CHAPTER XVII THE SALT MAKERS BOONSBORO ATTACKED-BLACKFISH-BOONE CAPTURED. Blackfish with 102 Shawnees, two French Canadian guides had set out to besiege Boonesborough in February, 1778. Boonesborough was a thorn in the flesh to the Ohio Indians. As Napoleon said of Antwerp, "It is a pistol leveled at the heart of England," so must have felt the Shawnees concerning this stockade in the heart of their hunting grounds. Collins, Vol. 2, p. 528—"On April 4, 1775, only three days after it was begun, the Indians killed one of the whites. On December 24, of the same year, they killed one man and wounded another . incessantly harrassed by flying parties of Indians. On April 15, 1777, a simultaneous attack was made on Boonesborough, Harrodsburg and Logan's Fort . . . On the fourth of July following . . . by about 200 warriors . . . On August 8, 1778 . . . by 500 warriors accompanied by two Canadian officers." Collins, Vol. 2, 446, "The enemy after keeping up the siege for three days, retired. Boonesborough sustained two other sieges this year, 1777. These two quotations for Collins show how fragmentary he is, his second quotation claiming three sieges in 1777, his first names but two. Blackfish and his party, threading the solitudes along the old war trail that led by Blue Licks Crossings, came upon the tracks of a solitary hunter, by his tracks it must have been evident that he favored one leg more than the other. Evidently a lame or a - 151 - 152 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO recently wounded man. One can visualize that band silently surrounding their quary much as grey timber wolves stealing out of the wood upon a wounded buffalo bull. Before them was that mysterious man who had defied them, maintained himself alone in the Dark and Bloody Ground, matched and mocked their woodcraft and for ten years had become a tale and a tradition around their winter fires, to be admired and wondered over. Here before them was their great white foe brought to bay. A warrior after their own heart and a chief whom they could understand. Not a creation of laces and ruffles. Kentucky was theirs again. Here was its brains, heart and soul trapped. None have chronicled the details of that capture. Boone, his leg shattered when Kenton had borne him in during one of the sieges of Boonesborough the spring before, must have felt like the wounded animal who knows it is hopeless to out run the pack in pursuit. It would be worth many a page of trite tales to know what actually happened. One hundred two Shawnees and one white man, and yet Boone rose from the palaver with honorable terms of surrender pledged for himself and his twenty-seven saltmakers whom he had led away from the scanty garrison of Boonesborough January 1, 1778. He must have been glad three had been sent home with salt to the querulous wives, grumbling over the savourless food or to the wise old women who having to contend with pent up men, had perhaps suggested to Boone the making of the salt. Why Blackfish, having captured such a large portion of the garrison so easily did not press on and appearing before Boonesborough, threaten to tomahawk his prisoners unless the gates were opened is a mystery. But in the few accounts extant of the Shawnee chief he appears as a rather, stern, noble, generous minded foe. He had perhaps agreed with Boone to take the salt-makers and let the garrison go. Perhaps the Indians elated with their great capture pined to hurry home and receive the plaudits of the tribe and—other tribes as well. HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 153 Randall and Ryan, usually so voluminous and accurate say George and James Girty are claimed to have been along. Butterfield does not dispute this but in his whereabouts of George at this time places him with Capt. James Willing's U. S. marines, having been commissioned a second lieutenant at Pittsburgh on Feb. 6, 1778, the day preceding his supposed presence at the capture of the saltmakers. James, Butterfield locates at this time as still loyal to the Americans and not seduced from his allegiance by McKee and Simon Girty until later in the year. This capture of the saltmakers is important in West Central Ohio history since it brought Boone into and through Western Ohio and familiarize him with its topography and fitted him to afterward act as guide on Clark and Logan's expeditions. It must be remembered that at this time Western Ohio was terra incognita to all Kentuckians, it being a vague region out of which Indians swarmed. These almost illiterate white adventurers probably knew nothing of Evan's map, nor that of Hutchins made for Bouquet, nor had read Gist's Journal. Probably by word of mouth had come to Boone through converse with traders and perhaps by contact with Thomas Bullitt who had gone to the Miami towns in 1773 some vague knowledge of what kind of country Western Ohio was. Boone was carried up the Little Miami to Chillicothe, now Oldtown, Greene County, three miles north of Xenia. Here Boone was adopted into the family of Blackfish as a son and given the name of Sheltowee or Big Turtle. Few who drive today by the Little Miami or its branch, Massey's Creek vision that wild, barbaric ceremony nor conceive that many of the happenings which give glamour to the names of Boone, Kenton and others associated with Kentucky, actually took place on Ohio soil and that a character like Boone, born in Pennsylvania, settled in North Carolina, pioneering in Kentucky, captive in Ohio, taking part in at least four military expeditions in that state and finally roaming the West far up the Missouri 154 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO and dying finally in Missouri, is, though buried in Kentucky, that Kentucky which allowed him to be dispossessed, in reality not the son of any state but the property of the whole West. Boone's procession as a captive, taken and exhibited through the Ohio tribes while enroute to Detroit must have partaken of the nature of a Roman triumph save that he was the captured and not the conqueror. No doubt the sting was taken away by the Indian consideration for an adopted brother. Hamilton, the "hair buyer" had still enough humanity or cunning policy to offer $500 for Boone which was indignantly refused. The Indian did not sell his brother. Between the lines one reads of Hamilton's designs on the Kentucky settlements through Boone. Indeed Boone's palavering with Hamilton aroused suspicions among the other members of the party and his prestige and the confidence they felt in him was unsettled. Coupled with his surrender without fighting, his influence among the Indians and now the favor and indulgence shown at Detroit, it was enough to make his companions watchful for it was a day of changing allegiances, unsettled positions and Boone had some cause to look coldly on the Continental Congress. It had ousted his employer Henderson and interfered with his own plans and ambitions, if such a simple soul could be thought to have great ambitions. Whether Daniel Boone was particularly loyal to a far distant Congress and vague political ideal cannot be known, but he was undoubtedly loyal to his people in Kentucky and must have been a backwoods diplomat of the first water to have matched wits with Blackfish and Hamilton, retained his trust and greatest of all a partial freedom. Leaving Boone among the Shawnees making salt for them, since the human animal craves that commodity as the deer does the lick, it is time to again locate the other main actors of the period. HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 155 Alexander McKee, Indian agent under Sir William Johnson, had received orders on the very day Boone was captured that he must repair from Pitt to Yorktown, Pennsylvania, to receive further directions from the Continental Board of War. These orders came from General Hand who had heard McKee was preparing to leave the country and join the British. Simon Girty had gone with Gen. Hand in the Squaw campaign of February, 1778, and at the time of the capture of the saltmakers was leading an American detachment against the Monsey Indians on the Mahoning River, also engaged in making salt. CHAPTER XVIII CLARK AND BOONE CLARK'S TRIP EAST-EVENTS IN WESTERN OHIO-MCKEE'S ACTIVITIES-BOONE, KENTON AND OTHERS-CLARK'S EXPEDITION. George Rogers Clark at this time was in Virginia, having gone East in the fall of 1777 to gather men and material for his ambitious attempt against the Western posts of the British seeking with the ardency of a young soul military glory, patriotically longing to extend the domain of the Congress to the Mississippi and justifying his activities to Governor Henry by claiming it would cut off supplies to Detroit and get possession of the two rivers, the Mississippi and the Ohio. December 10, 1777, Clark got to Williamsburg, Virginia. February 1, 1778, got to Redstone Fort, now Brownsville, Pennsylvania. Here he found Pennsylvania and Virginia partisans so warlike toward each other and so indifferent to Kentucky as to kill his main plan to attempt Detroit. Clark had letters from Captain Smith on the Holston promising 200 men and with 150 raised in Virginia he got away late in May, 1778, for Kentucky ostensibly but secretly for Kaskaskia. Meanwhile March had seen happenings. The month that saw Boone threading Western Ohio on the way to Detroit, McKee broke his parole, defied American orders to go to Yorktown, Pennsylvania, and on March 28 he slipped away from Pitt with Mathew Elliott, Simon Girty, one Higgins, Robert Surphlit and two negro slaves of McKee. - 157 - 158 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO Elliott, an Irish trader, had ranged the Ohio country and had been Dunmore's messenger to the Shawnees after Fort Pleasant. Elliott had lost his goods trading among the Indians and had been carried to Detroit and sent by Hamilton as a prisoner to Quebec. Whether that was a plot and Elliott turned over at this period is not known unless the Haldiman papers should reveal the possibility. He was released on parole by the British and came to Pitt. There he became intimate with McKee. The Americans afterwards suspected Elliott brought dispatches to McKee from Quebec. McKee was rated a man of the strictest honor and probity, perhaps because he was a man of means and standing due to his opportunities under the crown. How McKee and