USA > Virginia > Tazewell County > Tazewell County > History of Tazewell county and southwest Virginia, 1748-1920 > Part 31
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62
Soon after the chiefs reached Lord Dunmore's camp, he sent a messenger to inform Colonel Lewis that he was engaged in a peace parley with the Indians, and ordered him to halt with his forces and to go into camp. Dunmore feared that, if the Virginians came to his camp while the Indians were there, Colonel Lewis would not be able to control his men, who were enraged at the loss of such a large number of their esteemed officers and comrades in the recent
318
History of Tazewell Couny
battle; and that they would murder the chiefs while they were engaged in the peace conference. His Lordship, however, invited Colonel Lewis, and such of his officers as he chose to select, to visit the camp and take part in the peace negotiations.
The invitation was declined in such terms as to convince Dun- more that Colonel Lewis, and his officers, and the men in the ranks, had not made the long and severe march from their distant homes to the mouth of the Kanawha, and fought the bloody battle at Point Pleasant to accomplish nothing more than an uneertain peace with the savages, a peace which Dunmore had been seeking from the moment he left Pittsburg. The mountaineers from Fincastle County wanted to go on to the Shawnce towns and do what Colonel Preston had promised them should be done, that is, plunder and burn the Shawnee towns, destroy their corn fields, take their "great stock of horses," and foree the people to abandon their country, or kill them. And the men from the Holston and Clinch valleys were eager to march on and avenge the cruel outrages that had been committed, since they left their homes, upon their neighbors and kindred by Shawnee and Mingo scalping parties.
The governor then concluded a treaty of peace with the Indians. Being disturbed over the attitude of Lewis and his men, his Lord- ship laid aside his dignity, mounted his horse and rode to Lewis' camp. He informed Lewis that a treaty had been agreed upon, and that its terms were such as would protect the inhabitants of the regions west of the Alleghanics. Then he told Lewis that the pres- ence of himself and army could be of no further service, but might be a hinderance to the conelusion of the treaty; and ordered him to march home with his forces. It is said that Colonel Lewis was greatly concerned for the safety of Governor Dunmore while he was visiting his camp. The soldiers were so angry on account of being ordered to return home just as they had gotten where they could strike and punish their foes, that Lewis thought it best to double or treble the guards about his tent while the governor was visiting him. Dunmore and his party remained in the camp that night. The next day he called the eaptains together, told them what he had done, and requested them to return home with their men ; and that day the return march was begun.
The terms of the treaty, as briefly reported by Governor Dunmore to the secretary of state for the colonies, were: "That the Indians should deliver up all prisoners without reserve; that they should not
.
319
and Southwest Virginia
hunt on our Side the Ohio, nor molest any Boats passing thereupon ; That they should promise to agree to such regulations for their trade with our People, as should be hereafter dictated by the Kings In- structions, and that they Should deliver into our hands certain Hos- tages, to be Kept by us until we were convinced of their Sincere in- tention to adhere to all these Articles. The Indians finding, contrary to their expectation, no punishment likely to follow, agreed to every thing with the greatest alacrity, and gave the most Solemn assur- ances of their quiet and peaceable deportment for the future: and in return I have given them every promise of protection and good treatment on our side."
Apparently the provisions of the treaty were reasonable and just for both the Virginians and the Indians ; but, for some unknown reason, the Mingos refused to accept its terms. It may be that they were influenced to take this course by Logan, their famous chief, who was not present at the preliminary conference that negotiated the treaty. He had just gotten back to the Mingo towns from his bloody scalping expedition to the Holston and Clinch valleys; and had brought with him the little Roberts boy, captured on Reedy Creek when the Roberts family was massacred, and also the two negroes he had captured at Moore's Fort. From contemporary reports, it is known that he also had a large number of scalps, pos- sibly as many as thirty, dangling at his belt when he returned from this expedition. It is probable the scalps of Mrs. Henry and her children, who were murdered in Thompson Valley, were part of Logan's trophies.
