Cherokees with a sincere desire for peace, which they soon after
concluded, and never again violated. Soon after this affair, young
George Brown was liberated by the Creeks. Joseph returned home and
lived some years with his mother. He was devoted to business, and of
most exemplary conduct in every relation of life. He soon attached
himself to Rev. Thomas B. Craighead’s congregation, near Hayesboro’,
and was made an elder in the church.
For several years, he and his mother and brothers memorialized the
Congress of the United States to reimburse them for the goods and
slaves taken from them in violation of the treaty of Hopewell. But
their claims were still unregarded, and still delayed, year after year.
In 1806, a treaty was finally concluded with the Indians which opened
all the lands on Duck river to the occupation of those who had located
their warrants there. Thus Mrs. Brown and her children came into
possession of a large and splendid tract of land south of Columbia, to
which she soon after removed with her son Joseph.
During the Creek war of 1812, a large number of Cherokee Indians
offered their services to Gen. Jackson against their red brethren.
Gen. Jackson immediately wrote to Joseph Brown, who had lately been
elected colonel by his neighbors, requesting him to consent to
command a regiment of Cherokee Indians. This he promptly agreed to
do, and started to join the army for that purpose. He however, never
took charge of the Indians, but served with the army, as aid to Gen.
Robards, as well as interpreter and guide.
He was thus a participant in the battle of Talladega, and had the
honor of leading and conducting a charge upon the most hotly contested
part of the Indian lines. During this campaign Brown again met Charles
Butler, the nephew of Kiachatalee, and learned from him that the old
Tuskegee chief, Cutty-a-toy, was still alive. He learned also that he
was then living on an island in the Tennessee river, near the mouth of
Elle river, and that he had with him several negroes, the descendants
of the woman taken by him at Nickajack, on the 9th of May, 1788.
Col. Brown had at that time a claim before Congress for the value of
those negroes, but had always been put off by reason of some defect
in the proof as to their value, or some other matter of form. He now
determined that, as his negroes were still in the hands of the original
wrong-doer, the Tuskegee chief, he would get possession of them, and
carry them home. He stated to General Jackson the facts of the case,
demanded of him and obtained an order appointing a mixed commission of
American and Cherokee officers, to value the negroes of Cutty-a-toy.
The Cherokees had long been at peace with the whites, and were now in
alliance with them against the Creeks, and under such circumstances
there was friendly intercourse between them.
With ten picked men, Brown proceeded to the island, went to the head
man’s lodge, exhibited to him Gen. Jackson’s order, and demanded that
Cutty-a-toy’s slaves should be immediately sent over to Fort Hampton,
to be valued, in pursuance of said order. The head man sent for
Cutty-a-toy, and it was immediately agreed that all would go to the
fort the next morning.
The next morning, the negroes, Cutty-a-toy, his wife, and some friends,
went with Col. Brown to the Fort. In crossing the river Brown and his
men took up the negroes and Cutty-a-toy’s wife behind them, to carry
over the water, while the Indian men crossed on a raft higher up.
When he reached the fort he directed his men to proceed with the
negroes towards Ditto’s landing, while he turned into the fort with
Cutty-a-toy’s wife, to await the arrival of the Indians. He immediately
called on the commandant of the fort, Col. Williams, stated the history
of the case, the order of Gen. Jackson, the failure of Congress to pay
for the slaves, and the fact that they were now in his possession; and
frankly asked him what course he would pursue, under the circumstances.
“Take the negroes home with you,” said the Colonel; “and if you wish to
do it, and have not men enough, I will give you more.”
Upon the arrival of Cutty-a-toy and his followers, they were invited
into the fort, and Col. Brown made known to him that he had sent the
negroes off, but was willing for the commissioners to proceed to value
them. The Indian became enraged. At last, in the midst of the garrison,
officers and men, and the Indians, Col. Brown gave a brief narrative
of the murder of his father by Cutty-a-toy’s party, the murder of his
brothers, and the captivity of his mother, small brother and sisters;
of the capture of the slaves by Cutty-a-toy, and his attempt on the
life of Col. Brown himself, then a boy at the house of the French
trader; of his being saved at the intercession of the trader’s wife,
and the Indian’s desire to save the life of his captive negro woman.
