Woe on the Frontier.

Until near the close of the year 1782 the frontiers suffered heavily. A terrible and deserved retribution fell on the borderers for their crime in failing to punish the dastardly deed of Williamson and his associates. The Indians were roused to savage anger by the murder of the Moravians, and were greatly encouraged by their easy defeat of Crawford's troops. They harassed the settlements all along the Upper Ohio, the Alleghany and the Monongahela, and far into the interior, [Footnote: Va. State Papers, III., 235.] burning, ravaging, and murdering, and bringing dire dismay to every lonely clearing, and every palisaded hamlet of rough log-cabins.



CHAPTER VI.

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

Illinois Made a County.

The Virginian Government took immediate steps to provide for the civil administration of the country Clark had conquered. In the fall of 1778 the entire region northwest of the Ohio was constituted the county of Illinois, with John Todd as county-lieutenant or commandant.

Todd was a firm friend and follower of Clark's, and had gone with him on his campaign against Vincennes. It therefore happened that he received his commission while at the latter town, early in the spring of '79. In May he went to Kaskaskia, to organize the county; and Clark, who remained military commandant of the Virginia State troops that were quartered in the district, was glad to turn over the civil government to the charge of his old friend.

Together with his commission, Todd received a long and excellent letter of instructions from Governor Patrick Henry. He was empowered to choose a deputy-commandant, and officers for the militia; but the judges and officers of the court were to be elected by the people themselves. He was given large discretionary power, Henry impressing upon him with especial earnestness the necessity to "cultivate and conciliate the French and Indians." [Footnote: See Col. John Todd's "Record Book," while County Lieutenant of Illinois. There is an MS. copy in Col. Durrett's library at Louisville. It is our best authority for these years in Illinois. The substance of it is given on pp. 49-68 of Mr. Edward G. Mason's interesting and valuable pamphlet on "Illinois in the 18th Century" (Chicago, Fergus Printing Co., 1881).] With this end in view, he was bidden to pay special heed to the customs of the creoles, to avoid shocking their prejudices, and to continually consult with their most intelligent and upright men. He was to cooeperate in every way with Clark and his troops, while at the same time the militia were to be exclusively under his own control. The inhabitants were to have strict justice done them if wronged by the troops; and Clark was to put down rigorously any licentiousness on the part of his soldiers. The wife and children of the former British commandant—the creole Rocheblave—were to be treated with particular respect, and not suffered to want for any thing. He was exhorted to use all his diligence and ability to accomplish the difficult task set him. Finally Henry advised him to lose no opportunity of inculcating in the minds of the French the value of the liberty the Americans brought them, as contrasted with "the slavery to which the Illinois was destined" by the British.

This last sentence was proved by subsequent events to be a touch of wholly unconscious but very grim humor. The French were utterly unsuited for liberty, as the Americans understood the term, and to most of them the destruction of British rule was a misfortune. The bold, self-reliant, and energetic spirits among them, who were able to become Americanized, and to adapt themselves to the new conditions, undoubtedly profited immensely by the change. As soon as they adopted American ways, they were received by the Americans on terms of perfect and cordial equality, and they enjoyed a far higher kind of life than could possibly have been theirs formerly, and achieved a much greater measure of success. But most of the creoles were helplessly unable to grapple with the new life. They had been accustomed to the paternal rule of priest and military commandant, and they were quite unable to govern themselves, or to hold their own with the pushing, eager, and often unscrupulous, new-comers. So little able were they to understand precisely what the new form of government was, that when they went down to receive Todd as commandant, it is said that some of them, joining in the cheering, from force of habit cried "Vive le Roi."

For the first year of Todd's administration, while Clark still remained in the county as commandant of the State troops, matters went fairly well. Clark kept the Indians completely in check, and when some of them finally broke out, and started on a marauding expedition against Cahokia, he promptly repulsed them, and by a quick march burned their towns on Rock River, and forced them to sue for peace. [Footnote: In the beginning of 1780. Bradford MS.]

Todd appointed a Virginian, Richard Winston, as commandant at Kaskaskia; all his other appointees were Frenchmen. An election was forthwith held for justices; to the no small astonishment of the Creoles, unaccustomed as they were to American methods of self-government. Among those whom they elected as judges and court officers were some of the previously appointed militia captains and lieutenants, who thus held two positions. The judges governed their decisions solely by the old French laws and customs. [Footnote: State Department MSS., No. 48, p. 51.] Todd at once made the court proceed to business. On its recommendation he granted licenses to trade to men of assured loyalty. He also issued a proclamation in reference to new settlers taking up lands. Being a shrewd man, he clearly foresaw the ruin that was sure to arise from the new Virginia land laws as applied to Kentucky, and he feared the inrush of a horde of speculators, who would buy land with no immediate intention of settling thereon. Besides, the land was so fertile in the river bottoms, that he deemed the amount Virginia allotted to each person excessive. So he decreed that each settler should take up his land in the shape of one of the long narrow French farms, that stretched back from the water-front; and that no claim should contain a greater number of acres than did one of these same farms. This proclamation undoubtedly had a very good effect.

Financial Difficulties.

He next wrestled steadily, but much less successfully, with the financial question. He attempted to establish a land bank, as it were, setting aside a great tract of land to secure certain issues of Continental money. The scheme failed, and in spite of his public assurance that the Continental currency would shortly be equal in value to gold and silver, it swiftly sank until it was not worth two cents on the dollar.

This wretched and worthless paper-money, which the Americans brought with them, was a perfect curse to the country. Its rapid depreciation made it almost impossible to pay the troops, or to secure them supplies, and as a consequence they became disorderly and mutinous. Two or three prominent creoles, who were devoted adherents of the American cause, made loans of silver to the Virginian Government, as represented by Clark, thereby helping him materially in the prosecution of his campaign. Chief among these public-spirited patriots were Francis Vigo, and the priest Gibault, both of them already honorably mentioned. Vigo advanced nearly nine thousand dollars in specie,—piastres or Spanish milled dollars,—receiving in return bills on the "Agent of Virginia," which came back protested for want of funds; and neither he nor his heirs ever got a dollar of what was due them. He did even more. The creoles at first refused to receive any thing but peltries or silver for their goods; they would have nothing to do with the paper, and to all explanations as to its uses, simply answered "that their commandants never made money." [Footnote: Law's "Vincennes," pp. 49, 126. For some inscrutable reason, by the way, the Americans for a long time persisted in speaking of the place as St. Vincennes.] Finally they were persuaded to take it on Vigo's personal guaranty, and his receiving it in his store. Even he, however, could not buoy it up long.

Gibault likewise [Footnote See his letter to Governor St. Clair, May I, 1790.] advanced a large sum of money, parted with his titles and beasts, so as to set a good example to his parishioners, and, with the same purpose, furnished goods to the troops at ordinary prices, taking the paper in exchange as if it had been silver. In consequence he lost over fifteen hundred dollars, was forced to sell his only two slaves, and became almost destitute; though in the end he received from the government a tract of land which partially reimbursed him. Being driven to desperate straits, the priest tried a rather doubtful shift. He sold, or pretended to sell, a great natural meadow, known as la prairie du pont, which the people of Cahokia claimed as a common pasture for their cattle. His conduct drew forth a sharp remonstrance from the Cahokians, in the course of which they frankly announced that they believed the priest should confine himself to ecclesiastical matters, and should not meddle with land grants, especially when the land he granted did not belong to him. [Footnote: State Department MSS., No. 48, p. 41. Petition of J. B. La Croix and A. Girardin.]

It grew steadily more difficult to get the Creoles to furnish supplies; Todd had to forbid the exportation of any provisions whatever, and, finally, the soldiers were compelled to levy on all that they needed. Todd paid for these impressed goods, as well as for what the contractors furnished, at the regulation prices—one third in paper-money and two thirds in peltries; and thus the garrisons at Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and Vincennes were supplied with powder, lead, sugar, flour, and, above all, hogsheads of taffia, of which they drank an inordinate quantity.

The justices did not have very much work; in most of the cases that came before them the plaintiff and defendant were both of the same race. One piece of recorded testimony is rather amusing, being to the effect that "Monsieur Smith est un grand vilain coquin." [Footnote: This and most of the other statements for which no authority is quoted, are based on Todd's MS. "Record Book."]

Burning of Negroes Accused of Sorcery.

