ORE KOOSE\

A COURIER'S HALT TO FEED

From Painting by Frederic Remington

THE WORKS OF

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

IN FOURTEEN VOLUMES

f » « ^v" ./.< y^ \
Illustrated

C < .*•/ !'../'</

THE WINNING OF THE WEST /|0

VOLUME THREE

Executive B3dition

PUBLISHED WITH THE PERMISSION OF THE
PRESIDENT THROUGH SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
WITH THE CENTURY CO., MESSRS. CHARLES
SCRIBNER'S SONS, AND G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

NEW YORK

P. F. COLLIER & SON, PUBLISHERS

7

COPYRIGHT 1889, 1894, 1896
Bv G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

This edition is published under arrangement with
G. P. Putnam's Sons, of New York and London.

CONTENTS

THE WAR IN THE NORTHWEST

(CONTINUED)

VII. ROBERTSON FOUNDS THE CUMBERLAND SETTLE
MENT, 1779-1780 i

VIII. THE CUMBERLAND SETTLEMENTS TO THE CLOSE

OP THE REVOLUTION, 1781-1783 32

IX. WHAT THE WESTERNERS HAD DONE DURING

THE REVOLUTION, 1783 49

APPENDICES

APPENDIX D — To CHAPTER VIII 72

APPENDIX E — To CHAPTER IX 74

APPENDIX F — To CHAPTER IX 76

THE INDIAN WARS, 1784-1787

I. THE INRUSH OP SETTLERS, 1784-1787 .... 83
II. THE INDIAN WARS, 1784-1787 114

III. THE NAVIGATION OP THE MISSISSIPPI; SEPARAT

IST MOVEMENTS AND SPANISH INTRIGUES,
1784-1788 176

IV. THE STATE OP FRANKLIN, 1784-1788 242

V. KENTUCKY'S STRUGGLE FOR STATEHOOD, 1784-

1790 294

ST. CLAIR AND WAYNE

I. THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY; OHIO, 1787-1790 . 325
II. THE WAR IN THE NORTHWEST, 1787-1790 . . . 373

THE WAR IN THE NORTHWEST

(CONTINUED)

CHAPTER VII'

ROBERTSON FOUNDS THE CUMBERLAND SETTLE
MENT, 1779-1780

ROBERTSON had no share in the glory of
King's Mountain, and no part in the subse
quent career of the men who won it; for, at the
time, he was doing his allotted work, a work of at
least equal importance, in a different field. The
year before the mountaineers faced Ferguson, the
man who had done more than any one in founding
the settlements from which the victors came, had
once more gone into the wilderness to build a new
and even more typical frontier commonwealth, the
westernmost of any yet founded by the backwoods
men.

Robertson had been for ten years a leader among
the Holston and Watauga people. He had at dif
ferent times played the foremost part in organizing
the civil government and in repelling outside attack.
He had been particularly successful in his dealings
with the Indians, and by his missions to them had
managed to keep the peace unbroken on more than
one occasion when a war would have been disas
trous to the whites. He was prosperous and suc-

VOL. VII.— i (l)

2 The Winning of the West

cessful in his private affairs; nevertheless, in 1779,
the restless craving for change and adventure surged
so strongly in his breast that it once more drove him
forth to wander in the forest. In the true border
temper he determined to abandon the home he had
made, and to seek out a new one hundreds of miles
further in the heart of the hunting-grounds of the
red warriors.

The point pitched upon was the beautiful country
lying along the great bend of the Cumberland.
Many adventurous settlers were anxious to accom
pany Robertson, and, like him, to take their wives
and children with them into the new land. It was
agreed that a small party of explorers should go first
in the early spring to plant corn, that the families
might have it to eat when they followed in the fall.

The spot was already well known to hunters.
Who had first visited it can not be said; though
tradition has kept the names of several among the
many who at times halted there while on their wan
derings.1 Old Kasper Mansker and others had
made hunting trips thither for ten years past; and
they had sometimes met the creole trappers from

1 One Stone or Stoner, perhaps Boone's old associate, is
the first whose name is given in the books. But in both
Kentucky and Tennessee it is idle to try to find out exactly
who the first explorers were. They were unlettered woods
men; it is only by chance that some of their names have
been kept and others lost; the point to be remejnbered is
that many hunters were wandering over the land at the
same time, that they drifted to many different places, and
that now and then an accident preserved the name of some
hunter and of some place he visited.

The War in the Northwest 3

the Illinois. When Mansker first went to the Bluffs,2
in 1769, the buffaloes were more numerous than he
had ever seen them before; the ground literally
shook under the gallop of the mighty herds, they
crowded in dense throngs round the licks, and the
forest resounded with their grunting bellows. He
and other woodsmen came back there off and on,
hunting and trapping, and living in huts made of
buffalo hides; just such huts as the hunters dwelt in
on the Little Missouri and Powder Rivers as late
as 1883, except that the plainsmen generally made
dug-outs in the sides of the buttes and used the
hides only for the roofs and fronts. So the place
was well known, and the reports of the hunters had
made many settlers eager to visit it, though as yet
no regular path led thither. In 1778 the first per
manent settler arrived in the person of a hunter
named Spencer, who spent the following winter en
tirely alone in this remote wilderness, living in a
hollow sycamore-tree. Spencer was a giant in his
day, a man huge in body and limb, all whose life
had been spent in the wilderness. He came to the
bend of the Cumberland from Kentucky in the early
spring, being in search of good land on which to
settle. Other hunters were with him, and they
stayed some time. A Creole trapper from the Wa-
bash was then living in a cabin on the south side
of the river. He did not meet the new-comers ; but

2 The locality where Nashborough was built, was some
times spoken of as the Bluffs, and sometimes as the French
Lick.

4 The Winning of the West

one day he saw the huge moccasin tracks of Spen
cer, and on the following morning the party passed
close by his cabin in chase of a wounded buffalo, hal
loing and shouting as they dashed through the un
derwood. Whether he thought them Indians, or
whether, as is more likely, he shared the fear and
dislike felt by most of the Creoles for the American
backwoodsmen, can not be said ; but certainly he left
his cabin, swam the river, and plunging into the for
est, straightway fled to his kinsfolk on the banks of
the Wabash. Spencer was soon left by his com
panions ; though one of them stayed with him a short
time, helping him to plant a field of corn. Then this
man, too, wished to return. He had lost his hunt
ing-knife; so Spencer went with him to the bar
rens of Kentucky, put him on the right path, and
breaking his own knife, gave his departing friend
a piece of the metal. The undaunted old hunter
himself returned to the banks of the Cumberland,
and sojourned throughout the fall and winter in the
neighborhood of the little clearing on which he had
raised the corn crop; a strange, huge, solitary man,
self-reliant, unflinching, cut off from all his fellows
by endless leagues of shadowy forest. Thus he
dwelt alone in the vast dim wastes, wandering whith
ersoever he listed through the depths of the melan
choly and wintry woods, sleeping by his camp-fire
or in the hollow tree-trunk, ever ready to do battle
against brute or human foe — a stark and sombre
harbinger of the oncoming civilization.

Spencer's figure, seen through the mist that

The War in the Northwest 5

shrouds early Western history, is striking and pic
turesque in itself; yet its chief interest lies in the
fact that he was but a type of many other men.
whose lives were no less lonely and dangerous. He
had no qualities to make him a leader when settle
ments sprang up around him. To the end of his
days he remained a solitary hunter and Indian
fighter, spurning restraint and comfort, and seeking
the strong excitement of danger to give zest to his
life. Even in the time of the greatest peril from the
savages he would not stay shut up in the forts, but
continued his roving, wandering life, trusting to his
own quick senses, wonderful strength, and iron
nerves. He even continued to lie out at night,
kindling a fire, and then lying down to sleep far
from it.3

Early in the year 1779 a leader of men came to
the place where the old hunter had roamed and killed
game; and with the new-comer came those who
were to possess the land. Robertson left the Wa-
tauga settlements soon after the spring opened,4

3 "Southwestern Monthly," Nashville, 1852, Vol. II. Gen
eral Hall's narrative.

4 It is very difficult to reconcile the dates of these early
movements; even the contemporary documents are often a
little vague, while Haywood, Ramsey, and Putnam are fre
quently months out of the way. Apparently Robertson
stayed as commissioner in Chota until February or March,
1779- when he gave warning of the intended raid of the
Chickamaugas, and immediately afterward came back to the
settlements and started out for the Cumberland, before
Shelby left on his Chickamauga expedition. But it is pos
sible that he had left Chota before, and that another man was

6 The Winning of the West

with eight companions, one of them a negro. He
followed Boone's trace, — the Wilderness Road, —
through Cumberland Gap, and across the Cumber
land River. Then he struck off southwest through
the wilderness, lightening his labor by taking the
broad, well-beaten buffalo trails whenever they led
in his direction; they were very distinct near the
pools and springs, and especially going to and from
the licks. The adventurers reached the bend of the
Cumberland without mishap, and fixed on the neigh
borhood of the Bluff, the ground near the French
Lick, as that best suited for their purpose; and
they planted a field of corn on the site of the future
forted village of Nashborough. A few days after
their arrival they were joined by another batch of
hunter-settlers, who had come out under the leader
ship of Kasper Mansker.

As soon as the corn was planted and cabins put
up, most of the intending settlers returned to their
old homes to bring out their families, leaving three
of their number "to keep the buffaloes out of the
corn." 5 Robertson himself first went north through
the wilderness to see George Rogers Clark in Illi
nois, to purchase cabin-rights from him. This act
gives an insight into at least some of the motives
that influenced the adventurers. Doubtless they
were impelled largely by sheer restlessness and love
of change and excitement ;6 and these motives would

there as commissioner at the time of the Chickamauga raid
which was followed by Shelby's counter-stroke.

5 Haywood, 83.

6 Phelan, p. in, fails to do justice to these motives, while

The War in the Northwest 7

probably have induced them to act as they did, even
had there been no others. But another and most
powerful spring of action was the desire to gain
land — not merely land for settlement, but land for
speculative purposes. Wild land was then so abun
dant that the quantity literally seemed inexhaustible ;
and it was absolutely valueless until settled. Our
forefathers may well be pardoned for failing to see
that it was of more importance to have it owned
in small lots by actual settlers than to have it filled
up quickly under a system of huge grants to indi
viduals or corporations. Many wise and good men
honestly believed that they would benefit the coun
try at the same time that they enriched themselves
by acquiring vast tracts of virgin wilderness, and
then proceeding to people them. There was a rage
for land speculation and land companies of every
kind. The private correspondence of almost all the
public men of the period, from Washington, Madi
son, and Gouverneur Morris down, is full of the
subject. Innumerable people of position and influ
ence dreamed of acquiring untold wealth in this
manner. Almost every man of note was actually
or potentially a land speculator; and in turn almost
every prominent pioneer from Clark and Boone to
Shelby and Robertson was either himself one of the
speculators or an agent for those who were. Many
people did not understand the laws on the subject, or
hoped to evade them; and the hope was as strong

very properly insisting on what earlier historians ignored,
the intense desire for land speculation.

8 The Winning of the West

in the breast of the hunter, who made a "tomahawk
claim" by blazing a few trees, and sold it for a small
sum to a new-comer, as in that of the well-to-do-
schemer, who bought an Indian title for a song, and
then got what he could from all outsiders who came
in to dwell on the land.

This speculative spirit was a powerful stimulus
to the settlement not only of Kentucky, but of
middle Tennessee. Henderson's claim included the
Cumberland country, and when North Carolina an
nulled his rights, she promised him a large but in
definitely located piece of land in their place. He
tried to undersell the State in the land market, and
undoubtedly his offers had been among the main
causes that induced Robertson and his associates to
go to the Cumberland when they did. But at the
time it was uncertain whether Cumberland lay in
Virginia or North Carolina, as the line was not run
by the surveyors until the following spring; and
Robertson went up to see Clark, because it was ru
mored that the latter had the disposal of Virginia
"cabin-rights"; under which each man could, for a
small sum, purchase a thousand acres, on condition
of building a cabin and raising a crop. However,
as it turned out, he might have spared himself the
journey, for the settlement proved to be well within
the Carolina boundary.

In the fall very many men came out to the new
settlement, guided thither by Robertson and Man-
sker; the former persuading a number who were
bound to Kentucky to come to the Cumberland in-

The War in the Northwest 9

stead. Among them were two or three of the Long
Hunters, whose wanderings had done so much to
make the country known. Robertson's special part
ner was a man named John Donelson. The latter
went by water and took a large party of immigrants,
including all the women and children, down the
Tennessee, and thence up the Ohio and Cumber
land to the Bluff or French Lick.7 Among them
were Robertson's entire family, and Donelson's
daughter Rachel, the future wife of Andrew Jack
son, who missed by so narrow a margin being mis
tress of the White House. Robertson, meanwhile,
was to lead the rest of the men by land, so that they
should get there first and make ready for the com
ing of their families.

Robertson's party started in the fall, being both
preceded and followed by other companies of set
tlers, some of whom were accompanied by their
wives and children. Cold weather of extraordinary
severity set in during November; for this was the
famous "hard winter" of '79-80, during which the
Kentucky settlers suffered so much. They were not
molested by Indians, and reached the Bluff about
Christmas. The river was frozen solid, and they
all crossed the ice in a body; when in mid-stream
the ice jarred, and — judging from the report — the
jar or crack must have gone miles up and down
the stream; but the ice only settled a little and did

1 The plan was that Robertson should meet this party at
the Muscle Shoals, and that they should go from thence
overland; but owing to the severity of the winter, Robert
son could not get to the shoals.

io The Winning of the West

not break. By January first there were over two
hundred people scattered on both sides of the river.
In Robertson's company was a man named John
Rains, who brought with him twenty-one horned
cattle and seventeen horses; the only cattle and
horses which any of the immigrants succeeded in
bringing to the Cumberland. But he was not the
only man who had made the attempt. One of the
immigrants who went in Donelson's flotilla, Daniel
Dunham by name, offered his brother John, who
went by land, £100 to drive along his horses and
cattle. John accepted, and tried his best to fulfil
his share of the bargain; but he was seemingly
neither a very expert woodsman nor yet a good
stock hand. There is no form of labor more ardu
ous and dispiriting than driving unruly and un
broken stock along a faint forest or mountain trail,
especially in bad weather; and this the would-be
drover speedily found out. The animals would not
follow the trail; they incessantly broke away from
it, got lost, scattered in the brush, and stampeded
at night. Finally the unfortunate John, being, as
he expressed it, nearly "driven mad by the drove,"
abandoned them all in the wilderness.8

The settlers who came by water passed through
much greater peril and hardship. By a stroke of
good fortune the journal kept by Donelson, the
leader of the expedition, has been preserved.9 As

8 MSS. on "Dunham Pioneers," in Nashville Hist. Society.
Daniel, a veteran stockman, was very angry when he heard
what had happened.

9 Original MS. "Journal of Voyage intended by God's per-

The War in the Northwest n

with all the other recorded wanderings and explora
tions of these backwoods adventurers, it must be
remembered that while this trip was remarkable in
itself, it is especially noteworthy because, out of
many such, it is the only one of which we have a full
account. The adventures that befell Donelson's com
pany differed in degree, but not in kind, from those
that befell the many similar flotillas that followed
or preceded him. From the time that settlers first
came to the upper Tennessee valley occasional hardy
hunters had floated down the stream in pirogues, or
hollowed out tree-trunks. Before the Revolution a
few restless emigrants had adopted this method of
reaching Natchez ; some of them made the long and
perilous trip in safety, others were killed by the
Chickamaugas or else foundered in the whirlpools,
or on the shoals. The spring before Donelson
started, a party of men, women and children, in
forty canoes or pirogues, went down the Tennessee
to settle in the newly conquered Illinois country,
and skirmished with the Cherokees on their way.10

mission in the good boat Adventure from Fort Patrick Henry
of Holston River to the French Salt Springs on Cumberland
River, kept by John Donelson." An abstract, with some tra
ditional statements interwoven, is given by Hay wood; the
journal itself, with some inaccuracies, and the name of the
writer misspelt by Ramsey; and in much better and fuller
shape by A. N. Putnam in his "History of Middle Tennes
see." I follow the original, in the Nash. Hist. Soc.
10 State Department MSS., No. 51, Vol. II, p. 45:
"JAMES COLBERT TO CHAS. STUART

"CHICKASAW NATION, May 25, 1779.

"SiR", — I was this day informed that there is forty large
Cannoes loaded with men women and children passed by here

12 The Winning of the West

Donelson's flotilla, after being joined by a num
ber of other boats, especially at the mouth of the
Clinch, consisted of some thirty craft, all told — flat-
boats, dug-outs, and canoes. There were probably
two or three hundred people, perhaps many more, in
the company; among them, as the journal records,
"James Robertson's lady and children," the latter
to the number of five. The chief boat, the flag
ship of the flotilla, was the Adventure, a great scow,
in which there were over thirty men, besides the
families of some of them.

They embarked at Holston, Long Island, on De
cember 22d, but falling water and heavy frosts de
tained them two months, and the voyage did not
really begin until they left Cloud Creek on Febru-

down the Cherokee River who on their way down they took
a Dellaway Indian prisoner & kept him till they found out
what Nation he was of — they told him they had come from
Long Island and were on their way to Illinois with an intent
to settle — Sir I have some reason to think they are a party of
Rebels My reason is this after they left the Dellaway Indian
at liberty they met with some Cherokees whom they endeav
oured to decoy, but finding they would not be decoyed they
fired on them but they all made their Escape with the Loss
of their arms and ammunition and one fellow wounded, who
arrived yesterday. The Dellaway informs me that Lieut.
Governor Hamilton is defeated and himself taken prisoner,"
etc.

It is curious that none of the Tennessee annalists have no
ticed the departure of this expedition ; very, very few of the
deeds and wanderings of the old frontiersmen have been re
corded ; and in consequence historians are apt to regard these
few as being exceptional, instead of typical. Donelson was
merely one of a hundred leaders of flotillas that went down
the Western rivers at this time.

The War in the Northwest 13

ary 27, 1780. The first ten days were uneventful.
The Adventure spent an afternoon and night on a
shoal, until the water fortunately rose, and, all the
men getting out, the clumsy scow was floated off.
Another boat was driven on the point of an island
and sunk, her crew being nearly drowned; where
upon the rest of the flotilla put to shore, the sunken
boat was raised and bailed out, and most of her
cargo recovered. At one landing-place a man went
out to hunt, and got lost, not being taken up again
for three days, though "many guns were fired to
fetch him in," and the four-pounder on the Adven
ture was discharged for the same purpose. A ne
gro became "much frosted in his feet and legs, of
which he died." Where the river was wide a strong
wind and high sea forced the whole flotilla to lay
to, for the sake of the smaller craft. This happened
on March 7th, just before coming to the uppermost
Chickamauga town; and that night, the wife of
one Ephraim Peyton, who had himself gone with
Robertson overland, was delivered of a child. She
was in a boat whose owner was named Jonathan
Jennings.

The next morning they soon came to an Indian
village on the south shore. The Indians made signs
of friendliness, and two men started toward them
in a canoe which the Adventure had in tow, while
the flotilla drew up on the opposite side of the river.
But a half-breed and some Indians jumped into a
pirogue, paddled out to meet the two messengers,
and advised them to return to their comrades, which

14 The Winning of the West

they did. Several canoes then came off from the
shore to the flotilla. The Indians who were in them
seemed friendly and were pleased with the presents
they received ; but while these were being distributed
the whites saw a number of other canoes putting
off, loaded with armed warriors, painted black and
red. The half-breed instantly told the Indians round
about to paddle to the shore, and warned the whites
to push off at once, at the same time giving them
some instructions about the river. The armed In
dians went down along the shore for some time as
if to intercept them ; but at last they were seemingly
left behind.

In a short time another Indian village was
reached, where the warriors tried in vain to lure the
whites ashore; and as the boats were hugging the
opposite bank, they were suddenly fired at by a party
in ambush, and one man slain. Immediately after
ward a much more serious tragedy occurred. There
was with the flotilla a boat containing twenty-eight
men, women, and children, among whom small-pox
had broken out. To guard against infection, it was
agreed that it should keep well in the rear; being
warned each night by the sound of a horn when it
was time to go into camp.

As this forlorn boat-load of unfortunates came
along, far behind the others, the Indians, seeing its
defenceless position, sallied out in their canoes, and
butchered or captured all who were aboard. Their
cries were distinctly heard by the rearmost of the
other craft, who could not stem the current and come

The War in the Northwest 15

to their rescue. But a dreadful retribution fell on
the Indians; for they were infected with the dis
ease of their victims, and for some months virulent
small-pox raged among many of the bands of Creeks
and Cherokees. When stricken by the disease, the
savages first went into the sweat-houses, and when
heated to madness, plunged into the cool streams,
and so perished in multitudes.

When the boats entered the Narrows they had
lost sight of the Indians on shore, and thought they
had left them behind. A man, who was in a canoe,
had gone aboard one of the larger boats with his
family, for the sake of safety while passing through
the rough water. His canoe was towed alongside,
and in the rapids it was overturned, and the cargo
lost. The rest of the company, pitying his distress
over the loss of all his worldly goods, landed, to see
if they could not help him recover some of his prop
erty. Just as they got out on the shore to walk
back, the Indians suddenly appeared almost over
them, on the high cliffs opposite, and began to fire,
causing a hurried retreat to the boats. For some
distance the Indians lined the bluffs, firing from the
heights into the boats below. Yet only four people
were wounded, and they not dangerously. One of
them was a girl named Nancy Gower. When, by
the sudden onslaught of the Indians, the crew of
the boat in which she was were thrown into dismay,
she took the helm and steered, exposed to the fire
of the savages. A ball went through the upper part
of one of her thighs, but she neither flinched nor

1 6 The Winning of the West

uttered any cry ; and it was not known that she was
wounded until, after the danger was past, her mother
saw the blood soaking through her clothes. She
recovered, married one of the frontiersmen, and
lived for fifty years afterward, long enough to see
all the wilderness filled with flourishing and popu
lous States.

One of the clumsy craft, however, did not share
the good fortune that befell the rest, in escaping
with so little loss and damage. Jonathan Jennings'
boat, in which was Mrs. Peyton, with her new-born
baby, struck on a rock at the upper end of the whirl,
the swift current rendering it impossible for the
others to go to his assistance; and they drifted by,
leaving him to his fate. The Indians soon turned
their whole attention to him, and from the bluffs
opened a most galling fire upon the disabled boat.
He returned it as well as he could, keeping them
somewhat in check, for he was a most excellent
marksman. At the same time he directed his two
negroes, a man and woman, his nearly grown son,
and a young man who was with him, to lighten the
boat by throwing his goods into the river. Before
this was done, the negro man, the son, and the other
young man most basely jumped into the river, and
swam ashore. It is satisfactory to record that at
least two of the three dastards met the fate they de
served. The negro was killed in the water, and the
other two captured, one of them being afterward
burned at the stake, while the other, it is said, was
ultimately released. Meanwhile Mrs. Jennings, as-

The War in the Northwest 17

sisted by the negro woman and Mrs. Peyton, actu
ally succeeded in shoving the lightened boat off the
rock, though their clothes were cut in many places
by the bullets; and they rapidly drifted out of dan
ger. The poor little baby was killed in the hurry
and confusion; but its mother, not eighteen hours
from child-bed, in spite of the cold, wet, and exer
tion, kept in good health. Sailing by night as well
as day, they caught up with the rest of the flotilla
before dawn on the second morning afterward, the
men being roused from their watch-fires by the cries
of "help poor Jennings," as the wretched and worn-
out survivors in the disabled boat caught the first
glimpse of the lights on shore.

Having successfully run the gauntlet of the
Chickamauga banditti, the flotilla was not again mo
lested by the Indians, save once when the boats
that drifted near shore were fired on by a roving
war party, and five men wounded. They ran over
the great Muscle Shoals in about three hours with
out accident, though the boats scraped on the bot
tom here and there. The swift, broken water surged
into high waves, and roared through the piles of
driftwood that covered the points of the small isl
ands, round which the currents ran in every direc
tion ; and those among the men who were unused to
river- work were much relieved when they found
themselves in safety. One night, after the fires had
been kindled, the tired travelers were alarmed by
the barking of the dogs. Fearing that Indians were
near by, they hastily got into the boats and crossed

1 8 The Winning of the West

to camp on the opposite shore. In the morning two
of them returned to pick up some things that had
been left ; they found that the alarm had been false,
for the utensils that had been overlooked in the con
fusion were undisturbed, and a negro who had been
left behind in the hurry was still sleeping quietly
by the camp-fires.

On the 2Oth of the month they reached the Ohio.
Some of the boats then left for Natchez, and others
for the Illinois country ; while the remainder turned
their prows up stream, to stem the rapid current —
a task for which they were but ill-suited. The work
was very hard, the provisions were nearly gone,
and the crews were almost worn out by hunger and
fatigue. On the 24th they entered the mouth of the
Cumberland. The Adventure, the heaviest of all
the craft, got much help from a small square-sail
that was set in the bow.

Two days afterward the hungry party killed some
buffalo, and feasted on the lean meat, and the next
day they shot a swan "which was very delicious,"
as Donelson recorded. Their meal was exhausted
and they could make no more bread; but buffalo
were plenty and they hunted them steadily for their
meat ; and they also made what some of them called
"Shawnee salad" from a kind of green herb that
grew in the bottoms.

On the last day of the month they met Col. Rich
ard Henderson, who had just come out and was
running the line between Virginia and North Caro
lina. The crews were so exhausted that the progress

\

The War in the Northwest 19

of the boats became very slow, and it was not until
April 24th that they reached the Big Salt Lick, and
found Robertson awaiting them. The long, toil
some, and perilous voyage had been brought to a
safe end.

There were then probably nearly five hundred set
tlers on the Cumberland, one half of them being
able-bodied men in the prime of life.11 The central
station, the capital of the little community, was that
at the Bluff, where Robertson built a little stock
aded hamlet and called it Nashborough ;12 it was of
the usual type of small frontier forted town. Other
stations were scattered along both sides of the river ;
some were stockades, others merely block-houses,
with the yard and garden inclosed by stout palings.
As with all similar border forts or stations, these
were sometimes called by the name of the founder;
more rarely they were named with reference to some
natural object, such as the river, ford, or hill by
which they were, or commemorated some deed, or
the name of a man the frontiersmen held in honor;
and occasionally they afforded true instances of
clan-settlement and clan-nomenclature, several kin
dred families of the same name building a village
which grew to be called after them. Among these

11 Two hundred and fifty-six names are subscribed to the
compact of government; and in addition there were the
women, children, the few slaves, and such men as did not
sign.

12 After A. Nash ; he was the Governor of North Carolina ;
where he did all he could on the patriot side. See Gates
MSS. Sept. 7, 1780.

2o The Winning of the West

Cumberland stations was Mansker's (usually called
Kasper's or Gaspers — he was not particular how his
name was spelled), Stone River, Bledsoe's, Freed-
land's, Eatons', Clover-Bottom, and Fort Union.

As the country where they had settled belonged
to no tribe of Indians, some of the people thought
they would not be molested, and, being eager to
take up the best lands, scattered out to live on sepa
rate claims. Robertson warned them that they would
soon suffer from the savages; and his words speed
ily came true — whereupon the outlying cabins were
deserted and all gathered within the stockades. In
April roving parties of Delawares, Chickasaws, and
Choctaws began to harass the settlement. As in
Kentucky, so on the banks of the Cumberland, the
Indians were the first to begin the conflict. The
lands on which the whites settled were uninhabited,
and were claimed as hunting-grounds by many hos
tile tribes ; so that it is certain that no one tribe had
any real title to them.

True to their customs and traditions, and to their
race-capacity for self-rule, the settlers determined
forthwith to organize some kind of government un
der which justice might be done among themselves,
and protection afforded against outside attack. Not
only had the Indians begun their ravages, but turbu
lent and disorderly whites were also causing trouble.
Robertson, who had been so largely instrumental in
founding the Watauga settlement, and giving it
laws, naturally took the lead in organizing this, the
second community which he had caused to spring

The War in the Northwest 21

up in the wilderness. He summoned a meeting of
delegates from the various stations, to be held at
Nashborough ;13 Henderson being foremost in ad
vocating the adoption of the plan.

In fact, Henderson,' the treaty-maker and land-
speculator, whose purchase first gave the whites
clear color of title to the valleys of the Kentucky
and Cumberland, played somewhat the same part,
though on a smaller scale, in the settlement made by
Robertson as in that made by Boone. He and the
Virginian commissioner, Walker, had surveyed the
boundary line and found that the Cumberland set
tlements were well to the south of it. He then
claimed the soil as his under the Cherokee deed;
and disposed of it to the settlers who contracted to
pay ten dollars a thousand acres. This was but a
fraction of the State price, so the settlers were all
eager to hold under Henderson's deed; one of the
causes of their coming out had been the chance of
getting land so cheap. But Henderson's claim was
annulled by the legislature, and the satisfaction-piece
of 200,000 acres allotted him was laid off elsewhere ;
so his contracts with the settlers came to nothing,
and they eventually got title in the usual way from
North Carolina. They suffered no loss in the mat
ter, for they had merely given Henderson promises
to pay when his title was made good.

13 It is to Putnam that we owe the publication of the com
pact of government, and the full details of the methods and
proceedings by which it was organized and carried on. See
"History of Middle Tennessee," pp. 84-103.

22 The Winning of the West

The settlers, by their representatives, met together
at Nashborough, and on May i, 1780, entered into
articles of agreement or a compact of government.
It was doubtless drawn up by Robertson, with per
haps the help of Henderson, and was modeled upon
what may be called the "constitution" of Watauga,
with some hints from that of Transylvania.14 The
settlers ratified the deeds of their delegates on May
1 3th, when they signed the articles, binding them
selves to obey them to the number of two hundred
and fifty-six men. The signers practically guaran
teed one another their rights in the land, and their
personal security against wrong-doers; those who
did not sign were treated as having no rights what
ever — a proper and necessary measure as it was es
sential that the naturally lawless elements should be
forced to acknowledge some kind of authority.

The compact provided that the affairs of the com
munity should be administered by a Court or Com
mittee of twelve Judges, Triers or General Arbitra
tors, to be elected in the different stations by vote
of all the freemen in them who were over twenty-
one years of age. Three of the Triers were to come

14 Phelan, the first historian who really grasped what this
movement meant, and to what it was due, gives rather too
much weight to the part Henderson played. Henderson cer
tainly at this time did not aspire to form a new State on the
Cumberland ; the compact especially provided for the speedy
admission of Cumberland as a county of North Carolina.
The marked difference between the Transylvania and the
Cumberland "constitutions," and the close agreement of
the latter with the Watauga articles, assuredly point to
Robertson as the chief author.

The War in the Northwest 23

from Nashborough, two from Mansker's, two from
Bledsoe's, and one from each of five other named
stations.15 Whenever the freemen of any station
were dissatisfied with their Triers, they could at
once call a new election, at which others might be
chosen in their stead. The Triers had no salaries,
but the Clerk of the Court was allowed some very
small fees, just enough to pay for the pens, ink, and
paper, all of them scarce commodities.16 The Court
had jurisdiction in all cases of conflict over land
titles; a land office being established and an entry
taker appointed. Over half of the compact was de
voted to the rules of the land office. The Court,
acting by a majority of its members, was to have
jurisdiction for the recovery of debt or damages,
and to be allowed to tax costs. Three Triers were
competent to make a Court to decide a case where
the debt or damage was a hundred dollars or less;
and there was no appeal from their decision. For
a larger sum an appeal lay to the whole Court. The
Court appointed whomsoever it pleased to see de
cisions executed. It had power to punish all of
fences against the peace of the community, all mis
demeanors and criminal acts, provided only that its

15 Putnam speaks of these men as "notables"; apparently
they called themselves as above. Putnam's book contains
much very valuable information; but it is written in -most
curious style and he interlards it with outside matter ; much
that he puts in quotation marks is apparently his own ma
terial. It is difficult to make out whether his "tribunal of
notables" is his own expression or a quotation, but appar
ently it is the former.

" Haywood, 126.

24 The Winning of the West

decisions did not go so "far as to affect the life of the
criminal. If the misdeed of the accused was such as
to be dangerous to the State, or one "for which the
benefit of clergy was taken away by law," he was
to be bound and sent under guard to some place
where he could be legally dealt with. The Court
levied fines, payable in money or provisions, entered
up judgments and awarded executions, and granted
letters of administration upon estates of deceased
persons, and took bonds "payable to the chairman of
the Committee." The expenses were to be paid pro
portionately by the various settlers. It was pro
vided, in view of the Indian incursions, that the mi
litia officers elected at the various stations should
have power to call out the militia when they deemed
it necessary to repel or pursue the enemy. They
were also given power to fine such men as disobeyed
them, and to impress horses if need be; if damaged,
the horses were to be paid for by the people of the
station in the proportion the Court might direct. It
was expressly declared that the compact was de
signed as a "temporary method of restraining the
licentious" ; that the settlement did not desire to be
exempt from the ratable share of the expense for
the Revolutionary War, and earnestly asked that
North Carolina would immediately make it part of
the State, erecting it into a county. Robertson was
elected chairman of the Court, and colonel of the
militia, being thus made both civil and military com
mandant of the settlement. In common with the
other Triers he undertook the solemnization of mar-

The War in the Northwest 25

riages ; and these were always held legal, which was
fortunate, as it was a young and vigorous commu
nity, of which the members were much given to
early wedlock.

Thus a little commonwealth, a self-governing
state, was created. It was^ an absolute democracy,
the majority of freemen of full age in each stockade
having power in every respect, and being able not
only to elect, but to dismiss their delegates at any
moment. Their own good sense and a feeling of
fair play could be depended upon to protect the
rights of the minority, especially as a minority of
such men would certainly not tolerate anything even
remotely resembling tyranny. They had formed a
representative government in which the legislative
and judicial functions were not separated, and were
even to a large extent combined with the executive.
They had proceeded in an eminently practical man
ner, having modeled their system on what was to
them the familiar governmental unit of the county
with its county court and county militia officers.
They made the changes that their peculiar position
required, grafting the elective and representative
systems on the one they adopted, and of course
enlarging the scope of the court's action. Their
compact was thus in some sort an unconscious re
production of the laws and customs of the old-time
court-leet, profoundly modified to suit the peculiar
needs of backwoods life, the intensely democratic
temper of the pioneers and above all the military
necessities of their existence. They had certain

VOL. VII.— 2

26 The Winning of the West

theories of liberty and justice; but they were too
shrewd and hard-headed to try to build up a gov
ernment on an entirely new foundation, when they
had ready to hand materials with which they were
familiar. They knew by experience the workings
of the county system; all they did was to alter the
immediate channel from which the court drew its
powers, and to adapt the representation to the needs
of a community where constant warfare obliged the
settlers to gather in little groups, which served as
natural units.

When the settlers first came to the country they
found no Indians living in it, no signs of cultivation
or cleared land, and nothing to show that for ages
past it had been inhabited. It was a vast plain, cov
ered with woods and canebrakes, through which
the wild herds had beaten out broad trails. The
only open places were the licks, sometimes as large
as corn-fields, where the hoofs of the game had
trodden the ground bare of vegetation, and chan
neled its surface with winding seams and gullies.
It is even doubtful if the spot of bare ground which
Mansker called an "old field" or sometimes a
"Chickasaw old field" was not merely one of these
licks. Buffalo, deer, and bear abounded ; elk, wolves,
and panthers were plentiful.

Yet there were many signs that in long bygone
times a numerous population had dwelt in the land.
Round every spring were many graves, built in a
peculiar way, and covered eight or ten inches deep
by mould. In some places there were earth-covered

The War in the Northwest 27

foundations of ancient walls and embankments that
inclosed spaces of eight or ten acres. The Indians
knew as little as the whites about these long-van
ished mound-builders, and were utterly ignorant of
the race to which they had belonged.17

For some months the whites who first arrived
dwelt in peace. But in the spring, hunting and war
parties from various tribes began to harass the set
tlers. Unquestionably the savages felt jealous of
the white hunters, who were killing and driving
away the game, precisely as they all felt jealous of
one another, and for the same reason. The Chicka-
saws in particular were much irritated by the fort
Clark had built at Iron Bank, on the Mississippi. But
the most powerful motive for the attacks was doubt
less simply the desire for scalps and plunder. They
gathered from different quarters to assail the col
onists, just as the wild beasts gathered to prey on
the tame herds.

The Indians began to commit murders, kill the
stock, and drive off the horses in April, and their
ravages continued unceasingly throughout the year.
Among the slain was a son of Robertson, and also
the unfortunate Jonathan Jennings, the man who
had suffered such loss when his boat was passing
the whirl of the Tennessee River. The settlers
were shot as they worked on their clearings, gath-

" Haywood. At present it is believed that the mound-
builders were Indians. Haywood is the authority for the
early Indian wars of the Cumberland settlement, Putnam
supplying some information.

28 The Winning of the West

ered the corn crops, or ventured outside the walls
of the stockades. Hunters were killed as they
stooped to drink at the springs, or lay in wait at
the licks. They were lured up to the Indians by
imitations of the gobbling of a turkey or the cries
of wild beasts. They were regularly stalked as they
still-hunted the game, or were ambushed as they
returned with their horses laden with meat. The
inhabitants of one station were all either killed or
captured. Robertson led pursuing parties after one
or two of the bands, and recovered some plunder;
and once or twice small marauding parties were met
and scattered, with some loss, by the hunters. But,
on the whole, very little could be done at first to
parry or revenge the strokes of the Indians.18

Horses and cattle had been brought into the new
settlement in some number during the year; but
the savages killed or drove off most of them, shoot
ing the hogs and horned stock, and stealing the
riding animals. The loss of the milch cows in par-

18 Putnam, p. 107, talks as if the settlers were utterly un
used to Indian warfare, saying that until the first murder
occurred, in this spring, "few, if any" of them had ever
gazed on the victim of scalping-knife and tomahawk. This
is a curiously absurd statement. Many of the settlers were
veteran Indian fighters. Almost all of them had been born
and brought up on the frontier, amid a succession of Indian
wars. It is, unfortunately, exceedingly difficult in Putnam's
book to distinguish the really valuable authentic information
it contains from the interwoven tissue of matter written
solely to suit his theory of dramatic effect. He puts in with
equal gravity the "Articles of Agreement" and purely ficti
tious conversation, jokes, and the like. (See pp. 126, 144,
and passim. )

The War in the Northwest 29

ticular, was severely felt by the women. Moreover,
there were heavy freshets, flooding the low bottoms
on which the corn had been planted, and destroying
most of the crop.

These accumulated disasters wrought the greatest
discouragement among the settlers. Many left the
country, and most of the remainder, when midsum
mer was past, began to urge that they should all go
back in a body to the old settlements. The panic
became very great. One by one the stockades were
deserted, until finally all the settlers who remained
were gathered in Nashborough and Freelands.19
The Cumberland country would have been aban
doned to the Indians, had Robertson not shown
himself to be exactly the man for whom the crisis
called.

Robertson was not a dashing, brilliant Indian
fighter and popular frontier leader, like Sevier. He
had rather the qualities of Boone, with the differ
ence that he was less a wandering hunter and ex
plorer, and better fitted to be head of a settled com
munity. He was far-seeing, tranquil, resolute, un
shaken by misfortune and disaster; a most trust
worthy man, with a certain severe fortitude of tem
per. All people naturally turned to him in time of
panic, when the ordinarily bold and daring became
cowed and confused. The straits to which the set
tlers were reduced, and their wild clamor for im-

19 By some accounts there were also a few settlers left in
Eaton's Station ; and Mansker's was rarely entirely deserted
for any length of time.

30 The Winning of the West

mediate flight, the danger from the Indians, the
death of his own son all combined failed to make
him waver one instant in his purpose. He strongly
urged on the settlers the danger of flight through
the wilderness. He did not attempt to make light
of the perils that confronted them if they remained,
but he asked them to ponder well if the beauty and
fertility of the land did not warrant some risk being
run to hold it, now that it was won. They were at
last in a fair country fitted for the homes of their
children. Now was the time to keep it. If they
abandoned it, they would lose all the advantages
they had gained, and would be forced to suffer the
like losses and privations if they ever wished to
retake possession of it or of any similar tract of
land. He, at least, would not turn back, but would
stay to the bitter end.

His words and his steadfast bearing gave heart
to the settlers, and they no longer thought of flight.
As their corn had failed them they got their food
from the woods. Some gathered quantities of wal
nuts, hickory-nuts, and shellbarks, and the hunters
wrought havoc among the vast herds of game.
During the early winter one party of twenty men
that went up Caney Fork on a short trip, killed one
hundred and five bears, seventy-five buffaloes, and
eighty-seven deer, and brought the flesh and hides
back to the stockades in canoes; so that through
the winter there was no lack of jerked and smoke-
dried meat.

The hunters were very accurate marksmen ; game

The War in the Northwest 31

was plenty, and not shy, and so they got up close
and rarely wasted a shot. Moreover, their small
bore rifles took very little powder; in fact the need
of excessive economy in the use of ammunition
when on their long hunting-trips was one of the
chief reasons for the use of small bores. They
therefore used comparatively little ammunition.
Nevertheless, by the beginning of winter both
powder and bullets began to fail. In this emergency
Robertson again came to the front to rescue the
settlement he had founded and preserved. He was
accustomed to making long, solitary journeys
through the forest, unmindful of the Indians; he
had been one of the first to come from North Caro
lina to Watauga; he had repeatedly been on peril
ous missions to the Cherokees; he had the previous
year gone north to the Illinois country to meet
Clark. He now announced that he would himself
go to Kentucky and bring back the needed ammuni
tion; and at once set forth on his journey, across
the long stretches of snow-powdered barrens, and
desolate, Indian-haunted woodland.

CHAPTER VIII

THE CUMBERLAND SETTLEMENTS TO THE CLOSE
OF THE REVOLUTION, 1781-1783

OBERTSON passed unharmed through the
1 \ wilderness to Kentucky. There he procured
plenty of powder, and without delay set out on his
return journey to the Cumberland. As before,
he traveled alone through the frozen woods, trusting
solely to his own sharp senses for his safety.

In the evening of January 15, 1781, he reached
Freeland's Station, and was joyfully received by
the inmates. They supped late, and then sat up
for some time, talking over many matters. When
they went to bed all were tired, and neglected to
take the usual precautions against surprise; more
over, at that season they did not fear molestation.
They slept heavily, none keeping watch. Robert
son alone was wakeful and suspicious; and even
during his light slumbers his keen and long-trained
senses were on the alert.

At midnight all was still. The moon shone
brightly down on the square block-houses and
stockaded yard of the lonely little frontier fort;
its rays lit up the clearing, and by contrast dark
ened the black shadows of the surrounding forest.
None of the sleepers within the log-walls dreamed
(32)

The War in the Northwest 33

of danger. Yet their peril was imminent. An In
dian war band was lurking near by, and was on the
point of making an effort to carry Freeland's Sta
tion by an attack in the darkness. In the dead of
the night the attempt was made. One by one the
warriors left the protection of the tangled wood-
growth, slipped silently across the open space, and
crouched under the heavy timber pickets of the
palisades, until all had gathered together. Though
the gate was fastened with a strong bar and chain,
the dexterous" savages finally contrived to open it.
In so doing they made a slight noise, which
caught Robertson's quick ear, as he lay on his
buffalo-hide pallet. Jumping up he saw the gate
open, and dusky figures gliding into the yard with
stealthy swiftness. At his cry of "Indians," and
the report of his piece, the settlers sprang up, every
man grasping the loaded arm by which he slept.
From each log cabin the rifles cracked and flashed;
and though the Indians were actually in the yard
they had no cover, and the sudden and unexpected
resistance caused them to hurry out much faster
than they had come in. Robertson shot one of their
number, and they in return killed a white man who
sprang out-of-doors at the first alarm. When they
were driven out the gate was closed after them;
but they fired through the loopholes; especially into
one of the block-houses, where the chinks had not
been filled with mud, as in the others. They thus
killed a negro, and wounded one or two other men :
yet they were soon driven off. Robertson's return

34 The Winning of the West

had been at a most opportune moment. As so often
before and afterward, he had saved the settlement
from destruction.

Other bands of Indians joined the war party, and
they continued to hover about the stations, daily
inflicting loss and damage on the settlers. They
burned down the cabins and fences, drove off the
stock and killed the hunters, the women and chil
dren who ventured outside the walls, and the men
who had gone back to their deserted stockades.1

On the 2d day of April another effort was made
by a formidable war party to get possession of one
of the two remaining stations — Freeland's and
Nashborough — and thus, at a stroke, drive the
whites from the Cumberland district. This time
Nashborough was the point aimed at.

A large body2 of Cherokees approached the fort

1 Hay wood says they burned "immense quantities of corn" ;
as Putnam points out, the settlers could have had very little
corn to burn. Haywood is the best authority for the Indian
fighting in the Cumberland district during '80, *8i, and '82.
Putnam supplies some details learned from Mrs. Robertson
in her old age. The accounts are derived mainly from the
statements of old settlers; but the Robertsons seem always
to have kept papers, which served to check off the oral state
ments. For all the important facts there is* good authority.
The annals are filled with name after name of men who were
killed by the Indians. The dates, and even the names, may
be misplaced in many of these instances; but this is really a
matter of no consequence, for their only interest is to show
the nature of the harassing Indian warfare, and the kind of
adventure then common.

8 How large it is impossible to say. One or two recent ac
counts make wild guesses, calling it 1,000; but this is sheer
nonsense ; it is more likely to have been roo.

The War in the Northwest 35

in the night, lying hid in the bushes, divided into
two parties. In the morning three of them came
near, fired at the fort, and ran off toward where the
smaller party lay ambushed, in a thicket through
which ran a little "branch." Instantly twenty men
mounted their horses and galloped after the decoys.
As they overtook the fugitives they saw the Indians
hid in the creek-bottom, and dismounted to fight,
turning their horses loose. A smart interchange of
shots followed, the whites having, if anything, rather
the best of it, when the other and larger body of
Indians rose from their hiding-place, in a clump of
cedars, and, running down, formed between the
combatants and the fort, intending to run into the
latter, mixed with the fleeing riflemen. The only
chance of the hemmed-in whites was to turn and
try to force their way back through their far more
numerous foes. This was a desperate venture, for
their pieces were all discharged, and there was no
time to reload them; but they were helped by two
unexpected circumstances. Their horses had taken
flight at the firing, and ran off toward the fort, pass
ing to one side of the intervening line of Indians;
and many of the latter, eager for such booty, ran off
to catch them. Meanwhile, the remaining men in
the fort saw what had happened, and made ready for
defence, while all the women likewise snatched up
guns or axes, and stood by loopholes and gate. The
dogs in the fort were also taking a keen interest in
what was going on. They were stout, powerful
animals, some being hounds and others watch-dogs,

36 The Winning of the West

but all accustomed to contests with wild beasts ; and
by instinct and training they mortally hated Indians.
Seeing the line of savages drawn up between the fort
and their masters, they promptly sallied out and
made a most furious onset upon their astonished
foes. Taking advantage of this most opportune di
version, the whites ran through the lines and got
into the fort, the Indians being completely occupied
in defending themselves from the dogs. Five of
the whites were killed, and they carried two wounded
men into the fort. Another man, when almost in
safety, was shot, and fell with a broken thigh; but
he had reloaded his gun as he ran, and he killed his
assailant as the latter ran up to scalp him. The
people from the fort then, by firing their rifles, kept
his foes at bay until he could be rescued; and he
soon recovered from his hurt. Yet another man
was overtaken almost under the walls, the Indian
punching him in the shoulder with the gun as he
pulled the trigger ; but the gun snapped, and a hunter
ran out of the fort and shot the Indian. The gates
were closed, and the whites all ready ; so the Indians
abandoned their effort and drew off. They had
taken five scalps and a number of horses; but they
had failed in their main object, and the whites had
taken two scalps, besides killing and wounding oth
ers of the red men, who were carried off by their
comrades.

After the failure of this attempt the Indians did
not, for some years, make any formidable attack on
any of the larger stations. Though the most dan-

The War in the Northwest 37

gerous of all foes on their own ground, their ex
treme caution, and dislike of suffering punishment
prevented them from ever making really determined
efforts to carry a fort openly by storm; moreover,
these stockades were really very defensible against
men unprovided with artillery, and there is no rea
son for supposing that any troops could have carried
them by fair charging, without suffering altogether
disproportionate loss. The red tribes acted in rela
tion to the Cumberland settlements exactly as they
had previously done toward those on the Kentucky
and Watauga. They harassed the settlers from the
outset ; but they did not wake up to the necessity for
a formidable and combined campaign against them
until it was too late for such a campaign to succeed.
If, at the first, any one of these communities had
been forced to withstand the shock of such Indian
armies as were afterward brought against it, it
would, of necessity, have been abandoned.

Throughout '81 and '82 the Cumberland settlers
were worried beyond description by a succession of
small war parties. In the first of these years they
raised no corn ; in the second they made a few crops
on fields they had cleared in 1780. No man's life
was safe for an hour, whether he hunted, looked
up strayed stock, went to the spring for water, or
tilled the fields. If two men were together, one al
ways watched while the other worked, ate, or drank ;
and they sat down back to back, or, if there were
several, in a ring, facing outward, like a covey of
quail. The Indians were especially fond of steal-

38 The Winning of the West

ing the horses; the whites pursued them in bands,
and occasionally pitched battles were fought, with
loss on both sides, and apparently as often resulting
in the favor of one party as of the other. The most
expert Indian fighters naturally became the leaders,
being made colonels and captains of the local militia.
The position and influence of the officers depended
largely on their individual prowess; they were the
actual, not titular, leaders of their men. Old Kasper
Mansker, one of the most successful, may be taken as
a type of the rest. He was ultimately made a colonel,
and shared in many expeditions ; but he always acted
as his own scout, and never would let any of his
men ride ahead or abreast of him, preferring to trust
to his own eyes and ears and knowledge of forest
warfare. The hunters, who were especially exposed
to danger, were also the men who inflicted most loss
on the Indians, and though many more of the set
tlers than of their foes were slain, yet the tables were
often turned on the latter, even by those who seemed
their helpless victims. Thus, once, two lads were
watching at a deer lick, when some Indians came to
it; each of the boys chose his man, fired, and then
fled homeward; coming back with some men they
found they had killed two Indians, whose scalps they
took.

The eagerness of the Indians to get scalps caused
them frequently to scalp their victims before life was
extinct; and, as a result, there were numerous in
stances in which the scalped unfortunate, whether
man, woman, or child, was rescued and recovered,

The War in the Northwest 39

living many years. One of these instances is worth
giving in the quaint language of the old Tennessee
historian, Haywood :

"In the spring of the year 1782 a party of Indians
fired upon three persons at French Lick, and broke
the arms of John Tucker and Joseph Hendricks, and
shot down David Hood, whom they scalped and
stamped, as he said, and followed the others toward
the fort ; the people of the fort came out and repulsed
them and saved the wounded men. Supposing the
Indians gone, Hood got up softly, wounded and
scalped as he was, and began to walk toward the
fort on the bluff, when, to his mortification, he saw,
standing upon the bank of the creek, a number of
Indians, the same who had wounded him before,
making sport of his misfortune and mistake. They
then fell upon him again, and having given him, in
several places, new wounds that were apparently
mortal, then left him. He fell into a brush heap in
the mow, and next morning was tracked and found
by his blood, and was placed as a dead man in one
of the outhouses, and was left alone; after some
time'he recovered, and lived many years."

Many of the settlers were killed, many others left
for Kentucky, Illinois, or Natchez, or returned to
their old homes among the Alleghanies; and in 1782
the inhabitants, who had steadily dwindled in num
bers, became so discouraged that they again mooted
the question of abandoning the Cumberland district

40 The Winning of the West

in a body. Only Robertson's great influence pre
vented this being done; but by word and example
he finally persuaded them to remain. The follow
ing spring brought the news of peace with Great
Britain. A large inflow of new settlers .began with
the new year, and though the Indian hostilities still
continued, the Cumberland country throve apace,
and by the end of 1783 the old stations had been
rebuilt and many new ones founded. Some of the
settlers began to live out on their clearings. Rude
little corn-mills and "hominy pounders" were built
beside some of the streams. The piles of furs and
hides that had accumulated in the stockades were
sent back to the coast country on pack-horses. Af
ter this year there was never any danger that the
settlements would be abandoned.

During the two years of petty but disastrous In
dian warfare that followed the attack on Freelands,
the harassed and diminishing settlers had been so
absorbed in the contest with the outside foe that
they had done little toward keeping up their own
internal government. When 1783 opened new set
tlers began to flock in, the Indian hostilities abated,
and commissioners arrived from North Carolina
under a strong guard, with the purpose of settling
the claim of the various settlers3 and laying off the
bounty lands promised to the Continental troops.4

8 Haywood. Six hundred and forty acres were allowed by
pre-emption claim to each family settled before June i, 1780;
after that date they had to make proper entries in the courts.
The salt-licks were to be held as public property.

4 Isaac Shelby was one of these commissioners.

The War in the Northwest 41

It therefore became necessary that the Committee
or Court of Triers should again be convened, to see
that justice was done as between man and man.

The ten men elected from the different stations
met at Nashborough on January 7th, Robertson be
ing again made chairman, as well as colonel of the
militia, while a proper clerk and sheriff were chosen.
Each member took a solemn oath to do equal justice
according to the best of his skill and ability. A
number of suits between the settlers themselves were
disposed of. These related to a variety of subjects.
A kettle had been "detained" from Humphry Ho-
gan; he brought suit, and it was awarded him, the
defendant "and his mother-in-law" being made to
pay the cost of the suit. A hog case, a horse used
in hunting, a piece of cleared ground, a bed which
had not been made according to contract, the own
ership of a canoe, and of a heifer, a "clevis lent and
delayed to be returned" — such were some of the
cases on which the judges had to decide. There
were occasional slander suits; for in a small back
woods community there is always much jealousy
and bitter gossip. When suit was brought for
"cattle won at cards," the committee promptly dis
missed the claim as illegal ; they evidently had clear
ideas as to what was good public policy. A man
making oath that another had threatened his life,
the latter was taken and put under bonds. Another
man produced a note of hand for the payment of
two good cows, "against John Sadler" ; he "proved
his accompt," and procured an attachment against

42 The Winning of the West

the estate of "Sd. Sadler." When possible, the
Committee compromised the cases, or advised the
parties to adjust matters between themselves. The
sheriff executed the various decrees, in due form;
he arrested the men who refused to pay heed to the
judgments of the court, and when necessary took
out of their "goods and chatties, lands and tene
ments," the damages awarded, and also the costs
and fees. The government was in the hands of men
who were not only law-abiding themselves but also
resolute to see that the law was respected by others.
The committee took cognizance of all affairs con
cerning the general welfare of the community.
They ordered roads to be built between the different
stations, appointing overseers who had power to
"call out hands to work on the same." Besides the
embodiment of all the full-grown men as militia, —
those of each station under their own captain, lieu
tenant, and ensign, — a diminutive force of paid
regulars was organized ; that is, six spies were "kept
out to discover the motions of the enemy so long
as we shall be able to pay them ; each to receive sev
enty-five bushels of Indian corn per month." They
were under the direction of Colonel Robertson, who
was head of all the branches of the government.
One of the committee's regulations followed an
economic principle of doubtful value. Some enter
prising individuals, taking advantage of the armed
escort accompanying the Carolina commissioners,
brought out casks of liquors. The settlers had
drunk nothing but water for many months, and they

The War in the Northwest 43

eagerly purchased the liquor, the merchants nat
urally charging all that the traffic would bear. This
struck the committee as a grievance, and they forth
with passed a decree that any person bringing in
liquor "from foreign ports," before selling the
same, must give bond that he would charge no
more than one silver dollar, or its value in merchan
dise, per quart.

Some of the settlers would not enter the associa
tion, preferring a condition of absolute freedom
from law. The committee, however, after waiting
a proper time, forced these men in by simply serv
ing notice that thereafter they would be treated as
beyond the pale of the law, not entitled to its pro
tection, but amenable to its penalties. A petition
was sent to the North Carolina Legislature, asking
that the protection of government should be ex
tended to the Cumberland people, and showing that
the latter were loyal and orderly, prompt to suppress
sedition and lawlessness, faithful to the United
States, and hostile to its enemies.5 To show their
good feeling the committee made every member of
the community, who had not already done so, take
the oath of abjuration and fidelity.

Until full governmental protection could be se
cured the commonwealth was forced to act as a lit
tle sovereign state, bent on keeping the peace, and
yet on protecting itself against aggression from the
surrounding powers, both red and white. It was

5 This whole account is taken from Putnam, who has ren
dered such inestimable service by preserving these records.

44 The Winning of the West

forced to restrain its own citizens, and to enter into
quasi-diplomatic relations with its neighbors. Thus
early this year fifteen men, under one Colbert, left
the settlements and went down the river in boats,
ostensibly to trade with the Indians, but really to
plunder the Spaniards on the Mississippi. They
were joined by some Chickasaws, and at first met
with some success in their piratical attacks, not only
on the Spanish trading-boats, but on those of
the French Creoles, and even the Americans, as well.
Finally they were repulsed in an attempt against
the Spaniards at Ozark; some were killed, and the
rest scattered.6 Immediately upon learning of these
deeds, the Committee of Triers passed stringent
resolutions forbidding all persons trading with the
Indians until granted a license by the committee,
and until they had furnished ample security for
their good behavior. The committee also wrote a
letter to the Spanish governor at New Orleans, dis
claiming all responsibility for the piratical misdeeds
of Colbert and his gang, and announcing the meas
ures they had taken to prevent any repetition of the
same in the future. They laid aside the sum of
twenty pounds to pay the expenses of the messen
gers who carried this letter to the Virginian "agent"
at the Illinois, whence it was forwarded to the Span
ish Governor.7

One of the most difficult questions with which
the committee had to deal was that of holding a

6 Calendar Va. State Papers, III, pp. 469. 527-
1 Putnam, pp. 185, 189, 191.

The War in the Northwest 45

treaty with the Indians. Commissioners came out
from Virginia and North Carolina especially to hold
such a treaty 8 ; but the settlers declined to allow it
until they had themselves decided on its advisability.
They feared to bring so many savages together, lest
they might commit some outrage, or be themselves
subjected to such at the hands of one of the many
wronged and reckless whites; and they knew that
the Indians would expect many presents, while there
was very little indeed to give them. Finally, the
committee decided to put the question of treaty or
no treaty to the vote of the freemen in the several
stations; and by a rather narrow majority it was
decided in the affirmative. The committee then
made arrangements for holding the treaty in June,
some four miles from Nashborough; and strictly
prohibited the selling of liquor to the savages. At
the appointed time many chiefs and warriors of the
Chickasaws, Cherokees, and even Creeks appeared.
There were various sports, such as ball-games and
foot-races; and the treaty was brought to a satis
factory conclusion.9 It did not put a complete stop
to the Indian outrages, but it greatly diminished
them. The Chickasaws thereafter remained friend
ly ; but, as usual, the Cherokee and Creek chiefs who
chose to attend were unable to bind those of their

8 Donelson, who was one of the men who became discour
aged and went to Kentucky, was the Virginian commis
sioner. Martin was the commissioner from North Carolina.
He is sometimes spoken of as if he likewise represented
Virginia.

9 Putnam, 196.

46 The Winning of the West

fellows who did not. The whole treaty was, in fact,
on both sides, of a merely preliminary nature. The
boundaries it arranged were not considered final
until confirmed by the treaty of Hopewell a couple
of years later.

Robertson meanwhile was delegated by the unani
mous vote of the settlers to go to the Assembly of
North Carolina, and there petition for the establish
ment of a regular land office at Nashborough, and
in other ways advance the interests of the settlers.
He was completely successful in his mission. The
Cumberland settlements were included in a new
county, called Davidson;10 and an Inferior Court of
Pleas and Common Sessions, vested by the act with
extraordinary powers, was established at Nashbor
ough. The four justices of the new court had all
been Triers of the old committee, and the scheme
of government was practically not very greatly
changed, although now resting on an indisputably
legal basis. The Cumberland settlers had for years
acted as an independent, law-abiding, and orderly
commonwealth, and the Court of Triers had shown
great firmness and wisdom. It spoke well for the
people that they had been able to establish such a
government, in which the majority ruled, while the
rights of each individual were secured. Robertson
deserves the chief credit as both civil and military
leader. The committee of which he was a member,

10 In honor of General Wm. Davidson, a very gallant and
patriotic soldier of North Carolina during the Revolutionary
war. The county government was established in October,
1783-

The War in the Northwest 47

had seen that justice was done between man and
man, had provided for defence against the outside
foe, and had striven to prevent any wrongs being
done to neutral or allied powers. When they be
came magistrates of a county of North Carolina
they continued to act on the lines they had already
marked out. The increase of population had brought
an increase of wealth. The settlers were still fron
tiersmen, clad in buckskin or homespun, with raw
hide moccasins, living in log-cabins, and sleeping
under bearskins on beds made of buffalo hides ; but
as soon as they ventured to live on their clearings
the ground was better tilled, corn became abundant
and cattle and hogs increased as the game dimin
ished. Nashborough began to look more like an or
dinary little border town.11

During this year Robertson carried on some cor
respondence with the Spanish governor at New
Orleans, Don Estevan Miro. This was the begin
ning of intercourse between the Western settlers
and the Spanish officers, an intercourse which was
absolutely necessary, though it afterward led to
many intrigues and complications. Robertson was
obliged to write to Miro not only to disclaim re
sponsibility for the piratical deeds of men like Col
bert, but also to protest against the conduct of cer
tain of the Spanish agents among the Creeks and
Chickamaugas. No sooner had hostilities ceased

11 The justices built a court-house and jail of hewed logs,
the former eighteen feet square, with a lean-to or shed of
twelve feet on one side. The contracts for building were let
out at vendue to the lowest bidder.

48 The Winning of the West

with the British than the Spaniards began to incite
the savages to take up once more the hatchet they
had just dropped,12 for Spain already recognized
in the restless borderers possible and formidable
foes.

Miro in answering Robertson assured him that
the Spaniards were very friendly to the Western
settlers, and denied that the Spanish agents were
stirring up trouble. He also told him that the
harassed Cherokees, weary of ceaseless warfare, had
asked permission to settle west of the Mississippi —
although they did not carry out their intention. He
ended by pressing Robertson and his friends to come
down and settle in Spanish territory, guaranteeing
them good treatment.13

In spite of Miro's fair words the Spanish agents
continued to intrigue against the Americans, and
especially against the Cumberland people. Yet
there was no open break. The Spanish governor
was felt to be powerful for both good and evil, and
at least a possible friend of the settlers. To many
of their leaders he showed much favor, and the
people as a whole were well impressed by him ; and
as a compliment to him they ultimately, when the
Cumberland counties were separated from those ly
ing to the eastward, united the former under the
name of Mero 14 District.

