by Allan Eckert
The force of 350 had left Fort Washington and marched all the way eastward to the Scioto without encountering any Indians, but the situation changed a little on the way back. As they crossed Ohio Brush Creek, Alex McIntire detected sign of a small party of Indians moving toward the southwest and reported it. After conferring with Gen. Harmar, Gen. Scott gave orders for Capt. Joshua Baker to select a dozen men, follow the trail and endeavor to engage them.
The 13 men had followed the trail all day and only an hour ago, near the mouth of Eagle Creek, had discovered the camp of the Indians just a short distance above the creek mouth on its eastern side.697 There were four Shawnees in the camp, and thus far they were wholly unaware of the whites being nearby, largely because a strong wind was blowing off of the river and causing a good deal of covering sound as it whipped through the trees that were largely still bare of leaves.
At Baker’s directions, the scouts crept closer, their rifles primed and ready. Joshua Baker ordered that no one should fire until he gave the signal, causing McIntire to glance at him askance and shake his head at the effrontery, since Baker had nowhere near the Indian-fighting experience of at least half the men he was leading. As they slipped through the brush and got within 50 yards of the camp, McIntire saw one of the warriors so fairly exposed that it was a sure shot. He knew he wouldn’t miss, so he fired. The warrior was slammed off his feet and fell dead to the ground. The other three leaped up, crouched and fearfully looked about in all directions. With the wind making so much noise, they could not be sure where the shot had come from and didn’t want to run right into the enemy’s arms.
Even while they hesitated, Baker yelled “Fire!” and a ragged chorus of shots followed. Two more of the Shawnees fell and the final one turned and jumped into a deep hole in Eagle Creek as the whites left cover and rushed toward him. Young John Williams reached the creek first and, tossing his rifle aside, jumped in after the warrior. At once his friends warned him to come back, that the warrior had a knife in his hand. Williams’s sudden surge of enthusiasm considerably dampened, he returned to shore with alacrity.
The warrior stood close to shore in waist-deep water under some overhanging willows and began voicing a sing-song chant. Baker called to him to throw the knife away and surrender, telling him he would not be harmed if he did so. The Shawnee either did not understand or was prepared to die fighting. Baker quickly lost patience and put a bullet squarely between his eyes.
They scalped the four Indians, and it was McIntire who pointed out, after examining their camp, that the four had not been raiders but were simply a hunting party that had no doubt come as close as they could to their former fine hunting ground across the river. For the first time in his years of hunting Indians, he felt a surge of pity for these people and what he and other whites had done to them. Now, as they moved to rejoin the main army, Washburn and McIntire continued their earlier conversation.
“Well,” McIntire said, “I ain’t never hankered to see the Injens come over and hit our folks an’ steal our horses, but I’m sure as hell gonna’ miss comin’ acrost an’ huntin’ these buggers down.”
“Alex,” Washburn said, motioning toward his companion’s belt pouch, “I don’t reckon that’s the last scalp you’re gonna lift. Not by a long shot. They may be pullin’ back, but I figger we ain’t even begun t’see the worst where fightin’ the Shawnees is concerned.”
“Hell, Neil, it sure as hell will be by the time Harmar finishes that fall expedition he’s shapin’ up.”
“You’re aimin’ t’go, ain’t you, Alex?”
McIntire shook his head. “I been out with him on this one,” he said, “an’ I’ve seen enough of him t’know I ain’t never goin’ out on another one with him leadin’. He ain’t got no real feel for Injen fightin’, Neil, an’ I sort’a ’speck he ain’t got much backbone, either. That’s the kind of man k’n lead you into a whole lot of trouble.”
[September 28, 1790—Tuesday]
It seemed not to have taken the Indians very long to figure out that if, after making an attack on the Virginia side of the river, they did not linger to make follow-up attacks on other cabins or settlements but, instead, swiftly recrossed the river to the Ohio side, the usual follow-up pursuits by the Americans were not occurring. Aware that Gen. Harmar was shaping up a large force at Fort Washington to move against them in the fall, the Indians seemed intent upon inflicting as much damage as they possibly could on the south and east side of the river before it became necessary for them to draw together to meet Harmar’s advance. Very soon almost all their attacks were hit-and-run, and so the late winter, spring and summer had resulted in a very bad time for the Ohio Valley settlers.
By the middle of March, close to 40 people had been killed in and around the Kentucky settlements. One of these was the much-beloved Maj. William Bailey, who had settled at Kennedy’s Bottom. In the same attack, all five members of the Jason Quick family were taken captive.
Within a few days after that, three young men traveling from the Blue Licks to Maysville were fired on from ambush. Two were killed and the third, Peter Livingston, was captured. Simon Kenton managed to rescue him before he could be carried to the Shawnee towns. At the same time, on the Ohio River shoreline just below the mouth of Lee’s Creek, one of the more experienced Kentucky frontiersmen and Indian fighters, Ignatius Ross, was wounded in a short fight with a small party of Shawnees, who immediately fled across the Ohio.
