USA > Virginia > A history of the valley of Virginia, 1st ed > Part 21
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or if females, they may become mothers. Even the fetal state is criminal in his view. It is not enough that the fetus should perish with the murdered mother; it is torn from her pregnant womb, and elevated on a stick or pole, as a trophy of victory and an object of horror to the survivors of the slain.
If the Indian takes prisoners, mercy has but little concern in the transaction. He spares the lives of those who fall into his hands, for the purpose of feasting the feelings of ferocious vengeance of himself and his com- rades, by the torture of his captive; or to increase the strength of his nation by his adoption into an Indian family ; or for the purpose of gain, by selling him for an higher price, than his scalp would fetch, to his chris- tian allies of Canada; for be it known that those allies were in the constant practice of making presents for scalps and prisoners, as well as furnishing the means - for carrying on the Indian war, which for so many years desolated our defenseless frontiers. No lustration can ever wash out this national stain. The foul blot must remain, as long as the page of history shall convey the record of the foul transaction to future generations.
The author would notopen wounds which have, alas! already bled so long. but for the purpose of doing jus- tice to the memory of his forefathers and relatives, ma- ny of whom perished in the defense of their country, by the hands of the merciless Indians.
How is a war of extermination, and accompanied with such acts of atrocious cruelty, to be met by those on whom it is inflicted? Must it be met by the lenient maxims of civilized! warfare ? Must the Indian captive be spared his life ? What advantage would be gained by this course? The young white prisoners, adopted in o Indian families, often become complete Indians : but in how few instances did ever an Indian become civilized. "Send a cartel for an exchange of prisoners; the Indians know nothing of this measure of clemency in war; the bearer of the white flag for the purpose of
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effecting the exchange would have exerted his humani- ty at the forfeit of his life.
Should my countrymen be still charged with barba- rism, in the prosecution of the Indian war, let him who harbors this unfavorable impression concerning them, portray in imagination the horrid scenes of slaughter which frequently met their view in the course of the Indian war. Let him, if he can bear the reflection, look at helpless infancy, virgin beauty and hoary age, dishonored by the ghastly wounds of the tomahawk and scalping knife of the savage. Let him hear the shrieks of the victims of the Indian torture by fire, and smell the surrounding air, rendered sickening by the effluvia of their burning flesh and blood. Let him hear the yells, and view the hellish features of the surround- ing circle of savage warriors, rioting in all the luxuri- ance of vengeance, while applying the flaming torches to the parched limbs of the sufferers, and then suppose . those murdered infants, matrons, virgins and victims of torture, were his friends and relations, the wife, sis- ter, child or brother; what would be his feelings! After a short season of grief, he would say, "I will now think only of revenge."
Philosophy shudders at the destructive aspect of war in any shape: christianity, by teaching the religion of the good Samaritan, altogether forbids it: but the origi- nal settlers of the western regions, like the greater part of the world, were neither philosophers nor saints. They were "men of like passions with others ;" and there- fore adopted the Indian mode of warfare from necessity and a motive of revenge ; with the exception of burn- ing their captives alive, which they never did. If the bodies of savage enemies were sometimes burned, it was not until after they were dead.
Let the voice of nature and the law of nations plead in favor of the veteran pioneers of the desert regions of the west. War has hitherto been a prominent trait in the moral system of human nature, and will con-
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tinue such, until a radical change shall be effected in favor of science, morals and piety, on a general scale. . In the conflicts of nations, as well as those of indi- viduals, no advantages are to be conceded. If mercy may be associated with the carnage and devastations of war, that mercy must be reciprocal ; but a war of utter extermination must be met by a war of the same cha- racter, or by an overwhelming force which may put an end to it, without a sacrifice of the helpless and unof- fending part of the hostile nation. Such a force was not at the command of the first inhabitants of this coun- try. The sequel of the Indian war goes to show that in a war with savages the choice lies between extermi- nation and subjugation. Our government has wisely and humanely pursued the latter course.
