actuates the hireling soldier; and, though civilization was not then far
enough advanced, to make it very conspicuous, there were other elements
mingled, which could not but depreciate the simple nobility of the
pioneer's nature. Many of the qualities which, in him, had been merely
passive, in the ranger became fierce and active. We have alluded, for
example, to his hatred of the Indian; and this, habit soon strengthened
and exaggerated. Nothing marks that change so plainly as his adoption of
the barbarous practice of scalping enemies.
For this there might be some little palliation in the fact, that the
savage never considered a warrior overcome, though he were killed,
unless he lost his scalp; and so long as he could bring off the dead
bodies of his comrades, not mutilated by the process, he was but
partially intimidated. Defeat was, in that case, converted to a sort of
triumph; and having gone within one step of victory--for so this
half-success was estimated--was the strongest incentive to a renewal of
the effort. It might be, therefore, that the ranger's adoption of the
custom was a measure of self-defence. But it is to be feared that this
consideration--weak as it is, when stated as an excuse for cruelty so
barbarous--had but little influence in determining the ranger. Adopting
the code of the savage, the practice soon became a part of his warfare;
and the taking of the scalp was a ceremony necessary to the completion
of his victory. It was a bloody and inhuman triumph--a custom, which
tended, more forcibly than any other, to degrade true courage to mere
cruelty; and which, while it only mortified the savage, at the same
time, by rendering his hatred of the white men more implacable,
aggravated the horrors of Indian warfare. But the only measure of
justice in those days, was the _lex talionis_--"An eye for an eye," a
scalp for a scalp; and, even now, you may hear frontiermen justify,
though they do not practise it, by quoting the venerable maxim, "Fight
the devil with fire."
But, though the warfare of the ranger was sometimes distinguished by
cruelty, it was also ennobled by features upon which it is far more
pleasant to dwell.
No paladin, or knight, of the olden times, ever exhibited more wild,
romantic daring, than that which formed a part of the ranger's daily
action. Danger, in a thousand forms, beset him at every step--he defied
mutilation, death by fire and lingering torture. The number of his
enemies, he never counted, until after he had conquered them--the power
of the tribe, or the prowess of the warrior, was no element in his
calculations. Where he could strike first and most effectually, was his
only inquiry. Securing an avenue for retreat was no part of his
strategy--for he had never an intention or thought of returning, except
as a victor. "Keeping open his communications," either with the rear or
the flanks, had no place in his system; "combined movements" he seldom
attempted, for he depended for victory, upon the force he chanced to
have directly at hand. The distance from his "base of operations" he
never measured; for he carried all his supplies about his person, and he
never looked for reinforcements. Bridges and wagon-roads he did not
require, for he could swim all the rivers, and he never lost his way in
the forest. He carried his artillery upon his shoulder, his tactics were
the maxims of Indian warfare, and his only drill was the "ball-practice"
of the woods. He was his own commissary, for he carried his "rations" on
his back, and replenished his havresack with his rifle. He needed no
quartermaster; for he furnished his own "transportation," and selected
his own encampment--his bed was the bosom of mother-earth, and his tent
was the foliage of an oak or the canopy of heaven. In most
cases--especially in battle--he was his own commander, too; for he was
impatient of restraint, and in savage warfare knew his duty as well as
any man could instruct him. Obedience was no part of his
nature--subordination was irksome and oppressive. In a word, he was an
excellent soldier, without drill, discipline or organization.
He was as active as he was brave--as untiring as he was fearless.
A corps of rangers moved so rapidly, as apparently to double its
numbers--dispersing on the Illinois or Missouri, and reassembling on the
Mississippi, on the following day--traversing the Okan timber to-day,
and fording the Ohio to-morrow. One of them, noted among the Indians for
desperate fighting, and personally known for many a bloody meeting,
would appear so nearly simultaneously in different places, as to acquire
the title of a "Great Medicine;" and instances have been known, where as
many as three distinct war-parties have told of obstinate encounters
with the same men in one day! Their apparent ubiquity awed the Indians
more than their prowess.
General Benjamin Howard, who, in eighteen hundred and thirteen resigned
the office of governor of Missouri, and accepted the appointment of
brigadier-general, in command of the militia and rangers of Missouri
and Illinois, at no time, except for a few weeks in eighteen hundred and
fourteen, had more than one thousand men under his orders: And yet, with
this inconsiderable force, he protected a frontier extending from the
waters of the Wabash, westward to the advanced settlements of
Missouri--driving the savages northward beyond Peoria, and intimidating
them by the promptitude and rapidity of his movements.
Our government contributed nothing to the defence of its frontiers,
except an act of Congress, which authorized them to defend themselves!
