USA > Texas > Border fights & fighters; stories of the pioneers between the Alleghenies and the Mississippi and in the Texan republic > Part 4
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Border Fights and Fighters
tribes, Logan had exercised a strict neutrality. Rather more. He had befriended the white men on many occa- sions.
The most serious happening, which finally put an end to possibilities of even the quasi-peace which might have been maintained, was the unprovoked murder of Logan's entire family, including women and children, by a ruf- fianly trader named Greathouse, on April 30th, 1774. These Indians were first made drunk and then ruthlessly butchered without opportunity of defence, and for no occasion whatsoever.
The cruel murder turned the peaceable Logan into a fiend. With a few companions he declared war on his own account at once. Thinking that Cresap had ordered the massacre, although he was entirely innocent of it, and was, as frontiersmen go, too honorable a man to have done it, Logan sent him a defiance and began to raid the border. As usual, the vengeance fell on the in- nocent. No less than thirty people were killed by him before the authorities were awakened.
Lord Dunmore, the Royal Governor of Virginia, acted with commendable promptness. He embodied the mili- tia of the counties west of the Blue Ridge and called for volunteers. The left wing was ordered to rendezvous at the Great Levels of the Greenbriar, now Lewisburg, and was placed under the command of General Andrew Lewis. The other division, under the command of Dunmore himself, assembled at Frederick. Lewis was ordered to lead his men over the mountains until he struck the Kanawha, down which he was to march until he came to the place where it flowed into the Ohio. There Dunmore, who was to march through Potomac Gap to the Ohio, was to meet him, and the two divisions
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conjoined were to march up the Scioto to the Shawanee Indian towns, which they were to destroy.
The movement was vastly agreeable to the old back- woodsman, and the sturdy pioneers of western Virginia were embodied under their local officers and repaired to his standard at Camp Union with joyous alacrity. Colo- nel Charles Lewis, the brother of the general, led some four hundred men from Augusta; Colonel William Flem- ming an equal number from Botetourt. From over the mountains came the settlers from the Holston and the Watagua in Fincastle County, led by Colonel William Christian. There was also an independent company led by Colonel John Field.
Among the subordinate officers were men destined afterward to achieve a wide reputation. Captain Evan Shelby commanded a company in which his son Isaac was first lieutenant. Isaac was afterward one of that dauntless band which wiped out Ferguson, and when he was a very old man and the Governor of Kentucky, he led his volunteers to the assistance of William Henry Harrison, and participated in the defeat of Tecumseh at the Battle of the Thames-" Old King's Mountain " they called him. Another captain was Benjamin Harri- son, one of the signers of the Declaration of Indepen- dence from Virginia, and the ancestor of two of our Pres- idents. Valentine Sevier, brother of the great pioneer of Tennessee, was with the force. A humble sergeant in the ranks was one James Robertson, whose name is held in the highest esteem in western Tennessee.
Others who participated in the war, although not with Lewis' command, were George Rogers Clark, Simon Kenton, Daniel Morgan, and the afterward infamous renegade Simon Girty. In one way or another nearly
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everyone of prominence afterward in the then far west, served in the war. Daniel Boone commanded three small frontier forts. John Sevier was a captain, and among the officers and soldiers were many men like General George Matthews, the hero of Germantown, General Andrew Moore, the first and only man ever elected to the United States Senate by Virginia from the west of the Blue Ridge, and many others of importance, although most of them are now more or less forgotten.
In quality Lewis' force was remarkably high. They were in the main an undisciplined lot, who submitted grudgingly to his rule and would probably have utterly refused to obey anybody else. They knew nothing of the tactics of soldiers, but they were an unsurpassed body of border fighters.
II. The Battle of Point Pleasant
The assemblage began about the first of September and was nearly completed on the seventh.
On the eighth, the first division started accompanied by four hundred pack-horses loaded with flour and driv- ing one hundred and eight beef cattle. Field and his company followed them and soon joined them. A few days afterward the second division marched out with two hundred pack-horses and the balance of the cattle. The march led straight across the mountains. There was no road; not even a trail. The men had to cut their way through the timber. Such a thing as wagon transporta- tion was absurd and unheard of. They made good time, however, all things considered, and their progress was greatly facilitated when they reached the Kanawha at the mouth of the Elk, and marched down its banks.
