100 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO two latter to cross seas to match wits with his Majesty's men and play patriotic poker for the Northwest Territory, backing John Jay of New York, holding all the poker chips that Thomas Paine, Pat Henry, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Daniel Boone, Simon Kenton had wrung away from Indian, Tory and Red Coat, gambling for a future empire in a game where the cards were human lives. Out of such things and by such ways came West Central Ohio. So intricate is the pattern of history that one comes slowly to the conviction that, God willing, he must wait for the library of the Recording Angel and for eternity for time to read, to trace his way down endless aisles of books, reading myriad lives, following innumerable threads, coming to realize at last why eternity is endless, knowing he can never know but is ever drawing nearer to the plan and purpose of all. One sees mysterious urges tugging at the minds of men, savage and civilized Black Hoof, Shawnee by the salt waters on the Florida coast, leading his people like some Indian Moses toward a promised land, gathering, it is said a Cherokee bride at the same time Puckeshinwa had taken to himself a Creek, to breed and bring forth Tecumseh, the Shooting Star of the Shawnees. John Turner, blind with a merciful blindness, leading Mary Girty and her children toward captivity, future odium, tempting one to exclaim "vessels fitted for destruction." So lives are drawn in from all quarters of the compass, from all bloods and divers and diverse blends that in "Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble" the witches may brew hell broth. History is more fascinating than a mystery novel for the explanation is never reached and remains always a mystery. Much in the history of West Central Ohio can never be known as cold, exact history. Rather it awaits the alchemy of the great historical novelist. There is that twilight of legend, tradition, half guessed truths, surmise, conjecture and tangled imaginings HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 101 which distracts the veracious historian and fires the fancy of the novelist. A great historical novelist like Dumas or Scott is generally a better historian than the historians. Unimpeded by dull and insignificant facts, he links in the highlights and his impressionistic embodiment may be nearer the spirit of the times than tomes of history. The great novelist must be a great historian who scorns impeding facts in pursuit of illuminating truth. CHAPTER X RISE OF THE SHAWNEES TO POWER SPEECH OF A DELAWARE CHIEF-FALL OF FORT DUQUESNE-PONTIACS CONSPIRACY- SHAWNEE'S ALLIANCE-BATTLES-TECUMSEH'S BIRTH-CAPTIVES. Not for many a day would West Central Ohio see the pack trains of the English or Pennsylvania traders. How all this came about let the Indian tell. Ackowanothio, a Delaware chief, speaking in 1758: "Brethren the English you wonder at our joining the French . . . get sober and think impartially .... Does not the law of nations permit, or rather command us all, to stand upon our guard, in order to preserve our lives, the lives of our wives and our children, our property and our liberty . . . your nation, always showed an eagerness to settle our lands. We protested . . . without any redress or help. We pitied the poor people . . . indeed some of these were very good people . . . where one of these settled, like pigeons, a thousand more would settle . . . at last we jumped over the Alleghany Hills . . . your covetousness disturbed us again. Who should have thought the Great King Over the Water, should have given away that land to a parcel of covetous gentlemen from Virginia called the Ohio Company, who came and offered to build forts among us, no doubt to make themselves masters of our land, and to make slaves of us." Then the Chief quoted the French: "Children, the King of England has given your lands on Ohio to a company of wicked men in Virginia . . . be on your guard . . . they are as - 103 - 104 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO numerous as Muskeeto's and Nitts in the wood, if they once get a fast hold, it will not be in your power to drive them out again. . . . Brethren, we never liked the French, but . . . the Senecas came with the French . . . and we were obliged to be still . . . by craftiness and presents we were brought over to their side . . . but a great number of us stood neuter. . . . When that great General Braddock landed . . . the French did let us know immediately . . . now the time is come of which I have often told . . . an army to take your lands from you and make slaves of you. You know the Virginians, they all come with him . . . I will fight with you for your land." The French general's words by the assistance of priests had great weight with the Indians on the Ohio, brought the Shawnees over in a body to them, they being wronged in Carolina, and imprisoned and their chief hanged . . . the Shawnees brought over the Delawares, their lands being sold by the Mohocks to the New England people. "Brethren, one thing more sticks in our stomach . . . if when we lived among you, our young men stole a horse, kill'd a hog, . . . we were imprisoned. Now, we have killed, will you heartily forgive us and take no revenge on us." This speech, remarkable when studied in its full context, shows the Indian had a more profound and truthful grasp upon Colonial drifts and ways than American historians have since attained. A summary of Indian comment upon Washington, the Ohio Company coupled with the French report upon the killing of Jumonville would certainly shock complacent American public school opinion. It confirms from the Indian standpoint the rise of the Shawnees into power and leadership among the Ohio Indians, a fact of much significance in West Central Ohio history. The fall of Fort Duquesne in 1758 broke the back of the Indian warfare in the Ohio region and in 1760 Col. Robert Rogers, famous ranger, was sent to the Ohio country to take over the French forts. George Croghan and Andrew Montour again ac- HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 105 companied the expedition. It is noticeable that every movement into Ohio in those days seemed to require Croghan, a testimony to the indespensableness of the man. Rogers did not come into the territory of West Central Ohio but his emissaries took over the French posts on all sides and the transfer to the English was complete. The Shawnees and Delawares about this time heard with rage and fury that their old enemy the Ohio Company was again active in its quest for Ohio lands. This made them willing allies of Pontiac's Conspiracy in 1763. The territory of West Central Ohio was alienated from the English colonies by the famous Quebec act of Oct. 7, 1763, issued by King George by advice of his privy council. It created four new governments, placing West Central Ohio territory in an Indian reservation in which settlement was forbidden. This was done for two reasons, in all probability, to pacify the Indians under Pontiac and prevent the growth of the English colonies to the west. In all the exciting events of Pontiac's Conspiracy, Bradstreet's march to the present Fremont and Bouquet to Coshocton in 1764 there is little mention of the Miamis save that a French trader estimated their warriors at 350. This is a sad decline from the powerful confederacy prior to Pickawillany and the losses of that sortie made by the French do not account for this sudden weakness. There is a tradition that about 1763 the Shawnees with a sudden about face gathered an alliance of Indians favorable to the English cause and threw themselves on the Miamis at the site of Pickawillany and a great battle of the tribes took place resulting in the Miamis falling back to the Maumee and the Shawnees moving onto the Little Miami and Mad River. Aside from the tradition there are substantiating circumstances. Bradstreet encountered the Miamis in 1764 living among the Wyandots and Ottawas around Sandusky Bay where they had not been a few years earlier, and it seems certain that 106 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO Tecumseh was born about 1768 on Mad River, according to his testimony to Duncan McArthur which fixes the presence of the Shawnees so far as their western limits were at that time. The sudden weakness of the Miamis, their shift northward and the advent of the Shawnees into Miami territory all fit into the idea of a sanguinary battle about 1762-3 in or about Pickawillany. Publicity makes fame. One line at the time is worth ten in the future. Every hero must have a press agent or else he becomes no hero, just a nameless unknown. Let a hunter meet a huge grizzly on a mountain ledge and after Herculean efforts, dauntless bravery and sublime fortitude, let him kill his antagonist and fall dying on his dead antagonist, let none find him and he is but food for worms. Let him be found and ink and fluent fancy be handy and he has become food for printing presses, preserved to feed the future's fire. There are battles which by a quirk of fate escapes their meed of glory from posterity, become obscured by some obliterating hand before their dead are cold. There are deeds that leave no record save the bones of the participants. There are deeds that wait a hundred, yes, a thousand years for notice. Such was the Alamance, such was Stamford Bridge which yet awaits some British historian with the passion of the archaeologist for digging in buried burrows of history. Stamford Bridge must wait. Such a battle is that in which the Shawnees whipped the Miamis out of the pleasant land West Central Ohio. The tale hangs on a single thread. From Black Hoof, the Shawnee chief to Col. John Johnston, the Indian agent, from Johnston to Henry Howe. The