by Allan Eckert
Brothers, I have kept all our warriors in from doing any mischief to you. We expect you will follow our example in the same manner as we have. Be strong, and keep your people from distressing our towns in the south west quarter as they have already done. It seems very strange to us that such large bodies of men should slip off from you. It makes us doubt that you are carrying on a Confederacy with these people that strike us every now and then.
Brothers, we repeat again, be strong! And correct your young men. It seems very strange that such large bodies of men should slip from you. Be strong, and prevent these bad evils. You tell us always in your speeches that you will do so. We believe that it only comes from your lips and not from your heart, as it gives us place to think so. We wish, then, that all those matters may be settled in the best terms. It is from our heart’s desire that it should be so done, according to the peace made between you and us.
Brothers, as to the mischief committed on you by our people—as I may call them so, as we are all United Indians—it is those that come from a great ways, and they conceal themselves by our towns and passes, as their number is so small that we cannot discern them. Such small bodies of men we cannot look after; they are people that will not hear our speeches. But we shall do our best to prevent them.
Brothers, your people have struck ours—I mean those Wyandots that resort to the southward. We take it very hard that you allow us to be cut to pieces by your people. Call your people together and tell them not to do so anymore. Be strong and do this, as our intention is that peace shall continue between you and us as long as the world shall stand, if possible. We shew it very plain that we wish to be at peace with you.
Brothers, the United Nations of Indians do now cast our eyes daily back towards you, in waiting for your answer, which is to be held at the Great Fire, which is now already kindled.
Half King
Captn Pipe
for the United Indians
Butler was pleased to get their message, and he reported to Congress, which in turn authorized Arthur St. Clair, an officer in the late war and a born politician now residing in western Pennsylvania, to assemble the Indians for the purpose of negotiating a peaceful solution to the land problem. Yet all this was a delicate position for the new United States, only too well aware of its own weaknesses. Further, it was nowhere near well enough informed as to the strength of the new Indian confederation.
In those messages previously received by Congress, the tribes had renounced previous treaties as having been unfairly drawn, fraudulent and illegal because of having been consummated oftentimes with mere village chiefs having no right to speak for and commit their own tribes, much less others. The Indians had indicated they did not wish war and might be willing to discuss the cession of some small areas of land north of the Ohio River, but at the same time they spoke ominously of the consequences should the government persist in failing to keep settlers and surveyors south of the river until and unless any such cessions were completed. Yet, since the United States, by reason of the Treaty of Paris, already considered itself owner of the land upon which the Indians were resident, it had no desire to reopen negotiations for the same land, but neither was it prepared, economically or in manpower, for another Indian war. As Secretary of War Henry Knox put it on behalf of Congress:
In the present embarrassed state of public affairs and entire deficiency of funds, an Indian war of any considerable extent and duration would most exceedingly distress the United States. The great distance by land which supplies and stores must be transported would render the expense intolerable.
That did not, however, prevent Congress from relaying word via Secretary Knox to Gen. Josiah Harmar to begin long-range preparations for a possible invasion he would lead as soon as feasible through the heart of the Ohio country to the Maumee Valley to chastise and humble the Indians living there. Despite the efforts for secrecy, rumors of this pending invasion were soon filling the ears of virtually everyone in the Ohio Valley—including the Indians.
