That Dark and Bloody River

by Allan Eckert

  The Indians had come to Fort Harmar in the belief that the United States was ready and willing to reconsider boundaries and make greater efforts toward conciliation with the tribes in this respect. In point of fact, they found St. Clair adamant in his refusal to bend one iota toward any kind of concession and doing all in his power to stir intertribal jealousies to the advantage of the United States. Further, the Indians on hand were well aware that they neither occupied nor claimed the lands in question—lands belonging to and occupied by the Shawnees and Miamis who were not in attendance—so anything they agreed to, so far as they were concerned, was simply not binding. As one of the Delaware chiefs simplified it: “I point to a horse in the meadow and say to you that I agree to sell it to you. I even sign a paper to that end. But the horse belongs to another, the meadow is not mine and the land upon which they stand belongs not to me. Can you then claim that you have legally bought the horse and the meadow and the land? No, you cannot. Yet that is what you do here today. We sign this treaty you have made, but it is meaningless. It is a treaty made of air and without substance.”

  Another chief complained that the treaty council was one in name only, not in action, saying, “A treaty council is where two parties negotiate to settle the differences between them, but here there is not negotiation. Though you listen to what we say, and show impatience at having to do so, when it comes your turn to speak, it is as if you have heard not one word we have spoken and instead you then tell us how things must be. You could have told us this by runners, and we would not have had to go through the expense and trouble of coming this long way for nothing.”

  Eventually, however, seeing there was nothing else to do, the tribes on hand gave in and signed the treaty. The Senecas in doing so merely reaffirmed the same land cessions they had agreed to with the Fort Stanwix Treaty. The Wyandots, Delawares, Potawatomies, Sacs, Chippewas and Ottawas similarly reaffirmed the previous treaties at Fort Stanwix, Fort McIntosh and Fort Finney, insofar as their own territories were considered. Their signing away the lands the United States was now claiming in the Northwest Territory was simply a case of selling a horse that belonged to another; they knew the northwestern tribes would, with justification and legality, repudiate the agreements before the ink was dry. To them all, the Fort Harmar Treaty was wholly meaningless.

  That the Potawatomies, Ottawas, Chippewas and Sacs were on hand at all was ridiculous, since their lands were far away and they had no claim whatsoever to any lands here in question. Yet, they had been duped into coming by the promise that they would receive many fine presents from the Americans. They received virtually nothing and were highly disgruntled, to such an extent that they agreed among themselves to throw in their lot with the Shawnees, Kickapoos and Miamis in opposing the Americans.

  Now, even the Wyandots and Delawares began to feel they had been in error by pulling away from their Shawnee and Miami allies and some of the chiefs were already advocating a full reconciliation with them and rejoining their efforts to oppose the moves the Americans were now so swiftly making into the Indian country. For decades they had contended that the Ohio River would be a barrier that would stop the American encroachment; now, finally and with great clarity, they could see the fallacy of that belief. If the Americans were to be stopped, it could only be accomplished by all the northwestern tribes uniting in that endeavor.

  If that meant unconditional war with the United States, then so be it.

  Chapter 9

  [January 12, 1789—Monday]

  The first session of Congress under the Federal Constitution, which replaced the Congress of the Confederation of States, had many problems to consider, many ordinances to pass.

  Among these matters was one that was seen to swiftly and passed along without objection, yet it was of extreme importance insofar as the residents of the Ohio Valley were concerned, as well as the tribes north and west of the big river. It was perhaps fitting and proper that it was the First Congress of the United States that gave the Ohio Territory a permanent status among the States of the Union and thereby opened the door to statehood for Ohio in what, a great number of settlers anticipated, would be only a few short years.

  [January 22, 1789—Thursday]

  With more and more Shawnee parties being sighted in the area of the new settlements in the southwestern Ohio country—Columbia, Fort Miami, Covalt’s Station and North Bend—the residents had become apprehensive over the possibility of an attack.685 They were singularly unprotected and appealed to Gen. Harmar for regular troops to be stationed in their vicinity.

  With Judge John Cleve Symmes directly involved, and since he was a Northwest Territory Supreme Court justice and carried considerable weight politically, Harmar knew it would be wise to take action at once and that the soldiers used for this duty would undoubtedly have to come from the Falls of the Ohio—either Fort Finney or Fort Nelson. Maj. John P. Wyllys was presently in command of the latter, and Harmar now wrote to tell him what was in the wind, to prepare him to move when the order would be given:

  It is not improbable but that two companies will be ordered to be stationed at the mouth of the Great Miami, not only as a better cover for Kentucky but also as a protection to Judge Symmes in his intended settlement there.