Yet there are two entries in the proceedings of the Creole courts for the summer of 1779, as preserved in Todd's "Record Book," which are of startling significance. To understand them it must be remembered that the Creoles were very ignorant and superstitious, and that they one and all including, apparently, even, their priests, firmly believed in witchcraft and sorcery. Some of their negro slaves had been born in Africa, the others had come from the Lower Mississippi or the West Indies; they practised the strange rites of voudooism, and a few were adepts in the art of poisoning. Accordingly the French were always on the look-out lest their slaves should, by spell or poison, take their lives. It must also be kept in mind that the pardoning power of the commandant did not extend to cases of treason or murder—a witchcraft trial being generally one for murder,—and that he was expressly forbidden to interfere with the customs and laws, or go counter to the prejudices, of the inhabitants.

At this time the Creoles were smitten by a sudden epidemic of fear that their negro slaves were trying to bewitch and poison them. Several of the negroes were seized and tried, and in June two were condemned to death. One, named Moreau, was sentenced to be hung outside Cahokia. The other, a Kaskaskian slave named Manuel, suffered a worse fate. He was sentenced "to be chained to a post at the water-side, and there to be burnt alive and his ashes scattered." [Footnote: The entries merely record the sentences, with directions that they be immediately executed. But there seems very little doubt that they were for witchcraft, or voudouism, probably with poisoning at the bottom—and that they were actually carried out. See Mason's pamphlet, p. 59.] These two sentences, and the directions for their immediate execution, reveal a dark chapter in the early history of Illinois. It seems a strange thing that, in the United States, three years after the declaration of independence, men should have been burnt and hung for witchcraft, in accordance with the laws, and with the decision of the proper court. The fact that the victim, before being burned, was forced to make "honorable fine" at the door of the Catholic church, shows that the priest at least acquiesced in the decision. The blame justly resting on the Puritans of seventeenth-century New England must likewise fall on the Catholic French of eighteenth-century Illinois.

Early in the spring of 1780 Clark left the country; he did not again return to take command, for after visiting the fort on the Mississippi, and spending the summer in the defence of Kentucky, he went to Virginia to try to arrange for an expedition against Detroit. Todd also left about the same time, having been elected a Kentucky delegate to the Virginia Legislature. He afterwards made one or two flying visits to Illinois, but exerted little influence over her destiny, leaving the management of affairs entirely in the hands of his deputy, or lieutenant-commandant for the time being. He usually chose for this position either Richard Winston, the Virginian, or else a Creole named Timothea Demunbrunt.

Disorders in the Government.

Todd's departure was a blow to the country; but Clark's was a far more serious calamity. By his personal influence he had kept the Indians in check, the Creoles contented, and the troops well fed and fairly disciplined. As soon as he went, trouble broke out. The officers did not know how to support their authority; they were very improvident, and one or two became implicated in serious scandals. The soldiers soon grew turbulent, and there was constant clashing between the civil and military rulers. Gradually the mass of the Creoles became so angered with the Americans that they wished to lay their grievances before the French Minister at Philadelphia; and many of them crossed the Mississippi and settled under the Spanish flag. The courts rapidly lost their power, and the worst people, both Americans and Creoles, practised every kind of rascality with impunity. All decent men joined in clamoring for Clark's return; but it was impossible for him to come back. The freshets and the maladministration combined to produce a dearth, almost a famine, in the land. The evils were felt most severely in Vincennes, where Helm, the captain of the post, though a brave and capable man, was utterly unable to procure supplies of any kind. He did not hear of Clark's success against Piqua and Chillicothe until October.

Then he wrote to one of the officers at the Falls, saying that he was "sitting by the fire with a piece of lightwood and two ribs of an old buffloe, which is all the meat we have seen this many days. I congratulate your success against the Shawanohs, but there's never doubts where that brave Col. Clark commands; we well know the loss of him in Illinois.... Excuse Haste as the Lightwood's Just out and mouth watering for part of the two ribs." [Footnote: Calendar of Va. State Papers, I., pp. 380, 382, 383, Oct. 24-29, 1780.]

La Balme's Expedition.

In the fall of 1780 a Frenchman, named la Balme, led an expedition composed purely of Creoles against Detroit. He believed that he could win over the French at that place to his side, and thus capture the fort as Clark had captured Vincennes. He raised some fifty volunteers round Cahokia and Kaskaskia, perhaps as many more on the Wabash, and marched to the Maumee River. Here he stopped to plunder some British traders; and in November the neighboring Indians fell on his camp, killed him and thirty or forty of his men, and scattered the rest. [Footnote: Haldimand MSS. De Peyster to Haldimand, Nov. 16, 1780.] His march had been so quick and unexpected that it rendered the British very uneasy, and they were much rejoiced at his discomfiture and death.

The following year a new element of confusion was added. In 1779 Spain declared war on Great Britain. The Spanish commandant at New Orleans was Don Bernard de Galvez, one of the very few strikingly able men Spain has sent to the western hemisphere during the past two centuries. He was bold, resolute, and ambitious; there is reason to believe that at one time he meditated a separation from Spain, the establishment of a Spanish-American empire, and the founding of a new imperial house. However this may be, he threw himself heart and soul into the war against Britain; and attacked British West Florida with a fiery energy worthy of Wolfe or Montcalm. He favored the Americans; but it was patent to all that he favored them only the better to harass the British. [Footnote: State Department MSS., No. 50, p. 109.]

Besides the Creoles and the British garrisons, there were quite a number of American settlers in West Florida. In the immediate presence of Spanish and Indian foes, these, for the most part, remained royalists. In 1778 a party of armed Americans, coming down the Ohio and Mississippi, tried to persuade them to turn whig, but, becoming embroiled with them, the militant missionaries were scattered and driven off. Afterwards the royalists fought among themselves; but this was a mere faction quarrel, and was soon healed. Towards the end of 1779, Galvez, with an army of Spanish and French Creole troops, attacked the forts along the Mississippi—Manchac, Baton Rouge, Natchez, and one or two smaller places,—speedily carrying them and capturing their garrisons of British regulars and royalist militia. During the next eighteen months he laid siege to and took Mobile and Pensacola. While he was away on his expedition against the latter place, the royalist Americans round Natchez rose and retook the fort from the Spaniards; but at the approach of Galvez they fled in terror, marching overland towards Georgia, then in the hands of the tories. On the way they suffered great loss and damage from the Creeks and Choctaws.

A Spanish Attempt on St. Joseph.

The Spanish commander at St. Louis was inspired by the news of these brilliant victories to try if he, too, could not gain a small wreath at the expense of Spain's enemies. Clark had already become thoroughly convinced of the duplicity of the Spaniards on the upper Mississippi; he believed that they were anxious to have the British retake Illinois, so that they, in their turn, might conquer and keep it. [Footnote: Clark to Todd, March, 1780. Va. State Papers, I., 338.] They never had the chance to execute this plan; but, on January 2, 1781, a Spanish captain, Don Eugenio Pierro, led a hundred and twenty men, chiefly Indians and Creoles, against the little French village, or fur post, of St. Joseph, where they burned the houses of one or two British traders, claimed the country round the Illinois River as conquered for the Spanish king, and forthwith returned to St. Louis, not daring to leave a garrison of any sort behind them, and being harassed on their retreat by the Indians. On the strength of this exploit Spain afterwards claimed a large stretch of country to the east of the Mississippi. In reality it was a mere plundering foray. The British at once retook possession of the place, and, indeed, were for some time ignorant whether the raiders had been Americans or Spaniards. [Footnote: Haldimand MSS. Haldimand to De Peyster, April 10, 1781. Report of Council at St. Joseph, March 11, 1781.] Soon after the recapture, the Detroit authorities sent a scouting party to dislodge some Illinois people who had attempted to make a settlement at Chicago. [Footnote: Do. Haldimand to De Peyster, May 19, 1782. This is the first record of an effort to make a permanent settlement at Chicago.]

At the end of the year 1781 the unpaid troops in Vincennes were on the verge of mutiny, and it was impossible longer even to feed them, for the inhabitants themselves were almost starving. The garrison was therefore withdrawn; and immediately the Wabash Indians joined those of the Miami, the Sandusky, and the Lakes in their raids on the settlements. [Footnote: Va. State Papers, III., 502.] By this time, however, Cornwallis had surrendered at Yorktown, and the British were even more exhausted than the Americans. Some of the French partisans of the British at Detroit, such as Rocheblave and Lamothe, who had been captured by Clark, were eager for revenge, and desired to be allowed to try and retake Vincennes and the Illinois; they saw that the Americans must either be exterminated or else the land abandoned to them. [Footnote: Haldimand MSS. Letter of Rocheblave, Oct. 7, 1781; of Lamothe, April 24, 1782.] But the British commandant was in no condition to comply with their request, or to begin offensive operations. Clark had not only conquered the land, but he had held it firmly while he dwelt therein; and even when his hand was no longer felt, the order he had established took some little time before crumbling. Meanwhile, his presence at the Falls, his raids into the Indian country, and his preparations for an onslaught on Detroit kept the British authorities at the latter place fully occupied, and prevented their making any attempt to recover what they had lost. By the beginning of 1782 the active operations of the Revolutionary war were at an end, and the worn-out British had abandoned all thought of taking the offensive anywhere, though the Indian hostilities continued with unabated vigor. Thus the grasp with which the Americans held the conquered country was not relaxed until all danger that it would be taken from them had ceased.

