USA > West Virginia > Summers County > History of Summers County from the earliest settlement to the present time > Part 4
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The outrages by the Indians about 1777 were very numerous against the white settlers in all this section of the country, and the people were obliged to gather into the forts, where they were com- pelled to remain during the whole of the summer. From Barger's Fort on the upper New River on Tom's Creek, to Fort Donnally and Union in the Greenbrier country, the men, women and children fled to the forts. Fields on Crump's Bottoms and Cook's on Indian Creek, were filled with the settlers in that region, as was the fort below Alderson. Scouts under Capt. John Lucas penetrated the region round about Cook's and Field's, on Crump's Bottoms and Indian Creek, as well as Farley's Fort, five miles below Fields at the lower end of the bottom.
We give some account of the attack of the Indians on Fort Donnally, ten miles west of Lewisburg towards the Muddy Creek country, as it was in the region of a part of our territory for many
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HISTORY OF SUMMERS COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA.
years, and was under the jurisdiction of Greenbrier County after its formation in 1777.
Two scouts informed the settlements of the danger apprehended from a band of marauding Indians from west of the Ohio, who advanced up the Kanawha, across the War Ridge and into the Greenbrier country.
After being advised by the scouts the settlers gathered into the fort, consisting of twenty men. Capt. Donnally sent a messenger to Fort Union to Col. John Stuart, advising him of the advance of the Indians (Injuns). The best arrangements possible to resist an attack were made, and the attack began the next morning early. Col. Stuart had sent Col. Sam Lewis with sixty men to the relief of Donnally, and they entered the fort without damage. Four whites were killed in this attack-Pritcher, James Burns, Alex. Ochiltree and James Graham, who was killed in the fort, the other three being killed outside. The Grahams of Summers County are direct kin of this Indian fighter. Seventeen of the Indians were killed in the yard outside of the fort, who remained lying on the ground. Other slain Indians were carried off by the survivors. There were engaged in this fight more than two hundred Indians, and in all eighty-seven whites. The Indians, failing, retreated. During the Indian attack on Donnally's Fort a number of men gathered in at Jarrett's Fort on Wolf Creek and Keeney's Fort, a number of whom were members of Captain Joseph Renfrew's company who were from Bedford County, Virginia, and among them was Josiah Meadows, the ancestor of A. G. Meadows, assis- tant postmaster at Hinton, and James E. Meadows, present mayor of Avis, and of J. M. Meador, clerk of the County Court of Summers County. Josiah Meadows applied for a pension to the County Court of Giles County in 1832. In his application he gives a full account of his Indian warfare. This Josiah Meadows was a great- grandfather of Hon. I. G. Meador, of Athens, Mercer County, West Virginia. He was with the expedition of George Rogers Clark into the Illinois country in 1778.
Mrs. Margaret Pauley, with her husband, John Pauley, and James Pauley, wife and child; Robert Wallace and wife, and Brice Miller, on September 23, 1779, set out from the Greenbrier region to go to Kentucky. They crossed New River at the horse ford near the mouth of Rich Creek, then went down New River by the nearest route to Cumberland Gap. Each man in the party was armed with a rifle. The women were on horseback, on which they carried all their household plunder. They were in front and the men in the
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HISTORY OF SUMMERS COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA.
rear, driving the cattle. About noon, after they had arrived at a point on East River one mile below the mouth of Five Mile Fork, they were attacked by five Indians and a white man by the name of Morgan. The women were knocked from their horses by the Indians with their clubs; Wallace and his two children killed and scalped. John Pauley was fatally wounded, but escaped to Wood's Fort on Rich Creek, where he shortly afterwards died. Mrs. James and John Pauley were taken prisoners and carried to the Indian town on the Miami River, where they remained prisoners for two years. Shortly after they arrived Margaret Pauley gave birth to a son. Mrs. James Pauley made her escape and Margaret and her child were ransomed. Margaret Pauley's name was Handley. After she returned she married a man by the name of Erskine, and by whom she had a daughter who married Hugh Caperton, who was a distinguished gentleman and who was the father of Allen T. Caperton, of Monroe County, the United States Senator from West Virginia at the date of his death. Adam Caperton, the father of Hugh Caperton, was killed at Mt. Sterling, Kentucky, by the In- dians at the battle of Little Mountain. Samuel Richmond, who lived at New River Falls, married Sallie Caperton, a descendant of Adam Caperton. A full account of this killing of Pauley and capture was dictated by Margaret Pauley many years afterwards to Senator Allen T. Caperton, and the full history as so written will be found in Lewis' History of West Virginia.