“It is now,” said Col. Brown, “nearly twenty-five years, and yet during
all that time you have had the negro and her children as your slaves,
and they have worked for you; and yet you got them by the murder of
my father and brothers! You made me an orphan and a beggar, when but
for you, I had begun the world with the smiles of a father, and the
comforts of a home provided by his care. For this wrong, this crime,
Cutty-a-toy, you deserve to die!”
Here Cutty-a-toy hung his head, and said, “It is all true: do with me
as you please.”
The soldiers who stood around, many of them the neighbors of Col.
Brown, said, “Kill him! he ought to die.” But Brown was now a
Christian, and had long since ceased to cherish feelings of revenge
against the savage murderer of his father.
“No, no, Cutty-a-toy,” he proceeded, “although you deserve to die, and
at my hands, yet I will not kill you. If I did not worship the Great
Spirit who rules all things, I would slay you; but vengeance is his,
and I will leave you to answer to him for your crimes! I will not stain
my hands with your blood; you are now old, and must soon go down to the
grave, and answer to that Great Spirit for the life you have led. Live
and repent.”
Here Cutty-a-toy assumed a bolder front, and said, by certain treaties
made in 1794, this property was guaranteed to him, and that he would
sue Brown in the Federal Courts, as some other Indians named by him had
done, in similar cases; but he finally agreed, if Brown would give him
a young negro fellow, he might take the rest, including two women and
some children, which was generously done.
Thus the fortunes of war, controlled by the steady perseverance of
her son, at length restored to Mrs. Brown a part of her long-lost
property. Many years afterwards, when Gen. Jackson became President,
Col. Brown finally obtained an allowance from Congress for a part of
the property lost by his father in 1788. In 1810, he became a member
of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, and in 1823, a regular ordained
minister of that Church.
Having lived to the advanced age of ninety, and never having remarried,
but always making her home with her son Joseph, Mrs. Brown left this
world of vexation and sorrow, for such it had been to her, at her son’s
residence in Maury County, Tennessee. Hers was a most eventful life,
full of trials almost beyond human endurance; yet she did not murmur,
but tried to see in all her afflictions the kind guidance of a wise
Providence.
George, soon after his release from captivity, emigrated to the South,
and after nearly fifty years’ honorable citizenship near Woodville,
Mississippi, died in the bosom of his family. The captive daughter,
Jane, whose release was due to the manly courage of her youthful
brother, was married to a Mr. Collingsworth, and became with him a
citizen of Texas as early as 1819, where her children yet reside.
The history possesses all the attractions of a romance; yet it is but
a plain sad story of trials and sufferings incident to the period and
to border life. The only survivor of that pioneer family is the Rev.
Joseph Brown, of Maury County, better known as Col. Brown. From notes
and memoranda furnished by him, the principal details of this narrative
have been written. It cannot fail to be useful to the future historian
of Tennessee, yet Haywood, in his history of five hundred pages, only
makes the following allusion to the facts contained in this narrative.
Speaking of the treaty of peace made at Tellico, October 20, 1795,
between the people of Tennessee, and the Creeks and Cherokees, they
(the Creeks,) says the historian, “at this time delivered up Brown,
son of Mrs. Brown, formerly a prisoner in the Creek nation.” How
inadequate is such a notice to do justice either to the sufferings
of Mrs. Brown and her children, or to the generous protection of the
Creek chieftain to whom they were indebted for their deliverance! For
notwithstanding the “obloquy which both history and tradition have
thrown upon the characters of the Creek and Cherokee warriors, some
bright gleams occasionally break through, which throw a melancholy
lustre over their memories.” But a large portion of the pioneer history
of Tennessee has never been written. Replete with incidents and heroic
deeds which might challenge the admiration of the world, yet all that
has been written by Haywood and others would scarcely serve as a thread
to guide the future historian through the labyrinth of events which
crowded upon the infant colonies of the Holston and the Cumberland.
