USA > Virginia > A history of the valley of Virginia, 3rd ed > Part 21
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On them, then, be the blame of all the horrid features of this war between civilized and savage men, in which the former was compel- led, by every principle of self-defense, to adopt the Indian mode of warfare, in all its revolting and destructive features.
Were those who were engaged in the war against the Indians, less humane than those who carried on the war against their English allies ? No, they were not. Both parties carried on the war on the same principle of reciprocity of advantages and disadvantages. For example, the English and Americans each take one thousand prison- ers ; they are exchanged ; neither army is weakened by this arrange- ment. A sacrifice is indeed made to humanity, in the expense of taking care of the sick, wounded and prisoners ; but this expense is
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INDIAN WARFARE.
mutual. No disadvantages result from all the clemency of modern warfare, except the augumentation of the expenses of the war. In this mode of warfare, those of the nation, not in arms, are safe from death by the hands of the soldiers. No civilized warrior dishonors his sword with the blood of helpless infancy, old age, or that of the fair sex. He aims his blows only at those whom he finds in arms against him. The Indians kills indiscriminately. Child- ren are victims of his vengeance, because, if males, they may hereafter become warriors, 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 falls into his hands, for the purpose of feasting the feelings of the ferocious vengeance of himself and comrades, 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 christian 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 defenceless frontiers. No lustration can ever blot 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 not open wounds which have, alas ! already bled so long, but for the purpose of doing justice to the memory of his forefathers and relatives, many of whom perishsd 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 was in- flicted ? Must it be met by the lenient maxims of civilized war- fare? Must the Indian captive be spared his life? What advan- tage would be gained by this course ? The young white prisoners, adopted into 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 effecting the exchange would have exerted his humanity at the forfeit of his life.
Should my countrymen be still charged with barbarism, in the prosecution of the Indian war, let him who harbor 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 help- less infancy, virgin beauty and hoary age, dishonored by the ghast- ly wounds of the tomahawk and scalping knife of the savage. Let
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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 surrounding circle of savage warriors, rioting in all the luxuriance 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, his wife, sister, child or brother ; what would be his feel- ings ? 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 original settlers of the western reg- ions, like the greater part of the world, were neither philosophers nor saints. They were "men of like passions with others ;" and therefore adopted the Indian mode of warfare from necessity and a motive of revenge; with the exception of burning 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 continue 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 individuals, no advantages are to be conceded. If mercy may be associated with the carnage and devastation of war, that mercy must be reciprocal ; but a war of utter extermination must be met by a war of the same character, and by an overwhelming force which may put an end to it, without a sacrifice of the helpless and unoffending part of the hostile nation. Such a force was not at the command of the first in- habitants of this country. The sequel of the Indian war goes to show that in a war with savages the choice lies between extermina- tion and subjugation. Our government has wisely and humanely pursued the latter course.
The author begs to be understood that the foregoing observa- tions are not intended as a justification of the whole of the transac- tions of our people with regard to the Indians during the course of the war. Some instances of acts of wanton barbarity occurred on our side, which have received and must continue to receive the un- equivocal 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.
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WAR OF 1763.
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 Ioth 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.
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 forces of all the Indian nations of the western country, along the shores of the northern lakes, and throughout the whole extent of the frontier set- tlements of Pennsylvania, Virginia and North Carolina.
The events of this war, as it relates to the frontier of Pennsyl- vania and the shores of the lakes, are matters 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 sea- sons. 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 historian (Hist. of England, vol. 10. p. 399), at- tribute 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, extremely doubtful.
The peace of 1763, by which the provinces of Canada were ceded to Britain, was offensive to the Indians, especially as they very well knew that the English government, on the ground of this treaty, claimed the jurisdiction of the western country generally ; and as an Indian sees no difference between the right of jurisdiction and that of possession, they consider themselves as about to be dis- possessed of the whole of their country, as rapidly as the English might find it convenient to take possession of it. In this opinion they were confirmed by the building of Forts on the Susquehanna, on 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 additions to their garrisons. Thus the Indians saw themselves surrounded on the north and east by a strong line of
25
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WAR OF 1763.
forts, while those of Bedford, Ligonier and Pittsburg, threatened an extension of them into the heart of their country. Thus circum- stanced, 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 lands, or of taking up arms for its de- fense. They chose the latter course, in which a smallness of their numbers, and the scantiness of their resources, ought to have taught them, that although they might do much mischief, they could not ultimately succeed ; but the Indians, as well as their brethren of the white skin, are often driven by their impetuous passions to rash and destructive enterprises, which reason, were permitted to give it coun- sels, would disapprove.
