CHAPTER II.

THE INDIAN WARS, 1784-1787.

Lull in the Border War.

After the close of the Revolution there was a short, uneasy lull in the

eternal border warfare between the white men and the red. The Indians

were for the moment daunted by a peace which left them without allies;

and the feeble Federal Government attempted for the first time to aid

and control the West by making treaties with the most powerful frontier

tribes. Congress raised a tiny regular army, and several companies were

sent to the upper Ohio to garrison two or three small forts which were

built upon its banks. Commissioners (one of whom was Clark himself) were

appointed to treat with both the northern and southern Indians. Councils

were held in various places. In 1785 and early in 1786 utterly fruitless

treaties were concluded with Shawnees, Wyandots, and Delawares at one or

other of the little forts. [Footnote: State Department MSS., No. 56, p.

333, Letter of G. Clark, Nov. 10, 1785; p. 337, Letter of G. Clark to R.

Butler, etc.; No. 16, p. 293; No. 32, p. 39.]

Treaty of Hopewell.

About the same time, in the late fall of 1785, another treaty somewhat

more noteworthy, but equally fruitless, was concluded with the Cherokees

at Hopewell, on Keowee, in South Carolina. In this treaty the

Commissioners promised altogether too much. They paid little heed to the

rights and needs of the settlers. Neither did they keep in mind the

powerlessness of the Federal Government to enforce against these

settlers what their treaty promised the Indians. The pioneers along the

upper Tennessee and the Cumberland had made various arrangements with

bands of the Cherokees, sometimes acting on their own initiative, and

sometimes on behalf of the State of North Carolina. Many of these

different agreements were entered into by the whites with honesty and

good faith, but were violated at will by the Indians. Others were

violated by the whites, or were repudiated by the Indians as well,

because of some real or fancied unfairness in the making. Under them

large quantities of land had been sold or allotted, and hundreds of

homes had been built on the lands thus won by the whites or ceded by the

Indians. As with all Indian treaties, it was next to impossible to say

exactly how far these agreements were binding, because no persons, not

even the Indians themselves, could tell exactly who had authority to

represent the tribes. [Footnote: American State Papers, Public Lands,

I., p. 40, vi.] The Commissioners paid little heed to these treaties,

and drew the boundary so that quantities of land which had been entered

under regular grants, and were covered by the homesteads of the

frontiersmen, were declared to fall within the Cherokee line. Moreover,

they even undertook to drive all settlers off these lands.

Of course, such a treaty excited the bitter anger of the frontiersmen,

and they scornfully refused to obey its provisions. They hated the

Indians, and, as a rule, were brutally indifferent to their rights,

while they looked down on the Federal Government as impotent. Nor was

the ill-will to the treaty confined to the rough borderers. Many men of

means found that land grants which they had obtained in good faith and

for good money were declared void. Not only did they denounce the

treaty, and decline to abide by it, but they denounced the motives of

the Commissioners, declaring, seemingly without justification, that they

had ingratiated themselves with the Indians to further land speculations

of their own. [Footnote: Clay MSS. Jesse Benton to Thos. Hart, April 3,

1786.]

Violation of the Treaty.

As the settlers declined to pay any heed to the treaty the Indians

naturally became as discontented with it as the whites. In the following

summer the Cherokee chiefs made solemn complaint that, instead of

retiring from the disputed ground, the settlers had encroached yet

farther upon it, and had come to within five miles of the beloved town

of Chota. The chiefs added that they had now made several such treaties,

each of which established boundaries that were immediately broken, and

that indeed it had been their experience that after a treaty the whites

settled even faster on their lands than before. [Footnote: State

Department MSS., No. 56. Address of Corn Tassel and Hanging Maw, Sept.

5, 1786.] Just before this complaint was sent to Congress the same

chiefs had been engaged in negotiations with the settlers themselves,

who advanced radically different claims. The fact was that in this

unsettled time the bond of Governmental authority was almost as lax

among the whites as among the Indians, and the leaders on each side who

wished for peace were hopelessly unable to restrain their fellows who

did not. Under such circumstances, the sword, or rather the tomahawk,

was ultimately the only possible arbiter.

Treaties with Northwestern Indians.

The treaties entered into with the northwestern Indians failed for

precisely the opposite reason. The treaty at Hopewell promised so much

to the Indians that the whites refused to abide by its terms. In the

councils on the Ohio the Americans promised no more than they could and

did perform; but the Indians themselves broke the treaties at once, and

in all probability never for a moment intended to keep them, merely

signing from a greedy desire to get the goods they were given as an

earnest. They were especially anxious for spirits, for they far

surpassed even the white borderers in their crazy thirst for strong

drink. "We have smelled your liquor and it is very good; we hope you

will give us some little kegs to carry home," said the spokesmen of a

party of Chippewas, who had come from the upper Great Lakes. [Footnote:

_Do._, Letters of H. Knox, No. 150, vol. i., p. 445.] These frank

savages, speaking thus in behalf of their far northern brethren, uttered

what was in the minds of most of the Indians who attended the councils

held by the United States Commissioners. They came to see what they

could get, by begging, or by promising what they had neither the will

nor the power to perform. Many of them, as in the case of the Chippewas,

were from lands so remote that they felt no anxiety about white

encroachments, and were lured into hostile encounter with the Americans

chiefly by their own overmastering love of plunder and bloodshed.

Nevertheless, there were a few chiefs and men of note in the tribes who

sincerely wished peace. One of these was Cornplanter, the Iroquois. The

power of the Six Nations had steadily dwindled; moreover, they did not,

like the more western tribes, lie directly athwart the path which the

white advance was at the moment taking. Thus they were not drawn into

open warfare, but their continual uneasiness, and the influence they

still possessed with the other Indians, made it an object to keep on

friendly terms with them. Cornplanter, a valiant and able warrior, who

had both taken and given hard blows in warring against the Americans,

was among the chiefs and ambassadors who visited Fort Pitt during the

troubled lull in frontier war which succeeded the news of the peace of

1783. His speeches showed, as his deeds had already shown, in a high

degree, that loftiness of courage, and stern, uncomplaining acceptance

of the decrees of a hostile fate, which so often ennobled the otherwise

gloomy and repellent traits of the Indian character. He raised no plaint

over what had befallen his race; "the Great Spirit above directs us so

that whatever hath been said or done must be good and right," he said in

a spirit of strange fatalism well known to certain creeds, both

Christian and heathen. He was careful to dwell on the fact that in

addressing the representatives of "the Great Council who watch the

Thirteen Fires and keep them bright," he was anxious only to ward off

woe from the women and little ones of his people and was defiantly

indifferent to what might personally be before him. "As for me my life

is short, 't is already sold to the Great King over the water," he said.

But it soon appeared that the British agents had deceived him, telling

him that the peace was a mere temporary truce, and keeping concealed the

fact that under the treaty the British had ceded to the Americans all

rights over the Iroquois and western Indians, and over their land. Great

was his indignation when the actual text of the treaty was read him, and

he discovered the double-dealing of his far-off royal paymaster. In

commenting on it he showed that, like the rest of his race, he had been

much impressed by the striking uniforms of the British officers. He

evidently took it for granted that the head of these officers must own a

yet more striking uniform; and treachery seemed doubly odious in one who

possessed so much. "I assisted the great King," he said, "I fought his

battles, while he sat quietly in his forts; nor did I ever suspect that

so great a person, one too who wore a red coat sufficient of itself to

tempt one, could be guilty of such glaring falsehood." [Footnote: State

Dept. MSS., No. 56, March 7, 1786, p. 345, also p. 395.] After this

Cornplanter remained on good terms with the Americans and helped to keep

the Iroquois from joining openly in the war. The western tribes taunted

them because of this attitude. They sent them word in the fall of 1785

that once the Six Nations were a great people, but that now they had let

the Long Knife throw them; but that the western Indians would set them

on their feet again if they would join them; for "the western Indians

were determined to wrestle with Long Knife in the spring." [Footnote:

_Do._, No. 150, vol. i., Major Finley's Statement, Dec. 6, 1785.]

Failure of the Treaties.

Some of the Algonquin chiefs, notably Molunthee the Shawnee, likewise

sincerely endeavored to bring about a peace. But the western tribes as a

whole were bent on war. They were constantly excited and urged on by the

British partisan leaders, such as Simon Girty, Elliot, and Caldwell.

These leaders took part in the great Indian councils, at which even

tribes west of the Mississippi were represented; and though they spoke

without direct authority from the British commanders at the lake posts,

yet their words carried weight when they told the young red warriors

that it was better to run the risk of dying like men than of starving

like dogs. Many of the old men among the Wyandotes and Delawares spoke

against strife; but the young men were for war, and among the Shawnees,

the Wabash Indians, and the Miamis the hostile party was still stronger.

A few Indians would come to one of the forts and make a treaty on behalf

of their tribe, at the very moment that the other members of the same

tribe were murdering and ravaging among the exposed settlements or were

harrying the boats that went down the Ohio. All the tribes that entered

into the treaties of peace were represented among the different parties

of marauders. Over the outlaw bands there was no pretence of control;

and their successes, and the numerous scalps and quantities of plunder

they obtained, made them very dangerous examples to the hot-blooded

young warriors everywhere. Perhaps the most serious of all obstacles to

peace was the fact that the British still kept the lake posts.

[Footnote: _Do._, Letters of H. Knox, No. 150, vol. i., pp. 107, 112,

115, 123, 149, 243, 269, etc.]