Confusion at Vincennes.

In 1782 the whole Illinois region lapsed into anarchy and confusion. It was perhaps worst at Vincennes, where the departure of the troops had left the French free to do as they wished. Accustomed for generations to a master, they could do nothing with their new-found liberty beyond making it a curse to themselves and their neighbors. They had been provided with their own civil government in the shape of their elective court, but the judges had literally no idea of their proper functions as a governing body to administer justice. At first they did nothing whatever beyond meet and adjourn. Finally it occurred to them that perhaps their official position could be turned to their own advantage. Their townsmen were much too poor to be plundered; but there were vast tracts of fertile wild land on every side, to which, as far as they knew, there was no title, and which speculators assured them would ultimately be of great value. Vaguely remembering Todd's opinion, that he had power to interfere under certain conditions with the settlement of the lands, and concluding that he had delegated this power, as well as others, to themselves, the justices of the court proceeded to make immense grants of territory, reciting that they did so under "les pouvoirs donnes a Mons'rs Les Magistrats de la cour de Vincennes par le Snr. Jean Todd, colonel et Grand Judge civil pour les Etats Unis"; Todd's title having suffered a change and exaltation in their memories. They granted one another about fifteen thousand square miles of land round the Wabash; each member of the court in turn absenting himself for the day on which his associates granted him his share.

This vast mass of virgin soil they sold to speculators at nominal prices, sometimes receiving a horse or a gun for a thousand acres. The speculators of course knew that their titles were worthless, and made haste to dispose of different lots at very low prices to intending settlers. These small buyers were those who ultimately suffered by the transaction, as they found they had paid for worthless claims. The speculators reaped the richest harvest; and it is hard to decide whether to be amused or annoyed at the childish and transparent rascality of the French Creoles. [Footnote: State Department MSS., Nos. 30 and 48. Laws "Vincennes."]

Lawlessness in the Illinois.

In the Illinois country proper the troops, the American settlers, speculators, and civil officials, and the Creole inhabitants all quarrelled together indiscriminately. The more lawless new-comers stole horses from the quieter Creoles; the worst among the French, the idle coureurs-des-bois, voyageurs, and trappers plundered and sometimes killed the peaceable citizens of either nationality. The soldiers became little better than an unruly mob; some deserted, or else in company with other ruffians, both French and American, indulged in furious and sometimes murderous orgies, to the terror of the Creoles who had property. The civil authorities, growing day by day weaker, were finally shorn of all power by the military. This, however, was in nowise a quarrel between the French and the Americans. As already explained, in Todd's absence the position of deputy was sometimes filled by a Creole and sometimes by an American. He had been particular to caution them in writing to keep up a good understanding with the officers and troops, adding, as a final warning: "If this is not the case you will be unhappy." Unfortunately for one of the deputies, Richard Winston, he failed to keep up the good understanding, and, as Todd had laconically foretold, he in consequence speedily became very "unhappy." We have only his own account of the matter. According to this, in April, 1782, he was taken out of his house "in despite of the civil authority, disregarding the laws and on the malitious alugation of Jno. Williams and Michel Pevante." Thus a Frenchman and an American joined in the accusation, for some of the French supported the civil, others the military, authorities. The soldiers had the upper hand, however, and Winston records that he was forthwith "confined by tyrannick military force." From that time the authority of the laws was at an end, and as the officers of the troops had but little control, every man did what pleased him best.

In January, 1781, the Virginia Legislature passed an act ceding to Congress, for the benefit of the United States, all of Virginia's claim to the territory northwest of the Ohio; but the cession was not consummated until after the close of the war with Great Britain, and the only immediate effect of the act was to still further derange affairs in Illinois. The whole subject of the land cessions of the various States, by which the northwest territory became Federal property, and the heart of the Union, can best be considered in treating of post-revolutionary times.

The French Creoles had been plunged in chaos. In their deep distress they sent to the powers that the chances of war had set above them petition after petition, reciting their wrongs and praying that they might be righted. There is one striking difference between these petitions and the similar requests and complaints made from time to time by the different groups of American settlers west of the Alleghanies. Both alike set forth the evils from which the petitioners suffered, and the necessity of governmental remedy. But whereas the Americans invariably asked that they be allowed to govern themselves, being delighted to undertake the betterment of their condition on their own account, the French, on the contrary, habituated through generations to paternal rule, were more inclined to request that somebody fitted for the task should be sent to govern them. They humbly asked Congress either to "immediately establish some form of government among them, and appoint officers to execute the same," or else "to nominate commissioners to repair to the Illinois and inquire into the situation." [Footnote: State Department MSS., No. 30, p. 453. Memorial of Francois Carbonneaux, agent for the inhabitants of Illinois.]

One of the petitions is pathetic in its showing of the bewilderment into which the poor Creoles were thrown as to who their governors really were. It requests "their Sovereign Lords," [Footnote: "Nos Souverains Seigneurs." The letter is ill-written and worse spelt, in an extraordinary French patois. State Department MSS., No. 30, page 459. It is dated December 3, 1782. Many of the surnames attached are marked with a cross; others are signed. Two are given respectively as "Bienvenus fils" and "Blouin fils."] whether of the Congress of the United States or of the Province of Virginia, whichever might be the owner of the country, to nominate "a lieutenant or a governor, whomever it may please our Lords to send us." [Footnote: State Department MSS., No. 30, p. 459, "de nomer un lieutenant ou un gouverneur tel qu'il plaira a nos Seigneurs de nous l'envoyer."] The letter goes on to ask that this governor may speak French, so that he may preside over the court; and it earnestly beseeches that the laws may be enforced and crime and wrong-doing put down with a strong hand.

The conquest of the Illinois Territory was fraught with the deepest and most far-reaching benefits to all the American people; it likewise benefited, in at least an equal degree, the boldest and most energetic among the French inhabitants, those who could hold their own among freemen, who could swim in troubled waters; but it may well be doubted whether to the mass of the ignorant and simple Creoles it was not a curse rather than a blessing.



CHAPTER VII.

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

Seventeen hundred and eighty-two proved to be Kentucky's year of blood. The British at Detroit had strained every nerve to drag into the war the entire Indian population of the northwest. They had finally succeeded in arousing even the most distant tribes—not to speak of the twelve thousand savages immediately tributary to Detroit. [Footnote: Haldimand MSS. Census for 1782, 11,402.] So lavish had been the expenditure of money and presents to secure the good-will of the savages and enlist their active services against the Americans, that it had caused serious complaint at headquarters. [Footnote: Do. Haldimand to De Peyster, April 10, October 6, 1781.]

Renewal of the Indian Forays.

Early in the spring the Indians renewed their forays; horses were stolen, cabins burned, and women and children carried off captive. The people were confined closely to their stockaded forts, from which small bands of riflemen sallied to patrol the country. From time to time these encountered marauding parties, and in the fights that followed sometimes the whites, sometimes the reds, were victorious.

One of these conflicts attracted wide attention on the border because of the obstinacy with which it was waged and the bloodshed that accompanied it. In March a party of twenty-five Wyandots came into the settlements, passed Boonsborough, and killed and scalped a girl within sight of Estill's Station. The men from the latter, also to the number of twenty-five, hastily gathered under Captain Estill, and after two days' hot pursuit overtook the Wyandots. A fair stand-up fight followed, the better marksmanship of the whites being offset, as so often before, by the superiority their foes showed in sheltering themselves. At last victory declared for the Indians. Estill had despatched a lieutenant and seven men to get round the Wyandots and assail them in the rear; but either the lieutenant's heart or his judgment failed him, he took too long, and meanwhile the Wyandots closed in on the others, killing nine, including Estill, and wounding four, who, with their unhurt comrades, escaped. It is said that the Wyandots themselves suffered heavily. [Footnote: Of course not as much as their foes. The backwoodsmen (like the regular officers of both the British and American armies in similar cases, as at Grant's and St. Clair's defeats) were fond of consoling themselves for their defeats by snatching at any wild tale of the losses of the victors. In the present instance it is even possible that the loss of the Wyandots was very light instead of very heavy.]