Capt. Hugh Caperton, the father of Sallie Richmond, lived on New River, and was an uncle of Hugh Caperton, of Monroe County. Capt. Caperton was ordered to form a company of men from the New River Company to fight the Indian marauders and prowling bands who were active in the country in 1793. He marched and camped at the mouth of Elk. Overton Caperton resided at the mouth of Island Creek in Summers County, where he owned a valuable farm. He fell in a deep culvert on the C. & O. Railroad and killed himself, a few years ago, between Avis and Hinton. He left a son, Adam, who resides now in Mercer County. Another descendant of Capt. Hugh Caperton is Allen Caperton, of Princeton, having been postmaster of that town, and is a prominent capitalist. Daniel Boone was the "commissary" of that company referred to of Capt. Hugh Caperton, and there were but few settlers in the Kanawha-among them Leonard Morriss-whose descendants still live in that valley. Leonard Morriss, a descendant, is an aged man, now eighty-seven years old, but strong mentally. He remembers seeing the Indians passing up the valley on their way to see the
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HISTORY OF SUMMERS COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA.
President. He tells many interesting incidents to the writer, of these aborigines. He says they still carried the bow and arrow, but that their arrows had no stone points. He visited Barger's Springs in 1907.
Some of the men who belonged to this company of Caperton's Indian fighters, whose descendants live in this region, are: Edward Farley, John Cook, William Graham, Francis Farley, Drewry Far- ley, John Barton, Thomas Cook, Mathew Farley, David Johnston, James Stuart, James Abbott, Joseph Abbott, Moses Massey, James Graham, David Graham, James Sweeney and Isaiah Calloway. This company was disbanded after General Wayne's victory at Fallen Timbers.
The Christian family came from the Isie of Man, settling in Pennsylvania, where they lived in 1726, whence Gilbert Christian came to where Staunton now stands. He had a family of three sons, John, Robert and William, and one daughter, Mary. Capt. Israel Christian settled in the valley, and removed into the territory of Botetourt County in 1740 at Fincastle. He gave the site for that town. Later he crossed the Allegheny Mountains and settled on New River at Ingle's Ferry. Christiansburg was named for him. Colonel William Christian was his son, and married a sister of Patrick Henry-Anne. He was a prominent man and was once a member of the State Senate of Virginia in 1781, and commanded a regiment at the Battle of Point Pleasant in 1774. He was killed while fighting the Indians in Ohio in 1786 at Jeffersonville, in Indiana. Joseph J. Christian, of the upper end of this county, is a direct descendant of Col. Israel Christian.
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THE ANCIENT SWOPE HOME. (Big Wolf Creek.)
PUBLIC LIBRARY
AUTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONE.
CHAPTER III.
ABORIGINAL AND ANCIENT.
In regard to the inhabitants of this territory immediately pre- ceding the English settlers, we are unable to get any definite information as to what particular tribes resided here, or whether there were any regular inhabitants of these mountain regions at all we do not know ; but there is plenty of information on the subject, especially of a circumstantial character, showing that this region had been inhabited. When I say regular inhabitants, I mean whether or not there were any villages of encampments of Indians, or whether they ever cultivated any of the soil in what is the ter- ritory of the county. Of course, they hunted over these mountains, fished in our streams, traveled through our valleys and territories. The so-called Indian Mounds and Indian relics in the shape of arrow points, spear points, stone hammers, axes, tomahawks, pot- tery, etc., were found in abundance along the rivers and in the mountains of this region, were not, in the opinion of scientists, made by the Indians. There is positive evidence to show that the first inhabitants of the Mississippi Valley and of the Apalachian region and the Atlantic Coast came from the south. They may have crossed the Continent of Atlantis, which once existed where the Atlantic Ocean now is, from Southern Europe, and Southern Asia to South America and Mexico, and from thence into the Mississippi Valley and the mountains on either side. The Incas of Peru, the Aztecs and Toltecs of Mexico, the Mound Builders of the Missis- sippi Valley had many similar customs and left somewhat similar remains. They were all descendants of these people who came from Southern Asia, perhaps in the time of Abraham. The modern Indians probably came from Northern Asia and crossed Behring Strait. Those who wandered towards the North became small in stature and acquired the characters of the modern Esquimo. Those who came farther north probably drove out the Mound Builder after much fighting, and took possession of the country. The Mound Builders went south, and, possibly, the Zuni Indians of to-day are their degenerate descendants.