Elliott seduced Simon Girty at this time would be intensely interesting if known. Pitt was a hotbed of intrigue between Virginia, Pennsylvania, British secret interests and open American adherence. The same net that tied Clark so long and more or less effectually at Redstone at this very time now completely ensnared Simon Girty. Poor pay, little honor and no prospects on one side. Old associates, an oath of loyalty to the king once given, friendly feeling for the Indians although it had not prevented his warring against them and perhaps most of all glittering prospects coupled with growing irritation, may have swung the pendulum. Again it is a field for the imagination of the historical novelist rather than the historian. One can visualize secret meetings at McKee's, spies watching Clark, cunning manipulation of the feud between Pennsylvania and Virginia over the boundary, the coming of emisaries by night from the Johnsons—but it is all highly probable but not clearly demonstrable. Afterward Simon Girty said "It was a too hasty step." But the die was cast. He had gone to make his name a byword and link himself in infamy with the later treason of Arnold as the top and bottom of black perfidy. Later times are dealing more kindly with both. It was a day of flux, a kaleidoscope of positions. HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 159 Loyalty to America was new born. Loyalty to the king was an old in-born, bred in the bone tradition. The land was honeycombed with divided allegiance and many a name now honored in America as patriotic might have abundant cause to blush were all truths known. McKee, Elliott and Girty were best fitted by training of all men on the border to help Hamilton raise a bountiful crop of hell. But there was to be a difference. McKee and Elliott were business men, men of some means, which meant much among English and Tories. McKee and Elliott were to become captains, Girty was to remain always just an interpreter and emissary. In modern parlance McKee and Elliott got the gravy and Girty did the dirty work. The Grenadier Squaw, sister of Cornstalk and Shawnee woman of consequence told the Americans at Point Pleasant that McKee had hired Indians to carry his wealth to the Shawnee towns and later to take them to Detroit. Meanwhile the three fled to the Ohio Indians striving enroute to Detroit to turn all agains the Americans, claiming Washington was killed, the American defeated, Congress had ceased to exist and that the fugitive American army was coming west to attack the Ohio Indians. May, 1778, Clark is going down the Ohio, McKee and Girty are leaving the Shawnee towns for Detroit, Boone, who left ten of the saltmakers at Detroit, has been taken to near Chillicothe in Ross County to make salt. Back past the Indian saltmakers come 450 warriors surly from a defeat on the Greenbrier (Collins, Vol. 2, p. 656). The saltmakers go along and Boone is satisfied they intend to march against Boonesborough once they are come to the new Chillicothe on the Little Miami. The war party came to what is now Washington in Fayette County and Boone stole away before sunrise, June 16, 1778 on a four-day run from Boonesborough. It was all unknown country until he passed the Ohio. One hundred and sixty miles without 160 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO time for food or rest, a great river to cross, a leg that had been shattered little more than a year before. He was fifty-seven years old. He risked death by the most horrid torture, forfeited ease and security, dared all that might daunt the spirit of man, defied failing nature that Kentucky might endure white and American. Boone ate one meal in four days, not stopping to eat for 120 miles until he came to the three branches of the Flat fork of Johnston's fork of the Licking River in either Felmin or Robertson County, Kentucky. He found Boonesborough defenceless, his wife gone back to Carolina thinking him dead or a traitor. Stephen Hancock, another of the saltmakers, broke away in July, 1778, and brought the news the expedition had been halted by Boone's escape but not abandoned. Simon Kenton, rather harum scarum youth who had not yet rounded into his later form, had been one of the two Kentuckians who had joined Clark to go to Kaskaskia. If Pennsylvania cared little about Kentucky, the Kentuckians cared less about visionary conquests when they were menaced on all sides by real foes. Again it is time to take a particular date and locate the characters. The middle of June, 1778, found Boone stealing out of the present Washington, Fayette County, on his man killing run, Simon Girty, McKee and Elliott coming into Detroit to receive the rewards of their deeds enroute from Pitt, Simon Kenton was joining Clark then encamped on Corn Island, opposite Louisville. Going down the river Clark made a decision of great consequence to the future West Central Ohio territory. He decided against a central location at the mouth of the Kentucky and chose the falls of the Ohio since boats would have to be unloaded there and it was closer to the Western country on which he had designs of conquest. This shift of American strategic location westward was to leave the road open between Eastern Kentucky and Western Ohio from which flowed numerous military activi- HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 161 ties unchecked and unimpeded, which go to the making of history in that region. It was then that Clark made that partial abandonment of Eastern Kentucky which was afterward to raise him enemies in that region and which in the minds of its inhabitants justified the Bowman expedition against Chillicothe on the Little Miami in 1779, an expedition which cost Clark dear since it may well have caused him to loose his only sound chance of taking Detroit, a feat which would have made unnecessary the campaigns of Harmar, St. Clair and Wayne, since the Ohio Indians, unsupplied from British Detroit could scarcely have waged their remarkable warfare of twenty years' duration against the Americans. Clark's Kaskaskie and Vincennes expeditions are outside the compass of this work. They are properly treated elsewhere. The exaggerated idea so exploited by many historians that the capture of Kaskaskia and Vincennes was intended or did result in a stoppage of Indian invasions of Kentucky is given a black eye by what eventuated. The middle of June, 1778, that saw Boone starting his run to Boonesborough had witnessed the government of Pennsylvania demanding McKee, Elliott, Simon and James Girty come and stand trial under charges of treason. The first three were seated that day at a great council called by Hamilton in Detroit in which every Indian chief of consequence in West Central Ohio territory was probably present together with the adjacent tribes and the officials of Detroit participating. Girty got his appointment at interpreter on June 15, 1778, at this council. It was his first appearance in the British councils of that time. Nine days later Clark shot the Falls at Louisville and started for Kaskaskia, Boone was busy on the defences of Boonesborough. Blackfish was probably delaying his invasion while he attended the Detroit council. It was a Godgiven delay for the 162 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO Americans. While the British palavered, Boone worked with might and main. Simon Kenton was too inconsequential at this time to appear in Clark's records and seems to have come back to Kentucky after the capture of Kaskaskia on July 4. Possibly he bore messages, probably he grew tired of inactivity. He was twenty-three years and unripened. At any rate he joined Boone at Boonesborough and that worthy not knowing what had happened at Chillicothe decided on a scout up toward the Little Miami country. Of course, Kenton went along. It was a habit he had. Boone's plan was a small edition of Clark's. He intended to attack an Indian town on Paint Creek. Perhaps he hoped to break up the Indian raid on Boonesborough by scattering them to their homes. It must have been August 1, 1778, when Boone and Kenton with eighteen men encountered a body of thirty warriors enroute to Chillicothe on the Little Miami to join the great invasion. These Boone whipped and somehow learning the Indian march had started, raced them to Boonesborough, passing the Indian army on the sixth day of the march and on the seventh day reached Boonesborough. The next day, August 8, the Indians appeared, 500 strong with Canadian officers skilled in warfare. The capture of Kaskaskia a month earlier had not in the least interfered with this expedition which no doubt grew out of the Detroit council although previously planned by Black-fish and the Shawnees. This was the last great effort of the Shawnees against Boonesborough and the lead collected after the battle was measured by the hundred weight. CHAPTER XIX THE BOWMAN EXPEDITION BOWMAN'S PLANS-SIMON GIRTY ON THE WARPATH-HAMILTON'S CAPTURE-- BOONE UNDER SUSPICION. Much confusion as to where authority resided at this time in Kentucky prevails among readers. Clark was lieutenant colonel of Virginia forces. The civil authority in Kentucky County, then a part of Virginia and embracing all the present state was vested in Colonel John Bowman, lieutenant-governor for the county. Bowman had a brother, Joseph, who was Clark's right hand man and Colonel John had been called into conference and asked himself to support Clark. He has been accused of hamstringing Clark's plans for Detroit. After all his duty was to his stations and he could scarcely vision the success of the mad plans of genius. Bowman finding Simon Kenton available sent the latter with another George Clark and Alexander Montgomery to spy out Chillicothe on the Little Miami with view to attacking it. Bowman evidently held to the idea that the menace to Kentucky resided in Ohio and did not comprehend the strategy of a diversion or rear attack. This was Kenton's first really important mission. Hitherto he had scouted, fought, acted as guide, was rated no doubt a first class fighting man and a veteran woodsman although only twenty-three he had been ranging the country along the Ohio and its tributaries since 1771. But his spirit was still youthful. - 163 - 164 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO Frederick Palmer continually speaks of this period concerning the "Veteran Kenton" and