The Winning of the West, Volume Two by Theodore Roosevelt

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On another occasion, while Campbell was in command of a camp of militia,
at the time of a Cherokee outbreak, he wrote a letter to his wife, a
sister of Patrick Henry, that gives us a glimpse of the way in which he
looked at Indians. His letter began, "My dearest Betsy"; in it he spoke
of his joy at receiving her "sweet and affectionate letter"; he told how
he had finally got the needles and pins she wished, and how pleased a
friend had been with the apples she had sent him. He urged her to buy a
saddle-horse, of which she had spoken, but to be careful that it did not
start nor stumble, which were bad faults, "especially in a woman's
hackney." In terms of endearment that showed he had not sunk the lover
in the husband, he spoke of his delight at being again in the house
where he had for the first time seen her loved face, "from which happy
moment he dated the hour of all his bliss," and besought her not to
trouble herself too much about him, quoting to her Solomon's account of
a good wife, as reminding him always of her; and he ended by commending
her to the peculiar care of Heaven. It was a letter that it was an honor
to a true man to have written; such a letter as the best of women and
wives might be proud to have received. Yet in the middle of it he
promised to bring a strange trophy to show his tender and God-fearing
spouse. He was speaking of the Indians; how they had murdered men,
women, and children near-by, and how they had been beaten back; and he
added: "I have now the scalp of one who was killed eight or nine miles
from my house about three weeks ago. The first time I go up I shall take
it along to let you see it." Evidently it was as natural for him to
bring home to his wife and children the scalp of a slain Indian as the
skin of a slain deer. [Footnote: See Preston's pamphlet on Mrs. Russell,
pp. 11-18.]

The times were hard, and they called for men of flinty fibre. Those of
softer, gentler mould would have failed in the midst of such
surroundings. The iron men of the border had a harsh and terrible task
allotted them; and though they did it roughly, they did it thoroughly
and on the whole well. They may have failed to learn that it is good to
be merciful, but at least they knew that it is still better to be just
and strong and brave; to see clearly one's rights, and to guard them
with a ready hand.

These frontier leaders were generally very jealous of one another. The
ordinary backwoodsmen vied together as hunters, axemen, or wrestlers; as
they rose to leadership their rivalries grew likewise, and the more
ambitious, who desired to become the civil and military chiefs of the
community, were sure to find their interests clash. Thus old Evan Shelby
distrusted Sevier; Arthur Campbell was jealous of both Sevier and Isaac
Shelby; and the two latter bore similar feelings to William Campbell.
When a great crisis occurred all these petty envies were sunk; the
nobler natures of the men came uppermost; and they joined with unselfish
courage, heart and hand, to defend their country in the hour of her
extreme need. But when the danger was over the old jealousies cropped
out again.

Some one or other of the leaders was almost always employed against the
Indians. The Cherokees and Creeks were never absolutely quiet and at
peace.

Indian Troubles.

After the chastisement inflicted upon the former by the united forces of
all the southern backwoodsmen, treaties were held with them, [Footnote:
See _ante_, Chapter XI. of Vol. I.] in the spring and summer of 1777.
The negotiations consumed much time, the delegates from both sides
meeting again and again to complete the preliminaries. The credit of the
State being low, Isaac Shelby furnished on his own responsibility the
goods and provisions needed by the Virginians and Holston people in
coming to an agreement with the Otari, or upper Cherokees [ Footnote:
Shelby's MS. autobiography, copy in Col. Durrett's library.]; and some
land was formally ceded to the whites.

