THE MILITARY ROAD TO THE WEST
There is another hero of Forbes's Road. The rough days of that summer of
1758 were only suggestions of what was to come. Other armies than that
of Forbes were to pass this way, for, be it understood at once, Forbes's
Road became the great military highway into the West. No single road in
America witnessed so many campaigns; no road in America was fortified by
such a chain of forts. For a generation this route from Lancaster by
Carlisle, Bedford, Ligonier to Pittsburg was the most important
thoroughfare to the West.
The French retired from Fort Duquesne, down the Ohio and up the
Allegheny. The remainder of the war was fought far away on the St.
Lawrence. Hardly a shot was fired in the West after the skirmishes at
Fort Ligonier succeeding Grant's defeat. The French at Venango and
Detroit made light of Forbes's occupation of Fort Duquesne. They had
retired voluntarily and swore to return in the spring. In a dozen
western posts the French bragged still of their possession of the West
and of their future conquests. The Indians believed each boast.
In the next year's campaign Quebec fell. New France passed away, and all
French territory east of the Mississippi, save only a fishing station on
the island of Newfoundland came into the hands of the English. But this
campaign was fought in the far northeast. Of it the West and its
redskinned inhabitants knew nothing. Fort Niagara was the most westerly
fort which had succumbed; Fort Duquesne, technically, was evacuated. The
real story of the successive French defeats was, perhaps, little heard
of in the West; or, if communicated to the Indian allies there, the
logical conclusion was not plain to them. How could a land be conquered
where not a single battle had been fought? So far as the Indians were
concerned, France was never more in possession of their western lakes
and forests than then. Was not the blundering Braddock killed and his
fine army utterly put to rout? Were not the French forts in the
West--Presque Isle, Venango, Le Boeuf, Miami, and Detroit, secure?
Fort Duquesne could be reoccupied whenever the French would give the
signal. The leaden plates of France still reposed at the mouths of the
rivers of the West and the Arms of the King of France still rattled in
the wind which swept the land.
Fancy the surprise of the Indians, then, when little parties of redcoat
soldiers came into the West, and, with quiet insolence, took possession
of the French forts and of the Indian's land! And the French moved
neither hand nor foot to oppose them, though through so many years they
had boasted their prowess, and though ten Wyandots could have done so
successfully. Detroit was surrendered to a mere corporal's guard, and
the lesser forts to a sentry's watch each. It remained for the newcomers
to inform the Indians of the events which led to the changing of the
flags on these inland fortresses--to tell them that the French armies
had been utterly overwhelmed, and the French capital captured, and
French rule in America at an end.
But these explanations, given glibly, no doubt, by arrogant English
officers, were repeated over and over by the Indians, and slowly, before
a hundred, yea, a thousand dim fires in the forests. We can believe it
was not all plain to them, this sudden conquest of a country where
hardly a battle had been fought for eight years, and that battle the
greatest victory ever achieved by the red man. Perhaps messengers were
sent back to the forts to gain, casually, additional information
concerning this marvelous conquest by proxy. French traders, as
ignorant, or feigning to be, as the Indians, were implored to explain
the sudden forgetfulness of the French "Father" of the Indians.
It was inexplicable. The news spread rapidly: "The French have
surrendered our land to the English." Fierce Shawanese around their
fires at Chillicothe on the Scioto heard the news, and sullenly passed
it on westward to the Miamis, and eastward to the angered Delawares on
the Muskingum, who had now forgotten Frederick Post. The Senecas on the
upper Allegheny heard the news. The Ottawas and Wyandots on both sides
of the Detroit River heard it--and before the fires of each of these
fierce French-loving Indian nations there was much silence while
chieftains pondered, and the few words uttered were stern and cruel.
Cruel words grew to angry threats. By what right, the chieftains asked,
could the French surrender the Black Forest to the English? When did the
French come to own the land, after all? They were the guests, the
friends of the Indian--not his conquerors. The French built forts, it is
true, but they were for the Indian as well as for the French, and were
forts in name only, and the more of them the merrier! But now a
conqueror had come, telling the Indian the land was no longer his, but
belonged to the British king.
Threats soon grew into visible form. Where it started is not surely
known--some say from the Senecas on the upper Allegheny--but soon a
fearful Bloody Belt went on a journey with its terrible summons to war.
