The Indians return home from the Blue Licks--They attack
the settlements in Jefferson County--Affair at Simpson's
Creek--General Clark's expedition to the Indian country--Colonel
Boone joins it--Its effect--Attack of the Indians on the
Crab Orchard settlement--Rumor of intended invasion by
the Cherokees--Difficulties about the treaty with Great
Britain--Hostilities of the Indians generally stimulated by
renegade whites--Simon Girty--Causes of his hatred of the
whites--Girty insulted by General Lewis--Joins the Indians
at the battle of Point Pleasant--Story of his rescuing Simon
Kenton--Crawford's expedition, and the burning of Crawford--Close
of Girty's career.
Most of the Indians who had taken part in the battle of the Blue Licks,
according to their custom, returned home to boast of their victory,
thus abandoning all the advantages which might have resulted to them
from following up their success. Some of them, however, attacked the
settlements in Jefferson County but they were prevented from doing much
mischief by the vigilance of the inhabitants. They succeeded, however,
in breaking up a small settlement on Simpson's Creek. This they attacked
in the night, while the men, wearied by a scout of several days, were
asleep. The enemy entered the houses before their occupants were fully
aroused. Notwithstanding this, several of the men defended themselves
with great courage. Thomas Randolph killed several Indians before his
wife and infant were struck down at his side, when he escaped with his
remaining child through the roof. On reaching the ground he was assailed
by two of the savages, but he beat them off, and escaped. Several women
escaped to the woods, and two were secreted under the floor of a cabin,
where they remained undiscovered. Still the Indians captured quite a
number of women and children, some of whom they put to death on the road
home. The rest were liberated the next year upon the conclusion of peace
with the English.
General George Rogers Clark proposed a retaliatory expedition into
the Indian country, and to carry out the plan, called a council of the
superior officers. The council agreed to his plan, and preparations
were made to raise the requisite number of troops by drafting, if there
should be any deficiency of volunteers. But it was not found necessary
to resort to compulsory measures, both men and supplies for the
expedition were raised without difficulty. The troops to the number of
one thousand, all mounted, assembled at Bryant's Station, and the Falls
of the Ohio, from whence the two detachments marched under Logan and
Floyd to the mouth of the Licking, where general Clark assumed the
command. Colonel Boone took part in this expedition; but probably as
a volunteer. He is not mentioned as having a separate command.
The history of this expedition, like most others of the same nature,
possesses but little interest. The army with all the expedition they
could make, and for which the species of force was peculiarly favorable,
failed to surprise the Indians. These latter opposed no resistance of
importance to the advance of the army. Occasionally, a straggling party
would fire upon the Kentuckians, but never waited to receive a similar
compliment in return. Seven Indians were taken prisoners, and three or
four killed; one of them an old chief, too infirm to fly, was killed
by Major McGary. The towns of the Indians were burnt, and their fields
devastated. The expedition returned to Kentucky with the loss of four
men, two of whom were accidentally killed by their own comrades.
This invasion, though apparently so barren of result, is supposed to
have produced a beneficial effect, by impressing the Indians with the
numbers and courage of the Kentuckians. They appear from this time to
have given up the expectation of reconquering the country, and confined
their hostilities to the rapid incursions of small bands.
During the expedition of Clark, a party of Indians penetrated to the
Crab Orchard settlement. They made an attack upon a single house,
containing only a woman, a negro man, and two or three children. One of
the Indians, who had been sent in advance to reconnoitre, seeing the
weakness of the garrison, thought to get all the glory of the
achievement to himself.
He boldly entered the house and seized the negro, who proving strongest,
threw him on the floor, when the woman dispatched him with an axe. The
other Indians coming up, attempted to force open the door which had been
closed by the children during the scuffle. There was no gun in the
house, but the woman seized an old barrel of one, and thrust the muzzle
through the logs, at which the Indians retreated.
The year 1783 passed away without any disturbance from the Indians, who
were restrained by the desertion of their allies the British. In 1784,
the southern frontier of Kentucky was alarmed by the rumor of an
intended invasion by the Cherokees, and some preparations were made for
an expedition against them, which fell through, however, because there
was no authority to carry it on. The report of the hostility of the
Cherokees proved to be untrue.