These various ravages and skirmishes were but the prelude to a far more serious attack. In July the British captains Caldwell and McKee came down from Detroit with a party of rangers, and gathered together a great army of over a thousand Indians [Footnote: Haldimand MSS. Letter from Capt. Caldwell, August 26, 1782; and letter of Captain McKee, August 28, 1782. These two letters are very important, as they give for the first time the British and Indian accounts of the battle of the Blue Licks; I print them in the Appendix.]—the largest body of either red men or white that was ever mustered west of the Alleghanies during the Revolution. They meant to strike at Wheeling; but while on their march thither were suddenly alarmed by the rumor that Clark intended to attack the Shawnee towns. [Footnote: This rumor was caused by Clark's gunboat, which, as will be hereafter mentioned, had been sent up to the mouth of the Licking; some Shawnees saw it, and thought Clark was preparing for an inroad.] They at once countermarched, but on reaching the threatened towns found that the alarm had been groundless. Most of the savages, with characteristic fickleness of temper, then declined to go farther; but a body of somewhat over three hundred Hurons and Lake Indians remained. With these, and their Detroit rangers, Caldwell and McKee crossed the Ohio and marched into Kentucky, to attack the small forts of Fayette County.

Fayette lay between the Kentucky and the Ohio rivers, and was then the least populous and most exposed of the three counties into which the growing young commonwealth was divided. In 1782 it contained but five of the small stockaded towns in which all the early settlers were obliged to gather. The best defended and most central was Lexington, round which were grouped the other four—Bryan's (which was the largest), McGee's, McConnell's, and Boon's. Boon's Station, sometimes called Boon's new station, where the tranquil, resolute old pioneer at that time dwelt, must not be confounded with his former fort of Boonsborough, from which it was several miles distant, north of the Kentucky. Since the destruction of Martin's and Ruddle's stations on the Licking, Bryan's on the south bank of the Elkhorn was left as the northernmost outpost of the settlers. Its stout, loopholed palisades enclosed some forty cabins, there were strong block-houses at the corners, and it was garrisoned by fifty good riflemen.

These five stations were held by backwoodsmen of the usual Kentucky stamp, from the up-country of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina. Generations of frontier life had made them with their fellows the most distinctive and typical Americans on the continent, utterly different from their old-world kinsfolk. Yet they still showed strong traces of the covenanting spirit, which they drew from the Irish-Presbyterian, the master strain in their mixed blood. For years they had not seen the inside of a church; nevertheless, mingled with men who were loose of tongue and life, there still remained many Sabbath-keepers and Bible-readers, who studied their catechisms on Sundays, and disliked almost equally profane language and debauchery. [Footnote: McAfee MSS.]

Patterson and Reynolds.

An incident that occurred at this time illustrates well their feelings. In June a fourth of the active militia of the county was ordered on duty, to scout and patrol the country. Accordingly forty men turned out under Captain Robert Patterson. They were given ammunition, as well as two pack-horses, by the Commissary Department. Every man was entitled to pay for the time he was out. Whether he would ever get it was problematical; at the best it was certain to be given him in worthless paper-money. Their hunters kept them supplied with game, and each man carried a small quantity of parched corn.

The company was ordered to the mouth of the Kentucky to meet the armed row-boat, sent by Clark from the Falls. On the way Patterson was much annoyed by a "very profane, swearing man" from Bryan's Station, named Aaron Reynolds. Reynolds was a good-hearted, active young fellow, with a biting tongue, not only given to many oaths, but likewise skilled in the rough, coarse banter so popular with the backwoodsmen. After having borne with him four days Patterson made up his mind that he would have to reprove him, and, if no amendment took place, send him home. He waited until, at a halt, Reynolds got a crowd round him, and began to entertain them "with oaths and wicked expressions," whereupon he promptly stepped in "and observed to him that he was a very wicked and profane man," and that both the company as well as he, the Captain, would thank him to desist. On the next day, however, Reynolds began to swear again; this time Patterson not only reproved him severely, but also tried the effect of judicious gentleness, promising to give him a quart of spirits on reaching the boat if he immediately "quit his profanity and swearing." Four days afterwards they reached the boat, and Aaron Reynolds demanded the quart of spirits. Patterson suggested a doubt as to whether he had kept his promise, whereupon he appealed to the company, then on parade, and they pronounced in his favor, saying that they had not heard him swear since he was reproved. Patterson, who himself records the incident, concludes with the remark: "The spirits were drank." [Footnote: Patterson's paper, given by Col. John Mason Brown, in his excellent pamphlet on the "Battle of the Blue Licks" (Franklin, Ky., 1882). I cannot forbear again commenting on the really admirable historic work now being done by Messrs. Brown, Durrett, Speed, and the other members of the Louisville "Filson Club."] Evidently the company, who had so impartially acted as judges between their fellow-soldier and their superior officer, viewed with the same equanimity the zeal of the latter and the mixed system of command, entreaty, and reward by which he carried his point. As will be seen, the event had a striking sequel at the battle of the Blue Licks.

Throughout June and July the gunboat patrolled the Ohio, going up to the Licking. Parties of backwoods riflemen, embodied as militia, likewise patrolled the woods, always keeping their scouts and spies well spread out, and exercising the greatest care to avoid being surprised. They greatly hampered the Indian war bands, but now and then the latter slipped by and fell on the people they protected. Early in August such a band committed some ravages south of the Kentucky, beating back with loss a few militia who followed it. Some of the Fayette men were about setting forth to try and cut off its retreat, when the sudden and unlooked-for approach of Caldwell and McKee's great war party obliged them to bend all their energies to their own defence.

The blow fell on Bryan's Station. The rangers and warriors moved down through the forest with the utmost speed and stealth, hoping to take this, the northernmost of the stockades, by surprise. If they had succeeded, Lexington and the three smaller stations north of the Kentucky would probably likewise have fallen.

The Attack on Bryan's Station.

The attack was made early on the morning of the 16th of August. Some of the settlers were in the corn-fields, and the rest inside the palisade of standing logs; they were preparing to follow the band of marauders who had gone south of the Kentucky. A few outlying Indian spies were discovered, owing to their eagerness; and the whites being put on their guard, the attempt to carry the fort by the first rush was, of course, foiled. Like so many other stations—but unlike Lexington,—Bryan's had no spring within its walls; and as soon as there was reason to dread an attack, it became a matter of vital importance to lay in a supply of water. It was feared that to send the men to the spring would arouse suspicion in the minds of the hiding savages; and, accordingly, the women went down with their pails and buckets as usual. The younger girls showed some nervousness, but the old housewives marshalled them as coolly as possible, talking and laughing together, and by their unconcern completely deceived the few Indians who were lurking near by—for the main body had not yet come up. [Footnote: Caldwell's letter says that a small party of Indians was sent ahead first; the watering incident apparently took place immediately on this small party being discovered.] This advance guard of the savages feared that, if they attacked the women, all chance of surprising the fort would be lost; and so the water-carriers were suffered to go back unharmed. [Footnote: This account rests on tradition; it is recorded by McClung, a most untrustworthy writer; his account of the battle of the Blue Licks is wrong from beginning to end. But a number of gentlemen in Kentucky have informed me that old pioneers whom they knew in their youth had told them that they had themselves seen the incident, and that, as written down, it was substantially true. So with Reynold's speech to Girty. Of course, his exact words, as given by McClung, are incorrect; but Mr. L. C. Draper informs me that, in his youth, he knew several old men who had been in Bryan's Station, and had themselves heard the speech. If it were not for this I should reject it, for the British accounts do not even mention that Girty was along, and do not hint at the incident. It was probably an unauthorized ruse of Girty's. The account of the decoy party of Indians is partially confirmed by the British letters. Both Marshall and McClung get this siege and battle very much twisted in their narratives; they make so many mistakes that it is difficult to know what portion of their accounts to accept. Nevertheless it would be a great mistake to neglect all, even of McClung's statements. Thus Boon and Levi Todd in their reports make no mention of McGarry's conduct; and it might be supposed to be a traditional myth, but McClung's account is unexpectedly corroborated by Arthur Campbell's letter, hereafter to be quoted, which was written at the time.

Marshall is the authority for Netherland's feat at the ford. Boon's description in the Filson narrative differs on several points from his earlier official letter, one or two grave errors being made; it is one of the incidents which shows how cautiously the Filson sketch must be used, though it is usually accepted as unquestionable authority.] Hardly were they within the fort, however, when some of the Indians found that they had been discovered, and the attack began so quickly that one or two of the men who had lingered in the corn-fields were killed, or else were cut off and fled to Lexington, while, at the same time, swift-footed runners were sent out to carry the alarm to the different stockades, and summon their riflemen to the rescue.

