That Dark and Bloody River

by Allan Eckert

  The hunter, breathing heavily, was unhurt save for a single claw slash on his left forearm and quickly reloaded. Then he walked over and checked his dog’s wounds. The two gouges were ugly but not dangerous, and he grinned as he ruffled the dog’s ears.

  “You’re a right good pal to have along, Kicker,” he said. The dog raised his head, thumped his tail against the ground a few times and then resumed licking. “Well, now,” the hunter said as he straightened and looked back toward the dead cat, “won’t little Simon’s eyes open wide when he sees that painter’s skin!”

  The “little Simon” he referred to was the eldest of his four sons, a very self-assured eight-year-old who could already be relied upon to help his mother take good care of his younger brothers, George, James and the toddler, Thomas. Chuckling at the thought, the hunter turned away, recovered his knife and bent to finish skinning and quartering the deer. Skinning the big cat would be next. It would make a heavier load for him to carry than anticipated, but he’d manage. He always had. This was the man who had once carried the heart, liver and hindquarters of an elk he had killed some ten miles in order to bring the meat back to his family.

  This was the well-known hunter Simon Girty.

  About this same time, another experienced frontiersman, Christopher Gist, left Will’s Creek Station on the Potomac on behalf of the Ohio Company to inspect possible settlement areas in the tract the company had received as a grant from King George. He stopped first to visit the Indians at Logstown, where he was received with pleasure by the Wyandots, Delawares and Mingoes on hand and spent many hours counciling and smoking with them. While there he also visited with resident trader Barney Curran, who had traded there longer than anyone else.

  Curran readily admitted to Gist that he was worried. Though the tribes were treating them well enough, he had a “feeling” that all was not as it seemed and there were some big troubles ahead. Yet when Gist tried to pin him down to specifics, Curran simply shook his head and shrugged. He said trader George Croghan, who might know more, had passed through with his Seneca half-breed friend, Andrew Montour, and a dozen other traders only a few days before en route to Goschachgunk. Gist set off at once, descended the Ohio to the Muskingum and then paddled upstream to the principal Delaware village. There he met Croghan, who had stopped by Goschachgunk to pay his respects, drop off some trade goods and gather up some of the traders there to journey with him to Pickawillany. Croghan said he knew nothing more than Barney Curran had already told him but that he himself had been experiencing the same sense of disquiet. He also said he was thoroughly disgusted that, despite the fact the Indians had—through Croghan’s own efforts—granted permission for the erection of a British fort at the Forks of the Ohio, governmental decision had now been made against doing so: by Virginia on the grounds that the post would be too distant and too exposed to be properly maintained, by Pennsylvania on the grounds that it did not have funds enough to do so. Both the Pennsylvania Assembly and the Virginia Council had even condemned Croghan for placing them in a position where they had to refuse.71 Croghan was bitter, considering it a very serious mistake that he was sure they would eventually come to regret.

  While Gist conferred with the tribal leaders at Goschachgunk for three days, Croghan and some of his traders left, Montour accompanying them, and went to the little Indian town called Whitewoman’s Creek Village on the stream of that name, a tributary of the Tuscarawas a short distance above Goschachgunk. The village, though small, was one of the oldest established Wyandot villages. There, as they had done on numerous past occasions, the traders paid their respects to the medicine woman, who had great influence in the tribe. There was always a sense of wonderment in such visits; wonderment that came from the fact that she was the white woman for whom the tributary had been named. Some 40 years previously she had been captured in New England as a young woman named Mary Harris. After being shunted from tribe to tribe for several years, she came into possession of the Wyandots, who admired her courage and were more than impressed with her knowledge of herbs and folk medicine. Before long she had become established in her own village, and the place became a focal point for those who were suffering from maladies or injuries. She had married a Wyandot and bore him children but had outlived them all and now was content to live out the rest of her days practicing her lore. She dearly loved rum, and even though Croghan never traded in any form of whiskey, he always made sure to bring along a small bottle for her. They visited with her for a day, and when they returned to Goschachgunk, they found Gist had finished his counciling and was ready to leave.

