PUBLIC LIBRARY
FORT WAYNE <Sc ALlEN CO., IND,
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Simon Girty
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FORT WAYNE AND ALLEN COUNTY, IND.
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SIMON GIRTY
bidian War Dancu
SIMON GIRTY
The White Savage
By THOMAS BOYD
MINTON, BALCH & COMPANY
NEW YORK
Copyright, 1928
BY
MINTON, BALCH & COMPANY
Printed in the United States of America by
J. J. LITTLE AND IVES COMPANY, NEW YORK
/Vj 518201
TO
AGNES AND AIMEE
AND ERIC
CONTENTS
CHAPTER '^°*
I — "Then Girty's Name and Girty's Fame*' . 3
II — Excursions and Alarms 13
III — A Rough Neck's First Thirty Years . 29
IV — ^Wherein the Scoundrel Saves a Hero from
Roasting at the Stake 63
V — Simon Becomes Morose j His Scalp Causes
Him Some Concern 91
VI — ^Those Damned Missionaries j and the
Butchering and Burning of Their Hap-
less Brood H-^
VII — ^Wherein Vengeance Carelessly Takes the
Wrong Man 14-1
VIII — With One War Ended and None Other at
Hand Simon Takes A Wife 169
IX — ^Wherein Two Generals Lose Their Armies 185
X — Simon Drives a Quill Through His Nos-
trils 207
XI — The Long Shadow of Mad Anthony Wayne 223
XII — The Last Ride from the Tavern . .241
ILLUSTRATIONS
Indian War Dance Frontispiece
FACING PAGE
Tecumseh 40
Simon Kenton 74
Theyandenegea 126
Sir John Johnson 178
Brigadier General Anthony Wayne 224
^^Then Girtfs Name and Girtfs Fame^'*
A.
The White Savage
CHAPTER I
^^Then Girty^s Name and Glrty^s Fame^^
MERICAN pioneers who crossed over the Alle-
^hanies and settled westward of Pittsburgh during the
ast quarter of the eighteenth century went into a wil-
lerness where the forces of destruction flourished.
5nakes, catamounts and bears — each had its way of kill-
ing; also floods, cyclones and diseases attacked the pio-
leers. Paint-streaked Indians fought these white inter-
opers moodily, self-defensive and revengeful, and for
:hirty years musket ball and speeding arrowhead crossed
md recrossed over clearing and occasional plain. Cabins
A^ere burned, bark tents torn from their supporting poles,
:ornfields trampled and charred back into the earth.
5calps were ripped by Indian and white man alike.
VIercy was a word not greatly honored by anyone.
I It was a time of fury, those thirty years. Ambushes,
narauds and murderous expeditions were carried on con-
inuously. There were three major battles which rolled
:3]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
up their toll in hundreds, but when the last had been
fought and the vast forests started crashing down the
white men were there to stay and the Indians were
herded into what was then the far northwest.
Those surviving white folk who settled western
Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Ohio had tall tales to tell
their youngsters. They had seen the harshest murders,
the most providential escapes. They had been besieged
not only by four strong tribes of Indians, but also by the
British, who held Detroit and who worked hand in hand
with the dark warriors to drive the frontiersmen back
across the Ohio River.
Out of this warfare grew heroes and villains. The
list of the former was a long one. It included names of
Daniel Boone, Simon Kenton, George Rogers Clark,
Mad Anthony Wayne, Colonel William Crawford, the
Wetzel brothers and many others remembered in the
west. The villains, quite naturally, were the enemies of
the pioneers: among them were General Henry Hamil-
ton, Lieutenant Governor of Canada ^ Captain Pipe, a
war chief of the Delawares; Alexander McKee, a loyal-
ist who had fled from Pittsburgh to take up service
under Hamilton at Detroit; and Simon Girty.
Of all the men remembered from those years Simon
Girty, who has been called the anomaly of western his-
tory, was perhaps the most widely and deeply hated.
[4]
''GIRTY'S NAME AND FAME''
Pioneer mothers in lonely cabins used to scare their chil-
dren into obedience by threatening them with the ap-
pearance of the dreaded Girty. And afterward it was
said of him that "no other country or age ever produced,
perhaps, so brutal, depraved, and wicked a wretch."
Another called him "a monster. No famished tiger
ever sought the blood of a victim with more unrelenting
rapacity than Girty sought the blood of a white man.
He could laugh, in fiendish mockery, at the agonies of a
captive, burning and writhing at the stake. He could
witness unmoved the sacrifice of unoffending women
and children. No scene of torture or of bloodshed was
sufficiently horrible to excite compassion in his bosom."
And in "The Romance of Western History" it is told
that he was "a wretched miscreant" who "had fled from
the abode of civilized men; he became a savage in man-
ners and in principle, and spent his whole life in the
perpetration of a demoniac vengeance against his
countrymen." To an early midwest poet he was:
" ^The outlawed white man, by Ohio's flood,
Whose vengeance shamed the Indian's thirst for blood;
Whose hellish arts surpassed the red man far;
Whose hate enkindled many a border war,
Of which each aged grand-dame hath a tale, —
Of which man's bosom burns and childhood's cheeks grow
pale.^ "
[5]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
It was with such etnbellishments as these that Simon
Girty's name was handed down from generation to gen-
eration of men who had come to live in the land of the
Indian. He was looked on as a monster, and local his-
torians treated him as one. They had him killed as they
believed he ought to have been killed. In Wright's
"History of Perry County, Pennsylvania" he was slain
"in a desperate contest" by a colonel whose wife he was
supposed to have stolen; in other works he was cut down
and trampled to death by Kentucky horsemen at the
Battle of the Thames.
As a matter of fact Girty survived his own death
notice by several years. When he died it was from a
prosaic illness. But up to that time his life had been
made up of constant movement and adventure. From
his youth he had seen heads split by tomahawks, had seen
men roast inside a circle of burning faggots. His own
father had been killed by a hatchet, his stepfather had
been burned. In traveling over the Ohio and Kentucky
wilderness, first as a scout and interpreter for the colo-
nists, then for the United States and later as a renegade
with the British, he built for himself a singular place
in the history of his time.
Girty's life, particularly between 1774 and 1794,
was so closely connected with the Ohio Indians during
the years in which their country was being invaded by
[6]
"GIRTY'S NAME AND FAME''
J
American settlers that his story follows their successes
and defeats like an historical narrative of them. He had
been born on the border and had grown up amid its wild-
ness. From childhood he had known Senecas, Dela-
wares and Wyandots. Their manner of living in some
ways suited him better than that of the frontiersmen.
And when a combination of circumstances — in the third
year of America's War of Independence — made him
leave Fort Pitt and go to the British at Detroit he was
unwittingly on his way to become a leader among the
Indians.
His is the story of a backwoods roughneck who left
his own people because of a slender grievance and for
twenty years led raiding parties of Indian warriors
through the Ohio wilderness to the white man's border,
a dark, brawny man who fought as fiercely as a Sha-
wanese chieftain. Over the Ohio into Pennsylvania,
Virginia and Kentucky he rode at the head of marauding
braves and left settlements smoking when he turned
back. That the early pioneers had cause to hate him
there is no doubt. Nor is there any doubt that they
hysterically exaggerated his numerous cruelties.
But that was to be expected. For at lease twice in
his career he stood in the light cast by his own former
countrymen burning at the stake; and once he com-
manded a horde of Wyandot warriors who galloped into
[7]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
an American army which they were foremost in butcher-
ing. No name seemed black enough to discolor him.
However, this "wretched miscreant/' than whom no
country or age ever produced "a monster so brutal, de-
praved and wicked," had a disconcerting way of showing
feelings that would have been praiseworthy even in men
more humane than any that ever fought in a border war.
Those frontiersmen were not noted for their gentleness.
Neither was Simon Girty. Yet a number of times, and
nearly always at the risk of offending the Indian chiefs
and warriors, he pleaded or demanded that the lives of
doomed white prisoners be spared. In the case of Simon
Kenton, of whose captivity and death sentence there is a
full account, Girty worked anxiously to save the Vir-
ginia scout — and he succeeded. That he often did suc-
cessfully intercede for former countrymen of his who
had been taken and condemned by the Indians is proved
by records. There is the laconic deposition by William
May in American State Papers (Indian Affairs), Volume
one, page 242, in which he says he "was condemned to
die; but saved by Simon Girty." And there is also the
assertion of Jonathan Alder, who during his long years
as a captive of the Indians met Girty often. Alder states
that the renegade saved the lives of many white prison-
ers, sometimes at his own expense.
In short, Girty displayed too much humanity not to
[8]
''GIRTY'S NAME AND FAME''
have champions among the tender-hearted. And one of
these, far from believing that Girty's "hellish arts sur-
passed the red man's far," came to his rescue with the
following lines:
"Oh, great-souled chief, so long maligned
By bold calumniatorsj
The world shall not be always blind,
Nor all men be thy haters.
If ever on the field of blood,
Man's valor merits glory,
Then Girty's name and Girty's fame
Shall shine in song and story."
That optimistic prophecy, made many years ago, has
not yet been fulfilled. Nor is this book an attempt to do
so. Stubborn, bull-necked, proud of his strength, mur-
derous yet merciful, Girty the traitor can't be white-
washed. But some credit should be given to the memory
of a man who spent twenty years in the closest contact
with the Shawanese, Miamis and Wyandots, rose to a
position of trust among them and was, in fact, the only
white person to sit as one of them in their tribal war
councils. And while it would be fatal to defend him it
may be interesting to see how far he can be explained.
[9]
Excursions and Alarms
CHAPTER II
Excursions and Alarms
s.
OMEHOW the American colonists always felt it
queer that the Indians, who had inhabited this continent
before them and who continued to live on in spite of
them, should seriously object to giving up their land.
Particularly was this surprise at aboriginal strangeness
shown by the Pennsylvanians and Virginians.
Those two colonies were closest to the most thickly
settled Indian country; it was over Pennsylvania or Vir-
ginia roads and rivers that western immigration had to
pass, their boundaries that had to be expanded. Fami-
lies voyaging down the Alleghany, up the Youghi-
ogheny, down the Great Kanawha and the Little Kan-
awha westward pushed blindly into the Shawanese,
Seneca, Wyandot and Delaware country with ax and
musket and began to fell the forests and frighten off
more game than they actually shot. And naturally the
Indians resented it and used their tomahawks, their bows
and arrows, and the gunpowder which the white men
had sold them, to drive these irrepressible settlers back.
[13]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
That was the maih reason why bloody terror stalked
the length of the American frontier for half a century,
why the bulk of the Indians south of Lake Erie and
along the Ohio River joined the French against the Eng-
lish and fought with them until at the Treaty of Paris
in 1763 the French admitted their defeat; the reason
why these Indians later sided with the English after the
colonies had rebelled and formed their own government j
and also the reason why they continued to fight against
the Americans for twelve years after Great Britain had
formally acknowledged the United States of America.
They were to fight, that is to say, until hope of success
had completely gone. And altogether the showing they
made was creditable rather than otherwise.
Had the French loved their own hearthfires less and
ocean voyaging more the story of the American Indians
during the eighteenth century would have been differ-
ent from what it was. The men who explored the re-
gion of the Great Lakes and along the Mississippi down
towards the Ohio were mostly French Jesuits and traders.
They built churches and established trading posts beside
the streams that moved throughout the wilderness, pre-
paring the way for the emigrants from their own coun-
try. But these emigrants did not come; they preferred
their few, well-cultivated gardens to all the timbered
acres of the new world which they might have had for
[14]
EXCURSIONS AND ALARMS
J
the asking. And so the Jesuits and traders, while they
failed to build an empire, were recompensed by few
perplexing troubles which a hurried settlement of the
land would have brought. They dealt only in religion
and furs. The novelty of Christianity interested many
of the tribes — not the Miamis, however — and gained
many converts; the trade in skins pleased them all, for
the Indians were given bright and useful things in re-
turn. And it was because of this that we find Indian
warriors maintaining to the last that the French were
the only white people whom they had ever voluntarily
called their brothers.
The British, on the contrary, began life in the new
world as colonizers. Self-righteous and determined,
they had a lust for land and lordliness. Starting with
the Plymouth colony and going down the coast this was
true of nearly all the settlements except those controlled
by Penn In their harbors immigration flowered and
from their villages men went out to penetrate the wilder-
ness in search of permanent homes. In a long, discon-
nected chain they pushed westward, driving the Indians
back, sometimes bargaining for what they took, but
often wresting it by the superior force given them
through ball and gunpowder in an arquebus or musket.
By the third quarter of the eighteenth century these
men had become numerous enough to be able success-
[15]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
fully to defy the government under whose segis they had
settled. Englishmen, Scotchmen, Germans, Irishmen,
Dutchmen and a few Frenchmen were willing to go to
war rather than continue to pay the taxes on importa-
tions levied by the ministers of King George the Third.
Englishmen of Virginia and Massachusetts took the lead
in resisting the authority of Englishmen from England,
and by the year the third quarter of the century ended
the Thirteen Colonies were in a state of active rebellion.
That closed the coastline to all immigrants save those
who wanted to come in as citizens of the United States
of America. And thus Englishmen, per se, were shut
out of the eastern seaboard and left with only Canada
as a scene for future colonization. As the north slope
of the St. Lawrence Valley was vast and as the tides from
Europe drifted southward rather than towards Quebec,
Canada remained thinly settled throughout the last half
of the century. The British ruled it with their garrisons
and their government, but the main business they carried
on was the trade in furs.
So the English, in the minds of the Indians, came
to take the place of the ousted French. They established
forts, made trading posts beside the Great Lakes and
along the main streams that drained the wilderness east
of the Alleghanies and north of the Ohio River. There
was no necessity for them to drive the Indians from their
[16]
EXCURSIONS AND ALARMS
ands, for the area was enormous enough to swallow
nany times their number. They bought furs in ex-
:hange for rum and whisky, gunpowder, cloth, tools and
;hiny things j and both races were at that point content.
Had the contact between the Indians and the United
States also been confined to trading, the western frontier
would not have become such a ghastly nightmare of
)Calping, bloody tomahawks, devilish torture at the stake,
indiscriminate murder and massacre. But that, of
course, was impossible. The colonies were filled with
people who had been born where land was precious and
where only the richest owned great tracts. But they
themselves had never been rich, in fact were unhappily
poor, and the prospect of free acres in the wilderness of
this new country tugged at them mightily. Always they
were venturing out into the forests, making settlements
on the ground from which the Indian had got his sub-
sistence. And, Pennsylvania excepted, but only for a
time at that, their colonial and state officers encouraged
them. In 1770 Dinwiddie of Virginia had given away
thousands and thousands of acres in the Indian country
— land which was then being occupied by Shawanese,
Mingo and Delaware tribes — and many of those who
had received these grants were anxious to survey and
make use of them. Their actions were those of a lordly,
land-mad people and showed scant consideration for any
[17]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
rights the original possessors might have had. And the
cultivated men of the time v^ere no less grasping than
the roughnecks of the border settlements. Quite typical,
or even perhaps a little better than the average, w^as the
attitude of George Washington, one time colonel in the
Virginia militia, v^ho had been awarded 10,000 acres
and who had tremendously increased his holdings by
buying more from others who wanted ready money.
Going out towards the Ohio country to investigate
his wilderness estate, Washington was met by a Mingo
chieftain who welcomed him to the country and assured
him of his hope that the people of Virginia and the
Indians would consider each other "as friends and broth-
ers linked together in one chain." And Washington, his
eyes open to the fact that the Mingoes would have to
be driven away before his land could be settled, assured
the chieftain "that all the injuries and affronts that had
passed on either side were now totally forgotten, and
that . . . nothing was more wished and desired by the
people of Virginia than to live in the strictest friendship
with them."
Yet he admits that these Indians had received "but
little part of the consideration that was given for the
lands eastward of the Ohio," that they "view the settle-
ment of the [white] people on this river with an uneasy
and jealous eye, and do not scruple to say that they must
[18]
EXCURSIONS AND ALARMS
)e compensated for their right if the people settle
hereon . . ."
"On the other hand," he goes on calmly, "the people
rom Virginia and elsewhere are exploring and marking
11 the lands that are valuable not only on Redstone and
ither waters of Monongahela but along down the Ohio
s low as the Little Kanawha; and by next summer I sup-
pose will get to the Great Kanawha, at least; how diffi-
ult it may be to contend with these people afterwards is
asy to be judged of from every day's experience of lands
ctually settled. . . ."
Washingon rather thought that there might be
rouble with the Indians, but that if there was it could
•e accounted for by the natural perversity of the aborig-
nal character and not by the fact that men like himself,
nen of the Ohio Land Company and also squatters, were
►ushing the Indians away from their villages. For
vhile it was generally admitted that territory not fairly
►urchased by treaty still belonged to the Indians it was
Iso taken for granted — ^by convenient mental sleight-
f-hand — that the Indians had no right to it. And
hus we find an American regular army major gravely
aking the deposition of a man who told him that "from
very observation he could make, and from the general
alk of the Indians, he is led to believe that they are,
n general, averse to giving up their lands" and, sur-
:i9]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
prisingly enough, h6 is "certain it will be dangerous f oi
the continental surveyors to go on with their busines!
until some further treaty is made with the Shawanese
Mingoes and Cherokees, who appear to be most avers(
to this business.'^
The Indians, as both above quotations suggest, wen
a divided people. Except in the case of the Seneca-Ira
quois confederacy each tribe had to be dealt with sepa
rately for a treaty to be of worth. Every tribe had it
own dialect and customs, its own territory in which t
live, hunt and cultivate the low-lying ground by th^
river banks. They were also capable of resentment, a
most people are whose livelihood is threatened. Alarmei
by the white men to the south and east, required an(
often forced to make treaties the natures of which the;
did not comprehend, they naturally had grievanc
against the colonies. When the colonies rebelled an
set up their own government both English and Ameri
cans tried to bring them in as allies. But, as was to b
expected, the English were the more successful.
It was not, however, until the second year of th
revolution that the Ohio Indians appeared on behalf o
either side. Up to that time they had fought the Ameri
can borderers independently. But in the spring of 177
Lord George Germain at Whitehall, London, passe
upon a recommendation that had been made by Genera
[20
EXCURSIONS AND ALARMS
■
Henry Hamiltorij Lieutenant-Governor of Canada sta-
:ioned at Detroit. Hamilton, out of the wilds of that
?ar western trading post and garrison, had written to sug-
gest that inasmuch as the Ohio forests were filled with
[ndian warriors it might be a stroke for the Crown if
:hose braves were equipped with ball, powder and rations
From the King's stores, guided by loyal Britishers and
lent out to make "a diversion on the frontiers of Vir-
ginia and Pennsylvania." Receiving the letter through
Sir Guy Carleton at Quebec, Hamilton soon afterward
railed a council of the tribes, the Shawanese, Senecas,
^yandots, Delawares, Ottawas, Chippewas and Potta-
A^atomies.
Meanwhile the Americans were making an effort to
mlist the support of the Indians, if for no other reason
:han to forestall their attendance at Hamilton's council
n Detroit. This attempt to counteract the British or-
ganization of the tribes was begun from Pittsburgh
Adhere General Edward N. Hand was the commanding
officer and George Morgan the agent of Indian affairs.
Both men had positions of great responsibility, for Fort
Pitt was the farthest and practically the only western
stronghold on the colonial border; there was little be-
:ween it and the British fort at Detroit except a few
lundred miles of forest and prairie that were filled for
;he most part with displeased braves. It was therefore
[21]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
important that Morgan and Hand look well to their job,
which was the conciliation of the Shawanese, Mingoes,
Wyandots and Delawares, who occupied territory adja-
cent to the frontier.
Morgan went out to call the sachems and warriors
to his council. Time passed. A few of them came, but
the very paucity of their numbers showed that the ma-
jority preferred treating with Hamilton at Detroit. In
the west the year 1777 drew to a close with settlers push-
ing towards the Ohio and into Kentucky and with the
Indians retaliating with the gory tomahawk and scalp-
ing knife. In the east Washington was wintering his
hungry, ragged soldiers at Valley Forge. At Detroit
Lieutenant Governor Hamilton was making plans for a
lively "diversion on the frontiers of Pennsylvania and
Virginia.^'
At Fort Pitt the new year opened dismally. The
fortification was old and crumbling, the town itself had
not only patriots but also loyalists to England and lawless
people who gave allegiance to nothing. Frequently
somebody would be reported on the suspicion that he had
been communicating vv^ith the British, would be locked
up and later released because of lack of evidence. And
sometimes the proof was there, but merely remained
hidden. Up and down the border which Fort Pitt was
supposed to guard small Indian parties fell upon lonely
[22]
EXCURSIONS AND ALARMS
abins and left red tracks in the snow when they de-
arted. Many pioneers thought desperately of the safe
nd pleasant homes they had exchanged for this life in
le treacherous wilderness.
February came and General Hand, to check the
lows of the Indians and to hearten the settlers, got to-
ether a force of five hundred men to attack a Delaware
Dwn on the Cuyahoga River. But by the time they had
ot as far north as the Mahoning the weather warmed;
lere were heavy rains which, with the thaws, swelled
le streams until they were impassable. There, how-
ver, he had the misfortune to discover Indian tracks,
it once his whole force went in pursuit of them. Fol-
)wing for some distance they came upon a solitary
rave, some women and children! They killed the
rave and one of the squaws, got hold of another squaw
nd took her captive. But the rest picked up their leath-
rn petticoats and ran to safety.
It would have been less discomfiting for General
land if his squaw prisoner had also escaped. For she
)ld him that a number of Delaware warriors were near-
y making salt, and at once he sent out a large detach-
lent to attack them. The detachment was composed of
le ordinary run of volunteers — men accustomed to play
t "long shot" with their muskets in the crooked Pitts-
urgh streets and to nurse their offspring on whisky 3
23]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
they went out to the salt lick and found four Indiam
women and a boy! But they seem to have had to whet;
their hatchets on somebody, and in lieu of the absent
braves they murdered the child and three of the squaws..
"One woman only was saved," are Hand's lugubrious;
words. His own loss was nearly as great, for he had a^
captain wounded and an enlisted man was drowned. !
But Hand had barely got back from his expedition
when another event made the Pittsburghers and the
outlying settlers gloomier than they ever before had]
been 3 an incident that was greatly to increase theiri
casualties during the revolution and that was to help:
keep the Ohio Indians steadfastly fighting the borderers
for twenty years:
On the night of March 28, 1778, a strangely as-
sorted group of seven men secretly left the neighborhood!
of Fort Pitt and struck out across the Ohio country oni
their way to Detroit. Two of them were Negroes, prob--
ably slaves. Another was a bland, canny man of prop-
erty, a British loyalist who for some time had beeni
Deputy Indian Agent at Fort Pitt for the Crown — Alex-
ander McKee was his name. Another was Robert
Surphlit, a cousin of McKee's. The fifth was "a mani
named Higgins." The sixth was Matthew Elliott, a
short, snub-nosed Irishman who spoke several Indian
dialects and knew the country well. And the seventh
[24]
EXCURSIONS AND ALARMS
was Simon Girty, a burly, short-necked man of about
thirty-six years whose jet black eyes looked out of a full,
round face, a stocky, tireless man, a man full of petty
pride, great personal courage, capable of ferocity and
kindness, lasting hatred and lasting friendship.
No three men knew the Ohio Indians better than
McKee, Elliott and Girty; no three men were better able
to lead them against the border, and at no other time
would their desertion have been so effective. Of these
three it was Girty that was the most competent, that
lived longest and most closely with the warriors. For
he was among them from the spring of 1778 until 1795;^
the story of his life is more or less the story of the long
fight of the Shawanese, Wyandots, Delawares and
Miamis to hold the northwest, that is to say the Ohio
country, for their own, and of their final eflFort which
I broke them up and left the Ohio River and the forest
i trails free to the pioneers who swarmed like locusts into
' the middle west, the northwest and the far west after
cheap, productive land.
[25]
A Rough Neck^s First Thirty Years
I
o
CHAPTER III
A Rough Neck^s First Thirty Years
LD SIMON GIRTY, an Irish immigrant who in
:he first half of the eighteenth century came to Pennsyl-
'•ania and there engaged in packhorse driving for the
[ndian trade, named his second son after himself,
oung Simon was born in 1741 at Chamber's Mill, five
imiles above the present site of Harrisburg, and very
early in his life grew acquainted with the Indians and
their ways. For Chamber's Mill was then on the verge
of the Colonial frontier j it consisted of a huddle of
rough log houses, a stockade named Fort Hunter, a mill
and a tavern. To this settlement, which was hard-boiled
even for those wild and ruthless days, came Senecas from
the north, Shawanese from the southwest and Delawares
and Wyandotes from the Ohio country to trade their
furs for whisky, firearms and cloth.
But even that outpost of civilization was not far
enough into the wilds for Old Simon. And when his
second son was eight years old he removed his family
across the Susquehanna to Sherman's Creek, where a
score of Pennsylvanians had gone to make clearings and
[29]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
build cabins under the misapprehension that as this lane
belonged merely to the Indians it really belonged to tht'
first white families that occupied it. The Girty family;
at that time was composed of Old Simon; his wife. Mar);
(Newton) Girty, an Englishwoman; Thomas, who waa:
ten; young Simon, the next in line; James, who was sixf
and George, only a little more than a baby.
/ But these settlers on Sherman's Creek were mistaken
about their right to the land. It belonged to the Indians?
by a treaty which at that time Pennsylvania took car©
not to break. And when the savages protested againstt
this encroachment a number of Cumberland Countyy
deputy officers marched forth and set fire to the offend-
ing cabins. The pioneers were dispersed and the Girtys^
went back to Chamber's Mill.
In that settlement once more Old Simon took up)
trading with the Indians and drinking considerable pota-
tions of rum and whisky. Simon Junior was nine then..
At best the family lived in a one-room log house withi
a kitchen built on at the back, and as the father enter--
tained the Indian traders in the cabin the boy often saw
white men and coppery men sprawling drunkenly on
their stools, thumping each other on the back and falling
at last quiescent on the bare floor.
For a year and a half this kind of life continued. A
man named John Turner used to come there, also a
[30]
J^ ROUGH NECK'S THIRTY YEARS
warrior named The Fish. And with the elder Girty
they would sit and drink and shout, until one December
day, it was in 1751, more liquor flowed than could be
handled. Suddenly The Fish became violent; lifting
his tomahawk he brought it crashingly down on the
skull of Old Simon. Whereupon John Turner, as a
friend of the deceased and with an interested eye towards
^ the widow, despatched The Fish among his ancient an-
cestors, and soon afterward became the legal stepfather
to young Simon, Thomas, George and James.
Tf tradition is to be believed John Turner would have
lived longer if he had let the death of the elder Girty
go unavenged. For in the course of the next four years,
while Simon was learning to bawl out roaring curses and
take his liquor like a man, events were shaping for Tur-
ner's downfall. During that time occurred the wilder-
ness war between the French and English, the purchase
of a tract of land across the Susquehanna by the Penns;'
and at Chamber's Mill the stepfather discovered that he
was unable to make a living for a wife and four ravenous
boys.
He moved in the summer of 1755, taking the family
near the site on Sherman's Creek where they had been
before. There he built another cabin and made a late
planting in the ground broken by his predecessor. But
again the farming venture was cut short. For in July
[31]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
General Braddock discovered — too late, though, to make
anything of the intelligence — that a host of scarlet
coated men marching in close formation were of little
account against a horde of Indians fighting under cover
of trees and underbrush, and thus the border, after his
defeat, v^as left v^ith scant protection from Shawanese,
Senecas, Delawares and the French. Within a year after
Braddock went down, Neyon de Velliers, commanding
twenty-three Frenchmen and about a hundred Indians,
set out from Fort Duquesne, which afterward became
Fort Pitt, then Fort Dunmore and finally the city of
Pittsburgh, to attack the colonial settlements. They
came to Fort Granville, on the Juniata, to which they
laid siege. At word of their approach the frontiersmen
about Sherman's Creek had come to Granville for pro-
tection. It was then nominally under command of Cap-
tain Edward Ward, but the day before de Villiers and his
Indians surrounded the stockade Ward had marched his
company of Pennsylvania provincials to gather the grain
which the settlers had sown that fall. That left Gran-
ville with twenty-three men, John Turner, his wife,
four stepsons and the recently born child which Mary
Girty Turner carried at her breast.
De Villiers made several unsuccessful assaults, but
in the midst of the last a group of Indians crept low
along the banks of the Juniata and got near enough to
[32]
A ROUGH NECK'S THIRTY YEARS
boot flaming arrows into the stockade. Soon the logs
/ere blazing and the garrison asked for quarter. It was
ranted and John Turner let down the heavy bars to the
tockade gates while the savages, headed by de Villiers,
creamed through.
As prisoners the Girty family were marched away
rom the light of burning Granville. ^Taken westward
3 the Delaware town of Kittanning, on the nearer bank
f the Alleghany, John Turner was tortured with red
lOt gun barrels, blazing faggots piled on his stomach,
nd a scalping knife slipped over his skull, while fifteen-
ear-old Simon, his brothers, and his mother holding
ohn Turner Jr. in her arms, were forced to look on.
^fter three hours a tomahawk ended the father's misery.
In the final division of prisoners, which occurred
Dme weeks after the burning of Fort Granville, young
rhomas escaped to Fort Pitt, Mrs. Girty, George and
he infant were taken by the Delawares, while James
/as given to the Shawanese and Simon to the Senecas.
?'hese latter were the most advanced of all the Indian
ribes in that part of the country 3 they had progressed
0 far as to have formed a confederacy with the Iro-
uois, Onondagas, Canandaiguas and Mohawks; their
achems, who were men of peace, were more powerful
han their war chiefs and they had a fairly definite civil
;overnment. Thus Simon was particularly fortunate,
;33]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
for though he would have been treated equally well
by almost any of the tribes he had the luck to begin
his real acquaintance with the Indians in superior sur-
roundings.
It was a general custom for prisoners either to be
killed or adopted into some family which had lost a
member in conflict. Simon's life was spared. Running
a gauntlet made up of two rows of braves armed with
sticks, he afterward went through the ceremony of nat-
uralization which ended with three maidens taking him
to a brook and there symbolically washing out his white
blood and renewing his veins with the blood of the
Secenas. From that moment he became a part of an
Indian family and for about three years knew life as a
young Seneca brave. He learned the language and cus-
toms of his foster people and was adept enough with
the musket to be allowed to join the hunting parties by
which his parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, sisters'
husbands and all the children were supplied with bear,
venison and 'coon. He was treated as though he had
been born of their flesh ... an agreeable life for a
youth who had no strong stirring towards the acquisi-
tion of private property, who would be content to shan
evenly with the old men, squaws, warriors and childrei
in all things.