19 Calendar of Va. State Papers, III., 584, 608, etc.

13 Robertson MSS. As the letter is important I give it in
full in the Appendix.

14 So spelt; but apparently his true name was Miro.

CHAPTER IX

WHEN the first Continental Congress began
its sittings the only frontiersmen west of the
mountains, and beyond the limits of continuous set
tlement within the old Thirteen Colonies,1 were the
two or three hundred citizens of the little Watauga
commonwealth. When peace was declared with
Great Britain the backwoodsmen had spread west
ward, in groups, almost to the Mississippi, and they
had increased in number to some twenty-five thou
sand souls,2 of whom a few hundred dwelt in the
bend of the Cumberland, while the rest were about
equally divided between Kentucky and Holston.

TJiis great westward movement of armed settlers
was essentially one of conquest, no less than of
colonization. Thronging in with their wives and

1 This qualification is put in because there were already a
few families on the Monongahela, the head of the Kanawha,
and the upper Holston; but they were in close touch with
the people behind them.

* These figures are simply estimates; but they are based
on careful study and comparison, and though they must be
some hundreds, and maybe some thousands, out of the way,
are quite near enough for practical purposes.
VOL. VII.-3 (49)

50 The Winning of the West

children, their cattle, and their few household goods,
they won and held the land in the teeth of fierce
resistance, both from the Indian claimants of the
soil and from the representatives of a mighty and
arrogant European power. The chain of events
by which the winning was achieved is perfect; had
any link therein snapped it is likely that the final
result would have been failure. The wide wander
ings of Boone and his fellow hunters made the
country known and awakened in the minds of the
frontiersmen a keen desire to possess it. The build
ing of the Watauga commonwealth by Robertson
and Sevier gave a base of operations, and furnished
a model for similar communities to follow. Lord
Dunmore's war made the actual settlement possible,
for it cowed the northern Indians, and restrained
them from seriously molesting Kentucky during its
most feeble years. Henderson and Boone made
their great treaty with the Cherokees in 1775, and
then established a permanent colony far beyond
all previous settlements, entering into final posses
sion of the new country. The victory over
the Cherokees in 1776 made safe the line of
communication along the Wilderness Road, and
secured the chance for further expansion. Clark's
campaigns gained the Illinois, or northwestern re
gions. The growth of Kentucky then became very
rapid; and in its turn this, and the steady progress
of the Watauga settlements, rendered possible Rob
ertson's successful effort to plant a new community
still further west, on the Cumberland.

The War in the Northwest 51

The backwoodsmen pressed in on the line of least
resistance, first taking possession of the debatable
hunting-grounds laying between the Algonquins
of the north and the Appalachian confederacies of
the south. Then they began to encroach on the
actual tribal territories. Every step was accom
panied by stubborn and bloody fighting with the
Indians. The forest tribes were exceedingly formid
able opponents; it is not too much to say that they
formed a far more serious obstacle to the American
advance than would have been offered by an equal
number of the best European troops. Their vic
tories over Braddock, Grant, and St. Clair, gained
m each case with a smaller force, conclusively
proved their superiority, on their own ground, over
the best regulars, disciplined and commanded in
the ordinary manner. Almost all of the victories,
even of the backwoodsmen, were won against in
ferior numbers of Indians.3 The red men were

3 That the contrary impression prevails is due to the boast
ful vanity which the backwoodsmen often shared with the
Indians, and to the gross ignorance of the average writer
concerning these border wars. Many of the accounts in the
popular histories are sheer inventions. Thus, in the "Chroni
cles of Border Warfare," by Alex. S. Withers (Clarksburg,
Va., 1831, p. 301), there is an absolutely fictitious account of
a feat of the Kentucky Colonel Scott, who is alleged to have
avenged St. Clair's defeat by falling on the victorious In
dians while they were drunk, and killing two hundred of
them. This story has not even a foundation in fact ; there
was not so much as a skirmish of the sort described. As
Mann Butler — a most painstaking and truthful writer — points
out, it is made up out of the whole cloth, thirty years after
the event ; it is a mere invention to soothe the mortified pride

52 The Winning of the West

fickle of temper, and large bodies could not be kept
together for a long campaign, nor indeed, for more
than one special stroke; the only piece of strategy
any of their chiefs showed was Cornstalk's march
past Dunmore to attack Lewis; but their tactics
and discipline in the battle itself were admirably
adapted to the very peculiar conditions of forest
warfare. Writers who speak of them as undisci
plined, or as any but most redoubtable antagonists,
fall into an absurd error. An old Indian fighter,
who, at the close of the last century, wrote, from
experience, a good book on the subject, summed
up the case very justly when he said : "I apprehend
that the Indian discipline is as well calculated to
answer the purpose in the woods of America as
the British discipline is in Flanders; and British
discipline in the woods is the way to have men
slaughtered, with scarcely any chance of defending
themselves."4 A comparison of the two victories
gained by the backwoodsmen, at the Great Kan-
awha, over the Indians, and at King's Mountain
over Ferguson's British and tories, brings out
clearly the formidable fighting capacity of the red
men. At the Kanawha the Americans outnumbered

of the whites. Gross exaggeration of the Indian numbers
and losses prevails even to this day. Mr. Edmund Kirke,
for instance, usually makes the absolute or relative numbers
of the Indians from five to twenty-five times as great as they
really were. Still, it is hard to blame backwoods writers for
such slips in the face of the worse misdeeds of the average
historian of the Greek and Roman wars with barbarians.
4 Col. Jas. Smith, "An Account," etc., Lexington, Ky., 1799.

The War in the Northwest 53

their foes, at King's Mountain they were no more
than equal; yet in the former battle they suffered
twice the loss they did in the latter, inflicted much
less damage in return, and did not gain nearly so
decisive a victory.

The Indians were urged on by the British, who
furnished them with arms, ammunition, and pro
visions, and sometimes also with leaders and with
bands of auxiliary white troops, French, British,
and tories. It was this that gave to the Revolution
ary contest its twofold character, making it on the
part of the Americans a struggle for independence
in the East, and in the West a war of conquest,
or rather a war to establish, on behalf of all our
people, the right of entry into the fertile and vacant
regions beyond the Alleghanies. The grievances
of the backwoodsmen were not the same as the
grievances of the men of the seacoast. The Ohio
Valley and the other western lands of the French
had been conquered by the British, not the Ameri
cans. Great Britain had succeeded to the policy
as well as the possessions of her predecessor, and,
strange to say, had become almost equally hostile
to the colonists of her own stock. As France had
striven for half a century, so England now in her
turn strove, to bar out the settlers of English race
from the country beyond the Alleghanies. The
British Crown, Parliament, and people were a unit
in wishing to keep woodland and prairie for the
sole use of their own merchants, as regions tenanted
only by Indian hunters and French trappers and

54 The Winning of the West

traders. They became the guardians and allies of
all the Indian tribes. On the other hand, the
American backwoodsmen were resolute in their de
termination to go in and possess the land. The
aims of the two sides thus clashed hopelessly.
Under all temporary and apparent grounds of
quarrel lay this deep-rooted jealousy and incom
patibility of interests. Beyond the Alleghanies the
Revolution was fundamentally a struggle between
England, bent on restricting the growth of the
English race, and the Americans, triumphantly
determined to acquire the right to conquer the
continent.

Had not the backwoodsmen been successful in
the various phases of the struggle, we would cer
tainly have been cooped up between the sea and
the mountains. If in 1774 and '76 they had been
beaten by the Ohio tribes and the Cherokees, the
border ravaged, and the settlements stopped or
forced back as during what the colonists called
Braddock's War,5 there is every reason to believe
that the Alleghanies would have become our west
ern frontier. Similarly, if Clark had failed in his
efforts to conquer and hold the Illinois and Vin-
cennes, it is overwhelmingly probable that the Ohio
would have been the boundary between the Ameri
cans and the British. Before the Revolution began,

8 During this Indian war, covering the period from Brad-
dock's to Grant's defeat, Smith, a good authority, estimates
that the frontiers were laid waste, and population driven
back, over an area nearly three hundred miles long by thirty
broad.

The War in the Northwest 55

in 1774, the British Parliament had, by the Quebec
Act, declared the country between the Great Lakes
and the Ohio to be part of Canada; and under the
provisions of this act the British officers continued
to do as they had already done — that is, to hold
adverse possession of the land, scornfully heedless
of the claims of the different colonies. The coun
try was de facto part of Canada; the Americans
tried to conquer it exactly as they tried to conquer
the rest of Canada; the only difference was that
Clark succeeded, whereas Arnold and Montgom
ery failed.

Of course the conquest by the backwoodsmen
was by no means the sole cause of our acquisition
of the West. The sufferings and victories of the
westerners would have counted for nothing, had
it not been for the success of the American arms
in the East, and for the skill of our three treaty-
makers at Paris — Jay, Adams, and Franklin, but
above all the two former, and especially Jay. On
the other hand, it was the actual occupation and
holding of the country that gave our diplomats
their vantage-ground. When the treaty was made,
in 1782, the commissioners of the United States
represented a people already holding the whole
Ohio Valley, as well as the Illinois. The circum
stances of the treaty were peculiar; but here they
need to be touched but briefly, and only so far as
they affected the western boundaries. The United
States, acting together with France and Spain, had
just closed a successful war with England; but

56 The Winning of the West

when the peace negotiations were begun, they speed
ily found that their allies were, if anything, more
anxious than their enemy to hamper their growth.
England, having conceded the grand point of inde
pendence, was disposed to be generous, and not
to haggle about lesser matters. Spain, on the con
trary, was quite as hostile to the new nation as
to England. Through her representative, Count
Aranda, she predicted the future enormous expan
sion of the Federal Republic at the expense of
Florida, Louisiana, and Mexico, unless it was ef
fectually curbed in its youth. The prophecy has
been strikingly fulfilled, and the event has thor
oughly justified Spain's fear; for the major part
of the present territory of the United States was
under Spanish dominion at the close of the Rev
olutionary War. Spain, therefore, proposed to hem
in our growth by giving us the Alleghanies for
our western boundary.6 France was the ally of
America; but as between America and Spain, she
favored the latter. Moreover, she wished us to
remain weak enough to be dependent upon her
further good graces. The French court, therefore,
proposed that the United States should content
themselves with so much of the trans-Alleghany
territory as lay round the head-waters of the Ten
nessee and between the Cumberland and Ohio. This
area contained the bulk of the land that was already

8 At the north this boundary was to follow the upper Ohio,
and end toward the foot of Lake Erie. See maps at end of
volume.

The War in the Northwest 57

settled7; and the proposal showed how important
the French court deemed the fact of actual settle
ment.

Thus the two allies of America were hostile to
her interests. The open foe, England, on the con
trary was anxious to conclude a separate treaty,
so that, she might herself be in better condition to
carry on negotiations with France and Spain; she
cared much less to keep the West than she did to
keep Gibraltar, and an agreement with the United
States about the former left her free to insist on
the retention of the latter. Congress, in a spirit
of slavish subserviency, had instructed the Ameri
can commissioners to take no steps without the
knowledge and advice of France. Franklin was
inclined to obey these instructions; but Jay, sup
ported by Adams, boldly insisted on disregarding
them; and accordingly a separate treaty was nego
tiated with England. In settling the claims to the
western territory, much stress was laid on the old
colonial charters; but underneath all the verbiage
it was practically admitted that these charters con
ferred merely inchoate rights, which became com
plete only after conquest and settlement. The
States themselves had already by their actions
shown that they admitted this to be the case. Thus
North Carolina, when by the creation of Washing
ton County — now the State of Tennessee — she
rounded out her boundaries, specified them as run-

1 Excluding only so much of Robertson's settlement as lay
south of the Cumberland, and Clark's conquest.

58 The Winning of the West

ning to the Mississippi. As a matter of fact the
royal grant, under which alone she could claim the
land in question, extended to the Pacific; and the
only difference between her rights to the regions
east and west of the river was that her people
were settling in one, and could not settle in the
other. The same was true of Kentucky, and of the
West generally; if the States could rightfully claim
to run to the Mississippi, they could also rightfully
claim to run to the Pacific. The colonial charters
were all very well as furnishing color of title; but
at bottom the American claim rested on the peculiar
kind of colonizing conquest so successfully carried
on by the backwoodsmen. When the English took
New Amsterdam they claimed it under old charters ;
but they very well knew that their real right was
only that of the strong hand. It was precisely so
with the Americans and the Ohio Valley. They
produced old charters to support their title; but in
reality it rested on Clark's conquests and above all
on the advance of the backwoods settlements.8

8 Mr. R. A. Hinsdale, in his excellent work on the "Old
Northwest" (New York, 1888), seems to me to lay too much
stress on the weight which our charter-claims gave us, and
too little on the right we had acquired by actual possession.
The charter-claims were elaborated with the most wearisome
prolixity at the time ; but so were the English claims to New
Amsterdam a century earlier. -Conquest gave the true title
in each case; the importance of a claim is often in inverse
order to the length at which it is set forth in a diplomatic
document. The West was gained by: (i) the westward
movement of the backwoodsmen during the Revolution;
(2) the final success of the Continental armies in the East;

The War in the Northwest 59

This view of the case is amply confirmed by a
consideration of what was actually acquired under
the treaty of peace which closed the Revolutionary
struggle. Map-makers down to the present day
have almost invariably misrepresented the territo
rial limits we gained by this treaty. They repre
sent our limits in the West in 1783 as being the
Great Lakes, the Mississippi, and the 3ist parallel
of latitude from the Mississippi to the Chattahoo-
chee;9 but in reality we did not acquire these limits
until a dozen years later, by the treaties of Jay and
Pinckney. Two points must be kept in mind : first,
that during the war our ally, Spain, had conquered
from England that portion of the Gulf coast known
as West Florida; and second, that when the treaty
was made the United States and Great Britain
mutually covenanted to do certain things, some of

(3) the skill of our diplomats at Paris; failure on any one of
these three points would have lost us the West.

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

The peace negotiations are best discussed in John Jay's
chapter thereon, in the seventh volume of Winsor's "Nar
rative and Critical History of North America." Sparks'
account is fundamentally wrong on several points. Bancroft
largely follows him, and therefore repeats and shares his
errors.

8 The map in Mr. Hinsdale's book may be given as a late
instance.

60 The Winning of the West

which were never done. Great Britain agreed to
recognize the lakes as our northern boundary, but,
on the alleged ground that we did not fulfil certain
of our promises, she declined to fulfil this agree
ment, and the lake posts remained in her hands until
the Jay treaty was ratified. She likewise consented
to recognize the 3ist parallel as our southern boun
dary, but by a secret article it was agreed that if
by the negotiations she recovered West Florida,
then the boundary should run about a hundred miles
further north, ending at the mouth of the Yazoo.
The discovery of this secret article aroused great
indignation in Spain. As a matter of fact, the dis
puted territory, the land drained by the Gulf rivers,
was not England's to grant, for it had been con
quered and was then held by Spain. Nor was it
given up to us until we acquired it by Pinckney's
masterly diplomacy. The treaty represented a mere
promise which in part was not and in part could
not be fulfilled. All that it really did was to guar
antee what we already possessed — that is, the Ohio
Valley and the Illinois, which we settled and con
quered during the years of warfare. Our boundary
lines were in reality left very vague. On the north
the basin of the Great Lakes remained British; on
the south the lands draining into the Gulf remained
Spanish, or under Spanish influence. The actual
boundaries we acquired can be roughly stated in
the north to have followed the divide between the
waters of the lake and the waters of the Ohio,
and in the south to have run across the heads of

The War in the Northwest 61

the Gulf rivers. Had we remained a loose confed
eration these boundaries would more probably have
shrunk than advanced; we did not overleap them
until some years after Washington had become the
head of a real, not merely a titular, nation. The
peace of 1783, as far as our western limits were
affected, did nothing more than secure us undis
turbed possession of lands from which it had proved
impossible to oust us. We were in reality given
nothing more than we had by our own prowess
gained; the inference is strong that we got what
we did get only because we had won and held it.

The first duty of the backwoodsmen who thus con
quered the West was to institute civil government.
Their efforts to overcome and beat back the Indians
went hand in hand with their efforts to introduce
law and order in the primitive communities they
founded ; and exactly as they relied purely on them
selves in withstanding outside foes, so they like
wise built up their social life and their first systems
of government with reference simply to their special
needs, and without any outside help or direction.
The whole character of the westward movement,
the methods of warfare, of settlement, and gov
ernment, were determined by the extreme and
defiant individualism of the backwoodsmen, their
inborn independence and self-reliance, and their in
tensely democratic spirit. The West was won and
settled by a number of groups of men, all acting
independently of one another, but with a common
object, and at about the same time. There was no

62 The Winning of the West

one controlling spirit; it was essentially the move
ment of a whole free people, not of a single master
mind. There were strong and able leaders, who
showed themselves fearless soldiers and just law
givers, undaunted by danger, resolute to persevere
in the teetji of disaster; but even these leaders are
most deeply interesting because they stand fore
most among a host of others like them. There
were hundreds of hunters and Indian fighters like
Mansker, Wetzel, Kenton, and Brady; there were
scores of commonwealth founders like Logan,
Todd, Floyd, and Harrod; there were many
adventurous land speculators like Henderson; there
were even plenty of commanders like Shelby and
Campbell. These were all men of mark; some of
them exercised a powerful and honorable influence
on the course of events in the West. Above them
rise four greater figures, fit to be called not merely
State or local, but national heroes. Clark, Sevier,
Robertson, and Boone are emphatically American
worthies. They were men of might in their day,
born to sway the minds of others, helpful in shap
ing the destiny of the continent. Yet of Clark
alone can it be said that he did a particular piece
of work which without him would have remained
undone. Sevier, Robertson, and Boone only hast
ened, and did more perfectly, a work which would
have been done by others had they themselves fallen
by the wayside.10 Important though they are for

10 Sevier's place would certainly have been taken by some
such man as his chief rival, Tipton. Robertson led his col-

The War in the Northwest 63

their own sakes, they are still more important as
types of the men who surrounded them.

The individualism of the backwoodsmen, how
ever, was tempered by a sound common-sense, and
capacity for combination. The first hunters might
come alone or in couples, but the actual coloniza
tion was done not by individuals, but by groups
of individuals. The settlers brought their families
and belongings either on pack-horses along the for
est trails, or in scows down the streams; they set
tled in palisaded villages, and immediately took
steps to provide both a civil and military organi
zation. They were men of facts, not theories; and
they showed their usual hard common-sense in mak
ing a government. They did not try to invent a
new system; they simply took that under which
they had grown up, and applied it to their altered
conditions. They were most familiar with the gov
ernment of the county; and therefore they adopted
this for the frame-work of their little independent,
self-governing commonwealths of Watauga, Cum
berland, and Transylvania.11

ony to the Cumberland but a few days before old Mansker
led another; and though without Robertson the settlements
would have been temporarily abandoned, they would surely
have been reoccupied. If Henderson had not helped Boone
found Kentucky, then Hart or some other of Henderson's
associates would doubtless have done so; and if Boone had
been lacking, his place would probably have been taken by
some such man as Logan. The loss of these men would
have been very serious, but of no one of them can it be said,
as of Clark, that he alone could have done the work he actu
ally did.
11 The last of these was the most pretentious and short-

64 The Winning of the West

They were also familiar with the representative
system; and accordingly they introduced it into
the new communities, the little forted villages serv
ing as natural units of representation. They were
already thoroughly democratic, in instinct and prin
ciple, and as a matter of course they made the
offices elective, and gave full play to the majority.
In organizing the militia they kept the old system
of county lieutenants, making them elective, not
appointive ; and they organized the men on the basis
of a regiment, the companies representing territo
rial divisions, each commanded by its own officers,
who were thus chosen by the fighting men of the
iort or forts in their respective districts. Thus
each of the backwoods commonwealths, during its
short-lived term of absolute freedom, reproduced
as its governmental system that of the old colonial
county, increasing the powers of the court, and
changing the justices into the elective representa
tives of an absolute democracy. The civil head,
the chairman of the court or committee, was
also usually the military head, the colonel-com
mandant. In fact the military side of the or
ganization rapidly became the most conspicuous,
and, at least, in certain crises, the most im
portant. There were always some years of des
perate warfare during which the entire strength
of the little commonwealth was drawn on to resist

lived and least characteristic of the three, as Henderson
made an abortive effort to graft on it the utterly foreign
idea of a proprietary colony.

The War in the Northwest 65

outside aggression, and during these years the chief
function of government was to provide for the grip
ing military needs of the community, and the one
pressing duty of -its chief was to lead his followers
with valor and wisdom in the struggle with the
stranger.12

These little communities were extremely inde
pendent in feeling, not only of the Federal Govern
ment, but of their parent States, and even of one
another. They had won their positions by their
own courage and hardihood; very few State troops
and hardly a Continental soldier had appeared West
of the Alleghanies. They had heartily sympathized
with their several mother colonies when they became
the United States, and had manfully played their
part in the Revolutionary War. Moreover they
were united among themselves by ties of good-will
and of services mutually rendered. Kentucky, for
instance, had been succored more than once by

12 My friend, Professor Alexander Johnson, of Princeton,
is inclined to regard these frontier county organizations as
reproductions of a very primitive type of government indeed,
deeming that they were formed primarily for war against
outsiders, that their military organization was the essential
feature, the real reason for their existence. I can hardly ac
cept this view in its entirety ; though fully recognizing the
extreme importance of the military side of the little govern
ments, it seems to me that the preservation of order, and
especially the necessity for regulating the disposition of the
land, were quite as powerful factors in impelling the settlers
to act together. It is important to keep in mind the terri
torial organization of the militia companies and regiments;
a county and a regiment, a forted village and a company,
were usually co-extensive.

66 The Winning of the West

troops raised among the Watauga Carolinians or
the Holston Virginians, and in her turn she had
sent needed supplies to the Cumberland. But when
the strain of the war was over the separatist spirit
asserted itself very strongly. The groups of West
ern settlements not only looked on the Union
itself very coldly, but they were also more or less
actively hostile to their parent States, and regarded
even one another as foreign communities;13 they
considered the Confederation as being literally only
a lax league of friendship.

Up to the close of the Revolutionary contest the
settlers who were building homes and States be
yond the Alleghanies formed a homogeneous back
woods population. The wood-choppers, game hunt
ers, and Indian fighters, who dressed and lived
alike, were the typical pioneers. They were a shift
ing people. In every settlement the tide ebbed and
flowed. Some of the new-comers would be beaten
in the hard struggle for existence, and would drift
back to whence they had come. Of those who suc
ceeded some would take root in the land, and others
would move still further into the wilderness. Thus
each generation rolled westward, leaving its chil
dren at the point where the wave stopped no less

13 See in Gardoqui MSS. the letters of George Rogers
Clark to Gardoqui, March 15, 1788; and of John Sevier to
Gardoqui, September 12, 1788; and in the Robertson MS.
the letter of Robertson to McGillivray, August 3, 1788. It
is necessary to allude to the feeling here ; but the separatist
and disunion movements did not gather full force until later,
and are properly to be considered in connection with post-
Revolutionary events.

The War in the Northwest 67

than at that where it started. The descendants of
the victors of King's Mountain are as likely to be
found in the Rockies as in the Alleghanies.

With the close of the war came an enormous in
crease in the tide of immigration ; and many of the
new-comers were of a very different stamp from
their predecessors. The main current flowed to
ward Kentucky, and gave an entirely different char
acter to its population. The two typical figures in
Kentucky so far had been Clark and Boone, but
after the close of the Revolution both of them sank
into unimportance, whereas the careers of Sevier
and Robertson had only begun. The disappearance
of the two former from active life was partly acci
dental and partly a resultant of the forces that as
similated Kentucky so much more rapidly than Ten
nessee to the conditions prevailing in the old States.
Kentucky was the best known and the most acces
sible of the western regions ; within her own borders
she was now comparatively safe from serious Indian
invasion, and the tide of immigration naturally
flowed thither. So strong was the current that,
within a dozen years, it had completely swamped the
original settlers, and had changed Kentucky from
a peculiar pioneer and backwoods commonwealth
into a State differing no more from Virginia, Penn
sylvania, and North Carolina than these differed
from one another.

The men who gave the tone to this great flood of
new-comers were the gentry from the sea-coast
country, the planters, the young lawyers, the men

68 The Winning of the West

of means who had been impoverished by the long-
continued and harassing civil war. Straitened in
circumstances, desirous of winning back wealth and
position, they cast longing eyes toward the beauti
ful and fertile country beyond the mountains, deem
ing it a place that afforded unusual opportunities
to the man with capital, no less than to him whose
sole trust was in his own adventurous energy.

Most of the gentle folks in Virginia and the
Carolinas, the men who lived in great roomy houses
on their well-stocked and slave-tilled plantations,
had been forced to struggle hard to keep their
heads above water during the Revolution. They
loyally supported the government, with blood
and money; and at the same time they endeavored
to save some of their property from the general
wreck, and to fittingly educate their girls, and those
of their boys who were too young to be in the army.
The men of this stamp who now prepared to cast
in their lot with the new communities formed an ex
ceptionally valuable class of immigrants; they con
tributed the very qualities of which the raw settle
ments stood most in need. They had suffered for no
fault of their own; fate had gone hard with them.
The fathers had been in the Federal or Provincial
congresses, the older sons had served in the Conti
nental line or in the militia. The plantations were
occasionally overrun by the enemy; and the general
disorder had completed their ruin. Nevertheless, the
heads of the families had striven to send the younger
sons to school or college. For their daughters they

The War in the Northwest 69

did even more; and throughout the contest, even in
its darkest hours, they sent them down to receive
the final touches of a lady-like education at some one
of the State capitals not at the moment in the hands
of the enemy — such as Charleston or Philadelphia.
There the young ladies were taught dancing and
music, for which, as well as for their frocks and
"pink calamanco shoes," their fathers paid enormous
sums in depreciated Continental currency.14

Even the close of active hostilities, when the Brit
ish were driven from the Southern States, brought
at first but a slight betterment of condition to the
struggling people. There was no cash in the land,
the paper currency was nearly worthless, every one
was heavily in debt, and no one was able to collect
what was owing to him. There was much mob vio
lence, and a general relaxation of the bonds of law
and order. Even nature turned hostile; a terrible
drought shrunk up all the streams until they could
not turn the gristmills, while from the same cause
the crops failed almost completely. A hard winter
followed, and many cattle and hogs died; so that
the well-to-do were brought to the verge of bank
ruptcy and the poor suffered extreme privations, be
ing forced to go fifty or sixty miles to purchase
small quantities of meal and grain at exorbitant
prices.15

14 Clay MSS. Account of Robert Morris with Miss Eliza
beth Hart, during her residence in Philadelphia in 1780-81.
The account is so curious that I give it in full in the Appendix.

16 Clay MSS. Letters of Jesse Benton, 1782 and '83. See
Appendix.

70 The Winning of the West

This distress at home inclined many people of
means and ambition to try their fortunes in the
West: while another and equally powerful motive
was the desire to secure great tracts of virgin lands,
for possession or speculation. Many distinguished
soldiers had been rewarded by successive warrants
for unoccupied land, which they entered wherever
they choose, until they could claim thousands upon
thousands of acres.16 Sometimes they sold these
warrants to outsiders ; but whether they remained in
the hands of the original owners or not, they served
as a great stimulus to the westward movement, and
drew many of the representatives of the wealthiest
and most influential families in the parent States to
the lands on the farther side of the mountains.

At the close of the Revolution, however, the men
from the sea-coast region formed but an insignifi
cant portion of the western pioneers. The country
beyond the Alleghanies was first won and settled
by the backwoodsmen themselves, acting under their
own leaders, obeying their own desires, and follow
ing their own methods. They were a marked and
peculiar people. The good and evil traits in their
character were such as naturally belonged to a
strong, harsh, and homely race, which, with all its
shortcomings, was nevertheless bringing a tremen
dous work to a triumphant conclusion. The back-

14 Thus Col. Wm. Christian, for his services in Braddock's
and Dunmore's wars and against the Cherokees, received
many warrants; he visited Kentucky to enter them, 9,000
acres in all. See "Life of Caleb Wallace," by Wm. H.
Whitsitt, Louisville, 1888.

The War in the Northwest 71

woodsmen were above all things characteristically
American ; and it is fitting that the two greatest and
most typical of all Americans should have been re
spectively a sharer and an outcome of their work.
Washington himself passed the most important
years of his youth heading the westward move
ment of his people ; clad in the traditional dress of
the backwoodsmen, in tasseled hunting-shirt and
fringed leggings, he led them to battle against the
French and Indians, and helped to clear the way
for the American advance. The only other man who
in the American roll of honor stands by the side of
Washington, was born when the distinctive work of
the pioneers had ended ; and yet he was bone of their
bone and flesh of their flesh; for from the loins of
this gaunt frontier folk sprang mighty Abraham
Lincoln.

APPENDICES

APPENDIX I>-TO CHAPTER VIII

(From the Robertson MSS., Vol. I., Letter of Don Miro.)

~ NEW ORLEANS, the 2Oth April, 1783.

I received yours of 2pth January last, & am high
ly pleased in seeing the good intentions of the Peo
ple of that District, & knowing the falsehood of the
report we have heard they are willing to attack their
Province. You ought to make the same account of
the news you had that the Indians have been ex
cited in their Province against you, since I wrote
quite the contrary at different times to Alexander
McGillevray to induce him to make peace, & lastly
he answered me that he gave his word to the Gov
ernor of North Carolina that the Creeks would not
trouble again those settlements: notwithstanding
after the letter received from you, and other from
Brigadier general Daniel Smith Esqr I will writte
to him engaging him to be not more troublesome to
you.

I have not any connection with Cheroquis &
Marcuten, but as they go now & then to Illinois
I will give advice to that Commander to induce them
to be quiet : in respect to the former in the month of
May of last year they asked the permission of set-
(72)

The War in the Northwest 73

tling themselves on the west side of the Mississippi
River which is granted & they act accordingly, you
plainly see you are quite free from their incursions
I will give the Passport you asked for your son-
in-law, & I will be highly pleased with his coming
down to setle in this Province & much more if you,
& your family should come along with him, since I
can assure you that you will find here your welfare,
without being either molested on religious matters
or paying any duty & under the circumstances of
finding allwais market for your crops which makes
every one of the planters settled at Natchez or else
where to improve every day, much more so than if
they were to purchase the Lands, as they are granted
gratis

I wish to be usefull to you being with regard sir

Your most obt. hi. servant
(Dupte.) ESTEVAN MIRO.

Colonel JAMES ROBERTSON, Esqr.

The duplicity of the Spaniards is well illustrated
by the fact that the Gardoqui MSS. give clear proof
that they were assisting the Creeks with arms and
ammunition at the very time Miro was writing these
letters. See the Gardoqui MSS., passim, especially
Miro's letter of June 28, 1786.

VOL. VII.— 4

74

The Winning of the West

Dr.

APPENDIX E— TO

Account of Robert Morris with Miss Betsey Hart,

Miss HARTE IN ACCOUNT

[Oldest daughter of Col. Thomas Hart.

1780
Aug.

Dec.

1781
Feb.

-9

6

29
3

To cash paid for a Pair
of Shoes for you
To a Chest of Sugar de
livered Mrs. Brodeau
& Porterage

Con
tinental

Ex
change

Specie

£64

1107
1116

223
95

3«3
78

506

629
3856

15

0

10
12

•2

C

6
6

0
0

2

6

at 60 for

Do'
Do

Do
Do

at 75 for i
Do

75 for i

Do
Do

£ i

18
18

3

i

5
i

6

8
5'

g

12

12
II

2

I

'5

1
8

4}
3

0

6
io|

•

0
0

•

6

s

7

To two ps Sheeting De
livered Ditto

To Cash paid Wm. Me-
Dugall's Bill for one &
a half Quarters Tui
tion at Dancing

Paid E. Denaugheys
Bill for washing Done
for you ....

To Ditto paid Hannah
Estys Bill for making
Frocks for
vou. . . £2^1 los

Paid D De
naugheys
Bill for
Washg £125.12.6

To Ditto paid for pair
of Pink Calemancoi
Shoes for you

To Ditto paid B. Victor
your music master for
one Quarter Tuition
of Music

5

I
7

To the following Ar
ticles delivered Mrs.
Brodeau on your
Accot.
One Firkin of Butter
one Box of Candles
& a Box of Soap
Amounting p Ac
count to

To cash paid Mrs. Bro
deau in full of her
Accot. to October last
against you

Allowed for Deprecia
tion

/«5

57

3
3
7

£*7»

O

The War in the Northwest 75

CHAPTER IX

Philadelphia, 1780-81. From the Clay MSS.

CURRENT WITH ROBERT MORRIS Cr.

She married Dr. Richard Pendell.]

Con
tinental

Exchg

Specie

Received Philad. April ?th 1781 the One hundred and Seventy
two Pounds 17$ State Specie being in full the amount of the an
nexed account Cor Robt. Morris

£172. 17. State Specie J. SWANNICK

j6 The Winning of the West

APPENDIX F— TO CHAPTER IX

IN the Clay MSS. the letters of Jesse Benton to
Col. Hart, of December 4, 1782, and March 22,
1783, paint vividly the general distress in the Caro-
linas. They are taken up mostly with accounts of
bad debts and of endeavors to proceed against vari
ous debtors; they also touch on other subjects.

In the first, of December 4, 1782, Benton writes:
"It seems the powers above are combined against us
this year. Such a Drouth was never known here
[in the upper Carolinas] before; Corn sells from the
stack at 4 & 5] p. Bushel, Wheat 6 & 8|, Rye the
same, Oats, 3(6 &c &c . . . I have not had Water
to keep the Grist Mill Puling Mill and Oyl Mill at
Work before this Week. . . . Johny Rice has gone
to Kentuck with his goods to buy Furs, but before
he went we talked of your debts and he did not like
to be concerned, saying he should gain ill will for
no profit; However I will immediately enforce the
Law to recover your Debts . . . the Lands which
You had of me would sell as soon as any but this
hard year makes many settlers and few buyers. I
have heard nothing more of Major Hay woods de
sire of purchasing & all I ever heard upon the sub
ject was from his son-in-law who now appears very
sick of his late purchase of Elegant Buildings. . . .
Your Brother Capt. Nat Hart, our worthy and re
spectable Friend, I doubt is cut off by the Savages
at the time and in the manner as first represented, to
wit, that he went out to hunt his horses in the

The War in the Northwest 77

month of July or August it is supposed the Indians
in Ambuscade between Boonsboro and Knock-
buckle, intended to take him prisonner but killd his
horse and at the same time broke his Thigh, that
the savages finding their Prisonner with his Thigh
broken was under the necessity of puting him to
Death by shooting him through the Heart at so
small a Distance as to Powder burn his Flesh. He
was Tomahawkd, scalped & lay two days before he
was found and buried. This Account has come by
difrent hands & confirmd to Col. Henderson by a
Letter from an intimate Friend of his at Kentuck."

This last bit of information is sandwiched in be
tween lamentations over bad debts, concerning
which the writer manifested considerable more emo
tion than over the rather startling fate of Captain
Hart.

The second letter contains an account of the
"trafficking off" of a wagon and fine pair of Penn
sylvania horses, the news that a debt had been par
tially liquidated by the payment of sixty pounds'
worth of rum and sugar, which in turn went to
pay 'workmen, and continues: "The common people
are and will be much distressed for want of Bread.
I have often heard talk of Famine, but never thought
of seeing any thing so much like it as the present
times in this part of the Country. Three fourths
of the Inhabitants of this country are obliged to
purchase their Bread at 50 & 60 miles distance at
the common price of i6| and upwards per barrel.
The winter has been very hard upon the live stock

78 The Winning of the West

& I am convinced that abundance of Hogs and Cat
tle will die this Spring for want of Food. . . . Cash
is now scarcer here than it ever was before. ... I
have been industrious to get the Mills in good repair
and have succeeded well, but have red. very little
benefit from them yet owing intirely to the general
failure of a Crop. We have done no Merchant
work in the Grist Mill, & she only supplies my Fam
ily and workmen with Bread. Rye, the people are
glad to eat. Flaxseed the cattle have chiefly eaten
though I have got as much of that article as made
1 80 Gallons of Oyl at 4] per bushel. The Oyl is in
great demand; I expect two dollars p. Gallon for it
at Halifax or Edenton, & perhaps a better price.
We were very late in beginning with the Fulling

Business; for want of water [there are

many] Mobbs and commotions among the People."

THE INDIAN WARS, 1784-1787

FRANKLIN, KENTUCKY, OHIO, AND

TENNESSEE

COPYRIGHT 1894
BY G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

This edition is published under arrangement with
G. P. Putnam's Sons, of New York and London.

PREFACE

npHE material used herein is that mentioned in
1 the preface to the first volume, save that I have
also drawn freely on the Draper Manuscripts, in
the Library of the State Historical Society of Wis
consin, at Madison. For the privilege of examin
ing these valuable manuscripts I am indebted to
the generous courtesy of the State Librarian, Mr.
Reuben Gold Thwaites; I take this opportunity of
extending to him my hearty thanks.

The period covered in this volume includes the
seven years immediately succeeding the close of the
Revolutionary War. It was during these seven
years that the Constitution was adopted, and act
ually went into effect; an event if possible even
more momentous for the West than the East. The
time was one of vital importance to the whole na
tion; alike to the people of the inland frontier and
to those of the seaboard. The course of events
during these years determined whether we should
become a mighty nation, or a mere snarl of weak
and quarrelsome little commonwealths, with a his
tory as bloody and meaningless as that of the Span
ish-American States.

At the close of the Revolution the West was
peopled by a few thousand settlers, knit by but

(81)

82 Preface

the slenderest ties to the Federal Government. A
remarkable inflow of population followed. The
warfare with the Indians, and the quarrels with the
British and Spaniards over boundary questions,
reached no decided issue. But the rifle-bearing
freemen who founded their little republics on the
Western waters gradually solved the question of
combining personal liberty with national union.
For years there was much wavering. There were
violent separatist movements, and attempts to es
tablish complete independence of the Eastern
States. There were corrupt conspiracies between
some of the Western leaders and various high
Spanish officials, to bring about a disruption of
the Confederation. The extraordinary little back
woods State of Franklin began and ended a career
unique in our annals. But the current, though
eddying and sluggish, set toward Union. By 1790
a firm government had been established west of
the mountains, and the trans-Alleghany common
wealths had become parts of the Federal Union.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

SAGAMORE HILL, LONG ISLAND,
October, 1894

THE INDIAN WARS, 1784-1787

CHAPTER I

THE INRUSH OF SETTLERS, 1784-1787

AT the beginning of 1784 peace was a definite
fact, and the United States had become one
among the nations of the earth; a nation young
and lusty in her youth, but as yet loosely knit, and
formidable in promise rather than in actual ca
pacity for performance.

On the Western frontier lay vast and fertile va
cant spaces; for the Americans had barely passed
the threshold of the continent predestined to be the
inheritance of their children and their children's
children. For generations the great feature in the
nation's history, next only to the preservation of its
national life, was to be its westward growth; and
its distinguishing work was to be the settlement of
the immense wilderness which stretched across to
the Pacific. But before the land could be settled
it had to be won.

The valley of the Ohio already belonged to the
Americans by right of conquest and of armed pos
session; it was held by rifle-bearing backwoods
farmers, hard and tenacious men, who never lightly
yielded what once they had grasped. North and

(83)

84 The Winning of the West

south of the valley lay warlike and powerful Indian
confederacies, now at last thoroughly alarmed and
angered by the white advance; while behind these
warrior tribes, urging them to hostility, and fur
nishing them the weapons and means wherewith
to fight, stood the representatives of two great
European nations, both bitterly hostile to the new
America, and both anxious to help in every way
the red savages who strove to stem the tide of set
tlement. The close alliance between the soldiers and
diplomatic agents of polished old-world powers and
the wild and squalid warriors of the wilderness was
an alliance against which the American settlers had
always to make head in the course of their long
march westward. The kings and the peoples of
the old world ever showed themselves the inveterate
enemies of their blood-kin in the new; they always
strove to delay the time when their own race should
rise to wellnigh universal supremacy. In mere blind
selfishness, or in a spirit of jealousy still blinder,
the Europeans refused to regard their kinsmen who
had crossed the ocean to found new realms in new
continents as entitled to what they had won by
their own toil and hardihood. They persisted in
treating the bold adventurers who went abroad as
having done so simply for the benefit of the men
who stayed at home; and they shaped their trans
atlantic policy in accordance with this idea. The
Briton and the Spaniard opposed the American set
tler precisely as the Frenchman had done before
them, in the interest of their own merchants and

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 85

fur-traders. They endeavored in vain to bar him
from the solitudes through which only the Indians
roved.

All the ports around the Great Lakes were held
by the British;1 their officers, military and civil,
still kept possession, administering the government
of the scattered French hamlets, and preserving
their old-time relations with the Indian tribes, whom
they continued to treat as allies or feudatories. To
the south and west the Spaniards played the same
part. They scornfully refused to heed the boundary
established to the southward by the treaty between
England and the United States, alleging that the
former had ceded what it did not possess. They
claimed the land as theirs by right of conquest.
The territory which they controlled stretched from
Florida along a vaguely defined boundary to the
Mississippi, up the east bank of the latter at least
to the Chickasaw Bluffs, and thence up the west
bank; while the Creeks and Choctaws were under
their influence. The Spaniards dreaded and hated
the Americans even more than did the British, and
they were right; for three-fourths of the present
territory of the United States then lay within the
limits of the Spanish possessions.2

Thus there were foes, both white and red, to be
overcome, either by force of arms or by diplomacy,

1 State Dep. MSS., No. 150, Vol. II, March, 1788. Report
of Secretary Knox.

4 State Dep. MSS., No. 81, Vol. II, pp. 189, 217. No. 120,
vol. ii, June 30, 1786.

86 The Winning of the West

before the northernmost and the southernmost por
tions of the wilderness lying on our Western border
could be thrown open to settlement. The lands lying
between had already been conquered, and yet were
so sparsely settled as to seem almost vacant. While
they offered every advantage of soil and climate to
the farmer and cultivator, they also held out pecu
liar attractions to ambitious men of hardy and ad
venturous temper.

With the ending of the Revolutionary War the
rush of settlers to these Western lands assumed
striking proportions. The peace relieved the pres
sure which had hitherto restrained this movement,
on the one hand, while on the other it tended to
divert into the new channel of pioneer work those
bold spirits whose spare energies had thus far found
an outlet on stricken fields. To push the frontier
westward in the teeth of the forces of the wilder
ness was fighting work, such as suited well enough
many a stout soldier who had worn the blue and
buff of the Continental line, or who, with his fellow
rough-riders, had followed in the train of some grim
partisan leader.

The people of the New England States and of
New York, for the most part, spread northward
and westward within their own boundaries ; and
Georgia likewise had room for all her growth within
her borders; but in the States between there was a
stir of eager unrest over the tales told of the beau
tiful and fertile lands lying along the Ohio, the
Cumberland, and the Tennessee. The days of the

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 87

early pioneers, of the men who did the hardest and
roughest work, were over; farms were being laid
out and towns were growing up among the felled
forest from which the game and the Indians had
alike been driven. There was still plenty of room
for the rude cabin and ^stump-dotted clearing of the
ordinary frontier settler, the wood-chopper and
game hunter. Folk of the common backwoods type
were as yet more numerous than any others among
the settlers. In addition there were planters from
among the gentry of the sea-coast; there were men
of means who had bought great tracts of wild land ;
there were traders with more energy than capital;
there were young lawyers; there were gentlemen
with a taste for an unfettered life of great oppor
tunity; in short there were adventurers of every
kind.

All men who deemed that they could swim in
troubled waters were drawn toward the new coun
try. The more turbulent and ambitious spirits saw
roads to distinction in frontier warfare, politics,
and diplomacy. Merchants dreamed of many for
tunate ventures, in connection with the river trade
or the overland commerce by pack-train. Lawyers
not only expected to make their living by their
proper calling, but also to rise to the first places in
the commonwealths, for in these new communities,
as in the older States, the law was then the most hon
ored of the professions, and that which most surely
led to high social and political standing. But the
one great attraction for all classes was the chance

88 The Winning of the West

of procuring large quantities of fertile land at low
prices.

To the average settler the land was the prime
source of livelihood. A man of hardihood, thrift,
perseverance, and bodily strength could surely
make a comfortable living for himself and his fam
ily, if only he could settle on a good tract of rich
soil; and this he could do if he went to the new
country. As a matter of course, therefore, vigor
ous young frontiersmen swarmed into the region
so recently won.

These men merely wanted so much land as they
could till. Others, however, looked at it from a very
different standpoint. The land was the real treas
ury-chest of the country. It was the one commodity
which appealed to the ambitious and adventurous
side of the industrial character at that time and in
that place. It was the one commodity the manage
ment of which opened chances of procuring vast
wealth, and especially vast speculative wealth. To
the American of the end of the eighteenth century
the roads leading to great riches were as few as
those leading to competency were many. He could
not prospect for mines of gold and of silver, of
iron, copper, and coal; he could not discover and
work wells of petroleum and natural gas; he could
not build up, sell, and speculate in railroad systems
and steamship companies; he could not gamble in
the stock market; he could not build huge manu
factories of steel, of cottons, of woolens; he could
not be a banker or a merchant on a scale which

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 89

is dwarfed when called princely; he could not sit
still and see an already great income double and
quadruple because of the mere growth in the value
of real estate in some teeming city. The chances
offered him by the fur trade were very uncertain.
If he lived in a sea-coast town, he might do some
thing with the clipper ships that ran to Europe and
China. If he lived elsewhere, his one chance of
acquiring great wealth, and his best chance to ac
quire even moderate wealth without long and plod
ding labor, was to speculate in wild land.

Accordingly the audacious and enterprising busi
ness men who would nowadays go into speculation
in stocks, were then forced into speculation in land.
Sometimes as individuals, sometimes as large com
panies, they sought to procure wild lands on the
Wabash, the Ohio, the Cumberland, the Yazoo. In
addition to the ordinary methods of settlement by,
or purchase from private persons, they endeavored
to procure grants on favorable terms from the na
tional and State Legislatures, or even from the
Spanish government. They often made a regular
practice of buying the land rights which had accrued
in lieu of arrears of pay to different bodies of Con
tinental troops. They even at times purchased a
vague and clouded title from some Indian tribe.
As with most other speculative business investments,
the great land companies rarely realized for the
originators and investors anything like what was
expected; and the majority were absolute failures in
every sense. Nevertheless, a number of men made

90 The Winning of the West

money out of them, often on quite a large scale;
and in many instances, where the people who planned
and carried out the scheme made nothing for them
selves, they yet left their mark in the shape of
settlers who had come in to purchase their lands,
or even in the shape of a town built under their
auspices.

Land speculation was by no means confined to
those who went into it on a large scale. The set
tler without money might content himself with stak
ing out an ordinary-sized farm; but the new
comer of any means was sure not only to try to
get a large estate for his own use, but also to procure
land beyond any immediate need, so that he might
hold on to it until it rose in value. He was apt
to hold commissions to purchase land for his friends
who remained east of the mountains. The land
was turned to use by private individuals and by
corporations; it was held for speculative purposes;
it was used for the liquidation of debts of every
kind. The official surveyors, when created, did most
of their work by deputy; Boone was deputy sur
veyor of Fayette County, in Kentucky.3 Some
men surveyed and staked out their own claims; the
others employed professional surveyors, or else hired
old hunters like Boone and Kenton, whose knowl
edge of woodcraft and acquaintance with the most
fertile grounds enabled them not only to survey the
land, but to choose the portions best fit for settle-

3 Draper MSS. ; Boone MSS. Entry of August court for
1783.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 91

ment. The lack of proper government surveys, and
the looseness with which the records were kept in
the land office, put a premium on fraud and encour
aged carelessness. People could make and record
entries in secret, and have the land surveyed in
secret, if they feared a dispute over a title; no one
save the particular deputy surveyor employed need
ed to know.4 The litigation over these confused
titles dragged on with interminable tediousness.
Titles were often several deep on one "location,"
as it was called; and whoever purchased land too
often purchased also an expensive and uncertain
lawsuit.

The two chief topics of thought and conversa
tion, the two subjects which beyond all others en
grossed and absorbed the minds of the settlers, were
the land and the Indians. We have already seen how
on one occasion Clark could raise no men for an
expedition against the Indians until he closed the
land offices round which the settlers were throng
ing. Every hunter kept a sharp lookout for some
fertile bottom on which to build a cabin. The vol
unteers who rode against the Indian towns also
spied out the land and chose the best spots whereon
to build their blockhouses and palisaded villages
as soon as a truce might be made, or the foe driven

4 Draper MSS. in Wisconsin State Hist. Ass. Clark papers.
Walter Darrell to Col. William Fleming, St. Asaphs, April 14,
1783. These valuable Draper MSS. have been opened to me
by Mr. Reuben Gold Thwaites, the State Librarian; I tak
this opportunity of thanking him for his generous courtesy
to which I am so greatly indebted.

92 The Winning of the West

for the moment further from the border. Some
times settlers squatted on land already held but
not occupied under a good title; sometimes a man
who claimed the land under a defective title, or
under pretence of original occupation, attempted to
oust or to blackmail him who had cleared and tilled
the soil in good faith ; and these were both fruitful
causes not only of lawsuits but of bloody affrays.
Among themselves, the settlers' talk ran ever on
land titles and land litigation, and schemes for se
curing vast tracts of rich and well watered country.
These were the subjects with which they filled their
letters to one another and to their friends at home,
and the subjects upon which these same friends
chiefly dwelt when they sent letters in return.5 Often
well-to-do men visited the new country by them
selves first, chose good sites for their farms and
plantations, surveyed and purchased them, and then
returned to their old homes, whence they sent out
their field hands to break the soil and put up build
ings before bringing out their families.

The westward movement of settlers took place
along several different lines. The dwellers in what
is now Eastern Tennessee were in close touch with
the old settled country; their farms and little towns
formed part of the chain of forest clearings which
stretched unbroken from the border of Virginia

5 Clay MSS. and Draper MSS., passim: e. g., in former, J.
Mercer to George Nicholas, Nov. 28, 1789: J. Ware to George
Nicholas, Nov. 29, 1789; letter to Mrs. Byrd, Jan. 16, 1786,
etc., etc., etc.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 93

down the valleys of the Watauga and the Holston.
Though they were sundered by mountain ranges
from the peopled regions in the State to which they
belonged, North Carolina, yet these ranges were
pierced by many trails, and were no longer haunted
by Indians. There were no great obstacles to be
overcome in moving in to this valley of the upper
Tennessee. On the other hand, by this time it held
no very great prizes in the shape of vast tracts of
rich and unclaimed land. In consequence there was
less temptation to speculation among those who
went to this part of the Western country. It grew
rapidly, the population being composed chiefly of
actual settlers who had taken holdings with the
purpose of cultivating them, and of building homes
thereon. The entire frontier of this region was
continually harassed by Indians; and it was steadily
extended by the home-planting of the rifle-bearing
backwoodsmen.

The danger from Indian invasion and outrage
was, however, far greater in the distant communi
ties which were growing up in the great bend of
the Cumberland, cut off, as they were, by immense
reaches of forest from the sea-board States. The
settlers who went to this region for the most part
followed two routes, either descending the Ten
nessee and ascending the Cumberland in flotillas of
flat-boats and canoes, or else striking out in large
bodies through the wilderness, following the trails
that led westward from the settlements on the
Holston. The population on the Cumberland did

94 The Winning of the West

not increase very fast for some years after the close
of the Revolutionary War; and the settlers were,
as a rule, harsh, sturdy backwoodsmen, who lived
lives of toil and poverty. Nevertheless, there was
a good deal of speculation in Cumberland lands;
great tracts of tens of thousands of acres were pur
chased by men of means in the old districts of
North Carolina, who sometimes came out to live
on their estates. The looseness of the system of
surveying in vogue is shown by the fact that where
possible these lands were entered and paid for under
a law which allowed a warrant to be shifted to
new soil if it was discovered that the first entry
was made on what was already claimed by some
one else.6

Hamlets and homesteads were springing up on
the left bank of the upper Ohio, in what is now
West Virginia; and along the streams flowing into
it from the East. A few reckless adventurers were
building cabins on the right bank of this great
river. Others, almost as adventurous, were pushing
into the neighborhood of the French villages on the
Wabash and in the Illinois. At Louisville men were
already planning to colonize the country just oppo
site on the Ohio, under the law of the State of Vir
ginia, which rewarded the victorious soldiers of
Clark's famous campaign with grants in the region
they had conquered.

The great growth of the West took place in
Kentucky. The Kentucky country was by far the

• Clay MSS., Jesse Benton to Thos. Hart, April 3, 1786.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 95

most widely renowned for its fertility; it was much
more accessible and more firmly held, and its gov
ernment was on a more permanent footing than
was the case in the Wabash, Illinois, and Cumber
land regions. In consequence the majority of the
men who went West to build homes fixed their eyes
on the vigorous young community which lay north
of the Ohio, and which already aspired to the hon
ors of Statehood.

The immigrants came into Kentucky in two
streams, following two different routes — the Ohio
River, and Boone's old Wilderness Trail. Those
who came overland, along the latter road, were
much fewer in number than those who came by
water; and yet they were so numerous that the trail
at times was almost thronged, and much care had
to be taken in order to find camping places where
there was enough feed for the horses. The people
who traveled this wilderness road went in the usual
backwoods manner, on horseback, with laden pack-
trains, and often with their herds and flocks. Young
men went out alone or in parties; and groups of
families from the same neighborhood often jour
neyed together. They struggled over the narrow,
ill-made roads which led from the different back
settlements, until they came to the last outposts
of civilization east of the Cumberland Mountains;
scattered block-houses, whose owners were by turns
farmers, tavern-keepers, hunters, and Indian fight
ers. Here they usually waited until a sufficient
number had gathered together to furnish a band

96 The Winning of the West

of riflemen large enough to beat off any prowling
party of red marauders ; and then set off to traverse
by slow stages the mountains and vast forests which
lay between them and the nearest Kentucky station.
The time of the journey depended, of course, upon
the composition of the traveling party, and upon
the mishaps encountered; a party of young men
on good horses might do it in three days, while a
large band of immigrants, who were hampered by
women, children, and cattle, and dogged by ill-luck,
might take three weeks. Ordinarily six or eight
days were sufficient. Before starting each man laid
in a store of provisions for himself and his horse;
perhaps thirty pounds of flour, half a bushel of corn
meal, and three bushels of oats. There was no meat
unless game was shot. Occasionally several trav
elers clubbed together and carried a tent; otherwise
they slept in the open. The trail was very bad,
especially at first, where it climbed between the
gloomy and forbidding cliffs that walled in Cum
berland Gap. Even when undisturbed by Indians,
the trip was accompanied by much fatigue and
exposure; and, as always in frontier traveling, one
of the perpetual annoyances was the necessity for
hunting up strayed horses.7

The chief highway was the Ohio River; for to
drift down stream in a scow was easier and quicker,
and no more dangerous than to plod through thick
mountain forests. Moreover, it was much easier
for the settler who went by water to carry with

7 Durrett MSS. Journal of Rev. James Smith, 1785.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 97

him his household goods and implements of hus
bandry ; and even such cumbrous articles as wagons,
or, if he was rich and ambitious, the lumber where
with to build a frame house. All kinds of craft
were used, even bark canoes and pirogues, or dug
outs; but the keel-boat, and especially the flat-bot
tomed scow with square ends, were the ordinary
means of conveyance. They were of all sizes.
The passengers and their live stock were of course
huddled together so as to take up as little room
as possible. Sometimes the immigrants built or
bought their own boat, navigated it themselves, and
sold it or broke it up on reaching their destination.
At other times they merely hired a passage. A few
of the more enterprising boat owners speedily in
troduced a regular emigrant service, making trips
at stated times from Pittsburg or perhaps Lime
stone, and advertising the carriage capacity of their
boats and the times of starting. The trip from
Pittsburg to Louisville took a week or ten days;
but in low water it might last a month.

The number of boats passing down the Ohio,
laden with would-be settlers and their belongings,
speedily became very great. An eye-witness stated
that between November I3th and December 22d,
of 1785, thirty-nine boats, with an average of ten
souls in each, went down the Ohio to the Falls ; and
there were others which stopped at some of the
settlements further up the river.8 As time went

8 Draper MSS., "Massachusetts Gazette," March 13, 1786;
letter from Kentucky, December 22, 1785.
VOL. VII.— 5

98 The Winning of the West

on the number of immigrants who adopted this
method of travel increased ; larger boats were used,
and the immigrants took more property with them.
In the last half of the year 1787 there passed by
Fort Harmar 146 boats, with 3,196 souls, 1,371
horses, 165 wagons, 191 cattle, 245 sheep, and 24
hogs.9 In the year ending in November, 1788,
967 boats, carrying 18,370 souls, with 7,986 horses,
2,372 cows, i, no sheep, and 646 wagons,10 went
down the Ohio. For many years this great river
was the main artery through which the fresh blood
of the pioneers was pumped into the West.

There are no means of procuring similar figures
for the number of immigrants who went over the
Wilderness Road ; but probably there were not half
as many as went down the Ohio. Perhaps from
ten to twenty thousand people a year came into
Kentucky during the period immediately succeeding
the close of the Revolution ; but the net gain to the
population was much less, because there was always
a smaller, but almost equally steady, counter-flow
of men who, having failed as pioneers, were strug
gling wearily back toward their deserted Eastern
homes.

The inrush being so great Kentucky grew apace.
In 1785 the population was estimated at from
twenty11 to thirty thousand; and the leading towns,

' Harmar Papers, December 9, 1787.

10 "Columbian Magazine," January 1789. Letter from Fort
Harmar, November 26, 1788. By what is evidently a clerical
error the time is put down as one month instead of one year.

11 "Journey in the West in 1785," by Lewis Brantz.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 99

Louisville, Lexington, Harrodsburg, Booneboro, St.
Asaph's, were thriving little hamlets, with stores
and horse grist-mills, and no longer mere clusters
of stockaded cabins. At Louisville, for instance,
there were already a number of two-story frame
houses, neatly painted, with verandas running the
full length of each house, and fenced vegetable gar
dens alongside;12 while at the same time Nashville
was a town of logs, with but two houses that de
served the name, the others being mere huts.13 The
population of Louisville amounted to about 300
souls, of whom 116 were fighting men;14 between it
and Lexington the whole country was well settled ;
but fear of the Indians kept settlers back from the
Ohio.

The new-comers were mainly Americans from all
the States of the Union; but there were also a few
people from nearly every country in Europe, and
even from Asia.15 The industrious and the adven
turous, the homestead winners and the land specu
lators, the criminal fleeing from justice, and the
honest men seeking a livelihood or a fortune, all
alike prized the wild freedom and absence of re
straint so essentially characteristic of their new
life ; a life in many ways very pleasant, but one

12 Lettres d'un eultivateur American," St. John de Creve
Coeur. Summer of 1784.
18 Brantz.

14 State Department MSS. Papers Continental Congress,
No. 150, Vol. II, p. 21. Letter from Major W. North, August
23, 1786.

15 Letter in "Massachusetts Gazette," above quoted.

ioo The Winning of the West

which on the border of the Indian country sank
into mere savagery.

Kentucky was "a good poor man's country"16
provided the poor man was hardy and vigorous.
The settlers were no longer in danger of starvation,
for they already raised more flour than they could
consume. Neither was there as yet anything ap
proaching to luxury. But between these two ex
tremes there was almost every grade of misery and
well-being, according to the varying capacity shown
by the different settlers in grappling with the condi
tions of their new life. Among the foreign-born
immigrants success depended in part upon race; a
contemporary. Kentucky observer estimated that,
of twelve families of each nationality, nine German,
seven Scotch, and four Irish prospered, while the
others failed.17 The German women worked just
as hard as the men, even in the fields, and both sexes
were equally saving. Naturally such thrifty immi
grants did well materially; but they never took any
position of leadership or influence in the community
until they had assimilated themselves in speech and
customs to their American neighbors. The Scotch
were frugal and industrious; for good or for bad
they speedily became indistinguishable from the
native-born. The greater proportion of failures
among the Irish, brave and vigorous though they
were, was due to their quarrelsomeness, and their

16 State Department MSS. Madison Papers. Caleb Wal
lace to Madison, July 12, 1785.

11 "Description of Kentucky," 1792, by Harry Toulmin,
Secretary of State.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 101

fondness for drink and litigation; besides, remarks
this Kentucky critic, "they soon took to the gun,
which is the ruin of everything." None of these
foreign-born elements were of any very great im
portance in the development of Kentucky; its des
tiny was shaped and controlled by its men of native
stock.

In such a population there was of course much
loosening of the bands, social, political, moral, and
religious, which knit a society together. A great
many of the restraints of their old life were thrown
off, and there was much social adjustment and re
adjustment before their relations to one another
under the new conditions became definitely settled.
But there came early into the land many men of
high purpose and pure life whose influence upon
their fellows, though quiet, was very great. More
over, the clergyman and the school-teacher, the
two beings who had done so much for colonial civil
ization on the seaboard, were already becoming im
portant factors in the life of the frontier communi
ties. Austere Presbyterian ministers were people of
mark in many of the towns. The Baptist preachers
lived and worked exactly as did their flocks; their
dwellings were little cabins with dirt floors and, in
stead of bedsteads, skin-covered pole-bunks; they
cleared the ground, split rails, planted corn, and
raised hogs on equal terms with their parishioners.18
After Methodism cut loose from its British con
nections in 1785, the time of its great advance be-

18 "History of Kentucky Baptists," by J. H. Spencer.

102 The Winning of the West

gan, and the circuit-riders were speedily eating bear
meat and buffalo tongues on the frontier.19

Rough log schools were springing up everywhere,
beside the rough log meeting-houses, the same build
ing often serving for both purposes. The school
teacher might be a young surveyor out of work for
the moment, a New Englander fresh from some
academy in the Northeast, an Irishman with a smat
tering of learning, or perhaps an English immi
grant of the upper class, unfit for and broken down
by the work of a new country.20 The boys and girls
were taught together, and at recess played together
— tag, pawns, and various kissing games. The rod
was used unsparingly, for the elder boys proved
boisterous pupils. A favorite mutinous frolic was to
"bar out" the teacher, taking possession of the
school-house and holding it against the master with
sticks and stones until he had either forced an en
trance or agreed to the terms of the defenders.
Sometimes this barring out represented a revolt
against tyranny; often it was a conventional, and
half-acquiesced-in, method of showing exuberance
of spirit, just before the Christmas holidays. In
most of the schools the teaching was necessarily
of the simplest, for the only books might be a Testa
ment, a primer, a spelling book, and a small arith
metic.

In such a society, simple, strong, and rude, both

19 "History of Methodism in Kentucky," by John B. Mc-
Ferrier.
i0 Durrett MSS. "Autobiography of Robert McAfee."