says he was older than Clark. Actually he was more than two years younger, being born in 1755 and was much the boy whereas Clark was much the man. Kenton or Butler as he was called, being a fugitive from justice, due to having as he thought erroneously, killed a rival in love, had one consuming obsession at this time. He could not let Indian horses alone. The Ohio Indian, although originally purely a foot soldier, was beginning to accumulate a stock of horses. He was now finding the conveniences of horses in travelling. Most of these horses were no doubt stolen or the offspring of stolen stock. The settlers turned horses loose in the woods and they grazed afar. Horses were still scarce in Kentucky and Kenton had missed the siege of Boonesborough after the Paint Creek battle because he and Montgomery had remained behind to run off Indian steeds. Having scouted the seventy miles along the Little Miami to Chillicothe, the trio proceeded to run off the Indian horses. They reached the Ohio at the mouth of Eagle Creek, found the river whipped by storm, it being about the autumnal equinox of 1778. The difference between the boy Kenton and the "Veteran" Boone appeared when Kenton sat down to wait for the river to calm so they could force the horses in. The Indian pursuit came up, Montgomery was scalped, Clark escaped and Kenton was captured. Then began a classical adventure which had little historical weight save that it made Kenton, like Boone, familiar with the Western Ohio country and fitted to act as guide for later expeditions. It seasoned him in the salt of torture, and later led him to become one of the founders of Western Ohio. Kenton has been numbered among the Kentucky heroes. Actually he spent sixteen years in Virginia, about four years wandering around the headwaters of the Ohio and along the main HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 165 stream, twenty-four years in Kentucky and thirty-seven years in Ohio, where he died and is buried. His most daring, romantic, and breath-taking deeds occurred in Ohio but have been hooked up with his Kentucky sojourn, since they occurred while he was resident of that state. Some details of his life will be given under a biographical sketch elsewhere in this volume. Col. John Bowman received his report from George Clark, the escaped one of the trio of scouts. Nevertheless, Bowman nursed his plan either for self-glorification or real belief that the enemy was in Ohio and toward Detroit rather than westward. Meanwhile Simon Girty had gone on his first warpath with John Ward, the son of James Ward, killed at Pt. Pleasant, who had grown up among the Shawnees and married a Shawnee girl. Simon and James Girty with Ward must have made a raid into Kentucky in the fall of 1778, for McClung says that Girty and Ward were returning with Mary Kennedy and her seven children when Simon Girty found Simon Kenton, his old blanket mate of the Dunmore war, a blackened, tortured captive in the council house at Wapatomica, Logan County, and there saved Kenton. Diligent search through Kentucky annals yields no mention of the capture of the Kennedys. Hundred of isolated cabins were cut off and nothing but ashes left to tell the tale. These silent witnesses might never have been met by the eye of man. Many a tale of rapine never reached the records. Mary Kennedy and her children appear for one brief instant etched against the sky line on the hill of Wapatomica, then vanish forever into oblivion, with her despairing brood clutching her tattered skirts, clinging for protection. She might stand there in bronze as a symbol of the Woman of the Border on whom the black hand of fate had fallen and over whom it was forever poised in menace. Simon Girty had brought back seven scalps along with his woman captive. It is one thing in his favor that he had brought in the woman and children. He had been assigned to the Senecas 166 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO and Mingoes and James to the Shawnees. He first ranged the tribes in what is now Delaware, Marion, Morrow, Hardin counties and north to the lakes. James had the Miami and Mad River County. October, 1778,, saw Girty part from Kenton at Wapatomica, each to go his way. Governor Henry Hamilton at Detroit was starting out this month to avenge the capture of Vincennes by Clark in August. Major Arent Schuyler De Peyster, New York Tory in command at Michilimackinac, was sending reinforcements to Hamilton. Washington was bending every effort which could be spared from the hard pressed East to send reinforcements to Pitt. One-tenth the abortive effort wasted around Pitt in a prospective straight march upon Detroit would, if given to Clark, have allowed him to take it from the rear, since the martial, well armed tribes lay between Detroit and the Ohio but were not an obstacle in the West where Clark had cowed the less warlike and comparatively unirritated tribes into neutrality. The march of General McIntosh from Pitt to the mouth of the Beaver, where Fort McIntosh was erected and by October 8 headquarters of the army moved, had acted as a diversion of the Northern Ohio Indian forays and to that extent protected Kentucky and Virginia and Pennsylvania. McIntosh had the largest army of Americans gathered in the West during the Revolution. He got as far as the building of Ft. Laurens on the Tuscarawas and Simon Girty was employed in that direction by the British for the following year. Many of the Western Ohio Indians were engaged in these operations around Ft. Laurens and Girty reported in the spring of 1779 that some 600 or 800 of such Indians were assembled for the warpath at Upper Sandusky. Meanwhile Clark had bagged Hamilton at Vincennes. This was in February, 1779. Clark had expected McIntosh to keep Hamilton busy in the East but Hamilton had scorned McIntosh's threat and made for Clark in November, the very month that HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 167 McIntosh had moved out toward Detroit. Since the McIntosh expedition was formidable on paper, Hamilton must have depended upon the martial spirit of the Ohio tribes to hold McIntosh. Hamilton's capture left Detroit weakened. The garrison was but 100 men with few supplies. Hamilton had drained the place for his Vincennes expedition. Captain R. B. Lernoult was now in command. Charles Langlade, that half-breed ranger who had wiped out the Miamis at Pickawillany, had to abandon his reinforcing expedition to Hamilton at Milwaukee. The British rushed work on the fort at Detroit. Clark was asking Virginia and Kentucky for men. The French at Kaskaskia and Vincennes were enthusiastic. Col. John Bowman had promised 300 men. By July 1, 1779, Clark got to Vincennes but word had come that Bowman had struck off straight for the Shawnee towns on the Miamis instead of coming to Vincennes. Bowman had marched earlier. Perhaps he counted on removing the menace to the north before he joined Clark at Vincennes. As early as April, 1779, Bowman had notified the people to plant their corn and rendezvous in May at the mouth of the Licking. Bowman must have taken practically all the available man power of the Kentucky settlements. There had been a continuous trickle of immigration ever since the opening of the Wilderness road but the great rush had not yet started. The muster roles of the militia companies taken at this time and a year later show between 400 and 500 men, but this included considerable immigration of the fall of 1779 and spring of 1780. It shows the difference between the recognized civil authority of the lieutenant governor and his power to call out the militia and that of Clark, the militia lieutenant colonel, who could only ask for volunteers. However, Clark's expeditions were to an unknown goal and Bowman's was definitely known to be against the immediate neighboring enemy. 168 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO For the first time in Kentucky history, neither Boone nor Kenton were to be in the forefront. Kenton, the captive, had come to Detroit in November and winter had healed his wounds. This same warm sun that saw the corn dropped amid the girdled trees of Kentucky saw Kenton again robustly working around the garrison at Detroit, laboring on the fort Captain Henry Bird had rushed along when he heard of the capture of Hamilton. At times Kenton may have worked for the French farmers whose homes lined the Detroit River. Boone was gone to North Carolina seeking his wife. Following the attack on Boonesborough, August 8, 1778, Boone had stood trial on charges concerning his conduct with the saltmakers and during the siege. He had been cajoled into an assinine treaty outside the fort where two Indians were to shake hands with each white man and the Shawnees throwing off the dissimulation had started dragging away this traitor to their baptism. The struggle had jeopardized the fort and, taken together with Boone's hobnobbing with the Indians, his adoption and all, it again raised the suspicion of treason. He was acquitted at the trial but his influence was temporarily obscured. Whether Mrs. Boone had been "hated out" during his captivity by women, who resenting her former supremacy now turned on her with taunts, whether she loathed the land which had taken her oldest son's life enroute and stolen her daughter the first summer and had now taken both her husband and the family's good name, or whether she pined for her old home cannot be known. Women are rarely adventurous. They have the cat-like fondness for particular places and love society and security. There is something intriguing in the second courtship of this elderly couple and it shows the strong conjugal bond between them that Boone travelled the long road to the Yadkin and set himself to win again in old age the woman of his youth. What arguments or rather cajoleries the taciturn man used can but be HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 169 imagined. He was absent about one year and one-half and the task must not have been easy. Perhaps after a long, patient siege, he shouldered his rifle and turned his face westward. Women who will not yield to entreaties will often knuckle to determination and yield in the face of abandonment. Perhaps she remembered that like Ruth she had vowed "Whither thou goest, I will go." At any rate the Boones appeared in Kentucky in the late spring of 