The Winning of the West, Volume Two by Theodore Roosevelt

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Some of the settlers would not enter the association, preferring a
condition of absolute freedom from law. The committee, however, after
waiting a proper time, forced these men in by simply serving notice,
that thereafter they would be treated as beyond the pale of the law, not
entitled to its protection, but amenable to its penalties. A petition
was sent to the North Carolina Legislature, asking that the protection
of government should be extended to the Cumberland people, and showing
that the latter were loyal and orderly, prompt to suppress sedition and
lawlessness, faithful to the United States, and hostile to its enemies.
[Footnote: This whole account is taken from Putnam, who has rendered
such inestimable service by preserving these records.] To show their
good feeling the committee made every member of the community, who had
not already done so, take the oath of abjuration and fidelity.

Affairs with Outside Powers.

Until full governmental protection could be secured the commonwealth was
forced to act as a little sovereign state, bent on keeping the peace,
and yet on protecting itself against aggression from the surrounding
powers, both red and white. It was forced to restrain its own citizens,
and to enter into quasi-diplomatic relations with its neighbors. Thus
early this year fifteen men, under one Colbert, left the settlements and
went down the river in boats, ostensibly to trade with the Indians, but
really to plunder the Spaniards on the Mississippi. They were joined by
some Chickasaws, and at first met with some success in their piratical
attacks, not only on the Spanish trading-boats, but on those of the
French Creoles, and even the Americans, as well. Finally they were
repulsed in an attempt against the Spaniards at Ozark; some were killed,
and the rest scattered. [Footnote: Calendar Va. State Papers, III., pp.
469, 527.] Immediately upon learning of these deeds, the Committee of
Triers passed stringent resolutions forbidding all persons trading with
the Indians until granted a license by the committee, and until they had
furnished ample security for their good behavior. The committee also
wrote a letter to the Spanish governor at New Orleans, disclaiming all
responsibility for the piratical misdeeds of Colbert and his gang, and
announcing the measures they had taken to prevent any repetition of the
same in the future. They laid aside the sum of twenty pounds to pay the
expenses of the messengers who carried this letter to the Virginian
"agent" at the Illinois, whence it was forwarded to the Spanish
Governor. [Footnote: Putnam, pp. 185, 189, 191.]

One of the most difficult questions with which the committee had to deal
was that of holding a treaty with the Indians. Commissioners came out
from Virginia and North Carolina especially to hold such a treaty
[Footnote: Donelson, who was one of the men who became discouraged and
went to Kentucky, was the Virginian commissioner. Martin was the
commissioner from North Carolina. He is sometimes spoken of as if he
likewise represented Virginia.]; but the settlers declined to allow it
until they had themselves decided on its advisability. They feared to
bring so many savages together, lest they might commit some outrage, or
be themselves subjected to such at the hands of one of the many wronged
and reckless whites; and they knew that the Indians would expect many
presents, while there was very little indeed to give them. Finally, the
committee decided to put the question of treaty or no treaty to the vote
of the freemen in the several stations; and by a rather narrow majority
it was decided in the affirmative. The committee then made arrangements
for holding the treaty in June, some four miles from Nashborough; and
strictly prohibited the selling of liquor to the savages. At the
appointed time many chiefs and warriors of the Chickasaws, Cherokees,
and even Creeks appeared. There were various sports, such as ball-games
and footraces; and the treaty was brought to a satisfactory conclusion.
[Footnote: Putnam, 196.] It did not put a complete stop to the Indian
outrages, but it greatly diminished them. The Chickasaws thereafter
remained friendly; but, as usual, the Cherokee and Creek chiefs who
chose to attend were unable to bind those of their fellows who did not.
The whole treaty was, in fact, on both sides, of a merely preliminary
nature. The boundaries it arranged were not considered final until
confirmed by the treaty of Hopewell a couple of years later.