The well-known riverman, Cobus Sullivan—Cobe to his friends—who had so long ago inadvertently become a defender in the second siege of Wheeling, was shot and killed while delivering mail between Louisville and Vincennes.
Early in April, Stephen Carter, one of the earlier settlers at Judge Symmes’s new settlement of North Bend, was shot dead and scalped in his own yard as he was splitting firewood. Later that same day a young man named Samuel Jeffers was tomahawked and scalped within calling distance of the new Ludlow’s Station, which had been established by Israel Ludlow on Mill Creek, a few miles northeast of Cincinnati.
In late April, the young sisters Mary and Margaret Castleman were visiting their friends Sarah, Moses and Thomas Martin at the sugar camp their father, John Martin, had set up near the mouth of King’s Creek. A party of Wyandots rushed upon them, killed the elder Martin and captured all five of the children. They immediately took them back to Half King’s Town on the upper Sandusky River.698
In early May a party of Indians crossed the river near Wheeling during the night and approached the new cabin belonging to the Robert Purdy family. It did not yet even have a door, just a blanket hung over the door opening. They crawled under it and attacked the Purdys in their bed. Robert put up a tremendous fight, while his wife snatched up their infant son and raced outside. An Indian waiting out there struck her down with his tomahawk, scalped her and then killed the baby. Inside, Robert Purdy was finally overpowered and killed, and their two young daughters were captured. In the yard, Mrs. Purdy regained her senses but lay still until the Indians, carrying the two girls with them, hurried away. Then she crawled a half-mile to the nearest neighbor and a search was mounted, but it was too late; the Indians had gone directly back to the Ohio and recrossed to the “safe” side.699
Less than a week later, up the Kanawha near Clendenin’s Fort, young James Hale went to a cold spring at a nearby branch to get some cool water for his fiancée, who was ill with a fever and, while dipping up the water, was shot and scalped.700 Upon learning of his death, the young woman suddenly took a turn for the worse, her fever increased and she soon died. A few days later at another nearby branch, Charles Staten was quenching his thirst when a rifle ball shot by a Shawnee caught him at the base of his skull and blew away the whole top of his head.701
Hardly two weeks later, on May 29, Rebecca Van Buskirk, an extremely attractive young woman living with her husband, Lawrence, not far from the mouth of Buffalo Creek 16 miles above Wheeling, decided to go to Washington village for some weaving goods. She set off early i
n the morning on her horse. In less than two miles a party of Indians captured her, during which she suffered a sprained ankle when thrown from her horse. As they took her toward the river to recross to the Indian side, moving slowly because of her injury, the horse showed up back at the settlement. About the same time a settler arrived who had found some Indian canoes sunk in a creek mouth, and the men figured these were the same Indians who had taken Rebecca. Lawrence Van Buskirk, intensely concerned for his wife, who was pregnant, suggested they try to box in the Indians. He led some of the men toward where the attack had occurred, while another group posted themselves in ambush near the sunken canoes. The latter group saw them first, Rebecca among them, hobbling along painfully. One of the men in the ambush was new to the frontier and very fearful of being involved in an Indian fight. Hoping to scare them off and avoid a fight, he yelled aloud, “Here they come!” He did indeed avoid the fight. Instantly the Indians dragged Rebecca off into the brush, killed her with tomahawk blows and vanished.
In July, Joseph Tomlinson was visited at his Grave Creek home by his nephew, Robert Carpenter. Tomlinson sent him out to bring in the horses and, while he was doing so, a party of Wyandots shot him, the ball breaking his shoulder. He tried to flee but they caught him, then tried to catch the horses. The animals wouldn’t let the Indians come near them, and young Carpenter, saying he’d rather ride than walk into captivity, told them the horses would let him approach and he would get the animals for them if they would let him try. They did, and he moved up slowly on the animals till he was close, and then darted away in the underbrush. He managed to get safely to the house of a neighbor, Nathan Masters. The disgruntled Wyandots, without captive or horses, immediately crossed back to the Ohio country.
The Carpenter family was at this time living at the mouth of Short Creek on the Ohio side of the river. John Carpenter and his wife were hoeing the potatoes when some Indians shot from hiding and wounded him badly, though not fatally. As they came charging out of the woods, Mrs. Carpenter ran toward the cabin, screaming for her grown son, George, who came running out with his gun in hand. The Indians, evidently thinking more men were in the house, broke off their pursuit of Mrs. Carpenter and turned back to scalp John, but he had by this time crawled into the cornfield and hidden, so the attackers simply fled.
The same Indians then struck the McCoy place a short distance away, also on Short Creek. They killed George McCoy and his wife and captured the two 17-year-old boys who were staying with them, Richard Tilton and David Pusley. Glimpsing the approach of William Spencer and his sons, James and John, the Indians ordered Tilton and Pusley to squat down in the tall grasses while they tried to ambush the Spencers. Pusley, however, gave a yell and alerted the three people approaching, who instantly wheeled about and escaped. Pusley was summarily tomahawked and scalped. Then, with young Tilton in tow, the party moved cross-country to Indian Cross Creek, where they came upon four men digging ginseng root—David Cox, John Fitzpatrick, William Crowley and Thomas Van Swearingen, the latter a younger brother of Drusilla Brady. The Indians fired on them, killing Van Swearingen, and charged the remaining three. Fitzpatrick and Crowley managed to get away, but Cox was cut off. Armed only with a hoe, he fought the Indians with that implement until finally downed by spear thrusts and scalped.
