The Winning of the West, Volume Three by Theodore Roosevelt

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At about the same time three girls, sisters, walking together near
Wheeling Creek, were pounced upon by a small party of Indians. After
going a short distance the Indians halted, talked together for a few
moments, and then without any warning a warrior turned and tomahawked
one of the girls. The second instantly shared the same fate; the third
jerked away from the Indian who held her, darted up a bank, and,
extraordinary to relate, eluded her pursuer, and reached her home in
safety. Another family named Doolin, suffered in the same year; and
there was one singular circumstance connected with their fate. The
Indians came to the door of the cabin in the early morning; as the man
rose from bed the Indians fired through the door and shot him in the
thigh. They then burst in, and tomahawked him and two children; yet for
reasons unknown they did not harm the woman, nor the child in her arms.

No such mercy was shown by a band of six Indians who attacked the log
houses of two settlers, brothers, named Edward and Thomas Cunningham.
The two cabins stood side by side, the chinks between the logs allowing
those in one to see what was happening in the other. One June evening,
in 1785, both families were at supper. Thomas was away. His wife and
four children were sitting at the table when a huge savage slipped in
through the open door. Edward in the adjoining cabin, saw him enter, and
seized his rifle. The Indian fired at him through a chink in the wall,
but missed him, and, being afraid to retreat through the door, which
would have brought him within range of Edward's rifle, he seized an axe
and began to chop out an opening in the rear wall. Another Indian made a
dash for the door, but was shot down by Edward; however, he managed to
get over the fence and out of range. Meanwhile the mother and her four
children remained paralyzed with fear until the Indian inside the room
had cut a hole through the wall. He then turned, brained one of the
children with his tomahawk, threw the body out into the yard through the
opening, and motioned to her to follow it. In mortal fear she obeyed,
stepping out over the body of one of her children, with two others
screaming beside her, and her baby in her arms. Once outside he scalped
the murdered boy, and set fire to the house, and then drove the woman
and the remaining children to a knoll where the wounded Indian lay with
the others around him. The Indians hoped the flames would destroy both
cabins; but Edward Cunningham and his son went into their loft, and
threw off the boards of the roof, as they kindled, escaping unharmed
from the shots fired at them; and so, though scorched by the flame and
choked by the smoke, they saved their house and their lives. Seeing the
failure of their efforts the savages then left, first tomahawking and
scalping the two elder children. The shuddering mother, with her baby,
was taken along with them to a cave, in which they hid her and the
wounded Indian; and then with untold fatigue, hardship, and suffering,
for her brutal captors gave her for food only a few papaw nuts and the
head of a wild turkey, she was taken to the Indian towns. Some months
afterwards Simon Girty ransomed her and sent her and tried to follow the
trail; but the crafty forest warriors had concealed it with such care
that no effective pursuit could be made.

Retaliation of the Settlers.

In none of the above-mentioned raids did the Indians suffer any loss of
life, and in none was there any successful pursuit. But in one instance
in this same year and same neighborhood the assailed settlers
retaliated, with effect. It was near Wheeling. A lad named John Wetzel,
one of a noted border family of coarse, powerful, illiterate Indian
fighters, had gone out from the fortified village in which his kinsfolk
were living to hunt horses. Another boy went with him. There were
several stray horses, one being a mare which belonged to Wetzel's
sister, with a colt, and the girl had promised him the colt if he would
bring the mare back. The two boys were vigorous young fellows,
accustomed to life in the forest, and they hunted high and low, and
finally heard the sound of horse-bells in a thicket. Running joyfully
forward they fell into the hands of four Indians, who had caught the
horses and tied them in the thicket, so that by the tinkling of their
bells they might lure into the ambush any man who came out to hunt them
up. Young Wetzel made a dash for liberty, but received a shot which
broke his arm, and then surrendered and cheerfully accompanied his
captors; while his companion, totally unnerved, hung back crying, and
was promptly tomahawked. Early next morning the party struck the Ohio,
at a point where there was a clearing. The cabins on this clearing were
deserted, the settlers having taken refuge in a fort because of the
Indian ravages; but the stock had been left running in the woods. One of
the Indians shot a hog and tossed it into a canoe they had hidden under
the bank. The captive was told to enter the canoe and lie down; three
Indians then got in, while the fourth started to swim the stolen horses
across the river.