Throughout the big river’s valley, small but important incidents of improvement, impediment, attack and counterattack, matters of consequence and those of little significance continued to occur throughout the year. Samuel Brady and Drusilla held a happy little birthday celebration for their year-old son, Van Swearingen Brady, and began serious consideration of having another child. The impetuous, bullheaded John Hardin, much to the relief of most on the upper Ohio, left there permanently to settle in Kentucky, and Isaac Williams and his wife, Rebecca, sister of Joe Tomlinson, left their claim at Grave Creek and moved to their 400-acre tract along the left bank of the Ohio, almost directly opposite the mouth of the Muskingum, comforted by the presence of the new and formidable Fort Harmar just across the Ohio. A new wagon road was presently under construction that, when finished, would connect the settlements of the Greenbrier Valley via the Kanawha Falls to Lexington, Kentucky. And only ten miles northeast of Wheeling, a new town was laid out by Moses Chapline, Zachariah Spriggs, George McCulloch, Charles Wells, Andrew Van Swearingen, James Mitchell and Benjamin Briggs and was named West Liberty.675 Well down the Ohio, at the mouth of the Little Miami River, a new settlement called Columbia—the first settlement by Americans in the southwestern Ohio country—was established by Benjamin Stites and others formerly from Redstone on the Monongahela and, shortly afterward, Fort Miami was constructed about a mile below the settlement.
Certain close calls and tragedies, however, intermingled with the increase of white expansion in the Ohio Valley. Samuel Brady, leading a patrol of his Rangers up Yellow Creek two miles into the Ohio country, saw an Indian appear out of the woods 100 yards ahead and yelled a warning. Though out of range, the Indian fired at the Rangers and then loped off into a dark, narrow ravine.
“Don’t follow!” Brady barked. “He’s a decoy. It’s an ambush. Get treed, now!”
Instantly the Rangers leaped behind trees and prepared to fight. It was not a moment too soon. A horde of Indians burst out of the trees between themselves and where the lone warrior had been and opened fire with a hail of bullets. Bullets whined through the air and clipped off leaves and twigs, or they thumped into the trunks of the trees behind which the men had taken cover, killing one Ranger and wounding two others. The Rangers returned the fire with good effect, killing and wounding upward of 20 of the Indians. It was obvious to Brady, however, that his party was badly outnumbered, and he ordered his men to retreat. They managed to reach the Ohio, quickly launched their hidden canoes and got safely to the Virginia side without further loss or injury.
Not all incidents were so satisfactorily resolved. Silas Zane and George Green, seeing the Ordinance of 1787 as being the first major step to achieving a normal, peaceful intercourse with the Indians, decided to get in on the ground floor and establish a lucrative trade with the Shawnees, a dream they had harbored for some time. Pooling their own resources, they acquired a good supply of merchandise from the trading store that Col. George Stickney of Maryland had recently established in Wheeling. The two men filled their big canoe with the goods and paddled down the Ohio to the Scioto with them, then up that stream. The Shawnees, though startled to see them, treated them cordially enough, and the partners quickly sold out their entire stock of merchandise and started back down the Scioto with a rich load of furs. The dream, however, became a nightmare. Before they reached the Ohio River, a barrage of shots from Indians hidden on shore snuffed out the lives of both George Green and Silas Zane.
So, despite the Ordinance of 1787, the frontier situation throughout the Ohio River Valley remained in a state of flux, and ever more voices were being raised for lifting the ban on expeditions entering the Ohio country against the Indians. With this transitional year coming to a close, William McMahan and Archibald Woods, now representatives of Ohio County to the Virginia Legislature, wrote with obvious bitterness to Gov. Randolph:
The incursions of the savages have of late become so frequent in the County of Ohio, & their murders & depredatio
ns so alarming, as to prevent the inhabitants from following their ordinary occupations. Ohio County has a frontier on the Ohio of at least forty miles, from six to ten in breadth, forms a good barrier for the inhabitants of Pennsylvania, who appear perfectly easy in their situation. The inhabitants of Ohio County, thus dispersed, badly armed & destitute of a sufficient stock of ammunition, find it impossible to make a defense against the enemy, or to collect in time to pursue them with any provable prospect of success. Offensive operations against the hostile Indians is the only mode likely to afford peace & safety to the frontiers. But until Congress are disposed to think with the people who feel and experience the horrors of savage warfare, we beg that Virginia will employ a few confidential persons as scouts or spies, & to embody at least one company of militia, to be divided into two detachments, & be employed after the 15th of February next in constantly ranging the frontiers on both sides of the Ohio, & establish a magazine of arms & ammunition in a central part of the County with all expedition.
