The Winning of the West, Volume Two by Theodore Roosevelt

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PRESIDENTIAL EDITION

THE WINNING OF THE WEST

BY

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

VOLUME TWO

FROM THE ALLEGHANIES TO THE MISSISSIPPI 1777-1783

WITH MAPS

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED WITH HIS PERMISSION TO

FRANCIS PARKMAN

TO WHOM AMERICANS WHO FEEL A PRIDE IN THE PIONEER HISTORY OF THEIR
COUNTRY ARE SO GREATLY INDEBTED

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER

I.--THE WAR IN THE NORTHWEST, 1777-1778.

II.--CLARK'S CONQUEST OF THE ILLINOIS, 1778.

III.--CLARK'S CAMPAIGN AGAINST VINCENNES, 1779.

IV.--CONTINUANCE OF THE STRUGGLE IN KENTUCKY AND THE NORTHWEST,
1779-1781.

V.--THE MORAVIAN MASSACRE, 1779-1782.

VI.--THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE CONQUERED FRENCH SETTLEMENTS, 1779-1783.

VII.--KENTUCKY UNTIL THE END OF THE REVOLUTION, 1782-1783.

VIII.--THE HOLSTON SETTLEMENTS, 1777-1779.

IX--KING'S MOUNTAIN, 1780.

X.--THE HOLSTON SETTLEMENTS TO THE END OF THE REVOLUTION, 1781-1783.

XI.--ROBERTSON FOUNDS THE CUMBERLAND SETTLEMENT, 1779-1780.

XII.--THE CUMBERLAND SETTLEMENTS TO THE CLOSE OF THE REVOLUTION,
1781-1783.

XIII.--WHAT THE WESTERNERS HAD DONE DURING THE REVOLUTION.

APPENDICES:

APPENDIX A--To CHAPTER I.
APPENDIX B--To CHAPTER II.
APPENDIX C--To CHAPTER III.
APPENDIX D--To CHAPTER IV.
APPENDIX E--To CHAPTER VII.
APPENDIX F--To CHAPTER VII.
APPENDIX G--To CHAPTER X.
APPENDIX H--To CHAPTER XII.
APPENDIX I--To CHAPTER XIII.
APPENDIX J--To CHAPTER XIII.

INDEX

[Illustration: The Colonies in 1774, when the First Continental Congress
assembled. The heavy line marks roughly the extension of population
westward. Based on a map by G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York and London.]

[Illustration: The States in 1783, when peace was declared. Based on a
map by G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York and London.]

CHAPTER I.

THE WAR IN THE NORTHWEST, 1777-1778.

The Tribes Hold Councils at Detroit.

In the fall of 1776 it became evident that a formidable Indian war was
impending. At Detroit great councils were held by all the northwestern
tribes, to whom the Six Nations sent the white belt of peace, that they
might cease their feuds and join against the Americans. The
later councils were summoned by Henry Hamilton, the British
lieutenant-governor of the northwestern region, whose head-quarters were
at Detroit. He was an ambitious, energetic, unscrupulous man, of bold
character, who wielded great influence over the Indians; and the conduct
of the war in the west, as well as the entire management of frontier
affairs, was intrusted to him by the British Government. [Footnote:
Haldimand MSS. Sir Guy Carleton to Hamilton, September 26, 1777.] He had
been ordered to enlist the Indians on the British side, and have them
ready to act against the Americans in the spring; [Footnote: _Do_.,
Carleton to Hamilton, October 6, 1776.] and accordingly he gathered the
tribes together. He himself took part in the war-talks, plying the
Indians with presents and fire-water no less than with speeches and
promises. The headmen of the different tribes, as they grew excited,
passed one another black, red or bloody, and tomahawk belts, as tokens
of the vengeance to be taken on their white foes. One Delaware chief
still held out for neutrality, announcing that if he had to side with
either set of combatants it would be with the "buckskins," or
backwoodsmen, and not with the red-coats; but the bulk of the warriors
sympathized with the Half King of the Wyandots when he said that the
Long Knives had for years interfered with the Indians' hunting, and that
now at last it was the Indians' turn to threaten revenge. [Footnote: "Am.
Archives," 1st Series, Vol. II., p. 517. There were several councils
held at Detroit during this fall, and it is difficult--and not very
important--to separate the incidents that occurred at each. Some took
place before Hamilton arrived, which, according to his "brief account,"
was November 9th. He asserts that he did not send out war parties until
the following June; but the testimony seems conclusive that he was
active in instigating hostility from the time of his arrival.]

Lt-Gov. Henry Hamilton. Scalp Buying.