Fortunately for the captured boy three of the settlers had chosen this
day to return to the abandoned clearing and look after the loose stock.
They reached the place shortly after the Indians, and just in time to
hear the report of the rifle when the hog was shot. The owner of the
hogs, instead of suspecting that there were Indians near by, jumped to
the conclusion that a Kentucky boat had landed, and that the immigrants
were shooting his hogs--for the people who drifted down the Ohio in
boats were not, when hungry, over-scrupulous concerning the right to
stray live stock. Running forward, the three men had almost reached the
river, when they heard the loud snorting of one of the horses as it was
forced into the water. As they came out on the bank they saw the canoe,
with three Indians in it, and in the bottom four rifles, the dead hog,
and young Wetzel stretched at full length; the Indian in the stern was
just pushing off from the shore with his paddle; the fourth Indian was
swimming the horses a few yards from shore. Immediately the foremost
white man threw up his rifle and shot the paddler dead; and a second
later one of his companions coming up, killed in like fashion the Indian
in the bow of the canoe. The third Indian, stunned by the sudden
onslaught, sat as if numb, never so much as lifting one of the rifles
that lay at his feet, and in a minute he too was shot and fell over the
side of the canoe, but grasped the gunwale with one hand, keeping
himself afloat. Young Wetzel, in the bottom of the canoe, would have
shared the same fate, had he not cried out that he was white and a
prisoner; whereupon they bade him knock loose the Indian's hand from the
side of the canoe. This he did, and the Indian sank. The current carried
the canoe on a rocky spit of land, and Wetzel jumped out and waded
ashore, while the little craft spun off and again drifted towards
midstream. One of the men on shore now fired at the only remaining
Indian, who was still swimming his horse for the opposite bank. The
bullet splashed the water on his naked skin, whereat he slipped off his
horse, swam to the empty canoe, and got into it. Unhurt he reached the
farther shore, where he leaped out and caught the horse as it swam to
land, mounted it, rifle in hand, turned to yell defiance at his foes,
and then vanished in the forest-shrouded wilderness. He left behind him
the dead bodies of his three friends, to be washed on the shallows by
the turbid flood of the great river. [Footnote: De Haas, pp. 283-292. De
Haas gathered the facts of these and numerous similar incidents from the
pioneers themselves in their old age; doubtless they are often
inaccurate in detail, but on the whole De Haas has more judgment and may
be better trusted than the other compilers. In the Draper MSS. are
volumes of such traditional stories, gathered with no discrimination
whatever.]

Monotonous Horror of the Ravages.

These are merely some of the recorded incidents which occurred in the
single year 1785, in one comparatively small portion of the vast stretch
of territory which then formed the Indian frontier. Many such occurred
on all parts of this frontier in each of the terrible years of Indian
warfare. They varied infinitely in detail, but they were monotonously
alike in their characteristics of stealthy approach, of sudden onfall,
and of butcherly cruelty; and there was also a terrible sameness in the
brutality and ruthlessness with which the whites, as occasion offered,
wreaked their revenge. Generally the Indian war parties were successful,
and suffered comparatively little, making their attacks by surprise, and
by preference on unarmed men cumbered with women and children.
Occasionally they were beaten back; occasionally parties of settlers or
hunters stumbled across and scattered the prowling bands; occasionally
the Indian villages suffered from retaliatory inroads.

Attack on the Lincoln Family.

One attack, simple enough in its incidents, deserves notice for other
reasons. In 1784 a family of "poor white" immigrants who had just
settled in Kentucky were attacked in the daytime, while in the immediate
neighborhood of their squalid cabin. The father was shot, and one Indian
was in the act of tomahawking the six-year-old son, when an elder
brother, from the doorway of the cabin, shot the savage. The Indians
then fled. The boy thus rescued grew up to become the father of Abraham
Lincoln. [Footnote: Hay and Nicolay.]

Now and then the monstrous uniformity of horror in assault and reprisal
was broken by some deed out of the common; some instance where despair
nerved the frame of woman or of half-grown boy; some strange incident in
the career of a backwoods hunter, whose profession perpetually exposed
him to Indian attack, but also trained him as naught else could to evade
and repel it. The wild turkey was always much hunted by the settlers;
and one of the common Indian tricks was to imitate the turkey call and
shoot the hunter when thus tolled to his foe's ambush; but it was only
less common for a skilled Indian fighter to detect the ruse and himself
creep up and slay the would-be slayer. More than once, when a cabin was
attacked in the absence or after the death of the men, some brawny
frontierswoman, accustomed to danger and violent physical exertion, and
favored by peculiar circumstances, herself beat off the assailants.

