USA > West Virginia > History of West Virginia > Part 10
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Three trails or war-paths led from the Ohio into the interior of Virginia. These followed the valleys of the Big Sandy, Great Kanawha, and Little Kanawha rivers. The route taken by the war-parties depended on the locality they wished to reach. If it was the Roanoke and upper tributaries of the James, then the Big Sandy route was chosen; if the Greenbrier and New river valleys, then they crossed the Ohio and pro-
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ceeded up the Great Kanawha; but if they marched toward the settlements on the West Fork and along the Buckhannon, Tygert's, and Cheat rivers, they jour- neyed up the Little Kanawha, and ascending Leading creek to its source, passed over to the upper waters of these rivers.
The frontiersmen of Virginia were as hardy a race as ever braved the perils of the wilderness, and were ready if need be to sacrifice their lives in defence of their homes. Whenever they were strong enough they took the offensive, and, organizing in detach- ments, carried the war into the wilderness. We shall now notice those sent out in defence of the Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky frontiers, together with Indian invasions, sieges, and attacks.
THE INDIANS BESIEGE FORT HENRY.
Fort Henry stood immediately on the left bank of the Ohio, about a quarter of a mile above Wheeling creek. It is said to have been planned by General George Rogers Clarke, and was constructed under the superintendence of Ebenezer Zane and John Cald- well. It was originally called Fort Fincastle, and was a place of refuge for the settlers in Dunmore's war. The name was afterwards changed to Fort Henry in honor of Patrick Henry. The fort was built on open ground, and covered a space of about three-quarters of an acre. It was a parallelogram, having a block- house at each corner, with lines of stout pickets, about eight feet high, extending from one block-house to another. Within the enclosure were a store-house, barrack-rooms, garrison-well, and a number of cabins for the use of families. The principal entrance was
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FORT HENRY, WHEELING, 1777.
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through a gateway on the eastern side of the fort, next to the then straggling village of Wheeling, consisting of some twenty-five log-houses.
In September, 1777, the savages, variously estimated at from 380 to 500 warriors, having been abundantly supplied with arms and provisions by the British Governor, Hamilton, at Detroit, and led on by Girty, were brought before the walls of Fort Henry, before Colonel Shepherd, the commandant, knew of their real design. Some symptoms of their propinquity having been discovered, the settlers in the vicinity had, the night previous, sought shelter in the fort.
The garrison numbered only forty-two fighting men, all told, counting those advanced in years as well as those who were mere boys. A portion of them were skilled in Indian warfare, and all were excellent marks- men. The storehouse was amply supplied with mus- kets, but was sadly deficient in ammunition.
The next morning Colonel Shepherd despatched a man, accompanied by a negro, on an errand a short distance from the fort. The white man was brought to the ground by a blow from the firelock of an Indian ; but the negro escaped back to the fort, and gave intel- ligence that they had been waylaid by a party of Indians in a corn-field.
As soon as the negro related his story, the colonel despatched Captain Samuel Mason, with fourteen men, to dislodge the Indians from the field. Captain Mason with his party marched through the field, and arrived almost on the bank of the creek without finding the Indians, and had already commenced a retrograde movement when he was suddenly and furiously assailed in front, flank, and rear by the whole of Girty's 10
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army. The captain rallied his men from the confusion produced by this unexpected demonstration of the enemy, and instantly comprehending the situation in which he was placed, gallantly took the lead, and hewed a passage through the savage phalanx that opposed him. In this desperate conflict more than half the little band were slain, and their leader se- verely wounded. Intent on retreating back to the fort, Mason pressed rapidly on with the remnant of his command, the Indians following closely in pursuit. One by one these devoted soldiers fell at the crack of the enemy's rifle. An Indian, who eagerly pursued Captain Mason, at length overtook him ; and to make sure his prey, fired at him from the distance of five paces; but the shot, although it took effect, did not disable the captain, who immediately turned about, and hurling his gun at the head of his pursuer, felled him to the earth. The fearlessness with which this act was performed caused an involuntary dispersion of the gang of Indians who led the pursuit; and Mason, whose extreme exhaustion of physical powers prevented him from reaching the fort, was fortunate enough to hide himself in a pile of fallen timbers, where he was compelled to remain to the end of the siege. Only two of his men survived the skirmish, and they, like their leader, owed their safety to the heaps of logs and brush that abounded in the corn- field.