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They arrived at the mouth of the river on the 6th of October, having traversed one hundred and sixty-five miles of primeval forest and rugged mountain range. Colonel Christian, with some two hundred men, had been left behind at the camp to bring up the rear-guard and the balance of the supplies. The pack-horses were un- loaded when they reached the Kanawha and the supplies were floated down the river in canoes or on rafts. The horses were then sent back to the Greenbriar to bring up the remainder of supplies under the direction of Colo- nel Christian, who was very unwilling to delay his ad- vance to take the part assigned.
Arrived at the mouth of the Kanawha, according to one account they found a note in a hollow tree which had been put there by Kenton and Girty; according to another, they were met by these men with letters from Dunmore ordering Lewis to march up the Ohio to join Dunmore's force. Lewis' men were greatly exhausted by their terrible march. They were not yet all assem- bled, and it would not be safe to leave Colonel Christian . and his three hundred men alone in the wilderness, so he determined to delay his departure until the rear-guard had joined him.
The ninth was Sunday. The assemblage was by no means the godless, reckless crowd which we naturally imagine it might have been, for it is related that they. had services conducted by a chaplain in which the hardy Scotch-Irish Presbyterians lustily took part, Lewis set- ting the example, although personally he was an Episco- palian. On the morning of the tenth two young men started out before daybreak on a hunting expedition. Some four or five miles from the camp they ran into a large body of Indians. One was shot dead before he
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could get away and the other killed an Indian, made his escape, and ran post-haste to the camp bearing the alarm.
The chief of the Shawnees, who were to the middle west what the Iroquois were to the north and the Creeks to the south, was a veteran warrior named Cornstalk. In every war on the border he had borne a prominent part. Ruthless and ferocious, as all the Indians were, he was not without redeeming qualities. He was a man of the greatest courage and capacity. Indeed he showed a grasp of military science and tactics unusual in one of his race. The Indians were perfectly aware of the ad- vance of the Virginians. They knew they were coming in two widely separated armies, and Cornstalk determined to fall upon the weaker body and crush it before it had time to effect a junction with the other, with which he could then deal. It was sound strategy.
Massing his warriors, whose number about equalled the Americans-say eleven hundred on each side-he led them down the river designing to fall upon Lewis' camp in the night and annihilate his force. The fortunate dis- covery by the two hunters in a measure frustrated his plans. Realizing that the escaping fugitive would give the alarm, Cornstalk at once put his band in motion. They were ferried across the Ohio in rafts and came tear- ing through the woods close on the heels of the fugitive, . thinking, as they phrased it, to drive the borderers " like bullocks into the river." .
As soon as the alarming message had been delivered Lewis ordered the long roll to be beaten. Some of the men were not yet awake when the first rattle of the drum echoed through the forest. They sprang to their arms instantly, however, and fell into such line as their undis- ciplined condition permitted.
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The camp had been made at the confluence of, and between, the two rivers. On the left lay the Ohio, on the right the Kanawha. There was little chance, there- fore, of either flank being turned. It was a good place for defence, although if the American line were thor- oughly broken the troops would be annihilated, for there would be no way of escape, being penned in between the Indians and the river.
No one at the time believed that the Indians were more than a scouting party; they never dreamed that the whole hostile force was upon them. Colonel Charles Lewis with one hundred and fifty men was ordered to march up the right flank along the Kanawha, Colonel Flemming with a like force was ordered up the left flank. Colonel Field was ordered to hold himself in readiness to advance in the centre with another party. The rest of the men were put in a state of preparation and kept in hand by Lewis himself until he could determine what was to happen.
The time was not long in coming. First one musket- shot, then another and another, then a roaring fusillade, apprized the listeners that here was no skirmishing party but an attack in heavy force, and not three quarters of a mile from the main camp. It was evident that the Indians were in sufficient numbers to cover the whole line between the rivers.