If Fort Duquesne (in 1758) had not fallen to Gen
[34;
ROUGH NECK'S THIRTY YEARS
il John Forbes and if that achievement had not been
[lowed by a treaty with the Ohio Indians which
juired them in the following year to give up all their
soners, Simon might very easily have lived on among
I Senecas, taking an Indian wife who would have
ired with him the labors of existence. He would have
nted with the braves, have gone on war parties when
chose, stayed in camp when he preferred and would
ve been well content, as were so many of the white
rderers adopted by the Indians. ^1 5 i. 8 2 0 1
But the Jireaty made it necessary for him to go and
was curious to see his people. Some time in 1759
said farewell to his Seneca relations and left them,
ley gave him of their supply of jerk and parched corn
r his long journey southward to Fort Duquesne, which
LS now in the hands of the Pennsylvanians. After
my days on the lonely trail he arrived; there he met
; mother, his little half-brother, John Turner, his
il brothers James, George and Thomas. All of them
cept Thomas had come in from the wilderness.
It was hard getting back into the stride of civiliza-
n, slow as it was at that place and time. Removed
)m an easy, communistic existence in which the feel-
y for private property had scarcely formed, Simon and
5 brothers had to find work in a society where personal
'-nership was a paramount urge. But he would, per-
5]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
hapsj have succeeded in returning to the more norma
swing of things had his mother been more of a deter
mined character with a more solid interest in famih
4
life. But apparently she hadn't, for after her returi
to Fort Duquesne she completely disappears fron
Simon's story. That left Thomas, at twenty, Simon, a
eighteen, James, at sixteen, and young George to taki
care of themselves and hold together if they could.
But the very work which lay at hand separated them
Simon began to earn his living in the simplest and mos
unambitious way — becoming an interpreter for Englisl
and Pennsylvania traders who, now that the French wen
driven from the Ohio Valley, made Fort Pitt one o:
their chief headquarters. Strangely enough, though th
Seneca tongue was best known to him, it was among th
Delawares that he was principally employed. With thi
fur buyers he went repeatedly up into the northwest t<
the Muskingum and along that river towards the Tus
carawas, where he watched the exchange of warm, sleel
skins for gunpowder, cloth and things that attract th
eye. These sunburnt chiefs and warriors in their hunt
ing shirts and jackets must have liked himj he mus
have shown himself to have been in some degree remark
able, for by the time he was twenty-three years old
chieftain of the Delawares, Katepakomen, had honore^
him by taking the name of Simon Girty. '
[36
A ROUGH NECK'S THIRTY YEARS
However, his interest was not caught solely by the
ndians. He voted at the first Bedford County election,
»^hich then included the whole of western Pennsylvania,
nd by the time he was thirty he had become "a man of
ilents" who possessed "great influence in the garrison
Fort Pitt) and with the Indians.'' Yet he acquired no
roperty in or about the settlement of Pittsburgh. Like
is brother James, he kept to his job of interpreter.
What then distinguished Simon among the f rontiers-
len was probably his understanding of the aboriginal
lind and customs. He had a tendency towards their
ray of life. It is nowhere recorded that he made any
ffort to become a substantial citizen or that he shared
t that time the almost universal itch for land which sent
D many people, from George Washington down to the
umblest squatter, journeying into the wilderness to
:ake out a claim. He had ambitions, it is true, but they
rtre akin to those of the Indian and of the more roman-
c-minded white man: a desire for personal achievement
nd palpable recognition by his acquaintances. But as
or Church and State, the bulwarks of civilized society,
e had little use. Towards religion he was also, like his
rother James, "a stranger . . . [without] any inch-
ation to engage in such solemn matters contrary to the
mor of his life, having little or no fear of God before
is eyes." But the Girtys were not unique in their atti-
371
THE WHITE SAVAGE
tude towards "such solemn matters.'' Most of the fron-
tiersmen of the day lived violent and lawless lives ; thos(
who died professing the True Faith usually had beei
overtaken by God near the end of their tether — as wa
the case of the Indian scout, Simon Kenton — or afte:
some terrible adventure in which they had nearly died.
Patriotism, however, was a more general sentimen
with the borderers. But here again Simon was deficien
in civilized feelings. Though by birth a Pennsylvanian
he sided with the Virginians in the boundary war whicl
came on when Pennsylvania established a Bedfon
County seat at Hannastown. Bedford had been mad(
from Westmoreland County and included Fort Pitt/^u
Virginia claimed that Pennsylvania was a thief, havinj
no right to the fort or to some of the land east of it o:
to much of the territory that stretched westward. Al
of that belonged to Virginia, Lord Dunmore contended;
and with a gesture suited to an earl who was Governor
in-Chief, Captain-General and Vice Admiral of the Col
ony and Dominion of Virginia, he appointed one Johi
Connolly to make the Pittsburghers dissatisfied witl
Pennsylvania and clamorous to be taken in under th(
government of Virginia.
Into this disturbance stepped Simon Girty, not oi
an impulse, it is likely, but because John Connolly o:
because Lord Dunmore, who had been at Fort Pitt whei
[38;
1 ROUGH NECK'S THIRTY YEARS
le trouble began — in 1773 — made him an agreeable
fer. But whatever the reasons for his disaffection
om Pennsylvania, the fact that he aided Virginia's
•asping claims turned him towards the Tories of the
luntry and against the men who wanted to set up a
lie of their own. John, Earl of Dunmore, governed
s Dominion in the interests of King George and was
oughtful of his commands. John Connolly, as the
)vernor's appointee at Fort Pitt, was likewise a thor-
igh-going loyalist.
Thus the two major events in Simon's growing life
ere of the kind that set him at variance with the motive
the times. The first was his stay among the Indians,
hose point of view he learned so well that he was with-
it sympathy for the land companies that were trying
force westward colonization. The second was his
ignment with the Tories, which placed him outside
e sweep of independence that was stirring the country.
By Connolly Simon was engaged to help strengthen
irginia's claims in the new territory about Fort Pitt
id to aid the settlers in growing used to the new name —
Drt Dunmore. There followed violent business at elec-
ts and Simon gave good account of his short but
awny armj once, however, in the name of chivalry.
Dr he not only cracked heads about the Hannastown
>urthouse; he at one time, during a bitter election,
!9]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
raised his hand to catch a blow aimed by a Virginia par-
tisan at a woman's head.
/ But the Pennsylvanians were not passive under Dun-
more's attempt to annex Fort Pitt. They fought back.
There were fights and arrests. Arthur St. Clair, then a
justice of the peace for Westmoreland County, had Con-
nolly jailed and signed a warrant for the apprehension
of Girty. Connolly, however, was released; he after-
ward led Virginia militiamen against the Pennsylvania
court at Hannastown and ordered the imprisonment of
three of its justices. And as for Simon it is doubtful
whether he was even captured. He was rather proud of
being a law unto himself.
This boundary warfare continued for a year, then
was interrupted by more serious trouble. Down along
the Ohio a great many white families were being mur-
dered by angry Shawanese and Mingoes. To check
these marauds, to restore confidence to the pioneers and
to drive the Indians farther westward. Lord Dunmore
began the organization of a large force of militiamen
to enter the Ohio country where the Shawanese, Min-
goes and a few Delawares had their villages.
The Shawanese had been forced to take up a wander-
ing existence and now for the first time in many years
were settled. Up to the middle of the eighteenth cen-
tury they had traveled over most of eastern North Amer-
[40]
Tecumseh
A ROUGH NECK'S THIRTY YEARS
lea in search of hunting grounds that were unoccupied
md had finally come to rest in what became southern
3hio, where they were permitted to remain by the
^yandotSj who had claims to that country. Nearby
kVere mixed groups of Senecas and Delawares. As indi-
/-iduals they had been in conflict with the borderers for
;ome time. On both sides there had been attacks and
mtrageous murders as a result of two races with oppos-
ng purposes and different modes of conduct living so
:lose to each other. Settlers from Virginia went into
he Indian territory and established their farms, un-
hecked by Dinwiddie and, later, Dunmore. And, some-
imes through fear and sometimes because they were
uflSans, they shot those Indians who got in their way.
S/lorc than once they killed passive braves, squaws and
hildren.
yrhat had been the fate of the family of Logan, a
hief of the Mingo tribe. For years he had been
riendly with the borderers, had helped them on occa-
ion; but he was repaid for this by parties of maraud-
ng militiamen murdering all of his relations. It mad-
.ened him and he went out to kill heartily. It was,
uperficially, the vengeful work of Logan that brought
jord Dunmore and his army westward.
When Dunmore reached Fort Pitt — or Fort Dun-
lore as he had it called — on his way down the Ohio
:4i]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
to join Colonel Andrew Lewis, who had gone ahead
towards the mouth of the Great Kanawha in command
of half the army of 3,000 men, he enrolled Simon Girty
as a scout and interpreter. Theretofore Girty had never
been active against the Indians and whether he would
have gone had it not been for his service under Dun-
more during the boundary trouble is uncertain. For
considerably more than a decade he had lived about
Pittsburgh and had been in frequent and friendly con-
tact with Delawares, Shawanese and Senecas. Never-
theless he joined Dunmore's army 3 and with George
Rogers Clark, Colonel Cresap, Simon Kenton, John Gib-
son, William Crawford and a host of others known to
western history he left Fort Pitt in August, 1774, in
the general movement against the Indians.
The campaign, like most of those that were aimed
at the Ohio savages, was poorly managed. Dunmore's
original plan was for Colonel Lewis to march westward
along the Great Kanawha while his Lordship proceeded
down the Ohio from Fort Pitt to the Great Kanawha's
mouth, where both divisions were to meet. But this
Governor-in-Chief, Captain-General and Vice Admiral
of Virginia changed his mind so often after both forces
had been put in motion that Lewis reached the desig-|
nated spot and had to engage the enemy without sup-
port— while Dunmore had entirely left the Ohio and
[42]
A ROUGH NECK'S THIRTY YEARS
i^as marching half the army through the forest west-
i^ard, which was directly away from him!
Where the Great Kanawha emptied into the Ohio
Liver a V-shaped piece of land points towards the
Duthwestj the smaller stream running along its lower
de, the larger bounding the upper. It was on this
:rip — Point Pleasant — that Lewis' division was en-
amped when the Indians under Cornstalk, Blackhoof
nd Logan surprised them. The Virginia riflemen
uickly spread out among the trees in a line nearly two
liles wide, their right flanked by the Kanawha, their
jft by the Ohio. Fighting grew hot immediately, a
lass of braves flinging themselves on the right flank,
illing Colonel Charles Lewis, the officer in command
lere, and breaking through at some points. But support
ime almost at once from Colonels Field and Fleming.
The attack was a morning surprise and Andrew
-ewis had made no plans for such an encounter. The
irginians slowly fell back, giving ground inch by inch
ntil the sun had come to the height of its daily course
id was beginning to descend. Opposite them Chief
ornstalk urged on his warriors; his voice could be
eard above the crackling muskets exclaiming in the
[lawanese, "Be strong! Be strong!"
But by early afternoon the Virginians got a foot-
ig and with good positions stubbornly held forced the
43]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
warriors to a standstill. Along the front now narrowed
down to a mile and a quarter, both flanks guarded by a
river bank, they took each other's fire until sundown.
During the night the warriors followed their cus-
tom, religiously adhered to, of carrying away the dead
and wounded. Their loss was comparatively great,
estimated at 23 3 j it was more than a quarter of their
whole force.^While in the Virginians' camp half the
officers were dead or dying and fifty-two enlisted men
had been killed. But before morning the Indians disap-
peared. Though they had worked nearly till dawn they
had to leave twenty-one unburied bodies on the ground.
Soon after the battle one of Lord Dunmore's run-
ners arrived with orders for Colonel Lewis to join him
at Old Chillicothe, the Shawanese headquarters in what
is now Pickaway County, Ohio. The victors of Point
Pleasant made their eighty-mile march through the un-
broken wilderness and reached the village to find Lord
Dunmore listening to peace offers from the Shawanesei
For, after the braves had lost. Cornstalk led them dil
rectly back to the Chillicothe towns and there called a
tribal council. After upbraiding his warriors for not
letting him make peace before the engagement (whichi
it appears he had wanted to do) he scolded them, "What
will you do now? The Long Knife is coming upon m
and we shall all be killed! Now you must fight or wc
[44l
A ROUGH NECK'S THIRTY YEARS
re done.'' Nobody answered him. He went on des-
erately, "Then let us kill all our women and our chil-
ren and go and fight until we die!" Still nobody an-
vvered; then burying the blade of his tomahawk in one
f the timbers of the council house he exclaimed dis-
ustedly, "I'll go and make peace!" Then when he
ad finished speaking all the surrounding warriors had
odded their agreement.
But anything more than a sham peace and a flimsy
•eaty was impossible. Virginia and Pennsylvania were
t war over a boundary line that had not been run; King
reorge had recently limited the colonies' western f ron-
er, taking all of the land northwest of the Ohio for
!anada; because of the white man's yearning for the
idian's land and the Indian's resentment thereto no last-
ig agreement could be made until the red men were
^holly conquered; and moreover the feeling that there
'as about to be a revolution was nearly as strong on this
Ige of the wilderness as along the more populous and
lore civilized seaboard.
Lord Dunmore returned Cornstalk's messengers with
le reply that he was willing to parley. This infuriated
ewis, who, finding himself w^ith twenty-five hundred
irginians well into the Indian country, thought it an
ccellent moment to destroy the Shawanese completely.
[e refused to halt while the council gathered, but Dun-
45]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
more "went in person to enforce his orders, and it ix
said drew his sword upon Colonel Lewis, threatening
him with instant death if he persisted in further disobe-
dience." Lewis gave in and the troops were checked^
they bivouacked on the ground that Dunmore had namec
Camp Charlotte.
Soon Shawanese chieftains began to assemble, also
a few of the Mingoes. But there was one head warrioi
that proudly stayed away. It was Logan, whose good-
will the borderers, by their stupidity and reckless muri
dering, had forfeited. And as no treaty could be con-
cluded without his agreement he was sent for. Lore
Dunmore, looking about for an able man, selected Simor
Girty.
Girty had remained with Dunmore throughout thd
advance into the Indian country. Ordered to get Lo-i
gan's view with regard to the proposed treaty he went
feeling rather reluctant. On his way out of the camf
he stopped and talked with one of the pickets whom he
told of his mission and also that he disliked it, for Logan,
he said, would be in a surly, dangerous mood.
Logan was encountered under a great elm tree, bare
against the November sky, which stood some distance
from his cabin. There he waited, bronzed, powerful
and gloomily fatalistic; stiff with habitual dignity, en-
wrapped and made perilous by bitter memories of the
[46]
A ROUGH NECK'S THIRTY YEARS
death of his people, his blood still seething for revenge —
that was the kind of man Girty had to meet.
Logan spoke. He began with a kind of harsh
mournfulness:
"I appeal to any white man to say if ever he entered
Logan's cabin hungry and I gave him not meat; if ever
he came cold or naked and I gave him not clothing!
"During the course of the last long and bloody war,
Logan remained in his tent, an advocate of peace. Nay,
such was my love for the whites that those of my own
country pointed at me as they passed and said, ^Logan is
the friend of the white man.' I had even thought to
hve with you, but for the injuries of one man. Colonel
Cresap, the last spring, in cold blood and unprovoked,
cut off all the relatives of Logan, not sparing even wo-
men and children. There runs not a drop of my blood
in the veins of any creature. This called on me for
revenge. I have sought it. I have killed many. I
bave fully glutted my vengeance. For my country I
rejoice at the beams of peace. Yet do not harbor the
thought that mine is the joy of fear. Logan never felt
fear. He will not turn on his heel to save his life. Who
LS there to mourn for Logan? Not one."
He turned away again and the interview was over.
Girty marched back to Camp Charlotte with the words
ringing in his head. The white men and Indians were
[47]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
seated in a large circle, waiting for the parley to begin.
As Girty walked across the crisp grass towards them one
of the officers — it was John Gibson — arose and greeted
him. Where was Logan? /asked Gibson. Girty told is
him, adding that the parley might now be started, for
the Mingo chief had agreed to peace. Did Girty re-
member what Logan had said? inquired Gibson. Simon
nodded J whereupon the two men went into Gibson's
tent and there the one repeated to the other the speech,
which Gibson set down "on a piece of clean, new paper"
that he had in his pocket, the words substantially as
Logan had spoken them.
The treaty continued for some days and it was at
length decided that — so it had been said by white men —
the Indians would thenceforth make the Ohio River
their eastern boundary, while the Virginians promised
not to pass beyond that river, also that the Shawanese
should give Dunmore four of their chiefs to be taken
back to Virginia as hostages.
When that meaningless treaty had been concluded
the army moved back across the Ohio. Girty accom-
panied Dunmore and had the satisfaction of being
known as a man whose service had been faithful and
competent. It is not difficult to imagine him, while
leading the advance towards Camp Charlotte, thrusting
his way through trees and underbrush, leading the army
[48],,
A ROUGH NECK'S THIRTY YEARS
Into the wilderness he knew so well, assisting in gaining
intelligence from captured Indians and acting as inter-
•reter and messenger when the parley began. That he
/as looked on favorably by Dunmore is certain: while
oth branches of the army were marching towards the
Indian country he had been chosen as one of the mes-
?ngers to Colonel Andrew Lewis; and after the trouble-
reeding treaty at the Chillicothe town it was Girty
horn the noble A'^irginia governor called on to provide
musement for the officers.
An Indian dance was what Lord Dunmore wanted
D see. Girty arranged it. With young John Turner
•nd the two Nicholson brothers he led his sham warriors
louting and pounding the earth with their moccasins
'bout a campfire in a clearing; they sang the weird, dol-
rous Indian songs, gave out their fearful yells and
)udly thumped a skin-topped drum that was half full
f water. His Lordship was greatly pleased. And when
le army reached Fort Pitt Simon was given a commis-
on in Dunmore's militia.
As a second lieutenant in the battalion commanded
Y Major John Connolly, Girty was required to swear
vvay any lingering belief of transubstantiation in the
Lcrament of the Lord's Supper and to give full alle-
iance to his Majesty, King George the Third. He
implied, his right hand upraised, on February 22,
+9]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
177 5 y a day not far distant from the eighteenth o
Aprilj same year.
Had there been no particular occurrence on tha
eighteenth of April and had it not been a step toward
the Revolutionary War, the life of Simon Girty woul
have been vastly changed. There would probably hav
been no tales about "Girty, the White Indian'' j "Girty
the White Savage" j no legends of his ferocious cruelt;
and indignant accounts of his barbarous deeds and blood
nature. It is likely he would have remained about Pitts;
burghj going no higher than a captaincy in the militia
or would have made it a base for his job as scout and in
terpreter to the parties venturing among the Indians i]
the wilderness. For he seems to have had no markedl;
acquisitive instinct and no strong urge to rise up to ;
position above his fellows.
But the Revolution was at hand even as he swore th
oath of loyalty to King George. Washington had writ
ten to Bryan Fairfax, "as to your political sentiments,
would heartily join you in them, so far as relates to ;
humble and dutiful petition to the throne, provide(
there was the most distant hope of success. But hav
we not tried this already? Have we not addressed th-
Lords, and remonstrated with the commons? And t«
what end? Did they deign to look at our petitions!
Does it not appear, as clear as the^sun in its meridiai
.1
A ROUGH NECK'S THIRTY YEARS
brightness, that there is a regular, systematic plan
formed to fix the right and practice of taxation upon
lis?" And at a Fairfax County meeting the next month
vVashington offered to raise and equip a thousand sol-
'iiers and send them to the aid of Boston.
/Also there were men farther west in Virginia who
felt the struggle coming on and, realizing that Lord
Ounmore was no friend of the colonists, were anxious
o dispossess King George's governor. While Dunmore
vvas with his army at the Hocking River on his expedi-
tion against the Shawanese and Mingoes one of the sol-
diers saw the commander sitting in his tent with two
ndians. Upon which he conceived the idea of killing
lot only Dunmore but the redskin guests with one shot.
Circling the tent, the soldier paused and fired through
he canvas. But because of his greed he missed all
hree, then quickly hid among the rank and file, none
)f whom would tell who had fired the ball. "From the
ime he left the camp," wrote one of the men who had
)een on the expedition, "Dunmore tried to conciliate
vhat he could by indulgence and talking; but this would
iiot have availed him had he not taken other precautions,
jOr many in the camp believed him the enemy of their
;:ountry and the betrayer of the army."
Some of this feeling is expressed in a resolution
Irawn up by Dunmore's officers at Camp Charlotte
THE WHITE SAVAGE
where the treaty with the Indians was held. In its pre
amble it summed up the campaign against the Shawanes
and Mingoes as having been successful (which it W2
not) J asserted that the assembled army was a respectabl
body, that it had lived for weeks without either brea
or salt and that its men could march and shoot with an
in the known world. "Blessed with these talents," goe
on this extraordinary document, "let us solemnly engag
to one another and our country in particular that w
will use them for no other purpose but for the honor an
advantage of America and of Virginia in particulai
It behooves us, then, for the satisfaction of our countr}
that we should give them our real sentiments by way o
resolves, in this very alarming crisis.'' Whereupon al
of the officers promised to bear the most faithful alle
giance to King George so long as "his majesty delight
to reign over a brave and free people'' and further re
solved that they felt "the greatest respect for his excel
lency the Rt. Hon. Lord Dunmore, who commanded th
expedition against the Shawanese, and who, we are con
fident, underwent the greatest fatigue of this singula
campaign from no other motive than the true interest
of his country."
But whatever Lord Dunmore's motives were in th'
campaign, it is true that he foresaw grievous troubL
between the colonies and Great Britain and that he la
[52
A ROUGH NECK'S THIRTY YEARS
ored to recruit and strengthen loyalists to the King's
^^overnment. And in this he had the assistance of Con-
nolly at Fort Pitt. <
/Connolly, in those days before the fracas at Concord
md Lexington, either under instruction from Lord Dun-
nore or on his account, provided the \^irginia governor
vith a list of names of people about the \'irginia frontier
vho, he believed, were well-disposed towards British
ule. It contained descriptions of nineteen men, Indians,
raders and frontiersmen, and was sent by Connolly to
)unmore, by Dunmore to Lord George Germain and
»y Germain to Sir Guy Carleton, governor-general of
Quebec — a piece of paper evidently regarded as being
f great importance. But though this list was to be
landed from one bigwig to another almost any piece of
•aper picked up at random would have been as valuable
D the British government.
For of the nineteen named nearly all took up the
ide of the colonials when war came. Included in the
St were Major (later Colonel) William Crawford, who
ommanded Pennsylvania militiamen during the Revo-
ition; White Eyes, a chief of the Delawares whose per-
Dnal efforts kept half his tribe from joining the Sene-
as against the Americans; the bereaved Logan, who
ever from 1774 lifted his arm against the white men,
nd Cornstalk, a chieftain of the Shawanese who was
53]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
also friendly towards the frontiersmen. In fact the
only men Connolly could have relied upon that were
mentioned in the list were Alexander McKee and Simon
Girty.
During the first years of the war Simon moved with
the patriotic tide about Fort Pitt. Connolly's militia
had been withdrawn and Girty was left without either
commission or job. There was no more talk of calling
the place Fort Dunmore. For the Virginia governor
was no longer a power there; it was Fort Pitt and Pitts-
burgh and belonged to Pennsylvania! The frontiers-i^
men spoke little about boundary lines or even about In-
dians; their conversation was chiefly concerned with
affairs along the distant seaboard.
//'Shifting about in this changed scene, Simon finally
went to work as an interpreter for George Morgan, the
new deputy commissioner of Indian Affairs. But he
was given odd jobs, small pay and little encouragement.
It was not the same as when he had worked with Alex-(
ander McKee, deputy agent of Indian Affairs under the
Crown; with Major Connolly and Lord Dunmore. Un-
der Morgan, however, he made several journeys intc
the Ohio country, also one for the Virginia House of
Burgesses. But he got on badly with his superior and
within three months he was discharged. To lose his jot
was a thing of little importance in itself. So was tht
[54:
A ROUGH NECK'S THIRTY YEARS
fact that when he presented his bill for about a hundred
dollars which he had expended in "extraordinary ser-
dce" — one item being "a horse taken by Mr. George
Morgan and given out in the service of the public" —
:he bill was not paid. But he had not had trouble like
.hat under the old rule.
During the next two years while ragged troops were
naneuvering in the east, fighting under Washington
"'It Trenton, Germantown, Brandywine and at last going
nto winter quarters at Valley Forge, Girty tried to fit
nmself into the new scheme of things as manifested at
■Pittsburgh. There, since June of 1777, Brigadier Gen-
•Tal Edward N. Hand was in command. And whether
t was because the frontiersmen of that neighborhood
vere suspicious of any man who had been an officer
•inder Connolly and Lord Dunmore, or because Simon
associated with Alexander McKee, then on parole to the
lOontinental government, or whether it was simply his
;ontinued familiarity with the Indians — whatever the
eason, it was rumored that he was in league with McKee
3 slay all the Americans on the border. Though such a
laim sounds obviously like nonsense, there may have
een at the base of it some fact that showed him indif-
erent to the cause of the United States. At any rate he
^as jailed on the charge (breaking out of the guard-
ouse, he absented himself a few days, then returned
55]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
and gave himself up, evidently to show his indepen-
dence), but w^hen brought to trial there was no prooi
that could be brought against him.
In a time of disturbance, such as a great social up-
heaval, when men of one belief are thrown out while
those of another take their place, there is bound to b(
great dissatisfaction with whatever may occur in th(
reorganized society. One ambitious soul is stirred, onl]
to be hampered and suspected by countless others. Tha
was the fate of Arnold, one of the bravest and mos
competent generals in the Continental army^ the fate o;
Anthony Wayne, an excellent drill-master, deeply en
grossed in the military life and personally valiant, wh(
had to stand aside while his inferiors as soldiers but hi
betters as politicians were given the appointments tha
should have gone to him^ and, in a lesser degree, to b
sure, that was likewise the misfortune of Girty.
A man with Girty's peculiar qualifications shouL
have been of inestimable value to Pennsylvania and Vir
ginia on the western edge of the wilderness during th
War of the Revolution. He knew the country north
west of the Ohio as well as any white man at Fort Pitt
He had an understanding of the Indians, their mannei
and speech and the land they occupied. He was cou
rageous and outspoken. His interest in private propert
(he was never known to have been a trader or to stak
[56
"s
\
A ROUGH NECK'S THIRTY YEARS
lut land claims, either of which he might easily have
lone) was small. Hence at Fort Pitt he could have
leen depended on to make true reports of the temper and
vants of the Shawanese, Wyandots and Delawares, to
onciliate them if that were possible, not to steal from
hem as did so many of the Indian agents, and to plan
xpeditions, at least the routes that were to be taken,
vhen that was necessary.
Nor was it unlikely he would have given such ser-
ice if he had had the chance. Throughout 1777 he
lad worked on behalf of the colonists, recruiting men
if the settlements for the army under one-year enlist-
nents. How many men he brought in or how heartily
le worked is not known, but he must have been fairly
uccessful. And for what he had done he expected a
aptaincy.
In this he was disappointed. John Stephenson was
ut in command of the company and Girty's reward was
^ second lieutenancy. That was the rank he had held
nder Connolly, and men who had been lieutenants and
aptains then were now majors and colonels. Moreover,
le discovered, the company was to be sent to Charleston.
't was too hot down there. Not wanting to go to
i'harleston, he remained at Fort Pitt and a short time
'.ter was out of a job again.
These small but repeated failures disgruntled him.
57]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
During the rest of the year at Pittsburgh he was seen as
often with visiting Indians as with his own kind.
Another man who had grievances against the revo-
lutionaries was Alexander McKee. He was a man of
substance and had servants on his plantation down the
river. Not only had the rebellion cost him his position
as Indian Agent and caused him to be placed on parole as .,
a person suspected of seditious sentiments, but his Tory'
sympathies had raised a popular clamor against him.
He was charged with violating his parole, and though
tried and acquitted the suspicion still remained. Or
February 7, 1778, General Hand ordered him to go ai
once "to Yorktown, in Penn., on your parole, there tc
receive the further directions of the Hon. Continenta
Board of War.''
But by this time McKee had decided that if he lef '
Fort Pitt at all — his property was there — it would be t( '
go in another direction. Drawn together by their dis- ^
satisfaction with affairs as they had now become, McKe( I
and Girty, with Matthew Elliott, a young Irish tradei
who had been much with the Indians, McKee's cousii ,
Robert Surphlit, "a man named Higgins" and two 0:|
McKee's Negro servants planned their departure fo:
Detroit, where they intended to offer themselves to Gen i
eral Henry Hamilton, Lieutenant-Governor of Canada i
From there, for nearly twenty years Girty, McKed
[58:1
i:
A ROUGH NECK'S THIRTY YEARS
md Elliott were ably to direct Ohio Indians in the bor-
ler war, to keep the frontier from encroaching far into
he Northwest and to help prolong the fight between
ireat Britain and America over the land south of Lake
i;rie and northwest of the Ohio River.
59]
Wherein the Scoundrel Saves a Hero from Roasting at
the Stake
CHAPTER IV
Wherein the Scoundrel Saves a Hero from Roasting
at the Stake
U AIRNESS and level-headedness are qualities not
ften found in accounts of that long drawn out fight
Dr supremacy in the country northwest of the Ohio
iver. Western historians have generally taken for
ranted that all of the land in North America belonged
Y divine right to the offspring of the Thirteen Colonies
id that any attempt by the Indians to drive back the
;ttlers was cruel, treacherous and extraordinarily crim-
lal. And the frontiersmen who successfully gained a
)oting within Shawanese or Delaware country were
id to have "met their dastardly, cruel, relentless foe
I the spirit of genuine manhood — of true, determined,
nflinching heroism!" and were called "men worthy of
le heroic age of the west."
That land in which several small white armies f oun-
sred, but which the braves finally had to relinquish,
as worth the blood that moistened it. To the white
ttlers it gave various ores, pottery, rich fields and tim-
63]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
ber. To the Indian it supplied his every want. It
rivers, though small, were many and navigable by pi-
rogue, raft and canoe. Fish were large and plentifu
in all the streams, caught merely by the throwing of ',
spear near the flashing shallows or by the dipping of •
net near the shade of an overhanging willow. Thi
game was abundant. There were fat but surprisingly
agile bears, slim-flanked deers, raccoon, wild turkeys
buffaloes, and groundhog for the not too fastidious
And in killing a bear or deer the brave got not onl]
meat for his family but clothing and bedding and skin:
for his cabin as well. For his vegetables and corn h(
had but to scratch the ground in the river bottoms anc
plant the seed after the water had subsided from the
perennial spring thaws.