1780 but by that time Bowman's expedition was over and a greater storm was breaking. CHAPTER XX BOWMAN AND THE BATTLE OF OLD TOWN BOWMAN'S EXPEDITION-CHILLICOTHE-PLAN OF CAMPAIGN-THE' FINAL FIGHT. The Bowman expedition was the first invasion in force made by the Americans into West Central Ohio. Boone's scouting trip up to Paint Creek had not penetrated the heart of the Indian country but Bowman in aiming at Chillicothe on the Little Miami was striking at what had by now become the Shawnee capital. Chillicothe lay on the second bottom of the Little Miami. Above it rose a range of low hills and beneath the town by a drop of a few feet stretched the swampy bottom of the river, a rattlesnake heaven. Again were present all the factors which spelled location for an Indian town. There was a gigantic spring which gushed a stream as thick as a man's leg; wide stretches of black loam for the squaw's hoe; rivers and creeks full of fish, and it all lay by the war trail which headed down into Kentucky by way of Eagle Creek and ran also northward to Piqua on Mad River, twelve miles away, and thence on to the Mac-a-chack towns at West Liberty and forking in Logan County ran by the east fork to Wapatomica (Zanesfield) on to Logan's town near Kenton and thence to the Wyandotte towns on the Sandusky. By the west fork there were the Shawnee Solomon's town, and on up to the Miami towns around Defiance. Chillicothe thus lay at the bottom of a great Y which hooked together the Indian towns between Kentucky and Detroit. Perhaps the simile of two Y's, one fitted upside down upon the other - 171 - 172 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO with Detroit at the base of the top and inverted Y, would be more exact. In view of what happened to Crawford in his later assault on the east leg of the top Y and to Harmar and St. Clair when they entered by Bowman's door, the expedition of the latter seems foolhardy and lacking in adequate man power. Ben Logan from Logan's Station was second in command, with Major George Bedinger as adjutant. Bedinger had served on Washington's staff and his papers preserved in the Draper manuscript are probably the most reliable account, since he was a trained observer and his duties as adjutant and quartermaster made him familiar with the data of the expedition. Most accounts agree that William Harrod with about sixty men from the Redstone fort on the Monongehela joined the expedition with his party. Harrod and his men had gone to the Falls at Louisville to locate land and it was the temporary sojourn of this party in Kentucky which influenced the attempt. Bowman may have seen that the Monongehela men could be led on a short foray but not on the long trip to Detroit planned by Clark. This reinforcement was partially nullified by Captain Hugh McGary taking thirty men to join Clark at Vincennes. It is all a welter of cross purposes. General James Ray, then a lad, went with Bowman although McGary was his stepfather. McGary was so notoriously insubordinate that he may have marched away from Bowman rather than have preferred Clark. He afterward disobeyed Clark in the Piqua campaign of 1780, defied the allied councils at Blue Licks and scorned Logan's authority in 1786 when he murdered Moluntha. McGary was an exaggerated type of the independent, hot headed frontiersman of whom Andrew Jackson later said "the — will volunteer to fight and then volunteer to go home again." George Clark who had escaped the fate of Kenton and his companion, Montgomery, and William Whitley are said by Ran- HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 173 dall and Ryan to have been guides. Whitley was a brother-in-law of George Clark, the other guide. Whitley deserves more than passing mention. He fought in eighteen battles and died at the Thames, some claiming he killed Tecumseh and others that killing Whitley was Tecumseh's last act, both falling at about the same time in the same melee. Robert Patterson, later of Dayton, was ensign in Captain Todd's company. From depositions of Col. Robert Patterson, Col. William Whitley, Col. Levi Todd, Benj. Berry, James Guthrie, James Sodowsky and twenty-six other soldiers of the expedition taken in 1804, Collins gives the following account (Vol. 2, p. 425) : "The men from the Falls were directed to meet us at the mouth of the Licking with boats to enable us to cross. A certain William Harrod, who this deponent conceives, commanded them at the Falls, harangued the people then there—showing the necessity of the expedition, and that the settlements from the other parts of Kentucky were desirous of having the expedition carried into effect !" "Four companies of militia, Captain Benj. Logan's from Logans, Whitley's and Clark's Stations; Capt. Josiah Harlan's, partly from Harrodsburg, Wilson's and McAfee's stations; Capt. Levi Todd's, from Harrodsburg, Lexington and Bryan's stations, and Capt. John Holder's from Boonesborough, were joined at the mouth of the Licking by about 40 men from Ruddle's and Martin's stations under Lieut. John Haggin, also under Captain Harlan, and by Captain William Harrod's company, about sixty strong from the Falls, with two batteaux. "They chiefly turned out as volunteers but would have been drafted if necessary to obtain force enough. 'We were only entitled to a peck of parched corn apiece' and received some 'public beef' at Lexington. "From Lexington they kept down the west side of the Licking, and 'striking on the headwaters of Bank Lick Creek, encamped 174 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO one night on the same and went down it to the mouth of the Licking.' Maj. George Bedinger was there appointed adjutant. "On the northwest side of the Ohio, the men were formed into three divisions, and placed in marching order by an adjutant in the presence of Colonel Bowman. "The only deposition which speaks of the affair at Chillicothe says 'success in the attack was well known.' They returned down the Little Miami and at its mouth crossed to a bottom opposite in Kentucky, and 'after disposing of the Indian plunder among themselves by way of vendue the men were discharged and dispersed in different directions, as their courses homeward made it expedient." Collins next quotes Samuel Frazee as differing from all other accounts. Frazee's name was enrolled at that of a private in Harrod's company, but by the time of his death in 1849 Frazee had promoted himself to command of one-third of the force. If he had been twenty at the time of the expedition he would have been eighty-nine at his death. His promotion of himself above Harlan, Todd, Holder, Harrod, Whitley, Haggin and Patterson, all old Indian fighters, speaks for itself. "Near what is now Cincinnati 'We struck the trail of the red men and followed it to Old Chillicothe where we found about 500 Indians encamped. Our forces were divided into three companies. Colonel Bowman, Captain Logan and myself took command of forty-five men each. About midnight we attempted to move on three sides of the Indian camp, and were to remain stationary within good gunshot of the Indians until daylight—when we were to make a simultaneous attack upon the camp. Just as we had gotten up within short range, an Indian dog gave the alarm. A tall Indian raised up from the center of their camp, and I shot him down and immediately gave the order for my men to fire. The Indians shot from the cracks of their huts, and after we had fired three rounds I gave word to retreat. I saw that we were fighting at a great disadvantage. We got into and behind HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 175 a few of their poorest huts, while they retained possession of their best houses—from which I saw it was not possible to drive them without a great and reckless loss of life. Bowman has lately been condemned for ordering his men to fire too early and to retreat too soon. Now, if any one was to be censured, it was I, and not Bowman. We lost eight men while the Indians lost probably twenty or thirty. When we retreated we took shelter in a pond (or swamp) the Indians passed on each side of us." This account is included since it is an excellent illustration of the kind of material on which much Western history is based: memories of old men magnifying their own exploits yet preserving a tinge of valuable color. Collins, quoting Butler's Ky., p. 109, "Lieut. James Patton, of the company from Louisville, said that 'spite of the fairest promises, they only burned the town and captured 163 horses and some other spoil—with loss of six or seven men.' " Butler's Ky., p. 110, "Gen. James Ray, of one company from Harrodsburg, thought differently from the current account (as to the inefficiency of Colonel Bowman) and believed the attack failed from the vigorous defense of the Indians which prevented Bowman getting near enough to give Logan the signal agreed upon. He gave full credit to Bowman on this retreat as well as on other occasions." Bradford's Notes on Kentucky (Henry Howe gives it as from Butler's), describes the raid as follows (duplications omitted) : "At the end of the second night got in sight of the town undiscovered. It was determined to await until daylight . . . . before making the attack; but by the imprudence of some of the men, whose curiosity exceeded their judgment, the party was discovered by the Indians before the officers and men had arrived at the several places assigned to them. As soon as the alarm was given a fire commenced on both sides, and was kept up, while the women and children were seen running from cabin to cabin, in the greatest confusion, and collecting in the most central and 176 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO strongest. At clear daylight it was discovered that Bowman's men were from 70 to 100 yards from the cabins in which the Indians had collected, and which they appeared determined to defend. Having no other arms than tomahawks and rifles, it was thought imprudent to attempt to storm strong cabins, well defended by expert warriors. In consequence of the warriors collecting in a few cabins contiguous to each other, the remainder of the town was left unprotected, therefore, while a fire was kept up at the portholes, which engaged the attention of those within, fire was set to thirty or forty cabins, which were consumed and a considerable quantity of property, consisting of kettles and