Back with the main body Lewis was calmly waiting. He had just taken out his pipe when the first rifle-shot rang out. Coolly waiting until he had completed the lighting of his pipe, the sturdy backwoodsman quickly sent Field's column forward to connect the two columns led by Charles Lewis and-Flemming. The men dashed eagerly and gallantly through the woods until they reached the battle line.
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The Americans had taken to the trees as the Indians had done and the battle was raging fiercely. Colonel Charles Lewis, a veteran of the French and Indian War, with a brilliant record for courage and skill, disdained the use of cover and walked about through his command encouraging his men. He was shot and mortally wound- ed. On the other flank Colonel Flemming, another veteran, while holding his men bravely up to the battle, was shot through the lung so severely that his life was despaired of.
The Indians were massed in force in front of these two bodies. There were probably three Indians to one white man at the point of contact and their firing was terrible. The trees offered little or no protection. Disheartened by the loss of the two commanding officers the Virgin- ians began to give ground. One moment more would have turned their withdrawal into a disastrous retreat, which would have ruined the whole command, when Colonel Field arrived on the ground with his column and restored the line.
Captain Evan Shelby, who had succeeded to the com- mand of the right flank after the wounding of Charles Lewis, managed to rally his men and the line held. Seeing now that the battle was general, leaving a small force to protect the camp and watch the river flanks, General Lewis led his force forward into the battle, the men extending in a long line which reached from river to river for a distance of a mile and a quarter. He got to the front just in time; Colonel Field had been killed and the line was wavering again.
The Indians exhibited a most desperate and gallant offence. They made charge after charge upon the Vir- ginians, hurling themselves on the lines again and again;
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and many a grim, hand-to-hand conflict was fought out in the depths of woods between white and red man. The forest was full of smoke and fire, and rang with shots, yells, and cheers. Tomahawks and knives were freely used. Lewis was everywhere in the thick of the fray, cool and calm, encouraging his men and doing every- thing that a brave commander could do to ensure a vic- tory, but what the end was to be was not easy to foresee.
The Indians were brilliantly led by old Cornstalk, who showed himself a hero. His voice could be heard above the din of the battle exhorting his braves to stand like men, to fight it out, to be strong. The suddenness of his attack and the tactics employed, which consisted in alternate advance and retreat, made the battle the most fiercely contested of any the Indians had ever taken part in on the continent. During the heat of the action Corn- stalk was seen to cut down a cowardly savage with his tomahawk.
All day long the battle raged, but toward the late afternoon the superior steadiness of the Americans began to tell. Cautiously covering themselves, they advanced from tree to tree, slowly forcing the stubborn Indians to retreat. There was no rout, however, on the part of the savages, and Cornstalk managed his retreat in a way that would have done credit to a veteran European captain. His tactics were masterly. He would hurl a body of his Indians on the American advance, throw them into con- fusion for a moment, and before they could rally he would withdraw his attacking party, and when the Amer- icans came on again they would be confronted by a new line. The loss among the Americans was fearful.
Finally toward evening the Indians reached a heavily wooded rise of ground from which they could not be
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driven. The battle so far was a drawn one, the advan- tage if anything, being with the Americans, except in the matter of loss.
Lewis, finding that Cornstalk had at last definitely stopped the advance of his army, detached three com- panies with Isaac Shelby in the lead, to march up the Kanawha until they came to Crooked Creek, up which they were to proceed until they got in rear of the Ind- ian line, which they were immediately to assault. The movement was a brilliant one, and as soon as the crack of muskets and rifles apprized the general that Shelby's detachment had engaged, he ordered a final advance on the Indian line, which, however, did not wait the Ameri- can attack.
Mistaking Shelby's party for the re-enforcements un- der Colonel Christian, which they knew were due, the Indians withdrew in good order, carrying most of their dead with them, and the battle ended leaving the Ameri- cans in possession of the field. They had paid a heavy price for their victory. Seventy-five officers and men had been killed and one hundred and forty wounded, over half of them very seriously. The loss among the officers was unusually severe. The Indian loss has never been ascertained, but it was very heavy, although not so great as that of the Americans, which was over twenty per cent. Logan was not present at this battle.