  [April 30, 1789—Thursday]

  A large crowd had gathered at Federal Hall in New York, knowing they were witnesses to a remarkable occurrence. As a free and independent country, the United States of America had selected the man they thought best qualified for the job of leading the American people.

  On this day 57-year-old George Washington was inaugurated as the first President of the United States—a position in which he was required, to the best of his abilities, to represent all the people of this great new republic.

  All the people, that is, if one did not count the native Americans.

  [December 31, 1789—Thursday]

  Two things had become increasingly clear this year: first, that no matter what the Indians did to discourage and push back the whites, their encroachments were not only continuing, they were increasing, and the Ohio River had wholly ceased to function as a boundary; second, that another full-scale Indian war was imminent.

  In the first matter, the number of new settlers streaming down the Ohio and into lands on both sides of the big river far surpassed that of any previous year. More new settlements, forts, blockhouses, and individual cabins had been built than ever before, with the promise of more to come and, keeping pace with this, more formalized political boundaries were being established. A huge new county was created by Virginia on the south side of the Ohio, fronting on the big river downstream all the way from the mouth of Pond Run, five miles below the Little Kanawha, about 130 miles to the mouth of the Big Sandy, then southward to the Cumberland Mountains, encompassing some 10,000 acres; it was being called Kanawha County. Its militia was placed under command of Samuel Lewis, brother of the long-dead Gen. Andrew Lewis, who had faced the Indians in the Battle of Point Pleasant 15 years earlier. His second in command, with the rank of lieutenant colonel, was Daniel Boone, who had deferred his plan to go to Missouri and had now settled at Point Pleasant.

  Farther to the west, Mason County was established in Kentucky, with Maysville—formerly Limestone—named as the county seat. The new Kennedy’s Bottom Settlement was established in that county a mile from the Washington village. Twenty-five miles above Maysville at the mouth of an unnamed stream, the new little settlement of Quick’s Station was established and the stream was named Quick’s Run. Just over 60 miles down the Ohio from Maysville, Clements’ Station was settled in the Ohio country, three-quarters of a mile downstream from Covalt’s Station on the left bank of the Little Miami River opposite the mouth of the East Fork Little Miami River.686 And, on a somewhat larger scale, North Carolina became the twelfth of the 13 original colonies to ratify the United States Constitution and officially become part of the Union.

  The aspect of the Ohio River was rapidly changing. In this year alone it
was estimated that more than 20,000 new settlers had come downstream to sink roots in both Kentucky and the Ohio country and, along with this influx of people, there was a sharp increase in Indian attacks on boats all the way downstream from Fort McIntosh to the Falls of the Ohio. Since the end of the Crawford Campaign against the Sandusky towns seven years ago, a total of more than 1,500 travelers on the Ohio River had been waylaid by Indians and either killed or taken captive, but by far the greater majority of the incidents occurred this year. Sometimes the boats were simply fired upon and sunk and their occupants drowned. More often the attacks were at closer range, as parties were lured to shore by Indians dressed in the clothing of whites and then ambushed. Most of these deaths and captures involved people unfamiliar with the hazards of the Ohio River border country, but there were numerous familiar names among the casualties as well.

  Charles Bilderback, who had participated in the Moravian Massacre and the Crawford Campaign, was traveling by canoe down to Kentucky with his wife, Ruhama, when they were captured near the mouth of Cabin Creek, close to the cabin he had built on land he had claimed there. He was stripped and tied to a tree, and then Ruhama was forced to watch as, in succession, they cut off his ears, nose, lips, thumbs and penis before he was struck a fatal blow between the eyes with a tomahawk and scalped. Then they took his wife off into captivity.687

  In March the Indians had unexpectedly shown up at the mouth of Short Creek on the upper Ohio and viciously struck at Vanmetre’s, killing some of the John Vanmetre family and taking others into captivity. On Dunkard Creek off the Monongahela, where no attacks had occurred for a very long time, the houses of Joseph Cambridge and William Thomas were struck; Thomas was killed, as was everyone in the entire Cambridge family, including his wife and their two children. Even farther into the Virginia country, where most Indian attacks had ended a decade ago, well upstream on the West Fork Monongahela in Harrison County, the families of John Mauck, William Johnson, Jethro Thompson, William Stalzer and John Simms were attacked, eight killed. Their cabin burned, Joseph Johnstone, his wife and three children were killed on Clinch River near Rye Cove. In Abb’s Valley the Indians struck the Andrew Davidson place during his absence and took prisoner his pregnant wife, two young daughters and a two-year-old son, plus two indentured children staying with the Davidsons.688