Hamilton was for the next two years the mainspring of Indian hostility
to the Americans in the northwest. From the beginning he had been
anxious to employ the savages against the settlers, and when the home
government bade him hire them he soon proved himself very expert, as
well as very ruthless, in their use. [Footnote: Haldimand MSS. Germaine
to Carlton, March 26, 1777.] He rapidly acquired the venomous hatred of
the backwoodsmen, who held him in peculiar abhorrence, and nicknamed him
the "hair-buyer" general, asserting that he put a price on the scalps of
the Americans. This allegation may have been untrue as affecting
Hamilton personally; he always endeavored to get the war parties to
bring in prisoners, and behaved well to the captives when they were in
his power; nor is there any direct evidence that he himself paid out
money for scalps. But scalps were certainly bought and paid for at
Detroit; [Footnote: See the "American Pioneer," I., 292, for a very
curious account of an Indian, who by dividing a large scalp into two got
fifty dollars for each half at Detroit.] and the commandant himself was
accustomed to receive them with formal solemnity at the councils held to
greet the war parties when they returned from successful
raids. [Footnote: Haldimand MSS; _passim;_ also Heckewelder, etc.] The
only way to keep the friendship of the Indians was continually to give
them presents; these presents were naturally given to the most
successful warriors; and the scalps were the only safe proofs of a
warrior's success. Doubtless the commandant and the higher British
officers generally treated the Americans humanely when they were brought
into contact with them; and it is not likely that they knew, or were
willing to know, exactly what the savages did in all cases. But they at
least connived at the measures of their subordinates. These were
hardened, embittered, men who paid for the zeal of their Indian allies
accordingly as they received tangible proof thereof; in other words,
they hired them to murder non-combatants as well as soldiers, and paid
for each life, of any sort, that was taken. The fault lay primarily with
the British Government, and with those of its advisers who, like
Hamilton, advocated the employment of the savages. They thereby became
participants in the crimes committed; and it was idle folly for them to
prate about having bidden the savages be merciful. The sin consisted in
having let them loose on the borders; once they were let loose it was
absolutely impossible to control them. Moreover, the British sinned
against knowledge; for some of their highest and most trusted officers
on the frontier had written those in supreme command, relating the
cruelties practised by the Indians upon the defenceless, and urging that
they should not be made allies, but rather that their neutrality only
should be secured. [Footnote: E. g. in Haldimand MSS. Lieut.-Gov. Abbott
to General Carleton, June 8, 1778.] The average American backwoodsman
was quite as brutal and inconsiderate a victor as the average British
officer; in fact, he was in all likelihood the less humane of the two;
but the Englishman deliberately made the deeds of the savage his own.
Making all allowance for the strait in which the British found
themselves, and admitting that much can be said against their accusers,
the fact remains that they urged on hordes of savages to slaughter men,
women, and children along the entire frontier; and for this there must
ever rest a dark stain on their national history.

Hamilton organized a troop of white rangers from among the French,
British, and Tories at Detroit. They acted as allies of the Indians, and
furnished leaders to them. Three of these leaders were the tories McKee,
Elliot, and Girty, who had fled together from Pittsburg [Footnote:
Haldimand MSS. Hamilton's letter, April 25. 1778. "April the 20th-Edward
Hayle (who had undertaken to carry a letter from me to the Moravian
Minister at Kushayhking) returned, having executed his commission--he
brought me a letter & newspapers from Mr. McKee who was Indian Agent for
the Crown and has been a long time in the hands of the Rebels at Fort
Pitt, at length has found means to make his escape with three other men,
two of the name of Girty (mentioned in Lord Dunmore's list) interpreters
& Matthew Elliott the young man who was last summer sent down from this
place a prisoner.--This last person I am informed has been at New York
since he left Quebec, and probably finding the change in affairs
unfavourable to the Rebels, has slipp'd away to make his peace here.

"23d--Hayle went off again to conduct them all safe through the Villages
having a letter & Wampum for that purpose. Alexander McKee is a man of
good character, and has great influence with the Shawanese is well
acquainted with the country & can probably give some useful
intelligence, he will probably reach this place in a few days."] they
all three warred against their countrymen with determined ferocity.
Girty won the widest fame on the border by his cunning and cruelty; but
he was really a less able foe than the two others. McKee in particular
showed himself a fairly good commander of Indians and irregular troops;
as did likewise an Englishman named Caldwell, and two French partisans,
De Quindre and Lamothe, who were hearty supporters of the British.

The British Begin a War of Extermination.