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HISTORY OF SUMMERS COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA.
The Mound Builders had no iron instruments nor any sub- stitute, and could not contend against the growth of timber the country was completely covered with. They, possibly cul- tivated the soil. The more substantial theory, in my opinion, is that the Mound Builders were driven out after a desperate fight with the Indians, who, like the Goths and the Vandals of Europe, descended on the Roman people. This is the opinion of Dr. G. D. Lind, of New Richmond, in this county, a learned physician, and who has given these subjects very intelligent study, and to whom I am indebted for an opinion. There are no mounds or evidence of monuments built by the Mound Builders in the territory of this county. We have, however, numerous small mounds, known as Indian graves, scattered throughout the county in the valleys; and, while there were no Indian settlements within the territory between the Allegheny Mountains and the Ohio when the country was first visited by civilized man, there are ample evidences at this day of the territory of this country having at an early day been inhabited by the Indian savages in considerable numbers, but we doubt if the Indians ever used the flints or arrow heads. People who re- member seeing them with their bows and arrows say they did not have such heads to their arrows, but that the arrow was one piece of wood. The Hurons are supposed by some to have possessed this territory, but the white man did not dispossess this region of the Indians. It had been depopulated of Indian settlements before the white man entered.
The true, very ancient history of this land has never been writ- ten ; and, if it is ever done, it will be from geological research, and not from ordinary historical sources. It is more ancient than any historical records that exist of any times.
This territory was probably first inhabited by the Mound Build- ers, then by the Indians, one tribe after another, and then by the Europeans, following the Jamestown Settlement by Capt. John Smith in 1607.
The Indians are a remarkable race of people. Their contrasts of character and the make-up of their mental characteristics are unfathomable-sometimes very rare and exceptional. You read of one of these savage people with human sympathy and instincts, but in the great and preponderating number of cases they have the savage character and characteristics. This seems to have been intensified as time passed after the first intermingling between them and the white races of Europe.
Immediately after the discovery of America, we read that in
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HISTORY OF SUMMERS COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA.
the early associations there were many examples of humanity and of human kindness emanating from a human brain. A disposition to return kindness for kindness, as do some of the domestic animals, but the avariciousness of the first discoverers and explorers of the American continent, especially of the Spaniards, even though under the guise of the Christian spirit ; but with treachery so instilled into the minds of the Indian savage an internal hatred, it grew and hard- ened and expanded as the generations passed ; and, as generation after generation followed, their cruelty was instilled into and became a part of their nature, one of inheritance. To hate the white race, from whence or where he came, or for whatever his purpose might be, so that from the first generation to the present there has been no relaxation in the disposition of the race to inflict on all the whites all of the barbarities to be imagined by human ingenuity; and when we now read of and learn by tradition and history of the. brutal savagery of these treacherous inhabitants who occupied all of this country, we may well believe the hardships endured by the original and pioneer settlers of all this region from an ever-present savage foe, hating and despising all progress advanced by the whites with whom they came in contact. It matters not how gen- erous the disposition of the exceptional white may have been- whether his advancements into the wilderness into the West were for civilization or Christian purposes-the Indian knew no mercy, pity, magnanimity. They were words unknown in his nature, and the doctrines of mercy, pity, magnanimity and Christian forbear- ance became unknown entirely to the Indian character. This, no doubt, grew largely from the action and brutal treatment in many instances of the white adventurer, whose only object was to secure pecuniary advantage ; so that, as time passed, the natures of both races, the white and the red, became actions of retaliation, so that the white settler, like Jim Wiley, who could cut a razor strap out of the hide of an Indian with as little qualms as out of the hide of an ox.
The Spanish robbed and slaughtered them by the sword; the English robbed and murdered them under the guise of a pretense at commercialism, trading with them, dealing for their furs, and throwing in civilization, Christianity and whiskey; the French seemed to have been more generous in their treatment with the Indians than any other white European race, and for that reason their diplomatic relations with them were more friendly, and they received more results and benefits from the coalitions than any other nation undertaking to colonize or civilize the continent.
