by Allan Eckert
The army of men drawn largely from Botetourt, Fincastle and Augusta counties had grown quickly at Camp Union under the overall command of Gen. Andrew Lewis, who had commanded regular army troops under Gen. Braddock during the French and Indian War but who had never before commanded an army of militia. By the end of the first week of September, the full complement of 1,100 men had assembled and the army was formed into its various regiments and companies. Nearly all the young volunteers were good hunters and woodsmen but without experience in warfare.
The commander’s brother, Col. Charles Lewis, headed the Augusta Regiment, consisting of eight companies whose captains were Benjamin Harrison, Samuel Wilson, John Dickinson, Joseph Haynes, Alexander McClannahan, William Paul, George Mathews and John Lewis, the latter a nephew of Andrew and Charles Lewis. Capt. Mathews’s company boasted of having no man under six feet in height and most of them at least two inches taller than that.
The Botetourt Regiment was under command of Col. William Fleming and consisted of seven companies under Capts. Robert McClannahan, Matthew Arbuckle, James Ward, John Murray, James Robertson, John Stewart and another John Lewis, the latter being the son of the commanding general.228
Col. William Christian was named to command the division made up of three independent Fincastle County companies under Capts. John Herbert of New River, Evan Shelby of Holston River and William Russell of Clinch River, plus another independent company from Bedford County under Capt. Thomas Buford and a company of scouts and spies under Capt. John Draper of Draper’s Valley. Still trying to bring his own command up to regimental strength, Christian took leave to return to Fincastle County to recruit more men.
Finally, as something of a fly in the ointment, an independent company of 70 men had been raised in Culpeper County by Col. John Field, who was miffed that he had not only been passed over for full command of this southern army but had not even received a regimental command, which he felt he deserved more than any of the other field officers.
Lt. Daniel Boone was on hand also, having returned from warning the Kentucky surveyors. He and Michael Stoner had been gone 61 days and covered more than 800 miles on the dangerous mission. He was promoted to captain, and though it was thought he would certainly be placed in command of a company, he was instead ordered to stay behind in command of three garrisons on this frontier—Camp Union and Donnelly’s Fort on the Greenbrier and Jarrett’s Fort where Wolf Creek empties into the New River. Boone was soon also given command of Moore’s Fort, located at Castle’s Woods in the Clinch Valley, a remote post where three of his men had already been killed and scalped by Talgayeeta within sight of the fort.
The march began on Sunday, September 11, guided by Capt. Matthew Arbuckle, who had been to the Ohio several times on claiming expeditions. Despite a certain military bearing to the force, it had a ragtag appearance at best. No man in the entire army was wearing a uniform, although Col. Charles Lewis had brought along his scarlet coat to wear on special occasions. All others were clad in linsey-woolsey and leathers of wide variation and little distinction. No wagons could be used, so everything was being carried either in backpacks or on packhorses. The independent regiment commanded by Col. William Christian did not start with the main army. He had not yet returned with the additional men he had set out to raise in Fincastle County, and so orders were left for him to immediately follow with his full force upon his return. In the meanwhile, Lewis’s army had marched 12 miles on the first day, which was respectable, considering the terrain. Many days followed when they marched far less. Every step of the way the path had to be improved to allow passage not only for the packhorses but also for the small herd of beef cattle being herded as their meat supply. There were also many small difficulties, and one major tragedy right at the start.
Col. Field, still irked at being passed over for a substantial command, decided he would march his company of 70 men by a different route from that taken by the main army. Having twice before been downriver as far as the Kelly’s Creek Settlement, he felt the route he was taking would be faster and safer. Faster it may have been; safer it was not.
On the third day two privates named Edward Clay and John Coward strayed from the main body of troops to hunt deer at a creek bottom called the Little Meadows. Unbeknownst to them, a pair of Mingoes had been spying on the detachment’s movements, and the privates accidentally stumbled into them. Clay was somewhat ahead when one of the Indians rose from behind a log and shot him dead. When the warrior raced out to scalp his victim, he was himself shot and killed by Pvt. Coward. The second Mingo fled, leaving behind a bundle of ropes, which led the commander to conclude that their intent had been to steal some of the packhorses. This incident prompted Col. Field to rejoin the main army, and the full force traveled the remainder of the way together.