The Indians who did come in to treat were sullen, and at first always

insisted on impossible terms. They would finally agree to mutual

concessions, would promise to keep their young men from marauding, and

to allow surveys to be made, provided the settlers were driven off all

lands which the Indians had not yielded; and after receiving many gifts,

would depart. The representatives of the Federal Government would then

at once set about performing their share of the agreement, the most

important part of which was the removal of the settlers who had built

cabins on the Indian lands west of the Ohio. The Federal authorities,

both military and civil, disliked the intruders as much as they did the

Indians, stigmatizing them as "a banditti who were a disgrace to human

nature." There was no unnecessary harshness exercised by the troops in

removing the trespassers; but the cabins were torn down and the sullen

settlers themselves were driven back across the river, though they

protested and threatened resistance. Again and again this was done; not

alone in the interest of the Indians, but in part also because Congress

wished to reserve the lands for sale, with the purpose of paying off the

public debt. At the same time surveying parties were sent out. But in

each case, no sooner had the Federal Commissioners and their

subordinates begun to perform their part of the agreement, than they

were stopped by tidings of fresh outrages on the part of the very

Indians with whom they had made the treaty; while the surveying parties

were driven in and forced to abandon their work. [Footnote: State Dept.

MSS., No. 30, p. 265; No. 56, p. 327; No. 163, pp. 416, 418, 422, 426.]

Both Sides Bent on War.

The truth was that while the Federal Government sincerely desired peace,

and strove to bring it about, the northwestern tribes were resolutely

bent on war; and the frontiersmen themselves showed nearly as much

inclination for hostilities as the Indians. [Footnote: _Do._, Indian

Affairs. Letter of P. Mühlenberg, July 5, 1784.] They were equally

anxious to intrude on the Government and on the Indian lands; for they

were adventurous, the lands were valuable, and they hated the Indians,

and looked down on the weak Federal authority. [Footnote: _Do._, Report

of H. Knox, April, 1787.] They often made what were legally worthless

"tomahawk claims," and objected almost as much as the Indians to the

work of the regular Government surveyors. [Footnote: _Do._, 150, vol.

ii., p. 548.] Even the men of note, men like George Rogers Clark, were

often engaged in schemes to encroach on the land north of the Ohio:

drawing on themselves the bitter reproaches not only of the Federal

authorities, but also of the Virginia Government, for their cruel

readiness to jeopardize the country by incurring the wrath of the

Indians. [Footnote: draper MSS. Benj. Harrison to G. R. Clark, August

19, 1784.] The more lawless whites were as little amenable to authority

as the Indians themselves; and at the very moment when a peace was being

negotiated one side or the other would commit some brutal murder. While

the chiefs and old Indians were delivering long-winded speeches to the

Peace Commissioners, bands of young braves committed horrible ravages

among the lonely settlements. [Footnote: State Dept. MSS., No. 56, pp.

279 and 333; No. 60, p. 297, etc.] Now a drunken Indian at Fort Pitt

murdered an innocent white man, the local garrison of regular troops

saving him with difficulty from being lynched [Footnote: Denny's

Journal, p. 259.]; now a band of white ruffians gathered to attack some

peaceable Indians who had come in to treat [Footnote: State Dept. MSS.,

No. 56, p. 255.]; again a white man murdered an unoffending Indian, and

was seized by a Federal officer, and thrown into chains, to the great

indignation of his brutal companions [Footnote: _Do_., No. 150, vol.

ii., p. 296.]; and yet again another white man murdered an Indian, and

escaped to the woods before he could be arrested. [Footnote: Draper MSS.

Clark, Croghan, and Others to Delawares, August 28, 1785.]

Bloodshed Begun.

Under such conditions the peace negotiations were doomed from the

outset. The truce on the border was of the most imperfect description;

murders and robberies by the Indians, and acts of vindictive retaliation

or aggression by the whites, occurred continually and steadily increased

in number. In 1784 a Cherokee of note, when sent to warn the intruding

settlers on the French Broad that they must move out of the land, was

shot and slain in a fight with a local militia captain. Cherokee war

bands had already begun to harry the frontier and infest the Kentucky

Wilderness Road. [Footnote: State Dept. MSS., No. 48, p. 277.] At the

same time the northwestern Indians likewise committed depredations, and

were only prevented from making a general league against the whites by

their own internal dissensions--the Chickasaws and Kickapoos being

engaged in a desperate war. [Footnote: _Do_., Mühlenberg's Letter.] The

Wabash Indians were always threatening hostilities. The Shawnees for

some time observed a precarious peace, and even, in accordance with

their agreement, brought in and surrendered a few white prisoners; and

among the Delawares and Wyandots there was also a strong friendly party;

but in all three tribes the turbulent element was never under real

control, and it gradually got the upper hand. Meanwhile the Georgians

and Creeks in the south were having experiences of precisely the same

kind--treaties fraudulently procured by the whites, or fraudulently

entered into and violated by the Indians; encroachments by white

settlers on Indian lands, and bloody Indian forays among the peaceful

settlements. [Footnote: _Do_., No. 73, pp. 7, 343. Gazette of the State

of Georgia, Aug. 5, 1784, May 25, June 1, Nov. 2, Nov. 30, 1786.]

The more far-sighted and resolute among all the Indians, northern and

southern, began to strive for a general union against the Americans.

[Footnote: _Do_., No. 20, pp. 321 and 459; No. 18, p. 140; No. 12, vol.

ii., June 30. 1786.] In 1786 the northwestern Indians almost formed such

a union. Two thousand warriors gathered at the Shawnee towns and agreed

to take up the hatchet against the Americans; British agents were

present at the council; and even before the council was held, war

parties were bringing into the Shawnee towns the scalps of American

settlers, and prisoners, both men and women, who were burned at the

stake. [Footnote: _Do_., No. 60, p. 277, Sept. 13, 1786.] But the

jealousy and irresolution of the tribes prevented the actual formation

of a league.

The Federal Government still feebly hoped for peace; and in the vain

endeavors to avoid irritating the Indians forbade all hostile

expeditions into the Indian country--though these expeditions offered

the one hope of subduing the savages and preventing their inroads. By

1786 the settlers generally, including all their leaders, such as Clark,

[Footnote: _Do_., No. 50, p. 279. Clark to R. H. Lee.] had become

convinced that the treaties were utterly futile, and that the only right

policy was one of resolute war.

The War Inevitable.

In truth the war was unavoidable. The claims and desires of the two

parties were irreconcilable. Treaties and truces were palliatives which

did not touch the real underlying trouble. The white settlers were

unflinchingly bent on seizing the land over which the Indians roamed but

which they did not in any true sense own or occupy. In return the

Indians were determined at all costs and hazards to keep the men of

chain and compass, and of axe and rifle, and the forest-felling settlers

who followed them, out of their vast and lonely hunting-grounds. Nothing

but the actual shock of battle could decide the quarrel. The display of

overmastering, overwhelming force might have cowed the Indians; but it

was not possible for the United States, or for any European power, ever

to exert or display such force far beyond the limits of the settled

country. In consequence the warlike tribes were not then, and never have

been since, quelled save by actual hard fighting, until they were

overawed by the settlement of all the neighboring lands.

Nor was there any alternative to these Indian wars. It is idle folly to

speak of them as being the fault of the United States Government; and it

is even more idle to say that they could have been averted by treaty.

Here and there, under exceptional circumstances or when a given tribe

was feeble and unwarlike, the whites might gain the ground by a treaty

entered into of their own free will by the Indians, without the least

duress; but this was not possible with warlike and powerful tribes when

once they realized that they were threatened with serious encroachment

on their hunting-grounds. Moreover, looked at from the standpoint of the

ultimate result, there was little real difference to the Indian whether

the land was taken by treaty or by war. In the end the Delaware fared no

better at the hands of the Quaker than the Wampanoag at the hands of the

Puritan; the methods were far more humane in the one case than in the

other, but the outcome was the same in both. No treaty could be

satisfactory to the whites, no treaty served the needs of humanity and

civilization, unless it gave the land to the Americans as unreservedly

as any successful war.

Our Dealings with the Indians.

As a matter of fact, the lands we have won from the Indians have been

won as much by treaty as by war; but it was almost always war, or else

the menace and possibility of war, that secured the treaty. In these

treaties we have been more than just to the Indians; we have been

abundantly generous, for we have paid them many times what they were

entitled to; many times what we would have paid any civilized people

whose claim was as vague and shadowy as theirs. By war or threat of war,

or purchase we have won from great civilized nations, from France,

Spain, Russia, and Mexico, immense tracts of country already peopled by

many tens of thousands of families; we have paid many millions of

dollars to these nations for the land we took; but for every dollar thus

paid to these great and powerful civilized commonwealths, we have paid

ten, for lands less valuable, to the chiefs and warriors of the red

tribes. No other conquering and colonizing nation has ever treated the

original savage owners of the soil with such generosity as has the

United States. Nor is the charge that the treaties with the Indians have

been broken, of weight in itself; it depends always on the individual

case. Many of the treaties were kept by the whites and broken by the

Indians; others were broken by the whites themselves; and sometimes

those who broke them did very wrong indeed, and sometimes they did

right. No treaties, whether between civilized nations or not, can ever

be regarded as binding in perpetuity; with changing conditions,

circumstances may arise which render it not only expedient, but

imperative and honorable, to abrogate them.

Necessity of the Conquest.

Whether the whites won the land by treaty, by armed conquest, or, as was

actually the case, by a mixture of both, mattered comparatively little

so long as the land was won. It was all-important that it should be won,

for the benefit of civilization and in the interests of mankind. It is

indeed a warped, perverse, and silly morality which would forbid a

course of conquest that has turned whole continents into the seats of

mighty and flourishing civilized nations. All men of sane and wholesome

thought must dismiss with impatient contempt the plea that these

continents should be reserved for the use of scattered savage tribes,

whose life was but a few degrees less meaningless, squalid, and

ferocious than that of the wild beasts with whom they held joint

ownership. It is as idle to apply to savages the rules of international

morality which obtain between stable and cultured communities, as it

would be to judge the fifth-century English conquest of Britain by the

standards of today. Most fortunately, the hard, energetic, practical men

who do the rough pioneer work of civilization in barbarous lands, are

not prone to false sentimentality. The people who are, are the people

who stay at home. Often these stay-at-homes are too selfish and

indolent, too lacking in imagination, to understand the race-importance

of the work which is done by their pioneer brethren in wild and distant

lands; and they judge them by standards which would only be applicable

to quarrels in their own townships and parishes. Moreover, as each new

land grows old, it misjudges the yet newer lands, as once it was itself

misjudged. The home-staying Englishman of Britain grudges to the

Africander his conquest of Matabeleland; and so the home-staying

American of the Atlantic States dislikes to see the western miners and

cattlemen win for the use of their people the Sioux hunting-grounds.

