USA > Virginia > Tazewell County > Tazewell County > History of Tazewell county and southwest Virginia, 1748-1920 > Part 29
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Major Campbell also reported that on the evening of the 13th Captain Smith's scouts discovered the tracks of a party of the enemy going off with horses and prisoners they had taken. From this it appears that others besides Lammey had been made captives ; but Campbell still thought that Henry's wife and children had been made prisoners by the Indians, though Mrs. Henry and all the children, except one little boy, were afterwards found by a com- pany of men who went to the Henry home, dead, scalped and piled
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up on a ridge a short distance from the house. The Indians when they made their forays always stole as many horses as they could find, which they used to carry away the plunder they took and their captives. Captain Smith when informed by his scouts of the inva- sion set out with a party of twenty-one men in pursuit of them, but was unable to overtake them. At that time there was a very small number of men on the Upper Clinch region employed as scouts. They had to cover and guard a number of passes along a front of
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This is a view of the Bowen homestead, and no more beautiful pastoral scene can be found anywhere. The white cross mark is very near the spot where Rees Bowen built his fort in 1773. Rees Bowen the 5th now owns and occupies the splendid estate.
fifty miles; and could not do the work effectively, no matter how skilled and daring they might be as woodsmen. Major Campbell knew that these passes were not properly guarded ; and in his reports to Colonel Preston, sent on the 9th and 17th of September, com- plained, because not a man from Doack's or Herbert's companies had yet gone to help guard the Clinch Valley frontier, though Pres- ton had ordered, on the 25th of August, that thirty men from these companies be drafted and sent there.
Small parties of Indians next invaded the Clinch Valley in the present Scott County, and also the lower settlements on the Hols- ton. The first outrage they committed was at or near Fort Black- more on the Clinch, when two negroes were captured and a number
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of cattle and horses stolen from the settlers. The garrison at the fort was so small that the men were afraid to go out and encounter the Indians, not knowing the number in the party. This so embold- ened the Indians, who hoped to capture the fort, that they brought the two negroes in full view of the fort and made them run the gauntlet.
In the afternoon of the following day, the 24th of September, John Roberts and his wife and several children were killed, and the eldest child, James, a boy ten years of age, was made a captive by a band of Shawnees and Mingos under the leadership of Logan, the noted Mingo chief. This massacre occurred on Reedy Creek, an affluent of the North Fork of Holston, and the place was then supposed to be within the bounds of Fincastle County, Virginia; and it was, but afterwards it was found that it had been given to Ten- nessee through carelessness of the Virginia commissioners when the boundry line was run between North Carolina and Virginia in 1802. Logan left in the Roberts cabin a war club, with a letter tied to the club and addressed to Captain Cresap. The original, when found, was sent to Major Arthur Campbell, and by him forwarded to Colonel William Preston on the 12th of October, 1774. The letter was written on a piece of birch bark and with ink made from gun- powder. It had been prepared before Logan left Ohio with his scalping party; and was written, at his dictation, by a white man named William Robinson, who was captured on the Monongahela River, July 12th, carried to the Indians towns, saved from the stake by Logan, and adopted into an Indian family. Before he sent the letter to Captain Cresap, Colonel Preston made a copy on the back of the letter Major Campbell had written him when he forwarded the Indian chief's letter from Royal Oak. This copy was found among the Preston papers and is as follows:
"To Captain Cressap-What did you kill my people on Yellow Creek for. The white People Killed my Kin at Coneestoga a great while ago, & I thought nothing of that. But you Killed my Kin again on Yellow Creek; and took my cousin prisoner, then I thought I must Kill too; and I have been three times to war since but the Indians is not Angry only myself.
Captain John Logan
July 21st. Day."
In his mention of the killing of his kin at Conestoga, Logan
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refers to what was called the Paxton riot, which occurred in 1763 in Pennsylvania, when twenty inoffensive, friendly Conestoga Indians were brutally murdered by a mob of border desperadoes.