But the chief Dragging Canoe would not make peace. Gathering the boldest
and most turbulent of the young braves about him, he withdrew to the
great whirl in the Tennessee, [Footnote: Va. State Papers, III., 271;
the settlers always spoke of it as the "suck" or "whirl."] at the
crossing-place of the Creek war parties, when they followed the trail
that led to the bend of the Cumberland River. Here he was joined by many
Creeks, and also by adventurous and unruly members from almost all the
western tribes [Footnote: Shelby MS.]--Chickasaws, Chocktaws, and
Indians from the Ohio. He soon had a great band of red outlaws round
him. These freebooters were generally known as the Chickamaugas, and
they were the most dangerous and least controllable of all the foes who
menaced the western settlements. Many tories and white refugees from
border justice joined them, and shared in their misdeeds. Their shifting
villages stretched from Chickamauga Creek to Running Water. Between
these places the Tennessee twists down through the sombre gorges by
which the chains of the Cumberland ranges are riven in sunder. Some
miles below Chickamauga Creek, near Chattanooga, Lookout Mountain towers
aloft into the clouds; at its base the river bends round Moccasin Point,
and then rushes through a gap between Walden's Ridge and the Raccoon
Hills. Then for several miles it foams through the winding Narrows
between jutting cliffs and sheer rock walls, while in its boulder-strewn
bed the swift torrent is churned into whirlpools, cataracts, and rapids.
Near the Great Crossing, where the war parties and hunting parties were
ferried over the river, lies Nick-a-jack Cave, a vast cavern in the
mountain side. Out of it flows a stream, up which a canoe can paddle two
or three miles into the heart of the mountain. In these high fastnesses,
inaccessible ravines, and gloomy caverns the Chickamaugas built their
towns, and to them they retired with their prisoners and booty after
every raid on the settlements.

No sooner had the preliminary treaty been agreed to in the spring of '77
than the Indians again began their ravages. In fact, there never was any
real peace. After each treaty the settlers would usually press forward
into the Indian lands, and if they failed to do this the young braves
were sure themselves to give offence by making forays against the
whites. On this occasion the first truce or treaty was promptly broken
by the red men. The young warriors refused to be bound by the promises
of the chiefs and headmen, and they continued their raids for scalps,
horses, and plunder. Within a week of the departure of the Indian
delegates from the treaty ground in April, twelve whites were murdered
and many horses stolen. Robertson, with nine men, followed one of these
marauding parties, killed one Indian, and retook ten horses; on his
return he was attacked by a large band of Creeks and Cherokees, and two
of his men were wounded; but he kept hold of the recaptured horses and
brought them safely in. [Footnote: Chas. Robertson to Captain-General of
North Carolina, April 27, 1777.] On the other hand, a white scoundrel
killed an Indian on the treaty ground, in July, the month in which the
treaties were finally completed in due form. By act of the Legislature
the Holston militia were kept under arms throughout most of the year,
companies of rangers, under Sevier's command, scouring the woods and
canebrakes, and causing such loss to the small Indian war parties that
they finally almost ceased their forays. Bands of these Holston rangers
likewise crossed the mountains by Boon's trail, and went to the relief
of Boonsborough and St. Asaphs, in Kentucky, then much harassed by the
northwestern warriors. [Footnote: See _ante_ Chap. I.] Though they did
little or no fighting, and stayed but a few days, they yet by their
presence brought welcome relief to the hard-pressed Kentuckians.
[Footnote: Monette (followed by Ramsey and others) hopelessly confuses
these small relief expeditions; he portrays Logan as a messenger from
Boon's Station, is in error as to the siege of the latter, etc.]
Kentucky during her earliest and most trying years received
comparatively little help from sorely beset Virginia; but the
backwoodsmen of the upper Tennessee valley--on both sides of the
boundary--did her real and lasting service.

In 1778 the militia were disbanded, as the settlements were very little
harried; but as soon as the vigilance of the whites was relaxed the
depredations and massacres began again, and soon became worse than ever.
Robertson had been made superintendent of Indian affairs for North
Carolina; and he had taken up his abode among the Cherokees at the town
of Chota in the latter half of the year 1777. He succeeded in keeping
them comparatively quiet and peaceable during 1778, and until his
departure, which took place the following year, when he went to found
the settlements on the Cumberland River.

But the Chickamaugas refused to make peace, and in their frequent and
harassing forays they were from time to time joined by parties of young
braves from all the Cherokee towns that were beyond the reach of
Robertson's influence--that is, by all save those in the neighborhood of
Chota. The Chickasaws and Choctaws likewise gave active support to the
king's cause; the former scouted along the Ohio, the latter sent bands
of young warriors to aid the Creeks and Cherokees in their raids against
the settlements. [Footnote: Haldimand MSS. Letter of Rainsford and Tait
to Hamilton. April 9, 1779.]

