That Dark and Bloody River

by Allan Eckert

  Kentucky was still in grave jeopardy from the attacks of the Shawnees, and the apprehension of the Kentuckians—as these far western Virginians were now calling themselves—grew considerably when all the plans for a major government-backed offensive by Gen. George Rogers Clark seemed to be curtailed. Clark, still at Louisville, had just received the devastating news in a letter from Col. William Davies of the Virginia War Office:

  Sir:

  I have the honor to correspond with you by the direction of the Governor in Council, on the subject of your present and future military prospects. It is peculiarly unfortunate for the public interests, and it must be painful to your feelings, that the exhausted, debilitated state of the country is unable to support the smallest attempt upon the plan of offence. What were the sentiments of the Legislature, you will be able to judge more fully by the enclosed resolution. I wish it was in my power to promise you any proportion of that assistance, which the Assembly seem willing to supply for the purposes of defence, but the want of money puts every design upon the footing of uncertainty; and indeed I am utterly at a loss to know how we shall be able to forward to you the few supplies we are able to furnish. To possess you more fully of what you may expect, I promise you a probability of your being supplied with 200 suits of clothing for your men, & six brass four-pounders for your forts or gunboats, or any other preferable purpose. You shall have the whole of my influence to have the whole of the State infantry annexed to your command. They amount to about 150 men for the war under Col. Dabney. How to send the men, the cannon or clothing to you, I know not; at all events there appears no probability of getting them forwarded to you before next Spring. In addition to your regular force, you are vested by Government with unlimited powers to call from the militia of Jefferson, Fayette & Lincoln Counties, what numbers you please.

  Gov. Benjamin Harrison, writing to Clark on that same day, confirmed the grim news from the War Office but at least extended some hope that by spring the situation might change. As Harrison put it:

  The delay of an answer to your several favors has been occasioned by a variety of causes which Major Crittenden will explain to you.

  Soon after his arrival they were referred to the consideration of the Assembly. The deranged situation of the finances of the State, and the reduced value of the paper currency made this step necessary. Their determination on the subject you have enclosed, by which you will find that an offensive war cannot at this time be carried on. We must therefore turn our attention to defensive measures, and make use of every means in our power, that this be done in the most effectual manner. On your exertions this must rest. The Executive have the most entire confidence in, and reliance on your abilities & integrity and therefor will leave much to your discretion.

  The news of the surrender of Cornwallis and its promise of a near end to the Revolution had the effect of sending a new wave of land claimers to the Ohio Valley, and many of them, not finding land available to claim, rented properties from the owners, disregarding the hazards that still prevailed on this frontier. George Washington had already leased quite a few of his land claims to others and, in fact, had just written to a prospective renter:

  I have a small tract called the Round Bottom, containing about 600 Acres, which would also let. It lyes on the Ohio, opposite to Pipe Creek and a little above Capteening [sic].

  The bordermen on the upper Ohio were inordinately proud that George Washington, whom they considered one of their own, if not the first of the true bordermen in this area, had achieved such recognition as both a military and political leader. There was considerable discussion that, when the time came that the Revolution was over and the colonists won their independence from the British Crown, it should be he who was proclaimed King of America. An early demonstration of their appreciation of him and his accomplishments became apparent at Catfish Camp. That settlement had grown so much of late, that the brothers John and William Hoge formally laid it out as a village, and, by almost unanimous vote of the residents, the name was changed from Catfish Camp to the village of Washington, Washington County, Pennsylvania.

  Prospective land renters were encouraged to take their chances in this volatile region because over these past few months the theater of conflict on the upper Ohio River frontier had subtly shifted. While incursions of the Indians were still occurring on the American side of the Ohio, ever more parties of Americans were carrying the warfare across the river into the country of the Indians, though not always too successfully.