Further outrages were committed in rapid succession upon the inhabitants of both the Clinch and the Holston. The people in the Holston Valley were so alarmed by Indian marauding bands that the men refused to comply with the orders of Colonel Preston and Major Campbell to send reinforcements to the Clinch Valley set- tlers to help guard the passes on the frontier. At the same time powder and lead became very scarce, the settlers on the Clinch having been compelled to use their amunition to protect their crops during the summer and fall from destruction by numerous wild animals. Flour was also wanted badly at Blackmore's and at the head of the Clinch. That powder was dangerously scarce is proven by the fact that when Major Campbell was sending a company of militia, on the 29th, of September, 1774, to repel or pursue a band of Indians, he wrote Colonel Preston :
"I luckily procured one pound & a half of powder before the militia went out, which I divided to such as had none. 3 loads apiece, which they went very cheerfully on. If you could possibly spare me one or two pounds I would divide it in the same, sparing man- ner, in case of another alarm."
On Thursday, September 29th, a very bold attack was made upon three men by the Indians within 300 yards of Moore's Fort on the Clinch, six miles below Castle's Woods. The attack was made between sunset and dark, and the Indians fired at the men from ambush, instantly killing a man named John Duncan. Though a party of men rushed from the fort and ran to the spot as soon as the guns were fired, the Indians succeeded in scalping Duncan and made their escape. Night came on and prevented any pursuit until the following morning, when it was too late to overhaul the savages. Daniel Boone was then in charge of the fort at Moore's and was supervising all the forts on the Clinch below Elk Garden. Although he was one of the most accomplished of the woodsmen and Indian fighters on the border, he was supported by such small and indif- ferent squads of men stationed at the several forts that he was unable to cope successfully with the wiley red men, who in most instances were being directed by the daring and intelligent John Logan.
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Boone sent an express messenger to Major Campbell on the 30th of September, to inform him of the killing of Duncan, and also told him that the Indians were still lurking about Fort Blackmore, where the two negroes had recently been captured and "coursed" in front of the fort; and that Captain Looney, who was in charge of the fort, had only eleven men and could not venture to attack or pursue the enemy. The situation at Russell's fort, at Castle's Woods, was also so serious that the people there were erying for help. Captain Dan Smith, on the 4th, of September, wrote to Colonel William Preston, saying: "The late Invasions of the Indians hath so mneh alarm'd the Inhabitants of this River that without more men come to their assistance from other parts, some of the most timorous among us will remove to a place of Safety, and when onee the example is set I fear it will be followed by many. By what I can learn the terror is as great on Holston, so that we've no room to hope for assistance from that quarter. *
I am just * * * going to the assistance of the Castle's Woods men with what force could be spared from this upper distriet." At the foot of the letter, Captain Smith made a list of the men he was taking with him to assist the alarmed garrison at Castle's Woods. They were:
Vineent Hobbs
Wm. MeaDoo
Thos. Shannon
John Mares (Marrs)
Robert Brown
Joseph Mares (Marrs)
Saul Cecil
David Pattorn (Patton)
John Smith
Israel Harmon
Wm. Baylstone
Thos. Maxwell
Holton Money (Mooney)
Joseph Turner
Samll. Money (Mooney )
Wm. Magee
From an inspection of the above list it seems that the inhabi- tants of the headwaters of the Clinch and Bluestone were taking pretty good care of themselves, and were willing and able to help protect their more "timorous" neighbors lower down on the Clineh. Nearly every man on this roll was from the Upper Clinch seetion. now in Tazewell County, and a number of the names are still repre- sented in the county-among them Marrs, Brown, Cecil, Patton, Maxwell, Shannon and Harman. Three months previous to using the Tazewell men for relief of the garrison at Castle's Woods, Cap- tain Smith had written Colonel Preston, preferring charges against Thomas Maxwell and Israel Harmon for negleet of duty as scouts
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at the head of Sandy Creek. He aeeused them of cowardice, beeause they were removing their families from the head of the north fork of Clinch and Bluestone and taking them to places of safety; and Smith was asking that Thomas Maxwell be court-martialed. Cap- tain Smith, evidently, had found that he had made a grievous mis- take as to the courage of Maxwell and Harmon; and was trying to make amends for the wrong he had done them, by selecting them to become proteetors of the "timorous" inhabitants living in his own seetion of the Clineh Valley.
About the 1st, of October the people in the Holston Valley and in the Upper New River region were apparently terror-stricken. A man by the name of George Adams, who lived on the Holston, wrote to Colonel Preston and told him that the people about Moccasin Gap had all fled from their homes; and that some of them had gathered at his house. He begged that a few men be sent out to go with the Moeeasin people to their homes and guard them while they gathered their crops, which he said were large but being destroyed by the "vermin" (wild animals) ; and that the men would have to take their families to other forts, if they lost their grain. Adams also said; "ammunition is very searce with us which is the occasion of abundance of fear."