  As soon as Croghan proposed that Gist accompany them to Pickawillany, he accepted, and the long journey together was made safely. They arrived at Pickawillany on January 18, 1751, and found close to 20 British traders already present—English, Scots and Irish. All pitched in and by the end of March had erected, under the approval of Unemakemi, a spacious log trading post that could almost pass as a fort; the large main building was enclosed within a wall of split logs that had three gates. They had even dug a well within the walls.

  Early in April an extended council was held with the Miamis, Weas and Piankeshaws under Pickawillany and representatives of the Shawnees, Delawares, Wyandots and Mingoes who were on hand. Some were glumly predicting bad things to come from the French because of the treatment the party under Céloron had experienced here the previous year. Unemakemi merely laughed and sloughed off the concerns, saying the French would not be fools enough to come here and attempt to make trouble. Almost as if on cue, a party of four Ottawas arrived bearing a French flag and gifts from the Marquis de la Jonquière. Unemakemi, with no vestige of tact, gravely insulted the Ottawa deputation, threw some of the gifts into the fire and told them to take the rest of the gifts and get out and tell the governor-general that so long as he was alive, Pickawillany would never again trade with the French. Then, as if nothing had happened, he gave an order, and a large, quite impressive feather dance was put on by some 40 Indian men and women.

  Gist was not at all sure they’d heard the last of this matter, and when he reported back to officials at the Ohio Company the following June, bringing good information respecting where settlements could best be established along the south bank of the Ohio, he also warned that there might be trouble afoot stemming from the French. Pickawillany he described to them as the largest and strongest Indian town in America, and he added that George Croghan had announced to all the Indians there that a major council, to which all the northwestern tribes were invited, was to be held in early June the following year at Logstown. At that time, Croghan had said, representatives of the Colony of Virginia would make a strong effort to effect a formal alliance with all the tribes.

  Taking advantage of this upswing of fortune for the British trade on the frontier, John Fraser, who had established himself well at the villages from Logstown up to the mouth of the Kiskeminetas on the Allegheny, now built a very good trading post at the Seneca village of Venango, located at the mouth of the stream the Céloron party had named Rivière aux Boeufs.72

  The fury of the Marquis de la Jonquière was great when he learned not only of Fraser’s new post but also of how his Ottawa emissaries had been treated by Unemakemi. Immediately he sent an express to Detroit with orders for Céloron to attack and destroy Pickawillany. With it he dispatched a strong body of Canadian militia under a wild-tempered Canadian-Ottawa half-breed, Charles Michel de Langlade, to aid the Fort Pontchartrain regulars.

  In July 1751, Mary Draper Ingles and her husband, William, the first couple to get married west of the Allegheny crest, now became the parents of the first white child born to that distinction—a fine healthy boy they named Thomas, after William’s father. But there were a growing number of stories of Indians prowling about in the area, and all the settlers were becoming nervous. Up the Greenbrier, at the mouth of Stony Creek, Dr. Thomas Walker passed through with his party, just completing his second exploratory trip, which had taken him west of the New River to t
he Holston River, Clinch River, Cumberland Gap and other locations. He had intended to go farther, but his party became so unnerved at all the Indian sign being discovered that they turned back. They followed the Bluestone River down to the New River, descended that as far as the mouth of the Greenbrier and then went up that latter stream to Stony Creek. There they encountered Stephen Sewell and Jacob Marlin, still living within sight of one another but still estranged. The Walker party continued toward home but not before warning the two whites about the Indians. Soon Marlin packed up and returned to the eastern settlements. Sewell, however, decided he’d explore on his own a bit. He followed the Greenbrier down to the New River and started down that stream, but he had traveled only about ten miles when he encountered a party of Indians, who promptly killed and scalped him.73

  In Quebec, where the ailing governor-general Jonquière had gone for treatment, he received word from the colonial minister in Paris that his request for 10,000 peasants to settle in the Ohio Valley had been denied. No news had come in respect to his order that Pickawillany be destroyed, and somehow he just didn’t care anymore. His health continued to degenerate, and on a bright Sunday morning—May 17, 1752—he quietly died. The Baron de Longueuil immediately assumed control until the favor of His Majesty could be known.