Robertson meanwhile was delegated by the unanimous vote of the settlers
to go to the Assembly of North Carolina, and there petition for the
establishment of a regular land office at Nashborough, and in other ways
advance the interests of the settlers. He was completely successful in
his mission. The Cumberland settlements were included in a new county,
called Davidson [Footnote: In honor of General Wm. Davidson, a very
gallant and patriotic soldier of North Carolina during the Revolutionary
war. The county government was established in October, 1783.]; and an
Inferior Court of Pleas and Common Sessions, vested by the act with
extraordinary powers, was established at Nashborough. The four justices
of the new court had all been Triers of the old committee, and the
scheme of government was practically not very greatly changed, although
now resting on an indisputably legal basis. The Cumberland settlers had
for years acted as an independent, law-abiding, and orderly
commonwealth, and the Court of Triers had shown great firmness and
wisdom. It spoke well for the people that they had been able to
establish such a government, in which the majority ruled, while the
rights of each individual were secured. Robertson deserves the chief
credit as both civil and military leader. The committee of which he was
a member, had seen that justice was done between man and man, had
provided for defense against the outside foe, and had striven to prevent
any wrongs being done to neutral or allied powers. When they became
magistrates of a county of North Carolina they continued to act on the
lines they had already marked out. The increase of population had
brought an increase of wealth. The settlers were still frontiersmen,
clad in buckskin or homespun, with rawhide moccasins, living in
log-cabins, and sleeping under bearskins on beds made of buffalo hides;
but as soon as they ventured to live on their clearings the ground was
better tilled, corn became abundant, and cattle and hogs increased as
the game diminished. Nashborough began to look more like an ordinary
little border town. [Footnote: The justices built a court-house and jail
of hewed logs, the former eighteen feet square, with a lean-to or shed
of twelve feet on one side. The contracts for building were let out at
vendue to the lowest bidder.]

Correspondence with the Spaniards.

During this year Robertson carried on some correspondence with the
Spanish governor at New Orleans, Don Estevan Miro. This was the
beginning of intercourse between the western settlers and the Spanish
officers, an intercourse which was absolutely necessary, though it
afterwards led to many intrigues and complications. Robertson was
obliged to write to Miro not only to disclaim responsibility for the
piratical deeds of men like Colbert, but also to protest against the
conduct of certain of the Spanish agents among the Creeks and
Chickamaugas. No sooner had hostilities ceased with the British than the
Spaniards began to incite the savages to take up once more the hatchet
they had just dropped, [Footnote: Calendar of Va. State Papers, III.,
584, 608, etc.] for Spain already recognized in the restless borderers
possible and formidable foes.

Miro in answering Robertson assured him that the Spaniards were very
friendly to the western settlers, and denied that the Spanish agents
were stirring up trouble. He also told him that the harassed Cherokees,
weary of ceaseless warfare, had asked permission to settle west of the
Mississippi--although they did not carry out their intention. He ended
by pressing Robertson and his friends to come down and settle in Spanish
territory, guaranteeing them good treatment. [Footnote: Robertson MSS.
As the letter is important I give it in full in the Appendix.]

In spite of Miro's fair words the Spanish agents continued to intrigue
against the Americans, and especially against the Cumberland people. Yet
there was no open break. The Spanish governor was felt to be powerful
for both good and evil, and at least a possible friend of the settlers.
To many of their leaders he showed much favor, and the people as a whole
were well impressed by him; and as a compliment to him they ultimately,
when the Cumberland counties were separated from those lying to the
eastward, united the former under the name of Mero [Footnote: So spelt;
but apparently his true name was Miro.] District.

CHAPTER XIII.

WHAT THE WESTERNERS HAD DONE DURING THE REVOLUTION, 1783.

When the first Continental Congress began its sittings the only
frontiersmen west of the mountains, and beyond the limits of continuous
settlement within the old Thirteen Colonies, [Footnote: This
qualification is put in because there were already a few families on the
Monongahela, the head of the Kanawha, and the upper Holston; but they
were in close touch with the people behind them.] were the two or three
hundred citizens of the little Watauga commonwealth. When peace was
declared with Great Britain the backwoodsmen had spread westward, in
groups, almost to the Mississippi, and they had increased in number to
some twenty-five thousand souls, [Footnote: These figures are simply
estimates; but they are based on careful study and comparison, and
though they must be some hundreds, and maybe some thousands, out of the
way, are quite near enough for practical purposes.] of whom a few
hundred dwelt in the bend of the Cumberland, while the rest were about
equally divided between Kentucky and Holston.