The plan resolved on by the Indians for the prosecution of the war, was that of a general massacre of all the inhabitants of the English settlements in the western country, as well as those on the lands on the Susquehanna, to which they laid claim.
Never did military commanders of any nation display more skill, or their troops more steady and determined bravery, than did those red men of the wilderness in the prosecution of their gigantic plan for the recovery of their country from the possession of the English. It was indeed a war of utter extermination on an extensive scale ; a conflict which exhibited human nature 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 an- cient mode of warfare, in which there was nothing of mercy. If science, associated with the benign influence 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, wounded and prisoners, may not a further extension of the influence of those powerful but salutory agents put an end to war altogether ? May not future generations read 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 the garrisons.
The Fortresses of Bedford, Ligonier, Niagara, Detroit and Pitt, were with difficulty preserved from being taken.
It was a principal object with the Indians to get possession of De- troit and Fort Pitt, either by assault or famine. The former was at- tempted with regard to Detroit. Fort Pitt, being a considerable dis- tance from the settlements, were alone supplies could be obtained, determined the savages to attempt its reduction by famine.
In their first attempt on Fort Detroit, the Indians calculated on
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WAR OF 1763.
taking possession of it by stratagem. A large number of Indians appeared before the place under a pretence of holding a congress with Maj. Gladwin, the commandant. He was on his guard and refuse 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 commandant refused to admit a greater number than forty. The Indians understood his design of detain- ing 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 exceed 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 to retire Cap- tain Dalyel arrived at the Fort with a considerable reinforce- ment for the relief of the place. He made a sortie against the breastworks which the Indians had thrown up, with two hun- 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 escorting 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 lie and his garri- sion had resolved to stand it out to the last extremity, and even perish of famine, rather than fall into the hands of the savages, not- withstanding 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. Amherst to the relief of the place, with a large quantity of provisions under a strong es- cort. This escort was attacked by a large body of Indians, in a narrow defile, on Turtle Creek, and would have been entirely de- feated, had it not been for a successful strategem employed by the commander for extricating themselves from the savage army. After sustaining a furious contest 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 movment, four companies of infantry and grenadiers were placed in ambuscade. The plan succeeded. When the retreat commenced, the Indians thought themselves secure of victory, and pressing for- ward with great vigor, fell into the ambuscade, and were dispersed with great slaughter. The loss on the side of the English was above one hundred killed and wounded ; and that of the Indians could not have been less. The loss was severely felt by the Indians, as in addition to the number of warriors who fell in the engage- ment, several of the most distinguished chiefs were among the slain. Fort Pitt, the reduction of which they had much at heart, was
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WAR OF 1763.
now placed out of their reach, by being effectually relieved and sup- plied with the munitions of war.
The historian of the western region of our country cannot help regarding Pittsburg, the present flourishing emporium of the north- ern part of that region, and its immediate neighborhood, as classic ground, on account of the memorable battles which took place for its possession 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. Bouquet, serve to show the import- ance 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 neighborhood of this place, as well as in the war-worn regions of the old world, the plowshare of the farmer turns up from beneath the surface of the earth, the broken and rustv implements of war, and the bones of the slain in battle.
It was in the course of this war that the dreadful massacre of 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 other places, so exasper- ated a large number of men, dominated the "Paxton boys," that they rivalled the most ferocious of the Indians themselves in deeds of cruelty, which have dishonored the history of our country, by the record of the shedding of innocent blood without the slighest provo- cation, deeds of the most atrocious barbarity.
