The Winning of the West, Volume Two by Theodore Roosevelt

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Clark Moves to the Falls of Ohio.

Clark himself, towards the end of 1779, took up his abode at the Falls
of the Ohio, where he served in some sort as a shield both for the
Illinois and for Kentucky, and from whence he hoped some day to march
against Detroit. This was his darling scheme, which he never ceased to
cherish. Through no fault of his own, the day never came when he could
put it in execution.

He was ultimately made a brigadier-general of the Virginian militia, and
to the harassed settlers in Kentucky his mere name was a tower of
strength. He was the sole originator of the plan for the conquest of the
northwestern lands, and, almost unaided, he had executed his own scheme.
For a year he had been wholly cut off from all communication with the
home authorities, and had received no help of any kind. Alone, and with
the very slenderest means, he had conquered and held a vast and
beautiful region, which but for him would have formed part of a foreign
and hostile empire [Footnote: It is of course impossible to prove that
but for Clark's conquest the Ohio would have been made our boundary in
1783, exactly as it is impossible to prove that but for Wolfe the
English would not have taken Quebec. But when we take into account the
determined efforts of Spain and France to confine us to the land east of
the Alleghanies, and then to the land southeast of the Ohio, the
slavishness of Congress in instructing our commissioners to do whatever
France wished, and the readiness shown by one of the commissioners,
Franklin, to follow these instructions, it certainly looks as if there
would not even have been an effort made by us to get the northwestern
territory had we not already possessed it, thanks to Clark. As it was,
it was only owing to Jay's broad patriotism and stern determination that
our western boundaries were finally made so far-reaching. None of our
early diplomats did as much for the west as Jay, whom at one time the
whole west hated and reviled; Mann Butler, whose politics are generally
very sound, deserves especial credit for the justice he does the New
Yorker.

It is idle to talk of the conquest as being purely a Virginian affair.
It was conquered by Clark, a Virginian, with some scant help from
Virginia, but it was retained only owing to the power of the United
States and the patriotism of such northern statesmen as Jay, Adams, and
Franklin, the negotiators of the final treaty. Had Virginia alone been
in interest, Great Britain would not have even paid her claims the
compliment of listening to them. Virginia's share in the history of the
nation has ever been gallant and leading; but the Revolutionary war was
emphatically fought by Americans for America; no part could have won
without the help of the whole, and every victory was thus a victory for
all, in which all alike can take pride.]; he had clothed and paid his
soldiers with the spoils of his enemies; he had spent his own fortune as
carelessly as he had risked his life, and the only reward that he was
destined for many years to receive was the sword voted him by the
Legislature of Virginia. [Footnote: A probably truthful tradition
reports that when the Virginian commissioners offered Clark the sword,
the grim old fighter, smarting under the sense of his wrongs, threw it
indignantly from him, telling the envoys that he demanded from Virginia
his just rights and the promised reward of his services, not an empty
compliment.]

CHAPTER IV.

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

Clark's Conquests Benefit Kentucky.

Clark's successful campaigns against the Illinois towns and Vincennes,
besides giving the Americans a foothold north of the Ohio, were of the
utmost importance to Kentucky. Until this time, the Kentucky settlers
had been literally fighting for life and home, and again and again their
strait had been so bad, that it seemed--and was--almost an even chance
whether they would be driven from the land. The successful outcome of
Clark's expedition temporarily overawed the Indians, and, moreover, made
the French towns outposts for the protection of the settlers; so that
for several years thereafter the tribes west of the Wabash did but
little against the Americans. The confidence of the backwoodsmen in
their own ultimate triumph was likewise very much increased; while the
fame of the western region was greatly spread abroad. From all these
causes it resulted that there was an immediate and great increase of
immigration thither, the bulk of the immigrants of course stopping in
Kentucky, though a very few, even thus early, went to Illinois. Every
settlement in Kentucky was still in jeopardy, and there came moments of
dejection, when some of her bravest leaders spoke gloomily of the
possibility of the Americans being driven from the land. But these were
merely words such as even strong men utter when sore from fresh
disaster. After the spring of 1779, there was never any real danger that
the whites would be forced to abandon Kentucky.