At first but a few Indians appeared, on the side of the Lexington road; they whooped and danced defiance to the fort, evidently inviting an attack. Their purpose was to lure the defenders into sallying out after them, when their main body was to rush at the stockade from the other side. But they did not succeed in deceiving the veteran Indian fighters who manned the heavy gates of the fort, stood behind the loopholed walls, or scanned the country round about from the high block-houses at the corners. A dozen active young men were sent out on the Lexington road to carry on a mock skirmish with the decoy party, while the rest of the defenders gathered behind the wall on the opposite side. As soon as a noisy but harmless skirmish had been begun by the sallying party, the main body of warriors burst out of the woods and rushed towards the western gate. A single volley from the loopholes drove them back, while the sallying party returned at a run and entered the Lexington gate unharmed, laughing at the success of their counter-stratagem.

The Indians surrounded the fort, each crawling up as close as he could find shelter behind some stump, tree, or fence. An irregular fire began, the whites, who were better covered, having slightly the advantage, but neither side suffering much. This lasted for several hours, until early in the afternoon a party from Lexington suddenly appeared and tried to force its way into the fort.

The runners who slipped out of the fort at the first alarm went straight to Lexington. There they found that the men had just started out to cut off the retreat of the marauding savages who were ravaging south of the Kentucky. Following their trail they speedily overtook the troops, and told of the attack on Bryan's. Instantly forty men under Major Levi Todd countermarched to the rescue. Being ignorant of the strength of the Indians they did not wait for the others, but pushed boldly forward, seventeen being mounted and the others on foot. [Footnote: Va. State Papers, III., p. 300. McClung's and Collins' accounts of this incident are pure romance.]

The road from Lexington to Bryan's for the last few hundred yards led beside a field of growing corn taller than a man. Some of the Indians were lying in this field when they were surprised by the sudden appearance of the rescuers, and promptly fired on them. Levi Todd and the horsemen, who were marching in advance, struck spurs into their steeds, and galloping hard through the dust and smoke reached the fort in safety. The footmen were quickly forced to retreat towards Lexington; but the Indians were too surprised by the unlooked-for approach to follow, and they escaped with the loss of one man killed and three wounded. [Footnote: Do.]

That night the Indians tried to burn the fort, shooting flaming arrows onto the roofs of the cabins and rushing up to the wooden wall with lighted torches. But they were beaten off at each attempt. When day broke they realized that it was hopeless to make any further effort, though they still kept up a desultory fire on the fort's defenders; they had killed most of the cattle and pigs, and some of the horses, and had driven away the rest.

Girty, who was among the assailants, as a last shift, tried to get the garrison to surrender, assuring them that the Indians were hourly expecting reinforcements, including the artillery brought against Ruddle's and Martin's stations two years previously; and that if forced to batter down the walls no quarter would be given to any one. Among the fort's defenders was young Aaron Reynolds, the man whose profanity had formerly roused Captain Patterson's ire; and he now undertook to be spokesman for the rest. Springing up into sight he answered Girty in the tone of rough banter so dear to the backwoodsmen, telling the renegade that he knew him well, and despised him, that the men in the fort feared neither cannon nor reinforcements, and if need be, could drive Girty's tawny followers back from the walls with switches; and he ended by assuring him that the whites, too, were expecting help, for the country was roused, and if the renegade and his followers dared to linger where they were for another twenty-four hours, their scalps would surely be sun-dried on the roofs of the cabins.

The Indians knew well that the riflemen were mustering at all the neighboring forts; and, as soon as their effort to treat failed, they withdrew during the forenoon of the 17th. [Footnote: There are four contemporary official reports of this battle: two American, those of Boon and Levi Todd; and two British, those of McKee and Caldwell. All four agree that the fort was attacked on one day, the siege abandoned on the next, pursuit made on the third, and the battle fought on the fourth. Boon and Todd make the siege begin on August 16th, and the battle take place on the 19th; Caldwell makes the dates the 15th and 18th; McKee makes them the 18th and 21st. I therefore take Boon's and Todd's dates.

McClung and Marshall make the siege last three or four days instead of less than two.

All the accounts of the battle of the Blue Licks, so far, have been very inaccurate, because the British reports have never been even known to exist, and the reports of the American commanders, printed in the Virginia State papers, have but recently seen the light. Mr. Whitsitt, in his recent excellent "Life of Judge Wallace," uses the latter, but makes the great mistake of incorporating into his narrative some of the most glaring errors of McClung and Marshall.] They were angry and sullen at their discomfiture. Five of their number had been killed and several wounded. Of the fort's defenders four had been killed and three wounded. Among the children within its walls during the siege there was one, the youngest, a Kentucky-born baby, named Richard Johnson; over thirty years later he led the Kentucky mounted riflemen at the victory of the Thames, when they killed not only the great Indian chief Tecumseh, but also, it is said, the implacable renegade Simon Girty himself, then in extreme old age.

Battle Of the Blue Licks.

All this time the runners sent out from Bryan's had been speeding through the woods, summoning help from each of the little walled towns. The Fayette troops quickly gathered. As soon as Boon heard the news he marched at the head of the men of his station, among them his youngest son Israel, destined shortly to be slain before his eyes. The men from Lexington, McConnell's, and McGee's, rallied under John Todd, who was County Lieutenant, and, by virtue of his commission in the Virginia line, the ranking officer of Kentucky, second only to Clark. Troops also came from south of the Kentucky River; Lieutenant-Colonel Trigg and Majors McGarry and Harlan led the men from Harrodsburg, who were soonest ready to march, and likewise brought the news that Logan, their County Lieutenant, was raising the whole force of Lincoln in hot haste, and would follow in a couple of days.

These bands of rescuers reached Bryan's Station on the afternoon of the day the Indians had left. The men thus gathered were the very pick of the Kentucky pioneers; sinewy veterans of border strife, skilled hunters and woodsmen, long wonted to every kind of hardship and danger. They were men of the most dauntless courage, but unruly and impatient of all control. Only a few of the cooler heads were willing to look before they leaped; and even their chosen and trusted leaders were forced to advise and exhort rather than to command them. All were eager for battle and vengeance, and were excited and elated by the repulse that had just been inflicted on the savages; and they feared to wait for Logan lest the foe should escape. Next morning they rode out in pursuit, one hundred and eighty-two strong, all on horseback, and all carrying long rifles. There was but one sword among them, which Todd had borrowed from Boon—a rough weapon, with short steel blade and buckhorn hilt. As with most frontier levies, the officers were in large proportion; for, owing to the system of armed settlement and half-military organization, each wooden fort, each little group of hunters or hard-fighting backwoods farmers, was forced to have its own captain, lieutenant, ensign, and sergeant. [Footnote: For the American side of the battle of Blue Licks I take the contemporary reports of Boon, Levi Todd, and Logan, Va. State Papers, Vol. III., pp. 276, 280, 300, 333. Boon and Todd both are explicit that there were one hundred and eighty-two riflemen, all on horseback, and substantially agree as to the loss of the frontiersmen. Later reports underestimate both the numbers and loss of the whites. Boon's Narrative, written two years after the event, from memory, conflicts in one or two particulars with his earlier report. Patterson, writing long afterwards, and from memory, falls into gross errors, both as to the number of troops and as to some of them being on foot; his account must be relied on chiefly for his own adventures. Most of the historians of Kentucky give the affair very incorrectly. Butler follows Marshall; but from the Clark papers he got the right number of men engaged. Marshall gives a few valuable facts; but he is all wrong on certain important points. For instance, he says Todd hurried into action for fear Logan would supersede him in the command; but in reality Todd ranked Logan. McClung's ornate narrative, that usually followed, hangs on the very slenderest thread of truth; it is mainly sheer fiction. Prolix, tedious Collins follows the plan he usually does when his rancorous prejudices do not influence him, and presents half a dozen utterly inconsistent accounts, with no effort whatever to reconcile them. He was an industrious collector of information, and gathered an enormous quantity, some of it very useful; he recorded with the like complacency authentic incidents of the highest importance and palpable fabrications or irrelevant trivialities; and it never entered his head to sift evidence or to exercise a little critical power and judgment.]

The Indians, in their unhurried retreat, followed the great buffalo trace that led to the Blue Licks, a broad road, beaten out through the forest by the passing and repassing of the mighty herds through countless generations. They camped on the farther side of the river; some of the savages had left, but there were still nearly three hundred men in all—Hurons and lake Indians, with the small party of rangers. [Footnote: Caldwell says that he had at first "three hundred Indians and Rangers," but that before the battle "nigh 100 Indians left." McKee says that there were at first "upwards of three hundred Hurons and Lake Indians," besides the rangers and a very few Mingos, Delawares, and Shawnees. Later he says of the battle: "We were not much superior to them in numbers, they being about two hundred."

Levi Todd put the number of the Indians at three hundred, which was pretty near the truth; Boon thought it four hundred; later writers exaggerate wildly, putting it even at one thousand.]