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 103

the good features and the bad were nakedly promi
nent ; and the views of observers in reference thereto
varied accordingly as they were struck by one set of
characteristics or another. One traveler would paint
the frontiersmen as little better than the Indians
against whom they warred, and their life as wild,
squalid, and lawless ; while the next would lay espe
cial and admiring stress on their enterprise, audacity,
and hospitable openhandedness. Though much
alike, different portions of the frontier stock were
beginning to develop 'along different lines. The
Holston people, both in Virginia and North Caro
lina, were by this time comparatively little affected
by immigration from without those States, and were
on the whole homogeneous ; but the Virginians and
Carolinians of the seaboard considered them rough,
unlettered, and not of very good character. One
traveling clergyman spoke of them with particular
disfavor; he was probably prejudiced by their in
difference to his preaching, for he mentions with
much dissatisfaction that the congregations he ad
dressed "though small, behaved extremely bad." 21
The Kentuckians showed a mental breadth that was
due largely to the many different sources from
which even the predominating American elements
in the population sprang. The Cumberland people
seemed to travelers the wildest and rudest of all,
as was but natural, for these fierce and stalwart set
tlers were still in the midst of a warfare as savage

SI Durrett MSS. Rev. James Smith, "Tour in Western
Country," 1785.

104 The Winning of the West

as any ever waged among the cave-dwellers of the
Stone Age.

The opinion of any mere passer through a coun
try is always less valuable than that of an intelligent
man who dwells and works among the people, and
who possesses both insight and sympathy. At this
time one of the recently created Kentucky judges,
an educated Virginian, in writing to his friend
Madison, said: "We are as harmonious amongst
ourselves as can be expected of a mixture of people
from various States and of various Sentiments and
Manners not yet assimilated. In point of Morals
the bulk of the inhabitants are far superior to what
I expected to find in any new settled country. We
have not had a single instance of Murder, and but
one Criminal for Felony of any kind has yet been
before the Supreme Court. I wish I could say as
much to vindicate the character of our Land-jobbers.
This business has been attended with much villainy
in other parts. Here it is reduced to a system, and
to take the advantage of the ignorance or of the pov
erty of a neighbor is almost grown into reputa
tion." 22

Of course, when the fever for land speculation
raged so violently, many who had embarked too
eagerly in the purchase of large tracts became land
poor; Clark being among those who found that
though they owned great reaches of fertile wild
land they had no means whatever of getting

88 Wallace's letter, above quoted.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 105

money.23 In Kentucky, while much land was taken
up under Treasury warrants, much was also allotted
to the officers of the Continental army; and the re
tired officers of the Continental line were the best
of all possible immigrants. A class of gentle-folks
soon sprang up in the land, whose members were not
so separated from other citizens as to be in any
way alien to them, and who yet stood sufficiently
above the mass to be recognized as the natural lead
ers, social and political, of their sturdy fellow-free
men. These men by degrees built themselves com
fortable, roomy houses, and their lives were very
pleasant ; at a little later period Clark, having aban
doned war and politics, describes himself as living a
retired life with, as his chief amusements, reading,
hunting, fishing, fowling, and corresponding with
a few chosen friends.24 Game was still' very plen
tiful: buffalo and elk abounded north of the Ohio,
while bear and deer, turkey, swans, and geese,25 not
to speak of ducks and prairie fowl, swarmed in the
immediate neighborhood of the settlements.

The gentry offered to strangers the usual open-
handed hospitality characteristic of the frontier,
with much more than the average frontier refine
ment; a hospitality, moreover, which was never
marred or interfered with by the frontier suspi-
ciousness of strangers which sometimes made the

23 Draper MSS. G. R. Clark to Jonathan Clark, April 20,
1788.

54 Do., letter of Sept 2, 1791.

25 "Magazine of American History," I. Letters of Lau
rence Butler from Kentucky, Nov. 20, 1786, etc.

io6 The Winning of the West

humbler people of the border seem churlish to trav
elers. When Federal garrisons were established
along the Ohio the officers were largely dependent
for their social pleasures on the gentle-folk of the
neighborhood. One of them in his journal gives
several rather curious glimpses of the life of the
time.26 He mentions being entertained by Clark at
"a very elegant dinner," 27 a number of gentlemen
being present. After dinner the guests adjourned
to the dancing school, "where there were twelve or
fifteen young misses, some of whom had made con
siderable improvement in that polite accomplish
ment, and indeed were middling neatly dressed con
sidering the distance from where luxuries are to be
bought and the expense attending the purchase of
them here" — for though beef and flour were cheap,
all imported goods sold for at least five times as
much as they cost in Philadelphia or New York.
The officers sometimes gave dances in the forts, the
ladies and their escorts coming in to spend the night ;
and they attended the great barbecues to which the
people rode from far and near, many of the men
carrying their wives or sweethearts behind them on
the saddle. At such a barbecue an ox or a sheep, a
bear, an elk, or a deer, was split in two and roasted
over the coals; dinner was eaten under the trees;
and there was every kind of amusement from horse-
racing to dancing.

56 Major Erkuries Beattie. In the "Magazine of Am.
Hist.," I, p. 175.
27 Aug. 25, 1786.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 107

Though the relations of the officers of the regular
troops with the gentry were so pleasant there was
always much friction between them and the ordinary
frontiersmen; a friction which continued to exist
as long as the frontier itself, and which survives
to this day in the wilder parts of the country. The
regular army officer and the frontiersman are
trained in fashions so diametrically opposite that,
though the two men be brothers, they must yet
necessarily, in all their thoughts and instincts and
ways of looking at life, be as alien as if they be
longed to two different races of mankind. The bor
derer, rude, suspicious, and impatient of discipline,
looks with distrust and with a mixture of sneering
envy and of hostility upon the officer ; while the lat
ter, with his rigid training and his fixed ideals,
feels little sympathy for the other's good points, and
is contemptuously aware of his numerous failings.
The only link between the two is the scout, the man
who, though one of the frontiersmen, is accustomed
to act and fight in company with the soldiers. In
Kentucky, at the close of the Revolution, this link
was generally lacking; and there was no tie of ha
bitual', even th'ough half-hostile, intercourse to unite
the two parties. In consequence the ill-will often
showed itself by acts of violence. The backwoods
bullies were prone to browbeat and insult the officers
if they found them alone, trying to provoke them to
rough-and-tumble fighting; and in such a combat,
carried on with the revolting brutality necessarily
attendant upon a contest where gouging and biting

io8 The Winning of the West

were considered legitimate, the officers, who were
accustomed only to use their fists, generally had the
worst of it; so that at 1'ast they made a practice of
carrying their side-arms — which secured them from
molestation.

Besides raising more than enough flour and beef
to keep themselves in plenty, the settlers turned
their attention to many other forms of produce. In
dian corn was still the leading crop; but melons,
pumpkins, and the like were grown, and there were
many thriving orchards; while tobacco cultivation
was becoming of much importance. Great droves
of hogs and flocks of sheep flourished in every lo
cality whence the bears and wolves had been driven ;
the hogs running free in the woods with the branded
cattle and horses. Except in the most densely set
tled parts much of the beef was still obtained from
buffaloes, and much of the bacon from bears. Veni
son was a staple commodity. The fur trade, largely
carried on by French trappers, was still of great im
portance in Kentucky and Tennessee. North of the
Ohio it was the attraction which tempted white men
into the wilderness. Its profitable nature was the
chief reason why the British persistently clung to
the posts on the Lakes, and stirred up the Indians
to keep the American settlers out of all lands that
were tributary to the British fur merchants. From
Kentucky and the Cumberland country the peltries
were sometimes sent east by pack-train, and some
times up the Ohio in bateaus or canoes.

In addition to furs, quantities of ginseng were

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 109

often carried to the Eastern settlements at this period
when the commerce of the West was in its first in
fancy, and was as yet only struggling for an outlet
down the Mississippi. One of those who went into
this trade was Boone. Although no longer a real
leader in Kentucky life he still occupied quite a
prominent position, and served as a Representative
in the Virginia Legislature,28 while his fame as a
hunter and explorer was now spread abroad in the
United States, and even in Europe. To travelers
and new-comers generally, he was always pointed
out as the first discoverer of Kentucky; and be
ing modest, self-contained, and self-reliant, he al
ways impressed them favorably. He spent most of
his time in hunting, trapping, and surveying land
warrants for men of means, being paid, for instance,
two shillings current money per acre for all the good
land he could enter on a ten-thousand acre Treasury
warrant.29 He also traded up and down the Ohio
River at various places, such as Point Pleasant and
Limestone ; and at times combined keeping a tavern
with keeping a store. His accounts contain much
quaint information. Evidently his guests drank as
generously as they ate; he charges one four pounds
sixteen shillings for two months' board and two
pounds four shillings for liquor. He takes the note
of another for ninety-three gallons of cheap corn
whiskey. Whiskey cost sixpence a pint, and rum

88 Draper's MSS., Boone MSS., from Bourbon Co. The
papers cover the years from 1784 on to '95.
49 Do., certificate of G. Imlay, 1784.

no The Winning of the West

one shilling ; while corn was three shillings a bushel,
and salt twenty-four shillings, flour, thirty-six shil
lings a barrel, bacon sixpence and fresh pork and
buffalo beef threepence a pound. Boone procured
for his customers or for himself such articles as
linen, cloth, flannel, corduroy, chintz, calico, broad
cloth, and velvet at prices varying according to the
quality, from three to thirty shillings a yard; and
there was also evidently a ready market for "tea
ware," knives and forks, scissors, buttons, nails, and
all kinds of hardware. Furs and skins usually ap
pear on the debit sides of the various accounts, rang
ing in value from the skin of a beaver, worth eigh
teen shillings, or that of a bear worth ten, to those
of deer, wolves, coons, wildcats, and foxes, costing
two to four shillings apiece. Boone procured his
goods from merchants in Hagerstown and Wil-
liamsport, in Maryland, whither he and his sons
guided their own pack-trains, laden with peltries and
with kegs of ginseng, and accompanied by droves
of loose horses. He either followed some well-
beaten mountain trail or opened a new road through
the wilderness as seemed to him best at the mo
ment.30

Boone's creed in matters of morality and religion
was as simple and straightforward as his own char
acter. Late in life he wrote to one of his kinsfolk :
"All the religion I have is to love and fear God,
believe in Jesus Christ, do all the good to my neigh-

30 Do. , passim.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 in

bors and myself that I can, and do as little harm as
I can help, and trust on God's mercy for the rest."
The old pioneer always kept the respect of red men
and white, of friend and foe, for he acted according
to his belief. Yet there was one evil to which he
was no more sensitive than the other men of his
time.

Among his accounts there is an entry recording
his purchase, for another man, of a negro woman
for the sum of ninety pounds.31 There was already
a strong feeling in the Western settlements against
negro slavery,32 because of its moral evil, and of its
inconsistency with all true standards of humanity and
Christianity, a feeling which continued to exist and
which later led to resolute efforts to forbid or abol
ish slave-holding. But the consciences of the major
ity were too dull, and, from the standpoint of the
white race, they were too shortsighted to take ac
tion in the right direction. The selfishness and
mental obliquity which imperil the future of a race
for the sake of. the lazy pleasure of two or three gen
erations prevailed; and in consequence the white
people of the middle West, and therefore eventually
of the Southwest, clutched the one burden under
which they ever staggered, the one evil which has
ever warped their development, the one danger
which has ever seriously threatened their very ex
istence. Slavery must of necessity exercise the most
baleful influence upon any slave-holding people, and

81 Do., March 7, 1786.

12 See Journals of Rev. James Smith.

ii2 The Winning of the West

especially upon those members of the dominant
caste who do not themselves own slaves. Moreover,
the negro, unlike so many of the inferior races, does
not dwindle away in the presence of the white man.
He holds his own; indeed, under the conditions of
American slavery he increased faster than the white,
threatening to supplant him. He actually has sup
planted him in certain of the West Indian Islands,
where the sin of the white in enslaving the black
has been visited upon the head of the wrongdoer
by his victim with a dramatically terrible complete
ness of revenge.

What has occurred in Hayti is what would even
tually have occurred in our own semi-tropical States
if the slave-trade and slavery had continued to flour
ish as their short-sighted advocates wished. Slavery
is ethically abhorrent to all right-minded men; and
it is to be condemned without stint on this ground
alone. From the standpoint of the master caste it
is to be condemned even more strongly because it
invariably in the end threatens the very existence
of that master caste. From this point of view the
presence of the negro is the real problem; slavery
is merely the worst possible method of solving the
problem. In their earlier stages the problem and
its solution, in America, were one. There may be
differences of opinion as to how to solve the prob
lem ; but there can be none whatever as to the evil
wrought by those who brought about that problem ;
and it was only the slave-holders and the slave-
traders who were guilty on this last count. The

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 113

worst foes, not only of humanity and civilization, but
especially of the white race in America, were those
white men who brought slaves from Africa, and
who fostered the spread of slavery in the States and
territories of the American Republic.

CHAPTER II

THE INDIAN WARS, 1784-1787

AFTER the close of the Revolution there was
a short, uneasy lull in the eternal border war
fare between the white men and the red. The In
dians were for the moment daunted by a peace
which left them without allies; and the feeble Fed
eral Government attempted for the first time to aid
and control the West by making treaties with the
most powerful frontier tribes. Congress raised a
tiny regular army, and several companies were sent
to the upper Ohio to garrison two or three small
forts which were built upon its banks. Commis
sioners (one of whom was Clark himself) were
appointed to treat with both the Northern and
Southern Indians. Councils were held in various
places. In 1785 and early in 1786 utterly fruitless
treaties were concluded with Shawnees, Wyandots,
and Delawares at one or other of the little forts.1
About the same time, in the late fall of 1785,
another treaty somewhat more noteworthy, but
equally fruitless, was concluded with the Cherokees
at Hopewell, on Keowee, in South Carolina. In

1 State Department MSS., No. 56, p. 333, Letter of G.
Clark, Nov. 10, 1785; p. 337, Letter of G. Clark to R. Butler,
etc. ; No. 16, p. 293 ; No. 32, p. 39.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 115

this treaty the Commissioners promised altogether
too much. They paid little heed to the rights and
needs of the settlers. Neither did they keep in
mind the powerlessness of the Federal Government
to enforce against these settlers what their treaty
promised the Indians. The pioneers along the upper
Tennessee and the Cumberland had made various
arrangements with bands of the Cherokees, some
times acting on their own initiative and sometimes
on behalf of the State of North Carolina. Many
of these different agreements were entered into by
the whites with honesty and good faith, but were
violated at will by the Indians. Others were vio
lated by the whites, or were repudiated by the In
dians as well, because of some real or fancied un
fairness in the making. Under them large quanti
ties of land had been sold or allotted, and hundreds
of homes had been built on the lands thus won by
the whites or ceded by the Indians. As with all
Indian treaties, it was next to impossible to say ex
actly how far these agreements were binding, be
cause no persons, not even the Indians themselves,
could tell exactly who had authority to represent
the tribes.2 The Commissioners paid little heed to
these treaties, and drew the boundary so that quan
tities of land which had been entered under regular
grants, and were covered by the homesteads of the
frontiersmen, were declared to fall within the
Cherokee line. Moreover, they even undertook to
drive all settlers off these lands.

* American State Papers, Public Lands, I, p. 40, vi.

n6 The Winning of the West

Of course, such a treaty excited the bitter anger
of the frontiersmen, and they scornfully refused to
obey its provisions. They hated the Indians, and,
as a rule, were brutally indifferent to their rights,
while they looked down on the Federal Government
as impotent. Nor was the ill-will to the treaty
confined to the rough borderers. Many men of
means found that land grants which they had ob
tained in good faith and for good money were
declared void. Not only did they denounce the
treaty, and decline to abide by it, but they de
nounced the motives of the Commissioners, declar
ing, seemingly without justification, that they had
ingratiated themselves with the Indians to further
land speculations of their own.3

As the settlers declined to pay any heed to the
treaty the Indians naturally became as discontented
with it as the whites. In the following summer
the Cherokee chiefs made solemn complaint that,
instead of retiring from the disputed ground, the
settlers had encroached yet further upon it, and had
come to within five miles of the beloved town of
Chota. The chiefs added that they had now made
several such treaties, each of which established
boundaries that were immediately broken, and that
indeed it had been their experience that after a
treaty the whites settled even faster on their lands
than before.4 Just before this complaint was sent

8 Clay MSS. Jesse Benton to Thos. Hart, April 3, 1786.
4 State Department MSS. , No. 56. Address of Corn Tassel
and Hanging Maw, Sept. 5, 1786.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 117

to Congress the same chiefs had been engaged in
negotiations with the settlers themselves, who ad
vanced radically different claims. The fact was
that in this unsettled time the bond of Governmental
authority was almost as lax among the whites as
among the Indians, and the leaders on each side
who wished for peace were hopelessly unable to
restrain their fellows who did not. Under such
circumstances, the sword, or rather the tomahawk,
was ultimately the only possible arbiter.

The treaties entered into with the Northwestern
Indians failed for precisely the opposite reason.
The treaty at Hopewell promised so much to the
Indians that the whites refused to abide by its
terms. In the councils on the Ohio the Americans
promised no more than they could and did perform ;
but the Indians themselves broke the treaties at
once, and in all probability never for a moment
intended to keep them, merely signing from a
greedy desire to get the goods they were given as
an earnest. They were especially anxious for spir
its, for they far surpassed even the white borderers
in their crazy thirst for strong drink. "We have
smelled your liquor and it is very good; we hope
you will give us some little kegs to carry home,"
said the spokesmen of a party of Chippewas, who
had come from the upper Great Lakes.5 These
frank savages, speaking thus in behalf of their far
northern brethren, uttered what was in the minds of
most of the Indians who attended the councils held

1 Do., Letters of H. Knox, No. 150, Vol. I, p. 445.

n8 The Winning of the West

by the United States Commissioners. They came
to see what they could get by begging, or by prom
ising what they had neither the will nor the power
to perform. Many of them, as in the case of the
Chippewas, were from lands so remote that they
felt no anxiety about white encroachments, and
were lured into hostile encounter with the Ameri
cans chiefly by their own overmastering love of
plunder and bloodshed.

Nevertheless, there were a few chiefs and men
of note in the tribes who sincerely wished peace.
One of these was Cornplanter, the Iroquois. The
power of the Six Nations had steadily dwindled;
moreover, they did not, like the more western tribes,
lie directly athwart the path which the white ad
vance was at the moment taking. Thus they were
not drawn into open warfare, but their continual
uneasiness, and the influence they still possessed
with the other Indians, made it an object to keep
on friendly terms with them. Cornplanter, a val
iant and able warrior, who had both taken and
given hard blows in warring against the Ameri
cans, was among the chiefs and ambassadors who
visited Fort Pitt during the troubled lull in frontier
war which succeeded the news of the peace of 1783.
His speeches showed, as his deeds had already
shown, in a high degree, that loftiness of courage,
and stern, uncomplaining acceptance of the decrees
of a hostile fate, which so often ennobled the other
wise gloomy and repellent traits of the Indian char
acter. He raised no plaint over what had befallen

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 119

his race ; "The Great Spirit above directs us so that
whatever hath been said or done must be good
and right," he said in a spirit of strange fatalism
well known to certain creeds, both Christian and
heathen. He was careful to dwell on the fact that
in addressing the representatives of "the Great
Council who watch the Thirteen Fires and keep
them bright," he was anxious only to ward off woe
from the women and little ones of his people and
was defiantly indifferent to what might personally
be before him. "As for me my life is short, 'tis
already sold to the Great King over the water," he
said. But it soon appeared that the British agents
had deceived him, telling him that the peace was
a mere temporary truce, and keeping concealed the
fact that under the treaty the British had ceded
to the Americans all rights over the Iroquois and
Western Indians, and over their land. Great was
his indignation when the actual text of the treaty
was read him, and he discovered the double-dealing
of his far-off royal paymaster. In commenting on it
he showed that, like the rest of his race, he had
been much impressed by the striking uniforms of the
British officers. He evidently took it for granted
that the head of these officers must own a yet more
striking uniform ; and treachery seemed doubly odi
ous in one who possessed so much. "I assisted the
great King," he said, "I fought his battles, while
he sat quietly in his forts; nor did I ever suspect
that so great a person, one too who wore a red
coat sufficient of itself to tempt one, could be guilty

i2o The Winning of the West

of such glaring falsehoods."6 After this Corn-
planter remained on good terms with the Americans
and helped to keep the Iroquois from joining openly
in the war. The Western tribes taunted them be
cause of this attitude. They sent them word in the
fall of 1785 that once the Six Nations were a great
fpeople, but that now they had let the Long Knife
throw them ; but that the Western Indians would set
them on their feet again if they would join 'them;
for "the Western Indians were determined to
wrestle with Long Knife in the spring."7

Some of the Algonquin chiefs, notably Molunthee
the Shawnee, likewise sincerely endeavored to bring
about a peace. But the Western tribes as a whole
were bent .on war. They were constantly excited
and urged on by the British partisan leaders, such
as Simon Girty, Elliot, and Caldwell. These lead
ers took part in the great Indian councils, at which
even tribes west of the Mississippi were represented ;
and though they spoke without direct authority from
the British commanders at the lake posts, yet their
words carried weight when they told the young red
warriors that it was better to run the risk of dying
like men than of starving like dogs. Many of the
old men among the Wyandots and Delawares spoke
against strife; but the young men were for war,
and among the Shawnees, the Wabash Indians, and

6 State Dept. MSS., No. 56, March 7, 1786, p. 345, also p.

395-

7 Do., No. 150, Vol. I, Major Finley's Statement, Dec. 6,

1785-

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 121

the Miamis the hostile party was still stronger. A
few Indians would come to one of the forts and
make a treaty on behalf of their tribe, at the very
moment that the other members of the same tribe
were murdering and ravaging among the exposed
settlements or were harrying the boats that went
down the Ohio. All the tribes that entered into the
treaties of peace were represented among the dif
ferent parties of marauders. Over the outlaw
bands there was no pretence of control; and their
successes, and the numerous scalps and quantities
of plunder they obtained, made them very danger
ous examples to the hot-blooded young warriors
everywhere. Perhaps the most serious of all ob
stacles to peace was the fact that the British still
kept the lake posts.8

The Indians who did come in to treat were sullen,
and at first always insisted on impossible terms.
They would finally agree to mutual concessions,
would promise to keep their young men from ma
rauding, and to allow surveys to be made, provided
the settlers were driven off all lands which the In
dians had not yielded; and, after receiving many
gifts, would depart. The representatives of the
Federal Government would then at once set about
performing their share of the agreement, the most
important part of which was the removal of the
settlers who had built cabins on the Indian lands
west of the Ohio. The Federal authorities, both

8 Do., Letters of H. Knox, No. 150, Vol. 1, pp. 107, 112, 115,
123, 149, 243, 269, etc.
VOL. VII,— 6

122 The Winning of the West

military and civil, disliked the intruders as much
as they did the Indians, stigmatizing them as "a
banditti who were a disgrace to human nature."
There was no unnecessary harshness exercised by
the troops in removing the trespassers; but the
cabins were torn down and the sullen settlers them
selves were driven back across the river, though
they protested and threatened resistance. Again and
again this was done; not alone in the interest of
the Indians, but in part also because Congress
wished to reserve the lands for sale, with the pur
pose of paying off the public debt. At the same
time surveying parties were sent out. But in each
case, no sooner had the Federal Commissioners and
their subordinates begun to perform their part of
the agreement, than they were stopped by tidings
of fresh outrages on the part of the very Indians
with whom they had made the treaty; while the
surveying parties were driven in and forced to
abandon their work.9

The truth was that while the Federal Govern
ment sincerely desired peace, and strove to bring
it about, the Northwestern tribes were resolutely
bent on war; and the frontiersmen themselves
showed nearly as much inclination for hostilities
as the Indians.10 They were equally anxious to
intrude on the Government and on the Indian lands ;
for they were adventurous, the lands were valuable,

9 State Department MSS., No. 30, p. 265; No. 56, p. 327;
No. 163, pp. 416, 418, 422, 426.

10 Do., Indian Affairs. Letter of P. Muhlenberg, July 5,
1784.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 123

and they hated the Indians and looked down on
the weak Federal authority.11 They often made
what were legally worthless "tomahawk claims,"
and objected almost as much as the Indians to the
work of the regular Government surveyors.12 Even
the men of note, men like George Rogers Clark,
were often engaged in schemes to encroach on the
land north of the Ohio, drawing on themselves
the bitter reproaches not only of the Federal au
thorities, but also of the Virginia Government, for
their cruel readiness to jeopardize the country by
incurring the wrath of the Indians.13 The more
lawless whites were as little amenable to authority
as the Indians themselves; and at the very moment
when a peace was being negotiated one side or the
other would commit some brutal murder. While
the chiefs and old Indians were delivering long-
winded speeches to the Peace Commissioners, bands
of young braves committed horrible ravages among
the lonely settlements.14 Now a drunken Indian
at Fort Pitt murdered an innocent white man, the
local garrison of regular troops saving him with
difficulty from being lynched;15 now a band of white
ruffians gathered to attack some peaceable Indians
who had come in to treat;18 again a white man

11 Do., Report of H. Knox, April, 1787.
11 Do., 150, Vol. II, p. 548.

13 Draper MSS. Benj. Harrison to G. R. Clark, August 19,
1784.

14 State Dept. MSS., No. 56, pp. 279 and 333; No. 60, p.
297, etc.

15 Denny's Journal, p. 259.

18 State Dept. MSS., No. 56, p. 255.

124 The Winning of the West

murdered an unoffending Indian, and was seized
by a Federal officer, and thrown into chains, to
the great indignation of his brutal companions;17
and yet again another white man murdered an In
dian, and escaped to the woods before he could
be arrested.18

Under such conditions the peace negotiations
were doomed from the outset. The truce on the
border was of the most imperfect description; mur
ders and robberies by the Indians, and acts of vin
dictive retaliation or aggression by the whites, oc
curred continually and steadily increased in num
ber. In 1784 a Cherokee of note, when sent to
warn the intruding settlers on the French Broad
that they must move out of the land, was shot
and slain in a fight with a local militia captain.
Cherokee war bands had already begun to harry
the frontier and infest the Kentucky Wilderness
Road.19 At the same time the Northwestern In
dians likewise committed depredations, and were
only prevented from making a general league against
the whites by their own internal dissensions — the
Chickasaws and Kickapoos being engaged in a des
perate war.20 The Wabash Indians were always
threatening hostilities. The Shawnees for some
time observed a precarious peace, and even, in ac
cordance with their agreement, brought in and sur-

" Do., No. 150, Vol. II, p. 296.

18 Draper MSS. Clark, Croghan, and Others to Delawares,
August 28, 1785.

19 State Dept. MSS., No. 48, p. 277.

20 Do., Miihlenberg's Letter.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 125

rendered a few white prisoners; and among the
Delawares and Wyandots there was also a strong
friendly party; but in all three tribes the turbulent
element was never under real control, and it grad
ually got the upper hand. Meanwhile the Geor
gians and Creeks in the South were having expe
riences of precisely the same kind — treaties fraud
ulently procured by the whites, or fraudulently
entered into and violated by the Indians; encroach
ments by white settlers on Indian lands, and bloody
Indian forays among the peaceful settlements.21

The more far-sighted and resolute among all
the Indians, Northern and Southern, began to strive
for a general union against the Americans.22 In
1786 the Northwestern Indians almost formed such
a union. Two thousand warriors gathered at the
Shawnee towns and agreed to take up the hatchet
against the Americans; British agents were present
at the council ; and even before the council was held,
war parties were bringing into the Shawnee towns
the scalps of American settlers, and prisoners, both
men and women, who were burned at the stake.23
But the jealousy and irresolution of the tribes pre
vented the actual formation of a league.

The Federal Government still feebly hoped for
peace; and in the vain endeavors to avoid irritating
the Indians forbade all hostile expeditions into the

S1 Do., No. 73, pp. 7, 343. Gazette of the State of Georgia,
Aug. 5, 1784. May 25, June i, Nov. 2, Nov. 30, 1786.

»* Do., No. 20, pp. 321 and 459; No. 18, p. 140; No. 12, Vol.
II, June 30, 1786.

93 Do., No. 60, p. 277, Sept. 13, 1786.

126 The Winning of the West

Indian country — though these expeditions offered
the one hope of subduing the savages and prevent
ing their inroads. By 1786 the settlers generally,
including all their leaders, such as Clark,24 had be
come convinced that the treaties were utterly futile,
and that the only right policy was one of resolute
war.

In truth the war was unavoidable. The claims
and desires of the two parties were irreconcilable.
Treaties and truces were palliatives which did not
touch the real underlying trouble. The white set
tlers were unflinchingly bent on seizing the land
over which the Indians roamed but which they did
not in any true sense own or occupy. In return
the Indians were determined at all costs and haz
ards to keep the men of chain and compass, and
of axe and rifle, and the forest-felling settlers who
followed them, out of their vast and lonely hunt
ing-grounds. Nothing but the actual shock of
battle could decide the quarrel. The display of
overmastering, overwhelming force might have
cowed the Indians; but it was not possible for the
United States, or for any European power, ever to
exert or display such force far beyond the limits
of the settled country. In consequence the warlike
tribes were not then, and never have been since,
quelled save by actual hard fighting, until they were
overawed by the settlement of all the neighboring
lands.

Nor was there any alternative to these Indian

44 Do., No. 50, p. 279. Clark to R. H. Lee.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 127

wars. It is idle folly to speak of them as being
the fault of the United States Government; and it
is even more idle to say that they could have been
averted by treaty. Here and there, under excep
tional circumstances or when a given tribe was
feeble and unwarlike, the whites might gain the
ground by a treaty entered into of their own free
will by the Indians, without the least duress; but
this was not possible with warlike and powerful
tribes when once they realized that they were threat
ened with serious encroachment on their hunting-
grounds. Moreover, looked at from the standpoint
of the ultimate result, there was little real differ
ence to the Indian whether the land was taken by
treaty or by war. In the end the Delaware fared
no better at the hands of the Quaker than the Wam-
panoag at the hands of the Puritan; the methods
were far more humane in the one case than in the
other, but the outcome was the same in both. No
treaty could be satisfactory to the whites, no treaty
served the needs of humanity and civilization, un
less it gave the land to the Americans as unreserv
edly as any successful war.

As a matter of fact, the lands we have won from
the Indians have been won as much by treaty as
by war; but it was almost always war, or else the
menace and possibility of war, that secured the
treaty. In these treaties we have been more than
just to the Indians; we have been abundantly gen
erous, for we have paid them many times what they
were entitled to; many times what we would have

128 The Winning of the West

paid any civilized people whose claim was as vague
and shadowy as theirs. By war or threat of war,
or purchase we have won from great civilized na
tions, from France, Spain, Russia, and Mexico,
immense tracts of country already peopled by many
tens of thousands of families; we have paid many
millions of dollars to these nations for the land we
took; but for every dollar thus paid to these great
and powerful civilized commonwealths, we have
paid ten, for lands less valuable, to the chiefs and
warriors of the red tribes. No other conquering
and colonizing nation has ever treated the original
savage owners of the soil with such generosity as
has the United States. Nor is the charge that the
treaties with the Indians have been broken, of weight
in itself; it depends always on the individual case.
Many of the treaties were kept by the whites and
broken by the Indians; others were broken by the
whites themselves; and sometimes those who broke
them did very wrong indeed, and sometimes they
did right. No treaties, whether between civilized
nations or not, can ever be regarded as binding in
perpetuity ; with changing conditions, circumstances
may arise which render it not only expedient, but
imperative and honorable, to abrogate them.

Whether the whites won the land by treaty, by
armed conquest, or, as was actually the case, by
a mixture of both, mattered comparatively little
so long as the land was won. It was all-important
that it should be won, for the benefit of civilization
and in the interests of mankind. It is indeed a

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 129

warped, perverse, and silly morality which would
forbid a course of conquest that has turned whole
continents into the seats of mighty and flourishing
civilized nations. All men of sane and wholesome
thought must dismiss with impatient contempt the
plea that these continents should be reserved for
the use of scattered savage tribes, whose lifex was
but a few degrees less meaningless, squalid, and
ferocious than that of the wild beasts with whom
they held joint ownership. It is as idle to apply
to savages the rules of international morality which
obtain between stable and cultured communities,
as it would be to judge the fifth-century English
conquest of Britain by the standards of to-day.
Most fortunately, the hard, energetic, practical men
.who do the rough pioneer work of civilization in
barbarous lands, are not prone to false sentimental
ity. The people who are, are the people who stay
at home. Often these stay-at-homes are too selfish
and indolent, too lacking in imagination, to under
stand the race-importance of the work which is done
by their pioneer brethren in wild and distant lands ;
and they judge them by standards which would
only be applicable to quarrels in their own town
ships and parishes. Moreover, as each new land
grows old, it misjudges the yet newer lands, as
once it was itself misjudged. The home-staying
Englishman of Britain grudges to the Africander
his conquest of Matabeleland ; and so the home-
staying American of the Atlantic States dislikes
to see the Western miners and cattlemen win for

130 The Winning of the West

the use of their people the Sioux hunting-grounds.
Nevertheless, it is the men actually on the borders
of the longed-for ground, the men actually in con
tact with the savages, who in the end shape their
own destinies.

The most ultimately righteous of all wars is a
war with savages, though it is apt to be also the
most terrible and inhuman. The rude, fierce settler
who drives the savage from the land lays all civ
ilized mankind under a debt to him. American
and Indian, Boer and Zulu, Cossack and Tartar,
New Zealander and Maori, — in each case the vic
tor, horrible though many of his deeds are, has
laid deep the foundations for the future greatness
of a mighty people. The consequences of struggles
for territory between civilized nations seem small
by comparison. Looked at from the standpoint of
the ages, it is of little moment whether Lorraine
is part of Germany or of France, whether the
Northern Adriatic cities pay homage to Austrian
kaiser or Italian king; but it is of incalculable
importance that America, Australia, and Siberia
should pass out of the hands of their red, black,
and yellow aboriginal owners, and become the her
itage of the dominant world races.

Yet the very causes which render this struggle
between savagery and the rough front rank of civ
ilization so vast and elemental in its consequence
to the future of the world, also tend to render it
in certain ways peculiarly revolting and barbarous.
It is primeval warfare, and it is waged as war

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 131

was waged in the ages of bronze and of iron. All
the merciful humanity that even war has gained
during the last two thousand years is lost. It is
a warfare where no pity is shown to non-comba
tants, where the weak are harried without ruth, and
the vanquished maltreated with merciless ferocity.
A sad and evil feature of such warfare is that the
whites, the representatives of civilization, speedily
sink almost to the level of their barbarous foes,
in point of hideous brutality. The armies are
neither led by trained officers nor made up of reg
ular troops — they are composed of armed settlers,
fierce and wayward men, whose ungovernable pas
sions are unrestrained by discipline, who have
many grievous wrongs to redress, and who -look
on their enemies with a mixture of contempt and
loathing, of dread and intense hatred. When the
clash comes between these men and their sombre
foes, too often there follow deeds of enormous,
of incredible, of indescribable horror. It is im
possible to dwell without a shudder on the mon
strous woe and misery of such a contest.

The men of Kentucky and of the infant North
west would have found their struggle with the
Indians dangerous enough in itself; but there was
an added element of menace in the fact that back
of the Indians stood the British. It was for this
reason that the frontiersmen grew to regard as
essential to their well-being the possession of the
lake posts; so that it became with them a prime
object to wrest from the British, whether by force

132 The Winning of the West

of arms or by diplomacy, the forts they held at
Niagara, Detroit, and Michilimakinac. Detroit
was the most important, for it served as the head
quarters of the Western Indians, who formed for
the time being the chief bar to American advance.
The British held the posts with a strong grip, in the
interest of their traders and merchants. To them
the land derived its chief importance from the fur
trade. This was extremely valuable, and, as it
steadily increased in extent and importance, the
consequence of Detroit, the fitting-out town for the
fur traders, grew in like measure. It was the centre
of a population of several thousand Canadians, who
lived by the chase and by the rude cultivation of
their long, narrow farms; and it was held by a gar
rison of three or four hundred British regulars,
with auxiliary bands of American loyalist and
French Canadian rangers, and, above all, with a
formidable but fluctuating reserve force of Indian
allies.25

It was to the interest of the British to keep the
American settlers out of the land; and therefore
their aims were at one with those of the Indians.
All the tribes between the Ohio and the Missouri
were subsidized by them, and paid them a pre
carious allegiance. Fickle, treacherous, and fero
cious, the Indians at times committed acts of out
rage even on their allies, so that these allies had
to be ever on their guard; and the tribes were
often at war with one another. War interrupted

»» Haldimand Papers, 1784, 5, 6.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 133

trade and cut down profits, and the British endeav
ored to keep the different tribes at peace among
themselves, and even with the Americans. Moreover
they always discouraged barbarities, and showed
what kindness was in their power to any unfortu
nate prisoners whom the Indians happened to bring
to their posts. But they helped the Indians in all
ways save by open military aid to keep back the
American settlers. They wished a monopoly of the
fur trade; and they endeavored to prevent the
Americans from coming into their settlements.26
English officers and agents attended the Indian
councils, endeavored to attach the tribes to the Brit
ish interests, and encouraged them to stand firm
against the Americans and to insist upon the Ohio
as the boundary between the white man and the
red.27 The Indians received counsel and advice
from the British, and drew from them both arms
and munitions of war, and while the higher British
officers were usually careful to avoid committing
any overt breach of neutrality, the reckless partisan
leaders sought to inflame the Indians against the
Americans, and even at times accompanied their war
parties.

The life led at a frontier post like Detroit was
marked by sharp contrasts. The forest round about
was cleared away, though blackened stumps still
dotted the pastures, orchards, and tilled fields. The

26 Do., John Hay to Haldimand, Aug. 13, 1784; James Mc
Neil, Aug. i, 1785.

*' Do. Letter of A McKee, Dec. 24, 1786; McKee to Sir
John Johnson, Feb. 25, 1786; Major Ancrum, May 8, 1786.

ij4 The Winning of the West

town itself was composed mainly of the dwellings
of the French hdbitans; some of them were mere
hovels, others pretty log cottages, all swarming with
black-eyed children ; while the stoutly-made, swarthy
men, at once lazy and excitable, strolled about the
streets in their picturesque and bright-colored blan
ket suits. There were also a few houses of loyalist
refugees; implacable tories, stalwart men, revenge
ful, and goaded by the memory of many wrongs
done and many suffered, who proved the worst
enemies of their American kinsfolk. The few big
roomy buildings, which served as storehouses and
residences for the merchants, were built not only
for the storage of goods and peltries, but also as
strongholds in case of attack. The heads of the
mercantile houses were generally Englishmen; but
the hardy men who traversed the woods for months
and for seasons, to procure furs from the Indians,
were for the most part French. The sailors, both
English and French, who manned the vessels on
the lakes formed another class. The rough earth
works and stockades of the fort were guarded by a
few light guns. Within, the red-coated regulars
held sway, their bright uniforms varied here and
there by the dingy hunting-shirt, leggings and fur
cap of some tory ranger or French partisan leader.
Indians lounged about the fort, the stores, and the
houses, begging, or gazing stolidly at the troops
as they drilled, at the creaking carts from the out
lying farms as they plied through the streets, at
the driving to and fro from pasture of the horses

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 135

and milch cows, or at the arrival of a vessel from
Niagara or a brigade of fur-laden bateaux from the
upper lakes.

In their paint and their cheap, dirty finery, these
savages did not look very important; yet it was
because of them that the British kept up their posts
in these far-off forests, beside these great lonely
waters; it was for their sakes that they tried to
stem the inrush of the settlers of their own blood
and tongue; for it was their presence alone which
served to keep the wilderness as a game preserve
for the fur merchants; it was their prowess in war
which prevented French village and British gar
rison from being lapped up like drops of water
before the fiery rush of the American advance.
The British themselves, though fighting with and
for them, loved them but little; like all frontiers
men, they soon grew to look down on their mean
and trivial lives, — lives which nevertheless strongly
attracted white men of evil and shiftless, but ad
venturous, natures, and to which white children,
torn from their homes and brought up in the wig
wams, became passionately attached. Yet back of
the lazy and drunken squalor lay an element of
the terrible, all the more terrible because it could
not be reckoned with. Dangerous and treacherous
allies, upon whom no real dependence could ever
be placed, the Indians were nevertheless the most
redoubtable of all foes when the war was waged
in their own gloomy woodlands.

At such a post those standing high in authority

136 The Winning of the West

were partly civil officials, partly army officers. Of
the former, some represented the provincial gov
ernment, and others acted for the fur companies.
They had much to do both in governing the French
townsfolk and countryfolk, in keeping the Indians
friendly, and in furthering the peculiar commerce
on which the settlements subsisted. But the im
portant people were the army officers. These were
imperious, able, resolute men, well drilled, and with
a high military standard of honor. They upheld
with jealous pride the reputation of an army which
in that century proved again and again that on
stricken fields no soldiery of continental Europe
could stand against it. They wore a uniform which
for the last two hundred years has been better
known than any other wherever the pioneers of
civilization tread the world's waste spaces or fight
their way to the overlordship of barbarous empires ;
a uniform known to the southern and the northern
hemispheres, the eastern and the western continents,
and all the islands of the sea. Subalterns wearing
this uniform have fronted dangers and responsi
bilities such as in most other services only gray-
headed generals are called upon to face; and at the
head of handfuls of troops have won for the British
crown realms as large, and often as populous, as
European kingdoms. The scarlet-clad officers who
served the monarchy of Great Britain have con
quered many a barbarous people in all the ends of
the earth, and hold for their sovereign the lands
of Moslem and Hindoo, of Tartar and Arab and

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 137

Pathan, of Malay, Negro., and Polynesian. In
many a war they have overcome every European
rival against whom they have been pitted. Again
and again they have marched to victory against
Frenchman and Spaniard through the sweltering
heat of the tropics; and now, from the stupendous
mountain masses of mid Asia, they look north
ward through the wintry air, ready to bar the
advance of the legions of the Czar. Hitherto they
have never gone back save once; they have failed
only when they sought to stop the westward march
of a mighty nation, a nation kin to theirs, a nation
of their own tongue and law, and mainly of their
own blood.

The British officers and the American border
leaders found themselves face to face in the wilder
ness as rivals of one another. Sundered by in
terest and ambition, by education and habits of
thought, trained to widely different ways of look
ing at life, and with the memories of the hostile
past fresh in their minds, they were in no humor to
do justice to one another. Each side regarded the
other with jealousy and dislike, and often with
bitter hatred. Each often unwisely scorned the
other. Each kept green in mind the wrongs suf
fered at the other's hands, and remembered every
discreditable fact in the other's recent history —
every failure, every act of cruelty or stupidity, every
deed that could be held as the consequence of the
worst moral and mental shortcomings. Neither
could appreciate the other's many and real virtues.

ij 8 The Winning of the West

The policies for which they warred were hostile
and irreconcilable; the interests of the nations they
represented were, as regards the Northwestern wild
erness, not only incompatible but diametrically op
posed. The commanders of the British posts, and
the men who served under them, were moved by
a spirit of stern loyalty to the empire, the honor
of whose flag they upheld, and endeavored faith
fully to carry out the behests of those who shaped
that empire's destinies; in obedience to the will of
their leaders at home they warred to keep the North
west a wilderness, tenanted only by the Indian
hunter and the white fur trader. The American
frontiersmen warred to make this wilderness the
heart of the greatest of all Republics; they obeyed
the will of no superior, they were not urged onward
by any action of the supreme authorities of the land ;
they were moved only by the stirring ambition of
a masterful people, who saw before them a con
tinent which they claimed as their heritage. The
Americans succeeded, the British failed; for the
British fought against the stars in their courses,
.while the Americans battled on behalf of the destiny
of the race.

Between the two sets of rivals lay leagues on
leagues of forest, in which the active enemies of
the Americans lived and hunted and marched to
war. The British held the posts on the lakes; the
frontiersmen held the land south of the Ohio. In
the wilderness between dwelt the Shawnees, Wyan-
dots, and Delawares, the Wabash Indians, the Mi-

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 139

amis, and many others; and they had as allies all
the fiercest and most adventurous of the tribes fur
ther off, the Chippewas, the Winnebagos, the Sacs
and Foxes. On the side of the whites the war was
still urged by irregular levies of armed frontiers
men. The Federal garrisons on the Ohio were as
yet too few and feeble to be of much account;
and in the South, where the conflict was against
Creek and Cherokee, there were no regular troops
whatever.

The struggle was at first one of aggression on
the part of the Northwestern Indians. They were
angered and alarmed at the surveyors and the few
reckless would-be settlers, who had penetrated their
country; but there was no serious encroachment on
their lands, and Congress for some time forbade any
expedition being carried on against them in their
home. They themselves made no one formidable
attack, sent no one overmastering force against the
whites. But bands of young braves from all the
tribes began to cross the Ohio and ravage the set
tlements, from the Pennsylvania frontier to Ken
tucky. They stole horses, burned houses, and killed
or carried into a dreadful captivity men, women,
and children. The inroads were as usual marked
by stealth, rapine, and horrible cruelty. It is hard
for those accustomed only to treat of civilized
warfare to realize the intolerable nature of
these ravages — the fact that the loss and dam
age to the whites was out of all proportion to the
strength of the Indian war parties, and the extreme

140 The Winning of the West

difficulty in dealing an effective counter stroke.
The immense tangled forest increased beyond
measure the difficulties of the problem. Under their
shelter the Indians were able to attack at will and
without warning, and though they would fight to
the death against any odds when cornered, they in
variably strove to make their attacks on the most
helpless, on those who were powerless to resist.
It was not the armed frontier levies, it was the im
migrants coming in by pack train or by flatboat, —
it was the unsuspecting settlers with their wives and
little ones who had most to fear from an Indian
fray; while, when once the blow was delivered, the
savages vanished as smoke vanishes in the open. A
small war party could thus work untold harm in a
district precisely as a couple of man-eating jaguars
may depopulate a forest village in tropical America ;
and many men and much time had to be spent before
they could be beaten into submission, exactly as it
needs a great hunting party to drive from their
fastness and slay the big man-eating cats, though,
if they came to bay in the open, they could readily be
killed by a single skilful and resolute hunter.

Each settlement or group of settlements had to
rely on the prowess of its own hunter-soldiers for
safety. The real war, the war in which by far the
greatest loss was suffered by both sides, was that
thus waged, man against man. These innumerable
and infinitely varied skirmishes, as petty as they
were bloody, were not so decisive at the moment as
the campaigns against the gathered tribes, but were

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787

often more important in their ultimate results.
Under the incessant strain of the incessant warfare
there arose here and there Indian fighters of special
note, men who warred alone, or at the head of small
parties of rangers, and who not only defended the
settlements, but kept the Indian villages and the
Indian war parties in constant dread by their venge
ful retaliatory inroads. These men became the pe
culiar heroes of the frontier, and their names were
household words in the log cabins of the children,
and children's children, of their contemporaries.
They were warriors of the type of the rude cham
pions who in the ages long past hunted the mammoth
and the aurochs, and smote one another with stone-
headed axes ; their feats of ferocious personal prow
ess were of the kind that gave honor and glory to
the mighty men of the time primeval. Their deeds
were not put into books while the men themselves
lived ; they were handed down by tradition, and grew
dim and vague in the recital. What one fierce par
tisan leader had done might dwindle or might grow
in the telling or might finally be ascribed to some
other; or else the same feat was twisted into such
varying shapes that it became impossible to recog
nize which was nearest the truth, or what man had
performed it.

Often in dealing with the adventures of one of
these old-time border warriors — Kenton, Wetzel,
Brady, Mansker, Castleman, — all we can say is
that some given feat was commonly attributed to
him, but may have been performed by somebody

142 The Winning of the West

else, or indeed may only have been the kind of feat
which might at any time have been performed by
men of his stamp. Thus one set of traditions
ascribe to Brady an adventure in which when bound
to a stake, he escaped by suddenly throwing an
Indian child into the fire, and dashing off unhurt
in the confusion, but other traditions ascribe the
feat not to Brady, but to some other wild hunter
of the day. Again one of the favorite tales of Brady
is his escape from a band of pursuing Indians, by an
extraordinary leap across a deep ravine, at the bot
tom of which flowed a rapid stream; but in some
traditions this leap appears as made by another
frontier hero, or even by an Indian whom Brady
himself was pursuing. It is therefore a satisfaction
to come across, now and then, some feat which is
attested by contemporaneous testimony. There is
such contemporary record for one of Brady's deeds,
which took place toward the close of the Revolu
tionary War.

Brady had been on a raid in the Indian country
and was returning. His party had used all their
powder and had scattered, each man going toward
his own home, as they had nearly reached the set
tlements. Only three men were left with Brady,
the four had but one charge of powder apiece, and
even this had been wet in crossing a stream, though
it had been carefully dried afterward. They had
with them a squaw whom they had captured. When
not far from home they ran into a party of seven
Indians, likewise returning from a raid, and carry-

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 143

ing with them as prisoners a woman and her child.
Brady spied the Indians first and instantly resolved
to attack them, trusting that they would be panic-
struck and flee; though after a single discharge of
their rifles he and his men would be left helpless.
Slipping ahead he lay in ambush until the Indians
were close up. He then fired, killing the leader,
whereat the others fled in terror, leaving the woman
and child. In the confusion, however, the captive
squaw also escaped and succeeded in joining the
fleeing savages, to whom she told the small number
and woeful plight of their assailants; and they at
once turned to pursue them. Brady, however, had
made good use of the time gained, and was in full
flight with his two rescued prisoners; and before
he was overtaken he encountered a party of whites
who were themselves following the trail of the ma
rauders. He at once turned and in company with
them hurried after the Indians; but the latter were
wary, and, seeing the danger, scattered and vanished
in the gloomy woodland. The mother and child,
thus rescued from a fearful fate, reached home in
safety. The letter containing the account of this
deed continues : "This young officer, Captain Brady,
has great merit as a partizan in the woods. He
has had the address to surprise and beat the Indians
three different times since I came to the Department
— he is brave, vigilant, and successful."28

For a dozen years after the close of the Revolu-

n Draper MSS. Alex. Fowler to Edward Hand, Pittsburgh,
July 22, 1780.

144 The Winning of the West

tion Brady continued to be a tower of strength to
the frontier settlers of Pennsylvania and Virginia.
At the head of his rangers he harassed the Indians
greatly, interfering with and assailing their war
parties, and raiding their villages and home camps.
Like his foes, he warred by ambush and surprise.
Among the many daring backwoodsmen who were
his followers and companions the traditions pay
particular heed to one Phouts, "a stout thick Dutch
man of uncommon strength and activity."

In spite of the counter strokes of the wild wood-
rangers, the Indian ravages speedily wrapped the
frontier in fire and blood. In such a war the small
parties were really the most dangerous, and in the
aggregate caused most damage. It is less of a para
dox than it seems, to say that one reason why the
Indians were so formidable in warfare was because
they were so few in numbers. Had they been more
numerous they would perforce have been tillers of
the soil, and it would have been far easier for the
whites to get at them. They were able to wage a
war so protracted and murderous, only because of
their extreme elusiveness. There was little chance
to deliver a telling blow at enemies who had hardly
anything of value to destroy, who were so compara
tively few in number that they could subsist year
in and year out on game, and whose mode of life
rendered them as active, stealthy, cautious, and fero
cious as so many beasts of prey.

Though the frontiers of Pennsylvania and of
Virginia proper suffered much, Kentucky suffered

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 145

more. The murderous inroads of the Indians at
about the close of the Revolutionary war caused a
mortality such as could not be paralleled save in a
community struck down by some awful pestilence;
and though from thence on our affairs mended, yet
for many years the most common form of death was
death at the hands of the Indians. A resident in
Kentucky, writing to a friend, dwelt on the need of
a system of vestries to take care of the orphans, who,
as things were, were left solely to private charity;
though, continues the writer, "of all countries I am
acquainted with this abounds most with these un
happy objects." 29

The roving war bands infested the two routes
by which the immigrants came into the country;
for the companies of immigrants could usually be
taken at a disadvantage, and yielded valuable plun
der. The parties who traveled the Wilderness Road
were in danger of ambush by day and of onslaught
by night. But there was often some protection for
them, for whenever the savages became very bold,
bodies of Kentucky militia were sent to patrol the
trail, and these not only guarded the trains of in
comers, but kept a sharp look-out for Indian signs,
and, if any were found, always followed and, if pos
sible, fought and scattered the marauders.

The Indians who watched the river-route down
the Ohio had much less to fear in the way of pur
suit by, or interference from, the frontier militia;

89 Draper MSS., Clark MSS. Darrell to Fleming, April 14,
1783-
VOL. VII.— 7

146 The Winning of the West

although they too were now and then followed,
overtaken, and vanquished. While in midstream
the boats were generally safe, though occasionally
the savages grew so bold that they manned flotillas
of canoes and attacked the laden flat-boats in open
day. But when any party landed, or wherever the
current swept a boat inshore, within rifle range of
the tangled forest on the banks, there was always
danger. The white riflemen, huddled together with
their women, children, and animals on the scows,
were utterly unable to oppose successful resistance
to foes who shot them down at leisure, while them
selves crouching in the security of their hiding-
places. The Indians practiced all kinds of tricks
and stratagems to lure their victims within reach.
A favorite device was to force some miserable
wretch whom they had already captured to appear
alone on the bank when a boat came in sight, signal
to it, and implore those on board to come to his
rescue and take him off; the decoy inventing some
tale of wreck or of escape from Indians to account
for his presence. If the men in the boat suffered
themselves to be overcome by compassion and drew
inshore, they were sure to fall victims to their sym
pathy.

The boat once assailed and captured, the first
action of the Indians was to butcher all the wound
ed. If there was any rum or whiskey on board they
drank it, feasted on the provisions, and took what
ever goods they could carry off. They then set off
through the woods with their prisoners for distant

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 147

Indian villages near the lakes. They traveled fast,
and mercilessly tomahawked the old people, the
young children, and the women with child, as soon
as their strength failed under the strain of the
toil and hardship and terror. When they had
reached their villages they usually burned some of
their captives and made slaves of the others, the
women being treated as the concubines of their cap
tors, and the children adopted by the families who
wished them. Of the captives a few might fall into
the hands of friendly traders, or of the British offi
cers at Detroit ; a few might escape, or be ransomed
by their kinsfolk, or be surrendered in consequence
of some treaty. The others succumbed to the perils
of their new life, or gradually sank into a state of
stolid savagery.

Naturally the ordinary Indian foray was directed
against the settlements themselves; and of course
the settlements of the frontier, as it continually
shifted westward, were those which bore the brunt
of the attack and served as a shield for the more
thickly peopled and peaceful region behind. Oc
casionally a big war party of a hundred warriors
or over would come prepared for a stroke against
some good-sized village or fort; but, as a rule, the
Indians came in small bands, numbering from a
couple to a dozen or score of individuals. Entirely
unencumbered by baggage or by impediments of any
kind, such a band lurked through the woods, leav
ing no trail, camping wherever night happened to
overtake it, and traveling whithersoever it wished.

148 The Winning of the West

The ravages committed by those skulking parties
of murderous braves were monotonous in their
horror. All along the frontier the people on the out
lying farms were ever in danger, and there was risk
for the small hamlets and block-houses. In their
essentials the attacks were alike: the stealthy ap
proach, the sudden rush, with its accompaniment of
yelling war-whoops, the butchery of men, women,
and children, and the hasty flight with whatever
prisoners were for the moment spared, before the
armed neighbors could gather for rescue and re
venge.

In most cases there was no record of the outrage ;
it was not put into any book; and save among the
survivors, all remembrance of it vanished as the
logs of the forsaken cabin rotted and crumbled.

Yet tradition, or some chance written record kept
alive the memory of some of these incidents, and a
few such are worth reciting, if only to show what
this warfare of savage and settler really was. Most
of the tales deal merely with some piece of un
avenged butchery.

In 1785, on June 29th, the house of a settler
named Scott, in Washington County, Virginia, was
attacked. The Indians, thirteen in number, burst
in the door just as the family were going to bed.
Scott was shot; his wife was seized and held mo
tionless, while all her four children were toma
hawked, and their throats cut, the blood spouting
over her clothes. The Indians loaded themselves
with plunder, and, taking with them the wretched

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 149

woman, moved off, and traveled all night. Next
morning each man took his share and nine of the
party went down to steal horses on the Clinch. The
remaining four roamed off through the woods, and
ten days later the woman succeeded in making her
escape. For a month she wandered alone in the
forest, living on the young cane and sassafras, until,
spent and haggard with the horror and the hard
ship, she at last reached a small frontier settlement.

At about the same time three girls, sisters, walk
ing together near Wheeling Creek, were pounced
upon by a small party of Indians. After going a
short distance the Indians halted, talked together
for 'a few moments, and then without any warning
a warrior turned and tomahawked one of the girls.
The second instantly shared the same fate ; the third
jerked away from the Indian who held her, darted
up a bank, and, extraordinary to relate, eluded her
pursuer, and reached her home in safety. Another
family named Dool'in suffered in the same year;
and there was one singular circumstance connected
with their fate. The Indians came to the door of the
cabin in the early morning; as the man rose from
bed the Indians fired through -the door and shot him
in the thigh. They then burst in, and tomahawked
him and two children; yet for reasons unknown
they did not harm the woman, nor the child in her
arms.

No such mercy was shown by a band of six In
dians who attacked the log houses of two settlers,
brothers, named Edward and Thomas Cunningham.

150 The Winning of the West

The two cabins stood side by side, the chinks be
tween the logs allowing those in one to see what was
happening in the other. One June evening, in
1785, both families were at supper. Thomas was
away. His wife and four children were sitting at
the table when a huge savage slipped in through the
open door. Edward in the adjoining cabin, saw
him enter, and seized his rifle. The Indian fired at
him through a chink in the wall, but missed him,
and, being afraid to retreat through the door, which
would have brought him within range of Edward's
rifle, he seized an axe and began to chop out an
opening in the rear wall. Another Indian made a
dash for the door, but was shot down by Edward;
however, he managed to get over the fence and out
of range. Meanwhile the mother and her four chil
dren remained paralyzed with fear until the Indian
inside the room had cut a hole through the wall.
He then turned, brained one of the children with his
tomahawk, threw the body out into the yard through
the opening, and motioned to her to follow it. In
mortal fear she obeyed, stepping out over the body
of one of her children, with two others screaming
beside her, and her baby in her arms. Once outside
he scalped the murdered boy and set fire to the
house, and then drove the woman and the remaining
children to a knoll where the wounded Indian lay
with the others around him. The Indians hoped
the flames would destroy both cabins; but Edward
Cunningham and his son went into their loft, and
threw off the boards of the roof as they kindled,

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 151

escaping unharmed from the shots fired at them;
and so, though scorched by the flame and choked
by the smoke, they saved their house and their lives.
Seeing the failure of their efforts the savages then
left, first tomahawking and scalping the two elder
children. The shuddering mother, with her baby,
was taken along with them to a cave, in which they
hid her and the wounded Indian ; and then with un
told fatigue, hardship, and suffering, for her brutal
captors gave her for food only a few papaw nuts
and the head of a wild turkey, she was taken to
the Indian towns. Some months afterward Simon
Girty ransomed her and sent her home. Edward
Cunningham raised a body of men and tried to
follow the trail; but the crafty forest warriors had
concealed it with such care that no effective pursuit
could be made.

In none of the above-mentioned raids did the
Indians suffer any loss of life, and in none was there
any successful pursuit. But in one instance in this
same year and same neighborhood the assailed set
tlers retaliated with effect. It was near Wheeling.
A lad named John Wetzel, one of a noted border
family of coarse, powerful, illiterate Indian fighters,
had gone out from the fortified village in which his
kinsfolk were living to hunt horses. Another boy
went with him. There were several stray horses,
one being a mare which belonged to Wetzel's sister,
with a colt, and the girl had promised him the colt
if he would bring the mare back. The two boys
were vigorous young fellows, accustomed to life

152 The Winning of the West

in the forest, and they hunted high and low, and
finally heard the sound of horse-bells in a thicket.
Running joyfully forward they fell into the hands
of four Indians, who had caught the horses and
tied them in the thicket, so that by the tinkling of
their bells they might lure into the ambush any man
who came out to hunt them up. Young Wetzel
made a dash for liberty, but received a shot which
broke his arm, and then surrendered and cheerfully
accompanied his captors ; while his companion, total
ly unnerved, hung back crying, and was promptly
tomahawked. Early next morning the party struck
the Ohio, at a point where there was a clearing.
The cabins on this clearing were deserted, the set
tlers having taken refuge in a fort because of the
Indian ravages ; but the stock had been left running
in the woods. One of the Indians shot a hog and
tossed it into a canoe they had hidden under the
bank. The captive was told to enter the canoe and
lie down ; three Indians then got in, while the fourth
started to swim the stolen horses across the river.
Fortunately for the captured boy three of the
settlers had chosen this day to return to the aban
doned clearing and look after the loose stock. They
reached the place shortly after the Indians, and just
in time to hear the report of the rifle when the hog
was shot. The owner of the hogs, instead of sus
pecting that there were Indians near by, jumped to
the conclusion that a Kentucky boat had landed,
and that the immigrants were shooting his hogs —
for the people who drifted down the Ohio in boats

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 153

were not, when hungry, over-scrupulous concerning
the right to stray live stock. Running forward,
the three men had almost reached the river, when
they heard the loud snorting of one of the horses
as it was forced into the water. As they came out
on the bank they saw the canoe, with three Indians
in it, and in the bottom four rifles, the dead hog,
and young Wetzel stretched at full length; the In
dian in the stern was just pushing off from the shore
with his paddle; the fourth Indian was swimming
the horses a few yards from shore. Immediately
the foremost white man threw up his rifle and shot
the paddler dead; and a second later one of his
companions coming up, killed in like fashion the
Indian in the bow of the canoe. The third Indian,
stunned by the sudden onslaught, sat as if numb,
never so much as lifting one of the rifles that lay
at his feet, and in a minute he too was shot and fell
over the side of the canoe, but grasped the gunwale
with one hand, keeping himself afloat. Young
Wetzel, in the bottom of the canoe, would have
shared the same fate, had he not cried out that he
was white and a prisoner ; wherupon they bade him
knock loose the Indian's hand from the side of the
canoe. This he did, and the Indian sank. The cur
rent carried the canoe on a rocky spit of land, and
Wetzel jumped out and waded ashore, while the lit
tle craft spun off and again drifted toward mid
stream. One of the men on shore now fired at the
only remaining Indian, who was still swimming
his horse for the opposite bank. The bullet splashed

154 The Winning of the West

the water on his naked skin, whereat he slipped off
his horse, swam to the empty canoe, and got into it.
Unhurt he reached the further shore, where he
leaped out and caught the horse as it swam to land,
mounted it, rifle in hand, turned to yell defiance at
his foes, and then vanished in the forest-shrouded
wilderness. He left behind him the dead bodies of
his three friends, to be washed on the shallows by
the turbid flood of the great river.30

These are merely some of the recorded incidents
which occurred in the single year 1785, in one com
paratively small portion of the vast stretch of terri
tory which then formed the Indian frontier. Many
such occurred on all parts of this frontier in each of
the terrible years of Indian warfare. They varied
infinitely in detail, but they were monotonously
alike in their characteristics of stealthy approach,
of sudden onfall, and of butcherly cruelty ; and there
was also a terrible sameness in the brutality and
ruthlessness with which the whites, as occasion of
fered, wreaked their revenge. Generally the In
dian war parties were successful, and suffered com
paratively little, making their attacks by surprise,
and by preference on unarmed men cumbered with
women and children. Occasionally they were beaten

80 De Haas, pp. 283-292. De Haas gathered the facts of
these and numerous similar incidents from the pioneers
themselves in their old age; doubtless they are often inac
curate in detail, but on the whole De Haas has more judg
ment and may be better trusted than the other compilers.
In the Draper MSS, are volumes of such traditional stories,
gathered with no discrimination whatever.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 155

back; occasionally parties of settlers or hunters
stumbled across and scattered the prowling bands;
occasionally the Indian villages suffered from retal
iatory inroads.