Meanwhile difficulties arose in performance of the terms of the treaty
between England and the United States. They appear to have originated
in a dispute in regard to an article contained in the treaty, providing
that the British army should not carry away with them any negroes or
other property belonging to the American inhabitants. In consequence of
what they deemed an infraction of this article, the Virginians refused
to comply with another, which stipulated for the repeal of acts
prohibiting the collection of debts due to British subjects. The British,
on the other hand, refused to evacuate the western posts till this
article was complied with. It was natural that the intercourse which had
always existed between the Indians and the garrisons of these posts,
during the period they had acted as allies, should continue, and it did.
In the unwritten history of the difficulties of the United States
Government with the Indian tribes within her established boundaries,
nothing appears clearer than this truth: that the fierce and sanguinary
resistance of the aborigines to the encroachments of the Anglo-Americans
has ever been begun and continued more through the instigations of
outlawed white men, who had sought protection among them from the arm
of the law or the knife of individual vengeance, and been adopted into
their tribes, than from the promptings of their own judgments, their
disregard of death, their thirst for the blood of their oppressors,
or their love of country.[46]
That their sense of wrong has at all times been keen, their hate deadly,
and their bravery great, is a fact beyond dispute; and that they have
prized highly their old hunting-grounds, and felt a warm and lively
attachment to their beautiful village-sites, and regarded with especial
veneration the burial-places of their fathers, their whole history
attests; but of their own weakness in war, before the arms and numbers
of their enemies, they must have been convinced at a very early period:
and they were neither so dull in apprehension, nor so weak in intellect,
as not soon to have perceived the utter hopelessness, and felt the mad
folly, of a continued contest with their invaders. Long before the
settlement of the whites upon this continent, the Indians had been
subject to bloody and exterminating wars among themselves; and such
conflicts had generally resulted in the flight of the weaker party
toward the West, and the occupancy of their lands by the conquerors.
Many of the tribes had a tradition among them, and regarded it as their
unchangeable destiny, that they were to journey from the rising to the
setting sun, on their way to the bright waters and the green forests of
the "Spirit Land;" and the working out of this destiny seems apparent,
if not in the location, course, and character of the tumult and other
remains of the great aboriginal nations of whom even tradition furnishes
no account, certainly in what we know of the history of the tribes found
on the Atlantic coast by the first European settlers.
It seems fairly presumable, from our knowledge of the history and
character of the North American Indians, that had they been left to
the promptings of their own judgments, and been influenced only by the
deliberations of their own councils, they would, after a brief, but
perhaps most bloody, resistance to the encroachments of the whites, have
bowed to what would have struck their untutored minds as an inevitable
destiny, and year after year flowed silently, as the European wave
pressed upon them, further and further into the vast wildernesses
of the mighty West. But left to their own judgments, or their own
deliberations, they never have been. Early armed by renegade white men
with European weapons, and taught the improvement of their own rude
instruments of warfare, and instigated not only to oppose the strides
of their enemies after territory, but to commit depredations upon their
settlements, and to attempt to chastise them at their very thresholds,
they drew down upon themselves the wrath of a people which is not slow
to anger, nor easily appeased; and as far back as the Revolution,
if not as the colonizing of Massachusetts, their breasts were filled
with a hatred of the whites, deadly and unslumbering. Through all our
subsequent transactions with them, this feeling has been increasing in
magnitude and intensity: and recent events have carried it to a pitch
which will render it enduring forever, perhaps not in its activity, but
certainly in its bitterness. Whether more amicable relations with the
whites, during the first settlements made upon this continent by the
Europeans, would have changed materially the ultimate destiny of the
aboriginal tribes, is a question about which diversities of opinion
may well be entertained; but it is not to be considered here.
The fierce, and bloody, and continuous opposition which the Indians
have made from the first to the encroachments of the Anglo-Americans,
is matter of history; and close scrutiny will show, that the great
instigators of that opposition have always, or nearly so, been _renegade
white men_. Scattered through the tribes east of the Alleghanies,
before and during the American Revolution, there were many such
miscreants. Among the Western tribes, during the early settlement of
Kentucky and Ohio, and at the period of the last war with Great Britain,
there were a number, some of them men of talent and great activity.