Provoked by the refusal of the Mingos to accept the treaty, Lord Dunmore sent Major William Crawford with a force of two hundred and fifty men to the nearest Mingo town to inflict such punishment upon the recalcitrants as would bring them into submis- sion. A night attack was made upon the town and five of the Indians were killed; and fourteen, chiefly women and children, were taken prisoners, the balance of the inhabitants escaping under cover of the night. The town was destroyed with the torch; and a con- siderable amount of booty was brought away, which was sold for three hundred and five pounds and fifteen shillings, and divided among Crawford's men. George Rodgers Clark, who a few years later was the leader of the famous expedition that made conquest of the Illinois country, was with Crawford when the disgraceful attack was made upon the Mingo town.
320
History of Tazewell County
Logan had proudly and defiantly refused to attend any of the peace conferences, or give his assent to the terms of the treaty. Finally he ceased to oppose peace, but declined to avow whether or not he would continue his acts of hostility against the whites. Dun- more made several futile efforts to get an interview with the proud Indian chief; and at last decided to reach him and find out his intentions through a special messenger. He selected for the mission his interpreter, John Gibson, who was the reputed husband of Logan's sister that had been brutally murdered by Greathouse and Baker at the Yellow Creek massacre. Gibson went to the Indian town and Logan agreed to talk privately with his brother-in-law, and took him aside for an interview. The outraged chief, with fervid eloquence, delivered a message for the governor that has since been pronounced one of the most classic and dramatic orations that can be found in the literature of any country. Gibson, who was an educated man, wrote it down while Logan was engaged in its delivery, and it is as follows:
"I appeal to any white man to say if ever he entered Logan's cabin hungry and he gave him not meat; if ever he came cold and naked and he clothed him not? During the course of the last 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 unpro- voked, murdered all the relations of Logan. There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of any living creature. This 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."
When Gibson returned to the camp with the message, Lord Dun- more assembled his soldiers and scouts, among the latter were Michael Cresap and George Rodgers Clark, and read the speech to them. Its beauty and pathos so impressed the rugged frontiersmen that they constantly strived to remember and repeat it. Cresap, whom Logan still believed was the murderer of his sister and brother, though he was guiltless, was so mortified and enraged by
321
and Southwest Virginia
its recital that he threatened to tomahawk Greathouse, who was the real perpetrator of the hideous crime.
In after years the genuiness of the speech was assailed, some writers asserting that it was the production of John Gibson or some other white man. Thomas Jefferson investigated, with his usual care, the authorship, and, in his Notes on Virginia, not only attrib- utes it to Logan, but commends the beautiful eloquence of the Indian chief. Theodore Roosevelt, also a careful investigator, in his Winning of the West, declares it was spoken by Logan. The style is entirely distinct from that used by the white men of that period, and neither Dunmore, nor any white man who was with him, had the peculiar talent for composing such a production. In thought and expression it bears the unmistakable impress of the child of nature.
The Mingo chief, whose life was a tragedy, was the most pathetic figure among the American Indians that were known to the early white settlers. His father was a French child that was captured by the Indians and adopted into the Oneida tribe; and who, when he grew to manhood, was made a chief by the Indians that lived in the Susquehanna Valley. Logan's mother belonged to the Mingo or Cayuga tribe, which was a branch of the Iroquois Nation. His Indian name was Tah-gah-jute, and he took the name Logan from his friend James Logan, who was secretary for Pennsylvania, and for a long time acted as governor of that province. Logan lived in Pennsylvania until 1770, when he moved to Ohio. At the time of Dunmore's War he was living at old Chillicothe, now Westfall, on the west bank of the Sciota River. He had always been the faithful friend of the white people, but the murder of his kindred made him an everlasting foe of the white race. His last home was at Detroit. where he was killed in a drunken brawl in 1780. Quoting from a historian of the period, Howe says: "For magnanimity in war, and greatness of soul in peace, few, if any, in any nation ever surpassed Logan. His form was striking and manly, his countenance calm and noble, and he spoke the English language with fluency and cor- rectness."
