The Winning of the West, Volume Two by Theodore Roosevelt

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Clark Hears the News

Before this inroad took place Clark had been planning a foray into the
Indian country, and the news only made him hasten his preparations. In
May this adventurous leader had performed one of the feats which made
him the darling of the backwoodsmen. Painted and dressed like an Indian
so as to deceive the lurking bands of savages, he and two companions
left the fort he had built on the bank of the Mississippi, and came
through the wilderness to Harrodsburg. They lived on the buffaloes they
shot, and when they came to the Tennessee River, which was then in
flood, they crossed the swift torrent on a raft of logs bound together
with grapevines. At Harrodsburg they found the land court open, and
thronged with an eager, jostling crowd of settlers and speculators, who
were waiting to enter lands in the surveyor's office. Even the dread of
the Indians could not overcome in these men's hearts the keen and
selfish greed for gain. Clark instantly grasped the situation. Seeing
that while the court remained open he could get no volunteers, he on his
own responsibility closed it off-hand, and proclaimed that it would not
be opened until after he came back from his expedition. The speculators
grumbled and clamored, but this troubled Clark not at all, for he was
able to get as many volunteers as he wished. The discontent, and still
more the panic over Bird's inroad, made many of the settlers determine
to flee from the country, but Clark sent a small force to Crab Orchard,
at the mouth of the Wilderness road, the only outlet from Kentucky, with
instructions to stop all men from leaving the country, and to take away
their arms if they persisted; while four fifths of all the grown men
were drafted, and were bidden to gather instantly for a campaign.
[Footnote: Bradford MSS.]

His Campaign against Piqua.

He appointed the mouth of the Licking as the place of meeting. Thither
he brought the troops from the Falls in light skiffs he had built for
the purpose, leaving behind scarce a handful of men to garrison the
stockade. Logan went with him as second in command. He carried with him
a light three-pounder gun; and those of the men who had horses marched
along the bank beside the flotilla. The only mishap that befell the
troops happened to McGarry, who had a subordinate command. He showed his
usual foolhardy obstinacy by persisting in landing with a small squad of
men on the north bank of the river, where he was in consequence
surprised and roughly handled by a few Indians. Nothing was done to him
because of his disobedience, for the chief of such a backwoods levy was
the leader, rather than the commander, of his men.

At the mouth of the Licking Clark met the riflemen from the interior
stations, among them being Kenton, Harrod, and Floyd, and others of
equal note. They had turned out almost to a man, leaving the women and
boys to guard the wooden forts until they came back, and had come to the
appointed place, some on foot or on horseback, others floating and
paddling down the Licking in canoes. They left scanty provisions with
their families, who had to subsist during their absence on what game the
boys shot, on nettle tops, and a few early vegetables; and they took
with them still less. Dividing up their stock, each man had a couple of
pounds of meal and some jerked venison or buffalo meat. [Footnote:
McAfee MSS.; the Bradford MS. says six quarts of parched corn.]

All his troops having gathered, to the number of nine hundred and
seventy, Clark started up the Ohio on the second of August. [Footnote:
This date and number are those given in the Bradford MS. The McAfee MSS.
say July 1st; but it is impossible that the expedition should have
started so soon after Bird's inroad. On July 1st, Bird himself was
probably at the mouth of the Licking.] The skiffs, laden with men, were
poled against the current, while bodies of footmen and horsemen marched
along the bank. After going a short distance up stream the horses and
men were ferried to the farther bank, the boats were drawn up on the
shore and left, with a guard of forty men, and the rest of the troops
started overland against the town of Old Chillicothe, fifty or sixty
miles distant. The three-pounder was carried along on a pack-horse. The
march was hard, for it rained so incessantly that it was difficult to
keep the rifles dry. Every night they encamped in a hollow square, with
the baggage and horses in the middle.