In the midst of all this turmoil, this final month of 1787 had witnessed a major step for the infant United States. On December 7, Delaware was the first of the former 13 colonies to ratify the new Constitution of the United States, and it became, officially, the first state, with the city of Dover as its capital. Five days later, on December 12, Pennsylvania became the second state, with Harrisburg on the Susquehanna being named capital. And another six days afterward, on December 18, New Jersey became the third state, with Trenton its capital.
Others were working hard to follow suit shortly.
[July 26, 1788—Saturday]
Arthur St. Clair was very grateful to his good friend, George Washington, for recommending to Congress that he be named governor of the newly established Northwest Territory. Thirteen days ago Congress had acted on that recommendation and appointed him to that seat. By the terms of the Ordinance of 1787, that appointment also made him military commander of the territory, with the rank of brigadier general.
There were other territorial appointments as well. Winthrop Sargent, a land speculator associated with the Ohio Company and Scioto Company, was named secretary of the territory, and nine Northwest Territory Supreme Court justices were also named: John Cleve Symmes, James M. Varnum, Samuel H. Parsons, John Armstrong, William Barton, Rufus Putnam, George Turner, Joseph Gillman and Return J. Meigs.
Today, in one of his first official acts in regard to this enormous territory, St. Clair posted a proclamation creating a huge county that embraced practically half of the Ohio country, taking in all the land westward from the Pennsylvania border and Ohio River to the Scioto River and directly northward to Lake Erie from there. No one raised objection over the fact that the new county included land that, according to the latest treaty between the United States and the Indians, belonged to the Delawares and Wyandots. Also, it came as no great surprise to anyone when St. Clair named it after his benefactor.
Thus was Washington County established.
[October 12, 1788—Sunday]
Daniel Boone had finally had his fill of Kentucky. Now, with Kenton’s Station still a mile or so ahead of him, he came to the decision he’d been putting off for a long while: He was going to leave Kentucky for good.
Boone had a hard time believing how rapidly this frontier was filling up and, for that matter, how swiftly the whole United States was developing. By the end of July, eight more of the original colonies—Georgia, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Virginia and New York—had ratified the Constitution of the United States and officially moved into statehood, leaving only North Carolina and Rhode Island yet to do so.676 And all this while, the Ohio Valley and Kentucky continued filling with the surge of new settlers, much to the disgust of many of those now considered old-timers in these dangerous but promise-filled lands.
Daniel Boone was one of those who had quickly looked askance at the numbers of people coming into Kentucky. Knowing he was in part responsible by virtue of being one of the prime movers in opening this country for settlement did not make him feel any better about it. No one had seen Boone smile for a long time, much less explode with the great laughter that had been his trademark in bygone days. His eyes seemed now to carry a sorrowful, faraway look, as if he did not know what to do with himself. Since moving away from Boonesboro, nothing he tried satisfied him. He had moved on to Fayette County and become sheriff there, but he didn’t like the responsibilities of the job and enforcing many laws he didn’t agree with himself, so he had tried his hand in the business of digging ginseng root, which had proved lucrative for others. He and his sons had dug and painstakingly dried some 15 tons of the valuable root, then loaded it into a keelboat destined for eventual market at Philadelphia, where, at the going rate of 24 cents a pound, the cargo would be worth $7,200.677 However, after laboriously poling their load upriver 140 miles, the unwieldy boat was caught by a cross current and whirled against a pile of driftwood at the head of an island, where it sank in shallow muddy water, badly damaging the ginseng roots.678 Though they spread the roots on shore and redried them, then repaired the damaged boat and finally reloaded the cargo, they were much delayed in getting them to market, and by then the prices had fallen. The whole effort was a great loss to Boone.