One attack, simple enough in its incidents, de
serves notice for other reasons. In 1784 a family
of "poor white" immigrants who had just settled in
Kentucky were attacked in the daytime, while in
the immediate neighborhood of their squalid cabin.
The father was shot, and one Indian was in the act
of tomahawking the six-year-old son, when an elder
brother, from the doorway of the cabin, shot the
savage. The Indians then fled. The boy thus
rescued grew up to become the father of Abraham
Lincoln.31

Now and then the monstrous uniformity of horror
in assault and reprisal was broken by some deed out
of the common ; some instance where despair nerved
the frame of woman or of half-grown boy; some
strange incident in the career of a backwoods hunt
er, whose profession perpetually exposed him to
Indian attack, but also trained him as naught else
could to evade and repel it. The wild turkey was
always much hunted by the settlers ; and one of the
common Indian tricks was to imitate the turkey call
and shoot the hunter when thus tolled to his foe's
ambush; but it was only less common for a skilled
Indian fighter to detect the ruse and himself creep
up and slay the would-be slayer. More than once,
when a cabin was attacked in the absence or after

81 Hay and Nicolay.

156 The Winning of the West

the death of the men, some brawny frontierswoman,
accustomed to danger and violent physical exertion,
and favored by peculiar circumstances, herself beat
off the assailants.

In one such case, two or three families were living
together in a block-house. One spring day, when
there were in the house but two men and one woman,
a Mrs. Bozarth, the children who had been playing
in the yard suddenly screamed that Indians were
coming. One of the men sprang to the door only
to fall back with a bullet in his breast, and in an
other moment an Indian leaped over the threshold
and attacked the remaining man before he could
grasp a weapon. Holding his antagonist the latter
called out to Mrs. Bozarth to hand him a knife;
but instead she snatched up an axe and killed the
savage on the spot. But that instant another leaped
into the doorway, and firing, killed the white man
who had been struggling with his companion; but
the woman instantly turned on him, as he stood
with his smoking gun, and ripped open his body
with a stroke of her axe. Yelling for help he sank
on the threshold, and his comrades rushed to his
rescue; the woman, with her bloody weapon, cleft
open the skull of the first, and the others fell back,
so that she was able to shut and bar the door. Then
the savages moved off, but they had already killed
the children in the yard.

A similar incident took place in Kentucky, where
the cabin of a man named John Merrill was attacked
at night. He was shot in several places, and one

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 157

arm and one thigh broken, as he stood by the open
door, and fell calling out to his wife to close it.
This she did ; but the Indians chopped a hole in the
stout planks with their tomahawks, and tried to
crawl through. The woman, however, stood to one
side and struck at the head of each as it appeared,
maiming or killing the first two or three. Enraged
at being thus baffled by a woman, two of the In
dians clambered on the roof of the cabin, and pre
pared to drop down the wide chimney ; for at night
the fire in such a cabin was allowed to smoulder,
the coals being kept alive in the ashes. But Mrs.
Merrill seized a feather-bed and, tearing it open,
threw it on the embers ; the flame and stifling smoke
leaped up the chimney, and in a moment both In
dians came down, blinded and half smothered, and
were killed by the big resolute woman before they
could recover themselves. No further attempt was
made to molest the cabin or its inmates.

One of the incidents which became most widely
noised along the borders was the escape of the two
Johnson boys, in the fall of 1788. Their father was
one of the restless pioneers along the upper Ohio,
who were always striving to take up claims across
the river, heedless of the Indian treaties. The two
boys, John and Henry, were at the time thirteen
and eleven years old respectively. One Sunday,
about noon, they went to find a hat which they had
lost the day before at the spot where they had been
working, three quarters of a mile from the house.
Having found the hat they sat down by the road-

158 The Winning of the West

side to crack nuts, and were surprised by two In
dians ; they were not harmed, but were forced to go
with their captors, who kept traveling slowly
through the woods on the outskirts of the settle
ments, looking for horses. The elder boy soon
made friends with the Indians, telling them that he
and his brother were ill-treated at home, and would
be glad to get a chance to try Indian life. By de
grees they grew to believe he was in earnest, and
plied him with all kinds of questions concerning the
neighbors, their live stock, their guns, the number
of men in the different families, to all of which he
replied with seeming eagerness and frankness. At
night they stopped to camp, one Indian scouting
through the woods, while the other kindled a fire
by flashing powder in the pan of his rifle. For sup
per they had parched corn and pork roasted over the
coals; there was then some further talk, and the
Indians lay down to sleep, one on each side of the
boys. After a while, supposing that their captives
were asleep, and anticipating no trouble from two
unarmed boys, one Indian got up and lay down on
the other side of the fire, where he was soon snoring
heavily. Then the lads, who had been wide awake,
biding their time, whispered to one another, and
noiselessly rose. The elder took one of the guns,
silently cocked it, and, pointing it at the head of one
Indian, directed the younger boy to take it and pull
trigger, while, he himself stood over the head of
the other Indian with drawn tomahawk. The one
boy then fired, his Indian never moving after receiv-

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 159

ing the shot, while the .other boy struck at the same
moment ; but the tomahawk went too far back on the
neck, and the savage tried to spring to his feet,
yelling loudly. However the boy struck him again
and again as he strove to rise, and he fell back and
was soon dead. Then the two boys hurried off
through the darkness, fearing lest other Indians
might be in the neighborhood. Not very far away
they struck a path which they recognized, and the
elder hung up his hat, that they might find the scene
of their feat when they came back. Continuing their
course they reached a block-house shortly before
daybreak. On the following day a party of men
went out with the elder boy and found the two dead
Indians.32

After any Indian stroke the men of the neighbor
hood would gather under their local militia officers,
and, unless the Indians had too long a start, would
endeavor to overtake them, and either avenge the
slain or rescue the prisoners. In the more exposed
settlements bands of rangers were kept continually
patrolling the woods. Every man of note in the
Cumberland county took part in this duty. In Ken
tucky the county lieutenants and their -subordinates
were always on the lookout. Logan paid especial
heed to the protection of the immigrants who came
in over the Wilderness Road. Kenton's spy com
pany watched the Ohio, and continually crossed it
on the track of marauding parties, and, though very
often baffled, yet Kenton and his men succeeded

89 De Haas.

160 The Winning of the West

again and again in rescuing hapless women and
children, or in scattering — although usually with
small loss — war parties bound against the settle
ments.

One of the best known Indian fighters in Kentucky
was William Whitley, who lived at Walnut Flat,
some five miles from Crab Orchard. He had come
to Kentucky soon after its settlement, and by his
energy and ability had acquired property and leader
ship, though of unknown ancestry and without edu
cation. He was a stalwart man, skilled in the use
of arms, jovial and fearless ; the backwoods fighters
followed him readily, and he loved battle; he took
part in innumerable Indian expeditions, and in his
old age was killed fighting against Tecumseh at the
battle of the Thames. In 1786 or '87 he built the
first brick house ever built in Kentucky. It was a
very handsome house for those days, every step in
the hall stairway having carved upon it the head of
an eagle bearing in its beak an olive branch. Each
story was high, and the windows were placed very
high from the ground, to prevent the Indians from
shooting through them at the occupants. The glass
was brought from Virginia by pack train. He
feasted royally the hands who put up the house ; and
to pay for the whiskey they drank he had to sell one
of his farms.

In 1785 (the year of the above recited ravages on
the upper Ohio in the neighborhood of Wheeling),
Colonel Whitley led his rangers, once and again,
against marauding Indians. In January he followed

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 161

a war party, rescued a captive white man, and took
prisoner an Indian who was afterward killed by one
of the militia — "a cowardly fellow," says Whitley.
In October a party of immigrants, led by a man
named McClure, who had just come over the Wil
derness trace, were set upon at dawn by Indians, not
far from Whitley's house; two of the men were
killed. Mrs. McClure got away at first, and ran
two hundred yards, taking her four children with
her; in the gloom they would all have escaped had
not the smallest child kept crying. This led the In
dians to them. Three of the children were toma
hawked at once ; next morning the fourth shared the
same fate. The mother was forced to cook break
fast for her captors at the fire before which the scalps
were drying. She was then placed on a half-broken
horse and led off with them. When word of the
disaster was brought to Whitley's, he was not at
home, but his wife, a worthy helpmeet, immediately
sent for him, and meanwhile sent word to his com
pany. On his return he was able to take the trail
at once with twenty-one riflemen, as true as steel.
Following hard, but with stealth equal to their own,
he overtook the Indians at sundown on the second
day, and fell on them in their camp. Most of them
escaped through the thick forest, but he killed two,
rescued six prisoners, and captured sixteen horses
and much plunder.

Ten days after this another party of immigrants,
led by a man named Moore, were attacked on the
Wilderness Road and nine persons killed. Whitley

162 The Winning of the West

raised thirty of his horse-riflemen, and, guessing
from the movements of the Indians that they were
following the war trace northward, he marched with
all speed to reach it at some point ahead of them,
and succeeded. Finding they had not passed he
turned and went south, and in a thick canebrake met
his foes face to face. The whites were spread out
in line, while the Indians, twenty in number, came
on in single file, all on horseback. The cane was so
dense that the two parties were not ten steps apart
when they saw one another. At the first fire the In
dians, taken utterly unaware, broke and fled, leav
ing eight of their number dead ; and the victors also
took twenty-eight horses.33

In the following spring another noted Indian
fighter, less lucky than Whitley, was killed while
leading one of these scouting parties. Early in 1786,
the Indians began to commit numerous depredations
in Kentucky, and the alarm and anger of the inhab
itants became great.34 In April, a large party of
savages, under a chief named Black Wolf, made a
raid along Beargrass. Col. William Christian, a
gallant and honorable man, was in command of the
neighboring militia. At once, as was his wont, he
raised a band of twenty men, and followed the plun
derers across the Ohio. Riding well in advance of

83 Draper MSS. Whitley 's MSS. Narrative, apparently
dictated some time after the events described. It differs
somewhat from the printed account in Collins.

34 Draper MSS. Clark Papers, passim for 1786. Wm. Fin-
ney to G. R. Clark, March 24 and 26, 1786. Also Wm. Cro-
ghan to G. R. Clark, Nov. 3, and Nov. 16, 1785.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 163

his followers, with but three men in company with
him, he overtook the three rearmost Indians, among
whom was Black Wolf. The struggle was momen
tary but bloody. All three Indians were killed, but
Colonel Christian and one of his captains were also
slain.35

The Kentuckians were by this time thoroughly
roused, and were bent on making a retaliatory ex
pedition in force. They felt that the efforts made
by Congress to preserve peace by treaties, at which
the Indians were loaded with presents, merely re
sulted in making them think that the whites were
afraid of them, and that if they wished gifts all they
had to do was to go to war.36 The only effective
way to deal with the Indians was to strike them in
their own country, not to try to parry the strokes
they themselves dealt. Clark, who knew the savages
well, scoffed at the idea that a vigorous blow, driven
well home, would rouse them to desperation; he
realized that, formidable though they were in actual
battle, and still more in plundering raid, they were
not of the temper to hazard all on the fate of war,
or to stand heavy punishment, and that they would
yield very quickly, when once they were convinced
that unless they did so they and their families would

85 State Department MSS. Papers Continental Congress.
Sam McDowell to Governor of Virginia, April 18, 1786. John
May to Do., April 19, 1786. Clark MSS. Bradford's Notes
on Kentucky. John Clark to Jonathan Clark, April 21, 1786.

86 Draper MSS. Jon. Clark Papers. John Clark to Jona
than Clark, March 29, 1786. Also, G. R. Clark to J. Clark,
April 20, 1788.

164 The Winning of the West

perish by famine or the sword.37 At this time he
estimated that some fifteen hundred warriors were
on the war-path and that they were likely to be
joined by many others.

The condition of affairs at the French towns of
the Illinois and Wabash afforded another strong rea
son for war, or at least for decided measures of some
kind. Almost absolute anarchy reigned in these
towns. The French inhabitants had become pro
foundly discontented with the United States Gov
ernment. This was natural, for they were neither
kept in order nor protected, in spite of their peti
tions to Congress that some stable government might
be established.38 The quarrels between the French
and the intruding American settlers had very nearly
reached the point of a race war; and the Americans
were further menaced by the Indians. These latter
were on fairly good terms with the French, many of
whom had intermarried with them, and lived as
they did ; although the French families of the better
class were numerous, and had attained to what was
for the frontier a high standard of comfort and
refinement.

The French complained with reason of the lawless
and violent character of many of the American new
comers, and also of the fact that already speculators
were trying by fraud and foul means to purchase

31 State Department MSS., No. 56, p. 282. G. R. Clark to
R. H. Lee.

38 State Department MSS., No. 30, p. 453, Dec. 8, 1784.
Also p. 443, Nov. 10, 1784. Draper MSS. J. Edgar to G. R.
Clark, Oct. 23, 1786.

. The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 165

large tracts of land, not for settlement, but to hold
until it should rise in value. On the other hand,
the Americans complained no less bitterly of the
French as a fickle, treacherous, undisciplined race,
in close alliance with the Indians, and needing to be
ruled with a rod of iron.39 It is impossible to rec
oncile the accounts the two parties gave of one an
other's deeds; doubtless neither side was guiltless
of grave wrongdoing. So great was Clark's repu
tation for probity and leadership that both sides
wrote him urgently, requesting that he would come
to them and relieve their distress.40 One of the
most fruitful sources of broils and quarrels was the
liquor trade with the Indians. The rougher among
the new-comers embarked eagerly in this harmful
and disreputable business, and the low-class French
followed their example. The commandant, Mon
sieur J. M. P. Legrace, and the Creole court forbade
this trade; a decision which was just and righteous,
but excited much indignation, as the other inhabi
tants believed that the members of the court them
selves followed it in secret.41

In 1786 the ravages of the Indians grew so seri
ous, and the losses of the Americans near Vincennes
became so great, that they abandoned their outlying

89 State Department MSS., No. 56. J. Edgar to G. R.
Clark, Nov. 7, 1785. Draper MSS. Petition of Americans of
Vincennes to Congress, June i, 1786.

40 Draper MSS. Petition to G. R. Clark from Inhabitants
of Vincennes, March 16 1786.

41 Do., John Filson; MS. Journey of Two Voyages, etc.

1 66 The Winning of the West

farms, and came into the town.42 Vincennes then
consisted of upward of three hundred houses. The
Americans numbered some sixty families, and had
built an American quarter, with a strong block
house. They only ventured out to till their corn
fields in bodies of armed men, while the French
worked their lands singly and unarmed.

The Indians came freely into the French quarter
of the town, and even sold to the inhabitants plunder
taken from the Americans; and when complaint of
this was made to the Creole magistrates, they paid
no heed. One of the men who suffered at the hands
of the savages was a wandering schoolmaster, named
John Fjlson,43 the first historian of Kentucky, and
the man who took down, and put into his own quaint
and absurdly stilted English, Boone's so-called "au
tobiography." Filson, having drifted West, had
traveled up and down the Ohio and Wabash by
canoe and boat. He was much struck with the
abundance of game of all kinds which he saw on
the northwestern side of the Ohio, and especially
by the herds of buffaloes which lay on the sand-bars ;
his party lived on the flesh of bears, deer, wild tur
keys, coons, and water-turtles. In 1785 the Indians
whom he met seemed friendly; but on June 2, 1786,
while on the Wabash, his canoe was attacked by
the savages, and two of his men were slain. He
himself escaped with difficulty, and ,reached Vin-

49 Do., Moses Henry to G. R. Clark, June 7, 1786.
48 Do., John Small to G. R. Clark, June 23, 1786.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 167

cennes after an exhausting journey, but having kept
possession of his "two small trunks." 44

Two or three weeks after this misadventure of the
unlucky historian, a party of twenty-five Americans,
under a captain named Daniel Sullivan,45 were at
tacked while working in their cornfields at Vin-
cennes.46 They rallied and drove back the Indians,
but two of their number were wounded. One of
the wounded fell for a moment into the hands of
the Indians and was scalped; and though he after
ward recovered, his companions at the time expected
him to die. They marched back to Vincennes in
furious anger, and finding an Indian in the house of
a Frenchman, they seized and dragged him to their
block-house, where the wife of the scalped man,
whose name was Donelly, shot and scalped him.

This greatly exasperated the French, who kept a
guard over the other Indians who were in town,
and next day sent them to the woods. Then their
head men, magistrates, and officers of the militia,
summoned the Americans before a council, and or
dered all who had not regular passports from the
local court to leave at once, "bag and baggage." This
created the utmost consternation among the Ameri
cans, whom the French outnumbered five to one,

44 Do., Filson's Journal.

45 Do., Daniel Sullivan to G. R. Clark, June 23, 1786.
Small's letter says June 2ist.

44 State Dept. MSS. Papers Continental Congress, No.
150, Vol. II, Letter of J. M. P. Legrace. "Au G6n6ral George
Rog<§ Clarck— a la Chute" (at the Palls— Louisville), July 22,
1786.

1 68 The Winning of the West

while the savages certainly would have destroyed
them had they tried to go back to Kentucky. Their
leaders again wrote urgent appeals for help to Clark,
asking that a general guard might be sent them if
only to take them out of the country. Filson had
already gone overland to Louisville and told the au
thorities of the straits of their brethren at Vincennes,
and immediately an expedition was sent to their re
lief under Captains Hardin and Patton.

Meanwhile, on July 1 5th, a large band of several
hundred Indians, bearing red and white flags, came
down the river in forty-seven canoes to attack the
Americans at Vincennes, sending word to the French
that if they remained neutral they would not be mo
lested. The French sent envoys to dissuade them
from their purpose, but the war chiefs and sachems
answered that the red people were at last united in
opposition to "the men wearing hats," and gave a
belt of black wampum to the wavering Piankeshaws,
warning them that all Indians who refused to join
against the whites would thenceforth be treated as
foes. However, their deeds by no means corre
sponded with their threats. Next day they assailed
the American block-house or stockaded fort, but
found they could make no impression and drew off.
They burned a few outlying cabins and slaughtered
many head of cattle, belonging both to the Ameri
cans and the French; and then, seeing the French
under arms, held further parley with them, and re
treated, to the relief of all the inhabitants.

At the same time the Kentuckians, under Hardin

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 169

and Patton, stumbled by accident on a party of In
dians, some of whom were friendly Piankeshaws
and some hostile Miamis. They attacked them with
out making any discrimination between friend and
foe, killed six, wounded seven, and drove off the
remainder. But they themselves lost one man killed
and four wounded, including Hardin, and fell back
to Louisville without doing anything more.47

These troubles on the Wabash merely hardened
the determination of the Kentuckians no longer to
wait until the Federal Government acted. With the
approval of Governor Patrick Henry, they took the
initiative themselves. Early in August the field offi
cers of the district of Kentucky met at Harrodsburg,
Benjamin Logan presiding, and resolved on an expe
dition, to be commanded by Clark, against the hos
tile Indians on the Wabash. Half of the militia of
the district were to go; the men were to assemble,
on foot or on horseback, as they pleased, at Clarks-
ville, on September loth.48 Besides pack-horses,

47 Letter of Legrace and Filson's Journal. The two con
tradict one another as to which side was to blame. Legrace
blames the Americans heavily for wronging both the French
and the Indians ; and condemns in the strongest terms, and
probably with justice, many of their number, and especially
Sullivan. He speaks, however, in high terms of Henry and
Small ; and both of these, in their letters referred to above,
paint the conduct of the French and Indians in very dark
colors, throwing the blame on them. Legrace is certainly
disingenuous in suppressing all mention of the wrongs done
to the Americans. For Filson's career and death in the
woods, see the excellent Life of Filson, by Durrett, in the
Filson Club publications.

48 Draper MSS. Minutes of meetings of the officers of the
VOL. VII.— 8

170 The Winning of the West

salt, flour, powder, and lead were impressed,49 not
always in strict compliance with law, for some of the
officers impressed quantities of spirituous liquors
also.50 The troops themselves, however, came in
slowly.51 Late in September, when twelve hundred
men had been gathered, Clark moved forward. But
he was no longer the man he had been. He failed
to get any hold on his army. His followers, on
their side, displayed all that unruly fickleness which
made the militia of the Revolutionary period a
weapon which might at times be put to good use
in the absence of any other, but which was really
trusted only by men whose military judgment was
as fatuous as Jefferson's.

After reaching Vincennes the troops became mu
tinous, and at last flatly refused longer to obey or
ders, and marched home as a disorderly mob, to the
disgrace of themselves and their leader. Neverthe
less, the expedition had really accomplished some
thing, for it overawed the Wabash and Illinois In
dians, and effectively put a stop to any active ex
pressions of disloyalty or disaffection on the part
of the French. Clark sent officers to the Illinois
towns, and established a garrison of one hundred
and fifty men at Vincennes,52 besides seizing the

district of Kentucky, Aug. 2, 1786. State Dept. MSS., No.
150, Vol. II. Letter of P. Henry, May 16, 1786.

48 Draper MSS. J. Cox to George Clark, Aug. 8, 1786.

50 State Dept. MSS., Madison papers. Letter of Caleb
Wallace, Nov. 20, 1786.

" State Dept. MSS., Papers Continental Congress. No.
150, Vol. II. Letter of Major Wm. North, Sept. 15, 1786.

M Do. Virginia State Papers. G. R. Clark to Patrick

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 171

goods of a Spanish merchant in retaliation for
wrongs committed on American merchants by the
Spaniards.

This failure was in small part offset by a success
ful expedition led by Logan at the same time against
the Shawnee towns.53 On October 5th, he attacked
them with seven hundred and ninety men. There
was little or no resistance, most of the warriors
having gone to oppose Clark. Logan took ten scalps
and thirty-two prisoners, burned two hundred cabins
and quantities of corn, and returned in triumph after
a fortnight's absence. One deed of infamy sullied
his success. Among his colonels was the scoundrel
McGarry, who, in cold blood, murdered the old
Shawnee chief, Molunthee, several hours after he
had been captured ; the shame of the barbarous deed
being aggravated by the fact that the old chief had
always been friendly to the Americans.54 Other
murders would probably have followed, had it not
been for the prompt and honorable action of Colonels
Robert Patterson and Robert Trotter, who ordered
their men to shoot down any one who molested an
other prisoner. McGarry then threatened them,
and they in return demanded that he be court-mar-
tialled for murder.55 Logan, to his discredit, re-
Henry. Draper MSS., Proceedings of Committee of Ken
tucky Convention, Dec. 19, 1786.

53 State Department MSS., Virginia State Papers, Logan to
Patrick Henry, December 17, 1786.

M Draper MSS., Caleb Wallace to Wm. Fleming, October
23, 1786. State Department MSS., No. 15, Vol. II, Harmar's
Letter, November 15, 1786.

56 Virginia State Papers, Vol. IV, p. 212.

1 72 The Winning of the West

fused the court-martial, for fear of creating further
trouble. The bane of the frontier military organi
zation was the helplessness of the elected command
ers, their dependence on their followers, and the in
ability of the decent men to punish the atrocious
misdeeds of their associates.

These expeditions were followed by others on a
smaller scale, but of like character. They did
enough damage to provoke, but not to overawe, the
Indians. With the spring of 1787 the ravages be
gan on an enlarged scale, with all their dreadful
accompaniments of rapine, murder, and torture.
All along the Ohio frontier, from Pennsylvania to
Kentucky, the settlers were harried; and in some
places they abandoned their clearings and hamlets,
so that the frontier shrank back.56 Logan, Kenton,
and many other leaders headed counter expeditions,
and now and then broke up a war party or de
stroyed an Indian town ;57 but nothing decisive was
accomplished, and Virginia paralyzed the efforts of
the Kentuckians and waked them to anger by for
bidding them to follow the Indian parties beyond
the frontier.58

The most important stroke given to the hostile
Indians in 1787 was dealt by the Cumberland peo
ple. During the preceding three or four years,
some scores of the settlers on the Cumberland had

M Durrett MSS., Daniel Dawson to John Campbell, Pitts-
burg, June 17, 1787. Virginia State Papers, Vol. IV, p. 419.

" Draper MSS., T. Brown to T. Preston, Danville, June
13, 1787. Virginia State Papers, Vol. IV, pp. 254, 287, etc.

58 Virginia State Papers, Vol. IV, p. 344.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 173

been slain by small predatory parties of Indians,
mostly Cherokees and Creeks. No large war band
attacked the settlements; but no hunter, surveyor,
or traveler, no woodchopper or farmer, no woman
alone in the cabin with her children, could ever feel
safe from attack. Now and then a savage was killed
in such an attack, or in a skirmish with some body
of scouts; but nothing effectual could be thus ac
complished.

The most dangerous marauders were some Creek
and Cherokee warriors who had built a town on the
Coldwater, a tributary of the Tennessee near the
Muscle Shoals, within easy striking distance of the
Cumberland settlements. This town was a favorite
resort of French traders from the Illinois and Wa-
bash, who came up the Tennessee in bateaux. They
provided the Indians with guns and ammunition,
and in return often received goods plundered from
the Americans; and they at least indirectly and in
some cases directly encouraged the savages in their
warfare against the settlers.59

Early in June, Robertson gathered one hundred
and thirty men and marched against the Coldwater
town, with two Chickasaws as guides. Another
small party started at the same time by water, but
fell into an ambush, and then came back. Robert
son and his force followed the trail of a marauding

69 Robertson MSS., Robertson to some Frenchman of note
in Illinois, June, 1787. This is apparently a copy, probably
by Robertson's wife, of the original letter. In Robertson's
own original letters, the spelling and handwriting are as
rough as they are vigorous.

174 The Winning of the West

party which had just visited the settlements. They
marched through the woods toward the Tennessee
until they heard the voice of the great river as it
roared over the shoals. For a day they lurked in
the cane on the north side, waiting until they were
certain no spies were watching them. In the night
some of the men swam over and stole a big canoe,
with which they returned. At daylight the troops
crossed, a few in this canoe, the others swimming
with their horses. After landing, they marched
seven miles and fell on the town, which was in a
ravine, with cornfields round about. Taken by sur
prise, the warriors, with no effective resistance, fled
to their canoes. The white riflemen thronged after
them. Most of the warriors escaped, but over twenty
were slain ; as were also four or five French traders,
while half a dozen Frenchmen and one Indian squaw
were captured. All the cabins were destroyed, the
live stock was slain, and much plunder taken. The
prisoners were well treated and released ; but on the
way home another party of French traders were en
countered, and their goods were taken from them.
The two Chickasaws were given their full share of
all the plunder.

This blow gave a breathing spell to the Cumber
land settlements. Robertson at once wrote to the
French in the Illinois country, and also to some Del-
awares, who had recently come to the neighborhood,
and were preserving a dubious neutrality. He ex
plained the necessity of their expedition, and re
marked that if any innocent people, whether French-

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 175

men or Indians, had suffered in the attack, they had
to blame themselves; they were in evil company,
and the assailants could not tell the good from the
bad. If any Americans had been there, they would
have suffered just the same. In conclusion he
warned the French that if their traders continued
to furnish the hostile Indians with powder and lead,
they would "render themselves very insecure" ; and
to the Indians he wrote that, in the event of a war,
"you will compell ous to retaliate, which will be a
grate pridgedes to your nation." 60 He did not spell
well; but his meaning was plain, and his hand was
known to be heavy.

60 Robertson MSS. His letter above referred to, and an
other, in his own hand, to the Delawares, of about the same
date.

CHAPTER III

THE NAVIGATION OF THE MISSISSIPPI; SEPARATIST

MOVEMENTS AND SPANISH INTRIGUES,

1784-1788

IT was important for the frontiersmen to take
the Lake Posts from the British ; but it was even
more important to wrest from the Spaniards the
free navigation of the Mississippi. While the Lake
Posts were held by the garrisons of a foreign power,
the work of settling the Northwestern territory was
bound to go forward slowly and painfully; but
while the navigation of the Mississippi was barred,
even the settlements already founded could not at
tain to their proper prosperity and importance.

The lusty young commonwealths which were
springing into life on the Ohio and its tributaries
knew that commerce with the outside world was es
sential to their full and proper growth. The high,
forest-clad ranges of the Appalachians restricted
and hampered their mercantile relations with the
older States, and therefore with the Europe which
lay beyond; while the giant river offered itself as a
huge trade artery to bring them close to all the outer
world, if only they were allowed its free use.

Navigable rivers are of great importance to a
country's trade now ; but a hundred years ago their
(176)

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 177

importance was relatively far greater. Steam, rail
roads, electricity, have worked a revolution so stu
pendous, that we find it difficult to realize the facts
of the life which our forefathers lived. The con
ditions of commerce have changed much more in the
last hundred years than in the preceding two thou
sand. The Kentuckians and Tennesseans knew only
the pack train, the wagon train, the river craft and
the deep-sea ship ; that is, they knew only such means
of carrying on commerce as were known to Greek
and Carthaginian, Roman and Persian, and the na
tions of mediaeval Europe. Beasts of draught
and of burden, and oars and sails, — these, and these
only, — were at the service of their merchants, as
they had been at the service of all merchants from
time immemorial. Where trade was thus limited
the advantages conferred by water carriage, com
pared to land carriage, were incalculable. The
Westerners were right in regarding as indispensa
ble the free navigation of the Mississippi. They
were right also in their determination ultimately
to acquire the control of the whole river, from the
source to the mouth.

However, the Westerners wished more than the
privilege of sending down stream the products of
their woods and pastures and tilled farms. They
had already begun to cast longing eyes on the fair
Spanish possessions. Spain was still the greatest
of colonial powers. In wealth, in extent, and in
population both native and European — her colonies
surpassed even those of England; and by far the

1 78 The Winning of the West

most important of her possessions were in the New
World. For two centuries her European rivals,
English, French, and Dutch, had warred against her
in America, with the net result of taking from her
a few islands in the West Indies. On the American
mainland her possessions were even larger than they
had been in the age of the great Conquisadores ;
the age of Cortes, Pizarro, De Soto, and Coronado.
Yet it was evident that her grasp had grown feeble.
Every bold, lawless, ambitious leader among the
frontier folk dreamed of wresting from the Span
iard some portion of his rich and ill-guarded do
main.

It was not alone the attitude of the frontiersmen
toward Spain that was novel, and based upon a sit
uation for which there was little precedent. Their
relations with one another, with their brethren of the
seaboard, and with the Federal Government like
wise had to be adjusted without much chance of
profiting by antecedent experience. Many phases
of these relations between the people who stayed at
home and those who wandered off to make homes,
between the frontiersmen as they formed young
States and the central government representing the
old States, were entirely new, and were ill-under
stood by both parties. Truths which all citizens
have now grown to accept as axiomatic were then
seen clearly only by the very greatest men, and by
most others were seen dimly, if at all. What is now
regarded as inevitable and proper was then held as
something abnormal, unnatural, and greatly to be

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 179

dreaded. The men engaged in building new com
monwealths did not, as yet, understand that they
owed the Union as much as did the dwellers in the
old States. They were apt to let liberty become
mere anarchy and license, to talk extravagantly
about their rights while ignoring their duties, and
to rail at the weakness of the Central Govern
ment while at the same time opposing with foolish
violence every effort to make it stronger. On the
other hand, the people of the long-settled country
found difficulty in heartily accepting the idea that
the new communities, as they sprang up in the for
est, were entitled to stand exactly on a level with
the old, not only as regards their own rights, but as
regards the right to shape the destiny of the Union
itself.

The Union was as yet imperfect. The jangling
colonies had been welded together, after a fashion,
in the slow fire of the Revolutionary War; but the
old lines of cleavage were still distinctly marked.
The great struggle had been of incalculable benefit
to all Americans. Under its stress they had begun
to develop a national type of thought and character.
Americans now held in common memories which
they shared with no one else ; for they held ever in
mind the facts of a dozen crowded years. Theirs
was the history of all that had been done by the
Continental Congress and the Continental armies;
theirs the memory of the toil and the suffering and
the splendid ultimate triumph. They cherished in
common the winged words of their statesmen, the

180 The Winning of the West

edged deeds of their soldiers; they yielded to the
spell of mighty names which sounded alien to all
men save themselves. But though the successful
struggle had laid deep the foundations of a new na
tion, it had also of necessity stirred and developed
many of the traits most hostile te assured national
life. All civil wars loosen the bands of orderly lib
erty, and leave in their train disorder and evil.
Hence those who cause them must rightly be held
guilty of the gravest wrongdoing unless they are
not only pure of purpose, but sound of judgment,
and unless the result shows their wisdom. The
Revolution had left behind it among many men love
of liberty, mingled with lofty national feeling and
broad patriotism; but to other men it seemed that
the chief lessons taught had been successful resist
ance to authority, jealousy of the central Govern
ment, and intolerance of all restraint. According
as one or the other of these mutually hostile sets of
sentiments prevailed, the acts of the Revolutionary
leaders were to stand justified or condemned in the
light of the coming years. As yet the success had
only been in tearing down; there remained the
harder and all-important task of building up.

This task of building up was accomplished, and
the acts of the men of the Revolution were thus jus
tified. It was the after result of the Revolution, not
the Revolution itself, which gave to the govern
mental experiment inaugurated by the Second Con
tinental Congress its unique and lasting value. It
was this result which marks most clearly the differ-

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 181

ence between the careers of the English-speaking
and Spanish-speaking peoples on this continent. The
wise statesmanship typified by such men as Wash
ington and Marshall, Hamilton, Jay, John Adams,
and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, prevailed over
the spirit of separatism and anarchy. Seven years
after the war ended, the Constitution went into ef
fect, and the United States became in truth a nation.
Had we not thus become a nation, had the separatists
won the day, and our country become the seat of va
rious antagonistic States and confederacies, then
the Revolution by which we won liberty and inde
pendence would have been scarcely more memorable
or noteworthy than the wars which culminated in
the separation of the Spanish-American colonies
from Spain ; for we would thereby have proved that
we did not deserve either liberty or independence.
The Revolutionary War itself had certain points
of similarity with the struggles of which men like
Bolivar were the heroes; where the parallel totally
fails is in what followed. There were features in
which the campaigns of the Mexican and South
American insurgent leaders resembled at least the
partisan warfare so often waged by American Rev
olutionary generals ; but with the deeds of the great
constructive statesmen of the United States there is
nothing in the career of any Spanish- American com
munity to compare. It was the power to build a
solid and permanent Union, the power to construct
a mighty nation out of the wreck of a crumbling
confederacy, which drew a sharp line between the

1 82 The Winning of the West

Americans of the North and the Spanish-speaking
races of the South.

In their purposes and in the popular sentiment to
which they have appealed, our separatist leaders of
every generation have borne an ominous likeness to
the horde of dictators and half-military, half-politi
cal adventurers who for three-quarters of a century
have wrought such harm in the lands between the
Argentine and Mexico; but the men who brought
into being and preserved the Union have had no
compeers in Southern America. The North Amer
ican colonies wrested their independence from Great
Britain as the colonies of South America wrested
theirs from Spain; but whereas the United States
grew with giant strides into a strong and orderly
nation, Spanish-America has remained split into a
dozen turbulent States, and has become a byword
for anarchy and weakness.

The separatist feeling has at times been strong
in almost every section of the Union, although in
some regions it has been much stronger than in oth
ers. Calhoun and Pickering, Jefferson and Gouver-
neur Morris, Wendell Phillips and William Taney,
Aaron Burr and Jefferson Davis — these and many
other leaders of thought and action, East and West,
North and South, at different periods of the nation's
growth, and at different stages of their own ca
reers, have, for various reasons, and with widely
varying purity of motive, headed or joined in sep
aratist movements. Many of these men were act
uated by high-minded, though narrow, patriotism;

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 183

and those who, in the culminating catastrophe of all
the separatist agitations, appealed to the sword,
proved the sincerity of their convictions by their
resolute courage and self-sacrifice. Nevertheless
they warred against the right, and strove mightily
to bring about the downfall and undoing of the
nation.

The men who brought on and took part in the
disunion movements were moved sometimes by good
and sometimes by bad motives ; but even when their
motives were disinterested and their purposes pure,
and even when they had received much provocation,
they must be adjudged as lacking the wisdom, the
foresight, and the broad devotion to all the land
over which the flag floats, without which no states
man can rank as really great. The enemies of the
Union were the enemies of America and of man
kind, whose success would have plunged their coun
try into an abyss of shame and misery, and would
have arrested for generations the upward movement
of their race.

Yet, evil though the separatist movements were,
they were at times imperfectly justified by the spirit
of sectional distrust and bitterness rife in portions
of the country which at the moment were themselves
loyal to the Union. This was especially true of the
early separatist movements in the West. Unfortu
nately the attitude toward the Westerners of certain
portions of the population in the older States, and
especially in the Northeastern States, was one of
unreasoning jealousy and suspicion ; and though this

184 The Winning of the West

mental attitude rarely crystallized into hostile deeds,
its very existence, and the knowledge that it did ex
ist, imbittered the men of the West. Moreover the
people among whom these feelings were strongest
were, unfortunately, precisely those who on the ques
tions of the Union and the Constitution showed the
broadest and most far-seeing statesmanship. New
England, the towns of the middle States and Mary
land, the tidewater region of South Carolina, and
certain parts of Virginia were the seats of the sound
est political thought of the day. The men who did
this sane, wholesome political thinking were quite
right in scorning and condemning the crude unrea
son, often silly, often vicious, which characterized
so much of the political thought of their opponents.
The strength of these opponents was largely derived
from the ignorance and suspicion of the raw country
districts, and from the sour jealousy with which the
backwoodsmen regarded the settled regions of the
seaboard.

But when these sound political thinkers permitted
their distrust of certain sections of the country to
lead them into doing injustice to those sections, they
in their turn deserved the same condemnation which
should be meted to so many of their political foes.
When they allowed their judgment to become so
warped by their dissatisfaction with the traits in
evitably characteristic of the earlier stages of fron
tier development that they became opposed to all
extension of the frontier; when they allowed their
liking for the well-ordered society of their own dis-

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 185

tricts to degenerate into indifference to or dislike
of the growth of the United States toward con
tinental greatness; then they themselves sank
into the position of men who in cold selfishness
sought to mar the magnificent destiny of their
own people.

In the Northeastern States, and in New "England
especially, this feeling showed itself for two genera
tions after the close of the Revolutionary War. On
the whole, the New Englanders have exerted a more
profound and wholesome influence upon the devel
opment of our common country than has ever been
exerted by any other equally numerous body of our
people. They have led the nation in the path of
civil liberty and sound governmental administration.
But too often they have viewed the nation's growth
and greatness from a narrow and provincial stand
point, and have grudgingly acquiesced in, rather than
led the march toward, continental supremacy. In
shaping the nation's policy for the future their sense
of historic perspective seemed imperfect. They
could not see the all-importance of the valley of the
Ohio, or of the valley of the Columbia, to the Re
public of the years to come. The value of a county
in Maine offset in their eyes the value of these vast,
empty regions. Indeed, in the days immediately
succeeding the Revolution, their attitude toward the
growing West was worse than one of mere indiffer
ence ; it was one of alarm and dislike. They for the
moment adopted toward the West a position not
wholly unlike that which England had held toward

1 86 The Winning of the West

the American colonies as a whole. They came dan
gerously near repeating, in their feeling toward their
younger brethren on the Ohio, the very blunder com
mitted in reference to themselves by their elder
brethren in Britain. For some time they seemed,
like the British, unable to grasp the grandeur of their
race's imperial destiny. They hesitated to throw
themselves with hearty enthusiasm into the task of
building a nation with a continent as its base. They
rather shrank from the idea as implying a lesser
weight of their own section in the nation; not yet
understanding that to an American the essential
thing was the growth and well-being of America,
while the relative importance of the locality where
he dwelt was a matter of small moment.

The extreme representatives of this Northeastern
sectionalism not only objected to the growth of the
West at the time now under consideration, but even
avowed a desire to work it harm, by shutting the
Mississippi, so as to benefit the commerce of the At
lantic States — a manifestation of cynical and self
ish disregard of the rights of their fellow-country
men quite as flagrant as any piece of tyranny com
mitted or proposed by King George's ministers in
reference to America. These intolerant extremists
not only opposed the admission of the young West
ern States into the Union, but at a later date actually
announced that the annexation by the United States
of vast territories beyond the Mississippi offered
just cause for the secession of the Northeastern
States. Even those who did not take such an ad-

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 187

vanced ground felt an unreasonable dread lest the
West might grow to overtop the East in power. In
their desire to prevent this (which has long since
happened without a particle of damage resulting to
the East), they proposed to establish in the Consti
tution that the representatives from the West should
never exceed in number those from the East, — a
proviso which would not have been merely futile,
for it would quite properly have been regarded by
the West as unforgivable.

A curious feature of the way many honest men
looked at the West was their inability to see how
essentially transient were some of the characteristics
to which they objected. Thus they were alarmed
at the turbulence and the lawless shortcomings of
various kinds which grew out of the conditions of
frontier settlement and sparse population. They
looked with anxious foreboding to the time when
the turbulent and lawless people would be very nu
merous, and would form a dense and powerful popu
lation ; failing to see that in exact proportion as the
population became dense, the conditions which
caused the qualities to which they objected would
disappear. Even the men who had too much good
sense to share these fears, even men as broadly pa
triotic as Jay, could not realize the extreme rapidity
of Western growth. Kentucky and Tennessee grew
much faster than any of the old frontier colonies
had ever grown ; and from sheer lack of experience,
Eastern statesmen could not realize that this rapid
ity of growth made the navigation of the Mississippi

1 88 The Winning of the West

a matter of immediate and not of future interest to
the West.

In short, these good people were learning with
reluctance and difficulty to accept as necessary cer
tain facts which we regard as part of the order of
our political nature. We look at territorial expan
sion, and the admission of new States, as part of a
process as natural as it is desirable. To our fore
fathers the process was novel, and, in some of its
features, repugnant. Many of them could not di
vest themselves of the feeling that the old States
ought to receive more consideration than the new;
whereas nowadays it would never occur to any one
that Pennsylvania and Georgia ought to stand either
above or below California and Montana. It is an
inestimable boon to all four States to be in the
Union, but this is because the citizens of all of them
are on a common footing. If the new common
wealths in the Rocky Mountains and on the Pacific
slope were not cordially accepted by the original
Thirteen States as having exactly the same rights
and privileges of every kind, it would be better for
them to stand alone. As a matter of fact, we have
become so accustomed to the idea of the equality of
the different States, that it never enters our heads
to conceive of the possibility of its being otherwise.
The feeling in its favor is so genuine and universal
that we are not even conscious that it exists. No
body dreams of treating the fact that the new com
monwealths are offshoots of the old as furnishing
grounds for any discrimination in reference to them,

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 189

one way or the other. There still exist dying jeal
ousies between different States and sections, but
this particular feeling does not enter into them in
any way whatsoever.

At the time when Kentucky was struggling for
Statehood, this feeling, though it had been given its
death-blow by the success of the Revolution, still
lingered here and there on the Atlantic coast. It
was manifest in the attitude of many prominent
people — the leaders in their communities — toward
the new commonwealths growing up beyond the
Alleghanies. Had this intolerant sectional feeling
ever prevailed and been adopted as the policy of the
Atlantic States, the West would have revolted, and
would have been right in revolting. But the mani
festations of this sectionalism proved abortive; the
broad patriotism of leaders like Washington pre
vailed. In the actual event the East did full and
free justice to the West. In consequence we are
now one nation.

While many of the people on the Eastern sea
board thus took an indefensible position in refer
ence to the trans-Alleghany settlements, in the pe
riod immediately succeeding the Revolution, there
were large bodies of the population of these same
settlements, including very many of their popular
leaders, whose own attitude toward the Union was,
if anything, even more blameworthy. They were
clamorous about their rights, and were not unready
to use veiled threats of disunion when they deemed
these rights infringed ; but they showed little appre-

190 The Winning of the West

ciation of their own duties to the Union. For cer
tain of the positions which they assumed no excuse
can be offered. They harped continually on the
feebleness of the Federal authorities, and the inabil
ity of these authorities to do them justice or offer
them adequate protection against the Indian and the
Spaniard ; yet they bitterly opposed the adoption of
the very Constitution which provided a strong and
stable Federal Government, and turned the weak
confederacy, despised at home and abroad, into one
of the great nations of the earth. They showed little
self-control, little willingness to wait with patience
until it was possible to remedy any of the real or
fancied wrongs of which they complained. They
made no allowance for the difficulties so plentifully
strewn in the path of the Federal authorities. They
clamored for prompt and effective action, and yet
clamored just as loudly against the men who sought
to create a national executive with power to take
this prompt and effective action. They demanded
that the United States wrest from the British the
Lake Posts, and from the Spaniards the navigation
of the Mississippi. Yet they seemed incapable of
understanding that if they separated from the Union
they would thereby forfeit all chance of achieving
the very purposes they had in view, because they
would then certainly be at the mercy of Britain, and
probably, at least for some time, at the mercy of
Spain also. They opposed giving the United States
the necessary civil and military power, although it
was only by the possession and exercise of such

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 191

power that it would be possible to secure for the
Westerners what they wished. In all human prob
ability, the whole country round the Great Lakes
would still be British territory, and the mouth of
the Mississippi still in the hands of some European
power, had the folly of the separatists won the day
and had the West been broken up into independent
States.

These shortcomings were not special or peculiar
to the frontiersmen of the Ohio Valley at the close
of the eighteenth century. All our frontiersmen
have betrayed a tendency toward them at times,
though the exhibitions of this tendency have grown
steadily less and less decided. In Vermont, during
the years between the close of the Revolution and
the adoption of the Constitution, the state of affairs
was very much what it was in Kentucky at the same
time.1 In each territory there was acute friction
with a neighboring State. In each there was a
small knot of men who wished the community to
keep out of the new American nation, and to enter
into some sort of alliance with a European nation,
England in one case, Spain in the other. In each
there was a considerable but fluctuating separatist
party, desirous that the territory should become an
independent nation on its own account. In each
case the separatist movements failed, and the final
triumph lay with the men of broadly national ideas,

1 "Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography," XI,
No. 2, pp. 160-165, Letters of Levi Allen, Ethan Allen, and
others, from 1787 to 1790.

192 The Winning of the West

so that both Kentucky and Vermont became States
of one indissoluble Union.

This final triumph of the Union party in these
first-formed frontier States was fraught with im
measurable good for them and for the whole nation
of which they became parts. It established a prece
dent for the action of all the other States that sprang
into being as the frontier rolled westward. It de
cided that the interior of North America should
form part of one great Republic, and should not be
parceled out among a crowd of English-speaking
Uruguays and Ecquadors, powerful only to damage
one another, and helpless to exact respect from alien
foes or to keep order in their own households. It
vastly increased the significance of the outcome of
the Revolution, for it decided that its after-effects
should be felt throughout the entire continent, not
merely in the way of example, but by direct impress.
The creation of a nation stretching along the At
lantic seaboard was of importance in itself, but the
importance was immensely increased when once it
was decided that the nation should cover a region
larger than all Europe.

While giving unlimited praise to the men so clear
sighted, and of such high thought, that from the be
ginning they foresaw the importance of the Union,
and strove to include all the West therein, we must
beware of blaming overmuch those whose vision
was less acute. The experiment of the Union was
as yet inchoate; its benefits were prospective; and
loyalty to it was loyalty to a splendid idea the real-

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 193

ization of which lay in the future rather than in the
present. All honor must be awarded to the men
who under such conditions could be loyal to so high
an ideal; but we must not refuse to see the many
strong and admirable qualities in some of the men
who looked less keenly into the future. It would
be mere folly2 to judge a man who, in 1787, was
lukewarm or even hostile to the Union by the same
standard we should use in testing his son's grand
son a century later. Finally, where a man's gen
eral course was one of devotion to the Union, it is
easy to forgive him some momentary lapse, due to
a misconception on his part of the real needs of the
hour, or to passing but intense irritation at some dis
play of narrow indifference to the rights of his sec
tion by the people of some other section. Patrick
Henry himself made one slip when he opposed the
adoption of the Federal Constitution; but this does
not at all offset the services he rendered our com
mon country both before and afterward. Every
statesmen makes occasional errors ; and the leniency
of judgment needed by Patrick Henry, and needed
far more by Ethan Allen, Samuel Adams, and
George Clinton, must be extended to frontier lead
ers for whose temporary coldness to the Union there
was much greater excuse.

When we deal, not with the leading statesmen of
the frontier communities, but with the ordinary
frontier folk themselves, there is need to apply the
same tests used in dealing with the rude, strong peo-

• R. T. Durrett, "Centenary of Kentucky," 64.
VOL. VII.— 9

194 The Winning of the West

pies of bygone ages. The standard by which inter
national, and even domestic, morality is judged,
must vary for different countries under widely dif
ferent conditions, for exactly the same reasons that
it must vary for different periods of the world's his
tory. We can not expect the refined virtues of a
highly artificial civilization from frontiersmen who
for generations have been roughened and hardened
by the same kind of ferocious wilderness toil that
once fell to the lot of their remote barbarian an
cestors.

The Kentuckian, from his clearing in the great
forest, looked with bold and greedy eyes at the Span
ish possessions, much as Markman, Goth, and Frank
had once peered through their marshy woods at the
Roman dominions. He possessed the virtues proper
to a young and vigorous race; he was trammeled
by few misgivings as to the rights of the men whose
lands he coveted ; he felt that the future was for the
stout-hearted, and not for the weakling. He was
continually hampered by the advancing civilization
of which he was the vanguard, and of which his
own sons were destined to form an important part.
He rebelled against the restraints imposed by his
own people behind him exactly as he felt impelled to
attack the alien peoples in front of him. He did
not care very much what form the attack took. On
the whole he preferred that it should be avowed
war, whether waged under the stars and stripes or
under some flag new-raised by himself and his fel
low-adventurers of the border. In default of such a

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 195

struggle, he was ready to serve under alien banners,
either those of some nation at the moment hostile to
Spain, or else those of some insurgent Spanish leader.
But he was also perfectly willing to obtain by diplo
macy what was denied by force of arms ; and if the
United States could not or would not gain his ends
for him in this manner, then he wished to make use
of his own power. He was eager to enter in and
take the land, even at the cost of becoming for the
time being a more or less nominal vassal of Spain ;
and he was ready to promise, in return for this privi
lege of settlement, to form a barrier State against
the further encroachment of his fellows. When
fettered by the checks imposed by the Central Gov
ernment, he not only threatened to revolt and estab
lish an independent government of his own, but even
now and then darkly hinted that he would put this
government under the protection of the very Span
ish power at whose cost he always firmly intended
to take his own strides toward greatness. As a
matter of fact, whether he first established himself
in the Spanish possessions as an outright enemy, or
as a nominal friend and subject, the result was sure
to be the same in the end. The only difference was
that it took place sooner in one event than in the
other. In both cases alike the province thus ac
quired was certain finally to be wrested from Spain.
The Spaniards speedily recognized in the Ameri
cans the real menace to their power in Florida,
Louisiana, and Mexico. They did not, however,
despair of keeping them at bay. The victories won

196 The Winning of the West

by Galvez over both the British regulars and the
Tory American settlers were fresh in their minds;
and they felt they had a chance of success even in
a contest of arms. But the weapons upon which
they relied most were craft and intrigue. If the
Union could be broken up, or the jealousies between
the States and sections fanned into flame, there
would be little chance of a successful aggressive
movement by the Americans of any one common
wealth. The Spanish authorities sought to achieve
these ends by every species of bribery and corrupt
diplomacy. They placed even more reliance upon
the warlike confederacies of the Creeks, Cherokees,
Choctaws, and Chickasaws, thrust in between them
selves and the frontier settlements; and while pro
testing to the Americans with smooth treachery that
they were striving to keep the Indians at peace,
they secretly incited them to hostilities, and fur
nished them with arms and munitions of war. The
British held the Lake Posts by open exhibition of
strength, though they, too, were not above conniv
ing at treachery and allowing their agents covertly
to urge the red tribes to resist the American ad
vance; but the Spaniards, by preference, trusted to
fraud rather than to force.

In the last resort the question of the navigation
of the Mississippi had to be decided between the
Governments of Spain and the United States; and
it was chiefly through the latter that the Westerners
could, indirectly, but most powerfully, make their
influence felt. In the longhand intricate negotia-

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 197

tions carried on toward the close of the Revolu
tionary War between the representatives of Spain,
France, and the United States, Spain had taken high
ground in reference to this and to all other Western
questions, and France had supported her in her de
sire to exclude the Americans from all rights in the
vast regions beyond the Alleghanies. At that time
the delegates from the Southern, no less than from
the Northern, States, in the Continental Congress,
showed much weakness in yielding to this attitude
of France and Spain. On the motion of those from
Virginia all the delegates with the exception of
those from North Carolina voted to instruct Jay,
then Minister to Spain, to surrender outright the
free navigation of the Mississippi. Later, when he
was one of the Commissioners to treat for peace,
they practically repeated the blunder by instructing
Jay and his colleagues to assent to whatever France
proposed. With rare wisdom and courage Jay re
pudiated these instructions. The chief credit for
the resulting diplomatic triumph, almost as essential
as the victory at Yorktown itself to our national
well-being, belongs to him, and by his conduct he
laid the men of the West under an obligation which
they never acknowledged during his lifetime.3

Shortly after his return to America he was made
Secretary of Foreign Affairs, and was serving as

3 It is not the least of Mann Butler's good points that in
his "History" he does full justice to Jay. Another Kentuck-
ian, Mr. Thomas Marshall Green, has recently done the same
in his "Spanish Conspiracy."

198 The Winning of the West

such when, in the spring of 1785, Don Diego Gar-
doqui arrived in Philadelphia, bearing a commission
from his Catholic Majesty to Congress. At this
time the brilliant and restless soldier Galvez had left
Louisiana and become Viceroy of Mexico, thus re
moving from Louisiana the one Spaniard whose en
ergy and military capacity would have rendered him
formidable to the Americans in the event of war.
He was succeeded in the government of the Creole
province by Don Estevan Miro, already colonel of
the Louisiana regiment.

Gardoqui was not an able man, although with
some capacity for a certain kind of intrigue. He
was a fit representative of the Spanish court, with
its fundamental weakness and its impossible pre
tensions. He entirely misunderstood the people
with whom he had to deal, and whether he was or
was not himself personally honest, he based his chief
hopes of success in dealing with others upon their
supposed susceptibility to the influence of corruption
and dishonorable intrigue. He and Jay could come
to no* agreement, and the negotiations were finally
broken off. Before this happened, in the fall of
1786, Jay in entire good faith had taken a step
which aroused furious anger in the West.4 Like
so many other statesmen of the day, he did not real
ize how fast Kentucky had grown, and deemed the
navigation question one which would not be of real
importance to the West for two decades to come.

4 State Dept. MSS., No. 81, Vol. II, 193, 241, 285, etc.; Re
ports of Sec'y John Jay.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 199

He absolutely refused to surrender our right to nav
igate the Mississippi ; but, not regarding it as of im
mediate consequence, he proposed both to Congress
and Gardoqui that in consideration of certain con
cessions by Spain we should agree to forbear to ex
ercise this right for twenty or twenty-five years.
The delegates from the Northern States assented
to Jay's views; those from the Southern States
strongly opposed them. In 1787, after a series of
conferences between Jay and Gardoqui, which came
to naught, the Spaniard definitely refused to enter
tain Jay's proposition. Even had he not refused
nothing could have been done, for under the con
federation a treaty had to be ratified by the votes of
nine States, and there were but seven which sup
ported the policy of Jay.

Unquestionably Jay showed less than his usual
far-sightedness in this matter, but it is only fair to
remember that his views were shared by some of the
greatest of American statesmen, even from Vir
ginia. "Lighthorse Harry" Lee substantially agreed
with them. Washington, with his customary broad
vision and keen insight, realized the danger of ex
citing the turbulent Westerners by any actual treaty
which might seem to cut off their hope of traffic
down the Mississippi; but he advocated pursuing
what was, except for defining the time limit, sub
stantially the same policy under a different name,
recommending that the United States should await
events and for the moment neither relinquish nor
push their claim to free navigation of the great

200 The Winning of the West

river.5 Even in Kentucky itself a few of the lead
ing men were of the opinion that the right of free
navigation would be of little real benefit during the
lifetime of the existing generation.6 It was no dis
credit to Jay to hold the views he did when they
were shared by intelligent men of affairs who were
actually in the district most concerned. He was
merely somewhat slow in abandoning opinions which
half a dozen years before were held generally
throughout the Union. Nevertheless it was fortu
nate for the country that the Southern States, headed
by Virginia, were so resolute in their opposition,
and that Gardoqui, a fit representative of his gov
ernment, declined to agree to a treaty which if rati
fied would have benefited Spain, and would have
brought undreamed of evil upon the United States.
Jefferson, to his credit, was very hostile to the prop
osition. As a statesman Jefferson stood for many
ideas which in their actual working have proved per
nicious to our country, but he deserves well of all
Americans, in the first place because of his ser
vices to science, and in the next place, what was
of far more importance, because of his steadfast
friendship for the great West, and his appreciation
of its magnificent future.

As soon as the Revolutionary War came to an
end adventurers in Kentucky began to trade down
the Mississippi. Often these men were merchants

6 "The Spanish Conspiracy," Thos. Marshall Green, p. 31.
6 State Dept MSS., Madison Papers, Caleb Wallace to
Madison, Nov. 21, 1787. Wallace himself shared this view.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 201

by profession, but this was not necessary, for on the
frontier men shifted from one business to another
very readily. A farmer of bold heart and money-
making temper might, after selling his crop, build
a flatboat, load it with flour, bacon, salt, beef, and
tobacco, and start for New Orleans.7 He faced
dangers from the waters, from the Indians, from
lawless whites of his own race, and from the Span
iards themselves. The New Orleans customs offi
cials were corrupt,8 and the regulations very absurd
and oppressive. The policy of the Spanish home
government in reference to the trade was unsettled
and wavering, and the attitude toward it of the
Governors of Louisiana changed with their varying
interests, beliefs, caprices, and apprehensions. In
consequence, the conditions of the trade were so
uncertain that to follow it was like indulging in a
lottery venture. Special privileges were allowed
certain individuals who had made private treaties
with, or had bribed, the Spanish officials ; and others
were enabled to smuggle their goods in under vari
ous pretences, and by various devices ; while the trad
ers who were without such corrupt influence or
knowledge found this river commerce hazardous in
the extreme. It was small wonder that the Ken-
tuckians should chafe under such arbitrary and un
equal restraints, and should threaten to break
through them by force.9

The most successful traders were of course those

' McAfee MSS. 8 Do.

9 Va. State Papers, IV, 630.

202 The Winning of the West

who contrived to establish relations with some one
in New Orleans, or perhaps in Natchez, who would
act as their agent or correspondent. Thek profits
from a successful trip made amends for much dis
aster, and enabled the trader to repeat his adventure
on a larger scale. Thus, among the papers of
George Rogers Clark there is a letter from one of
his friends who was living in Kaskaskia in 1784,
and was engaged in the river trade.10 The letter
was evidently to the writer's father, beginning "My
dear daddy." It describes how he had started on
one trip to New Orleans, but had been wrecked;
how, nothing daunted, he had tried again with a
cargo of forty-two beeves, which he sold in New
Orleans for what he deemed the good sum of $738 ;
and how he was about to try his luck once more,
buying a bateau and thirty bushels of salt, enough
to pickle two hundred beeves.

The traders never could be certain when their
boats would be seized and their goods confiscated
by some Spanish officer ; nor when they started could
they tell whether they would or would not find when
they reached New Orleans that the Spanish authori
ties had declared the navigation closed. In 1783
and the early part of 1784 traders were descending
the Mississippi without overt resistance from the
Spaniards, and were selling their goods at a profit
in New Orleans. In midsummer of 1784 the navi
gation of the river was suddenly and rigorously
closed. In 1785 it was again partially opened; so

10 Draper MSS. Letter of John Williams, June 20, 1784.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 203

that we find traders purchasing flour in Louisville
at twenty-four shillings a hundredweight, and car
rying it down stream to sell in New Orleans at thirty
dollars a barrel. By summer of the same year the
Spaniards were again shutting off traffic, being in
great panic over a rumored piratical advance by the
frontiersmen, to oppose which they were mustering
their troops and making ready their artillery.11

Among the articles the frontier traders received
for their goods horses held a high place.12 The
horse trade was risky, as in driving them up to Ken
tucky many were drowned, or played out, or were
stolen by the Indians; but as picked horses and
mares cost but twenty dollars a head in Louisiana
and were sold at a hundred dollars a head in the
United States, the losses had to be very large to eat
up the profits.

The French Creoles, who carried on much of the
river trade and who lived some under the American
and some under the Spanish flag, of course suffered
as much as either Americans or Spaniards. Often
these Creoles loaded their canoes with a view to trad
ing with the Indians, rather than at New Orleans.
Whether this was so or not, those officially in the
service of the two powers soon grew as zealous in
oppressing one another as in oppressing men of dif
ferent nationalities. Thus in 1787 a Vincennes cre-

11 Draper MSS. J. Girault to William Clark, July 22, 1784;
May 23, 1785; July 2, 1785; certificate of French merchants
testified to by Miro in 1785.

1S Do. Girault to Clark, July 9, 1784.

204 The Winning of the West

ole, having loaded his pirogue with goods to the
value of two thousand dollars, sent it down to trade
with the Indians near the Chickasaw Bluffs. Here
it was seized by the Creole commandant of the Span
ish post at the Arkansas. The goods were confis
cated and the men imprisoned. The owner appealed
in vain to the commandant, who told him that he
was ordered by the Spanish authorities to seize all
persons who trafficked on the Mississippi below the
mouth of the Ohio, inasmuch as Spain claimed both
banks of the river; and when he made his way to
New Orleans and appealed to Miro he was sum
marily dismissed with a warning that a repetition
of the offence would ensure his being sent to the
mines of Brazil.13

Outrages of this kind, continually happening alike
to Americans and to Creoles under American pro
tection, could not have been tamely borne by any
self-respecting people. The fierce and hardy fron
tiersmen were goaded to anger by them, and were
ready to take part in, or at least to connive at, any
piece of lawless retaliation. Such an act of revenge
was committed by Clark at Vincennes, as one re
sult of his ill-starred expedition against the Wabash
Indians in 1786. As already said, when his men
mutinied and refused to march against the Indians,
most of them returned home; but he kept enough
to garrison the Vincennes fort. Unpaid, and under
no regular authority, these men plundered the

18 State Dept. MSS., No. 150, Vol. Ill, p. 519. Letter of
Joseph St. Mary, Vincennes, August 23, 1788.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 205

French inhabitants and were a terror to the peace
able, as well as to the lawless, Indians. Doubtless
Clark desired to hold them in readiness as much
for a raid on the Spanish possessions as for a defence
against the Indians. Nevertheless they did some
service in preventing any actual assault on the place
by the latter, while they prevented any possible up
rising by the French, though the harassed Creoles,
under this added burden of military lawlessness, in
many instances accepted the offers made them by
the Spaniards and passed over to the French villages
on the west side of the Mississippi.