Chillicothe, when reached, was found to be deserted. It was burned, and
the army pushed on to Piqua, a town a few miles distant, on the banks of
the Little Miami, [Footnote: The Indians so frequently shifted their
abode that it is hardly possible to identify the exact location of the
successive towns called Piqua or Pickaway.] reaching it about ten in the
morning of the 8th of August. [Footnote: "Papers relating to G. R.
Clark." In the Durrett MSS. at Louisville. The account of the death of
Joseph Rogers. This settles, by the way, that the march was made in
August, and not in July.] Piqua was substantially built, and was laid
out in the manner of the French villages. The stoutly built log-houses
stood far apart, surrounded by strips of corn-land, and fronting the
stream; while a strong block-house with loop-holed walls stood in the
middle. Thick woods, broken by small prairies, covered the rolling
country that lay around the town.

The Fight at Piqua.

Clark divided his army into four divisions, taking the command of two in
person. Giving the others to Logan, he ordered him to cross the river
above the town [Footnote: There is some conflict as to whether Logan
went up or down stream.] and take it in the rear, while he himself
crossed directly below it and assailed it in front. Logan did his best
to obey the orders, but he could not find a ford, and he marched by
degrees nearly three miles up stream, making repeated and vain attempts
to cross; when he finally succeeded the day was almost done, and the
fighting was over.

Meanwhile Clark plunged into the river, and crossed at the head of one
of his own two divisions; the other was delayed for a short time. Both
Simon Girty and his brother were in the town, together with several
hundred Indian warriors; exactly how many cannot be said, but they were
certainly fewer in number than the troops composing either wing of
Clark's army. [Footnote: Haldimand MSS. McKee to De Peyster, Aug. 22,
1780. He was told of the battle by the Indians a couple of days after it
took place. He gives the force of the whites correctly as nine hundred
and seventy, forty of whom had been left to guard the boats. He says the
Indians were surprised, and that most of the warriors fled, so that all
the fighting was done by about seventy, with the two Girtys. This was
doubtless not the case; the beaten party in all these encounters was
fond of relating the valorous deeds of some of its members, who
invariably state that they would have conquered, had they not been
deserted by their associates. McKee reported that the Indians could find
no trace of the gun-wheels--the gun was carried on a pack-horse,--and so
he thought that the Kentuckians were forced to leave it behind on their
retreat. He put the killed of the Kentuckians at the modest number of
forty-eight; and reported the belief of Girty and the Indians that
"three hundred [of them] would have given [Clark's men] a total rout." A
very common feat of the small frontier historian was to put high praise
of his own side in the mouth of a foe. Withers, in his "Chronicles of
Border Warfare," in speaking of this very action, makes Girty withdraw
his three hundred warriors on account of the valor of Clark's men,
remarking that it was "useless to fight with fools or madmen." This
offers a comical contrast to Girty's real opinion, as shown in McKee's
letter.] They were surprised by Clark's swift advance just as a scouting
party of warriors, who had been sent out to watch the whites, were
returning to the village. The warning was so short that the squaws and
children had barely time to retreat out of the way. As Clark crossed the
stream, the warriors left their cabins and formed in some thick timber
behind them. At the same moment a cousin of Clark's, who had been
captured by the Indians, and was held prisoner in the town, made his
escape and ran towards the Americans, throwing up his hands, and calling
out that he was a white man. He was shot, whether by the Americans or
the Indians none could say. Clark came up and spoke a few words with him
before he died. [Footnote: Durrett MSS. Volume: "Papers referring to G.
R. Clark." The cousin's name was Joseph Rogers, a brother of the
commander of the galley.] A long-range skirmish ensued with the warriors
in the timber; but on the approach of Clark's second division the
Indians fell back. The two divisions followed in pursuit, becoming
mingled in disorder. After a slight running fight of two hours the
whites lost sight of their foes, and, wondering what had become of
Logan's wing, they gathered together and marched back towards the river.
One of the McAfees, captain over a company of riflemen from Salt River,
was leading, when he discovered an Indian in a tree-top. He and one of
his men sought shelter behind the same tree; whereupon he tried to glide
behind another, but was shot and mortally wounded by the Indian, who was
himself instantly killed. The scattered detachments now sat down to
listen for the missing wing. After half an hour's silent waiting, they
suddenly became aware of the presence of a body of Indians, who had
slipped in between them and the town. The backwoodsmen rushed up to the
attack, while the Indians whooped and yelled defiance. There was a
moment's heavy firing; but as on both sides the combatants carefully
sheltered themselves behind trees, there was very little loss; and the
Indians steadily gave way until they reached the town, about two miles
distant from the spot where the whites had halted. They then made a
stand, and, for the first time, there occurred some real fighting. The
Indians stood stoutly behind the loop-holed walls of the cabins, and in
the block-house; the Americans, advancing cautiously and gaining ground
inch by inch, suffered much more loss than they inflicted. Late in the
afternoon Clark managed to bring the three-pounder into action, from a
point below the town; while the riflemen fired at the red warriors as
they were occasionally seen running from the cabins to take refuge
behind the steep bank of the river. A few shots from the three-pounder
dislodged the defenders of the block-house; and about sunset the
Americans closed in, but only to find that their foes had escaped under
cover of a noisy fire from a few of the hindmost warriors. They had run
up stream, behind the banks, until they came to a small "branch" or
brook, by means of which they gained the shelter of the forest, where
they at once scattered and disappeared. A few of their stragglers
exchanged shots with the advance guard of Logan's wing as it at last
came down the bank; this was the only part Logan was able to take in the
battle. Of the Indians six or eight were slain, whereas the whites lost
seventeen killed, and a large number wounded. [Footnote: Bradford MS.;
the McAfee MSS. make the loss "15 or 20 Indians" in the last assault,
and "nearly as many" whites. Boon's narrative says seventeen on each
side. But McKee says only six Indians were killed and three wounded; and
Bombardier Homan, in the letter already quoted, says six were killed and
two captured, who were afterwards slain. The latter adds from hearsay
that the Americans cruelly slew an Indian woman; but there is not a
syllable in any of the other accounts to confirm this, and it may be set
down as a fiction of the by-no-means-valorous bombardier. The bombardier
mentions that the Indians in their alarm and anger immediately burnt all
the male prisoners in their villages.