Why the Indian fought to keep his land in the Ohi(
country is obvious: it contained everything that hf.
needed j and once driven from it there was little place
else for him to go. The tribes were of a wandering na-
ture, it is truej nevertheless each division of the abori-
gines had its own territory in which it alone had th(
right to live and hunt. Through the summer the brave:
would remain close by their villages; in the winter they
would go forth with musket and bow and arrow to les:
frequented forests where the bear and deer were not sc
wary. But as for wandering further, they abandonee
[64]
I THE SCOUNDREL SAVES A HERO
:heir villages only when the land and surrounding wil-
derness failed to support them.
In the Ohio country the tribes had a fairly settled
existence. To the north and east were Wyandots and
Delawares, to the south the Shawanese, with the Miamis
ilong the western boundary. Among these the Shawan-
ese were the most recent arrivals, having come there in
:he middle of the eighteenth century. Nearly a hun-
dred years earlier they had journeyed from the south,
Derhaps from Florida, and had been permitted by the
Seneca-Iroquois confederacy to build towns on the Sus-
:]uehanna. But later, by the treaty with William Penn
<n 1682, they were required to decamp. And after
^ipsying through Virginia, South Carolina and Tennes-
ee, going clear to the Mississippi where La Salle found
hem in 1684, they turned back and, this time with per-
;nission of the Wyandots, settled in southern Ohio near
ind along the Scioto River. Thus they had been buf-
:eted considerably since the white man had come to
America. Scarcely had they reared their cabins on the
kioto when they discovered that Virginians and North
Carolinians had penetrated the friendly forests as far as
he Ohio's shores. It angered them and they could not
mt wonder how long it would be before they were
Iriven on again. Lord Dunmore's war a few decades
ifter their arrival not only restricted their boundary to
[65]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
the south and east 5 it also showed them the temper of
the frontiersmen, who, in general, killed as treacherously
and with as little regard for age and sex as the Shawanese
brave himself.
Of all the Indian tribes in the Ohio country the
position of the Shawanese was the most precarious. They
had come but recently j they were under sufferance of
the Wyandots, and it was the fringe of their hunting
grounds that was the most exposed to the westward
pushing pioneers. Second to them, so far as the danger
of conflict was concerned, were the Delawares.
Contact with Europeans had sent the Shawanese
wandering to the south j it had driven the Delawares
directly west from the seaboard at a much earlier period.
They had never been, and they never were, great war-
riors. Thir right to live in the Ohio country came from
the Senecas, who long before this western continent had
been heard of had defeated them in battle and by some
strategy had managed to hold them in an inferior posi-
tion. They continued at intervals to humiliate them.
Compared to the bold and forthright Shawanese, the
Delawares were an almost indecently wobbly tribe.
Their noted warriors were few — Hopocan, or Captain
Pipe as he was called, being about the best they could
furnish at any time during the last half of the eighteenth
century. Their sachems were insignificant in the inter-
[66]
THE SCOUNDREL SAVES A HERO
tribal councils. Though the braves would fight, and
3ften did fight, the spirit of blood revenge, so strong
n the Indians as a whole, was weak in them. All this,
lowever, in no way lessened their aptitude towards
:ruelty to captives.
Coincident with the westward urge along the fron-
:ier came the spirit of organized soul saving. While
Dorderers tried hard but none too successfully to tame
he braves with long squirrel rifles there were other white
nen ready to conquer the warrior in the wilderness with
lothing but the Word of God. So far as is known the
vork of the missionaries among the Ohio Indians was
lot, for the most part, fruitful. The Shawanese, Mi-
mis, and nearly all of the Wyandots preferred their old
amiliar ways of worship. These permitted an invalid
o recover by giving a great feast in honor of the Sun
jod. They also insured the steady capture of game by
he hunter j he had only to cajole the souls of the dead
easts which his people had already consumed.
But one John Heckewelder and some of his Chris-
an brothers, going into the midst of the Delawares,
acceeded in making numerous conversions to the Meth-
dist religion. Heckewelder was a stubborn, flighty-
eaded man born in England of German parentage. He
ad come to Pennsylvania as a youth and was soon ob-
"ssed with theological mysteries. Northwest of Fort
67]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
Pitt along the Muskingum River he preached Chris-
tianity to those who would listen and after a time he
helped establish three Indian missions. One of them
was called Salem, another Schonbrunn, and the third was
Gnadenhutten. There he instructed the Delawares ir
building more weatherproof cabins, cultivating th(.
clearings and bottomlands and in saving up their stores!
for days when food was hard to get. But while shep-f
herding a flock of several hundred Indians he took care
to keep well in the good graces of the Continental offi-|
cers at Fort Pitt. ^^
Heckewelder, with another missionary named Jo-
seph Bull, was at Fort Pitt a few days after Simon Girty
Alexander McKee and Matthew Elliott disappeared into
the wilderness. Since these three had gone, he observed
the faces of the pioneers, their wives and children wer^
dark with gloomy they were fearful of their fate anc
ready to bundle up their few belongings and return east
General Hand was blenched with consternation and S(i
was Colonel John Gibson. The Pittsburghers looked t(
them for safety, for they believed that Girty, McKed
and Elliott would shortly return at the head of a howl
ing warpack and put them to the death. i
But Heckewelder, thereby heroizing himself, wa'
not so easily shaken; and he set out for the MuskingunI
to counteract this evil to the American cause. Arrivii
THE SCOUNDREL SAVES A HERO
Salem he discovered that though these three runaways
id been there they had moved on. Before leaving they
id represented the colonists as having been beaten and
le British triumphant, which had wakened the Dela-
ares to thoughts of attacking the frontier. But brave
xckewelder, prepared with newspapers (it is curious
)w apt the Indians were at reading English) and some
iendly speeches, soon proved to them that it was the
ritish who had suffered the defeats and cited Bur-
)yne's fate at Saratoga. This turn of affairs moved
hief White Eyes to send a message to the Shawanese
I the Scioto — where the three white men had jour-
*yed — saying, "Grandchildren, ye Shawanese! Some
lys ago a flock of birds from the East lit at [Coshoc-
n], imposing a song of theirs upon us, which song had
gh proved our ruin! Should these birds, which, on
aving us, took their flight toward the Scioto, endeavor
\ impose a song on you likewise, do not listen to them,
:r they lie."
What kind of song these birds sang among the Sha-
fmese is not known. But likely enough whatever the
:ne it was one the tribe had learned by heart. For they
PTC aware that already they were half surrounded, by
f nnsylvanians and Virginians to the east, and to the
mth by settlers who had followed Daniel Boone, the
nrrods, McAfees, Hendersons, Floyds, Hancocks,
THE WHITE SAVAGE
Bullets and others into Kentucky. They knew the
would have to fight, and they had chieftains like Con
stalkj Blackhoof, Blue Jacket, Red Hawk and, late
Tecumseh, who were competent and who, with the e?
ception of Cornstalk, were eager to lead them.
Certain it is that Girty and his companions spoke r
good for the colonists. But it would appear if not aL
certain at least reasonable that this party of white me
in going among the Shawanese intended no direct hari
towards the borderers, but rather went there for refuj
until they should hear from Lieutenant-Governor Han
ilton in Detroit. For McKee had written Hamiltc
while they were at the Delaware village of Coshoctc
asking for a safeguard through the territory of the wes
ern tribes. By way of reply Hamilton had sent out Ec
ward Hazle to the Scioto to escort them back throug
the Indian country.
The three had escaped from Fort Pitt late in Marcl
It was June before they arrived in Detroit, where Han
ilton eagerly awaited them. For he had got the list (
names which Connolly had made for Dunmore ail
which had gone through Lord George Germain to S
Guy Carleton, and the list showed McKee and Girty
be men of influence and well-disposed towards the Bri
ish government. They fitted in to Hamilton's pla
exactly. Because by this time he had received ofiici
[7(
THE SCOUNDREL SAVES A HERO
nction of the plan he had put forward, namely the har-
sing of the American frontier by Indians whom men of
is own choice were to lead. He was anxious for the
/"yandot and Shawanese warriors to be at their work,
heeling efficiently down upon the stockades in Ken-
icky, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
Hamilton welcomed the runaways. And after they
id been in Detroit a while he spoke to them of the jobs
2 wanted them to do. They were to go down into the
hio country and live among the Indians, interpreting
)r the traders among them and keeping them friendly
iwards the British, seeing that the presents given the
ibes from the King's stores reached them safely and,
1 occasion, leading the braves against the American
ttlements.
This last part of their task, Hamilton might have
Dinted out to them, was not so unnatural and blood-
lirsty as it sounded. The Indians were making ma-
Luds upon the border anyway 5 they might as well be
roperly led. Besides, the white men who accompanied
lem were required to restrain the braves from unneces-
ry cruelty (as if that were humanly possible! ) and to
Did them back from killing women and children.
The three men took up their new employment.
Don afterward Simon, as his first assignment, was sent
» the mixed-up tribe called Mingoes. He reached their
71]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
villages from Detroit by following the Indian trail dow
the Detroit River, skirting the west shore of Lake Eri
crossing the Maumee River near the rapids and goir
on through the wilderness towards the headwaters of tl
Scioto. Here he found them occupying the small an
that lay surrounded by the Miamis to the west, tl
Wyandots to the north and east and the Shawanese i
the south.
His meeting with the Mingoes was friendly. Th(
understood that it was through him that they woul
receive their annual presents from the King's stores ar
be supplied with provisions and gunpowder for the
raids against the border. It was not necessary for hii
to win them to a new point of view. He had merely i
keep them reminded that the Great White Father aero
the water was really their parent, that he was all-powe;
f ul and good, whereas the Long Knives of Pennsylvan
and Virginia were not powerful and not good.
Simon settled among them in Solomon's town, whic
was a few miles upward from the Shawanese village c
Wapatomica. There he built a stout log cabin whic
had a roof of bark and which he furnished with a be
made from bent saplings, perhaps a stool or two and tl
skins of bear and deer.
Altogether he found his situation agreeable. Tl
necessaries of life were free for the taking. He w;
[72
THE SCOUNDREL SAVES A HERO
receiving regular pay from General Hamilton. The
[ndians gave him the respect they v^ould have given to
Dne of their war chiefs. He talked with them and un-
derstood them enough neither to overestimate nor to
Delittle what they were. They came to his cabin and
were his friends.
While Simon was living at Solomon's town his bro-
:her James broke away from the Americans and went
:o Detroit where Hamilton hired him as an interpreter
ind sent him down among the Shawanese. Simon met
fames a short time later and James told him of a raid
:he Shawanese were planning against the Kentucky bor-
ler. They wanted him to accompany them.
He went. Riding a well-equipped horse and leading
:wo packmares, he set out with the braves as one of the
'proper persons ... to conduct their parties, and, re-
;train[ing] them from committing violence on the well-
iffected and Inoffensive inhabitants, employ [ed] them
n making a Diversion and exciting an alarm upon the
Tontier.''
Gone for two weeks or more, the party returned
^ith some plunder, a white woman, seven children and
I handful of scalps which they had taken from some
)oorly stockaded settlement in a Kentucky clearing.
\nd as Simon, more or less the leader or the party,
eached Wapatomica he met the first of his old Fort
;73]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
Pitt acquaintances whom he was destined to see undei
trying circumstances.
Among the scouts that had worked with Girty ir
Lord Dunmore's war was Simon Kenton, a young, blond
broad-faced six-footer. They were friends of a sort, th(
two Simons. But while one of them had deserted hi{
people at Fort Pitt and aligned himself against them
the other had been drawn more closely to the Americar
frontiersman's side. Kenton had gone with George
Rogers Clark to take Vincennes and had also skirmishec
with the Indians under Daniel Boone. But in this sum-
mer of 1778 he was lying idly about Boone's Station and
likely enough, thinking enviously of the Shawanese witl"
their horses on the other side of the Ohio River. At an)
rate the Shawanese had horses which would be very ac-
ceptable to the settlers at Boone's Station and Kentor
determined that a transfer in their ownership should b(
made. With Alexander Montgomery and George ClarP
he set out one fine day to get them, taking the salt anc
bridles necessary to the capture.
The three adventurers — they couldn't be callec
horse thieves because, after all, they were only taking
the property from the Indians — crossed the Ohio anc
on the following night came upon a herd of horses graz-
ing in a natural meadow. In the darkness they caugh
and slipped halters on seven of them, then started bacl
[74:
Si}) I on Ketiton
THE SCOUNDREL SAVES A HERO
towards the river. By dawn they had come to the wood-
fringed shore without mishap and none of them doubted
that the rest of the trip back to Boone's Station would be
as successful as had been the first part of the journey.
But a wind was blowing over the wide stretch of
water, sending the waves high up on the muddy banks.
The stolen horses took fright; rearing and tossing their
heads, they would not attempt the crossing.
By noon the whipped-up surface had not subsided.
There stood three anxious and angry men and seven
rebellious horses. Meanwhile in the forest behind them
the Indians to whom the stock belonged had discovered
their loss and had already begun to track them.
At last, the horses refusing to take to the water,
Kenton, Montgomery and Clark led them to the path
that followed the shore line and went westward, towards
the falls where, if it could be reached, there would be
an easy crossing.
But before they had gone very far they heard the
sounds of Shawanese behind them. The three men scat-
tered, letting the horses roam; Kenton ran down through
a stretch of timber where many trees had been blown
down. Coming out on the other side he was faced by a
mounted Indian who slipped off his horse and ran upon
him with tomahawk uplifted. Kenton took up his mus-
ket as a cudgel, was about to defend himself when an-
[75]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
other brave leaped upon his back and shoulders am
pinioned his arms. The tomahawk was stayed j Kentoi
gave up and was bpund with leather thongs.
During this time Clark had escaped and Montgom-
ery had been shot. Indians came to where the tall blonc
captive stood and one of them showed him Montgom-
ery's scalp and shook it in his face as a warning. Heed-
ing itj he remained passive in their hands. His position
he must have known, was grave indeed. He had com(
to steal Shawanese horses and had been caught at it, hac
attempted to escape and had been overpowered. More-
over, his brawn made him a prize to be carefully guarded
while being taken back to the Indian village before the
sachems and braves who would decide as to the mannei
of his death.
The following morning Kenton was tied to a frac-
tious horse. Prone on its back, he was lashed by om
rope that bound his neck to that of the mount, by an-
other that held his ankles together under its belly anc
by still another that cuffed his wrists. While a brav(
drew moccasins over the prisoner's hands to prevent hin
from warding off any of the stinging brush that woulc
slap and scratch him as the horse cantered through th(
wilderness, the others stood hilariously about and jeer-
ingly asked him if he thought he would ever come agaii
among the Shawanese to steal their horses. They thei
[76:
THE SCOUNDREL SAVES A HERO
all set off. And the horse, after wildly kicking and
plunging to free itself of its heavy burden, amiably fol-
lowed the party on its return.
On the painful journey Kenton might have held
5ome hope for his life being spared by captors grown
merciful at the sight of his fortitude. But that was all
there was to cheer him. For escape was impossible.
During the day he was trussed to the horse; at night
:he braves took him down and stretched him on the
ground with his legs extended wide, then fastened each
nember to a stake driven in the ground. Added to that
I pole was laid across his chest and his outstretched arms
trapped to it with thongs. Another rope, tied to a
learby sapling, encircled his neck.
Three days and nights of this brought him to Chilli-
:othe, a few miles from which a great horde of youths
ind warriors, having heard of the prisoner's approach,
:ame out to welcome him with jeers and kicks. They
lad a great to-do. They danced and sang about him
mtil they grew bored with that form of amusement
md returned to their village, leaving him tied in the
vilderness for the night.
In the morning, however, they came back. Kenton
oon discovered that he was fated to run the gauntlet,
^rmed with hickory clubs, they formed a long double
ow and stood waiting while his bonds were loosed and
77]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
he was taken to the beginning of this aisle that extende
between two lines of glowering warriors. If the clul
felled him, he knew as he stood there chafing his wristi
he was almost sure to be beaten to death; if he brok
through and reached the farther end still on his feet h
might hope that there would be some who would latei
in the council, plead that mercy be shown him. Ths
possibility for life and also another flickered through hi
mind as he stood rubbing his neck and his wrists wher
the thongs had abraded the skin: if he could brea
through the line and reach the council house in the dis
tant village without being captured his swiftness migh
win him forgiveness.
He began to run, desperately spurred by the flayin
hickory sticks. They struck his head and back an
shoulders, made a clatter as they knocked against eacl
other, but still he remained upright. Then of a sudde:
he saw through the nave of sticks ahead of him the flasl
of a scalping knife and he knew that at least one brav
was bent on his death. With no way of warding off th
stroke he took the one big chance. Swerving, he buckei
through the line and stretched his legs towards the coun
oil house in the village.
He I^ept his pursuers well behind him as he ran on
hastened by their baying voices. But luck was agains
him. Winded, though within sight of the counci
[78
THE SCOUNDREL SAVES A HERO
douse, his path took him directly towards an Indian who
Linexpectedly appeared from behind a tree. It was too
[ate to dodge. Exhausted, he grappled with the war-
rior and was thrown on his back as the cries of the pur-
;uing braves closed over him. Above him there was a
nelee: hands ripped at the remnant of his buckskin
:lothing, moccasins kicked at him and hickory clubs
Ntve held in readiness for whacking blows.
After a while they left him there. They came back
ater and brought food and water so that he might live
luring the trial which was now being prepared for him
n the house that he had failed to reach.
As he lay there recovering from the blows an old
:hief was seated beneath the skin and bark covered tent
)oles of the council house. He held a knife in one hand
md a stick of wood in the other and around him was a
ircle of warriors. Kenton was brought into this scene
0 listen to the arguments for and against his death.
They began speaking in an orderly manner, each
iddressing the others on the fate of the prisoner. There
vere those who spoke for clemency, but for the most
)art the words of the braves were angry and their ges-
ures abrupt and fierce. Then the final speech was
nade and the old chief in the center calmly lifted up a
var club and handed it to an Indian who stood near the
loor. The club was the ballot and was passed about
79]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
the circle. One brave thumped it on the ground^ tha'
was a vote for Kenton's death and the old chief in tht
middle made a mark in the earth with his knife. An-
other, refusing to drop the club, handed it on to hi
neighbor, and that was a vote against the execution. Tb^
old chief thoughtfully marked with his stick of wood.
But when the war club had been handed completel)
around the circle a large number of scrawls had beer
made by the knife and only a few with the little hick-
ory stick. Kenton was doomed. The sentence of deatt
was passed and, with this settled, the warriors began tc
discuss where and when it should take place. Hot-
blooded ones were vehement for instant execution, but
calmer warriors felt that the execution of this prisonei
should be a tribal event. As the latter were of the ma-
jority, it was decided that Kenton should be taken tc
Wapatomica, the town where the chief sachem of the
Shawanese had his cabin.
He was removed from the Chillicothe town and
carried on a tour of exhibition among the various fam-
ilies that made up his captors' tribe. At Piqua and at
the Mackachack towns he again had to run the gauntlet.
Little hope of life was left him when he finally reached
Wapatomica, where he submitted to the final form that
preceded death: his face was blacked, the mark of a
condemned prisoner.
[80]
THE SCOUNDREL SAVES A HERO
It was while Kenton lay within sight of the stake
tiat Simon Girty came to Wapatomica on his way north-
ward from his raid into Kentucky. With him were his
rother James and John Ward, another white manj
Iso some Indians, prisoners and scalps. Coming into
lenton's presence, Girty did not at first recognize his
Id acquaintance. He saw merely a large-sized man
ang on the ground with Kis hands and feet bound; a
lan with a blackened face, powerless and doomed,
firty only glanced at him.
But afterward, when he had talked to the Shawanese
tiiefs about the raid, he stood before Kenton again
id started bullyragging him and questioning him with
igard to the number of men under arms in Kentucky.
Kenton knew who was talking to him, but cannily
ept that knowledge to himself. However, he an-
vered Girty's questions. But finally Girty said,
What's your name and where do you come from?'^
Kenton replied with the name by which Girty knew
im and which he had used for several years, since, in
let, he had got into a shooting scrape in Virginia and
ad believed, though falsely, that he had killed his
iversary. He said, "Simon Butler."
Abruptly Girty changed. The overbearing tone
led away and he stared with wonder at the blackened
ice before him. "Oh, Butler^ my dear friend!" he
81] ■ •
THE WHITE SAVAGE
broke out and, rushing forward, he put his arms around
Kenton's shoulders. Suddenly as the two men stood to-
gether Girty began to cry unrestrainedly.
After the shock of the encounter had worn off Girtj
told Kenton slowly that there was little hope of saving
him from the stake since the counqil had passed thv
sentence, but that he would do whatever he possibl]
could to influence the warriors. The two men then drev
apart and Girty went to the tribal chiefs, asking tha
they meet in the council house at once so that he coulc
address them.
They came. And in the presence of Kenton he be-
gan speaking to the assembly. He talked long and wit!
vehemence, telling them that if they were ever mindec
to favor him they should show it then and save the lif<
of his friend Kenton. Whatever else he said is no
known, for he spoke, of course, in the Shawanese tongue
a language which Kenton did not understand. But a
any rate his plea was successful, and, when he had con-
cluded, the Indians "with one simultaneous grunt o:
approbation spared the prisoner's life and placed bin
under the care and protection of his old companion
Girtj."
But that was far from being the end. The tw(
men went to the British trading post at Wapatomica
where Girty bought Kenton a new outfit of clothing am
[82;
THE SCOUNDREL SAVES A HERO
ihorse and saddle. Kenton now was free to go, but he
jmained in the neighborhood and while he was there
lore danger threatened.
From Wapatomica they rode to Girty's cabin at Sol-
non's town. Here they stayed, hunting in the sur-
mnding forest, sitting in the dim light of evening while
ley reviewed their lives in monosyllables. Girty was
•oubled about having left Fort Pitt. He should not,
e said, have gone away like that. But . . . well, he
ad worked hard trying to get that gang of Pittsburgh
mstabouts into a company. He had hoped for a cap-
lincy out of it. Maybe if he had got the captaincy
e'd have stayed on there and fought. But Stephenson
ad got it instead. Well, it was too late to talk about it
3W.
And Kenton said that it was kind of nice around
3lomon's town. The Indians, they weren't so ornery
hen you got to know them. He didn't stand in well
ith the government back in Virginia either. Shot a
lan over a girl and the damn fool died. Now he had
• use another name and stay out in Kentucky. Maybe
s wouldn't go back at all. Maybe he'd stay right
here he was.
But while the two men were living in Girty's cabin
I security a party of Shawanese warriors who had made
humiliating foray against Wheeling and had been
83]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
severely beaten came back to Wapatomica. Several o
their warriors had been killed j their comrades returnei
in a fury and riding up to the council house demandei
that the horse-stealing Long Knife be brought back fo
another trial so that they might have a victim for thei
wrath.
This word was at once sent out by messenger fror
Wapatomica to Solomon's town. Meanwhile the tw
friends had left their cabin and were riding over th
same trail on which the runner with the bad news W2
headed. They met him soon and Girty very shortl
knew that the security which the council had given Ken
ton had been withdrawn. For the gloomy bearer of th
message accepted Girty's hand, but disdained to grec
Kenton. Then Girty asked the runner the meaning o
this hostility. Receiving no answer, he drew him asid
and they talked a few moments. Turning from th
Indian to Kenton, Girty said that they all would hav
to go to the council. The three men rode silently dow
through the wilderness trail to Wapatomica.
The council house was crowded with blanket-en
wrapped braves who gave their hands to Girty bv
scowled at his tall companion. Almost immediately th
warriors formed a circle and sat down. Soon they wer
listening to the chief who had commanded the unsuc
cessful Wheeling foray. He made jerky gestures an
[84
THE SCOUNDREL SAVES A HERO
liked fiercely, keeping his ugly eyes on Kenton.
Nearly he was asking for the white man's death.
But when the chief had finished Girty jumped to
is feet and began to talk earnestly, half pleading and
alf haranguing. They knew, he told these assembled
warriors, of his interest in the Indian's right to the Ohio
Duntry and of his efforts to keep it in their hands 3 they
new of his life and deeds with them, that during the
me he had been with them he had fought faithfully
nd bravely. Now he asked again that the life of his
riend be spared.
The council heard him respectfully, then turned to
ehement chiefs who kept to their argument that this
oung man was a hated Long Knife who had come
mong them to steal their horses and that he should be
illed, burned at the stake, as was the custom of dispos-
ig of publicly condemned prisoners. After long delib-
ration the council agreed and Kenton was doomed a
icond time.
So Girty lost his plea. But he did not yet give up 3
nd in the hope that with time he might find more
owerful interference with the Indians' decision against
Lenton he asked that the execution be postponed and
le prisoner be taken to Upper Sandusky where the east-
rn Ohio tribes were accustomed to gather to receive
!ieir presents from the British government agents at
85]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
Detroit. For if this were agreed to, argued Girty, tb
burning of the blond six-footer could be turned into ^h
spectacle that great hosts of Indian families could enjoj ^
That was what he told the Indians, but what hij
must have been thinking was that at Upper Sandusk
there were British traders who would certainly do whj.i
they could to save Kenton from the stake, that then
also, the Indians to whom the prisoner was to be ir
trusted would have no directly personal feeling towar
him and so could be the more easily persuaded in tt
direction of leniency. Then, too, along the trail b(
tween Wapatomica and Upper Sandusky was the Scio
village where Logan lived; and quixotic Logan had lor
been known as a friend of unfortunate white prisone
in the Ohio country.
In asking this Girty got what he wanted. Tlj
council approved Upper Sandusky as the scene of exec
tion and under the guard of five stalwart braves Ke:
ton was that day taken on his journey. And it happen
that because of his removal he was saved. At the Scio
town Logan interceded for him (though unsucce*-:
fully), but at Upper Sandusky Peter Druyer, a Canadian
trader in the British service, under the pretext that tci
prisoner possessed military secrets which, if heard t
Detroit, would be of value to both Indians and Britin,
and on payment of a hundred dollars' worth of rum adi
[8]
I
THE SCOUNDREL SAVES A HERO
i)bacco, effected his transfer from the savages to the
uardhouse in Detroit.
The council house at Wapatomica was the place
here the two adventurous Simons met for the last time,
lough both were to roam the greater part of the Ohio
ilderness throughout the next thirty years. Kenton,
a words that sound a little strange, but which, accord-
fig to McClung, he dictated, used long afterward to
nd his recollections of Girty with, "but he was good to
fie; and it was no wonder. \\'hen we see our fellow-
reatures every day, we don't care for them; but it is
ifferent when you meet a man all alone in the woods —
le wild, lonely woods."
It was in these woods among the savages that Girty
pent the be;>t years of his life.
P]
Simon Becomes Morose; His Scalp Causes Him Some
Concern
CHAPTER V
Simon Becomes Morose; His Scalp Causes Him
Some Concern
y HOL GH the Ohio Indians had good cause to
;trike at the borderers and though their feelings of jeal-
Dusy and revenge were deliberately sharpened by Lieu-
enant-Governor Hamilton, Alexander McKee, Mat-
hew Elliott and Simon Girty, a great number of the
avages remained friendly towards the settlers of Penn-
ylvania, \'irginia and Kentucky. For the Indians were
i divided, individualistic people and the brave used his
-ight to do what he thought best. Not only did each
:ribe function independently of the others, but each divi-
sion and subdivision as well was allowed to decide for
tself in matters of war. Moreover, when a petty chief,
ntent on setting out in a maraud, struck the war pole
^ith his hatchet his braves had the choice of following
lis action or of remaining in their cabins with their
squaws and old men.
This explains why it was that Chief Cornstalk, who
ed the Shawanese against Lord Dunmore in 1774,
:ould, in 1778, while the bulk of his tribe were actively
[91]
1
THE WHITE SAVAGE '
hostile against the Long Knives, be at peace with his
late enemies and willing to prove to them his friendship.
It also explains how half the Delawares could engage to
fight on the side of the British while the other half
favored the Americans. But as for the depressing re-
sults of this good willj they can only be explained by the
stupidity of the frontiersmen and their leaders. ji
The same year Simon Girty helped Kenton elude the r
stake, old Chief Cornstalk, learning that a band of war-
riors of his tribe were planning an attack upon a Ken- ^j
tucky stockade and being anxious to preserve peace andti
save the white men from a surprise assault, crossed the r
Ohio to warn the garrison. He arrived with the inf or- i
mation and delivered it, then started to leave. But sol^ )\
diers took hold of him and locked him up in a block- 3I
house where he was held so long that his son Ellimpsiccj
and another friendly chieftain. Red Hawk, gre^^'"
alarmed for his safety. Knowing where he had gone i
they went after him. They too were confined in th^jJ
makeshift jail. ^^^^
A day or so afterward a few Kentucky militiamei
from the stockade rowed to the north shore of the Ohic
on a foraging party and there got into a scrape with j|
stray band of Indians. One of the men, whose nam<;
was Gilmore, was shot in the scuffle, which put th
others of the garrison into such a fury that they entere(
[92:
H
SIMON BECOMES MOROSE
;he blockhouse and with knife and tomahawk butchered
Cornstalk, Red Hawk and the youth Ellimpsico.
With such bloody remembrances to stir a tribe of
vvarriors noted for their pursuit of vengeance and for the
stoicism with which they accepted death, the work of
:he British Indian Agents at Detroit became a simple
natter. And doubtless Girty and those other men sent
Dut by Hamilton to lead the aborigines often found
themselves following instead of being to the fore.
Still another occurrence which quickened the braves
of the Ohio country that year was the council of the
Seneca-Iroquois confederacy called by the sachems of
those eastern tribes to decide what would be their stand
during the Revolution. For the Senecas not only de-
clared themselves for war upon the United States, they
also ordered the Delawares to join them.
This split the Delaware tribe. About half of the
braves sided with Captain Pipe, which name translated
back into his own tongue was Hopocan. He was a Del-
aware chieftain who had already journeyed to Detroit
and had taken the war hatchet handed him by Hamilton.
But others, particularly those close to the Moravian Mis-
sions at Salem, Schonbrunn and Gnadenhutten, re-
mained steadfast and nodded assent to the indignant
speech of Chief White Eyes, who thus bawled out his
challenge to the Senecas:
[93]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
t
"White Eyes knows well that the Senecas conside^ij^'
:he Delaware a conquered tribe — as women — as theit f :
nferiors. They have — say they — shortened the Dela-
kvare's legs and put petticoats on us. They say thej
lave given us a hoe with a compounder and told us tf < .
Dound and plant for them — those men — those warriors' ):
But look at White Eyes! Is he not full grown? Wear* -
le not a warrior's dress? Ai, he is a man — and thest :-
ire the arms of a man — and all this land belongs to th( ^
Delawares." .^..