One of the boldest and most notorious of these latter, was one whom we
have had frequent occasion to mention, SIMON GIRTY--for many years the
scourge of the infant settlements in the West, the terror of women, and
the bugaboo of children. This man was an adopted member of the great
Wyandot nation, among whom he ranked high as an expert hunter, a brave
warrior, and a powerful orator. His influence extended through all the
tribes of the West, and was generally exerted to incite the Indians to
expeditions against the "Stations" of Kentucky, and to acts of cruelty
to their white prisoners. The bloodiest counsel was usually his; his
was the voice which was raised loudest against his countrymen, who were
preparing the way for the introduction of civilization and Christianity
into this glorious region; and in all great attacks upon the frontier
settlements he was one of the prime movers, and among the prominent
leaders.
Of the causes of that venomous hatred, which rankled in the bosom of
Simon Girty against his countrymen, we have two or three versions:
such as, that he early imbibed a feeling of contempt and abhorrence of
civilized life, from the brutality of his father, the lapse from virtue
of his mother, and the corruptions of the community in which he had his
birth and passed his boyhood; that, while acting with the whites against
the Indians on the Virginia border, he was stung to the quick, and
deeply offended by the appointment to a station over his head, of one
who was his junior in years, and had rendered nothing like his services
to the frontiers; and that, when attached as a scout to Dunmore's
expedition, an indignity was heaped upon him which thoroughly soured his
nature, and drove him to the Indians, that he might more effectually
execute a vengeance which he swore to wreak. The last reason assigned
for his defection and animosity is the most probable of the three, rests
upon good authority, and seems sufficient, his character considered, to
account for his desertion and subsequent career among the Indians.
The history of the indignity alluded to, as it has reached the
writer[47] from one who was associated with Girty and a partaker in it,
is as follows: The two were acting as scouts in the expedition set on
foot by Governor Dunmore, of Virginia, in the year 1774, against the
Indian towns of Ohio. The two divisions of the force raised for this
expedition, the one commanded by Governor Dunmore in person, the other
by General Andrew Lewis, were by the orders of the governor to form a
junction at Point Pleasant, where the Great Kenhawa empties into the
Ohio. At this place, General Lewis arrived with his command on the
eleventh or twelfth of September; but after remaining here two or three
weeks in anxious expectation of the approach of the other division, he
received dispatches from the governor, informing him that Dunmore had
changed his plan, and determined to march at once against the villages
on the Scioto, and ordering him to cross the Ohio immediately and join
him as speedily as possible. It was during the delay at the Point that
the incident occurred which is supposed to have had such a tremendous
influence upon Girty's after-life. He and his associate scout had
rendered some two or three months' services, for which they had as
yet drawn no part of their pay; and in their present idleness they
discovered means of enjoyment, of which they had not money to avail
themselves. In this strait, they called upon Gen. Lewis in person,
at his quarters, and demanded their pay. For some unknown cause this
was refused, which produced a slight murmuring on the part of the
applicants, when General Lewis cursed them, and struck them several
severe blows over their heads with his cane. Girty's associate was not
much hurt; but he himself was so badly wounded on the forehead or temple
that the blood streamed down his cheek and side to the floor. He quickly
turned to leave the apartment; but, on reaching the door, wheeled round,
planted his feet firmly upon the sill, braced an arm against either
side of the frame, fixed his keen eyes unflinchingly upon the general,
uttered the exclamation, "_By God, sir, your quarters shall swim in
blood for this_!" and instantly disappeared beyond pursuit.
General Lewis was not much pleased with the sudden and apparently
causeless change which Governor Dunmore had made in the plan of the
expedition. Nevertheless, he immediately prepared to obey the new
orders, and had given directions for the construction of rafts upon
which to cross the Ohio, when, before daylight on the morning of the
10th of October, some of the scouts suddenly entered the encampment
with the information that an immense body of Indians was just at hand,
hastening upon the Point. This was the force of the brave and skillful
chief Cornstalk, whose genius and valor were so conspicuous on that day,
throughout the whole of which raged the hardly-contested and moat bloody
_Battle of the Point_. Girty had fled from General Lewis immediately to
the chief Cornstalk, forsworn his white nature, and leagued himself with
the Redman forever; and with the Indians he was now advancing, under
the cover of night, to surprise the Virginian camp. At the distance of
only a mile from the Point, Cornstalk was met by a detachment of the
Virginians, under the command of Colonel Charles Lewis, a brother of the
general; and here, about sunrise on the 10th of October, 1774, commenced
one of the longest, severest, and bloodiest battles ever fought upon the
Western frontiers. It terminated, as we have seen, about sunset, with
the defeat of the Indians it is true, but with a loss to the whites
which carried mourning into many a mansion of the Old Dominion, and
which was keenly felt throughout the country at the time, and
remembered with sorrow long after.