* * * * *
In 1792 the family of Joseph Wilson, who was a pioneer in the
Cumberland Valley, from Carolina, was living at Zeigler’s Station in
what is now Sumner County, Tennessee. This station was near Cumberland
River, a few miles from Bledsoe’s Lick, but being nearer the frontier,
was more exposed to the incursions of the Indians. It was only a
small picketted fort, with a blockhouse, and contained but thirteen
men, including a son of Wilson, not yet grown. Near the fort was a
small farm which was cultivated by the inmates of the station. In the
afternoon of the 26th of June, 1792, a large party of Creek Indians
assaulted the station, but after a severe contest in which several
of the defenders were killed and wounded, the savages were repulsed.
There being no surgeon in the party, a messenger was despatched to a
neighboring station for a physician to attend the wounded, and for aid
to repel any new assault which might be made. Before either surgeon
or aid arrived, however, the Indians renewed the assault, and night
coming on, they succeeded in setting fire to the buildings, which
spread with such rapidity, that the assailed were compelled to decide
between instant destruction by the flames and a cruel and lingering
death by the hands of the savages. Five of the defenders were already
slain, and four others wounded. In this moment of extreme peril, Mrs.
Wilson urged her husband to attempt to break through the lines of the
savages, and make his escape. It was probable they would spare her
life, and those of her young children, but for him death was certain,
unless he could make his escape by a sudden sortie from the blockhouse.
Wilson hesitated, and feeling the horror of his situation, seemed to
prefer death with his family, to leaving his wife and children to the
cruelty of the foe; but his heroic wife urged him for her sake to
leave her, saying that she would be safer in the hands of the Indians
without him than with him. The same appeal was made to another man
who was unhurt, but he refused to leave the fort. But a few minutes
remained; the flames were sweeping over the roof of the block-house,
and the assailants stood around with rifles and their hatchets to
strike down any one who attempted to escape. In this dreadful moment
Wilson yielded to his wife’s entreaties, bade his son, a lad fifteen
or sixteen years of age, follow, and dashing boldly out of the flaming
building, was followed by his son. Several shots were instantly fired,
one of which took effect in Wilson’s foot, but father and son passed
beyond the lines of the assailants, pursued by yelling savages as they
fled. Becoming sick from the loss of blood, Wilson secreted himself
in a clump of bushes in the field, while his son went on to obtain a
horse from a neighboring field. As he lay thus concealed some pursuing
savages passed within a few feet of his hiding-place, but fortunately
missed him. The lurid flames of the burning block-house, meanwhile,
revealed, as he thought, the fate of his wife and children.
As soon as her son and husband had disappeared, Mrs. Wilson, with an
infant in her arms, and followed by five small children, the eldest a
lovely girl about ten years old, walked slowly out of the block-house,
expecting each instant to receive the fatal blow; but yielding to a
generous impulse and perhaps not unwilling to obtain captives, who
might be made slaves, the Indian warriors spared her life, and made
her and her children prisoners. All the rest of the inmates of the
fort were killed or burned, except the man who had been dispatched for
succor and a surgeon, both of which failed to arrive till the station
was in ashes, and the assailants had retreated towards their nation
with their prisoners. Capt. Alfred Wilson, a relation of Joseph Wilson,
came with a party of friends to the help of the besieged, but came only
in time to discover the blackened and charred bones of those who were
burned.
In the meantime, young Wilson obtained horses, returned to the place
of his father’s concealment, and after having with difficulty placed
him on one of the horses, conveyed him to Bledsoe’s Station. A party
of the soldiers hastily assembled, pursued, but did not overtake the
retreating savages, and thus Mrs. Wilson and her children were carried,
as captives, into the White Grounds, in the Upper Creek Nation.
In a few weeks Gov. Blount arrived at Nashville, and called into
service three hundred men, in order to defend the frontiers, but the
many women and children who were captives in the Creek Towns were left
to languish in a barbarous country.