Chief White Eyes and his men about those Mora-*:^!
aan missions along the Muskingum were the one grea
inag in the course of the Detroit British Indian Agent
/"oyaging about the Ohio country. They were estab
ished within the Indian domain, but near enough tr i
S^ort Pitt for intelligence of English or native war move i
nents to be conveyed there, often in time for the Ameri :
:ans to prepare for these intended surprises. Hamiltoi
lad tried to bribe these Delawares, had threatened them
)ut had got nowhere with them. For when White Eyes,
ribe finally agreed to go to war it was at the reques
)f the Americans and on the side of the Americans, t
vhom, at a council on the Muskingum, they promise( ^
;o furnish a considerable number of warriors to figh
he British.
So in this long-distance and rather ineffectual due.
[94
SIMON BF.COMES MOROSE
etvvecn Detroit and Fort Pitt the Indians were of ad-
antage to both the British and Americans — to almost
verybody but themselves. But those who joined the
Jnited States jeopardized their race to the greatest ex-
!nt. For with the Dclawarcs under White Eyes
miable to the Pennsylvanians the commandant at Fort
'itt — where General Mcintosh had replaced General
land — was enabled to build forts in the Ohio wilder-
ess. One of these, Fort Mcintosh, was on the right
ank of the Ohio River; the other, Fort Laurens, was
5venty miles through the forests towards the Tus-
arawas.
It was through the erection of these two forts that
imon Girty reappears again in the border annals. He
ad left Kenton in the late fall of 1778. Within a
lonth he had received orders from General Hamilton
0 reconnoiter the country between the Tuscarawas and
)hio rivers. Hamilton had received vague reports of
American activities in that vicinity and, anticipating an
ttack upon Detroit, he wanted more direct information
/ith regard to them. In January, with seventeen Shaw-
nese braves, Girty left the Scioto and set out through
he snowy wilderness.
Girty had known of the existence of Fort Laurens
efore he left the Scioto. He did not know the fort by
ame, but he had heard that one was there. That was
;95]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
\
all he did know. As to the officer in charge — it hap-
pened to be Colonel John Gibson, the man who copied
Logan's speech for Girty — , the size of the garrison, th(
exact position of the fort and the strength of its wall
those were pieces of information which he had to di
cover so that he could report them to General Hamilton
Hence the capture of a few of Gibson's men would b^
valuable.
The way in which Girty proposed to take these ca
tives, if Brother David Zeisberger, one of the Moravia
missionaries with Brother John Heckenwelder, is to b.
believed, was as follows: He had discovered that tK
Delawares allied with the Americans surmounted thei^
headdress with deers' tails so as to be distinguished froril
passive or enemy Indians in that neighborhood and h i:
planned that by the use of these tails on his own brave, r
he would be permitted to pass into the fort without bein
suspected and so would find means of taking one or t
of Gibson's men with him. He also, if there is an,
truth in Zeisberger, had designs on Gibson's scalp, a
on the journey was loudly threatening.
That Girty, when he reached the Delawares, boastcS
he would take the scalp of the officer in charge of Fo:
Laurens is probable enough. But that he mentioned thi
officer by name (which one of his biographers statJ
and which is to be inferred from a letter written by Zei*
[9<|
: V
SIMON BECOMES MOROSE
srger) is hard to believe. For how was he to know that
'ribson was in command unless some Delaware had told
im; and how was this Delaware, to whom as to all
idians the titles of white men were a mystery, to say
Colonel John Gibson'' to Girty?
But at any rate Girty or some of his associates talked
K) much and in a wrong quarter for their object to
!main a secret. Killbuck, a Delaware chief in Coshoc-
)n, heard Girty's plans announced and straightway sent
runner to Zeisberger at the Moravian Missions up the
vcr. And Zeisberger hastily forwarded the informa-
on to Colonel Gibson that Simon Girty and twenty-five
'arriors were on their way to Fort Laurens and planned
:> bring back the commandant's scalp.
That message from Zeisberger put Girty's recon-
'oitering party on a personal basis, made it appear as a
hallenge to a duel between Girty and Colonel Gibson,
•or Gibson, naturally resentful and infuriated when he
^ceived word of the threat, entered into the man-to-
lan phase of it very quickly. And in letters — which
ever reached their intended destination — he declared
hat he not only hoped to prevent his former acquaint-
nce from taking his scalp, but that he thought he should
c "able to trepan him" instead.
' Girty made no attempt to enter Fort Laurens, neither
'y force nor by the fictitious strategy of the deers' tails.
•97]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
X
On the contrary, he took his braves along the trail ths,
led from Laurens to Mcintosh and halted them for a •»
ambush. That, it is likely, had been his plan from th
beginning. However, there the warriors, subsisting o
a few handfuls of parched corn a day, waited in tk
January weather. And after a while Captain Johi
Clark of the Eighth Pennsylvania Regiment, who ha
taken a load of supplies from Fort Pitt to Gibson an
whose tracks Girty had doubtless discovered, passed t
on his return with fourteen privates and a sergeant.
As it was now well known that a band of warrio
under Girty was somewhere within the seventy mil
between Forts Laurens and Mcintosh, only carelessne
on the part of Gibson would have permitted a force ;
small to make the return journey. A few more squa(
would not have appreciably weakened his garrison; the
might have saved the escort from losing in the encounti
that followed.
Nevertheless Clark was allowed to leave the fort n ;
only with an insufficient number, but also to carry lette;
with which Gibson had entrusted one of Clark's men--
letters which if intercepted by Girty would be of vali:
to General Hamilton at Detroit.
Clark and his men left Fort Laurens. They had g^
about three miles outside of the gates when the wod
and underbrush through which they were passing grelA
I
SIMON BECOMES MOROSE
id with warriors' yells and the burst and rattle of
isketry. Some of the escort fell. Those that re-
lined standing, if they returned the Indians' fire at all,
re assailed by Girty and his braves before they had a
mce to reload their clumsy muskets. With two men
Clark's party killed and four of them wounded it was
bot race for the rest. Clark, his sergeant, and seven
vates beat their way back into the fort and the gates
re closed behind them, but one who had kept his legs
s overtaken by the Indians and bound.
Among those of Clark's convoy who did not safely
urn to the fort was the man whom Colonel Gibson
i entrusted with the letters. Girty discovered the
:ket. One of them contained the important news that
neral Mcintosh was planning to move with an army
)m Fort Pitt to attack Detroit some time in the fol-
ving March. But what interested him most were
\ words in Colonel Gibson's hand, the words staring
at him, ^4 hope, if Mr. Girty comes to pay me a visit,
hall be able to trepan him." So then, it was Gibson
10 commanded at Fort Laurens! And Gibson had
in informed that he, Girty, was to be in that vicinity.
)t only that, but had hoped — what did the letter say.f*
"hope I shall be able to trepan him." God damn.
:st there had come the shock of his meeting with Ken-
i. And now old Gibson was wanting to take his scalp!
9]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
He hadn't bargained for this kind of thing when he ra ,
away from Fort Pitt.
With his prisoner and the information he had gath
ered, Girty set out for Detroit, but stopped at Coshocto
among some Delawares and at Upper Sandusky amor
the Wyandots. Both towns were on the main trai
In spite of the success of his enterprise he was dispirite(
For Gibson's words kept clanking ominously against h
ears. He was surprised, bewildered, and felt as thoug
everywhere along the border frontiersmen were vinditi^
tively waiting to settle a special account with a ma
called Girty.
As Girty admitted to Kenton the one time he sa
him in the wilderness he had been too hasty in abscom
ing from Fort Pitt. He might have added that had
not been for chance placing him in the way of Alexand
McKee he would never have attempted to make tl
journey from the Ohio through the Indian country
General Hamilton at Detroit. But even after he d
leave he must not have felt that he was committing tl ■
unforgivable crime of treason. He could only have tol 1
himself that he was departing from a place where m^
was held to be of small account (else why, with all K-
experience, he might have argued, was he given a me
second-lieutenancy?) and going where he might expe:
more appreciation; that a man's first business is to he
[10(
I
SIMON BECOMES MOROSE
Lmself j that he was injuring nobody in particular,
erhaps he thought even less than that as he left Fort
itt; at any rate only a maniac — which he was far from
:ing — would have deserted with the intention of re-
timing to kill and plunder.
Gibson's threat against him was still in Girty's mind
hen he came back to the Delaware country four months
ter. He had taken his prisoner to Detroit, where Cap-
in Lernoult — temporarily in command while Hamil-
in, who had led a force against Vincennes and had been
;aten by George Rogers Clark, was journeying up the
hio in chains — welcomed him. Girty had been able
I inform Lernoult that Forts Mcintosh and Laurens
id been erected in the Ohio wilderness, that the Gen-
al at Fort Pitt intended moving against Detroit in
larch and that a host of Indians, particularly Wyan-
Dts and those stray Senecas known as Mingoes, were
ady to take to the warpath against these invading
mericans and only awaited supplies and somebody to
ad them.
During those four months Lernoult had sent out a
irty of Indians under Captain Henry Bird. They laid
ng siege to Fort Laurens, but at last had to give up.
nd General Mcintosh had not only dropped his plans
)r a march to Detroit; he had relinquished his post as
)mmandant at Fort Pitt as Nvell. As for Girty he had
101]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
made a daring trip into the neighborhood of Fort Pit
in order to secure some papers which a disaffected Amer- -^
ican there had written and had hidden in a hollow tret
for the perusal of the British. ^^
It was July of 1779 when Girty reappeared ? '^•
Coshocton. He had the papers which he had been ser -
for, but he was morose, looking at Hecke welder an^P
Zeisberger with an angry, suspicious eye, exploding t'^
Richard Connor, an American trader who had stoppe< «^'^
there, that, by God, he didn't expect the Americans t
show any favors to him, neither would he show any t
them!
Lean, sallow Heckewelder was at hand to hear thes ^-'^
words repeated and in the next of his chain of innumei
able letters to the authorities at Fort Pitt he reporte
them. From the beginning of the War of the Revolu
tion until the end Heckewelder, as long as he was abl«
continued to send messengers to Pittsburgh with ever
scrap of news that related to British and Indian mov(*i^'wil
ments in that part of the country. Which was, c
course, his own affair. But while his active sympatbr,
thus expressed gave the various commandants at FO'^^i^^s
Pitt opportunities to ward off British and Indian attack-
he might have realized that in taking up his self-a|JiitT
pointed position as informer he was endangering t
Delawares' lives even while trying to save their souls.
[102
m
ic
SIMON BECOMES MOROSE
Whenever those two met — the long, thin, dour
eckewelder and the solid, round-eyed Girty, both of
lom were about the same age — Heckeweldcr always
id a few prayers. For he suspected, in his ingenious
ly, that Simon was about to kill him. That was non-
ise, as any less fearful man would have known. But
ere is this much to be said about it: within a little more
an a year after Girty reported at Detroit he became
ardent worker towards British ends. And as such he
IS aware that not only Heckewelder but all of the
Moravian missionaries about the Muskingum were an
struction and it would be better if they were removed.
It General Hamilton, always considerate of the mis-
maries if towards nobody else, refused to have them
sturbed. So Girty could do nothing. He once glared
Brother David Zeisberger and remarked that he
Lshed the whole damned mission was in his power;
tiich quickly aroused Heckewelder to write Colonel
•odhead, then commandant at Fort Pitt, that Girty
A tried to kill his fellow cure of aboriginal souls.
It was this frequent mention of Girty's name in let-
rs written by Heckewelder that was largely responsible
r the borderers' belief that every evening at sundown
irty poised with a horde of screaming warriors on the
St bank of the Ohio preparatory to a murderous foray
I some lonely cabin. In that summer of 1779 when
103]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
Simon went after the packet of papers already referred
to he heard the further disturbing news that Pennsyl-
vania had offered a reward of eight hundred dollars for
his head.
That Girty had no liking for Heckewelder or for
those Delawares about Coshocton, or that he grev
more desperate in his marauds is scarcely to be wondered
at. For many of the Delawares, inspired by the vision
of all the barrels of rum they could buy for eight hun-
dred dollars, leered at him in a peculiarly lean and
thirsty fashion; naturally, increasing hate on one side
increases it on the other.
A letter, either written by him or for him at that
time, shows not only his feeling for the Coshoctor
Delawares, but also gives evidence of his deepening con-
nections with the Indians. It was sent to Captain Ler-
noult, still in command at Detroit, on September 6, 1779
by messenger from Sandusky, where there was a Britisl:
trading post. '
Girty wrote: "Sir, I take the liberty to acquaint yoi
that I intend leaving this place tomorrow. There is {,
party of twenty-five Wyandots that have been turnec
to go as volunteers with me on the road I proposed wher
leaving Detroit: likewise a party of ten Mingoes, whict
party Sandithtas commands. The Wyandots are com
manded by Seyatamah.
[ 1 041
SIMON BECOMES MOROSE
"Sir, I refer you to Captain [Alexander] McKee
)r the knowledge of the above-mentioned chiefs, if you
•e not already acquainted with their names. Tomor-
)W, my friend Nouthsaka sets off with ten warriors for
le Falls of the Ohio. Our great friend, Captain Pipe
Hopocan] is gone to Fort Pitt to a council j likewise
laulmatas and Duentate. Six days ago a party of
^yandots brought here three prisoners from Kentucky,
hey say there are three hundred men under pay [mili-
amen] in those parts. They also say there are nine
)rts in and about Kentucky.
"There are certain accounts of the rebels leaving
uscarawas [Fort Laurens]. I intend to go there di-
:ctly and shall send you the token you gave me at De-
oit if they are not there. If the Delawares are in
Dssession of the fort, I intend to turn them out and
irn the fort (if my party are able), as you gave me
le liberty to act as I thought best, and they and I are
)t on the best of terms.
"Yesterday Sandithtas arrived here with the account
: ten parties of Shawanese that are gone to war. This is
1 1 have to acquaint you with at present."
Girty was, and had been considered before this, a
usted and valuable man in the British Indian Depart-
lent. The spring before. Captain Bird had affirmed
» Lernoult, "Girty, I assure you, sir, is one of the most
105]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
useful, disinterested* friends in his department that the
government has." And now, a few weeks after Girty
dispatched the above letter, he was to show himself to be
as doughty at fighting men armed and prepared as he
had been in marauding scantily protected settlements and
making ambushes for unwary escorts.
In the early part of October, 1779, Girty was close
to the Ohio River with his brother George, Matthew
Elliott and nearly a hundred Indians under his com-i;
mand. ^ They were mostly Shawanese, Wyandots and
Delawares and all of them were ready to fight, else they
would not have gathered in so large a number on the
southern edge of their country. Whether or not they
knew it at the time, a force of about seventy Americans
under David Rogers was moving up the Ohio River.
They were coming in keelboats in which they guarded a
great supply of military stores for Virginia troops.
Rogers had made a long journey — from New Or-'
leans, where he had bought clothing, rum, fusees and
other goods for the Virginians. Most of his trip wa{\
passed without mishap, but when he got between th(j
mouths of the Little Miami, on the north side, and the
Licking on the south, he discovered Indians ahead. I
was on October 4. Quickly he landed on the Kentuck;
bank and began drawing the keelboats to the shore. Hi
men clambered out and deployed through the woods iiiiii
[106]
SIMON BECOMES MOROSE
lie Indian fashion, hoping to come upon and surprise
jic band of braves which they had sighted.
It was in the morning and half of the hundred braves
ider Girty and Elliott had not yet returned from hunt-
g when the news was brought to Simon that a party of
ong Knives was approaching. He too was on the
entucky side and Rogers' men were moving directly
awards him.
Doubtless underestimating the size of the white force
as Rogers unquestionably underestimated the strength
f the savages), Girty called out the Indian cry for the
ttack and the braves went speeding among the trees
arough which the enemy were coming upon them,
^hey met, fought hard and hand to hand, with Girty
rell to the forefront of the braves.
The meeting must have been short but terrific. Of
logers' men not less than forty-two were killed, the
ommander among them. Girty's warriors suffered the
Dss of two men mortally fallen and three with gunshot
rounds that were not serious.
The supplies that had been intended for the Vir-
ginia troops were taken by the victors, who had discov-
:red the well-stored keelboats farther down the river.
\nd likely enough there was that night on the Ohio
here a drinking party in which Simon again distin-
guished himself.
l107]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
Now Girty was giving the Pennsylvanians and Vir-
ginians some good cause to offer a reward for his head,
to single him out from all of the disaffected borderers
(there were perhaps more than a hundred) who left the
United States either to travel the wilderness directly to
Detroit or to remain with one of the Indian tribes. In
the spring of the following year, which was 1780, he
was again in the Kentucky country, not in command this
time, but as an interpreter and guide. Captain Henry
Bird was in charge of the expedition and had set out
from Detroit with more than a hundred and fifty Cana-
dians, a hundred Indians from the regions of the lakes,
and two small howitzers. He made the journey down-
ward by raft and pirogue, taking the Maumee from
Lake Erie to the St. Joseph portage, then down the Great
Miami and along the Ohio. On the Miami Alexander
McKee, risen by that time to the post of deputy Indian
Agent, had joined him with reinforcements that more
than doubled his command. The comparatively large
and well-equipped body then went up the Ohio to the
Licking and up the Licking between Kentucky banks.
Aiming at Ruddle's station, Alexander McKee was
sent ahead with two hundred warriors while Captain
Bird and the rest followed more slowly. McKee came
within sight of the log-built fort in the evening and by
nightfall had placed his Indians so as to encircle it.
[108]
P SIMON BECOMES MOROSE
\ hen dawn came the braves immediately set up a brisk
"ing at chinks between the logs and at the loopholes in
e blockhouses. Throughout the morning their
isketry was answered from within, but at noon Captain
;rd arrived with his main force and unloaded one of
eir cannon from the pirogue which they had poled up
e river. The weapon was put into position, trained on
e stockade. It roared out shot which ripped through
e logs, splintering a wide hole. Captain Bird turned
I Girty and sent him with a white flag across the clear-
g to demand immediate surrender.
Girty stepped forth with the flag above his head,
he firing ceased. He walked on, crossing the stump-
uttered ground to the pickets, whom he coolly in-
)rmed (one of his biographers states that he was cool.
It it is likely he blustered a little to hide his nervous-
iss) that if they didn't give up at once they would all
J killed.
This ultimatum he also spoke to Isaac Ruddle, but
uddle wanted terms before he would agree to let down
le bars that held the gates fast. He asked that his men
id their families be put under the protection of the
ritish and saved from the torture of the Indians.
Girty retired, taking this information to Captain
ird to consider. And Bird, though he should have
lown better, for he had experience in trying to curb
109]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
battle-warmed savages, consented that the captives
should be guarded by his own white men. Further re-
sistance being useless, the gates were then swung open.
But as soon as the bars were withdrawn the Indians
rushed into the stockade with knife and tomahawk. In
Bird's own sad words they "tore the poor children from
their mothers' breasts, killed and wounded many." They
spared nothing and acted not only with the greatest
cruelty but were so maddened that they destroyed a herd
of cattle which would otherwise have kept them from
half starving on their way back north.
Bird managed, however, to retrieve a number of the
prisoners. These he carefully guarded. But his expe-
dition was near its end. After one more assault the men
had to turn back for lack of provisions, and the capture
of Louisville, which he had had in mind, was aban-
doned.
Girty followed the army back across the Ohio, but
then struck off towards his cabin at Solomon's town to be
among the Mingoes again. There he began to hear of
events that were taking place among the Delawares and
Moravian Mission Indians in the neighborhood of Co-
shocton. He might have learned that Brother John
Gottlieb Ernestus Heckewelder had been married to
Miss Sarah Ohneburg, a teacher in his mission ... he
did hear the more interesting news that the United States
[110]
SIMON BECOMES MOROSE
pvernment, pinched for money and supplies, was not
[irrying out its part of the treaty which it had made
ith the Coshocton Delawares and that in consequence
lese Indians were beginning to mutter that they had
;en deceived. The war chief Wingenund and other
)elaware leaders between the Muskingum and the Tus-
irawas were thinking of breaking their alliance with
merica and forming another with England.
Ill]
lose Damned Missionaries; and the Butchering and
Burning of Their Hapless Brood
CHAPTER VI
hose Damned Missionaries ; and the Butchering and
I' Burning of their Hapless Brood
I r HEN Chatham, protesting to the British parlia-
lent against his country's authorized use of the Indians
the War of the Revolution, spoke of it as "letting
ose the horrible hell-hounds of savage war" he gave
e British Indian Department credit for more power
an it possessed. For no man in Canada had ever held
e Indians in check, so they couldn't very well be let
ose. The Ohio Indians, with that patriotic ardor
hich people praise when it acts towards their good and
•ndemn when it affects them unfavorably, simply
)ught to hold back the frontier and to repay in kind
le murder of members of their families. Thus, it must
; repeated, the aims of the aborigines and those of the
iople of the United States were directly opposed and an
idian war could scarcely have been avoided. But as
>r England, whose colonization schemes had been
ilted by the revolution, she had no such difficulties.
o settlers came into the Ohio country under the British
115]
«
THE WHITE SAVAGE
flag, only traders \^ho wanted furs and were willing t
be agreeable to the Indians in order to get them.
It seems more natural than fiendish, then, that th
Delawares about Coshocton should have become hostil
to the borderers again when the Federal governmen
failed to preserve its share of the treaty. During th
fall of 1780 Wingenund and other chieftains prepare
to turn against the frontier. In the following winte
they sent a message to Major De Peyster, then com
mandant at Detroit, asking that triendly relations be re
established between themselves and Britain.
The Christianized Delawares, however, remainei
amiable towards the United States. There were severs
hundred of them in the three mission villages on th
Tuscarawas and it was with pride and self-congratula
tion that their spiritual father, Heckewelder, looked o
their sheeplike devotion. But for the Delawares wh
had not been baptized he had no such fondness. An^
it made him bitter to hear that they were denouncin
the United States government. His imagination vaulte
above the facts of the case and he wrote Colonel Brod
head that these Delawares were planning a war part
against the border. He hoped, he added, that if Win
genund and his braves did attack the Americans th
Delawares would be properly beaten.
As far as the Delawares' change of feeling is con
[116
p
THOSE DAMNED MISSIONARIES
crned Heckewelder reported truly, but whether they
bd actually struck the war pole may be doubted. For
een after the missionary had informed Brodhead that
''he greater part of them (the warriors) will be upon
yu in a few days," they had gone no further than to
frward a speech to Detroit, by way of Half King, a
\yandot chief at Sandusky, asking that Major De
lyster send traders — not soldiers — among them and
t ling him that as they had been deceived by the Ameri-
cas they would listen to them no longer. No act of
agression was mentioned in the message; which would
crtainly have been done had they had any definite plans
aainst the border at that time. For in facing about
f Dm Americans to British and seeking the latter's sup-
prt they would have endeavored to prove the earnest-
rss of their decision by whatever means they had at
tnd.
Nevertheless Brodhead, on receiving Heckewelder's
rport, began to make ready for an expedition against the
Idians about Coshocton, exclusive, of course, of those
Islawares in the Moravian missions whom Hecke-
v.^lder, Zeisberger, Post and Bull had converted to
(iristianity.
Meanwhile Girty had gone to Detroit where, on
te twelfth of April, two days after Brodhead had
cossed the Ohio with three hundred men, he sponsored
(17]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
the following message which Major De Peyster wrote
in his name to the Delawares:
"Indians of Coshocton! I have received your speech
sent me by the Half King of Sandusky. It contains
three strings, one of them white and the other two check-
ered. You say that you want traders to be sent to youi
villages and that you are resolved no more to listen tc
the Virginians [all Americans, that is], who have de-
ceived you. It would give me pleasure again to receive
you as brothers, both for your own good and for th(
friendship I bear to the Indians in general.'' Aftei
Girty's name had been signed to this message he went t(
Half King's village on the Sandusky, where he waited
expecting that a closer alliance with the Delaware
would follow.
Girty had barely arrived at Upper Sandusky whei
Colonel Brodhead came within sight of Coshocton, o:
rather Salem, the lower Moravian settlement on the Tus
carawas. There, on April 20, which was a dark, chill;
day, the colonel halted his troops and waited for one o:
his runners whom he had sent after Brother Johi
Heckewelder. The runner returned with the missionar
(who left his wife and daughter Mary, born just fou
days earlier) and a supply of dried corn and meat fron
the Indians' store. Brodhead's outfit ate the provision
and then, after mutual expressions of good will, the tw"
[lis;
THOSE DAMNED MISSIONARIES
n parted. Brodhead led his army towards Coshocton,
ich he had so closely approached without raising an
rm.
But on his way along the east bank of the river Brod-
d's scouts discovered Indians. The scouts fired,
ugh not well enough to prevent two of the Delawares
m escaping. Now it was essential that Brodhead
ch Coshocton almost on the heels of the fleeing braves,
; none would be there for him to kill when he arrived.
5 troops broke into a run, were undeterred by a heavy
[ unexpected rain. They arrived at Coshocton and
k the town without a shot having been fired. There
men, children and braves were herded together. Fif-
1 of the latter were killed with spears and tomahawks,
n scalped.
As night came on Brodhead pitched his camp and a
ird of regulars was placed over the prisoners. The
liers settled down to sleep and sentries were posted
vatch the west bank of the river for any hostile dem-
tration from Delawares in the village on that side
ich Brodhead had been unable to reach on account
the high water that lay flush with the stream's banks,
e night passed quietly.
At dawn a Delaware chieftain stood on the west
ire and halloed across the water, saying that he had
rd for the white captain.
19]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
Brodhead himself shouted back for him to speak.
Thus encouraged, the Indian answered, "Peace!''
"If you want peace send over some of your chiefs!'
answered Brodhead.
But the Indian was suspicious of this. "Maybe yo^
kill!'' he said uneasily.
He was answered, "They shall not be killed.'V j
With this assurance one of the chieftains, an agree
able looking man, appeared and crossed over in a canoe
Brodhead met him as he alighted on the bank and the;
began to talk.
While the two men stood there one of the Wetzel
(either Jacob or Lewis was capable of what followed
stepped noiselessly up behind the chieftain. Wetzel ha
a tomahawk lying against his breast beneath his huntin
jacket. Suddenly the tomahawk flashed outward an
up, then down. The blade went into the back of th
chieftain's skull and he fell dead.
That ended the peace parley. W
At noon Brodhead began his march back towarc
Fort Pitt. His prisoners were under the charge c
some militiamen. Half a mile from Coshocton tht
found their charges had become a nuisance. They begf'
murdering them.
A further account of Brodhead's capture of Cosho
ton is given by Girty from a party of twenty Wyandc
[12(
I
THOSE DAMNED MISSIONARIES
rhom he had sent there but who had not arrived until
fter the American colonel's departure. Immediately
p had a letter written to De Peyster in which he gave
le news that they had brought:
"... Colonel Brodheadj with five hundred men
Dodderidge gives the number at eight hundred and
iutterfield at three hundred], burned the town and
illed fifteen men. He left six houses on this [the west]
de of the creek that he did not see. He likewise took
le women and children prisoners, but afterwards let
lem go. He let four men go that were prisoners who
lowed him a paper that they had from Congress.
Irodhead told them that it was none of his fault that
deir people were killed, but the fault of the militia
bat would not be under his command [they would not
bey, that is]. He likewise told them that in seven
lonths he would beat all of the Indians out of the coun-
ry. In six days from this date he is to set off for this
•lace with one thousand men; and Colonel [George
logers] Clark is gone down the Ohio with one thou-
and men.
"There were one hundred and twenty Wyandots
eady to start off with me until this news came. Your
hildren will be very glad if you will send these people
ou promised to send to their assistancey likewise send
he Indians that are about you to assist us. The Chris-
121]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
tian Indians have applied to us to move them off before
the rebels come to their town, etc. . . ."
As Girty's letter suggests — shows plainly, it might
be said, — the tempo of action was increasing in the Ohio
country. Colonel Brodhead's advance upon his former
allies at Coshocton had, quite naturally, turned nearly
all of the Delawares against him. And his threat that
within a week he was to come again and, with a thousand
men, complete the destruction he had begun, whipped up
their fear. As for Girty he stood fast in the face of this,
waiting at Upper Sandusky for volunteers from Detroit.
Yet he was well aware that De Peyster would be unable
to send him enough reinforcements to compete against
the thousand militiamen of which Brodhead had
boasted. He also knew what would be his fate if he
were taken by the Americans: some time earlier Penn-
sylvania had adjudged himself, Alexander McKee and
Matthew Elliott as traitors. There was also the eight
hundred dollars' reward on his head. Nevertheless he
remained where he was, which was no more than twenty
miles from Coshocton.
But those thousand men that Colonel Brodhead was
to muster against Sandusky never materialized. And
before the seven months had passed — in seven months
he had said that all of the Indians would have been
driven out of the Ohio country — he had been relieved
[122]
THOSE DAMNED MISSIONARIES
1 the commandant at Fort Pitt by Colonel John Gib-
in, who, by November, was replaced by Brigadier Gen-
al William Irvine. As for the report that Colonel
eorge Rogers Clark was marching an army against the
hio country, it was true: he aimed in a roundabout way
Detroit.
Within two weeks after Girty had asked Major De
eyster for troops to repel the anticipated attack of Col-
lel Brodhead, there were brought before the Wyandot
>uncil at Sandusky ten white male prisoners from the
irginia and Kentucky borders. They had been taken
'' marauding Indians who had watched the tide of
ring immigration flow down between the Ohio's
ickly wooded banks. One of the ten was an eighteen-
;ar-old youth named Henry Baker, who had been cap-
red at Wheeling Creek. At the Wyandot council he
id nine others were forced to run the gauntlet. Then
ey were led into the council house and condemned to
; burned at the stake, one each day until they all were
;ad. Young Baker, who was to be the last, saw nine
teful dawns and nine miserable nights j and finally, on
e tenth day, braves came into the tent where he was
ing, and unfastened the thongs that bound him. With
brave on either side of him they led him forth to the
tarred stake.
Young Baker had made no resistance as the braves
123]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
took him towards thfe stake, but when he was within a
few steps of the place of doom he balked with all his
energy. For he saw a white rider on a swift horse
coming up the trail from the wilderness. He held back,
tried to jerk his arms from the grip of his captors,
pleaded and argued with them, trying to gain a few
moments. But the braves drew him on towards the
faggots which had been piled in a circle about the stake.
Baker screamed and gave a final wrench, his head turned
imploringly towards the white horseman.
The rider was Girty, who stopped. He looked down
at young Baker and asked him a question. Held by the
braves, Baker faced away from the dreaded stake and
came nearer Girty, telling him his name and where he
had been captured.
By this time several Indians had gathered and there
were chiefs among them. To these men Girty spoke^
asking that the youth be spared, though doubtless givinj
as his reason the fact that Baker was worth more to thei
alive than dead.