Nevertheless, it is the men actually on the borders of the longed-for

ground, the men actually in contact with the savages, who in the end

shape their own destinies.

Righteousness of the War.

The most ultimately righteous of all wars is a war with savages, though

it is apt to be also the most terrible and inhuman. The rude, fierce

settler who drives the savage from the land lays all civilized mankind

under a debt to him. American and Indian, Boer and Zulu, Cossack and

Tartar, New Zealander and Maori,--in each case the victor, horrible

though many of his deeds are, has laid deep the foundations for the

future greatness of a mighty people. The consequences of struggles for

territory between civilized nations seem small by comparison. Looked at

from the standpoint of the ages, it is of little moment whether Lorraine

is part of Germany or of France, whether the northern Adriatic cities

pay homage to Austrian Kaiser or Italian King; but it is of incalculable

importance that America, Australia, and Siberia should pass out of the

hands of their red, black, and yellow aboriginal owners, and become the

heritage of the dominant world races.

Horrors of the War.

Yet the very causes which render this struggle between savagery and the

rough front rank of civilization so vast and elemental in its

consequence to the future of the world, also tend to render it in

certain ways peculiarly revolting and barbarous. It is primeval warfare,

and it is waged as war was waged in the ages of bronze and of iron. All

the merciful humanity that even war has gained during the last two

thousand years is lost. It is a warfare where no pity is shown to

non-combatants, where the weak are harried without ruth, and the

vanquished maltreated with merciless ferocity. A sad and evil feature of

such warfare is that the whites, the representatives of civilization,

speedily sink almost to the level of their barbarous foes, in point of

hideous brutality. The armies are neither led by trained officers nor

made up of regular troops--they are composed of armed settlers, fierce

and wayward men, whose ungovernable passions are unrestrained by

discipline, who have many grievous wrongs to redress, and who look on

their enemies with a mixture of contempt and loathing, of dread and

intense hatred. When the clash comes between these men and their sombre

foes, too often there follow deeds of enormous, of incredible, of

indescribable horror. It is impossible to dwell without a shudder on the

monstrous woe and misery of such a contest.

The Lake Posts.

The men of Kentucky and of the infant Northwest would have found their

struggle with the Indians dangerous enough in itself; but there was an

added element of menace in the fact that back of the Indians stood the

British. It was for this reason that the frontiersmen grew to regard as

essential to their well-being the possession of the lake posts; so that

it became with them a prime object to wrest from the British, whether by

force of arms or by diplomacy, the forts they held at Niagara, Detroit,

and Michilimakinac. Detroit was the most important, for it served as the

headquarters of the western Indians, who formed for the time being the

chief bar to American advance. The British held the posts with a strong

grip, in the interest of their traders and merchants. To them the land

derived its chief importance from the fur trade. This was extremely

valuable, and, as it steadily increased in extent and importance, the

consequence of Detroit, the fitting-out town for the fur traders, grew

in like measure. It was the centre of a population of several thousand

Canadians, who lived by the chase and by the rude cultivation of their

long, narrow farms; and it was held by a garrison of three or four

hundred British regulars, with auxiliary bands of American loyalist and

French Canadian rangers, and, above all, with a formidable but

fluctuating reserve force of Indian allies. [Footnote: Haldimand Papers,

1784, 5, 6.]

The British Aid the Indians.

It was to the interest of the British to keep the American settlers out

of the land; and therefore their aims were at one with those of the

Indians. All the tribes between the Ohio and the Missouri were

subsidized by them, and paid them a precarious allegiance. Fickle,

treacherous, and ferocious, the Indians at times committed acts of

outrage even on their allies, so that these allies had to be ever on

their guard; and the tribes were often at war with one another. War

interrupted trade and cut down profits, and the British endeavored to

keep the different tribes at peace among themselves, and even with the

Americans. Moreover they always discouraged barbarities, and showed what

kindness was in their power to any unfortunate prisoners whom the

Indians happened to bring to their posts. But they helped the Indians in

all ways save by open military aid to keep back the American settlers.

They wished a monopoly of the fur trade; and they endeavored to prevent

the Americans from coming into their settlements. [Footnote: _Do._ John

Hay to Haldimand, Aug. 13, 1784; James McNeil, Aug 1 1785.] English

officers and agents attended the Indian councils, endeavored to attach

the tribes to the British interests, and encouraged them to stand firm

against the Americans and to insist upon the Ohio as the boundary

between the white man and the red. [Footnote: _Do._ Letter of A. McKee,

Dec. 24, 1786; McKee to Sir John Johnson, Feb. 25, 1786; Major Ancrum,

May 8, 1786.] The Indians received counsel and advice from the British,

and drew from them both arms and munitions of war, and while the higher

British officers were usually careful to avoid committing any overt

breach of neutrality, the reckless partisan leaders sought to inflame

the Indians against the Americans, and even at times accompanied their

war parties.

Life at a Frontier Post.

The life led at a frontier post like Detroit was marked by sharp

contrasts. The forest round about was cleared away, though blackened

stumps still dotted the pastures, orchards, and tilled fields. The town

itself was composed mainly of the dwellings of the French _habitans_;

some of them were mere hovels, others pretty log cottages, all swarming

with black-eyed children; while the stoutly-made, swarthy men, at once

lazy and excitable, strolled about the streets in their picturesque and

bright-colored blanket suits. There were also a few houses of loyalist

refugees; implacable Tories, stalwart men, revengeful, and goaded by the

memory of many wrongs done and many suffered, who proved the worst

enemies of their American kinsfolk. The few big roomy buildings, which

served as storehouses and residences for the merchants, were built not

only for the storage of goods and peltries, but also as strongholds in

case of attack. The heads of the mercantile houses were generally

Englishmen; but the hardy men who traversed the woods for months and for

seasons, to procure furs from the Indians, were for the most part

French. The sailors, both English and French, who manned the vessels on

the lakes formed another class. The rough earthworks and stockades of

the fort were guarded by a few light guns. Within, the red-coated

regulars held sway, their bright uniforms varied here and there by the

dingy hunting-shirt, leggings, and fur cap of some Tory ranger or French

partisan leader. Indians lounged about the fort, the stores, and the

houses, begging, or gazing stolidly at the troops as they drilled, at

the creaking carts from the outlying farms as they plied through the

streets, at the driving to and fro from pasture of the horses and milch

cows, or at the arrival of a vessel from Niagara or a brigade of

fur-laden bateaux from the upper lakes.

The Indians.

In their paint and their cheap, dirty finery, these savages did not look

very important; yet it was because of them that the British kept up

their posts in these far-off forests, beside these great lonely waters;

it was for their sakes that they tried to stem the inrush of the

settlers of their own blood and tongue; for it was their presence alone

which served to keep the wilderness as a game preserve for the fur

merchants; it was their prowess in war which prevented French village

and British garrison from being lapped up like drops of water before the

fiery rush of the American advance. The British themselves, though

fighting with and for them, loved them but little; like all

frontiersmen, they soon grew to look down on their mean and trivial

lives,--lives which nevertheless strongly attracted white men of evil

and shiftless, but adventurous, natures, and to which white children,

torn from their homes and brought up in the wigwams, became passionately

attached. Yet back of the lazy and drunken squalor lay an element of the

terrible, all the more terrible because it could not be reckoned with.

Dangerous and treacherous allies, upon whom no real dependence could

ever placed, the Indians were nevertheless the most redoubtable of all

foes when the war was waged in their own gloomy woodlands.

The British Officers

At such a post those standing high in authority were partly civil

officials, partly army officers. Of the former, some represented the

provincial government, and others acted for the fur companies. They had

much to do, both in governing the French townsfolk and countryfolk, in

keeping the Indians friendly, and in furthering the peculiar commerce on

which the settlements subsisted. But the important people were the army

officers. These were imperious, able, resolute men, well drilled, and

with a high military standard of honor. They upheld with jealous pride

the reputation of an army which in that century proved again and again

that on stricken fields no soldiery of continental Europe could stand

against it. They wore a uniform which for the last two hundred years has

been better known than any other wherever the pioneers of civilization

tread the world's waste spaces or fight their way to the overlordship of

barbarous empires; a uniform known to the southern and the northern

hemispheres, the eastern and the western continents, and all the islands

of the sea. Subalterns wearing this uniform have fronted dangers and

responsibilities such as in most other services only gray-headed

generals are called upon to face; and, at the head of handfuls of

troops, have won for the British crown realms as large, and often as

populous, as European kingdoms. The scarlet-clad officers who serve the

monarchy of Great Britain have conquered many a barbarous people in all

the ends of the earth, and hold for their sovereign the lands of Moslem

and Hindoo, of Tartar and Arab and Pathan, of Malay, Negro, and

Polynesian. In many a war they have overcome every European rival

against whom they have been pitted. Again and again they have marched to

victory against Frenchman and Spaniard through the sweltering heat of

the tropics; and now, from the stupendous mountain masses of mid Asia,

they look northward through the wintry air, ready to bar the advance of

the legions of the Czar. Hitherto they have never gone back save once;

they have failed only when they sought to stop the westward march of a

mighty nation, a nation kin to theirs, a nation of their own tongue and

law, and mainly of their own blood.

The Frontiersmen and the British.