Before Clark left Vincennes, he summoned a
court of his militia officers, and got them to sanc
tion the seizure of a boat loaded with valuable goods,
the property of a creole trader from the Spanish
possessions. The avowed reason for this act was
revenge for the wrongs perpetrated in like manner
by the Spaniards on the American traders ; and this
doubtless was the controlling motive in Clark's
mind; but it was also true that the goods thus con
fiscated were of great service to Clark in paying his
mutinous and irregularly employed troops, and that
this fact, too, had influence with him.

The more violent and lawless among the back
woodsmen of Kentucky were loud in exultation over
this deed. They openly declared that it was not
merely an act of retaliation on the Spaniards, but
also a warning that, if they did not let the Ameri
cans trade down the river, they would not be allowed
to trade up it; and that the troops who garrisoned

2o6 The Winning of the West

Vincennes offered an earnest of what the frontiers
men would do in the way of raising an army of con
quest if the Spaniards continued to wrong them.14
They defied the Continental Congress and the sea
board States to interfere with them. They threat
ened to form an independent government, if the
United States did not succor and countenance them.
They taunted the Eastern men with knowing as lit
tle of the West as Great Britain knew of America.
They even threatened that they would, if necessary,
rejoin the British dominions, and boasted that, if
united to Canada, they would some day be able
themselves to conquer the Atlantic Commonwealth.15

Both the Federal and the Virginia authorities
were much alarmed and angered, less at the insult
to Spain than at the threat of establishing a sepa
rate government in the West.

From the close of the Revolution the Virginian
government had been worried by the separatist
movements in Kentucky. In 1784 two "stirrers-up
of sedition" had been fined and imprisoned, and an
adherent of the Virginian government, writing from
Kentucky, mentioned that one of the worst effects
of the Indian inroads was to confine the settlers to
the stations, which were hot-beds of sedition and
discord, besides excuses for indolence and rags.16
The people who distrusted the frontiersmen com-

14 Draper MSS. Minutes of Court-Martial, Summoned by
George Rogers Clark, at Vincennes, October 18, 1786.

16 State Dept. MSS. Reports of John Jay, No. 124, Vol.
Ill, pp. 31, 37, 44. 48, 53. 56, etc.

'• Va. State Papers, III, pp. 585, 589.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 207

plained that among them were many knaves and
outlaws from every State in the Union, who flew to
the frontier as to a refuge; while even those who
did not share this distrust admitted that the fact
that the people in Kentucky came from many dif
ferent States helped to make them discontented with
Virginia.17

In Georgia the conditions were much as they were
on the Ohio. Georgia was a frontier State, with
the ambitions and the lawlessness of the frontier;
and the backwoodsmen felt toward her as they did
toward no other member of the old Thirteen. Soon
after Clark established his garrison in Vincennes,
various inflammatory letters were circulated in the
Western country, calling for action against both the
central government and the Spaniards, and appeal
ing for sympathy and aid both to the Georgians and
to Sevier's insurrectionary State of Franklin.
Among others, a Kentuckian wrote from Louisville
to Georgia, bitterly complaining about the failure
of the United States to open the Mississippi; de
nouncing the Federal Government in extravagant
language, and threatening hostilities against the
Spaniards, and a revolt against the Continental Con
gress.18 This letter was intercepted, and, of course,
increased still more the suspicion felt about Clark's
motives, for though Clark denied that he had actu-

11 Draper MSS. Clark Papers, Walter Darrell to William
Fleming, April 14, 1783.

18 Do., Letter of Thomas Green to the Governor of Georgia,
December 23, 1786.

208 The Winning of the West

ally seen the letter, he was certainly cognizant of its
purport, and approved the movement which lay be
hind it.19 One of his fellow Kentuckians, writing
about him at this time, remarks : "Clark is playing
hell . . . eternally drunk and yet full of design.
I told him he would be hanged. He laughed, and
said he would take refuge among the Indians." 20

The Governor of Virginia issued a proclamation
disavowing all Clark's acts.21 A committee of the
Kentucky Convention, which included the leaders
of Kentucky's political thought and life, examined
into the matter,22 and gave Clark's version of the
facts, but reprobated and disowned his course. Some
of the members of this Convention were afterward
identified with various separatist movements, and
skirted the field of perilous intrigue with a foreign
power; but they recognized the impossibility of
countenancing such mere buccaneering lawlessness
as Clark's; and not only joined with their colleagues
in denouncing it to the Virginian Government, but
warned the latter that Clark's habits were such as
to render him unfit longer to be trusted with work
of importance.23

The rougher spirits all along the border of course
sympathized with Clark. In this same year 1786,

" Green's "Spanish Conspiracy," p. 74.

90 Va. State Papers, IV, 202, condensed.

91 Draper MSS. Proclamation of Edmund Randolph,
March 4, 1787.

88 State Dept. MSS., No. 71, Vol. II, p. 503. Report of Dec.
19, 1786.
83 Green, p. 78.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 209

the goods and boats of a trader from the Cumber
land district were seized and confiscated by the
Spanish commandant at Natchez.24 At first the
Cumberland Indian-fighters determined to retaliate
in kind, at no matter what cost ; but the wiser among
their leaders finally "persuaded them not to imitate
their friends of Kentucky, and to wait patiently
until some advice could be received from Congress."
One of these wise leaders, a representative from the
Cumberland district in the North Carolina Legis
lature, in writing to the North Carolina delegates to
the Continental Congress, after dwelling on the
necessity of acquiring the right to the navigation
of the Mississippi, added with sound common-sense :
"You may depend on our exertions to keep all things
quiet, and we agree entirely with you that if our
people are once let loose there will be no stopping
them, and that acts of retaliation poison the mind
and give a licentiousness to manners that can with
great difficulty be restrained." Washington was
right in his belief that in this business there was as
much to be feared from the impetuous turbulence of
the backwoodsmen as from the hostility of the Span
iards.

The news of Jay's attempted negotiations with
Gardoqui, distorted and twisted, arrived right on
top of these troubles, and threw the already excited

24 State Dept. MSS., No. 124, Vol. III. Papers transmitted
by Blount, Hawkins, and Ashe, March 29, 1787, including
deposition of Thomas Amis, Nov. 13, 1786. Letter from Fay-
etteville, Dec. 29, 1786, etc.

The Winning of the West

backwoodsmen into a frenzy. There was never any
real danger that Jay's proposition would be adopted ;
but the Westerners did not know this. In all the
considerable settlements on the Western waters,
committees of correspondence were elected to remon
strate and petition Congress against any agreement
to close the Mississippi.25 Even those who had no
sympathy with the separatist movement warned
Congress that if any such agreement were entered
into it would probably entail the loss of the West
ern country.26

There was justification for the original excite
ment; there was none whatever for its continuance
after Jay's final report to Congress, in April, 1 787,27
and after the publication by Congress of its resolve
never to abandon its claim to the Mississippi. Jay
in this report took what was unquestionably the ra
tional position. He urged that the United States
was undoubtedly in the right; and that it should
either insist upon a treaty with Spain, by which all
conflicting claims would be reconciled, or else
simply claim the right, and if Spain refused to grant
it promptly declare war.

So far he was emphatically right. His cool and
steadfast insistence on our rights, and his clear
sighted recognition of the proper way to obtain
them, contrasted well with the mixed turbulence

u Madison MSS. Letter of Caleb Wallace, Nov. 12, 1787.

»« State Dept. MSS., No. 56. Symmes to the President of
Congress, May 3, 1787.

51 W. H. Trescott, "Diplomatic History of the Administra
tions of Washington and Adams," p. 46.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 211

and foolishness of the Westerners who denounced
him. They refused to give up the Mississippi ; and
yet they also refused to support the party to which
Jay belonged, and therefore refused to establish a
government strong enough to obtain their rights
by open force.

But Jay erred when he added, as he did, that
there was no middle course possible; that we must
either treat or make war. It was undoubtedly to
our discredit, and to our temporary harm, that we
refused to follow either course; it showed the ex
istence of very undesirable national qualities, for it
showed that we were loud in claiming rights which
we lacked the resolution and foresight to enforce.
Nevertheless, as these undesirable qualities existed,
it was the part of a wise statesman to recognize
their existence and do the best he could in spite of
them. The best course to follow under such cir
cumstances was to do nothing until the national
fibre hardened, and this was the course which Wash
ington advocated.

In this summer of 1787 there rose to public promi
nence in the Western country a man whose influence
upon it was destined to be malign in intention rather
than in actual fact. James Wilkinson, by birth a
Marylander, came to Kentucky in 1784. He had
done his duty respectably as a soldier in the Revolu
tionary War, for he possessed sufficient courage
and capacity to render average service in subordi
nate positions, though at a later date he showed
abject inefficiency as commander of an army. He

212 The Winning of the West

was a good-looking, plausible, energetic man, gifted
with a taste for adventure, with much proficiency in
low intrigue, and with a certain address in influ
encing and managing bodies of men. He also spoke
and wrote well, according to the rather florid canons
of the day. In character he can only be compared
to Benedict Arnold, though he entirely lacked Ar
nold's ability and brilliant courage. He had no
conscience and no scruples; he had not the slight
est idea of the meaning of the word honor; he be
trayed his trust from the basest motives, and he was
too inefficient to make his betrayal effective. He was
treacherous to the Union while it was being formed
and after it had been formed; and his crime was
aggravated by the sordid meanness of his motives,
for he eagerly sought opportunities to barter his
own infamy for money. In all our history there is
no more despicable character.

Wilkinson was a man of broken fortune when he
came to the West. In three years he made a good
position for himself, in matters commercial and po
litical, and his restless, adventurous nature, and
thirst for excitement and. intrigue, prompted him
to try the river trade, with its hazards and its chances
of great gain. In June, 1787, he went down the
Mississippi to New Orleans with a loaded flat-boat,
and sold his cargo at a high profit, thanks to the
understanding he immediately established with
Miro.28 Doubtless he started with the full inten
tion of entering into some kind of corrupt arrange-

js "Wilkinson's Memoirs," II, 112.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 213

ment with the Louisiana authorities, leaving the pre
cise nature of the arrangement to be decided by
events.

The relations that he so promptly established with
the Spaniards were both corrupt and treacherous;
that is, he undoubtedly gave and took bribes, and
promised to intrigue against his own country for pe
cuniary reward ; but exactly what the different agree
ments were, and exactly how far he tried or in
tended to fulfil them, is, and must always remain,
uncertain. He was so ingrainedly venal, treacher
ous, and mendacious that nothing he said or wrote
can be accepted as true, and no sentiments which
he at any time professed can be accepted as those
he really felt. He and the leading Louisiana Span
iards had close mercantile relations, in which the
governments of neither were interested, and by
which the governments of both were in all proba
bility defrauded. He persuaded the Spaniards to
give him money for using his influence to separate
the West from the Union, which was one of the
chief objects of Spanish diplomacy.29 He was
obliged to try to earn the money by leading the
separatist intrigues in Kentucky, but it is doubtful
if he ever had enough straightforwardness in him
to be a thoroughgoing villain. All he cared for was
the money ; if he could not get it otherwise, he was
quite willing to do any damage he could to his
country, even when he was serving it in a high
military position. But if it was easier, he was

29 "History of Louisiana," Charles Gayarr6, III, 198.

214 The Winning of the West

perfectly willing to betray the people who had
bribed him.

However, he was an adept in low intrigue; and
though he speedily became suspected by all honest
men, he covered his tracks so well that it was not
until after his death, and after the Spanish archives
had been explored, that his guilt was established.

He returned to Kentucky after some months' ab
sence. He had greatly increased his reputation, and
as substantial results of his voyage he showed per
mits to trade, and some special and exclusive com
mercial privileges, such as supplying the Mexican
market with tobacco, and depositing it in the King's
store at New Orleans. The Kentuckians were much
excited by what he had accomplished. He bought
goods himself and received goods from other mer
chants on commission; and a year after his first
venture he sent a flotilla of heavy-laden flat-boats
down the Mississippi, and disposed of their contents
at a high profit in New Orleans.

The power this gave Wilkinson, the way he
had obtained it, and the use he made of it, gave an
impetus to the separatist party in Kentucky. He
was by no means the only man, however, who was at
this time engaged in the river trade to Louisiana;
nor were his advantages over his commercial rivals
as marked as he alleged. They, too, had discovered
that the Spanish officials could be bribed to shut
their eyes to smuggling, and that citizens of Nat
chez could be hired to receive property shipped
thither as being theirs, so that it might be admitted

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 215

on payment of twenty-five per cent duty. Mer
chants gathered quantities of flour and bacon, but
especially of tobacco, at Louisville, and thence
shipped it in flat-boats to Natchez, where it was re
ceived by their correspondents ; and keel boats some
times made the return journey, though the horses,
cattle, and negro slaves were generally taken to
Kentucky overland.30 All these traders naturally
felt the Spanish control of the navigation, and the
intermittent but always possible hostility of the
Spanish officials, to be peculiarly irksome. They
were, as a rule, too shortsighted to see that the only
permanent remedy for their troubles was their own
absorption into a solid and powerful Union. There
fore they were always ready either to join a move
ment against Spain, or else to join one which seemed
to promise the acquisition of special privileges from
Spain.

The separatist feeling, and the desire to sunder
the West from the East, and join hands with Spain
or Britain, were not confined to Kentucky. In one
shape or another, and with varying intensity, sep
aratist agitations took place in all portions of the
West. In Cumberland, on the Holston, among the
western mountains of Virginia proper, and in Geor
gia — which was practically a frontier community —
there occurred manifestations of the separatist spirit.
A curious feature of these various agitations was

30 Draper MSS. John Williams to William Clark, New
Orleans, Feb. n, 1789; Girault to Do., July 26, 1788, from
Natchez; Do. to Do., Dec. 5, 1788; receipt of D. Brashear at
Louisville, May 23, 1785.

216 The Winning of the West

the slight extent to which a separatist movement in
any one of these localities depended upon or sympa
thized with a similar movement in any other. The
national feeling among the separatists was so slight
that the very communities which wished to break
off from the Atlantic States were also quite indif
ferent to the deeds and fates of one another. The
only bond among them was their tendency to break
loose from the central government. The settlers
on the banks of the Cumberland felt no particular in
terest in the struggle of those on the head-waters of
the Tennessee to establish the State of Franklin ; and
the Kentuckians were indifferent to the deeds of
both. In a letter written in 1788 to the Creek Chief
McGillivray, Robertson alludes to the Holston men
and the Georgians in precisely the language he might
have used in speaking of foreign nations. He evi
dently took as a matter of course their waging war
on their own account against, and making peace
with, the Cherokees and Creeks, and betrayed little
concern as to the outcome, one way or the other.

In this same letter,31 Robertson frankly set forth
his belief that the West should separate from the
Union and join some foreign power, writing: "In
all probability we can not long remain in our pres
ent state, and if the British, or any commercial na
tion which may be in possession of the Mississippi,
would furnish us with trade and receive our produce,
there can not be a doubt but the people on the west

31 Robertson MSS., James Robertson to Alexander McGil
livray, Nashville, Aug. 3, 1788.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 217

side of the Appalachian Mountains will open their
eyes to their real interests." At the same time Se-
vier was writing to Gardoqui, offering to put his
insurrectionary State of Franklin, then at its last
gasp, under the protection of Spain.32

Robertson spoke with indifference as to whether
the nation with which the Southerners allied them
selves should happen to be Spain or Britain. As a
matter of fact, most of the intrigues carried on were
with or against Spain; but in the fall of 1788 an
abortive effort was made by a British agent to arouse
the Kentuckians against both the Spaniards and the
National Government, in the interest of Great Bri
tain. This agent was Conolly, the unsavory hero of
Lord Dunmore's war. He went to Louisville, vis
ited two or three prominent men, and laid bare to
them his plans. As he met with no encouragement
whatever, he speedily abandoned his efforts, and
when the people got wind of his design they threat
ened to mob him, while the officers of the Continen
tal troops made ready to arrest him if his plans bore
fruit, so that he was glad to leave the country.33

These movements all aimed at a complete inde
pendence, but there were others which aimed merely
at separation from the parent States. The efforts
of Kentucky and Franklin in this direction must be

84 Gardoqui MSS., Sevier to Gardoqui, Sept. 12, 1788.

u Do., Gardoqui to Florida Blanca, Jan. 12, 1789, inclosing
a letter from Col. George Moreau. See Green, p. 300. Also
State Dept. MSS., No. 150, Vol. Ill, St. Clair to John Jay,
Dec. 15, 1788. This letter and many others of St. Clair
are given in W. H.^Smith's "St. Clair Papers."
VOL. VII.— 10

2i 8 The Winning of the West

treated by themselves; but those that were less im
portant may be glanced at in passing. The peo
ple in western Virginia, as early as the spring of
1785, wished to erect themselves into a separate
State, under Federal authority. Their desire was
to separate from Virginia in peace and friendship,
and to remain in close connection with the Union.
A curious feature of the petition which they for
warded to the Continental Congress was their propo
sition to include in the new State the inhabitants of
the Holston territory, so that it would have taken
in what is now West Virginia proper,34 and also
eastern Tennessee and Kentucky.

The originators of this particular movement meant
to be friendly with Virginia, but of course friction
was bound to follow. The later stages of the agi
tation, or perhaps it would be more correct to say
the agitations, that sprang out of it, were marked
by bitter feelings between the leaders of the move
ment and the Virginia authorities. Finding no
heed paid to their requests for separation, some of
the more extreme separatists threatened to refuse
to pay taxes to Virginia ; while the Franklin people
proposed to unite with them into a new State, with
out regard to the wishes of Virginia or of North
Carolina. Restless Arthur Campbell was one of
the leaders of the separatists, and went so far as to
acknowledge the authorship of the "State of Frank-

M State Dept. MSS., Memorials, etc., No. 48, Thos. Cum-
ings, on behalf of the deputies of Washington County, to the
President of Congress, April 7, 1785.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 219

lin," and to become one of its privy councilors, cast
ing off his allegiance to the Virginian Government.35
However, the whole movement soon collapsed, the
collapse being inevitable when once it became evi
dent that the Franklin experiment was doomed to
failure.

The West was thus seething with separatist agi
tations throughout the time of Gardoqui's residence
as Spanish Envoy in America; and both Gardoqui
and Miro, who was Governor of Louisiana all
through these years, entered actively into intrigues
with the more prominent separatist leaders.

Miro was a man of some ability, and Martin Na-
varro, the Spanish Intendant of Louisiana, pos
sessed more; but they served a government almost
imbecile in its fatuity. They both realized that
Louisiana could be kept in possession of Spain only
by making it a flourishing and populous province,
and they begged that the Spanish authorities would
remove the absurd commercial restrictions which
kept it poor. But no heed was paid to their re
quests, and when they ventured to relax the severity
of the regulations, as regards both the trade down
the Mississippi and the sea-trade to Philadelphia,
they were reprimanded and forced to reverse their
policy. This was done at the instance of Gardoqui,
who was jealous of the Louisiana authorities, and
showed a spirit of rivalry toward them. Each side
believed, probably with justice, that the other was
influenced by corrupt motives.

16 Va. State Papers, IV., pp. 5, 31, 32, 75, etc.

220 The Winning of the West

Miro and Navarro were right in urging a liberal
commercial policy. They were right also in recog
nizing the Americans as the enemies of the Spanish
power. They dwelt on the peril, not only to Louisi
ana but to New Mexico, certain to arise from the
neighborhood of the backwoodsmen, whom they
described as dangerous alike because of their pov
erty, their ambition, their restlessness, and their
recklessness.36 They were at their wit's end to
know how to check these energetic foes. They ur
gently asked for additional regular troops to increase
the strength of the Spanish garrison. They kept
the creole militia organized. But they relied mainly
on keeping tjie Southern Indians hostile to the Amer
icans, on inviting the Americans to settle in Louisi
ana and become subjects of Spain, and on intrigu
ing with the Western settlements for the dissolu
tion of the Union. The Kentuckians, the settlers
on the Holston and Cumberland, and the Georgians
were the Americans with whom they had most fric
tion and closest connection. The Georgians, it is
true, were only indirectly interested in the naviga
tion question ; but they claimed that the boundaries
of Georgia ran west to the Mississippi, and that
much of the eastern bank of the great river, includ
ing the fertile Yazoo lands, was theirs.

The Indians naturally sided with the Spaniards

36 Gayarre, p. 190. He was the first author who gave a
full account of the relations between Miro and Wilkinson,
and of the Spanish intrigues to dissever the West from the
Union.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 221

against the Americans; for the Americans were as
eager to seize the possessions of Creek and Chero
kee as they were to invade the dominions of the
Catholic King. Their friendship was sedulously fos
tered by the Spaniards. Great councils were held
with them, and their chiefs were bribed and flat
tered. Every effort was made to prevent them
from dealing with any traders who were not in
the Spanish interest ; New Orleans, Natchez, Mobile,
and Pensacola were all centres for the Indian trade.
They were liberally furnished with arms and mu
nitions of war. Finally the Spaniards deliberately
and treacherously incited the Indians to war against
the Americans, while protesting to the latter that
they were striving to keep the savages at peace.
In answer to protests of Robertson, setting forth that
the Spaniards were inciting the Indians to harry the
..Cumberland settlers, both Miro and Gardoqui made
him solemn denials. Miro wrote him, in 1783, that
so far from assisting the Indians to war, he had
been doing what he could to induce McGillivray and
the Creeks to make peace, and that he would con
tinue to urge them not to trouble the settlers.37
Gardoqui, in 1788, wrote even more explicitly, say
ing that he was much concerned over the reported
outrages of the savages, but was greatly surprised
to learn that the settlers suspected the Government
of Spain of fomenting the warfare, which, he as
sured Robertson, was so far from the truth that the

31 Robertson MSS., Miro to Robertson, New Orleans, April

20, 1783.

222 The Winning of the West

King was really bent on treating the United States
in general, and the West in particular, with all pos
sible benevolence and generosity.38 Yet in 1786,
midway between the dates when these two letters
were written, Miro, in a letter to the Captain-General
of the Floridas, set forth that the Creeks, being
desirous of driving back the American frontiersmen
by force of arms, and knowing that this could be
done only after bloodshed, had petitioned him for
fifty barrels of gunpowder and bullets to correspond,
and that he had ordered the Governor of Pensa-
cola to furnish McGillivray, their chief, these mu
nitions of war, with all possible secrecy and caution,
so that it should not become known.39 The Gov
ernor of Pensacola shortly afterward related the
satisfaction the Creeks felt at receiving the powder
and lead, and added that he would have to furnish
them additional supplies from time to time, as the
war progressed, and that he would exercise every
precaution so that the Americans might have no
"just cause of complaint." 40 There is an uncon
scious and somewhat gruesome humor in this offi
cial belief that the Americans could have "no just

38 Gardoqui MSS., Gardoqui to "Col. Elisha Robeson" of
Cumberland, April 18, 1788.

39 Do., Miro to Galvez, June 28, 1786, "que summistrase
estas municiones 4 McGillivray Jefe principal to las Tala-
puches con toda la reserve y cantata posible de modo que ne
se transiendiese la mano de este socorro."

40 Do., "sera necessaria la mayor precaucion, y mafia para
contenerle ciSendose a la suministracion de polvora, balas
y efectos de treta con la cantata posible para no dar a los
Americanos justos motives de gueya."

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 223

cause" for anger so long as the Spaniards' treachery
was concealed.

Throughout these years the Spaniards thus se
cretly supplied the Creeks with the means of wag
ing war on the Americans, claiming all the time that
the Creeks were their vassals and that the land oc
cupied by the Southern Indians generally belonged
to Spain and not to the United States.41 They also
kept their envoys busy among the Chickasaws,
Choctaws, and even the Cherokees.

In fact, until the conclusion of Pinckney's treaty,
the Spaniards of Louisiana pursued as a settled pol
icy this plan of inciting the Indians to war against
the Americans. Generally they confined themselves
to secretly furnishing the savages with guns, pow
der, and lead, and endeavoring to unite the tribes in
a league; but on several occasions they openly gave
them arms, when they were forced to act hur
riedly. As late as 1794 the Flemish Baron de Ca-
rondelet, a devoted servant of Spain, and one of the
most determined enemies of the Americans, in
structed his lieutenants to fit out war parties of
Chickasaws, Creeks, and Cherokees, to harass a fort
the Americans had built near the mouth of the
Ohio. Carondelet wrote to the Home Government
that the Indians formed the best defence on which
Louisiana could rely. By this time the Spaniards
and English realized that, instead of showing hos
tility to one another, it behooved them to unite
against the common foe; and their agents in Can-

« Do.

224 The Winning of the West

ada and Louisiana were beginning to come to an
understanding. In another letter Carondelet ex
plained that the system adopted by Lord Dorchester
and the English officials in Canada in dealing with
the savages was the same as that which he had
employed, both the Spaniards and the British having
found them the most powerful means with which to
oppose the American advance. By the expenditure
of a few thousand dollars, wrote the Spanish Gov
ernor,42 he could always rouse the Southern tribes
to harry the settlers, while at the same time cover
ing his deeds so effectually that the Americans could
not point to any specific act of which to complain.

There was much turbulence and some treachery
exhibited by individual frontiersmen in their deal
ings with Spain, and the Americans of the Missis
sippi Valley showed a strong tendency to win their
way to the mouth of the river and to win the right
to settle on its banks by sheer force of arms; but
the American Government and its authorized rep
resentatives behaved with a straightforward and
honorable good faith which offered a striking con-

49 Draper Collection, Spanish MSS. State Documents.
Baron de Carondelet to Manuel Gayrso de Lemos, Aug. 20,
1794; Carondelet to Duke Alcudia, Sept. 25, 1795; Caronde-
let's Letter of July 9, 1795; Carondelet's Letter of Sept.
27. 1793- These Spanish documents form a very important
part of the manuscripts in the Library of the State Histori
cal Society of Wisconsin. I was able to get translations of
them through the great courtesy of Mr. Reuben Gold
Thwaites, the Secretary of the Society, to whom I must
again render my acknowledgments for the generosity with
which he has helped me.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 225

trast to the systematic and deliberate duplicity and
treachery of the Spanish Crown and the Spanish
Governors. In truth, the Spaniards were the weak
est, and were driven to use the pet weapons of weak
ness in opposing their stalwart and masterful foes.
They were fighting against their doom, and they
knew it. Already they had begun to fear, not only
for Louisiana and Florida, but even for sultry Mex
ico and far-away golden California. It was hard,
wrote one of the ablest of the Spanish Governors,
to gather forces enough to ward off attacks from
adventurers so hardy that they could go two hun
dred leagues at a stretch, or live six months in the
wilderness, needing to carry nothing save some corn-
meal, and trusting for everything solely to their
own long rifles.

Next to secretly rousing the Indians, the Span
iards placed most reliance on intriguing with the
Westerners, in the effort to sunder them from the
seaboard Americans. They also at times thought
to bar the American advance by allowing the fron
tiersmen to come into their territory and settle on
condition of becoming Spanish subjects. They
hoped to make of these favored settlers a barrier
against the rest of their kinsfolk. It was a foolish
hope. A wild and hardy race of rifle-bearing free
men, so intolerant of restraint that they fretted un
der the slight bands which held them to their breth
ren, were sure to throw off the lightest yoke the
Catholic King could lay upon them, when once they
gathered strength. Under no circumstances, even

226 The Winning of the West

had they profited by Spanish aid against their own
people, would the Westerners have remained allied
or subject to the Spaniards longer than the imme
diate needs of the moment demanded. At the bot
tom the Spaniards knew this, and their encourage
ment of American immigration was fitful and faint
hearted.

Many Americans, however, were themselves eager
to enter into some arrangement of the kind, whether
as individual settlers, or, more often, as companies
who wished to form little colonies. Their eagerness
in this matter caused much concern to many of the
Federalists of the Eastern States, who commented
with bitterness upon the light-hearted manner in
which these settlers forsook their native land, and
not only forswore their allegiance to it, but bound
themselves to take up arms against it in event of
war. These critics failed to understand that the
wilderness dwellers of that day, to whom the Na
tional Government was little more than a name,
and the Union but a new idea, could not be ex
pected to pay much heed to the imaginary line di
viding one waste space from another, and that, after
all, their patriotism was dormant, not dead. More
over, some of the Easterners were as blind as the
Spaniards themselves to the inevitable outcome of
such settlements as those proposed, and were also
alarmed at the mere natural movement of the popu
lation, fearing lest it might result in crippling the
old States, and in laying the foundation of a new
and possibly hostile country. They themselves had

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 227

not yet grasped the national idea, and could not see
that the increase in power of any one quarter of
the land, or the addition to it of any new unsettled
territory, really raised by so much the greatness of
every American. However, there was one point on
which the more far-seeing of these critics were right.
They urged that it would be better for the country
not to try to sell the public land speedily in large
tracts, but to grant it to actual settlers in such quan
tity as they could use.43

The different propositions to settle large colonies
in the Spanish possessions came to naught, although
quite a number of backwoodsmen settled there in
dividually or in small bands. One great obstacle
to the success of any such movement was the relig
ious intolerance of the Spaniards. Not only were
they bigoted adherents of the Church of Rome, but
their ecclesiastical authorities were cautioned to ex
ercise over all laymen a supervision and control to
which the few Catholics among the American back
woodsmen would have objected quite as strenuously
as the Protestants. It is true that in trying to in
duce immigration they often promised religious free
dom, but when they came to execute this promise
they explained that it merely meant that the new
comers would not be compelled to profess the Ro
man Catholic faith, but that they would not be al
lowed the free exercise of their own religion, nor
permitted to build churches nor pay ministers. This
was done with the express purpose of weakening
48 St. Clair to Jay, Dec. 13, 1788.

228 The Winning of the West

their faith, and rendering it easy to turn them from
it, and the Spaniards brought Irish priests into the
country and placed them among the American set
tlers with the avowed object of converting them.44
Such toleration naturally appealed very little to men
who were accustomed to a liberty as complete in
matters ecclesiastical as in matters civil. When the
Spanish authorities, at Natchez, or elsewhere, pub
lished edicts interfering with the free exercise of
the Protestant religion, many of the settlers left,45
while in regions remote from the Spanish centres
of government the edicts were quietly disobeyed or
ignored.

One of the many proposed colonies ultimately re
sulted in the founding of a town which to this day
bears the name of New Madrid. This particular
scheme originated in the fertile brain of one Col.
George Morgan, a native of New Jersey, but long
engaged in trading on the Mississippi. He origi
nally organized a company to acquire lands under
the United States, but meeting with little response
to his proposition from the Continental Congress, in
1788 he turned to Spain. With Gardoqui, who was
then in New York, he was soon on a footing of in
timacy, as their letters show; for these include in
vitations to dinner, to attend commencement at
Princeton, to visit one another, and the like. The
Spaniard, a cultivated man, was pleased at being
thrown in with an adventurer who was a college

44 Gayarrd, III., 181, 200, 202.
44 Va. State Papers, IV, 30.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 229

graduate and a gentleman ; for many of the would-
be colonizers were needy ne'er-do-wells, who were
anxious either to borrow money, or else to secure
a promise of freedom from arrest for debt when they
should move to the new country. Morgan's plans
were on a magnificent scale. He wished a tract of
land as large as a principality on the west bank of
the Mississippi. This he proposed to people with
tens of thousands of settlers, whom he should gov
ern under the commission of the King of Spain.
Gardoqui entered into the plan with enthusiasm, but
obstacles and delays of all kinds were encountered,
and the dwindling outcome was the emigration of a
few families of frontiersmen, and the founding of
a squalid hamlet named after the Iberian capital.46
Another adventurer who at this time proposed to
found a colony in Spanish territory was no less a
person than George Rogers Clark. Clark had in
dulged in something very like piracy at the expense
of Spanish subjects but eighteen months previously.
He was ready at any time to lead the Westerners
to the conquest of Louisiana ; and a few years later
he did his best to organize a freebooting expedition
against New Orleans in the name of the French
Revolutionary Government. But he was quite
willing to do his fighting on behalf of Spain, instead
of against her; for by this time he was savage with
anger and chagrin at the indifference and neglect

49 Gardoqui MSS., Gardoqui to Morgan, Sept. 2, 1788. Mor
gan to Gardoqui, Aug. 30, 1788. Letters of Sept. 9, 1788,
Sept. 12, 1788; Gardoqui to Miro, Oct. 4, 1788, to Florida
Blanca, June 28, 1789. Letter to Gardoqui, Jan. 22, 1788.

230 The Winning of the West

with which the Virginian and Federal Governments
had rewarded his really great services. He wrote
to Gardoqui in the spring of 1788, boasting of his
feats of arms in the past, bitterly complaining of the
way he had been treated, and offering to lead a large
colony to settle in the Spanish dominions; for, he
said, he had become convinced that neither property
nor character was safe under a government so weak
as that of the United States, and he therefore wished
to put himself at the disposal of the King of Spain.47
Nothing came of this proposal.

Another proposal which likewise came to noth
ing is noteworthy because of the men who made it,
and because of its peculiar nature. The proposers
were all Kentuckians. Among them were Wilkin
son, one Benjamin Sebastian, whom the Spaniards
pensioned in the same manner they did Wilkinson,
John Brown, the Kentucky delegate in Congress,
and Harry Innes, the Attorney-General of Kentucky.
All were more or less identified both with the ob
scure separatist movements in that commonwealth,
and with the legitimate agitation for Statehood into
which some of these movements insensibly merged.
In the spring of 1789 they proposed to Gardoqui
to enter into an agreement somewhat similar to
the one he had made with Morgan. But they named
as the spot where they wished to settle the lands
on the east bank of the Mississippi, in the neighbor
hood of the Yazoo, and they urged as a reason for

41 Gardoqui MSS., Clark to Gardoqui, Falls of the Ohio,
March 15, 1788.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 231

granting the lands that they were part of the terri
tory in dispute between Spain and the United States,
and that the new settlers would hold them under
the Spanish King, and would defend them against
the Americans.48

This country was claimed by, and finally awarded
to, the United States, and claimed by the State of
Georgia in particular. It was here that the adven
turers proposed to erect a barrier State which should
be vassal to Spain, one of the chief purposes of the
settlement being to arrest the Americans' advance.
They thus deliberately offered to do all the damage
they could to their own country, if the foreign coun
try would give them certain advantages. The apolo
gists for these separatist leaders often advance the
excuse — itself not a weighty one — that they at least
deserved well of their own section; but Wilkinson
and his associates proposed a plan which was not
only hostile to the interests of the American nation
as a whole, but which was especially hostile to the
interests of Kentucky, Georgia, and the other fron
tier communities. The men who proposed to enter
into the scheme were certainly not loyal to their
country , although the adventurers were not actuated
by hostile designs against it, engaging in the adven
ture simply from motives of private gain. The only
palliation — there is no full excuse — for their offence
is the fact that the Union was then so loose and
weak, and its benefits so problematical, that it re-

48 Gardoqui MSS., Gardoqui to Florida Blanca, June 29,
1789.

23 2 The Winning of the West

ceived the hearty and unswerving loyalty of only
the most far-seeing and broadly patriotic men; and
that many men of the highest standing and of the
most undoubted probity shared the views on which
Brown and Innes acted.

Wilkinson was bitterly hostile to all these schemes
in which he himself did not have a share, and pro
tested again and again to Miro against their adop
tion. He protested no less strongly whenever the
Spanish court or the Spanish authorities at New
Orleans either relaxed their vigilant severity against
the river smugglers, or for the time being lowered
the duties; whether this was done to encourage the
Westerners in their hostilities to the East, or to
placate them when their exasperation reached a pitch
that threatened actual invasion. Wilkinson, in his
protests, insisted that to show favors to the West
erners was merely to make them contented with the
Union ; and that the only way to force them to break
the Union was to deny them all privileges until
they broke it.49 He did his best to persuade the
Spaniards to adopt measures which would damage
both the East and West and would increase the fric
tion between them. He vociferously insisted that
in going to such extremes of foul treachery to his
country he was actuated only by his desire to see the
Spanish intrigues attain their purpose; but he was
probably influenced to a much greater degree by the

49 "Ga.ya.rr6," III, 30, 232, etc. Wilkinson's treachery dates
from his first visit to New Orleans. Exactly when he was
first pensioned outright is not certain ; but doubtless he
was the corrupt recipient of money from the beginning.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 233

desire to retain as long as might be the monopoly
of the trade with New Orleans.

The Intendant Navarro, writing to Spain in 1788,
dwelt upon the necessity of securing the separation
of the Westerners from the old thirteen States ; and
to this end he urged that commercial privileges be
granted to the West, and pensions and honors show
ered on its leaders. Spain readily adopted this pol
icy of bribery. Wilkinson and Sebastian were at
different times given sums of money, small portions
of which were doubtless handed over to their own
agents and subordinates and to the Spanish spies;
and Wilkinson asked for additional sums, nominally
to bribe leading Kentuckians, but very possibly
merely with the purpose of pocketing them himself.
In other words, Wilkinson, Sebastian, and their in
timate associates on the one hand, and the Spanish
officials on the other, entered into a corrupt con
spiracy to dismember the Union.

Wilkinson took a leading part in the political agi
tations by which Kentucky was shaken throughout
these years. He devoted himself to working for
separation from both Virginia and the United States,
and for an alliance with Spain. Of course he did
not dare to avow his schemes with entire frankness,
only venturing to advocate them more or less openly
accordingly as the wind of popular opinion veered
toward or away from disunion. Being a sanguine
man, of bad judgment, he at first wrote glowing
letters to his Spanish employers, assuring them that
the Kentucky leaders enthusiastically favored his

234 The Winning of the West

plans, and that the people at large were tending to
ward them. As time went on, he was obliged to
change the tone of his letters, and to admit that he
had been over-hopeful ; he reluctantly acknowledged
that Kentucky would certainly refuse to become a
Spanish province, and that all that was possible to
hope for was separation and an alliance with Spain.
He was on intimate terms with the separatist leaders
of all shades, and broached his views to them as far
as he thought fit. His turgid oratory was admired
in the backwoods, and he was much helped by his
skill in the baser kinds of political management. He
speedily showed all the familiar traits of the dema
gogue — he was lavish in his hospitality, and treated
young and old, rich and poor, with jovial good-fel
lowship ; so that all the men of loose habits, the idle
men who were ready for any venture, and the men
of weak character and fickle temper, swore by him,
and followed his lead; while not a few straightfor
ward, honest citizens were blinded by his showy
ability and professions of disinterestedness.50

It is impossible to say exactly how far his differ
ent allies among the separatist leaders knew his real
designs or sympathized with them. Their loosely
knit party was at the moment united for one osten
sible purpose — that of separation from Virginia.
The measures they championed were in effect revo
lutionary, as they wished to pay no regard to the
action either of Virginia herself, or of the Federal
Government. They openly advocated Kentucky's

60 Marshall, I, 245.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 235

entering into a treaty with Spain on her own ac
count. Their leaders must certainly have known
Wilkinson's real purposes, even though vaguely.
The probability is that they did not, either to him
or in their own minds, define their plans with clear
ness, but awaited events before deciding on a defi
nite policy. Meantime by word and act they pur
sued a course which might be held to mean, as occa
sion demanded, either mere insistence upon Ken
tucky's admission to the Union as a separate State,
or else a movement for complete independence with
a Spanish alliance in the background.

It was impossible to pursue a course so equivocal
without arousing suspicion. In after years many
who had been committed to it became ashamed of
their actions, and loudly proclaimed that they had
really been devoted to the Union; to which it was
sufficient to answer that if this had been the case, and
if they had been really loyal, no such deep suspicion
could have been excited. A course of straightfor
ward loyalty could not have been misunderstood.
As it was, all kinds of rumors as to proposed dis
union movements, and as to the intrigues with
Spain, got afloat ; and there was no satisfactory con
tradiction. The stanch Union men, the men -who
"thought continentally," as the phrase went, took the
alarm and organized a counter-movement. One of
those who took prominent part in this counter-move
ment was a man to whom Kentucky and the Union
both owe much: Humphrey Marshall, afterward a
Federalist Senator from Kentucky, and the author

236 The Winning of the West

of an interesting and amusing and fundamentally
sound, albeit somewhat rancorous, history of his
State. This loyal counter-movement hindered and
hampered the separatists greatly, and made them
cautious about advocating outright disunion. It
was one of the causes which combined to render
abortive both the separatist agitations, and the Span
ish intrigues of the period.

While Miro was corresponding with Wilkinson
and arranging for pensioning both him and Sebas
tian, Gardoqui was busy at New York. His efforts
at negotiation were fruitless; for his instructions
positively forbade him to yield the navigation of
the Mississippi, or to allow the rectification of the
boundary lines as claimed by the United States;51
while the representatives of the latter refused to
treat at all unless both of these points were con
ceded.52 Jay he found to be particularly intractable,
and in one of his letters he expressed the hope that
he would be replaced by Richard Henry Lee, whom
Gardoqui considered to be in the Spanish interest.
He was much interested in the case of Vermont,53
which at that time was in doubt whether to remain
an independent State, to join the Union, or even
possibly to form some kind of alliance with the
British; and what he saw occurring in this New
England State made him for the moment hopeful
about the result of the Spanish designs on Kentucky.

51 Gardoqui MSS., Instructions, July 25 and October 2, 1784.
51 Do., Gardoqui 's Letters, June 19, 1786, October 28, 1786,
December 5, 1787, July 25, 1788, etc.
83 Do., May n, 1787.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 237

Gardoqui was an over-hopeful man, accustomed
to that diplomacy which acts on the supposition that
every one has his price. After the manner of his
kind, he was prone to ascribe absurdly evil motives
to all men, and to be duped himself in consequence.54
He never understood the people with whom he was
dealing. He was sure that they could all be reached
by underhand and corrupt influences of some kind,
if he could only find out where to put on the pres
sure. The perfect freedom with which many loyal
men talked to and before him puzzled him ; and their
characteristically American habit of indulging in
gloomy forebodings as to the nation's future —
when they were not insisting that the said future
would be one of unparalleled magnificence — gave
him wild hopes that it might prove possible to cor
rupt them. He was confirmed in his belief by the
undoubted corruption and disloyalty to their coun
try shown by a few of the men he met, the most im
portant of those who were in his pay being an al
leged Catholic, James White, once a North Caro
lina delegate and afterward Indian agent. More
over, others who never indulged in overt disloyalty
to the Union undoubtedly consulted and questioned
Gardoqui about his proposals, while reserving their
own decision, being men who let their loyalty be
determined by events. Finally some men of entire
purity committed grave indiscretions in dealing with
him. Henry Lee, for instance, was so foolish as to

54 John Mason Brown, "Political Beginnings of Kentucky,"

138.

238 The Winning of the West

borrow five thousand dollars from this representa
tive of a foreign and unfriendly power; Gardoqui,
of course, lending the money under the impression
that its receipt would bind Lee to the Spanish in
terest.55

Madison, Knox, Clinton, and other men of posi
tion under the Continental Congress, including
Brown, the delegate from Kentucky, were among
those who conferred freely with Gardoqui. In
speaking with several of them, including Madison
and Brown, he broached the subject of Kentucky's
possible separation from the Union and alliance with
Spain ; and Madison and Brown discussed his state
ments between themselves. So far there was noth
ing out of the way in Brown's conduct; but after
one of these conferences he wrote to Kentucky in
terms which showed that he was willing to entertain
Gardoqui's proposition if it seemed advisable to
do so.

His letter, which was intended to be private, but
which was soon published, was dated July 10, 1788.
It advocated immediate separation from Virginia
without regard to constitutional methods, and also
ran in part as follows : "In private conferences which
I have had with Mr. Gardoqui, the Spanish Minis
ter, I have been assured by him in the most explicit
terms that if Kentucky will declare her independence
and empower some proper person to negotiate with

55 Gardoqui MSS., Gardoqui to Florida Blanca, Decembers,
1787; August 27, 1786; October 25, 1786; October 2, 1789, etc.
In these letters White is frequently alluded to as " Don Jaime. ' '

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 239

him, that he has authority and will engage to open
the navigation of the Mississippi for the exportation
of their produce on terms of mutual advantage. But
this privilege never can be extended to them while
part of the United States. ... I have thought
proper to communicate (this) to a few confidential
friends in this district, with his permission, not
doubting but that they will make a prudent use of
the information."

At the outset of any movement which, whatever
may be its form, is in its essence revolutionary, and
only to be justified on grounds that justify a revolu
tion, the leaders, though loud in declamation about
the wrongs to be remedied, always hesitate to speak
in plain terms concerning the remedies which they
really have in mind. They are often reluctant to
admit their purposes unequivocally, even to them
selves, and may indeed blind themselves to the nec
essary results of their policy. They often choose
their language with care, so that it may not com
mit them beyond all hope of explanation or retrac
tion. Brown, Innes, and the other separatist leaders
in Kentucky were not actuated by the motives of
personal corruption which influenced Wilkinson, Se
bastian, and White to conspire with Gardoqui and
Miro for the break-up of the Union. Their posi
tion, as far as the mere separatist feeling itself was
concerned, was not essentially different from that of
George Clinton in New York or Sumter in South
Carolina. Of course, however, their connection with
a foreign power unpleasantly tainted their course,

240 The Winning of the West

exactly as a similar connection, with Great Britain
instead of with Spain, tainted the similar course of
action Ethan Allen was pursuing at this very time
in Vermont.56 In after years they and their apolo
gists endeavored to explain away their deeds and
words, and tried to show that they were not disun-
ionists ; precisely as the authors of the Kentucky and
Virginia resolutions of 1798 and of the resolutions
of the Hartford Convention in 1814 tried in later
years to show that these also were not disunion
movements. The effort is as vain in one case as in
the other. Brown's letter shows that he and the
party with which he was identified were ready to
bring about Kentucky's separation from the Union,
if it could safely be done ; the prospect of a commer
cial alliance with Spain being one of their chief ob
jects, and affording one of their chief arguments.

The publication of Brown's letter and the bold
ness of the separatist party spurred to renewed effort
the Union men, one of whom, Col. Thomas Mar
shall, an uncle of Humphrey Marshall and father
of the great Chief- Justice, sent a full account of the
situation to Washington. The more timid and
wavering among the disunionists drew back ; and the
agitation was dropped when the new National Gov
ernment began to show that it was thoroughly able
to keep order at home and enforce respect abroad.57

These separatist movements were general in the

56 "Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography," XI,
No. 2, p. 165. Ethan Allen's letter to Lord Dorchester.
" Letter of Col. T. Marshall, September n, 1790.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 241

West, on the Holston and Cumberland, as well as
on the Ohio, during the troubled years immediately
succeeding the Revolution ; and they were furthered
by the intrigues of the Spaniards. But the antipathy
of the backwoodsmen to the Spaniards was too deep-
rooted for them ever to effect a real combination.
Ultimately the good sense and patriotism of the
Westerners triumphed; and the American people
continued to move forward with unbroken front to
ward their mighty future.

VOL. VII.— ii

CHAPTER IV

THE STATE OF FRANKLIN, 1784-1788

THE separatist spirit was strong throughout the
West. Different causes, such as the unchecked
ravages of the Indians, or the refusal of the right
to navigate the Mississippi, produced or accentuated
different manifestations; but the feeling itself was
latent everywhere. Its most striking manifestations
occurred not in Kentucky, but in what is now the
State of Tennessee ; and was aimed not at the United
States, but at the parent State of North Carolina.

In Kentucky the old frontiersmen were losing
their grip on the governmental machinery of the
district. The great flood of immigration tended to
swamp the pioneers; and the leading parts in the
struggle for Statehood were played by men who had
come to the country about the close of the Revolu
tionary War, and who were often related by ties of
kinship to the leaders of the Virginia legislatures
and conventions.

On the waters of the upper Tennessee matters
were entirely different. Immigration had been
slower, and the people who did come in were usu
ally of the type of those who had first built their
stockaded hamlets on the banks of the Watauga.
The leaders of the early pioneers were still the lead-
(242)

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 243

ers of the community, in legislation as in warfare.
Moreover, North Carolina was a much weaker and
more turbulent State than Virginia, so that a sepa
ratist movement ran less risk of interference. Chains
of forest-clad mountains severed the State proper
from its Western outposts. Many of the pioneer
leaders were from Virginia — backwoodsmen who
had drifted south along the trough-like valleys.
These of course felt little loyalty to North Carolina.
The others, who were North Carolinians by birth,
had cast in their lot, for good or for evil, with the
frontier communities, and were inclined to side with
them in any contest with the parent State.

North Carolina herself was at first quite as anx
ious to get rid of the frontiersmen as they were to
go. Not only was the central authority much weaker
than in Virginia, but the people were less proud of
their State and less jealously anxious to see it grow
in power and influence. The over-mountain settlers
had increased in numbers so rapidly that four coun
ties had been erected for them ; one, Davidson, tak
ing in the Cumberland district, and the other three,
Washington, Sullivan, and Greene, including what
is now eastern Tennessee. All these counties sent
representatives to the North Carolina legislature, at
Hillsborough ; but they found that body little dis
posed to consider the needs of the remote Western
colonists.

The State was very poor, and regarded the West
ern settlements as mere burdensome sources of ex
pense. In the innumerable Indian wars debts were

244 The Winning of the West

contracted by the little pioneer communities with the
faith that the State would pay them; but the pay
ment was made grudgingly or not at all, and no
measures were taken to provide for the protection
of the frontier in the future. No provisions were
made for the extension of the jurisdiction of the
State courts over the western counties, and they be
came a refuge for outlaws, who could be dealt with
only as they were — that is, by the settlers acting
on their own initiative, without the sanction of law.
In short the settlers were left to themselves, to work
out their own salvation as they best might, in peace
or war ; and as they bore most of the burdens of in
dependence, they began to long for the privileges.

In June, 1784, the State Legislature passed an act
ceding to the Continental Congress all the western
lands, that is, all of what is now Tennessee. It was
provided that the sovereignty of North Carolina
over the ceded lands should continue in full effect
until the United States accepted the gift; and that
the act should lapse and become void unless Con
gress accepted within two years.1

The western members were present and voted in
favor of the cession, and immediately afterward
they returned to their homes and told the frontier
people what had been done. There was a general
feeling that some step should be taken forthwith to
prevent the whole district from lapsing into an
archy. The frontiersmen did not believe that Con-

1 Ramsey, 283. He is the best authority for the history of
the curious State of Franklin.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 245

gress, hampered as it was and powerless to under
take new responsibilities, could accept the gift until
the two years were nearly gone; and meanwhile
North Carolina would in all likelihood pay them
little heed, so that they would be left a prey to the
Indians without and to their own wrongdoers with
in. It was incumbent on them to organize for their
own defence and preservation. The three counties
on the upper Tennessee proceeded to take measures
accordingly. The Cumberland people, however,
took no part in the movement, and showed hardly
any interest in it; for they felt as alien to the men
of the Holston valley as to those of North Carolina
proper, and watched the conflict with a tepid absence
of friendship for, or hostility toward, either side.
They had long practically managed their own af
fairs, and though they suffered from the lack of
a strong central authority on which to rely, they did
not understand their own wants, and were inclined
to be hostile to any effort for the betterment of the
national government.

The first step taken by the frontiersmen in the di
rection of setting up a new State was very charac
teristic, as showing the military structure of the
frontier settlements. To guard against Indian in
road and foray, and to punish them by reprisals, all
the able-bodied, rifle-bearing males were enrolled in
the militia ; and the divisions of this militia were ter
ritorial. The soldiers of each company represented
one cluster of rough little hamlets or one group of
scattered log houses. The company therefore formed

246 The Winning of the West

a natural division for purposes of representation.
It was accordingly agreed that "each captain's com
pany" in the counties of Washington, Sullivan, and
Greene should choose two delegates, who should all
assemble as committees in their respective counties
to deliberate upon some general plan of action. The
committees met and recommended the election of
deputies with full powers to a convention held at
Jonesboro.

This convention, of forty deputies or thereabout,
met at Jonesboro, on August 23, 1784, and appointed
John Sevier President. The delegates were unani
mous that the three counties represented should de
clare themselves independent of North Carolina, and
passed a resolution to this effect. They also re
solved that the three counties should form them
selves into an Association, and should enforce all the
laws of North Carolina not incompatible with be
ginning the career of a separate State, and that Con
gress should be petitioned to countenance them, and
advise them in the matter of their constitution. In
addition, they made provision for admitting to their
State the neighboring portions of Virginia, should
they apply, and should the application be sanctioned
by the State of Virginia, "or other power having
cognizance thereof." This last reference was, of
course, to Congress, and was significant. Evidently
the mountaineers ignored the doctrine of State Sov
ereignty. The power which they regarded as para
mount was that of the Nation. The adhesion they
gave to any government was somewhat shadowy;

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 247

but such as it was, it was yielded to the United
States, and not to any one State. They wished to
submit their claim for independence to the judg
ment of Congress, not to the judgment of North
Carolina; and they were ready to admit into their
new State the western part of Virginia, on the as
sent, not of both Congress and Virginia, but of
either Congress or Virginia.

So far the convention had been unanimous; but
a split came on the question whether their declara
tion of independence should take effect at once. The
majority held that it should, and so voted; while
a strong minority, amounting to one-third of the
members, followed the lead of John Tipton, and
voted in the negative. During the session a crowd
of people, partly from the straggling little frontier
village itself, but partly from the neighboring coun
try, had assembled, and were waiting in the street
to learn what the convention had decided. A mem
ber, stepping to the door of the building, announced
the birth of the new State. The crowd, of course,
believed in strong measures, and expressed its hearty
approval. Soon afterward the convention adjourned,
after providing for the calling of a new convention,
to consist of five delegates from each county, who
should give a name to the State, and prepare for it
a constitution. The members of this constitutional
convention were to be chosen by counties, and not by
captain's companies.

There was much quarreling over the choice of
members for the constitutional convention, the par-

248 The Winning of the West

ties dividing on the lines indicated in the vote on
the question of immediate independence. When the
convention did meet, in November, it broke up in
confusion. At the same time North Carolina, be
coming alarmed, repealed her cession act ; and there
upon Sevier himself counseled his fellow-citizens to
abandon the movement for a new State. However,
they felt they had gone too far to back out. The
convention came together again in December, and
took measures looking toward the assumption of
ful Statehood. In the constitution they drew up
they provided, among other things, for a Senate
and a House of Commons, to form the legislative
body, which should itself choose the Governor.2 By
an extraordinary resolution they further provided
that the government should go into effect, and elec
tions be held, at once; and yet that in the fall of
1785 a new convention should convene at which
the very constitution under which the government
had been carried on would be submitted for revision,
rejection, or adoption.

Elections for the Legislature were accordingly
held, and in March, 1785, the two houses of the
new State of Franklin met, and chose Sevier as
Governor. Courts were organized, and military and
civil officials of every grade were provided, those

* Hay wood, 142; although Ramsey writes more in full
about the Franklin government, it ought not to be forgotten
that the ground-work of his history is from Haywood. Hay-
wood is the original, and by far the most valuable, authority
on Tennessee matters, and he writes in a quaint style that is
very attractive.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 249

holding commissions under North Carolina being
continued in office in almost all cases. The friction
caused by the change of government was thus mini
mized. Four new counties were created, taxes were
levied, and a number of laws enacted. One of the
acts was "for the promotion of learning in the county
of Washington." Under it the first academy west
of the mountains was started ; for some years it was
the only high school anywhere in the neighborhood
where Latin, or indeed any branch of learning be
yond the simplest rudiments, was taught. It is no
small credit to the backwoodsmen that in this their
first attempt at State-making they should have done
what they could to furnish their sons the opportu
nity of obtaining a higher education.

One of the serious problems with which they had
to grapple was the money question. All through the
United States the finances were in utter disorder, the
medium of exchange being a jumble of almost
worthless paper currency, and of foreign coin of
every kind, while the standard value varied from
State to State. But in the backwoods conditions
were even worse, for there was hardly any money at
all. Transactions were accomplished chiefly by the
primeval method of barter. Accordingly, this back
woods Legislature legalized the payment of taxes
and salaries in kind, and set a standard of values.
The dollar was declared equal to six shillings, and
a scale of prices was established. Among the ar
ticles which were enumerated as being lawfully pay
able for taxes were bacon at six pence a pound, rye

250 The Winning of the West

whiskey at two shillings and six pence a gallon,
peach or apple brandy at three shillings per gallon,
and country-made sugar at one shilling per pound.
Skins, however, formed the ordinary currency ; otter,
beaver, and deer being worth six shillings apiece,
and raccoon and fox one shilling and three pence.
The Governor's salary was set at two hundred
pounds, and that of the highest judge at one hun
dred and fifty.

The new Governor sent a formal communication
to Governor Alexander Martin of North Carolina,
announcing that the three counties beyond the moun
tains had declared their independence, and erected
themselves into a separate State, and setting forth
their reasons for the step. Governor Martin an
swered Sevier in a public letter, in which he went
over his arguments one by one, and sought to re
fute them. He announced the willingness of the
parent State to accede to the separation when the
proper time came; but he pointed out that North
Carolina could not consent to such irregular and
unauthorized separation, and that Congress would
certainly not countenance it against her wishes. ' In
answering an argument drawn from the condition
of affairs in Vermont, Martin showed that the Green
Mountain State should not be treated as an example
in point, because she had asserted her independence,
as a separate commonwealth, before the Revolution,
and yet had joined in the war against the British.

One of the subjects on which he dwelt was the
relations with the Indians. The mountain men ac-

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 251

cused North Carolina of not giving to the Cherokees
a quantity of goods promised them, and asserted
that this disappointment had caused the Indians to
commit several murders. In his answer the Gov
ernor admitted that the goods had not been given,
but explained that this was because at the time the
land had been ceded to Congress, and the authori
ties were waiting to see what Congress would do;
and after the Cession Act was repealed the goods
would have been given forthwith, had it not been
for the upsetting of all legal authority west of the
mountains, which brought matters to a standstill.
Moreover, the Governor in his turn made counter
accusations, setting forth that the mountaineers had
held unauthorized treaties with the Indians, and had
trespassed on their lands, and even murdered them.
He closed by drawing a strong picture of the evils
sure to be brought about by such lawless secession
and usurpation of authority. He besought and
, commanded the revolted counties to return to their
allegiance, and warned them that if they did not,
and if peaceable measures proved of no avail, then
the State of North Carolina would put down the re
bellion bv dint of arms.

* '

At the same time, in the early spring of 1785,
the authorities of the new State sent a memorial to
the Continental Congress.3 Having found their nat
ural civil chief and military leader in Sevier, the

3 State Dept. MSS., Papers Continental Congress, Memo
rials, etc., No. 48. State of Franklin, March 12, 1785. Cer
tificate that William Cocke is agent; and memorial of the
freemen, etc.

252 The Winning of the West

backwoodsmen now developed a diplomat in the per
son of one William Cocke. To him they intrusted
the memorial, together with a certificate, testifying,
in the name of the State of Franklin, that he was
delegated to present the memorial to Congress and
to make what further representations he might find
"conducive to the interest and independence of this
country." The memorial set forth the earnest de
sire of the people of Franklin to be admitted as a
State of the Federal Union, together with the wrongs
sure to be brought about by such lawless secession
with particular bitterness upon the harm which had
resulted from her failure to give the Cherokees the
goods which they had been promised. It further re
cited how North Carolina's original cession of the
western lands had moved the Westerners to declare
their independence, and contended that her subse
quent repeal of the act making this cession was void,
and that Congress should treat the cession as an ac
complished fact. However, Congress took no action
either for or against the insurrectionary common
wealth.

The new State wished to stand well with Vir
ginia, no less than with Congress. In July, 1785,
Sevier wrote to Governor Patrick Henry, unsuc
cessfully appealing to him for sympathy. In this
letter he insisted that he was doing all he could to
restrain the people from encroaching on the Indian
lands, though he admitted he found the task diffi
cult. He assured Henry that he would on no ac
count encourage the Southwestern Virginians to

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 253

join the new State, as some of them had proposed ;
and he added, what he evidently felt to be a needed
explanation, "we hope to convince every one that
we are not a banditti, but a people who mean to
do right, as far as our knowledge will lead us." 4
At the outset of its stormy career the new State
had been named Franklin, in honor of Benjamin
Franklin; but a large minority had wished to call
it Frankland instead, and outsiders knew it as often
by one title as the other. Benjamin Franklin him
self did not know that it was named after him until
it had been in existence eighteen months.5 The
State was then in straits, and Cocke wrote Frank
lin, in the hope of some advice or assistance. The
prudent philosopher replied in conveniently vague
and guarded terms. He remarked that this was the
first time he had been informed that the new State
was named after him, he having always supposed
that it was called Frankland. He then expressed
his high appreciation of the honor conferred upon
him, and his regret that he could not show his ap
preciation by anything more substantial than good
wishes. He declined to commit himself as to the
quarrel between Franklin and North Carolina, ex
plaining that he could know nothing of its merits,
as he had but just come home from abroad ; but he
warmly commended the proposition to submit the

4 Va. State Papers, IV, 42, Sevier to Henry, July 19, 1785.

6 State Dept. MSS., Franklin Papers, Miscellaneous, Vol.
VII, Benj. Franklin to William Cocke, Philadelphia, Aug. 12,
1786.

254 The Winning of the West

question to Congress, and urged that the disputants
should abide by its decision. He wound up his let
ter by some general remarks on the benefits of hav
ing a Congress which could act as a judge in such
matters.

While the memorial was being presented to Con
gress, Sevier was publishing his counter-manifesto
to Governor Martin's in the shape of a letter to
Martin's successor in the chair of the chief execu
tive of North Carolina. In this letter Sevier justi
fied at some length the stand the Franklin people
had taken, and commented with lofty severity on
Governor Martin's efforts "to stir up sedition and
insurrection" in Franklin, and thus destroy the
"tranquillity" of its "peaceful citizens." Sevier
evidently shared to the full the horror generally felt
by the leaders of a rebellion for those who rebel
against themselves.

The new Governor of North Carolina adopted a
much more pacific tone than his predecessor, and he
and Sevier exchanged some further letters, but with
out result.