There was a short conference among the chiefs
Meanwhile Girty talked to the boy, asking him questioi
concerning the neighborhood of Wheeling. Thesi
Baker answered and had the vain hope that if he weri
freed the white man meant to send him back to hii
people. Then the chiefs returned and gave word tha^
[124;
THOSE DAMNED MISSIONARIES
ly had agreed to Girty's request and that the white
tith was to be saved; and soon afterward Baker was
;t to Detroit, where Major De Peyster released him.
Granted that Girty did nothing extraordinary in in-
[ceding for Henry Baker. Nevertheless it was an act
[it should be remembered to his sorely needed credit.
|.r a year later he was to stand in a shadow so dark and
|;t by so lurid a light that his former countrymen, in
l^r referring to the scene, have vilified him as being
iiong the lowest specimens humanity has ever offered,
should also be kept in mind that the Wyandots were
; friends, which greatly increased the possibility of
bir granting him such a favor; that when they had
il Baker to the stake their blood was not heated by
irsonal revenge, and that the youth, if spared, might
ve given them valuable information. None of these
Lxumstances were present at the scene already referred
which Girty took part in a year after Baker had been
ileased.
While Simon was spending that spring at Upper
.ndusky his brother George and Captain Andrew Brant
rheyandenegea, the Mohawk chieftain) were lying
Idden along the banks of the Ohio, where they were
laiting for Colonel Lochry and his detachment, which
lere bound for Louisville to join the force of George
logers Clark. George Girty had had a curious life
|125]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
since leaving Fort Pitt. Personal affairs had taken him
to St. Louis and there he had been shanghaied and forced
into the service of Captain Willing's company of fresh-
water Marines. Even in those days, it appears, Marines
had a v^ay of being hard-boiled. But though George had
been given a lieutenancy it had not contented him. He
deserted and after a long journey reached Detroit, where
he entered the British Indian service. A competent man
with gun and tomahawk, he was assisted by another who
was equally capable — Theyandenegea, or Captain Brant.
One day while George Girty, Brant and the braves
lay in ambush along the Ohio they saw Colonel Archi-
bald Lochry and his hundred Pennsylvanians coming
down the river. They sprang out at once and made a
complete surprise. Most of Lochry's men were killed
outright, but a few, among whom was seventeen-year-
old Christian Fast, were taken prisoners. So complete
was their victory that they were exceptionally well
pleased with themselves. Carrying their booty of scalps
rum and provisions, they swaggered down the Ohio, ther
up the Great Miami where they were to meet a fora
of British and Indians who were coming from Detroi
to attack Clark's main army at Louisville.
The command of this expedition from Detroit wai
divided between Captain Thompson, who had the Cana-
dian rangers, and Alexander McKee, who was to leac
[126;
Theyandenegea (^Captain Brant), jrom a
mezzotint after Romney's portrait
THOSE DAMNED MISSIONARIES
le Indians. McKee had picked up Simon Girty as he
issed southward and Simon accompanied them to the
rreat Miami, where the Indians under his brother
reorge and Captain Brant were added to the company,
rom the Great Miami the whole body proceeded
►wards Louisville, where Clark was then encamped.
It was during the dull, irritating days of waiting on
le north bank of the Ohio that Brant, having drunk
)0 much that night, began glorifying himself as a
lighty man of war and telling of his deeds against the
sad Lochry and his soldiers. Whereupon Simon, like-
ise drunk, frankly sneered. A little later he was call-
)g Theyandenegea a liar.
But this was too much for the Indian's pride. In
fury he dropped his hand to his sword hilt and whirled
le blade at Simon's skull, then looked dazedly at the
ream of blood which flowed down Girty's round face
nd matted his coarse black hair.
It was the one blow struck. It stretched Simon out
nd he had to be carried by his heels and shoulders to
is tent. In the weeks before he was able to rise of his
wn accord Captain Thompson and McKee discovered
lat Clark had given up his movement against Detroit,
laking it no longer necessary for them to interpose the
ndians and the rangers between him and his goal.
In the meantime a scene had been enacted at the
127]
THE WHITE SAVAGE \
Moravian missions which doubtless pleased Simon enor-
mously when he heard of it, but which, as a step leading
to the greater spectacle that was to make his memory
abhorred by the generation that came after him, he
might not have liked so well. It began in this way.
Matthew Elliott, who had been promoted to a cap-
taincy in the British Indian service, marched from San-
dusky in late August with a party of savages and French-
Canadians to the Tuscarawas and the Moravian missions.
After a skirmish eastward they entered the Moravian
villages and demanded that Heckewelder, the other mis-
sionaries, and the Christianized Delawares as well, leave
their cabins at once and accompany them back to the
Sandusky. In this Elliott had two motives. The first
was to get Heckewelder and Zeisberger farther away
from the border so that they would be less able to keep
up their correspondence with the American authorities
at Fort Pitt. The other was to remove the converted
Delawares to a place of greater safety. The Delawares
themselves had requested it, for another expedition was
being aimed at them by the militiamen of Pennsylvania.
Protesting angrily but without success, Heckewelder,
Zeisberger and their families both real and spiritual were
taken westward from the Tuscarawas and settled on a
stretch of land not far from Upper Sandusky.
In ordering the removal of these Christianized Dela-
[128]
THOSE DAMNED MISSIONARIES
';es Matthew Elliott had stood for no delay. Conse-
untly the fields of corn which they had planted about
jem, Gnadenhutten and Schonbrunn earlier in the year
I gained standing with the ears still in the husks. After
; iott had taken them to their new and less pleasant
me they often looked back longingly towards those
cmer villages of theirs which really seemed to be Tents
Grace and Beautiful Spring. They remembered the
husked corn and the warmth of their cabins.
, For there was nothing beautiful or comfortable
out Upper Sandusky. The land was sandy, the trees
|aggly, and the marshes dreary. In their new abode
by lived in tiny huts in which only the scantiest fires
aid be madej there were no floors and scarcely any
^ber to keep them warm throughout the approaching
inter. The pasture, too, was lean and their few heads
\ cattle became like skeletons and gave little milk.
! But even so they were in no worse shape than the
fyandots among whom they lived, not even the chief-
ins and Simon Girty. Girty had recovered from his
bund and had returned to Upper Sandusky in the fall.
'5 winter shut down the daily rations of the Christian-
ed Delawares near him were reduced to a pint of corn
l.r each person. "Yet," wrote Heckewelder later, "in
:.is wretched situation, the hungry Wyandots would
i'ten come to our huts to see if there was any victuals
|129]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
cooking, or ready cooked. At one time, just as my wife
had set down to what was intended for our dinner, the^
Half King, Simon Girty and another, a Wyandot, en-
tered my cabin, ajid seeing the victuals ready, without i
ceremony, began eating."
Or were affairs so bad that winter of 1781-82 as
Heckewelder afterward made out? For he also says
that Alexander McCormick, a British trader at Upper
Sandusky, now and again sent him a leg of venison
which McCormick had bought from one of the hunters;
and if venison was to be had for the shooting it is un-
likely that Girty was so ravenous when he and the Half
King began eating Heckewelder's meal, but rather that
it was his uncouth way of plaguing the missionary.
But Heckewelder's obtuseness was proof against his
understanding of even such simple human frailties. It
was incomprehensible to him that Girty and the Half
King should be angered because he acted as an informer
to the authorities at Pittsburgh j that they should be
eager to get him and the rest of the missionaries out of
the country.
Earlier, before Elliott broke up the missions. Hall
King had appealed to the Christianized Delawares them-
selves. He had said to them, "Cousins, you Indians ir
Gnadenhutten, Schonbrunn and Salem who believe ir
the Long Knives' God! Half King is much concernec
[130]
THOSE DAMNED MISSIONARIES
your account, because you live in a dangerous locality.
^o powerful, merciless and angry tribes, the English
1 the Long Knives, stand ready, opening their jaws
; inst each other like monstrous beasts. You are sitting
vn between both of them and are in danger of being
^oured and ground to powder, if not in the jaws of
:, then in the jaws of the other, or even both.
^'Consider your own people! Consider your wives
I children and preserve their lives from these crouch-
monsters. For here they all must perish. Half
ig therefore takes you by the hand, lifts you up and
ces you in the care of the white captain (Major De
fster) where you will be safe. Do not stand looking
/our plantations, but arise and follow Half King; take
D your white priests with you and worship the Great
rit as you have been accustomed to, only in the- place
>vhich Half King shall lead you. This is Half King's
•ssage and he has come solely for the purpose of de-
^ring it."
■ It was excellent advice. But the converted Dela-
res had sat lymphatic, trusting to Heckewelder and
isberger who were so wise about the Great Spirit that
atrolled all things. They had moved only when there
s a force behind them. And now they huddled in
:ir tiny, smoke-filled cabins through the long winter
the desolate Wyandot country of Upper Sandusky.
31]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
Helpless themselves, they looked for support towards
Heckewelder and the other missionaries, who were
equally helpless. Since their removal it was as though
the skies had darkened above them and as if that dark-
ness followed wherever they went.
In the midst of the cold winter plans were bein^
made by which these dazedly moving people should lose
even the little support which they had come to depend
on. Girty and the Half King felt that the Wyandol
country was not far enough away from Fort Pitt to pre-
vent Heckewelder and Zeisberger from continuing theii
correspondence with General Irvine. They wantec
these missionaries entirely out of the Ohio country. Sc
Girty had a letter written for the Half King to Majoi
De Peyster which stated that the Wyandot warrior
would remain uneasy and in fear of betrayal so long a:
Zeisberger and Heckewelder remained in the neighbor-
hood.
It was while this letter was traveling by runner f ron
Sandusky to Detroit that a great many of the Christian'
ized Indians, having scarcely any provisions left, wen
permitted to go back through the snowy wilderness t(
gather the corn that stood about the towns of peaceful
sounding names from which they had been taken. The;
departed in small groups, some as early as January 1'
and some not until the ninth of February. They mad
[132;
THOSE DAMNED MISSIONARIES
a family party by taking their wives and children,
lut none of their white mentors went along.
By the latter part of February all of them had ar-
ved at their former homes. There they began to husk
le corn. Each day they stacked their arms and went
ito the white bottomlands of the Tuscarawas to jerk
le ears from the frozen stalks. They worked slowly
id many nights were spent in their cabins. But by
le sixth of March, though most of the corn had been
athered, from Schonbrunn down through Gnaden-
utten to Salem on the bend of the river these Christian-
:ed families were still laboring in the fields.
On the night before, a force of Fort Pitt militiamen
Dmmanded by Colonel David Williamson arrived with-
i a mile of Gnadenhutten and pitched their camp,
'hey numbered an even hundred and had come as
^engers of several borderers who had been killed that
lonth by marauding Indians. Precisely where they in-
jnded going would be hard to determine. For a body
) small would never have dared attack the Sandusky
)wns and the only other villages between these and Fort
itt were at Coshocton. But that they had Coshocton
Dr their objective is equally doubtful, for they must
ave known that the Indians had removed farther into
le wilderness. At any rate they were there to fight.
In the morning Colonel Williamson, from his camp
133]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
a mile from Gnadenhutten, ordered two squads to go
ahead and reconnoiter. These sixteen men moved for-
ward quietly towards the village. When they had got
near to it they made out the figures of Indians in the
cornfields over on the farther side of the Tuscarawas.
Supposing that only a few would be there working they
got hold of a hollowed-out log which had been used for
catching maple sap and which made an excellent canoe.
Two at a time they crossed to the other side.
But after getting farther into the cornfield they dis-
covered that the Indians outnumbered them considerably.
So without any show of hostility they went up to them
and told them that they had come to guide them to a
more agreeable place, a place where the Christian Dela-
wares would thenceforth be kept in provisions and pro-
tected from all enemies — perhaps Fort Pitt. And as
few Delawares, either Christian or Great Spiritist in
their religious beliefs, would have objected to an ar-
rangement which insured them food without working
and security without fighting, it is not bewildering that
the Indian men gave up their guns and tomahawks and
followed their guides calmly. The women and children,
shouldering the bundles of corn, prepared to follow.
In Gnadenhutten had been left that morning only
one man and one squaw. These the main body under
Colonel Williamson came upon when they entered the
[134]
THOSE DAMNED MISSIONARIES
(vn, which was a short time after the two advance
(lads had crossed the river. The man and the squaw
i:re promptly shot. Their bodies lay in the village
lid while Colonel David Williamson sat down to await
b return of the reconnoitering party who had crossed
\d creek and gone into the cornfields.
i They came a little later, herding the meek Christian
l^lawares before them. Their arms were filled with
ie guns and tomahawks of these people even as the
ims of the Indians were filled with ears of corn,
illiamson met them pleasantly and after a time they
reed to be guided by the American officer's advice,
hey would, he told them, be taken somewhere and
red for. After this an Indian runner was sent down
Salem to inform the other Delawares of the arrange-
ent and to bring them up to Gnadenhutten.
When the runner had disappeared Colonel Willlam-
n's hundred men became more active. They walked
:hely among the Indian men and women and began
parating them like cattle. They bound their hands
curely. Then the men were driven into one cabin and
le women and children into another. It was too late
)r the Indians to cry out or to attempt an escape.
When the Christianized Delawares from Salem ar-
ved they also were disarmed and thrust into the cabins,
'he number of prisoners so neatly taken stood at ninety-
135]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
six, half a dozen gf them being Wyandots who had
accompanied the cornhusking party.
With the Indians from the two villages secured <
inside the cabins behind barred doors Colonel William- i
son stood outside on the frozen trail and asked the rank I
and file that surrounded him, "Boys, which shall we do,
kill them or take them back to Fort Pitt?"
Eighty-two of the hundred frontiersmen were of the
opinion that the best thing to do was to kill them.
Doubtless some of them offered the remark that the only ^
good Indian was a dead Indian. . . . The sentence thus
passed on them was soon made known to the victims.
It has been written often that among these Dela-
wares whom the Moravians had been instructing in re-
ligion for many years were those who had made raids
across the Ohio to the border^ that militiamen saw
bloodsplotched clothing which they wore and recognized
the pieces as belonging to murdered friends of theirsy
that some of the ninety-six doomed prisoners had been
trailed from the scene of one of their depredations
(which would seem impossible, considering the time of
year and the distance involved) ; and all of those expla-
nations of what followed may be true. But what cannot
be explained away is the fact that Williamson's men
were as murderous, as sickeningly lustful as any savage
tribe ever known to the Ohio country.
[136]
THOSE DAMNED MISSIONARIES
On the morning of the next day, with scalping
lives, mallets, tomahawks and spears, Williamson's
andred men divided between the doors of the cabins
id went inside among the men, women and children,
here they began a butchery that lasted — well, what-
^tv length of time is required for the crude dismember-
■ent of ninety-six human beings by means of ordinary
leapons.
As for sidelights on the massacre there Is one from
Doddridge's Notes: "One woman, who could speak
ood English, knelt before the commander and begged
is protection." (It seems that Williamson chose to de-
ver his blows among the women.) "Her supplication
^as unavailing." All then prepared for death and "the
risons of these devoted people were already ascending
le throne of the Most High! — the sound of the Chris-
.an's prayer found an echo in the surrounding wood, but
o responsive feeling in the bosoms of their execu-
ioners." And George Loskiel, presiding Bishop of the
imerican Moravian Church from 1802 till 1811, sup-
.lies the following from the Tuscarawas County his-
ory: "Abraham, whose long, flowing hair had the day
)efore attracted notice and elicited the remark that it
vould ^make a fine scalp,' was the first victim. One of
he party, seizing a cooper's mallet, exclaimed, 'How
ixactly this will answer the business!' Beginning with
:i37]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
Abraham he felled fourteen to the ground, then handed
the instrument to another, saying, ^My arm fails mej go
on in the same way. I think I have done pretty well.' "
While this wholesale execution was going on, the
missionaries who had instructed these luckless Delawares
in the ways of Christ were at Lower Sandusky, waiting
for a boat to take them across Lake Erie to Detroit.
For a letter in answer to the Half King's had come from
Major De Peyster, who had given orders for them to be
brought safely to the British western stronghold.
[138]
V herein Vengeance Carelessly Takes the Wrong Man
CHAPTER VII
^herein Vengeance Carelessly Takes the Wrong Man
I HERE was a sequel to the massacre of the Indians
. the Moravian missions. During the time it was in
xparation Simon Girty roamed widely through the
hio country, scouting, raiding and making discoveries
ith regard to proposed movements of American troops
1 the frontier. Though haunted by the fear of being
.ken by Pennsylvania or Virginia militiamen, never-
leless he had the hardihood to strike into their country
: the head of Indian warriors.
i Williamson's annihilation of the Christianized Dela-
'ares disturbed Girty, not because the deed had been so
ilely cruel, but because it was a threat against his own
ifety. And he might have reflected that if it had not
sen for the white missionaries the Delaware territory
^ould not now be so ragged as a defensive barrier against
le Americans. He might have told himself that had
not been for Heckewelder, Zeisberger and the other
loravian brothers the Delawares would have stood a
etter chance of remaining a united tribe throughout the
^ar, that these men had turned Chief White Eyes
141]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
against his own people and by thus making a division
among the Delawares had weakened the power of all the
warriors. This had enabled the Pennsylvanians to move
safely into the Indian country and to build Fort Laurens
and Fort Mcintosh, which they would otherwise have
found it difficult to do. That had been partly the work
of long- faced Heckewelder. And certainly the authori-
ties at Pittsburgh had been kept well informed of in-
tended Indian and British movements against them.
This, too, had come from Heckewelder and the others.
He might have said. Damn Heckewelder and Zeisberger
and the whole lot of them! In fact, he did say it.
A few days after Colonel Williamson had burned the
cabins above the piles of dead bodies at Gnadenhutten,
Girty went up from the Half King^s town to Lower San-
dusky. There he discovered the missionaries. They
were still waiting for the boat which Major De Peyster
had sent them from Detroit and in which they were to be
taken from the Indian country. As if, thought Girty,
when he heard of this means of transportation that had
been prepared for them, — as if these damned rascals
were too good to walk! But then De Peyster and Hamil-
ton before him had queer notions of treating people.
They knew they were in a war, knew also (at least they
had been told so often enough) that the missionaries
were working directly for American interests, yet they
[142]
INGEANCE TAKES THE WRONG MAN
>uld permit no harm to be done to these men. It was
rd for Girty to understand how these Moravian
Dthers deserved this consideration.
He reached Lower Sandusky one night and sat
wn to a bottle of rum with a friend. The mission-
ies were housed in a nearby cabin. At every drink his
•itation against them grew. If only he had his way
out it they would carry a few marks on them by which
remember the Indian country when they left! And
lally, when the rum was half gone, he took the bottle
■ the neck and lurched out into the chill spring night
wards the cabin in which the missionaries were lying.
Heckewelder was trying to sleep, but couldn't. His
ce frowned nervously up into the darkness, for he was
Lxious to leave and fearful that the boat should not
me before Girty arrived. Always there was this
orry of his that Girty was about to kill him.
After a while Heckewelder heard Girty's voice
)om out. He was talking to Le Villier, a flannel-
.outhed French trader with whom he had never been
1 good terms, who had been given the task of guiding
le missionaries to Lower Sandusky. Le Villier now
Lt by a candle in a room adjacent to that in which the
lissionaries were lying. They began to wrangle over
[eckewelder and Zeisberger, and Girty cursed Le Vil-
er and struck out at him.
143]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
But soon Girty's attention was turned towards the
men in the next room. It was they that he then cursed.
The damned rascals! he said; and added drunkenly that
he would never leave the cabin until he had split all
of their heads with his tomahawk. And Heckewelder,
though shivering with fear, yet felt his religious sense
outraged by the luxuriousness of Girty's curses.
Girty swore and reeled and drank till after midnight.
"I omit the names he called us by/' wrote Heckewelder,
"and the words he made use of while swearing, as also
the place he would go to [it must have been Hell!] if
he did not fulfill all which he had sworn that he would
do to us. He had somewhere procured liquor, and
would, as we were told by those who were near him, at
every drink renew his oaths, which he repeated till he
fell asleep.
"Never before did any of us hear the like oaths,
or know anybody to rave like him. He appeared like
an host of evil spirits. He would sometimes come up
to the bolted door between us and him, threatening to
chop it in pieces to get at us. No Indian we had ever
seen drunk would have been a match for him. How
we should escape the clutches of this white beast in
human form no one could foresee . . .''
Yet the miracle was performed and Heckewefder
and his associates were saved. In the morning at day-
[144]
:ngeance takes the wrong man
|ak two large, clumsy scows appeared from the west
jng the shores of Lake Erie and came to rest in the
rest surrounded harbor of Lower Sandusky. That was
f ul news for the missionaries. According to Hecke-
Ider, they were at last satisfied that they would be
•lieved from the hands of this wicked white savage,
ose equal, we were led to believe, was not to be found
ong mankind."
As the boats turned about towards Detroit again
rty was doubtless sleeping off his drunkenness of the
^ht before.
A short while later Girty left Lower Sandusky for
2 town of Captain Pipe on the Tymochtee. For there
LS more talk of an expedition of Pennsylvania militia-
m against the Indians of northeastern Ohio and there
is much to discuss with regard to it. Girty wanted
:ect news from the border and, assisted by a party of
ilaware and Wyandot braves, he intended to go after it.
On his way to Captain Pipe's town he saw a white
uth sitting disconsolately on a fallen log that lay in
e forest. It was young Christian Fast who had been
ken by Captain Brant and George Girty when they
nbushed Colonel Lochry and destroyed most of his
Idiers. Fast was seventeen and for some months he
id been living as an adopted son of a Delaware family.
'45]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
But the ways of tke Indian were strange to himj he
could speak only a few words of their language and his
longing again to be home among his own people was
almost overpowering. Girty noticed him and asked as
he drew nearer, "Boy, what are you thinking about?"
Young Fast looked up startled, then answered con-
fusedly that he was lonesome because he had no com-
pany.
Girty gazed thoughtfully at him for a while.
Finally he shook his head and observed sympathetically
that what young Fast was longing for was not company
but his people at home. "You be a good boy," he ad-
vised him, "and you'll get back there some day."
He went on to the village of Captain Pipe. Here
he was joined by Scotosh, a son of the Half King and
by eighty other Indians with whom he purposed going
on a war party against the settlements. It was to be
less of an attack than a scouting expedition j and Girty
carried a message from Major De Peyster which he was
to deliver to a British sympathizer within the American
frontier.
They set out on the seventeenth of March for the
Pennsylvania border. But when they had crossed the
Ohio River Girty discovered that there were so many
white men moving in groups through the woods that he
would be unable to go much farther without attracting
[146]
NGEANCE TAKES THE WRONG MAN
r attention. Therefore he had to turn away from
objective^ the message undelivered, and seek out a
• one.
To make a quick attack somewhere and push off
riedly was what he decided to do. And after some
> more his party found an accessible stockade,
sping up towards it, they killed one of the soldiers
took another man prisoner. It was in the neighbor-
d of Fort Pitt, and the captured white man told
ty that General Irvine had been absent from Fort
, attending a meeting of Congress, but that he was
L again and on his return had called a war council of
:he regular and militia officers. The purpose of the*
icil was to discuss the advisability of a campaign
nst the Indians in northeastern Ohio and the result
that five hundred or more mounted Pennsylvanians
e to gather at Fort Mcintosh and from there push off
m attack upon the Wyandots and Delawares about
dusky.
But Girty was not alarmed by this information
ch the prisoner had given him and which he sent on
lajor De Peyster. The Indians were working closely
1 him and the Ohio country was astir. War parties
ch he had supplied with ammunition had gone out
inst the border and had returned with numerous
ps, but with only four of their own men as casual-
■7]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
ties. Moreover, Aone of the scalps on this occasion bt
longed to women or children, which rather pleased hin
With plans to meet the attacking force of Americai
when they came, he moved northward to Upper Sai
dusky, taking with him "one hundred pounds of powdt
and two hundred pounds of ball, and eight dozen (
knives for the use of the Wyandots, Monseys and Deh
wares. I [Girty] was obliged to purchase some litti
necessaries from Mr. Arundell [Arundlej he was a Brii
ish trader among the Wyandots] that were not in tb;
King's store, which I hope you will be good enough tJ
excuse, as I did it for the good of the service. I shoul'l
be very much obliged if you would be good enough ti
order me out some few stores, that I may have it in m
power to give a little to some Indians that I know to b
deserving . . .''
Girty, then, was at this time working soberly for tk
men on whose side he had chosen to fight. That h
was capable of hatred and of sustaining it is probable
but the picture of him as a mad man who dashed oi
of the wilderness with a pack of howling brave:
swooped down upon unprotected settlers and either torn
ahawked them on the spot or carried them back to som
Indian village where he gleefully watched their bodic
crisp and shrivel under the fire of the stake — the pictur
generally encountered of Girty and wholly accepted b
[148
NGEANCE TAKES THE WRONG MAN
H'jt western writers (whole hog by Theodore Roose-
e: and to an enormous extent by even so thoughtful a
ill as Butterfield) has only the vaguest outlines. It
5 rue that he fought the borderers and went against
flies sent out from the border, but there is no proof
3 how that when the issue was decided he set exultantly
3 work on the skulls of the prisoners or abetted the
r ians in their torturous executions.
Already, however, he had done enough to be remem-
ecd by many a borderer who had never even seen him.
V:^ though he had deserted the Americans, though he
jl led many a maraud into Pennsylvania and Virginia
rl Kentucky, and though Heckewelder left a record
ibis unique and cruel character, he might have been
c gotten by the popular mind had it not been for one
\ nt. That event had been shaping up since the day of
: Moravian massacre and was an indirect outcome of
; It took place in the early summer of 1782.
i As early as April of that year news had seeped into
: Ohio country that an expedition was being planned
iFort Pitt against the Wyandots. Girty had discov-
|d it from the prisoner he had taken some time be-
l*e. Parties of Indians out hunting or scouting saw it
irified in the extraordinary movements of the white
;n along the east bank of the Ohio.
The attack on Coshocton and the breakup of Salem,
49]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
Gnadenhutten and Schonbrunn had caused the Dela-
wares to take up new abodes farther from the frontier;
the killing of the Christian Indians had sent them yei
farther into the wilderness, so that now both Delaware:
and Wyandots intermingled between Upper and Lowei
Sandusky. At Captain Pipe's town on the Tymochtet
there was a host of the former. And among them wen
cousins, uncles and other relations of the Christianizec
Indians who had been massacred. At the camp of th(
war chief Wingenund there were more. Thus the In-
dians about the Sandusky plains, where the coarse grass]
land was spotted with islets of soft wood, were mad(
morose and vindictive not only by the threatened inva-
sion of their land and destruction of their fields am
cabins but also by the remembrance of the past, princr
pally the picture of ninety Delawares hacked and burnec
in Gnadenhutten. Considerable spirit was waiting to b(
shown in that territory.
Girty was at the Half King's town on the Sandusk]
when word was brought that a force of men had lef
Fort Pitt and was gathering near the borderline madi
by the Ohio River. Knowing at once the destinatioi
of that army, the Sandusky Indians made preparation
to meet them. Half King and Girty sent a runner t(
Detroit asking Major De Peyster for help. And whili
the British officer was getting ready the Faith to sai
[150:
NGEANCE TAKES THE WRONG MAN
vn the river and across Lake Erie with rangers under
Dtain William Caldwell, Girty and the chiefs sounded
alarm to distant Wyandots, Delawares, Shawanese
Mingoes.
As these preparations were being made to meet them
Pennsylvania volunteers crossed the Ohio and en-
aped at Mingo Bottom, near what is now Steuben-
!e but which was once a Mingo village. They were
1 mounted and equipped, but had had no training
acting under one commander. Among them were
1st of the hundred men who had slaughtered the help-
'k Christian Delawares at Gnadenhutten a few months
flier. The commander of that party — Colonel David
lliamson — was also present. And for a time it was
ught that he would lead this new expedition as he
1 the old. For wasn't it under his leadership that the
derers had been enabled to kill ninety-six Indians?
d wasn't that sufficient to make him stand out as a
n of parts?
But fortunately for Williamson there was another
(cer of the same rank present. He was Colonel Will-
Q Crawford, a more decent, more likable, and more
pectable soldier than the man who had distinguished
nself at Gnadenhutten. The choice of commander
is made by popular election and Crawford received the
bst votes from the five hundred mounted volunteers.
51]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
He was the man to* lead them to destroy the Wyandot
towns.
From the day the Pennsylvania militiamen arrived '
at Mingo Bottom, they were watched by the people
whom they meant to attack. But in ignorance of this
they rode forward, striking the same trail which Will-
iamson had followed three months earlier, and continu-
ing to the Tuscarawas where they saw the burned cab-
ins and the trampled fields of Gnadenhutten, the cabins
which some of the men in the party remembered firing
into crematories for the bodies of Indians which they
had dismembered. 4
Here they were seen again by Wyandot or Delaware
spies. But this time the discovery was mutual. Three
of Colonel Crawford's men on a foraging party some
distance from the main camp (where their horses were
being fed on Indian corn) discerned the figures of two
braves. The militiamen immediately fired. But their
marksmanship was poor and the two braves fled uri^
harmed. However, at the sound of the shot nearly half
the volunteers — two hundred and fifty, that would be —
came tumbling out of camp with their flintlocks loaded,
ready to be on hand for what they took to be the begin-
ning of a lively skirmish.
But nothing happened. The two braves vanished
and the forest was still again save for the noises
of thi
[152f
i
NGEANCE TAKES THE WRONG MAN
r hundred and eighty Pennsylvanians as they made
and cooked their provisions along the banks of the
carawas. Night came, then another day, and they
e farther into the wilderness towards Sandusky.
Several days passed. It was the fifth of June, 1782.
.wford's force followed its guides out upon a branch
the Sandusky by whose banks there had once been a
^ravian village. The cabins were there, but deserted,
pre were dark rings on the lush green ground where
is had been. But it was all so quiet, so ominously
jet. The volunteers might have heard the undis-
bed echoes of their own voices.
In the tall grass about the empty village they could
i only their own tracks. Questions came up to be
[led by the officers and the wiseacres of the Indian
intry: Which way had the damned redskins gone?
fw much farther could they go before striking the
.randot braves? How strong would the Indian force
when they finally did make contact with it? And
In't they better retreat? Finally it was decided that
Pennsylvanians would march one day longer towards
: west and then, if no Delawares or Wyandots were
:ountered, they would turn back from this silent
irie land.
Three days earlier Captain William Caldwell with
Canadian rangers and a number of northern Indians
>3]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
had arrived at the* Half King's town on the Sandusky
to join Girty and a band of Wyandots, Captain Pipe andl
Wingenund with the Delawares, and a band of Min-i
goes besides. Gathering the whole force under him— i
even then it was considerably smaller than Crawford's—
Caldwell set out to challenge the advance of the Penn-
sylvania militiamen.