It passed to the Delawares and to the Shawanese and Miamis and Wyandots,
and where it went the death halloo sounded through the forests. The call
was to the Indians of the Black Forest to rise and cast out the English
from the land. If the French could not have it, certainly no one else
should. The dogs of war were loosened. The young warriors of the
Allegheny and Muskingum and Scioto and Miami and Detroit danced wildly
before the fires, and the old men sang their half-forgotten war chants.
The terrible war which in 1763 burst over the West has never been
paralleled by savages the world over in point of swift success. This may
be attributed to the fact that a leader was found in Pontiac, a
chieftain in the Ottawa nation, who for daring and intelligence was
never matched by a man of his race. He had the courage of sweeping and
patriotic convictions. He saw in the English occupation of the land the
doom of the red man. Indeed he must have seen it before, but if so he
had not had an opportunity to put his convictions to a public test. The
Indian was becoming a changed man. The implements and utensils of the
white man were adopted by the red. The independent forest arts of their
fathers were beginning to be forgotten. Kettles and blankets and powder
and lead were taking the place of the wooden bowls and fur robes and
swift flint heads. In another generation the art of making a living for
himself in the forest would be forgotten by the Indian, and he would
henceforth be absolutely dependent upon the foreigner. All this Pontiac
saw. He felt commissioned to lead a return to nature. The arts of the
white man must be discarded and the Indians must come back to their
primitive mode of living in dependence upon their own skill and
ingenuity.
And so Pontiac waged a religious war. At a great convention of the
savages he told them that a Delaware Indian had, while lost in the
forests, been guided into a path which led to the home of the Great
Spirit, and, on coming there, had been upbraided by the Master of Life
himself for the degenerate state to which his race was falling. The
forest arts of their fathers must be encouraged and relied upon. The
utensils of the white man must be banished from the wigwams. Bows and
arrows and tomahawks and stone hatchets should not be discarded.
Otherwise the Great Spirit would take away their land from them and give
it to others. And so, much of the fury which accompanied the war was a
sort of religious frenzy. "The Master of Life himself has stirred us
up," said the warriors.
Pontiac's plot--undoubtedly the most comprehensive military campaign
ever conceived in redman's brain--was discovered by the British at Fort
Miami, on the Maumee River, in March 1763, four years after the fall of
Quebec. There the Bloody Belt was found and secured before it could be
forwarded to the Wabash with its murderous message. By threats and
warnings the untutored English officers thought to quell the
disturbance. Amherst, his Majesty's commanding general in America,
haughtily condemned the signs of revolution as "unwarranted." Moreover
he gave his officers in the West authority to declare to the Indian
chieftains that if they should conspire they would in his eyes, make "a
contemptible figure!" Time passed and the garrisons breathed easily as
quiet reigned.
It was but the lull before the storm. On the seventh of May, Pontiac,
who led his Ottawas at Braddock's defeat, appeared before Detroit, the
metropolis of the northwest, with three hundred warriors. The
watchfulness of the brave Major Gladwin, a well-trained pupil in that
school on Braddock's Road, and the failure of Pontiac to capture the
fort by strategy, though his warriors were admitted within its walls and
had shortened guns concealed beneath their blankets, was the dramatic
beginning of a reign of terror and a war of devastation all the way from
Sault St. Marie to even beyond the crest of the Alleghenies. Pontiac
immediately invested Detroit and throughout the Black Forest his
faithful allies did their Ottawa chieftain's will. On the sixteenth of
May, Fort Sandusky was surrounded by Indians seemingly friendly. The
British commander permitted seven to enter. As they sat smoking, by the
turn of a head the signal was given and the commander was a prisoner.
As he was hurried out of the fort he saw, here one dead soldier, there
another--victims of the massacre. Nine days later a band of Indians
appeared before the fort at the mouth of the St. Joseph. "We are come to
see our relatives," they said, "and wish the garrison good morning."
Within two minutes after their entrance the commanding officer and three
men were prisoners and eleven others were murdered. Two days later the
commander of Fort Miami, on the Maumee River, came, at an Indian girl's
pitiful plea, to the Indian village to bleed a sick child. He was shot
in his tracks. Four days later the commander of Fort Ouatianon, on the
Wabash, was inveigled into an Indian cabin and captured, the fort
surrendering forthwith. Two days later Indians gathered at Fort
Michilimackinac to engage in a game of lacrosse. At the height of the
contest the ball was thrown near a gate of the fort. In the twinkling of
an eye the commanding officer who stood watching the game was seized,
and the Indians, snatching tomahawks from under the blankets of squaws
who were standing in proper position, entered the fort and killed
fifteen soldiers outright and took the remainder of the garrison
prisoners.