One of the main reasons for discontent with the
parent State was the delay in striking an advan
tageous treaty with the Indians, and the Franklin
people hastened to make up for this delay by sum
moning the Cherokees to a council.6 Many of the
chiefs, who were already under solemn agreement
with the United States and North Carolina, refused
to attend ; but, as usual with Indians, they could not

' Virginia State Papers, IV, 25, 37, etc.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 255

control all their people, some of whom were present
at the time appointed. With the Indians who were
thus present the whites went through the form of a
treaty under which they received large cessions of
Cherokee lands. The ordinary results of such a
treaty followed. The Indians who had not signed
promptly repudiated as unauthorized and ineffective
the action of the few who had; and the latter as
serted that they had been tricked into signing, and
were not aware of the true nature of the document
to which they had affixed their marks.7 The whites
heeded these protests not at all, but kept the land
they had settled.

In fact the attitude of the Franklin people toward
the Cherokees was one of mere piracy. In the
August session of their Legislature they passed a
law to encourage an expedition to go down the
Tennessee on the west side and take possession of
the country in the great bend of that river under
titles derived from the State of Georgia. The
eighty or ninety men composing this expedition act
ually descended the river, and made a settlement by
the Muscle Shoals, in what the Georgians called the
county of Houston. They opened a land office, or
ganized a county government, and elected John
Sevier's brother, Valentine, to represent them in the
Georgia Legislature ; but that body refused to allow
him a seat. After a fortnight's existence the atti
tude of the Indians became so menacing that the
settlement broke up and was abandoned.

T Talk of Old Tassel, September 19, 1785, Ramsey, 319.

256 The Winning of the West

*

In November, 1785, the convention to provide a
permanent constitution for the State met at Greene-
ville. There was already much discontent with the
Franklin Government. The differences between its
adherents and those of the old North Carolina Gov
ernment were accentuated by bitter faction fights
among the rivals for popular leadership, backed by
their families and followers. Bad feeling showed
itself at this convention, the rivalry between Sevier
and Tipton being pronounced. Tipton was one of
the mountain leaders, second in influence only to
Sevier, and his bitter personal enemy. At the con
vention a brand new constitution was submitted by
a delegate named Samuel Houston. The adoption
of the new constitution was urged by a strong minor
ity. The most influential man of the minority party
was Tipton.

This written constitution, with its bill of rights
prefixed, was a curious document. It provided that
the new State should be called the Commonwealth
of Frankland. Full religious liberty was estab
lished, so far as rites of worship went; but no one
was to hold office unless he was a Christian who be
lieved in the Bible, in Heaven, in Hell, and in the
Trinity. There were other classes prohibited from
holding office, — immoral men and sabbath breakers,
for instance, and clergymen, doctors, and lawyers.
The exclusion of lawyers from law-making bodies
was one of the darling plans of the ordinary sincere
rural demagogue of the day. At that time lawyers,
as a class, furnished the most prominent and influ-

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 257

ential political leaders; and they were, on the whole,
the men of most mark in the communities. A nar
row, uneducated, honest countryman, especially in
the backwoods, then looked upon a lawyer usually
with smothered envy and admiration, but always
with jealousy, suspicion, and dislike; much as his
successors to this day look upon bankers and rail
road men. It seemed to him a praiseworthy thing
to prevent any man whose business it was to study
the law from having a share in making the law.

The proposed constitution showed the extreme
suspicion felt by the common people for even their
own elected lawmakers. It made various futile pro
visions to restrain them, such as providing that "ex
cept on occasions of sudden necessity," laws should
only become such after being enacted by two suc
cessive Legislatures, and that a Council of Safety
should be elected to look after the conduct of all
the other public officials. Universal suffrage for
all freemen was provided; the Legislature was to
consist of but one body ; and almost all offices were
made elective. Taxes were laid to provide a State
university. The constitution was tediously elabo
rate and minute in its provisions.

However, its only interest is its showing the
spirit of the local "reformers" of the day and place
in the matters of constitution-making and legisla
tion. After a hot debate and some tumultuous
scenes, it was rejected by the majority of the con
vention, and in its stead, on Sevier's motion, the
North Carolina constitution was adopted as the

258 The Winning of the West

groundwork of the new government. This gave
umbrage to Tipton and his party, who for some time
had been discontented with the course of affairs in
Franklin, and had been grumbling about them.

The new constitution — which was in effect simply
the old constitution with unimportant alterations —
went into being, and under it the Franklin Legisla
ture convened at Greeneville, which was made the
permanent capital of the new State. The Commons
met in the court-house, a clapboarded building of
unhewn logs, without windows, the light coming
in through the door and through the chinks between
the timbers. The Senate met in one of the rooms of
the town tavern. The backwoods legislators lodged
at this tavern or at some other, at the cost of four-
pence a day, the board being a shilling for the man,
and sixpence for his horse, if the horse only ate
hay; a half pint of liquor or a gallon of oats cost
sixpence.8 Life was very rude and simple; no lux
uries, and only the commonest comforts, were ob
tainable.

The State of Franklin had now been in existence
over a year, and during this period the officers hold
ing under it had exercised complete control in the
three insurrectionary counties. They had passed
laws, made treaties, levied taxes, recorded deeds,
and solemnized marriages. In short, they had per
formed all the functions of civil government, and
Franklin had assumed in all respects the position
of an independent commonwealth.

9 Ramsey, 334.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 259

But in the spring of 1 786 the discontent which had
smouldered burst into a flame. Tipton and his fol
lowers openly espoused the cause of North Carolina,
and were joined, as time waned, by the men who for
various reasons were dissatisfied with the results
of the trial of independent Statehood. They held
elections, at the Sycamore Shoals and elsewhere,
to choose representatives to the North Carolina
Legislature, John Tipton being elected Senator.
They organized the entire local government over
again in the interest of the old State.

The two rival governments clashed in every way.
County courts of both were held in the same coun
ties ; the militia were called out by both sets of offi
cers; taxes were levied by both Legislatures.9 The
Franklin courts were held at Jonesboro, the North
Carolina courts at Buffalo, ten miles distant; and
each court in turn was broken up by armed bands
of the opposite party. Criminals throve in the con
fusion, and the people refused to pay taxes to either
party. Brawls, with their brutal accompaniments
of gouging and biting, were common. Sevier and
Tipton themselves, on one occasion when they by
chance met, indulged in a rough-and-tumble fight
before their friends could interfere.

Throughout the year '86 the confusion gradually
grew worse. A few days after the Greeneville con
vention met, the Legislature of North Carolina
passed an act in reference to the revolt. It declared
that, at the proper time, the western counties would

8 Hay wood, 160.

260 The Winning of the West

be erected into an independent State, but that this
time had not yet come; until it did, they would be
well cared for, but must return to their ancient
allegiance, and appoint and elect their officers under
the laws of North Carolina. A free pardon and
oblivion of all offences were promised. Following-
this act came a long and tedious series of negotia
tions. Franklin sent ambassadors to argue her case
before the Legislature of the mother State ; the Gov
ernors and high officials exchanged long-winded
letters and proclamations, and the rival Legislatures
passed laws intended to undermine each other's
influence. The Franklin Assembly tried menace,
and threatened to fine any one who acted under a
commission from North Carolina. The Legislature
of the latter State achieved more by promises, hav
ing wisely offered to remit all taxes for the two
troubled years to any one who would forthwith sub
mit to her rule.

Neither side was willing to force the issue to
trial by arms if it could be helped ; and there was a
certain pointlessness about the struggle, inasmuch
as the differences between the contending parties
were really so trifling. The North Carolinians kept
protesting that they would be delighted to see
Franklin set up as an independent State, as soon as
her territory contained enough people; and the
Franklin leaders in return were loud in their assur
ances of respect for North Carolina and of desire
to follow her wishes. But neither would yield the
points immediately at issue.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 261

A somewhat comic incident of the* affair occurred
in connection with an effort made by Sevier and his
friends to persuade old Evan Shelby to act as um
pire. After a conference they signed a joint mani
festo which aimed to preserve peace for the mo
ment by the novel expedient of allowing the citizens
of the disputed territory to determine, every man for
himself, the government which he wished to own,
and to pay his taxes to it accordingly. Nothing
came of this manifesto.

During this time of confusion each party rallied
by turns, but the general drift was all in favor
of North Carolina. One by one the adherents of
Franklin dropped away. The revolt was essentially
a frontier revolt, and Sevier was essentially a fron
tier leader. The older and longer-settled counties
and parts of counties were the first to fall away from
him, while the settlers on the very edge of the Indian
country clung to him to the last.

The neighboring States were more or less excited
over the birth of the little insurgent commonwealth.
Virginia looked upon it with extreme disfavor,
largely because her own western counties showed
signs of desiring to throw in their fortunes with the
Franklin people.10 Governor Patrick Henry issued
a very energetic address on the subject, and the au
thorities took effective means to prevent the move
ment from gaining head.

Georgia, on the contrary, showed the utmost
friendliness toward the new State, and gladly en-

10 Va. State Papers IV, 53.

262 The Winning of the West

tered into an aHiance with her.11 Georgia had no
self-assertive communities of her own children on
her western border, as Virginia and North Carolina
had, in Kentucky and Franklin. She was herself
a frontier commonwealth, challenging as her own
lands that were occupied by the Indians and claimed
by the Spaniards. Her interests were identical with
those of Franklin. The Governors of the two com
munities exchanged complimentary addresses, and
sent their rough ambassadors one to the other.
Georgia made Sevier a brigadier-general in her
militia, for the district she claimed in the bend of
the Tennessee ; and her branch of the Society of the
Cincinnati elected him to membership. In return
Sevier, hoping to tighten the loosening bonds of his
authority by a successful Indian war, entered into
arrangements with Georgia for a combined cam
paign against the Creeks. For various reasons the
proposed campaign fell through, but the mere plan
ning of it shows the feeling that was, at the bottom,
the strongest of those which knit together the Frank
lin men and the Georgians.12 They both greedily
coveted the Indians' land, and were bent on driving
the Indians off it.13

One of the Franklin judges, in sending a plea for
the independence of his State to the Governor of
North Carolina, expressed with unusual frankness

11 Stevens' "Georgia," II, 380.

18 State Dept. MSS., No. 125, p. 163.

13 Va. State Papers, IV, pp. 256, 353. Many of the rumors
of defeats and victories given in these papers were without
foundation.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 263

the attitude of the Holston backwoodsmen toward
the Indians. He remarked that he supposed the
Governor would be astonished to learn that there
were many settlers on the land which North Caro
lina had by treaty guaranteed to the Cherokees ; and
brushed aside all remonstrances by simply saying
that it was vain to talk of keeping the frontiersrrten
from encroaching on Indian territory. All that
could be done, he said, was to extend the laws over
each locality as rapidly as it was settled by the in
truding pioneers; otherwise they would become ut
terly lawless, and dangerous to their neighbors. As
for laws and proclamations to restrain the white
advance, he asked if all the settlements in America
had not been extended in defiance of such. And
now that the Indians were cowed, the advance was
certain to be faster, and the savages were certain to
be pushed back more rapidly, and the limits of
tribal territory more narrowly circumscribed.14

This letter possessed at least the merit of express
ing with blunt truthfulness the real attitude of the
Franklin people, and of the backwoodsmen general
ly, toward the Indians. They never swerved from
their intention of seizing the Indian lands. They
preferred to gain their ends by treaty, and with the
consent of the Indians ; but if this proved impossible,
then they intended to gain them by force.

In its essence, and viewed from the standpoint
of abstract morality, their attitude was that of the
freebooter. The backwoodsmen lusted for the pos-

14 Ramsey, 350.

264 The Winning of the West

sessions of the Indian, as the buccaneers of the
Spanish Main had once lusted for the possessions
of the Spaniard. There was but little more heed
paid to the rights of the assailed in one case than in
the other.

Yet in its results, and viewed from the standpoint
of applied ethics, the conquest and settlement by
the whites of the Indian lands was necessary to the
greatness of the race and to the well-being of civ
ilized mankind. It was as ultimately beneficial as it
was inevitable. Huge tomes might be filled with ar
guments as to the morality or immorality of such
conquests. But these arguments appeal chiefly to
the cultivated men in highly civilized communities
who have neither the wish nor the power -to lead
warlike expeditions into savage lands. Such con
quests are commonly undertaken by those reckless
and daring adventurers who shape and guide each
race's territorial growth. They are sure to come
when a masterful people, still in its raw, barbarian
prime, finds itself face to face with the weaker and
wholly alien race which holds a coveted prize in its
feeble grasp.

Many good persons seem prone to speak of all
wars of conquest as necessarily evil. This is, of
course, a shortsighted view. In its after affects a
conquest may be fraught either with evil or with
good for mankind, according to the comparative
worth of the conquering and conquered peoples. It
is useless to try to generalize about conquests simply
as such in the abstract; each case or set of cases

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 265

must be judged by itself. The world would have
halted had it not been for the Teutonic conquests
in alien lands; but the victories of Moslem over
Christian have always proved a curse in the end.
Nothing but sheer evil has come from the victories
of Turk and Tartar. This is true generally of the
victories of barbarians of low racial characteristics
over gentler, more moral, and more refined peoples,
even though these people have, to their shame and
discredit, lost the vigorous fighting virtues. Yet it
remains no less true that the world would probably
have gone forward very little, indeed would prob
ably not have gone forward at all, had it not been
for the displacement or submersion of savage and
barbaric peoples as a consequence of the armed set
tlement in strange lands of the races who hold in
their hands the fate of the years. Every such sub
mersion or displacement of an inferior race, every
such armed settlement or1 conquest by a superior
race, means the infliction and suffering of hideous
woe and misery. It is a sad and dreadful thing that
there should of necessity be such throes of agony;
and yet they are the birth-pangs of a new and vigor
ous people. That they are in truth birth-pangs does
not lessen the grim and hopeless woe of the race
supplanted ; of the race outworn or overthrown. The
wrongs done and suffered can not be blinked. Nei
ther can they be allowed to hide the results to
mankind of what has been achieved.

It is not possible to justify the backwoodsmen by
appeal to principles which we would accept as bind-
VOL. VII.— 12

266 The Winning of the West

ing on their descendants, or on the mighty nation
which has sprung up and flourished in the soil they
first won and tilled. All that can be asked is that
they shall be judged as other wilderness conquerors,
as other slayers and quellers of savage peoples, are
judged. The same standards must be applied to
Sevier and his hard-faced horse-riflemen that we
apply to the Greek colonists of Sicily and the Roman
colonist of the valley of the Po; to the Cossack
rough-rider who won for Russia the vast and mel
ancholy Siberian steppes, and to the Boer who
guided his ox-drawn wagon-trains to the hot graz
ing lands of the Transvaal ; to the founders of Mas
sachusetts and Virginia, of Oregon and icy Sas
katchewan; and to the men who built up those
far-off commonwealths whose coasts are lapped
by the waters of the great South Sea.

The aggressions by the Franklin men on the
Cherokee lands bore bloody fruit in i/Sd.15 The
young warriors, growing ever more alarmed and
angered at the pressure of the settlers, could not be
restrained. They shook off the control of the old
men, who had seen the tribe flogged once and again
by the whites, and knew how hopeless such a strug
gle was. The Chickamauga banditti watched from
their eyries to pounce upon all boats that passed
down the Tennessee, and their war bands harried
the settlements far and wide, being joined in their

14 State Dept. MSS., Vol. II, No. 71, Arthur Campbell to
Joseph Martin, June 16, 1786; Martin to the Governor of Vir
ginia, June 25, 1786, etc.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 267

work by parties from the Cherokee towns proper.
Stock was stolen, cabins were burned, and settlers
murdered. The stark riflemen gathered for re
venge, carrying their long rifles and riding their
rough mountain horses. Counter-inroads were car
ried into the Indian country. On one, when Sevier
himself led, two or three of the Indian towns were
burned and a score or so of warriors killed.' As
always, it proved comparatively easy to deal a dam
aging blow to these Southern Indians, who dwelt in
well-built log-towns; while the widely scattered,
shifting, wigwam-villages of the forest-nomads of
the North rarely offered a tangible mark at which to
strike. Of course, the retaliatory blows of the whites,
like the strokes of the Indians, fell as often on the
innocent as on the guilty. During this summer, to
revenge the death of a couple of settlers, a back
woods Colonel, with the appropriate name of Out
law, fell on a friendly Cherokee town and killed two
or three Indians, besides plundering a white man,
a North Carolina trader, who happened to be in the
town. Nevertheless, throughout 1786 the great ma
jority of the Cherokees remained quiet.18

Early in 1787, however, they felt the strain so
severely that they gathered in a great council and
deliberated whether they should not abandon their,
homes and move far out into the Western wilder
ness ; but they could not yet make up their minds to
leave their beloved mountains. The North Carolina
authorities wished to see them receive justice, but

16 Va. State Papers, IV, pp. 162, 164, 176.

268 The Winning of the West

all they could do was to gather the few Indian pris
oners who had been captured in the late wars and
return them to the Cherokees. The Franklin Gov
ernment had opened a land office and disposed of all
the lands between the French Broad and the Ten
nessee,17 which territory North Carolina had guar
anteed the Cherokees; and when, on the authority
of the Governor of North Carolina, his representa
tive ordered the settlers off the invaded land, they
treated his command with utter defiance. Not only
the Creeks but even the distant Choctaws and
Chickasaws became uneasy and irritated over the
American encroachments, while the French traders
who came up the Tennessee preached war to the
Indians, and the Spanish Government ordered all
the American traders to be expelled from among the
Southern tribes unless they would agree to take
commissions from Spain and throw off their alle
giance to the United States.

In the same year the Cherokees became em
broiled, not only with the Franklin people but with
the Kentuckians. The Chickamaugas, who were
mainly renegade Cherokees, were always ravaging
in Kentucky. Colonel John Logan had gathered
a force to attack one of their war bands, but he
happened instead to stumble on a Cherokee party,
which he scattered to the winds with loss. The
Kentuckians wrote to the Cherokee chiefs explain-

17 State Dept. MSS., Vol. II, No. 71. Letter to Edmund
Randolph, Feb. 10, 1787; Letter of Joseph Martin, of March
25, 1787; Talk from Piominigo, the Chickasaw Chief, Feb.
15, 1787-

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 269

ing that the attack was an accident, but that they
did not regret it greatly, inasmuch as they found
in the Cherokee camp several horses which had
been stolen from the settlers. They then warned
the Cherokees that the outrages by the Chickamau-
gas must be stopped; and if the Cherokees failed
to stop them they would have only themselves to
thank for the woes that would follow, as the Ken-
tuckians could not always tell the hostile from the
friendly Indians, and were bent on taking an exem
plary, even if indiscriminate revenge. The Council
of Virginia, on hearing of this announced intention
of the Kentuckians "highly disapproved of it," 18
but they could do nothing except disapprove. The
governmental authorities of the eastern States pos
sessed but little more power to restrain the back
woodsmen than the sachems had to restrain the
young braves. Virginia and North Carolina could
no more control Kentucky and Franklin than the
Cherokees could control the Chickamaugas.

In 1787 the State of Franklin began to totter to
its fall. In April 19 Sevier, hungering for help or
friendly advice, wrote to the gray statesman after
whom his State was named. The answer did not
come for several months, and when it did come it
was not very satisfactory. The old sage repeated
that he knew too little of the circumstances to ex-

18 State Dept. MSS., No. 71. Resolutions of Kentucky
Committee, June 5, 1787.

19 State Dept. MSS. Franklin Papers, VIII, Benjamin
Franklin to His Excellency Governor Sevier, Philadelphia,
June 30, 1787.

270 The Winning of the West

press an opinion but he urged a friendly under
standing with North Carolina, and he spoke with
unpalatable frankness on the subject of the In
dians. At that very time he was writing to a Chero
kee chief20 who had come to Congress in the vain
hope that the Federal authorities might save the
Cherokees from the reckless backwoodsmen; he had
promised to try to obtain justice for the Indians,
and he was in no friendly mood toward the back
woods aggressors.

Prevent encroachments on Indian lands, Franklin
wrote to Sevier, — Sevier, who, in a last effort to
rally his followers, was seeking a general Indian
war to further these very encroachments, — and re
member that they are the more unjustifiable because
the Indians usually give good bargains in the way
of purchase, while a war with them costs more than
any possible price they may ask. This advice was
based on Franklin's usual principle of merely mer
cantile morality ; but he was writing to a people who
stood in sore need of just the teaching he could
furnish and who would have done well to heed it.
They were slow to learn that while sober, debt-
paying thrift, love of order, and industry, are per
haps not the loftiest virtues and are certainly not
in themselves all sufficient, they yet form an indis
pensable foundation, the lack of which is but ill sup
plied by other qualities even of a very noble kind.

Sevier, also in the year 1787, carried on a long

40 Do. Letter to the Chief "Cornstalk" (Corntassel?), same
date and place.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 271

correspondence with Evan Shelby, whose adherence
to the State of Franklin he much desired, as the
stout old fellow was a power not only among the
frontiersmen but with the Virginian and North
Carolinian authorities likewise. Sevier persuaded
the Legislature to offer Shelby the position of chief
magistrate of Franklin, and pressed him to accept
it, and throw in his lot with the Westerners, instead
of trying to serve men at a distance. Shelby re
fused; but Sevier was bent upon being pleasant,
and thanked Shelby for at least being neutral, even
though not actively friendly. In another letter,
however, when he had begun to suspect Shelby of
positive hostility, he warned him that no unfriendly
interference would be tolerated.21

Shelby could neither be placated nor intimidated.
He regarded with equal alarm and anger the loosen
ing of the bands of authority and order among the
Franklin frontiersmen. He bitterly disapproved of
their lawless encroachments on the Indian lands,
which he feared would cause a general war with the
savages.22 At the very time that Sevier was writ
ing to him, he was himself writing to the North
Carolina Government, urging them to send forward
troops who would put down the rebellion by force,
and was requesting the Virginians to back up any
such government with their militia. He urged

81 Tennessee Hist. Soc. MSS. Letters of Sevier to Evan
Shelby, Feb. u, May 20, May 30, and Aug. 12, 1787.

99 State Dept. MSS., No. 71. Evan Shelby to General Rus
sell, April 27, 1787. Beverly Randolph to Virginia Delegates,
June 2, 1787.

The Winning of the West

that the insurrection threatened not only North
Carolina, but Virginia and the Federal Government
itself; and in phrases like those of the most ad
vanced Federalist statesman, he urged the Federal
Government to interfere. The Governor of Vir
ginia was inclined to share his views, and forwarded
his complaints and requests to the Continental Con
gress.

However, no action was necessary. The Franklin
Government collapsed of itself. In September, 1787,
the Legislature met for the last time, at Greeneville.
There was a contested election case for Senator from
the county of Hawkins, which shows the difficul
ties under which the members had labored in carry
ing their elections, and gives a hint of the anarchy
produced by the two contending Governments. In
this case the sheriff of the county of Hawkins grant
ed the certificate of election to one man, and the
three inspectors of the poll granted it to another.
On investigation by a committee of the Senate, it
appeared that the poll was opened by the sheriff "on
the third Friday and Saturday in August/' as pro
vided by law, but that in addition to the advertise
ment of the election which was published by the
sheriff of Hawkins, who held under the Franklin
Government, another proclamation, advertising the
same election, was issued by the sheriff of the North
Carolina county of Spencer, which had been recent
ly created by North Carolina out of a portion of the
territory of Hawkins County. The North Carolina
sheriff merely wished to embarrass his Franklin

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 273

rival, and he succeeded admirably. The Franklin
man proclaimed that he would allow no one to vote
who had not paid taxes to Franklin; but after
three or four votes had been taken the approach of
a body of armed adherents of the North Carolina
interest caused the shutting of the polls. The
Franklin authorities then dispersed, the North Caro
lina sheriff having told them plainly that the matter
would have to be settled by seeing which party was
strongest. One or two efforts were made to have
an adjourned election elsewhere in the neighbor
hood, with the result that in the confusion certifi
cates were given to two different men.23 Such dis
orders showed that the time had arrived when the
authorities of Franklin either had to begin a bloody
civil war or else abandon the attempt to create a
new State; and in their feebleness and uncertainty
they adopted the latter alternative.

When in March, 1788, the term of Sevier as Gov
ernor came to an end, there was no one to take his
place, and the officers of North Carolina were left
in undisputed possession of whatever governmental
authority there was.

The North Carolina Assembly which met in Nov
ember, 1787, had been attended by regularly elected
members from all the western counties, Tipton be
ing among them; while the far-off log hamlets on
the banks of the Cumberland sent Robertson him-

83 Tennessee Hist. Soc. MSS. Report of "Committee of
Privileges and Elections" of Senate of Franklin, Nov. 23,
1787.

274 The Winning of the West

self.24 This assembly once more offered full par
don and oblivion of past offences to all who would
again become citizens ; and the last adherents of the
insurrectionary Government reluctantly accepted the
terms. Franklin had been in existence for three
years, during which time she had exercised all the
powers and functions of independent Statehood.
During the first year her sway in the district was
complete; during the next she was forced to hold
possession in common with North Carolina; and
then, by degrees her authority lapsed altogether.

Sevier was left in dire straits by the falling of
the State he had founded; for not only were the
North Carolina authorities naturally bitter against
him, but he had to count on the personal hostility of
Tipton. In his distress he wrote to one of the op
posing party, not personally unfriendly to him, that
he had been dragged into the Franklin movement
by the people of the county; that he wished to sus
pend hostilities, and was ready to abide by the de
cision of the North Carolina Legislature, but that
he was determined to share the fate of those who
had stood by him, whatever it might be.25 About
the time that his term as Governor expired, a writ,
issued by the North Carolina courts, was executed
against his estate. The sheriff seized all his negro
slaves, as they worked on his Nolichucky farm, and
bore them for safe-keeping to Tipton's house, a

M Hay wood, 174.

** Va. State Papers, IV, 416, 421. Sevier to Martin, April 3
and May 27, 1788.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 275

rambling cluster of stout log buildings, on Sinking
Creek of the Watauga. Sevier raised a hundred
and fifty men and marched to take them back, carry
ing a light fieldpiece. Tipton's friends gathered,
thirty or forty strong, and a siege began. Sevier
hesitated to push matters to extremity by charging
home. For a couple of days there was some skir
mishing and two or three men were killed or wound
ed. Then the county-lieutenant of Sullivan, with
a hundred and eighty militia, came to Tipton's res
cue. They surprised Sevier's camp at dawn on the
last day of February,26 while the snow was falling
heavily; and the Franklin men fled in mad panic,
only one or two being slain. Two of Sevier's sons
were taken prisoners, and Tipton was with difficulty
dissuaded from hanging them. This scrambling
fight marked the ignoble end of the State of Frank
lin. Sevier fled to the uttermost part of the frontier,
where no writs ran, and the rough settlers were de
voted to him. Here he speedily became engaged in
the Indian war.

Early in the spring of 1788, the Indians renewed
their ravages.27 The Chickamaugas were the lead
ers, but there were among them a few Creeks, and
they were also joined by some of the Cherokees
proper, goaded to anger by the encroachments of
the whites on their lands. Many of the settlers
were killed, and the people on the frontier began

48 State Dept. MSS., No. 150, Vol. III. Armstrong to
Wyllys, April 28, 1788.
*' Va. State Papers. IV, 396, 432.

276 The Winning of the West

to gather into their stockades and block-houses.
The alarm was great. One murder was of peculiar
treachery and atrocity. A man named John Kirk28
lived on a clearing on Little River, seven miles south
of Knoxville. One day when he was away from
home, an Indian named Slim Tom, well known to
the family, and believed to be friendly, came to the
cabin and asked for food. The food was given him
and he withdrew. But he had come merely as a
spy; and seeing that he had to deal only with help
less women and children, he returned with a party
of Indians who had been hiding in the woods. They
fell on the wretched creatures, and butchered them
all, eleven in number, leaving the mangled bodies
in the court-yard. The father and eldest boy were
absent and thus escaped. It would have been well
had the lad been among the slain, for his coarse
and brutal nature was roused to a thirst for indis
criminate revenge, and shortly afterward he figured
as chief actor in a deed of retaliation as revolting
and inhuman as the original crime.

At the news of the massacres the frontiersmen
gathered, as was their custom, mounted and armed,
and ready either to follow the marauding parties or
to make retaliatory inroads on their own account.
Sevier, their darling leader, was among them, and
to him they gave the command.

Another frontier leader and Indian fighter of note
was at this time living among the Cherokees. He

48 State Dept. MSS., No. 150, Vol. II, p. 435. Proclamation
of Thos. Hutchings, June 3, 1788.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 277

was Joseph Martin, who had dwelt much among
the Indians, and had great influence over them, as
he always treated them justly; though he had shown
in more than one campaign that he could handle
them in war as well as in peace. Early in 1778,
he had been appointed by North Carolina Brigadier-
General of the western counties lying beyond the
mountains. In the military organization, which
was really the most important side of the Govern
ment to the frontiersmen, this was the chief posi
tion; and Martin's duties were not only to protect
the border against Indian raids, but also to stamp
out any smouldering embers of insurrection, and
see that the laws of the State were again put in
operation.

In April he took command, and on the 24th of
the month reached the lower settlements on the Hol-
ston River.29 Here he found that a couple of set
tlers had been killed by Indians a few days before,
and he met a party or riflemen who had gathered
to avenge the death of their friends by a foray on
the Cherokee towns. Martin did not believe that
the Cherokees were responsible for the murder.
After some talk he persuaded the angry whites to
choose four of their trusted men to accompany him
as ambassadors to the Cherokee towns in order to
find out the truth.

Accordingly they all went forward together.
Martin sent runners ahead to the Cherokees and

59 State Dept. MSS., No. 150, Vol. II. Joseph Martin to H.
Knox, July 15, 1788.

278 The Winning of the West

their chiefs and young warriors gathered to meet
him. The Indians assured him that they were
guiltless of the recent murder ; that it should doubt
less be laid at the door of some Creek war party.
The Creeks, they said, kept passing through their
villages to war on the whites, and they had often
turned them back. The frontier envoys at this pro
fessed themselves satisfied, and returned to their
homes, after begging Martin to stay among the
Cherokees; and he stayed, his presence giving con
fidence to the Indians, who forthwith began to plant
their crops.

Unfortunately, about the middle of May, the mur
ders again began, and again parties of riflemen
gathered for vengeance. Martin intercepted one
of these parties ten miles from a friendly Cherokee
town; but another attacked and burned a neighbor
ing town, the inhabitants escaping with slight loss.
For a time Martin's life was jeopardized by this
attack; the Cherokees, who swore they were inno
cent of the murders, being incensed at the counter
attack. They told Martin that they thought he had
been trying to gentle them, so that the whites might
take them unawares. After a while they cooled
down; and explained to Martin that the outrages
were the work of the Creeks and Chickamaugas,
whom they could not control, and whom they hoped
the whites would punish; but that they themselves
were innocent and friendly. Then the whites sent
messages to express their regret; and though Mar
tin declined longer to be responsible for the deeds

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 279

of men of his own color, the Indians consented to
patch up another truce.30

The outrages, however, continued ; among others,
a big boat was captured by the Chickamaugas, and
all but three of the forty souls on board were killed.
The settlers drew no fine distinctions between in
different Indians ; they knew that their friends were
being murdered by savages who came from the di
rection of the Cherokee towns; and they vented
their wrath on the Indians who dwelt in these towns
because they were nearest to hand.

On May 24th Martin left the Indian town of
Chota, the beloved town, where he had been stay
ing, and rode to the French Broad. There he found
that a big levy of frontier militia, with Sevier at
their head, were preparing to march against the
Indians ; Sevier having been chosen general, as men
tioned above. Realizing that it was now hopeless
to try to prevent a war, Martin hurried back to
Chota, and removed his negroes, horses and goods.

Sevier, heedless of Martin's remonstrances, hur
ried forward on his raid, with a hundred riders.
He struck a town on Hiawassee and destroyed it,
killing a number of the warriors. This feat, and
two or three others like it, made the frontiersmen
flock to his standard;81 but before any great num
ber were embodied under him, he headed a small
party on a raid which was sullied by a deed of

80 State Dept. MSS., No. 71, Vol. II. Martin to Randolph,
June n, 1788.

81 State Dept. MSS., No. 150, Vol. III. Geo. Maxwell to
Martin, July 9, 1788.

a8o The Winning of the West

atrocious treachery and cruelty. He led some forty
men to Chilhowa32 on the Tennessee; opposite a
small town of Cherokees, who were well known to
have been friendly to the whites. Among them
were several chiefs, including an old man named
the Corn Tassel, who for years had been foremost
in the endeavor to keep the peace, and to prevent
raids on the settlers. They put out a white flag;
and the whites then hoisted one themselves. On
the strength of this, one of the Indians crossed the
river, and on demand of the whites ferried them
over.33 Sevier put the Indians in a hut, and then
a horrible deed of infamy was perpetrated. Among
Sevier's troops was young John Kirk, whose mother,
sisters, and brothers had been so foully butchered
by the Cherokee Slim Tom and his associates.
Young Kirk's brutal soul was parched with longing
for revenge, and he was, both in mind and heart,
too nearly kin to his Indian foes greatly to care
whether his vengeance fell on the wrongdoers or
on the innocent. He entered the hut where the
Cherokee chiefs were confined and brained them with
his tomahawk, while his comrades looked on with
out interfering. Sevier's friends asserted that at
the moment he was absent; but this is no excuse.
He knew well the fierce blood lust of his followers,
and it was criminal negligence on his part to leave
to their mercy the friendly Indians who had trusted

81 State Dept. MSS., No. 150, Vol. III. Thos. Hutchings
to Martin, July u, 1788.

83 State Dept. MSS., No. 150, Vol. III. Hutchings to Max
well, June 20, 1788. Hutchings to Martin, July n, 1788.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 281

to his good faith ; and, moreover, he made no effort
to punish the murderer.

As if to show the futility of the plea that Sevier
was powerless, a certain Captain Gillespie success
fully protected a captive Indian from militia violence
at this very time. He had come into the Indian
country with one of the parties which intended to
join Sevier, and while alone he captured a Chero
kee. When his troops came up they immediately
proposed to kill the Indian, and told him they cared
nothing- for his remonstrances ; whereupon he sprang
from his horse, cocked his rifle, and told them he
would shoot dead the first man who raised a hand
to molest the captive. They shrank back, and the
Indian remained unharmed.34

As for young Kirk all that need be said is that
he stands in the same category with Slim Tom,
the Indian murderer. He was a fair type of the
low-class, brutal white borderer, whose inhumanity
almost equaled that of the savage. But Sevier must
be judged by another standard. He was a member
of the Cincinnati, a correspondent of Franklin, a
follower of Washington. He sinned against the
light, and must be condemned accordingly. He
sank to the level of a lieutenant of Alva, Guise,
or Tilly, to the level of a crusading noble of the
Middle Ages. It would be unfair to couple even
this crime with those habitually committed by Sid
ney and Sir Peter Carew, Shan O'Neil and Fitz
gerald, and the other dismal heroes of the hideous

84 Haywood, p. 183.

282 The Winning of the West

wars waged between the Elizabethan English and
the Irish. But it is not unfair to compare this bor
der warfare in the Tennessee Mountains with the
border warfare of England and Scotland two cen
turies earlier. There is no blinking the fact that
in this instance Sevier and his followers stood on
the same level of brutality with "keen Lord Evers,"
and on the same level of treachery with the "as
sured" Scots at the battle of Ancrum Muir.

Even on the frontier, and at that time, the better
class of backwoodsmen expressed much horror at
the murder of the friendly chiefs. Sevier had
planned to march against the Chickamaugas with
the levies that were thronging to his banner; but
the news of the murder provoked such discussion
and hesitation that his forces melted away. He
was obliged to abandon his plan, partly owing to
this disaffection among the whites, and partly owing
to what one of the backwoodsmen in writing to
General Martin termed "the severity of the In
dians,"35 — a queer use of the word severity which
obtains to this day in out-of-the-way places through
the Alleghanies, where people style a man with a
record for desperate fighting a "severe man," and
speak of big, fierce dogs, able to tackle a wolf, as
"severe" dogs.

Elsewhere throughout the country the news of
the murder excited great indignation. The Con
tinental Congress passed resolutions condemning

35 State Department MSS., 150, III, Maxwell to Martin,
July 7, i?88.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 283

acts which they had been powerless to prevent and
were powerless to punish.36 The Justices of the
Court of Abbeville County, South Carolina, with
Andrew Pickens at their head, wrote "to the people
living on Nolechucke, French Broad, and Hoi-
stein," denouncing in unmeasured terms the en
croachments and outrages of which Sevier and his
backwoods troopers had been guilty.37 In their zeal
the Justices went a little too far, painting the Chero-
kees as a harmless people, who had always been
friendly to the Americans, — a statement which Gen
eral Martin, although he too condemned the out
rages openly and with the utmost emphasis, felt
obliged to correct, pointing out that the Cherokees
had been the inveterate and bloody foes of the
settlers throughout the Revolution.38 The Gov
ernor of North Carolina, as soon as he heard the
news, ordered the arrest of Sevier and his associates
— doubtless as much because of their revolt against
the State as because of the atrocities they had com
mitted against the Indians.39

In their panic many of the Indians fled across
the mountains and threw themselves on the mercy
of the North and South Carolinians, by whom they
were fed and protected. Others immediately joined
the Chickamaugas in force, and the frontier districts

36 Do., No. 27, p. 359, and No. 151, p. 351.
31 Do., No. 56, Andrew Pickens to Thos. Pinckney. July n,
1788; No. 150, Vol. Ill, Letter of Justices, July gth.

38 Do., No. 150, Vol. Ill, Martin to Knox, Aug. 23, 1788.

39 Do., No. 72, Samuel Johnston to Sec'y of Congress,
Sept. 29, 1788.

284 The Winning of the West

of the Franklin region were harried with vindictive
ferocity. The strokes fell most often and most
heavily on the innocent. Half of the militia were
called out, and those who most condemned the orig
inal acts of aggression committed by their neigh
bors were obliged to make common cause with these
neighbors, so as to save their own lives and the
lives of their families.40 The officers of the dis
trict ordered a general levy of the militia to march
against the ^Indian towns, and in each county the
backwoodsmen began to muster.41

Before the troops assembled many outrages were
committed by the savages. Horses were stolen, peo
ple were killed in their cabins, in their fields, on
the roads, and at the ferries ; and the settlers nearest
the Indian country gathered in their forted stations,
and sent earnest appeals for help to their unmolested
brethren. The stations were attacked, and at one
or two the Indians were successful; but generally
they were beaten off, the militia marching promptly
to the relief of each beleaguered garrison. Severe
skirmishing took place between the war parties and
the bands of militia who first reached the frontier;
and the whites were not always successful. Once,
for instance, a party of militia, greedy for fruit,
scattered through an orchard, close to an Indian

40 Do., Hutchings to Maxwell, June 2oth, and to Martin,
July nth.

41 Do., No. 150, Vol. II, Daniel Kennedy to Martin, June 6,
1788; Maxwell to Martin, July gth, etc. No. 150, Vol. Ill, p.
357: Result of Council of Officers of Washington District,
August 19, 1788.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 285

town which they supposed to be deserted; but the
Indians were hiding near by and fell upon them,
killing seventeen. The savages mutilated the dead
bodies in fantastic ways, with ferocious derision,
and left them for their friends to find and bury.42
Sevier led parties against the Indians without ceas
ing; and he and his men by their conduct showed
that they waged the war very largely for profit.
On a second incursion, which he made with canoes,
into the Hiawassee country, his followers made nu
merous tomahawk claims, or "improvements," as
they were termed, in the lands from which the In
dians fled; hoping thus to establish a right of own
ership to the country they had overrun.43

The whites speedily got the upper hand, ceasing
to stand on the defensive ; and the panic disappeared.
When the North Carolina Legislature met, the
members, and the people of the seaboard generally,
were rather surprised to find that the over-hill men
talked of the Indian war as troublesome rather than
formidable.44

The militia officers holding commissions from
North Carolina wished Martin to take command
of the retaliatory expeditions against the Cherokees ;
but Martin, though a good fighter on occasions,
preferred the arts of peace, and liked best treating
with and managing the Indians. He had already
acted as agent to different tribes on behalf of Vir-

42 Do., Martin to Knox, August 23, 1788.

43 Do., Hutchings to Martin, July ji, 1788.

44 "Columbian Magazine," II, 472.

286 The Winning of the West

ginia, North Carolina, and Georgia; and at this
time he accepted an offer from the Continental Con
gress to serve in the same capacity for all the South
ern Indians.45 Nevertheless he led a body of militia
against the Chickamauga towns. He burnt a couple,
but one of his detachments was driven back in a
fight on Lookout Mountain; his men became dis
contented, and he was forced to withdraw, followed
and harassed by the Indians. On his retreat the
Indians attacked the settlements in force, and cap
tured Gillespie's station.

Sevier was the natural leader of the Holston rifle
men in such a war; and the bands of frontiersmen
insisted that he should take the command whenever
it was possible. Sevier swam well in troubled wa
ters, and he profited by the storm he had done so
much to raise. Again and again during the summer
of 1788 he led his bands of wild horsemen on
forays against the Cherokee towns, and always with
success. He followed his usual tactics, riding hard
and long, pouncing on the Indians in their homes
before they suspected his presence, or intercepting
and scattering their war parties ; and he moved with
such rapidity that they could not gather in force
sufficient to do him harm. Not only was the fame
of his triumphs spread along the frontier, but vague
rumors reached even the old settled States of the
seaboard,46 rumors that told of the slight loss suf-

45 State Dept. MSS., No. 50, Vol. II, p. 505, etc.

46 "Columbian Magazine" for 1789, p. 204. Also letter from
French Broad, December 18, 1788.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 287

fered by his followers, of the headlong hurry of
Ms marches, of the fury with which his horsemen
charged in the skirmishes, of his successful ambus
cades and surprises, and of the heavy toll he took
in slain warriors and captive women and children,
who were borne homeward to exchange for the wives
and little ones of the settlers who had themselves
been taken prisoners.

Sevier's dashing and successful leadership wiped
out in the minds of the backwoodsmen the memory
of all his shortcomings and misdeeds, even the mem
ory of that unpunished murder of friendly Indians
which had so largely provoked the war. The rep
resentatives of the North Carolina Government and
his own personal enemies were less forgetful. The
Governor of the State had given orders to seize
him because of his violation of the laws and treaties
in committing wanton murder on friendly Indians;
and a warrant to arrest him for high treason was
issued by the courts.

As long as "Nolichucky Jack'f remained on the
border, among the rough Indian fighters whom he
had so often led to victory, he was in no danger.
But in the fall, late in October, he ventured back
to the longer settled districts. A council of officers,
with Martin presiding and Tipton present as one
of the leading members, had been held at Jonesboro,
and had just broken up when Sevier and a dozen
of his followers rode into the squalid little town.47
He drank freely and caroused with his friends; and

41 Haywood, 190.

288 The Winning of the West

he soon quarreled with one of the other side who
denounced him freely and justly for the murder of
Corn Tassel and the other peaceful chiefs. Finally
they all rode away, but when some miles out of
town Sevier got into a quarrel with another man;
and after more drinking and brawling he went to
pass the night at a house, the owner of which was
his friend. Meanwhile one of the men with whom
he had quarreled informed Tipton that his foe was
in his grasp. Tipton gathered eight or ten men and
early next morning surprised Sevier in his lodgings.
Sevier could do nothing but surrender, and Tip-
ton put him in irons and sent him across the moun
tains to Morgantown, in North Carolina, where he
was kindly treated and allowed much liberty. Most
of the inhabitants sympathized with him, having
no special repugnance to disorder, and no special
sympathy even for friendly Indians. Meanwhile a
dozen of his friends, with his two sons at their
head, crossed the mountains to rescue their beloved
leader. They came into Morgantown while court
was sitting and went unnoticed in the crowds. In
the evening, when the court adjourned and the
crowds broke up, Sevier's friends managed to get
near him with a spare horse; he mounted and they
all rode off at speed. By daybreak they were out
of danger.48 Nothing further was attempted against

48 Ramsey first copies Haywood and gives the account
correctly.

He then adds a picturesque alternative account — followed
by later writers — in which Sevier escapes in open court on
a celebrated race mare. The basis for the last account, so

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 289

him. A year later he was elected a member of the
North Carolina Legislature; after some hesitation
he was allowed to take his seat, and the last trace
of the old hostility disappeared.

Neither the North Carolinians, nor any one else,
knew that there was better ground for the charge
of treason against Sevier than had appeared in his
overt actions. He was one of those who had been
in correspondence with Gardoqui on the subject of
an alliance between the Westerners and Spain.

The year before this Congress had been much
worked up over the discovery of a supposed move
ment in Franklin to organize for the armed conquest
of Louisiana. In September, 1787, a letter was sent
by an ex-officer of the Continental line named John
Sullivan, writing from Charleston, to a former com
rade in arms; and this letter in some way became
public. Sullivan had an unpleasant reputation. He
had been involved in one of the mutinies of the
underpaid Continental troops, and was a plotting,
shifty, violent fellow. In his letter he urged his
friend to come West forthwith and secure lands on
the Tennessee; as there would soon be work cut
out for the men of that country; and, he added:
"I want you much — by God — take my word for it
we will speedily be in possession of New Orleans."49

far as it has any basis at all, lies on statements made nearly
half a century after the event, and entirely unknown to Hay-
wood. There is no evidence of any kind as to its truthful
ness. It must be set down as mere fable.

49 State Dept. MSS., No. 150, Vol. Ill, John Sullivan to
Major Wm. Brown, September 24, 1787.
VOL. VII.— 13

290 The Winning of the West

The Secretary of War at once directed General.
Harmar to interfere, by force if necessary, with the
execution of any such plan, and an officer of the
regular army was sent to Franklin to find out the
truth of the matter. This officer visited the Holston
country in April, 1788, and after careful inquiry
came to the conclusion that Sullivan had no backing,
and that no movement against Spain was contem
plated; the settlers being absorbed in the strife be
tween the followers of Sevier and of Tipton.50

The real danger for the moment lay, not in a
movement by the backwoodsmen against Spain, but
in a conspiracy of some of the backwoods leaders
with the Spanish authorities. Just at this time the
unrest in the West had taken the form, not of at
tempting the capture of Louisiana by force, but of
obtaining concessions from the Spaniards in return
for favors to be rendered them. Clark and Rob
ertson, Morgan, Brown and Innes, Wilkinson and
Sebastian, were all in correspondence with Gardoqui
and Miro, in the endeavor to come to some profit
able agreement with them. Sevier now joined the
number. His newborn State had died ; he was being
prosecuted for high treason ; he was ready to go to
any lengths against North Carolina ; and he clutched
at the chance of help from the Spaniard. At the
time North Carolina was out of the Union, so that
Sevier committed no offence against the Federal
Government.

50 Do., Lieutenant John Armstrong to Major John P.
Wyllys, April 28, 1788.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 291

Gardoqui was much interested in the progress of
affairs in Franklin; and in the effort to turn them
to the advantage of Spain he made use of James
White, the Indian agent who was in his pay. He
wrote51 home that he did not believe Spain could
force the backwoodsmen out of Franklin (which
he actually claimed as Spanish territory), but that
he had secret advices that they could easily be
brought over to the Spanish interest by proper treat
ment. When the news came of the fight between
Sevier's and Tipton's men, he judged the time to
be ripe, and sent White to Franklin to sound Sevier
and bring him over; but he did not trust White
enough to give him any written directions, merely
telling him what to do and furnishing him with
three hundred dollars for his expenses. The mis
sion was performed with such guarded caution that
only Sevier and a few of his friends ever knew of
the negotiations, and these kept their counsel well.

Sevier was in the mood to grasp a helping hand
stretched out from no matter what quarter. He
lilad no organized government back of him; but he
was in the midst of his successful Cherokee cam
paigns, and he knew the reckless Indian fighters
would gladly follow him in any movement, if he
had a chance of success. He felt that if he were
given money and arms, and the promise of outside
assistance, he could yet win the day. He jumped
at Gardoqui's cautious offers; though careful not

51 Gardoqui MSS., Gardoqui to Florida Blanca, April 18,

1788.

292 The Winning of the West

to promise to subject himself to Spain, and doubt
less with no idea of playing the part of Spanish
vassal longer than the needs of the moment required.

In July he wrote to Gardoqui, eager to strike a
bargain with him; and in September sent him two
letters by the hand of his son James Sevier, who
accompanied White when the latter made his return
journey to the Federal capital.52 One letter, which
was not intended to be private, formally set forth
the status of Franklin with reference to the Indians,
and requested the representatives of the Catholic
king to help keep the peace with the Southern tribes.
The other letter was the one of importance. In
it he assured Gardoqui that the Western people
had grown to know that their hopes of prosperity
rested on Spain, and that the principal people of
Franklin were anxious to enter into an alliance with,
and obtain commercial concessions from, the Span
iards. He importuned Gardoqui for money and for
military aid, assuring him that the Spaniards could
best accomplish their ends by furnishing these sup
plies immediately, especially as the struggle over
the adoption of the Federal Constitution made the
time opportune for revolt.

Gardoqui received White and James Sevier with
much courtesy, and was profuse, though vague, in
his promises. He sent them both to New Orleans
that Miro might hear and judge of their plans.53
Nevertheless nothing came of the project, and doubt-

M Gardoqui MSS., Sevier to Gardoqui, Sept. 12, 1788.
M Gardoqui MSS., Gardoqui to Miro, Oct. 10, 1788.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 293

less only a few people in Franklin ever knew that
it existed. As for Sevier, when he saw that he was
baffled he suddenly became a Federalist and an ad
vocate of a strong central government; and this,
doubtless, not because of love for Federalism, but
to show his hostility to North Carolina, which had
at first refused to enter the new Union.54 This
particular move was fairly comic in its abrupt un
expectedness.

Thus the last spark of independent life flickered
out in Franklin proper. The people who had set
tled on the Indian borders were left without gov
ernment, North Carolina regarding them as tres
passers on the Indian territory.55 They accordingly
met and organized a rude governmental machine,
on the model of the Commonwealth of Franklin;
and the wild little State existed as a separate and
independent republic until the new Federal Govern
ment included it in the territory south of the Ohio.56

54 "Columbian Magazine," Aug. 27, 1788, Vol. II, 542.

85 Haywood, 195.

&* In my first two volumes I have discussed, once for all,
the worth of Gilmore's "histories" of Sevier and Robertson
and their times. It is unnecessary further to consider a
single statement they contain.

CHAPTER V
KENTUCKY'S STRUGGLE FOR STATEHOOD, 1784-1790

WHILE the social condition of the communi
ties on the Cumberland and the Tennessee
had changed very slowly, in Kentucky the changes
had been rapid.

Col. William Fleming, one of the heroes of the
battle of the Great Kanawha, and a man of note
on the border, visited Kentucky on surveying busi
ness in the winter of 1779-80. His journal shows
the state of the new settlements as seen by an un
usually competent observer; for he was an intelli
gent, well-bred, thinking man. Away from the
immediate neighborhood of the few scattered log
hamlets, he found the wilderness absolutely virgin.
The easiest way to penetrate the forest was to fol
low the "buffalo paths," which the settlers usually
adopted for their own bridle trails, and finally cut
out and made into roads. Game swarmed. There
were multitudes of swans, geese, and ducks on the
river; turkeys and the small furred beasts, such as
coons, abounded. Big game was almost as plentiful.
Colonel Fleming shot, for the subsistence of him
self and his party, many buffalo, bear, and deer,
and some elk. His attention was drawn by the
great flocks of paroquets, which appeared even
(294)

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 295

in winter, and by the big, boldly colored, ivory-
billed woodpeckers — birds which have long drawn
back to the most remote swamps of the hot Gulf-
coast, fleeing before man precisely as the buffalo
and elk had fled.

Like all similar parties, he suffered annoyance
from the horses straying. He lost much time in
hunting up the strayed beasts, and frequently had
to pay the settlers for helping find them. There
were no luxuries to be had for any money, and
even such common necessaries as corn and salt were
scarce and dear. Half a peck of salt cost a little
less than eight pounds, and a bushel of corn the
same. The surveying party, when not in the woods,
stayed at the cabins of the more prominent settlers,
and had to pay well for board and lodging, and for
washing, too.

Fleming was much struck by the misery of the
settlers. At the Falls they were sickly, suffering
with fever and ague; many of the children were
dying. Boonesboro and Harrodsburg were very
dirty, the inhabitants were sickly, and the offal and
dead beasts lay about, poisoning the air and the
water. During the winter no more corn could be
procured than was enough to furnish an occasional
hoe-cake. The people sickened on a steady diet
of buffalo-bull beef, cured in smoke without salt,
and prepared for the table by boiling. The buffalo
was the stand-by of the settlers ; they used his flesh1
as their common food, and his robe for covering;
they made moccasins of his hide and fiddle-strings

296 The Winning of the West

of his sinews, and combs of his horns. They spun
his winter coat into yarn, and out of it they made
coarse cloth, like wool. They made a harsh linen
from the bark of the rotted nettles. They got sugar
from the maples. There were then, Fleming esti
mated, about three thousand souls in Kentucky.
The Indians were everywhere, and all men lived in
mortal terror of their lives; no settlement was free
from the dread of the savages.1

Half a dozen years later all this was changed.
The settlers had fairly swarmed into the Kentucky
country, and the population was so dense that the
true frontiersmen, the real pioneers, were already
wandering off to Illinois and elsewhere; every man
of them desiring to live on his own land, by his own
labor, and scorning to work for wages. The un
exampled growth had wrought many changes; not
the least was the way in which it lessened the im
portance of the first hunter-settlers and hunter-sol
diers. The great herds of game had been wofully
thinned, and certain species of the buffalo prac
tically destroyed. The killing of game was no
longer the chief industry, and the flesh and hides
of wild beasts were no longer the staples of food
and clothing. The settlers already raised crops so
large that they were anxious to export the surplus.
They no longer clustered together in palisaded ham
lets. They had cut out trails and roads in every
direction from one to another of the many settle-

1 Draper MSS., Colonel Wm. Fleming, "MS. Journal in
Kentucky," Nov. 12, 1779, to May 27, 1780.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 297

ments. The scattered clearings on which they gen
erally lived dotted the forest everywhere, and the
towns, each with its straggling array of log cabins,
and its occasional frame houses, did not differ ma
terially from those in the remote parts of Pennsyl
vania and Virginia. The gentry were building
handsome houses, and their amusements and occu
pations were those of the up-country planters of
the sea-board.

The Indians were still a scourge to the settle
ments;2 but, though they caused much loss of life,
there was not the slightest danger of their imperil
ing the existence of the settlements as a whole, or
even of any considerable town or group of clearings.
Kentucky was no longer all a frontier. In the
thickly peopled districts life was reasonably safe,
though the frontier proper was harried and the re
mote farms jeopardized and occasionally aban
doned,3 while the river route and the Wilderness
Road were beset by the savages. Where the coun
try was at all well settled, the Indians did not at
tack in formidable war bands, like those that had
assailed the forted villages in the early years of
their existence; they skulked through the woods by
twos and threes, and pounced only upon the help
less or the unsuspecting.

Nevertheless, if the warfare was not dangerous
to the life and growth of the Commonwealth, it

' * State Department MSS., No. 151, p. 259, Report of Secre
tary of War, July 10, 1787: also, No. 60, p, 277.

3 Virginia State Papers, IV, 149, State Department MSS.,
No. 56, p. 271.

298 The Winning of the West

was fraught with undreamed-of woe and hardship
to individual settlers and their families. On the
outlying farms no man could tell when the blow
would fall. Thus, in one backwoodsman's written
reminiscences, there is a brief mention of a settler
named Israel Hart, who, during one May night, in
1787, suffered much from a toothache. In the morn
ing he went to a neighbor's, some miles away
through the forest, to have his tooth pulled, and
when he returned he found his wife and his five
children dead and cut to pieces.4 Incidents of this
kind are related in every contemporary account of
Kentucky; and though they commonly occurred in
the thinly peopled districts, this was not always the
case. Teamsters and travelers were killed on the
highroads near the towns — even in the neighbor
hood of the very town where the constitutional con
vention was sitting.

In all new-settled regions in the United States,
so long as there was a frontier at all, the changes
in the pioneer population proceeded in a certain
definite order, and Kentucky furnished an example
of the process. Throughout our history as a na
tion the frontiersmen have always been mainly na
tive Americans, and those of European birth have
been speedily beaten into the usual frontier type by
the wild forces against which they waged unending
war. As the frontiersmen conquered and trans
formed the wilderness, so the wilderness in its turn
created and preserved the type of man who over-

4 Draper MSS., Whitley MS. Narrative.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 299

came it. Nowhere else on the continent has so
sharply defined and distinctively American a type
been produced as on the frontier, and a single
generation has always been more than enough for
its production. The influence of the wild country
upon the man is almost as great as the effect of
the man upon the country. The frontiersman de
stroys the wilderness, and yet its destruction means
his own. He passes away before the coming of
the very civilization whose advance guard he has
been. Nevertheless, much of his blood remains,
and his striking characteristics have great weight
in shaping the development of the land. The vary
ing peculiarities of the different groups of men who
have pushed the frontier westward at different
times and places remain stamped with greater or .
less clearness on the people of the communities that
grow up in the frontier's stead.5

In Kentucky, as in Tennessee and the western
portions of the seaboard States, and as later in the
great West, different types of settlers appeared suc
cessively on the frontier. The hunter or trapper
came first. Sometimes he combined with hunting
and trapping the functions of an Indian trader, but
ordinarily the American, as distinguished from the
French or Spanish frontiersman, treated the Indian
trade as something purely secondary to his more
regular pursuits. In Kentucky and Tennessee the

5 Frederick Jackson Turner: "The Significance of the
Frontier in American History." A suggestive pamphlet,
published by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin.

300 The Winning of the West

first-comers from the East were not traders at all,
and were hunters rather than trappers. Boone was
a type of this class, and Boone's descendants went
westward generation by generation until they
reached the Pacific.

Close behind the mere hunter came the rude hunt
er-settler. He pastured his stock on the wild range,
and lived largely by his skill with the rifle. He
worked with simple tools and he did his work
roughly. His squalid cabin was destitute of the
commonest comforts; the blackened stumps and
dead, girdled trees stood thick in his small and
badly tilled field. He was adventurous, restless,
shiftless, and he felt ill at ease and cramped by the
presence of more industrious neighbors. As they
pressed in round about him he would sell his claim,
gather his cattle and his scanty store of tools and
household goods, and again wander forth to seek
uncleared land. The Lincolns, the forbears of the
great President, were a typical family of this class.

Most of the frontiersmen of these two types
moved fitfully westward with the frontier itself,
or near it, but in each place where they halted, or
where the advance of the frontier was for the mo
ment stayed, some of their people remained to grow
up and mix with the rest of the settlers.

The third class consisted of the men who were
thrifty, as well as adventurous, the men who were
even more industrious than restless. These were
they who entered in to hold the land, and who
handed it on as an inheritance to their children

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 301

and their children's children. Often, of course, '
these settlers of a higher grade found that for some
reason they did not prosper, or heard of better
chances still further in the wilderness, and so moved
onward, like their less thrifty and more uneasy
brethren, the men who half-cleared their lands and
half-built their cabins. But, as a rule, these better-
class settlers were not mere life-long pioneers. They
wished to find good land on which to build, and
plant, and raise their big families of healthy chil
dren, and when they found such land they wished
to make thereon their permanent homes. They did
not share the impulse which kept their squalid, rov
ing fellows of the backwoods ever headed for the
vague beyond. They had no sympathy with the feel
ing which drove these humbler wilderness-wander
ers always onward, and made them believe, wher
ever they were, that they would be better off some
where else, and that they would be better off in
that somewhere which lay in the unknown and un
tried. On the contrary, these thriftier settlers
meant to keep whatever they had once grasped.
They got clear title to their lands. Though they
first built cabins, as soon as might be they replaced
them with substantial houses and barns. Though
they at first girdled and burnt the standing timber,
to clear the land, later they tilled it as carefully as
any farmer of the seaboard States. They composed
the bulk of the population, and formed the backbone
and body of the State. The McAfees may be taken
as a typical family of this class.

302 The Winning of the West

Yet a fourth class was composed of the men of
means, of the well-to-do planters, merchants, and
lawyers, of the men whose families already stood
high on the Atlantic slope. The Marshalls were
such men; and there were many other families of
the kind in Kentucky. Among them were an un
usually large proportion of the families who came
from the fertile limestone region of Botetourt
County in Virginia, leaving behind them, in the
hands of their kinsmen, their roomy, comfortable
houses, which stand to this day. These men soon
grew to take the leading places in the new common
wealth. They were of good blood — using the words
as they should be used, as meaning blood that has
flowed through the veins of generations of self-re
straint and courage and hard work, and careful
training in mind and in the manly virtues. Their
inheritance of sturdy and self-reliant manhood
helped them greatly; their blood told in their favor
as blood generally does tell when other things are
equal. If they prized intellect they prized character
more; they were strong in body and mind, stout
of heart, and resolute of will. They felt that pride
of race which spurs a man to effort, instead of mak
ing him feel that he is excused from effort. They
realized that the qualities they inherited from their
forefathers ought to be further developed by them
as their forefathers had originally developed them.
They knew that their blood and breeding, though
making it probable that they would with proper
effort succeed, yet entitled them to no success which

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 303

they could not fairly earn in open contest with their
rivals.

Such were the different classes of settlers who-
successively came into Kentucky, as into other
Western lands. There were of course no sharp
lines of cleavage between the classes. They merged
insensibly into one another, and the same individual
might at different times stand in two or three. As
a rule the individuals composing the first two were
crowded out by their successors, and, after doing
the roughest of the pioneer work, moved westward
with the frontier; but some families were of course
continually turning into permanent abodes what
were merely temporary halting places of the greater
number.

With the change in population came the corre
sponding change in intellectual interests and in ma
terial pursuits. The axe was the tool, and the rifle
the weapon, of the early settlers; their business
was to kill the wild beasts, to fight the savages, and
to clear the soil; and the inthralling topics of con
versation were the game and the Indians, and, as
the settlements grew, the land itself. As the farms
became thick, and towns throve, the life became
more complex, the chances for variety in work and
thought increased likewise. The men of law sprang
into great prominence, owing in part to the inter
minable litigation over the land titles. The more
serious settlers took about as much interest in mat
ters theological as in matters legal; and the con
gregations of the different churches were at times

304 The Winning of the West

deeply stirred by quarrels over questions of church
discipline and doctrine.6 Most of the books were
either text-books of the simpler kinds or else theo
logical.

Except when there was an Indian campaign, pol
itics and the river commerce formed the two chief
interests for all Kentuckians, but especially for the
well-to-do.