Mrs. Wilson was the sister of Col. White of Knoxville, and through his
interposition, after more than twelve months’ captivity, was, with all
her children (except her eldest daughter,) restored to her home. Few
persons can now imagine the painful suspense in which Wilson and his
wife spent that year of separation. An aged pioneer matron,[15] who
resided near Bledsoe’s Lick during this period, has said that Wilson
seemed to her to have been the most unhappy man in the world, during
the year of his wife’s captivity.
Although the family was now again restored to a happy reunion, yet
their home circle lacked one bright-eyed prattler, yet in slavery and
exile among her savage captors. It was not until after the destruction
of Nickajack and Running Water, that young Sally Wilson was restored to
the arms of her parents. And then how changed! During her captivity,
she had forgotten her own language and her people, and for several
months sighed for her forest home! But soon regaining her language,
with it came also the remembrance of home and friends, and the home
circle was again complete.
Mr. and Mrs. Wilson lived many years after this terrible experience of
pioneer life, and reared their children to usefulness and honor. Many
of their descendants yet reside in Tennessee, while not a few, seeking
a better home in the far West, have adventured, like their sires, into
the deep solitudes of the wilderness, where they too may yet experience
some of the dark trials of their ancestors.
VI.
MARY MOORE.
Before proceeding to sketches illustrating a later period, it will
be proper to take a view of the early condition of that portion of
Virginia, which, lying on the sunset side of the great range of
mountains, belonged to the West. De Hass, in his History of the Indian
Wars of Western Virginia, says that before 1749, the country was
untrodden by foot of white man, except occasional traders who may have
ventured on the heads of some of the tributary streams rising in the
Alleghany mountains. It is said that in this year a lunatic wandered
into the wilderness of the Greenbriar country, and on returning home,
told his friends he had discovered rivers flowing in a westward
direction. His report induced two pioneers to enter the mountain wild,
where they were found in 1751 by the agent for the Greenbriar company.
Further attempts to colonize the country were not made for some years.
The first permanent settlements by Zane and Tomlinson, were at or near
Wheeling; hardy emigrants followed, and pushed into the fine regions
along the Upper Monongahela. When it became known that outposts were
established on the confines of civilization, hundreds pressed forward
to join the adventurous settlers, and secure homes in the forest domain.
“The escape of Mrs. Denis, who had been taken captive in the James
river settlement, in 1761, presents a parallel to narratives of female
captives in the early history of the settlement of New England. Her
husband having been slain, after being taken captive, the Indians
took her over the mountains and through the forests to the Chilicothe
towns north of the Ohio. There she seemed to conform to their ways,
painted and dressed herself, and lived as a squaw. Added to this, she
gained fame by attending to the sick, both as a nurse and a physician;
and became so celebrated for her cures, as to obtain from that
superstitious people the reputation of being a necromancer, and the
honor paid to a person supposed to have power with the Great Spirit.
“In 1763 she left them, under the pretext of obtaining medicinal herbs,
as she had often done before. Not returning at night, her object was
suspected, and she was pursued. To avoid leaving traces of her path,
she crossed the Scioto three times, and was making her fourth crossing
forty miles below the towns, when she was discovered, and fired upon
without effect. But in the speed of her flight, she wounded her foot
with a sharp stone, so as to be unable to proceed. The Indians had
crossed the river, and were just behind her. She eluded their pursuit
by hiding in a hollow sycamore log. They frequently stepped on the log
that concealed her, and encamped near it for the night. Next morning
they proceeded in their pursuit of her; and she started in another
direction as fast as her lameness would permit, but was obliged to
remain near that place three days. She then set off for the Ohio, over
which she rafted herself at the mouth of the Great Kanawha, on a drift
log; travelling only by night through fear of discovery, and subsisting
only on roots, wild fruits, and the river shell-fish. She reached the
Green Briar, having passed forests, rivers, and mountains, for more
than three hundred miles. Here she sank down exhausted, and resigned
herself to die, when providentially she was discovered by some of the
people of that settlement, and hospitably treated at one of their
habitations.”[16]
The settlement was made to suffer severely for this hospitable act. “A
party of fifty or sixty Shawanese, coming under the garb of friendship,
suddenly fell upon the men, butchering every one of them, and made
captives of the women and children. They next visited the Levels, where
Archibald Clendenin had erected a rude block-house, and where were
gathered quite a number of families--and were here again entertained
with hospitality. Mr. Clendenin had just brought in three fine elk,
upon which the savages feasted sumptuously. One of the inmates was a
decrepid old woman, with an ulcerated limb; she undressed the member,
and asked the Indian if he could cure it. ‘Yes,’ he replied; and
immediately sunk his tomahawk into her head. This was the signal, and
instantly every man in the house was put to death.