  At the mouth of the Kanawha, John Bruce, one of the earlier settlers at Point Pleasant, was sitting atop a fence rail at the common and was picked off as if he had been a turkey perched on a branch when a bullet shot by a distant warrior marksman passed through his head. Also at Point Pleasant, 14-year-old Jacob Van Bibber, brother-in-law of Nathan Boone, Daniel’s son, was captured, and Matthias Van Bibber, his older brother, who was called Tice, was wounded as they brought in a packhorse load of bear meat.689 Up the Kanawha, Fort Clendenin was put under siege by a large party of Indians and was saved when a frontierswoman named Anne Trotter, but called Mad Anne Bailey, rode her black horse named Liverpool through the Indian lines and all the way to Fort Union, collected a store of ammunition and brought it back in time to save the fort. A dozen miles or more upstream on the Kanawha from Fort Clendenin, at the mouth of Paint Creek, William Wyatt awoke one morning and told his wife he’d had a presentiment of himself being killed by Indians and later that same day he was. On the Carroll Branch of the Kanawha, the William Carroll family was attacked in their cabin and, though they all escaped, their cabin was burned.

  In the Kentucky country Samuel Scott, the son of militia Gen. Charles Scott, was killed while fishing in the Kentucky River and, not terribly far away from there, young Johnny Hardin was killed, Jake Kelsey wounded and Jacob Cris captured by a war party under the Shawnee war chief, Shemeneto.690 Less than a mile from Kenton’s Station, Phil Skaggs was shot through the throat and scalped, while Bill Walton was hung from an oak and disemboweled within shouting distance of Lexington. Closer to the Blue Licks, William Scott, Charles Ralston and James Livingston were taking a load of cheese and whiskey from Lexington to Maysville by wagon when Indians struck. Scott and Ralston were killed and 19-year-old Livingston was taken, along with the four horses and cargo. At practically the same time, two men were shot and killed within sight of Maysville. In Jefferson County, not far from Louisville, six members of the William Chenoweth family were killed and four others wounded. In less than a month, more than 40 horses had been stolen by Indians in Mason County.

  Among the new Ohio Territory settlements near the mouth of the Little Miami, nine people had been killed in separate incidents since June. A squad of soldiers escorting some civilians near North Bend was ambushed, with one soldier killed, four wounded, and two civilians also wounded. In another incident, Benjamin Stites and Nathaniel Reeder were riding together near Columbia when they were fired on by Indians in hiding. Stites was uninjured, but Reeder took a ball in the thigh and another in the arm that broke the bone. As the Indians charged out at them brandishing tomahawks, Stites grabbed the reins of Reeder’s horse and led him away to safety at the fort. A short distance away, at Clements’ Station, where two men had just been killed by Indians, Robert Halbers was plowing his field when he was startled by the sound of a bear thrashing through the brush nearby. Assuming it to be Indians preparing to attack, he quickly disengaged the horses from the plow, leaped upon one of the horses and galloped to the nearby station. As he entered through the gate, his head struck a crossbar of the portal and he was killed.

  Perhaps the most significant construction this year on the Ohio, however, was the erection of a new fort—large, strong and impressive—within the Symmes purchase and, more specifically, adjacent to the site where the village of Losantiville was laid out. Built by a force of 70 men under Maj. John Doughty on orders from Gen. Harmar, construction had begun on June 2 and was all but completed within two months. The fort was formed of hewn timbers and was 180 feet square with an excellent two-story blockhouse at each of the four corners and with 15 acres surrounding the fort as a government reserve. It was by far the best and most impregnable military installation in the Northwest Territory and, most important, it was more centrally located than Fort Harmar for expeditions against the Indians to the north. It was named Fort Washington.691

  Placing Fort Harmar under command of Capt. David Zeigler and leaving him with 20 men at that post, Gen. Josiah Harmar had just arrived with 300 regulars to garrison the new installation. He was pleased with what he found and sorry that President Washington could not be here to see it, certain he would not only be impressed with it and its apparent invulnerability but also delighted that it had been named Fort Washington.