The Kentucky historians give very scanty accounts of this expedition;
but as it was of a typical character it is worth while giving in full.
The McAfee MSS. contain most information about it.] Clark destroyed all
the houses and a very large quantity of corn; and he sent out
detachments which destroyed another village, and the stores of some
British and French Canadian traders. Then the army marched back to the
mouth of the Licking and disbanded, most of the volunteers having been
out just twenty-five days. [Footnote: Bradford MS.]

Effect of the Victory.

The Indians were temporarily cowed by their loss and the damage they had
suffered, [Footnote: See Haldimand MSS. De Peyster to Haldimand, Aug.
30, 1780.] and especially by the moral effect of so formidable a
retaliatory foray following immediately on the heels of Bird's inroad.
Therefore, thanks to Clark, the settlements south of the Ohio were but
little molested for the remainder of the year. [Footnote: McAfee MSS.]
The bulk of the savages remained north of the river, hovering about
their burned towns, planning to take vengeance in the spring. [Footnote:
Virginia State Papers, I., 451.]

Nevertheless small straggling bands of young braves occasionally came
down through the woods; and though they did not attack any fort or any
large body of men, they were ever on the watch to steal horses, burn
lonely cabins, and waylay travellers between the stations. They shot the
solitary settlers who had gone out to till their clearings by stealth,
or ambushed the boys who were driving in the milk cows or visiting their
lines of traps. It was well for the victim if he was killed at once;
otherwise he was bound with hickory withes and driven to the distant
Indian towns, there to be tortured with hideous cruelty and burned to
death at the stake. [Footnote: McAfee MSS. The last was an incident that
happened to a young man named McCoun on March 8, 1781.] Boon himself
suffered at the hands of one of these parties. He had gone with his
brother to the Blue Licks, to him a spot always fruitful of evil; and
being ambushed by the Indians, his brother was killed, and he himself
was only saved by his woodcraft and speed of foot. The Indians had with
them a tracking dog, by the aid of which they followed his trail for
three miles; until he halted, shot the dog, and thus escaped. [Footnote:
Boon's Narrative.]