In spite of all the efforts of the Spanish officials
the volume of trade on the Mississippi grew stead
ily. Six or eight years after the close of the Rev
olution the vast stretches of brown water, swirling
ceaselessly between the melancholy forests, were
already furrowed everywhere by the keeled and
keelless craft. The hollowed log in which the In
dian paddled; the same craft, the pirogue, only a
little more carefully made, and on a little larger
model, in which the Creole trader carried his
load of paints and whiskey and beads and bright
cloths to trade for the peltries of the savage;
the rude little scow in which .some backwoods farm
er drifted down stream with his cargo, the prod
uce of his own toil; the keel boats which, with
square-sails and oars, plied up as well as down the
river; the flotilla of huge flat boats, the property
of some rich merchant, laden deep with tobacco
and flour, and manned by crews who were counted
rough and lawless even in the rough and lawless

6 Durrett Collection; see various theological writings,
e.g., "A Progress," etc., by Adam Rankin, Pastor at Lex
ington. Printed "at the Sign of the Buffalo," Jan. i, 1793.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 305

backwoods — all these, and others too, were familiar
sights to every traveler who descended the Missis
sippi from Pittsburg to New Orleans,7 or who
was led by business to journey from Louisville to
St. Louis or to Natchez or New Madrid.

The fact that the river commerce throve was
partly the cause and partly the consequence of the
general prosperity of Kentucky. The pioneer days,
with their fierce and squalid struggle for bare life,
were over. If men were willing to work, and es
caped the Indians, they were sure to succeed in
earning a comfortable livelihood in a country so
rich. "The neighbors are doing well in every sense
of the word," wrote one Kentuckian to another,
"they get children and raise crops."8 Like all other
successful and masterful people the Kentuckians
fought well and bred well, and they showed by their
actions their practical knowledge of the truth that
no race can ever hold its own unless its members
are able and willing to work hard with their hands.

The general prosperity meant rude comfort every
where; and it meant a good deal more than rude
comfort for the men of greatest ability. By the
time the river commerce had become really consid
erable, the rich merchants, planters, and lawyers
had begun to build two-story houses of brick or
stone, like those in which they had lived in Vir
ginia. They were very fond of fishing, shooting,

1 John Pope's "Tour," in 1790. Printed at Richmond in
1792.

8 Draper MSS., Jonathan Clark Papers, O' Fallen to Clark,
Isles of Ohio, May 30, 1791.

306 The Winning of the West

and riding, and were lavishly hospitable. They
sought to have their children well taught, not only
in letters but in social accomplishments like danc
ing; and at the proper season they liked to visit
the Virginian watering-places, where they met
"genteel company" from the older States, and
lodged in good taverns in which "a man could have
a room and a bed to himself."9

An agreement entered into about this time be
tween one of the Clarks and a friend shows that
Kentuckians were already beginning to appreciate
the merits of neat surroundings even for a rather
humble town-house. This particular house, together
with the stable and lot, was rented for "one cow"
for the first eight months, and two dollars a month
after that — certainly not an excessive rate; and it
was covenanted that everything should be kept in
good repairs, and particularly that the grass plots
around the house should not be "trod on or tore
up."10

All Kentuckians took a great interest in politics,
as is the wont of self-asserting, independent free
men, living under a democratic government. But
the gentry and men of means and the lawyers very
soon took the lead in political affairs. A larger
proportion of these classes came from Virginia than
was the case with the rest of the population, and
they shared the eagerness and aptitude for political

9 Letter of a young Virginian, L. Butler, April 13, 1790.
"Magazine of Amer. Hist.," I, 113.

10 Draper MSS. Wm. Clark Papers. Agreement between
Clark and Bagley, April i, 1790.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 307

life generally shown by the leading families of Vir
ginia. In many cases they were kin to these fam
ilies; not, however, as a rule, to the families of the
tidewater region, the aristocrats of colonial days,
but to the families — so often of Presbyterian Irish
stock — who rose to prominence in western Vir
ginia at the time of the Revolution. In Kentucky
all were mixed together, no matter from what State
they came, the wrench of the break from their
home ties having shaken them so that they readily
adapted themselves to new conditions, and easily
assimilated with one another. As for their differ
ences of race origin, these had ceased to influence
their lives even before they came to Kentucky.
They were all Americans, in feeling as well as in
name, by habit as well as by birth ; and the positions
they took in the political life of the West was
determined partly by the new conditions surround
ing them, and partly by the habits bred in them
through generations of life on American soil.

One man, who would naturally have played a
prominent part in Kentucky politics, failed to do
so from a variety of causes. This was George
Rogers Clark. He was by preference a military
rather than a civil leader; he belonged by choice
and habit to the class of pioneers and Indian fight
ers whose influence was waning; his remarkable
successes had excited much envy and jealousy, while
his subsequent ignominious failure had aroused con
tempt; and, finally, he was undone by his fondness
for strong drink. He drew himself to one side,

308 The Winning of the West

though he chafed at the need, and in his private
letters he spoke with bitterness of the "big little
men," the ambitious nobodies, whose jealousy had
prompted them to destroy him by ten thousand lies ;
and, making a virtue of necessity, he plumed him
self on the fact that he did not meddle with politics,
and sneered at the baseness of his fellow-citizens,
whom he styled "a swarm of hungry persons gaping
for bread."11

Benjamin Logan, who was senior colonel and
county lieutenant of the District of Kentucky, stood
second to Clark in the estimation of the early set
tlers, the men who, riding their own horses and
carrying their own rifles, had so often followed
both commanders on their swift raids against the
Indian towns. Logan naturally took the lead in the
first serious movement to make Kentucky an indepen
dent State. In its beginnings this movement showed
a curious parallelism to what was occurring in
Franklin at the same time, though when once fairly
under way the difference between the cases became
very strongly marked. In each .case the prime
cause in starting the movement was trouble with
the Indians. In each, the first steps were taken by
the commanders of the local militia, and the first
convention was summoned on the same plan, a mem
ber being elected by every militia company. The
companies were territorial as -well as military units,
and the early settlers were all, in practice as well

11 Draper MSS., G. R. Clark to J. Clark, April 20, 1788, and
September 2, 1791.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 309

as in theory, embodied in the militia. Thus in both
Kentucky and Franklin the movements were begun
in the same way by the same class of Indian-fighting
pioneers; and the method of organization chosen
shows clearly the rough military form which at
that period settlement in the wilderness, in the teeth
of a hostile savagery, always assumed.

In 1784 fear of a formidable Indian invasion —
an unwarranted fear, as the result showed — became
general in Kentucky, and in the fall Logan sum
moned a meeting of the field officers to discuss the
danger and to provide against it. When the offi
cers gathered and tried to evolve some plan of
operations, they found that they were helpless.
They were merely the officers of one of the districts
of Virginia; they could take no proper steps of
their own motion, and Virginia was too far away
and her interests had too little in common with
theirs, for the Virginian authorities to prove satis
factory substitutes for their own.12 No officials in
Kentucky were authorized to order an expedition
against the Indians, or to pay the militia who took
part in it, or to pay for their provisions and muni
tions of war. Any expedition of the kind had to
be wholly voluntary, and could of course only be
undertaken under the strain of a great emergency;
as a matter of fact the expeditions of Clark and
Logan in 1786 were unauthorized by law, and were

15 Marshall, himself an actor in these events, is the best
authority for this portion of Kentucky history ; see also
Green; and compare Collins, Butler, and Brown.

3io The Winning of the West

carried out by bodies of mere volunteers, who gath
ered only because they were forced to do so by bit
ter need. Confronted by such a condition of affairs,
the militia officers issued a circular-letter to the
people of the district, recommending that on De
cember 24, 1784, a convention should be held at
Danville further to consider the subject, and that
this convention should consist of delegates elected
one from each militia company.

The recommendation was well received by the
people of the district; and on the appointed date
the convention met at Danville. Col. William
Fleming, the old Indian fighter and surveyor, was
again visiting Kentucky, and he was chosen Pres
ident of the convention. After some discussion
the members concluded that, while some of the
disadvantages under which they labored could be
remedied by the action of the Virginia Legislature,
the real trouble was deep-rooted, and could only be
met by separation from Virginia and the erection
of Kentucky into a State. There was, however,
much opposition to this plan, and the convention
wisely decided to dissolve, after recommending to
the people to elect, by counties, members who should
meet in convention at Danville in May for the ex
press purpose of deciding on the question of address
ing to the Virginia Assembly a request for sep
aration.13

The convention assembled accordingly, Logan

13 State Dept. MSS. Madison Papers, Wallace to Madison,
Sept. 25, 1785.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 311

being one of the members, while it was presided
over by Col. Samuel McDowell, who, like Fleming,
was a veteran Indian fighter and hero of the Great
Kanawha. Up to this point the phases through
which the movement for Statehood in Kentucky had
passed were almost exactly the same as the phases
of the similar movement in Franklin. But the two
now entered upon diverging lines of progression.
In each case the home government was willing
to grant the request for separation, but wished to
affix a definite date to their consent, and to make
the fulfilment of certain conditions a prerequi
site.

In each case there were two parties in the district
desiring separation, one of them favoring imme
diate and revolutionary action, while the other, with
much greater wisdom and propriety, wished to act
through the forms of law and with the consent of
the parent State. In Kentucky the latter party
triumphed. Moreover, while up to the time of
this meeting of the May convention the leaders
in the movement had been the old Indian fighters,
after this date the lead was taken by men who
had come to Kentucky only after the great rush
of immigrants began. The new men were not
backwoods hunter-warriors, like Clark and Logan,
Sevier, Robertson, and Tipton. They were poli
ticians of the Virginia stamp. They founded po
litical clubs, one of which, the Danville Club, be
came prominent, and in them they discussed with
fervid eagerness the public questions of the day,

ji2 The Winning of the West

the members showing a decided tendency toward
the Jeffersonian school of political thought.

The convention, which met at Danville, in May,
1785, decided unanimously that it was desirable
to separate, by constitutional methods, from Vir
ginia, and to secure admission as a separate State
into the Federal Union.

Accordingly, it directed the preparation of
a petition to this effect, to be sent to the Vir
ginia Legislature, and prepared an address to the
people in favor of the proposed course of action.
Then, in a queer spirit of hesitancy, instead of
acting on its own responsibility, as it had both the
right and power to do, the convention decided that
the issuing of the address, and the ratification of
its own actions generally, should be submitted to
another convention, which was summoned to meet
at the same place in August of the same year.
The people of the district were as yet by no
means a unit in favor of separation, and this
made the convention hesitate to take any irrevo
cable step.

One of the members of this convention was Judge
Caleb Wallace, a recent arrival in Kentucky, and
a representative of the new school of Kentucky pol
iticians. He was a friend and ally of Brown and
Innes. He was also a friend of Madison, and to
him he wrote a full account of the reasons which
actuated the Kentuckians in the step they had
taken.14 He explained that he and the people of

14 State Department MSS. Madison Papers, Caleb Wallace
to Madison, July 12, 1785.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 313

the district generally felt that they did not "enjoy
a greater portion of liberty than an American col
ony might have done a few years ago had she been
allowed a representation in the British Parlia
ment." He complained bitterly that some of the
taxes were burdensome and unjust, and that the
money raised for the expenses of government all
went to the East, to Virginia proper, while no cor
responding benefits were received ; and insisted that
the seat of government was too remote for Ken
tucky ever to get justice from the rest of the State.
Therefore, he said, he thought it would be wiser
to part in peace rather than remain together in
discontented and jealous union. But he frankly
admitted that he was by no means sure that the
people of the district possessed sufficient wisdom
and virtue to fit them for successful self-govern
ment, and he anxiously asked Madison's advice as
to several provisions which it was thought might
be embodied in the constitution of the new State.
In the August convention Wilkinson sat as a
member, and he succeeded in committing his col
leagues to a more radical course of action than that
of the preceding convention. The resolutions they
forwarded to the Virginia Legislature, asked the
immediate erection of Kentucky into an indepen
dent State, and expressed the conviction that the
new commonwealth would undoubtedly be admit
ted into the Union. This, of course, meant that
Kentucky would first become a power outside and
independent of the Union; and no provision was

VOL. VII.— 14

3 H The Winning of the West

made for entry into the Union beyond the expres
sion of a hopeful belief that it would be allowed.

Such a course would have been in the highest
degree unwise; and the Virginians refused to allow
it to be followed. Their Legislature, in January,
1786, provided that a new convention should be
held in Kentucky in September, 1786, and that, if
it declared for independence, the State should come
into being after the ist of September, 1787, pro
vided, however, that Congress, before June I, 1787,
consented to the erection of the new State, and
agreed to its admission into the Union. It was
also provided that another convention should be
held in the summer of 1787 to draw up a consti
tution for the new State.15

Virginia thus, with great propriety, made the
acquiescence of Congress a condition precedent for
the formation of the new State. Wilkinson im
mediately denounced this condition and demanded
that Kentucky declare herself an independent State
forthwith, no matter what Congress or Virginia
might say. All the disorderly, unthinking, and sepa
ratist elements followed his lead. Had his policy
been adopted the result would probably have been a
civil war ; and at the least there would have followed
a period of anarchy and confusion, and a condition of
things similar to that obtaining at this very time in
the territory of Franklin. The most enlightened and
farseeing men of the district were alarmed at the
outlook ; and a vigorous campaign in favor of order-

15 Marshall, I, 224.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 315

ly action was begun, under the lead of men like the
Marshalls. These men were themselves uncompro
misingly in favor of Statehood for Kentucky; but
they insisted that it should come in an orderly way,
and not by a silly and needless revolution, which
could serve no good purpose and was certain to
entail much disorder and suffering upon the com
munity. They insisted, furthermore, that there
should be no room for doubt in regard to the new
State's entering1 the Union.

There were thus two well-defined parties, and
there were hot contests for seats in the convention.
One unforeseen event delayed the organization of
that body. When the time that it should have con
vened arrived, Clark and Logan were making their
raids against the Shawnees and the Wabash In
dians. So many members-elect were absent in com
mand of their respective militia companies that the
convention merely met to adjourn, no quorum to
transact business being obtained until January,
1787. The convention then sent to the Virginian
Legislature explaining the reason for the delay, and
requesting that the terms of the act of separation
already passed should be changed to suit the new
conditions.

Virginia had so far acted wisely; but now she
in her turn showed unwisdom, for her Legislature
passed a new act, providing for another convention,
to be held in August, 1787, the separation from Vir
ginia only to be consummated if Congress, prior to
July 4th, 1788, should agree to the erection of the

316 The Winning of the West

State and provide for its admission to the Union.
When news of this act, with its requirement of need
less and tedious delay, reached the Kentucky con
vention, it adjourned for good, with much chagrin.

Wilkinson and the other separatist leaders took
advantage of this very natural chagrin to inflame
the minds of the people against both Virginia and
Congress. It was at this time that the Westerners
became deeply stirred by exaggerated reports of the
willingness of Congress to yield the right to navi
gate the Mississippi ; and the separatist chiefs fanned
their discontent by painting the danger as real and
imminent, although they must speedily have learned
that it had already ceased to exist. Moreover,
there was much friction between the Federal and
Virginian authorities and the Kentucky militia offi
cers in reference to the Indian raids. The Ken-
tuckians showed a disposition to include all Indians,
good and bad alike, in the category of foes. On
the other hand the home authorities were inclined to
forbid the Kentuckians to make the offensive re
turn-forays which could alone render successful
their defensive warfare against the savages. All
these causes combined to produce much irritation,
and the separatists began to talk rebellion. One of
their leaders, Innes, in a letter to the Governor of
Virginia, threatened that Kentucky would revolt
not only from the parent State but from the Union,
if heed were not paid to her wishes and needs.18

However, at this time Wilkinson started on his

»• Green, 83.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 317

first trading voyage to New Orleans, and the dis
trict was freed from his very undesirable presence.
He was the mainspring of the movement in favor
of lawless separation; for the furtive, restless, un
scrupulous man had a talent for intrigue which
rendered him dangerous at a crisis of such a kind.
In his absence the feeling cooled. The convention
met in September, 1787, and acted with order and
propriety, passing an act which provided for State
hood upon the terms and conditions laid down by
Virginia. The act went through by a nearly unani
mous vote, only two members dissenting, while
three or four refused to vote either way. Both Vir
ginia and the Continental Congress were notified
of the action taken.

The only adverse comment that could be made
on the proceedings was that in the address to Con
gress there was expressed a doubt, which was almost
equivalent to a threat, as to what the district would
do if it was not given full life as a State. But this
fear as to the possible consequences was real, and
many persons who did not wish for even a con
stitutional separation, nevertheless favored it be
cause they dreaded lest the turbulent and disorderly
elements might break out in open violence if they
saw themselves chained indefinitely to those whose
interests were, as they believed, hostile to theirs.
The lawless and shiftless folk, and the extreme sep
aratists, as a whole, wished for complete and abso
lute independence of both State and Nation, because
it would enable them to escape paying their share

318 The Winning of the West

of the Federal and State debts, would permit them
to confiscate the lands of those whom they called
"non-resident monopolizers," and would allow of
their treating with the Indians according to their
own desires. The honest, hardworking, forehand
ed, and farsighted people thought that the best way
to defeat these mischievous agitators was to take
the matter into their own hands, and provide for
Kentucky's being put on an exact level with the
older States.17

With Wilkinson's return to Kentucky, after his
successful trading trip to New Orleans, the dis
union agitation once more took formidable form.
The news of his success excited the cupidity of
every mercantile adventurer, and the whole district
became inflamed with desire to reap the benefits of
the rich river-trade ; and naturally the people formed
the most exaggerated estimate of what these bene
fits would be. Chafing at the way the restrictions
imposed by the Spanish officials hampered their
commerce, the people were readily led by Wilkin
son and his associates to consider the Federal au
thorities as somehow to blame because these restric
tions were not removed.

The discontent was much increased by the grow
ing fury of the Indian ravages. There had been a
lull in the murderous woodland warfare during the
years immediately succeeding the close of the Revo
lution, but the storm had again gathered. The hos-

" State Dept. MSS. Madison Papers, Wallace to Madison,
Nov. 12, 1787.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 319

tility of the savages had grown steadily. By the
summer of 1787 the Kentucky frontier was suffer
ing much. The growth of the district was not
stopped, nor were there any attempts made against
it by large war bands ; and in the thickly settled re
gions life went on as usual. But the outlying neigh
borhoods were badly punished, and the county lieu
tenants were clamorous in their appeals for aid to
the Governor of Virginia. They wrote that so many
settlers had been killed on the frontier that the
others had either left their clearings and fled to the
interior for safety, or else had gathered in the log
forts, and so were unable to raise crops for the sup
port of their families. Militia guards and small
companies of picked scouts were kept continually
patrolling the exposed regions near the Ohio, but
the forays grew fiercer, and the harm done was
great.18 In their anger the Kentuckians denounced
the Federal Government for not aiding them, the
men who were loudest in their denunciations being
the very men who were most strenuously bent on
refusing to adopt the new Constitution, which alone
could give the National Government the power to
act effectually in the interest of the people.

While the spirit of unrest and discontent was
high, the question of ratifying or rejecting this new
Federal Constitution came up for decision. The
Wilkinson party, and all the men who believed in
a weak central government, or who wished the Fed
eral tie dissolved outright, were, of course, violently

18 State Dept. MSS., No. 71, Vol. II, pp. 561, 563.

320 The Winning of the West

opposed to ratification. Many weak or short-sight
ed men, and the doctrinaires and theorists — most
of the members of the Danville political club, for
instance — announced that they wished to ratify the
Constitution, but only after it had been amended.
As such prior amendment was impossible, this
amounted merely to playing into the hands of the
separatists; and the men who followed it were re
sponsible for the by no means creditable fact that
most of the Kentucky members in the Virginia con
vention voted against ratification. Three of them,
however, had the patriotism and foresight to vote
in favor of the Constitution.

Another irritating delay in the march toward
Statehood now occurred. In June, 1788, the Con
tinental Congress declared that it was expedient
to erect Kentucky into a State.19 But immediately
afterward news came that the Constitution had been
ratified by the necessary nine States, and that the
new government was, therefore, practically in be
ing. This meant the dissolution of the old Confed
eration, so that there was no longer any object in
admitting Kentucky to membership, and Congress
thereupon very wisely refused to act further in the
matter. Unfortunately, Brown, who was the Ken
tucky delegate in Congress, was one of the separa
tist leaders. He wrote home an account of the mat
ter, in which he painted the refusal as due to the
jealousy felt by the East for the West. As a matter
of fact the delegates from all the States, except Vir-

19 State Dept. MSS., No. 20, Vol. I, p. 341, etc.

The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 321

ginia, had concurred in the action taken. Brown
suppressed this fact, and used language carefully
calculated to render the Kentuckians hostile to the
Union.

Naturally all this gave an impetus to the separatist
movement. The district held two conventions, in
July and again in November, during the year 1788;
and in both of them the separatist leaders made de
termined efforts to have Kentucky forthwith erect
herself into an independent State. In uttering their
opinions and desires they used vague language as to
what they would do when once separated from Vir
ginia. It is certain that they bore in mind at the
time at least the possibility of separating outright
from the Union and entering into a close alliance
with Spain. The moderate men, headed by those
who were devoted to the national idea, strenuously
opposed this plan; they triumphed and Kentucky
merely sent a request to Virginia for an act of sep
aration in accordance with the recommendations of
Congress.20

It was in connection with these conventions that
there appeared the first newspaper ever printed in
this new West ; the west which lay no longer among
the Alleghanies, but beyond them. It was a small
weekly sheet called the "Kentucke Gazette," and the
first number appeared in August, 1787. The editor
and publisher was one John Bradford, who brought
his printing press down the river on a flat-boat ; and
some of the type were cut out of dogwood. In poli-

M See Marshall and Green for this year.

322 The Winning of the West

tics the paper sided with the separatists and clam
ored for revolutionary action by Kentucky.21

The purpose of the extreme separatists was, un
questionably to keep Kentucky out of the Union
and turn her into a little independent nation, — a
nation without a present or a future, an English-
speaking Uruguay or Ecuador. The back of this
separatist movement was broken by the action of
the fall convention of 1788, which settled definitely
that Kentucky should become a State of the Union.
All that remained was to decide on the precise terms
of the separation from Virginia. There was at first
a hitch over these, the Virginia Legislature making
terms to which the district convention of 1789 would
not consent ; but Virginia then yielded the points in
dispute, and the Kentucky convention of 1790 pro
vided for the admission of the State to the Union
in 1792, and for holding a constitutional convention
to decide upon the form of government, just before
the admission.22

Thus Kentucky was saved from the career of
ignoble dishonor to which she would have been
doomed by the success of the disunion faction. She
was saved from the day of small things. Her in
terests became those of a nation which was bound
to succeed greatly or to fail greatly. Her fate was
linked for weal or for woe with the fate of the
mighty Republic.

91 Durrett Collection, "Kentucke Gazette," September 20,
1788.
" Marshall, I, 342, etc.

ST. CLAIR AND WAYNE

COPYRIGHT 1896
BY G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

This edition is published under arrangement with
G. P. Putnam's Sons, of New York and London.

ST. CLAIR AND WAYNE

CHAPTER I

THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY; OHIO — 1787-1790

SO far the work of the backwoodsmen in ex
ploring, conquering, and holding the West
had been work undertaken solely on individual ini
tiative. The nation as a whole had not directly
shared in it. The frontiersmen who chopped the
first trails across the Alleghanies, who earliest wan
dered through the lonely Western lands, and who
first built stockaded hamlets on the banks of the
Watauga, the Kentucky, and the Cumberland, acted
each in consequence of his own restless eagerness
for adventure and possible gain. The nation neither
encouraged them to undertake the enterprises on
which they embarked, nor protected them for the
first few years of uncertain foothold in the new-
won country. Only the backwoodsmen themselves
felt the thirst for exploration of the unknown, the
desire to try the untried, which drove them hither
and thither through the dim wilderness. The men
who controlled the immediate destinies of the con
federated commonwealths knew little of what lay
in the forest-shrouded country beyond the moun
tains, until the backwoods explorers of their own

(325)

326 The Winning of the West

motion penetrated its hidden and inmost fastnesses.
Singly or in groups, the daring hunters roved
through the vast reaches of sombre woodland, and
pitched their camps on the banks of rushing rivers,
nameless and unknown. In bands of varying size
the hunter-settlers followed close behind, and built
their cabins and block-houses here and there in the
great forest land. They elected their own military
leaders, and waged war on their own account against
their Indian foes. They constructed their own gov
ernmental systems, on their own motion, without
assistance or interference from the parent States,
until the settlements were firmly established, and the
work of civic organization well under way.

Of course some help was ultimately given by the
parent States; and the indirect assistance rendered
by the nation had been great. The West could
neither have been won nor held by the frontiers
men, save for the backing given by the Thirteen
States. England and Spain would have made short
work of the men whose advance into the lands of
their Indian allies they viewed with such jealous
hatred; had they not also been forced to deal with
the generals and soldiers of the Continental army,
and the statesmen and diplomats of the Continental
Congress. But the real work was done by the set
tlers themselves. The distinguishing feature in the
exploration, settlement, and up-building of Ken
tucky and Tennessee was the individual initiative
of the backwoodsmen.

The direct reverse of this was true of the set-

St. Clair and Wayne 327

tlement of the country northwest of the Ohio. Here,
also, the enterprise, daring, and energy of the in
dividual settlers were of the utmost consequence;
the land could never have been won had not the in
comers possessed these qualities in a very high de
gree. But the settlements sprang directly from the
action of the Federal Government, and the first and
most important of them would not have been un
dertaken save for that action. The settlers were
not the first comers in the wilderness they cleared
and tilled. They did not themselves form the armies
which met and overthrew the Indians. The regu
lar forces led the way in the country north of the
Ohio. The Federal forts were built first; it was
only afterward that the small towns sprang up in
their shadow. The Federal troops formed the van
guard of the white advance. They were the main
stay of the force behind which, as behind a shield,
the founders of the commonwealths did their work.
Unquestionably many of the settlers did their
full share in the fighting; and they and their de
scendants, on many a stricken field, and through
many a long campaign, proved that no people stood
above them in hardihood and courage ; but the land
on which they settled was won less by themselves
than by the statesmen who met in the national
capital and the scarred soldiers who on the fron
tier upbore the national colors. Moreover, instead
of being absolutely free to choose their own form
of government, and shape their own laws and so
cial conditions untrammeled by restrictions, the

328 The Winning of the West

Northwesterners were allowed to take the land only
upon certain definite conditions. The National
Government ceded to settlers part of its own do
main, and provided the terms upon which States
of the Union should afterward be made out of this
domain; and with a wisdom and love of righteous
ness which have been of incalculable consequence
to the whole nation, it stipulated that slavery should
never exist in the States thus formed. This con
dition alone profoundly affected the whole develop
ment of the Northwest, and sundered it by a sharp
line from those portions of the new country which,
for their own ill fortune, were left free from all
restriction of the kind. The Northwest owes its
life and owes its abounding strength and vigorous
growth to the action of the nation as a whole. It
was founded not by individual Americans, but by
the United States of America. The mighty and
populous commonwealths that lie north of the Ohio
and in the valley of the upper Mississippi are in a
peculiar sense the children of the National Govern
ment, and it is no mere accident that has made
them in return the especial guardians and pro
tectors of that government; for they form the heart
of the nation.

Before the Continental Congress took definite
action concerning the Northwest, there had been
settlements within its borders, but these settlements
were unauthorized and illegal, and had little or no
effect upon the aftergrowth of the region. Wild
and lawless adventurers had built cabins and made

St. Clair and Wayne 329

tomahawk claims on the west bank of the upper
Ohio. They lived in angry terror of the Indians,
and they also had cause to dread the regular army ;
for wherever the troops discovered their cabins,
they tore them down, destroyed the improvements,
and drove off the sullen and threatening squatters.
As the tide of settlement increased in the neighbor
ing country these trespassers on the Indian lands
and on the national domain became more numerous.
Many were driven off, again and again; but here
and there one kept his foothold. It was these
scattered few successful ones who were the first
permanent settlers in the present State of Ohio,
coming in about the same time that the forts of
the regular troops were built. They formed no
organized society, and their presence was of no
importance whatever in the history of the State.

The American settlers who had come in round
the French villages on the Wabash and the Illinois
were of more consequence. In 1787 the adult males
among these American settlers numbered 240, as
against 1,040 French of the same class.1 They
had followed in the track of Clark's victorious
march. They had taken up land, sometimes as
mere squatters, sometimes under color of title ob
tained from the French courts which Clark and
Todd had organized under what they conceived to

1 State Dept. MSS., No. 48, p. 165. Of adult males there
were among the French 520 at Vincennes, 191 at Kaskaskia,
239 at Cahokia, n at St. Phillippe, and 78 at Prairie du
Rocher. The American adult males numbered 103 at Vin
cennes and 137 in the Illinois.

330 The Winning of the West

be the authority of Virginia. They were for the
most part rough, enterprising men; and while some
of them behaved well, others proved very disor
derly and gave much trouble to the French; so
that both the Creoles and the Indians became exas
perated with them and put them in serious jeopardy
just before Clark undertook his expedition in the
fall of 1786.

The Creoles had suffered much from the general
misrule and anarchy in their country, and from the
disorderly conduct of some of the American set
tlers, and of not a few of the ragged volunteer sol
diery as well. They hailed with sincere joy the
advent of the disciplined Continental troops, com
manded by ofBcers who behaved with rigid justice
toward all men and put down disorder with a strong
hand. They were much relieved to find themselves
under the authority of Congress, and both to that
body and to the local Regular Army ofBcers they
sent petitions setting forth their grievances and
hopes. In one petition to Congress they recited at
length the wrongs done them, dwelling especially
upon the fact that they had gladly furnished the
garrison established among them with poultries and
provisions of every kind, for which they had never
received a dollar's payment. They remarked that
the stores seemed to disappear in a way truly mar
velous, leaving the backwoods soldiers who were
to have benefited by them "as ragged as ever." The
petitioners complained that the undisciplined militia
quartered among them, who on their arrival were

St. Clair and Wayne 331

"in the most shabby and wretched state," and who
had "rioted in abundance and unaccustomed luxury"
at the expense of the Creoles, had also maltreated
and insulted them ; as for instance they had at times
wantonly shot the cattle merely to try their rifles.
"Ours was the task of hewing and carting them fire
wood to the barracks," continued the petition, com
plaining of the way the Virginians had imposed on
the submissiveness and docility of the inhabitants,
"ours the drudgery of raising vegetables which we
did not eat, poultry for their kitchen, cattle for the
diversion of their marksmen."

The petitioners further asked that every man
among them should be granted five hundred acres.
They explained that formerly they had set no value
on the land, occupying themselves chiefly with the
Indian trade, and raising only the crops they abso
lutely needed for food; but that now they realized
the worth of the soil, and inasmuch as they had
various titles to it, under lost or forgotten charters
from the French kings, they would surrender all
the rights these titles conveyed, save only what be
longed to the Church of Cahokia, in return for the
above named grant of five hundred acres to each
individual.2

9 State Department MSS., No. 48, "Memorial of the French
Inhabitants of Post Vincennes, Kaskaskia, La Prairie du
Rocher, Cahokia, and Village of St. Philip to Congress."
By Bartholomew Tardiveau, agent. New York, February
26, 1788. Tardiveau was a French mercantile adventurer,
who had relations with Gardoqui and the Kentucky sepa
ratists, and in a petition presented by him it is not easy to
discriminate between the views that are really those of the

332 The Winning of the West

The memorialists alluded to their explanation
of the fact that they had lost all the title-deeds to
the land, that is all the old charters granted them,
as "ingenuous and candid"; and so it was. The
immense importance of having lost all proof of
their rights did not strike them. There was an
almost pathetic childishness in the request that the
United States authorities should accept oral tradi
tion in lieu of the testimony of the lost charters,
and in the way they dwelt with a kind of humble
pride upon their own "submissiveness and docility/'
In the same spirit the inhabitants of Vincennes sur
rendered their charter, remarking, "Accustomed to
mediocrity, we do not wish for wealth but for mere
competency."3 Of course the "submissiveness" and
the lightheartedness of the French did not prevent
their being also fickle; and their "docility" was
varied by fits of violent quarreling with their Ameri
can neighbors and among themselves. But the quar
rels of the Creoles were those of children, compared
with the ferocious feuds of the Americans.

Sometimes the trouble was of a religious nature.
The priest at Vincennes, for instance, bitterly as
sailed the priest at Cahokia, because he married a
Catholic to a Protestant ; while all the people of the
Cahokia church stoutly supported their pastor in
what he had done.4 This Catholic priest was Clark's
old friend Gibault. He was suffering from poverty,

Creoles, and the views which he deemed it for his own ad
vantage to have expressed.
8 Do., July 26, 1787. * Do., p. 85.

St. Clair and Wayne 333

due to his loyal friendship to the Americans; for
he had advanced Clark's troops both goods and pel
tries, for which he had never received payment.
In a petition to Congress he showed how this failure
to repay him had reduced him to want, and had
forced him to sell his two slaves, who otherwise
would have kept and tended him in his old age.5

The Federal General Harmar, in the fall of 1787,
took formal possession, in person, of Vincennes and
the Illinois towns; and he commented upon the
good behavior of the Creoles, and their respect for
the United States Government, and laid stress upon
the fact that they were entirely unacquainted with
what the Americans called liberty, and could best
be governed in the manner to which they were ac
customed — "by a commandant with a few troops."6

The American pioneers, on the contrary, were of
all people the least suited to be governed by a com
mandant with troops. They were much better stuff
out of which to make a free, self-governing nation,
and they were much better able to hold their own
in the world, and to shape their own destiny; but
they were far less pleasant people to govern. To
this day the very virtues of the pioneers — not to
speak of their faults — make it almost impossible for
them to get on with an ordinary army officer, ac
customed as he is to rule absolutely, though justly
and with a sort of severe kindness. Army officers

8 American State Papers, Public Lands, I, Gibault's Memo
rial, May i, 1790.

6 St. Clair Papers, Harmar's Letters, August 7th and No
vember 24th, 1787.

334 The Winning of the West

on the frontier — especially when put in charge of
Indian reservations or of French or Spanish com
munities — have almost always been more or less at
swords-points with the stubborn, cross-grained pio
neers. The borderers are usually as suspicious as
they are independent, and their self-sufficiency and
self-reliance often degenerate into mere lawlessness
and defiance of all restraint.

The Federal officers in the backwoods north of
the Ohio got on badly with the backwoodsmen.
Harmar took the side of the French Creoles, and
warmly denounced the acts of the frontiersmen who
had come in among them.7 In his letter to the Cre
oles he alluded to Clark's Vincennes garrison as
"a set of lawless banditti," and explained that his
own troops were regulars, who would treat with
justice both the French and Indians. Harmar never
made much effort to conceal his dislike of the border
ers. In one letter he alludes to a Delaware chief as
"a manly old fellow, and much more of a gentleman
than the generality of these frontier people."8 Nat
urally, there was little love lost between the bitterly
prejudiced old army officer, fixed and rigid in all
his ideas, and the equally prejudiced backwoodsmen,
whose ways of looking at almost all questions were
antipodal to his.

The Creoles of the Illinois and Vincennes sent
warm letters of welcome to Harmar. The Ameri-

7 State Dept. MSS., No. 150, Vol. II, Harmar to Le Grasse
and Busseron, June 29, 1787.

8 Do., Harmar to the Secretary of War, March 9, 1788.

St. Clair and Wayne 335

can settlers addressed him in an equally respectful
but very different tone, for, they said, their hearts
were filled with "anxiety, gloominess, and dismay."
They explained the alarm they felt at the report
that they were to be driven out of the country, and
protested — what was doubtless true — that they had
settled on the land in entire good faith, and with the
assent of the French inhabitants. The latter them
selves bore testimony to the good faith and good
behavior of many of the settlers, and petitioned that
these should not be molested,9 explaining that the
French had been benefited by their industry, and had
preserved a peaceable and friendly intercourse with
them. In the end, while the French villagers were
left undisturbed in their ancient privileges, and
while they were granted or were confirmed in the
possession of the land immediately around them,
the Americans and the French who chose to go out
side the village grants were given merely the rights
of other settlers.

The Continental officers exchanged courtesies
with the Spanish commandants of the Creole villages
on the west bank of the Mississippi, but kept a sharp
eye on them, as these commandants endeavored to
persuade all the French inhabitants to move west of
the river by offering them free grants of land.10

9 Do., Address of American Inhabitants of Vincennes, Au
gust 4, 1787; Recommendation by French Inhabitants in
Favor of American Inhabitants, August 2d; Letter of Le
Chamy and others, Kaskaskia, August 25th : Letter of J. M.
P. LeGras, June 25th.

10 Hamtranck to Harmar, October 13, 1788.

33 6 The Winning of the West

But all these matters were really of small conse
quence. The woes of the Creoles, the trials of the
American squatters, the friction between the regular
officers and the backwoodsmen, and jealousy felt
by both for the Spaniards, — all these were of little
real moment at this period of the history of the
Northwest. The vital point in its history was the
passage by Congress of the Ordinance of 1787, and
the doings of the various land companies under
and in consequence of this ordinance.

The wide gap between the ways in which the
Northwest and the Southwest were settled is made
plain by such a statement. In the Northwest, it was
the action of Congress, the action of the represen
tatives of the nation acting as a whole, which was
all-important. In the Southwest, no action of Con
gress was of any importance when compared with
the voluntary movements of the backwoodsmen
themselves. In the Northwest, it was the nation
which acted. In the Southwest, the determining
factor was the individual initiative of the pioneers.
The most striking feature in the settlement of the
Southwest was the free play given to the workings
of extreme individualism. The settlement of the
Northwest represented the triumph of an intelligent
collectivism, which yet allowed to each man a full
measure of personal liberty.

Another difference of note was the difference in
stock of the settlers. The Southwest was settled
by the true backwoodsmen, the men who lived on
their small clearings among the mountains of west-

St. Clair and Wayne 337

ern Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina.
The first settlement in Ohio, the settlement which
had most effect upon the history of the Northwest,
and which largely gave it its peculiar trend, was
the work of New Englanders. There was already
a considerable population in New England; but the
rugged farmers with their swarming families had
to fill up large waste spaces in Maine and in North
ern New Hampshire and Vermont, and there was a
very marked movement among them toward New
York, and especially into the Mohawk valley, all
west of which was yet a wilderness. In conse
quence, during the years immediately succeeding the
close of the Revolutionary War, the New England
emigrants made their homes in those stretches of
wilderness which were nearby, and did not appear
on the western border. But there had always been
enterprising individuals among them desirous of
seeking a more fertile soil in the far West or South,
and even before the Revolution some of these men
ventured to Louisiana itself, to pick out a good
country in which to form a colony. After the close
of the war the fame of the lands along the Ohio was
spread abroad; and the men who wished to form
companies for the purposes of adventurous settle
ment began to turn their eyes thither.

The first question to decide was the ownership
of the wished-for country. This decision had to
be made in Congress by agreement among the repre
sentatives of the different States. Seven States —
Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Virginia,
VOL. VII.— 15

33 8 The Winning of the West

Georgia, and both Carolinas — claimed portions of
the western lands. New York's claim was based
with entire solemnity on the ground that she was
the heir of the Iroquois tribes, and therefore inher
ited all the wide regions overrun by their terrible
war-bands. The other six States based their claims
on various charters, which in reality conferred
rights not one whit more substantial.

These different claims were not of a kind to
which any outside power would have paid heed.
Their usefulness came in when the States bargained
among themselves. In the bargaining, both among
the claimant States, and between the claimant and
the non-claimant States, the charter titles were treat
ed as of importance, and substantial concessions
were exacted in return for their surrender. But
their value was really inchoate until the land was
reduced to possession by some act of the States or
the Nation.

At the close of the Revolutionary War there ex
isted wide differences between the various States as
to the actual ownership and possession of the lands
they claimed. Virginia and North Carolina were
the only two who had reduced to some kind of occu
pation a large part of the territory to which they as
serted title. Their backwoodsmen had settled in
the lands so that they already held a certain popula
tion. Moreover, these same backwoodsmen, organ
ized as part of the militia of the parent States, had
made good their claim by successful warfare. The
laws of the two States were executed by State offi-

St. Clair and Wayne 339

cials in communities scattered over much of the
country claimed. The soldier-settlers of Virginia
and North Carolina had actually built houses and
forts, tilled the soil, and exercised the functions of
civil government, on the banks of the Wabash and
the Ohio, the Mississippi, the Cumberland, and the
Tennessee. Counties and districts had been erected
by the two States on the western waters ; and repre
sentatives of the civil divisions thus constituted sat
in the State Legislatures. The claims of Virginia
and North Carolina to much of the territory had be
hind them the substantial element of armed posses
sion. The settlement and conquest of the lands had
been achieved without direct intervention by the
Federal Government; though of course it was only
the ultimate success of the nation in its contest with
the foreign foe that gave the settlement and con
quest any value.

As much could not be said for the claims of the
other States. South Carolina's claim was to a mere
ribbon of land south of the North Carolina terri
tory, and need not be considered; it was ceded to
the Government about the time the Northwest was
organized.11 Georgia asserted that her boundaries
extended due west to the Mississippi, and that all
between was hers. But the entire western portion
of the territory was actually held by the Spaniards
and by the Indian tribes tributary to the Spaniards.
No subjects of Georgia lived on it, or were allowed

11 For an account of this cession see Mr. Garrett's excellent
paper in the publications of the Tennessee Historical Society.

34° The Winning of the West

to live on it. The few white inhabitants were sub
jects of the King of Spain, and lived under Spanish
law; the Creeks and Choctaws were his subsidized
allies ; and he held the country by right of conquest.
Georgia, a weak and turbulent, through a growing,
State, was powerless to enforce her claims. Most
of the territory to which she asserted title did not
in truth become part of the United States until
Pinckney's treaty went into effect. It was the
United States and not Georgia that actually won
and held the land in dispute; and it was a discredit
to Georgia's patriotism that she so long wrangled
about it, and ultimately drove so hard a bargain con
cerning it with the National Government.

There was a similar state of affairs in the far
Northwest. No New Yorkers lived in the region
bounded by the shadowy and wavering lines of the
Iroquois conquests. The lands claimed under an
cient charters by Massachusetts and Connecticut
were occupied by the British and their Indian allies,
who held adverse possession. Not a single New
England settler lived in them; no New England
law had any force in them; no New England sol
dier had gone or could go thither. They were won
by the victory of Wayne and the treaty of Jay. If
Massachusetts and Connecticut had stood alone, the
lands would never have been yielded to them at all ;
they could not have enforced their claim, and it
would have been scornfully disregarded. The re
gion was won for the United States by the arms and
diplomacy of the United States. Whatever of real-

St. Clair and Wayne 341

X

ity there was in the titles of Massachusetts and Con
necticut came from the existence and actions of the
Federal Union.12

All the States that did not claim lands beyond
the mountains were strenuous in belittling the claims
of those that did, and insisted that the title to the
Western territory should be vested in the Union.
Not even the danger from the British armies could
keep this question in abeyance, and while the war was
at its height the States were engaged in bitter wran
gles over the subject; for the weakness of the Federal
tie rendered it always probable that the different
members of the Union would sulk or quarrel with
one another rather than oppose an energetic resist
ance to the foreign foe. At different times differ
ent non-claimant States took the lead in pushing
the various schemes for nationalizing the Western
lands; but Maryland was the first to take action

" For this Northwestern history see "The Life, Journal,
and Correspondence of Manasseh Cutler," by Wm. Parker
Cutler and Julia Perkins Cutler; "The St. Clair Papers," by
W. H. Smith; "The Old Northwest," by B. A. Hinsdale;
"Maryland's Influence upon Land Cessions," by Herbert
Adams. See also Donaldson's "Public Domain," Hildreth's
"History of Washington County," and the various articles
by Poole and others. In Prof. Hinsdale's excellent book, on
p. 200, is a map of the Territory of the Thirteen Original
States in 1783. This map is accurate enough for Virginia
and North Carolina; but the lands in the West put down as
belonging to Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Georgia, did
not really belong to them at all in 1783; they were held by
the British and Spaniards, and were ultimately surrendered
to the United States, not to individual States. These States
did not surrender the land- they merely surrendered a dis
puted title to the lands.

342 The Winning of the West

in this direction, and was the most determined in
pressing the matter to a successful issue. She
showed the greatest hesitation in joining the Con
federation at all while the matter was allowed to
rest unsettled; and insisted that the titles of the
claimant States were void, that there was no need
of asking them to cede what they did not possess,
and that the West should be declared outright to be
part of the Federal domain.

Maryland was largely actuated by fear of her
neighbor Virginia. Virginia's claims were the most
considerable, and if they had all been allowed, hers
would have been indeed an empire. Mary
land's fears were twofold. She dreaded the mere
growth of Virginia in wealth, power, and popula
tion in the first place; and in the second she feared
lest her own population might be drained into these
vacant lands, thereby at once diminishing her own,
and building up her neighbor's, importance. Each
State at that time had to look upon its neigh
bors as probable commercial rivals and possible
armed enemies. This is a feeling which we now find
difficulty in understanding. At present no State in
the Union fears the growth of a neighbor, or would
ever dream of trying to check that growth. The
direct reverse was the case during and after the
Revolution ; for the jealousy and distrust which the
different States felt for one another were bitter to
a degree.

The Continental Congress was more than once
at its wits' ends in striving to prevent an open

St. Clair and Wayne 343

break over the land question between the more ex
treme States on the two sides. The wisest and cool
est leaders saw that the matter could never be deter
mined on a mere consideration of the abstract rights,
or even of the equities, of the case. They saw that
it would have to be decided, as almost all political
questions of great importance must be decided, by
compromise and concession. The foremost states
men of the Revolution were eminently practical
politicians. They had high ideals, and they strove
to realize them, as near as might be; otherwise they
would have been neither patriots nor statesmen.
But they were not theorists. They were men of
affairs, accustomed to deal with other men ; and they
understood that few questions of real moment can
be decided on their merits alone. Such questions
must be dealt with on the principle of getting the
greatest possible amount of ultimate good, and of
surrendering in return whatever must be surren
dered in order to attain this good. There was no
use in learned arguments to show that Maryland's
position was the proper one for a far-sighted Amer
ican patriot, or that Virginia and North Carolina
had more basis for their claims than Connecticut
or Georgia. What had to be done was to appeal to
the love of country and shrewd common-sense of
the people in the different States, and persuade
them each to surrender on certain points, so that all
could come to a common agreement.

New York's claim was the least defensible of all,
but, on the other hand, New York led the way in

344 The Winning of the West

vesting whatever title she might have in the Federal
Government. In 1780 she gave proof of the growth
of the national idea among her citizens by aban
doning all her claim to western lands in favor of the
Union. Congress used this surrender as an argu
ment by which to move the other States to action.
It issued an earnest appeal to them to follow New
York's example without regard to the value of their
titles, so that the Federal Union might be put on a
firm basis. Congress did not discuss its own rights,
nor the rights of the States ; it simply asked that the
concessions be made as a matter of expediency and
patriotism ; and announced that the policy of the
Government would be to divide this new territory
into districts of suitable size, which should be ad
mitted as States as soon as they became well set
tled. This last proposition was important, as it out
lined the future policy of the Government, which
was to admit the new communities as States, with
all the rights of the old States, instead of treating
them as subordinates and dependent, after the man
ner of the European colonial systems.

Maryland then joined the Confederation, in 1781.
Virginia and Connecticut had offered to cede their
claims but under such conditions that it was impos
sible to close with the offers. Congress accepted the
New York cession gratefully, with an eye to the
effect on the other States; but for some time no
progress was made in the negotiations with the lat
ter. Finally, early in 1784, the bargain with Vir
ginia was consummated. She ceded to Congress

St. Clair and Wayne 345

her rights to the territory northwest of the Ohio,
except a certain amount retained as a military re
serve for the use of her soldiers, while Congress
tacitly agreed not to question her right to Kentucky.
A year later Massachusetts followed suit, and ceded
to Congress her title to all the lands lying west
of the present western boundary of New York
State. Finally, in 1 786, a similar cession was made
by Connecticut. But Connecticut's action was not
much more patriotic or less selfish than Georgia's.
Throughout the controversy she showed a keen de
sire to extract from Congress all that could possibly
be obtained, and to delay action as long as might be ;
though, like Georgia, Connecticut could by rights
claim nothing that was not in reality obtained for
the Union by the Union itself. She made her grant
conditionally upon being allowed to reserve for her
own profit about five thousand square miles in what
is now northern Ohio. This tract was afterward
known as the Western Reserve. Congress was very
reluctant to accept such a cession, with its greedy
offset, but there was no wise alternative, and the
bargain was finally struck.

The non-claimant States had attained their object,
and yet it had been obtained in a manner that left
the claimant States satisfied. The project for which
Maryland had -contended was realized, with the dif
ference that Congress accepted the Northwest as a
gift coupled with conditions, instead of taking it as
an unconditional right. The lands became part of
the Federal domain, and were nationalized so far

346 The Winning of the West

as they could be under the Confederation ; but there
was no national treasury into which to turn the
proceeds from the sale until the Constitution was
adopted.13

Having got possession of the land, Congress pro
ceeded to arrange for its disposition, even before
providing the outline of the governmental system
for the States that might grow up therein. Con
gress regarded the territory as forming a treasury
chest, and was anxious to sell the land in lots,
whether to individuals or to companies. In 1785 it
passed an ordinance of singular wisdom, which has
been the basis of all our subsequent legislation on the
subject.

This ordinance was another proof of the way in
which the nation applied its collective power to the
sub-dual government of the Northwest, instead of
leaving the whole matter to the working of unre
stricted individualism, as in the Southwest. The
pernicious system of acquiring title to public lands
in vogue among the Virginians and North Caro
linians was abandoned. Instead of making each
man survey his own land, and allowing him to sur
vey it when, how, and where he pleased, with the
certainty of producing endless litigation and trouble,
Congress provided for a corps of government sur
veyors, who were to go about this work systemat
ically. It provided further for a known base line,
and then for division of the country into ranges of
townships six miles square, and for the subdivision

18 Hinsdale, 250.

St. Clair and Wayne 347

of these townships into lots ("sections") of one
square mile — six hundred and forty acres — each.
The ranges, townships, and sections were duly num
bered. The basis for the whole system of public
education in the Northwest was laid by providing
that in every township lot No. 16 should be reserved
for the maintenance of public schools therein. A
minimum price of a dollar an acre was put on the
land.

Congress hoped to find in these Western lands a
source of great wealth. The hope was disappointed.
The task of subduing the wilderness is not very re
munerative. It yields a little more than a livelihood
to men of energy, resolution, and bodily strength
and address; but it does not yield enough for men
to be able to pay heavily for the privilege of under
taking the labor. Throughout our history the pio
neer has found that by taking up wild land at a low
cost he can make a rough living, and keep his fam
ily fed, clothed, and housed; but it is only by very-
hard work that he can lay anything by, or mate
rially better his condition. Of course, the few very
successful do much more, and the unsuccessful do
even less; but the average pioneer can just manage
to keep continually forging a little ahead, in matters
material and financial. Under such conditions a
high price can not be obtained for public lands ; and
when they are sold, as they must be, at a low price,
the receipts do little more than offset the necessary
outlay. The truth is that people have a very misty
idea as to the worth of wild lands. Even when the

348 The Winning of the West

soil is rich they only possess the capacity of acquir
ing value under labor. All their value arises from
the labor done on them or in their neighborhood,
except that it depends also upon the amount of labor
which must necessarily be expended in transporta
tion.

It is the fashion to speak of the immense oppor
tunity offered to any race by a virgin continent. In
one sense the opportunity is indeed great; but in
another sense it is not, for the chance of failure is
very great also. It is an opportunity of which ad
vantage can be taken only at the cost of much hard
ship and much grinding toil.

It remained for Congress to determine the condi
tions under which the settlers could enter the new
land, and under which new States should spring up
therein. These conditions were fixed by the famous
Ordinance of 1787; one of the two or three most
important acts ever passed by an American legisla
tive body, for it determined that the new Northwest
ern States, the children, and the ultimate leaders,
of the Union, should get their growth as free com
monwealths, untainted by the horrible curse of negro
slavery.

Several ordinances for the government of the
Northwest were introduced and carried through
Congress in 1784-86, but they were never put into
operation. In 1784, Jefferson put into his draft of
the ordinance of that year a clause prohibiting slav
ery in all the Western territory, South as well as
North of the Ohio River, after the beginning of the

St. Clair and Wayne 349

year 1801. This clause was struck out; and even
if adopted it would probably have amounted to
nothing, for if slavery had be^n permitted to take
firm root it could hardly have been torn up. In
1785, Rufus King advanced a proposition to pro
hibit all slavery in the Northwest immediately, but
Congress never acted on the proposal.

The next movement in the same direction was
successful, because when it was made it was pushed
by a body of well-known men who were anxious to
buy the lands that Congress was anxious to sell,
but who would not buy them until they had some
assurance that the governmental system under which
they were to live would meet their ideas. This body
was composed of New Englanders, mostly veterans
of the Revolutionary War, and led by officers who
had stood well in the Continental army.

When, in the fall of 1783, the Continental army
was disbanded, the war-worn and victorious soldiers,
who had at last wrung victory from the reluctant
years of defeat, found themselves fronting grim
penury. Some were worn with wounds and sick
ness; all were poor and unpaid; and Congress had
no means to pay them. Many among them felt that
they had small chance to repair their broken fortunes
if they returned to the homes they had abandoned
seven weary years before, when the guns of the
minute-men first called them to battle.

These heroes of the blue and buff turned their
eyes westward to the fertile lands lying beyond
the mountains. They petitioned Congress to mark

35° The Winning of the West

out a territory, in what is now the State of Ohio,
as the seat of a distinct colony, in time to become
one of the confederated States ; and they asked that
their bounty lands should be set off for them in this
territory. Two hundred and eighty-five officers of
the Continental line joined in this petition ; one hun
dred and fifty-five, over half, were from Massachu
setts, the State which had furnished more troops
than any other to the Revolutionary armies. The
remainder were from Connecticut, New Hampshire,
New Jersey, and Maryland.

The signers of this petition desired to change the
paper obligations of Congress, which they held, into
fertile wild lands which they should themselves sub
due by their labor ; and out of these wild lands they
proposed to make a new State. These two germ
ideas remained in their minds, even though their pe
tition bore no fruit. They kept before their eyes the
plan of a company to undertake the work, after get
ting the proper cession from Congress. Finally, in
the early spring of 1786, some of the New England
officers met at the "Bunch of Grapes" tavern in Bos
ton, and organized the Ohio Company of Associates.
They at once sent one of their number as a delegate
to New York, where the Continental Congress
was in session, to lay their memorial before that
body.

Congress was considering another ordinance for
the government of the Northwest when the me
morial was presented, and the former was delayed
until the latter could be considered by the commit-

St. Clair and Wayne 351

tee to which it had been referred. In July, Dr.
Manasseh Cutler, of Ipswich, Massachusetts, ar
rived as a second delegate to look after the inter
ests of the company. He and they were as much
concerned in the terms of the governmental ordi
nance, as in the conditions on which the land grant
was to be made. The orderly, liberty-loving, keen-
minded New Englanders who formed the company,
would not go to a land where the form of govern
ment was hostile to their ideas of righteousness and
sound public policy.

The one point of difficulty was the slavery ques
tion. Only eight States were at the time represent
ed in the Congress, these were Massachusetts, New
York, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, North and
South Carolina, and Georgia — thus five of the eight
States were Southern. But the Federal Congress
rose in this, almost its last act, to a lofty pitch of
patriotism; and the Southern States showed a
marked absence of sectional feeling in the matter.
Indeed, Cutler found that though he was a New
England man, with a New England company be
hind him, many of the Eastern people looked rather
coldly at his scheme, fearing lest the settlement of
the West might mean a rapid drainage of popula
tion from the East. Nathan Dane, a Massachu
setts delegate, favored it, in part because he hoped
that planting such a colony in the West might keep
at least that part of it true to "Eastern politics."
The Southern members, on the other hand, heartily
supported the plan. The committee that brought

352 The Winning of the West

in the ordinance, the majority being Southern men,
also reported an article prohibiting slavery. Dane
was the mover, while the rough draft may have
been written by Cutler; and the report was vigor
ously pushed by the two Virginians on the com
mittee, William Grayson and Richard Henry Lee.
The article was adopted by a vote unanimous, ex
cept for the dissent of one delegate, a nobody from
New York.

The ordinance established a territorial govern
ment, with a governor, secretary, and judges. A
General Assembly was authorized as soon as there
should be five thousand free male inhabitants in
the district. The lower house was elective, the
upper house, or council, was appointive. The Leg
islature was to elect a territorial delegate to Con
gress. The governor was required to own a free
hold of one thousand acres in the district, a judge
five hundred, and a representative two hundred;
and no man was allowed to vote unless he possessed
a freehold of fifty acres.14 These provisions would
seem strangely undemocratic if applied to a similar
territory in our own day.

The all-important features of the ordinance were
contained in the six articles of compact between
the confederated States and the people and States
of the territory, to be forever unalterable, save by
the consent of both parties. The first guaranteed
complete freedom of worship and religious belief
to all peaceable and orderly persons. The second

14 "St. Clair Papers," II, 603.

St. Clair and Wayne 353

provided for trial by jury, the writ of habeas cor
pus, the privileges of the common law, and the
right of proportional legislative representation.
The third enjoined that faith should be kept with
the Indians, and provided that "schools and the
means of education" should forever be encouraged,
inasmuch as "religion, morality, and knowledge"
were necessary to good government. The fourth
ordained that the new States formed in the North
west should forever form part of the United States,
and be subject to the laws, as were the others. The
fifth provided for the formation and admission of
not less than three or more than five States, formed
out of this Northwestern territory, whenever such
a putative State should contain sixty thousand in
habitants; the form of government to be republi
can, and the State, when created, to stand on an
equal footing with all the other States.

The sixth and most important article declared
that there should never be slavery or involuntary
servitude in the Northwest, otherwise than for the
punishment of convicted criminals, provided, how
ever, that fugitive slaves from the older States
might lawfully be reclaimed by their owners. This
was the greatest blow struck for freedom and
against slavery in all our history save only Lin
coln's emancipation proclamation, for it deter
mined that in the final struggle the mighty West
should side with the right against the wrong. It
was in its results a deadly stroke against the traffic
in and ownership of human beings, and the blow

354 The Winning of the West

was dealt by Southern men, to whom all honor
should ever be given.

This anti-slavery compact was the most impor
tant feature of the ordinance, yet there were many
other features only less important.

In truth the ordinance of 1787 was so wide-
reaching in its effects, was drawn in accordance
with so lofty a morality and such far-seeing states
manship, and was fraught with such weal for the
nation, that it will ever rank among the foremost
of American State papers, coming in that little
group which includes the Declaration of Indepen
dence, the Constitution, Washington's Farewell
Address, and Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation
and Second Inaugural. It marked out a definite
line of orderly freedom along which the new States
were to advance. It laid deep the foundation for
that system of widespread public education so char
acteristic of the Republic and so essential to its
healthy growth. It provided that complete religious
freedom and equality which we now accept as part
of the order of nature, but which were then un
known in any important European nation. It guar
anteed the civil liberty of all citizens. It provided
for an indissoluble Union, a Union which should
grow until it could relentlessly crush nullification
and secession ; for the States founded under it were
the creatures of the Nation, and were by the com
pact declared forever inseparable from it.

In one respect the ordinance marked a new de
parture of the most radical kind. The adoption

St. Clair and Wayne 355

of the policy therein outlined has worked a com
plete revolution in the way of looking at new com
munities formed by colonization from the parent
country. Yet the very completeness of this revolu
tion to a certain extent veils from us its importance.
We can not realize the greatness of the change be
cause of the fact that the change was so great; for
we can not now put ourselves in the mental attitude
which regarded the old course as natural. The
Ordinance of 1787 decreed that the new States
should stand in every respect on an equal footing
with the old; and yet should be individually bound
together with them. This was something entirely
new in the history of colonization. Hitherto every
new colony had either been subject to the parent
State, or independent of it. England, Holland,
France, and Spain, when they founded colonies be
yond the sea, founded them for the good of the
parent State, and governed them as dependencies.
The home country might treat her colonies well or
ill, she might cherish and guard them, or oppress
them with harshness and severity, but she never
treated them as equals. Russia, in pushing her
obscure and barbarous conquest and colonization
of Siberia, — a conquest destined to be of such last
ing importance in the history of Asia, — pursued
precisely the same course.

In fact, this had been the only kind of coloniza
tion known to modern Europe. In the ancient
world it had also been known, and it was only
through it that great empires grew. Each Roman

356 The Winning of the West

colony that settled in Gaul or Iberia founded a city
or established a province which was tributary to
Rome, instead of standing on a footing of equality
in the same nation with Rome. But the other great
colonizing peoples of antiquity, the Greeks and
Phrenicians, spread in an entirely different way.
Each of their colonies became absolutely independ
ent of the country whence it sprang. Carthage and
Syracuse were as free as Tyre or Sidon, as Corinth
or Athens. Thus under the Roman method the
empire grew, at the cost of the colonies losing their
independence. Under the Greek and Carthaginian
method the colonies acquired the same freedom that
was enjoyed by the mother cities; but there was no
extension of empire, no growth of a great and en
during nationality. The modern European nations
had followed the Roman system. Until the United
States sprang into being every great colonizing
people followed one system or the other.

The American Republic, taking advantage of its
fortunate federal features and of its strong central
government, boldly struck out on a new path, which
secured the freedom-giving properties of the Greek
method, while preserving national Union as care
fully as it was preserved by the Roman Empire.
New States were created, which stood on exactly
the same footing as the old; and yet these new
States formed integral and inseparable parts of a
great and rapidly growing nation. This movement
was original with the American Republic; she was
dealing with new conditions, and on this point the

St. Clair and Wayne 357

history of England merely taught her what to avoid.
The English colonies were subject to the British
Crown, and therefore to Great Britain. The new
American States, themselves colonies in the old
Greek sense, were subject only to a government
which they helped administer on equal terms with
the old States. No State was subject to another,
new or old. All paid a common allegiance to a
central power which was identical with none.

The absolute novelty of this feature, as the world
then stood, fails to impress us now because we are
so used to it. But it was at that time without prec
edent; and though since then the idea has made
rapid progress, there seems in most cases to have
been very great difficulty in applying it in practice.
The Spanish-American States proved wholly unable
to apply it at all. In Australia and South Africa
all that can be said is that events now apparently
show a trend in the direction of adopting this sys
tem. At present all these British colonies, as re
gards one another, are independent but disunited;
as regards the mother country, they remain united
with her, but in the condition of dependencies.

The vital feature of the ordinance was the prohi
bition of slavery. This prohibition was not retro
active; the slaves of the French villagers, and of
the few American slaveholders who had already
settled round them, were not disturbed in their con
dition. But all further importation of slaves, and
the holding in slavery of any not already slaves,
were prohibited. The prohibition was brought

358 The Winning of the West

about by the action of the Ohio Company. With
out the prohibition the company would probably
not have undertaken its experiment in colonization;
and save for the pressure of the company slavery
would hardly have been abolished. Congress wished
to sell the lands, and was much impressed by the
solid worth of the founders of the association. The
New Englanders were anxious to buy the lands,
but were earnest in their determination to exclude
slavery from the new territory. The slave ques
tion was not at the time a burning issue between
North and South ; for no Northerner thought of cru
sading to destroy the evil, while most enlightened
Southerners were fond of planning how to do away
with it. The tact of the company's representative
before Congress, Dr. Cutler, did the rest. A com
promise was agreed to ; for, like so many other great
political triumphs, the passage of the Ordinance of
1787 was a compromise. Slavery was prohibited,
on the one hand ; and on the other, that the territory
might not become a refuge for runaway negroes,
provision was made for the return of such fugitives.
The popular conscience was yet too dull about sla
very to be stirred by the thought of returning fugi
tive slaves into bondage.