Girty having thrown himself among the Indians, as has been related,
and embraced their cause, now retreated with them into the interior
of Ohio, and ever after followed their fortunes without swerving. On
arriving at the towns of the Wyandots, he was adopted into that tribe,
and established himself at Upper Sandusky. Being active, of a strong
constitution, fearless in the extreme, and at all times ready to
join their war parties, lie soon became very popular among his new
associates, and a man of much consequence. He was engaged in most of
the expeditions against the frontier settlements of Pennsylvania and
Virginia--always brave and always cruel--till the year 1778, when
occurred an incident which, as it is the only bright spot apparent
on the whole dark career of the renegade, shall be related with some
particularity.
Girty happened to be at Lower Sandusky this year, when Kenton--known at
that period as Simon Butler--was brought in to be executed by a party
of Indians who had made him a prisoner on the banks of the Ohio.
Years before, Kenton and Girty had been bosom companions at Fort Pitt,
and served together subsequently in the commencement of Dunmore's
expedition; but the victim was already blackened for the stake, and the
renegade failed to recognize in him his former associate. Girty had at
this time but just returned from an expedition against the frontier of
Pennsylvania, which had been less successful than he had anticipated,
and was enraged by disappointment. He, therefore, as soon as Kenton was
brought into the village, began to give vent to a portion of his spleen
by cuffing and kicking the prisoner, whom he eventually knocked down.
He knew that Kenton had come from Kentucky; and this harsh treatment was
bestowed in part, it is thought, to frighten the prisoner into answers
of such questions as he might wish to ask him. He then inquired how many
men there were in Kentucky. Kenton could not answer this question, but
ran over the names and ranks of such of the officers as he at the time
recollected. "Do you know William Stewart?" asked Girty. "Perfectly
well," replied Kenton; "he is an old and intimate acquaintance."
"Ah! what is _your_ name, then?" "Simon Butler," answered Kenton; and
on the instant of this announcement the hardened renegade caught his
old comrade by the hand, lifted him from the ground, pressed him to his
bosom, asked his forgiveness for having treated him so brutally, and
promised to do every thing in his power to save his life, and set him
at liberty. "Syme!" said he, weeping like a child, "you are condemned
to die, but it shall go hard with me, I tell you, but I will save you
from _that_."
There have been various accounts given of this interesting scene, and
all agree in representing Girty as having been deeply affected, and
moved for the moment to penitence and tears. The foundation of McClung's
detail of the speeches made upon the occasion was a manuscript dictated
by Kenton himself a number of years before his death. From this writer
we therefore quote:
"As soon as Girty heard the name he became strongly agitated; and,
springing from his seat, he threw his arms around Kenton's neck, and
embraced him with much emotion. Then turning to the assembled warriors,
who remained astonished spectators of this extraordinary scene, he
addressed them in a short speech, which the deep earnestness of his
tone, and the energy of his gesture, rendered eloquent. He informed
them that the prisoner, whom they had just condemned to the stake, was
his ancient comrade and bosom friend; that they had traveled the same
war-path, slept upon the same blanket, and dwelt in the same wigwam.
He entreated them to have compassion on his feelings--to spare him the
agony of witnessing the torture of an old friend by the hands of his
adopted brothers, and not to refuse so trifling a favor as the life of
a white man to the earnest intercession of one who had proved, by three
years' faithful service, that he was sincerely and zealously devoted to
the cause of the Indians.
"The speech was listened to in unbroken silence. As soon as he had
finished, several chiefs expressed their approbation by a deep guttural
interjection, while others were equally as forward in making known their
objections to the proposal. They urged that his fate had already been
determined in a large and solemn council, and that they would be acting
like squaws to change their minds every hour. They insisted upon the
flagrant misdemeanors of Kenton--that he had not only stolen their
horses, but had flashed his gun at one of their young men--that it was
vain to suppose that so bad a man could ever become an Indian at heart,
like their brother Girty--that the Kentuckians were all alike--very bad
people--and ought to be killed as fast as they were taken--and finally,
they observed that many of their people had come from a distance, solely
to assist at the torture of the prisoner, and pathetically painted the
disappointment and chagrin with which they would hear that all their
trouble had been for nothing.