The backwoods horsemen rode swiftly on the trail of their foes, and before evening came to where they had camped the night before. A careful examination of the camp-fires convinced the leaders that they were heavily outnumbered; nevertheless they continued the pursuit, and overtook the savages early the following morning, the 19th of August.

As they reached the Blue Licks, they saw a few Indians retreating up a rocky ridge that led from the north bank of the river. The backwoodsmen halted on the south bank, and a short council was held. All turned naturally to Boon, the most experienced Indian fighter present, in whose cool courage and tranquil self-possession all confided. The wary old pioneer strongly urged that no attack be made at the moment, but that they should await the troops coming up under Logan. The Indians were certainly much superior in numbers to the whites; they were aware that they were being followed by a small force, and from the confident, leisurely way in which they had managed their retreat, were undoubtedly anxious to be overtaken and attacked. The hurried pursuit had been quite proper in the first place, for if the Indians had fled rapidly they would surely have broken up into different bands, which could have been attacked on even terms, while delay would have permitted them to go off unscathed. But, as it was, the attack would be very dangerous; while the delay of waiting for Logan would be a small matter, for the Indians could still be overtaken after he had arrived.

Well would it have been for the frontiersmen had they followed Boon's advice. [Footnote: Va. State Papers, III., 337. Col. Campbell's letter of Oct. 3, 1782. The letter is interesting as showing by contemporary authority that Boon's advice and McGarry's misbehavior are not mere matters of tradition. It is possible that there was some jealousy between the troops from Lincoln and those from Fayette; the latter had suffered much from the Indians, and were less rash in consequence; while many of the Lincoln men were hot for instant battle.] Todd and Trigg both agreed with him, and so did many of the cooler riflemen—among others a man named Netherland, whose caution caused the young hotheads to jeer at him as a coward. But the decision was not suffered to rest with the three colonels who nominally commanded. Doubtless the council was hasty and tumultuous, being held by the officers in the open, closely pressed upon, and surrounded by a throng of eager, unruly soldiers, who did not hesitate to offer advice or express dissatisfaction. Many of the more headlong and impatient among the bold spirits looking on desired instant action; and these found a sudden leader in Major Hugh McGarry. He was a man utterly unsuited to command of any kind; and his retention in office after repeated acts of violence and insubordination shows the inherent weakness of the frontier militia system. He not only chafed at control, but he absolutely refused to submit to it; and his courage was of a kind better fitted to lead him into a fight than to make him bear himself well after it was begun. He wished no delay, and was greatly angered at the decision of the council; nor did he hesitate to at once appeal therefrom. Turning to the crowd of backwoodsmen he suddenly raised the thrilling war-cry, and spurred his horse into the stream, waving his hat over his head and calling on all who were not cowards to follow him. The effect was electrical. In an instant all the hunter-soldiers plunged in after him with a shout, and splashed across the ford of the shallow river in huddled confusion.

Boon and Todd had nothing to do but follow. On the other side they got the men into order, and led them on, the only thing that was possible under the circumstances. These two leaders acted excellently throughout; and they now did their best to bring the men with honor through the disaster into which they had been plunged by their own headstrong folly.

As the Indians were immediately ahead, the array of battle was at once formed. The troops spread out into a single line. The right was led by Trigg, the centre by Colonel-Commandant Todd in person, with McGarry under him, and an advance guard of twenty-five men under Harlan in front; while the left was under Boon. The ground was equally favorable to both parties, the timber being open and good. [Footnote: Levi Todd's letter, Aug. 26, 1782.] But the Indians had the advantage in numbers, and were able to outflank the whites.

In a minute the spies brought word that the enemy were close in front. [Footnote: It is absolutely erroneous to paint the battle as in any way a surprise. Boon says: "We discovered the enemy lying in wait for us; on this discovery we formed our columns into a single line, and marched up in their front." There was no ambush, except that of course the Indians, as usual, sheltered themselves behind trees or in the long grass. From what Boon and Levi Todd say, it is evident that the firing began on both sides at the same time. Caldwell says the Indians fired one gun whereupon the Kentuckians fired a volley.] The Kentuckians galloped up at speed to within sixty yards of their foes, leaped from their horses, and instantly gave and received a heavy fire. [Footnote: Levi Todd's letter.] Boon was the first to open the combat; and under his command the left wing pushed the Indians opposite them back for a hundred yards. The old hunter of course led in person; his men stoutly backed him up, and their resolute bearing and skilful marksmanship gave to the whites in this part of the line a momentary victory.

But on the right of the Kentucky advance, affairs went badly from the start. The Indians were thrown out so as to completely surround Triggs' wing. Almost as soon as the firing became heavy in front, crowds of painted warriors rose from some hollows of long grass that lay on Trigg's right and poured in a close and deadly volley. Rushing forward, they took his men in rear and flank, and rolled them up on the centre, killing Trigg himself. Harlan's advance guard was cut down almost to a man, their commander being among the slain. The centre was then assailed from both sides by overwhelming numbers. Todd did all he could by voice and example to keep his men firm, and cover Boon's successful advance, but in vain. Riding to and fro on his white horse, he was shot through the body, and mortally wounded. He leaped on his horse again, but his strength failed him; the blood gushed from his mouth; he leaned forward, and fell heavily from the saddle. Some say that his horse carried him to the river, and that he fell into its current. With his death the centre gave way; and of course Boon and the men of the left wing, thrust in advance, were surrounded on three sides. A wild rout followed, every one pushing in headlong haste for the ford. "He that could remount a horse was well off; he that could not, had no time for delay," wrote Levi Todd. The actual fighting had only occupied five minutes. [Footnote: Levi Todd's letter.]

In a mad and panic race the Kentuckians reached the ford, which was fortunately but a few hundred yards from the battle-field, the Indians being mixed in with them. Among the first to cross was Netherland, whose cautious advice had been laughed at before the battle. No sooner had he reached the south bank, than he reined up his horse and leaped off, calling on his comrades to stop and cover the flight of the others; and most of them obeyed him. The ford was choked with a struggling mass of horsemen and footmen, fleeing whites and following Indians. Netherland and his companions opened a brisk fire upon the latter, forcing them to withdraw for a moment and let the remainder of the fugitives cross in safety. Then the flight began again. The check that had been given the Indians allowed the whites time to recover heart and breath. Retreating in groups or singly through the forest, with their weapons reloaded, their speed of foot and woodcraft enabled such as had crossed the river to escape without further serious loss.

Boon was among the last to leave the field. His son Israel was slain, and he himself was cut off from the river; but turning abruptly to one side, he broke through the ranks of the pursuers, outran them, swam the river, and returned unharmed to Bryan's Station.

Among the men in the battle were Capt. Robert Patterson and young Aaron Reynolds. When the retreat began Patterson could not get a horse. He was suffering from some old and unhealed wounds received in a former Indian fight, and he speedily became exhausted. As he was on the point of sinking, Reynolds suddenly rode up beside him, jumped off his horse, and without asking Patterson whether he would accept, bade him mount the horse and flee. Patterson did so, and was the last man over the ford. He escaped unhurt, though the Indians were running alongside and firing at him. Meanwhile Reynolds, who possessed extraordinary activity, reached the river in safety and swam across. He then sat down to take off his buckskin trowsers, which, being soaked through, hampered him much; and two Indians suddenly pounced on and captured him. He was disarmed and left in charge of one. Watching his chance, he knocked the savage down, and running off into the woods escaped with safety. When Patterson thanked him for saving his life, and asked him why he had done it, he answered, that ever since Patterson had reproved him for swearing, he had felt a strong and continued attachment for him. The effect of the reproof, combined with his narrow escape, changed him completely, and he became a devout member of the Baptist Church. Patterson, to show the gratitude he felt, gave him a horse and saddle, and a hundred acres of prime land, the first he had ever owned.

The loss of the defeated Kentuckians had been very great. Seventy were killed outright, including Colonel Todd and Lieutenant-Colonel Trigg, the first and third in command. Seven were captured, and twelve of those who escaped were badly wounded. [Footnote: Those are the figures of Boon's official report, and must be nearly accurate. The later accounts give all sorts of numbers.] The victors lost one of the Detroit rangers (a Frenchman), and six Indians killed and ten Indians wounded. [Footnote: Caldwell's letter. But there are some slight discrepancies between the letters of McKee and Caldwell. Caldwell makes the loss at Bryan's Station and the Blue Licks together twelve killed and twelve wounded; McKee says eleven killed and fourteen wounded. Both exaggerate the American loss, but not as much as the Americans exaggerated that of the Indians, Boon in his narrative giving the wildest of all the estimates.] Almost their whole loss was caused by the successful advance of Boon's troops, save what was due to Netherland when he rallied the flying backwoodsmen at the ford.