They met on the afternoon of June 6 in a land of;
tall grass studded with clumps of trees. The fighting!
began when an advance party of braves, creeping low
over the ground, came suddenly within sight of Craw-
ford's scouts and instantly discharged their muskets.
The scouts retired, but were jostled forward by Craw-
ford's main body. Meanwhile Captain Caldwell and
several sections of men under him were entering a large
grove that dominated the plain. It became a contested
spot as Colonel Crawford's volunteers rode up. And in
the rip and whine of musketry that announced the gen-
eral engagement Caldwell was struck by a leaden ball
and had to be carried away from the ensuing action.
The Pennsylvanians lost one captain, who was killed,
and two captains and a major, who were wounded.
The Americans gained the grove and drove the Brit-
ish and Indians out of it, into the tall grass. Then both
sides formed lines and faced each other at a complete
standstill.
[154]
SGEANCE TAKES THE WRONG MAN
[t was a curious situation. The Canadians and In-
s knew the American number to be much greater
L theirs and so hesitated to take the offensive, espe-
y as they were expecting reinforcements from the
^^anese. But the Pennsylvanians had been unable
nd out the size of the enemy. Discovering white
ps among them — which they had not counted on —
believed that the Canadians and Indians mustered
jast double their own number. So throughout the
: afternoon both sides kept a respectful distance from
L other and passed the time by a not too expert show
larksmanship.
Night came. In the darkness bonfires were laid and
ted in front of the waiting men, lighted so that the
7 from the burning wood might save either from a
rise attack. The antagonists lay on their arms and
jht with gnats and mosquitoes which buzzed and
viciously and continuously. The sunrise the next
ning disclosed Americans, Canadians and Indians
s lying exactly where they had been the night before.
If Colonel Crawford, instead of wasting this period
arkness, had made an early attack and had been able
eep his men under control the story would have had
fferent ending. He would have been glad to, as-
5 Butterfield, but, as that authority explains, there
e "several obstacles in the wayj several of his men
5]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
were sick and a niimber had been wounded" — which
is so poor an excuse that it makes one want to search for
a good one, an explanation better than the obvious fact
that Crawford let the momentous dawn slip by because
his command of his troops was not strong enough to
send them forward.
As the day brightened all hope was lost. For Penn-
sylvanian and Indian watchers observed coming over the
rippling grass to the south and west a band of mounted
warriors — one hundred and forty Shawanese whom Al-
exander McKee had brought hurriedly up from Wapa-
tomica. And now, with both forces about equal even
with these additional men on the Indian side, Crawford's
officers came together for a "war council/' the upshot
of which was that they would hold their lines until
nightfall and then make a quick but orderly retreat
through the darkness.
Here it might be expected that, strengthened by SQ
many Shawanese warriors, the Canadians and Indians
would take the battle in their own hands. Instead they
too remained on the defensive, sending over only enough
shot to keep in mind that an enemy lay before them.
The day went slowly and unprofitably by.
In the darkness the order for the retreat was passed.
All along the American line men stood up, took their
equipment and hurried towards the trail that wound to
[156]
fENGEANCE TAKES THE WRONG MAN
ee south and west. They did not attempt to form into
jy kind of marching order; they simply streamed in
te general direction of where they wanted to go —
ihere safety lay.
I But Crawford, as he should have done, stood by.
|e wanted to see that nobody was left. And as the
fen passed him he called out the names of four
j,out whom he was particularly anxious: John Craw-
:)rd, his son; Major Harrison, his son-in-law; and his
L-phews, Major Rose and young William Crawford.
ut they did not answer him. He waited, growing
ervous.
I In the confusion Crawford was left behind. For
rith all speed the gallant Williamson had put himself
t the head of about three hundred men and led them to
le trail. Crawford wandered about in the darkness,
ailing now and then in a low voice. After a while he
ras answered by Dr. Knight, the regimental surgeon.
klore voices of stragglers sounded and a small group
hus came together.
They struck directly eastward, missing the trail,
["here was not a guide — quite naturally — in the party
)f men left behind. Blindly and fatally they plodded
awards the village of Wingenund, the Delaware war-
:hief, but thinking they were moving towards the south
and east where saf ^1^^ lay. For two long days these men
;i57]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
wandered about through tall grass, cranberry marshes
and woodland.
Williamsonj however, had better luck. Beginning
the retreat he led. three hundred of the militiamen to
the Sandusky River and followed down the east bank.
Jt was not till morning that he discovered that Colonel
Crawford, the regimental surgeon, Crawford's son-in-
law, Major Harrison, and his nephew, William Craw-
ford, as well as a number of enlisted men, were missing.
But despite this he led on the retreat 3 was hastened some
time during the day when a few mounted rangers and
Indians overtook them and drove them from the rear.
Williamson halted long enough to meet them. He la
three men killed and eight wounded, but repelled the at
tack successfully. Five days later he was on the home"
side of the Ohio River.
But by this time Crawford, Dr. Knight, a man
named Slover, and some others were in the hands of the
Delawares. Muddy from wading the cranberry marshes,
scratched and torn by the briars and half-starved, they
had come out upon a trail on the afternoon of June 7
and there had met a party of Delawares who were re-
turning from their pursuit of Williamson. The Ameri-
can commander was badly worn by his two days and
nights of wandering. He made little resistance. The
Delawares closed about them with musket barrels bris-
[158]
I
\NGEANCE TAKES THE WRONG MAN
■ ■ ■
tlig. Thongs were brought out and the Americans'
ds were tied behind their backs. Then they were
rrched to the camp of Wingenund, from where, after
i ce days' captivity, they were led under a heavy guard
:c Upper Sandusky.
f From the moment he was taken by the Delawares
wford's death was virtually certain. And the won-
IS not that he died, but that he lived so long. Fol-
ing closely after the well-remembered massacre by
lliamson, carrying many of the men in his own army
o had taken part in it, and being at the head of an in-
ing force which had come to destroy the homes of
i Wyandots and Delawares, he could have had little
sonable hope that mercy would be shown him.
Yet Crawford did have that hope. And hearing
t Simon Girty, whom he had known and had doubt-
\ considered an inferior while about Fort Pitt, was
th the Half King at Upper Sandusky, he asked that
captors take him to the cabin of that Wyandot chief.
They agreed. Colonel Crawford and Simon Girty
;t in the Half King's town on the night of the tenth
June. Crawford was pale, badly scratched and weary.
t though his own life was in the greatest of danger,
; thoughts when he saw Girty were of his son-in-law,
illiam Harrison, and of his brother's son who had been
imed for him. Both of these young men had lain with
J59]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
him near a clump of trees while facing the enemy on
June 5j had been with him at the beginning of the re-
treat, but they also had got lost from the main body.
When Girty appeared Crawford's first question was
of these two young men. They too had been taken by
the DelawareSj who had burned them at the stake at a
village farther down the river. But this Girty did not
tell to Crawford. Instead, either because he did not
really know what had happened to them or because he
felt it difficult to speak the true words, he said that they
had been captured by the Shawanese, but that these war-
riors had pardoned them. Then Crawford and Girty
talked a little longer, nobody knows about what 5 but it
has been declared that Simon gave his word to intercede
for the unfortunate colonel.
From here all evidence as to what Girty did or left
undone is very shaky and contradictory. It is said that
he tried to save Crawford; it is likewise said that he did
nothing to save him. But both sides in discussing
whether Girty did or did not attempt to free Crawford
have slighted one important point.
It is generally taken for granted that Girty should
have tried to save Crawford and that he was a fiend for
not doing so. But why should he have done so? Be-
cause they were both white men? (In war white men
had killed each other for centuries.) Because they had
[160]
i.
"INGEANCE TAKES THE WRONG MAN
irh lived at Fort Pitt? (In every important city to
[t east there were loyalists and patriots who later fought
ainst each other.) Because common humanity de-
['nded that Girty exert himself to prevent a burning
irty? (Then Common Humanity asked too much of
h people of that time and place and should have known
iter.) In bolstering up reasons for what Girty should
ive done but omitted to do, western writers claim that
b two men had been friends at Fort Pitt and that Girty
id been frequently a guest "at Crawford's hospitable
loin" in Pennsylvania — a likely story, considering that
e was then a major and a man of property while the
ler was a border roughneck with a taste for Indian
fe and the possessor of not a single foot of property
ithe world!
' And if they were not friends why should Girty have
ed to save him? And how could he have accom-
ished it even if he had tried?
^ Early in the morning after Crawford had been
ought to Sandusky, Captain Pipe and Wingenund
me to claim the prisoner. He belonged to them, had
en taken by the Delawares whom he had tried to de-
■oy. His fate, as Colonel John Johnston has summed
up, v/as "in satisfaction for the massacre of their peo-
e at the Moravian towns on the Muskingum." Cap-
in Pipe met him and spoke to him from cruel lips;
61]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
he was glad to see Crawford, he said, and meanwhile
stood over him with his hands full of a black, sticky
mixture which he began to daub on Crawford's face —
the death warrant.
^/^From the Half King's town Captain Pipe and Win-
genung took Crawford a few miles westward along the
"old trace leading to the Big Spring, Wyandot town. It
was on the right hand of the trace going west, on a low
bottom on the east bank of the Tymochtee creek."
A fair-sized party wound up that trace with Craw-
ford. Towards the head of it was the chief prisoner,
bound and heavily guarded. Nearby rode Captain Pipe
and Wingenund. A stone's throw back of these came
Dr. Knight, the regimental surgeon, his hands tied and
a Delaware brave on either side of him. Now and again
there appeared from the opposite direction infuriated
squaws, braves and boys, some of whom slapped wet
scalps first in the blackened face of Crawford, then
against the cheeks of little Dr. Knight. Stones flew out
and struck the prisoners 5 furious braves lay cudgels on
their backs. Screams and insults engulfed the party in
a hideous sea of noise.
Among those riding eastward along the trace was
Simon Girty. He had returned to the Delawares after
his meeting with Crawford at the Half King's town.
As he came slowly towards the party he stopped and
[162]
^.NGEANCE TAKES THE WRONG MAN
^ed to Crawford, then rode on. Coming up to Dr.
ight he asked, ^4s this the doctor? "
^'Yes,'' Knight answered, and held out his hand in
ated friendship.
[ "You're a damned rascal; get the hell along there,''
•ty told him in effect, but later added (and this was
i an unkindness) that Knight was to be taken to the
iwanese towns.
The stake was already standing; a small blaze was
sping slowly along the faggots that encircled it, and
ut a hundred Delawares, with a few from other
»es, sat watching expectantly when the prisoners
Lved.
, "When we were come to the fire," Knight wrote
prward, having been transferred to another town and
jcing his escape on the way, "the colonel was stripped
.ed, ordered to sit down by the fire, and then they beat
1 with sticks and their fists. Presently after, I was
ited in the same manner. They then tied a rope to
I foot of a post about fifteen feet high^ bound the
DnePs hands behind his back and fastened the rope
:he ligature between his wrists. The rope was long
:ugh for him to sit down or walk around the post
le or twice and return the same way. The Colonel
n called to Girty and asked if they intended to burn
,1. Girty answered, yes. The colonel said he would
>3]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
take it all patiently.* Upon this Captain Pipe made a
speech to the Indians, viz., about thirty or forty men,
sixty or seventy squaws or boys. When the speech was
ended they all yelled a hideous and hearty assent to what
had been said."
What Captain Pipe said is easily imagined. He spoke
of the treachery of Brodhead's campaign when the Dela-
wares were driven from Coshocton, of the Moravian
massacre and of his latest attempt by the prisoner at the
stake to send the Delawares fleeing still farther into the
wilderness. Now Pipe and Wingenund had their
revenge. >
Meanwhile Girty stood watching. Perhaps by that
time he had become so dulled to executions of this kind
that he could look on Crawford without once imagining
himself to be standing in his place j perhaps he had taken
from the Indians their own feelings with regard to
scenes of torture — that it is the test of a brave man and
to be watched with scorn or admiration, depending on
whether the victim cries out or is proud in his fortitude.
But that he had come there to take conscious pleasure
in the slow death of Crawford is too much to assert
without more proof than there is at hand. It is quite as
likely that no ill will towards Crawford brought him
there and that once among the hot-blooded braves and
squaws he wished he could find himself suddenly taken
[164]
.NGEANCE TAKES THE WRONG MAN
t Z
< where. For circumstances made him cut an embar-
. ing figure that he could not have escaped noticing
1 forced him into a position from which writers on
. y frontier history have inferred that he was a mon-
■
While the surrounding braves were shooting powder
Crawford's naked skin, while burning faggots were
ist against his sides and the scalping knife shaved
ears off clean he came close to the end of his endur-
e and called out to Girty, whom he begged to shoot
^. But Girty did not answer; there was no sensible
mtr he could make. If he had complied there would
,e been a hundred braves and squaws, maddened at be-
'. cheated of their vengeance, upon him; and evidently
pould not bring himself flatly to deny Crawford his
uest.
. Crawford called again. And this time Girty turned
iy and with a laugh, as Dr. Knight reported (though
re are many kinds of laughter and not all of them are
ghted, humorous or gay), "he said that he had no
yy
People who read of this ghastly performance — peo-
excepting Indians, of course — naturally sympathize
Colonel Crawford. A competent enough and de-
enough man himself, he had come on the heels of
liamson's murderous expedition, had brought a gang
55]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
of border rough ndcks whom he could not control, had
been left behind by his own outfit and had given him-
self into the hands of the very tribes whose means of
subsistence he had come to destroy and whose braves
he meant to kill. His burning is a scene which warms
the blood of every patriotic American, yes, and blinds
the eye. For he had no right to expect to live; and if
the Delawares had spared him they would have showni
themselves so much more humane than the average bor-i
derer of that day that the contrast would even now be
painful. As it was, though the Pennsylvanians, V&-!
ginians and Kentuckians fought as brutally and killed
as indiscriminately as the Indian, they appear to have
been more civilized than their darker brother in that;
they never brought torture up to a really fine art in their
daily lives . . .
After a while Crawford's body lay still and black
and the flames ran low over the expiring faggots.
I
[16(
th One War Ended and No?ie Other at Hand Simon.
Takes a Wife
ai
CHAPTER VIII
yVith One War Ended and None Other at Hand
Simon Takes a Wife
r.
HE next year ended the War of the Revolution,
lit when word finally reached the border that peace had
ben declared between Great Britain and the United
Sites of America, Simon Girty, characteristically, was
Idding a marauding party to within a few miles of
Ittsburgh. He heard the guns which the commandant
a Fort Pitt was firing in salute to these tidings, but he
CLild not believe that these dull, sullen booms that shook
t.e quiet of the countryside were made in joyous recog-
n:ion that the war had ended. A prisoner he had cap-
tred there plaintively told him that peace between the
to countries had come, but Girty remained dubious
ad took him back to Detroit in spite of his remon-
3'ances.
Earlier, in the fall of 1782 and the spring of 1783,
Snon had fought steadily against the frontiersmen.
\ ith Captain Caldwell's Canadian rangers and Alex-
^der McKee's Indians he had been at the battle of Blue
Icks and had been in the attack on Bryan's Station.
69]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
Besides engaging in these he had led some expeditions of
his own against the Kentucky and Virginia borders. It
seems he was ready to continue fighting indefinitely.
But when he reached Detroit from his last maraud
during the war he discovered that there were no more
attacks just then to be taken part in. The British com-
mandantj instead of locking up the prisoner which Girty
had brought from Fort Pitt, released him and returned
him to his home. There was peace! Affairs had quieted
down! It was difficult for him to understand, but after
a while he mastered it.
It was during this unaccountable lull that Simon
made a slight concession to civilization. He married
Miss Catharine Malott, a girl of about half his age.
In an April four years earlier Catharine, her young
brothers and sisters and her parents were on their way
down the Ohio River towards the Kentucky settlements.
They had passed a little beyond Wheeling when a band
of Indians appeared and began firing. The father, Peter
Malott, managed to escape. But the rest of the family
was captured and began to live the life of the Indians.
When Simon met her, Catharine had become the
adopted daughter in an offshoot family of the Dela-
wares. She wore moccasins, a leather petticoat and she
greased herself well with bear fat, a process warranted
[170]
SIMON TAKES A WIFE
protect her skin from the stings and bites of outrage-
1 insects. When they met and why they married can
y be conjectured. Perhaps it was a love affair. Or
haps Catharine so abominated the Indian mode of life
t, as her only chance of escape, she was willing to
ept Simon Girty. At any rate, in August, 1784, she
t the Indian village in which she had grown to young
manhood and followed her intended husband up
ough the Ohio country and around the west shore of
be Erie to Detroit.
At the beginning marriage made a change in Simon's
idering life. He talked with some of the Indians
Dss the river from Detroit — for he needed a respect-
i place to live — and asked them whether they minded
jie laid out a little farm along the east bank of the
fer. They were willing for him to come. But he
' got permission from the British commandant, who
very strict with white men who trespassed on In-
1 country. So Simon built a cabin a few rods south
vhere the Canadian village of Maiden grew up, and
:an thinking of cultivating the soil into a farm. Re-
d on half pay from the British Indian service, he
Catharine lived in their stout cabin with no pressing
;its unsatisfied.
I But of this kind of existence he was to know very
e.
1]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
The peace that had come seriously affected only the
east. On the western border, from Fort Pitt down to the
Kentucky country and along the broadening Ohio, af-
fairs continued virtually as they had been before. In
one article of the treaty between England and America
the former was given the right to all of the trading
posts of the Great Lakes region as security until America
had paid off her obligations to loyalists whose goods the
government had taken. This enabled the British In-
dian service to keep its hold on the Ohio tribes, which
was necessary if Canadian traders were to continue their
profitable business in the exchange of furs. It was to
their interest that the Ohio tribes remain where they
were. And this, quite naturally, was also what the In-
dian himself wanted. But in opposition to both of them
the Americans were already beginning to look on the
rich land northwest of the Ohio as belonging to them-
selves and to make efforts towards securing it.
The same year in which Simon Girty married Cath-
arine Malott and went to live near Maiden there was
held the treaty of Fort Stanwix between the Americans
and the Seneca-Iroquois confederacy. But to give the
name of treaty to what took place is to misuse the word.
For the United States commissioners simply demanded
what they wanted and the Indians were forced to accept.
The situation is thus explained in the History of the
[172]
SIMON TAKES A WIFE
•ritory Northwest of the Ohio: "Large bounties of
d had been promised by Congress to officers and sol-
's of the line (the same practice that had caused Lord
nmore's War in 1774). Virginia, who regarded her-
as owner of the unlimited territories of Tennessee
Kentucky and northwest of the Ohio, had also made
nificent promises of bounties to her soldiers and
:ers. These bounties in case of brigadier generals
e 10,000 acres 5 and to major generals, 15,000
\pSj all other officers less, in proportion to their rank,
pse who were entitled to these bounties became anx-
^ to receive them. By the war their business had
\n broken up, the commerce and manufactures of the
fntry were of little value, and the small and sterile
tns of New England and the Atlantic coast offered
kll attractions for agriculture compared with the rich
^is of Kentucky and the Ohio country, of which ac-
fnts had found their way to these eastern states. Con-
ks was pressed by them to provide for the settlement
(these territories, particularly the great region north-
t of the Ohio River. Believing that the Indian
es who had been at war with the United States were
e treated as defeated enemies, with no absolute rights
tthe lands they occupied. Congress made the treaty
Fort Stanwix in October, 1784, with the Six Nations,
ng their boundary west by the west line of Pennsyl-
'3]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
vania and giving to the United States all north and wej/
of the Ohio."
A few months later another arbitrary treaty wa/-
madej that of Fort Mcintosh, in which the Delaware
and Wyandots signed away not only land that did belon)
to them but land that was not theirs as well. And thu-
it was taken for granted that the Ohio country was f reeh
open to colonization and that if the Indians did no^
peaceably submit they were treacherous scoundrels am
deserved no pity.
But the Indians would not submit, at least not with
out a fight. And this brought Simon Girty down intc
the Ohio country again before his marriage had run \
year. For the British Indian service, seeing the situa-
tion, also saw that they could make use of it to keep theii
valuable trading posts.
Simon, McKee, and Matthew Elliott became tht
three principal agents in the Ohio country who kept th(
Indian temper at war heat. In the spring of 1785
Colonel Josiah Harmar, then commandant at Fori
Mcintosh, learned of Girty's movements and sputtered
^'Speeches have been continually sent by the British f roir
Detroit to the Indians since the treaty, and I have good
intelligence that several traders have been among theOL:
using all means to make them entertain a bad opinion'
of the Americans. One Simon Girty, I am informe
[174
SIMON TAKES A WIFE
3 been to Sandusky for that purpose. I have taken
jry means in my power to counteract their proceed-
rs, and have directed the Indians not to listen to their
3, but to tie and bring in here any of those villains
10 spread reports among them injurious to the United
ites, in order that they may be punished."
Colonel Harmar (later General Harmar, who was
lead a large and unsuccessful expedition against these
dians who had the effrontery to listen to bad opinions
)ken of the United States) here breathes the very
rit of the men who stood impatiently waiting to break
rough the Indian border. Like George Rogers Clark
VincenneSj like the commissioners at Forts Stanwix
d Mcintosh he did not confer with the natives, he
"ected them. It was villainous that a bad opinion of
e Americans should be spread among the Indians. The
dians should take all of the men who talked injuriously
the United States, tie them and hand them over to
nerican justice! And meanwhile all of their land was
ing confiscated.
Girty, however, was not taken to Fort Mcintosh to
punished. He continued to roam the Ohio country
idely, going among the Delawares, Wyandots and
lawanese, giving them counsel and presents. And
:spite the directions of ColoneLHarmar he was allowed
continue his damaging work among the tribes.
[75]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
The treaty of Fort Stanwix had penned up th
Seneca-Iroquois j the treaty of Fort Mcintosh ha
halved the land of the Delawares, and now the Shawan -'
ese and Miamis were in line to be treated with, for in:
migration was swinging down the Ohio. So a fort wi
built at the mouth of the Great Miami and in the fa]
of 1785 the Indians of southern and western Ohio wer
invited to hear how much land was to be left themj oi
as Butterfield puts it, "Congress [was of the opinion
that the treaty of peace of 1783 with Great Britai:'
absolutely invested the [American] government witl
the fee of all the Indian lands within the limits of th
United States and that they had the right to assign o -
retain such portions as they should judge proper." -j!
But the Indians thought otherwise. And the onl Ei
representatives that came to Fort Finney were a fe\ :5]
Shawanese. Nevertheless they were told that thence '"
forth their hunting grounds were to begin far north o -
the Ohio River, to go west into the country claimed b;
the Miamis and south and east to the boundaries of th
Wyandots and Delawares.
The Shawanese chiefs went back to their families
looking angrily at the string of wampum which thjj^!
Americans had given them. As for the Miamis, the; Ai
had kept proudly aloof. Until now, because they werfc
the farthest westward tribe in the Ohio country, theipte
[176;i7'
SIMON TAKES A WIFE
ad not been troubled by the headlong rushing settlers,
lut their turn was soon to come.
Despite these treaties, the strings of wampum and
le presentation of hostages which accompanied them,
ne Indians were not satisfied to lose their land. On the
/uscarawas and the Hockhocking in the northeast white
len fell under the tomahawk; and at the new headquar-
srs of the Dclawares near W'apatomica there was held
great council of Wyandots, Shawanese, Delawares,
Jiamis and others who came to discuss ways of driving
ut the Americans. They had been temporarily stunned
nto inactivity when England had given up the war.
Jut now they were rallying again, even though the col-
•nies had faced about from east to west.
England, they found, was still willing to help them
.nd Sir John Johnson, they wxre told, was to hold a
.'ouncil for their benefit in the following year — it was
.786 — at Niagara. It would be chiefly among the
kneca-Iroquois, but the Ohio Indians were invited to
)e present. Ready for any alliance they could find, they
:ame; and at the meeting Girty, McKee, and Elliott
lelped strengthen their resolve to make whoever took
.heir lands pay for them in some way or other.
At this council Johnson truthfully told the assembled
iachems and warriors that if the various tribes did not
anite in a solid front of defense they would soon lose all
[177]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
of their hunting grounds. Many heard him, man]
cheered, but nothing was done about it.
Another meeting was held by Johnson later in th<
year. The place .was up the Detroit River from Lak(
Erie and representatives of more than a dozen tribe
came there. Captain Brant arrived from the east an»
heatedly harangued the assembly on the necessity of ai
all-embracing confederacy to repel the whites. Bu
through a variety of interests and dialects which gav
them much to overcome they were enabled to act to
gether only slightly: as a body they notified Congres
that they expected settlers to keep out of the Ohio coun
try and asked that the United States send commissioner
to meet them near the Ohio boundary to discuss th
future relations between the two races. The comin;
spring (1787)5 ^h^y thought, would be a good time fo
the council to take place.
The coming spring, the Americans thought, was
better time to think of settling the Ohio country witi
white men. A portion of the southern part had bee:
surveyed and in that year Congress placed enough 0:
sale in New York to amount to $72,974. And in th
fall of the year Manasseh Cutler and Winthrop Sar
geant, acting as agents for the New England Ohio Com
pany, bought a tract that was bounded "by the Ohi(
from the mouth of the Scioto to the intersection of th
[178
S/r ](jh)i Johnsoji
SIMON TAKES A WIFE
vjstern boundary of the seventh range of townships then
srveying; thence by said boundary to the northern
tundary to the northern boundary or the tenth town-
sip from the Ohioj thence by a due west line to the
f iot0 5 thence by the Scioto to the beginning." And in
t^ same month that this land was sold Congress ap-
I'inted a governor to the Northwest Territory. Gen-
eal Arthur St. Clair was chosen. There were a secre-
try and some judges, also an ordinance for the govern-
lent of the territory, which last contains the curious
atement that ^^the utmost good faith shall always be
oserved towards the Indians, their lands and property
{.all never be taken from them without their consent
.. ,"j as though anyone ever willingly consented to
iving his property taken from him. ... A month
iter General Rufus Putnam, under the direction of
le land company, had got forty-seven men and was
taking ready to go to this immense tract and prepare
for the settlers who were to follow.
That was the only answer the tribes received to their
^quest that the Americans keep out of the Ohio country
ntil after another council had been held. During the
immer of 1787 the Indians, however, were expecting
)me news of the commissioners and had come to the
oot of the Maumee Rapids to await it. Time went by
nd no message came; guided by Brant the representa-
179]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
tives of the various tribes concluded they would retui
to their families and meet again in the following ye:
at the same place.
Before this second convention of Indians there w
another settlement of white men on the northwest si;
of the Ohio. John Cleve Symmes, father-in-law
William Henry Harrison, and a number of other lail
speculators had bought a tract between the Great ari
Little Miamis and within a month afterward had begii
a settlement five miiles above the site on which Cincinnsi
now stands.
Time came for the convention. But as the day a]
proached a runner appeared at the foot of the Maum^
Rapids with a message from Governor St. Clair, t
had discovered that they were to meet again and in ord
to confuse them and divert them from any direct actic
they might take he requested that they meet him at Fo
Harmar. Which was no more than a trick, for i
sooner had the tribal sachems got halfway across tl
wilderness than they were met by another messengi
from St. Clair who informed them that they would 1
foolish to expect the white man to recross the Ohio ar
that the early treaties must be abided by. Disgusted ar
angered, Brant and the rest turned back.
It was such events as these, all of them increasir
the sullenness of the Indians — who saw themselv
[18C
SIMON TAKES A WIFE
Miuned in now to the east and south — and inflaming
:e warriors to a heat in which they flung themselves
iross the encroaching border and hacked at settlers,
:rning their cabins and stockades, which led up to the
[dian war and which, in turn, enabled Simon Girty to
iss what remained of his crime vears in scenes of gore.
t
181]
I
Wherein Two Generals Lose Their Armies
B.
CHAPTER IX
Wherein Two Generals Lose Their Armies
Y 1790 Catharine Girty had borne her husband
\so children, Ann and Thomas. And now Simon had
11 the things that makes a domesticated man. But
lough on the verge of fifty, having led an extraordi-
arily hard life, he was yet eager to leave his wife, his
Dn and daughter, his farm and warm cabin and go off
ito the wilderness where he would sleep on a bed of
dns, eat with his fingers in the Indian way and where
e knew that war was imminent. For word had come
lat General Harmar (he commanded Fort Washington,
le recently built garrison on the north bank of the Ohio
ear Symmes' settlement) had plans to march north-
ward with more than a thousand men. That informa-
on, rather than holding Girty back, was what drew
im down to the Ohio country.
Simon made his headquarters at the foot of the
/laumee Rapids, a few miles up the bay from Lake
Irie. The rapids were a long stretch of rock-studded
fallows beside which the sachems and warriors who at-
"nded the Ohio Indian council of 1787 waited for the
185]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
answer from General St. Clair, the answer that neveji
came. They were well towards the mouth of the Mau-j
mee, which river hems in the extreme northwesteni
corner of what later became Ohio state. And it was i\,
this corner that the tribes were congregating. Blu(i
Jacket, the stubborn and courageous Shawanese chief
tain, had a village along the Auglaize one mile fron
its junction with the Maumee; young Tecumseh wa(
close at hand 5 Captain Pipe had come westward witl
his Delaware warriors and was hovering in the neighj
borhood; Tarhe the Crane and some Wyandots ha(j
a village within a day's journey to the east; while dowi;
at the Maumee's source, at the meeting of the St. Mary'j
and St. Joseph's rivers. Little Turtle was at Kekiongi
gay, the seat of the Miami tribe. And during the yea
Captain Joseph Brant was thereabouts with some o|
his Mohawks.
The foot of the Maumee Rapids was then a bus)
place. Supplies of powder, muskets, lead, mutton, peas
corn, rice, blue, red, scarlet and crimson bolts of cloth
bags of vermilion dye, were being sent down by flatboa
from Detroit, and Simon was at hand to apportion th
goods among the various tribes. Old braves strode abou
in blankets, staring gloomily or with lighted eyes. Youni
bucks laughed and tried their muscles in the games, th
broad jump, the running race and an early, almost pre
[1861
'WO GENERALS LOSE THEIR ARMIES
istoric kind of football in which one side tried to carry
stuffed and rounded skin through the other. The
quaws watched their men folk and went quietly about
leir work of providing wood and water, which were
lentiful. There was talk of war and of a great coun-
11 meeting at which it would be determined.