Colonel Christian, to whom expresses had been sent, arrived on the field that night. Waiting several days to bury the dead, attend to the wounded, and erect a fort for their protection, Lewis left three hundred men on the battle field at Point Pleasant-so the place was called- crossed the Ohio and marched up the Pickaway plains to join Dunmore. His men were filled with wrath
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against that commander. They thought he had betrayed them to the Indians, that he had placed them in a posi- tion subject to attack, and then had left them without succor; that he never intended to meet them.
It was charged afterward that Dunmore would not have been disappointed if the Virginians had been wiped out on this occasion. The disaffection which culminated in the Revolution six months later, was already widely prevalent in Virginia, and the men thought that Dun- more, as Royal Governor, would have been glad to have weakened the forces of the colonies by the annihilation of this large detachment.
There is not much to admire in the character of Dun- more. When the Revolution came, it is plain that he en- deavored to incite not only a servile insurrection among the slaves but also to throw the savages upon the border ; but there is absolutely no foundation for the assertion that he played false in this instance, and we must acquit him of the charges made which have remained current for many years.
Indeed he seems to have acted with considerable ca- pacity as well as courage, for he adroitly took advantage of the victory to make a treaty with the Indians, to which they assented in spite of the strenuous efforts of Corn- stalk and others to constrain them to continue the war. And the peace was of lasting benefit to the rebellious colonies, for the remembrance of their defeat kept the Indians quiet during the early years of the Revolution; just at the time, in fact, when their antagonism would have been most serious in the colonies.
None of these things were then realized, and when Dunmore and Lewis met, such was the state of affairs that a guard of fifty men was required to prevent the
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undisciplined pioneers from taking summary vengeance for the supposed treachery of Dunmore by putting him to death. Lewis himself cherished great animosity to Dunmore.
III. The Fate of the Participants in the Campaign
When the chiefs met at Camp Charlotte to sign the treaty, Logan was not with them. He had refused to be present, professing that he would be unable to con- trol himself in the presence of the race which had so bitterly wronged him. Knowing that no peace could be permanent or valid without Logan's assent to it, an en- voy, a veteran frontiersman, was sent to him to secure his ratification.
To him Logan made a speech, very famous indeed, and much quoted in history and in reading books, and which used to be a great favorite with the youthful de- claimers of the public schools, though now fallen into disuse and neglect. It is this speech which, in a meas- ure, has kept alive the remembrance of the war and of Logan himself. It is undoubtedly the finest specimen of savage eloquence extant, and compares with any effort of the kind, civilized or otherwise.
Although its authenticity has been questioned, it may be fairly considered as a faithful report of the old chief- tain's impassioned words. Most investigators now ac- cept it as genuine. The messenger took it down in writing and translated it literally at the first opportunity, and it was immediately given to the world. Several versions of it exist. Although it does an injustice, un- wittingly, to the brave Cresap, a soldier in the Revolu- tion until he died-he is buried in Trinity churchyard,
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New York, by the way-it is here subjoined in its ap- proved form :
" I appeal to any white man if he ever entered Logan's cabin hungry and he gave him no meat; if ever he came cold and naked and he clothed him not? During the course of the long and bloody war, Logan remained idle in his camp, an advocate for peace. Such was my love for the whites that my countrymen pointed as I passed and said, 'Logan is the friend of the white man.' I had even thought to have lived with you, but for the injuries of one man.
" Colonel Cresap, the last spring, in cold blood and unprovoked, murdered all the relations of Logan, not even sparing my women and children. There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of any living creature. Thi's called on me for revenge. I have sought it. I have killed many. I have fully glutted my vengeance.
"For my country I rejoice at the beams of peace; but do not harbor a thought that mine is the joy of fear. Logan never felt fear. He will not turn on his heel to save his life.
" Who is there to mourn for Logan? Not one."
Roosevelt aptly calls it " no message of peace, nor an acknowledgment of defeat, but instead, a strangely pathetic recital of his wrongs, and a fierce and exultant justification of the vengeance he had taken."
Logan afterward fell into bad habits; he drank to excess, and constantly. He participated in the attacks on the Kentucky settlements during the Revolution, particularly in the massacres at Martin's and Ruddle's Stations. He was killed by another Indian in a drunken brawl-a melancholy end indeed.
