200 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO starved out of North Ireland, Irish rebels, German Palatinates owing no allegiance to England, English adherents of Monmouth, indenture servants, impressed men, lawless spirits fugitive from justice, debtors who groaned under debts, all the discontented, poor, restless, adventurous ones, the bitter failures and the ambitious ones denied opportunity in the old settlements. Such they were, or such their fathers had been. In the older seaboard settlements were sleek, prosperous Tories, office holders, men dependent for special privileges on the crown. So the flower of the Continental army came from the back country. Where they fought, victory followed; Saratoga, Bennington, Cowpens, King's Mountain, the triumphs of the mountain men almost completes the American roll of victory in the Revolution. Only on the sea or with the mountain men could we overmatch the British, the rest is a sorry story save when the solid weight of Washington could sit down before a town which could not move fast enough to elude him, such as Boston and Yorktown or Trenton. With this situation the British strategy was simple. With the sea power they could concentrate on the East wherever desired. With the Indian power in the West they could threaten, harass and ravage the sources of the American strength. The colonies were exposed front and rear. Throw the savages over the mountains and Morgan's men, the men who could shoot the seeds out of an apple, "The finest light infantry in the world," as Burgoyne's officer dubbed them, would go home and many more like them. No discipline could hold them with the tomahawk over the heads of their children, their cabins in flames, their wives ravished. Like a great salient from the Western wall of the mountains projected Kentucky, cutting athwart the Indian power, severing the Northern Indian from the Southern one, buttressing the back door of the colonies, guarding the rear door of the Revolution, HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 201 keeping the Indian busy at home, bearing the brunt of savage onslaught, holding the bridge like Horatius and the passes of the mountains as did the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae. Pinch off that salient and the British could crush in the rear of the American resistance. With no newspapers, men too busy fighting to write, most of them too illiterate to even read, a fighting stock not versed in schools nor with access to publicity, it has taken a century for the story to dig a hand out of the grave of oblivion and wave it to attract notice from the purse proud, arrogant, self sufficient, self centered, complacent East. Clark opened 1780 with the final flush of his expiring genius. He had powers from Jefferson to attempt the capture of Detroit, or to attack the Shawnees, or build a fort on the Mississippi at the mouth of the Ohio. Kentucky was torn wide open by the land rush. The earlier settlers who had borne the brunt and opened the way were being submerged by a rush of bounty land grabbers. The Eastern Kentuckians subjected to the hounding of the Ohio Indians, wanted Clark to attack the Shawnees. Clark retorted that if they gave 1,000 men and five months' provisions he would take Detroit and their troubles would be over. But the Kentuckians were sour and shortsighted. Sour at rich men dispossessing them from their land, sour at taxes, saying "Let the great men, whom the land belongs to, defend it." Nor could they who were illiterate at most, be expected to grasp military strategy. Many of the new immigrants were not loyal to Virginia. They wanted a new state and said Virginia was too far away for good government. Clark lost friends when he suppressed this incipient rebellion. He must have felt that Eastern and Central Kentucky were strong enough to hold their own but that the future of expanding empire called for a grasp on the Mississippi and the lower Ohio. April 14, 1780, Clark set out from Louisville to build Fort Jefferson on the Mississippi, five miles below the mouth of the Ohio. 202 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO Meanwhile the British struck. Their great plan of conquest embraced four attacks to clear the way for complete possession of the West. Charles Langlade, half breed conqueror of Pickawillany, was to come down the Illinois River. Another column was to come by way of the Wabash and watch Vincennes and the French posts. De Peyster who had come to Detroit to succeed Lernoult in the fall of 1779, spent 84,036 pounds on the Indians and organized the main attack at Detroit under Colonel Henry Bird. Evidently the plan was to threaten Clark in the West and while he was drawn that way to descend into Kentucky and capture the stockades with cannon or else hold Clark at the Falls while the other British columns did their work of conquest. General John Campbell was ordered up the Mississippi to crush the Spaniards who had joined with France in war on England. Meanwhile immigration started with a rush into Kentucky, the Shawnees and Delawares were reported by De Peyster, May 17, 1780, as "Daily bringing in scalps and prisoners.' The Kentuckians appealed piteously to Clark not to desert them as a "Scattered, Divided and Defenceless People who have no other Probable source of defence but through your means." But the Spaniards bottled Campbell and his Maryland and Pennsylvania Tories and British regulars up in Pensacola, and ultimately captured it. Lieut.-Gov. Patrick Sinclair of Michilimackinac sought to bring in the Sioux and launched a new attack from the upper Mississippi under Emanuel Hesse, a trader. Hesse had 950 Ottowa, Menomonee, Sauk, Fox and Winnebago Indians. These attacked the Spaniards in Saint Louis. Clark rushed from Fort Jefferson to the Illinois country where an attack was developing against Cahokia. Both assaults, that at Cahokia and St. Louis, were repulsed and Clark struck back at the Indians with a raid as far as Peoria and Rock River. This was in May, 1780. Meanwhile the main assault was under way led by Bird. His force has been variously estimated. It in- HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 203 cluded Canadian rangers, and probably regular troops to the number of 150 while he gathered enroute Indians estimated from 600 to 1,000. He had two cannon, the first to take the open field in Western Ohio. His march was squarely across West Central Ohio, down the lake to the Maumee, up that river to the portage to the Miami and down the Miami to the Ohio. Water floated his cannon all but a few miles of the way. McKee, Elliott and the three Girty's were along. So was Logan, the Mingo orator, going on his final war path. It was the greatest army the West had as yet seen. Stockades in Kentucky had proven immune to Indian rifle fire. But with cannon to breach wooden walls, the conquest of all Kentucky was possible. Of the councils, the palavers, the war dances that must have accompanied his progress at every Indian town, history is silent. The colorful fancy of a Parkman would have supplied the details which must be left for historical romancers. Bird started early in May, 1780, and coming to the mouth of the Big Miami, held council there with the Indian chiefs. Bird seems to have encountered here the same trouble that beset Clark. The Indians wanted to strike the settlements against which they had always warred and would not be led against Clark at the Falls. The Licking River was in full flow and it offered a road straight into the heart of the Blue Grass. Bird went up the river about 20 miles to Falmouth where the river forks and then cut a path for his cannon across woods to the two most northern and exposed stations in Kentucky, Ruddell's and Martin's, on the south fork of the Licking near what is now Paris, Bourbon County, but Ruddel's itself was situated in the later formed Harrison County. It was originally settled by John Hinkston in April, 1775, but abandoned in July, 1776, due to fear of Indians. In April, 1779, Isaac Ruddell and John Burger rebuilt the old station. 204 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO As the most northern settlement it was nearest to the Ohio River and received the Pennsylvania Dutch immigration rather than the Scotch-Irish stock of the Carolinas which came in over the Wilderness Road. There were a few families of the original Kentucky stock but most of the people were newcomers and were not knitted into the fabric or consciousness of Kentucky. This fact may explain what otherwise is an almost incomprehensible historical mystery: here were several hundred people, their capture was by far the greatest disaster which had ever befallen Kentucky so far as numbers went, it constituted perhaps the greatest capture of a white force by Indians up to that time in the history of the United States, and has only been exceeded since by the fall of Mimm's Station. It was the most formidable force that had ever entered Kentucky or menaced the frontier. The possibilities and probabilities were horrible beyond words. Yet few events in Kentucky history are so buried, few have had such scant attention paid to them until very recent years as Ruddell's. It was an event that sank into almost complete obscurity. It was like a page torn from a book so cleanly that its absence could only be surmised by the thorough reader. The massacre at Mimm's Station in the Creek War has filled many pages. Its details are known. Here at Ruddell's 300 to 400 people melt out of sight and are scarce remembered. Some fatal jinx seemed to ride the events of 1780 in the West. Even in Clark County, Ohio, where the results of Ruddell's terminated in the battle of Piqua all local historians completely ignored or were in ignorance of the existence of Ruddell's station or the connection of the Bird expedition with Clark's Piqua Campaign of 1780 and as late as 1930 disputed hotly that no such connection existed, nor in any Clark County history was ever a reference made to Ruddell's nor in any Ohio history printed to date was there a reference to Clark's account of his 1780 expedition. Some writers on state history, notably Randall and Ryan and later in general his- HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 205 tories James Alton James and William English and Temple Bodley have covered the connections adequately but not so fully as is demanded by the local connections of West Central Ohio to the above mentioned events. When the writer of this volume began delving into the connection of Clark and Kenton with West Central Ohio in 1925 and prior to the appearance of the works of Temple Bodley and Prof. James Alton James on Clark and had published in a series of fifty-seven consecutive weekly newspaper articles bearing on the coming of settlement into West Central Ohio, there then existed no correlated story of such happenings but rather isolated fragments which were secondary and subordinate to many other themes and suffered by being considered as merely incidental details to the main themes of the writers. Begun as Sunday newspaper features with emphasis mainly on action and drama and intended for reader interest solely, the research for full details and color seemed to reveal a vast body of related materials which had never been orientated from the standpoint of West Central Ohio and which historians of weight and reputation had overlooked, by following beaten paths, some pertinent and weighty facts or rather interpretation of facts which seemed essential to a correct proportioning of history in the West. Out of that research has grown this work which eschewing all fictionizing or coloring and sacrificing reader interest for fact has attempted to give to West Central Ohio history a fuller and juster interpretation. It was from the attack on Ruddell's grew events which led many of the original settlers of West Central Ohio into their first contact with the land and opened their eyes to its possibilities. Many of Clark's soldiers came later to settle the land they had glimpsed in following Clark in 1780 and 1782. Some of our knowledge of the youth of Tecumseh came from the captivity of young Isaac Ruddell and his association with the boy, Tecumseh. 