blankets, were taken from these cabins. In searching the woods near the town, 133 horses were collected. "About ten o'clock Bowman and his party commenced their march homeward, after having nine men killed. What loss the Indians sustained was never known, except Blackfish, their principal chief who was wounded through the knee. After receiving the wound, Blackfish proposed to surrender, being confident that his wound was dangerous, and believing that there were among the white people surgeons that could cure him but that none among his own people could do it." Randall and Ryan, Vol. 2, p. 270, declare the expedition was one of cavalry. This may have been so and certainly was partially so. The fact that the expedition negotiated the sixty-seven miles by the second night would indicate as much although the earlier accounts speak only of mounted detachments in the battle rather than the whole force being mounted. It is not easily apparent as to how the Redstone boatmen, sixty or seventy strong, were mounted nor how Kentucky so barren of horses in 1777, should mount every man his horse and lend to the Redstone men in 1779. Equally unaccountable is the fact that the Indians were unapprised of the expedition's marching toward them. The require- HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 177 ments of 500 mouths dependent in June almost solely upon hunting since the truck had not yet matured, would seem to send hunters ranging the wood far and wide. Moreover, how nearly 300 men could lie all night within 200 to 300 feet of Indian cabins without being seen, especially when ranged on three sides, is incomprehensible. Horses neighing, Indian horses in the wood stampeding or showing restlessness, Indian dogs sniffing the strangers, Indian children playing, lovers wandering in the June night, hunters coming in from distant ranging, it all challenges what is assumed concerning the Indian's keen instincts and woodcraft. It is true that the Indian dogs had been devoured during the famine in the spring of 1778 when Boone was captive and he related the Indians were reduced to living on the bark of trees, yet there were some dogs present in the village as is attested and the fifteen months since the famine was sufficient time to import or breed new stocks of canines. CHAPTER XXI BATTLE OF OLD TOWN AND ITS EFFECT PLAN OF BATTLE-THE RETREAT-LITTLE CHILLICOTHE-THE BATTLE-EFFECT. Randall and Ryan give some additional data as follows: "It was planned that Captain Logan with one-half the force should turn to the left and march half way round the town, while Colonel Bowman commanding the remainder should take the right; both columns were thus in silence and darkness, to encircle the town. Logan executed his orders and concealing his men in the high grass awaited the arrival of Bowman. Daylight appeared but Bowman did not. For some unexplained cause the commander-in-chief fell short of his appointment. "The Shawnee warriors, 100 strong, under their chiefs, Black Fish, Black Hoof and Black Beard, rallied to the council house as a fortress, while the two hundred squaws and children were hurried into the woods along a pathway not occupied by the assailants. Logan ordered his men to occupy the deserted huts which they did under fire from the Indian stronghold. The situation determined Logan to move directly to the attack of the cabin, in which the warriors had taken refuge, and ordering his men to advance, he was already marching on the foe, when he was overtaken by an order from Colonel Bowman to retreat. It is supposed this order of retreat was given because a false report was started among the soldiers that Simon Girty and 100 Shawnees from the Indian village of Piqua, twelve miles distant, was marching to the relief of Black Fish. - 179 - 180 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO "There was nothing for Logan to do but obey the orders of his superior, and retreat was directed. It disorganized the soldiers, who, after setting fire to the 30 or more huts as they fled, scattered to the woods, while the Indians sallied forth to give battle.. . . Captains Logan and Harrod succeeded in partially rallying the retreating men and in charging the pursuing savages who boldly returned the enemy's fire until they saw their chief Black Fish fall, mortally wounded, when the savages in turn took to flight. It was (say the Draper mss.) in a well planned charge of Major Bedinger with a party of forty or fifty of the backwoods soldiers (mostly Monongahelians) of the expedition, that Black Fish was mortally wounded; the Indians were seen to hurriedly place their fallen chief upon a horse, and then flee toward their town. It was observed that Black Fish was dressed in a beautiful white shirt richly trimmed with brooches and other silver ornaments; and from white prisoners who subsequently escaped or were liberated, it was ascertained that the brave Shawnee chief expired as he entered the town." "Little Chillicothe was by the most part destroyed by fire and the adjacent crops laid waste. The frontiersmen, having nine men killed and a few wounded, returned to the Ohio with 163 Indian ponies and other plunder, chiefly silver ornaments and clothing amounting in all to the value of $160,000 Continental money, each man getting goods or horses to the amount of about $500 in the same paper valuation. The method of distribution was as follows: The plunder was sold at auction and any soldier of the expedition could bid in the property to the amount of $500. If the bidder bought in excess of that, he paid the difference in money, if less, he was entitled, from the general surplus an amount in money to make good his share." Allowing for the officers to get a larger share than the men, the division of $160,000 into lots of $500 argues more than 160 men as McClung says or 135 as Frazee claimed. It would come nearer the 240 to 300 claimed by Patterson and others as present. HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 181 After telling of the initial dispositions as quoted by Randall and Ryan, McClung says: "Hour after hour stole away but Bowman did not appear. At length daylight appeared. Logan still expecting the arrival of his colonel, ordered his men to conceal themselves in the high grass, and awaited the expected signal to attack. No orders, however, arrived. In the meantime, the men, in shifting about through the grass, alarmed an Indian dog, the only sentinel on duty. He instantly began to bay loudly and advanced in the direction of the man who had attracted his attention. Presently a solitary Indian left his cabin, and walked cautiously towards the party, halting frequently, rising upon tiptoes, and gazing around him. Logan's party lay close, with the hope of taking him, without giving the alarm; but at that instant a gun was fired in an opposite quarter of the town, as was afterwards ascertained by one of Bowman's party, and the Indian, giving one shrill whoop, ran swiftly back to the council house. Concealment was now impossible. Logan's party instantly sprung up from the grass, and rushed upon the village, not doubting for a moment that they would be gallantly supported. As they advanced they perceived Indians of all ages and both sexes running to the great cabin, near the center of the town, where they collected in full force and appeared determined upon an obstinate defence. Logan instantly took possession of the houses which had been deserted, and rapidly advancing from cabin to cabin, at length established his detachment within close rifle shot of the Indian redoubt. "He now listened impatiently for the firing which should have been heard from the opposite extremity of the town, where he supposed Bowman's party to be, but to his astonishment, everything remained quiet in that quarter. In the meantime his own position became critical. The Indians had recovered from their panic, and kept up a close and heavy fire upon the cabins which covered his men. He had pushed his detachment so close to the redoubt that they could neither advance nor retreat without great exposure. The enemy outnumbered him, and gave indica- 182 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO tions of a disposition to turn both flanks of his position and thus endanger his retreat. "Under these circumstances, ignorant of the condition of his commander, and cut off from communication with him, he formed the bold and judicious resolution, to make a movable breastwork of the planks which formed the floor of the cabins, and under cover of it, rush upon the stronghold of the enemy and carry it by main force. Had this gallant determination been carried into effect and had the movement been promptly seconded, as it ought to have been by Bowman, the conflict would have been bloody and the victory decisive. Most probably not an Indian would have escaped and the consternation which such signal vengeance would have spread throughout the Indian tribes, might have repressed their incursions for a considerable time. But before the necessary steps could be taken an order arrived from Bowman with orders 'to retreat.' " “. . . . . Each man selected the time, manner and route of his retreat for himself. Here a solitary Kentuckian would start up from behind a stump, and scud away through the grass, dodging and turning to avoid the balls which whistled around him. There a dozen men would run from a cabin, and scatter in every direction, each anxious to save himself. The Indians, astonished at seeing men rout themselves in this manner, sallied out of their redoubts and pursued the stragglers as sportsmen would cut up a scattered flock of wild geese . . . . All was confusion. Some cursed their colonel. Some reproached other officers; one shouted one thing, one bellowed another; but all seemed agreed that they ought to make the best of their way home without the loss of a moment's time." McClung then describes the retreat and condemns Bowman. Two more accounts are extant and when the reader has waded through them he will have the gist of what is known from the original source. It is exactly from such hodge-podges of conflicting accounts that the historian must sift his version. Bowman's HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 183 expedition is a perfect illustration of the lack of discipline, loose cohesion, divided command, lack of co-ordination of volunteers working