Dunmore's War and the battle of Point Pleasant were of such moment to the pioneer settlers of the Clinch Valley, I have felt con- strained to write freely about the most important incidents con- T.H .- 21
322
History of Tazewell County
nected therewith. The treaty of peace made by Dunmore with the Ohio Indians, after they had been vanquished by the Virginia moun- taineers, gave assurance to the inhabitants of the Clinch Valley that the red men would not, for a time, molest them in their earnest endeavor to clear away the forests and establish comfortable homes for themselves and their descendants. The Shawnees had pledged themselves to make no more invasions of the territory south of the Ohio for either war or hunting purposes. This pledge was not violated until after the Revolution began, when brutal British agents persuaded the Indians to resume hostilities and murder the border settlers.
Colonel Lewis, after parting with Lord Dunmore, marched rapidly and directly back to Point Pleasant, arriving there with his forces on the night of the 20th of October. The following day a large detail of men was made for the purpose of completing the fortifications that Lewis had commenced the day the battle was fought. The fort when completed was named Fort Blair; and it was a small rectangle, about eighty yards long, with block-houses at two of its corners. During the absence of the army across the Ohio, a number of wounded had died from their injuries. Colonel Christian in a letter to Colonel Preston reported: "Many of our wounded men died since the accounts of the battle came in. I think there are near 70 dead. Capt. Buford and Lieut. Goldman and 7 or 8 more died whilst we were over the Ohio and more will yet die." Colonel Christian also said: "Colo. Fleming is in a fair way to recover and I think out of danger if he don't catch cold."
Colonel Fleming, who was an accomplished surgeon for that day, had been very severely and supposedly fatally wounded. Two balls struck his left arm below the elbow and broke both bones, and a third entered his breast three inches below the left nipple and lodged in the chest. In a letter to a friend he said: "When I came to be drest, I found my lungs forced through the wound in my breast, as long as one of my fingers. Watkins tried to reduce them ineffectually. He got some part returned but not the whole. Being in considerable pain, some time afterwards, I got the whole returned by the assistance of one of my attendants. Since which I thank the Almighty I have been in a surprising state of ease. Nor did I ever know such dangerous wounds attended with so little inconvenience." Colonel Fleming did recover from the wounds, but was disabled for active service in the Revolutionary War. He afterwards served
323
and Southwest Virginia
Virginia in many responsible civil positions, and his death, which occurred Aug. 24th, 1795, was occasioned by the wounds he received at Point Pleasant. The sword he wore in the battle is now a cher- ished heirloom in the possession of Judge S. M. B. Coulling, of Tazewell, Virginia. Judge Coulling is a great-great-grandson of the valiant soldier and distinguished surgeon.
Soon after the return of the army to Point Pleasant, the troops began to make the homeward journey in small companies. They were eager to get back home, and took the most direct routes to their respective places of residence. The men from the Clinch and Hol- ston did not return by the route they used when they marched to Camp Union and thence to the mouth of the Kanawha. They crossed to the west side of the Kanawha at Point Pleasant and took the most direct course they could find for their homes. The Taze- well men, so far as is known, all got back about the first of Novem- ber, safe and sound, except John Hickman, who was the first white man killed at Point Pleasant, and Moses Bowen who died on the march home from smallpox. Captain William Russell was left in command of Fort Blair, with a garrison of fifty men who were to remain until a regular garrison could be provided by the General Assembly. It is hardly probable that any of the Tazewell men remained with Russell, as they were still anxious for the safety of their families.
The treaty with the Indians being satisfactorily concluded, and Lewis' men having gone home, Lord Dunmore started on his return journey to Williamsburg. He arrived there on the 4th of December, was received with much acclaim by the people, and was presented with congratulatory addresses by the city, the College of William and Mary and the Governor's Council. About the time of his arrival, or shortly thereafter, Dunmore received five dispatches, numbered 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13, from the Earl of Dartmouth, then secretary of state for the colonies; and dispatch Number 13 gave the governor very great concern. In this dispatch Dartmouth rebuked Dunmore severely for permitting grants to be issued for lands west of the Alleghany and allowing settlements to be made thereon, which was done in violation of the royal proclamation of 1763, that forbade British citizens settling west of the Alleghany Mountains.
