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 40
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In Nickajack was found a quantity of powder and lead just received from the Spanish government, and a commission to "The Breath," the chief of that town, who was killed. The mi- litia had three men wounded. The Indians in the other town, called Running Water, when they heard the firing below, re- paired instantly to the place of action, and met their terrified brethren coming to the Running Water. From the place of meeting they began to return, but made a stand at the narrow pass before described, placing themselves behind the rocks and upon the sides of the mountains. There they kept up a run- ning fire, when the Cumberland troops came up, three of whom were wounded: Luke Anderson, Severn Donalson, and Joshua Thomas, the latter of whom died of his wounds. Some horses were taken which we never got over the river, and some blank. ets and other trifles of small value, which were sold on the north side of the river, and divided among such as wished a di- vision.' On Friday, the 12th of September, they left the river and encamped on the mountain. The next day they marched to the place where Caldwell's bridge now is, and there they re- crossed Elk River. The next day they came to Fennison's Spring; thence to the place since called Purdie's Garrison, where Lemon (a soldier) died, who had in his sleep climbed a tree, and had fallen from the boughs, and had mortally bruised and wounded himself. Thence they marched to Hart's Spring, on the north side of Steele's Creek, and next day to Nashville, where the troops were discharged. This severe chastisement, with other events which soon followed, began to break the spirit of the Cherokees. They began to despair of preventing the settlements which quickly spread to all parts of the territory which by treaty belonged to the whites, and their vindictive pro- pensities were greatly discouraged. In June, 1794, they had ap- plied for peace. On the 26th of July a treaty between them and the United States, made at Philadelphia, re-established the treaty of Holston, and they were made seriously to believe that "the ways of peace are the ways of pleasantness."
Beneficial as was this affair to the people of the south-western territory, the principal officers of it were obliged at least to pre- tend ignorance of its commencement and progress. Maj. Ore, with sixty men, had been ordered by the Governor, on the 19th of August, 1794, to range the Cumberland Mountains in search
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of hostile Indians, and somehow or other he left the mountains and found himself at Nashville just about the time when the troops from Kentucky and those raised in the District of Mero were about to rendezvous. Gov. Blount, in his letter to the Sec- retary of War, dated the 22d of September, 1794, informed him of a report in circulation ( which he believed) of the destruction of the Running Water and Nickajack, stating that he understood it was done by order of Gen. Robertson, to whom the Governor had given no orders for such purpose. And on the 1st of Oeto- ber, 1794, the Governor stated to Gen. Robertson the report . made to him by Maj. Ore of the irruption across the Tennessee, which had been made by a detachment of the militia of Gen. Rob- ertson's brigade, sanctioned by his orders, and requested of him a copy of the order which he had given to Maj. Ore for that purpose.
Gen. Robertson, before he had given the order, had been informed by the Chickasaws that two hundred Creeks might be daily expected on the frontiers of Mero. As early, however, as the 5th of August, 1794-a few days only before Ore was dis- patched with sixty men to the Cumberland Mountains-Gen. Logan and Col. Whitley, of Kentucky, had been represented to the Governor as planning an expedition against the Cherokees. They were the most popular leaders on the frontiers of Ken- tucky, and were publicly announced as the leaders of volunteer companies to be raised against the Indians; and it was appre- hended by the Governor that "this spirit" would diffuse itself among the disorderly part of the frontier people, not only into this Territory, but to the mouth of the St. Mary's. His presenti- ment was correct as to the people of this Territory, but the Gor- ernor forgot to give any directions to Maj. Ore on this subject, when he gave orders a few days afterward to raise men and scour the mountains. It seemed as if everybody was tired of being scalped and robbed and cooped up in stations, and were willing to let pass without scanning too nicely every thing that was done or intended, to see whether it was exactly according to prescribed rule. Revenge was sweet, and they stole it; protec- tion was valuable, and they inspired the savages with fear to procure it; and the event proved that fear was effectual, when . . persuasion was proverbially otherwise. During the time the men were raising in the Cumberland counties so much caution was used that the Governor did not hear of it, and only received