The Indians, amounting to at least twenty tribes, had been stirred up to
hostility by the British, and, before the establishment of rangers, were
murdering and plundering almost with impunity. But soon after the
organization of these companies, the tide began to turn. The ranger was
at least a match for the savage in his own mode of warfare; and he had,
moreover, the advantages of civilized weapons, and a steadiness and
constancy, unknown to the disorderly war-parties of the red men.
He was persevering beyond all example, and exhibited endurance which
astonished even the stoical savage. Three or four hours' rest, after
weeks of hardship and exposure, prepared him for another expedition. If
the severity of his vengeance, or the success of a daring enterprise,
intimidated the Indian for a time, and gave him a few days' leisure, he
grew impatient of inactivity, and was straightway planning some new
exploit. The moment one suggested itself, he set about accomplishing
it--and its hardihood and peril caused no hesitation. He would march, on
foot, hundreds of miles, through an unbroken wilderness, until he
reached the point where the blow was to be struck; and then, awaiting
the darkness, in the middle of the night, he would fall upon his
unsuspecting enemies and carry all before him.
During the war of independence, the rangers had not yet assumed that
name, nor were they as thoroughly organized, as they became in the
subsequent contest of eighteen hundred and twelve. But the same material
was there--the same elements of character, actuated by the same spirit.
Let the following instance show what that spirit was.
In the year seventeen hundred and seventy-seven, there lived at
Cahokia--on the east side of the Mississippi below Saint Louis--a
Pennsylvanian by the name of Brady--a restless, daring man, just made
for a leader of rangers. In an interval of inactivity, he conceived the
idea of capturing one of the British posts in Michigan, the nearest
point of which was at least three hundred miles distant! He forthwith
set about raising a company--and, at the end of three days, found
himself invested with the command of _sixteen men_! With these, on the
first of October, he started on a journey of more than one hundred
leagues, through the vast solitudes of the prairies and the thousand
perils of the forest, to take a military station, occupied by a
detachment of British soldiers! After a long and toilsome march, they
reached the banks of the St. Joseph's river, on which the object of
their expedition stood. Awaiting the security of midnight, they suddenly
broke from their cover in the neighborhood, and by a _coup de main_,
captured the fort without the loss of a man! Thus far all went well--for
besides the success and safety of the party, they found a large amount
of stores, belonging to traders, in the station, and were richly paid
for their enterprise--but having been detained by the footsore, on their
homeward march, and probably delayed by their plunder, they had only
reached the Calumet, on the borders of Indiana, when they were overtaken
by three hundred British and Indians! They were forced to surrender,
though not without a fight, for men of that stamp were not to be
intimidated by numbers. They lost in the skirmish one fourth of their
number: the survivors were carried away to Canada, whence Brady, the
leader, escaped, and returned to Cahokia the same winter. The twelve
remained prisoners until seventeen hundred and seventy-nine.
Against most men this reverse would have given the little fort
security--at least, until the memory of the disaster had been obscured
by time. But the pioneers of that period were not to be judged by
ordinary rules. The very next spring (1778), another company was raised
for the same object, and to wipe out what they considered the stain of a
failure. It was led by a man named Maize, over the same ground, to the
same place, and was completely successful. The fort was retaken, the
trading-station plundered, the wounded men of Brady's party released,
and, loaded with spoil, the little party marched back in triumph!
There is an episode in the history of their homeward march, which
illustrates another characteristic of the ranger--his ruthlessness. The
same spirit which led him to disregard physical obstacles, prevented his
shrinking from even direful necessities. One of the prisoners whom they
had liberated, became exhausted and unable to proceed. They could not
carry him, and would not have him to die of starvation in the
wilderness. They could not halt with him, lest the same fate should
overtake them, which had defeated the enterprise of Brady. But one
alternative remained, and though, to us, it appears cruel and inhuman,
it was self-preservation to them, and mercy, in a strange guise, to the
unhappy victim--_he was despatched by the hand of the leader_, and
buried upon the prairie! His grave is somewhere near the head-waters of
the Wabash, and has probably been visited by no man from that day to
this!
Mournful reflections cluster round such a narrative as this, and we are
impelled to use the word "atrocious" when we speak of it. It was
certainly a bloody deed, but the men of those days were not nurtured in
drawing-rooms, and never slept upon down-beds. A state of war, moreover,
begets many evils, and none of them are more to be deplored than the
occasional occurrence of such terrible necessities.
The ranger-character, like the pioneer-nature of which it was a phase,
was compounded of various and widely-differing elements. No one of his
evil qualities was more prominent than several of the good; and, I am
sorry to say, none of the good was more prominent than several of the
bad. No class of men did more efficient service in defending the western
settlements from the inroads of the Indians; and though it seems hard
that the war should sometimes have been carried into the country of the
untutored savage by civilized men, with a severity exceeding his own, we
should remember that we can not justly estimate the motives and feelings
of the ranger, without first having been exasperated by his sufferings
and tried by his temptations.