The author begs to be understood that the foregoing observations are not intended as a justification of the whole of the transactions of our people with regard to the Indians during the course of the war. Some in- : stances of acts of wanton barbarity occurred on our side, which have received and must continue to receive the unequivocal reprobation of all the civilized world. In the course of this history, it will appear that more deeds of wanton barbarity took place on our side than the world is now acquainted with.
CHAPTER II. War of 1763.
The treaty of peace between his British majesty and the kings of France, Spain and Portugal, concluded at Paris on the 10th of February 1763. did not put an end to the Indian war against the frontier parts and back settlements of the colonies of Great Britain.
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'The spring and summer of 1763, as well as those of 1764, deserve to be memorable in history, for the great extent and destructive results of a war of extermination, carried on by the united force of all the Indian nations of the western country, along the shore of the northern lakes, and throughout the whole extent of the frontier settlements of Pennsylvania, Virginia and North. Ca- rolina.
The events of this war, as they relate to the frontier of Pennsylvania and the shores of the lakes, are mat- ters of history already, and therefore shall be no farther related here than is necessary to give a connected view of the military events of those disastrous seasons. "The massacres by the Indians in the southwestern part of Virginia, so far as they have come to the knowledge of the author, shall be related more in detail.
The English historians (Hist. of England, vol. x. p. 399,) attribute this terrible war to the influence of the French Jesuits over the Indians; but whether with much truth and candor, is, to say the least of it, ex- tremely doubtful ..
The peace of 1763, by which the provinces of Cana- da were ceded to Britain, was offensive to the Indians, especially as they very well knew that the English gov- ernment, on the ground of this treaty, claimed the juris- diction of the western country generally; and as an Indian sces no difference between the right of jurisdic- tion and that of possession, they considered themselves as about to be dispossessed of the whole of their coun- try, as rapidly as the English might find it convenient to take possession of it. In this opinion they were con- firmed by the building of forts on the Susquehanna, cn lands to which the Indians laid claim. The forts and posts of Pittsburg, Bedford, Ligonier, Niagara, Detroit, Presque Isle, St. Joseph and Michilimackinac, were either built, or improved and strengthened, with addi- tions to their garrisons. Thus the Indians saw them- selves surrounded on the north and cast by a strong I'ne of forts, while those of Bedford, Ligonier and Pitts-
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burg, threatened an extension of them into the heart of their country. Thus circumstanced, the aboriginals of the country had to choose between the prospect of being driven to the inhospitable regions of the north and west, of negotiating with the British government for continuance of the possession of their own land, or of taking up arms for its defense. They chose the latter course, in which a view of the smallness of their num- bers and the scantiness of their resources, ought to have taught them. that although they might do much mis- chief, they could not ultimately succeed ; but the In- dians, as well as their brethren of the white skin, are often driven by their impetuous passions to rash and de- structive enterprises, which reason, were it permitted to give its counsels. would disapprove.
The plan resolved on by the Indians for the prosecu- tion of the war, was that of a general massacre of all the inhabitants of the English setlements in the west- ern country, as well as of those on the lands on the Sus- quehanna, to which they laid claim.
Never did military commanders of any nation dis- play more skill, or their troops more steady and deter- mined bravery, than did those red men of the wilder- ness in the prosecution of their gigantic plan for the re- covery of their country from the possession of the Eng- lish. It was indeed a war of utter extermination on an extensive scale .- a conflict which exhibited human na- ture in its native state, in which the cunning of the fox is associated with the cruelty of the tiger. We read the history of this war with feelings of the deepest horror ; but why ? On the part of the savages, theirs was the ancient mode of warfare, in which there was nothing of inercy. If science. associated with the benign influ- ence of the christian system, has limited the carnage of war to those in arms, so as to give the right of life and hospitality to women. infancy, old age, the sick, wound- ed and prisoners, may not a farther extension of the in- fluence of those powerful but salutary agents put an end to war altogether ? May not future generations read
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the history of our civilized warfare with equal horror and wonder, that with our science and piety we had wars at all !
The English traders among the Indians were the first victims in this contest. Out of one hundred and twenty of them, among the different nations, only two or three escaped being murdered. 'The forts of Presque Isle, St. Joseph and Michilimackinac were taken, with a general slaughter of their garrisons.