  On October 18, Lt. Matthew Neely at Fort Pitt was ordered to take command of Fort Henry at Wheeling. He took with him 15 privates and the old French swivel he had recovered from the river at Fort Pitt a month before, now unspiked and reconditioned and in fairly good condition. So pleased were the residents of Wheeling to at last get a piece of artillery, however small, that they formed a volunteer work party and quickly constructed a platform for it in the middle of Fort Henry—a raised log pen high enough that the “little big gun” could overshoot the pickets.

  In mid-November a party of 15 men under Capt. Joseph Biggs pursued a party of eight Wyandots that had stolen five horses in the Wheeling area. Jacob Wetzel, now 15, was a member of the party—his first real venture into the Ohio country since he and his brother, Lewis, had been captured and briefly taken there by the Indians over four years earlier, in August of ’77. Brady Rangers John Bukey and Alexander Mitchell were also members of the party.

  When they reached the Muskingum Bottom, Capt. Biggs felt they were close to where the Indians were camped. He split his party into small groups to spy about and see what they could find, keeping especially alert for the smell or sight of smoke from an Indian camp or any noise that might be coming from one. Young Wetzel thought he saw a movement and took cover behind a large tree. An Indian carrying a deer draped over his shoulders passed very close and Jacob could have killed him easily, but he held off firing because he was afraid his shot would alert the Indians in their camp, wherever it was, and they would escape. As soon as the Indian was out of sight, Wetzel went back to the others and reported and a search was made in that area throughout the night without the Indian camp being discovered. When daylight came, they discovered where the Indians had been camped, very close to where the principal part of the Biggs party had repeatedly passed during the night without discovering it; but the Indians, becoming aware of the whites, had quietly slipped away. Jacob Wetzel then regretted that he had not killed the Indian when he had the opportunity.

  Two nights later—on November 19—Indians crept into the camp of a detached party of scouts comprising Kinzie Dickerson, Joseph Hedges, John Hough, Jacob Linn and Thomas Biggs. They fired into the sleeping men. Young Biggs sat straight up, cried, “God have mercy on me!” and fell over dead. Hedges, shot through the heart, leaped up and ran almost 100 yards before he, too, fell dead. Jacob Linn never moved, having been shot through the head. Dickerson and Hough escaped in bare feet, though a tomahawk was thrown at the latter as he climbed a bank and stuck in the earth only inches from his head. When a larger party of the whites came to the scene to bury the dead, they found all three dead had been scalped but not otherwise mutilated, the Indians having evidently hastened on in fear of the larger party.

  Everyone knew by now of the forcible removal of the Moravians to the Sandusky Valley by the hostile Wyandots and Delawares, and it was rumored that their evacuated towns were now being used as staging sites by the hostiles for their raids against the frontier. Everyone felt that important things were in the offing, partly because of tentative plans soon to send a large force of whites over the Ohio to march on those Moravian towns in the valley of the Tuscarawas and find out if the rumors were true.

  The Moravian Indians themselves and their missionaries were not doing well at all. The promise by Monakaduto that they would be given a tract upon which to build a village was fulfilled, but the tract was a poor piece of land, subject to flooding and exposed to the elements. The Moravian Indians built some mean shelt
ers and the place was dubbed the Captives’ Town, but without adequate food, cover or shelter, the Indians were suffering badly and their pleas for help fell mainly on deaf ears. Even when their chief, Abraham—the former Delaware chief Netawatwees—asked several times for permission to lead a party of his people back to the area of their towns to try to gather what remained of their corn and other unharvested crops in the fields, they were put off with the remark, “Perhaps later, not now.” Their missionaries, John Heckewelder and David Zeisberger, along with other missionary teachers and their families, suffered even more than they, being held prisoner in abominable conditions with never enough warmth or food and with excessively bad treatment, especially from Simon Girty, who seemed to bear a particular hatred for the missionaries. The plan was eventually to take them to Detroit for trial as spies against the Crown, but as yet no one had found the time to convey them there.