Hamilton and his subordinates, both red and white, were engaged in what
was essentially an effort to exterminate the borderers. They were not
endeavoring merely to defeat the armed bodies of the enemy. They were
explicitly bidden by those in supreme command to push back the frontier,
to expel the settlers from the country. Hamilton himself had been
ordered by his immediate official superior to assail the borders of
Pennsylvania and Virginia with his savages, to destroy the crops and
buildings of the settlers who had advanced beyond the mountains, and to
give to his Indian allies,--the Hurons, Shawnees, and other tribes,--all
the land of which they thus took possession. [Footnote: Haldimand MSS.
Haldimand to Hamilton, August 6, 1778.] With such allies as Hamilton
had this order was tantamount to proclaiming a war of extermination,
waged with appalling and horrible cruelty against the settlers, of all
ages and sexes. It brings out in bold relief the fact that in the west
the war of the Revolution was an effort on the part of Great Britain to
stop the westward growth of the English race in America, and to keep the
region beyond the Alleghanies as a region where only savages should
dwell.

All the Northwestern Tribes go to War.

All through the winter of '76-77 the northwestern Indians were preparing
to take up the tomahawk. Runners were sent through the leafless, frozen
woods from one to another of their winter camps. In each bleak, frail
village, each snow-hidden cluster of bark wigwams, the painted,
half-naked warriors danced the war dance, and sang the war song, beating
the ground with their war clubs and keeping time with their feet to the
rhythmic chant as they moved in rings round the peeled post, into which
they struck their hatchets. The hereditary sachems, the peace chiefs,
could no longer control the young men. The braves made ready their
weapons and battle gear; their bodies were painted red and black, the
plumes of the war eagle were braided into their long scalp locks, and
some put on necklaces of bears' claws, and head-dresses made of panther
skin, or of the shaggy and horned frontlet of the buffalo. [Footnote:
For instances of an Indian wearing this buffalo cap, with the horns on,
see Kercheval and De Haas.]

Before the snow was off the ground the war parties crossed the Ohio and
fell on the frontiers from the Monongahela and Kanawha to the Kentucky.
[Footnote: State Department MSS. for 1777, _passim_. So successful were
the Indian chiefs in hoodwinking the officers at Fort Pitt that some of
the latter continued to believe that only three or four hundred Indians
had gone on the war path.]

On the Pennsylvanian and Virginian frontiers the panic was tremendous.
The people fled into the already existing forts, or hastily built
others; where there were but two or three families in a place, they
merely gathered into block-houses--stout log-cabins two stories high,
with loop-holed walls, and the upper story projecting a little over the
lower. The savages, well armed with weapons supplied them from the
British arsenals on the Great Lakes, spread over the country; and there
ensued all the horrors incident to a war waged as relentlessly against
the most helpless non-combatants as against the armed soldiers in the
field. Block-houses were surprised and burnt; bodies of militia were
ambushed and destroyed. The settlers were shot down as they sat by their
hearth-stones in the evening, or ploughed the ground during the day; the
lurking Indians crept up and killed them while they still-hunted the
deer, or while they lay in wait for the elk beside the well-beaten game
trails.

The captured women and little ones were driven off to the far interior.
The weak among them, the young children, and the women heavy with child,
were tomahawked and scalped as soon as their steps faltered. The
able-bodied, who could stand the terrible fatigue, and reached their
journey's end, suffered various fates. Some were burned at the stake,
others were sold to the French or British traders, and long afterwards
made their escape, or were ransomed by their relatives. Still others
were kept in the Indian camps, the women becoming the slaves or wives of
the warriors, [Footnote: Occasionally we come across records of the
women afterwards making their escape; very rarely they took their
half-breed babies with them. De Haas mentions one such case where the
husband, though he received his wife well, always hated the
copper-colored addition to his family; the latter, by the way, grew up a
thorough Indian, could not be educated, and finally ran away, joined the
Revolutionary army, and was never heard of afterwards.] while the
children were adopted into the tribe, and grew up precisely like their
little red-skinned playmates. Sometimes, when they had come to full
growth, they rejoined the whites; but generally they were enthralled by
the wild freedom and fascination of their forest life, and never forsook
their adopted tribesmen, remaining inveterate foes of their own color.
Among the ever-recurring: tragedies of the frontier, not the least
sorrowful was the recovery of these long-missing children by their
parents, only to find that they had lost all remembrance of and love for
their father and mother, and had become irreclaimable savages, who
eagerly grasped the first chance to flee from the intolerable
irksomeness and restraint of civilized life. [Footnote: For an instance
where a boy finally returned, see "Trans-Alleghany Pioneers," p. 119;
see also pp. 126, 132, 133, for instances of the capture and treatment
of whites by Indians.]

