possess themselves of on the other; the probability of new acquisitions of members from the interior settlements; the certainty of being able, by a careful attention to circumstances, to defend them- selves till succor could arrive. Finally their apprehensions were quieted, and gradually they relinquished the design of evacuating the position they occupied.
In this year George Aspy was killed by the Indians on Drake's Creek, and Thomas Spencer was wounded. This was in May. In the fall of this year William McMurry was killed near Win- chester's Mill, on Bledsoe's Creek. Gen. Smith and some oth- ers were with him, and the general was wounded. They killed Noah Trammel on Goose Creek. Malden's Station, upon Red River, was broken up.
In the month of April of this year the Legislature of North Carolina, by an act passed for the purpose, allowed to the set- tlers on the Cumberland rights of preemption: six hundred and forty acres to each family or head of a family, and every sin- gle man of the age of twenty-one years and upward, who were settled on the said lands before the 1st day of June, 1780. Such tracts were to include their improvements; but Lo grant to any of them was to include any salt licks or salt springs, which, by the same act, were reserved as public property, together with six hundred and forty acres of the adjoining land. All the rest of the country was declared to be subject to partition.
In this year also the Legislature of North Carolina, after a great deal of uncommendable tergiversation, established courts of equity in all the districts of the State.
The Revolutionary War was now fast hastening to a close. and actually came to an end on the 30th of November, 1782. This event had been anticipated by Capt. Robertson, and from it he expected an abatement of Indian hostility, as the Indians, he conceived, would be no longer either encouraged or paid to persist in it. The event corresponded in part with his expecta-
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tions, and was soon followed by the arrival of a number of per- sons from North Carolina, who gave strength and animation to the settlements.
Early in 1783 the commissioners, with a guard, came from North Carolina to lay off lands for satisfaction of the bounties promised to the officers and soldiers of her line in the regular army; and also to examine into the claims of those persons who considered themselves entitled to the pre-emption rights granted to the settlers on Cumberland before the Ist of June, 1780; and also to lay off the lands given by the Assembly of North Carolina to Gen. Greene as a mark of the high sense they en- tertained of his extraordinary services in the war of the Revo- lution. The settlers were much animated by their presence and by the additional strength derived from their accession, and soon wholly abandoned the design which they had once enter- tained of leaving the country. The commissioners and guards, with some of the inhabitants in company, went to the place now called Latitude Hill, on Elk River, to ascertain the thirty-fifth degree of north latitude, and there made their observations, and thence came down Haywood's Creek to Richland Creek of Elk, and thence by Fountain Creek of Duck River; and at the second creek below that laid off the 25,000 acres of land for Gen. Greene which the people of North Carolina had made him a present of, and then fifty-five miles from the southern boundary, and parallel thereto ran the line, which received the name of the "continental line," because it was the boundary of the territory allotted for the officers and soldiers of the line of North Caro- lina in the continental army. But upon the representation and at the request of the officers made to the General Assembly in their session of 1783, they directed it to be laid off from the northern boundary fifty-five miles to the south; beginning on the Virginia line where the Cumberland River intersects the same; thence west to the Tennessee River; thence down the Tennessee to the Virginia line; thence with the said Virginia line east to the beginning. The General Assembly at the same time took into consideration the claims set up to these lands by Hender- son and his associates, who had obtained them from the Indians in 1775, as has been already stated in the chapter of boundaries. Purchases of the Indians, except by public authority, had been forbidden by the king's proclamation and instructions to his
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