Life of the Settlers.

During this comparatively peaceful fall the settlers fared well; though
the men were ever on the watch for Indian war parties, while the
mothers, if their children were naughty, frightened them into quiet with
the threat that the Shawnees would catch them. The widows and the
fatherless were cared for by the other families of the different
stations. The season of want and scarcity had passed for ever; from
thenceforth on there was abundance in Kentucky. The crops did not fail;
not only was there plenty of corn, the one essential, but there was also
wheat, as well as potatoes, melons, pumpkins, turnips, and the like.
Sugar was made by tapping the maple trees; but salt was bought at a very
exorbitant price at the Falls, being carried down in boats from the old
Redstone Fort. Flax had been generally sown (though in the poorer
settlements nettle bark still served as a substitute), and the young men
and girls formed parties to pick it, often ending their labor by an hour
or two's search for wild plums. The men killed all the game they wished,
and so there was no lack of meat. They also surveyed the land and tended
the stock--cattle, horses, and hogs, which throve and multiplied out on
the range, fattening on the cane, and large white buffalo-clover. At odd
times the men and boys visited their lines of traps. Furs formed almost
the only currency, except a little paper money; but as there were no
stores west of the mountains, this was all that was needed, and each
settlement raised most things for itself, and procured the rest by
barter.

The law courts were as yet very little troubled, each small community
usually enforcing a rough-and-ready justice of its own. On a few of the
streams log-dams were built, and tub-mills started. In Harrodsburg a
toll mill was built in 1779. The owner used to start it grinding, and
then go about his other business; once on returning he found a large
wild turkey-gobbler so busily breakfasting out of the hopper that he was
able to creep quietly up and catch him with his hands. The people all
worked together in cultivating their respective lands; coming back to
the fort before dusk for supper. They would then call on any man who
owned a fiddle and spend the evening, with interludes of singing and
story-telling, in dancing--an amusement they considered as only below
hunting. On Sundays the stricter parents taught their children the
catechism; but in spite of the presence of not a few devout Baptists and
Presbyterians there was little chance for general observance of
religious forms. Ordinary conversation was limited to such subjects as
bore on the day's doings; the game that had been killed, the condition
of the crops, the plans of the settlers for the immediate future, the
accounts of the last massacre by the savages, or the rumor that Indian
sign had been seen in the neighborhood; all interspersed with much
banter, practical joking, and rough, good-humored fun. The scope of
conversation was of necessity narrowly limited even for the backwoods;
for there was little chance to discuss religion and politics, the two
subjects that the average backwoodsman regards as the staples of deep
conversation. The deeds of the Indians of course formed the one
absorbing topic. [Footnote: For all this see McAfee MSS.]

An Abortive Separatist Movement.

An abortive separatist movement was the chief political sensation of
this summer. Many hundreds and even thousand of settlers from the
backwoods districts of various States, had come to Kentucky, and some
even to Illinois, and a number of them were greatly discontented with
the Virginian rule. They deemed it too difficult to get justice when
they were so far from the seat of government; they objected to the land
being granted to any but actual settlers; and they protested against
being taxed, asserting that they did not know whether the country really
belonged to Virginia or the United States. Accordingly, they petitioned
the Continental Congress that Kentucky and Illinois combined might be
made into a separate State; [Footnote: State Department MSS. No. 48. See
Appendix G. As containing an account of the first, and hitherto entirely
unnoticed, separatist movement in Kentucky, I give the petition entire.]
but no heed was paid to their request, nor did their leading men join in
making it.

Kentucky Divided into Counties.