tale is that the Miamis, Wyandottes, Ottawas with northern tribes loyal to the French fortified the old post at Pickawillany after the expulsion of the English, the Canadian traders and French officers assisting. Against them came Shawnees, Delawares, Munseys, part of the Senecas from Pennsylvania, Chero- HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 107 kees, Catawbas from the south, friends of the English traders. The seige, Black Hoof said, lasted a week. The fort stood. Many of the beseigers fell. The outlying property of the Miamis was burnt. Bullets could be gathered by basketfuls. After a seige the Miamis withdrew to the Maumee. So goes the tale and it fits other facts. The Shawnees ever showed a high capacity for statecraft and were capable of making such an alliance. The inclusion of the southern tribes strengthens the plausibility of the tale, since the Shawnees had blood connections and marriage ties with these southern Indians; with the fall of Duquesne the Ohio Indians along with colonial border became again dependent upon the English traders for supplies. The Shawnees were crafty and adjustable enough to seize an opportunity to expel the weakened Miamis. The alignment of tribes is plausible. It explains facts otherwise hard to explain. It fits a hole in the puzzle of why the Miamis abandoned the Miami rivers. Just when the Shawnees came onto the Miamis cannot be stated exactly. If one is right in assuming a battle about 1763 which expelled the Miamis toward the lakes, that date may mark the approximate time of Shawnee entrance into West Central Ohio. Tecumseh's birth is placed at 1768 and the place pointed out by him to Duncan McArthur as his birthplace was Piqua on Mad River, which would fix the Shawnees in the old Miami town where Gist had parted with Croghan in 1751. At the same time or earlier the main body of the Shawnees had worked up the Scioto from the mouth of that stream for we find them in 1774 firmly planted in the Pickaway plains around Circleville. It is significant that the Shawnees, so inconspicuous in 1750 compared with the Miamis, should be one of the main vertebra of Pontiac's Conspiracy. The fact that they surrendered some 100 or 125 captives speaks for their bloody deeds upon the frontiers at that time. That these captives were the last surrendered and then only upon frantic pleas from the other tribes to spare them 108 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO from Bouquet's vengeance, shows the truculence and indomitable character which the Shawnee was now manifesting and which was to be characteristic to the end under Tecumseh. Who these captives were and how many of them were brought to West Central Ohio cannot be known. Previously, following his capture in 1756, James Girty had spent three years among the Shawnees, it may be that he was among the more western clans of the Miamis, since he later returned there to take a Shawnee wife and live among the Indians. Whether by battle or peaceful penetration, the coming of the Shawnee to West Central Ohio was a vital fact upon the border. Here he was to make his stand, organize confederacy after confederacy against the American, ravage the border, threaten Kentucky, and for twenty years be the forefront of the Indian resistance. No other tribe in American history so long halted the march of conquest or caused the American people so many worries and reverses. With the coming of the Shawnee, West Central Ohio was to become the hive of Indian hate. CHAPTER XI OHIO CONFEDERACY BLACK HOOF-TECUMSEH-CORNSTOCK'S COUNCIL-WILLIAM JOHNSON-GROGAN AND OTHERS-FRONTIER TERRORIZED-EFFECT OF BOSTON TEA PARTY. Under the sagacious leadership of the old Black Hoof and a rising leader of great ability, Keightughqua (a stock of maize) I, e.: Cornstalk, the Shawnees by 1770 dominated the Ohio scene from their central location and ferocity and prowess. At this time their principal towns were: Grenadier Squaw's Town, on Scippo Creek, just north of the mouth of Congo Creek, but on the south side of Scippo Creek. Across the creek a short distance on the north side was Cornstalk's town. These with Piqua on Mad River and scattered village such as the shifting Chillicothe marked the center of Shawnee strength. As yet most of the tribe was on the Scioto rather than on the Miamis. If "As the twig is bent the tree is inclined," it is significant that Tecumseh must have grown up and his impressionable years been filled with continual talk about a great Ohio Indian Confederacy. Tecumseh's later plan to unite all the Indians east of the Mississippi in a league to expel the whites or at least hold back their advance may well have had its birth when his keen ears cocked to catch the words of Puchewinsha, his father, explaining to the tribe at Piqua what had occurred in the many Indian councils of the years 1770-74. Drake in his memoir on Tecumseh says the mother was Methoantaske, a Shawnee of the Turtle clan, whether she be Shawnee or Creek, it devolved upon - 109 - 110- HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO the Indian women to keep the tribal traditions and impart the tribal history to the children, and who had better knowledge than Methoantaske, wife of a chief. The Shawnees and other Ohio tribes had waxed powerful, were angry at the high handedness of the Iroquois which had disposed of the hunting lands south of the Ohio at the Treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1768. Nor did the trip of George Washington down the Ohio in 1770 soothe the Indian suspicion. Croghan, Franklin, Washington and others were busy as bees seeking land grants on the Ohio and the Ohio Indian was neither deaf nor a fool. Sir William Johnson, Indian agent, married into the Mohawks, deft Irish manipulator of Indian jealousies, had his ear to the ground and doubtless through his watchful Iroquois connections could keep close tab on the plotting Shawnees, now boasting they could put a thousand warriors in the field. Evidently the black lands of the Scioto and Miamis had grown other than corn or by growing corn had made possible full wigwams among the Shawnees. Cornstalk gathered his first great council at the Pickaway Plains in the late summer of 1770. By February, 1771, Johnson's spy system enabled him to write the Earl of Hillsborough : "The Great Council is ended . . . the design of the Indians in that quarter is to promote such a union as I apprehend and endeavored with all possible caution to obstruct." At this council the Shawnees kept their ultimate plans under cover but were maneuvering for an alliance with the Southern Indians whom they had lived among a generation previous and also with the Long House the Six Nations for a massed attack upon the English. It was a delicate position the Shawnee diplomats confronted. So recently expelled as fugitives from the south and received condescendingly in the north, they were now seeking the leadership from the Iroquois which was much like the American position in 1898 when it shouldered into world affairs despite the Six Great Powers of Europe. Johnson was responsible for the second great HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 111 council which met again at Pickaway Plains, where the emissary of Johnson, Thomas King, an Iroquois chief, upbraided the Shawnees for going south for alliances and being unmindful of their engagements to the Six Nations. Johnson was playing the Iroquois pride and suspicion together with their old hate for the Southern Indians against the Shawnee plan. With much Indian palaver the Shawnees evaded the accusation with counter ones and betrayed the alliance had already progressed to take in the Illinois Indians and ten other confederate nations. Indian representatives from the far west and far south were present and it was truly an Indian world meet. Agastarax, an Iroquois and Seneca chief, proposed to remove the western door of the Long House to the Pickaway Plains. This menace, disguised as a great honor, brought the Shawnees to send belts of amity to the Six Nations which Agastarax never delivered. No one will ever know all the duplicity and diplomacy of Sir William Johnson among the Indians or among the colonies. Johnson had a great estate, a high position and the beginnings of a great family all at stake. He was astute enough to see the gathering War of Independence; in his old age he was caught between the millstones, his power and fortune was from the king, his leverage was with the Indians, but the future of his family and his landed estate were among the Colonials. More Western history than will ever be written lies buried forever in the skull of Johnson of the Mohawk. He gathered the Six Nations in council in 1771 to turn them against the Shawnees. Johnson's emissary, Thomas King, died in the South where he may have gone to thwart the Shawnees. But the Shawnees, undaunted by the defection of the Iroquois and refusing to bow to ancient prestiges, gathered the third Great Council at the Pickaway Plains in July, 1772. Here they united the Shawnees, Delawares, Wyandots, Ottawas, Miamis, Illinois, and the western tribes in the greatest Indian confederacy 112 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO in history. Cornstalk was recognized as head of the alliance. Both he and his sister, the Grenadier Squaw, were of commanding presence. Cornstalk had such an intellect and personality as one would associate with a plan worthy of the highest statesmanship and patriotic fervor. Again the great council met in 1773 at Pickaway Plains. It is intriguing to see the Shawnees uniting against the Americans at the same time Samuel Adams was bending every effort to unite the Americans against the English. Union was in the air, the union of necessity. Johnson having held the Iroquois aloof, next worked among the Lake