The Attack on Wheeling.

Among others, the stockade at Wheeling [Footnote: Fort Henry. For an
account of the siege, see De Haas, pp. 223-340. It took place in the
early days of September.] was attacked by two or three hundred Indians;
with them came a party of Detroit Rangers, marshalled by drum and fife,
and carrying the British colors. [Footnote The accounts of the different
sieges of Wheeling were first written down from the statements of the
pioneers when they had grown very aged. In consequence, there is much
uncertainty as to the various incidents. Thus there seems to be a doubt
whether Girty did or did not command the Indians in this first siege.
The frontiersmen hated Girty as they did no other man, and he was
credited with numerous actions done by other white leaders of the
Indians; the British accounts say comparatively little about him. He
seems to have often fought with the Indians as one of their own number,
while his associates led organized bands of rangers; he was thus more
often brought into contact with the frontiersmen, but was really hardly
as dangerous a foe to them as were one or two of his tory companions.]
Most of the men inside the fort were drawn out by a stratagem, fell into
an ambuscade, and were slain; but the remainder made good the defence,
helped by the women, who ran the lead into bullets, cooled and loaded
the guns, and even, when the rush was made, assisted to repel it by
firing through the loopholes. After making a determined effort to storm
the stockade, in which some of the boldest warriors were slain while
trying in vain to batter down the gates with heavy timbers, the baffled
Indians were obliged to retire discomfited. The siege was chiefly
memorable because of an incident which is to this day a staple theme for
story-telling in the cabins of the mountaineers. One of the leading men
of the neighborhood was Major Samuel McColloch, renowned along the
border as the chief in a family famous for its Indian fighters, the
dread and terror of the savages, many of whose most noted warriors he
slew, and at whose hands he himself, in the end, met his death. When
Wheeling was invested, he tried to break into it, riding a favorite old
white horse. But the Indians intercepted him, and hemmed him in on the
brink of an almost perpendicular slope, [Footnote: The hill overlooks
Wheeling; the slope has now much crumbled away, and in consequence has
lost its steepness.] some three hundred feet high. So sheer was the
descent that they did not dream any horse could go down it, and instead
of shooting they advanced to capture the man whom they hated. McColloch
had no thought of surrendering, to die by fire at the stake, and he had
as little hope of resistance against so many foes. Wheeling short round,
he sat back in the saddle, shifted his rifle into his right hand, reined
in his steed, and spurred him over the brink. The old horse never
faltered, but plunged headlong down the steep, boulder-covered,
cliff-broken slope. Good luck, aided by the wonderful skill of the rider
and the marvellous strength and sure-footedness of his steed, rewarded,
as it deserved, one of the most daring feats of horsemanship of which we
have any authentic record. There was a crash, the shock of a heavy body,
half springing, half falling, a scramble among loose rocks, and the
snapping of saplings and bushes; and in another moment the awe-struck
Indians above saw their unharmed foe, galloping his gallant white horse
in safety across the plain. To this day the place is known by the name
of McColloch's leap. [Footnote: In the west this feat is as well known as
is Putnam's similar deed in the north.]

In Virginia and Pennsylvania the Indian outrages meant only the
harassing of the borderers; in Kentucky they threatened the complete
destruction of the vanguard of the white advance and, therefore the
stoppage of all settlement west of the Alleghanies until after the
Revolutionary war, when very possibly the soil might not have been ours
to settle. Fortunately Hamilton did not yet realize the importance of
the Kentucky settlements, nor the necessity of crushing them, and during
1777 the war bands organized at Detroit were sent against the country
round Pittsburg; while the feeble forts in the far western wilderness
were only troubled by smaller war parties raised among the tribes on
their own account. A strong expedition, led by Hamilton in person, would
doubtless at this time have crushed them.

The Struggle in Kentucky.