Prowess of Frontier Women.

In one such case, two or three families were living together in a
block-house. One spring day, when there were in the house but two men
and one woman, a Mrs. Bozarth, the children who had been playing in the
yard suddenly screamed that Indians were coming. One of the men sprang
to the door only to fall back with a bullet in his breast, and in
another moment an Indian leaped over the threshold and attacked the
remaining man before he could grasp a weapon. Holding his antagonist the
latter called out to Mrs. Bozarth to hand him a knife; but instead she
snatched up an axe and killed the savage on the spot. But that instant
another leaped into the doorway, and firing, killed the white man who
had been struggling with his companion; but the woman instantly turned
on him, as he stood with his smoking gun, and ripped open his body with
a stroke of her axe. Yelling for help he sank on the threshold, and his
comrades rushed to his rescue; the woman, with her bloody weapon, cleft
open the skull of the first, and the others fell back, so that she was
able to shut and bar the door. Then the savages moved off, but they had
already killed the children in the yard.

A similar incident took place in Kentucky, where the cabin of a man
named John Merrill was attacked at night. He was shot in several places,
and one arm and one thigh broken, as he stood by the open door, and fell
calling out to his wife to close it. This she did; but the Indians
chopped a hole in the stout planks with their tomahawks, and tried to
crawl through. The woman, however, stood to one side and struck at the
head of each as it appeared, maiming or killing the first two or three.
Enraged at being thus baffled by a woman, two of the Indians clambered
on the roof of the cabin, and prepared to drop down the wide chimney;
for at night the fire in such a cabin was allowed to smoulder, the coals
being kept alive in the ashes. But Mrs. Merrill seized a feather-bed
and, tearing it open, threw it on the embers; the flame and stifling
smoke leaped up the chimney, and in a moment both Indians came down,
blinded and half smothered, and were killed by the big resolute woman
before they could recover themselves. No further attempt was made to
molest the cabin or its inmates.

One of the incidents which became most widely noised along the borders
was the escape of the two Johnson boys, in the fall of 1788. Their
father was one of the restless pioneers along the upper Ohio who were
always striving to take up claims across the river, heedless of the
Indian treaties. The two boys, John and Henry, were at the time thirteen
and eleven years old respectively. One Sunday, about noon, they went to
find a hat which they had lost the day before at the spot where they had
been working, three quarters of a mile from the house. Having found the
hat they sat down by the roadside to crack nuts, and were surprised by
two Indians; they were not harmed, but were forced to go with their
captors, who kept travelling slowly through the woods on the outskirts
of the settlements, looking for horses. The elder boy soon made friends
with the Indians, telling them that he and his brother were ill-treated
at home, and would be glad to get a chance to try Indian life. By
degrees they grew to believe he was in earnest, and plied him with all
kinds of questions concerning the neighbors, their live stock, their
guns, the number of men in the different families, to all of which he
replied with seeming eagerness and frankness. At night they stopped to
camp, one Indian scouting through the woods, while the other kindled a
fire by flashing powder in the pan of his rifle. For supper they had
parched corn and pork roasted over the coals; there was then some
further talk, and the Indians lay down to sleep, one on each side of the
boys. After a while, supposing that their captives were asleep, and
anticipating no trouble from two unarmed boys, one Indian got up and lay
down on the other side of the fire, where he was soon snoring heavily.
Then the lads, who had been wide awake, biding their time, whispered to
one another, and noiselessly rose. The elder took one of the guns,
silently cocked it, and, pointing it at the head of one Indian, directed
the younger boy to take it and pull trigger, while he himself stood over
the head of the other Indian with drawn tomahawk. The one boy then
fired, his Indian never moving after receiving the shot, while the other
boy struck at the same moment; but the tomahawk went too far back on the
neck, and the savage tried to spring to his feet, yelling loudly.
However the boy struck him again and again as he strove to rise, and he
fell back and was soon dead. Then the two boys hurried off through the
darkness, fearing lest other Indians might be in the neighborhood. Not
very far away they struck a path which they recognized, and the elder
hung up his hat, that they might find the scene of their feat when they
came back. Continuing their course they reached a block-house shortly
before daybreak. On the following day a party of men went out with the
elder boy and found the two dead Indians. [Footnote: De Haas.]