Indians and the barriers of white settlements shut off the southern Indians from the Shawnee's confederacy. For that is what it became despite Cornstalk's genius, perhaps cunning old Black Hoof sat behind the scenes and worked through the younger man. Johnson was successful with the lake Indians. Here the old sore of the expulsion of the Miamis may have been rubbed open by the deft hand of Johnson. The Illinois Indians were too far removed by distance and threat of direct injury to be counted upon for actual contingents. The French Canadians urged on the Ohio Indians, the Spaniards goaded the Illinois tribes, the Virginian land hunger invaded the Ohio River territory. The Colonial land companies jockied for charters like modern corporations in Mexico and Central America. The frontier seethed like a caldron. The Colonials raged against the Quebec act which sought to set up an Indian buffer state between them and the West. The American Revolution was about to spill its barrel of blood, the whole western country from Fort Pitt to Saint Louis was a buzzing hornet's nest of Indian, colonial and national jealousies. It only needed a poke to bring forth the stings of death. To make matters worse, Virginia and Pennsylvania were engaged in a quasi-war over the possession of the site of Fort Pitt. HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 113 George Croghan, assistant to Johnson, and dreaming similar dreams of landed proprietorship, had by now recouped losses in the French and Indian war and became front of a great land company. Croghan, either acting on orders from Johnson or seeking to ingratiate himself with the Shawnees gathered some of the Shawnee chiefs at Fort Pitt. Here he held them as quasi-hostages from December, 1773, to April, 1774. Dr. John Connolly, agent of Lord Dunmore but nephew of Croghan, led a party of Virginia militia who fired into the prison of the Shawnee chiefs. Connolly led his men from Croghan's neighborhood. It is a confusing mixture of motives, connections and contradictions in which one gropes blindly. Could a historian ascertain the true inwardness of Johnson, Croghan, Dunmore, Connolly at this time he would clear up a blind spot which bids fair to remain forever a mystery of the American Revolution. It would go a long way to explaining the later defection of Alexander McKee and Simon Girty. The land ambitions of Washington, Dinwiddie and the Lees in Virginia together with like ambitions of Franklin and Croghan in Pennsylvania working at cross purposes, the like attempt of Henderson in Kentucky, managed so far as immigration went by Daniel Boone, together with murder of a number of inoffensive Indians on the Ohio River all goaded the Indians to the point of madness. Dr. John Connolly, claiming authority from the governor of Virginia began issuing inflammatory proclamations. These fell into the hands of surveying parties on the Ohio, one party under George Rogers Clark and another under Michael Cresap, son of an unsavoury character, Col. Thomas Cresap, charter member of the Ohio Company, cheating contractor to Braddock, one of the more than questionable characters who mark the outposts of civilization. Captain Michael does not share in his father's shady reputation. The Cresap-Clark party fired into a canoe of In- 114 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO dians, killing two and later attacked a Shawnee encampment at Capitina Creek, killing several. Cresap and Clark next marched on Logan, the Mingo chief's camp at the mouth of Yellow Creek, but Cresap brought up the impropriety of attacking a hunting camp with women and children in it and the march was abandoned. Two days later, April 30, 1774, Daniel Greathouse having gathered twenty whites at Baker's Bottom, opposite the mouth of Yellow Creek, decoyed Logan's people across the river to Baker's trading post. Here in Baker's store Greathouse and his party murdered the unarmed Indians, women and children included, sparing only the half breed child of John Gibson, whose squaw, Logan's sister, begged piteously for the infant's life, telling its parentage as she was dying. Gibson had been a captive in Pontiac's war and was saved at the stake by a squaw claiming her rights to a hunter. This foul deed, black as the massacre at Gnadenhutten, led to Logan's War, the Mingo chief, long friend of the whites, raided the frontiers, the whites killed Bald Eagle an inoffensive old Delaware chief who wandered about the country visiting among the settlers. Next to be killed was Silver Heels, a favorite chief of the Shawnees, one of the few of his tribe friendly to the whites. These murders were wanton expressions of hatred toward Indians. The whole frontier was terrorized. Settlers fled into the stockades. Daniel Boone and Michael Stoner were sent into Kentucky to bring back James Harrod who had planted the first settlement in Kentucky at Harrodstown. Meanwhile Lord Dunmore sent Major Angus McDonald to attack Cornstalk in June, 1774. Instead of hitting the Scioto towns McDonald marched to Wapatomica on the Muskingum (not to be confused with the later Wapatomica in Logan County). The Shawnees abandoned all settlements of the Muskingum and fell back to the Scioto. HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 115 Even the Iroquois forgot their jealousy and roused to aid the Shawnees. All of Sir William Johnson's powers of persuasion were necessary to hold the Iroquois aloof. Johnson died of his efforts at this peace conference. Whatever divided allegiance or dissimulation had prevailed in the Johnson headquarters passed with his death. His heirs definitely and openly worked henceforth for the British interests in the impending Revolution. George Rogers Clark had served under McDonald and now joined the main expedition which Lord Dunmore was preparing. Clark, Cresap, Simon Girty and Simon Kenton, known then as Simon Butler, and a fugitive from justice, were assigned as scouts along the Ohio. The second Quebec Act had been passed in June, 1774, further inflamed Virginia which was conducting the Indian war wholly on her own resources and without aid from Pennsylvania, her rival and then enemy. The second Quebec act removed all land north of the Ohio from Virginia and sanctioned the Catholic religion and the French civil law in what is now the Northwest Territory. Coming to a community which had long held out the threat of death to any Catholic priest found in the colony, and coupled with the barrier erected to land grabbing, the effect was to break the last tie to England and Washington's loyalty to England could not surmount the affront to his one obsession, the love of land. The Boston Tea Party in December, 1773, had brought about the Boston Port Bill which closed Boston, June 1, 1774. Washington, Jefferson and Patrick Henry in the House of Burgesses, had led the adoption of a resolution of denunciation and Lord Dunmore had dissolved the House of Burgesses and gone west to direct the war against the Indians. Dunmore was a descendant from the Stuart kings of England and a Tory of the Tories. Dunmore rendevouzed his men at Greenaway Court, home of Lord Thomas Fairfax, marched to Redstone fort on Monongahela and thence to Fort Pitt where he was joined by the notorious 116 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO John Connolly with reinforcements. From Pitt, Dunmore went down the Ohio to the mouth of the Hockhocking where he built Fort Gower. Meanwhile Col. Andrew Lewis, a veteran of Forbes' campaign, had assembled the southern wing, pronounced "The most remarkable body of men ever assembled on the frontier." The Scotch are the tallest people in Europe. The Augusta County company stood over six feet to the man. They were experienced bordermen and many of the men who were to afterward win Kings Mountain were with Lewis. They came up out of the back country of Virginia and marched down the Kanawa to Point Pleasant where Lewis had orders to meet Dunmore. Cornstalk followed their moves. The Iroquois held aloof, the Lake Indians were disaffected, the Illinois Indians were not up but the Shawnees, Delawares, Wyandots and Mingoes were at his command. Puckeshinwa had brought in the Shawnees from Piqua on Mad River. Six-year-old Tecumseh must have remembered to his dying day his warrior father marching out of the village never to return. Military ability lies in mastery of tactics and strategy. Strategy picks the point of contact, makes the plans to mass forces at the vital point, marches its columns by clockwork, converges them at the crucial hour. Tactics fights the forces which strategy has assembled on the battlefield. Few leaders are masters of both strategy and tactics. Washington was a far greater strategist than tactician. He handled men rather poorly in the field since he often thought too slowly to make lightning changes in plans gone awry. His exceptions were at Princeton and Monmouth. Napoleon surpassed all his marshals in strategy. Murat, Ney, McDonald, Massena equalled or surpassed Napoleon in tactics. Stonewall Jackson was the almost perfect combination of strategy and tactics. Lee excelled in strategy but was not an extraordinary tactician. Greene was a better strategist than tactician. HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 117 Dan Morgan was unexcelled as a tactician; so was Benedict Arnold. Cornstalk was both a strategist of the first water and one of the best tacticians who ever led Indians to battle. It is a military axiom that superior forces should be whipped in detail before they unite. Dunmore was at the Hockhocking with 1,200 men. Lewis at Point Pleasant with 1,200, Colonel Christian was marching up from the south with an additional 400 men to join Lewis. Cornstalk could muster between 1,000 and 1,200 warriors. The bulk were Shawnees. Randall says