The British agents among the southern Indians had received the letters
Hamilton sent them after he took Vincennes; in these they were urged at
once to send out parties against the frontier, and to make ready for a
grand stroke in the spring. In response the chief agent, who was the
Scotch captain Cameron, a noted royalist leader, wrote to his official
superior that the instant he heard of any movement of the northwestern
Indians he would see that it was backed up, for the Creeks were eager
for war, and the Cherokees likewise were ardently attached to the
British cause; as a proof of the devotion of the latter, he added: "They
keep continually killing and scalping in Virginia, North Carolina, and
the frontier of Georgia, although the rebels are daily threatening to
send in armies from all quarters and extirpate the whole tribe."
[Footnote: Haldimand MSS. Series B., Vol. 117, p. 131. Letter of
Alexander Cameron, July 15, 1779.] It would certainly be impossible to
desire better proof than that thus furnished by this royal officer, both
of the ferocity of the British policy towards the frontiersmen, and of
the treachery of the Indians, who so richly deserved the fate that
afterwards befell them.

While waiting for the signal from Hamilton, Cameron organized two Indian
expeditions against the frontier, to aid the movements of the British
army that had already conquered Georgia. A great body of Creeks,
accompanied by the British commissaries and most of the white traders
(who were, of course, tories), set out in March to join the king's
forces at Savannah; but when they reached the frontier they scattered
out to plunder and ravage. A body of Americans fell on one of their
parties and crushed it; whereupon the rest returned home in a fright,
save about seventy, who went on and joined the British. At the same time
three hundred Chickamaugas, likewise led by the resident British
commissaries, started out against the Carolina frontier. But Robertson,
at Chota, received news of the march, and promptly sent warning to the
Holston settlements [Footnote: _Do_. "A rebel commissioner in Chote
being informed of their movements here sent express into Holston river."
This "rebel commissioner" was in all probability Robertson.]; and the
Holston men, both of Virginia and North Carolina, decided immediately to
send an expedition against the homes of the war party. This would not
only at once recall them from the frontier, but would give them a
salutary lesson.

Accordingly the backwoods levies gathered on Clinch River, at the mouth
of Big Creek, April 10th, and embarked in pirogues and canoes to descend
the Tennessee. There were several hundred of them [Footnote: State
Department MSS. No. 51, Vol. II., p. 17, a letter from the British
agents among the Creeks to Lord George Germaine, of July 12, 1779. It
says, "near 300 rebels"; Haywood, whose accounts are derived from oral
tradition, says one thousand. Cameron's letter of July 15th in the
Haldimand MSS. says seven hundred. Some of them were Virginians who had
been designed for Clark's assistance in his Illinois campaign, but who
were not sent him. Shelby made a very clever stroke, but it had no
permanent effect, and it is nonsense to couple it, as has been recently
done, with Clark's campaigns.] under the command of Evan Shelby; Isaac
Shelby having collected the supplies for the expedition by his
individual activity and on his personal credit. The backwoodsmen went
down the river so swiftly that they took the Chickamaugas completely by
surprise, and the few warriors who were left in the villages fled to the
wooded mountains without offering any resistance. Several Indians were
killed [Footnote: Cameron in his letter says four, which is probably
near the truth. Haywood says forty, which merely represents the
backwoods tradition on the subject, and is doubtless a great
exaggeration.] and a number of their towns were burnt, together with a
great deal of corn; many horses and cattle were recaptured, and among
the spoils were large piles of deer hides, owned by a tory trader. The
troops then destroyed their canoes and returned home on foot, killing
game for their food; and they spread among the settlements many stories
of the beauty of the lands through which they had passed, so that the
pioneers became eager to possess them. The Chickamaugas were alarmed and
confounded by this sudden stroke; their great war band returned at once
to the burned towns, on being informed by swift runners of the
destruction that had befallen them. All thoughts of an immediate
expedition against the frontier were given up; peace talks were sent to
Evan Shelby [Footnote: State Department MSS. No. 71, Vol. I., p. 255,
letter of Evan Shelby, June 4, 1779.]; and throughout the summer the
settlements were but little molested.