The early fall of the year went by and news came
han General Harmar was on his way. What did he
hink he was going to do? the Indians wondered. Simon
jirty walked about among them, sometimes in the In-
lian dress, breeches, moccasins, a long skin shirt, silver
bracelets on his wrists and earrings pendant along his
ound, sun-tanned cheeks. The Americans, he loudly
epeated the Indians' thoughts, had no right to be on the
lorth bank of the Ohio! Let them go back to where
hey belonged! With most of the braves he could speak
n their own tongue and his voice was beginning to be
leard in their council meetings, at which he was the
)nly white man permitted.
For twelve years now Simon had been living in their
ullages and camps, attending and often leading bands
)f warriors against the border, supplying many of their
wants from the King's stores. They knew him to have
I fair amount of honesty and never to have cheated them.
Many times he had led parties of them on bold marauds,
and usually they had come back with scalps, prisoners
[187]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
and goods looted from white stockades and cabins. He jj
had qualities which they admired — strength withouti*!
foolhardinesSj perseverance in war and the willingness
to slash out fiercely against the enemy. For a long time
he had continued his duties in the British service and
his counsel to the Indians had always been for them to
fight. Yet there was something more than mere duty
or friendships to sharpen his thoughts towards war with
the Americans. There was something personal about it; ;
and this axe which he had to grind had been curiously
fashioned.
So far as the United States was concerned Girty was
an outlaw. Years earlier he and Alexander McKee and
Matthew Elliott had been charged with treason by a
continental court and when they did not appear had been
adjudged guilty. Thus a legal execution waited for him
in Pennsylvania. And this fact, perhaps inconsiderable
by itself, fitted neatly in with the general American atti-
tude towards him as he hiad learned it. It must have
seemed to him that half the country which he had so
surreptitiously left was imbued with the most bitter and
personal hatred towards him. This knowledge had first
come through chance, when he had captured the letter
in which Colonel John Gibson had written coolly that if \
Girty fell into his hands he would trepan him. Up to
that time, though he had had ample opportunity, he had
[188] i
rWO GENERALS LOSE THEIR ARMIES
lot been especially violent against the borderers. On
returning with the letter to Detroit, however, he was
gloomy, as Heckewelder noticed. Then there were
Heckewelder's and Zeisberger's reports to Fort Pitt,
from which it appeared that one Simon Girty, late of
che Pittsburgh garrison, was one of the most ubiquitous
and most malignant forces that preyed on the frontier.
These, spreading about the facts of Girty's raids and
exaggerating them, must have been in the minds — in
fact they were — of many of the borderers whom Girty
captured or met in the Indian villages. There was also
a reward on his head: it was for eight hundred dollars,
nearly as much as President Washington thought the
Cherokees should receive as annuities for having been
driven out of North Carolina! All this was fermenting
in his mind. Even at the burning of Colonel Crawford
he had been apprehensive of what the Americans would
do to him if he fell into their hands. He asked the opin-
ion of Dr. Knight on this point, muttering that he heard
something about vengeance having been sworn against
him. Then he had tried to make little of the matter by
adding that for his part he doubted it. Plainly he was
worried.
Now the Americans were coming, pushing bun-
glingly but irresistibly up through the long shadows of
defeat. And from his headquarters at the Maumee Rap-
[189]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
ids Simon listened to the news brought by the fleet run-
ners. General Harmar, it was discovered, had left Fort
Washington in October with thirteen hundred men. He
was aiming in the direction of the Miami villages about
Kekiong-gay.
But this time Girty had no chance to meet the
Americans. For Little Turtle, glowering but prudent,
had withdrawn all of his warriors and their families.
They had taken their belongings and had moved down
the Maumee so as to be near the other tribes in case
Harmar drove farther into their country. He would I
soon go back.
Harmar arrived. He found Kekiong-gay barei
and deserted. About the empty cabins the cornstalks'
had been stripped. But he destroyed what little there
was to be destroyed and then turned back towards Fort
Washington.
But his return march was more eventful. For the
Miami warriors followed him, striking detachments of
his army at several points and killing a number of offi-
cers and men. The journey back to Fort Washington
became a bedraggled retreat.
Through the snow Miami braves rode northward
towards the Maumee, exultant at the success of their
tactics against General Harmar. It was winter and
their stores were low, but there were provisions coming
[190]
I
71V0 GENERALS LOSE THEIR ARMIES
f Dm the King's stores at Detroit and they had let enough
fc3od to make them feel victorious.
* December came and the tribes went into council, the
rrpose of which was the formation of a confederacy.
J Hon Girty spoke as one of the chiefs, saying: Let
tz white man go back across the Ohio and leave the
]dian to his hunting ground. Let him break up the
Jrts he has built on the north bank, else we will burn
tern for him. And let us assembled here send out the
id belts of war to the chieftains of all the Indian tribes
< that they may join us in driving the white man back
^here he came from! Blue Jacket, Tarhe, Little Tur-
ii, Bockongahelas — all of the war chiefs spoke those
:ords and were thereby heartened to believe that what
itey wanted would come to pass.
Not only did Simon urge the braves in the council
Duse towards war, he was also ready, solely of his own
xord, with a guiding hand in the field. Towards the
' id of the meeting he called to the warriors, asking them
ho would follow him down to the white man's forts.
Many answered his call. And while the war pole
ill shivered in the cold wind Girty led a pack down the
mg trail — it was nearly two hundred miles — to the
eighborhood of Dunlap's Station, which then became
is objective.
They left the Maumee in December, probably the
191]
THE WHITE SAVAGE !
J
middle of the montK; for by January 8 a party of Girty"
scouts who had followed down the Great Miami to
within a few miles of the Dunlap settlement had com(^
upon four white men. The frontiersmen were on thil
west bank, where they had camped the night before
had finished their breakfast and were unsuspecting!
walking along the river when Girty's scouts fired a^
them from an ambush. One of the four men droppec
dead; two wheeled and ran down the trail to the settld
mentj but the fourth was captured. His name wa'
Abner Hunt, and the Indians, apparently satisfied tha
their job was done, bound him and carried him up th
Great Miami towards Girty instead of pursuing th*
two that had escaped.
A day or so after the capture the braves and theS
prisoner met Girty coming down the river with his war
riors, who were nearly three hundred in number. Hun'
was terrified to stand before this darkly visaged whit
man in Indian dress. And from him Girty learned wha
there was to know about Dunlap's Station^ that the set
tlement covered about an acre in which several cabir
were enclosed by surrounding pickets 5 that at the cornei
of the pickets stood blockhouses in which the men coul
defend themselves from attack, and that of the men wh
were capable of bearing arms there were seventeen wh
belonged there regularly with their wives and childre
[192
I
:W0 GENERALS LOSE THEIR ARMIES
ad also eighteen private soldiers who had been sent
tere a short while before by General Harmar from
]Drt Washington. The whole was commanded by Lieu-
inant Jacob Kingsbury.
Taking Hunt with him, Girty and his three hundred
iaves moved on down the river and on the next night
iime quietly within sight of the stockade and prepared
• make an overwhelming surprise in the morning. The
•aves were kept well within the surrounding woods
id no fires showed through to the clearing. In a wide
rcle they lay on their arms and waited for dawn.
As the sun rose the savages appeared among the
umps in the fields about the stockade. They ran for-
''ard, howling and firing into the logs. But the two
,ien who had escaped when Hunt was taken had hurried
ack to the stockade with the news that Indians were in
le neighborhood and Lieutenant Kingsbury was some-
what prepared. The soldiers inside ran at once to the
lockhouses and returned the fire through the loopholes,
hooting so effectively that no Indian at any point got
vithin reach of the pickets.
Now that the surprise attack had failed — for Girty's
ndians could make no headw^ay — a strange piece of
trategy was employed. As his braves fell back among
he trees some of them closed about Abner Hunt. And
.eeing him there the thought came into one of their
[193]
I
THE WHITE SAVAGE
heads that through this prisoner they might be able t(
break down the morale of the garrison. A white flaj'
was thrust into his hand and he was pushed fort!
through the clearing to within a stone's throw of thf
stockade. Girty told him, "Tell them to give up anr
we won't harm their lives or belongings; but if the}
don't, by God, we'll kill you| if they do we'll turn yoi
loose."
The shot was stilled as Hunt appeared with the pica
of white goods fluttering from the end of a stick whicl
he held aloft. With two braves directly behind him anc
a host of others with their muskets leveled at him fron
the thicket in rear he was forced to mount a stump
There he began to deliver the hateful message whic
Girty had commanded of him. And having been prom
ised his own liberty if he succeeded and his death if hi
failed. Hunt pleaded fervently, imploringly.
But inside the stockade there was little thought o
opening the gates to a horde of war-heated savages wh
had traveled for nearly two weeks through the cold fo:
the purpose of killing. Too many times in the past hac™;
white men listened to promises of that kind and had seei
horrible consequences. Besides, though Kingsbury wa
nearly ten times outnumbered, the men were resolut
enough not to give up hope. Only one man had beei|
wounded in the first attack and, moreover. Fort Wash
[194"
u
'WO GENERALS LOSE THEIR ARMIES
i.gton was not so far away but that troops could march
•om it to the aid of Dunlap's Station.
After Hunt's entreaties had sounded for some time
; was brought down from the stump and the stick with
le white flag broken. The firing recommenced.
The sun made its slow rise and descent to the accom-
animent of whizzing musket balls and flying arrows.
,nd when night came the thirty-five soldiers inside the
;ockade were still holding the warriors away from the
ICKCtS.
Some hours after dark two of Kingsbury's men left
he station and after slipping unobserved through the
ndian fires ran over the trail towards Fort Washington.
Their departure made no interruption in the fight. Bul-
ets spattered intermittently through the chill blackness
hat lay over the clearing and now and again a flam-
ng arrow was launched upon the roof of a cabin or
blockhouse.
Still the thirty-three men held out. Thinking to
frighten them out of their fortitude the maddened sav-
ages, whether with or without Girty's sanction, deter-
mined to exhibit their powers on the luckless Hunt.
Taking hold of him, they drew him into the clearing.
There, in the remembrance of one of the men in the
stockade, they tied him to a log, stretched him out and
built a scorching fire around him. As he burned he
[195]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
screamed, but theii; own yells as they danced in a circlt
about him kept his voice from being heard. After z
while the dancing and shouting ceased. Then Hunt'i
painful cries rose penetratingly. It was nearly dawr
when he was silenced 5 he was dead.
The burning of Hunt was about the last act of Girty'
party before Dunlap's Station. Before the day had*
brightened they had turned disappointedly towards the
north again. Fortunate for them that they did, for hun-
ters had brought word of the siege to Fort Washingtor
and the two messengers who had escaped from the stock-
ade that night met a body of troops the next morning
only a few miles away.
Girty went back with them to the Maumee Rapids,
but left soon afterward for his farm near Maiden.!
Catharine, he knew, was going to produce another child
and whether he went on that account or not he was there
when the daughter was born and christened Sarah.
He remained throughout the winter and into the
early spring on his farm. But when the thaw came
he engaged a Canadian farmer to look after his fields
and returned to the Maumee, where the British were
building a fort at the foot of the Rapids.
During the spring and the following summer Simon
heard the news from the banks of the Ohio. Down at
[196]
^VO GENERALS LOSE THEIR ARMIES
*ct Washington General St. Clair, as governor of the
\ rthwest Territory, was sending out troops on short ex-
nlitions and being criticized for not taking the field
V h a greater force. Immigration was being held up
rfear of the Indians and the men who had invested in
jl laid out the great tracts of land were not making
cney from their venture. People generally were of
h opinion that the Indians ought to be driven so far
r into the Ohio country that they would be unable to
like at the pioneers.
But Arthur St. Clair was hardly a war-like soul.
►:ial amenities and a well-filled table were more ap-
uling to his nature than a long journey through f or-
is and swamps, with creeks and rivers that had to be
rded or bridged. Also he was a victim of that prime
::hteenth century complaint, the gout. However,
cnething had to be dpne, and he, being governor of the
(ritory and commander of the army there, had to do it.
From April until September was spent in concen-
iting troops and supplies at Fort Washington. By
lit time he had got an army of about twenty-three
mdred, not counting the militia. He had also got be-
'een fifty and two hundred and fifty women who were
' provide entertainment for the soldiers on the way.
Iiey would, of course, slow up the movements of his
:>ops and he was greatly imperiling their lives by allow-
[97]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
ing them to go, but if it would make the soldiers an
officers any happier to have wives and strumpets alon
— which it apparently would — he was willing that the
should go.
In September he moved from Fort Washington t
Fort Ludlow, which was six miles upward. And fror
there he advanced along the Great Miami to the locatic
on which he built Fort Hamilton. Major Gener;
Richard Butler, between whom and himself there was
good deal of jealousy, was also along. Forty- four miL
north of Hamilton he and Butler constructed anotht
fort, which St. Clair called Fort Jefferson. With all (|
this protection behind him, with the camp women buil
zing and gossiping about and with some soldiers who hj
rather not have gone, he set out to engage the Indians ;|
the wilderness.
It was not long after General St. Clair began cuttir^
his way up into the Indian country that the warrioi
gathered about the lower Maumee heard of his mov
ments. Tecumseh, whose name in the Shawane
tongue signifies a shooting star, went down swiftly wi
a small group of braves and was soon shadowing t
advance guard of the governor's unsuspecting arrr
And shortly St. Clair's line of march and the appro
mate number of his men were known at the Miami hea
quarters.
[191
IIVO GENERALS LOSE THEIR ARMIES
But this time the Indians did not fall back. All
png the Maumee the tribes were daubing themselves
iith war paint and singing old songs of vengeance. Blue
I cket, who was tall and straight, rather dazzling in his
limson coat and red sash, struck the pole for the fierce
[lawanesej Little Turtle, lighter skinned and more con-
implative than his fellow leader, called to the Miami
larriors; Captain Pipe was ready with a force of Dela-
lares, and Simon Girty, looking like a musical comedy
Imdit in his bright silk handkerchief fitted over his
iirk, scarred poll and a brace of silver mounted pistols
;: his sides, prepared to ride at the head of the
/yandots.
j Altogether there were less than fifteen hundred men
'ho rode down to meet St. Clair's army. But they went
uietly and easily, unhampered by the burdens of pro-
isions, artillery and equipment that weighed down the
imericans and required them to cut roads for passage
/herever they went.
i That was the first advantage possessed by the In-
ians. Another perhaps equally strong was that St.
:iair, except on one occasion, had no scouting parties
n front of his main body. There were also the trouble-
ome women, at least one of whom carried a nursing
:hild at her breast. And, to add to St. Clair's handicaps,
lot all of his men were willing to fight, for at least two
'199]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
hundred of them had deserted some days before they : j
struck the Indian country. -j
This curious assemblage of white people which had
come to drive four tribes out of the Ohio country was
itself attacked as it lay encamped on the night of No-
vember third at a bend of the Wabash River in what
became Mercer County, Ohio. St. Clair was surprised.
The only warning he had came from the sounds of ..g
firing from some volunteer scouting parties which had .^
gone out during the night and had a slight brush with an ... ^j
advance party of Indians. . . •
A little after daybreak on November fourth the full . ..^
attack began. The militia, encamped about a quarter
of a mile in front of the main army, took the first blow
and promptly fell back over the snow-covered ground
and across the creek. Doubtless St. Clair heard them, •
but he did not see them, for at that time he was lying
stretched out in his tent with a sudden and mortifying
renewal of the gout.
The Indians came howling forward under a shower .
of shot and arrows. The Wyandots were leading and
Girty was well to the fore. On the heels of the militia .^
they came riding down through the woods and splashed
over the river into the midst of the regulars. Some
parts of the American line held, as men, not as military
units. Major Jacob Fowler, who was at the battle as a
[200] ■'
I
\''WO GENERALS LOSE THEIR ARMIES
)nd lieutenant, described the confusion for Cist's
Cincinnati) Advertiser: '^One of Captain Piatt's men
ly . . . shot through the belly. I saw an Indian be-
ind a small tree, not twenty steps off, just outside the
ular lines. He was loading his piece, squatting down
:nuch as possible to screen himself. I drew sight at
. butt and shot him through . . ." Then Colonel
^ rke came up through the melee, leading his men at
.c charge. "The Indians were driven by this move-
ment clear out of sight, and the Colonel called a halt
nd rallied his men, who were about 300 in number. As
n experienced woodsman and hunter [he was also, he
lodestly admits, a mere subaltern; but those were demo-
ratic days], I claimed the privilege of suggesting to
he Colonel that where we then stood — there being a
ile of trees blown out of root — would form an excellent
reastwork, being of length sufficient to protect the
Irhole force, and that we might yet need it; I judged
pr the shouting and firing that the Indians had closed
p the gap we had made in charging, and told the colonel
D." But though Fowler suggested a charge and the
olonel told him to lead the way, the "Indians were so
hick we could do nothing with them."
It was the flying Wyandots led by Girty that were so
hick. They pushed through the soldiers' ranks, scat-
ering destruction and driving them towards the baggage
201]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
trains and the artillery, which were well into the camp.
By the time the Wyandots had captured the rolling stock
only ten per cent of Colonel Darke's men were left
standing. But Fowler was still at hand: "I had been
partially sheltered by a small tree, but a couple of In-
dians, who had taken a larger one, both fired at me at
once, and feeling the steam of their guns at my belly, I
supposed myself cut to pieces. But no harm had been
done, and I brought my piece to my side and fired, with-
out aiming at the man who stood his ground, the fellow \
being so close to me I could hardly miss him. I shot him
through the hips and while he was crawling away on all
fours Colonel Darke, who had dismounted and stood
close by me, made at him with his sword and struck his
head off . . ."
A little later there was a cry from the neighborhood
of the tents. General St. Clair, who had hobbled from '
his bed and was trying to mount a horse which his order- :
lies were holding for him, was calling for the troops to
charge the road. His adjutant general echoed the com- :
mand.
But the order from St. Clair was not for an attack t
but for a break to safety. Already men and women were t
streaming down the freshly cut road and horses were \
plunging madly at the whoops and musketry of the on-
rushing Indians. St. Clair missed the stirrup of the
[202]
I
rWO GENERALS LOSE THEIR ARMIES
.Tiare he was trying to mount. It ran oflF and another, a
packhorse, was led up. On its broad back he ambled
slowly away from the action.
Fowler, however, ran over to his relative. Captain
Piatt, and "told him that the army was broken up and
in full retreat."
"Don't say so,'' he replied, "you will discourage my
men and I can't believe it."
Soon, however, Captain Piatt was convinced. "The
bodies of the dead and dying were around us [Major
General Butler's was one, but he was carried into a tent
where a surgeon attended to his wounds] and the freshly
scalped heads were reeking with smoke, and in the heavy
morning frost looked like so many pumpkins through a
cornfield in December."
By noon the Indians completely had the field and
went to work with their scalping knives. For the re-
treating army had made no attempt to take care of the
wounded. General Butler was one who had been left
behind. He had lain outstretched with a bullet wound
while the screaming Indians cut in among the deserted
tents of the officers, the trains of baggage and ammuni-
tion which St. Clair's army had hastily abandoned.
Helplessly he waited for someone to come.
Presently Girty and a Wyandot warrior detached
themselves from the looting and scalping melee and rode
[203]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
up to the general's tent. Girty looked at Butler, whom
he did not know but whose uniform showed him to be
of high command, then turned to his Indian companion
and observed, "Big, very big Long Knife captain." The
warrior's tomahawk went up and down 5 General Butler
was dead and ready to be hacked to pieces.
From all over the field where St. Clair's camp had
been, came the thud of the tomahawk and the rip of the
scalping knife. Horses plunged about without riders
while braves reached out for their bridles 5 bewildered
cattle ran with swinging heads y flour, ball and powder,
clothing and blankets lay scattered everywhere.
Down along St. Clair's trace a few braves followed
the retreating army for a dozen or more miles. And
one woman, made frantic by the pursuit, flung the child
that she was carrying into a snow pile, then ran the
more swiftly back over the slushy trace towards distant
Fort Washington.
When the looting and murder was finally over a
deputation of Wyandots, who had been the leaders of
the day, came respectfully up to Simon Girty and made
a long speech in which they presented him with three of
the captured cannon ♦ , ,
[204]
Simon Drives a Quill Through His Nostrils
CHAPTER X
Simon Drives a Quill Through His Nostrils
IVJi AlSSy of the Indians were brave, but not all of
:hem were foolish. And after they had seen two expe-
ditions of Americans drive towards the Miami towns
:hey knew enough to withdraw to a locality that was less
in the minds of the officers who commanded the forts
down along the Ohio. Accordingly the Miamis and
others who had been living about Kekiong-gay began to
move eastward along the Maumee towards its junction
with the Auglaize.
Scenically and productively that territory where the
Indians now were intermingling was a delight. Most
of the land was thickly wooded with walnut, oak, syca-
more, maple and hickory; the two rivers meandered
through soft ground and made a long, clear sweep of
bottomland on either shore. Each spring the life of the
soil was renewed by the floodwater, which deposited rich
mud that made it excellent for cereals and vegetables;
game was abundant; the fish were of various kinds and
ran to prodigious sizes.
Here during that spring were gathered a thousand
[207]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
or more Indians 5 they worked at building huts from
logs blown down by the winds and covered them with
bark and hides. They planted gardens and great fields,
until by summer the banks of the Auglaize for some
miles and those of the Maumee for even farther were
lined with a tall stand of yellowing corn (the ears of
which, as it happened, General Anthony Wayne, ap-
pointed by President Washington to take charge of oper-
ations in the Northwest, was inordinately fond of).
At that time, as for nearly a hundred years before,
a number of white people were living with the Indians.
Some of them were traders and had cabins on the high-
banked point of land that lay between the Auglaize com-
ing from the northwest and the Maumee from the
southwest. One or two were British emissaries. The
rest had been captured on raids upon the American settle-
ment and were now adopted into the families which had
taken them.
Of these white captives living about the Maumee at
that time at least three have left some record of the
manners and habits of Simon Girty. One of them,
young Jonathan Alder, rather liked the pugnacious rene-
gade and rather thought that reports of his cruelties had
been exaggerated. Several times he had known Girty
to effect the release of white prisoners, more than once
at his own expense. He also thought that Simon had not
[208]
SIMON DRIVES A QUILL
siDwn the fiendishness of which he had been accredited
a the burning of Colonel Crawford.
But Oliver Spencer, on the other hand, felt that
C rty was the very substance of dangerous and malignant
imagery. As a boy Oliver had been captured by the
sawanese in a raid on the settlement of Columbia, a
fvV miles above Fort Washington, that summer. He
pi.s eleven years old at the time and after being brought
ti the new Maumee encampment he was placed in the
fnily of an ancient squaw named Cooh-coo-cheeh and
bd for his adopted brother and sister, "a dark Indian
B'l (an orphan) two years my elder, and a half Indian
by, about a year younger than myself, both her grand-
:ildren by her only daughter, now the wife of George
[Dnside, a British Indian trader living at the trading
j.tion on the high point directly opposite to her cabin
ifew hundred yards above the mouth of the Auglaize.
[}eorge Ironside, by the way, had an M. A. from King's
[)llege, Aberdeen.] The boy, reputed to be the son
: the famous, or, rather, infamous renegade Simon
Cirty, was very sprightly, but withal, passionate and
d.lful, a perfectly spoiled child, to whom his mother
t.d given the Mohawk name of Ked-zaw-saw, while his
Eandmother called him Simo-ne."
One day young Spencer was taken by his foster
fandmother up the Auglaize to the Shawanese village
l:o9]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
of Blue Jacket. This war chief stood about six fee
tall — "was finely proportionedj stout and muscular; hi
eyes large, bright and piercing j his forehead high anc
broad 3 his nose aquiline; his mouth rather wide, and hi
countenance open and intelligent, expressive of firmnes
and decision." The chieftain was gaudily clad in bono
of another visitor who was soon to come — Simon Girty] '
Blue Jacket wore a scarlet tunic with gold lace and golc
epaulets, a red sash around his waist and red moccasin
and leggings. He was agreeable to young Spencer am
allowed him to go inside the cabin. It was richly fur
nished with skins and adorned with war clubs, bows anc
beaded quivers, muskets, swords and tomahawks.
While young Spencer was there Girty arrived, bu
"whether it was from prejudice, associating with hil'^
look the fact that he was a renegade, the murderer o:
his own countrymen, racking his diabolical inventions t(
inflict new and more excruciating forms of torture, o:
not; his dark, shaggy hair, his low forehead; his brow
contracted and meeting above the short, flat nose; hi
gray, sunken eyes, averting the ingenuous gaze; his lip
thin and compressed, and the dark and sinister expressioi
of his countenance, seemed to me the very picture of ;
villain. He wore the Indian costume, but without an]
ornament; and his silk handkerchief, while it suppliec
the place of a hat, hid an unsightly wound in his fore
[2io:
SIMON DRIVES A QUILL
lad. On each side, in his belt, was stuck a silver
rmnted pistol, and at his left hung a short broad dirk,
(ving occasionally the uses of a knife."
On meeting the youth Girty straightened his
bulders and began asking countless questions. He
imted to know about Spencer's family and how he liked
li captivity, yet he was more interested in the strength
I the different garrisons on the Ohio, the number of
nerican troops at Fort Washington and when Presi-
Int Washington planned to send another army against
e Indians.
With old Cooh-coo-cheeh, Blue Jacket, and young
>encer standing there, Simon grew eloquent and vain-
orious. "He spoke of the wrongs he had received at
e hands of his countrymen, and with fiendish exulta-
)n, of the revenge he had taken. He boasted of his
cploits, of the number of his victories, and of his per-
nal prowess j then, raising his handkerchief and ex-
biting the deep wound in his forehead (which I was
•terwards told was inflicted by the tomahawk [sword]
:' the celebrated Indian chief. Captain Brant, in a
runken frolic) said it was a saber cut which he had
:ceived in battle at St. Clair's defeat, adding with an
ith that he had Sent the damned Yankee officer' that
ive it 'to Hell.' He ended by telling me that I would
2ver see home, but if I should 'turn out to be a good
211]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
hunter and a bra\ie warrior I might some day be a
chief.'"
Young Spencer was frightened by the meeting and
glad when old Cooh-coo-cheeh took him back to thd
cabin.
Another white captive on the Maumee at that timCj
however, owed his life to Simon Girty. His name was!
William May. After the Indians had brought him to!
their camp they had condemned him to death, had black-|
ened his face, and were preparing the faggots about thej
stake. The laconic words of his own statement are "wasi
condemned to die, but saved by Simon Girty." . '
May had been with the Indians at St. Clair's routl
where Simon had fought with so much zeal. WhicW
was not unusual, for in most of the larger engagements^
at that time there were white men — though they were
given their choice and not required to take up arms —
fighting with the Indians for the loot that would fall
to the victor. '
But in the smaller attacks, in the marauds, the whitd
men were not allowed to take part. None, that is, ex-1
cept Simon Girty, who by this time was a renowned and
trusted warrior among the Indians. '
In the early summer when Spencer met him Simor'
raised a force of braves from the Maumee and journeyed
at their head down to the south among the forts which'
[2121
SIMON DRIVES A QUILL
e settlers were always building. It was June and the
anting had been done; willingly a hundred braves fol-
wed him through the leafy forest to Fort Jefferson,
here, concealing themselves in the surrounding wood,
ey watched sharply for the moment to attack.
Now Fort Jefferson had at that time, if Howe quoted
ight, a very gullible commander, a Captain Shaylor,
ho was extraordinarily fond of hunting. And this
;nchant of his, it appears, was known to some of the
idians who surrounded the fort that summer. "Be-
;re they were discovered . . . [they] secreted them-
Ives in some underbrush and behind some bogs near
,e fort . . . [where] they imitated the noise of tur-
:ys. The captain, not dreaming of a decoy, hastened
ft with his son, Billy, expecting to return loaded with
[me. As they approached near the place the savages
se, fired, and his son, a promising lad, fell. The cap-
in turning, fled to the garrison. The Indians pursued
Dsely, calculating either to take him prisoner or enter
]€ sally-gate with him in case it opened for his admis-
)n. They were, however, disappointed, though at his
:els; he entered and the gate was closed the instant he
ached it. In his retreat he was badly wounded by an
row in his back."
Whether these extraordinarily wily braves were of
irty's party is nowhere stated, but it was within a few
!13]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
weeks of that time at most that the white leader ap-
peared (June 25, 1792) before Fort Jefferson and
waited until a number of the garrison went out to work
in the cornfields. Then his braves leaped upon them anc
disposed of sixteen, either killed or taken prisoner
They left four bodies in the field behind them when the^^
took the northward trail again.
From this raid Simon returned to the Maumee
where the chieftains were beginning to talk of holding
another great council, perhaps the greatest of any evei
held in the Ohio country. Girty was restless at thi:
time, boastful, eager for any action that was directec
against the Americans. He was glad when word was
sent by runners with belts of wampum to the north-
west tribes, the "seven nations of Canada, and of twenty-
seven nations beyond Canada, as well as to the Gora tribdk
and to the Seneca-Iroquois. And the result was to be
if the Ohio Indians got what they wanted, a united f ron
of all the tribes against the settlers. And what a mar-
velous battle might have followed! Thousands anc
/ thousands of Indians standing ready along the Maume<
to await Wayne's army which was slowly coming. . .
However:
Weeks went by after the runners had gone out. Th<
leaves began to turn the colors of autumn. And Girty
waiting for the council, again bethought himself of thcj
[214j
l! SIMON DRIVES A QUILL
inerican forts that lay southward. Organizing a party
some two hundred and fifty braves he struck down
:vards the Ohio again, his object being the capture of a
i>ply train that was, he had heard, moving up to Fort
SFerson.
But his marauding party had not gone far when he
, s overtaken by a runner from the Maumee who
)ught word that the sachems were arriving from the
ler tribes and that he should be on hand for the deliber-
ons. He turned back, gladly perhaps, for the meeting
s of prime importance; he hoped that it would result
what at last amounted to a declaration of war by all
b tribes, and he could not help feeling honored to be
k only white man who would sit in the council. It was
he to fight again.
' When he arrived he found a vast gathering of im-
rtant chiefs and sachems. Red Jacket — whose coun-
against a general war was to delay the issue fatally —
d forty-six other representatives of the Seneca-Iro-
'ois, three chiefs of the Gora tribe, many from the far
Tthwest; and besides these were present the heads of
e Shawanese, the Delawares, Miamis, Wyandots, Pot-
^atomies and such offshoots from parent tribes as the
iingoes and Monseys.
' They went into session in October in the grove on
e high ground between the Maumee and Auglaize
!15]
I
THE WHITE SAVAGE
rivers. Simon was the only alien to sit with them ir
that stretch of mainland between the two streams. In j
great clearing surrounded by tremendously branching
trees, they kindled their council fires of the tied-uj
bundles of faggots brought from great distances and sa
solemnly on their blankets while everybody listened t
everybody else on the question of what should be doiK
about these persistent and war-like white men, so mucl
more war-like than themselves.