in an unknown country and leaving results to be garnered out of the memories of old men; all of which is absolutely typical of Western history and will always make it a fertile field for legend, far fetched stories and contradictory versions. Next to be quoted will be extracts from the Bedinger papers preserved in the Draper manuscripts. Bedinger, being the adjutant, trained under Washington, should be considered the preferable authority. For the sake of brevity broken phrases embodying new material or new sidelights will be quoted only: (see Ohio A. and H. S. publications, Vol. 22, for further account) Bedinger "Started about June 1st . . . . continued about four weeks . . . . not over twenty or twenty-five belonged to Boonesborough . . . . line of march, up valley of Little Miami . . . soon after commencing march, introduced to Bowman, who, having heard that Bedinger had seen service to the eastward, desired him to act as adjutant and quartermaster. During march, and when pursuing trail in Indian file, they passed a rattlesnake by the side of the path unobserved and the man who brought up the rear was bitten by the reptile and sent back to the boats with which a few men were left to guard . . . . no Indians were seen. Eight or ten miles of Indian town . . . . near close of day . . . . a council . . . . troops divided in three parties . . . . Logan . . . . James Harrod . . . . third under Holder. Logan and William Harrod to left of town . . . . (James?) Harrod and Bowman to the right and Holder in front . . . . take their positions as early in the night as they could reach between Logan's and Harrod's commands a space to be left through which the Indians, when roused by Holder's party, to escape; it being deemed the better policy to suffer them first to get out of town, rather than completely surround them and compel them to keep to their cabins or take to their council house . . . . March resumed. . . . early in night when town was 184 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO reached . . . all was quiet until about midnight, when an Indian came running in on trail the troops had pursued. He had evidently when out hunting, discovered . . . . signs of a large army . . . . was on his way to give alarm . . . . neared Holder's party, puffing and blowing . . . . seeming to discover trap into which he was running . . . . ejaculated . . . . Ross shot him . . . . gave a weak confused yell . . . . Jacob Stearns ran up, scalped & tomahawked him . . . . Holder lay close and still . . . . six or seven Indians came out . . . . cautiously . . . . arms recovered and one behind another . . . . Holder's party cocking guns . . . . Indians heard . . . fired and fled. Town aroused . . . . dogs set up great noise . . . . squaws with cries and whimperings heard to say: "Kentucky—Kentucky" . . . . fled in dismay to council house . . . . Holder's men marched into town, killed a few dogs . . . . Monongaheleans set up confused hallooing . . . . "prisoners with Indians had better flee . . . . all in the council house would be killed in the morning." Portions of Logan's and Harrod's men now ran into town, shot interchanged but most busy searching cabins . . . . find scarlet vest and double barreled gun . . . . recognized as Simon Girty's by soldier recently a prisoner among Shawnees. Indians busy cutting portholes in council house. Former prisoners hear Black Fish in very sonorous manner exhorting: "Men and warriors . . . . fight and be strong" . . . . they would subscribe by simultaneous and rapidly spoken guttural affirmative, very much like "ye-aw, ye-aw, ye-aw, ye-aw." Nearly all left and went hunting Indian horses outside the town but a party of fifteen . . . . Bedinger, Jesse Hodges, Thomas and Jack South, one or two of the Proctors had screened themselves behind a large oak log, not over 40 paces from the council house. William Hickman . . . . while peeping round the corner HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 185 of a cabin was shot through the head and died instantly. Had presentiment the night before of death. Log lay a little up from ground but weeds and grass grew beneath it Indians might have killed entire party by . . . . firing under the log. Tom South ventured preliminary peep . . . . Bedinger 'Down with your head' South shot in forehead . .. . Seven of fifteen behind log killed . . . . Nine o'clock Bowman appeared behind hill . . . . 200 yards to right of Bedinger's party and at top of voice "Make your escape." I can bring no one to your assistance" . . . . Indians comprehended Bowman . . . . scattering out of council house . . . . Ralph Morgan behind tree to left fighting on his "own hook." . . . . Negro woman came running to Logan, pretending to have made her escape . . . . represented Girty at Pickaway town with 100 of his Mingoes and would soon arrive . . . . a stratagem . . . . Girty's scarlet vest had been found and he was likely in the council house . . . . but report spread among the troops . . . . Monongaheleans magnified number of 100 to 600. Negro woman disappeared. Bedinger's men reach the men with the horses. Bedinger ordered line of battle just below brow of hill . . . . Only one fourth in line . . . . Bedinger in absence of movement on part of Bowman, had assumed command . . . . mortified at needless consternation of troops, followed the last of the line . . . . found old friend William Oldham who had been with Morgan at Quebec . . . . consulted with Oldham . . . . ordered officers to form companies in single file . . . . Logan, right . . . . Harrod's to the left . . . . Holder's in the center . . . . to form hollow square . . . . some three or four miles gained . . . . forded a creek . . . . shaking in the grass . . . . enemy seen . . . . Holder's company closed front and rear . . . . horses in the hollow square ground . . . . judiciously chosen . . . . a small windfall . . . . a desirable shelter. Now half past ten in forenoon . . . . voice of Black Fish heard . . . . their hearty response and reiterated whoops would make 186 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO the woods resound. Their number small but resort to stratagem and greater activity Black Fish "Be strong and fight . . . . load well and shoot sure" . . . . would feign to kill a Kentuck . . . . irregular contest lasted nine hours . . . . Bedinger went to Bowman." Enemy increasing in numbers . . . . our men sinking with fatigue and hunger . . . . Bowman, disheartened "Do as you please, I don't know what to do." Bedinger "We must rush them on foot with the tomahawk, advance rapidly, dodging as we proceed and in this way we shall avoid the enemy's fire, then with ours reserved, we can dash upon them and force them to retreat" forty or fifty of the boldest followed . . . . Black Fish forty or fifty yards off. Black Fish mortally wounded . . . . Indians fled toward their town. Retreat resumed at dusk . . . . struck Cesar's Creek . . . . mounted Shawnee horses . . . . suffered exceedingly from hunger. The second night, worn down with fatigue and hunger, ventured to take a little repose. Reached Ohio early the ensuing day . . . crossed just above mouth of Little Miami. Henry Hall of Bourbon county furnished some additional information to Draper in 1844. Extracts as follows (see Ohio A. & H. S. Pub. Vol. 22, p. 515). Harrod brought two keel boats and three canoes . . . . thirty-two troops left to take of the boats. Left Licking Friday morning, May 28 and reached Chillicothe Sunday eve, May 27. (Draper points out days and dates not correct and that Hall confused start with date of attack.) Quite foggy at town night of attack . . . . Hutton, seeing an Indian coming into town shot him . . . . Drums beat in town . . . . Indians hollored out proposing to fight whites in the woods . . . . Bowman seemed to accept . . . . men in confusion and did not obey . . . . cabins set on fire with small bags of powder . . . . furnished doubtless by the British . . . . gathered horses . . . . some five or six hundred . . . . a great variety of English goods . . . . while retreat- HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 187 ing Jerry South shot between shoulders, ball passing through body and lodging under skin of his breast . . . . died second day after . . . . John Moredock shot in head (at fight on creek) Thomas Guthrie shot in mouth . . . . Edward Pulger proposed sally from hollow square. Bulger, Hall and three others sallied on horses . . . . all the horses shot . . . . six or seven sallies . . . . last one near dark with flashes of guns distinctly visible . . . . men in great confusion and anger . . . . blaming Bowman for bad management, while bandying complaints, horses strayed off . . . . men nearly starved. Sunday evening men had taken blankets and thrown round them . . . . in these were their small store of provisions . . . . too confused next day to re-possess blankets, thus lost provisions. It is plain that Bowman lost reputation and popularity and the affair was regarded as a dangerous squeak in which luck favored the Kentuckians in the death of Black Fish else the entire party would have been penned up until reinforcements came as was Crawford later and all probably would have perished. Every man is the hero of his own account. Out of the contradictory statements emerge the following agreed upon facts: There was a breakdown in the plan of attack; the arrival of the Indian scout or hunter and his killing aroused the town, the warriors took refuge in the council house, the troops got out of hand and went plundering in many instances and the initial advantage of surprise was lost, all was in confusion and the commanders could not co-operate, due to the fog, the size of the town, to lack of a staff and to lack of discipline among the troops. Part of the town was burned, the Shawnees lost much gear and some of their prisoners escaped. The attack must have shaken the Shawnee morale since it showed they were again situated within striking distance from Kentucky and the war was not henceforth to be one-sided. There is evidence that the accounts of the raid spreading among Indians broke up a war party forming among the Wyandottes, Delawares and Mingoes of Hardin, 188 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO Marion, Delaware and Morrow counties and northward. This was being organized by Capt. Henry Bird