The British officers and the American border leaders found themselves

face to face in the wilderness as rivals of one another. Sundered by

interest and ambition, by education and the habits of thought,

trained to widely different ways of looking at life, and with the

memories of the hostile past fresh in their minds, they were in no humor

to do justice to one another. Each side regarded the other with jealousy

and dislike, and often with bitter hatred. Each often unwisely scorned

the other. Each kept green in mind the wrongs suffered at the other's

hands, and remembered every discreditable fact in the other's recent

history--every failure, every act of cruelty or stupidity, every deed

that could be held as the consequence of the worst moral and mental

shortcomings. Neither could appreciate the other's many and real

virtues. The policies for which they warred were hostile and

irreconcilable; the interests of the nations they represented were, as

regards the northwestern wilderness, not only incompatible but

diametrically opposed. The commanders of the British posts, and the men

who served under them, were moved by a spirit of stern loyalty to the

empire, the honor of whose flag they upheld, and endeavored faithfully

to carry out the behests of those who shaped that empire's destinies; in

obedience to the will of their leaders at home they warred to keep the

Northwest a wilderness, tenanted only by the Indian hunter and the white

fur trader. The American frontiersmen warred to make this wilderness the

heart of the greatest of all Republics; they obeyed the will of no

superior, they were not urged onward by any action of the supreme

authorities of the land; they were moved only by the stirring ambition

of a masterful people, who saw before them a continent which they

claimed as their heritage. The Americans succeeded, the British failed;

for the British fought against the stars in their courses, while the

Americans battled on behalf of the destiny of the race.

Between the two sets of rivals lay leagues on leagues of forest, in

which the active enemies of the Americans lived and hunted and marched

to war. The British held the posts on the lakes; the frontiersmen held

the land south of the Ohio. In the wilderness between dwelt the

Shawnees, Wyandots, and Delawares, the Wabash Indians, the Miamis, and

many others; and they had as allies all the fiercest and most

adventurous of the tribes farther off, the Chippewas, the Winnebagos,

the Sacs and Foxes. On the side of the whites the war was still urged by

irregular levies of armed frontiersmen. The Federal garrisons on the

Ohio were as yet too few and feeble to be of much account; and in the

south, where the conflict was against Creek and Cherokee, there were no

regular troops whatever.

Indian Inroads.

The struggle was at first one of aggression on the part of the

northwestern Indians. They were angered and alarmed at the surveyors and

the few reckless would-be settlers, who had penetrated their country;

but there was no serious encroachment on their lands, and Congress for

some time forbade any expedition being carried on against them in their

home. They themselves made no one formidable attack, sent no one

overmastering force against the whites. But bands of young braves from

all the tribes began to cross the Ohio, and ravage the settlements, from

the Pennsylvania frontier to Kentucky. They stole horses, burned houses,

and killed or carried into a dreadful captivity men, women, and

children. The inroads were as usual marked by stealth, rapine, and

horrible cruelty. It is hard for those accustomed only to treat of

civilized warfare to realize the intolerable nature of these ravages,

the fact that the loss and damage to the whites was out of all

proportion to the strength of the Indian war parties, and the extreme

difficulty in dealing an effective counter stroke.

The immense tangled forests increased beyond measure the difficulties of

the problem. Under their shelter the Indians were able to attack at will

and without warning, and though they would fight to the death against

any odds when cornered, they invariably strove to make their attacks on

the most helpless, on those who were powerless to resist. It was not the

armed frontier levies, it was the immigrants coming in by pack train or

by flat boat,--it was the unsuspecting settlers with their wives and

little ones who had most to fear from an Indian fray; while, when once

the blow was delivered, the savages vanished as smoke vanishes in the

open. A small war party could thus work untold harm in a district

precisely as a couple of man-eating jaguars may depopulate a forest

village in tropical America; and many men and much time had to be spent

before they could be beaten into submission, exactly as it needs a great

hunting party to drive from their fastness and slay the big man-eating

cats, though, if they came to bay in the open, they could readily be

killed by a single skilful and resolute hunter.

Warfare of the Settlers.

Each settlement or group of settlements had to rely on the prowess of

its own hunter-soldiers for safety. The real war, the war in which by

far the greatest loss was suffered by both sides, was that thus waged

man against man. These innumerable and infinitely varied skirmishes, as

petty as they were bloody, were not so decisive at the moment as the

campaigns against the gathered tribes, but were often more important in

their ultimate results. Under the incessant strain of the incessant

warfare there arose here and there Indian fighters of special note, men

who warred alone, or at the head of small parties of rangers, and who

not only defended the settlements, but kept the Indian villages and the

Indian war parties in constant dread by their vengeful retaliatory

inroads. These men became the peculiar heroes of the frontier, and their

names were household words in the log cabins of the children, and

children's children, of their contemporaries. They were warriors of the

type of the rude champions who in the ages long past hunted the mammoth

and the aurochs, and smote one another with stone-headed axes; their

feats of ferocious personal prowess were of the kind that gave honor and

glory to the mighty men of time primeval. Their deeds were not put into

books while the men themselves lived; they were handed down by

tradition, and grew dim and vague in the recital. What one fierce

partisan leader had done might dwindle or might grow in the telling or

might finally be ascribed to some other; or else the same feat was

twisted into such varying shapes that it became impossible to recognize

which was nearest the truth, or what man had performed it.

The Border Leaders.

Often in dealing with the adventures of one of these old-time border

warriors--Kenton, Wetzel, Brady, Mansker, Castleman,--all we can say is

that some given feat was commonly attributed to him, but may have been

performed by somebody else, or indeed may only have been the kind of

feat which might at any time have been performed by men of his stamp.

Thus one set of traditions ascribe to Brady an adventure in which when

bound to a stake, he escaped by suddenly throwing an Indian child into

the fire, and dashing off unhurt in the confusion; but other traditions

ascribe the feat not to Brady, but to some other wild hunter of the day.

Again one of the favorite tales of Brady is his escape from a band of

pursuing Indians, by an extraordinary leap across a deep ravine, at the

bottom of which flowed a rapid stream; but in some traditions this leap

appears as made by another frontier hero, or even by an Indian whom

Brady himself was pursuing. It is therefore a satisfaction to come

across, now and then, some feat which is attested by contemporaneous

testimony. There is such contemporary record for one of Brady's deeds,

which took place towards the close of the Revolutionary war.

Brady's Feats.

Brady had been on a raid in the Indian country and was returning. His

party had used all their powder and had scattered, each man going

towards his own home, as they had nearly reached the settlements. Only

three men were left with Brady, the four had but one charge of powder

apiece, and even this had been wet in crossing a stream, though it had

been carefully dried afterwards. They had with them a squaw whom they

had captured. When not far from home they ran into a party of seven

Indians, likewise returning from a raid, and carrying with them as

prisoners a woman and her child. Brady spied the Indians first and

instantly resolved to attack them, trusting that they would be

panic-struck and flee; though after a single discharge of their rifles

he and his men would be left helpless. Slipping ahead he lay in ambush

until the Indians were close up. He then fired, killing the leader,

whereat the others fled in terror, leaving the woman and child. In the

confusion, however, the captive squaw also escaped and succeeded in

joining the fleeing savages, to whom she told the small number and woful

plight of their assailants; and they at once turned to pursue them.

Brady, however, had made good use of the time gained, and was in full

flight with his two rescued prisoners; and before he was overtaken he

encountered a party of whites who were themselves following the trail of

the marauders. He at once turned and in company with them hurried after

the Indians; but the latter were wary, and, seeing the danger, scattered

and vanished in the gloomy woodland. The mother and child, thus rescued

from a fearful fate, reached home in safety. The letter containing the

account of this deed continues: "This young officer, Captain Brady, has

great merit as a partizan in the woods. He has had the address to

surprise and beat the Indians three different times since I came to the

Department--he is brave, vigilant, and successful." [Footnote: Draper

MSS. Alex. Fowler to Edward Hand, Pittsburgh, July 22, 1780.]

For a dozen years after the close of the Revolution Brady continued to

be a tower of strength to the frontier settlers of Pennsylvania and

Virginia. At the head of his rangers he harassed the Indians greatly,

interfering with and assailing their war parties, and raiding on their

villages and home camps. Like his foes he warred by ambush and surprise.

Among the many daring backwoodsmen who were his followers and companions

the traditions pay particular heed to one Phouts, "a stout, thick

Dutchman of uncommon strength and activity."

In spite of the counter strokes of the wild wood-rangers, the Indian

ravages speedily wrapped the frontier in fire and blood. In such a war

the small parties were really the most dangerous, and in the aggregate

caused most damage. It is less of a paradox than it seems, to say that

one reason why the Indians were so formidable in warfare was because

they were so few in numbers. Had they been more numerous they would

perforce have been tillers of the soil, and it would have been far

easier for the whites to get at them. They were able to wage a war so

protracted and murderous, only because of their extreme elusiveness.

There was little chance to deliver a telling blow at enemies who had

hardly anything of value to destroy, who were so comparatively few in

number that they could subsist year in and year out on game, and whose

mode of life rendered them as active, stealthy, cautious, and ferocious

as so many beasts of prey.

Ravages in Kentucky.

Though the frontiers of Pennsylvania and of Virginia proper suffered

much, Kentucky suffered more. The murderous inroads of the Indians at

about the close of the Revolutionary war caused a mortality such as

could not be paralleled save in a community struck down by some awful

pestilence; and though from thence on our affairs mended, yet for many

years the most common form of death was death at the hands of the

Indians. A resident in Kentucky, writing to a friend, dwelt on the need

of a system of vestries to take care of the orphans, who, as things

were, were left solely to private charity; though, continues the writer,

"of all countries I am acquainted with this abounds most with these

unhappy objects." [Footnote: Draper MSS., Clark MSS. Darrell to Fleming,

April 14, 1783.]

Attacks on Incoming Settlers.