The Winning of the West.

This great westward movement of armed settlers was essentially one of
conquest, no less than of colonization. Thronging in with their wives
and children, their cattle, and their few household goods, they won and
held the land in the teeth of fierce resistance, both from the Indian
claimants of the soil and from the representatives of a mighty and
arrogant European power. The chain of events by which the winning was
achieved is perfect; had any link therein snapped it is likely that the
final result would have been failure. The wide wanderings of Boon and
his fellow hunters made the country known and awakened in the minds of
the frontiersmen a keen desire to possess it. The building of the
Watauga commonwealth by Robertson and Sevier gave a base of operations,
and furnished a model for similar communities to follow. Lord Dunmore's
war made the actual settlement possible, for it cowed the northern
Indians, and restrained them from seriously molesting Kentucky during
its first and most feeble years. Henderson and Boon made their great
treaty with the Cherokees in 1775, and then established a permanent
colony far beyond all previous settlements, entering into final
possession of the new country. The victory over the Cherokees in 1776
made safe the line of communication along the Wilderness road, and
secured the chance for further expansion. Clark's campaigns gained the
Illinois, or northwestern regions. The growth of Kentucky then became
very rapid; and in its turn this, and the steady progress of the Watauga
settlements, rendered possible Robertson's successful effort to plant a
new community still farther west, on the Cumberland.

The Wars of the Backwoodsmen

The backwoodsmen pressed in on the line of least resistance, first
taking possession of the debatable hunting-grounds lying between the
Algonquins of the north and the Appalachian confederacies of the south.
Then they began to encroach on the actual tribal territories. Every step
was accompanied by stubborn and bloody fighting with the Indians. The
forest tribes were exceedingly formidable opponents; it is not too much
to say that they formed a far more serious obstacle to the American
advance than would have been offered by an equal number of the best
European troops. Their victories over Braddock, Grant, and St. Clair,
gained in each case with a smaller force, conclusively proved their
superiority, on their own ground, over the best regulars, disciplined
and commanded in the ordinary manner. Almost all of the victories, even
of the backwoodsmen, were won against inferior numbers of Indians.
[Footnote: That the contrary impression prevails is due to the boastful
vanity which the backwoodsmen often shared with the Indians, and to the
gross ignorance of the average writer concerning these border wars. Many
of the accounts in the popular histories are sheer inventions. Thus, in
the "Chronicles of Border Warfare," by Alex. S. Withers (Clarksburg,
Va., 1831, p. 301), there is an absolutely fictitious account of a feat
of the Kentucky Colonel Scott, who is alleged to have avenged St.
Clair's defeat by falling on the victorious Indians while they were
drunk, and killing two hundred of them. This story has not even a
foundation in fact; there was not so much as a skirmish of the sort
described. As Mann Butler--a most painstaking and truthful
writer--points out, it is made up out of the whole cloth, thirty years
after the event; it is a mere invention to soothe the mortified pride of
the whites. Gross exaggeration of the Indian numbers and losses prevails
even to this day. Mr. Edmund Kirke, for instance, usually makes the
absolute or relative numbers of the Indians from five to twenty-five
times as great as they really were. Still, it is hard to blame backwoods
writers for such slips in the face of the worse misdeeds of the average
historian of the Greek and Roman wars with barbarians.] The red men were
fickle of temper, and large bodies could not be kept together for a long
campaign, nor, indeed, for more than one special stroke; the only piece
of strategy any of their chiefs showed was Cornstalk's march past
Dunmore to attack Lewis; but their tactics and discipline in the battle
itself were admirably adapted to the very peculiar conditions of forest
warfare. Writers who speak of them as undisciplined, or as any but most
redoubtable antagonists, fall into an absurd error. An old Indian
fighter, who, at the close of the last century, wrote, from experience,
a good book on the subject, summed up the case very justly when he said:
"I apprehend that the Indian discipline is as well calculated to answer
the purpose in the woods of America as the British discipline is in
Flanders; and British discipline in the woods is the way to have men
slaughtered, with scarcely any chance of defending themselves."
[Footnote: Col. Jas. Smith, "An Account," etc., Lexington, Ky., 1799.] A
comparison of the two victories gained by the backwoodsmen, at the Great
Kanawha, over the Indians, and at Kings Mountain over Ferguson's British
and tories, brings out clearly the formidable fighting capacity of the
red men. At the Kanawha the Americans outnumbered their foes, at King's
Mountain they were no more than equal; yet in the former battle they
suffered twice the loss they did in the latter, inflicted much less
damage in return, and did not gain nearly so decisive a victory.