they were led by Red Hawk, the Delaware, Scrappathus, the Mingo, Chiywee, the Wyandot, while Shawnees themselves were captained by Cornstalk, his son, Elenipsico, Red Eagle, Blue Jacket, Puchewunsha, Cheeskau, the latter a brother of Tecumseh and Black Hoof. The last must have been over seventy and one doubts his presence on the forced march which followed. CHAPTER XII POINT PLEASANT POSITION OF LEWIS-CORNSTOCK'S FORCED MARCH-THE BATTLE-KILLED AND WOUNDED-EQUIPMENT AND VALOR. At Point Pleasant the Ohio and Great Kanawa form a V. Lewis was camped with a line across the V making it an A inverted. It was a strong position to defend but a perfect bottle if the line across the inverted A was once forced. Lewis was not to blame for the faulty position. He had orders from Dunmore to rendevouz at Point Pleasant and expected to find Dunmore there but found instead that Simon Girty had arrived from Dunmore, left a message in a hollow stump and returned to his lordship. This message ordered Lewis to the mouth of the Hockhocking. Again on October 8 messages came from Dunmore repeating the order. Unable to move at once and naturally irritated, Lewis had dispatched messengers to Dunmore. On October 9, Sunday, Cornstalk made his forced march to strike Lewis. He camped that night in the deep forest now the site of Addison, Gallia County. Lewis's scouts reported not an Indian in fifteen miles. Eighty rafts had been prepared, doubtless far back in the woods for sound travels far on water. That night Cornstalk put his warriors across the Ohio and by morning was ready to move up the contracting sides of the V formed by the rivers. - 119 - 120 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO Dawn—mist on the water—hint of frost in the air—war painted—the sentinel trees await the winter—a thousand tall men prone in one big bed—endless roll of silent water—tides of life that come out of nowhere and move into eternity—a man named Ward asleep, come because he long ago lost a little son to the Shawnees—a white Indian creeping through the morning mist, tomahawk in hand stealing upon his father and his father's people, unknown and unknowing—creeping tragedy and stalking terror. Two men rouse from slumber and go forth to hunt, Joseph Hughey and James Mooney. Two more rise and follow, James Robinson and Valentine Sevier. Two miles out and the hunters blunder on "Four acres of Indians . . . . as close as they could stand by the side of each other." General Lewis took the news, struck his flint and lit his pipe. Men roll out of their blankets. Half a mile out they meet the Indian line, coming slowly, rolling a breastwork before them, a solid mile long front from Ohio to Kanawa. Lewis's brother Charles hits the Indian right and falls at the first fire. Colonel Fleming strikes along the Ohio on the left, takes three balls in his body and his line gives way. General Lewis builds a breastwork along his front. The Indian line comes up to twenty yards. The Virginian knows his rifle, the Indian knows his cover. A thousand men face a thousand men at point blank range. The best the border breeds with its back to the river. There is no escape save by victory. James Ward goes down. In all that medley, murk and orgy of blind murder there is possibility that it comes from his son's rifle. Improbable, yes, but it has happened on the American battlefield (Drake tells of an Iroquois chief fighting for the English, who met his father on the side of the French. The son was about to deal the fatal blow. Withholding his hand he said: "You have once given me life and I now give it to you. Let me meet you no more for I have paid the debt I owe you"). Pucheshiwa falls and six-year-old Tecumseh must look to Cheeshau, his elder HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 121 brother. Cornstalk's voice, clear and clarion, rings above the fray: "Be strong, be strong." The Indians have penetrated the right line of the Virginians. Along the mile and a quarter of swaying, stabbing front, tomahawk and knife and rifle butt replaced the discharged rifles and muskets and made a way for life to speed from the scene. Noon came, a noon whose sun was obscured by the murk of rifle smoke and whose air resounded to maniacal yells of men mad with battle. Noon, the day half done and with a frenzy of energy the Virginians hurled back the Indian front but the Indians with the tenacity of patriots dying devotedly for their land, contested every inch and once the cover became favorable turned and stood steadfast, and now there was "equal weight of action from wing to wing." Man picked man. The lines locked like two tense, strained wrestler. Neither yielded and the sun was sinking behind the Virginia mountains. The steel that was to cut its way through Saratoga, Cowpens and Kings Mountain was being forged but "In what a fire and what a heat" and the backwoodsmen who were to toy with His Majesty's crack troops were now hard put by a lesser number of poorly armed savages, fighting as Indian never fought before or since unless it be in Chief Joseph's time. Iron-souled Andrew Lewis regarded the night anxiously. Cornstalk was handling his warriors as one man bent to his will. Like Harold Stamford Bridge and William the Conqueror at Hastings, though he had heard of neither, he intuitively knew their tactics. Out charges his flanks, his center yields. In pour the whooping Virginians and the fleeing center turns at bay, the Indian flanks pour in their cross fire. Not for nothing had the Shawnees been whipped that way by Bouquet at Bushy Run in 1764. Again and again the Shawnee bear cat drew in the Vir- 122 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO ginian bear hound to rip and claw and tear to tatters. The Virginians are getting whipsawed. Lewis's pipe might be empty but his head was not. He, too, knew a few tactics. He used the most difficult, dangerous one in the military text. He flanked. Crooked Creek comes into the Kanawa above the Point. Its banks are lined with tall weeds and close matted bushes. Stuart, Mathews and Shelby steal along under the cover and descend upon the Indian flank. The cry goes up among the braves that Colonel Christian has come up from the south and they are between two armies. The French at Waterloo, the Federals at Chancellorsville, under similar circumstances gave way. Rout, ruin, panic are in order but the Shawnees this day defy all Indian custom, tactics. They defy fate. Slowly, stubbornly they yield before the flank attack, what they think is a new army. Silently as the shades of advancing night they steal away their comrade's bodies, extricate themselves in turn from the trap of the rivers, bury their dead in the fastness of the forest, and come brokenly to Pickaway Plains. The Virginians were spent-222 were down. More than twenty per cent casualty. Seventy-five killed and 147 wounded. Point Pleasant ranks with Shiloh and Antietam, Chickamauga and the world's bloodiest fields so far as percentages go. In numbers only, not in fierceness does it yield palm to other American battles. The flower of the white and red race had met, grappled all day and at night it was a draw. Let it be said for the Indian that his gun was inferior to the backwood's long rifle and his knowledge of the care of arms was defective. Many of the Indians must have borne old King's and Queen's arms and French muskets, all defective in range and accuracy. The Indian had fought the finest and best armed body of white men to a standstill. So ended the battle of Point Pleasant called by some the "First battle of the American Revolution" a battle which found its echoes as far away as France and Germany where newspaper HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 123 carried accounts and comments. Whether it can be accounted a battle of the Revolution is very questionable. That it had a profound effect upon the course of the coming Revolution is certain. Point Pleasant trained a considerable body of men to military habits and gave many men on the frontier confidence in their own prowess. It crushed the great Ohio Confederacy which otherwise the Johnsons would have hurled at the rear doors of the revolting colonies. It took two years for the Indians to recover from the blow, two years very vital to the success of the Revolution. Dan Morgan and his riflemen would not have been with Washington and Gates if the Ohio Confederacy had been ravaging the frontier and Dan Morgan was a deciding factor at Saratoga, rated by Sir Edward Creasy as the decisive battle of the Revolution and one of the decisive battles of the world. Point Pleasant relieved what otherwise would have been an overwhelming pressure on the Kentucky settlements, in fact without that victory, Boone would scarcely have dared the venture and the West would have gone with Canada at the Treaty of Paris. CHAPTER XIII THE SHAWNEES AND BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION TREATIES-IMPORTANCE OF SHAWNEES-OTHER INDIAN TRIBES-DETROIT THE KEY POINT-VINCENNES EXPEDITION-BOONE'S ACTIVITIES. We pass over the march of Lewis and Dunmore to the Pick-away Plains, the treaty there, Logan's famed speech and all connected therewith; the main consequences to West Central Ohio history coming out of the battle of Point Pleasant and which justify its rather full treatment here are the shift of the Shawnees westward to the Miamis and into West Central Ohio. From 1774 to 1795 the history of West Central Ohio was the history of the Shawnees. From that location they welled rivers of blood that overflowed the frontier. Not alone West Central Ohio but Kentucky and the whole West felt the force of the Shawnees. This people of at most 4,000 souls and generally but a half or third of that number exercised an influence upon American history beyond that of any other community of similar