  One spot of bright news was that Gen. William Irvine had finally arrived at Fort Pitt to take command, and Col. Daniel Brodhead returned east, no longer to be a thorn in the side of the settlers on the upper Ohio. And in the last significant change this year on the upper Ohio, Irvine ordered the Continental regulars at Fort Henry—Lt. Matthew Neely and his 15 privates—back to Fort Pitt. Relieved today by Washington County Militia Lt. John Hay, who brought with him a sergeant and 15 privates, Lt. Neely generously left his French swivel at Fort Henry.

  “I rather suspect,” Neely commented to Ebenezer Zane, “you folks here are going to need it a lot more than I.”

  [January 3, 1782—Thursday]

  Frederick Haldimand, British Governor of Canada, had been justifiably upset with last October’s surrender of Maj. Gen. Charles Cornwallis to George Washington at Yorktown. There was no doubt that the war was going badly for the British in the east, and he felt that it behooved him to prove to His Majesty George III that the Americans did not hold the upper hand everywhere. That proof, he felt, lay in the triumphs the Indians had been having on the frontier, all the way from North Carolina to the Great Lakes, particularly in the remote regions of New York and down the Allegheny and Ohio rivers for their entire lengths. The Indians had shown themselves to be excellent allies who hated their American foes with boundless intensity. If King George could be convinced to throw even more strength of arms, munitions and supplies to these Indians, there was little doubt in Haldimand’s mind that in a very short time the Americans could be ousted everywhere west of the Alleghenies.

  One way the Canadian governor hoped to show what great effect the Indian warfare was having on the frontier was to ship to England the substantial lots of scalps that the Indians had taken, which they had turned in at Detroit and other frontier British posts. For these, of course, they had been paid handsomely. With that in mind, shortly after the defeat of Cornwallis, Haldimand dispatched orders to these posts to send in their lots of scalps without delay. He was especially interested in those that would be forthcoming from the Iroquois, who were still carrying the war forward in the valleys of the Mohawk and Allegheny, because they would represent tangible proof of the falsity of the American claim that Gen. John Sullivan’s 1779 campaign against the Iroquois had utterly destroyed the Six Nations—especially the Senecas.

  Detroit, beyond doubt, had the greatest accumulation of these grisly trophies of frontier war—bales and boxes of them, in fact—but similar quantities had been building at other posts and collection points, such as Presque Isle and Fort Niagara.

  Now, in accordance with those orders, the first of these scalp shipments—eight large oilskin-wrapped bundles—had just been prepared by one of the Royal Indian agents for transport to Gov. Haldimand with the following letter:

  January 3d, 1782

  May it please Your Excellency,

  At the request of the Seneca Chiefs, I herewith send to Your Excellency, under the care of James Boyd, eight packages of scalps, cured, dried, hooped and painted with the Indian triumphal marks, of which the following is invoice and explanation:

  No. 1. Containing 43 scalps of Congress soldiers, killed in different skirmishes; these are stretched on black hoops 4 inches in diameter; the inside of the skin painted red, with a small black spot to note their being killed by bullets. Also, 62 of farmers killed in their homes; the hoops painted red, the skin painted brown, and marked with a hoe, a dark circle all around to indicate their being surprised at night, and a black hatchet in the middle, signifying their being killed with that weapon.

  No. 2. Containing 98 of farmers killed in their houses; hoops red, figure of a hoe to mark their profession, great white circle and sun to show they were surprised in the daytime; a little red foot to show they stood upon their defence, and died fighting for their lives and families.

  No. 3. Containing 97 of farmers; hoops green, to show they were killed in the fields; a large white circle with a little round mark on it for the sun, to show it was in the daytime, black bullet mark on some, and hatchet on others.