The fortresses of Bedford, Ligonier, Niagara, Detroit and Pitt, were with difficulty preserved from being ta- ken.
It was a principal object with the Indians to get pos- session of Detroit and Fort Pitt, either by assault or fim- ine. The former was attempted with regard to Detroit. Fort Pitt, being at a considerable distance from the set- tlements, where alone supplies could be obtained, deter- mined the savages to attempt its reduction by famine.
In their first attempt on Fort Detroit, the Indians cal- culated on taking possession of it by stratagem. A Large number of Indians appeared before the place un- der pretence of holding a congress with Maj. Gladwin. the commandant. He was on his guard and refused them admittance. On the next day, about five hundred more of the Indians arrived in arms, and demanded leave to go into the fort, to hold a treaty. The com- mandant refused to admit a greater number than forty. The Indians understood his design of detaining them - as hostages, for the good conduct of their comrades on the outside of the fort, and therefore did not send them into the place. The whole number of men in the fort and on board two vessels of war in the river, did not ex- ceed one hundred and ten or twelve: but by means of the cannon they possessed, they made shift to keep the Indians at a distance, and convince them that they could not take the place. When the-Indians were about 10 retire, Capt. Dalvel arrived at the fort with a considera- ble reinforcement for the relief of the place. He made a sortie against the breastworks which the Indians had
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thrown up, with two hundred and forty-five men. This detachment was driven back with the loss of seventy men killed and forty-two wounded. Capt. Dalyel was among the slain. Of one hundred men who were es- corting a large quantity of provisions to Detroit, sixty- seven were massacred.
Fort Pitt had been invested for some time, before Capt. Ecayer had the least prospect of relief. In this situation he and his garrison had resolved to stand it out to the last extremity, and even perish of famine, ra- ther than fall into the hands of the savages, notwith- standing the fort was a bad one, the garrison weak, and the country between the fort and Ligonier in possession of the savages, and his messengers killed or compelled to return back. In this situation, Col. Bouquet was sent by Gen. Amhurst to the relief of the place, with a large quantity of provisions under a strong escort. This es- cort was attacked by a large body of Indians, in a nar- row defile on Turtle creek, and would have been en- - tirely defeated, had it not been for a successful stratagent employed by the commander for extricating themselves from the savage army. After sustaining a furious con- test from one o'clock till night, and for several hours the next morning, a retreat was pretended, with a view to draw the Indians into a close engagement. Previous to this movement, four companies of infantry and gren- adiers were placed in ambuscade. The plan succeeded. When the retreat commenced, the Indians thought themselves secure of victory, and pressing forward with great vigor, fell into the ambuscade, and were dispersed with great slaughter. The loss on the side of the En- glish was above one hundred killed and wounded; that of the Indians could not have been less .. 'The loss was severely felt by the Indians, as in addition to the num- ber of warriors who fell in the engagement, several of the most distinguished chiefs were among the slain. Fort Pitt, the reduction of which they had much at heart, was now placed out of their reach, by being effec- tually relieved and supplied with the munitions of war.
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The historian of the western region of our country cannot help regarding Pittsburg, the present flourishing emporium of the northern part of that region, and its immediate neighborhood, as classic ground, on account of the memorable battles which took place for its pos- session in the infancy of our settlements. Braddock's defeat, Maj. Grant's defeat, its conquest by Gen. Forbes, the victory over the Indians above related by Maj. Bou- quet, serve to show the importance in which this post was held in early times, and that it was obtained and supported by the English government, at the price of no small amount of blood and treasure. In the neigh- borhood of this place, as well as in the war-worn re- gions of the old world, the plowshare of the farmer turns up, from beneath the surface of the earth, the bro- ken and rusty implements of war, and the bones of the slain in battle.
It was in the course of this war that the dreadful niassacre at Wyoming took place, and desolated the fine settlements of the New-England people along the Susquehanna.