“The cries of the women and children alarmed a man in the yard, who
escaped and reported the circumstances to the settlement at Jackson’s
river. The people were loth to believe him, but were soon convinced,
for the savages appeared, and many of the flying families were
massacred without mercy. The prisoners were then marched off in the
direction of the Ohio. Mrs. Clendenin proved herself in that trying
moment a woman fit to be one of the mothers of the West. Indignant at
the treachery and cowardly conduct of the wretches, she did not fail
to abuse them from the chief down, in the most unmeasured manner. The
savages, to intimidate her, would flap the bloody scalp of her dead
husband against her face, and significantly twirl their tomahawks
above her head, but still the courageous woman talked to them like one
who felt her injuries and resolved to express the feeling. On the day
after her captivity, she had an opportunity to escape, and giving her
infant to a woman, slipped unobserved into a thicket. The child soon
beginning to cry, one of the Indians inquired concerning the mother;
but getting no satisfactory reply, swore he would ‘bring the cow to the
calf,’ and taking the infant by the heels dashed out its brains against
a tree. Mrs. Clendenin returned to her desolate home, and secured the
remains of her husband from the rapacious jaws of the wild animals with
which the woods abounded. It is stated that a black woman, in escaping
from Clendenin’s house, killed her own child to prevent its cries
attracting the attention of the savages. Such were some of the horrid
realities endured by the first settlers of Western Virginia.”[17]
Early in 1778, an attack was made on a block-house in the country of
the Upper Monongahela. The children allowed to play outside, discovered
Indians, and running in, gave the alarm. “John Murphy stepped to the
door, when one of the Indians, turning the corner of the house, fired
at him. The ball took effect, and Murphy fell into the house. The
Indian springing in, was grappled by Harbert, and thrown on the floor.
A shot from without wounded Harbert, yet he continued to maintain his
advantage over the prostrate savage, striking him as effectually as he
could with his tomahawk, when another gun was fired from without, the
ball passing through his head. His antagonist then slipped out at the
door, badly wounded in the encounter.
“Just after the first Indian entered, an active young warrior, holding
a tomahawk with a long spike at the end, came in. Edward Cunningham
instantly drew up his gun, but it flashed, and they closed in doubtful
strife. Both were active and athletic; each put forth his strength,
and strained every nerve to gain the ascendency. For awhile the issue
seemed doubtful. At length, by great exertion, Cunningham wrenched the
tomahawk from the hand of the Indian, and buried the spike end to the
handle in his back. Mrs. Cunningham closed the contest. Seeing her
husband struggling with the savage, she struck at him with an axe.
The edge wounding his face severely, he loosened his hold, and made
his way out of the house. The third Indian who had entered before the
door was closed, presented an appearance almost as frightful as the
object he had in view. He wore a cap made of the unshorn front of a
buffalo, with the ears and horn still attached, and hanging loosely
about his head. On entering the room, this hideous monster aimed a blow
with his tomahawk at Miss Reece, which inflicted a severe wound on her
hand. The mother, seeing the uplifted weapon about to descend on her
daughter, seized the monster by the horns; but his false head coming
off, she did not succeed in changing the direction of the weapon.
The father then caught hold of him; but far inferior in strength,
he was thrown on the floor, and would have been killed, but for the
interference of Cunningham, who having cleared the house of one Indian,
wheeled and struck his tomahawk into the head of the other. During all
this time, the door was kept secure by the women. The Indians from
without endeavored several times to force it, and would at one time
have succeeded; but just as it was yielding, the Indian who had been
wounded by Cunningham and his wife, squeezed out, causing a momentary
relaxation of their efforts, and enabled the women again to close it.