A fortnight after the passage of the ordinance, the
transaction was completed by the sale of a million
and a half acres, north of the Ohio, to the Ohio
Company. Three million and a half more, known as
the Sciato purchase, were authorized to be sold to a
purely speculative company, but the speculation

St. Clair and Wayne 359

ended in nothing save financial disaster. The price
was nominally seventy cents an acre ; but as payment
was made in depreciated public securities, the real
price was only eight or nine cents an acre. The
sale illustrated the tendency of Congress at that time
to sell the land in large tracts ; a most unwholesome
tendency, fruitful of evil to the whole community.
It was only by degrees that the wisdom of selling
the land in small plots, and to actual occupiers, was
recognized.

Together with the many wise and tolerant meas
ures included in the famous Ordinance of 1787, and
in the land Ordinance of 1785, there were one or
two which represented the feelings of the past, not
the future. One of them was a regulation which
reserved a lot in every township to be given for the
purposes of religion. Nowadays, and rightfully, we
regard as peculiarly American the complete sever
ance of Church and State, and refuse to allow the
State to contribute in any way toward the support
of any sect.

A regulation of a very different kind provided
that two townships should be set apart to endow
a university. These two townships now endow the
University of Ohio, placed in a town which, with
queer poverty of imagination, and fatuous absence
of humor, has been given the name of Athens.

The company was well organized, the founders
showing the invaluable New England aptitude for
business, and there was no delay in getting the set
tlement started. After some deliberation the lands

360 The Winning of the West

lying along the Ohio on both sides of, but mainly
below, the Muskingum, were chosen for the site
of the new colony. There was some delay in mak
ing the payments subsequent to the first, and only a
million and some odd acres were patented. One of
the reasons for choosing the mouth of the Musk
ingum as the site for the town was the neighborhood
of Fort Harmar, with its strong Federal garrison,
and the spot was but a short distance beyond the
line of already existing settlement.

As soon as enough of the would-be settlers were
ready, they pushed forward in parties toward the
headwaters of the Ohio, struggling along the win
ter-bound roads of western Pennsylvania. In Janu
ary and February they began to reach the banks of
the Youghiogheny, and set about building boats to
launch when the river opened. There were forty-
eight settlers in all who started down stream, their
leader being General Rufus Putnam. He was a
tried and gallant soldier, who had served with honor
not only in the Revolutionary armies, but in the war
which crushed the French power in America. On
April 7, 1788, he stepped from his boat, which he
had very appropriately named the Mayflower, on to
the bank of the Muskingum. The settlers immedi
ately set to work felling trees, building log houses
and a stockade, clearing fields, and laying out the
ground-plan of Marietta; for they christened tHe
new town after the French Queen, Marie Antoi
nette.15 It was laid out in the untenanted wilder-
15 "St. Clair Papers," I, 139. It was at the beginning of
the dreadful pseudo-classic cult in our intellectual history,

St. Clair and Wayne 361

ness; yet near by was the proof that ages ago the
wilderness had been tenanted, for close at hand were
huge embankments, marking the site of a town of
the long-vanished mound-builders. Giant trees
grew on the mounds; all vestiges of the builders
had vanished, and the solemn forest had closed
above every remembrance of their fate.

The day of the landing of these new pilgrims was
a day big with fate not only for the Northwest but
for the Nation. It marked the beginning of the
orderly and national conquest of the lands that now
form the heart of the Republic. It marked the ad
vent among the pioneers of a new element, which
was to leave the impress of its strong personality
deeply graven on the institutions and the people of
the great States north of the Ohio ; an element which
in the end turned their development in the direc
tion toward which the parent stock inclined in its
home on the North Atlantic seaboard. The new
settlers were almost all soldiers of the Revolutionary
armies; they were hard-working, orderly men of
trained courage and of keen intellect. An outside
observer speaks of them as being the best informed,
the most courteous and industrious, and the most
law-abiding of all the settlers who had come to the
frontier, while their leaders were men of a higher
type than was elsewhere to be found in the West.16

and these honest soldiers and yeomen, with much self-com
placency, gave to portions of their little raw town such ludi
crously inappropriate names as the Campus Martius and Via
Sacra.

14 "Denny's Military Journal," May 28 and June 15, 1789.
VOL. VII.— 16

362 The Winning of the West

No better material for founding a new State ex
isted anywhere. With such a foundation the State
was little likely to plunge into the perilous abysses
of anarchic license or of separatism and disunion.
Moreover, to plant a settlement of this kind on the
edge of the Indian-haunted wilderness showed that
the founders possessed both hardihood and resolu
tion.

Yet it must not be forgotten that the daring
needed for the performance of this particular deed
can in no way be compared with that shown by the
real pioneers, the early explorers and Indian fight
ers. The very fact that the settlement around Mari
etta was national in its character, that it was the
outcome of national legislation, and was undertaken
under national protection, made the work of the in
dividual settler count for less in the scale. The
founders and managers of the Ohio Company and
the statesman of the Federal Congress deserve much
of the praise that in the Southwest would have fallen
to the individual settlers only. The credit to be
given to the nation in its collective capacity was
greatly increased, and that due to the individual was
correspondingly diminished.

Rufus Putnam and his fellow New Englanders
built their new town under the guns of a Federal
fort, only just beyond the existing boundary of set
tlement, and on land guaranteed them by the Fed
eral Government. The dangers they ran and the
hardships they suffered in no wise approached those
undergone and overcome by the iron-willed, iron-

St. Clair and Wayne 363

limbed hunters who first built their lonely cabins on
the Cumberland and Kentucky. The founders of
Marietta trusted largely to the Federal troops for
protection, and were within easy reach of the set
tled country ; but the wild wood- wanderers who first
roamed through the fair lands south of the Ohio
built their little towns in the heart of the wilderness,
many scores of leagues from all assistance, and
trusted solely to their own long rifles in time of
trouble. The settler of 1788 journeyed at ease over
paths worn smooth by the feet of many thousands
of predecessors; but the early pioneers cut their
own trails in the untrodden wilderness, and warred
single-handed against wild nature and wild man.

In the summer of 1788 Dr. Manasseh Cutler vis
ited the colony he had helped to found, and kept a
diary of his journey. His trip through Pennsyl
vania was marked merely by such incidents as were
common at that time on every journey in the United
States away from the larger towns. He traveled
with various companions, stopping at taverns and
private houses ; and both guests and hosts were fond
of trying their skill with the rifle, either at a mark
or at squirrels. In mid-August he reached Coxe's
fort, on the Ohio, and came for the first time to the
frontier proper. Here he embarked on a big flat-
boat, with on board forty-eight souls all told, be
sides cattle. They drifted and paddled down stream,
and on the evening of the second day reached the
Muskingum. Here and there along the Virginian
shore the boat passed settlements, with grain fields

364 The Winning of the West

and orchards; the houses were sometimes squalid
cabins, and sometimes roomy, comfortable build
ings. When he reached the newly built town he was
greeted by General Putnam, who invited Cutler to
share the marquee in which he lived ; and that after
noon he drank tea with another New England gen
eral, one of the original founders.

The next three weeks he passed very comfortably
with his friends, taking part in the various social
entertainments, walking through the woods, and vis
iting one or two camps of friendly Indians with all
the curiosity of a pleasure-tourist. He greatly ad
mired the large cornfields, proof of the industry of
the settlers. Some of the cabins were already com
fortable ; and many families of women and children
had come out to join their husbands and fathers.

The newly appointed Governor of the territory,
Arthur St. Clair, had reached the place in July, and
formally assumed his task of government. Both
Governor St. Clair and General Harmar were men
of the old Federalist school, utterly unlike the ordi
nary borderers; and even in the wilderness they
strove to keep a certain stateliness and formality in
their surroundings. They speedily grew to feel at
home with the New England leaders, who were gen
tlemen of much the same type as themselves, and
had but little more in common with the ordinary
frontier folk. Dr. Cutler frequently dined with one
or other of them. After dining with the Governor
at Fort Harmar, he pronounced it in his diary a
"genteel dinner"; and he dwelt on the grapes, the

St. Clair and Wayne 365

beautiful garden, and the good looks of Mrs. Har-
mar. Sometimes the leading citizens gave a dinner
to "His Excellency," as Dr. Cutler was careful to
styleH:he Governor, and to "General Harmar and his
Lady." On such occasions the visitors were rowed
from the fort to the town in a twelve-oared barge
with an awning; the drilled crew rowed well, while
a sergeant stood in the stern to steer. On each oar
blade was painted the word "Congress" ; all the regu
lar army men were devout believers in the Union.
The dinners were handsomely served, with punch1
and wine; and at one Dr. Cutler records that fifty-
five gentlemen sat down, together with three ladies.
The fort itself was a square, with block-houses, cur
tains, barracks, and artillery.

After three weeks' stay the Doctor started back,
up stream, in the boat of a well-to-do Creole trader
from the Illinois. This trader was no less a per
son than Francis Vigo, who had welcomed Clarlc
when he took Kaskaskia, and who at that time ren
dered signal service to the Americans, advancing
them peltries and goods. To the discredit of the
nation be it said, he was never repaid what he had
advanced. When Cutler joined him he was making
his way up the Ohio in a big keel-boat, propelled by
ten oars and a square sail. The Doctor found his
quarters pleasant; for there was an awning and a
cabin, and Vigo was well equipped with comforts
and even luxuries. In his traveling-chest he car
ried his silver-handled knives and forks, and flasks
of spirits. The beds were luxurious for the fron-

366 The Winning of the West

tier; in his journal the Doctor mentions that one
night he had to sleep in "wet sheets." The average
pioneer knew nothing whatever of sheets, wet or
dry. Often the voyagers would get out and walk
along shore, shooting pigeons or squirrels and
plucking bunches of grapes. On such occasions if
they had time they would light a fire and have "a
good dish of tea and a French fricassee." Once
they saw some Indians; but the latter were merely
chasing a bear, which they killed, giving the travel
ers some of the meat.

Cutler and his companions caught huge catfish in
the river; they killed game of all kinds in the for
est; and they lived very well indeed. In the morn
ing they got under way early, after a "bitter and a
biscuit," and a little later breakfasted on cold meat,
pickles, cabbage, and pork. Between eleven and
twelve they stopped for dinner ; usually of hot veni
son or wild turkey, with a strong "dish of coffee"
and loaf-sugar. At supper they had cold meat and
tea. Here and there on the shore they passed set
tlers' cabins, where they obtained corn and milk,
and sometimes eggs, butter, and veal. Cutler landed
at his starting-point less than a month after he had
left it to go down stream.17

Another Massachusetts man, Col. John May, had
made the same trip just previously. His experi
ences were very like those of Dr. Cutler; but in his
journal he told them more entertainingly, being a
man of considerable humor and sharp observation.

" Cutler, p. 420.

St. Clair and Wayne 367

He traveled on horseback from Boston. In Phila
delphia he put up "at the sign of the Connastago
Wagon" — the kind of wagon then used in the up
country, and afterward for two generations the
wheeled-house with which the pioneers moved west
ward across plain and prairie. He halted for some
days in the log-built town of Pittsburg, and, like
many other travelers of the day, took a dislike to
the place and to its inhabitants, who were largely
Pennsylvania Germans. He mentioned that he had
reached it in thirty days from Boston, and had not
lost a pound of his baggage, which had accompanied
him in a wagon under the care of some of his hired
men. At Pittsburg he was much struck by the beauty
of the mountains and the river, and also by the
numbers of flat-boats, loaded with immigrants, whicK
were constantly drifting and rowing past on their
way to Kentucky. From the time of reaching tfie
river his journal is filled with comments on the ex
traordinary abundance and great size of the various
kinds of food fishes.

At last, late in May, he started in a crowded flat-
boat down the Ohio, and was enchanted with the
wild and beautiful scenery. He was equally pleased
with the settlement at the mouth of the Muskingum ;
and he was speedily on good terms with the officers
of the fort, who dined and wined him to his heart's
content. There were rumors of savage warfare
from below; but around Marietta the Indians were
friendly. May and his people set to work to clear
land and put up buildings; and they lived sumptu-

368 The Winning of the West

ously, for game swarmed. The hunters supplied
them with quantities of deer and wild turkeys, and
occasionally elk and buffalo were also killed; while
quantities of fish could be caught without effort, and
the gardens and fields yielded plenty of vegetables.
On July 4th the members of the Ohio Company en
tertained the officers from Fort Harmar and the
ladies of the garrison at an abundant dinner, and
drank thirteen toasts, — to the United States, to Con
gress, to Washington, to the King of France, to the
new Constitution, to the Society of the Cincinnati,
and various others.

Colonel May built him a fine "mansion house/*
thirty-six feet by eighteen, and fifteen feet high,
with a good cellar underneath, and in the windows
panes of glass he had brought all the way from
Boston. He continued to enjoy the life in all its
phases, from hunting in the woods to watching the
sun rise, and making friends with the robins, which,
in the wilderness, always followed the settlements.
In August he went up the river, without adventure,
and returned to his home.18

Such a trip as either of these was a mere holiday
picnic. It offers as striking a contrast as well could
be offered to the wild and lonely journeyings of the
stark wilderness-hunters and Indian fighters who
first went west of the mountains. General Rufus
Putnam and his associates did a deed the conse-

18 Journal and Letters of Colonel John May; one of the
many valuable historical publications of Robert Clarke &
Co., of Cincinnati.

St. Clair and Wayne 369

quences of which were of vital importance. They
showed that they possessed the highest attributes of
good citizenship — resolution and sagacity, stern
morality, and the capacity to govern others as well
as themselves. But they performed no pioneer feat
of any note as such, and they were not called upon
to display a tithe of the reckless daring and iron en
durance of hardship which characterized the con
querors of the Illinois and the founders of Kentucky
and Tennessee. This is in no sense a reflection upon
them. They did not need to give proof of a cour
age they had shown time and again in bloody battles
against the best troops of Europe. In this particu
lar enterprise, in which they showed so many ad
mirable qualities, they had little chance to show the
quality of adventurous bravery. They drifted com
fortably down stream, from the log fort whence they
started, past many settlers' houses, until they came
to the post of a small Federal garrison, where they
built their town. Such a trip is not to be mentioned
in the same breath with the long wanderings of
Clark and Boone and Robertson, when they went
forth unassisted to subdue the savage and make tame
the shaggy wilderness.

St. Clair, the first Governor, was a Scotchman of
good family. He had been a patriotic but unsuc
cessful general in the Revolutionary army. He was
a friend of Washington, and in politics a firm Fed
eralist; he was devoted to the cause of Union and
Liberty, and was a conscientious, high-minded man.
But he had no aptitude for the incredibly difficult

37° The Winning of the West

task of subduing the formidable forest Indians, with
their peculiar and dangerous system of warfare ; and
he possessed no capacity for getting on with the
frontiersmen, being without sympathy for their vir
tues while keenly alive to their very unattractive^
faults.

In the fall of 1787 another purchase of public
lands was negotiated, by the Miami Company. The
chief personage in this company was John Cleves
Symmes, one of the first judges of the Northwestern
Territory.

Rights were acquired to take up one million
acres, and under these rights three small settle
ments were made toward the close of the year 1788.
One of them was chosen by St. Clair to be the seat
of government. This little town had been called
Losantiville in its first infancy, but St. Clair re-
christened it Cincinnati, in honor of the Society of
the officers of the Continental army.

The men who formed these Miami Company colo
nies came largely from the Middle States. Like the
New England founders of Marietta, very many of
them, if not most, xhad served in the Continental
army. They were good settlers; they made good
material out of which to build up a great state.
Their movement was modeled on that of Putnam
and his associates. It was a triumph of collectiv
ism rather than of individualism. The settlers were
marshaled in a company, instead of moving freely
by themselves, and they took a territory granted
them by Congress, under certain conditions, and de-

St. Clair and Wayne 371

fended for them by the officers and troops of the
regular army.

Civil government was speedily organized. St.
Clair and the judges formed the first legislature; in
theory they were only permitted to adopt laws al
ready in existence in the old States, but as a matter
of fact they tried any legislative experiments they
saw fit. St. Clair was an autocrat both by military
training and by political principles. He was a man
of rigid honor, and he guarded the interests of the
territory with jealous integrity, but he exercised
such a rigorous supervision Over the acts of his
subordinate colleagues, the judges, that he became
involved in wrangles at the very beginning of his
administration. To prevent the incoming of unau
thorized intruders, he issued a proclamation sum
moning all newly arrived persons to report at once
to the local commandants, and, with a view of keep
ing the game for the use of the actual settlers, and
also to prevent as far as possible fresh irritation
being given the Indians, he forbade all hunting in
the territory for hides or flesh save by the inhabi
tants proper.19 Only an imperfect obedience was
rendered either proclamation.

Thus the settlement of the Northwest was fairly
begun, on a system hitherto untried. The fates and
the careers of all the mighty States which yet lay
formless in the forest were in great measure deter
mined by what was at this time done. The nation

19 Draper MSS. Wm. Clark Papers. Proclamation, Vin-
cennes, June 28, 1790.

372 The Winning of the West

had decreed that they should have equal rights with
the older States and with one another, and yet that
they should remain forever inseparable from the
Union; and above all, it had been settled that the
bondman should be unknown within their borders.
Their founding represented the triumph of the prin
ciple of collective national action over the spirit of
intense individualism displayed so commonly on
the frontier. The uncontrolled initiative of the indi
vidual, which was the chief force in the settlement
of the Southwest, was given comparatively little
play in the settlement of the Northwest. The North
west owed its existence to the action of the nation
as a whole.

CHAPTER II

THE WAR IN THE NORTHWEST, 1787-1790

THE Federal troops were camped in the Federal
territory north of the Ohio. They garrisoned
the fort and patrolled between the little 'log-towns.
They were commanded by the Federal General Har-
mar, and the territory was ruled by the Federal Gov
ernor St. Clair. Thenceforth the national authori
ties and the regular troops played the chief parts in
the struggle for the Northwest. The frontier mi
litia became a mere adjunct — often necessary, but
always untrustworthy — of the regular forces.

For some time the regulars fared ill in the war
fare with the savages; and a succession of mortify
ing failures closed with a defeat more ruinous than
any which had been experienced since the days of
the "iron-tempered general with the pipe-clay
brain," — for the disaster which befell St. Clair was
as overwhelming as that wherein Braddock met his
death. The continued checks excited the anger of
the Eastern people, and the dismay and derision of
the Westerners. They were keenly felt by the offi
cers of the army ; and they furnished an excuse for
those who wished to jeer at regular troops, and ex
alt the militia. Jefferson, who never understood
anything about warfare, being a timid man, and

(373)

374 The Winning of the West

who belonged to the visionary school which always
denounced the army and navy, was given a legiti
mate excuse to criticise the tactics of the regulars;1
and of course he never sought occasion to comment
on the even worse failings of the militia.

The truth was that the American military authori
ties fell into much the same series of errors as their
predecessors, the British, untaught by the dreary and
mortifying experience of the latter in fighting these
forest foes. The War Department at Washington,
and the Federal generals who first came to the
Northwest, did not seem able to realize the for
midable character of the Indian armies, and were
certainly unable to teach their own troops how to
fight them. Harmar and St. Clair were both fair
officers, and in open country were able to acquit
themselves respectably in the face of civilized foes.
But they did not have the peculiar genius necessary
to the successful Indian fighter, and they never
learned how to carry on a campaign in the woods.

They had the justifiable distrust of the militia
felt by all the officers of the Continental Army. In
the long campaigns waged against Howe, Clinton,
and Cornwallis they had learned the immense supe
riority of the Continental troops to the local mi
litia. They knew that the Revolution would have
failed had it not been for the Continental troops.
They knew also, by the bitter experience common to
all officers who had been through the war, that,

1 Draper MSS., G. R. Clark Papers. Jefferson to Innes,
March 7, 1791.

St. Clair and Wayne 375

X

though the militia might on occasion do well, yet
they could never be trusted ; they were certain to de
sert or grow sulky and mutinous if exposed to the
fatigue and hardship of a long campaign, while in
a pitched battle in the open they never fought as
stubbornly as the regulars, and often would not
fight at all.

All this was true; yet the officers of the regular
army failed to understand that it did not imply the
capacity of the regular troops to fight savages on
their own ground. They showed little real com
prehension of the extraordinary difficulty of such
warfare against such foes, and of the reasons which
made it so hazardous. They could not help assign
ing other causes than the real ones for every defeat
and failure. They attributed each in turn to the ef
fects of ambuscade or surprise, instead of realizing
that in each the prime factor was the formidable
fighting power of the individual Indian warrior,
when in the thick forest which was to him a home,
and when acting under that species of wilderness dis
cipline which was so effective for a single crisis in his
peculiar warfare. The Indian has rarely shown any
marked excellence as a fighter in mass in the open ;
though of course there have been one or two bril
liant exceptions. At times in our wars we have
tried the experiment of drilling bodies of Indians
as if they were whites, and using them in the ordi
nary way in battle. Under such conditions, as a
rule, they have shown themselves inferior to the
white troops against whom they were pitted. In

376 The Winning of the West

the same way they failed to show themselves a match
for the white hunters of the great plains when on
equal terms. But their marvelous faculty for taking
advantage of cover, and for fighting in concert when
under cover, has always made the warlike tribes
foes to be dreaded beyond all others when in the
woods, or among wild broken mountains.

The history of our warfare with the Indians dur
ing the century following the close of the Revolu
tion is marked by curiously sharp contrasts in the
efficiency shown by the regular troops in campaigns
carried on at different times and under varying con
ditions. These contrasts are due much more to the
difference in the conditions under which the cam
paigns were waged than to the difference in the
bodily prowess of the Indians. When we had been
in existence as a nation for a century the Modocs
in their lava-beds and the Apaches amid their water
less mountains were still waging against the regu
lars of the day the same tedious and dangerous war
fare waged against Harmar and St. Clair by the
forest Indians. There were the same weary, long-
continued campaigns ; the same difficulty in bringing
the savages to battle ; the same blind fighting against
hidden antagonists shielded by the peculiar nature of
their fastnesses; and, finally, the same great dis
parity of loss against the white troops. During the
intervening hundred years there had been many sim
ilar struggles ; as, for instance, that against the Sem-
inoles. Yet there had also been many struggles,
against Indians naturally more formidable, in which

St. Clair and Wayne 377

the troops again and again worsted their Indian foes
even when the odds in numbers were two or three
to one against the whites. The difference between
these different classes of wars was partly accounted
for by change in weapons and methods of righting;
partly by the change in the character of the battle
grounds. The horse Indians of the plains were as
elusive and difficult to bring to battle as the Indians
of the mountains and forests ; but in the actual right
ing they had no chance to take advantage of cover in
the way which rendered so formidable their brethren
of the hills and the deep woods. In consequence their
occasional slaughtering victories, including the most
famous of all, the battle of the Rosebud, in which
Custer fell, took the form of the overwhelming of a
comparatively small number of whites by immense
masses of mounted horsemen. When their weapons
were inferior, as on the first occasions when they
were brought into contact with troops carrying
breech-loading arms of precision, or when they tried
the tactics of downright fighting, and of charging
fairly in the open, they were often themselves beaten
or repulsed with fearful slaughter by mere handfuls
of whites. In the years 1867-68, all the horse In
dians of the plains were at war with us, and many
battles were fought with varying fortune. Two
were especially noteworthy. In each a small body
of troops and frontier scouts, under the command
of a regular army officer who was also a veteran In
dian fighter, beat back an overwhelming Indian
force, which attempted to storm by open onslaught

378 The Winning of the West

the position held by the white riflemen. In one in
stance fifty men under Major Geo. H. Forsyth beat
back nine hundred warriors, killing or wounding
double their own number. In the other a still more
remarkable defence was made by thirty-one men
under Major James Powell against an even larger
force which charged again and again, and did not
accept their repulse as final until they had lost three
hundred of their foremost braves. For years the
Sioux spoke with bated breath of this battle as the
"medicine fight," the defeat so overwhelming that
it could be accounted for only by supernatural
interference.2

But no such victory was ever gained over moun
tain or forest Indians who had become accustomed
to fighting the white men. Every officer who has
ever faced these foes has had to spend years in learn
ing his work, and has then been forced to see a bit
terly inadequate reward for his labors. The officers
of the regular army who served in the forests north
of the Ohio just after the Revolution had to undergo
a strange and painful training; and were obliged to
content themselves with scanty and hard-won tri
umphs even after this training had been undergone.

The officers took some time to learn their duties
as Indian fighters, but the case was much worse with
the rank and file who served under them. From the
beginning of our history it often proved difficult
to get the best type of native American to go into the
regular army save in time of war with a powerful

* For all this see Dodge's admirable "Our Wild Indians."

St. Clair and Wayne 379

enemy, for the low rate of pay was not attractive,
while the disciplined subordination of the soldiers
to their officers seemed irksome to people with an ex
aggerated idea of individual freedom and no proper
conception of the value of obedience. Very many
of the regular soldiers have always been of foreign
birth; and in 1787, on the Ohio, the percentage of
Irish and Germans in the ranks was probably fully
as large as it was on the Great Plains a century
later.3 They, as others, at that early date, were,
to a great extent, drawn from the least desirable
classes of the Eastern seaboard.4 Three or four
years latter an unfriendly observer wrote of St.
Clair's soldiers that they were a wretched set of men,
weak and feeble, many of them mere boys, while
others were rotten with drink and debauchery. He
remarked that men "purchased from the prisons,
wheel-barrows, and brothels of the nation at fool
ishly low wages, would never do to fight Indians" ;
and that against such foes, who were terrible ene
mies in the woods, there was need of first-class,
specially trained troops, instead of trying to use "a
set of men who enlisted because they could no longer
live unhung any other way."5

8 Denny's Journal, passim.

* For fear of misunderstanding, I wish to add that at many
periods the rank and file have been composed of excellent
material ; of recent years their character has steadily risen,
and the stuff itself has always proved good when handled for
a sufficient length of time by good commanders.

5 Draper collection. Letter of John Cleves Symmes to
Elias Boudinot, January 12, 1792.

380 The Winning of the West

Doubtless this estimate, made under the sting of
defeat, was too harsh; and it was even more ap
plicable to the forced levies of militia than to the
Federal soldiers; but the shortcomings of the regu
lar troops were sufficiently serious to need no exag
geration. Their own officers were far from pleased
with the recruits they got.

To the younger officers, with a taste for sport,
the life beyond the Ohio was delightful. The cli
mate was pleasant, the country beautiful, the water
was clear as crystal, and game abounded. In hard
weather the troops lived on salt beef; but at other
times their daily rations were two pounds of turkey
or venison, or a pound and a half of bear meat or
buffalo beef. Yet this game was supplied by hired
hunters, not by the soldiers themselves. One of the
officers wrote that he had to keep his troops prac
ticing steadily at a target, for they were incompetent
to meet an enemy with the musket; they could not
kill in a week enough game to last them a day.6 It
was almost impossible to train such troops, in a
limited number of months or years, so as to enable
them to meet their forest foes on equal terms. The
discipline to which they were accustomed was ad
mirably fitted for warfare in the open ; but it was not
suited for warfare in the woods. They had to learn
even the use of their firearms with painful labor.
It was merely hopeless to try to teach them to fight
Indian fashion, all scattering out for themselves,

• State Dept. MSS., No. 150; Doughty's Letter March 15,
1786; also, November 30, 1785.

St. Clair and Wayne 381

and each taking a tree trunk, and trying to slay an
individual enemy. They were too clumsy; they ut
terly lacked the wild-creature qualities proper to the
men of the wilderness, the men who inherited wolf-
cunning and panther-stealth from countless genera
tions, who bought bare life itself only at the price of
never-ceasing watchfulness, craft, and ferocity.

The regulars were certainly not ideal troops with
which to oppose such foes; but they were the best
attainable at that time. They possessed traits which
were lacking in even the best of the frontier militia;
and most of the militia fell far short of the best.
When properly trained the regulars could be trusted
to persevere through a campaign; whereas the mi
litia were sure to disband if kept out for any length
of time. Moreover, a regular army formed a weapon
with a temper tried and known; whereas a militia
force was the most brittle of swords which might
give one true stroke, or might fly into splinters at
the first slight blow. Regulars were the only troops
who could be trusted to wear out their foes in a suc
cession of weary and hard-fought campaigns.

The best backwoods fighters, however, such men
as Kenton and Brady had in their scout companies,
were much superior to the regulars, and were able
to meet the Indians on at least equal terms. But
there were only a very few such men ; and they were
too impatient of discipline to be embodied in an
army. The bulk of the frontier militia consisted
of men who were better riflemen than the regulars
and often physically abler, but who were otherwise

382 The Winning of the West

in every military sense inferior, possessing their de
fects, sometimes in an accentuated form, and not
possessing their compensating virtues. Like the
regulars, these militia fought the Indians at a terri
ble disadvantage. A defeat for either meant mur
derous slaughter; for whereas the trained Indian
fighters fought or fled each for himself, the ordinary
troops huddled together in a mass, an easy mark
for their savage foes.

The task set the leaders of the army in the
Northwest was one of extreme difficulty and dan
ger. They had to overcome a foe trained through
untold ages how to fight most effectively on the very
battle-ground where the contest was to be waged.
To the whites a march through the wilderness was
fraught with incredible toil; whereas the Indians
moved without baggage, and scattered and came to
gether as they wished, so that it was impossible to
bring them to battle against their will. All that
could be done was to try to beat them when they
chose to receive or deliver an attack. With ordi
nary militia it was hopeless to attempt to accomplish
anything needing prolonged and sustained effort,
and, as already said, the thoroughly trained Indian
fighters who were able to beat the savages at their
own game were too few in numbers, and too unac
customed to control and restraint, to permit of their
forming the main body of the army in an offensive
campaign. There remained only the regulars; and
the raw recruits had to undergo a long and special
training, and be put under the command of a thor-

St. Clair and Wayne 383

oughly capable leader, like old Mad Anthony Wayne,
before they could be employed to advantage.

The feeling between the regular troops and the
frontiersmen was often very bitter, and on several
occasions violent brawls resulted. One such oc
curred at Limestone, where the brutal Indian-fighter
Wetzel lived. Wetzel had murdered a friendly In
dian, and the soldiers bore him a grudge. When
they were sent to arrest him the townspeople sallied
to his support. Wetzel himself resisted, and was,
very properly, roughly handled in consequence. The
interference of the townspeople was vigorously re
paid in kind; they soon gave up the attempt, and
afterward one or two of them were ill-treated or
plundered by the soldiers. They made complaint
to the civil authorities, and a court-martial was then
ordered by the Federal commanders. This court-
martial acquitted the soldiers. Wetzel soon after
ward made his escape, and the incident ended.7

By 1787 the Indian war had begun with all its
old fury. The thickly settled districts were not much
troubled, and the towns which, like Marietta in the
following year, grew up under the shadow of a Fed
eral fort, were comparatively safe. But the frontier
of Kentucky, and of Virginia proper along the Ohio,
suffered severely. There was great scarcity of pow
der and lead, and even of guns, and there was diffi
culty in procuring provisions for those militia who

1 Draper MSS. Harmar's letter to Henry Lee, Sept. 27,
1789. Also depositions of McCurdy, Lawler, Caldwell, and
others, and proceedings of court-martial. The depositions
conflict.

384 The Winning of the West

consented to leave their work and turn out when
summoned. The settlers were harried, and the sur
veyors feared to go out to their work on the range.
There were the usual horrible incidents of Indian
warfare. A glimpse of one of the innumerable
dreadful tragedies is afforded by the statement of
one party of scouts, who, in following the trail of
an Indian war band, found at the crossing of the
river "the small tracks of a number of children,"
prisoners from a raid made on the Monongahela
settlements.8

The settlers in the harried territory sent urgent
appeals for help to the Governor of Virginia and to
Congress. In these appeals stress was laid upon the
poverty of the frontiersmen, and their lack of am
munition. The writers pointed out that the men
of the border should receive support, if only from
motives of policy; for it was of great importance
to the people in the thickly settled districts that the
war should be kept on the frontier, and that the men
who lived there should remain as a barrier against
the Indians. If the latter broke through and got
among the less hardy and warlike people of the in
terior, they would work much greater havoc ; for in
Indian warfare the borderers were as much supe
rior to the more peaceful people behind them as a
veteran to a raw recruit.9

These appeals did not go unheeded ; but there was

8 State Dept. MSS., No. 71, Vol. II. Letters of David
Shepherd to Governor Randolph, April 30, and May 24, 1787.
• Draper MSS. Lt. Marshall to Franklin, Nov. 6, 1787.

St. Clair and Wayne 385

embarrassment in affording the frontier adequate
protection, both because the party to which the bor
derers themselves belonged foolishly objected to the
employment of a fair-sized regular army, and be
cause Congress still clung to the belief that war
could be averted by treaty, and so forbade the taking
of proper offensive measures. In the years 1787,
'88, and '89, the ravages continued; many settlers
were slain, with their families, and many bodies of
immigrants destroyed; while the scouting and res
cue parties of whites killed a few Indians in re
turn.10 All the Indians were not yet at war, how
ever; and curious agreements were entered into by
individuals on both sides. In the absence on either
side of any government with full authority and
power, the leaders would often negotiate some spe
cial or temporary truce, referring only to certain
limited localities, or to certain people; and would
agree between themselves for the interchange or
ransom of prisoners. There is a letter of Boone's
extant in which he notifies a leading Kentucky col
onel that a certain captive woman must be given up,
in accordance with an agreement he has made with
one of the noted Indian chiefs ; and he insists upon
the immediate surrender of the woman, to clear his
"promise and obligation." n

The Indians watched the Ohio with especial care,
and took their toll from the immense numbers of

10 Va. State Papers, IV, 357.

11 Draper MSS., Boone Papers. Boone to Robert Patter
son, March 16, 1787.

VOL. VII.— 17

386 The Winning of the West

immigrants who went down it. After passing the
Muskingum no boat was safe. If the war parties,
lurking along the banks, came on a boat moored to
the shore, or swept thither by wind or current, the
crew was at their mercy ; and grown bold by success,
they sometimes launched small flotillas of canoes
and attacked the scows on the water. In such at
tacks they were often' successful, for they always
made the assault with the odds in their favor;
though they were sometimes beaten back with heavy
loss.

When the war was at its height, the boats going
down the Ohio preferred to move in brigades. An
army officer has left a description12 of one such flo
tilla, over which he had assumed command. It
contained sixteen flat-boats, then usually called
"Kentuck boats," and two keels. The flat-boats were
lashed three together and kept in one line. The
women, children, and cattle were put in the middle
scows, while the outside were manned and worked
by the men. The keel boats kept on either flank.
This particular flotilla was unmolested by the In
dians, but was almost wrecked in a furious storm
of wind and rain.

The Federal authorities were still hopelessly en
deavoring to come to some understanding with the
Indians; they were holding treaties with some of
the tribes, sending addresses and making speeches
to others, and keeping envoys in the neighborhood
of Detroit. These envoys watched the Indians who

1S Denny's Military Journal, April 19, 1790.

St. Clair and Wayne 387

were there, and tried to influence the great gather
ings of different tribes who came together at San-
dusky to consult as to the white advance.13

These efforts to negotiate were as disheartening
as was usually the case under such circumstances.
There were many different tribes, and some were for
peace, while others were for war; and even the
peaceful ones could not restrain their turbulent
young men. Far off nations of Indians who had
never been harmed by the whites, and were in no
danger from them, sent war parties to the Ohio;
and the friendly tribes let them pass without inter
ference. The Iroquois were eagerly consulted by the
Western Indians, and in the summer of 1788 a
great party of them came to Sandusky to meet in
council all the tribes of the Lakes and the Ohio
Valley, and even some from the upper Mississippi.
With the Iroquois came the famous chief Joseph
Brant, a mighty warrior, and a man of education,
who in his letters to the United States officials
showed much polished diplomacy.14

The tribes who gathered at this great council met
on the soil which, by treaty with England, had been
declared American, and came from regions which
the same treaty had defined as lying within the
boundaries of the United States. But these pro
visions of the treaty had never been executed, ow
ing largely to a failure on the part of the Americans

13 State Department MSS., No. 150, Vol. Ill, Harmar's
speech to the Indians at Vincennes, September 17, 1787.
Richard Butler to the Secretary of. War, May 4, 1788, etc.

14 Do., pp. 47 and 51.

388 The Winning of the West

themselves to execute certain other provisions. The
land was really as much British as ever, and was so
treated by the British Governor of Canada, Lord
Dorchester, who had just made a tour of the Lake
Posts. The tribes were feudatory to the British, and
in their talks spoke of the King of Great Britain
as "father," and Brant was a British pensioner.
British agents were in constant communication with
the Indians at the councils, and they distributed
gifts among them with a hitherto unheard-of lavish-
ness. In every way they showed their resolution to
remain in full touch with their red allies.15

Nevertheless, they were anxious that peace should
be made. The Wyandots, too, seconded them, and
addressed the Wabash Indians at one of the coun
cils, urging them to cease their outrages on the
Americans.16 These Wyandots had long been con
verted, and in addressing their heathen brethren,
said proudly: "We are not as other nations are —
we, the Wyandots — we are Christians." They cer
tainly showed themselves the better for their re
ligion, and they were still the bravest of the brave.
But though the Wabash Indians in answering spake
them fair, they had no wish to go to peace; and the
Wyandots were the only tribes who strove ear
nestly to prevent war. The American agents who
had gone to the Detroit River were forced to re
port that there was little hope of putting an end to

16 Do., St. Clair to Knox, September 14, 1788; St. Clair to
Jay, December 13, 1^788.
16 Do., p. 267, Detroit River's Mouth, July 23, 1788.

St. Clair and Wayne 389

hostilities.17 The councils accomplished nothing to
ward averting a war; on the contrary, they tended
to band all the Northwestern Indians together in a
loose confederacy, so that active hostilities against
some were sure in the end to involve all.

While the councils were sitting and while the
Americans were preparing for the treaties, outrages
of the most flagrant kind occurred. One, out of
many, was noteworthy as showing both the treach
ery of the Indians, and the further fact that some
tribes went to war, not because they had been in any
way maltreated, but from mere lust of blood and
plunder. In July of this year, 1788, Governor St.
Clair was making ready for a treaty to which he had
invited some of the tribes. It was to be held on the
Muskingum, and he sent to the appointed place pro
visions for the Indians with a 'guard of men. One
day" a party of Indians, whose tribe was then un
known, though later they turned out to be Chippe-
was from the Upper Lakes, suddenly fell on the
guard. They charged home with great spirit, using
their sharp spears well, and killed, wounded, or cap
tured several soldiers; but they were repulsed, and
retreated, carrying with them their dead, save one
warrior.18 A few days afterward they imprudently
ventured back, pretending innocence, and six were
seized, and sent to one of the forts as prisoners.
Their act of treacherous violence had, of course,

11 Do., James Rinkin to Richard Butler, July 20, 1788.
18 St. Clair Papers, II, 50.

39° The Winning of the West

caused the immediate abandonment of the proposed
treaty.

The remaining Chippewas marched toward home,
with the scalps of the men they had slain, and with
one captured soldier. They passed by Detroit, tell
ing the French villagers that "their father [the
British Commandant] was a dog," because he had
given them no arms or ammunition, and that in
consequence they would not deliver him their pris
oner, but would take the poor wretch with them to
their Mackinaw home. Accordingly they carried
him on to the far-off island at the mouth of Lake
Michigan; but just as they were preparing to make
him run the gantlet the British commander of the
lonely little post interfered. This subaltern with his
party of a dozen soldiers 'was surrounded by many
times his number of ferocious savages, and was com
pletely isolated in the wilderness; but his courage
stood as high as his humanity, and he broke through
the Indians, threatening them with death if they in
terfered, rescued the captive American, and sent him
home in safety.19

The other Indians made no attempt to check the
Chippewas; on the contrary, the envoys of the Iro-
quois and Delawares made vain efforts to secure the
release of the Chippewa prisoners. On the other
hand, the generous gallantry of the British com
mander at Mackinaw was in some sort equaled by

19 State Dept. MSS., No. 150, Vol. III. William Wilson
and James Rinkin to Richard Butler, August 4, 1788; Wilson
and Rinkin to St. Clair, August 31, 1788.

St. Clair and Wayne 391

the action of the traders on the Maumee, who went
to great expense in buying from the Shawnees Amer
icans whom they had doomed to the terrible torture
of death at the stake.20

Under such circumstances the treaties of course
came to naught. After interminable delays the In
dians either refused to treat at all, or else the acts
of those who did were promptly repudiated by those
who did not. In consequence throughout this period
even the treaties that were made were quite worth
less, for they bound nobody. Moreover, there were
the usual clashes between the National and State
authorities. While Harmar was trying to treat, the
Kentuckians were organizing retaliatory inroads;
and while the United States Commissioners were
trying to hold big peace councils on the Ohio, the
New York and Massachusetts Commissioners were
conducting independent negotiations at what is now
Buffalo, to determine the western boundary of New
York.21

All the while the ravages grew steadily more se
vere. The Federal officers at the little widely scat
tered forts were at their wits' ends in trying to pro
tect the outlying settlers and retaliate on the In-

50 Do., Rinkin to Butler, July 2, 1788; St. Clair to Knox,
September 4, 1788.

21 Do., Wilson and Rinkin to St. Clair, July 29, 1788. These
treaties made at the Ohio forts are quite unworthy of preser
vation, save for mere curiosity; they really settled nothing
whatever and conferred no rights that were not taken with
the strong hand ; yet they are solemnly quoted in some books
as if they were the real sources of title to parts of the North
west.

392 The Winning of the West

dians; and as the latter grew bolder they menaced
the forts themselves and harried the troops who
convoyed provisions to them. Of the innumerable
tragedies which occurred, the record of a few has
by chance been preserved. One may be worth giv
ing merely as a sample of many others. On the Vir
ginian side of the Ohio lived a pioneer farmer of
some note, named Van Swearingen.22 One day his
son crossed the river to hunt with a party of stran
gers. Near a "waste cabbin," the deserted log hut
of some reckless adventurer, an Indian war-band
came on them unawares, slew three, and carried off
the young man. His father did not know whether
they had killed him or not. He could find no trace
of him, and he wrote to the commander of the near
est fort, begging him to try to get news from the In
dian villages as to whether his son were alive or
dead, and to employ for the purpose any friendly
Indian or white scout, at whatever price was set — he
would pay it "to the utmost farthing." He could
give no clew to the Indians who had done the deed ;
all he could say was that a few days before, one of
these war parties, while driving off a number of
horses, was overtaken by the riflemen of the neigh
borhood and scattered, after a fight in which one
white man and two red men were killed.

The old frontiersman never found his son ; doubt
less the boy was slain ; but his fate, like the fate of
hundreds of others, was swallowed up in the gloomy

M State Dept. MSS., No. 150, Vol. II, Van Swearingen to
William Butler, Washington County, Sept. 29, 1787.

St. Clair and Wayne 393

mystery of the wilderness. So far from being un
usual, the incident attracted no comment, for it was
one of every-day occurrence. Its only interest lies
in the fact that it was of a kind that befell the family
of almost every dweller in the wilds. .Danger and
death were so common that the particular expres
sion which each might take made small impress on
the minds of the old pioneers. Every one of them
had a long score of slain friends and kinsfolk to
avenge upon his savage foes.

The subalterns in command of the little detach
ments which moved between the posts, whether they
went by land or water, were forced to be ever on
the watch against surprise and ambush. This was
particularly the case with the garrison at Vincen-
nes. The Wabash Indians were all the time out
in parties to murder and plunder ; and yet these same
thieves and murderers were continually coming into
town and strolling innocently about the fort; for it
was impossible to tell the peaceful Indians from the
hostile. They were ever in communication with the
equally treacherous and ferocious Miami tribes, to
whose towns the war parties often brought five or
six scalps in a day, and prisoners, too, doomed to
a death of awful torture at the stake. There is no
need to waste sympathy on the Northwestern In
dians for their final fate ; never were defeat and sub
jection more richly deserved.

The bands of fierce and crafty braves who lounged
about the wooden fort at Vincennes watched eagerly
the outgoing and incoming of the troops, and were

394 The Winning of the West

prompt to dog and waylay any party they thought
they could overcome. They took advantage of the
unwillingness of the Federal commander to harass
Indians who might be friendly; and plotted at ease
the destruction of the very troops who spent much
of the time in keeping intruders off their lands. In
the summer of 1788 they twice followed parties of
soldiers from the town, when they went down the
Wabash, and attacked them by surprise, from the
river-banks, as they sat in their boats. In one in
stance, the lieutenant in command got off with the
loss of but two or three men. In the other, of
the thirty-six soldiers who composed the party ten
were killed, eight wounded, and the greater part of
the provisions and goods they were conveying were
captured ; while the survivors, pushing down-stream,
ultimately made their way to the Illinois towns.23
This last tragedy was avenged by a band of thirty
mounted riflemen from Kentucky, led by the noted
backwoods fighter Hardin. They had crossed the
Ohio on a retaliatory foray, many of their horses
having been stolen by the Indians. When near Vin-
cennes they happened to stumble on the war party
that had attacked the soldiers, slew ten, and scat
tered the others to the winds, capturing thirty
horses.24

The war bands who harried the settlements, or
lurked along the banks of the Ohio, bent on theft

« State Dept. MSS., No. 150, Vol. III. Lt. Spear to Har-
mar, June 2, 1788; Hamtranck to Harmar, Aug. 12, 1788.

14 Draper MSS. Wm. Clark Papers. N. T. Dalton to W.
Clark, Vincennes, Aug. 23, 1788; also Denny, p. 528.

St. Clair and Wayne 395

and murder, did terrible deeds, and at times suffered
terrible fates in return, when some untoward chance
threw them in the way of the grim border ven
geance. The books of the old annalists are filled
with tales of disaster and retribution, of horrible
suffering and of fierce prowess. Countless stories
are told of heroic fight and panic rout ; of midnight
assault on lonely cabins, and ambush of heavy-laden
immigrant scows; of the deaths of brave men and
cowards, and the dreadful butchery of women and
children; of bloody raid and revengeful counter
stroke. Sometimes a band of painted marauders
would kill family after family, without suffering
any loss, would capture boat after boat without ef
fective resistance from the immigrants, paralyzed
by panic fright, and would finally escape unmo
lested, or beat off with ease a possibly larger party of
pursuers, who happened to be ill led, or to be men
with little training in wilderness warfare.

At other times all this might be reversed. A
cabin might be defended with such maddened cour
age by some stout rifleman, fighting for his cower
ing wife and children, that a score of savages would
recoil baffled, leaving many of their number dead.
A boat's crew of resolute men might beat back, with
heavy loss, an over-eager onslaught of Indians in
canoes, or push their slow, unwieldy craft from
shore under a rain of rifle-balls, while the wounded
oarsmen strained at the bloody handles of the sweeps,
and the men who did not row gave shot for shot,
firing at the flame tongues in the dark woods. A

The Winning of the West

party of scouts, true wilderness veterans, equal to
their foes in woodcraft and cunning, and superior in
marksmanship and reckless courage, might follow
and scatter some war band and return in triumph
with scalps and retaken captives and horses.

A volume could readily be filled with adventures
of this kind, all varying infinitely in detail, but all
alike in their bloody ferocity. During the years
1789 and 1790 scores of Indian war parties went on
such trips, to meet every kind of success and failure.
The deeds of one such, which happen to be recorded,
may be given merely to serve as a sample of what
happened in countless other cases. In the early
spring of 1790 a band of fifty-four Indians of va
rious tribes, but chiefly Cherokees and Shawnees,
established a camp near the mouth of the Scioto.25
They first attacked a small new-built station, on one
of the bottoms of the Ohio, some twenty miles from
Limestone, and killed or captured all its fifteen in
habitants. They spared the lives of two of the cap
tives, but forced the wretches to act as decoys so as
to try to lure passing boats within reach.

Their first success was with a boat going down
river, and containing four men and two unmarried
girls, besides a quantity of goods intended for the
stores in the Kentucky towns. The two decoys ap
peared on the right bank, begging piteously to be
taken on board, and stating that they had just es
caped from the savages. Three of the voyagers, not

85 American State Papers, Indian Affairs, Vol. I, pp. 87,
88, 91.

St. Clair and Wayne 397

liking the looks of the men, refused to land, but the
fourth, a reckless fellow named Flynn, and the two
girls, who were coarse, foolish, good-natured fron
tier women of the lower sort, took pity upon the
seeming fugitives, and insisted on taking them
aboard. Accordingly the scow was shoved inshore,
and Flynn jumped on the bank, only to be immedi
ately seized by the Indians, who then opened fire
on the others. They tried to put off, and fired back,
but they were helpless; one man and a girl were
shot, another wounded, and the savages then
swarmed aboard, seized everything, and got very
drunk on a keg of whiskey. The fates of the cap
tives were various, each falling to some different
group of savages. Flynn, the cause of the trouble,
fell to the Cherokees, who took him to the Miami
town, and burned him alive, with dreadful tor
ments. The remaining girl, after suffering outrage
and hardship, was bound to the stake, but saved by
a merciful Indian, who sent her home. Of the two
remaining men, one ran the gantlet successfully,
and afterward escaped and reached home through
the woods, while the other was ransomed by a
French trader at Sandusky.

Before thus disposing of their captives the In
dians hung about the mouth of the Scioto for some
time. They captured a pirogue going up-stream,
and killed all six paddlers. Soon afterward three
heavily laden scows passed, drifting down with the
current. Aboard these were twenty-eight men, with
their women and children, together with many horses

398 The Winning of the West

and bales of merchandise. They had but sixteen
guns among them, and many were immigrants, un
accustomed to savage warfare, and therefore they
made no effort to repel the attack, which could
easily have been done by resolute, well-armed vet
erans. The Indians crowded into the craft they
had captured, and paddled and rowed after the
scows, whooping and firing. They nearly overtook
the last scow, whereupon its people shifted to the
second, and abandoned it. When further pressed
the people shifted into the headmost scow, cut holes
in its sides so as to work all the oars, and escaped
down-stream, leaving the Indians to plunder the
two abandoned boats, which contained twenty-eight
horses and fifteen hundred pounds' worth of goods.

The Kentuckians of the neighborhood sent word
to General Harmar, begging him to break up this
nest of plunderers. Accordingly he started after
them, with his regular troops. He was joined by a
number of Kentucky mounted riflemen, under the
command of Col. Charles Scott, a rough Indian
fighter, and veteran of the Revolutionary War, who
afterward became Governor of the State. Scott had
moved to Kentucky not long after the close of the
war with England; he had lost a son at the hands
of the savages,26 and he delighted in war against
them.

Harmar made a circuit and came down along the
Scioto, hoping to surprise the Indian camp; but he
might as well have hoped to surprise a party of

State Dept. MSS., No. 71, Vol. II, p. 563.

St. Clair and Wayne 399

timber wolves. His foes scattered and disappeared
in the dense forest. Nevertheless, coming across
some moccasin tracks, Scott's horsemen followed the
trail, killed four Indians, and carried in the scalps
to Limestone. The chastisement proved of little
avail. A month later rive immigrant boats, while
moored to the bank a few miles from Limestone,
were rushed by the Indians at night; one boat was
taken, all the thirteen souls aboard being killed or
captured.

Among the men who suffered about this time was
the Italian Vigo; a fine, manly, generous fellow, of
whom St. Clair spoke as having put the United
States under heavy obligations, and as being "in
truth the most disinterested person" he had ever
known.27 While taking his trading boat up the Wa-
bash, Vigo was attacked by an Indian war party,
three of his men were killed, and he was forced
to drop down-stream. Meeting another trading
boat manned by Americans, he again essayed to
force a passage in company with it, but they were
both attacked with fury. The other boat got off;
but Vigo's was captured. However, the Indians,
when they found the crew consisted of Creoles, mo
lested none of them, telling them that they only
warred against the Americans; though they plun
dered the boat.

By the summer of 1790 the raids of the Indians
had become unbearable. Fresh robberies and mur-

81 American State Papers, Indian Affairs, Vol. I, Sept. 19,
1790.

400 The Winning of the West

ders were committed every day in Kentucky, or
along- the Wabash and Ohio. Writing to the Sec
retary of War, a prominent Kentuckian, well know
ing all the facts, estimated that during the seven
years which had elapsed since the close of the Revo-"
lutionary War the Indians had slain fifteen hundred
people in Kentucky itself, or on the immigrant routes
leading thither, and had stolen twenty thousand
horses, besides destroying immense quantities of
other property.28 The Federal generals were also
urgent in asserting the folly of carrying on a merely
defensive war against such foes. All the efforts of
the Federal authorities to make treaties with the
Indians and persuade them to be peaceful had failed.
The Indians themselves had renewed hostilities, and
the different tribes had one by one joined in the war,
behaving with a treachery only equaled by their fe
rocity. With great reluctance the National Gov
ernment concluded that an effort to chastise the hos
tile savages could no longer be delayed; and those
on the Maumee, or Miami of the Lakes, and on the
Wabash, whose guilt had been peculiarly heinous,
were singled out as the objects of attack.

The expedition against the Wabash towns was
led by the Federal commander at Vincennes, Major
Hamtranck. No resistance was encountered; and
after burning a few villages of bark huts and de
stroying some corn he returned to Vincennes.

The main expedition was that against the Miami

S8 American State Papers, Indian Affairs, Vol. I. Innes to
Sec. of War, July 7, 1790.

St. 'Clair and Wayne 401

Indians, and was led by General Harmar himself.
It was arranged that there should be a nucleus of
regular troops, but that the force should consist
mainly of militia from Kentucky and Pennsylvania,
the former furnishing twice as many as the latter.
The troops were to gather on the 1 5th of September
at Fort Washington, on the north bank of the Ohio,
a day's journey down-stream from Limestone.

At the appointed time the militia began to strag
gle in; the regular officers had long been busy get
ting their own troops, artillery, and military stores
in readiness. The regulars felt the utmost disap
pointment at the appearance of the militia. They
numbered but few of the trained Indian fighters of
the frontier; many of them were hired substitutes;
most of them were entirely unacquainted with In
dian warfare, and were new to the life of the wil
derness; and they were badly armed.29 The Penn-
sylvanians were of even poorer stuff than the Ken-
tuckians, numbering many infirm old men, and many
mere boys. They were undisciplined, with little re
gard for authority, and inclined to be disorderly and
mutinous.

By the end of September one battalion of Penn
sylvania, and three battalions of Kentucky, militia
had arrived, and the troops began their march to
the Miami. All told there were 1,453 men, 320
being Federal troops and 1,133 militia, many of
whom were mounted; and there were three light

29 American State Papers, Indian Affairs, Vol. I, pp. 104,
105 ; Military Affairs, I, 20.

402 The Winning of the West

brass field-pieces.30 In point of numbers the force
was amply sufficient for its work; but Harmar,
though a gallant man, was not fitted to command
even a small army against Indians, and the bulk of
the militia, who composed nearly four-fifths of his
force, were worthless. A difficulty immediately oc
curred in choosing a commander for the militia.
Undoubtedly the best one among their officers was
Colonel John Hardin, who (like his fellow Ken-
tuckian, Colonel Scott), was a veteran of the Revo
lutionary War, and a man of experience in the in
numerable deadly Indian skirmishes of the time. He
had no special qualifications for the command of
more than a handful of troops, but he was a brave
and honorable man, who had done well in leading
small parties of rangers against their red foes.
Nevertheless, the militia threatened mutiny unless
they were allowed to choose their own leader, and
they chose a mere incompetent, a Colonel Trotter.
Harmar yielded, for the home authorities had dwelt
much on the necessity of his preventing friction be
tween the regulars and the militia ; and he had so lit
tle control over the latter, that he was very anxious
to keep them good-humored. Moreover, the com
missariat arrangements were poor. Under such cir
cumstances the keenest observers on the frontier
foretold failure from the start.31

80 Do., Indian Affairs, I, p. 104; also p. 105. For this ex
pedition see also Military Affairs, I, pp. 20, 28, and Denny's
Military Journal, pp. 343, 354.

31 Am. State Papers, Indian Affairs, I. Jno. O'Fallan to
the President, Lexington, Ky., Sept. 25, 1790.

St. Clair and Wayne 403

For several days the army marched slowly for
ward. The regular officers had endless difficulty
with the pack horsemen, who allowed their charges
to stray or be stolen, and they strove to instruct the
militia in the rudiments of their duties on the
march, in camp, and in battle. A fortnight's halt
ing progress through the wilderness brought the
army to a small branch of the Miami of the Lakes.
Here a horse patrol captured a Maumee Indian,
who informed his captors that the Indians knew of
their approach and were leaving their towns. On
hearing this an effort was made to hurry forward;
but when the army reached the Miami towns, on
October I7th, they had been deserted. They stood
at the junction of two branches of the Miami, the St.
Mary and the St. Joseph, about one hundred and sev
enty miles from Fort Washington. The troops had
marched about ten miles a day. The towns con
sisted of a couple of hundred wigwams, with some
good log huts; and there were gardens, orchards,
and immense fields of corn. All these the soldiers
destroyed, and the militia loaded themselves with
plunder.

On the 1 8th Colonel Trotter was ordered out with
three hundred men to spend a couple of days explor
ing the country, and finding out where the Indians
were. After marching a few miles, they came across
two Indians. Both were killed by the advanced
horsemen. All four of the field officers of the
militia — two colonels and two majors — joined hel
ter-skelter in the chase, leaving their troops for half

404 The Winning of the West

an hour without a leader. Apparently satisfied with
this feat, Trotter marched home, having accom
plished nothing.

Much angered, Harmar gave the command to
Hardin, who left the camp next morning with two
hundred men, including thirty regulars. But the
militia had turned sulky. They did not wish to go,
and they began to desert and return to camp imme
diately after leaving it. At least half of them had
thus left him, when he stumbled on a body of about
a hundred Indians. The Indians advanced firing,
and the militia fled with abject cowardice, many not
even discharging their guns. The thirty regulars
stood to their work, and about ten of the militia
stayed with them. This small detachment fought
bravely, and was cut to pieces, but six or seven men
escaping. Their captain, after valiant fighting,
broke through the savages, and got into a swamp
near by. Here he hid, and returned to camp next
day; he was so near the place of the fight that he
had seen the victory dance of the Indians over their
slain and mutilated foes.

This defeat took the heart out of the militia. The
army left the Miami towns, and moved back a couple
of miles to the Shawnee town of Chillicothe. A few
Indians began to lurk about, stealing horses, and
two of the militia captains determined to try to kill
one of the thieves. Accordingly, at nightfall, they
hobbled a horse with a bell, near a hazel thicket in
which they hid. Soon an Indian stalked up to the
horse, whereupon they killed him, and brought his

St. Clair and Wayne 405

head into camp, proclaiming that it should at least
be worth the price of a wolf scalp.

Next day was spent by the army in completing
the destruction of all the corn, the huts, and the be
longings of the Indians. A band of a dozen war
riors tried to harass one of the burning parties ; but
some of the mounted troops got on their flank, killed
two and drove the others off, they themselves suffer
ing no loss.

The following day, the 2ist, the army took up the
line of march for Fort Washington, having de
stroyed six Indian towns and an immense quantity
of corn. But Hardin was very anxious to redeem
himself by trying another stroke at the Indians, who,
he rightly judged, would gather at their towns as
soon as the troops left. Harmar also wished to re
venge his losses, and to forestall any attempt of the
Indians to harass his shaken and retreating forces.
Accordingly that night he sent back against the
towns a detachment of four hundred men, sixty of
whom were regulars, and the rest picked militia.
They were commanded by Major Wyllys, of the
regulars. It was a capital mistake of Harmar's to
send off a mere detachment on such a business. He
should have taken a force composed of all his regu
lars and the best of the militia, and led it in person.

The detachment marched soon after midnight,
and reached the Miami at daybreak on October 22d.
It was divided into three columns, which marched
a few hundred yards apart, and were supposed to
keep in touch with one another. The middle column

406 The Winning of the West

was led by Wyllys in person, and included the regu
lars and a few militia. The rest of the militia com
posed the flank columns and marched under their
own officers.

Immediately after crossing the Miami, and reach
ing the neighborhood of the town, Indians were
seen. The columns were out of touch, and both
of those on the flanks pressed forward against small
parties of braves, whom they drove before them up
the St. Joseph. Heedless of the orders they had
received, the militia thus pressed forward, killing
and scattering the small parties in their front and
losing all connection with the middle column of
regulars. Meanwhile the main body of the Indians
gathered to assail this column, and overwhelmed
it by numbers; whether they had led the militia
away by accident or by design is not known. The
regulars fought well and died hard, but they were
completely cut off, and most of them, including
their commander, were slain. A few escaped, and
either fled back to camp or up the St. Joseph.
Those who took the latter course met the militia
returning and informed them of what had hap
pened. Soon afterward the victorious Indians them
selves appeared, on the opposite side of the St.
Joseph, and attempted to force their way across.
But the militia were flushed by the easy triumph
of the morning and fought well, repulsing the In
dians, and finally forcing them to withdraw. They
then marched slowly back to the Miami towns,
gathered their wounded, arrayed their ranks, and

St. Clair and Wayne 407

rejoined the main army. The Indians had suf
fered heavily, and were too dispirited, both by their
loss and by their last repulse, to attempt further
to harass either this detachment or the main army
itself on its retreat.

Nevertheless, the net result was a mortifying
failure. In all, the regulars had lost 75 men killed
and 3 wounded, while of the militia 28 had been
wounded and 108 had been killed or were missing.
The march back was very dreary; and the militia
became nearly ungovernable, so that at one time
Harmar reduced them to order only by threatening
to fire on them with the artillery.

The loss of all their provisions and dwellings ex
posed the Miami tribes to severe suffering and want
during the following winter; and they had also
lost many of their warriors. But the blow was
only severe enough to anger and unite them, not to
cripple or crush them. All the other Western tribes
made common cause with them. They banded to
gether and warred openly; and their vengeful for
ays on the frontier increased in number, so that the
suffering of the settlers was great. Along the Ohio
people lived in hourly dread of tomahawk and scalp
ing knife; the attacks fell unceasingly on all the
settlements from Marietta to Louisville.

END OP VOLUME SEVEN

°.

a

OS

.

81 ".I

4*

0)

GOi

O

as

University of Toronto
Library

n

DO NOT

REMOVE

THE

CARD

FROM

THIS

POCKET

Acme Library Card Pocket

Under Pat. "Ref. Index Ffl»"
Made by LIBRARY BUREAU