size. So far as United States history goes no Indian tribe, not the Iroquois, the Apache or the Sioux ever approached the Shawnee as a factor in its history. In the most dramatic, the most romantic, daring and fearful years of the history of Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia, Michigan and Indiana the word "Shawnee" is the symbol of all that is awful, and the tomahawk of these savages, the poised sword of Damocles, hovered over every head on the frontier. - 125 - 126 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO From Point Pleasant to the Battle of the Thames, from the Ohio Confederacy to Tecumseh's staging the last great conspiracy of the Red Men, the Shawnee was the central figure of rapine, revenge and resistance. West Central Ohio, due to the Shawnee, became a focal point in American history for forty years. How historians can have for 125 years allowed fortuitous publicity associated with Vincennes and Kaskaskia to blind them to some irrefutable facts is one of the things that appals common sense. In all the invasions, attacks, sieges, raids and forays which crowd Kentucky history from 1775 to 1790, one word arises perpetually: "Shawnee." It is Shawnee chiefs such as Black Fisk and Moluntha who are invariably mentioned, it is to the Shawnee country that Boone and Kenton and all captives of consequence are led. It is ever from the Miami and West Central Ohio country that the menace and threat comes. One searches in vain for any mention of tribes from around Vincennes or Kaskaskia. No chiefs from these regions leave their names in the pages of Kentucky history. You look in vain for a single account of a war party from Vincennes or Kaskaskia regions ravaging Kentucky. None of the three sieges of Boonesborough or the seiges of Harrodstown, Logan's Fort or places like Ruddle's, Martin's or Bryant's Station were by Vincennes or Kaskaskia tribes, all by Shawnees or West Central Ohio Indians. Absolutely overlooking these irrefutable facts historians writing about George Rogers Clark have tramped out a trail of repetition rather than of historical truth. No falsehood is so heard to confute as the one colored by truth. It is true that Clark while besieged by Shawnees at Harrodstown did slip away spies to go to Vincennes and Kaskaskia. From this historians have leaped to the conclusion that Clark intended to carry the war into Africa since the Indian had to be stopped from raiding or else Kentucky was untenable as a habitation for white men. So far the theory is sound. Where it HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 127 slips askew is that the raiding Indians were in the main not from Vincennes and Kaskaskia. A glance at the location of the white settlements with respect to the Vincennes, and Kaskaskia tribes as compared with the habitations of the Western Ohio Indians will show the Ohio Indians almost due north of the Kentucky settlements, with natural river roads leading from one to the other and within a few days' marching distance. The Vincennes and Kaskaskia tribes are too far away to feel the immediate menace of the white invasion, have not the natural river roads since they would come against the current all the way and would have many days more marching to reach the Kentucky settlements. None of the Kaskaskia or Vincennes tribes ever achieved the record for prowess of the Shawnees, Wyandots and Miamis nor do their chiefs figure on the roll of great Indian warriors. Neither Kaskaskia nor Vincennes was the strategic key of the Northwest Territory. This is evidenced by their location and by the important fact that Clark, himself, transferred his headquarters after the capture of Vincennes over to Louisville on the ground that the latter location enabled him to command better the general situation. Kaskaskia is at the far edge of the Northwest Territory and commanded no then road of empire or dominated no tribes active in warfare on the American frontier. These tribes were too far removed to be effective. Vincennes, far up the Wabash, was only strategically located insofar as the road from the lakes to the lower Ohio was concerned and that was not one of moment at the time. It was too far west to block the incursions of the Ohio tribes into Kentucky. Finally and definitely, the Northwest Territory had a key point, whose possession spelled conquest and domination and that point was Detroit. Situated on the straits that connected the lakes, barring the water route from the ocean to the interior, the natural way by which Indian supplies must enter the Northwest 128 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO Territory from the Canadian possessions of the British, Detroit was squarely astride the umbilical cord which fed the blood stream of supplies from England to the Indians. So long as the British held Detroit just so long did the Indian of the Northwest Territory wage war against the United States. Once Detroit passed into American hands the Indian warfare died down and did not revive until Hull's surrender again yielded the strategic point. Clark recognized the key position of Detroit and never ceased to dream of its conquest and further conquest of Canada in consequence. Clark led two abortive attempts against Detroit and Washington organized indirectly several expeditions for that purpose. Detroit was so ringed and barred by warlike tribes, supplied and organized by Girty, Elliott and McKee that its conquest was impossible with the forces and supplies available to Clark. This immediately answers the query why Clark choose to attack Vincennes and Kaskaskia. In the slang of today they were "Easy picking," being the outlying, unsupported forts of the British, lying in territory where the tribes were not particularly warlike as is evidenced by the fact that Indians were not obstacles to Clark in his capture of these posts. Clark did desire to carry the war into Africa but with wise consideration of his means chose to attack at the weakest point, far removed from the real seat of British power. There was something so daring, so dramatic, so flattering to the national pride in these surprising successes that they have caught the eye and fired the imagination of writers. Mainly the importance of Vincennes and Kaskaskia has been created by writers out of their imagination, following the easy path of Clark's letter to Mason and his later Memoir. For many years these two papers comprised practically all that was known of Clark's work in the West. The Memoir ceases at 1779 and HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 129 does not cover the campaigns of 1780, 1781 or 1782, or the still later abortive expedition into Indiana. Virginia was primarily responsible for the Vincennes expedition. It was organized under direction of the Virginia authorities. The later campaigns of 1780-1782 were spontaneously generated by Clark himself out of the necessities of the hour and equipped solely in Kentucky without recourse to Virginia. The unfortunate fact of Benedict Arnold's incursion in Virginia in 1780 so scattered and disarranged the Virginia records that Clark's vouchers for expense did not turn up until 1913 and most of the records of the 1780-1781-1782 campaigns are lost. What survive are excerpts and not the full, completed account such as historians had available for Vincennes. Following the available record and not reasoning over the missing portions has stamped a pattern conception which has been mouthed ever since and one in which Vincennes and Kaskaskia become like the wing of a house still standing when the other wing and center have been burned. To the cursory inspection the part still standing seems the whole edifice and the whole scene is subjected to a distorted perspective in which proportions are lost. Clark wrote his memoir at the request of James Madison at a time when the Virginian claims to the Northwest Territory needed from a Virginian standpoint to be re-emphasized. Clark had passed into his decline at the time of the memoir. There is abundant evidence that a deterioration of spirit had set in. He naturally dwelt upon those phases of his career in which success had been most gratifying and also the memoir was supposed to cover the then lost Mason letter which subsequently turned up. To summarize: the attacks that threatened Kentucky came from the Ohio Indians as is evidenced by Kentucky annals. Detroit, the key position, was too strong to attack at the time. Vincennes and Kaskaskia were isolated outposts. Indian aggressions did not cease after the capture of Vincennes and Kaskaskia but 130 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO increased, therefore their capture was not made with the idea of blocking Indian warfare, or if so, the idea was proved erroneous. Indian warfare did not cease until Detroit was yielded. Clark and Washington both regarded Detroit as the key position. So did the British as witness the tenacious hold of the British on Detroit in defiance of treaty obligations. The Vincennes story has grown by distortion and over emphasis until instead of a part, it usurps the place of the whole. It will be the province of these chapters to in a small way seek to rectify a neglect in which the events of 1780 have suffered overlong and to bring them belatedly upon the scene in what is conceived to be truer proportion. Nothing is so confusing and blurring to a sound historical perspective than to follow one figure or one theme to the exclusion of other parallel happenings. From time to time during the developments of the period 1774 to 1795, the locations and acts of the various characters associated with the unfolding of West Central Ohio will be listed as of the same month so that the inter relations of each upon the other and the unfoldment of the historical drama will be more easily