206 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO Ohio historians have neglected Collin's entirely too much. As Theodore Roosevelt once said, "He is an inexhaustible mine of unworked ore." Unfortunately his vast stores are scattered so widely and so un-related save by index as to make a connected story on any one subject very inaccessible to the reader. CHAPTER XXIV RUDDELL'S STATION CANNON INTRODUCED-NUMBER ENGAGED-INDIANS AND CANADIANS- PRISONERS AND PROPERTY TAKEN-INDIANS ENTHUSED-INDIAN CRUELTY. There are many styles in writing history. There is the dry-as-dust recordings of the chronicler who interprets nothing. There is the matter-of-fact historian who records and comments so prosaicly that all the color of life evaporates; there is the brass band style of Macauley which makes history a grand pageant; there is the literary style of Motley and Bancroft whose sentences frequently fall into feet and have the rhythm of blank verse. Prescott and Parkham embroider into the bare facts of an ancient jotting all the resources of their rich mental storehouses. Parkham will take a few lines recording a march made in winter and throw in pages of word painting showing how the woods were in this particular time, transplanting his acute observations and glowing imagery to this far off event and making it live with some sacrifice of strict details lost forever save as his fancy resurrects them. So Napoleon who saw more history made than most men, sardonically observed "History is a fable agreed upon." The paucity of actual details concerning Ruddell's and Martin's stations is appalling to the historian, intriguing to the romancer. What the people of Ruddell's and Martin's knew, thought or felt must be conjectured. The slow advance of such an army cutting a road for artillery through the woods from   208 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO Falmouth should have been known; Indian scouting parties may have harassed the outlying cabins, messengers may have hurried south for succor; or, as so strangely happened oft in history of the West, the invading army, its preliminary blow withheld, may have debauched from the wood unawares. One might rhapsodize of the contrast between the peaceful settlements wrapped in the langorous silence of a June night in Kentucky, imagine as men have for Vincennes, the young dancing to the fiddle under the June moon (was there a moon that night?) sink the station into sleep sentinelled by the wheeling night bird, calling his vain warning as his coverts were disturbed, vision the gathering of a growing ring of beady, exultant and ferocious eyes, claim the renegade Girtys came to glare slavering at their betrayed countrymen and that Alexander McKee ground his teeth over the impending escheatment of his Kentucky lands. How the cannon, strange monsters hitherto unknown in Kentucky, trundled out into the starlight of the clearings and open their black mouths wide to bray for death and captivity. But it is doubtful if McKee knew of the escheatment proceedings. There is evidence that Kentucky had been warned of impending invasion but it is doubtful if it was known where or when the blow would fall. Clark's Memoir closed with the statement Capt. Abraham Chapline had been made prisoner when Col. David Roger's boats were captured at the mouth of the Little Miami in October, 1779. Chapline had burst out of the woods with the warning of Bird's coming. Collins' History of Kentucky says, Vol. 1, Page 11: "Captain E. Worthington and Benjamin Roberts, Lieut. James Patton and Ensign Edward Bulger, writing from Boonesborough in April or May, 1780, advise Col. John Bowman as follows: Lieut. Abraham Chaplain and—Hendricks saith that on the 27th or 28th ultimo they made their escape from the Indians of the Windot (Wyandot) nation from off the waters of St. Dusky (Sandusky) and ar- HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 209 rived at this place this day. That about three or four days preceding the said escape they had undoubted intelligence that a great number of the different tribes of Indians in conjunction with the subjects of Great Britain to the amount of 2,000, in the whole 600 of whom are Green Coat Rangers from Cannaday, were preparing to attack this place with cannon and after subduing the same their destination was for the Illinois. "Capt. Matthew Elliott (Indian agent for Great Britan) gave intelligence the Indians were gathering horses to aid the expedition which is expected to reach this place in three or four weeks." The writers add: "The above information has just now received and beg you to use the greatest expedition to embody the militia under your command and march them here to repel the hostile invaders. This is the humble prayer of the inhabitants of this garrison and of every other son of liberty who beg you would send express to Col. Crockett to push his troops to our assistance." This information, which considering the time, was remarkably accurate and must have nerved Chaplan (really spelled Chapline and a sample of the loose spelling of the time) and Hendricks to their desperate escape in which they had to traverse all of Ohio and part of Kentucky through hostile Indians. Colonel Bowman, who was lieutenant governor of Kentucky County, seems to have done little or nothing until the blow fell." The numbers at Ruddell's and Martins have been estimated from 100 to 400. They seem to have gathered in the stations. Their cattle to the number of 300 fell into the hands of the Indians. Generally the settlers drove their cattle to the stockades. Here seems evidence of headlong flight that stopped for naught save life. The western woods were full of unsung Paul Reveres, the hoarse halooed warning, the panting runner leaping on away leaving the pale pioneer mother to clutch and count her brood, all were common occurrence. Well for her if the good man was at home to snatch his rifle from above the door or from the stump 210 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO adjacent to his work. Sad and dreadful if he were away ranging the wood and she was left torn between dread of the dark aisles of the wood waiting like the jaws of a trap, fear for her man, terror for her brood and anguish over her home. Collins' History of Kentucky, Vol. 2, page 328, gives a version of what happened but some statements are difficult to reconcile with logic. How the people all came to be in the stations if surprised when in June the men would have been dispersed about their work is accountable for only by the assumption the surprise was relative. Portions of the statement Collins quotes follows: ". . . . Six hundred Indians and Canadians . . . . accompanied by six pieces of artillery . . . . brought down the Big Miami and thence up the Licking as far as the present town of Falmouth, at the forks of the Licking where it was landed, and where Colonel Byrd ordered some huts to be constructed to shelter them from the weather. From this point Colonel Byrd took up his line of march for Ruddle's station with 1,000 men. Such a force, accompanied by artillery, was resistless to the stockades of Kentucky, which were altogether destitute of ordinance. "The approach of the enemy was totally undiscovered by our people until on the 22nd of June, 1780, the report of one of their field pieces announced their arrival before the station. This is the more extraordinary as the British army were twelve days in marching from the Ohio River to Ruddle's station and had cleared a wagon road the greater part of the way . . . . A summons to surrender at discretion to his Britannic majesty's arms was immediately made by Colonel Byrd—to which demand Captain Ruddle answered that he could not consent to surrender but on certain conditions, that the prisoners should be under the protection of the British, and not suffered to be prisoners of the Indians. To these terms Colonel Byrd consented and immediately the gates were unbarred to him. No sooner were the gates opened, than the Indians rushed into the station, and each Indian seized the first person he could lay his hand on, and claimed him HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 211 as his own prisoner. In this way members of every family were separated from each other; the husband from the wife and the parents from the children: the piercing sceams of the children when torn from their mothers, the distracted throes of the mothers when force from their tender offspring, are indescribable. Ruddle remonstrated with the colonel against this barbarous conduct of the Indians but to no effect. He confessed that it was out of his power to restrain them, their numbers being so much greater than the troops over which he had control, that he himself was completely in their power. "After the people were entirely stripped of all their property, and the prisoners divided among their captors, the Indians proposed to Colonel Byrd to march to and take Martin's Station, which was about five miles from Ruddle's, but Colonel Byrd was so affected by the conduct of the Indians toward the prisoners taken, that he peremptorily refused, unless the chiefs should pledge themselves in behalf of the Indians that all the prisoners should be entirely under his control, and the Indians should only be entitled to the plunder. Upon these propositions being agreed to by the chiefs (it should be noticed the Indians needed the artillery of Byrd—Ed's note) the army marched to Martin's Station and took it without opposition. The Indians divided the spoils among themselves and Colonel Byrd took charge of the prisoners. "The ease with which these two stations were taken, so animated the Indians that they pressed Byrd to go forward and assist them to take Bryan's Station and Lexington. Byrd declined going and urged as a reason, the improbability of success; and, besides the impossibility of procuring provisions to support the prisoners they already had, also the impracticability of transporting their artillery by land, to any part of the Ohio River,—therefore the necessity of descending the Licking before the waters fell, which might be expected to take place in a very few days. "Immediately after it was decided not to go forward to Bryan's station, the army commenced their retreat to the forks 212 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO of the Licking, where they had left their boats, and with all possible dispatch got their artillery and military stores