In November the Virginia Legislature divided Kentucky into the three
counties of Jefferson, Lincoln, and Fayette, appointing for each a
colonel, a lieutenant-colonel, and a surveyor. The three colonels, who
were also justices of the counties, [Footnote: Calendar of Virginia
State Papers, Vol. II., p. 47.] were, in their order, John Floyd--whom
Clark described as "a soldier, a gentleman and a scholar," [Footnote:
_Do_., Vol. I., p. 452.]--Benjamin Logan, and John Todd. Clark, whose
station was at the Falls of the Ohio, was brigadier-general and
commander over all. Boon was lieutenant-colonel under Todd; and their
county of Fayette had for its surveyor Thomas Marshall, [Footnote:
Collins, I., 20.] the father of the great chief-justice, whose services
to the United States stand on a plane with those of Alexander Hamilton.
[Footnote: Roughly, Fayette embraced the territory north and northeast
of the Kentucky River, Jefferson that between Green River and the lower
Kentucky, and Lincoln the rest of the present State.]

Clark's Plans to Attack Detroit.

The winter passed quietly away, but as soon as the snow was off the
ground in 1781, the Indians renewed their ravages. Early in the winter
Clark went to Virginia to try to get an army for an expedition against
Detroit. He likewise applied to Washington for assistance. Washington
fully entered into his plans, and saw their importance. He would gladly
have rendered him every aid. But he could do nothing, because of the
impotence to which the central authority, the Continental Congress, had
been reduced by the selfishness and supine indifference of the various
States--Virginia among the number. He wrote Clark: "It is out of my
power to send any reinforcements to the westward. If the States would
fill their continental battalions we should be able to oppose a regular
and permanent force to the enemy in every quarter. If they will not,
they must certainly take measures to defend themselves by their militia,
however expensive and ruinous the system." [Footnote: State Department
MSS., No. 147, Vol. V. Reports of Board of War. Letter of Washington,
June 8, 1781. It is impossible to study any part of the Revolutionary
struggle without coming to the conclusion that Washington would have
ended it in half the time it actually lasted, had the jangling States
and their governments, as well as the Continental Congress, backed him
up half as effectively as the Confederate people and government backed
up Lee, or as the Northerners and the Washington administration backed
up McClellan--still more as they backed up Grant. The whole of our
Revolutionary history is a running commentary on the anarchic weakness
of disunion, and the utter lack of liberty that follows in its train.]
It was impossible to state with more straightforward clearness the fact
that Kentucky owed the unprotected condition in which she was left, to
the divided or States-rights system of government that then existed; and
that she would have had ample protection--and incidentally greater
liberty--had the central authority been stronger.

Why his Efforts were Baffled.

At last, Clark was empowered to raise the men he wished, and he passed
and repassed from Fort Pitt to the Falls of the Ohio and thence to the
Illinois in the vain effort to get troops. The inertness and
shortsightedness of the frontiersmen, above all the exhaustion of the
States, and their timid selfishness and inability to enforce their
commands, baffled all of Clark's efforts. In his letters to Washington
he bitterly laments his enforced dependence upon "persuasive arguments
to draw the inhabitants of the country into the field." [Footnote: State
Department MSS. Letters to Washington, Vol. 49, p. 235, May 21, 1781.
The entire history of the western operations shows the harm done by the
weak and divided system of government that obtained at the time of the
Revolution, and emphasizes our good fortune in replacing it by a strong
and permanent Union.] The Kentuckians were anxious to do all in their
power, but of course only a comparatively small number could be spared
for so long a campaign from their scattered stockades. Around Pittsburg,
where he hoped to raise the bulk of his forces, the frontiersmen were
split into little factions by their petty local rivalries, the envy
their leaders felt of Clark himself, and the never-ending jealousies and
bickerings between the Virginians and Pennsylvanians. [Footnote:
Calendar of Virginia State Papers, I., pp. 502, 597, etc.; II., pp. 108,
116, 264, 345. The Kentuckians were far more eager for action than the
Pennsylvanians.]