apparent. The Dunmore War gave Clark, Kenton, and Girty their first taste of warfare, threw them together for that mutual appraisement which later counts for much among antagonists or allies. Clark's whole military training consisted of his observations under Dunmore. Crucial events were to draw these main actors together and with the passing of the crisis, they would drift apart going their several ways until Fate gathered the scattered strands together to weave new tapestries. The action of the Shawnees after 1774 in falling back to the Miamis was in harmony with the usual Indian practice of putting a further barrier between themselves and the victorious whites. The wood was a wall and distance a rampart. Where the white man could come once and deliver a crushing blow he could again HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 131 return. The Indian no more than the white man relished the destruction of his scanty store of belongings nor the hazards to his family. To replace his possessions and provide for his children after the destruction of his villages imposed double hardships. While Dunmore had spared the Scioto towns, the Shawnees read the handwriting on the wall and placed another 75 miles of distance between themselves and the whites. As this shift or trek went forward, Girty returned to Pitt where he resumed his position as a handy man in Indian affairs and even obtained a lieutenancy among the American forces in the later Revolution. Boone hastened to lead Henderson's emigrants into Kentucky and had founded Boonesborough by April of 1775. The movements of Clark following Point Pleasant are uncertain save that he was reported on a flying visit to Kentucky in 1775. May 4, 1775, Nicholas Cresswell, a young Englishman, entered in his journal that Clark had joined his party, the latter being enroute to Kentucky. Simon Kenton had preceded Clark a few months, going down the Ohio in the spring of 1775 with a companion named Williams and landing near the present Maysville where in the back country near Washington, Kentucky, they raised the first corn grown in Kentucky by Americans north of the Kentucky River. Daniel Boone had been placed by Dunmore in charge of three frontier stations during the Dunmore War (See Collins, Vol. 2, p. 57). After Point Pleasant Boone went to gather up his emigrant party which had been marking time in the Clinch River bottoms. March 10, 1775, Boone set out to mark for Colonel Henderson that route to Kentucky afterward famed as the Wilderness Trail. April 1, they began to build Boonesborough. Simon Girty, made a lieutenant in the militia at Fort Dunmore for his services in the Dunmore war, had been active in the Pennsylvania-Virginia boundary war (see Butterfield, p. 30). On February 22, 1775, Girty took the oath of allegiance to King 132 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO George required of officers in the militia, and swore to defend the king against "traitorious conspiracies." Lord Dunmore listed Girty at this time as being among those loyal to the king in a communication furnished his government. Contrary to later defamatory accounts Simon Girty was an officer and a man of some consequence in society and not a ruffian, a white savage, scum of the frontier and what not as so often recorded. However, with the news of Lexington, Girty seems to have gone with the patriotic tide despite the efforts of Dr. John Connolly and was sent by the Virginia House of Burgesses as guide and interpreter for James Wood, on a mission to the Ohio tribes to ratify Dunmore's peace treaty. Girty left Pitt in July, 1775, and went to Wyandotte towns in what is Wyandotte County. So in this summer of 1775 one finds Boone building the Wilderness Road and Boonesborough, Kenton going down the Ohio to plant corn north of the Kentucky River, Clark following down the river in May to go to Harrodstown, Girty going in July on the Wyandotte mission. Henry Hamilton was not to come to Detroit until November 9, 1775. The stage was getting set. The actors dressing for their parts. CHAPTER XIV PRE-REVOLUTION MILITARY MOVEMENTS SHAWNEES AND OTHER INDIAN TRIBES-GIRTY AND WOOD'S MISSION-CLARK. West Central Ohio at this time was not wholly occupied by the Shawnees. It is not likely the latter at this time ranged farther north than the height of land which may be assumed as the boundary between them and the Miamis who thus held the Auglaize and likely all of Van Wert, Auglaize, Allen, and part of Mercer counties, while the Wyandottes ranged into Hardin, Marion and Morrow counties. The Shawnees were not alone in their migration away from the white menace. Logan's Mingoes had been routed out of their village near present Columbus in the Dunmore War by a party led by William Crawford and said to be guided by Simon Kenton. Logan about this time must have gone to the headwaters of the Scioto in Hardin County and located near the present Kenton for Simon Kenton found him there three years later during his captivity. The Delawares, the warlike branch of the tribe, began to appear on the upper waters of the Scioto in what is now Delaware County. As a result of Girty and Wood's mission the Ohio tribes gathered at Fort Dunmore (Pittsburgh), in September, 1775. The Shawnees sent nineteen chiefs including Cornstalk and Blue Jacket. Washington, who was appointed as a commissioner for Virginia, had been called to Boston following Bunker Hill. The - 133 - 134 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO Indians here entered into a pledge of peace and friendship with the Americans, a peace very essential to the latter with the Revolution opening. Simon Girty, who had done much to arrange the peace conference, was paid but five shillings a day, although he "Underwent the greatest fatigues, difficulties and dangers" his petition, May, 1777, to the Virginia Executive Council for additional compensation was rejected, and may have been the entering wedge for his later dissatisfaction. Girty and Wood on their return had stopped at Pluggy's Town, the site of the present Delaware, Ohio. At the Pittsburgh conference the Delawares were torn apart. White Eyes leading the American faction and Captain Pipe of the Monseys or Wolf clan, heading the pro-British. The Monseys retired nearer Lake Erie and sent word to the British and Six Nations that they were friendly to their cause. It was these Mingoes who precipitated the next act in the drama of West Central Ohio, Kentucky and the West. George Rogers Clark finding Kentucky settlers hostile to Col. Henderson's land company had gone back to Virginia to block the efforts of the proprietors to becoming the fourteenth colony. Henderson and his associates had sent James Hogg to the Continental Congress with such a petition. The Congress refused because the land grant obtained by Henderson from the Indians was in Virginia territory. The matter was referred to the Virginia delegates and Thomas Jefferson and these in turn sent it to the Virginia convention at Williamsburg. The settlers objected to Henderson's quit rents as smacking of vassalage. George Rogers Clark defeated the Henderson proposal before the Virginia convention. Incidentally Clark had gone to Kentucky as deputy surveyor for the Ohio Company. This land company of the Washton's bobs up perpetually in having much to do with the West. Clark having blocked Henderson either for the Washingtons, or his own political ambitions or from love of the settlers, had HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 135 now to provide for the defense of the territory from which Henderson had been barred. He hurried to Harrodsburg to call a meeting that would cement Kentucky to Virginia. Arrived, he found the settlers had chosen he and Gabriel Jones as delegates instead of deputies to the Virginia Assembly. After a dangerous and arduous trip, Clark arrived and went to Gov. Patrick Henry asking for powder to defend the settlements. The Virginia council sought to make Clark surety for the powder which he refused with the classic remark that a country not worth defending was not worth claiming. At this point the first hint of Western secession came up, Clark threatening to go elsewhere for aid. Clark got the order for the powder. At this time Kentucky was defenceless and the attitude of the Indians threatening and at times warlike. Sporadic Indian raids kept the settlers on tenterhooks. Clark and Jones got the powder at Pittsburgh and with seven men among whom was Clark's cousin, Joe Rogers, a boy of about nineteen. They left Pitt December, 1776. Clark said he felt most of the Indians who came to the Fort Pitt council were spies and only awaiting spring for hostilities. Clark felt sure these hostile Indians knew about the powder and where it was going. This is likely since the frontier swarmed with spies and the loyalty of few was above suspicion. He relates "the most indefatigable labor made our way good. We passed the Indians in the night or by some means or other got ahead of them, for the day before we landed near Limestone, we plainly discovered they were in pursuit of us. We hid our stores in four or five places, at a considerable distance apart, and, running a few miles lower in our vessel, set it adrift and took by land to Harrodstown in order to get a force sufficient and return for our stores." This band of Indians which pursued Clark is said to have been Chief Pluggy's band of Mingoes. At least Chief Pluggy and a pack of about fifty warriors attacked McClellan's Station a day 136 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO or two after Jones was killed and Rogers captured. Pluggy was killed in the attack. Of particular interest to West Central Ohio history is the fact that this fight at McClellan's Station, one of the founders of Lexington, Kentucky, Cincinnati, Ohio