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HISTORY OF SUMMERS COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA.
The Indians had no written laws. Their customs were handed down from generation to generation and from age to age by the old men, and had all the force of well-defined and positive statutes, more so than the "common law." The aborigines of this country enjoyed absolute freedom. Their sachems made their own tools for war and husbandry. They worked the grounds in common with other tribes. They entered into no great war or scheme with- out the consent of the whole people or movement of a public nature. If their council declared in favor of war, their warriors declared their approbation by painting themselves with various colors, rend- ering themselves horrid in the extreme to their enemies. In this shape they would rush furiously into the council and begin the war dance, accompanying their steps with fierce gestures expres- sive of their thirst for vengeance, and describing the manner in which they would wound, kill and scalp their victims; after which they would sing their own glories, exploit the glories of their an- cestors and of the nation in the ancient times. Their festivals consisted of dancing around in a circle of curved posts or a fire built in a convenient part of the town, each having his rattle in his hand, or his bow and arrow or tomahawk. They dressed themselves in branches of trees or other strange accoutrement. They had no idea of distinct or exclusive property. Every man could cultivate and abandon whatever land he pleased. They reckoned their years by the coming and going of the wild geese -- "cohunks" they called them-a noise made by these birds. This coming was once a year. They distinguished the parts of the year by five seasons, viz .: The budding or blossoming of the spring; the earing of the corn, or roasting-ear time; the summer, or high sun; the corn gathering, or fall of the leaf ; and the winter, or the "cohunks." They counted the months by the moons, though not with so many in the year as we do, but they made them return again as the Corn Moon, the First and the Second Moon of Cohunks. They had no distinctions of the hour of the day, but divided them into three parts-the rise, power and lowering of the sun. They kept their accounts by knots on strings, or notches on sticks.
They were grossly superstitious and idolatrous. He was the most improvident animal existing ; his present necessities satisfied, and he was happy. He wasted no thought on the morrow.
A man could have as many wives as he could support. He could abandon one and seek another when he pleased, and the wife could do the same, except she could have but one husband at a time, and she could not marry for a year after separation.
THE ISAAC BALLENGER HOUSE, Which Stood on Hinton Railway Yards. Frank Cundiff in front.
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
ASTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS.
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HISTORY OF SUMMERS COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA.
Courtship, like marriage, was short. If the squaw accepted the presents of the man, it was understood she agreed ; and, without further ceremony, she went and joined him in his hut, not even notifying her people. The principles which were to regulate their future conduct were well understood. He was to assume the more laborious labor-fighting the enemies of his tribe, hunting, fishing, felling the trees and building the hut. She looked after raising the children, providing food and domestic duties. It was her duty to plant the corn and do all the agricultural work, as well as trans- port on her back the children (papooses), but the labor of agricul- ture was trifling. In the event of separation, the children all be- longed to the women. The warrior was considered a visitor, and, if any differences arose, the warrior picked up his gun and walked off, and that ended it. This separation entailed no quarrel or disgrace. They acted according to the dictates of nature and the customs of their country. Every object inspired happiness and content, and their only care was to crowd as much pleasure as possible into a short life. They were a rawboned, muscular, red- skinned people, with high cheek bones; with a bow and arrow for their weapons until the whites introduced firearms.
The territory of which Summers County is inchided was origi- nally a howling wilderness, inhabited, no doubt, by the ancient Indian tribes, and there are many evidences yet remaining in some parts of the county of the habitations of these people. After the Mound Builders the county was inhabited by Indians, supposed to be a tribe, a section, or part of the powerful confederacy known as the Six Nations. There are yet remaining in different localities many evidences of the ancient habitations-flints, arrow-heads. .stone tomahawks and other stone implements are found scattered on and under the surface, and are plowed up from beneath the surface in the cultivation of the soil.
At the time West Virginia first became known to civilized people there were no Indian settlements of any importance within its territory which were in actual possession by any tribe or nation of Indians, but there is evidence everywhere that Indians in great numbers had occupied this territory.