"Girty listened with obvious impatience to the young warriors who had
so ably argued against a reprieve--and starting to his feet, as soon
as the others had concluded, he urged his former request with great
earnestness. He briefly, but strongly recapitulated his own services,
and the many and weighty instances of attachment he had given. He asked
if _he_ could be suspected of partiality to the whites? When had he ever
before interceded for any of that hated race? Had he not brought seven
scalps home with him from the last expedition? and had he not submitted
seven white prisoners that very evening to their discretion? Had he ever
expressed a wish that a single captive should be saved? _This_ was his
first and should be his last request: for if they refused to _him_, what
was never refused to the intercession of one of their natural chiefs,
he would look upon himself as disgraced in their eyes, and considered
as unworthy of confidence. Which of their own natural warriors had
been more zealous than himself? From what expedition had he ever
shrunk?--what white man had ever seen his back? Whose tomahawk had been
bloodier than his? He would say no more. He asked it as a first and last
favor, as an evidence that they approved of his zeal and fidelity, that
the life of his bosom friend might be spared. Fresh speakers arose upon
each side, and the debate was carried on for an hour and a half with
great heat and energy.
"During the whole of this time, Kenton's feelings may readily
be imagined. He could not understand a syllable of what was said.
He saw that Girty spoke with deep earnestness, and that the eyes of
the assembly were often turned upon himself with various expressions.
He felt satisfied that his friend was pleading for his life, and that
he was violently opposed by a large part of the council. At length the
war-club was produced, and the final vote taken. Kenton watched its
progress with thrilling emotion--which yielded to the most rapturous
delight, as he perceived that those who struck the floor of the
council-house, were decidedly inferior in number to those who passed it
in silence. Having thus succeeded in his benevolent purpose, Girty lost
no time in attending to the comfort of his friend. He led him into his
own wigwam, and from his own store gave him a pair of moccasins and
leggins, a breech-cloth, a hat, a coat, a handkerchief for his neck,
and another for his head."
In the course of a few weeks, and after passing through some
further difficulties, in which the renegade again stood by him
faithfully, Kenton was sent to Detroit, from which place he effected
his escape and returned to Kentucky. Girty remained with the Indians,
retaining his old influence, and continuing his old career; and four
years after the occurrences last detailed, in 1782, we find him a
prominent figure in one of the blackest tragedies that have ever
disgraced the annals of mankind. It is generally believed, by the old
settlers and their immediate descendants, that the influence of Girty
at this period, over the confederate tribes of the whole northwest,
was almost supreme. He had, it is true, no delegated authority, and
of course was powerless as regarded the final determination of any
important measure; but his voice was permitted in council among the
chiefs, and his inflaming harangues were always listened to with delight
by the young warriors. Among the sachems and other head-men, he was what
may well be styled a "power behind the throne;" and as it is well known
that this unseen power is often "greater than the throne itself," it may
reasonably be presumed that Girty's influence was in reality all which
it is supposed to have been. The horrible event alluded to above, was
the _Burning of Crawford_; and as a knowledge of this dark passage in
his life, is necessary to a full development of the character of the
renegade, an account of the incident, as much condensed as possible,
will be given from the histories of the unfortunate campaign of that
year.
The frontier settlements of Pennsylvania and Virginia, had been
greatly harassed by repeated attacks from bands of Indians under Girty
and some of the Wyandot and Shawnee chiefs, during the whole period
of the Revolutionary War; and early in the spring of 1782, these savage
incursions became so frequent and galling, and the common mode of
fighting the Indians on the line of frontier, when forced to do so
in self-defense, proved so inefficient, that it was found absolutely
necessary to carry the war into the country of the enemy. For this
purpose an expedition against the Wyandot towns on the Sandusky, was
gotten up in May, and put under the command of Colonel William Crawford,
a brave soldier of the Revolution. This force, amounting to upward
of four hundred mounted volunteers, commenced its march through the
wilderness northwest of the Ohio River, on the 25th of May, and
reached the plains of the Sandusky on the 5th of June. A spirit of
insubordination had manifested itself during the march, and on one
occasion a small body of the volunteers abandoned the expedition and
returned to their homes. The disaffection which had prevailed on the
march, continued to disturb the commander and divide the ranks, after
their arrival upon the very site (now deserted temporarily) of one of
the enemy's principal towns; and the officers, yielding to the wishes of
their men, had actually determined, in a hasty council, to abandon the
objects of the expedition and return home, if they did not meet with the
Indians in large force in the course of another day's march. Scarcely
had this determination been announced, however, when Colonel Crawford
received intelligence from his scouts, of the near approach of a large
body of the enemy. Preparations were at once made for the engagement,
which almost instantly commenced. It was now about the middle of the
afternoon; and from this time till dusk the firing was hot and galling
on both sides. About dark the Indians drew off their force, when the
volunteers encamped upon the battle-ground, and slept on their arms.