The Land Laws.

The land laws which the Virginia Legislature enacted about this time
[Footnote: May, 1779; they did not take effect nor was a land court
established until the following fall, when the land office was opened at
St. Asaphs, Oct. 13th. Isaac Shelby's claim was the first one considered
and granted. He had raised a crop of corn in the country in 1776.] were
partly a cause, partly a consequence, of the increased emigration to
Kentucky, and of the consequent rise in the value of its wild lands.
Long before the Revolution, shrewd and far-seeing speculators had
organized land companies to acquire grants of vast stretches of western
territory; but the land only acquired an actual value for private
individuals after the incoming of settlers. In addition to the
companies, many private individuals had acquired rights to tracts of
land; some, under the royal proclamation, giving bounties to the
officers and soldiers in the French war; others by actual payment into
the public treasury. [Footnote: The Ohio Company was the greatest of the
companies. There were "also, among private rights, the ancient
importation rights, the Henderson Company rights, etc." See Marshall,
I., 82.] The Virginia Legislature now ratified all titles to regularly
surveyed ground claimed under charter, military bounty, and old treasury
rights, to the extent of four hundred acres each. Tracts of land were
reserved as bounties for the Virginia troops, both Continentals and
militia. Each family of actual settlers was allowed a settlement right
to four hundred acres for the small sum of nine dollars, and, if very
poor, the land was given them on credit. Every such settler also
acquired a preemptive right to purchase a thousand acres adjoining, at
the regulation State price, which was forty pounds, paper money, or
forty dollars in specie, for every hundred acres. One peculiar provision
was made necessary by the system of settling in forted villages. Every
such village was allowed six hundred and forty acres, which no outsider
could have surveyed or claim, for it was considered, the property of the
townsmen, to be held in common until an equitable division could be
made; while each family likewise had a settlement right to four hundred
acres adjoining the village. The vacant lands were sold, warrants for a
hundred acres costing forty dollars in specie; but later on, towards the
close of the war, Virginia tried to buoy up her mass of depreciated
paper currency by accepting it nearly at par for land warrants, thereby
reducing the cost of these to less than fifty cents for a hundred acres.
No warrant applied to a particular spot; it was surveyed on any vacant
or presumably vacant ground. Each individual had the surveying done
wherever he pleased, the county surveyor usually appointing some skilled
woodsman to act as his deputy.

In the end the natural result of all this was to involve half the people
of Kentucky in lawsuits over their land, as there were often two or
three titles to each patch, [Footnote: McAfee MSS.] and the surveys
crossed each other in hopeless tangles. Immediately, the system gave a
great stimulus to immigration, for it made it easy for any incoming
settler to get title to his farm, and it also strongly attracted all
land speculators. Many well-to-do merchants or planters of the seaboard
sent agents out to buy lands in Kentucky; and these agents either hired
the old pioneers, such as Boon and Kenton, to locate and survey the
lands, or else purchased their claims from them outright. The advantages
of following the latter plan were of course obvious; for the pioneers
were sure to have chosen fertile, well-watered spots; and though they
asked more than the State, yet, ready money was so scarce, and the
depreciation of the currency so great, that even thus the land only cost
a few cents an acre. [Footnote: From the Clay MSS. "Virginia, Frederick
Co. to wit: This day came William Smith of [illegible] before me John A.
Woodcock, a Justice of the peace of same county, who being of full age
deposeth and saith that about the first of June 1780, being in Kentuckey
and empowered to purchase Land, for Mr. James Ware, he the deponent
agreed with a certain Simon Kenton of Kentucky for 1000 Acres of Land
about 2 or 3 miles from the big salt spring on Licking, that the sd.
Kenton on condition that the sd. Smith would pay him L100 in hand and
L100 more when sd. Land was surveyed,... sd. Kenton on his part wou'd
have the land surveyed, and a fee Simple made there to.... sd. Land was
first rate Land and had a good Spring thereon.... he agreed to warrant
and defend the same ... against all persons whatsoever.... sworn too
before me this 17th day of Nov. 1789." Later on, the purchaser, who did
not take possession of the land for eight or nine years, feared it would
not prove as fertile as Kenton had said, and threatened to sue Kenton;
but Kenton evidently had the whip-hand in the controversy, for the land
being out in the wilderness, the purchaser did not know its exact
location, and when he threatened suit, and asked to be shown it, Kenton
"swore that he would not shoe it at all." Letter of James Ware, Nov. 29,
1789.]