After any Indian stroke the men of the neighborhood would gather under
their local militia officers, and, unless the Indians had too long a
start, would endeavor to overtake them, and either avenge the slain or
rescue the prisoners. In the more exposed settlements bands of rangers
were kept continually patrolling the woods. Every man of note in the
Cumberland country took part in this duty. In Kentucky the county
lieutenants and their subordinates were always on the lookout. Logan
paid especial heed to the protection of the immigrants who came in over
the Wilderness Road. Kenton's spy company watched the Ohio, and
continually crossed it on the track of marauding parties, and, though
very often baffled, yet Kenton and his men succeeded again and again in
rescuing hapless women and children, or in scattering--although usually
with small loss--war parties bound against the settlements.

Feats of an Indian Fighter

One of the best known Indian fighters in Kentucky was William Whitley,
who lived at Walnut Flat, some five miles from Crab Orchard. He had come
to Kentucky soon after its settlement, and by his energy and ability had
acquired property and leadership, though of unknown ancestry and without
education. He was a stalwart man, skilled in the use of arms, jovial and
fearless; the backwoods fighters followed him readily, and he loved
battle; he took part in innumerable Indian expeditions, and in his old
age was killed fighting against Tecumseh at the battle of the Thames. In
1786 or '87 he built the first brick house ever built in Kentucky. It
was a very handsome house for those days, every step in the hall
stairway having carved upon it the head of an eagle bearing in its beak
an olive branch. Each story was high, and the windows were placed very
high from the ground, to prevent the Indians from shooting through them
at the occupants. The glass was brought from Virginia by pack train. He
feasted royally the hands who put up the house; and to pay for the
whiskey they drank he had to sell one of his farms.

In 1785 (the year of the above recited ravages on the upper Ohio in the
neighborhood of Wheeling), Colonel Whitley led his rangers, once and
again, against marauding Indians. In January he followed a war party,
rescued a captive white man, and took prisoner an Indian who was
afterwards killed by one of the militia--"a cowardly fellow," says
Whitley. In October a party of immigrants, led by a man named McClure,
who had just come over the Wilderness trace, were set upon at dawn by
Indians, not far from Whitley's house; two of the men were killed. Mrs.
McClure got away at first, and ran two hundred yards, taking her four
children with her; in the gloom they would all have escaped had not the
smallest child kept crying. This led the Indians to them. Three of the
children were tomahawked at once; next morning the fourth shared the
same fate. The mother was forced to cook breakfast for her captors at
the fire before which the scalps were drying. She was then placed on a
half-broken horse and led off with them. When word of the disaster was
brought to Whitley's, he was not at home, but his wife, a worthy
helpmeet, immediately sent for him, and meanwhile sent word to his
company. On his return he was able to take the trail at once with
twenty-one riflemen, as true as steel. Following hard, but with stealth
equal to their own, he overtook the Indians at sundown on the second
day, and fell on them in their camp. Most of them escaped through the
thick forest, but he killed two, rescued six prisoners, and captured
sixteen horses and much plunder.

Ten days after this another party of immigrants, led by a man named
Moore, were attacked on the Wilderness Road and nine persons killed.
Whitley raised thirty of his horse-riflemen, and, guessing from the
movements of the Indians that they were following the war trace
northward, he marched with all speed to reach it at some point ahead of
them, and succeeded. Finding they had not passed he turned and went
south, and in a thick canebrake met his foes face to face. The whites
were spread out in line, while the Indians, twenty in number, came on in
single file, all on horseback. The cane was so dense that the two
parties were not ten steps apart when they saw one another. At the first
fire the Indians, taken utterly unaware, broke and fled, leaving eight
of their number dead; and the victors also took twenty-eight horses.
[Footnote: Draper MSS. Whitley's MSS. Narrative, apparently dictated
some time after the events described. It differs somewhat from the
printed account in Collins.]