on board and moved off. "At this place the Indians separated from Byrd and took with them the whole of the prisoners taken at Ruddle's Station." Byrd afterwards justified his retreat by saying the incessant rains were rotting the feet of his people. It is useless to ponder the motives that animated Byrd. Kentucky was in his hand if he could but close it. The stockades were powerless before him; the back door of the Revolution was open to breaching; he held the destiny of America in his hands. No doubt he understood all this; the British had been planning this consummation for several years; he was intelligent, probably brave and ambitious. Why did he waver? Most accounts of Byrd make his humane. He had witnessed the torture of an American in 1779 by the Wyandottes and been horrified. Butterfield, Life of Girtys, page 93, says he offered $1,000 for the prisoner but in vain, buried the remains, buried it a second time when the Indians dug the body up and then told the Wyandottes: "You damned rascals, if it were in my power, as it is in the power of the Americans, not one of you should live. Nothing would please me better than to see such devils as you all killed. You cowards, is that all you can do, torture a poor, innocent prisoner. You dare not show your faces where an army is but there (here) you are busy when you have nothing to fear. Get away from me. I will have nothing to do with you." The Indians had wantonly slaughtered the 300 cattle of the settlers and no doubt the game was scarce due to the hard winter of 1780, and the incessant hunting of such a large body of Indians coming on top of the regular ranging of the settlers. A humane man was confronted with depopulating a countryside, turning his prisoners over to torture, starving the remainder. He also risked losing his artillery. The difficulties were not insurmountable, the HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 213 risks not excessive. Byrd lacked the stern stuff of conquerors. He must have loved his fellow man more than his Britannic majesty. He retreated. One does not go far against the heart. Butterfield makes some additional statements concerning Ruddell's on page 119: "McKee surrounded the station with 200 Indians in the night (this would account for the settlers being inside and reconcile with Collins that the approach was unsuspected—Ed's note). Firing commenced at daylight. Captain Byrd arrived at noon with the rest of the force and the smaller of the two field pieces. After two discharges of this gun, the captain sent Simon Girty with a flag of truce demanding the surrender of the fort. According to Girty's story, many rifles were pointed at him as he entered the stockade. He declares he kept cool, and informed those inside the pickets that unless they surrendered, they would all be killed, a determination they clearly saw would be carried out in the event of longer resistance, as the other field piece was now brought up. The two would of course soon batter down the frail stockade." Butterfield adds that Bird and McKee followed Girty into the fort to negotiate the terms of surrender and that all but the Lake Indians turned over their prisoners the next morning. Butterfield further claims Bird wanted to move down to the Falls but was forced to retreat from want of provisions and buried his cannon at Loramie's (the head of navigation on the Big Miami for light craft). Butterfield says, p. 120: "George Girty, who had remained with him until this point (Loramie's) now returned to the Shawnees but Simon and James had previously gone back, the former to the home of the Mingoes, the latter to the Shawnees. George was of much service in getting the prisoners along who numbered about 350. Bird reached Detroit August 4." West Central Ohio had seen the recruiting of this most successful of the British expeditions in the West. Its march and its return with its train of captives lay through the heart of this region. Thus there stretches along the Big Miami and the Au- 214 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO glaize a Way of Sorrows, lined with unknown and unmarked graves where the babe's bones were flung to the carrion bird and the pioneer mother sank beneath grief or the tomahawk, an ever dwindling, dropping band, men and women marching into martyrdom, dropping into oblivion, children passing into savagery, a people swallowed, their names forgotten, their fate obscured, their story untold, the state that had so little contacted them and the states that swallowed them and the far-off state that had seen them go forth to the West, all alike have ignored what was the greatest march of white captives, the greatest bag of the Indian in lives and loot in all American history. What became of the survivors? Again one meets the hollow husk of a few facts: Collins, Vol. 2, p. 327: "From depositions of Isaac Ruddle, James Ruddle, Nicholas Hart, Samuel Vanhook and John Burger, who were among the prisoners taken and whose lives were spared, and from other sources, it appears that Vanhook and probably most of the others were not released from captivity for four years and two months; that several never returned but continued to live among the Indians; and that, when on their way to besiege Bryan's Station, August 14, 1782 . . . . and at Blue Licks . . . . the Indians required Nicholas Hart and several others of the prisoners to come with them—thus making them witnesses of the perils and suffering of their friends without power to help them. "When murdering some of the women and children after the capture, they concluded to adopt little Johnny Lail, two years old, if he should have the nerve and endurance required of an Indian boy; so they rolled him down the bank and he did not cry—thus securing his own adoption and that of his brother George, three years older. Johnny was returned, with other prisoners, after the war and lived to be nearly eighty years old and a useful citizen. George remained with the Indians and married among them; afterwards he came back and settled in the home of his HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 215 childhood, but his Indian wife deserted him and went back to her people." Some who have commented upon Ruddell's have assumed that but a life or two was lost in the taking of the station but Collins speaks in a fragment of the finding of a cave near the fort where the skeletons of the massacred had been flung. News of what had happened came into Lexington with Capt. John Hinkson, whose escape should be a class of wood lore. At Lexington, Hinkson must have run into that jury called to escheat Alexander McKee and John Connolly of their Kentucky lands at the Falls of the Ohio. This jury convened July 1, 1780. John Bowman, lieutenant governor of Kentucky was attending the trial as juryman and that fact that Daniel Boone was on the jury shows he was back in Kentucky and re-instated in favor and regard when he could be set to try the men with whom he had been accused by Col. Richard Callaway as being in league and his family driven from Kentucky (see Ohio A. and H. Collection, Vol. 18, p. 57). These lands of Connolly, McKee, Simon Girty and others were located in 1773 by Captain Thomas Bullitt two years prior to Boone's founding of Boonesborough and on the same voyage in which Bullitt visited West Central Ohio. Some of these escheated lands went to found Transylvania College in Kentucky. CHAPTER XXV CLARK'S PLANS AND PREPARATIONS CLARK'S RETURN FROM FT. JEFFERSON-CLOSES LAND OFFICE-THE MILITARY PLAN-PRELIMINARY MOVEMENTS-THE PIQUA EXPEDITION. The veil that hangs heavy over 1780 in particularly dark concerning the actions that immediately followed the fall of Ruddell's and Martin's stations. Who sent for Clark, who went, what the reaction was in Central Kentucky to the news is conjecture. Clark had defeated Langlade at Cahokia, probably helped baffle the British attack on the Spanish post of St. Louis and returned to Fort Jefferson on the Ohio when the news of Ruddell reached him. Roosevelt, James and Palmer say Clark came through the woods with two companions to Harrodsburg and disguised themselves enroute as Indians. Randall and Ryan, Vol. 2, p. 285, states that Clark marched from Fort Jefferson with two companies of his soldiers, disguised as Indians. Butterfield, Life of Girtys, page 121, laughs the whole story to scorn, calling Roosevelt's story of the Indian disguises as "Silly" and claims Clark had probably 200 men with him, quoting from the Washington-Irving Correspondence, p. 47-50, that Clark made haste "With what men he could well spare." In any event he arrived in Harrodsburg to find the country overrun with land bounty men, the first day the office being opened seeing applications for 1,600,000 acres. Whether with soldiers or with but two companions, Clark burst into the welter of greed like a bombshell and as a bombshell - 217 - 218 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO he blew up when men said they would not defend the country because they had no lands, while others taunted "Let them that claim the lands come fight for them, and still others jeered that the state paid Clark's soldiers to defend the land, let them do it. Lest these men be judged too harshly it must be remembered they had come to Kentucky without law or lawyers, taken tomahawk claims, dared death for five years and were now seeing a rush of rich speculators beginning those land grabs and dispossessions which were later to rob Boone, Kenton and many a brave pioneer of his life work, moreover the Pennsylvania Dutch of Ruddell's and Martin's were the main newcomers. Clark saw the crux of the evil was the mad rush for riches. He asked the register to close the land office. The latter refused. Clark did not argue. He acted. He usurped authority, closed the office and called for volunteers. Now it was the turn of the speculators. They mounted their horses. Virginia beckoned. They had come for lands not battles. The man who had told the Virginia assembly that a land not worth defending was not worth claiming, spoke again. He closed the Wilderness Road, stopped the headlong flight of the panic stricken and issued further orders: "Stop any person from going . . . . by putting their horses in service and by taking their arms and ammunition." Clark was confronted with a plain military proposition. Byrd had registered what in the Indian eyes was a great triumph: the taking of two stations, the raiding of horses from two more, the bagging of the greatest lot of white captives in Indian history, a triumph and a tragedy as Temple Bodley has well said "Far more appalling than Wyoming or Cherry Valley, but being far from the northeastern printing presses, few have ever read about it." It was the fashion for Indians who scored a victory to return to their villages, celebrate and then inflamed with adulation, come back to repeat. Byrd's cannon were buried where they were HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 219 easily accessible for a return invasion. With such a menace hanging over Eastern Kentucky, it was not possible to remove the troops to the West; Clark had not men enough to fight on two fronts. He had baffled the invasions because they were ill timed and he had the advantage of interior lines. In a small way his problem in 1780 had been what Napoleon had