Inrush of Settlers.

Thus it came about that with the fall of 1779 a strong stream of
emigration set towards Kentucky, from the backwoods districts of
Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina. In company with the real
settlers came many land speculators, and also many families of weak,
irresolute, or shiftless people, who soon tired of the ceaseless and
grinding frontier strife for life, and drifted back to the place whence
they had come. [Footnote: Thus the increase of population is to be
measured by the net gain of immigration over emigration, not by
immigration alone. It is probably partly neglect of this fact, and
partly simple exaggeration, that make the early statements of the
additions to the Kentucky population so very untrustworthy. In 1783, at
the end of the Revolution, the population of Kentucky was probably
nearer 12,000 than 20,000, and it had grown steadily each year. Yet
Butler quotes Floyd as saying that in the spring of 1780 three hundred
large family boats arrived at the Falls, which would mean an increase of
perhaps four or five thousand people; and in the McAfee MSS. occurs the
statement that in 1779 and 1780 nearly 20,000 people came to Kentucky.
Both of these statements are probably mere estimates, greatly
exaggerated; any westerner of to-day can instance similar reports of
movements to western localities, which under a strict census dwindled
wofully.] Thus there were ever two tides--the larger setting towards
Kentucky, the lesser towards the old States; so that the two streams
passed each other on the Wilderness road--for the people who came down
the Ohio could not return against the current. Very many who did not
return nevertheless found they were not fitted to grapple with the stern
trials of existence on the border. Some of these succumbed outright;
others unfortunately survived, and clung with feeble and vicious
helplessness to the skirts of their manlier fellows; and from them have
descended the shiftless squatters, the "mean whites," the listless,
uncouth men who half-till their patches of poor soil, and still cumber
the earth in out-of-the-way nooks from the crannies of the Alleghanies
to the canyons of the southern Rocky Mountains.

In April, before this great rush of immigration began, but when it was
clearly foreseen that it would immediately take place, the county court
of Kentucky issued a proclamation to the new settlers, recommending them
to keep as united and compact as possible, settling in "stations" or
forted towns; and likewise advising each settlement to choose three or
more trustees to take charge of their public affairs. [Footnote: Durrett
MSS., in the bound volume of "Papers relating to Louisville and
Kentucky." On May 1, 1780, the people living at the Falls, having
established a town, forty-six of them signed a petition to have their
title made good against Conolly. On Feb. 7, 1781, John Todd and five
other trustees of Louisville met; they passed resolutions to erect a
grist mill and make surveys.] Their recommendations and advice were
generally followed.

Bowman Attacks Chillicothe.