Nothing else untoward occurred during the rest of the march. When they reached the mouth of Elk River, they paused to build canoes with which to float the heavier supplies the remaining distance to Point Pleasant.229 The boats were quickly built and loaded, and the remainder of the army continued down the east shoreline of the Kanawha.
So now, arriving at Point Pleasant and finding abundant Indian sign but no indication of Dunmore’s army, Gen. Lewis dispatched messengers up the Ohio to discover where Dunmore was and when he would arrive. Meanwhile he ordered his army to set up camp while they waited. He also assumed that the size of his army was such that there was simply no danger of attack and therefore neglected to order temporary fortifications erected.
It was a very serious error.
[October 1, 1774—Saturday]
On the day that Lord Dunmore had established as the rendezvous date with Gen. Lewis’s army at Point Pleasant, he was still 175 miles away—a greater distance than the Lewis force had marched in order to reach the Ohio.
It was only yesterday that the crusty, chunky, grizzled old Scot governor had reached Wheeling, and he appeared in no particular hurry to move on. His arrival with so huge a force—1,200 men, of whom 700 had come by water from Fort Pitt and the remaining 500 under Capt. William Crawford by land, driving the beeves with them—was a festive affair unprecedented on the upper Ohio. The handful of regulars with his force were arrayed in their scarlet coats, white trousers and black boots, accompanied by fifes and drums, and the governor’s own personal guard of Scottish Highlanders in kilts and ceremonial bonnets disembarked to the wailing strains of bagpipes and the rattle of drums. The vast majority of troops, however, were clad simply in the same type of hunting shirts, leathers and linsey-woolsey worn by the army of Gen. Lewis.
Dunmore left Williamsburg on July 10 and had begun collecting men as he moved from post to post. The majority of his force, exclusive of those who had previously assembled at Fort Pitt under Col. Connolly, had been raised in Frederick, Rockbridge, Dunmore and adjacent counties and assembled first at Fort Frederick and then at Fort Cumberland.230 The march from that latter post along the Braddock Road to Fort Pitt was begun on September 8, and they arrived at Pittsburgh on September 18. Dunmore immediately began a series of secret conferences with Col. Connolly, along with a private council attended by a number of Indian delegates.231 It was believed by the assembled men that they would set off downriver from Fort Pitt immediately in the large number of boats that had been assembled and prepared by Col. Connolly, but that did not occur. Ten days passed with Dunmore always giving the impression of being very busily engaged in details, but precious little of significance was accomplished. On the eighth day—September 26—he started Capt. Crawford off with the land detachment of 500 men and the herd of beef cattle and two days later embarked in boats with his remaining 700 men, leaving behind only a small garrison at Fort Pitt. The Dunmore force camped overnight at Logstown and arrived at Wheeling almost simultaneously with Crawford’s detachment.
Dunmore immediately selected George Rogers Clark, Simon Girty, Simon Kenton and Peter Parchment as his personal spies and couriers, and he also named Ebenezer Zane as his disbursement officer a
nd John Gibson as aide and chief interpreter. Michael Cresap, despite Gibson’s threat to him, was part of Dunmore’s party, having gathered a party of men for the campaign, but he kept a close watch for Gibson and studiously avoided him so they never came face to face.