Yet all the while they were planning further attacks; at the same time
that they sent peace talks to Shelby they sent war talks to the
Northwestern Indians, inviting them to join in a great combined movement
against the Americans. [Footnote: Haldimand MSS. Series B., Vol. 117, p.
157. A talk from the Cherokees to the envoy from the Wabash and other
Indians, July 12, 1779. One paragraph is interesting: "We cannot forget
the talk you brought us some years ago into this Nation, which was to
take up the hatchet against the Virginians. We heard and listened to it
with great attention, and before the time that was appointed to lift it
we took it up and struck the Virginians. Our Nation was alone and
surrounded by them. They were numerous and their hatchets were sharp;
and after we had lost some of our best warriors, we were forced to leave
our towns and corn to be burnt by them, and now we live in the grass as
you see us. But we are not yet conquered, and to convince you that we
have not thrown away your talk here are 4 strands of whampums we
received from you when you came before as a messenger to our Nation."]
When the news of Hamilton's capture was brought it wrought a momentary
discouragement; but the efforts of the British agents were unceasing,
and by the end of the year most of the southwestern Indians were again
ready to take up the hatchet. The rapid successes of the royal armies in
the southern States had turned the Creeks into open antagonists of the
Americans, and their war parties were sent out in quick succession, the
British agents keeping alive the alliance by a continued series of
gifts--for the Creeks were a venal, fickle race whose friendship could
not otherwise be permanently kept. [Footnote: State Department MSS.
Papers Continental Congress. Intercepted Letters, No. 51. Vol. II.
Letter of British Agents Messrs. Rainsford, Mitchell, and Macullagh, of
July 12, 1779. "The present unanimity of the Creek Nation is no doubt
greatly owing to the rapid successes of His Majesty's forces in the
Southern provinces, as they have now no cause to apprehend the least
danger from the Rebels ... we have found by experience that without
presents the Indians are not to be depended on."]

As for the Cherokees, they had not confined themselves to sending the
war belt to the northwestern tribes, while professing friendship for the
Americans; they had continued in close communication with the British
Indian agents, assuring them that their peace negotiations were only
shams, intended to blind the settlers, and that they would be soon ready
to take up the hatchet. [Footnote: _Do_., No. 71, Vol. II., p. 189.
Letter of David Tait to Oconostota. "I believe what you say about
telling lies to the Virginians to be very right."] This time Cameron
himself marched into the Cherokee country with his company of fifty
tories, brutal outlaws, accustomed to savage warfare, and ready to take
part in the worst Indian outrages. [Footnote: _Do_., No. 51, Vol. II.
Letter of the three agents. "The Cherokees are now exceedingly well
disposed. Mr. Cameron is now among them ... Captain Cameron has his
company of Loyal Refugees with him, who are well qualified for the
service they are engaged in.... He carried up with him a considerable
quantity of presents and ammunition which are absolutely necessary to
engage the Indians to go upon service."] The ensuing Cherokee war was
due not to the misdeeds of the settlers--though doubtless a few lawless
whites occasionally did wrong to their red neighbors--but to the
short-sighted treachery and ferocity of the savages themselves, and
especially to the machinations of the tories and British agents. The
latter unceasingly incited the Indians to ravage the frontier with torch
and scalping knife. They deliberately made the deeds of the torturers
and women-killers their own, and this they did with the approbation of
the British Government, and to its merited and lasting shame.

Yet by the end of 1779 the inrush of settlers to the Holston regions had
been so great that, as with Kentucky, there was never any real danger
after this year that the whites would be driven from the land by the red
tribes whose hunting-ground it once had been.

CHAPTER IX.

KING'S MOUNTAIN, 1780.

The British in the Southern States.

During the Revolutionary war the men of the west for the most part took
no share in the actual campaigning against the British and Hessians.
Their duty was to conquer and hold the wooded wilderness that stretched
westward to the Mississippi; and to lay therein the foundations of many
future commonwealths. Yet at a crisis in the great struggle for liberty,
at one of the darkest hours for the patriot cause, it was given to a
band of western men to come to the relief of their brethren of the
seaboard and to strike a telling and decisive blow for all America. When
the three southern provinces lay crushed and helpless at the feet of
Cornwallis, the Holston backwoodsmen suddenly gathered to assail the
triumphant conqueror. Crossing the mountains that divided them from the
beaten and despairing people of the tidewater region, they killed the
ablest lieutenant of the British commander, and at a single stroke undid
all that he had done.

By the end of 1779 the British had reconquered Georgia. In May, 1780,
they captured Charleston, speedily reduced all South Carolina to
submission, and then marched into the old North State. Cornwallis, much
the ablest of the British generals, was in command over a mixed force of
British, Hessian, and loyal American regulars, aided by Irish volunteers
and bodies of refugees from Florida. In addition, the friends to the
king's cause, who were very numerous in the southernmost States, rose at
once on the news of the British successes, and thronged to the royal
standards; so that a number of regiments of tory militia were soon
embodied. McGillivray, the Creek chief, sent bands of his warriors to
assist the British and tories on the frontier, and the Cherokees
likewise came to their help. The patriots for the moment abandoned hope,
and bowed before their victorious foes.