As soon as the critical situation of Captain Mason became known at the fort, Captain Ogle, with twelve volunteers from the garrison, sallied forth to cover his retreat. This noble, self-devoted band, in their eager- ness to press forward to the relief of their suffering
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fellow-soldiers, fell into an ambuscade, and two-thirds of their number were slain upon the spot. Sergeant Jacob Ogle, though mortally wounded, managed to escape with two soldiers into the woods, while Captain Ogle escaped in another direction, and found a place of concealment, which, like his brother officer, Cap- tain Mason, he was obliged to keep as long as the siege continued. Immediately after the departure of Captain Ogle's command, three new volunteers left the garrison to overtake and reinforce him. These men, however, did not reach the corn-field until after the bloody scenes had been enacted, and barely found time to return to the fort before the Indian host appeared before it. The enemy advanced in two ranks, in open order, their left flank reaching to the river bank, and their right extending into the woods as far as the eye could reach. As the three volunteers were about to enter the gate a few random shots were fired at them, and instantly a loud whoop arose on the enemy's left flank, which passed as if by concert along the line to the extreme right, until the welkin was filled with a chorus of the wildest and most startling character. This salute was answered by a few well-directed rifle-shots from the lower block-houses, which produced a mani- fest confusion in the ranks of the 'besiegers. They discontinued their shouting and retired a few paces, probably to await the coming up of their right flank, which, it would seem, had been directed to make a general sweep of the bottom, and then approach the stockade on the eastern side.
At this moment the garrison of Fort Henry numbered no more than twelve men and boys. The fortunes of the day so far had been fearfully against them ; two
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of their best officers and more than two-thirds of their original force were missing. The exact fate of their comrades was unknown to them, but they had every reason to apprehend that they had been cut to pieces. Still they were not dismayed; their mothers, sisters, · wives, and children were assembled around them ; they had a sacred charge to protect, and they resolved to fight to the last extremity, and confidently trusted in Heaven for the successful issue of the combat.
When the enemy's right flank came up Girty changed his order of attack. Parties of Indians were placed in such of the village houses as commanded a view of the block-houses ; a strong body occupied the yard of Ebenezer Zane, about fifty yards from the fort, using a paling fence as a cover, while the greater part were posted under cover in the edge of the corn-field, to act offensively or serve as a corps of reserve as occasion might require. These dispositions having been made, Girty, with a white flag in his hand, ap- peared at the window of a cabin, and demanded the surrender of the garrison in the name of his Britannic Majesty. He read the proclamation of Governor Hamilton, and promised them protection if they would lay down their arms and swear allegiance to the British crown. He warned them to submit peaceably, and admitted his inability to restrain the passions of his warriors when they once became excited with the strife of battle. Colonel Shepherd promptly told him in reply that the garrison would never surrender to him, and that he could only obtain possession of the fort when there remained no longer an American soldier to defend it. Girty renewed his proposition, but before he finished his harangue a thoughtless
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youth in one of the block-houses fired a gun at the speaker, and brought the conference to an abrupt termination. Girty disappeared, and in about fifteen minutes the Indians opened the siege by a general dis- charge of rifles.
It was yet quite early in the morning, the sun not having appeared above the summit of Wheeling hill, and the day is represented to have been one of sur- passing beauty. The Indians, not entirely concealed from the view of the garrison, kept up a brisk fire for the space of six hours without much intermission. The little garrison, in spite of its heterogeneous character, was, with scarcely an exception, composed of sharp-shooters. Several of them, whose experi- ence in Indian warfare gave them a remarkable degree of coolness and self-possession in the face of danger, infused confidence into the young ; and, as they never fired at random, their bullets, in most cases, took effect. The Indians, on the contrary, gloated with their previous success, their tomahawks reeking with the blood of Mason's and Ogle's men, and all of them burning with impatience to rush into the fort and complete their work of butchery, discharged their guns against the pickets, the gate, the logs of the block- houses, and every other object that seemed to shelter « a white man. Their fire was thus thrown away. At length some of their most daring warriors rushed up close to the block-house, and attempted to make more sure work by firing through the logs; but these reck- less savages received, from the well-directed rifles of the frontiersmen, the fearful reward of their temerity. About one o'clock the Indians discontinued their fire, and fell back against the base of the hill.