The Conestoga Indians had lived in peace for more than a cen- tury in the neighborhood of Lancaster, Pa. Their number did not exceed forty. Against these unoffending descendants of the first friends of the famous William Penn, the Paxton boys first directed their more tlian savage vengeance. Fifty-seven of them in military array, poured into their little village, and instantly murdered all whom they found at home, to the number of fourteen men, women and children. Those of them who did not happen to be home at the massacre, were lodged in the jail of Lancester 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 or 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 cruelties did not satisfy their rage for slaugh- ter ; they mangled the dead bodies of the Indians with their scalp- ing knives and tomahawks in the most shocking and brutal manner, scalped even the children and chopping off their hands and feet of most of them.
The next object of those Paxton boys was the murder of the christian Indians of the villages of Wequetank and Nain. From the execution of this infernal design they were prevented by the hu-
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mane interference of the government of Pennsylvania, which re- moved the inhabitants of both places under a strong guard to Philadelphia for protection. They remained under guard from No- vember, 1763, until the close of the war in December, 1764; 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 desisted from the enterprise.
While we read, with feelings of the deepest horror, the record of the murders which have at different periods been inflicted on the unoffending Christians Indians of the Moravian profession, it is some consolation to reflect, that our government has had no participation in those murders; but on the contrary, has at all times afforded them all the protection which circumstances allowed.
The principal settlements of Greenbrier where those of Muddy Creek and the Big Levels, distance about fifteen or twenty miles from each other. Before these settlers were aware of the existence of the war, and supposing that the peace inade with the French comprehended their Indian allies also, about sixty Indians visited the settlement of Muddy Creek. They made the visit under the mask of friendship. They were cordially received and treated with all the hospitality which it was in the power of these new settles to bestow upon them ; but on a sudden, and without any previous in- timation of anything like an hostile intention, the Indians murdered, in cold blood, all the men belonging to the settlement, and made prisoners of the women and children.
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 requested he answered with 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 children 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 mak- ing her escape.
Mrs. Glendennin, whose husband were among the slain, and herself with her children prisoners, boldly charged the Indians with
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WAR OF 1763.
perfidity and cowardice, in taking advantage of the mask of friendship to commit murder. One of the Indians exasperated at her boldness, and stung, no doubt, at the justice of her charge against them, brandishing his tomahawk over her head, and dashed her husband's scalp in her face. In defiance of all his threats, the heroine still reiterated the charges of perfidity and cowardice against the Indians.
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 in- quire 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 during the course of the succeed- ing night, and covered the corpse of her husband with fence rails. Having performed this pious office for her murdered hus- band, she choose, 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 weakness on the part of this daughter of affliction, will commisserate her situation of unpar- ralleled destitution and distress. Alone, in the dead of night, the survivor of all the infant settlements of that district, while all her relatives and neighbors of 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 among the slain.
It was some days before a force could be collected in the eastern part of Botetourt and the adjoining country for the purpose of bury- ing the dead.
Of the events of this war, on the southwestern frontier of Virginia, and in the County of Holstein, the then western part of North Carolina, the author has been informed, farther than that, on the part of the Indians, it was carried on with the greatest activity, and its course 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 Indian na- tions by Sir William Johnston, at the German Flats.
The perfidity and cruelty practiced by the Indians during the war of 1763 and 1764, occasioned the revolting and singuinary character of the Indian wars which took place afterwards. The In- dians had resolved on the total extermination of all the settlers of our northern and southwestern frontiers, and being no longer under the control of their former allies, the French, they were at full liberty to
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WAR OF 1763.
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 Dun- more's war, which the author of this history has transferred to the chapter under that head in the proceeding pages. The chapter which follows relates to an event which occurred during that war].
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DEATH OF CORNSTALK.
CHAPTER III.
THE DEATH OF CORNSTALK.
This was one of the most atrocious murders committed by the white's during the whole course of the war. [Dunmore's war].
In the summer of 1777, when the confederacy of the Indian na- tions, under the influence of the British government, was formed, and began to commit hostilities along our frontier settlements, Corn- stalk, and a young chief of the name of Red-hawk, with another In- dian, made a visit to the garrison at the Point, commanded at that time by Col. Arbuckle. He stated to the Captain, that, with the exception of himself and the tribe to which he belonged, all the na- tions had joined the English, and that unless protected by the whites, "they would have to run with the stream."
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