and Dayton, Ohio, and ancestor of John H. Patterson, National Cash Register founder, was a leader at McClellan's, having helped build the fort. Patterson, then twenty-two years old, had come from Pittsburgh in October, 1775. driving nine horses and fourteen cattle, the first of either to come to northern Kentucky. They met Simon Kenton and Thomas Williams in their corn clearing, who knew of no other white men about. So by round about ways did the future founders of West Central Ohio school themselves for their supreme achievement. Clark's powder saved the Kentucky settlements for ten days after Clark got the order for the powder, Gov. Henry Hamilton at Detroit received his government's consent to use the tribes against the Americans. The next day after Clark's order came, Howe had sent Cornwallis to flank Washington on Long Island and the disastrous year of 1776 was coming to a focus. That Christmas eve when Washington was marching into Trenton to surprise the Hessians, Clark was tramping behind Kenton toward Harrodstown to save the Kentucky powder, Gabriel Jones was getting ready to go forth the next day to his death, Pluggy was prowling along the trail after Clark and Joe Rogers was spending his last free day. Girty was still at Fort Pitt, where in April, 1776, George Morgan, the new American Indian agent, took charge. One of Morgan's first acts was to appoint Simon Girty interpreter to the Six Nations. Morgan paid him five-eighths of a dollar a day and discharged him in three months for "ill behavior." Girty brought in a bill for extras including a horse he claimed Morgan had taken from him. This was in August. By September Simon Girty was acting as messenger to Carlisle, warning of Indian outrages. HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 137 Butterfield, History of the Girtys, p. 40, says the Shawnees at this period were raiding in Kentucky, and mentions Pluggy's band as raiding on the Ohio, killing without distinction of sex or age. Butterfield and Collins claim him a Mingo. With the presence of Pluggy's band on the Ohio, the pursuit of Clark would seem logical by this band but Joe Rogers was found captive among the Shawnees in 1780 which does not jibe with the supposition that Jones ran into Pluggy's band. The history of the West is full of contradictory scraps of information which do not fit exactly. Writers like Henry Howe and Judge Collins are gold mines of information but they are too prone to take it as it comes without critical analysis, and their work is a maze of scattered fragments which have to be pieced together and often contradict each other. If any one event was necessary to fire the train of Indian hate against the Americans and launch the Shawnees and Ohio Indians on the settlements, it was supplied in the spring of 1777. Cornstalk, keeping true to his treaty of Fort Pitt in 1775, came to warn the commander at Fort Randolph (Point Pleasant), that the Shawnees were planning to unite with the northern and western tribes against the Americans. Cornstalk and Red Hawk were detained. Ellinipsico, son of Cornstalk came to ascertain why he was detained. All three were murdered by the soldiers enraged over the death of a comrade. CHAPTER XV THE CURRENT OF HISTORY LOCAL INFLUENCES-HISTORICAL VIEW POINTS-THE REVOLUTION INDIAN POWER-SHAWNEES AND OTHER TRIBES. It may appear we have gone far afield and emphasized the distant forays of Indians which have no apparent connection with West Central Ohio history. These Indian happenings are mileposts along the way of settlement came into this section. Kentucky may be likened to a lakebed, fed by two streams, the Wilderness Road and the Ohio River. Population flowing in these two streams spread over Central Kentucky, overflowed westward and southward, but also northward, in time. It was the spill to the North which settled West Central Ohio. Kentucky's history up to the point of divergence of the overflow is as much our history as it is Kentucky's. Her early heroes are the early heroes in many instances of West Central Ohio. Moreover the unique position of Western Ohio and the portions of Indiana and Michigan adjacent thereto and the Indian warfare are based on Detroit has not been duly emphasized as a factor bearing upon the development of the whole West. The stream of history, after halting in Kentucky and dwelling upon the events of its settlements, has tended to be written westeringly and the events of West Central Ohio treated as side issues. Whereas in reality there existed a natural North and South cross stream of events between the lakes and the Kentucky region which constitutes a distant and separate historical entity. - 139 - 140 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO The streams of national history do flow west but this cross connection between the. North and Middle streams, passing through Western Ohio is what makes the history of that section dramatic, interesting and important. Historical viewpoints alter with time and location. The past generations ignored the Western phase of the Revolution, the present generation has sought to rectify that error of omission but it remains to yet establish the relative proportions of events west of the mountains. The Revolution had two main fields, the one east of the mountains dominated by Washington, the one west of the mountains, equally dominated by Clark. Each field was sub-divided into three sections. East of the mountains there was the New England campaigns, the campaigns of the Middle States and finally those of the Southern states. West of the mountains there was the almost entirely distinct operations of James Robertson and John Sevier, with the high point of King's Mountain springing up like a beacon to the patriot cause in the East. The other two western sections were, first, the cross thrust between Detroit, the British main base and Eastern Kentucky, second, the later American base at Louisville with its connection with Vincennes, Kaskaskia, Saint Louis and Fort Jefferson on the Mississippi. Between these two later divisions of military operations in the West there has grown up a rivalry of historical partisanship. To date the advantage and emphasis has all been with the Louisville-Vincennes school since it has the initial advantage of Clark's Memoirs covering that field and covering little else. The line of cleavage was developing even during the operations of Clark since Eastern Kentucky accused him of neglecting them to further his own more independent field in the Mississippi section. Another factor that has militated against the development of the proper historical consciousness in West Central Ohio and HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 141 along the Detroit-Cincinnati-Harrodstown line is that Cincinnati the city logically due to have developed such historical findings, early became flooded with a Germanic influence which was utterly alien to the early happenings and had no historical hookup, while Detroit, at the other end, had its historical beginnings tied into the French and British occupations, and was subject to the westward flow of the New England and Canadian emigration. Detroit and the Detroit influence lost in the duel for the West as fought in 1775-1795 and has no particular glory to gather from eulogizing the victory of the Kentucky strains of blood. Left high and dry, historically speaking, West Central Ohio, in fact all Western Ohio and Eastern Indiana have witnessed the Louisville and Chicago and Indianapolis schools of historical writing build up their interpretation unchallenged. West Central Ohio did not hold the entire Indian power of this period, but the effective force brought to bear on American emigration westward if not wholly therein was immediately adjacent thereto or marched to its forays through its territory. Temple Bodley in a life of George Rogers Clark has denied such statements as these, claiming there were ten to twenty times as many Indian warriors north and west of the Shawnees as that tribe mustered and that most of the forays appearing to emanate from the Shawnee territory were forces that marched through rather than out of the section herein called West Central Ohio. Bodley is correct so far as numbers but his statement takes no account of the passivity of the western and northern tribes, a passivity unstirred by contact with the American. These tribes were comparatively poorly armed since they were farthest distant from the traders, they had not been hammered into steel by the long warfare with the Iroquois nor had the intensive training of the French and Indian war, nor had they been so active in Pontiac's conspiracy, nor joined so wholeheartedly in Cornstalk and Logan's war. 142 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO For purposes of strict historical accuracy the Indians who were supplied from Detroit should be acknowledged as abetting, aiding and emulating the Shawnees, Mingoes, Wyandottes, Delawares and Miamis who were in part or wholly within West Central Ohio, and the remainders of whose tribes were immediately adjacent. Bodley in his eager desire to justify Clark's later actions in retiring from Eastern and Central Kentucky to the western portion and basing himself on Louisville, minimizes and belittles the menace to the eastern section, and confuses the period of lessening danger which came after 1782 with the conditions prior to that year. From 1774 to 1782 the menace was greatest to Eastern Kentucky and it was upon this section that the weight and fury of the tribes based on Detroit fell. Bodley's contention that the Kentuckians confused every Indian raid with the Shawnees is sound, but in calling attention to a minor point he overlooks the major one that whether the raids came from Shawnees, or out of Shawnee territory, or through Shawnee territory, they were still raids, forays, invasions, menaces instigated and supplied from Detroit and not from Kaskaskia or Vincennes and that these attacks were none the less real whether they were Shawnee or other Ohio or neighboring to Ohio tribesmen. Justly it cannot be claimed for the Shawnee that he was superior as a warrior to all other Indians. The Wyandotte, man for man, was probably a more steadfast warrior and was certainly more humane due to long contact with missionaries, but the Shawnee, if a trifle inferior to the proud Wyandotte who scorned to flee, was a shade better than the Delaware, the Miami, the Ottawa and Pottawatomie. Moreover, the Shawnee excelled the Wyandotte in statescraft and leadership, in ferocity, intractability, activity and sullen resentfulness. The Shawnee, never numbering quite a thousand warriors, had by the time Louisville was settled rather spent his forces in the HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 143 years 1774 to 1780 and probably never entirely recovered his morale after the thrashing Clark gave him at Piqua in 1780. The Louisville settlers never felt the full power of the Shawnee, the Louisville station being as far out of the Shawnee direct line of thrust as the Harrodstown, Boonesborough, Bryan and Logan stations were removed from the Vincennes and Kaskaskia Indians.  