During 1779 the Indian war dragged on much as usual. The only expedition
of importance was that undertaken in May by one hundred and sixty
Kentuckians, commanded by the county lieutenant, John Bowman, against
the Indian town of Chillicothe. [Footnote: MS. "Notes on Kentucky," by
George Bradford, who went there in 1779; in the Durrett collection.
Haldimand MSS., Letter of Henry Bird, June 9, 1779. As this letter is
very important, and gives for the first time the Indian side, I print it
in the Appendix almost in full. The accounts of course conflict
somewhat; chiefly as to the number of cabins burnt--from five to forty,
and of horses captured--from thirty to three hundred. They agree in all
essential points. But as among the whites themselves there is one
serious question. Logan's admirers, and most Kentucky historians, hold
Bowman responsible for the defeat; but in reality (see Butler, p. 110)
there seems strong reason to believe that it was simply due to the
unexpectedly strong resistance of the Indians. Bird's letter shows, what
the Kentuckians never suspected, that the attack was a great benefit to
them in frightening the Indians and stopping a serious inroad. It
undoubtedly accomplished more than Clark's attack on Piqua next year,
for instance.] Logan, Harrod, and other famous frontier fighters went
along. The town was surprised, several cabins burned, and a number of
horses captured. But the Indians rallied, and took refuge in a central
block-house and a number of strongly built cabins surrounding it, from
which they fairly beat off the whites. They then followed to harass the
rear of their retreating foes, but were beaten off in turn. Of the
whites, nine were killed and two or three wounded; the Indians' loss was
two killed and five or six wounded.

The defeat caused intense mortification to the whites; but in reality
the expedition was of great service to Kentucky, though the Kentuckians
never knew it. The Detroit people had been busily organizing expeditions
against Kentucky. Captain Henry Bird had been given charge of one, and
he had just collected two hundred Indians at the Mingo town when news of
the attack on Chillicothe arrived. Instantly the Indians dissolved in a
panic, some returning to defend their towns; others were inclined to beg
peace of the Americans. So great was their terror that it was found
impossible to persuade them to make any inroad as long as they deemed
themselves menaced by a counter attack of the Kentuckians. [Footnote:
Haldimand MSS. De Peyster to Haldimand, Nov. 20, 1779.]

Occasional Indian Forays.

It is true that bands of Mingos, Hurons, Delawares, and Shawnees made
occasional successful raids against the frontier, and brought their
scalps and prisoners in triumph to Detroit, [Footnote: Haldimand MSS. De
Peyster to Haldimand, Oct. 20, 1779.] where they drank such astonishing
quantities of rum as to incite the indignation of the British
commander-in-chief. [Footnote: Haldimand MSS. Haldimand's letter, July
23, 1779.] But instead of being able to undertake any formidable
expedition against the settlers, the Detroit authorities were during
this year much concerned for their own safety, taking every possible
means to provide for the defence, and keeping a sharp look-out for any
hostile movement of the Americans. [Footnote: Haldimand MSS., April 8,
1779.]

The incoming settlers were therefore left in comparative peace. They
built many small palisaded towns, some of which proved permanent, while
others vanished utterly when the fear of the Indians was removed and the
families were able to scatter out on their farms. At the Falls of the
Ohio a regular fort was built, armed with cannon and garrisoned by
Virginia troops, [Footnote: One hundred and fifty strong, under Col.
George Slaughter.] who were sent down the river expressly to reinforce
Clark. The Indians never dared assail this fort; but they ravaged up to
its walls, destroying the small stations on Bear Grass Creek and
scalping settlers and soldiers when they wandered far from the
protection of the stockade.

The Hard Winter.