V.
THE REGULATOR.
"Thieves for their robbery have authority,
When judges steal themselves."--
MEASURE FOR MEASURE.
At the conclusion of peace between England and America, in eighteen
hundred and fifteen, the Indians, who had been instigated and supported
in their hostility by the British, suddenly found themselves deprived of
their allies. If they now made war upon the Americans, they must do so
upon their own responsibility, and, excepting the encouragement of a few
traders and commanders of outposts, whose enmity survived the general
pacification, without assistance from abroad. They, however, refused to
lay down their arms, and hostilities were continued, though languidly,
for some years longer. But the rangers, now disciplined by the
experience of protracted warfare, and vastly increased in numbers, had
grown to be more than a match for them, so that not many years elapsed
before the conclusion of a peace, which has lasted, with but occasional
interruptions, to the present day.
When danger no longer threatened the settlements, there was no further
call for these irregular troops. The companies were disbanded, and those
who had families, as a large proportion of them had, returned to their
plantations, and resumed the pursuits of industry and peace. Those who
had neither farms nor families, and were unfitted by their stirring life
for regular effort, emigrated further west. Peace settled upon our
borders, never, we hope, to be seriously broken.
But as soon as the pressure of outward danger was withdrawn, and our
communities began to expand, the seeds of new evils were
developed--seeds which had germinated unobserved, while all eyes were
averted, and which now began to shoot up into a stately growth of vices
and crimes. The pioneers soon learned that there was among them a class
of unprincipled and abandoned men, whose only motive in emigrating was
to avoid the restraints, or escape the penalties, of law, and to whom
the freedom of the wilderness was a license to commit every sort of
depredation. The arm of the law was not yet strong enough to punish
them.
The territorial governments were too busy in completing their own
organization, to give much attention to details: where states had been
formed, the statute-book was yet a blank: few officers had been
appointed, and even these were strangers to their duties and charge of
responsibility. Between the military rule of the rangers--for they were
for internal police as well as external defence--and the establishment
of regular civil government, there was a sort of interregnum, during
which there was neither law nor power to enforce it. The bands of
villains who infested the country were the only organizations known;
and, in not a few instances, these bands included the very magistrates
whose duty it was to see that the laws were faithfully executed. Even
when this was not the case, it was a fruitless effort to arrest a
malefactor; indeed, it was very often worse than fruitless, for his
confederates were always ready to testify in his favor: and the usual
consequence of an attempt to punish, was the drawing down upon the head
of the complainant or prosecutor, the enmity of a whole confederacy.
Legal proceedings, had provision been made for such, were worse than
useless, for conviction was impossible: and the effort exasperated,
while the failure encouraged, the outlaw spirit.
An _alibi_ was the usual defence, and to those times may be referred the
general prejudice entertained among our people, even at the present day,
against that species of testimony. A jury of western men will hardly
credit an _alibi_, though established by unexceptionable witnesses; and
the announcement that the accused depends upon that for his defence,
will create a strong prejudice against him in advance. Injustice may
sometimes be done in this way, but it is a feeling of which our people
came honestly in possession. They established a habit, in early days, of
never believing an _alibi_, because, at that time, nine _alibis_ in ten
were false, and habits of thought, like legal customs, cling to men long
after their reason has ceased. It is right, too, that it should be so,
on the principle that we should not suspend the use of the remedy until
the disease be thoroughly conquered.
In a state of things, such as we have described, but one of two things
could be done: the citizens must either abandon all effort to assert the
supremacy of order, and give the country over to thieves and robbers,
or they must invent some new and irregular way of forcing men to live
honestly. They wisely chose the latter alternative. They consulted
together, and the institution of _Regulators_ was the result of their
deliberations.
These were small bodies of men, chosen by the people, or voluntarily
assuming the duty--men upon whom the citizens could depend for both
discretion and resolution. Their duties may be explained in a few words:
to ferret out and punish criminals, to drive out "suspicious
characters," and exercise a general supervision over the interests and
police of the settlements, from which they were chosen. Their
statute-book was the "code of Judge Lynch"--their order of trial was
similar to that of a "drum-head court-martial"--the principles of their
punishment was certainty, rapidity, and severity. They were judges,
juries, witnesses, and executioners.
They bound themselves by a regular compact (usually verbal, but
sometimes in writing[77]), to the people and to each other, to rid the
community of all thieves, robbers, plunderers, and villains of every
description. They scoured the country in all directions and in all
seasons, and by the swiftness of their movements, and the certainty of
their vengeance, rivalled their predecessors, the rangers. When a
depredation had been committed, it was marvellous with what rapidity
every regulator knew it; even the telegraph of modern days performs no
greater wonders: and it frequently happened, that the first the quiet
citizens heard of a theft, or a robbery, was the news of its punishment!