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intelligence after the lapse of time which intervened between the raising of the troops and the 9th of September, and then it was too late to interfere: he could only communicate intelligence to the Secretary of War. But the Governor by some means had received information that Gen. Robertson gave encouragement to Col. Whitley to raise troops, and to be on the Cumberland as early as the 9th of September; for on that day he wrote a pri- vate letter to Gen. Robertson: "You cannot," said he, "conceive my surprise and mortification on being taught to believe that you have so far countenanced the lawless attempt of Whitley as to give conditional sanction to musters of troops going with him. You have surely paid less respect to yourself on this oc- casion than on any other since my acquaintance with you. It is not possible that the representatives in Congress from Kentucky can have had so little understanding as to have entertained the most distant hope that the perpetrators of such lawless, unau- thorized acts could expect the least pecuniary reward for their trouble; for services," said he, "I cannot call them." He hoped the conditional order of muster was not in writing. He knew not what price he would take to report such an order to the war office. "The general's letter of the 30th of August will be de- stroyed," said he, "that it may never rise in judgment. Do not," said he, "suppose this too severe; it proceeds from my personal esteem and the high value which I set upon your pub- lic character. No good consequence can arise," said he, "from such unauthorized expeditions; and if such must be, let them be made by the States which have Senators and Representatives in the public councils. You cannot conceive," said he, "the pain that I feel on the occasion." In another letter of the same date he said to Gen. Robertson: "There appears to me to be an im- propriety in the President's filling the commission of brigadier- general of Mero District until you make a formal resignation to him, and not a conditional one. I shall not write to the Presi- dent," said he, "respecting your resignation until you send for- ward one more formal." On the 1st of October the Governor stated to Gen. Robertson that none of his letters heretofore written would appear, remarking at the same time that he (the general) had it in his power to take up the subject at large and state his reasons. "Maj. Ore's report," said he, "will go to the President by Dr. White."
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· What are the feelings excited by this scene in which we see an old and tried patriot, who never once failed to fly to the suc- cor of his country in distress, so chided and reproved for an act which actually put an end to Indian incursions, and wrested from their hands the tomahawk and the scalping-knife? We shall be obliged to say that if an error was committed it was on the side of virtue and patriotism, and that reproof should be administered with a great portion of kindness and respect intermixed. Shall one be the savior of his country, and for that be chagrined into retirement? The regrets of that coun- try will follow his exit, and the glow of affection shall rise at the tale.
Whoever admires the man that loved his country more than himself, at the same time that he acknowledges the correctness of that policy in government which is inflexible for disobedience of orders, will say with the graceful sincerity of truth that in this instance he wishes it were otherwise.
Gen. Robertson, on the Sth of October, transmitted to the Governor a copy of his orders to Maj. Ore, of the 6th of Sep- tember, and he assigned to the Governor his reasons for giving it. He had received two expresses from the Chickasaws-one by Thomas Brown, a man of unquestionable veracity, and the other by a common runner-giving information that a large body of Creeks, with the Cherokees of the lower towns, were embody- ing with a determination to invade the District of Mero; and not doubting the truth of the information, he conceived that if Maj. Ore should not meet the invading army of Creeks and Cherokees that it could not be considered otherwise than de- fensive to strike the first blow on the lower towns, and thereby check them in their advance. Nor could he suppose that the pursuit of parties of Indians who had recently committed mur- ders and thefts to the towns from which they came, and there striking them, could be considered as an offensive measure, un- authorized by the usage of nations in such cases. "It cannot be necessary," said he, "to add as a justification the long-re- peated and almost daily sufferings of the people of the District of Mero, by the bands of the Creeks and Cherokees of the lower towns." He stated that the destruction of the lower towns by Maj. Ore was on the 13th of September, and that on the 13th, in Tennessee County, Miss Roberts was killed on Red River,
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forty miles below Nashville; and on the 14th Thomas Reasons and wife were killed and their house plundered, near the same place, by Indians. On the 16th, in Davidson County, twelve miles above Nashville, another party killed Chambers, wounded John Bozley and Joseph Davis, burned John Donalson's Sta- tion, and carried off sundry horses; and in Sumner County, on the same day, a third party of Indians killed a woman on Red River, near Maj. Sharp's, about forty miles north-east of Nash- ville, and carried off several horses. This proved in his opin- ion that three separate and distinct parties of Indians were out for war against the District of Mero before the march of Maj. Ore from Nashville.