The new-comers of 1779 were destined to begin with a grim experience,
for the ensuing winter [Footnote: Boon, in his Narrative, makes a
mistake in putting this hard winter a year later; all the other
authorities are unanimous against him.] was the most severe ever known
in the west, and was long recalled by the pioneers as the "hard winter."
Cold weather set in towards the end of November, the storms following
one another in unbroken succession, while the snow lay deep until the
spring. Most of the cattle, and very many of the horses, perished; and
deer and elk were likewise found dead in the woods, or so weak and
starved that they would hardly move out of the way, while the buffalo
often came up at nightfall to the yards, seeking to associate with the
starving herds of the settlers. [Footnote: McAfee MSS. Of the McAfees'
horses ten died, and only two survived, a brown mare and "a yellow horse
called Chickasaw." Exactly a hundred years later, in the hard winter of
1879-80, and the still worse winter of 1880-81, the settlers on the
Yellowstone and the few hunters who wintered on the Little Missouri had
a similar experience. The buffalo crowded with the few tame cattle round
the hayricks and log-stables; the starving deer and antelope gathered in
immense bands in sheltered places. Riding from my ranch to a neighbor's
I have, in deep snows, passed through herds of antelope that would
barely move fifty or a hundred feet out of my way.] The scanty supply of
corn gave out, until there was not enough left to bake into johnny-cakes
on the long boards in front of the fire. [Footnote: _Do._] Even at the
Falls, where there were stores for the troops, the price of corn went up
nearly fourfold, [Footnote: From fifty dollars (Continental money) a
bushel in the fall to one hundred and seventy-five in the spring.] while
elsewhere among the stations of the interior it could not be had at any
price, and there was an absolute dearth both of salt and of vegetable
food, the settlers living for weeks on the flesh of the lean wild game,
[Footnote: McAfee MSS.] especially of the buffalo. [Footnote: Boon's
Narrative.] The hunters searched with especial eagerness for the bears
in the hollow trees, for they alone among the animals kept fat; and the
breast of the wild turkey served for bread. [Footnote: McAfee MSS.]
Nevertheless, even in the midst of this season of cold and famine, the
settlers began to take the first steps for the education of their
children. In this year Joseph Doniphan, whose son long afterwards won
fame in the Mexican war, opened the first regular school at
Boonsborough, [Footnote: _Historical Magazine_, Second Series, Vol.
VIII.] and one of the McAfees likewise served as a teacher through the
winter. [Footnote: McAfee MSS.] But from the beginning some of the
settlers' wives had now and then given the children in the forts a few
weeks' schooling.

Through the long, irksome winter, the frontiersmen remained crowded
within the stockades. The men hunted, while the women made the clothes,
of tanned deer-hides, buffalo-wool cloth, and nettle-bark linen. In
stormy weather, when none could stir abroad, they turned or coopered the
wooden vessels; for tin cups were as rare as iron forks, and the
"noggin" was either hollowed out of the knot of a tree, or else made
with small staves and hoops. [Footnote: McAfee MSS.] Every thing was of
home manufacture--for there was not a store in Kentucky,--and the most
expensive domestic products seem to have been the hats, made of native
fur, mink, coon, fox, wolf, and beaver. If exceptionally fine, and of
valuable fur, they cost five hundred dollars in paper money, which had
not at that time depreciated a quarter as much in outlying Kentucky as
at the seat of government. [Footnote: Marshall, p. 124.]

As soon as the great snow-drifts began to melt, and thereby to produce
freshets of unexampled height, the gaunt settlers struggled out to their
clearings, glad to leave the forts. They planted corn, and eagerly
watched the growth of the crop; and those who hungered after oatmeal or
wheaten bread planted other grains as well, and apple-seeds and
peach-stones. [Footnote: McAfee MSS.]

Many New Settlers Arrive in the Spring.

As soon as the spring of 1780 opened, the immigrants began to arrive
more numerously than ever. Some came over the Wilderness road; among
these there were not a few haggard, half-famished beings, who, having
stalled too late the previous fall, had been overtaken by the deep
snows, and forced to pass the winter in the iron-bound and desolate
valleys of the Alleghanies, subsisting on the carcasses of their
stricken cattle, and seeing their weaker friends starve or freeze before
their eyes. Very many came down the Ohio, in flat-boats. A good-sized
specimen of these huge unwieldly scows was fifty-five feet long, twelve
broad, and six deep, drawing three feet of water; [Footnote: Lettres
d'un Cultivateur Americain, St. John de Creve Coeur, Paris, 1787. p.
407. He visited Kentucky in 1784.] but the demand was greater than the
supply, and a couple of dozen people, with half as many horses, and all
their effects, might be forced to embark on a flat-boat not twenty-four
feet in length. [Footnote: MS. Journals of Rev. James Smith. Tours in
western country in 1785-1795 (in Col. Durrett's library).] Usually
several families came together, being bound by some tie of neighborhood
or purpose. Not infrequently this tie was religious, for in the back
settlements the few churches were almost as much social as religious
centres. Thus this spring, a third of the congregation of a Low Dutch
Reformed Church came to Kentucky bodily, to the number of fifty heads of
families, with their wives and children, their beasts of burden and
pasture, and their household goods; like most bands of new immigrants,
they suffered greatly from the Indians, much more than did the old
settlers. [Footnote: State Department MSS. No. 41, Vol. V., Memorials K,
L, 1777-1787, pp. 95-97, Petition of Low Dutch Reformed Church, etc.]
The following year a Baptist congregation came out from Virginia,
keeping up its organization even while on the road, the preacher holding
services at every long halt.