Death of Black Wolf and Col. Christian

In the following spring another noted Indian fighter, less lucky than
Whitley, was killed while leading one of these scouting parties. Early
in 1786, the Indians began to commit and Col. numerous depredations in
Kentucky, and the alarm and anger of the inhabitants became great.
[Footnote: Draper MSS. Clark Papers, _passim_ for 1786. Wm. Finney to G.
R. Clark, March 24 and 26, 1786. Also Wm. Croghan to G. R. Clark, Nov.
3, and Nov. 16, 1785.] In April, a large party of savages under a chief
named Black Wolf, made a raid along Beargrass. Col. William Christian, a
very gallant and honorable man, was in command of the neighboring
militia. At once, as was his wont, he raised a band of twenty men, and
followed the plunderers across the Ohio. Riding well in advance of his
followers, with but three men in company with him, he overtook the three
rearmost Indians, among whom was Black Wolf. The struggle was momentary
but bloody. All three Indians were killed, but Colonel Christian and one
of his captains were also slain. [Footnote: State Department MSS. Papers
Continental Congress. Sam McDowell to Governor of Virginia, April 18,
1786. John May to _Do._, April 19, 1786. Clark MSS. Bradford's Notes on
Kentucky. John Clark to Johnathan Clark, April 21, 1786.]

Anger of the Kentuckians.

The Kentuckians were by this time thoroughly roused, and were bent on
making a retaliatory expedition in force. They felt that the efforts
made by Congress to preserve peace by treaties, at which the Indians
were loaded with presents, merely resulted in making them think that the
whites were afraid of them, and that if they wished gifts all they had
to do was to go to war. [Footnote: Draper MSS. Jon. Clark Papers. John
Clark to Johnathan Clark, March 29, 1786. Also, G. R. Clark to J. Clark,
April 20, 1788.] The only effective way to deal with the Indians was to
strike them in their own country, not to try to parry the strokes they
themselves dealt. Clark, who knew the savages well, scoffed at the idea
that a vigorous blow, driven well home, would rouse them to desperation;
he realized that, formidable though they were in actual battle, and
still more in plundering raid, they were not of the temper to hazard all
on the fate of war, or to stand heavy punishment, and that they would
yield very quickly, when once they were convinced that unless they did
so they and their families would perish by famine or the
sword. [Footnote: State Department MSS., No. 56, p. 282. G. R. Clark to
R. H. Lee.] At this time he estimated that some fifteen hundred warriors
were on the war-path and that they were likely to be joined by many
others.

Anarchy on the Wabash.

The condition of affairs at the French towns of the Illinois and Wabash
afforded another strong reason for war, or at least for decided measures
of some kind. Almost absolute anarchy reigned in these towns. The French
inhabitants had become profoundly discontented with the United States
Government. This was natural, for they were neither kept in order nor
protected, in spite of their petitions to Congress that some stable
government might be established. [Footnote: State Department MSS., No.
30, p. 453, Dec. 8, 1784. Also p. 443, Nov. 10, 1784. Draper MSS. J.
Edgar to G. R. Clark, Oct. 23, 1786.] The quarrels between the French
and the intruding American settlers had very nearly reached the point of
a race war; and the Americans were further menaced by the Indians. These
latter were on fairly good terms with the French, many of whom had
intermarried with them, and lived as they did; although the French
families of the better class were numerous, and had attained to what was
for the frontier a high standard of comfort and refinement.

Quarrels between French and Americans.

The French complained with reason of the lawless and violent character
of many of the American new-comers, and also of the fact that already
speculators were trying by fraud and foul means to purchase large tracts
of land, not for settlement, but to hold until it should rise in value.
On the other hand, the Americans complained no less bitterly of the
French, as a fickle, treacherous, undisciplined race, in close alliance
with the Indians, and needing to be ruled with a rod of iron. [Footnote:
State Dept. MSS., No. 56. J. Edgar to G. R. Clark, Nov. 7, 1785. Draper
MSS. Petition of Americans of Vincennes to Congress, June I, 1786.] It
is impossible to reconcile the accounts the two parties gave of one
another's deeds; doubtless neither side was guiltless of grave
wrongdoing. So great was Clark's reputation for probity and leadership
that both sides wrote him urgently, requesting that he would come to
them and relieve their distress. [Footnote: Draper MSS. Petition to G. R.
Clark from Inhabitants of Vincennes, March 16, 1786.] One of the most
fruitful sources of broils and quarrels was the liquor trade with the
Indians. The rougher among the new-comers embarked eagerly in this
harmful and disreputable business, and the low-class French followed
their example. The commandant, Monsieur J. M. P. Legrace, and the Creole
court forbade this trade; a decision which was just and righteous, but
excited much indignation, as the other inhabitants believed that the
members of the court themselves followed it in secret. [Footnote: Do.,
John Filson; MS. Journey of Two Voyages, etc.]

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