The roving war bands infested the two routes by which the immigrants

came into the country; for the companies of immigrants could usually be

taken at a disadvantage, and yielded valuable plunder. The parties who

travelled the Wilderness Road were in danger of ambush by day and of

onslaught by night. But there was often some protection for them, for

whenever the savages became very bold, bodies of Kentucky militia were

sent to patrol the trail, and these not only guarded the trains of

incomers, but kept a sharp look-out for Indian signs, and, if any were

found, always followed and, if possible, fought and scattered the

marauders.

The Indians who watched the river-route down the Ohio had much less to

fear in the way of pursuit by, or interference from, the frontier

militia; although they too were now and then followed, overtaken, and

vanquished. While in midstream the boats were generally safe, though

occasionally the savages grew so bold that they manned flotillas of

canoes and attacked the laden flat-boats in open day. But when any party

landed, or wherever the current swept a boat inshore, within rifle range

of the tangled forest on the banks, there was always danger. The white

riflemen, huddled together with their women, children, and animals on

the scows, were utterly unable to oppose successful resistance to foes

who shot them down at leisure, while themselves crouching in the

security of their hiding-places. The Indians practised all kinds of

tricks and stratagems to lure their victims within reach. A favorite

device was to force some miserable wretch whom they had already captured

to appear alone on the bank when a boat came in sight, signal to it, and

implore those on board to come to his rescue and take him off; the decoy

inventing some tale of wreck or of escape from Indians to account for

his presence. If the men in the boat suffered themselves to be overcome

by compassion and drew inshore, they were sure to fall victims to their

sympathy.

The boat once assailed and captured, the first action of the Indians was

to butcher all the wounded. If there was any rum or whiskey on board

they drank it, feasted on the provisions, and took whatever goods they

could carry off. They then set off through the woods with their

prisoners for distant Indian villages near the lakes. They travelled

fast, and mercilessly tomahawked the old people, the young children, and

the women with child, as soon as their strength failed under the strain

of the toil and hardship and terror. When they had reached their

villages they usually burned some of their captives and made slaves of

the others, the women being treated as the concubines of their captors,

and the children adopted by the families who wished them. Of the

captives a few might fall into the hands of friendly traders, or of the

British officers at Detroit; a few might escape, or be ransomed by their

kinsfolk, or be surrendered in consequence of some treaty. The others

succumbed to the perils of their new life, or gradually sank into a

state of stolid savagery.

Forays on the Settlements.

Naturally the ordinary Indian foray was directed against the settlements

themselves; and of course the settlements of the frontier, as it

continually shifted westward, were those which bore the brunt of the

attack and served as a shield for the more thickly peopled and peaceful

region behind. Occasionally a big war party of a hundred warriors or

over would come prepared for a stroke against some good-sized village or

fort; but, as a rule, the Indians came in small bands, numbering from a

couple to a dozen or score of individuals. Entirely unencumbered by

baggage or by impediments of any kind, such a band lurked through the

woods, leaving no trail, camping wherever night happened to overtake it,

and travelling whithersoever it wished. The ravages committed by these

skulking parties of murderous braves were monotonous in their horror.

All along the frontier the people on the outlying farms were ever in

danger, and there was risk for the small hamlets and block-houses. In

their essentials the attacks were alike: the stealthy approach, the

sudden rush, with its accompaniment of yelling war-whoops, the butchery

of men, women, and children, and the hasty flight with whatever

prisoners were for the moment spared, before the armed neighbors could

gather for rescue and revenge.

In most cases there was no record of the outrage; it was not put into

any book; and, save among the survivors, all remembrance of it vanished

as the logs of the forsaken cabin rotted and crumbled.

Incidents of the War on the Frontier.

Yet tradition, or some chance written record kept alive the memory of

some of these incidents, and a few such are worth reciting, if only to

show what this warfare of savage and settler really was. Most of the

tales deal merely with some piece of unavenged butchery.

In 1785, on June 29th, the house of a settler named Scott, in Washington

County, Virginia, was attacked. The Indians, thirteen in number, burst

in the door just as the family were going to bed. Scott was shot; his

wife was seized and held motionless, while all her four children were

tomahawked, and their throats cut, the blood spouting over her clothes.

The Indians loaded themselves with plunder, and, taking with them the

wretched woman, moved off, and travelled all night. Next morning each

man took his share and nine of the party went down to steal horses on

the Clinch. The remaining four roamed off through the woods, and ten

days later the woman succeeded in making her escape. For a month she

wandered alone in the forest, living on the young cane and sassafras,

until, spent and haggard with the horror and the hardship, she at last

reached a small frontier settlement.

At about the same time three girls, sisters, walking together near

Wheeling Creek, were pounced upon by a small party of Indians. After

going a short distance the Indians halted, talked together for a few

moments, and then without any warning a warrior turned and tomahawked

one of the girls. The second instantly shared the same fate; the third

jerked away from the Indian who held her, darted up a bank, and,

extraordinary to relate, eluded her pursuer, and reached her home in

safety. Another family named Doolin, suffered in the same year; and

there was one singular circumstance connected with their fate. The

Indians came to the door of the cabin in the early morning; as the man

rose from bed the Indians fired through the door and shot him in the

thigh. They then burst in, and tomahawked him and two children; yet for

reasons unknown they did not harm the woman, nor the child in her arms.

No such mercy was shown by a band of six Indians who attacked the log

houses of two settlers, brothers, named Edward and Thomas Cunningham.

The two cabins stood side by side, the chinks between the logs allowing

those in one to see what was happening in the other. One June evening,

in 1785, both families were at supper. Thomas was away. His wife and

four children were sitting at the table when a huge savage slipped in

through the open door. Edward in the adjoining cabin, saw him enter, and

seized his rifle. The Indian fired at him through a chink in the wall,

but missed him, and, being afraid to retreat through the door, which

would have brought him within range of Edward's rifle, he seized an axe

and began to chop out an opening in the rear wall. Another Indian made a

dash for the door, but was shot down by Edward; however, he managed to

get over the fence and out of range. Meanwhile the mother and her four

children remained paralyzed with fear until the Indian inside the room

had cut a hole through the wall. He then turned, brained one of the

children with his tomahawk, threw the body out into the yard through the

opening, and motioned to her to follow it. In mortal fear she obeyed,

stepping out over the body of one of her children, with two others

screaming beside her, and her baby in her arms. Once outside he scalped

the murdered boy, and set fire to the house, and then drove the woman

and the remaining children to a knoll where the wounded Indian lay with

the others around him. The Indians hoped the flames would destroy both

cabins; but Edward Cunningham and his son went into their loft, and

threw off the boards of the roof, as they kindled, escaping unharmed

from the shots fired at them; and so, though scorched by the flame and

choked by the smoke, they saved their house and their lives. Seeing the

failure of their efforts the savages then left, first tomahawking and

scalping the two elder children. The shuddering mother, with her baby,

was taken along with them to a cave, in which they hid her and the

wounded Indian; and then with untold fatigue, hardship, and suffering,

for her brutal captors gave her for food only a few papaw nuts and the

head of a wild turkey, she was taken to the Indian towns. Some months

afterwards Simon Girty ransomed her and sent her and tried to follow the

trail; but the crafty forest warriors had concealed it with such care

that no effective pursuit could be made.

Retaliation of the Settlers.

In none of the above-mentioned raids did the Indians suffer any loss of

life, and in none was there any successful pursuit. But in one instance

in this same year and same neighborhood the assailed settlers

retaliated, with effect. It was near Wheeling. A lad named John Wetzel,

one of a noted border family of coarse, powerful, illiterate Indian

fighters, had gone out from the fortified village in which his kinsfolk

were living to hunt horses. Another boy went with him. There were

several stray horses, one being a mare which belonged to Wetzel's

sister, with a colt, and the girl had promised him the colt if he would

bring the mare back. The two boys were vigorous young fellows,

accustomed to life in the forest, and they hunted high and low, and

finally heard the sound of horse-bells in a thicket. Running joyfully

forward they fell into the hands of four Indians, who had caught the

horses and tied them in the thicket, so that by the tinkling of their

bells they might lure into the ambush any man who came out to hunt them

up. Young Wetzel made a dash for liberty, but received a shot which

broke his arm, and then surrendered and cheerfully accompanied his

captors; while his companion, totally unnerved, hung back crying, and

was promptly tomahawked. Early next morning the party struck the Ohio,

at a point where there was a clearing. The cabins on this clearing were

deserted, the settlers having taken refuge in a fort because of the

Indian ravages; but the stock had been left running in the woods. One of

the Indians shot a hog and tossed it into a canoe they had hidden under

the bank. The captive was told to enter the canoe and lie down; three

Indians then got in, while the fourth started to swim the stolen horses

across the river.

Fortunately for the captured boy three of the settlers had chosen this

day to return to the abandoned clearing and look after the loose stock.