Instead of immediately putting his troops into motion again to reach the rendezvous with Lewis as speedily as possible, Dunmore dispatched Crawford with his land force of 500 men, 50 packhorses and 200 head of cattle with orders to continue descending the left bank of the Ohio for 100 miles until opposite the mouth of the Hockhocking. There he was to swim his detachment across the Ohio and erect a fortification for the deposit of supplies at the Hockhocking River mouth. Dunmore promised that he and the army would follow in a few days in the boats.232 The general also sent dispatches, carried by Kenton, Girty and Parchment, to Gen. Lewis with a change in orders that was not immediately made known to Dunmore’s own men: Lewis was not to wait for the northern army but was to ascend the Ohio to a new rendezvous point some 80 miles above Point Pleasant, at the mouth of the little Kanawha.233
Now, the day following Crawford’s departure, word was beginning to circulate that Dunmore had no intention of making the rendezvous with Lewis’s army at Point Pleasant because he was concerned lest his flotilla of boats be attacked on the river. Instead, he had decided to ascend the Hockhocking and follow the Indian trail overland to the Pickaway Plains, where Hokolesqua’s Town was located, along with several other villages.
It was all very confusing and worrisome, and once again rumors began circulating that Dunmore was maliciously exposing the southern wing of the army to extreme jeopardy.
[October 2, 1774—Sunday]
Despite the presence of the Dunmore and Lewis armies on the Ohio, attacks did not cease against the various small settlements. At Draper’s Meadows the Philie Lybrook family living on Sinking Creek was attacked. Philie, working in a nearby field, managed to escape and hide himself in a cave, but when he returned to the cabin after the attackers were gone, he found the scalped bodies of his five children. At a cabin not too far distant from Lybrook’s, Jacob, John and Joshua Snidow were captured by the same party of Indians. Jacob and John, older boys and more fleet of foot, managed to sprint away from their captors and escape, but Joshua was taken away.234
On Tenmile Creek, not terribly far from Redstone, two settlers were killed and two captured, and a family of four on Dunkard Creek, after putting up a valiant fight, were roasted alive in their cabin.
As if flaunting the very presence of Dunmore’s force, last night, only 24 miles above Wheeling at Harmon’s Creek, a large party of Mingoes had attacked the Harmon Greathouse cabin just after dark. Harmon’s grown sons, Jacob and Daniel, were away, but he and his second wife, Mary, and their three small children were there, as was his sister, Jane Muncy and a visiting neighbor, Benjamin Davis. Fortunately, they had barred the door from the inside, and as the Indians chopped at it with their tomahawks, Greathouse gave instructions to his wife and sister and then climbed up into the loft. The women immediately began shouting and tossing furniture about and making a great commotion, calling out various names of men to come down and help fight, that they were being attacked. At once Davis shot through the door, and Greathouse shot from a tiny window in the loft, both shouting hoarsely. The Indians, convinced the house was filled with men, quickly dispersed into the darkness.
Once sure the Indians were gone, everyone in the cabin fled to the mile-distant cabin of Thomas Edgington, which was much better fortified and had a dozen men on hand. They spent the remainder of the night there and all day today, planning to return to their own cabin tomorrow. Now, however, just after dark, as a light drizzle began falling, the Indians attacked the Edgington cabin and fired upon it at intervals until nearly midnight before finally leaving. All inside were very relieved and thanked God for the rain that had prevented the attackers from setting the place afire.
[October 9, 1774—Sunday afternoon]
Gen. Andrew Lewis was not in a very good humor. For some time he had been speaking to the subordinate officers that had been summoned to his tent, and now he shook his head in exasperation.
“I do not pretend to know just what the devil is going on,” he said, “but I don’t like any of it.”
For the past nine days his army had been camped here at Point Pleasant, awaiting the arrival of Dunmore’s army, their patience becoming very thin and morale disintegrating as the men groused about their limited rations and the poor quality of the beef from the animals they had herded with them. Four days after their arrival, the party of 42 surveyors from Kentucky, under James Harrod, appeared in their sturdy boats. They were on their way home after Dunmore’s warning had been delivered to them by Boone. Now, however, finding the army camped here, all volunteered to stay and help.