He inclosed also to the Governor the copy of a letter received from Dr. R. J. Walters, a citizen of the United States resident at New Madrid, to John Eastin, his factor in Tennessee County, strongly supporting the information the Chickasaws had given of the invasion by the Creeks; "and," said the general, "is not the old Maw's information to yourself, in the latter part of Au- gust, to the same effect? To him and his friendly party are the people of this country indebted," he said, "for their not invad- ing us as they intended? If," said he, "I have erred, I shall ever regret it. To be a good citizen, obedient to the laws, is my greatest pride; and to execute the duties of the commission with which the President has been pleased to honor me, in such manner as to meet his approbation and that of my superiors in rank has ever been my most favorite wish. Previously to the march of Maj. Ore from Nashville," he said, "Col. Whitley, with about one hundred men, arrived there from Kentucky, saying that they had followed a party of Indians who had committed depredations on the southern frontier of that State; that in the pursuit they had a man killed by the Indians and several horses taken, and they were determined to pursue to the lower towns. They were attached to Maj. Ore's command, which augmented the number to five hundred and fifty men." He should be happy, he continued, if his apprehensions of a Creek invasion were re- moved; but they were not, for William Colbert and other Chick- asaws informed him that they yet threatened Mero District-not in large numbers, but in small parties, which were equally dan- gerous, as there was no possibility of guarding against a number of small parties invading the frontier at different places at the
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same time. He inclosed to the Governor a letter from John Watts; "and from my experience," said he, "in Indian affairs my hopes are that from the scourging which Maj. Ore has given the lower Cherokees we shall receive less injury from them than heretofore." He also inclosed Maj. Doyle's letter from Fort Massac, in consequence of which he had ordered to his relief an ensign, sergeant, corporal, and five privates of mounted infant- ry. Besides the death of Miss Roberts, Reasons and wife, and of Chambers, in the month of Septembor, as related in Gen, Robertson's letter, they also did other mischief. On the night of the 14th of September the Indians pulled up a part of the stockading of Morgan's Station, and took out a valuable gelding; and on the same day a party of Cherokees fell in with John Henley as he passed down the Ohio, near the mouth, and robbed him of a thousand dollars in cash and many valuable articles of merchandise; and on the 16th, when they burned the house of Mr. Donalson, they also burned that of Mrs. Hays.
On the 28th there arrived in Knoxville Miss Alice Thompson and Mrs. Caffrey, of Nashville, by way of the Rock Landing, in Georgia, from a captivity of upward of two years with the Creeks. The latter refused to deliver to Mr. Seagrove, the United States Agent for Indian Affairs, sundry citizens of the United States who were prisoners among them-more particu- larly the child of Mrs. Caffrey, taken about two years before that time from near Bledsoe's Lick. Also, they did not deliver young Brown, the son of Mrs. Brown, near Nashville; nor did they deliver young Mayfield, the son of Mrs. Mayfield, near the same place. The child of Alexander Cavet, also called Alexan- der, taken from near Knoxville in September, 1793, when the rest of the family were massacred, was killed, as these late cap- tives reported, by a Creek warrior, by the stroke of his toma- hawk, three days after their arrival in the nation. Miss Thomp- son, soon after arriving in the nation, was purchased from her captives for eight hundred pounds of deer leather, equal to $266.663, by a white trader, who treated her with humanity; but Mrs. Caffrey was treated as a slave, and was frequently scratched and torn with gar teeth by way of punishment; and was made to hoe corn, beat meal, and to perform other duties of slavery, and when released was obliged to leave her child be- hind.