The extensive and indiscriminate slaughter of both sexes and all ages by the Indians, at Wyoming and oth- er places, so exasperated a large number of men, de- nominated the "Paxton boys," that they rivaled the most ferocious of the Indians themselves in deeds of cruelty, which have dishonored the history of our coun- try, by the record of the shedding of innocent blood without the slightest provocation-deeds of the most atrocious barbarity.
'The Conestoga Indians had lived in peace for more than a century in the neighborhood of Lancaster, Pa. Their number did not exceed forty. Against these un- offinding descendants of the first friends of the famous Wi liam Penn, the Paxton boys first directed their more than savage vengeance. Fifty-seven of them. in mili- tary array, poured into their little village, and instantly murdered all whom they found at home, to the num- ber of fourteen men, women and children. Those of
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them who did not happen to be at home at the massa" cre, were lodged in the jail of Lancaster for safety. But alas ! this precaution was unavailing. The Paxton boys broke open the jail door, and murdered the whole of them, in number about fifteen to twenty. It was in vain that these poor defenseless people protested their innocence and begged for mercy on their knees. Blood was the order of the day with those ferocious Paxton boys. The death of the victims of their crueltics did not satisfy their rage for slaughter ; they mangled the dead bodies of the Indians with their scalping knives and tomahawks in the most shocking and brutal man- ner, scalping even the children and chopping off the hands and feet of most of them.
The next object of those Paxton boys was the mur- der of the christian Indians of the villages of Weque- tank and Nain. From the execution of this infernal design they were prevented by the humane interference of the government of Pennsylvania, which removed the inhabitants of both places under a strong guard to Philadelphia for protection. They remained under guard from November 1763, until the close of the war in December 1761: the greater part of this time they occupied the barracks of that city. The Paxton boys twice assembled in great force, at no great distance from the city, with a view to assault the barracks and murder the Indians; but owing to the military preparations made for their reception, they at last reluctantly desist- ed from the enterprise.
While we read, with feelings of the deepest horror, the record of the murders which have at different peri- ods been inflicted on the unoffending christian Indians of the Moravian profession, it is some consolation to re- flect, that our government has had no participation in those murders ; but on the contrary, has at all times af- forded them all the protection which circumstances al- lowed.
The principal settlements in Greenbrier were those of Muddy creek and the Big Levels, distant about fifteen
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or twenty miles from each other. Before these settlers were aware of the existence of the war, and supposing that the peace made with the French comprehended their Indian allies also, about sixty Indians visited the settlement on Muddy creek. They made the visit un- der the mask of friendship. They were cordially re- ceived and treated with all the hospitality which it was in the power of these new settlers to bestow upon them ; but on a sudden, and without any previous intimation of any thing like an hostile intention, the Indians mur dered, in cold blood, all the men belonging to the set- tlement, and made prisoners of the women and chil- dren.
Leaving a guard with their prisoners, they then marched to the settlements in the Levels, before the fate of the Muddy creek settlement was known. Here, as at Muddy creek, they were treated with the most kind and attentive hospitality, at the house of Archibald Glendennin, who gave the Indians a sumptuous feast of three fat elks, which he had recently killed. Here a scene of slaughter similar to that which had recently taken place at Muddy creek, occurred at the conclusion of the feast. It commenced with an old woman, who having a very sore leg, showed it to an Indian, desiring his advice how she might cure it. This request he an- swered with a blow of the tomahawk, which instantly killed her. In a few minutes all the men belonging to the place shared the same fate. . The women and chil- dren were made prisoners.
In the time of the slaughter, a negro woman at the spring near the house where it happened, killed her own child for fear it should fall into the hands of the Indians, or hinder her from making her escape.
Mrs. Glendennin, whose husband was among the slain, and herself with her children prisoners, boldly charged the Indians with perfidy and cowardice, in ta- king advantage of the mask of friendship to commit murder. One of the Indians exasperated at her bold- ness, and stung, no doubt, at the justice of her charge
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against them, brandished his tomahawk over her head, and dashed her husband's scalp in her face. In defi- ance of all his threats, the heroine still reiterated the charges of perfidy and cowardice against the Indians.