faced in the first Italian campaign, Stonewall Jackson in the first Shenandoah campaign, and Lee in 1862. In the West he dealt with the British, here in the Eastern part of Kentucky it was the Ohio Indian who was the menace. That Indian had to be humbled before Clark could return to his task of holding the Mississippi and lower Ohio. After Bowman's raid in the year before the Shawnees had fortified Piqua on Mad River. Here the river flowed before the town for three miles, a moat lined with swamp at one end and passing through a rock gorge at the other. With forts crowning the heights and the approaches over the river, through the swamp and up the slopes, it was the strongest natural east and west line between Kentucky and Detroit once the Indian country was reached for all the rest of the way was plain or with the river valleys running north and south or through low wide plains like the Maumee. True to their usual instinct the Indians, while not abandoning Old Chillicothe after finding the white man could reach that far, had fallen back so far as fortifications were concerned some twelve miles. The Indian had abandoned fortifications in Ohio after the Iroquois had used their canoes as scaling ladders and run the Erie stockades knee deep in blood; the poor defences of the mound builders were forgotten or inadequate, too large to man, unfitted for Indian tactics. The Indian had come to rely upon mobility. But here was an increasing tendency of the whites to thrust through the heart of his country. He must make a stand or forfeit it. He had seen and understood the advantages of stockades. He had with him such men as the Girty's, McKee 220 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO and Elliott, such military men as Bird, skilled in planning defenses. He had seen many a white man's fort. If a stockade was safe against the Indian rifle would it not hold at bay the white man? Hence the forts at Piqua. Clark must have known about them through escaped prisoners. Chapline and Hendricks would have known about them. A stockade called for a cannon. He had a six-pounder at the Falls which he had captured in the Illinois country. You will find today balls from this cannon in the Clark County Historical Society, dug from the site of the Piqua forts. Kentucky had grown. Where Bowman had mustered 296 counting the Monongahela men in 1779, Clark could muster 1,000 counting his regulars from the Falls. Kentucky well might hesitate. Clark was asking every man to abandon his family, march away for a least a month, cross one of the greatest rivers of the continent, enter the Indian country where Bowman had been defeated, engage those Indians which had battled Lewis to a standstill at Point Pleasant, face probably British reinforcements with Canadian rangers and King's Foot, go up against cannon and fortifications, 150 miles from home, no hospital corps, no commissary to speak of, in an almost unknown country, the whereabouts of Bird and his Indians and rangers unknown, with a scanty store of ammunition, and the knowledge that defeat trapped them between the Ohio and a merciless foe. If the East had Valley Forge, the West had had the Hard Winter. Corn at $200 a bushel had left little for seed. The woods were bare of game. The clearings had not ripened their scant harvest. The Cherokee and Choctaw prowled in from the South. Their women and children had starved all winter, all spring and most of the summer. Now he must ask these women to forgo their meager rations of game, lie the long night with a rifle on one arm and a baby on the other, shuddering at the fitful hooting of the owl, cringing at every sound, soothing a starved babe, murmuring, "My God, let him come, let him come," visioning HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 221 stricken fields, tortured sons and husbands, defenseless homes, a 500 mile flight for every soul in Kentucky, a Braddock's Defeat with no base or no succor to fall back upon. Clark had to face the civil authority. He must outface and overawe the curses and threats of rich men balked from profit, men who had influence and weight in the colonies from which they had hastened to transfer their riches to avoid the taxes and tithes of the Revolution. Clark, a twenty-eight year old man with questionable authority, was attempting to strip Kentucky of all strength to assay a doubtful and temporarily unneeded venture. Clark at Kaskaskia and Vincennes had a small force, certain of his authority with three months discipline behind them. In Kentucky Clark had to overawe a truculent, scattered civil body and weld it into an obedient whole. What he went through, how he did it, what prodigies of tact, force, will, acumen and energy he performed, cannot be known. Lemuel Draper rescued from an old copy of the Maryland Journal of Oct 17, 1780, all that is positively from Clark's hand concerning the Piqua campaign save a short letter to his father. Draper's fragment or rather the fragment printed by the Maryland Journal only covers the actual march and battle. For long it escaped attention and the events of 1780 were almost as they had never been so far as history is concerned. Clark, a man of few words, passes over all the foregoing conditions with the brief phrase "Having by every possible exertion." Details are lacking of Clark's preliminary movements. It seems most probable that the men from the interior stations were left to rendezvous at the mouth of the Licking while Clark went to the Falls to bring up the soldiers garrisoned there and to recruit on the Beargrass. Most of the flat boat immigration had concentrated at the Falls due to the protection of the soldiery. Collins says, Vol. 2, page 359, that seven stations had been erected on the Beargrass in the fall of 1779 and spring of 1780, but 222 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO on page 367 he gives but six stations with 600 men. The latter force must have constituted the greatest available force in Kentucky and represented the gain over 1779 at the time of Bowman's expedition. The trained soldiery, the cannon and the main body of recruits thus came up the Ohio River. Just how is told by John McCaddon of Newark, Ohio, in a communication to the American Pioneer, Vol. 1, page 377, quoted by Collins on page 368: "The people placed themselves, myself among them, under the command of Colonel Clark, who at that time was almost the idol of the Kentuckians. We started from the Falls, now Louisville. On our way up the river to where Cincinnati now stands, Capt. Hugh McGary, a famous Indian fighter, had placed himself on the Indian side of the river, frequently boasting that they lived better than we did, for they kept their hunters out to procure meat. The main body kept the Kentucky shore. One day when the main body stopped for dinner, McGary's men, as usual, halted opposite us. When we were ready to march, they concluded to cross over to our side—for they discovered fresh Indian tracks. They had got but a few yards from the shore when they were fired upon from the top of the bank. They seemed to have no alternative but to jump out and mix with the Indians as they ran down the bank. Colonel Clark's barge was instantly unloaded and filled with men, but before they got across they heard the Indians give the scalp halloo on the top of the hill At the place where Cincinnati now is it was necessary to build a block house for the purpose of leaving some stores and some wounded men we got of McGary's company." How McGary who was from Harrodstown should have been with the Falls detachment is not apparent. The anecdote fits so thoroughly with the McGary record for headlong, rash indifference to danger as to appear correct especially as there is other record of the attack on McGary's men. It illustrated Clark's difficulties with insubordinate men. McGary's action must have made him rage inwardly. That it was contrary to his judgment HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 223 is shown by the fact the main body kept south of the river and so protected their flank. Moreover such a slight victory would raise the Indian morale and it burdened Clark with wounded and compelled delay while a block house was built. Such a wait gave time for the Indian runners to gather in reinforcements and rally the dispersing bands dropping away from Bird's march to go home to their villages. It must be remembered that Bird had not yet arrived at Detroit with his captives and the day McGary was attacked (latter part of July, 1780), Bird was about six days march out of Detroit. If he returned by water after hitting the Maumee, Bird may still have been around the portage between the lower and upper Miamis. Thomas Vickroy, surveyor and soldier with Clark on this campaign in Western Annals, 3rd edition, page 324 (See Collins, Vol. 2, p. 431), relates that Clark crossed the Ohio at Covington August 1 and built two block houses where Cincinnati now stands. Vickroy as commissary was left in charge of the stores for fourteen days. Captain Johnson and twenty to thirty sick and wounded were left with him. Vickroy's account does several things; it confirms the presence of wounded men, the building of the blockhouses, fixes Clark's crossing of the river and the time it took him to make the round trip from the Ohio to Piqua on Mad River and back. There are extant a number of accounts of the Piqua expedition. Roosevelt in the Winning of the West relies upon the McAfee manuscript, but gives a very garbled account, placing the battle on the Little Miami and showing a total ignorance of the local geography. McCaddon's has been mentioned. Abraham Thomas, a resident of Troy, Ohio, in his old age gave out an interview which Henry Howe rates as the most accurate, a view that cannot be acquiesced in since Thomas was very old at the time of the interview and his account is too much at variance with others, especially when he says it was a "bloodless 224 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO victory" a statement which has helped to minimize the whole campaign and which is now known to be flatly negatived by Clark's official report. Thomas who participated in the Clark campaign of 1782 against the Piqua on the Big Miami may have in his old age confused the details of the two expeditions. His account bears interior evidence that he actually was in the 1780 expedition and throws some additional light upon it and may be relied upon where it fits and supplements the facts as given elsewhere. Henry Howe, Vol. 1, pages 389-390 gives Thomas's account in full. The Thomas additional information includes the following: Ben Logan led the detachments up from the interior to the Licking. (This is so probable that it should be accepted. Logan was second in command and located below Boonesborough.) A stockade fort and cabin were erected at Cincinnati. (Here McCaddon's single blockhouse which had grown to two with Vickroy's, now becomes a fort and stockade, with Thomas. This latter seems plausible. A blockhouse by itself was a rather weak defense especially against fire. Two blockhouses would flank each other and a stockade would give a protected communication between them, the whole constituting a fort, 1,000 skilled axmen could have thrown up small works of this kind in short order, the whole constituting a base upon which Clark could