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On the 2d of October, 1794, Thomas Bledsoe, son of Col. All- thony Bledsoe, was killed and scalped near the house of the late Col. Isaac Bledsoe. His father, brother, uncle, and cousin had all suffered under the tomahawk and scalping-knife. On the 24th of October, 1794, a party of Indians fired upon John Leiper and another man, near the house of the former, on the east fork of Red River, in Tennessee County. On the same day another party of Indians killed and scalped Evan Watkins, within a hun- dred yards of Col. Winchester's mill, in Sumner County. These two places are seventy miles distant from each other. On the 25th of the same month a party of fellows were discovered crossing the road between Bledsoe's Lick and Shaver's cabin. On the following day Cornet Evans was fired upon between Bledsoe's Lick and Col. Winchester's by four fellows; and on the 20th the spies discovered a party of thirteen Indians cross- ing the Cumberland River toward the settlements, within five miles of Col. Winchester's. These several parties appearing in and about the settlements nearly at the same time gave an un- usual degree of alarm to the inhabitants. Families in general through the neighborhood shut themselves up in their stations, and all intercourse ceased for several days, except by patroling parties. The people cried out that Congress could not know of their sufferings and have the feelings of men, or that they would take measures to give them more effectual protection.
On the 5th of November, 1794, a party of fifty Indians, on the . waters of Red River, in Tennessee County, fell upon the families of Col. Isaac Titsworth and of his brother, John Titsworth, and killed and scalped seven white persons, wounded a negro woman, and took prisoners a white man, three children, and a negro fel- low, and also a daughter of Col. Titsworth. Pursuit was given by the neighboring militia, and the Indians, discovering their approach, tomahawked the three children and scalped them, tak- ing off the whole skins of their heads. The white man and the negro fellow they either killed or carried off, together with the daughter. These murders were imputed to the Creeks.
On the 11th of November the Indians made an attack on Col. Sevier's Station, near Clarksville, and killed Snyder, his wife, and one child; also one of Col. Sevier's children, and another they mortally wounded and scalped. On hearing the guns fire, a few of the people of Clarksville ran over. They found Sevier
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defending his house, with his wife. The crying of women and children in town, and the bustle and consternation of the peo- ple, they being all women and children but the few who went to Sevier's, exhibited a scene which cannot be described. Col. Se- vier began immediately to remove, and all were preparing on the 12th to evacuate Clarksville, unless they should receive succor in a day or two from the interior. On the 12th the Indians killed John Covington, on his way from the Red Bank on the Ohio, to the Muddy River, in Kentucky.
On the 24th of November, 1794, the incursions of the Creeks made it still necessary to keep up defensive protection on the frontier, which was ordered till the 1st of April, 1795; and on the 22d of November the Governor stated in a letter to Col. Winchester that as to the Creeks he had no doubt but that they would continue to kill and steal as usual until the United States marched an army into their country and they in turn felt the horrors of war. When this wished for period would arrive, he could not say; but it was decidedly his opinion, at the same time, that the sooner the people of the south-western territory became a State the sooner would protection be afforded; and he declared it to be his wish that the people might see their own interests, and upon the question of State or no State determine in the af- firmative.
On the 27th of November, 1794, a party of Indians killed and scalped Col. John Montgomery, and wounded Julius Saunders with four balls and Charles Beatty through the arm, on the north-western frontier of Tennessee County; and on the 29th another party of Indians, on the northern frontier of Sumner County, killed and scalped John Lawrence, William Hains, and Michael Hampton, and wounded a fourth, whose name was not reported. The party was supposed to consist of Creeks and lower town Cherokees. The people in their conduct toward the Indians were now no longer to be restrained from offensive op- erations. On the 20th of December were killed and scalped by Indians, on Harpeth River, Hugh Tenin, of Sumner County, then late colonel of Orange County, in North Carolina, and John Brown and William Grimes, the latter a nephew of Gen. Mebane, a member of Congress from North Carolina.