The announced purpose of the proclamation of 1763, was to pre- vent continued trouble with the Indian tribes who were the allies of the French in the war that had just been terminated. A few years
324
History of Tazewell County
after the royal proclamation was promulgated, the companies that had obtained from the Virginia Government grants for hundreds of thousands of acres west of the Alleghany Mountains, and who had surveyed numerous tracts of land and sold them to prospective set- tlers, went industriously to work to avoid the terms of the proclama- tion, by securing an extinguishment of the claims of the various tribes to the lands in the disputed territory. This induced many persons to cross to the territory west of New River and settle on lands purchased from Colonel Patton's representatives, or from the Loyal Company ; and others settled on unappropriated boundaries, expecting to perfect their titles under what was called the settlers right or "corn laws." About all the pioneer settlers in the Clinch Valley had come here and located on waste or unappropriated land.
Over in England the mythical belief that the shores of the Pacific Ocean were not far beyond the Alleghany ranges had been dis- sipated; and through the explorations of Christopher Gist and others it was known that the territory embraced in the charters of Virginia, lying beyond the mountains, was of vast extent and wonderfully valuable for agricultural purposes. This information attracted the attention and aroused the cupidity of certain Englishmen. They devised a plan for getting possession of the extensive region belong- ing to Virginia west of the mountains, and enriching themselves by selling it in parcels to settlers.
In June, 1769, about the time the settlers began to come to the Clinch Valley and to other localities west of New River, a company of Englishmen and Americans presented a petition to the King of England, asking that they be permitted to purchase and colonize the large boundary in America that had been ceded by the Iroquois Nation to Great Britain by the Fort Stanwix treaty, negotiated in 1768. The company was composed of men of influence, headed by Thomas Walpole; but the scheme was so vigorously opposed that the prayer of the petition was not acted upon until October, 28th, 1773, when the Privy Council ordered that the grant be issued to the petitioners. A new province was to be established to be called Vandalia, and the seat of government was to be located at the mouth of the Great Kanawha, on and about the ground where the battle of Point Pleasant was fought.
But for the disturbances that arose in the American colonies in 1774, and that culminated in the Revoluntionary War, the specula- tive scheme of Walpole and his associates would have taken legal
325
and Southwest Virginia -
shape. This would have invested Walpole's company with title to all the unoccupied land belonging to Virginia west of the Alle- ghanies, including the Clinch Valley. And it is more than probable that all the pioneer settlers of the Upper Clinch Valley would have been turned out of their homes, or forced to pay Walpole's company for them, as none of the first settlers had secured regular titles for their lands, and did not perfect them until after the Revolution. It would also have taken authority from the Virginia Council to issue grants for lands west of the mountains; and put an end to the policy of the General Assembly for pushing the frontiers westward by the creation of new counties, as was done by the erection of Botetourt and Fincastle counties.
That Governor Dunmore was secretly favoring the plans of Wal- pole is shown from his letter to the Earl of Dartmouth, replying to the aforementioned Dispatch "No. 13." It is possible that this was the true reason for the indifferent treatment he extended the Virginia mountaineers whom he had requested to join him in the Ohio cam- paign. On the 12th of July, 1774, Dunmore wrote a letter to Colonel Andrew Lewis, directing him to go to Ohio with a force of men, to destroy the Indian towns and to show the savages no mercy. The governor said: "All I can now say is to repeat what I have before said which is to advise you by no means to wait any longer for them to Attack you, but to raise all the Men you think willing & Able & go down immediately to the mouth of the Kanhaway & there build a Fort, and if you think you have forse enough (that are willing to follow you) to proceed directly to their Towns & if possible destroy their Towns & Magazines and distress them in every way that is possible."