Twofold Character of the Revolution.

The Indians were urged on by the British, who furnished them with arms,
ammunition, and provisions, and sometimes also with leaders and with
bands of auxiliary white troops, French, British, and tories. It was
this that gave to the revolutionary contest its twofold character,
making it on the part of the Americans a struggle for independence in
the east, and in the west a war of conquest, or rather a war to
establish, on behalf of all our people, the right of entry into the
fertile and vacant regions beyond the Alleghanies. The grievances of the
backwoodsmen were not the same as the grievances of the men of the
seacoast. The Ohio Valley and the other western lands of the French had
been conquered by the British, not the Americans. Great Britain had
succeeded to the policy as well as the possessions of her predecessor,
and, strange to say, had become almost equally hostile to the colonists
of her own stock. As France had striven for half a century, so England
now in her turn strove, to bar out the settlers of English race from the
country beyond the Alleghanies. The British Crown, Parliament, and
people were a unit in wishing to keep woodland and prairie for the sole
use of their own merchants, as regions tenanted only by Indian hunters
and French trappers and traders. They became the guardians and allies of
all the Indian tribes. On the other hand, the American backwoodsmen were
resolute in their determination to go in and possess the land. The aims
of the two sides thus clashed hopelessly. Under all temporary and
apparent grounds of quarrel lay this deep-rooted jealousy and
incompatibility of interests. Beyond the Alleghanies the Revolution was
fundamentally a struggle between England, bent on restricting the growth
of the English race, and the Americans, triumphantly determined to
acquire the right to conquer the continent.

The West Actually Conquered.

Had not the backwoodsmen been successful in the various phases of the
struggle, we would certainly have been cooped up between the sea and the
mountains. If in 1774 and '76 they had been beaten by the Ohio tribes
and the Cherokees, the border ravaged, and the settlements stopped or
forced back as during what the colonists called Braddock's War,
[Footnote: During this Indian war, covering the period from Braddock's
to Grant's defeats, Smith, a good authority, estimates that the
frontiers were laid waste, and population driven back, over an area
nearly three hundred miles long by thirty broad.] there is every reason
to believe that the Alleghanies would have become our western frontier.
Similarly, if Clark had failed in his efforts to conquer and hold the
Illinois and Vincennes, it is overwhelmingly probable that the Ohio
would have been the boundary between the Americans and the British.
Before the Revolution began, in 1774, the British Parliament had, by the
Quebec Act, declared the country between the Great Lakes and the Ohio to
be part of Canada; and under the provisions of this act the British
officers continued to do as they had already done--that is, to hold
adverse possession of the land, scornfully heedless of the claims of the
different colonies. The country was _de facto_ part of Canada; the
Americans tried to conquer it exactly as they tried to conquer the rest
of Canada; the only difference was that Clark succeeded, whereas Arnold
and Montgomery failed.

But only Definitely Secured by Diplomacy.