Whoever endeavors to please all seldom in the end pleases anybody, unless he has the address to substitute good wishes for
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good offices. The former is an inexhaustible fund, out of which all mankind can be supplied, and wherever distributed creates an expectation of beneficence, which becomes the basis of com- placency in the expectant as durable and as unconfined as the good wishes are liberal. But if he attempts to please by the performance of good offices, the fund is limited, and but few can taste of its bounty; and these few, losing the expectation of fut- ure beneficence from the scantiness of the means which can be employed, lose at the same time the good-will which that expec- tation supported; and in place thereof, as the receipt of favors is an admission of inferiority, the suspicion is entertained that the doer so considers their relative situation. From that mo- ment dislike takes the place of benevolence, and often grows to an enormous bulk. So it is with government. Whatever it does will not please all, and sometimes none. In many instances when the public good, or, in other words, that of the greater part, is consulted, the measures taken for that end will run counter to the prospects, and even the acquired rights, of indi- viduals.
The Indians complained of the invasion of their territorial rights, and now came forward. In the beginning of this year other discontented persons, murmuring at the relinquishments made to quiet the Indians by the treaties of Hopewell and Hol- ston, a committee consisting of Thomas Person, J. Rutledge, Hugh Williamson, William Polk, and Robert Irwin, in behalf of themselves and the other purchasers of lands in the ceded territory south of the Ohio, presented their petition to the General Assembly of North Carolina, stating the acts of that Legislature under which they had purchased lands in the ceded territory, and the entries and grants which had been made by and to them under the authority of North Carolina; and that by the treaties made between the United States and the Chick- asaw and Cherokee Indians boundaries had been established between the United States and the said Indians, the former guaranteeing to the latter all the lands not ceded by the Indians, and the said treaties declaring that no person not being an In- dian shall settle on any of the said lands; that a great part of the lands entered by the petitioners, and for which they had paid the purchase money, as well as some of the lands reserved by law for the officers and soldiers of the line of North Carolina
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in the late Continental army, was entered within the tract of country ceded by those treaties to the Chickasaw and Cherokee Indians. They had twice before applied, they said, to the Leg- islature of North Carolina for redress, who recommended the subject to the consideration of the North Carolina delegation in Congress. And as the petitioners were excluded and debarred from the possession of their lands, they now earnestly solicited the Assembly for justice and satisfaction, such as regardful of public faith the State ought to afford. A committee was ap- pointed, and reported in favor of the petitioners, and proposed that the Representatives and Senators in Congress from North Carolina should exert themselves to procure redress for the pe- titioners from the national government, and this recommenda- tion was approved by the Assembly. The subject was brought before Congress, together with the petition of the trustees of the University of North Carolina, which echoed the same querulous expostulations.
A committee was appointed, and reported on the 19th of Feb- ruary, 1794, that the certificates paid for lands lying within the territory ceded by the treaty of Holston to certain Indian tribes ought of right to be restored to the former proprietors, and that they should be assumed and provided for as a part of the debt of the United States; and that the said proprietors should, moreover, be re-imbursed all expenses incurred in entering, lo- cating, and surveying said lands. And to this report the com- mittee subjoined, for the opinion of the House, two resolutions, pointing out the manner in which they thought the business should be conducted. These plans, however, never grew to ma- turity, and the petitioners had the good fortune to be disap- pointed in their wishes.
If men of so much intelligence and experience in business were disheartened at the long continuance of unchecked devas- tations committed by the Indians, can it be a matter of surprise that the afflicted population of Mero District should also enter- tain a sentiment of dissatisfaction at the unmerited cruelties which they had never provoked, and which, like a strong current of mighty waters, were suffered to beat upon them incessantly. by night and by day. Still they submitted with patient resig- nation to the arrangements of national authority, and gave to the world a signal proof that as genuine bravery as any age or
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country could boast of was not incompatible with the most per- fect subserviency to national councils. Every day they had to grieve for the loss of their dearest relations, the victims of sav- age vengeance; yet they believed that the ways of the government were wiser than their ways, and carefully followed the course which the government prescribed. From the incompetence of the late confederation to the adjustment of national affairs, they perceived that numerous difficulties had arisen to embarrass the operations of the present government, and that from all quarters of the earth there came something which claimed attention. They were bayed by the Spaniards, by the Indians, by the En- glish; teased by the French, disturbed by insurgents, besieged by public creditors, and murmured at by those who were ex- cluded for a time from the possession of their lands by Indian treaties. Perceiving all this, they yielded to the necessity of circumstances, and hoped with confidence for better times.
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