  Had Jonquière lived only a little longer, he would have been gratified with what occurred at Pickawillany. Exactly five weeks later, on June 21, the force he had sent utterly destroyed the Miami principal village. Langlade, who had led the Canadians—and a party of Chippewas and Ottawas under Chief Pontiac—in their attack, had personally slain Unemakemi, cutting out his heart while he was still alive, eating a portion of it and then beheading the chief’s dead body. Many other Indians had been killed, along with some of the traders on hand, and those who were not killed were taken captive, to be executed later.74

  Immediately following the death of Unemakemi and the destruction of Pickawillany, Unemakemi’s second, Michikiniqua—Little Turtle—became principal chief of the Miamis, and in a very short time he had established a new capital village of the tribe, called Kekionga, at the head of the Maumee River, where it is formed by the confluence of the St. Marys and St. Josephs rivers.75

  The major council of the tribes that had been scheduled by George Croghan was held at Logstown on June 9, 1752, and it ended up satisfying no one. Croghan was there, of course, as was Gist, along with Commissioners William Patton, Joshua Fry and others. For many of the Indians on hand, it was the first time they truly learned the details of the Lancaster Treaty of 1744, in which the Iroquois had blandly sold to the British for £600 the entire Ohio River drainage. They were furious and absolutely repudiated that treaty on the grounds that the Iroquois had had no right to sell lands not belonging to them—and the British had had no right to buy. When they learned that the Ohio Company, acting on the surveys Gist had made, was already preparing to establish settlements in the Ohio Valley—the first to be at the mouth of Chartier’s Creek, two miles below the Forks of the Ohio, where the company also intended to erect a fort—they warned against it in the most serious manner. The talks continued, and the Indians again offered the British the right to build a fort at the Forks of the Ohio, and though they signed the Logstown Treaty on June 13, they continued to maintain that the British had no right to settle on the Ohio.

  Because his fortunes seemed to be swinging toward the Ohio River as a result of his connection with the Ohio Company, Christopher Gist, in July 1752, abandoned his settlement on the Yadkin River and, along with 11 other families, established a settlement that included his own combined cabin and trading post 12 miles west of Laurel Hill, at the foot of the west slope of Chestnut Hill, only a short distance northeast of the Nemacolin Trail.76

  At the same time the Ohio Company erected a strong storage house at the mouth of Redstone Creek. Called a hangard, the storage house was constructed of stone and notched logs, 20 feet wide and 30 feet long, and was to be used to house trade goods at the western terminus of the Nemacolin Trail. It was situated on the slope just above the Monongahela and adjacent to the prehistoric Indian ruins called Redstone Old Fort.

  For the Shawnees, it all seemed to emphasize the assessment that Pucksinwah had made: The British meant to continue their encroachment, and with ever more settlers sinking roots on the frontier, the Ohio would be next. So despite what the French force had done at Pickawillany, the Shawnees still considered the British to be the more dangerous potential enemy and remained convinced that, as Pucksinwah had warned, the British had “very bad designs” against all the Indians, including the Shawnees; thus they maintained their resolve to side with the French when the rapidly looming war between the two finally broke out. While biding time for that to occur, they had other problems. On May 23, 1753, excessive rains caused heavy flooding on the Scioto River, and the Shawnees at Sinioto had to scramble to safety on higher ground and watch stoically as the water rose nine feet high in their expansive village and the powerful current swept it all away except for three or four cabins. George Croghan was visiting at the time and sympathized deeply with them, giving them what stores he could out of his own supplies to help make up for their loss. He expected they would now relocate the village far up the Scioto, perhaps at the Pickaway Plains, where other Shawnee villages were located, but such was not the case. Within a few days a new Sinioto was being established, still close to the mouth of the Scioto, but this time to the east of the river on the much higher terrace overlooking the Ohio.77