and Simon Girty who had been busy in the meantime with the seige of Ft. Laurens in Eastern Ohio. This disposes of the supposition of the Kentuckians that Simon Girty was at Chillicothe. George Girty was still with the Americans on the Mississippi River expedition although very soon to join his brothers. James alone of the Girty family might have been at Chillicothe or Piqua on Mad River. The death of Black Fish in this fight has been disputed by Dr. William Galloway of Greene County, who claimed Black Fish survived and perished years later in a raid on Kentucky. Regardless of minor differences all accounts of the battle by eye witnesses concur in Black Fish's death. From being mentioned frequently prior to the battle, he drops from notice afterwards nor is referred to in future campaigns. The results of Bowman's expedition were indirectly tremendous. From lack of these 300 men, George Rogers Clark abandoned his march on Detroit at a time when the garrison was in such a low state as to be unable to make resistance. The opportunity came once, lasted but a few months and was gone forever so far as Clark was concerned. His plan to march to the rear and around the fighting Ohio tribes by way of the Wabash might well have succeeded. With its failure something went out of Clark. The complete conquest of the Northwest Territory and the possible conquest of Western Canada had slipped from his fingers. Given that great prize, renown, recognition, he would have stood at twenty-nine or thirty as the Napoleon of the West as well as the Hannibal of his time. With fame, youth and ambition, the presidency which came to Andrew Jackson and William Henry Harrison might have gone to Clark. But about this time began that unending battle with whiskey which may have been born of rheumatism found in the Drowned Lands of Vincennes, or born as some would have it of disappointment in love, or far more likely of ambitions frozen in his breast. Clark with red HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 189 hair and black eyes was born to fight and from now on he fought whiskey increasingly and the enemy less. The old magic which essayed and conquered the impossible was gone. There remained but a few flashes of the divine fire, as a burned log bursts into momentary flame when poked one last time. As Napoleon, musing in his study after Trafalgar, suddenly asked "How old was Paul Jones when he died ?" and murmured over the answer, "He did not fulfill his destiny" so history musing over Clark must ever echo: "He did not fulfill his destiny." The little affair at Oldtown had perhaps changed the destiny of a continent, a trifling thing as battles go but a clot of blood in the heart—and all's over. Destiny oft turns on a point so delicate a breath would blow it about. "For want of a nail the shoe was lost" and Bowman's 300 men were the nail needed for the shoe of George Rogers Clark's charger. It is said providence looks after children, fools, drunkards and the United States.—Clark was an ambitious lad! So was Napoleon. Again take the pin point of a date and get the complete picture. The first date to suggest itself is that of the attack on Chillicathe, but it does not click exactly with other current happenings. There has been dispute in some cases and much vagueness in others concerning the exact date of Bowman's attack. It is definitely fixed in the Washington-Crawford correspondence as May 30, 1779. (See Butterfield Hist. of Girty's, p. 96.) However, May 30 fell on Sunday (See Journal of Gen. Dan Smith, O. A. & H. Collections, Vol. 22, p. 515). Now Sunday must have been the night before the main attack, since Henry Hall (Draper mss.) says the men lost their blankets Sunday night while lying on the prairie in the cold, abandoning them for the attack. The main fight must have been the morning of Monday, May 31. Then, by following Bedinger's account (Draper mss.) it is found Bowman rested the second night (June 1) and came the "ensuing day (June 2) and crossed the Ohio." Here a camp was made and the vendue held (June 3 ?). CHAPTER XXII ACTIVITIES DURING THE REVOLUTION KENTON'S ESCAPE-BRITISH STRATEGY-THE PAYOFF-ROGER'S DISASTER-CLARK CHANGES HEADQUARTERS-IMMIGRATION. Taking June 3 as the pin point date, there is the vendue of Bowman's men on the hills opposite Cincinnati; Simon Kenton, Bowman's original spy to Chillicothe, broke away from Detroit that night of June 3, accompanied by Bullitt and Cofer, two of Boone's salt makers (Collins, Vol. 2, p. 447). Kenton, then twenty-four, was fine looking, with a dignified and manly deportment, and a soft, pleasing voice and was wherever he went a favorite among the ladies. He had enlisted the favor and sympathy of a Mrs. Harvey, wife of an Indian trader. She hid arms in her garden and Kenton made his break in the midst of a great gathering of Indians, "Engaged in a great spree." That night he was heading for Kentucky by way of the prairies of the Wabash. By a singular coincidence that same night of June 3 saw George Girty fleeing northward along the Mississippi, seeking refuge among the British. Girty had deserted the Americans under Captain Willing on May 4, and was enroute to the Illinois country where he was to gather five members of the King's Eighth Foot, three American deserters and one of Hamilton's volunteers, all of whom he was to lead into Detroit to join his brothers, arriving August 8, 1779, and thus completing the trio of renegades. - 191 - 192 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO Kenton got into the fort at the Falls (Louisville) in July, the two parties skirting each other in opposite directions. Boone that night of June 3 may have been coaxing his wife in Carolina to return to Kentucky. Clark was heading toward the disappointing rendezvous at Vincennes, where he was vainly to await Bowman, Hamilton was in irons down in Virginia where the prisoners had arrived in May, 1779, the month of Bowman's expedition. Thomas Jefferson had straightway acted and in the words of Hamilton, "at Chesterfield an officer met the party, having a written order under the hand of the governor of the province, Thomas Jefferson, for taking me in irons to Williamsburg. I was accordingly handcuffed, put upon a horse, and, my servant not being suffered to go with me, my valise was fastened behind me . . . . the fatigues of the march heated my blood to a violent degree. I had several large boils on my legs; my handcuffs were too tight . . . . we were conducted to the palace where we remained about half an hour at the governor's door, in wet clothes, weary, hungry and thirsty, but had not even a cup of water offered us. During this time a considerable mob gathered about us which accompanied us to jail. On arrival there we were put into a cell, not ten feet square, where we found five criminals and Mr. Dejean . . . . We had the floor for a bed, the five felons were as happy as rum could make them. The next day . . . our handcuffs taken off and fetters put on in exchange . . . . I was honored with the largest, which weighed eighteen pounds, eight ounces. Simon Girty this June 3, 1779, must have been in Delaware County around Pluggy's town on the upper Scioto (Delaware City) for Butterfield says, p. 97, quoting Capt. Henry Bird under date of June 9, which letter referred to happenings of the past few days, "After much running about and making some presents to the chiefs, we had collected at Mingo town, near two hundred savages, chiefly Shawnees, when lo' a runner arrived with accounts of the Shawnees' towns being attacked by a body from HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 193 Kentucky. News flew that all the towns were to be attacked and our little body separated in an instant, past re-assembling . . . . Girty is flying about." This letter of Bird's throws light on several hitherto unexplainable facts: How it came about that the Shawnees were not in greater force at Chillicothe and why Bowman could escape so easily, also whence came the rumor that Simon Girty was sent for and was coming with Mingo warriors yet did not arrive. Girty was with the Mingo warriors sure enough but they were at Pluggy's town and not at Piqua on Mad River, and hence not within striking distance. Black Fish must have been left with the women and children and a group of hunters while the main strength of the Shawnees had gone northward to attack Fort Laurens. For the British had moved simultaneously against the threat of Clark in the West and MacIntosh in the East and while Hamilton had beseiged and taken Vincennes, Girty and Bird had been besieging Fort Laurens intermittently all spring and summer and the Indians of Morrow, Delaware and Marion counties had been as busy toward the East as the Shawnees toward the South. The British strategy was to use the Indians of West Central Ohio to hold the whites in check on the East and South while the offensive was resumed in the West. Thus it will be seen that the battle for the Northwest Territory turned as on a pivot in and around West Central Ohio. Clark avoiding this hub of Indian strength and the British position turning on the strategic position at Detroit with Kaskaskia, Vincennes, Louisville, Boonesborough, Wheeling and Fort Laurens as the rim where the British wheel ground against the American advance. This same June 3 that saw the Shawnees abandoning a fresh assault on Fort Laurens and flying south to succor their towns, saw another tragedy in the making, one that was to have some after effects upon West Central Ohio history. 