Sixteen days later Fort Le Boeuf, on French Creek, where Washington
delivered his message to the haughty St. Pierre a decade before, was
attacked by an overwhelming army of savages. Keeping the enemy off until
midnight, the garrison made good its escape, unknown to the exultant
besiegers who had already fired one corner bastion, and fled down the
river to Fort Pitt. On their way they passed the smouldering ruins of
Fort Venango. Two days later Fort Presque Isle was attacked. In two days
the commander, senseless with terror, struck his flag. The same day Fort
Ligonier on Forbes's Road was invested by a besieging army.
Thus the campaign of Pontiac, prosecuted with such swiftness and such
success, bade fair to end in triumph. "We hate the English," the Indians
sent word to the French on the Mississippi, "and wish to kill them. We
are all united: the war is our war, and we will continue it for seven
years. The English shall never come into the West!"
But Fort Detroit and Fort Pitt stood firm. For months Pontiac
beleaguered the northern fortress, gaining advantages whenever the
garrison attacked him, but unable to reduce the fort. All summer long
the eyes of the world were upon Detroit; and the gallant defense of Fort
Pitt, was, comparatively, forgotten. But the maintenance of this
strategic point was of incalculable importance to the West. The garrison
felt this. And here, if anywhere, was courage shown in battle. Here, if
ever, brave men faced fearful odds with unshaken courage worthy of their
Saxon blood.
In planning his campaign Pontiac delegated the Shawanese and Delawares
to carry Fort Pitt. If they could not do it he might be assured that the
position was impregnable. They were his most reliable warriors, and,
once given the task of carrying out the second most important _coup_ of
their great leader's plan, could be trusted to use any alternative
savage lust could suggest, or trick savage cunning could invent in order
to accomplish their portion of the terrible conquest of the West. The
defense of Detroit was brave; but Detroit was on the great water highway
east and west. Succor was possible, in fact probable, in time; if not,
there was a way of escape. At Fort Pitt could either be expected? The
only approach to it was this indifferent roadway hewn westward from
Bedford in 1758. Moreover the fort had never been completed. On three
sides the flood tides of the rivers had injured it. Ecuyer, its valiant
defender, threw up a rough rampart of logs and palisaded the interior.
And in this fragile fortress, hardly worthy of the name, behind which
lay the darkling Alleghenies and about which loomed the Black Forest,
were gathered some six hundred souls, a larger community, probably, than
the total population of Detroit. And around on every side were gathered
the lines of ochred warriors preparing for another charge even to the
very blood-bespattered walls. The garrison might well have believed
itself beyond the reach of succor, if indeed succor could avail before
need of it had vanished. The bones of Braddock's seven hundred slain
lay scattered about the forests only seven miles away. Could another
army come again? Little wonder that the Shawanese and Delawares were
already flushed with victory as they renewed their unavailing attacks.
The task of relieving Fort Pitt was placed upon the tried shoulders of
Colonel Henry Bouquet, whose brilliant services in Forbes's campaign
have been fully described. Amherst, then commanding in America, sent him
the remains of the Forty-second and Seventy-seventh regiments, which
amounted to the pitiful total of three hundred and forty-seven men and
officers; concerning additional troops Amherst was painfully plain:
"Should the whole race of Indians take arms against us I can do no
more." Recruits joined the army as it moved along through Lancaster and
Carlisle, which augmented the force slightly.
But the brave Bouquet, with an army not exceeding five hundred men, set
out westward from Bedford on the rough road he himself had made with the
vanguard of the "Head of Iron" five years before. The appalling
condition in which he found the country along the border would have
daunted a less bold man. Every fort from Lake Erie to the Ohio had been
razed to the ground. The whole country was panic-stricken. Houses were
left vacant or burned, together with crops, and the mountain roads were
blocked with fugitives, half famished, who threw themselves upon the
intrepid Bouquet at his camps. It was indeed a trying time, a time for
such a man as Bouquet to show himself.