The fort at the Falls, where Clark already had some troops, was
appointed as a gathering-place for the different detachments that were
to join him; but from one cause or another, all save one or two failed
to appear. Most of them did not even start, and one body of
Pennsylvanians that did go met with an untoward fate. This was a party
of a hundred Westmoreland men under their county-lieutenant, Col.
Archibald Loughry. They started down the Ohio in flat-boats, but having
landed on a sand bar to butcher and cook a buffalo that they had killed,
they were surprised by an equal number of Indians under Joseph Brant,
and being huddled together, were all slain or captured with small loss
to their assailants. [Footnote: At Loughry's Creek, some ten miles below
the mouth of the Miami, on August 24, 1781. Diary of Captain Isaac
Anderson, quoted in "Indiana Hist. Soc. Pamphlets, No. 4," by Charles
Martindale, Indianapolis, 1888. Collins, whose accuracy by no means
equals his thirst for pure detail, puts this occurrence just a year too
late. Brant's force was part of a body of several hundred Indians
gathered to resist Clark.] Many of the prisoners, including Loughry
himself, were afterwards murdered in cold blood by the Indians.

Fighting on the Frontier.

During this year the Indians continually harassed the whole frontier,
from Pennsylvania to Kentucky, ravaging the settlements and assailing
the forts in great bands of five or six hundred warriors. [Footnote: It
is most difficult to get at the number of the Indian parties; they were
sometimes grossly exaggerated and sometimes hopelessly underestimated.]
The Continental troops stationed at Fort Pitt were reduced to try every
expedient to procure supplies. Though it was evident that the numbers of
the hostile Indians had largely increased and that even such tribes as
the Delawares, who had been divided, were now united against the
Americans, nevertheless, because of the scarcity of food, a party of
soldiers had to be sent into the Indian country to kill buffalo, that
the garrison might have meat. [Footnote: State Department MSS., No. 147,
Vol. VI. Reports of Board of War. March 15, 1781.] The Indians
threatened to attack the fort itself, as well as the villages it
protected; passing around and on each side, their war parties ravaged
the country in its rear, distressing greatly the people; and from this
time until peace was declared with Great Britain, and indeed until long
after that event, the westernmost Pennsylvanians knew neither rest nor
safety. [Footnote: _Do_., No. 148, Vol. I.. January 4, 1781; No. 149,
Vol. I., August 6, 1782; No. 149, Vol. II., p. 461; No. 149, Vol. III.,
p. 183. Federal garrisons were occasionally established at, or withdrawn
from, other posts on the upper Ohio besides Fort Pitt; but their
movements had no permanent value, and only require chronicling by the
local, State, or county historians. In 1778 Fort McIntosh was built at
Beaver Creek, on the north bank of the Ohio, and Fort Laurens seventy
miles towards the interior. The latter was soon abandoned; the former
was in Pennsylvania, and a garrison was kept there.] Among many others
the forted village at Wheeling was again attacked. But its most
noteworthy siege occurred during the succeeding summer, when [Footnote:
The commanders at the unmolested forts and the statesmen who stayed at
home only saw those members of the tribes who claimed to be peaceful,
and invariably put the number of warriors on the warpath at far too low
a figure. Madison's estimates, for instance, were very much out of the
way, yet many modern critics follow him.] Simon Girty, with fife and
drum, led a large band of Indians and Detroit rangers against it, only
to be beaten off. The siege was rendered memorable by the heroism of a
girl, who carried powder from the stockade to an outlying log-house,
defended by four men; she escaped unscathed because of her very
boldness, in spite of the fire from so many rifles, and to this day the
mountaineers speak of her deed. [Footnote: See De Haas, 263-281, for the
fullest, and probably most accurate, account of the siege; as already
explained he is the most trustworthy of the border historians. But it is
absolutely impossible to find out the real facts concerning the sieges
of Wheeling; it is not quite certain even whether there were two or
three. The testimony as to whether the heroine of the powder feat was
Betty Zane or Molly Scott is hopelessly conflicting; we do not know
which of the two brothers Girty was in command, nor whether either was
present at the first attack. Much even of De Haas' account is, to put it
mildly, greatly embellished; as for instance his statement about the
cannon (a small French gun, thrown into the Monongahela when Fort Du
Quesne was abandoned, and fished up by a man named Naly, who was in
swimming), which he asserts cut "a wide passage" through the "deep
columns" of the savages. There is no reason to suppose that the Indians
suffered a serious loss. Wheeling was a place of little strategic
importance, and its fall would not have produced any far-reaching
effects.]

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