194 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO Somewhere along the lonely stretches of the Mississippi that night of June 3 were two keelboats, battling the current, wearily fighting their almost endless way from New Orleans to Pitt, bringing up drygoods, rum, fusees, and a chest of hard specie, all fruits of barter which the Virginians had carried on with the Spaniards. Virginia was after a loan of $600,000 along with blankets and munitions which had been deposited at New Orleans rather than run the British blockade on the East coast and through the good offices of Oliver Pollock all these goods were being wafted by sweat and ceaseless strain up the long weary way of the wilderness rivers, stealing into Virginia by the back door. Col. David Rogers had left Virginia in January, 1778, and now after a year and one-half was returning. Clark was running into difficulties with the Continental currency which had taken a great drop. Even England was hard put to it to subsidize the Indians as lavishly as Bowman's men had found the Shawnees to be. Haldiman at Quebec croaked ceaselessly about the expense. If the Americans were hard put in 1779, the British were demoralized due to the capture of Hamilton, and uncertainty as to the movements of Clark; rumor magnified his forces and put them everywhere. General John Sullivan was harrassing the Iroquois in New York in August, 1779, Brodhead was moving up from Pitt to take the Western end of the Long House in the rear. Detroit was panicky. Reports of the French, Spanish and German alliance with the Americans spread among the Indians. The British spent money like water for presents and food for the women and children but in words of a British officer, "fear acts stronger on them . . . . than the enemy's ill designs against their lands." If a great triangle is drawn from the Iroquois in Central New York down to the mouth of the Great Miami and thence turning at the apex, the other side running northwestward below the HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 195 lower end of Lake Michigan, the British position resembles a a great salient of which the Shawnees on the Miamis hold the apex of the salient, Fort Laurens threatens the eastern flank and Vincennes the western. Within that salient the three Girty's, McKee and Elliott fly to and fro cajoling and buying Indian loyalty. In the West, 1779 sees the American generally on the offensive. Simon Girty maurading and scouting eastward that summer, threatening the Moravian missionaries, spying around Pitt, hunting packets of letters which may have contained treasonable information, was back in West Central Ohio in the fall of 1779. There he joined with his brother George who had been sent among the Shawnees. Just how the British spent money among the Indians can be realized from the following account of this time: "Charles Beaubien furnished goods to Indians at Miami town, 1,683 pounds, eight shillings. "Matthew Elliott in Indian country, forty-seven pounds, six shillings, nine pence. Captain McKee in Indian country, 835 pounds, five shillings, six pence. "George Girty in Indian country, seventy-five pounds, 17 shillings. "George Girty also has a charge: "To salt at Shawnees' towns, four bucks. "To 116 pounds of flour, 14 bucks. "To 1 bag with flour, 2 bucks. To tobacco, 3 bucks." Deer skins passed as money at this time and were valued at about $1 each, hence the term one "Buck" which survives to this day. James Girty had been for a year among the Shawnees, resident at Wapatomica in Logan County. In September, 1779, he was called to Detroit where Lenoult was still greatly excited in the belief that Clark was marching his way. He wanted James 196 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO Girty to stir up the Shawnees to reconnoiter to the tribes in Indiana and arouse them up against Clark. Whether it was this effort that brought disaster to Col. David Rogers and his keelboat party is uncertain. It seems to coincide for Rogers got to Four Mile Bar about opposite the mouth of the Little Miami on October 4, 1779. Clark had given him an escort when he passed the Falls and entrusted important Virginian dispatches to the convoy. Rogers had seventy men including Captain Robert Benham, later a noted settler of the Miami valley, resident in Warren County and active in founding Dayton, also the man who attempted the earliest laying out of a town in Clark County at the forks of Mad River. Rogers discovered the presence of Indians and attempted to surprise them. Rogers had seen (Collins, Vol. 2, p. 115) canoes and rafts laden with Indians shooting out of the mouth of the Little Miami, then very high, probably filled with autumnal freshets. The Roger's party stole along the Kentucky side of the bar to attack the savages when they landed. He was suddenly assailed on all sides, the Indians pouring in a close fire with rifles and then charging with tomahawks. "The panic was complete, the slaughter prodigious." Rogers and forty-five of his men fell at the onset. Five men with the boats fled with one and the enemy seized the other. The rest broke through the Indian line and fled to Harrodsburg. The Indians seized the dispatches and goods, the latter sorely needed by the Americans. Simon Girty, George Girty and Matthew Elliott led this attack which included about 100 Shawnees, Mingoes, Wyandottes and a few Delawares. The loss of Clark's dispatches was important for it served to let the British know of his condition and plans. Clark's memoir ends with this attack upon Rogers in October, 1779, a fact which has had a tremendous effect upon the writing of Western history. The memoir contains nothing about the HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 197 campaign of 1780 or the after events of Clark's life. It has been used by historians so copiously that it has given a distortion to the history of the West, especially has West Central Ohio suffered in consequence, since the later events of Clark's life transpiring in this section are not covered in the memoir and have been almost wholly ignored and until the last few years it was assumed that Vincennes and Kaskaskia represented practically all of Clark's major performances. Just why Clark should have stopped at 1779 is explainable. He was reporting to Mason of Virginia at that time an account of what had happened to date. This early letter was lost for a long time and in the meanwhile James Madison, his boyhood friend, asked Clark to prepare another report covering the contents of the Mason letter. Clark did this in what is called his memoir. As it was a resume of the Mason letter it stopped with the account of the events of 1779. Clark had abandoned Vincennes as headquarters and repaired to the Falls August 20, 1779. This and his attempt to take Detroit disposes of all arguments which conceived Vincennes as the key of the Northwest Territory. Vincennes will ever remain the pinnacle of personal daring, high resolve, defiance of hardship, triumph of personality and sensational turning of the tables, in the annals of the West. It is for its power to kindle the imagination and fire the heart rather than from military or strategic importance that Vincennes is pre-eminent. It has the fascination of Xenophen's March of the Ten Thousand, or Hannibal's passage of the Alps—but the war in the West went on. Clark attempted since his money was so depreciated to gather in great supplies of meat for the winter, he records as one of the last things in his memoir: "We set out on a plan of laying up this fall great quantities of jerked meats for the ensuing season, but as Detroit has pretty well recovered itself, the Shawnees, Delawares and other prominent Indian tribes were so exceedingly 198 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO troublesome that our hunters had no success." He records in his letter to Mason that the Ohio was so low, the smallest canoes could not navigate it. This one line seems to tell of the whole Ohio valley having a drought in the summer of 1779 such as has never since been equalled. Immigration has poured in. Settlers began to spread out along the valley of the Bear Grass, the little stream that empties in the Ohio near the Falls. Clark's promonition came true. After the drought and as we must suppose, great heat, the Hard Winter fell upon the land. What it was in West Central Ohio can only be surmised from what prevailed in Kentucky where the annalists record that the Ohio froze from source to mouth, the streams interior froze solid, waters crept along the tops of the ice, congealing as they came; glaciers of ice marked each streamlet. The buffalo, deer and game froze in the woods, trees burst asunder with frozen sap, the wild turkey froze on the roost and fell like balls of ice. Corn leaped to more than $200 the bushel, a johnny cake was divided into twelve equal parts twice each day. People fell sick from eating the dead buffalo, so nauseous was the stringy starved sinews of the frozen game. Three solid months of winter and the end came late in February with heavy rains. 1780 was at hand. The year which was to decide once and for all whether the Northwest Territory would be British and the United States a seaboard fringe like modern Chile or become the great continental power. If it be thought too much stress is laid upon these times to the exclusion of other and later periods, let it be said this was the crucial period not only for West Central Ohio but for all the territory, the spokes and rim of the great wheel which turned upon Detroit. Regions are like men, they are effected both by what goes on within themselves and what goes on outside themselves. Clark had taken Vincennes, Hamilton had taken it back, Clark had re-captured it and threatened Detroit. Now it was the turn of the British. CHAPTER XXIII CAMPAIGN OF 1780 HARDSHIPS-BRITISH PLANS-CLARK'S ACTIVITIES-THE CAMPAIGN-RESULTS. All winter Clark had been bound in the iron grip of winter. Poverty, famine, cold, disease, like wolves, howled on the doorsteps of his people. The British, warm in barracks, fed, flush with money, full of arrogant pride, planned all winter to redeem their prestige. West Central Ohio was to see the end of this decisive campaign. Bowman had nullified the fruits of Vincennes in this same West Central Ohio and now the last casting of the dice in the decisive game was to fall where Bowman had cast the year before and lost. The strategy of the British was simple. Whether it was formulated by Hamilton at Detroit, or by Haldimand at Quebec, or by the far distant council in London matters not. A glance at the map makes the situation clearly apparent. Thirteen colonies were strung out along a seaboard blockaded on the East by an overwhelming sea power. Back of them on the West ranged an Indian country filled with 10,000 to 20,000 warriors. The cream of the Continental forces came from the border. This was true for many reasons. The border men were trained in the use of the rifle, they had their own arms, they were inured to hardship and had military experience. Moreover they were overwhelmingly of those bloods which had been oppressed by England. They were Scotch who had been hunted out after Gulloden, - 199 -