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The stock of gunpowder in the fort having been nearly exhausted, it was determined to seize the favorable opportunity offered by the suspension of hostilities to send for a keg of gunpowder which was known to be in the house of Ebenezer Zane, about sixty yards from the gate of the fort. The person executing this service would necessarily expose him- self to the danger of being shot down by the Indians, who were yet sufficiently near to observe everything that transpired about the works. The colonel ex- plained the matter to his men, and, unwilling to order one of them to undertake such a desperate enterprise, inquired whether any man would volunteer for the service. Three or four young men promptly stepped forward in answer to the call. The colonel informed them that the weak state of the garrison would not justify the absence of more than one man, and that it was for themselves to decide who that person should be. The eagerness felt by each volunteer to under- take the honorable mission prevented them from making the arrangement proposed by the commandant ; and so much time was consumed in the contention that fears began to arise that the Indians would renew the attack before the powder could be procured. At this crisis a young lady, the sister of Ebenezer and Silas Zane, came forward and desired that she might be permitted to execute the service. This proposition seemed so reckless that it met with a peremptory re- fusal ; but she instantly renewed her petition in terms of redoubled earnestness, and all remonstrances of the colonel and her relatives failed to dissuade her from her heroic purpose. It was represented to her that either of the young men, on account of their superior
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fleetness and familiarity with scenes of danger, would be more likely than herself to do the work successfully. She replied that the danger which would attend the enterprise was the one reason that induced her to offer her services, for, as the garrison was very weak, no soldier's life should be placed in needless jeopardy, and that if she were to fall her loss would not be felt. Her petition was ultimately granted and the gate opened for her to pass out. The opening of the gate arrested the attention of several Indians who were strag- gling through the village. . It was noticed that their eyes were upon her as she crossed the open space to reach her brother's house, but seized perhaps with a sudden freak of clemency, or believing that a woman's life was not worth a load of gunpowder, or influenced by some other unexplained motive, they permitted her to pass without molestation. When she reappeared with the powder in her arms, the Indians, suspecting, no doubt, the character of her burden, elevated their fire-locks and discharged a volley at her as she swiftly glided toward the gate, but the balls flew wide of the mark, and the fearless girl reached the fort in safety with her prize. The pages of history may furnish a parallel to the noble exploit of Elizabeth Zane, but an instance of greater self-devotion and moral intrepidity is not to be found anywhere.
About half-past two o'clock the Indians put them- selves again in motion, and advanced' to renew the siege. As in the first attack, a portion of their war- riors took possession of the cabins contiguous to the fort, while others availed themselves of the cover afforded by Zane's paling fence. A large number posted themselves in and behind a blacksmith shop
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and stable that stood opposite the northern line of pickets ; and another party, probably the strongest of all, stationed themselves under cover of a fence and several large piles of fallen timbers on the south side of the fort. The siege was now reopened from the latter quarter-a strong gang of Indians advancing under cover of some large stumps that stood on the side of the declivity below the fort, and renewing the combat with loud yells and a brisk fire. The impetu- osity of the attack on the south side brought the whole garrison to the two lower block-houses, from which they were enabled to pour out a destructive fire upon the enemy in that quarter. While the garrison was thus employed, a party of eighteen or twenty Indians, armed with rails and billets of wood, rushed out of Zane's yard and made an attempt to force open the gate of the fort. Their design was discovered in time to defeat it ; but they only abandoned it after five or six of their number had been shot down. Upon the failure of this scheme the Indians opened a fire upon the fort from all sides, except that next the river, which afforded no shelter to a besieging host. On the north and east the battle raged most fiercely ; for, notwithstanding the strength of the assailants on the south, their unfavorable position prevented them from prosecuting with much vigor the attack which they had commenced with such fury.