The next day, the battle was renewed by small detachments of the
enemy, but no general engagement took place. The Indians had suffered
severely from the close firing which ensued upon their first attack,
and were now maneuvering and awaiting the arrival of reinforcements.
No sooner had night closed upon this madly spent day, than the officers
assembled in council. They were unanimous in the opinion that the enemy,
already as they thought more numerous than their own force, was rapidly
increasing in numbers. They therefore determined, without a dissenting
voice, to retreat that night, as rapidly as circumstances would permit.
This resolution was at once announced to the whole body of volunteers,
and the arrangements necessary to carry it into effect were immediately
commenced. By nine or ten o'clock every thing was in readiness--the
troops properly disposed--and the retreat begun in good order. But
unfortunately, says McClung, "they had scarcely moved an hundred paces,
when the report of several rifles was heard in the rear, in the
direction of the Indian encampment. The troops instantly became very
unsteady. At length a solitary voice, in the front rank, called out that
their design was discovered, and that the Indians would soon be upon
them. Nothing more was necessary. The cavalry were instantly broken;
and, as usual, each man endeavored to save himself as he best could.
A prodigious uproar ensued, which quickly communicated to the enemy that
the white men had routed themselves, and that they had nothing to do but
pick up stragglers." A scene of confusion and carnage now took place,
which almost beggars description. All that night and for the whole of
the next day, the work of hunting out, running down, and butchering,
continued without intermission. But a relation of these sad occurrences
does not properly belong to this narrative. The brief account of the
expedition which has been given, was deemed necessary as an introduction
to the event which now claims attention.
Among the prisoners taken by the Indians, were Colonel Crawford,
the commander, and Dr. Knight of Pittsburg, who had gone upon the
expedition as surgeon. On the 10th of June, these gentlemen were
marched toward the principal town of the Wyandots, where they arrived
the next day. Here they beheld the mangled bodies of some of their late
companions, and were doomed to see others, yet living, butchered before
their eyes. Here, likewise, they saw Simon Girty, who appeared to take
an infernal delight in gazing upon the dead bodies, and viewing the
tortures which were inflicted upon the living. The features of this
wretch, who had known Colonel Crawford at Fort Pitt, were clad in
malicious smiles at beholding the brave soldier in his present strait;
and toward Dr. Knight he conducted himself with insolence as well as
barbarity. The Colonel was soon stripped naked, painted black, and
commanded to sit down by a large fire which was blazing close at hand;
and in this situation he was surrounded by all the old women and young
boys of the town, and severely beaten with sticks and clubs. While this
was going on, the Indians were sinking a large stake in the ground, and
building a circle of brushwood and hickory sticks around it, with a
diameter of some twelve or fifteen feet. These preparations completed,
Crawford's hands were tied firmly behind his back, and by his wrists
he was bound to the stake. The pile was then fired in several places,
and the quick flames curled into the air. Girty took no part in these
operations, but sat upon his horse at a little distance, observing them
with a malignant satisfaction. Catching his eye at the moment the pile
was fired, Crawford inquired of the renegade if the savages really
meant to burn him. Girty coldly answered "Yes," and the Colonel calmly
resigned himself to his fate. The whole scene is minutely described
in the several histories which have been written of this unfortunate
expedition; but the particulars are too horrible to be dwelt upon
here For more than two hours did the gallant soldier survive at that
flame-girdled stake; and during the latter half of this time, he was
put to every torture which savage ingenuity could devise, and hellish
vengeance execute. Once only did a word escape his lips. In the
extremity of his agony he again caught the eye of Girty; and he is
reported to have exclaimed at this time, "Girty! Girty! shoot me through
the heart! Do not refuse me! quick!--quick!" And it is said that the
monster merely replied, "Don't you see I have no gun, Colonel?" then
burst into a loud laugh and turned away. Crawford said no more; he sank
repeatedly beneath the pain and suffocation which he endured, and was
as often aroused by a new torture; but in a little while the "vital
spark" fled, and the black and swollen body lay senseless at the foot
of the stake.