That anything could be done about it was a prepos
terous hope from the beginning. That all of the tribes
on such short notice, should overcome their various per
sonal interests and unite! Perhaps it would never havi
been undertaken had it not been urged upon the Indian
by men working through the British Indian Department
Sir John Johnson, Alexander McKee (who now had ,
post down at the foot of the rapids by the British fort)
Simon Girty and others. As for the meeting itself i
was broken up after a long harangue by Red Jacket
sachem of the Senecas, who pleaded with the Ohio Inj
dians to withhold the declaration of war until the fol'
lowing spring, meanwhile giving the Americans
chance to meet them in a treaty. This was agreed t,
and a message was despatched to the United States Cor
gress.
The long winter passed. Finally the answer cam
[216
SIMON DRIVES A QUILL
Injamin Lincolrij of Massachusetts, Beverly Randolph
I Virginia and Timothy Pickering of Pennsylvania, all
United States commissioners, took ship northwesterly
-Qss Lake Erie to the mouth of the Detroit River,
iiere they prepared to deal with the Ohio tribes. They
lyed at the house of Matthew Elliott, which was some
litance south of the Girty farm at Maiden. From
ite the commissioners apprised the Indians of their
iidiness to treat.
So at last the commissioners had come! Down along
\t Maumee Indian chiefs were chosen to meet them.
Iiey went in boats and Girty, Elliott and Alexander
IcKee accompanied them. It was on an island from
lich could be seen Elliott's house that the representa-
es of the Indians met the representatives of the United
iates. There were no handclasps, no greetings or signs
I mutual esteem.
Girty's voice rolled forth insolently. Were these
immissioners, he wanted to know in the name of the
lio Indians, ready and authorized to fix the Ohio
iver as the south and west boundary of the native's ter-
rory? And as he made this astounding remark he "sup-
rted," it is said, "his insolence" with a quill driven
rough his nose beneath the nostrils.
The commissioners stepped grimly back and replied
:'tly that they were not so authorized. What they had
U7]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
come for was to get more land, not to relinquish whatf
they had already claimed. '
Very well then 5 there was no use of further talk,
said Girty, interpreting. The chiefs and their white 1
allies turned their backs.
But another voice, an Indian's, arose. There was
use in talking; the sachems would have to consult their
families again 3 let the commissioners wait until they had
done so.
The Indians and their white friends went away inl
their boats again. The commissioners remained, waiting
to hear from them, smiling at their ridiculous request
for the Ohio River as the south and west boundary of
their lands.
Weeks passed. It was summer. The commissioners
had stayed near the mouth of the Detroit River. For
they could afford to wait. General Wayne, who had
been organizing the Legion of the United States when
they left on their mission, was now at Fort Washington,
where he was drilling his rough-neck volunteers into an
obedient corps that was fit to fight Indians. Also John
Jay was in London negotiating for a final treaty with
England which would drive the British out of the Ohio
country when the agreement had finally been reached.
At last a message came from the council on the
Maumee. It notified the commissioners that the only
[218]'
SIMON DRIVES A QUILL
oundary to which the Indians could agree was the Ohio
Liver. Very well again! Pickering, Lincoln and Ran-
olph knew the United States would never consent to
lat. They went home.
219]
The Long Shadow of Mad Anthony Wayne
CHAPTER XI
The Long Shadow of Mad Anthony Wayne
I T was August, 1793, when the commissioners de-
)rted. Throughout the fall, the winter, and the spring
) 1794 the Indians remained stubborn and fiery and
^)uld accept no less than the Ohio River as the boundary
)i:ween themselves and the frontiersmen. For Simon
\ rty it was a time of restless waiting. He and the war
:i(jfs knew that General Wayne had come up farther
i:o their country and was making ready to attack them.
:it the Indians then had no thought of defeat. Their
;ccess over St. Clair had given them immense confi-
Ince and rather than fearing Wayne's approach they
^^re pleased that he was coming. For they coveted the
:)rses, blankets, firearms and provisions that he would
ing, and they had tall hopes of getting them. Their
ies watched him advance towards the spot where St.
lair had been cut up; and twice their warriors charged
to detachments of his army. The first time the braves
shed upon the cavalry and were quickly driven back,
It on the next day about forty of them discovered a
pply train guarded by an escort of ninety men; and
223]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
barging into it, they killed a great number and rode off
^xty-four borses.
From tbe time General Wayne got witbin a bundred
liles of tbe Maumee tbe war cbief s were kept informed
f tbe general movements of bis army and of its approxi-
late size, wbicb was tben about fifteen bundred. They
new when bis line of march veered off from tbe Great
/[iami and drew him near to St. Clair's battlefield,
'bey knew that be stopped about six miles above Fort
efferson and there began to erect small cabins for win-
^r quarters and to surround them with a huge stockade
nd a line of pickets. Their spies saw bis men come still
loser, to the very ground by the creek where the In-
ians had been so victorious and where the skulls of
lore than six hundred white men lay above the earth.
It was there that General Wayne built Fort Recov-
ry, which was an advance post for his main garrison,
brt Greenville. The Indians knew these things, which
^ere of the sort that had helped them to defeat Colonel
Crawford, to harry and confuse Harmar, and to destroy
t. Clair. But this time their knowledge was of little use
) them. Though every night runners and spies reported
l^ayne's movements, they also brought the news that he
^as always on the alert. They said that "when he was
n the march, that it was next to impossible to get a
orse out of his camp" and "that at night Wayne would
[224]
Brigadier Getural Atjthony Wayne
'HE SHADOW OF ANTHONY WAYNE
At down great trees, and fence in a tract of land large
lough to hold his entire army and baggage, and that
lese fences were built so high that none could get at
icm, and but few could get out.'' And after Fort
ireenville went up Wayne was even more inaccessible.
The winter passed. At Wayne's headquarters his
rmy marked time. Up on the Maumee Simon Girty
xnt about among his friends, talking to Blue Jacket, to
'aptain Pipe, to Tarhe the Crane, to Little Turtle and to
^iptain Brant. Let the Indians continue in their pur-
ose to fight; let them stand ready to attack, to come
own with the force and unexpectedness of the cyclone
pen this Big White Captain and his Long Knife war-
iors! The Big Captain would yet grow careless, the
ndians would defeat him, and all of the Ohio country
/ould be theirs! A man of temper, he was irritated by
he long days of inactivity, the more so because he felt
he menace of the Americans, who were establishing
hemselves ever nearer to him. They had had a reward
'osted for his scalp; there were the various threats which
hey had made; what would they, he wondered, do to
lim if they caught him? It wasn't very pleasant to
hink about.
But he stayed on. Whether it was that he had hope
)f the Indians again defeating United States soldiers,
hat he felt himself bound to remain with them, that
225]
.1^
THE WHITE SAVAGE
he was simply carrying out his job, or that he was im-
pelled to defy his former countrymen to the last — what-
ever the reason, he remained on the Maumee throughout
the spring and early summer.
An opening for an attack came in June and Simon
was ready to take part in it. Indian scouts in the neigh-
borhood of Wayne's main army (where Mad Anthony,
still at Fort Greenville, was awaiting reinforcements
from Kentucky that would nearly double the size of his
command) reported to their chieftains that the party of ^
Long Knives that held Fort Recovery were growing less
cautious ; from time to time American convoys traveled '
between Recovery and Greenville; moreover, the former I
stronghold did not seem to be impregnable.
It was the kind of news that Girty, Blue Jacket, and
the rest were waiting for. They called to the braves,
who needed no persuading. Eager for revenge and in-
spired by the thought of the heavy supply trains that
had traveled with Wayne's army, more than a thousand
of them set out to attack Fort Recovery and to retrieve,
if possible, the cannons which had been presented to
Girty but which he had failed to take with him from St.
Clair's battleground.
On the morning of June 30, they had come to the
edge of a forest within a few miles of the fort. They
were riding cautiously forward into the tall grass when
[226]
'HE SHADOW OF ANTHONY WAYNE
f a sudden there was a cry of, "Indians! Indians!" and
ley were discovered by a body of ninety riflemen and
fty cavalrymen. These men were under the command
f Major McMahon. The Indians rushed forward
nth. a whoop.
McMahon's outfit, most of whom were afoot,
/heeled and ran before that thundering, howling mob
f savage horsemen. Even the soldiers that were
Qounted were put in such a fear that they slid off their
addles and rushed for the gates. Inside the pickets the
larm was given and shot began to pour out from loop-
oles in the walls and blockhouses. Well-saddled horses,
lereft of their riders, galloped confusedly about, jerk-
ng their heads up to avoid the outstretched hands of
ndians.
( Under the commands of Blue Jacket, who was as-
isted by Little Turtle and Girty, the braves strung out
round the fort, encircling it completely and firing from
)ehind trees and fallen logs. But the bullets continued
:o spit out at them from the pickets. Up into the air
md down whirred the shell from a mortar. It dropped
vith a great burst and a black cloud of pungent smoke,
[rhe mortar, the marksmanship of the men behind the
barricade, were disconcerting, but the Indians kept on
:rawling forward in small parties, trying to reach the
walls. Some of them got within fifty yards of the fort.
[227]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
There they ran, half bent over, their attention divided
between overthrowing the defense and capturing the
frightened horses which reared among the stumps and
saplings.
Throughout the day the siege continued, but as dark-
ness fell there was a lull. No considerable number had
fallen on either side. But Blue Jacket had discovered
that his tactics were unavailing. He drew his force a
mile down the creek and determined to wait until a little
before dawn when he would make a surprise attack.
Before sunrise the surprise assault was tried. But
that too was a failure. Musketry crackled for an hour
or more 5 by daylight there were more than fifty casual-
ties inside the fort, but a much greater number among
the Indians. During the early hours of the first of July
there was little firing from the savages. They had come
to feel that the fort could not be taken. And after
rescuing their wounded, some of whom had to be carried
in broad light from the very shadows of the pickets, and
capturing about two hundred and fifty horses, they made
the long retreat back to the Maumee.
Girty was reluctant to abandon the attack and gloomy
on the return ride. To lose on the exact ground where
St. Clair's army had been cut up was a bad omen. He
knew, also, that Wayne's main body had not even been
touched, that the Indian force of about twelve hundred
[228]
''HE SHADOW OF ANTHONY WAYNE
lad been repelled by merely an advance post of greatly
nf erior numbers. But his stubborn fury, his fear of the
Americans, and perhaps his friendship for the Indians
till governed his actions, making him remain in the
iangerous Ohio country when it was no longer necessary
^'or him to be there. It was not that he hadn't other
)laces to go, for he had: his home was waiting for him, a
fairly well developed farm, a house that for those days
vas comfortable, and a growing family. He could have
jone to Maiden and stayed there, retiring on half pay.
But he chose to hire a man to work his land while he
limself urged the Indians to stand fast on the Maumee
md meet Wayne in battle.
For the Indians were in need of support. Though
31ue Jacket's stalwart six-foot frame and ineradicable
latred stood as encouragement towards victory, the de-
'eat at Fort Recovery had lowered the warriors' spirits
md many of them were willing to listen to Little Turtle
— a brave man, an able commander, but a thoughtful
nan as well — who advised them to arrange a treaty with
he oncoming Americans and thus save their families
Tom a bloody war. His opinion then was the same as
t was later when he spoke at the general council, when
le told them on August 19, "We have beaten the enemy
wice, under separate commanders. We cannot expect
he same good fortune always to attend us. The Amer-
;229]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
icans are now led by a chief who never sleeps. The
night and the day are alike to him. During all the
time he has been marching on our villages, notwithstand-
ing the watchfulness of our young men, we have been
unable to surprise him. Think well of it. There is
something whispers me it would be prudent to listen to
his offers of peace."
Prudent, yes, but whether the Indians fought or
parleyed the result would have been the same: for the
Americans wanted their land and meant to have it. And
General Wayne was determined to subjugate the Ohio
tribes even though in so doing it might mean a war with
England, which General Washington had especially
instructed him against.
However, the majority of the warriors had less faith
in treaties than in arms. They were being well supplied
with guns and ammunition by the British; at the foot of
the Rapids stood Fort Miami, whose garrison under
Major William Campbell, cannon and solid walls they
expected to be defended by 3 also there were about three
thousand braves who had come together between the
Grand Glaize and the British fort. Therefore it was the
words of Girty and Blue Jacket that they applauded.
In July, a few weeks after the attack on Fort Re-
covery, Wayne got his reinforcements. Major General
Charles Scott, with sixteen hundred Kentucky volun-
[230]
HE SHADOW OF ANTHONY WAYNE
ers, had arrived at Fort Greenville on July 26 and two
lys later Mad Anthony gave orders for the advance.
The Legion went slowly and cautiously, preceded by
number of scouts familiar with the country. The
eather was hot and most of the water stagnant; from
ort Recovery onward roads had to be cut through the
ilderness and bridges built over the swamps. Wayne
)und the mosquitoes "very troublesome and larger than
ever saw/' was compelled to dig holes in the marshes
, order that his troops might have water, dragged his
*avy carriages through this strange land at the galling
te of about ten miles a day, incautiously got in the way
■ a falling tree and was nearly killed, yearned for salt,
•een corn and more rum.
But finally he came out upon what was called the
rand Glaize, the junction of the Maumee and Au-
aize rivers. He thought the country thereabouts the
ost beautiful of any in the west "and believed equal by
)ne in the Atlantic states. Here are vegetables of every
nd in abundance, and we have marched four or five
iles in cornfields down the Oglaize and there is not
ss than one thousand of acres of corn around the
wn.'' (There was to be scarcely any standing when he
ft.)
The Indians, of course, had deserted their towns,
he day before, the last of the inhabitants had left, hav-
!31]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
ing been warned by ^ runner who came rushing through
the fields and whooping the alarm. At once the remain-
ing Indians gathered up all they could carry and took
the trail down the Maumee towards the foot of the
Rapids where warriors of half a dozen tribes were
hesitantly making ready for battle.
For the Indians were not to be caught by any army
that called fifteen miles a good day's march and who
gave away their approach by smoke, fire and gunshot.
They knew better tactics for enemy country than that.
Yet despite all this it was the Indians who eventually
were surprised.
At Camp "Grand Oglaize" [so he spelled Auglaize]
General Wayne, expecting an attack and wanting to
secure his position there in what had become the heart of
the Indian country, built Fort Defiance. During the
eight days which passed before it was finished he sent a
messenger down the river to the Rapids, from where the
Indians were watching him. The messenger carried the
word that the Big White Captain considered the Indians
to be his brothers, that Simon Girty, McKee, Elliott,
and the rest from Detroit had neither the power nor the
inclination to protect them and that they should at once
send deputies to meet him halfway between his camp
and Fort Miami, the British stronghold, "in order to
settle the preliminaries of a lasting peace."
[232]
HE SHADOW OF ANTHONY WAYNE
I This message was received and answered, but not, it
terns likely, by a general council of the warriors. The
^ply given Wayne was a request for time, ten days in
hich the Indians agreed to make up their minds as to
whether they would fight or parley; but if this exten-
on were not granted them, they added, they would give
attle when Wayne moved upon them.
Wayne was already on the march when this answer
rrived. And that night he recorded in his journal the
are fact of the Indians' counter-proposal and made no
lention of how he considered it. The next day, bow-
lder, the army went on as before and encamped that
ight at the head of the rapids, one day's march from
le British fort and the assembled Indians.
On the following night, that of August 19, the war-
ors held their final council; and it was then that Little
urtle made his plea for a peaceful meeting with the
ig White Captain. The warriors listened, but in a
rowning silence. And when Little Turtle had finished
le of them offered the opinion that the reason Chief
fittle Turtle talked like that was because he felt fear.
There was no more to be done. Even as the war-
ors sat in a circle before their fires that night General
^^ayne was writing that in the morning his men would
z ready for action, "providing the enemy have the pre-
imption to favor us with an interview, which if they
233]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
should think proper to do, the troops are in such high
spirits that we will make an easy victory of them." As
he wrote, Wayne could hear his pioneer companies
throwing up shovelfuls of dirt, and felling logs to make
a lightwork that would secure the baggage. For he
knew he was within striking distance of the Indians and
he wanted his men to be walking lightly when he struck
them. But where the warriors sat the only sounds besides
their voices came from the low water streaming bro-
kenly down over the rock-bedded river.
After the unsatisfactory break-up of the council,
most of the braves and chieftains spread their blankets
and lay down to sleep, thinking that in the morning they
would return again to the clutter of uprooted trees —
the havoc of a cyclone some time past — where for three
days they had lain in wait for Wayne's army. Having
had no answer from him with regard to the ten days'
armistice, they had been expecting him since the morn-
ing after the messenger had gone.
The stretch of fallen timber was along the north
bank of the river a few miles up from the British fort
and directly within Wayne's line of march. On the
first morning the warriorsi had gone there — without
breakfast, as was their custom when expecting to fight
— and had waited throughout the day. Only at night
had they gone back down the river to their kettles and
[234]
HE SHADOW OF ANTHONY WAYNE
ankets, and then they had been hungry. On the second
ly this was repeated. So that by the morning of the
^entieth they had become disgusted with fasting till
ening — furthermore, it was possible that Wayne in-
nded to grant them the ten days. Something like that
ey must have thought, for they were woefully unpre-
.red on the morning of the battle.
They were so poorly prepared that it was as if they
id not expected combat that day at all. Of the (about)
ree thousand warriors in the neighborhood less than a
ird were near their positions in the fallen timber when
e first shot was fired. The rest were lolling in the
eadows near the British fort, talking and sitting
ound their steaming kettles. Captain Brant, in com-
and of four hundred Mohawks who had come there
take part in the fight, was somewhere in the vicinity,
It nobody seems to have discovered just where he was
what he was doing. Girty also was at hand, but not
the fort and not with the Indians. He did not emerge
at day.
Wayne's army approached, the regulars, who were
I the right, flanked by the river and covered in front,
ft flank and rear by Scott's mounted volunteers. As
ey came near the fallen timber the Indians on the
ound opened fire and the advance guard "retreated in
e utmost confusion," according to General Wayne.
!35]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
For a while it seemed as if the whole army would run.
Captain Howell Lewis' outfit began to falter, turn and
flee. But then there was a charge led around the right
flank by Captain Campbell, who commanded the Legior
cavalry. The men went swinging through the corn witfc
muskets and sabers and the Indians scampered from theii
cover like so many rabbits.
Everywhere the Indians were running. At the fori
they clamored at the doors, shouting and bewildered
But the doors remained closed and the guns of the Brit-
ish were silent. And by noon General Wayne was enter-
ing into a long argument with the commandant, and all
the warriors that could walk had either disappeared oi
had been taken prisoner.
From somewhere in the vicinity of Fort Miami Si-
mon Girty heard the news of the disaster and trice
furiously to rally the Indians. But it was not to be done
Wayne had come upon them and was prepared to sta)
until they were broken. Fort Defiance gave him strong
protection and he stayed there until about the middle oi
September, maintaining a strict watch for a counter-
attack and meanwhile inviting the braves to attend the
belated council.
It was the end. In England an agreement had beer
made through John Jay between Britain and America
[236]
'HE SHADOW OF ANTHONY WAYNE
/hich tied the hands of the Indian service and required
'anada to give up Detroit. And the Indians themselves,
eaten and disorganized, were forced to follow General
V^ayne down to Fort Greenville where, in the following
ear, they agreed to limit their wanderings to a little
orner in Northwestern Ohio.
Simon watched all this with an inflamed, befuddled
ye. The British were giving up Detroit. He couldn't
nderstand it. It didn't seem right. He was there on
le day the last of them moved out in the face of the
Lmerican troops who were coming to take command.
le watched the people chuck great stones down into
le wells, filling them up so that there would be no
rinking water; smashing the windows of their erst-
''hile houses, locking the doors and throwing away the
eys — but his expression of scorn and undying defiance
ad to be something greater than that, something pic-
aresque and lasting. He sat on his horse near the edge
f the high river bank, watching the American troops
pproaching from the south. Across the river was Mal-
en and he could see his farm and cabin under a row of
•ees that fringed the opposite shore. Still he waited,
nd the Americans came closer. . . . Finally, with a
lout and a curse, Simon dug the rowels into the mare's
anks and sent her forward. She leaped and there was
splash below. But as the waves smoothed out old
237]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
Simon reappeared, still in the saddle and facing away
from the country from which he was banned. After
a while the mare clambered up on the Canadian shore
and Simon headed her towards the cabin.
[238,
The Last Ride from the Tavern
F.
CHAPTER XII
The Last Ride from the Tavern
EW men, no matter what kind of lives they lead,
lurvive their obituaries. But that was the fortune of
5imon Girty. Whether it was because Americans in
general refused to admit that a man could desert the
United States, make war against it, and yet go unpun-
shed (hence the fiction taught school children that Bene-
lict Arnold died in poverty and disgrace), or whether
t was taken for granted that all undesirables were killed
^t the battle of the Thames in the War of 1812, the
■ollowing appeared in the Missouri Gazette for May 7,
1814, when Simon's life had four years still to run:
"Simon [Girty] was adopted by the Senecas, and
Decame as expert a hunter as any of them. His charac-
:er, as related in Kentucky and Ohio, ^of being a savage,
nerciless monster' is much exaggerated. It is true that
le joined the Indians in most of their war parties, and
:onformed to their mode of warfare, but it is well au-
:henticated that he saved many prisoners from death.
He was considered an honest man, paying his debts to
^he last cent 3 and it is known that he sold his only horse
;241]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
to discharge a claim against him. It is true that he was
a perfect Indian in his manners; that his utmost felicity
was centered in a keg of rum; that under its influence he
was abusive to all around him, even to his best friends.
Yet we must recollect that his education was barbarous,
and that mankind are more apt to sink into barbarism
than they are to acquire the habits of civilized life.
"For the last ten years he had been crippled with
rheumatism, yet he rode to his hunting grounds in pur-
suit of game, and would boast that he preserved a war-
like spirit in the midst of bodily pain, and would often
exclaim, 'May I breathe my last on the field of battle.'
In this wish Simon was gratified; for in the battle of
the Moravian towns, on the river Thames, he was cut
to pieces by Colonel Johnson's mounted men. . . ."
When the foregoing (an extract from a sketch of
the Girty brothers) was published, Simon was at the Mo-
hawk village of Burlington Heights in Canada. Age
and a too active life had left him stiff and gnarled, and
when he walked it was to hobble about slowly and uncer-
tainly. At this time he had already made his will, giving
to his son Thomas his eighty-two acre farm in the first
concession in the Maiden township. He was definitely
an old man; his hair had turned white and his skin was
loose and leathery. And at Burlington Heights he was
unhappy.
[242]
THE LAST RIDE
He had gone to Burlington Heights after the Amer-
:an victories about Lake Erie in the War of 1812, had
one to live with the Indians again so as to be far away
I'om the Ohio and Kentucky soldiers who had reached
le Canadian side of the Detroit River. But now it was
ifferent living among the braves and squaws. For in
le old days he had his musket to depend on to supply
is wants. But in these latter times the gun was shaky
i his hands and he tired quickly riding after game,
nd sometimes he would look with quiet envy at the
[d men of the Mohawk family with whom he lived,
or they had their sons and grandsons to provide for
lem and to listen to their sage counsel. But for Simon
lere was nobody.
Thomas, his best loved boy, had died, his heart f ail-
Lg from carrying a wounded British officer from the
sld. Simon would have to make a new will, or else let
le property go whatever way it would. He wasn't sure
)out Catharine, his wife. It had been some years since
le had shared his cabin, but that was his fault, not hers.
1 fact he had practically driven her out, whirling his
^ord blade around his head as he had done and cursing
id threatening to lay the flat of it against her. He
ight not to have done that, but somehow Catharine had
Dt "right cantankerous" of late. She talked so much
)out religion and the after life — of which Simon cared
H3]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
nothing; and she told him it was sinful to drink as he
did. At last she had gone and now he didn't know
whether there was anybody in the cabin or not. . . .
The Americans had burned many of the houses when
they came to Maiden j it would be luck if his own still
stood.
His eyesight was failing. Though his return to
Maiden was not agreeable to contemplate, he knew he
would have to go back. He knew he could not stay on
with the Indians, for he had become a nuisance to them.
Besides, he wanted to see the old farm again, to know
how Ann and Peter Govereau, her husband, were get-
ting along. So he saddled his mare and made the slow
ride back to Maiden.
Afterwards he was glad. For he found the cabin
still unharmed and his son Prideaux living in it. He too
must live there, Prideaux told him. And Peter Gover-
eau kept a tavern at Amherstberg, which was just enough
of a journey to give his old bones exercise. Then pretty
soon Catharine came back 5 she came to cook and care
for him and talk to him about religion.
But when he got weary of Catharine's voice there
was always the tavern at Amherstberg. Peter and Ann
were good to him and rather proud of him. His name
by that time was familiar throughout all the west and
middle west and when strangers came to Amherstberg
[244]
THE LAST RIDE
or a night's lodging Ann took delight in pointing out
; he white-haired, slumped and almost sightless figure
itting before his noggin of rum. She would ask, "Do
^ou know who that is? " "No," the stranger would reply.
\nd then Ann or Peter would answer respectfully,
'Well, that's Simon Girty!'' Whereupon the visitor
vould stare more intently and think, perhaps aloud, "He
lon't look so terrible 5 not for a man who had the name
)f being so great a villain.''
For four years Simon lived amid these surroundings,
kvhich were now and again enlivened by the appearance
Df one of his Indian friends who had stopped in passing
:o talk to him. Or some old veteran would come down
from Maiden, where there was now a British fort, and
dt, toothlessly garrulous.
But all the old people were dropping off. General
Wayne, now, had been dead for more than twenty years.
^ . . And old Tarhe the Crane, they had just buried
him on the Sandusky with the great to-do the Indians
made when they paid the last honors to one of their
chieftains. . . . And down in Kentucky at Locust
Grove, George Rogers Clark, his heart gone wrong from
too much whisky drunk to drown his poverty and the
neglect of which he felt himself the victim, was ready
to die. . . . And old Blue Jacket, they had buried him
at an Ottawa village up the Auglaize. ... As for Lit-
[245]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
tie Turtle, for five years he had been under the grass
that grew about Kekiong-gay.
In the middle of February, 1818, Simon was at-
tacked by illness one day as he returned to his cabin from
the Amherstberg tavern. It was an extraordinarily bit-
ter winter with tremendous drifts of snow. He had
tired himself and had been chilled; when he got home
he went to bed with a fever. That night he was no
better and Catharine came and sat by his side.
The next day was worse and what was left of his
rugged figure seemed to be shriveling up. His legs, as
he would look down the quilt at them, appeared like two
little hickory sticks, they were so thin and unreal to
him. And Catharine began talking of religipn and God
and Jesus Christ. He lay with his face averted, his
cheek against the pillow while he wondered helplessly,
"why did women want to take on like that!"
He had been a sinner. He had killed a heap of
folk. All the marauds he had led against the settle-
ments, all the forts he had stormed, the pitched battles
in which he had struck out so mightily. Could he be
ashamed of them, crawl and grovel, ask repentance now
that they were gone?
It snowed again the next day, and outside the cabin
the wind drove ridges of white, deep, rolling drifts.
The flakes became a blur to him, Catharine's voice grew
[246]
THE LAST RIDE
idistinct and distant, outside the door the creak of heavy
oots tiptoeing was no longer heard. . . .
But two days later the planks of the cabin floor re-
Dunded. Despite the weather, the neighbors were com-
ig from near and far. Catharine, Ann, Prideaux,
arah, Peter, Joseph Munger stood white-faced and
uiet while red-jacketed soldiers from Fort Maiden
larched through the heavy drifts and entered the door,
ly that time Simon was in a coffin, and down the road a
etachment was digging into the frozen ground with
icks and shovels.
Soldiers lifted him up and the procession filed slowly
ut. They walked towards the gate, but there the drifts
^ere so high that the burden could not be carried
Jirough. After a moment a passage was found and
imon was lifted over the fence and down the road. A
ttle later a salute of musketry roared into the biting air.
Ls the smoke cleared away the soldiers marched north-
ward, while the mourners moved back towards the cabin,
imon remained where he was, stationary at last.
247]
Note
NOTE
The bulk of the foregoing material concerning the
fe of Simon Girty had already been gathered by Con-
j1 Willshire Butterfield, who published it in his "His-
Dry of the Girtys"; Robert Clarke & Co., Cincinnati,
890. Other works which have been read in connec-
ion with the writing of the present volume are: A
"Narrative of the Mission of the United Brethren Among
he Delawares and Mohegan Indians, from its com-
lencement in the year 1740, to the close of the Year
'808. By the Rev. John Heckewelder. Philadelphia,
vPCarty and Davis, 1820; The Winning of the West.
]y Theodore Roosevelt. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New
^ork, 1889-995 The Washington-Irvine Correspond-
nce, arranged and annotated by C. W. Butterfield.
Madison, Wisconsin, David Atwood, 1882. The Indian
Claptivity of O. M. Spencer, edited by Milo Milton
}uaife (The Lakeside Classics), R. R. Donnelly &
>ons, Chicago, 1917. The Magazine of American
history. Transactions of the American Philosophical
Society, Philadelphia, Abraham Small, 1819, Vol-
ime 1 . An Account of the History, Manners and Cus-
oms of the Indian Natives who once inhabited Penn-
251]
THE WHITE SAVAGE
sylvania and Neighboring States, by the Rev. John
Heckewelder, Howe's Historical Collections of Ohio,
ColumbuSj 1900. A History of the Mississippi Valley,
by John R. Spears and A. H. Clarke, A. S. Clarke, pub-
lisher. New York, 1903. American State Papers (In-
dian Affairs), Volume One, A History of Defiance
(Ohio) County, Chicago, 1883. A Short Biography
of John Leith, a reprint with illustrative notes by C. W.
Butterfield, Robert Clarke & Co., Cincinnati, 1883.
The History of Detroit and Michigan by Silas Farmer,
Silas Farmer & Co., Detroit, 1884. Notes on the Set-
tlement and Indian Wars of the Western Parts of Vir-
ginia and Pennsylvania from 1763 to 1783, etc., by
Joseph Doddridge, Albany, New York, Joel Munsell,
1 876. Sketches of Western Adventure, by John A. Mc-
Clung, Ells, Claflin & Co., Dayton, O., 1847. Bio-
graphical Sketches, etc., by John McDonald, E. Mor-
gan & Son, Cincinnati, 1838. Frontier Defense on the
Upper Ohio— 1777-78 (Draper Series Vol. Ill), edited
by Reuben Gold Thwaites and Louise Phelps Kellogg,
Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, 1912. The
Westward Movement, by Justin Winsor, Houghton,
Mifflin, 1897. Articles on Americana from the Amer-
ican Historical Record.
[252]
1^
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