Never did the success of a campaign in the history of war depend more on
the sagacity, bravery, and personal knowledge of a single commanding
officer. This daring Swiss was everywhere and everything. He knew that
the enemy, though they retired before him even as he approached Fort
Ligonier, were watching every movement of the coming army. He knew they
were cognizant of his weakness, the debility of his men, the lack of
provision, the paucity of scouts and spies. He knew, and so did the
silent, lurking spies of the enemy, that Braddock's slain outnumbered
his whole force.
But Ligonier--named by Bouquet himself from a warrior whose bravery was
now his inspiration--was not a place to pause, though just beyond lay
the death-trap where Aubrey had defeated the ill-fated Grant five years
before. On he went. As the inevitable battle-ground was neared Bouquet
redoubled his watchfulness. When a darker defile than usual was reached,
with a rifle across his lap, the commander went forward and himself led
the army's van into it.
On the morning of the fifth of August tents were struck early and
another day's march commenced. Over broken country enveloped in forests
the army went its way. By one o'clock they had made seventeen miles and
were not less than half a mile from Bushy Run, their proposed camping
place. Suddenly was heard the report of rifle fire in front. As the main
army listened the noise quickened to a sharp rattle--and the decisive
battle of Bushy Run was commenced.
The two foremost companies were ordered forward to support the vanguard
now hotly engaged. This causing no abatement, the convoy was halted and
a general charge formed. By an onward rush, with fixed bayonets, Bouquet
and his eager men cleared the field. But firing on the right and left
and in the rear announced that both flanks and the convoy were
simultaneously attacked. An order was given to fall back. This having
been executed, an unbroken circle was formed about the terrified horses.
Though in number the combatants were nearly equal, the savages had all
the advantage of a superior force fighting under cover. Bouquet's army,
like Braddock's, was in the open. With furious cries accompanied by a
heavy fire, the Indians attempted to break the iron circle. And they
fought with sly cunning. Not waiting to receive the answering attacks,
they leaped behind the nearest trees, only to come back to the attack
with increased ferocity from another quarter. The English suffered
severely while the active Indians, under cover, were almost untouched.
Nothing but implicit confidence in Bouquet could have inspired this
little army with the steadiness it displayed. No one lost composure.
Each man knew they could not retreat or advance--fight they must and
fight they surely did.
Night came, and under cover of the darkness the wearied soldiers cared
for the wounded. Placed in the cleared center of the circle, a rude wall
of sacks of flour was built around them. Here, enduring agonies of
thirst, for not a drop of water could be obtained, they lay listening to
the fiendish yells of the enemy--a poor cure for wounds and burning
thirst.
When the necessary arrangements for the night had been completed and
provision made against a night attack, Bouquet, doubtful of surviving
the morrow's battle, wrote to Sir Jeffrey Amherst a brief and concise
account of the day's fight. His report ends with these words:
"... As, in case of another engagement, I fear insurmountable,
difficulties in protecting and transporting our provisions, being
already so much weakened by the losses of this day, in men and horses,
besides the additional necessity of carrying the wounded, whose
situation is truly deplorable."
Even before morning light, the beastly, impatient cries of the Indians
began to be heard on every side, soon accompanied by a deadly fire. As
on the preceding day the return fire had little effect, for the savages
silently vanished at the gleam of leveled bayonets. But at ten o'clock
the ring remained unbroken though the troops were already fatigued and
were now crazed by torments of thirst, "more intolerable than the
enemy's fire." The horses, often struck and completely terrified, now
broke away by scores and madly galloped up and down the neighboring
hills. The ranks were constantly thinning. It was plain to all that a
decisive and immediate bold stroke must be made.
The commander was equal to the emergency! The confidence of the foe had
grown so overbearing that Bouquet determined to stake everything upon
the very recklessness of his enemies. The portion of the circle which
immediately fronted the Indians, and which was composed of light
infantry, was ordered to feign retreat. As this movement was
accomplished, a thin line of men was thrown across the deserted
position from the sides, drawing in close to the convoy. Thinking this
to be a retreat, which the new line had been summoned to cover, the
Indians, with cutting screams, jumped out from every side and rushed
headlong toward the centre of the circle. Then, suddenly upon their rear
poured the light infantry, which had made a marvelous detour through the
woods. With a frightful bayonet charge and with highland yells as
piercing as those of the Indians, the grenadiers, flushed with victory,
drove the terrified savages through the forests. In the twinkling of an
eye the outcries of the savages ceased altogether and not a living foe
remained. Sixty Indian corpses lay scattered about the camp. Only one
captive was taken and he was riddled with English bullets. The loss of
the English amounted to eight officers and one hundred and fifteen men.