On the 6th, of October, 1774, Major Campbell wrote Colonel Preston from Royal Oak and very graphieally portrayed the state of alarm that then prevailed on the Holston, and on New River. He said:
"The people in the Wolf-Hill settlement, (the present Abing- don) will have the Indians to come up the Valley & North fork, opposite to them, and then make a Right-Angle to their habitations ; the people on ye south fork will have the Enemy, to steal Slyly up the Iron Mountain, and make one Grand attack on the Head of Holston, and Sweep the River down before them; The Head of New River will have it, that the Cherokees will fetch a Compass, round Wattago Settlement, and come down New River, on a particular Search for their Scalps. The Rich-Valley and North fork people will have Sandy the dangerous pass, for proof of which they quote former and reeent Instances; to wit Stalnaker & Henrys Family being carried out the same road."
This looks like consternation reigned supreme throughout the settlements west of New River, with one exception. The exception
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was the settlements on the headwaters of the Clinch, where our pioneer ancestors were not calling for help, but were remaining at their frontier homes and forts, resolved to hold them against the savages, or yield up their lives in their defence. This they were doing, though some of their best and mightiest woodsmen had gone with the Lewis expedition to Ohio, and others were being sent to succor the threatened and alarmed inhabitants lower down the river, where Logan was still operating with his scalping parties.
The next attempt to inflict damage on the settlers was near the fort of Captain Evan Shelby, which was located on the site of Bristol, Tennessee, and which was called in frontier days Sapling Grove. It happened on the 6th of October, 1774, and when Captain Shelby was nearing the mouth of the Kanawha with his company of Fincastle riflemen, who were an important unit of the Lewis expedi- tion. The Indians, who had been prowling and spying in the neigh- borhood, surprised and captured a negro girl, the property of Cap- tain Shelby, within 300 yards of his fort. Their purpose in making her a captive was to get information about the fort. They tried to find out how many guns were in the fort, what amount of supplies was there, and the relative strength of the place. Several questions were asked the negro girl by the Indians, but she loyally and bravely refused to give them any information. Thereupon, the red men knocked her down twice, and started away with her. After they had gone about a mile from the fort they heard a boy passing who was on his way home from mill, and they tied the girl to a tree and went in pursuit of the boy. During their absence, the girl managed to get loose, and ran immediately to the fort and gave an alarm. Whether the boy was captured and taken away is not shown by accessible records, and the presumption is that he escaped.
On the 6th of October, a very daring murder was committed at Fort Blackmore, in the present Scott County, when Dale Carter was killed and scalped within fifty-five steps of the fort. Carter was sitting alone on a log outside the fort. The Indians had crawled along and under the bank of the river with the view of making a surprise attack upon the place and capturing it by a bold push. Carter happened to discover the enemy and immediately gave the alarm by "hallooing, murder." One of the Indians fired at Carter and missed him, but another fired and wounded him through the thigh. One of the boldest of the red men, possibly Logan, ran up and tomahawked and scalped the wounded man. A man by the
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name of Anderson fired from the bastion of the fort at the daring Indian while he was scalping Carter. but failed to hit him. Dale Carter was the ancestor of the Hon. Henry Carter Stuart, lately governor of Virginia, and of all the Carters of Russell County.
While the revolting incidents that I have recounted were tak- ing place in The Clinch Valley and other sections of Fincastle County, the army of Virginia mountaineers, led by Andrew Lewis, was assembling and marching to the mouth of the Kanawha to join forces with Lord Dunmore at that place, as had been previously arranged. The knowledge the Indians had received of the object of this joint expedition-that is to discipline the hostile tribes in Ohio-no doubt, made the depredations in the Clinch Valley fewer and less violent than they would otherwise have been. It is probable that the small bands of Indians, with the great Logan leading them, were sent here for the puropse of so alarming the inhabitants as to demand a recall of the companies, eight in number, that had gone from that part of Fincastle County west of New River; and in that way so weaken Lewis' army as to give the red men a chance to defeat the "Long Knives" when they crossed into Ohio. In fact, if the Indians were trying to work such a scheme, at one time their pur- pose came very near being accomplished. On the 26th of Sep- tember, just after he had been officially informed of the butchery of the Roberts family by Logan and his band, Major Campbell wrote to Colonel Preston an urgent request to send a messenger to Lewis' army to hurry the return of the men from Fincastle County, espec- ially the companies of Captains Russell and Shelby, whose families were in great distress and danger.