De Peyster at Detroit.

Soon after the rush of spring immigration was at its height, the old
settlers and the new-comers alike were thrown into the utmost alarm by a
formidable inroad of Indians, accompanied by French partisans, and led
by a British officer. De Peyster, a New York tory of old Knickerbocker
family, had taken command at Detroit. He gathered the Indians around him
from far and near, until the expense of subsidizing these savages became
so enormous as to call forth serious complaints from head-quarters.
[Footnote: Haldimand MSS. Haldimand to Guy Johnson, June 30, 1780.] He
constantly endeavored to equip and send out different bands, not only to
retake the Illinois and Vincennes, but to dislodge Clark from the Falls
[Footnote: _Do._ Haldimand to De Peyster, Feb. 12 and July 6, 1780.]; he
was continually receiving scalps and prisoners, and by May he had fitted
out two thousand warriors to act along the Ohio and the Wabash.
[Footnote: _Do._ De Peyster to Haldimand, June 1, 1780.] The rapid
growth of Kentucky especially excited his apprehension, [Footnote: _Do._
March 8, 1780.] and his main stroke was directed against the clusters of
wooden forts that were springing up south of the Ohio. [Footnote: _Do._
May 17 to July 19, 1780.]

Bird's Inroad.

Late in May, some six hundred Indians and a few Canadians, with a couple
of pieces of light field artillery, were gathered and put under the
command of Captain Henry Bird. Following the rivers where practicable,
that he might the easier carry his guns, he went down the Miami, and on
the 22d of June, surprised and captured without resistance Ruddle's and
Martin's stations, two small stockades on the South Fork of the Licking.
[Footnote: He marched overland from the forks of the Licking. Marshall
says the season was dry and the waters low; but the Bradford MSS.
particularly declare that Bird only went up the Licking at all because
the watercourses were so full, and that he had originally intended to
attack the settlements at the Falls.] But Bird was not one of the few
men fitted to command such a force as that which followed him; and
contenting himself with the slight success he had won, he rapidly
retreated to Detroit, over the same path by which he had advanced. The
Indians carried off many horses, and loaded their prisoners with the
plunder, tomahawking those, chiefly women and children, who could not
keep up with the rest; and Bird could not control them nor force them to
show mercy to their captives. [Footnote: Collins, Butler, etc. Marshall
thinks that if the force could have been held together it would have
depopulated Kentucky; but this is nonsense, for within a week Clark had
gathered a very much larger and more efficient body of troops.] He did
not even get his cannon back to Detroit, leaving them at the British
store in one of the upper Miami towns, in charge of a bombardier. The
bombardier did not prove a very valorous personage, and on the alarm of
Clark's advance, soon afterwards, he permitted the Indians to steal his
horses, and was forced to bury his ordnance in the woods. [Footnote:
Haldimand MSS. Letter of Bombardier Wm. Homan, Aug. 18, 1780. He speaks
of "the gun" and "the smaller ordnance," presumably swivels. It is
impossible to give Bird's numbers correctly, for various bands of
Indians kept joining and leaving him.]

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