rally a retreat previous to essaying the crossing of the river. For such a purpose a blockhouse would be practically useless while a stockade would hold a small army.) Thomas speaks of the difficulty of making a road for the pack horses and cannon, which English, Conquest of Northwest, Vol. 2, page 681, says was carried on a pack horse. Thomas further states Piqua lay not on the hills but on the second bottom and could be approached from but three points. Thomas here seems to wander in relating how Logan got tangled in the swamps when other accounts say it was the rock gorge which held Logan back. Thomas declared the Indians feared to enter the Indian stockade (explicitly contrary to Clark's report) and claims the HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 225 Kentuckians captured the squaws and papooses (contrary to other accounts which say these latter escaped up and through the gorge. Nor is there any account of what happened to these alleged captives, they were not brought back. Certainly if they were massacred others would have mentioned it and Clark would hardly have released them but have held them hostages and called in the Shawnees and forced them to humiliating terms before releasing their children and women. Probably a few squaws and children were taken—and disposed of—in the heat of the conflict.) Thomas refers to Clark's nephew (really his cousin, Joe Rogers) and claims the latter a "Great reprobate" (a natural conclusion to the uninformed Kentuckians most of whom had come west after Joe's capture and knew nothing about the expedition with the powder and so could not account for Roger's presence among the Indians save as a renegade like the Girtys. It might be said in passing that it is a trifle strange that Joe Rogers had not tried earlier to escape. As a youth he no doubt adapted himself to the wild life. Clark does not linger much over his passing). Thomas concludes by saying the men had little time to hunt, so boiled green plums and nettles, the men slept on the ground, only officers had tents and that the return march had no unpleasant occurrences save scarcity of provisions. This is contradicted by McCaddon who claimed they found the Indian corn in the roasting ear stage and that the army subsisted upon it while at Piqua and that "We were not so fortunate as to reach Kentucky without the loss of a few more men." Whether this latter was from Indian attacks or deaths among the wounded, McCaddon does not say. Bradford's Notes on Kentucky gives information not covered by McCaddon, Thomas or even Clark. Bradford's additional data includes the following: "On the second of August, 1780, Gen. Clark took up the line of march from where Cincinnati now stands for the Indian towns. 226 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO . . . . The men were ordered to march in four lines at about 40 yards distance, with a line of flankers on each side. There was also a front and rear guard. (Orders how to act in case of attack were issued.) Nothing worthy of notice was encountered until the army arrived August 6 at Chillicothe on the Little Miami in Greene County, (now Oldtown) Most of the houses were burning, having been set on fire that morning. The army camped and cut down several hundred acres of corn. "About 4 p. m. on the 7th day the army started for the Piqua towns, 12 miles away in Clark County A mile from Chillicothe there came a very heavy rain, with thunder and lightning and considerable wind. Without tents or shelter from the rain, which fell in torrents, the men were wet as though plunged in the river. Nor had they it in their power to keep their guns dry. . . . . They encamped in a square with horses and baggage in the center, lit fires, dried clothing and examined their guns. To be sure the guns were in good order, they discharged them by companies alternately from different points of the line until all were fired. They arrived at Piqua at 2 p. m. August 8, . . . . crossed Mad River one quarter mile below the town and came to a prairie of high weeds. They were attacked by the Indians in the weeds. The ground and the manner left no doubt but that a general engagement was intended. Col. Logan was ordered to file to the right with 400 men and continue to the upper end of the town to prevent the Indians escaping in that direction. Cols. Lynn, Floyd and Herrod were ordered to cross the river and encompass the town on the west side. General Clark with Col. Slaughter and such as were attached to the artillery marched direct toward the town "The Indians evinced great military skill and judgment and to prevent the west divisions from executing their design, made a powerful effort to turn the American left wing The battle line extended west more than a mile and continued warmly contested on both sides until about 5 p. m., when the Indians HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 227 disappeared everywhere except a few in the town. The field piece was brought to bear upon the houses and a few shots dislodged the Indians. "A nephew of General Clark, a prisoner among the Indians, was supposed to be an Indian and received a mortal wound. . . . . "A Frenchman found in one of the cabins . . . . gave the information. The Indians did not expect the Kentuckians to arrive that day . . . . and it was their intention to have attacked the camp in the night with tomahawk and knife and not to fire a gun. They had intended to attack the night before, but were prevented by the rain and the vigilance of the Kentuckians in firing their guns . . . . the reason for which they comprehended. The loss on each side was about twenty killed. "One division came up the Licking River under Logan, the other up the Ohio from the falls with a six-pounder cannon. It was a toilsome task to get the boats up the river under constant expectation of attack. Several were killed and wounded. After erecting a stockade, fort and cabin we started for Mad river. The way was over the uplands of an untracked, primitive forest, through which with great labor we cut and bridged a road for the pack horses and cannon. The country abounded in game. None but the officers thought of tents. Our beds were on the ground. We kept on the march all night before the battle and surprised 300 warriors who were to attack us the next morning. . . . . "Our party was about to enter the town with great impetuosity, when Gen. Clark sent orders for us to stop, as the Indians were making portholes in their cabins. He added he would soon make portholes for us both, and he brought his six-pounder to bear on the village The Indians poured out in great consternation and our party and those on the bank took possession of all the squaws and papooses. 228 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO . . . A nephew of Clark . . . . a great reprobate . . . . was to have led the Indians the next morning. He was wounded and expired, but asked forgiveness We killed buffaloes on the Licking going home." CHAPTER XXVI BATTLE OF PIQUA CLARK MARCHED NORTHWARD-REACHES PIQUA-INDIAN REINFORCEMENTS ARRIVE-AN IMPORTANT VICTORY-CASUALTIES. Before taking up Clark's own account or such fragments of it as have come down to posterity, let us consider a few circumstances that have bearing upon the battle or have historical interest. As Clark marched northward, Bird had done likewise. When Clark crossed the Ohio, August 1, Bird was three days south of Detroit, it is not possible for the Indian runners to have reached Bird with news of Clark's invasion much short of Bird's actual entrance into Detroit, August 4. Bird was then too far away to turn about and succor the Shawnees. There is no evidence that it was thought of or that the Indians made the appeal. What is most likely is that the Indians of the lower towns sent runners to such warriors as were within a few days march and watched Clark meanwhile in hope of a false move or a delay, which would permit the re-mobilization of Bird's dispersed forces that had been branching off at every step of his northward journey. These Indians, just returned from a protracted and trying war path were slow in relinquishing their rest and triumph to make a return. The Shawnees, left practically unsupported in the south central part of the state, decided to burn Chillicothe which has no natural defensive contours and fall back to Piqua on Mad River, probably according to a long pre-conceived plan, - 229 - 230 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO much as Joffre fell back before the Germans in 1914 until he had gathered his strength, tolled them deep into the enemy's country and then turned and faced them. By the time Clark reached Piqua, August 8, the Shawnees should have massed their full tribal strength which had been sadly depleted by constant warfare for the past six years. It is doubtful if they could muster much over 300 rifles at this time. Bowman had found 100 under Blackfish in 1779, the ones left behind while 200 went to beseige Fort Laurens. War was cutting down the tribe faster than the natural increase. While estimates of 4,000 souls have been made about this Piqua such estimate did not apply to August 8, 1780, but rather to the time when the Miamis may have held the town site. Piqua on August 8, 1780, granting that it was three miles long, had its cabins a hundred or more feet apart in a row parallel to the river. This would give but about 150 lodges, which supplemented by the refugees from Old Chillicothe would give less than 300 warriors. Clark states that several large reinforcements entered the town just prior to the battle. These would be the Shawnees from the headwaters of the Mad River, Mac-a-chack and Wapatomica warriors with possibly a sprinkling of Mingoes from the upper Scioto and even a few Wyandottes, perhaps Delawares from Pluggy's town (Delaware). These were within marching distance and there was time to reach them with runners, and for them to come in. What the reinforcements amounted to is problematical. "Several large reinforcements could not mean much less than an additional 300 warriors. Assuming such to be the case the battle was fought by about equal numbers of white and red men. Of Clark's 1,000, some 400 had been detached under Logan and were completely out of the conflict. Clark with about 600 men made a frontal attack, supplemented by a left flank attack on about the same number of Indians posted behind a river, their flanks resting on the left on a rocky gorge and the right on a swamp, HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 231 and based upon at least two strong stockades. The Indians had the advantage of position, Clark the advantage of artillery and unified command. Clark's problem was to surround and strike the Shawnees such a crushing blow as would destroy the power of the tribe, and remove this menace to Kentucky. His tactics were much as afterwards attempted by Custer at the Little Big Horn: to throw a flank attack across the valley at each end of his line and so hold or push in the Indian force while the center was moving in or else with the center engage the Indians while the flanks corralled them as would the clasp of two arms. It was a plan of battle certain to result in a large bag of prisoners or great slaughter if successful. It was open to the fault that Clark could be whipped in detail if the Indians