They reached the place shortly after the Indians, and just in time to

hear the report of the rifle when the hog was shot. The owner of the

hogs, instead of suspecting that there were Indians near by, jumped to

the conclusion that a Kentucky boat had landed, and that the immigrants

were shooting his hogs--for the people who drifted down the Ohio in

boats were not, when hungry, over-scrupulous concerning the right to

stray live stock. Running forward, the three men had almost reached the

river, when they heard the loud snorting of one of the horses as it was

forced into the water. As they came out on the bank they saw the canoe,

with three Indians in it, and in the bottom four rifles, the dead hog,

and young Wetzel stretched at full length; the Indian in the stern was

just pushing off from the shore with his paddle; the fourth Indian was

swimming the horses a few yards from shore. Immediately the foremost

white man threw up his rifle and shot the paddler dead; and a second

later one of his companions coming up, killed in like fashion the Indian

in the bow of the canoe. The third Indian, stunned by the sudden

onslaught, sat as if numb, never so much as lifting one of the rifles

that lay at his feet, and in a minute he too was shot and fell over the

side of the canoe, but grasped the gunwale with one hand, keeping

himself afloat. Young Wetzel, in the bottom of the canoe, would have

shared the same fate, had he not cried out that he was white and a

prisoner; whereupon they bade him knock loose the Indian's hand from the

side of the canoe. This he did, and the Indian sank. The current carried

the canoe on a rocky spit of land, and Wetzel jumped out and waded

ashore, while the little craft spun off and again drifted towards

midstream. One of the men on shore now fired at the only remaining

Indian, who was still swimming his horse for the opposite bank. The

bullet splashed the water on his naked skin, whereat he slipped off his

horse, swam to the empty canoe, and got into it. Unhurt he reached the

farther shore, where he leaped out and caught the horse as it swam to

land, mounted it, rifle in hand, turned to yell defiance at his foes,

and then vanished in the forest-shrouded wilderness. He left behind him

the dead bodies of his three friends, to be washed on the shallows by

the turbid flood of the great river. [Footnote: De Haas, pp. 283-292. De

Haas gathered the facts of these and numerous similar incidents from the

pioneers themselves in their old age; doubtless they are often

inaccurate in detail, but on the whole De Haas has more judgment and may

be better trusted than the other compilers. In the Draper MSS. are

volumes of such traditional stories, gathered with no discrimination

whatever.]

Monotonous Horror of the Ravages.

These are merely some of the recorded incidents which occurred in the

single year 1785, in one comparatively small portion of the vast stretch

of territory which then formed the Indian frontier. Many such occurred

on all parts of this frontier in each of the terrible years of Indian

warfare. They varied infinitely in detail, but they were monotonously

alike in their characteristics of stealthy approach, of sudden onfall,

and of butcherly cruelty; and there was also a terrible sameness in the

brutality and ruthlessness with which the whites, as occasion offered,

wreaked their revenge. Generally the Indian war parties were successful,

and suffered comparatively little, making their attacks by surprise, and

by preference on unarmed men cumbered with women and children.

Occasionally they were beaten back; occasionally parties of settlers or

hunters stumbled across and scattered the prowling bands; occasionally

the Indian villages suffered from retaliatory inroads.

Attack on the Lincoln Family.

One attack, simple enough in its incidents, deserves notice for other

reasons. In 1784 a family of "poor white" immigrants who had just

settled in Kentucky were attacked in the daytime, while in the immediate

neighborhood of their squalid cabin. The father was shot, and one Indian

was in the act of tomahawking the six-year-old son, when an elder

brother, from the doorway of the cabin, shot the savage. The Indians

then fled. The boy thus rescued grew up to become the father of Abraham

Lincoln. [Footnote: Hay and Nicolay.]

Now and then the monstrous uniformity of horror in assault and reprisal

was broken by some deed out of the common; some instance where despair

nerved the frame of woman or of half-grown boy; some strange incident in

the career of a backwoods hunter, whose profession perpetually exposed

him to Indian attack, but also trained him as naught else could to evade

and repel it. The wild turkey was always much hunted by the settlers;

and one of the common Indian tricks was to imitate the turkey call and

shoot the hunter when thus tolled to his foe's ambush; but it was only

less common for a skilled Indian fighter to detect the ruse and himself

creep up and slay the would-be slayer. More than once, when a cabin was

attacked in the absence or after the death of the men, some brawny

frontierswoman, accustomed to danger and violent physical exertion, and

favored by peculiar circumstances, herself beat off the assailants.

Prowess of Frontier Women.

In one such case, two or three families were living together in a

block-house. One spring day, when there were in the house but two men

and one woman, a Mrs. Bozarth, the children who had been playing in the

yard suddenly screamed that Indians were coming. One of the men sprang

to the door only to fall back with a bullet in his breast, and in

another moment an Indian leaped over the threshold and attacked the

remaining man before he could grasp a weapon. Holding his antagonist the

latter called out to Mrs. Bozarth to hand him a knife; but instead she

snatched up an axe and killed the savage on the spot. But that instant

another leaped into the doorway, and firing, killed the white man who

had been struggling with his companion; but the woman instantly turned

on him, as he stood with his smoking gun, and ripped open his body with

a stroke of her axe. Yelling for help he sank on the threshold, and his

comrades rushed to his rescue; the woman, with her bloody weapon, cleft

open the skull of the first, and the others fell back, so that she was

able to shut and bar the door. Then the savages moved off, but they had

already killed the children in the yard.

A similar incident took place in Kentucky, where the cabin of a man

named John Merrill was attacked at night. He was shot in several places,

and one arm and one thigh broken, as he stood by the open door, and fell

calling out to his wife to close it. This she did; but the Indians

chopped a hole in the stout planks with their tomahawks, and tried to

crawl through. The woman, however, stood to one side and struck at the

head of each as it appeared, maiming or killing the first two or three.

Enraged at being thus baffled by a woman, two of the Indians clambered

on the roof of the cabin, and prepared to drop down the wide chimney;

for at night the fire in such a cabin was allowed to smoulder, the coals

being kept alive in the ashes. But Mrs. Merrill seized a feather-bed

and, tearing it open, threw it on the embers; the flame and stifling

smoke leaped up the chimney, and in a moment both Indians came down,

blinded and half smothered, and were killed by the big resolute woman

before they could recover themselves. No further attempt was made to

molest the cabin or its inmates.

One of the incidents which became most widely noised along the borders

was the escape of the two Johnson boys, in the fall of 1788. Their

father was one of the restless pioneers along the upper Ohio who were

always striving to take up claims across the river, heedless of the

Indian treaties. The two boys, John and Henry, were at the time thirteen

and eleven years old respectively. One Sunday, about noon, they went to

find a hat which they had lost the day before at the spot where they had

been working, three quarters of a mile from the house. Having found the

hat they sat down by the roadside to crack nuts, and were surprised by

two Indians; they were not harmed, but were forced to go with their

captors, who kept travelling slowly through the woods on the outskirts

of the settlements, looking for horses. The elder boy soon made friends

with the Indians, telling them that he and his brother were ill-treated

at home, and would be glad to get a chance to try Indian life. By

degrees they grew to believe he was in earnest, and plied him with all

kinds of questions concerning the neighbors, their live stock, their

guns, the number of men in the different families, to all of which he

replied with seeming eagerness and frankness. At night they stopped to

camp, one Indian scouting through the woods, while the other kindled a

fire by flashing powder in the pan of his rifle. For supper they had

parched corn and pork roasted over the coals; there was then some

further talk, and the Indians lay down to sleep, one on each side of the

boys. After a while, supposing that their captives were asleep, and

anticipating no trouble from two unarmed boys, one Indian got up and lay

down on the other side of the fire, where he was soon snoring heavily.

Then the lads, who had been wide awake, biding their time, whispered to

one another, and noiselessly rose. The elder took one of the guns,

silently cocked it, and, pointing it at the head of one Indian, directed

the younger boy to take it and pull trigger, while he himself stood over

the head of the other Indian with drawn tomahawk. The one boy then

fired, his Indian never moving after receiving the shot, while the other

boy struck at the same moment; but the tomahawk went too far back on the

neck, and the savage tried to spring to his feet, yelling loudly.

However the boy struck him again and again as he strove to rise, and he

fell back and was soon dead. Then the two boys hurried off through the

darkness, fearing lest other Indians might be in the neighborhood. Not

very far away they struck a path which they recognized, and the elder

hung up his hat, that they might find the scene of their feat when they

came back. Continuing their course they reached a block-house shortly

before daybreak. On the following day a party of men went out with the

elder boy and found the two dead Indians. [Footnote: De Haas.]

After any Indian stroke the men of the neighborhood would gather under

their local militia officers, and, unless the Indians had too long a

start, would endeavor to overtake them, and either avenge the slain or

rescue the prisoners. In the more exposed settlements bands of rangers

were kept continually patrolling the woods. Every man of note in the

Cumberland country took part in this duty. In Kentucky the county

lieutenants and their subordinates were always on the lookout. Logan

paid especial heed to the protection of the immigrants who came in over

the Wilderness Road. Kenton's spy company watched the Ohio, and

continually crossed it on the track of marauding parties, and, though

very often baffled, yet Kenton and his men succeeded again and again in

rescuing hapless women and children, or in scattering--although usually

with small loss--war parties bound against the settlements.

Feats of an Indian Fighter

One of the best known Indian fighters in Kentucky was William Whitley,

who lived at Walnut Flat, some five miles from Crab Orchard. He had come

to Kentucky soon after its settlement, and by his energy and ability had

acquired property and leadership, though of unknown ancestry and without

education. He was a stalwart man, skilled in the use of arms, jovial and

fearless; the backwoods fighters followed him readily, and he loved

battle; he took part in innumerable Indian expeditions, and in his old

age was killed fighting against Tecumseh at the battle of the Thames. In

1786 or '87 he built the first brick house ever built in Kentucky. It

was a very handsome house for those days, every step in the hall

stairway having carved upon it the head of an eagle bearing in its beak

an olive branch. Each story was high, and the windows were placed very

high from the ground, to prevent the Indians from shooting through them

at the occupants. The glass was brought from Virginia by pack train. He

feasted royally the hands who put up the house; and to pay for the

whiskey they drank he had to sell one of his farms.

In 1785 (the year of the above recited ravages on the upper Ohio in the

neighborhood of Wheeling), Colonel Whitley led his rangers, once and

again, against marauding Indians. In January he followed a war party,

rescued a captive white man, and took prisoner an Indian who was

afterwards killed by one of the militia--"a cowardly fellow," says

Whitley. In October a party of immigrants, led by a man named McClure,

who had just come over the Wilderness trace, were set upon at dawn by

Indians, not far from Whitley's house; two of the men were killed. Mrs.