A great deal of the alarm felt and shown by the people of the Holston and New River settlements was caused by apprehension that the Cherokees were secretly associated with the Shawnees and Mingos; and that the Southern Indians would come in great force against the Fincastle inhabitants while such a large number of the best fighting men were away on the Ohio expedition. Colonel Pres- ton, however, did not take this view of the situation; but thought it probable "some straggling fellows" from the Cherokee Nation might have joined a party of Shawnees who had lately been at the Cherokee town, possibly Logan's band; and that they had since been committing robberies and murders on the Clinch and the Hol- ston. Colonel Preston also expressed the opinion that the Ohio Indians could not send any number of men at that time to annoy
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the settlements, as they would be kept busily occupied defending their own homes from attacks by the army which Lewis had taken to the mouth of the Kanawha. He was correct in his conclusions, as after events proved, and very wisely declined to recall the companies commanded by Russell and Shelby, or any part of the Fincastle troops that had gone with Lewis to Ohio.
Soon after sending his orders of the 24th of July, from Win- chester, Virginia, to Colonel Andrew Lewis to raise a respectable body of men and to meet him at the mouth of the Kanawha, Gov- ernor Dunmore proceeded to Pittsburg. He, as speedily as pos- sible, assembled the Delawares, Six Nations, and such other tribes as were disposed to be friendly, held a conference with them, and called their attention to the cruel treatment the Shawnees and the Virginians were extending each other. This was done, Dunmore said, to secure the aid of the Delawares and other friendly disposed Indians in an effort to restore peaceful relations between the Vir- ginians and the Ohio Indians. The Delawares, and other tribes that were represented at the conference, not only gave assurance of their friendship for the whites, but consented to send delegations to the Shawnees and other hostile tribes, and to urge them to meet Gov- ernor Dunmore for a conference at some designated spot on the Ohio. In a report subsequently made to Lord Dartmouth, secretary of state for the colonies, Dunmore gave an account of his course of action after his conference with the Delawares. He wrote to Dart- mouth :
"I determined therefore to go down the Ohio; but I thought it Prudent to take a Force which might effect our purpose if our Negotiation failed: And I collected from the Militia of the Neigh- bouring Country about twelve hundred Men, to take with me, Send- ing orders to a Colonel Lewis to March with as many more, of the Militia of the Southern Counties, across the Country to Join me at the Mouth of the little Kanhaway, the Place I appointed to meet the Indians at.
"I passed down the river with this body of Men, and arrived at the appointed place at the Stated time. The day after Some of our friends the Delawars arrived according to their promise; but they brought us the disagreeable information, that the Shawnees would
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listen to no terms, and were resolved to prosecute their designs against the People of Virginia.
"The Delawars, Notwithstanding, remained Steady in their attachment; and their Chief, named Captain White Eyes, offered me the assistance of himself and whole tribe; but apprehending evil effects from the Jealousy of, and natural dislike in our People to, all Indians, I accepted only of him and two or three: And I received great Service from the faithfullness, the firmness and remarkable good understanding of White Eyes.
"Colonel Lewis not Joining me, and being unwilling to encrease the expence of the Country by delay, and, from the accounts we had of the Numbers of the Indians, Judging the Force I had with me Sufficient to defeat them and destroy their Towns, in case they should refuse the offers of Peace; and after Sending orders to Colonel Lewis, to follow me to a Place I appointed near the Indian Settlements, I crossed the Ohio and proceeded to the Shawnese Towns; in which march, one of our detached Parties encountered an other of Indians laying in Ambush, of whom they killed Six or eight and took Sixteen Prisoners.
"When we came up to the Towns we found them. deserted, and the main body of the Indians, to the amount of near five hundred, had Some time before gone off towards the Ohio; and we Soon learnt that they had Crossed the river, near the Mouth of the great Kanha- way, with the design of attacking the Corps under Colonel Lewis."