were alert and aggressive. It would have been a dangerous maneuver to attempt in the face of a Cornstalk just as it turned out fatal to attempt on Crazy Horse, Gall and Rain-in-the-Face at the Little Big Horn. But there was no Cornstalk present among the Shawnees nor was Clark so detached from his flanking parties as Custer nor was the ground so broken. Logan did get lost but Clark did not need him save to block a wide open door of escape to the east. Peeping out upon the preparations for the impending battle were four boys who must have been in a lather of pent up excitement. Stephen and Abraham Ruddell, sons of Captain Isaac Ruddell, commander of Ruddell's station had been torn from their father and while Captain Isaac had been dragged to Detroit, the two boys being carried off by the Shawnees and Stephen being adopted into the family of Tecumseh. Tecumseh's age is fixed by Stephen Ruddell as being six months younger than his own, which places Tecumseh's birth in the spring of 1768. That Tecumseh and his brother the later Prophet could have failed to be all agog that August afternoon is not consistent with either boy or Indian character. The Ruddell boys, worn 232 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO by six weeks of horror must have panted with an agony of hope. For six years Kentucky had trembled before the word "Shawnee"—ever the Shawnee knife had been at her throat and the Shawnee hand in her hair. The two powers wrestling for the Western country stood breast to breast. Kentucky had turned upon her tormentor. This day would decide who henceforth would be the under dog. Local tradition had claimed Clark viewed the battlefield from the top of Knob Prairie Mound, a sixty foot elevation of the Adena culture which stands opposite the center of Piqua battlefield. What had happened and what was to happen from that moment he told in terse words dispatched from the Falls to Governor Jefferson and copied by the Maryland Journal: Clark's own account of the Battle of Piqua, missing for 150 years from Clark County and Ohio histories, exists in the Draper collection of manuscripts at Wisconsin University. Lost from the Virginia state papers it settles many questions concerning the battle and solves by the fact it was lost from the Virginia records the reason why historians have given but passing reference to the battle. The report, mutilated with respect to the introductory portion which is missing, is quoted in full. It was written by Clarke at Louisville, Kentucky, fourteen days after the battle. Many most interesting statements are made by Clarke not covered by Clark County and Ohio historians who apparently have been in complete ignorance that such a report was ever made. Clark's account of the Vincennes campaign stopped one year prior to the battle of Piqua and historians have used the Vincennes account and consequently found no reference to Piqua. Clarke's account solves many questions that have arisen to puzzle the historical reader who read the previous existing accounts. Some of these were: Did the Indians know Clarke was coming and how could the Kentuckians have marched for days through the woods undetected by the Indians? Did the Indians HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 233 intend to fight a pitched battle at Piqua and why were there not more Indians present? How much corn did Clarke actually find growing about the Indian villages? How many men did Clarke actually lose? What was the cause of Logan failing to cooperate in the battle? Was the fight severe or a passing skirmish as most historians have assumed? Was the British report of the battle correct or were the Indian losses minimized? What provisions did Clarke's army have along? Why did Clarke not press his victory? And what did he think of his army? Clark's principle statements of importance which threw new light on the battle were: That a road was cut for seventy miles for the artillery; that the Indians designed to lead the Kentuckians on to their own ground and time of battle; that the Indians picked Piqua for the fight; that Clarke was watched by Indian runners the full length of the march; that the Indians retired purposely to Piqua from Chillicothe (Old Town), twelve miles south of Springfield; that the Indians were confident of victory and most important of all these statements: that instead of a fort, as all historians have mentioned, there were "Forts" and the fighting was of a "savage fierceness" that instead of but a few shots from the cannon, the cannon "Playing briskly on their works" until they were totally routed, that the Indian loss was about ninety, that the Indian dead were carried off during the night all but about "12 or 14 that lay too near our lines." Clarke accounts for Logan's failure to join in the action, which has puzzled historians, by saying "The right of our army had been rendered useless by an uncommon chain of rocks which they could not pass by which means the enemy escaped through the ground they were ordered to occupy." Clarke makes the interesting statement that instead of cutting down 200 acres of corn as historians have said, he cut down "800 acres besides great quantities of vegetables, the latter of which appear to have been cultivated by white men, I suppose for the purpose of supporting war parties from Detroit." This 234 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO would indicate that the British had laid plans ahead for a continued warfare in Kentucky in 1780 which was blocked by the battle and the destruction of the British base of supplies. "The excessive heat and weak diet prevented" an attack on the Delaware towns and a falling in by way of Pittsburgh. Clarke says that instead of each man having but a little parched corn as historians have reported he had "300 bushels of corn and 1,500 pounds of flour" or about a peck of corn and one and a half pounds of flour for each man on a "480 mile march of 31 days." Rationed out among 1,000 men who in thirty-one days would eat 93,000 meals this was equal to three ounces of corn and one-fifth ounce of flour or possibly a spoonful for each meal. Clarke's men had but a handful of corn at a meal and had they gone farther would not have had that. The British claim that the Indians retired from the village with the exception of seventy warriors under the two Girtys. This has led some historians to think the resistence was trivial. If this account of the British cannoneer who reported to the British be at all correct, it must refer to a band of seventy who remained to the last after the rest of the Indians were routed. Clarke says his French prisoner taken in the village the next morning after the battle reported that 300 warriors were in the village on the morning of the battle and several reinforcements coming in during the day so that the Indians were sure of destroying all of the Kentucky army. Nothing could excel his army in bravery, each company vieing with the other who should be the most subordinate, Clarke declares. One statement of Clarke's may puzzle those who have not studied the circumstances connected with this campaign. Clarke speaks of the "Picawey settlements on the waters of the Big Miami." It must be remembered that the Kentuckians were familiar only with the two mouths of the Miamis, one they perceived was the larger, hence it was the "Big Miamie," the smaller HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 235 the "Little Miamie," as to tributaries and feeder streams they were more or less hazy, dependent upon the observations of Boone, Kenton and other captives. Mad River is the main tributary of the Big Miami, hence it was the "Waters of the Big Miamie" as distinct from the waters of the Little Miami where Clarke had burned Chillicothe. The use of the word "waters" to include a stream and all its tributaries is common, especially when the unknown tributary is meant. Abundant testimony exists including Simon Kenton's, Tecumseh's, early settlers who fought in the battle and all of the early historians who talked with survivors—including Bradford and McClung and McDonald, that the Piqua town was on Mad River previous to this battle and on the Big Miami after the battle, when the surviving Indians retreated to the latter location. Numerous cannon balls have been plowed up around the "forts" on Mad River and are in the Clark County Historical Society's Collection and the father of General J. Warren Keifer found the charred stumps and burnt timbers of one fort when he cleared the ground for farming. One interesting fact mentioned by Clarke was his own losses which have always been a matter of conjecture, several historians saying he had seventeen dead, others, twenty killed with no mention of the wounded. Clarke says he lost "about 14 killed and 13 wounded, theirs at least triple that number." This loss of thirteen wounded is puzzling. In no other battle of history that one can recall did the dead outnumber the wounded, especially where the Kentuckians, veteran tree fighters, fought from behind every possible cover and only exposed in such fighting an arm or side, which would result in the natural assumption that the wounded would exceed the natural average of about four or five to one killed. So great is the law of probability from these reasons that one is forced to reflect carefully over this report of Clarke's. Light may be found in the following facts: The Kentuckians 236 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO were without a hospital or surgeons. They were engaged in a desperate enterprise where time counted, for their families were left unprotected; they were the hardiest men in the world; they were inured to rough going—minor accidents were held too lightly to be mentioned; no man who could stand on his feet dared or wished, to be a burden to his comrades, only the badly hurt would be ranked as wounded; flesh wounds, cuts, grazing gun-shot wounds, knife thrust that did not reach a vital spot, all these would be ignored. The Kentuckians, from necessity, had to be like those football players who play with broken ribs, wrenched limbs and scorn to be out of the game, playing even with broken necks held in place in leather harness. Woe to the man who made a burden of himself. So that a large number of wounds, not desperate in character, would be ignored by the bearers and by Clarke as a commander who must keep up the morale of his men. The fact that thirteen are reported wounded must mean that thirteen were so desperately hurt they could not help themselves—such men as Bland Ballard who was shot through both hips in the battle. The fourteen dead does not count in all probability the cousin of Clarke, Joe Rogers, shot as he ran out from among the Indians by whom he was held captive. Rogers must be listed as a Revolutionary soldier since he was captured on a government mission, but cannot be listed as a Kentucky fatality of the battle since he was not of the Kentucky army. He must lie, however, with the dead of Clarke's army. This now fifteen dead may have, and probably was increased by wounded that died after the battle since Roosevelt speaks of a Captain McAfee who was "mortally wounded"—mortally used in such connection denotes a speedy death. Clarke's letter was published in the Maryland Journal, October 17, 1780, but by being lost from the Virginia