  One of Harmar’s first acts in taking command of the new post, after first consuming a few glasses of choice brandy, was to issue a new warrant, prominently posted, for the arrest of Lewis Wetzel, charged with murder; the reward still set at $500. Wetzel, taking the advice of friends, had left the Wheeling area and was en route down the Ohio heading for Louisiana when he stopped off at Maysville. Shortly after his arrival, a boatload of soldiers under Lt. William Lawler, heading for Fort Washington, stopped there also. The soldiers were not in uniform and Lawler, learning Wetzel was there, sought him out, congratulated him on his escape from Fort Harmar and lured him toward their boat for a drink. Arriving at the riverbank, Wetzel became suspicious and was about to race off when, at a signal from Lawler, the soldiers fell upon him, took him prisoner and dragged him down the bank by his queued hair and took him aboard. There they securely bound him hand and foot and immediately set off downstream, taking him directly to Fort Washington, where they turned him over to Gen. Harmar.

  Greatly pleased at once again having Lewis Wetzel in custody, Josiah Harmar, face flushed from having drunk a bit more than discretion allowed, had the frontiersman thrown into confinement under triple guard and prepared to exact his vengeance by having him hanged without delay. He was unprepared, however, for the wrath of the people.

  On learning of Wetzel’s capture, a party of 200 men assembled at Maysville under Simon
Kenton, Benjamin Whiteman and Cornelius Washburn, advanced on Fort Washington and demanded that Gen. Harmar release him, on threat that if he did not, they would themselves overwhelm the guards, take Wetzel out and place Harmar himself in chains. Thwarted and now fearing for his own life, Gen. Harmar issued a complete pardon for Wetzel and set him at liberty. The young frontiersman returned in triumph with his liberators to Maysville, where he decided against going to Louisiana for now, or even returning to Wheeling; instead, he accepted Neil Washburn’s invitation to live with him in Kentucky for as long as he wished.

  Gen. Harmar might have put up a stronger opposition to the frontiersmen in their liberation of Wetzel, but he was now considerably feeling the effects of the imbibing he had done and knew well the peril of acting under the influence. Besides which, he was on the verge of something much bigger that would, he knew, very quickly be consuming all his energies. He had just received orders from President Washington and the Congress that, in view of this year’s greatly increased attacks by the Indians throughout the Ohio Valley and elsewhere, he was to prepare to march against the tribes at their greatest stronghold on a punitive expedition. The recommended target was the massive village called Kekionga, the capital of the Miami tribe under Michikiniqua—Little Turtle.692

  This was to be no minor campaign. Kekionga—meaning The Glorious Gate—was the most cosmopolitan of all the Indian villages in the Northwest and a veritable city unto itself. It had been the heart of the Miami tribe ever since the destruction of Pickawillany by Charles de Langlade and Chief Pontiac in June 1752, and it presently boasted more than 800 houses and in excess of 3,000 residents. The Maumee River was formed here and flows northeastward 132 miles to Lake Erie, providing access to Detroit and the Ottawa and Chippewa villages to the north of there, to the Wyandot villages along southern Lake Erie, and to the major routes by land or water to the ports and forts and centers of the east. Northward, up the St. Joseph, were many of the villages of the Potawatomies and Ottawas, while southward, up the St. Marys, were many of the smaller Miami villages. Like spokes radiating from a hub, several important portage routes gave direct access from Kekionga to a broad range of territory: A short portage to the north-northwest gave access to the headwaters of another, completely different river also called the St. Joseph, this one flowing northwest past the major trading center called St. Joseph that was operated by the famed and well-liked trader William Burnett.693 Farther down that same stream, where it empties into Lake Michigan, there was access to all the tribes to the north and west of that great body of water. To the northwest from Kekionga, another relatively easy portage connected with the headwaters of the Eel River, and down that stream were the numerous villages of the Eel River Miamis. A portage leading southwest from Kekionga connected, via a tributary, to the Wabash River, which flowed westward and southward through the territory of the Wea branch of the Miami tribe, past the Tippecanoe villages and the important centers at Ouiatenon and Vincennes and finally into the Ohio River, with access at that point to the Illinois Territory and western Kentucky country as well as the entire Mississippi Valley. And, of course, a journey down the Maumee and then up the Auglaize provided portage access to the Great Miami River, the western Ohio country and, ultimately, the Ohio River and the heart of Kentucky.