The rifles used by the garrison towards evening became so much heated by continuous firing that they were rendered useless; recourse was then had to muskets, a full supply of which was found in the store-house. As night set in the firing of the savages grew weaker, though it was not entirely discontinued
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until next morning. Shortly after nightfall a party of Indians advanced within sixty yards of the fort, bringing with them a hollow maple log, which they had converted into a field-piece, by plugging up one end with a block of wood. To give it additional strength, a quantity of chains, taken from the black- smith shop, encompassed it from one end to the other. It was heavily charged with powder, and then filled to the muzzle with pieces of stone, slugs of iron, and such other hard substances as could be found. This piece of primitive artillery was elevated carefully so as to discharge its contents against the gate of the fort. When the match was applied it burst into many frag- ments ; and although it had no effect upon the fort, it killed or wounded several of the Indians who stood by to witness the discharge. A loud yell succeeded the failure of this experiment and the crowd dis- persed. By this time the Indians generally had with- drawn from the siege and fallen back against the hill to take rest and food. Numbers of stragglers, how- ever, lurked about the village all night, keeping up an irregular fire on the fort, and destroying whatever articles of furniture and household comfort they chanced to find in the cabins.
Late in the evening, Francis Drake, a son-in-law of Colonel Shepherd, arrived from the forks of Wheel- ing, and was shot down by the Indians before he could reach the gate of the fort. About four o'clock next morning, September 28, Colonel Swearingen with fourteen men arrived in a periogue from Cross creek, and was fortunate enough to fight his way into the fort without the loss of a man.
About daybreak Major Samuel McColloch, with
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forty mounted men from Short creek, came to the re- lief of the garrison. The gate was thrown open, but McColloch was not permitted to pass the gate-way : the Indians crowded around him and separated him from his party. After several ineffectual attempts to force his way to the gate, he wheeled about and galloped with the swiftness of a deer in the direction of Wheeling hill.
The Indians might easily have killed him, but they cherished towards him a most frenzied hatred; for he had participated in so many encounters that almost every warrior personally knew him. To take him alive and glut their fell revenge by the most fiendish tortures was their object. They made almost super- human exertions to capture him. He put spurs to his horse, but was soon completely hemmed in on three sides; on the fourth was an almost perpendicular prec- ipice of 150 feet descent, with Wheeling creek at its base. Supporting his rifle in his left hand, and carefully adjusting the reins with the other, he urged his horse to the brink of the bluff, and then made the leap which decided his fate. The next moment the noble steed, still bearing his intrepid rider in safety, was at the foot of the precipice. McColloch dashed across the creek and was soon beyond the reach of the Indians.
After the escape of Major McColloch the Indians concentrated at the foot of the hill, and soon after set fire to all the houses and fences outside the fort, and killed about three hundred head of cattle belonging to the settlers. They then raised the siege, and took up their line of march to some other theatre of action.
During the investiture not a man within the fort
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was killed, and only one wounded. But the loss sustained by the whites during the enemy's inroad was severe. Of the forty-two men who were in the fort on the morning of the 27th, no less than twenty-three were killed in the cornfield before the siege began. Two men who had been sent down the river in a canoe, the night previous, were intercepted by the Indians and killed also; including Drake in the list, the loss sustained by the settlement amounted to twenty-six killed and four or five wounded. The enemy's loss was from sixty to one hundred. Accord- ing to their ancient custom, they removed their dead from the field before the siege was raised; the extent of their loss is therefore merely conjectural.