records passed out of the ken of men. L. C. Draper, who found the report was the most inveterate collector of historical manuscript in the history of the United States, intending to write a series on western HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 237 leaders. Always collecting, but unable to arrange his notes he left hundreds of volumes of paper on Clarke, Boone and Kenton which have been glanced over by historians who touched the high spots. None seemed to be interested enough in the Piqua account to give it in detail, following the beaten track which had started in ignorance of the report and placed all emphasis elsewhere. Draper says—referring to Clarke's report: "(The above official report of Clarke of his Shawnee campaign does not appear in the calendar of the Virginia State Papers, so the introductory portion is wanting.)" He then gives the report from the Maryland Journal: "Extract of a letter from Col. George Rogers Clarke to his Excellency the Governor, dated Louisville, Aug. 22, 1780. (Clarke's fragmentary report) : "By every possible exertion and the aid of Col. Slaughter's corps, we completed the number of 1,000 with which he crossed the river at the mouth of the Licking on the first day of August and begun our march on the second. Having a road to cut for the artillery to pass, for 70 miles, it was the sixth before we reached the first town, which we found vacated and the greater part of their effects carried off. The general conduct of the Indians on our march, and many other corroborating circumstances proved their design of leading us on to their own ground and time of action. "After destroying the crops and buildings of Chillecauthey, we began our march for the Picawey settlements, on the waters of the Big Miamie, the Indians keeping runners continually before our advance guards. At half past two in the evening of the eighth, we arrived in sight of the town and forts, a plain of one half mile in width laying between us. I had an opportunity of viewing the situation and motion of the enemy near their works. "I had scarcely time to make those dispositions necessary before the action commenced on our left wing and in a few minutes became almost general, with a savage fierceness on both 238 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO sides. The confidence the enemy had in their own strength and certain victory, or want of generalship, occasioned several neglects by which those advantages were taken that proved the ruin of their army, being flanked two or three times drove from hill to hill, in a circuitous direction, for upwards of a mile and a half; at last took shelter in their strongholds and woods adjacent, when the firing ceased for about half an hour until necessary preparations were made for dislodging them. "A heavy firing again commenced and continued severe until dark by which time the enemy were totally routed. The cannon playing too briskly on their works could afford them no shelter. Our loss was about 14 killed and 13 wounded; theirs at least triple that number. They carried off their dead during the night except 12 or 14 that lay too near our lines for them to venture. This would have been a decisive stroke to the Indians if unfortunately the right wing of our army had been rendered useless for some time by an uncommon chain of rocks that they could not pass by which part of the enemy escaped through ground they were ordered to occupy. "By the French prisoner we got the next morning, we learn that the Indians had been preparing for our reception ten days, moving their families and effects; that the morning before our arrival there were 300 warriors, Shawanese, Mingoes, Wyandottes and Delawares. Several reinforcements coming that day, he did not know their numbers, that they were sure of destroying the whole of us; that the greater part of the prisoners taken by Byrd were carried to Detroit, where there were only 200 regulars, having no provisions except green corn and vegetables. "Our whole store at first setting out being only 300 bushels of corn and 1,500 pounds of flour, having done the Shawnees all the mischief in our power, after destroying the Picawey settlements. I returned to this post, having marched in the whole 480 miles in 31 days. We destroyed upwards of 800 acres of HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 239 corn, besides great quantities of vegetables, a considerable portion of which appears to have been cultivated by white men. I suppose for the purpose of supporting war parties from Detroit. "I could wish to have had a small store of provisions to have enabled us to have laid waste the part of the Delaware settlements and falling in at Pittsburgh, but the excessive heat and weak diet showed the impropriety of such a step. Nothing could excel the few regulars and Kentuckians that composed this little army in bravery and in implicit obedience to orders, each company vying with the other who should be the most subordinate." One error of punctuation on the part of the Maryland Journal or some transcribing organ may have changed the meaning of one sentence of the foregoing. Where Clarke is made to say the British regulars at Detroit, "Having no provisions but green corn and vegetables" followed by a period and then starts to discuss his own provisions separately, it would appear to make much better sense if the phrase : "Having no provisions but green corn and vegetables" was connected with Clarke's men and the rest of the description of what he had in the way of food since lie is explaining why he returned. He almost certainly had nothing but green corn and vegetables at Piqua whereas it would be strange if the British at Detroit at this time should have nothing but green corn and vegetables since the lake was open to them. However, it is doubtful if green corn matures at Detroit by the latter part of July which would be the latest date tidings could come to Piqua from that city. Almost certainly there has been one of those errors of punctuation so common when such a style is used and transcribed a number of times.. The account is almost certainly the first time Clarke's account has been brought to the attention of persons in this section of Ohio, through any common medium of knowledge and must in consequence take its place in future county histories that aim to give a comprehensive description of events in this section. 240 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO It settles forever the question as to whether a general battle took place at Piqua, the question of the forts and the reason Clarke did not push his advantage. The destruction of the base of supplies for the British against Kentucky undoubtedly broke down their plans for further aggressions similar to Bird's invasion. The dispatch disposes of numerous errors which have crept into history concerning this expedition. Alexander McKee wrote De Peyster from Wapatomica on August 27, 1780. He must have belittled the invasion and the battle which he had not seen for Butterfield in quoting him adds that not less than six of the Indians were killed. Contrast this with Clark's statement of the Indian losses. It was such statements long current and unrebutted which gave little significance to Piqua and relegated it to the status of a "Mere skirmish in the wood." This does not agree with "Savage fierceness of the fighting" if the percentages of loss in five hours fighting were equal to the percentages in the whole day's fighting at Pt. Pleasant. In proportion to numbers engaged (Clark actually had but about 500 men in line) the percentages would have compared with the ratios at Chickamauga, Waterloo, Gettysburg, Antietam, Shiloh and the hardest fought battles of history, relative time and numbers considered with the ratio of loss heaviest at Piqua. The very nature of the fighting must have created a large proportion of wounded, rather in excess than under the normal average. The Indian was never a dead shot. His rifle was badly looked after. He was no adept in the fine art of measuring his powder, trimming and wrapping his bullet, he had not acquired with the comparatively new and complicated rifle the art that he had with the bow. Hence he was more apt than not to miss or give a surface rather than a center wound. Tree fighting in which the Kentuckians were adept, exposed nothing but a side, leg or arm, wounds in which were not fatal. Nor was the fighting at extreme close quarters as at Pt. Pleasant which would favor HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 241 the Indian aim. Nor all consideration of the circumstances call for a large excess of wounded over killed. The only logical explanation is that only the desperately wounded were counted. Among these latter were a Captain McAfee who afterwards died from his wounds and Bland Ballard, shot through both hips. It is a lamentable fact that these Western campaigns were without muster rolls or formal enlistments. Hence veterans of a dozen engagements are not listed in the Revolutionary rolls and compared with the Eastern Revolution the soldiers of the West have suffered grave injustice and neglect. Unnamed, unknown, unmarked, the soldiers of Piqua sleep on their battlefield nor state nor nation have deigned to give them memorial or marking. The muster rolls of the Kentucky stations doubtless carry the names of many of the men who fought at Piqua but these rolls were compiled in most instances one or two years before the battle and cannot be counted as muster rolls for the campaign nor would they contain the names of the men from the Beargrass or the late corners to Kentucky. Boone, Kenton, Logan, Floyd, Slaughter, Lynn, Robert Patterson, William Whitley, Bland Ballard, Abraham Thomas, almost comprise the known names on the American side while James and George Girty alone of the leaders among the savages have their names recorded. The name of not a single Shawnee chief has survived not one of whom it can be said absolutely that he took part in the engagement. CHAPTER XXVII EFFECT OF THE BATTLE OF PIQUA INTRODUCED WESTERN OHIO TO THE REVOLUTION-CLOSED THE CAMPAIGN WEST OF THE MOUNTAINS-CULMINATION OF CLARK'S MILITARY GLORY. The consequences, importance and interest of Piqua depend upon the viewpoint. From the standpoint of West Central Ohio it was the first and greatest American victory ever won on the soil of the twenty-two counties. The campaign of Bird and Clark the one part recruited in West Central Ohio and the other culminating in the same territory, collectively constituted the greatest movement of active armies west of mountains during the Revolution. The Piqua campaign introduced Western Ohio to the American and laid the foundation for future immigration and settlement by making known the resources of this section. From a more national standpoint Piqua closed the campaign of 1780 west of the mountains with triumph for the American arms. It marked the breakdown of the British attempt to wrest the offensive from the Americans and breach the west mountain rampart of the Eastern Revolution. Piqua was the first successful major offensive of the Americans against the Ohio tribes, it was the first pitched battle between the Americans and the tribes north of the river and the only striking success north of the Ohio attained by the Americans over the Ohio Indians