As it was, there were still so few whites in Kentucky that they were
greatly outnumbered by the invading Indians. They were, in consequence,
unable to meet the enemy in the open field, and gathered in their
stations or forted villages. Therefore the early conflicts, for the most
part, took the form of sieges of these wooden forts. Such sieges, had
little in common with the corresponding operations of civilized armies.
The Indians usually tried to surprise a fort; if they failed, they
occasionally tried to carry it by open assault, or by setting fire to
it, but very rarely, indeed, beleaguered it in form. For this they
lacked both the discipline and the commissariat. Accordingly, if their
first rush miscarried, they usually dispersed in the woods to hunt, or
look for small parties of whites; always, however, leaving some of their
number to hover round the fort and watch any thing that took place.
Masters in the art of hiding, and able to conceal themselves behind a
bush, a stone, or a tuft of weeds, they skulked round the gate before
dawn, to shoot the white sentinels; or they ambushed the springs, and
killed those who came for water; they slaughtered all of the cattle that
had not been driven in, and any one venturing incautiously beyond the
walls was certain to be waylaid and murdered. Those who were thus hemmed
in the fort were obliged to get game on which to live; the hunters
accordingly were accustomed to leave before daybreak, travel eight or
ten miles, hunt all day at the risk of their lives, and return after
dark. Being of course the picked men of the garrison, they often eluded
the Indians, or slew them if an encounter took place, but very
frequently indeed they were themselves slain. The Indians always trusted
greatly to wiles and feints to draw their foes into their power. As ever
in this woodland fighting, their superiority in hiding, or taking
advantage of cover, counterbalanced the superiority of the whites as
marksmen; and their war parties were thus at least a match, man against
man, for the Kentuckians, though the latter, together with the Watauga
men, were the best woodsmen and fighters of the frontier. Only a very
few of the whites became, like Boon and Kenton, able to beat the best of
the savages at their own game.

The innumerable sieges that took place during the long years of Indian
warfare differed in detail, but generally closely resembled one another
as regards the main points. Those that occurred in 1777 may be
considered as samples of the rest; and accounts of these have been
preserved by the two chief actors, Boon and Clark. [Footnote: In Boon's
narrative, written down by Filson, and in Clark's diary, as given by
Morehead. The McAfee MSS. and Butler's history give some valuable
information. Boon asserts that at this time the "Long Knives" proved
themselves superior to their foe in almost every battle; but the facts
do not seem to sustain him, though the statement was doubtless true as
regards a few picked men. His estimates of the Indian numbers and losses
must be received with great caution.]

Boonsborough Attacked.

Boonsborough, which was held by twenty-two riflemen, was attacked twice,
once in April and again in July, on each occasion by a party of fifty or
a hundred warriors. [Footnote: Boon says April 15th and July 4th.
Clark's diary makes the first date April 24th. Boon says one hundred
Indians, Clark "40 or 50." Clark's account of the loss on both sides
agrees tolerably well with Boon's. Clark's diary makes the second attack
take place on May 23d. His dates are probably correct, as Boon must have
written only from memory.] The first time the garrison was taken by
surprise; one man lost his scalp, and four were wounded, including Boon
himself, who had been commissioned as captain in the county militia.
[Footnote: Two of the other wounded men were Captain John Todd and
Boon's old hunting companion, Stoner.] The Indians promptly withdrew
when they found they could not carry the fort by a sudden assault. On
the second occasion the whites were on their guard, and though they had
one man killed and two wounded (leaving but thirteen unhurt men in the
fort), they easily beat off the assailants, and slew half a dozen of
them. This time the Indians stayed round two days, keeping up a heavy
fire, under cover of which they several times tried to burn the fort.
[Footnote: Clark's diary.]

Logan's Adventures.

Logan's [Footnote: Boon says July 19th, Clark's diary makes it May 30th:
Clark is undoubtedly right; he gives the names of the man who was killed
and of the two who were wounded.] station at St. Asaphs was likewise
attacked; it was held by only fifteen gunmen. When the attack was made
the women, guarded by part of the men, were milking the cows outside the
fort. The Indians fired at them from the thick cane that still stood
near-by, killing one man and wounding two others, one mortally.
[Footnote: The name of the latter was Burr Harrison; he died a fortnight
afterward.--Clark.] The party, of course, fled to the fort, and on
looking back they saw their mortally wounded friend weltering on the
ground. His wife and family were within the walls; through the loopholes
they could see him yet alive, and exposed every moment to death. So
great was the danger that the men refused to go out to his rescue,
whereupon Logan alone opened the gate, bounded out, and seizing the
wounded man in his arms, carried him back unharmed through a shower of
bullets. The Indians continued to lurk around the neighborhood, and the
ammunition grew very scarce. Thereupon Logan took two companions and
left the fort at night to go to the distant settlements on the Holston,
where he might get powder and lead. He knew that the Indians were
watching the wilderness road, and trusting to his own hardiness and
consummate woodcraft, he struck straight out across the cliff-broken,
wood-covered mountains, sleeping wherever night overtook him, and
travelling all day long with the tireless speed of a wolf. [Footnote:
Not a fanciful comparison; the wolf is the only animal that an Indian or
a trained frontiersman cannot tire out in several days' travel.
Following a deer two days in light snow, I have myself gotten near
enough to shoot it without difficulty.] He returned with the needed
stores in ten days from the time he set out. These tided the people over
the warm months.

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