Of the seven white captives four were put to death with torture; three eventually rejoined their people. One of them owed his being spared to a singular and amusing feat of strength and daring. When forced to run the gauntlet he, by his activity, actually succeeded in reaching the council-house unharmed; when almost to it, he turned, seized a powerful Indian and hurled him violently to the ground, and then, thrusting his head between the legs of another pursuer, he tossed him clean over his back, after which he sprang on a log, leaped up and knocked his heels together, crowed in the fashion of backwoods victors, and rallied the Indians as a pack of cowards. One of the old chiefs immediately adopted him into the tribe as his son.

All the little forted villages north of the Kentucky, and those lying near its southern bank, were plunged into woe and mourning by the defeat. [Footnote: Arthur Campbell, in the letter already quoted, comments with intense bitterness on the defeat, which, he says, was due largely to McGarry's "vain and seditious expressions." He adds that Todd and Trigg had capacity but no experience, and Boon experience but no capacity, while Logan was "a dull and narrow body," and Clark "a sot, if nothing worse." Campbell was a Holston Virginian, an able but very jealous man, who disliked the Kentucky leaders, and indeed had no love for Kentucky itself; he had strenuously opposed its first erection as a separate county.] In every stockade, in almost every cabin, there was weeping for husband or father, son, brother, or lover. The best and bravest blood in the land had been shed like water. There was no one who had not lost some close and dear friend, and the heads of all the people were bowed and their hearts sore stricken.

The bodies of the dead lay where they had fallen, on the hill-slope, and in the shallow river; torn by wolf, vulture, and raven, or eaten by fishes. In a day or two Logan came up with four hundred men from south of the Kentucky, tall Simon Kenton marching at the head of the troops, as captain of a company. [Footnote: McBride's "Pioneer Biography," I., 210] They buried the bodies of the slain on the battle-field, in long trenches, and heaped over them stones and logs. Meanwhile the victorious Indians, glutted with vengeance, recrossed the Ohio and vanished into the northern forests.

The Indian ravages continued throughout the early fall months; all the outlying cabins were destroyed, the settlers were harried from the clearings, and a station on Salt River was taken by surprise, thirty-seven people being captured. Stunned by the crushing disaster at the Blue Licks, and utterly disheartened and cast down by the continued ravages, many of the settlers threatened to leave the country. The county officers sent long petitions to the Virginia Legislature, complaining that the troops posted at the Falls were of no assistance in checking the raids of the Indians, and asserting that the operations carried on by order of the Executive for the past eighteen months had been a detriment rather than a help. The utmost confusion and discouragement prevailed everywhere. [Footnote: Va. State Papers, III., pp. 301, 331. Letter of William Christian, September 28th. Petition of Boon, Todd, Netherland, etc., September 11th. In Morehead's "address" is a letter from Nathaniel Hart. He was himself as a boy, witness of what he describes. His father, who had been Henderson's partner and bore the same name as himself, was from North Carolina. He founded in Kentucky a station known as White Oak Springs; and was slain by the savages during this year. The letter runs: "It is impossible at this day to make a just impression of the sufferings of the pioneers about the period spoken of. The White Oak Springs fort in 1782, with perhaps one hundred souls in it was reduced in August to three fighting white men—and I can say with truth that for two or three weeks my mother's family never unclothed themselves to sleep, nor were all of them within that time at their meals together, nor was any household business attempted. Food was prepared and placed where those who chose could eat. It was the period when Bryant's station was beseiged, and for many days before and after that gloomy event we were in constant expectation of being made prisoners. We made application to Col. Logan for a guard and obtained one, but not until the danger was measureably over. It then consisted of two men only. Col. Logan did every thing in his power, as County Lieutenant, to sustain the different forts—but it was not a very easy matter to order a married man from a fort where his family was to defend some other when his own was in imminent danger.

"I went with my mother in January, 1783, to Logan's station to prove my father's will. He had fallen in the preceding July. Twenty armed men were of the party. Twenty-three widows were in attendance upon the court to obtain letters of administration on the estates of their husbands who had been killed during the past year."

The letter also mentions that most of the original settlers of the fort were from Pennsylvania, "orderly respectable people and the men good soldiers. But they were unaccustomed to Indian warfare, and the consequence was that of some ten or twelve men all were killed but two or three." This incident illustrates the folly of the hope, at one time entertained, that the Continental troops, by settling in the west on lands granted them, would prove a good barrier against the Indians; the best Continentals in Washington's army would have been almost as helpless as British grenadiers in the woods.]

Clark's Counter-Stroke.

At last the news of repeated disaster roused Clark into his old-time energy. He sent out runners through the settlements, summoning all the able-bodied men to make ready for a blow at the Indians. The pioneers turned with eager relief towards the man who had so often led them to success. They answered his call with quick enthusiasm; beeves, pack-horses, and supplies were offered in abundance, and every man who could shoot and ride marched to the appointed meeting-places. The men from the eastern stations gathered at Bryan's, under Logan; those from the western, at the Falls, under Floyd. The two divisions met at the mouth of the Licking, where Clark took supreme command. On the 4th of November, he left the banks of the Ohio and struck off northward through the forest, at the head of one thousand and fifty mounted riflemen. On the 10th he attacked the Miami towns. His approach was discovered just in time to prevent a surprise. The Indians hurriedly fled to the woods, those first discovered raising the alarm-cry, which could be heard an incredible distance, and thus warning their fellows. In consequence no fight followed, though there was sharp skirmishing between the advance guard and the hindermost Indians. Ten scalps were taken and seven prisoners, besides two whites being recaptured. Of Clark's men, one was killed and one wounded. The flight of the Indians was too hasty to permit them to save any of their belongings. All the cabins were burned, together with an immense quantity of corn and provisions—a severe loss at the opening of winter. McKee, the Detroit partisan, attempted to come to the rescue with what Indians he could gather, but was met and his force promptly scattered. [Footnote: Haldimand MSS. Letter of Alex. McKee, November 15, 1782. He makes no attempt to hide the severity of the blow; his letter shows a curious contrast in tone to the one he wrote after the Blue Licks. He states that the victory has opened the road to Detroit to the Americans.] Logan led a detachment to the head of the Miami, and burned the stores of the British traders. The loss to the savages at the beginning of cold weather was very great; they were utterly cast down and panic-stricken at such a proof of the power of the whites, coming as it did so soon after the battle of the Blue Licks. The expedition returned in triumph, and the Kentuckians completely regained their self-confidence; and though for ten years longer Kentucky suffered from the inroads of small parties of savages, it was never again threatened by a serious invasion. [Footnote: Va. State Papers, p. 381. Clark's letter of November 27, 1782.]

Wonderful Growth of Kentucky.

At the beginning of 1783, when the news of peace was spread abroad, immigration began to flow to Kentucky down the Ohio, and over the Wilderness road, in a flood of which the volume dwarfed all former streams into rivulets. Indian hostilities continued at intervals throughout this year, [Footnote: Do., p. 522. Letter of Benjamin Logan, August 11, 1783.] but they were not of a serious nature. Most of the tribes concluded at least a nominal peace, and liberated over two hundred white prisoners, though they retained nearly as many more. [Footnote: Pennsylvania Packet, No. 1,079, August 12, 1783.] Nevertheless in the spring one man of note fell victim to the savages, for John Floyd was waylaid and slain as he was riding out with his brother. Thus within the space of eight months, two of the three county lieutenants had been killed, in battle or ambush.

The inrush of new settlers was enormous, [Footnote: McAfee MSS.] and Kentucky fairly entered on its second stage of growth. The days of the first game hunters and Indian fighters were over. By this year the herds of the buffalo, of which the flesh and hides had been so important to the earlier pioneers, were nearly exterminated; though bands still lingered in the remote recesses of the mountains, and they were plentiful in Illinois. The land claims began to clash, and interminable litigation followed. This rendered very important the improvement in the judiciary system which was begun in March by the erection of the three counties into the "District of Kentucky," with a court of common law and chancery jurisdiction coextensive with its limits. The name of Kentucky, which had been dropped when the original county was divided into three, was thus permanently revived. The first court sat at Harrodsburg, but as there was no building where it could properly be held, it adjourned to the Dutch Reformed Meeting-house six miles off. The first grand jury empanelled presented nine persons for selling liquor without license, eight for adultery and fornication, and the clerk of Lincoln County for not keeping a table of fees; besides several for smaller offences. [Footnote: Marshall, I., 159.] A log court-house and a log jail were immediately built.