Their acts may sometimes have been high-handed and unjustifiable, but on
the whole--and it is only in such a view that social institutions are to
be estimated--they were the preservers of the communities for whom they
acted. In time, it is true, they degenerated, and sometimes the corps
fell into the hands of the very men they were organized to punish.
Every social organization is liable to misdirection, and this, among
others, has been perverted to the furtherance of selfish and
unprincipled purposes; for, like prejudices and habits of thought,
organized institutions frequently survive the necessities which call
them into existence. Abuses grow up under all systems; and, perhaps, the
worst abuse of all, is a measure or expedient, good though temporary,
retained after the passing away of the time for which it was adopted.
But having, in the article "Pioneer," sufficiently elaborated the
_character_--for the regulator was of course a pioneer also--we can best
illustrate the mode of his action by a narrative of facts. From the
hundreds of well-authenticated stories which might be collected, I have
chosen the two following, because they distinguish the successive stages
or periods of the system. The first relates to the time when a band of
regulators was the only reliable legal power, and when, consequently,
the vigilance of the citizens kept it comparatively pure. The second
indicates a later period, when the people no longer felt insecure, and
there was in fact no necessity for the system; and when, not having been
disused, it could not but be abused. We derive both from an old citizen
of the country, who was an actor in each. One of them, the first, has
already been in print, but owing to circumstances to which it is
needless to advert, it was thought better to confine the narrative to
facts already generally known. These circumstances are no longer
operative, and I am now at liberty to publish entire the story of "The
First Grave."
THE FIRST GRAVE.
At the commencement of the war of eighteen hundred and twelve, between
Great Britain and the United States, there lived, in the western part of
Virginia, three families, named, respectively, Stone, Cutler, and
Roberts. They were all respectable people, of more than ordinary wealth;
having succeeded, by an early emigration and judicious selection of
lands, in rebuilding fortunes which had been somewhat impaired east of
the Blue Ridge. Between the first and second there was a relationship,
cemented by several matrimonial alliances, and the standing of both had
been elevated by this union of fortunes. In each of these two, there
were six or seven children--the most of them boys--but Captain Roberts,
the head of the third, had but one child, a daughter, who, in the year
named, was approaching womanhood.
She is said to have been beautiful: and, from the extravagant admiration
of those who saw her only when time and suffering must have obscured her
attractions, there can be little doubt that she was so. What her
character was, we can only conjecture from the tenor of our story:
though we have reason to suspect that she was passionate, impulsive,
and somewhat vain of her personal appearance.
At the opening of hostilities between the two countries, she was wooed
by two suitors, young Stone, the eldest of the sons of that family, and
Abram Cutler, who was two or three years his senior. Both had recently
returned home, after a protracted absence of several years, beyond the
mountains, whither they had been sent by their ambitious parents, "to
attend college and see the world." Stone was a quiet, modest, unassuming
young man, rather handsome, but too pale and thin to be decidedly so.
Having made the most of his opportunities at "William and Mary," he had
come home well-educated (for that day and country) and polished by
intercourse with good society.
His cousin, Abram Cutler, was his opposite in almost everything. He had
been wild, reckless, and violent, at college, almost entirely giving up
his studies, after the first term, and always found in evil company. His
manners were as much vitiated as his morals, for he was exceedingly
rough, boisterous, and unpolished: so much so, indeed, as to approach
that limit beyond which wealth will not make society tolerant. But his
freedom of manner bore, to most observers, the appearance of generous
heartiness, and he soon gained the good will of the neighborhood by the
careless prodigality of his life. He was tall, elegantly formed, and
quite well-looking; and though he is said to have borne, a few years
later, a sinister and dishonest look, it is probable that most of this
was attributable to the preconceived notions of those who thus judged
him.
Both these young men were, as we have said, suitors for the hand of
Margaret Roberts, and it is possible that the vain satisfaction of
having at her feet the two most attractive young men in the country, led
her to coquet with them both, but decidedly to prefer neither. It is
almost certain, that at the period indicated, she was sufficiently
well-pleased with either to have become his wife, had the other been
away. If she _loved_ either, however, it was Stone, for she was a little
timid, and Cutler sometimes frightened her with his violence: but the
preference, if it existed at all, was not sufficiently strong to induce
a choice.
About this time, the elder Cutler died, and it became necessary for
Abram, as executor of a large estate, to cross the mountains into the
Old Dominion, and arrange its complicated affairs. It was not without
misgiving that he went away, but his duties were imperative, and his
necessities, produced by his spendthrift habits, were pressing. He
trusted to a more than usually favorable interview with Margaret, and
full of sanguine hopes, departed on his journey.