Of course the conquest by the backwoodsmen was by no means the sole
cause of our acquisition of the west. The sufferings and victories of
the westerners would have counted for nothing, had it not been for the
success of the American arms in the east, and for the skill of our three
treaty-makers at Paris--Jay, Adams, and Franklin, but above all the two
former, and especially Jay. On the other hand, it was the actual
occupation and holding of the country that gave our diplomats their
vantage-ground. When the treaty was made, in 1782, the commissioners of
the United States represented a people already holding the whole Ohio
Valley, as well as the Illinois. The circumstances of the treaty were
peculiar; but here they need to be touched but briefly, and only so far
as they affected the western boundaries. The United States, acting
together with France and Spain, had just closed a successful war with
England; but when the peace negotiations were begun, they speedily found
that their allies were, if any thing, more anxious than their enemy to
hamper their growth. England, having conceded the grand point of
independence, was disposed to be generous, and not to haggle about
lesser matters. Spain, on the contrary, was quite as hostile to the new
nation as to England. Through her representative, Count Aranda, she
predicted the future enormous expansion of the Federal Republic at the
expense of Florida, Louisiana, and Mexico, unless it was effectually
curbed in its youth. The prophecy has been strikingly fulfilled, and the
event has thoroughly justified Spain's fear; for the major part of the
present territory of the United States was under Spanish dominion at the
close of the Revolutionary war. Spain, therefore, proposed to hem in our
growth by giving us the Alleghanies for our western boundary. [Footnote:
At the north this boundary was to follow the upper Ohio, and end towards
the foot of Lake Erie. See maps at end of volume.] France was the ally
of America; but as between America and Spain, she favored the latter.
Moreover, she wished us to remain weak enough to be dependent upon her
further good graces. The French court, therefore, proposed that the
United States should content themselves with so much of the
trans-Alleghany territory as lay round the head-waters of the Tennessee
and between the Cumberland and Ohio. This area contained the bulk of the
land that was already settled [Footnote: Excluding only so much of
Robertson's settlement as lay south of the Cumberland, and Clark's
conquest.]; and the proposal showed how important the French court
deemed the fact of actual settlement.

Thus the two allies of America were hostile to her interests. The open
foe, England, on the contrary was anxious to conclude a separate treaty,
so that she might herself be in better condition to carry on
negotiations with France and Spain; she cared much less to keep the west
than she did to keep Gibraltar, and an agreement with the United States
about the former left her free to insist on the retention of the latter.
Congress, in a spirit of slavish subserviency, had instructed the
American commissioners to take no steps without the knowledge and advice
of France. Franklin was inclined to obey these instructions; but Jay,
supported by Adams, boldly insisted on disregarding them; and
accordingly a separate treaty was negotiated with England. In settling
the claims to the western territory, much stress was laid on the old
colonial charters; but underneath all the verbiage it was practically
admitted that these charters conferred merely inchoate rights, which
became complete only after conquest and settlement. The States
themselves had already by their actions shown that they admitted this to
be the case. Thus North Carolina, when by the creation of Washington
County--now the State of Tennessee--she rounded out her boundaries,
specified them as running to the Mississippi. As a matter of fact the
royal grant, under which alone she could claim the land in question,
extended to the Pacific; and the only difference between her rights to
the regions east and west of the river was that her people were settling
in one, and could not settle in the other. The same was true of
Kentucky, and of the west generally; if the States could rightfully
claim to run to the Mississippi, they could also rightfully claim to run
to the Pacific. The colonial charters were all very well as furnishing
color of title; but at bottom the American claim rested on the peculiar
kind of colonizing conquest so successfully carried on by the
backwoodsmen. When the English took New Amsterdam they claimed it under
old charters; but they very well knew that their real right was only
that of the strong hand. It was precisely so with the Americans and the
Ohio valley. They produced old charters to support their title; but in
reality it rested on Clark's conquests and above all on the advance of
the backwoods settlements. [Footnote: Mr. R. A. Hinsdale, in his
excellent work on the "Old Northwest" (New York, 1888), seems to me to
lay too much stress on the weight which our charter-claims gave us, and
too little on the right we had acquired by actual possession. The
charter-claims were elaborated with the most wearisome prolixity at the
time; but so were the English claims to New Amsterdam a century earlier.
Conquest gave the true title in each case; the importance of a claim is
often in inverse order to the length at which it is set forth in a
diplomatic document. The west was gained by: (1) the westward movement
of the backwoodsmen during the Revolution; (2) the final success of the
Continental armies in the east; (3) the skill of our diplomats at Paris;
failure on any one of these three points would have lost us the west.

Mr. Hinsdale seems to think that Clark's conquest prevented the Illinois
from being conquered from the British by the Spaniards; but this is very
doubtful. The British at Detroit would have been far more likely to have
conquered the Spaniards at St. Louis; at any rate there is small
probability that they would have been seriously troubled by the latter.
The so-called Spanish conquest of St. Joseph was not a conquest at all,
but an unimportant plundering raid.

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