Manufactories of salt were started at the licks, where it was sold at from three to five silver dollars a bushel. [Footnote: McAfee MSS.] This was not only used by the settlers for themselves, but for their stock, which ranged freely in the woods; to provide for the latter a tree was chopped down and the salt placed in notches or small troughs cut in the trunk, making it what was called a lick-log. Large grist-mills were erected at some of the stations; wheat crops were raised; and small distilleries were built. The gigantic system of river commerce of the Mississippi had been begun the preceding year by one Jacob Yoder, who loaded a flat-boat at the Old Redstone Fort, on the Monongahela, and drifted down to New Orleans, where he sold his goods, and returned to the Falls of the Ohio by a roundabout course leading through Havana, Philadelphia, and Pittsburg. Several regular schools were started. There were already meeting-houses of the Baptist and Dutch Reformed congregations, the preachers spending the week-days in clearing and tilling the fields, splitting rails, and raising hogs; in 1783 a permanent Presbyterian minister arrived, and a log church was speedily built for him. The sport-loving Kentuckians this year laid out a race track at Shallowford Station. It was a straight quarter of a mile course, within two hundred yards of the stockade; at its farther end was a canebrake, wherein an Indian once lay hid and shot a rider, who was pulling up his horse at the close of a race. There was still but one ferry, that over the Kentucky River at Boonsborough; the price of ferriage was three shillings for either man or horse. The surveying was still chiefly done by hunters, and much of it was in consequence very loose indeed. [Footnote: McAfee MSS. Marshall, Collins, Brown's pamphlets.]

The first retail store Kentucky had seen since Henderson's, at Boonsborough, was closed in 1775, was established this year at the Falls; the goods were brought in wagons from Philadelphia to Pittsburg, and thence down the Ohio in flat-boats. The game had been all killed off in the immediate neighborhood of the town at the Falls, and Clark undertook to supply the inhabitants with meat, as a commercial speculation. Accordingly he made a contract with John Saunders, the hunter who had guided him on his march to the Illinois towns; the latter had presumably forgiven his chief for having threatened him with death when he lost the way. Clark was to furnish Saunders with three men, a packhorse, salt, and ammunition; while Saunders agreed to do his best and be "assiduously industrious" in hunting. Buffalo beef, bear's meat, deer hams, and bear oil were the commodities most sought after. The meat was to be properly cured and salted in camp, and sent from time to time to the Falls, where Clark was to dispose of it in market, a third of the price going to Saunders. The hunting season was to last from November 1st to January 15th. [Footnote: Original agreement in Durrett MSS.; bound volume of "Papers Relating to G. R. Clark." This particular agreement is for 1784; but apparently he entered into several such in different years.]

Thus the settlers could no longer always kill their own game; and there were churches, schools, mills, stores, race tracks, and markets in Kentucky.



CHAPTER VIII.

THE HOLSTON SETTLEMENTS, 1777-1779.

Organization of the Holston Settlements.

The history of Kentucky and the Northwest has now been traced from the date of the Cherokee war to the close of the Revolution. Those portions of the southwestern lands that were afterwards made into the State of Tennessee, had meanwhile developed with almost equal rapidity. Both Kentucky and Tennessee grew into existence and power at the same time, and were originally settled and built up by precisely the same class of American backwoodsmen. But there were one or two points of difference in their methods of growth. Kentucky sprang up afar off in the wilderness, and as a separate entity from the beginning. The present State has grown steadily from a single centre, which was the part first settled; and the popular name of the commonwealth has always been Kentucky. Tennessee, on the other hand, did not assume her present name until a quarter of a century after the first exploration and settlement had begun; and the State grew from two entirely distinct centres. The first settlements, known as the Watauga, or afterwards more generally as the Holston, settlements, grew up while keeping close touch with the Virginians, who lived round the Tennessee head-waters, and also in direct communication with North Carolina, to which State they belonged. It was not until 1779 that a portion of these Holston people moved to the bend of the Cumberland River and started a new community, exactly as Kentucky had been started before. At first this new community, known as the Cumberland settlement, was connected by only the loosest tie with the Holston settlements. The people of the two places were not grouped together; they did not even have a common name. The three clusters of Holston, Cumberland, and Kentucky settlements developed independently of one another, and though their founders were in each case of the same kind, they were at first only knit one to another by a lax bond of comradeship.

In 1776 the Watauga pioneers probably numbered some six hundred souls in all. Having at last found out the State in which they lived, they petitioned North Carolina to be annexed thereto as a district or county. The older settlements had evidently been jealous of them, for they found it necessary to deny that they were, as had been asserted, "a lawless mob"; it may be remarked that the Transylvanian colonists had been obliged to come out with a similar statement. In their petition they christened their country "Washington District," in honor of the great chief whose name already stood first in the hearts of all Americans. The document was written by Sevier. It set forth the history of the settlers, their land purchases from the Indians, their successful effort at self-government, their military organization, with Robertson as captain, and finally their devotion to the Revolutionary cause; and recited their lack of proper authority to deal promptly with felons, murderers, and the like, who came in from the neighboring States, as the reason why they wished to become a self-governing portion of North Carolina. [Footnote: The petition, drawn up in the summer of '76, was signed by 112 men. It is given in full by Ramsey, p. 138. See also Phelan, p. 40.] The legislature of the State granted the prayer of the petitioners, Washington District was annexed, and four representatives therefrom, one of them Sevier, took their seats that fall in the Provincial Congress at Halifax. But no change whatever was made in the government of the Watauga people until 1777. In the spring of that year laws were passed providing for the establishment of courts of pleas and quarter sessions in the district, as well as for the appointment of justices of the peace, sheriffs, and militia officers; and in the fall the district was made a county, under the same name. The boundaries of Washington County were the same as those of the present State of Tennessee, and seem to have been outlined by Sevier, the only man who at that time had a clear idea as to what should be the logical and definite limits of the future State.

Upholding the Law.

The nominal change of government worked little real alteration in the way the Holston people managed their affairs. The members of the old committee became the justices of the new court, and, with a slight difference in forms, proceeded against all offenders with their former vigor. Being eminently practical men, and not learned in legal technicalities, their decisions seem to have been governed mainly by their own ideas of justice, which, though genuine, were rough. As the war progressed and the southern States fell into the hands of the British, the disorderly men who had streamed across the mountains became openly defiant towards the law. The tories gathered in bands, and every man who was impatient of legal restraint, every murderer, horse-thief, and highway robber in the community flocked to join them. The militia who hunted them down soon ceased to discriminate between tories and other criminals, and the courts rendered decisions to the same effect. The caption of one indictment that has been preserved reads against the defendant "in toryism." He was condemned to imprisonment during the war, half his goods was confiscated to the use of the State, and the other half was turned over for the support of his family. In another case the court granted a still more remarkable order, upon the motion of the State attorney, which set forth that fifteen hundred pounds, due to a certain H., should be retained in the hands of the debtor, because "there is sufficient reason to believe that the said H's estate will be confiscated to the use of the State for his misdemeanours."

There is something refreshing in the solemnity with which these decisions are recorded, and the evident lack of perception on the part of the judges that their records would, to their grandchildren, have a distinctly humorous side. To tories, and evil-doers generally, the humor was doubtless very grim; but as a matter of fact, the decisions, though certainly of unusual character, were needful and just. The friends of order had to do their work with rough weapons, and they used them most efficiently. Under the stress of so dire an emergency as that they confronted they were quite right in attending only to the spirit of law and justice, and refusing to be hampered by the letter. They would have discredited their own energy and hard common-sense had they acted otherwise, and, moreover, would have inevitably failed to accomplish their purpose.

In the summer of '78, when Indian hostilities almost entirely ceased, most of the militia were disbanded, and, in consequence, the parties of tories and horse-thieves sprang into renewed strength, and threatened to overawe the courts and government officers. Immediately the leaders among the whigs, the friends of order and liberty, gathered together and organized a vigilance committee. The committee raised two companies of mounted riflemen, who were to patrol the country and put to death all suspicious characters who resisted them or who refused to give security to appear before the committee in December. The proceedings of the committee were thus perfectly open; the members had no idea of acting secretly or against order. It was merely that in a time of general confusion they consolidated themselves into a body which was a most effective, though irregular, supporter of the cause of law. The mounted riflemen scoured the country and broke up the gangs of evil-doers, hanging six or seven of the leaders, while a number of the less prominent were brought before the committee, who fined some and condemned others to be whipped or branded. All of doubtful loyalty were compelled to take the test oath. [Footnote: Haywood, p. 58. As Haywood's narrative is based largely on what the pioneers in their old age told him, his dates, and especially his accounts of the numbers and losses of the Indians in their battles, are often very inaccurate. In this very chapter he gives, with gross inaccuracy of detail, an account of one of Sevier's campaigns as taking place in 1779, whereas it really occurred after his return from King's Mountain. There is therefore need to be cautious in using him.]