Dr. Knight was now removed from the spot, and placed under the charge
of a Shawanee warrior to be taken to Chillicothe, where he was to share
in the terrible fate of his late companion. The Doctor, however, was
fortunate enough to effect his escape; and after wandering through the
wilderness for three weeks, in a state bordering on starvation, he
reached Pittsburg. He had been an eye-witness of all the tortures
inflicted upon the Colonel, and subsequently published a journal of the
expedition; and it is from this that the particulars have been derived
of the several accounts which have been published of the _Burning of
Crawford_.[48]
It was not to be expected that such a man as Simon Girty could, for a
great many years, maintain his influence among a people headed by chiefs
and warriors like Black-Hoof, Buckongahelas, Little Turtle, Tarhé, and
so forth. Accordingly we find the ascendancy of the renegade at its
height about the period of the expedition against Bryant's Station,
already described; and not long after this it began to wane, when,
discontent and disappointment inducing him to give way to his natural
appetites, he partook freely of all intoxicating liquors, and in the
course of a few years became a beastly drunkard. It is believed that
he at one time seriously meditated an abandonment of the Indians, and a
return to the whites; and an anecdote related by McClung, in his notice
of the emigration to Kentucky, by way of the Ohio River, in the year
1785, would seem to give color to this opinion. But if the intention
ever was seriously indulged, it is most likely that fear of the
treatment he would receive on being recognized in the frontier
settlements, on account of his many bloody enormities, prevented him
from carrying it into effect. He remained with the Indians in Ohio till
Wayne's victory, when he forsook the scenes of his former influence and
savage greatness, and established himself somewhere in Upper Canada.
He fought in the bloody engagement which terminated in the defeat and
butchery of St. Clair's army in 1791, and was at the battle of the
Fallen Timbers in 1794; but he had no command in either of those
engagements, and was not at this time a man of any particular influence.
In Canada, Girty was something of a trader, but gave himself up almost
wholly to intoxicating drinks, and became a perfect sot. At this time
he suffered much from rheumatism and other diseases; but he had grown
a great braggart, and amidst his severest pains he would entertain his
associates, and all who were willing to listen, with stories of his past
pranks and cruelty. He had now the most exaggerated notions of the honor
attaching to the character of a great warrior; and for some years before
his death his constantly-expressed wish was, that he might find an
opportunity of signalizing his last years by some daring action, and
die upon the field of battle. Whether sincere in this wish or not, the
opportunity was afforded him. He fought with the Indians at Proctor's
defeat on the Thames in 1814, and was among those who were here cut
down and trodden under foot by Colonel Johnson's regiment of mounted
Kentuckians.
Of the birth-place and family of Simon Girty we have not been able to
procure any satisfactory information. It is generally supposed, from
the fact that nearly all of his early companions were Virginians, that
he was a native of the Old Dominion; but one of the early pioneers,
(yet living in Franklin County,) who knew Girty at Pittsburg before his
defection, thinks that his native State was Pennsylvania. This venerable
gentleman is likewise of the opinion, that it was the disappointment
of not getting an office to which he aspired that first filled Girty's
breast with hatred of the whites, and roused in him those dark thoughts
and bitter feelings which subsequently, on the occurrence of the first
good opportunity, induced him to desert his countrymen and league
himself with the Indians. That Girty was an applicant or candidate
for some office, and was defeated in his efforts to obtain it by an
individual who was generally considered less deserving of it than he,
my informant has distinct recollections; and also remembers that his
defeat was occasioned principally through the exertions, in behalf of his
opponent, of Colonel William Crawford. This affords a key to the cause
of Girty's fiend-like conduct toward the Colonel when, some ten years
afterward, the latter was bound to the stake at one of the Wyandot
towns, and in the extremity of his agony besought the renegade to put
an end to his misery by shooting him through the heart: it offers no
apology, however, for Girty's brutality on that occasion.
The career of the renegade, commenced by treason and pursued through
blood to the knee, affords a good lesson, which might well receive some
remark; but this narrative has already extended to an unexpected length,
and must here close. It is a dark record; but the histories of all new
countries contain somewhat similar passages, and their preservation in
this form may not be altogether without usefulness.[49]
[Footnote 46: Gallagher: "Hesperian," vol. i., p. 343.]
[Footnote 47: Gallagher.]
[Footnote 48: Gallagher.]
[Footnote 49: Gallagher.]