Lewis' conduct in the battle has been called in ques- tion by no less an historian than Bancroft, but unjustly, and most modern investigators give him full credit for
.
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undaunted courage and devotion. That Washington continued to be his warm personal friend and that he recommended him for a major-generalcy at the outbreak of the Revolution, and privately implored him to con- tinue in the service when his merits were passed over and he was given only a brigadier's commission, is evi- dence enough of his efficiency and the esteem in which his contemporaries held him.
Singularly enough to Lewis in the Revolution was committed the task of finally expelling Dunmore from the state of Virginia. He accomplished this in his usual thoroughgoing manner. He did not make much of a mark in the war subsequently, however. The fact that he had been passed over unjustly rankled in his mind and at last he resigned his command as John Stark and many others had done. His health, too, gave way; he had been subjected to much exposure in his many hard campaigns, and he died in 1780.
The fate of Cornstalk is a melancholy example fre- quently met with in our records, of our dealings with the Indian. In 1777, the old chief came to the com- mander of Point Pleasant, Captain Matthew Arbuckle, to warn him that the Shawnees were contemplating going on the warpath; that he was endeavoring to re- strain them, but he feared his success would be slight. He also said that if they declared war he should be forced to join them as they were his people. With a fatuity which can hardly be understood, for he was removing the sole check upon the Shawnees, the American captain thereupon immediately made Cornstalk a prisoner, in defiance of every law or custom of civilized nations.
The old chief seems to have had a premonition that his race was run and for himself he did not greatly care.
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" Cornstalk received them standing with wide open arms."
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He had warred enough to satisfy even the heart of a savage and was ready for his end. After he had been a captive for some time his son Ellinipsico came to visit him accompanied by two or three other Indians. The day after their arrival two soldiers ranging the woods were fired upon by a party of Indians and one was killed. Charging that the Indians who had committed this of- fence had been brought there by Ellinipsico, the enraged soldiers proceeded to mob the fort shouting in their fury, " Death to the Indians!"
Old Cornstalk heard the cries and realized what they meant. Although Ellinipsico was in no way privy to the attack by which the soldier had been killed, and the murder it was learned afterward was not committed by any of his tribe, there was no use in remonstrating. The officers were powerless to restrain the men-indeed they manifested little desire to interfere. The soldiers burst into the hut where the Indians had been confined. Cornstalk received them standing with wide open arms. He was pierced by seven bullets and instantly killed. Ellinipsico was also shot, as was Red Hawk, another famous chief who had been at Point Pleasant battle, and there was still a fourth Indian left, who was brutally tortured.
Cornstalk had been a dreadful scourge on the border. He had ravaged and burned and murdered in his time, as few other Indians had ever done. In the French and Indian War, in Pontiac's War, and in Dunmore's War, he had taken the prominent part. All that, however, does not make it right to have detained him as a pris- oner when he came on a peaceable, helpful errand, nor to have allowed him to be shot for an action with which he had no possible connection,
PART II
VIRGINIA, TENNESSEE. THE CAROLINAS II The Pioneers of East Tennessee
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THE PIONEERS OF EAST TENNESSEE
I. John Sevier and the Watauga Men
U PON a pleasant spring morning in the year 1772, three horsemen dressed in hunting shirts, the most convenient garb ever devised for wood ranging, rode up to the cabin of James Robertson, the principal man of the little settlement of North Carolina pioneers in the valley of the Watauga, in what is now eastern Tennessee. All three of them were destined to play important parts in the building of the nation, and one of them especially was to tower far above his con- temporaries in character and achievement.
That man was John Sevier, the organizer of the first free and independent democratic government upon the continent, the leader of a great commonwealth; an Indian fighter whom few have ever equalled; a soldier who could meet the finest troops on the continent in the field, and with inferior numbers win success from adverse circumstances; an administrator who could conduct the affairs of his fellow-men under circumstances of the greatest difficulty; a statesman who takes rank not far behind those colossal men who watched the travail pains and facilitated the delivery of the new nation to be. Yet in the long roll of books telling of our national heroes I find singularly few which adequately treat of the char- acter and career of this remarkable man. And the one
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