McClure got away at first, and ran two hundred yards, taking her four

children with her; in the gloom they would all have escaped had not the

smallest child kept crying. This led the Indians to them. Three of the

children were tomahawked at once; next morning the fourth shared the

same fate. The mother was forced to cook breakfast for her captors at

the fire before which the scalps were drying. She was then placed on a

half-broken horse and led off with them. When word of the disaster was

brought to Whitley's, he was not at home, but his wife, a worthy

helpmeet, immediately sent for him, and meanwhile sent word to his

company. On his return he was able to take the trail at once with

twenty-one riflemen, as true as steel. Following hard, but with stealth

equal to their own, he overtook the Indians at sundown on the second

day, and fell on them in their camp. Most of them escaped through the

thick forest, but he killed two, rescued six prisoners, and captured

sixteen horses and much plunder.

Ten days after this another party of immigrants, led by a man named

Moore, were attacked on the Wilderness Road and nine persons killed.

Whitley raised thirty of his horse-riflemen, and, guessing from the

movements of the Indians that they were following the war trace

northward, he marched with all speed to reach it at some point ahead of

them, and succeeded. Finding they had not passed he turned and went

south, and in a thick canebrake met his foes face to face. The whites

were spread out in line, while the Indians, twenty in number, came on in

single file, all on horseback. The cane was so dense that the two

parties were not ten steps apart when they saw one another. At the first

fire the Indians, taken utterly unaware, broke and fled, leaving eight

of their number dead; and the victors also took twenty-eight horses.

[Footnote: Draper MSS. Whitley's MSS. Narrative, apparently dictated

some time after the events described. It differs somewhat from the

printed account in Collins.]

Death of Black Wolf and Col. Christian

In the following spring another noted Indian fighter, less lucky than

Whitley, was killed while leading one of these scouting parties. Early

in 1786, the Indians began to commit and Col. numerous depredations in

Kentucky, and the alarm and anger of the inhabitants became great.

[Footnote: Draper MSS. Clark Papers, _passim_ for 1786. Wm. Finney to G.

R. Clark, March 24 and 26, 1786. Also Wm. Croghan to G. R. Clark, Nov.

3, and Nov. 16, 1785.] In April, a large party of savages under a chief

named Black Wolf, made a raid along Beargrass. Col. William Christian, a

very gallant and honorable man, was in command of the neighboring

militia. At once, as was his wont, he raised a band of twenty men, and

followed the plunderers across the Ohio. Riding well in advance of his

followers, with but three men in company with him, he overtook the three

rearmost Indians, among whom was Black Wolf. The struggle was momentary

but bloody. All three Indians were killed, but Colonel Christian and one

of his captains were also slain. [Footnote: State Department MSS. Papers

Continental Congress. Sam McDowell to Governor of Virginia, April 18,

1786. John May to _Do._, April 19, 1786. Clark MSS. Bradford's Notes on

Kentucky. John Clark to Johnathan Clark, April 21, 1786.]

Anger of the Kentuckians.

The Kentuckians were by this time thoroughly roused, and were bent on

making a retaliatory expedition in force. They felt that the efforts

made by Congress to preserve peace by treaties, at which the Indians

were loaded with presents, merely resulted in making them think that the

whites were afraid of them, and that if they wished gifts all they had

to do was to go to war. [Footnote: Draper MSS. Jon. Clark Papers. John

Clark to Johnathan Clark, March 29, 1786. Also, G. R. Clark to J. Clark,

April 20, 1788.] The only effective way to deal with the Indians was to

strike them in their own country, not to try to parry the strokes they

themselves dealt. Clark, who knew the savages well, scoffed at the idea

that a vigorous blow, driven well home, would rouse them to desperation;

he realized that, formidable though they were in actual battle, and

still more in plundering raid, they were not of the temper to hazard all

on the fate of war, or to stand heavy punishment, and that they would

yield very quickly, when once they were convinced that unless they did

so they and their families would perish by famine or the

sword. [Footnote: State Department MSS., No. 56, p. 282. G. R. Clark to

R. H. Lee.] At this time he estimated that some fifteen hundred warriors

were on the war-path and that they were likely to be joined by many

others.

Anarchy on the Wabash.

The condition of affairs at the French towns of the Illinois and Wabash

afforded another strong reason for war, or at least for decided measures

of some kind. Almost absolute anarchy reigned in these towns. The French

inhabitants had become profoundly discontented with the United States

Government. This was natural, for they were neither kept in order nor

protected, in spite of their petitions to Congress that some stable

government might be established. [Footnote: State Department MSS., No.

30, p. 453, Dec. 8, 1784. Also p. 443, Nov. 10, 1784. Draper MSS. J.

Edgar to G. R. Clark, Oct. 23, 1786.] The quarrels between the French

and the intruding American settlers had very nearly reached the point of

a race war; and the Americans were further menaced by the Indians. These

latter were on fairly good terms with the French, many of whom had

intermarried with them, and lived as they did; although the French

families of the better class were numerous, and had attained to what was

for the frontier a high standard of comfort and refinement.

Quarrels between French and Americans.

The French complained with reason of the lawless and violent character

of many of the American new-comers, and also of the fact that already

speculators were trying by fraud and foul means to purchase large tracts

of land, not for settlement, but to hold until it should rise in value.

On the other hand, the Americans complained no less bitterly of the

French, as a fickle, treacherous, undisciplined race, in close alliance

with the Indians, and needing to be ruled with a rod of iron. [Footnote:

State Dept. MSS., No. 56. J. Edgar to G. R. Clark, Nov. 7, 1785. Draper

MSS. Petition of Americans of Vincennes to Congress, June I, 1786.] It

is impossible to reconcile the accounts the two parties gave of one

another's deeds; doubtless neither side was guiltless of grave

wrongdoing. So great was Clark's reputation for probity and leadership

that both sides wrote him urgently, requesting that he would come to

them and relieve their distress. [Footnote: Draper MSS. Petition to G. R.

Clark from Inhabitants of Vincennes, March 16, 1786.] One of the most

fruitful sources of broils and quarrels was the liquor trade with the

Indians. The rougher among the new-comers embarked eagerly in this

harmful and disreputable business, and the low-class French followed

their example. The commandant, Monsieur J. M. P. Legrace, and the Creole

court forbade this trade; a decision which was just and righteous, but

excited much indignation, as the other inhabitants believed that the

members of the court themselves followed it in secret. [Footnote: Do.,

John Filson; MS. Journey of Two Voyages, etc.]

In 1786 the ravages of the Indians grew so serious, and the losses of

the Americans near Vincennes became so great, that they abandoned their

outlying farms, and came into the town. [Footnote: Do., Moses Henry to G.

R. Clark, June 7, 1786.] Vincennes then consisted of upwards of three

hundred houses. The Americans numbered some sixty families, and had

built an American quarter, with a strong blockhouse. They only ventured

out to till their cornfields in bodies of armed men, while the French

worked their lands singly and unarmed.

Indians Attack Americans.

The Indians came freely into the French quarter of the town, and even

sold to the inhabitants plunder taken from the Americans; and when

complaint of this was made to the Creole magistrates, they paid no heed.

One of the men who suffered at the hands of the savages was a wandering

schoolmaster, named John Filson, [Footnote: _Do_., John Small to G. R.

Clark, June 23, 1786.] the first historian of Kentucky, and the man who

took down, and put into his own quaint and absurdly stilted English,

Boone's so-called "autobiography." Filson, having drifted west, had

travelled up and down the Ohio and Wabash by canoe and boat. He was much

struck with the abundance of game of all kinds which he saw on the

northwestern side of the Ohio, and especially by the herds of buffaloes

which lay on the sand-bars; his party lived on the flesh of bears, deer,

wild turkeys, coons, and water-turtles. In 1785 the Indians whom he met

seemed friendly; but on June 2, 1786, while on the Wabash, his canoe was

attacked by the savages, and two of his men were slain. He himself

escaped with difficulty, and reached Vincennes after an exhausting

journey, but having kept possession of his "two small trunks."

[Footnote: _Do_., Filson's Journal.]

Two or three weeks after this misadventure of the unlucky historian, a

party of twenty-five Americans, under a captain named Daniel

Sullivan, [Footnote: _Do_., Daniel Sullivan to G. R. Clark, June 23,

1786. Small's letter says June 21st.] were attacked while working in

their cornfields at Vincennes. [Footnote: State Dept. MSS. Papers

Continental Congress, No. 150, vol. ii., Letter of J. M. P. Legrace, "Au

Général George Rogé Clarck a la Châte" (at the Falls-Louisville), July

22, 1786.] They rallied and drove back the Indians, but two of their

number were wounded. One of the wounded fell for a moment into the hands

of the Indians and was scalped; and though he afterwards recovered, his

companions at the time expected him to die. They marched back to

Vincennes in furious anger, and finding an Indian in the house of a

Frenchman, they seized and dragged him to their block-house, where the

wife of the scalped man, whose name was Donelly, shot and scalped him.

French Threaten Americans.

This greatly exasperated the French, who kept a guard over the other

Indians who were in town, and next day sent them to the woods. Then

their head men, magistrates, and officers of the militia, summoned the

Americans before a council, and ordered all who had not regular

passports from the local court to leave at once, "bag and baggage." This

created the utmost consternation among the Americans, whom the French

outnumbered five to one, while the savages certainly would have

destroyed them had they tried to go back to Kentucky. Their leaders

again wrote urgent appeals for help to Clark, asking that a general

guard might be sent them if only to take them out of the country. Filson

had already gone overland to Louisville and told the authorities of the

straits of their brethren at Vincennes, and immediately an expedition

was sent to their relief under Captains Hardin and Patton.

Indians Attempt to Destroy Americans.