Cornwallis himself led the main army northward against the American
forces. Meanwhile he entrusted to two of his most redoubtable officers
the task of scouring the country, raising the loyalists, scattering the
patriot troops that were still embodied, and finally crushing out all
remaining opposition. These two men were Tarleton the dashing
cavalryman, and Ferguson the rifleman, the skilled partisan leader.

Colonel Ferguson.

Patrick Ferguson, the son of Lord Pitfour, was a Scotch soldier, at this
time about thirty-six years old, who had been twenty years in the
British army. He had served with distinction against the French in
Germany, had quelled a Carib uprising in the West Indies, and in 1777
was given the command of a company of riflemen in the army opposed to
Washington. [Footnote: "Biographical Sketch or Memoir of
Lieutenant-Colonel Patrick Ferguson," by Adam Ferguson, LL.D.,
Edinburgh, 1817, p. 11. The copy was kindly lent me by Mr. Geo. H. Moore
of the Lenox Library.] He played a good part at Brandywine and Monmouth.
At the former battle he was wounded by an American sharpshooter, and had
an opportunity, of which he forbore taking advantage, to himself shoot
an American officer of high rank, who unsuspectingly approached the
place where he lay hid; he always insisted that the man he thus spared
was no less a person than Washington. While suffering from his wound,
Sir William Howe disbanded his rifle corps, distributing it among the
light companies of the different regiments; and its commander in
consequence became an unattached volunteer in the army. But he was too
able to be allowed to remain long unemployed. When the British moved to
New York he was given the command of several small independent
expeditions, and was successful in each case; once, in particular, he
surprised and routed Pulaski's legion, committing great havoc with the
bayonet, which was always with him a favorite weapon. His energy and
valor attracted much attention; and when a British army was sent against
Charleston and the South he went along, as a lieutenant-colonel of a
recently raised regular regiment, known as the American Volunteers.
[Footnote: Though called volunteers they were simply a regular regiment
raised in America instead of England; Ferguson's "Memoir" p. 30, etc.,
always speaks of them as regulars. The British gave an absurd number of
titles to their various officers; thus Ferguson was a brigadier-general
of militia, lieutenant-colonel of volunteers, a major in the army, etc.]

Cornwallis speedily found him to be peculiarly fitted for just such
service as was needed; for he possessed rare personal qualities. He was
of middle height and slender build, with a quiet, serious face and a
singularly winning manner; and withal, he was of literally dauntless
courage, of hopeful, eager temper, and remarkably fertile in shifts and
expedients. He was particularly fond of night attacks, surprises, and
swift, sudden movements generally, and was unwearied in drilling and
disciplining his men. Not only was he an able leader, but he was also a
finished horseman, and the best marksman with both pistol and rifle in
the British army. Being of quick, inventive mind, he constructed a
breech-loading rifle, which he used in battle with deadly effect. This
invention had been one of the chief causes of his being brought into
prominence in the war against America, for the British officers
especially dreaded the American sharpshooters. [Footnote: Ferguson's
"Memoir," p. 11.] It would be difficult to imagine a better partisan
leader, or one more fitted by his feats of prowess and individual skill,
to impress the minds of his followers. Moreover, his courtesy stood him
in good stead with the people of the country; he was always kind and
civil, and would spend hours in talking affairs over with them and
pointing out the mischief of rebelling against their lawful sovereign.
He soon became a potent force in winning the doubtful to the British
side, and exerted a great influence over the tories; they gathered
eagerly to his standard, and he drilled them with patient perseverance.

After the taking of Charleston Ferguson's volunteers and Tarleton's
legion, acting separately or together, speedily destroyed the different
bodies of patriot soldiers. Their activity and energy was such that the
opposing commanders seemed for the time being quite unable to cope with
them, and the American detachments were routed and scattered in quick
succession. [Footnote: "History of the Campaigns of 1780 and 1781,"
Lt.-Col. Tarleton, London (1787). See also the "Strictures" thereon, by
Roderick Mackenzie, London, same date.] On one of these occasions, the
surprise at Monk's Corners, where the American commander, Huger, was
slain, Ferguson's troops again had a chance to show their skill in the
use of the bayonet.

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