prior to the campaign of Wayne. Piqua was the first definite test of the Kentuckians in full force against the Shawnees. It humbled the power of that tribe, never again did the Shawnee occupy the - 243 - 244 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO place of prestige he held prior to Piqua. He had lost his two principal towns, his place of national council, his granary, his crops, he was forced to retreat and yield another belt of no man's land, his activities for the remainder of 1780 were curbed, it was necessary that he remain at home and hunt to feed his family, he had little time or heart for molestation of Ohio river immigration. As a consequence this waxed and welled until by another season the whites had accumulated such numbers in Kentucky as to make anything but forays and inroads hopeless. With Piqua the offensive passed definitely to the Americans. Henceforth no invasion would muster force enough to threaten that salient of the Revolution. Bloody inroads might follow Piqua but never again could the Indian hope to dispossess the white, he might injure, annoy but never hope to conquer back the land south of the river. Henceforth he was content to make the Ohio River the boundary if it could be maintained. Piqua marked the culmination of Clark's military glory. Never again would he move with such celerity, command such implicent obedience, wield such prestige. Never before had he led an army worthy of the name so far as numbers and the three arms of infantry, cavalry and artillery were concerned. Never before had he planned and fought a pitched battle in the open. It was a new departure for Clark and without it his military record would not have been rounded and complete. Indirectly the influence of Piqua was even more far reaching. The news of Piqua reached Richmond October 4, 1780, or prior to the fighting at King's Mountain. It had most certainly come in over the Wilderness Road and half way enroute it had doubtless turned and sent its news down the valleys of the Holston and French Broad. That this territory had heard of Bird's invasion of Kentucky cannot be doubted. That refugees who had fled out over the Wilderness Road must have taken shelter there cannot be questioned. Here was a serious menace in the north whose extent and sweep could scarcely be estimated. HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 245 It is not reasonable or logical to suppose that the threat to Kentucky in the threefold movement from the north against Vincennes, Cahokia and Ruddell's station should have escaped attention. Had this been successful, Tennessee's turn would have been next. Kentucky was the north rampart of these Southerners even as Kentucky was the back door of the East. It is practically certain that Clark drew recruits clear to Cumberland Gap and even beyond as he had on other occasions been reinforced by some of the Tennessee men. These recruits returning from victorious Piqua carried confidence and a spirit of emulation with them. The menace to the north had been removed, there remained nothing to distract the attention of these mountain men from the British to the east. In fact Col. Isaac Shelby, one of the leaders at King's Mountain was in Kentucky in July, 1780, entering lands and must have been fully cognizant of Bird's invasion which had preceded his leaving. Just why Shelby (see Collins, Vol. 2, page 714) should have left Kentucky in this crisis is not clear save that he heard of the desperate condition of the South. That the King's Mountain men knew of Piqua, that it must have reassured and released them for activities away from home cannot be douted. King's Mountain is now regarded as one of the crucial victories of the Revolution, since it crushed in Cornwallis's flank, and began the series of defeats that resulted in his withdrawal to Yorktown. The West had brought 1780 to a successful close and instead of the West becoming a menace to the East, the tables were turned in the darkest hour of the Revolution. Piqua on the north released King's Mountain on the south. Together the West released the East from complete collapse. Piqua was the only engagement of consequence won by the Americans in the open field west of the mountains during the Revolution. Everywhere else disaster dogged their footsteps or their opponents evaded coming to the gripes on a large scale. Bowman's Defeat, Rogers' Defeat, Crawford's Defeat, Lochry's Defeat, Estil's Defeat, Holder's Defeat, Blue Licks Crossing, all 246 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO disasters to the Americans in the open. Brodhead and MacIntosh's expedition were largely abortions, the other major operations of the West were sieges like Fort Henry, Boonesborough, Harrodstown, Logan's, Fort Lauren's where the Americans were thankful to beat off their enemies. Clark's capture of Kaskaskia and Vincennes, two victorious coups against posts and his open field victory at Piqua remain the basis upon which rested whatever claims America had to present at the Treaty of Paris for possession of the Northwest. Piqua was the last, the one without which the previous ones at Kaskaskia would have been nullified. With Piqua America began that battering at the doors to Detroit, the key of the Northwest. There were but two American victories of consequence north of the Ohio from Pt. Pleasant, 1774, to Fallen Timbers, 1794. Piqua began what Fallen Timbers finished. Previous to Piqua the word "Shawnee" dominated Ohio Indian annals. Following Piqua the Shawnee sunk to a military status subordinate to the Wyandotte and later to the Miami. The aggressive leadership of the Ohio Indians no longer resided with the Shawnees. Why Clark after Piqua did not march for Detroit has intrigued many. He had a thousand victorious men. Detroit meant Western Canada, the end of the war in the West, the cutting of the umbilical cord through which the English fed supplies to the Indians. It would have seemed that the Clark of Vincennes would have risked all, dared all in a march northward through West Central Ohio. But the Clark who had magnetized Virginian forces in the far off Wabash country amid February ice could not do likewise with Kentuckians in August, the most favorable month of the year for military operations since the land was dried out and fit for marching. Clark's claim that he did not have food will hardly hold good since the Indian corn fields lay along the way to Detroit. The Confederacy fought the Civil War on green corn or parched kernels. HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 247 It must have been that the Kentuckians dare not leave their families exposed to the Cherokees. It is significant that Clark the next year preferred the Wabash route to Detroit to the Miami road. He claimed he would find more Indians and thus strike a more decisive blow. Clark never raised a major fight among the Wabash Indians in all his operations. One wonders if he could have been seeking a softer spot to thrust through. In justice to Bird the retirement of Clark after Piqua should be laid down beside the retreat of Bird from Kentucky. Both had to deal with refractory elements and both had failed to follow up their victory. Clark went to Virginia in the late fall of 1780 to push plans for the capture of Detroit in 1781. That winter there occurred happenings which made endless trouble for Clark in the future and helped obscure West Central Ohio history for all time. Benedict Arnold, the traitor, came up the James and took Richmond. The public stores and records were partially removed. With them went Clark's reports and records, many of them never to be recovered. Not until 1913 did Clark's accounts of his expenditures turn up. His life was embittered by charges of misappropriation of funds which these accounts would have answered. The reports on 1780 military activities were lost probably forever in this shuffle of papers. Both the British and the Americans were alarmed by the events of 1780 in the West. Clark, Jefferson and Washington feared an invasion of Kentucky in 1781 that would draw off Morgan's men from the South. They decided to forestall it with an attack on Detroit. Those who imagine Vincennes to have been the key point of the West should read the comment of these three men about the importance of Detroit. Clark's plans for the Detroit campaign broke down when the Ohio Indians massacred Archibald Lochry's party of reinforcements hastening down the Ohio to join Clark at the Falls. Pre- 248 - HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO vious to this in April, 1781, Col. Brodhead had attacked Cochocton with the result that the hostile Delawares now fell back into West Central Ohio, settling on the Upper Scioto, Mad River and the Sandusky. This was concentrating more and more of the savage resistance in the territory covered in this volume. Ever it was the Indians from this and the immediate surrounding section which were to baffle the Americans. These Ohio Indians were an island in the sea of American invasion against which the onrushing tide beat vainly for twenty years. In Kentucky and Tennessee the line of white advance by 1795 had reached the Mississippi and was curling in around and behind the Ohio Indians who were still breasting the full might of United States. This battle for Ohio was one of the most heroic defenses ever made by a people against overwhelming odds. The Western Ohio Indian was one of the greatest military men of all time. The glory of West Central Ohio is almost the glory of ragged, dirty but unconquerable wilderness Romans. They were the rock upon which the genius of Clark, perhaps one of the finest soldiers of all time, was wrecked. Whether the rheumatism of the Wabash waters or the Ohio Indian or the dull selfishness of Eastern officials drove Clark to drink is a mooted question. George Girty and Joseph Brant, he that was brother-in-law to Sir William Johnson were the two evil geniuses who duplicated on Lochry the fate of Col. David Rogers at nearly the same spot in 1779. Girty and Brant had recruited about 100 Indians and were scouting the Ohio looking for Clark. They captured a party with letters and used them for a decoy below the mouth of the Big Miami where they lured Lochry ashore August 24, 1781, and killed or captured his command. Girty and Brant then fell back up the Big Miami where they met Alexander McKee and Captain Andrew Thompson, the former with Indians and the latter with Canadian rangers. The united body advanced toward Louisville to watch Clark. HISTORY OF WEST CENTRAL OHIO - 249 While thus engaged Brant and Simon Girty who had come along with some Sandusky Indians, fell into an altercation over Brant's prowess, and Girty calling Brant a liar, the latter retaliated with a saber cut that bit deep into Girty's head and nearly let the life out. Now after a long absence appear the Miamis, from 1762 when the Shawnee drove them from the lower Miamis until 1781, the word Miami scarce creeps into the Western narrative. Now, in 1781, with the Shawnees obscured a bit, the Miamis join with the Wyandottes and raid into Kentucky along with George Girty, Brant and McKee. Hence forth the Wyandottes and later the Miamis make Ohio Indian history until the Shawnee resurrection under Tecumseh. With 1781 Clark began that slow but increasing descent toward obscurity.