  No. 4. Containing 102 of farmers, mixed of several of the marks above, only 18 marked with a little yellow flame, to denote their being prisoners burned alive after being scalped, their nails pulled out by the roots, and other torments; one of these latter was supposed to be an American clergyman, his band being fixed to the hoop of his scalp. Most of the farmers appear, by the hair, to be young or middle-aged men, there being but 67 very grey heads among them all; which made the service more essential.

  No. 5. Containing 88 scalps of women, hair braided in the Indian fashion to show they were mothers, hoops blue, skin yellow ground with little red tadpoles to represent, by way of triumph, the tears of grief occasioned to their relations; a black scalping knife or hatchet at the bottom, to mark their being killed by those instruments; 17 others, very grey, black hoops, plain brown color, no marks by the short club or casse-tete, to show they were knocked down dead, or had their brains beat out.

  No. 6. Containing 193 boy’s [sic] scalps of various ages, small green hoops, whitish ground on the skin, with red tears in the middle, and black marks, knife, hatchet, or club as their death happened.

  No. 7. Containing 211 girls [sic] scalps of various ages, small green hoops, white ground, tears, hatchet, club, scalping knife, &c.

  No. 8. This package is a mixture of all the varieties above mentioned, to the number of 122, with a box of birch bark containing 29 little infant’s [sic] scalps of various sizes, small white hoops, white ground, no tears, and only a little black knife in the middle, to show they were ripped out of their mother’s [sic] bellies.474

  [March 2, 1782—Saturday]

  Col. David Williamson listened closely as Col. Ebenezer Zane and Majs. John and Samuel McCulloch filled him in on the details of what had been occurring here in Wheeling and the upper Ohio River area over the past couple of months; details of incidents that had led him and his men to make this the rendezvous point for the expedition now forming.475

  “Things’ve not been good around here lately,” Zane told him. “Usually we can count on a respite from the attacks during January and February because then the weather’s so bad, the Indians have a tough enough time just surviving without making raids. Not this time. This past winter has been the warmest I’ve ever experienced here, and it’s played havoc with us. They’ve been crossing over around Yellow Creek, Cross Creek, Mingo Bottom, Pipe, Captina, all over. They hit places on Chartier’s, King’s and Raccoon, killed some and captured more. Been one attack after another, and they’ve even been seen watching us from a distance here in Wheeling. Unnerving.”

  “Same thing at Vanmetre’s,” Sam McCulloch put in, wincing a little as he shifted position. He was still troubled with pain in the stump of his upper left arm from the amputation, though no one had heard him complain about it. Somehow he seemed to take it in stride, and he hadn’t even let it prevent his wedding here in Wheeling a month after the accident. He and Mary Mitchell, sister of Sam’s good friend, Alex Mitchell, had gone on with their planned wedding on January 30, though Mary had been agreeabl
e to putting it off if he had wanted to do so. He hadn’t.

  The accident had occurred while Sam McCulloch and David Fouts were out hunting together and had stopped to rest. McCulloch had leaned his gun against the log he was sitting on and a few moments later accidentally jostled it. The gun discharged, sending a ball into his upper left arm, shattering the bone. So severe was the injury that by the time they got back to Wheeling, nothing could be done except amputate the arm just below the shoulder.

  What bothered Sam McCulloch most of all about losing his arm was the continual inconvenience it caused him. He could mount a horse and ride and even shoot his rifle when it came to that—though he still had quite a tough time reloading—but the multiplicity of things that really required two good arms and hands sorely aggravated him. It was bad enough to lose a limb as the result of an Indian fight, but to shoot yourself accidentally and lose an arm as a result was so completely unnecessary and frustrating. Now, even though he had proven to everyone he could still function well enough, he had lost command of Vanmetre’s Fort, that position having been taken by his brother, John. Nor would he be able to participate, as he undoubtedly would have chosen to do, in this present expedition forming up under Col. Williamson. John had already announced that he was going along.

  “I’m sure,” John McCulloch spoke up, “you’ve heard about John Carpenter being caught and then getting away, haven’t you?”