As time went on the line of greatest pressure moved westward but never were the Louisville stations on the Beargrass subjected to such pressure as had preceded them in Central and Eastern Kentucky.  If the Kentucky mothers scared the children with whispers that the Shawnees would get bad children and saw a Shawnee in every Indian, there was a reason and the reason was the incessant warfare which that tribe waged until instead of exterminating the whites it almost exterminated itself.  CHAPTER XVI THE YEAR OF THE THREE BLOODY "7'S" INSTIGATED BY BRITISH-SIEGE OF FT. HENRY-WAR IN KENTUCKY-CLARK'S PLANS-ATTACK ON BOONE'S SALT PARTY. Maddened by the murderous folly of the Americans on the Ohio River side and instigated, urged and supplied by British power at Detroit, the Western and Northwestern Ohio Indians opened 1777, the "year of the three bloody 7s" with swarming bands that ravaged Pennsylvania, Virginia and Kentucky outposts. It was Kentucky which felt the full force of the Indian hate. To enumerate the countless forays, raids on isolated cabins, cutting off of hunters, capturing of flat boats and attacks upon stations would fill a volume. Enough Indians have fallen in Western tales and scenarios to create an Indian army beyond count. Actually the Indian was too adept in warfare to suffer heavy losses. With their capacity for swift travel, living off the country and initiativeness in individual action, a small band of Indians could harass, devil and threaten a whole section, be apparently everywhere at once, be here today, gone tomorrow, reappear when supposedly far away, be always where they were thought not and seldom where they were supposed to be. Ordinarily the Indian raid was of a few days or at worst weeks, but in 1777 there appears something like a planting of an invading Ohio force in Kentucky. With a seethe of hate from Pluggy's town at Delaware, up into the Wyandotte towns on - 145 - 146 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO the Sandusky and with the Shawnees fed by Miami reinforcements from the Maumee and Auglaize, one can rather confidently/ affirm that corn and truck plantings of the squaws that spring were far heavier than usual. The Western Ohio Indian was an agriculturist to a greater extent than he is credited with being. Clark and Wayne destroyed truck and corn patches of thousands of acres. There was bustle in the river bottoms, swinging of hoes, widening of the clearings, droppings of the precious seed while warriors burnished weapons, and were we as broadminded and impartial as Fate, we could quote of the Indian woman as we do of the yeoman's wife after Concord; "And poured, with half suspended breath The lead into the molds of death." Her warrior was going out to fight for the Ohio land, for her, his tribal gods, his children. It was as true of him as of the almost equally barbarian Romans in Horatius's time "How can a man die better Than facing fearful odds, For the altars of his fathers, And the household of his gods And for the tender mother Who dandled him to rest And for the wife who holds His baby at her breast." Give the Ohio Indian his due meed of patriotism, if patriotism be a virtue, he had virtue in plenty. The year 1777 saw the first siege of Fort Henry (Wheeling). Around this siege have grown up so many apocrypal tales and traditions that their garbling illustrates perfectly the unsure ground upon which the historian stands in treating this period when writing paper was an almost unknown commodity west of HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 147 the mountains and the ability and inclination to use same almost as rare. Much of the history of the West at this time has been gathered from old men whose memories are notoriously treacherous. Events of this siege of Fort Henry and the later one in 1782 are so intermingled that differentiation is difficult. One thing has been positively settled by later research. Simon Girty did not lead the Indians as the old settlers tales asservated. Documentary evidence gathered by Butterfield proves that Simon Girty was still at Fort Pitt engaged in the American service. The later evil reputation of the Girty's was reflected back over their earlier career and it was customary to see a Girty in every renegade white man who was with the Indians, and there were quite a number so associated aside from the Girtys. Kentucky was in a state of almost perpetual siege during 1777. There is evidence that the Shawnees early in the year moved into Kentucky and established a central camp in a canebrake fastness (see Collins). So furious and sustained were their attacks that the settlers were forced to abandon all the stations save Boone-borough, Harrodstown and Logan's Fort. Powder became so scarce that Ben Logan, worming his way out of his besieged station, went 200 miles for the little powder he could carry back on his person. Despite Bodley's assertion that these attacks did not come from the Shawnees, Blackfish, the Shawnee chief, told his adopted son, Boone, two years later that it was Blackfish and his party which had made the attacks around Harrodstown which preceded the siege of that town in 1777. It was during this siege by the Shawnees that Clark sent forth his spies to Vincennes and Kaskaskia. At the risk of being repetitious, it should be here pointed out again the primary fallacy of those dealing with Clark's life. The desperate condition of Kentucky which could not exist without access to hunting and farming, the complete penning up of the settlers, the sending of the spies, the later following up of their 148 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO report with the conquest of Vincennes and Kaskaskia are all facts which none can dispute. It is the historical interpretation of these conditions and actions that has gone astray. The conditions called for a counter-irritant and Clark planned to apply it. The question was, where? To hope to march against Detroit and seize the key to lock the door of troubles was insane. If Clark could not defend Kentucky against the Ohio Indians, could not raise the siege of Harrodstown and the other stations, how could he hope with the scanty forces available to march through the Shawnee territory, through the Miamis and Ottawas into Detroit, garrisoned in turn by regulars. That it could not be done is attested by Bowman's defeat at Chillicothe two years later in 1779, by Clark's confession after Piqua in 1780 that he could not march on even with 1,000 men. It is attested by Harmar's defeat in 1790, by St. Clair's defeat in 179__ and by the long drawn out, doubtful and dangerous expedition of Wayne in 1794, when it took an army of several thousand men to achieve this definite result. All that remained for Clark in 1777 was to turn his eyes westward to where he might create a diversion of British forces from Kentucky and draw their efforts into a defense of their outlying possessions in the west which lay exposed and were of so little strength and so surrounded by comparatively unwarlike tribes as to make the attempt at least barely feasible. The fact that Clark did not in his Kaskaskia or Vincennes marches encounter resistance in any shape or form from any Indians, that he fought no Indian battles in this section and that he was concerned with them only as after thoughts and that he could intimidate them proves the character and the little weight of the then Illinois and Western Indiana Indian. The Vincennes and Kaskaskia expedition was a feint to draw aside the Detroit attack and not as has been so falliciously contended to turn aside attacks emanating from Vincennes and Kaskaskia. HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 149 The seiges of Boonesborough, of Harrodstown, Logan's station etc. cannot be described in detail. They are touched upon as indicating the fearsome activities of the Western Ohio, Eastern Indiana and Southern Michigan tribes, roused to fury by American pressure or British goadings. Aside from Blackfish's statements to Boone and the finding of the abandoned camp of 600 Shawnee warriors in the canebrake as evidences that supplement the universally held belief of the Kentuckians as to whence their enemy came, there is also the logic of location, juxta-position, tribal revenge for Cornstalk to bulwark the case for the offensive having come from or through the Ohio Indian territory. The next direct action of the Shawnees was the attack upon. Boone's salt party in February, 1778.