Now he had returned to Maysville and was living in a cabin Simon Kenton had helped him build, but he was still a man at loose ends, uncharacteristically unsure of himself and what he wanted to do next. He grew ever more displeased with the rapid growth of new settlements in the Kentucky country and along the Ohio and its tributaries. With the continuing arrival of so many Indian delegates from various tribes for the peace talks with Gov. Arthur St. Clair at Fort Harmar, an uneasy peace was prevailing and numerous new settlers were taking advantage of it. George Mefford, one of the many new arrivals to Kentucky, had recently established a new settlement, Mefford’s Station, on a branch of Lawrence Creek not far distant from Kenton’s Station. Then there was that new settlement called Columbia that had been established in the Ohio country at the mouth of the Little Miami, with Fort Miami just below it. Only a little west of there, right across from the mouth of the Licking, Matthias Denman bought 740 acres of land from Judge Symmes, who was himself beginning a settlement on the northernmost bend of the Ohio River and calling it North Bend. Denman began talking about establishing a major Ohio River port city and was looking for a couple of partners to share the cost. He found them in Lexington in the persons of Col. Robert Patterson and John Filson. The latter surveyed the entire plot for the proposed city and then gave it a name. Since the site was opposite the mouth of the Licking River, he combined the L for Licking with the Latin os, for mouth, the Greek anti, for opposite, and the French ville, for city to coin the word Losantiville—city opposite the mouth of Licking. It was not long after that when, as the three were exploring the site, Filson disappeared and was believed killed by Indians.679 His share in the enterprise and duties of continuing to lay out the city were accepted by Israel Ludlow.
Elsewhere, there were other indications of how swiftly the frontier of the Ohio River and its tributaries was changing. The Ohio country was no longer being called Indian lands but, rather, part of the Northwest Territory. Now, at the mouth of the Muskingum, in addition to Fort Harmar, Campus Martius was being built, and new settlers were flocking into the Marietta Settlement across the mouth of the Muskingum from Fort Harmar. There was also the new Fort Clendenin being built by George Clendenin on the Kanawha at the mouth of Elk River, and a new unnamed fort a mile up the Kanawha from there.680 And some ten miles downstream from Fort Clendenin, Lewis Tackett had just finished building a fort at the mouth of Coal River called Coal Fort, though some were calling it Tackett’s Fort.
No doubt about it, things were suddenly moving just too quickly. So far as Boone was concerned, the frontier was becoming altogether too civilized. Along with Kenton, he had increasingly been called in to testify in land dispute cases and, as was happening to Kenton, ever more of his own land w
as being whittled away because of overlapping and faulty claims. That was the situation he had commented upon gloomily when he visited Henry Lee a few months ago at Lee’s new little station southeast of Maysville.
“Henry,” he had commented bitterly, “over and over I been robbed of my lands here. I’m regular being called on t’give depositions in land claim cases an’ tol’ to sign papers an’ then later find out I’ve signed away rights to my own land. These lawyers are always tryin’ t’make me falsify my oath.”
Lee had nodded sympathetically. Boone was far from the only one having such troubles here. The shrewd land-grabbers were making killings by preying on the ignorance and illiteracy of the frontiersmen who opened this land. He wished he could help but knew there was nothing he could do.
“By God, Henry,” Boone had continued, growing angrier the more he thought about it, “it’s bad enough to be stripped of my land without being abused an’ accused of lyin’. From now on, no one need send to me for a deposition. All my own lands are gone, and others’ll jest have to take care of their own.”
He had paused reflectively a moment and then added, “I believe I’m goin’ west o’the Mississippi, where it ain’t so all-fired crowded. I won’t live in a country where I cain’t fell wood in my own dooryard.” His eyes had widened and his voice registered something between surprise and consternation. “Why, at Bryan’s Station they have t’haul firewood half a mile!”
“That’s Spanish land west of the Mississippi, Dan’l,” Lee had cautioned. “It’s still all wilderness, and the Indians are moving out there. They might not take too kindly to your coming to settle.”