In the face of these specific orders to his subordinates, the gover- nor, immediately after his arrival at Pittsburg, began to take steps to negotiate a peace with all the Ohio tribes, including the Shawnees, without giving Lewis and his brave men opportunity to accomplish the ends for which they had made their laborious and perilous march to the Ohio. Dunmore's conduct in connection with the campaign was so insincere and vacillating that Lewis and his men strongly suspected him of treachery. Howe, in his History of Virginia, says: "Lord Dunmore marched the army in two divisions: the one under Col. Andrew Lewis he sent to the junction of the Great Kanawha with the Ohio, while he himself marched to a higher point on the latter river, with pretended purpose of destroying the Indian towns
326
History of Tazewell County
and joining Lewis at Point Pleasant; but it is believed with the real object of sending the whole Indian force to annihilate Lewis' detachment, and thereby weaken the power and break down the spirit of Virginia." Howe is strongly sustained in his charge of treachery against Dunmore by Colonel John Stuart, who commanded a company of the Augusta men at Point Pleasant, and who wrote a narrative of the battle. Alexander Withers, in his Chronicles of Border Warafare, corroborates Colonel Stuart's accusations. Colonel Stuart was a fellow-countryman of Dunmore, being a native of Scotland, and this adds greater force to his charges of infidelity against the earl.
In his letter to the secretary of state for the colonies, Dunmore made a very earnest effort to convince Dartmouth that he was not only opposed to extending the settlements beyond the limits of the colonies as they stood in 1770, but that he had done everything pos- sible while governor of New York to prevent any such extension. He also protested that he made ineffectual but earnest efforts to prevent further settlements in the terriory west of New River that the Cherokees ceded to Virginia by the treaty concluded at Lochaber on the 18th of October, 1770. He was certainly not in sympathy with the men who composed Lewis' army, many of whom had already settled in the forbidden territory; and some of whom, Floyd, Har- rod, and others, had been preparing to settle in Kentucky. Dunmore showed his contempt for the pioneers by saying: "They acquire no attachment to Place: But wandering about Seems engrafted in their nature; and it is a weakness incident to it, that they Should forever immagine the Lands further off, are Still better than those upon which they are already Settled."
The Tazewell pioneers were not composed of restless rovers, such as Lord Dunmore describes. They, or their ancestors, had left the old countries to secure that freedom of thought and action which later became the inalienable right of every American citizen. The lands they found here and settled on were so rich and attractive that they knew it was useless to seek anything better "further off." So, they remained, and imparted to their descendants a love for Taze- well soil that has almost become an obsession. In his report to Lord Dartmouth, in explanation of the existing conditions on the Virginia frontiers, Lord Dunmore said:
"In this Colony Proclamations have been published from time to time to restrain them (the frontier settlers): But impressed from
327
and Southwest Virginia
their earliest infancy with Sentiments and habits, very different from those acquired by persons of a Similar condition in England, they do not conceive that Government has any right to forbid their taking possession of a Vast tract of Country, either inhabitated, or which Serves only as a Shelter to a few Scattered Tribes of Indians. Nor can they be casily brought to entertain any belief of the per- mancnt obligation of Treaties made with those people, whom they consider, as but little removed from the brute Creation."
These utterances of Governor Dunmore very accurately set forth the motives and characteristics of the Tazewell pioneers; but they were not a proper subject for unfavorable comment by an official representative of the government of Great Britain. The British Government, from the time the first settlement was made at James- town, had established and followed a policy of aggression and exter- mination toward the American aborigines. England's title to the immense region now embraced in the United States was based upon the chimerical right of discovery and the brutal principle that might makes right. If treaties were made with the Indians by the British Government, in each and every instance the natives were deceived and defrauded. Such treaties were not made from a sense of moral or legal obligation to the aboriginal inhabitants, but from a selfish desire to make the colonies stronger and prepare them for further encroachments upon the natural rights of the red men. If our ances- tors believed that the English King had no right to forbid them taking possession of the Clinch Valley and adjacent territory for their homes, that the treaties made with the Indians were devoid of "permament obligation," and that the natives were no better than "the brute creation," these convictions had been imbibed from the teachings and practices of the British Government toward both the Indians of America and the inhabitants of the East Indies. We should feel proud of the fact that our pioneer ancestors rested their right to make their homes in the wilderness regions of the Clinch upon the theory that the lands were uninhabited, that they were of "no man's land;" and that they did not look for title to a government that claimed the country by right of conquest or discovery.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.