On the next day, after marching about ten miles, while passing through a thicket, the Indians forming a front and rear guard, Mrs. Glendennin gave her infant to a neighbor woman, stepped into the bushes without being perceived by the Indians, and made her escape. The cries of the child made the Indians inquire for the mother. . She was not to be found. " Well," says one of them, "I will soon bring the cow to her calf ;" and taking the child by the feet, beat its brains out against a tree. Mrs. Glendennin returned home in the course of the succeeding night, and covered the corpse of her husband with fence rails. Having performed this pious office for her murdered husband, she chose, as a place of safety, a cornfield, where, as she related, her heroic resolution was succeeded by a paroxysm of grief and despondency, during which she imagined she saw a man with the aspect of a murderer standing within a few steps of her. The reader of this narrative, instead of regarding this fit of despondency as a feminine weak- . ness on the part of this daughter of affliction, will com- misserate her situation of unparalleled destitution and distress. Alone, in the dead of night, the survivor of all the infant settlements of that district, while all her relatives and neighborsof both settlements were either prisoners or lying dead, dishonored by ghastly wounds of the tomahawk and scalping knife of the savages, her husband and her children amongst the slain. .
It was some days before a force could be collected in the eastern part of Betetourt and the adjoining country for the purpose of burying the dead.
Of the events of this war. on the southwestern fron- tier of Virginia, and in the country of Holstein. the then western part of North Carolina, the author has not been informed. farther than that, on the part of the Indians, it was carried ou with the greatest activity, and its course
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marked with many deeds of the most atrocious cruelty, until late in the year 1764, when a period was put to this sanguinary contest, by a treaty made with the In- dian nations by Sir William Johnston, at the German Flats.
The perfidy and cruelties practiced by the Indians during the war of 1763 and 1764, occasioned the re- volting, and sanguinary character of the Indian wars which took place afterwards. The Indians had resolved on the total extermination of all the settlers of our north and southwestern frontiers, and being no longer under the control of their former allies, the French, they were at full liberty to exercise all their native ferocity, and riot in the indulgence of their innate thirst for blood.
[Next follows, in Dr. Doddridge's work, his account of Dunmore's war, which the author of this history has transferred to the chapter under that head in the pre- ceding pages. See pp. 157-187. The chapter which follows relates an event which occurred during that war.]
CHAPTER III.
The death of Cornstalk.
This was one of the most atrocious murders com- mitted by the whites during the whole course of the war. [Dunmore's war.]
In the summer of 1777, when the confederacy of the Indian nations, under the influence of the British goy- ermuent, was formed, and began to commit hostilities along our frontier settlements, Cornstalk, and a young chief of the name of Red-hawk, with another Indian. made a visit to the garrison at the Point, commanded at that time by Capt. Arbuckle. Cornstalk stated to the
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captain, that, with the exception of himself and the tribe to which he belonged, all the nations had joined the English, and that unless protected by the whites, "they would have to run with the stream."
Capt. Arbuckle thought proper to detain the Corn- stalk chief and his two companions as hostages for the good conduct of the tribe to which they belonged. They had not been long in this situation before a son of Corn- stalk, concerned for the safety of his father, came to the opposite side of the river and hallooed; his father know- ing his voice, answered him. He was brought over the 'river. The father and son mutually embraced each other with the greatest tenderness.
On the day following. two Indians, who had conceal- ed themselves in the weeds on the bank of the Kana- wha opposite the fort, killed a man of the name of Gil- more, as he was returning from hunting. As soon as the dead body was brought over the river, there was a general cry amongst the men who were present, "Let us kill the Indians in the fort." They immediately as- cended the bank of the river with Capt. Hall at their head, to execute their hasty resolution. On their way they were met by Capt. Stuart and Capt. Arbuckle, who endeavored to dissuade them from killing the Indian hostages, saying that they certainly had no concern in the murder of Gilmore; but remonstrance was in vain. Pale as death with rage, they cocked their guns and threatened the captains with instant death, if they should attempt to hinder them from executing their purpose.
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