Meanwhile, on July 15th, a large band of several hundred Indians,

bearing red and white flags, came down the river in forty-seven canoes

to attack the Americans at Vincennes, sending word to the French that if

they remained neutral they would not be molested. The French sent envoys

to dissuade them from their purpose, but the war chiefs and sachems

answered that the red people were at last united in opposition to "the

men wearing hats," and gave a belt of black wampum to the wavering

Piankeshaws, warning them that all Indians who refused to join against

the whites would thenceforth be treated as foes. However, their deeds by

no means corresponded with their threats. Next day they assailed the

American block-house or stockaded fort, but found they could make no

impression and drew off. They burned a few outlying cabins and

slaughtered many head of cattle, belonging both to the Americans and the

French; and then, seeing the French under arms, held further parley with

them, and retreated, to the relief of all the inhabitants.

A Successful Skirmish.

At the same time the Kentuckians, under Hardin and Patton, stumbled by

accident on a party of Indians, some of whom were friendly Piankeshaws

and some hostile Miamis. They attacked them without making any

discrimination between friend and foe, killed six, wounded seven, and

drove off the remainder. But they themselves lost one man killed and

four wounded, including Hardin, and fell back to Louisville without

doing anything more. [Footnote: Letter of Legrace and Filson's Journal.

The two contradict one another as to which side was to blame. Legrace

blames the Americans heavily for wronging both the French and the

Indians; and condemns in the strongest terms, and probably with justice,

many of their number, and especially Sullivan. He speaks, however, in

high terms of Henry and Small; and both of these, in their letters

referred to above, paint the conduct of the French and Indians in very

dark colors, throwing the blame on them. Legrace is certainly

disingenuous in suppressing all mention of the wrongs done to the

Americans. For Filson's career and death in the woods, see the excellent

Life of Filson, by Durrett, in the Filson club publications.]

Clark's Expedition.

These troubles on the Wabash merely hardened the determination of the

Kentuckians no longer to wait until the Federal Government acted. With

the approval of Governor Patrick Henry, they took the initiative

themselves. Early in August the field officers of the district of

Kentucky met at Harrodsburg, Benjamin Logan presiding, and resolved on

an expedition, to be commanded by Clark, against the hostile Indians on

the Wabash. Half of the militia of the district were to go; the men were

to assemble, on foot or on horseback, as they pleased, at Clarksville on

September 10th. [Footnote: Draper MSS. Minutes of meetings of the

officers of the district of Kentucky, Aug. 2, 1786. State Dept. MSS.,

No. 150, vol. ii. Letter of P. Henry, May 16, 1786.] Besides

pack-horses, salt, flour, powder, and lead were impressed, [Footnote:

Draper MSS. J. Cox to George Rogers Clark, Aug. 8, 1786.] not always in

strict compliance with law, for some of the officers impressed

quantities of spirituous liquors also. [Footnote: State Dept. MSS.,

Madison papers. Letter of Caleb Wallace Nov. 20,1786.] The troops

themselves however came in slowly. [Footnote: State Dept. MSS., Papers

Continental Congress. No. 150, vol. ii. Letter of Major Wm. North, Sept.

15, 1786.] Late in September when twelve hundred men had been gathered,

Clark moved forward. But he was no longer the man he had been. He failed

to get any hold on his army. His followers, on their side, displayed all

that unruly fickleness which made the militia of the Revolutionary

period a weapon which might at times be put to good use in the absence

of any other, but which was really trusted only by men whose military

judgment was as fatuous as Jefferson's.

Clark's Failure.

After reaching Vincennes the troops became mutinous, and at last flatly

refused longer to obey orders, and marched home as a disorderly mob, to

the disgrace of themselves and their leader. Nevertheless the expedition

had really accomplished something, for it overawed the Wabash and

Illinois Indians, and effectively put a stop to any active expressions

of disloyalty or disaffection on the part of the French. Clark sent

officers to the Illinois towns, and established a garrison of one

hundred and fifty men at Vincennes, [Footnote: _Do_. Virginia State

Papers. G. R. Clark to Patrick Henry. Draper MSS., Proceedings of

Committee of Kentucky Convention, Dec. 19, 1786.] besides seizing the

goods of a Spanish merchant in retaliation for wrongs committed on

American merchants by the Spaniards.

Logan's Expedition.

This failure was in small part offset by a successful expedition led by

Logan at the same time against the Shawnee towns. [Footnote: State

Department MSS., Virginia State Papers, Logan to Patrick Henry, December

17, 1786.] On October 5th, he attacked them with seven hundred and

ninety men. There was little or no resistance, most of the warriors

having gone to oppose Clark. Logan took ten scalps and thirty-two

prisoners, burned two hundred cabins and quantities of corn, and

returned in triumph after a fortnight's absence. One deed of infamy

sullied his success. Among his colonels was the scoundrel McGarry, who,

in cold blood, murdered the old Shawnee chief, Molunthee, several hours

after he had been captured; the shame of the barbarous deed being

aggravated by the fact that the old chief had always been friendly to

the Americans. [Footnote: Draper MSS., Caleb Wallace to Wm. Fleming,

October 23, 1786. State Department MSS., No. 150, vol. ii., Harmar's

Letter, November 15, 1786.] Other murders would probably have followed,

had it not been for the prompt and honorable action of Colonels Robert

Patterson and Robert Trotter, who ordered their men to shoot down any

one who molested another prisoner. McGarry then threatened them, and

they in return demanded that he be court-martialled for murder.

[Footnote: Virginia State Papers, vol. iv., p. 212.] Logan, to his

discredit, refused the court-martial, for fear of creating further

trouble. The bane of the frontier military organization was the

helplessness of the elected commanders, their dependence on their

followers, and the inability of the decent men to punish the atrocious

misdeeds of their associates.

These expeditions were followed by others on a smaller scale, but of

like character. They did enough damage to provoke, but not to overawe,

the Indians. With the spring of 1787, the ravages began on an enlarged

scale, with all their dreadful accompaniments of rapine, murder, and

torture. All along the Ohio frontier, from Pennsylvania to Kentucky, the

settlers were harried; and in some places they abandoned their clearings

and hamlets, so that the frontier shrank back. [Footnote: Durret MSS.,

Daniel Dawson to John Campbell, Pittsburg, June 17, 1787. Virginia State

Papers, vol. iv., p. 419.] Logan, Kenton, and many other leaders headed

counter expeditions, and now and then broke up a war party or destroyed

an Indian town; [Footnote: Draper, MSS., T. Brown to T. Preston,

Danville, June 13, 1787. Virginia State Papers, vol. iv., pp. 254, 287,

etc.] but nothing decisive was accomplished, and Virginia paralyzed the

efforts of the Kentuckians and waked them to anger, by forbidding them

to follow the Indian parties beyond the frontier. [Footnote: Virginia

State Papers, vol. iv., p. 344.]

The most important stroke given to the hostile Indians in 1787 was dealt

by the Cumberland people. During the preceding three or four years, some

scores of the settlers on the Cumberland had been slain by small

predatory parties of Indians, mostly Cherokees and Creeks. No large war

band attacked the settlements; but no hunter, surveyor, or traveller, no

wood-chopper or farmer, no woman alone in the cabin with her children,

could ever feel safe from attack. Now and then a savage was killed in

such an attack, or in a skirmish with some body of scouts; but nothing

effectual could be thus accomplished.

Ravages in Cumberland Country.

The most dangerous marauders were some Creek and Cherokee warriors who

had built a town on the Coldwater, a tributary of the Tennessee near the

Muscle Shoals, within easy striking distance of the Cumberland

settlements. This town was a favorite resort of French traders from the

Illinois and Wabash, who came up the Tennessee in bateaux. They provided

the Indians with guns and ammunition, and in return often received goods

plundered from the Americans; and they at least indirectly and in some

cases directly encouraged the savages in their warfare against the

settlers. [Footnote: Robertson MSS., Robertson to some French man of

note in Illinois, June, 1787. This is apparently a copy, probably by

Robertson's wife, of the original letter. In Robertson's own original

letters, the spelling and handwriting are as rough as they are

vigorous.]

Robertson's Expedition against the Coldwater Town.

Early in June, Robertson gathered one hundred and thirty men and marched

against the Coldwater town, with two Chickasaws as guides. Another small

party started at the same time by water, but fell into an ambush, and

then came back. Robertson and his force followed the trail of a

marauding party which had just visited the settlements. They marched

through the woods towards the Tennessee until they heard the voice of

the great river as it roared over the shoals. For a day they lurked in

the cane on the north side, waiting until they were certain no spies

were watching them. In the night some of the men swam over and stole a

big canoe, with which they returned. At daylight the troops crossed, a

few in this canoe, the others swimming with their horses. After landing,

they marched seven miles and fell on the town, which was in a ravine,

with cornfields round about. Taken by surprise, the warriors, with no

effective resistance, fled to their canoes. The white riflemen thronged

after them. Most of the warriors escaped, but over twenty were slain; as

were also four or five French traders, while half a dozen Frenchmen and

one Indian squaw were captured. All the cabins were destroyed, the live

stock was slain, and much plunder taken. The prisoners were well treated

and released; but on the way home another party of French traders were

encountered, and their goods were taken from them. The two Chickasaws

were given their full share of all the plunder.

This blow gave a breathing spell to the Cumberland settlements.

Robertson at once wrote to the French in the Illinois country, and also

to some Delawares, who had recently come to the neighborhood, and were

preserving a dubious neutrality. He explained the necessity of their

expedition, and remarked that if any innocent people, whether Frenchmen

or Indians, had suffered in the attack, they had to blame themselves;

they were in evil company, and the assailants could not tell the good

from the bad. If any Americans had been there, they would have suffered

just the same. In conclusion he warned the French that if their traders

continued to furnish the hostile Indians with powder and lead, they

would "render themselves very insecure"; and to the Indians he wrote

that, in the event of a war, "you will compell ous to retaliate, which

will be a grate pridgedes to your nation." [Footnote: Robertson MSS. His

letter above referred to, and another, in his own hand, to the

Delawares, of about the same date.] He did not spell well; but his

meaning was plain, and his hand was known to be heavy.