Two years ago I was presented with a stone pipe, all of one solid piece, nicely finished. the bowl nicely hollowed out, with the stem about three inches long, by J. Frank Smith, who had found the same in his explorations for mineral on Suck Creek, a tributary of Little Blue Stone River in Jumping Branch District, evidently of very ancient make, but complete in all its parts. Mr. Allen
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HISTORY OF SUMMERS COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA.
Bragg, several years ago, presented us with a piece of ancient clay utensil of some character impossible to determine, but very nicely finished, either a part of an ornament, or of some useful utensil, being of oval and pointed shape at the top, or in the shape of a half-crown with pointed top.
Some four or five years ago an extraordinary flood of New River occurred. The river banks were overflowed west of the Warford in New River, and along "Barker's Bottom," and many evidences of ancient habitations were washed up from the earth, including skulls, stone implements, human bones, etc. One im- plement of a peculiar make, made from very hard stone an inch and a half thick, perfectly finished, as large as the hollow of a man's hand, was presented to the writer, and of which I now have pos- session. But there is no tradition of Indian or other habitation in this region since the early settlements east of the Allegheny Mountains.
There is authentic history of Indian excursions through the territory of the county, and there were three great war trails of the Indians, which were followed by them in their excursions from west of the Ohio River into Western Virginia, after the Indians had been forced west of that stream. One was up the Great Kanawha River, across the Sewell Mountain, up Lick Creek, and across the Keeney's Knob, down Griffith's Creek to Greenbrier River, near where the town of Alderson is now located. Another trail was up the Big Sandy River, down Bluestone; thence across to East River and down Bluestone up New River and Indian Creek and through Monroe County. The third was up the Little Kana- wha River.
LAST INDIAN EXCURSIONS.
The last Indian excursion of which I have any information through this territory was of a party of Indians from west of the Ohio, who proceeded into the Greenbrier country, attacking Capt. McClung and his settlement on Muddy Creek; thence passing over the Keeney's Knob, after having captured a Mrs. Clendennin. The prisoners were all taken over to Muddy Creek, and a number of the Indians retained them there until the return of the others from Carr's Creek. On the day they started from the foot of Keeney's Knob, going over the mountain, Mrs. Clendennin gave her infant child to a prisoner woman to carry, as the prisoners were in the
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HISTORY OF SUMMERS COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA.
center of the line and the Indians in the front and rear, she escaped into a thicket and concealed herself until they passed by. The cries of the child soon caused the Indians to inquire for the mother, who was missing, and one of them said he "would soon bring the cow to her calf," and, taking the child by the heels, he beat its brains out against a tree, and, throwing the body down into the path, all marched over it until its entrails were trampled out by the horses.
She returned that night in the dark to her house, a distance of more than ten miles, and covered her husband's corpse with rails, which lay in the yard where he was killed in endeavoring to escape over the fence with one of his children in his arms. This occur- rence is taken from the memorandum of Col. John Stuart, of Green- brier County, made 1798, who was then clerk of the county, and made this memorandum in one of his deed books. The Indian warfare at this time resulted in the entire destruction of the set- tlers in the Greenbrier Valley and within what is now Greenbrier and Summers Counties, which was in the year 1780.
Their last excursion was into the Greenbrier region in this county, in which they killed Thomas Griffith near the mouth of Griffith's Creek, which empties into the Greenbrier River about a mile west of the town of Alderson, and whose name said creek still bears, which was in the year 1780. At the same time they captured Griffith, his son, and immediately started for the West, pursued by a party of white settlers. The Indians camped the first night under a cliff on Lick Creek, about a mile from the foot of Keeney's Knob, just by the rear of the side of the brick residence erected by Capt. A. A. Miller in 1868, where he resided at the time of his death. The pursuing party camped about three-quarters of a mile east, just below the foot of Keeney's Mountain, on Lick Creek, at the old Curtis Alderson place, about half a mile above the place where the writer was born and raised (the old Miller, place). Griffith had settled at the mouth of Grif- fith's Creek, near Greenbrier River, on the John and Enos Ellis place, and an alarm had been made that the Indians were in the neighborhood, there being a fort almost opposite on the Lane Bot- toms, but Griffith, being a very brave man, declined to go into the fort. There were several Indians and one white man ; they watched Griffith's house for some days for their opportunity. When the attack was made, Griffith was shot dead, and the Indians rushed for his scalp, but his wife, in order to save her husband's scalp,
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