When messengers came to Lewis, bearing orders for him to lead his force upstream to a new rendezvous point at the mouth of the Little Kanawha, the general had absolutely refused, considering the order stupid and a reckless endangerment of his troops, to say nothing of the fact that it would also leave the southern Virginia frontier open and vulnerable to massive invasion and assault by Indians moving up the Kanawha. He immediately sent the messengers back with his refusal and with word of his determination to await Dunmore’s arrival.
Then, today, had come Sam McCulloch, Simon Kenton and Simon Girty with another dispatch from Dunmore, who was furious at the disobedience of the earlier order and who now told Lewis in no uncertain terms that he absolutely must obey the present order: Plans had been changed, Dunmore was now going to lead his force up the Hockhocking and then directly overland to the Scioto towns, and it was there that the two armies would finally merge.235 Gen. Lewis was to begin marching his men to that location at once.
Although he disliked that order nearly as much as the first, Andrew Lewis realized he could not disobey again. He told the messengers he would comply, and they left at once to return to Dunmore. That was when he had called these officers in to explain the situation. It was Capt. John Stuart who put into words what all of them felt.
“None of this makes any sense!” he growled. “Lord Dunmore is placing both armies in jeopardy. Who ever heard of an attacking force going into enemy territory and not joining until they were in the midst of their enemy’s stronghold?”
No one had an answer, of course, but Gen. Lewis sighed and gave the order. “We will break camp first thing in the morning and utilize the canoes we built, as well as Captain Harrod’s boats, to ferry the men across as quickly as possible. Then,” he added grimly, “we will march to join the governor as he has directed.”
At practically this same moment, Lord Dunmore and his army, in more than 100 canoes, piroques and a few large keelboats, had just landed at the mouth of the Hockhocking and made camp, with orders for the march to begin first thing in the morning. Dunmore then inspected the small fort that had been built by Capt. Crawford and approved of the good job that had been done. He named the place Fort Gower and promoted William Crawford to the rank of major.
[October 9, 1774—Sunday night]
In the pale light of a three-quarters moon, Hokolesqua, as commander of the allied Indians, assembled his force of more than 900 warriors at the mouth of the creek that enters the Ohio three miles upstream from Point Pleasant.236 His expression was set in grim lines as he watched the warriors preparing their weapons and painting their faces. What was in the offing this night would undoubtedly result in many lost lives, but there was no turning back now.
He thought of the inexorable chain of events that had brought them to this point and concluded that what was happening now must be the will of Moneto. All the high hopes had gone awry, beginning with the mission they had made to Fort Pitt in an effort to bring about a peace before all-out war could descend upon them. But instead of hearing their words of peace, the whites had set upon them, and Silverheels had been stabbed and nearly died. Yet Moneto had smiled upon them, and the younger brother of Hokolesqua had sur
vived his wounds and was among the warriors gathered here this night.
The reaction of the tribe to this insult to a peace delegation led by their principal chief was, however, one of consummate outrage far greater than that evinced by Hokolesqua himself. He told them that he was grieved that his brother had been stabbed and that he shared their anger that such could have occurred, but that he was strongly opposed to their cries for immediate retaliation. War with the Shemanese, he believed, would be a grave error. Far better, he advised, to suffer the sting of that insult than to sacrifice the lives of many fine warriors, a certain outcome if they went to war.
“You know me well,” he had told the assembled council. “I have not become your chief by avoiding battle. But this time you must take a long, close look at what embarking into warfare against the whites can do to you. Destruction of our tribe is entirely possible. Heed my words! In this instance, would it not be better to swallow the insult, put aside our pride for once and resume peaceful negotiations with the whites? In the end result, far more would almost surely be accomplished in this way than by bloodshed.”
But then, for the first time in the years they had been close friends, Hokolesqua found Pucksinwah openly opposed to him. Addressing the assembled warriors, the war chief had spoken forcefully. “Hokolesqua is my revered chief and also my friend. Yet, as war chief of the Shawnees, I believe we have moved beyond the realm of negotiation and can only suffer by attempting more. There will be time enough to resume negotiations after we have confronted and bested the whites and can then negotiate from a position of strength rather than from a position of weakness and fear.”