Governor Dunmore's expeditionary force was composed of troops he raised in the counties of Frederick and Dunmore (the latter now Shenandoah County), and forces he found at Pittsburg under the command of Colonel Angus McDonald and Major William Crawford. The combined forces aggregated twelve hundred splen- did, trained men. It was known as the northern division of the army that was going against the Ohio Indians; and was under the immediate command of Colonel Adam Stephens. He was a native of Scotland, was an educated physician, and had settled in the Lower Valley of Virginia. Stephens was a noted Indian fighter, was with Washington at Great Meadows, and was badly wounded at Braddock's defeat; but after his recovery from the wound had served throughout the French and Indian War, and commanded the Virginia regiment in Pontiac's War. He served with distinc- tion in the Revolutionary army, first as a brigadier general and
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then as major general. After the Revolution he returned to his home at Martinsburg, Virginia, now in West Virginia, and for some years was an active and distinguished participant in the civil affairs of the State. The northern division had along as scouts and officers men that were then and afterwards noted characters-among them being Simon Girty, Simon Kenton, Peter Parchment, John and Martin Wetzel, and Daniel Morgan.
As previously related, Colonel Charles Lewis had marched on the 6th of September from Camp Union with the Augusta troops and Captain Matthew Arbuckle's company from Botetourt, taking along four hundred pack-horses loaded with flour, salt and tools; and all the beef cattle that had been collected at the camp. Captain Arbuckle marched at the head of the column with his company, and was the best qualified man then living to act as guide for the advanc- ing army. In 1765, with one or two companions, he had explored the Kanawha Valley to the Ohio River; and was the first white man to pass along that valley, except a few who were prisoners of the Indians. For these reasons he was selected as captain of a company of scouts to guide the Lewis division of the army. The orders given Colonel Charles Lewis directed him to go to the mouth of Elk Creek, to build a small storehouse there, to have sufficient canoes made to transport the flour and other supplies down the Kanawha to the Ohio River; and to remain in camp at that place until he was joined by the other section of the expedition that was to follow.
On the 10th of September, Colonel John Field left Camp Union with his Culpeper men. He was offended because Colonel Andrew Lewis would not recognize him as the ranking officer and yield him command of the expedition. Field had explored the Lower Kanawha Valley the previous year, and had undertaken to make a settlement there; but was prevented from doing so by an attack made by a party of Indians. He made a narrow escape, but his son, Ephraim, and a negro woman, his cook, were made prisoners and taken to Ohio by the savages. Field knew the country pretty well, and pur- sued a route of his own selection to the mouth of Kanawha, arriving there in time to take a part in the battle that was fought at that point.
Colonel Andrew Lewis marched on the 12th of September, from Camp Union with the Botetourt troops, Captain Evan Shelby's and Captain William Russell's companies from Fincastle, and Captain Thomas Buford's company from Bedford; and took with him all the T.H .- 20
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beeves and pack-horses that had been collected after Colonel Charles Lewis started on his march. On the evening of that day a messenger from Colonel Charles Lewis came into the camp and reported that one of Colonel Field's men, who was out with a hunting party, had been shot and killed by an Indian, but that the Indian had been killed before he could scalp the white man. It seems that Indian scouts and scalping parties hovered about each section of the expedi- tion as it marched to the mouth of the Kanawha, and kept their people in Ohio thoroughly posted as to the movements of the army,
On the 23rd of September, Colonel Andrew Lewis, with his forces, joined his brother Charles and the Augusta men at their camp on the banks of Elk Creek, about one mile above where it flows into the Kanawha. This camp was about 108 miles from Camp Union, according to a computation made by Colonel Fleming, com- mander of the Botetourt troops. Colonel Lewis had been compelled to move his troops very slowly, making an average of only about ten miles a day after starting from Camp Union. The route he had followed was through a pathless wilderness and very rugged; and he had to cross Gauley Mountain-a difficult and hazardous under- taking, with cattle and pack-horses to handle. The combined forces remained at Elk Creek until the 30th, engaged in completing the storehouse and making canoes to transport the supplies down the river. On the 24th Lewis sent out scouts in different directions to look for the enemy, and on the 25th, one of the scouts that had crossed to the west side of the Kanawha returned, and reported that about four miles from camp a small party of Indians had passed the scouts in the night with horses, and going down the river. The even- ing of the 25th, Colonel Lewis sent scouts to discover the where- abouts of Lord Dunmore and to ascertain when he would arrive with his troops at the place designated for meeting, the mouth of the Little Kanawha.
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