This was the first English victory over the Indians of the central West.
Fort Necessity, Braddock's Field, and Grant's Hill were now avenged. It
was a late victory but was far better late than never. Fort Pitt was
relieved.
[Illustration]
What Forbes's Road was to Pittsburg and the West in the Old French War
and in Pontiac's Rebellion it was in the Revolutionary days, 1775-83.
For thirty years after it was built it was the main highway across the
mountains. It is impossible to estimate the worth of this straight
roadway to the Ohio; had Forbes followed Braddock's Road to Fort Pitt,
western travel ever after would have been at the mercy of the two
rivers, the Youghiogheny and Monongahela, which that road crosses. In
the winter months it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to
have kept open communication between a line of forts and blockhouses on
Braddock's Road. This was done on Forbes's Road throughout the half
century of conflict.
At the opening of the Revolutionary War, the continental war office
being at Philadelphia, Forbes's Road became more strategic than ever in
its history. It was now known as the "Pennsylvania Road," and was the
direct route to the military center of the West, Fort Pitt. Braddock's
Road--now known as the "Virginia Road"--was the main route from
Virginia and Maryland. In the dispute between Virginia and Pennsylvania
for the region of which Fort Pitt was the center, the two routes thither
were the avenues of the two contending factions. With the drowning of
this quarrel in the momentous struggle precipitated in 1775, Forbes's
Road at once became preeminently important. Cattle and goods were
frequently sent over Braddock's Road as far as Brownsville and forwarded
by water to Fort Pitt and the American forts on the Ohio. But far
greater was the activity on Forbes's Road. Forts Bedford and Ligonier,
and a score of fortified cabins at such points as Turtle Creek,
Sewickly, Bullock Pens, Widow Myers, Proctors, Brush Run, Reyburn's, and
Hannastown served to guard the main thoroughfare to the Ohio. Between
these points scouts were continually hurrying, and over the narrow
roadway passed the wagons and pack-horses laden with ammunition and
stores. Hannastown and Ligonier became the important _entrepots_ between
Carlisle and Fort Pitt in the Revolution. Carlisle was the important
eastern depot of troops and ammunition from which both eastern and
western commanders received supplies.[77] Garrisons along the
Pennsylvania Road were ordered at the close of the war to report at
Carlisle for their pay.[78] Hannastown, thirty miles east of Fort Pitt
and three miles northeast of the present Greensburg, was the first
collection of huts on the Pennsylvania Road between Bedford and
Pittsburg dignified by the name of a town. At the breaking out of the
Revolution it was the most important settlement in all Westmoreland
County save only those about Forts Pitt and Ligonier. "These huts
scattered along the narrow pack-horse track among the monster trees of
the ancient forest, was that Hannastown, which occupied such a prominent
place in the early history of Western Pennsylvania where was held the
first court west of the Alleghany where the resolves of May 16, 1775,
were passed."[79] From this rude little cluster of huts on Forbes's
Road, deep in the Allegheny mountains, came one of the first and most
spirited protests against British tyranny. From such sparks the flames
of revolution were soon fanned. Hannastown "was burned last Saturday
afternoon," wrote General Irvine to Secretary of War Lincoln, July 16,
1782; "... that place is about thirty-five miles in the rear of Fort
Pitt, on the main road leading to Philadelphia, generally called the
Pennsylvania [Forbes's] road. The Virginia [Braddock's] road is yet
open, but how long it will continue so is uncertain, as this stroke has
alarmed the whole country beyond conception."
In winter the road was almost impassable; Brodhead wrote Richard Peters:
"The great Depth of Snow upon the Alleghany and Laurel Hills have
prevented our Getting every kind of Stores, nor do I expect to get any
now until the latter End of April."[80] General Irvine wrote his wife
January 8, 1782: "If the road was fit for sleighing I could now go down
(to Carlisle) snugly, but it is quite impracticable; it is barely
passable on horseback." Fort Pitt was invariably supplied with regular
troops from Lancaster or Carlisle, which marched over the Pennsylvania
Road.[81]