  Although the Baron de Longueuil had hoped he would be permanently appointed to the position of governor-general, which he had temporarily filled on Jonquière’s death, it was not to be. That top post was quickly filled by a particularly distinguished soldier and statesman who arrived from France, the Marquis de Duquesne de Menneville.78 The new governor-general quickly familiarized himself with the situation on the frontier and ordered Capt. Henri Marin to take a force of 1,000 men and build three new French forts to protect a better portage route that had been discovered from Lake Erie to the upper Ohio—a route that avoided the difficult Lake Chautauqua Portage. By the time they reached there, the force had been augmented by other detachments to a total number of about 1,500. The new route began at the peninsula called Presque Isle—which Duquesne termed “the finest harbor in nature”—on Pennsylvania’s Lake Erie frontage, where Marin’s men built Fort Presque Isle. They then constructed a good portage road some 15 miles south to the headwaters of the Rivière aux Boeufs, where Fort Le Boeuf was built. It was too late in the season by then to start construction of the third post—Fort Machault—but they nevertheless followed the stream nearly 60 miles down to its mouth at the Allegheny, where Venango was located and where the new English trading post had been erected by John Fraser. The Indians had fled from the village on the approach of the French, but the trading post was captured and all its goods confiscated. Fraser was not there at the time—he was occupied with building a new log cabin as his residence on the Monongahela at the mouth of Turtle Creek, ten miles above the Forks of the Ohio—but two of his men were taken captive.79

  One of the more experienced and reliable of the English traders, John Fraser, built a cabin of his own the following year far closer to the Forks than anyone previously—on the right bank of the Monongahela, only ten miles distant from where the Ohio River forms.80 A French flag was raised over the trading post, and Capt. Daniel Joncaire, who had accompanied the force, was given a small detachment and ordered to hold the place until Fort Machault could be erected there. Seneca Indians had watched the whole tableau from hiding, and they immediately sent runners to inform the Indians and British at Logstown of what had happened.

  When Robert Dinwiddie, Governor of Virginia, learned of the unprecedented French action at Venango, he saw the danger signs clearly and was more than ever convinced of the necessity for the British to get a fort erected at the Forks of the Ohio without delay; if they did not, he warned, the toehold the French were presently establishing wou
ld quickly become an iron grasp on the entire Ohio Valley. When the Virginia Assembly continued to ignore his plea for funds to build the fort that the Indians had given them the right to erect, determined Scot that he was, Dinwiddie appealed directly to the King, and the response was exactly what he wanted: the authority to supersede the Assembly in this matter. As His Majesty George instructed:

  Your plan for the construction of forts, in particular a strong fort at the Forks of the Ohio, is approved for the security and protection of our subjects and of the Indians in alliance with us. You are directed to procure funds from the Colonial Government that a sufficient number of cannon may be shipped for emplacement in the forts. Our will and pleasure is that you use your utmost endeavors to erect the said forts as soon as the nature of the service will admit. Our further will and pleasure is that you should bring forth with cause the whole or part of our militia of the Province of Virginia now under your government, to be drawn forth and armored as you may judge necessary for our service. In case any of the Indians not in alliance with us or dependent upon our Crown, or any Europeans under pretense of alliance with the said Indians, should presume to interrupt you in the execution of these our orders, you are first to represent our undoubted right and to require the peaceable departure of any such Europeans or Indians. But if they should still persist, our will and pleasure is that you should repel by force. Since the Crown has received information that a number of Europeans not our subjects are appearing in a hostile manner in the area, you are instructed to inquire into the truth of the report. If you shall find that any number of persons shall presume to erect any fort or forts within the limits of our Province of Virginia, you are first to require of them peaceably to depart; and if, notwithstanding your admonitions, they do still endeavor to carry out any such unlawful and unjustifiable designs, we do hereby strictly charge you and command you to drive them off by force of arms, in execution of which, all our officers, civil and military, within the limits of your government, are to be aiding and assisting to the utmost of their abilities.