The defence of Fort Henry, when we consider the extreme weakness of the garrison and the forty-fold superiority of the host besieging it, was admirably conducted. Foremost on the list of the brave defenders was Colonel Shepherd, whose good conduct on this occasion gained for him the appointment of county-lieutenant from Governor Patrick Henry. The brothers, Silas and Ebenezer Zane, and John Caldwell, men of influence in the community, and the first settlers at Wheeling, contributed much to the suc- cess of the battle. Besides the names already mentioned, those of Abraham Rogers, John Linn, Joseph Biggs, and Robert Lemmon must not be omitted, as they were among the best Indian-fighters on the frontier, and aided much in achieving the victory of the day. The wife of Ebenezer Zane, together with several other women in the fort, undis- mayed by the sanguinary strife that was raging, em- ployed themselves in running bullets and preparing
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patches for the use of the men ; and, by their presence at every point where they could make themselves useful, and their cheering words of encouragement, infused new life into the soldiers, and spurred them on in the performance of their duty. The noble act of Elizabeth Zane inspired the men with an enthusiasm which contributed not a little to turn the fortunes of the day. The affair at Fort Henry was unquestion- ably one of the battles of the Revolution. The north- western Indians were as much the mercenary troops of Great Britain as were the Hessians and the Wal- deckers, who fought at Bennington, Saratoga, and in New Jersey. If the price received by the Indians for the scalps of American citizens did not always amount to the daily pay of the European minions of England, it was, nevertheless, sufficient to prove that the Amer- ican savages and the German hirelings were precisely on the same footing as part and parcel of the British army : " Howe's Historical Collections," pp. 409, 410, 411, 412, 413.
MURDER OF CORNSTALK.
The brave and noble Shawnee chief Cornstalk was atrociously murdered at Point Pleasant, November 10, 1777. The particulars as here detailed are from the modest, unostentatious memoirs of Colonel John Stuart : " In the year 1777, the Indians being urged by British agents, became very troublesome to frontier settlements, manifesting much appearance of hostili- ties, when the Cornstalk warrior, with the Redhawk, paid a visit to the garrison at Point Pleasant. He made no secret of the disposition of the Indians; de- claring that, on his own part, he was opposed to join-
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ing the war on the side of the British, but that all the nations except himself and his own tribe were deter- mined to engage in it ; and that of course he and his tribe would have to run with the stream, as he ex- pressed it. On this Captain Arbuckle thought proper to detain him, the Redhawk, and another fellow as hostages, to prevent the nation from joining the British.
"In the course of that summer our government had ordered an army to be raised, of volunteers, to serve under the command of General Hand; who was to have collected a number of troops at Fort Pitt, with them to descend the river to Point Pleasant, there to meet a reinforcement of volunteers expected to be raised in Augusta and Botetourt counties, and then proceed to the Shawnee towns and chastise them so as to compel them to a neutrality. Hand did not succeed in the collection of troops at Fort Pitt; and but three or four companies were raised in Augusta and Botetourt counties, which were under the com- mand of Colonel George Skillern, who ordered me to use my endeavors to raise all the volunteers I could get in Greenbrier for that service. The people had begun to see the difficulties attendant on a state of war and long campaigns carried through wildernesses, and but few were willing to engage in such service. But the settlement which we covered, though less ex- posed to the depredations of the Indians, had showed their willingness to aid in the proposed plan to chas- tise the Indians, and had raised three companies. I was, therefore, very desirous of doing all I could to promote the enterprise. I used the utmost endeavor, and proposed to the militia officers to volunteer our-
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selves, which would be an encouragement to others, and by such means to raise all the men that could be got. The chief of the officers in Greenbrier agreed to the proposal, and we cast lots who should command the company. The lot fell on Andrew Hamilton for captain and William Renick, lieutenant. We collected in all about forty, and joined Colonel Skillern's party on their way to Point Pleasant.
"When we arrived, there was no account of General Hand or his army, and little or no provision made to support our troops other than what we had taken with us down the Kanawha. We found, too, that the gar- rison was unable to spare us any supplies, having nearly exhausted, when we got there, what had been provided for themselves. But we concluded to wait there as long as we could for the arrival of General Hand or some account from him. During the time of our stay, two young men, Hamilton and Gilmore, went over the Kanawha one day to hunt for deer; on their return to camp, some Indians had concealed themselves on the bank among the weeds to view our encampment, and as Gilmore came past them, they fired on him and killed him on the bank.
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