Next came a lightning thrust by a party of Shawnees against Tackett’s Fort, at the mouth of Coal River on the Kanawha just below Fort Clendenin. John and Lewis Tackett and their mother were harvesting turnips in the field nearby when the warriors burst out and captured all three. Then the Shawnees rushed on the small fort itself, where Christopher Tackett and his 16-year-old brother, Sam, were with their sister and brother-in-law, Betsy and George McElhany, and a small boy. They were unaware that the Indians were nearby until they were almost upon them, and though Christopher leaped to get his gun, he was struck dead with a tomahawk and the others captured. McElhany continued to struggle, even after the Indians dragged him outside, and they finally tomahawked him as well. The Indians then plundered the fort and set it afire. While this was going on, John managed to sprint away and escape, but all the others were carried off into captivity.702
Just yesterday at Wheeling, the young Johnson brothers, Henry, 13, and John, 11, were sent out to bring in the cows. On the way, while passing through a skirt of woods, they stopped and gathered up some hickory nuts that had fallen and were cracking them open. They heard someone approaching and thought it was their father and uncle, but it turned out to be a pair of Shawnee warriors, who captured them. The two were hustled off until evening, when camp was made and a small fire built. The boys were ordered to lie down and sleep between their two captors, but were not tied. They only feigned sleep, however, and while the warriors were asleep, silently got to their feet. Henry managed to get one of the rifles of the Indians but could not get the other since the hand of the sleeping warrior was gripping it. The boys moved off a short distance and then stopped by a log. Bracing the gun firmly across the log and aiming it at the head of one of the two sleeping warriors, Henry then instructed his brother to fire when he yelled. As soon as John was ready, Henry went back to the fire and carefully pulled the tomahawk out of the belt of the other sleeping warrior and raised it high over his head in both hands.
“Fire!” he yelled, and at the same moment brought the weapon down with all his strength, burying it in the temple of the warrior. John instantly shot the rifle, but the other warrior had jerked up at the cry, and the shot, instead of catching him full in the head, exploded through his lower jaw, practically carrying it away. The Shawnee whom Henry had tomahawked flailed about for a moment and rolled over into the campfire, where he died.
The two Johnson boys then headed for Wheeling with the two Indian guns and the tomahawk and finally got back home just after sunrise today. As soon as they told their story, Jacob Wetzel raised a party of men and went where the boys directed. They found the camp with the dead Shawnee still lying across the ashes and the blood of the one who had run off. Wetzel, leaving the others at the camp, said he would follow the wounded Indian and try to collect his scalp for the Johnson boys. He followed the blood trail for half a mile but lost it in a small creek, then very nearly lost his own life in the process.703
Two Wyandot warriors, armed only with tomahawks, had seen Jacob Wetzel pass and followed him, determined to kill him and take his good flintlock rifle. As he gave up trailing the wounded Shawnee at the creek and turned back to retrace his steps to the others, the two Wyandots leaped out on him from opposite sides of the path. It was a wild melee for a short while. Wetzel’s gun had been knocked from his grasp at the first plunge of the Indians, but he managed to jerk out his tomahawk to parry their blows. One of the warriors managed to grip Wetzel from behind, pinning his arms against his sides, and the other, seeing his opportunity, swung his tomahawk viciously at the white man’s head. Wetzel, seeing the blow sweeping toward him, violently jerked and spun in the other warrior’s grasp. The blade of the tomahawk, instead of striking him, buried itself in the neck hollow of the warrior holding him, who howled and released his grasp, tumbling to the ground and jerking the tomahawk out of his companion’s grasp. Arms freed, Wetzel immediately swung his own tomahawk and sank it deeply into the head of the one who had swung at him, killing him. Unable to pull his tomahawk free from the Wyandot’s skull, Wetzel jerked out his knife and leaped onto the other, who was writhing on the ground as he tried to pull out the tomahawk buried in his own flesh. Wetzel thrust his knife into the warrior’s chest, plunging the blade directly into the man’s heart. Drenched with blood from his enemies but himself uninjured, Wetzel was concerned lest these two were part of a larger party. He quickly scalped them, took their tomahawks, recovered his own gun and ran all the way back to the others. Without further delay, the party returned home with enough scalps to give one each to the Johnson boys and for Wetzel to keep one himself. He was fairly sure it would be the last Indian scalp he took on the upper Ohio, as he had decided to move to Kentucky
for good and would be leaving soon.
Despite persisting Indian attacks like these occurring all down the Ohio River Valley, new white families kept pouring in to settle, and those already well settled started banding together to lay out new river towns. Typical of these was the town that had just been surveyed and platted by James Griffith on the Virginia side of the river, at the mouth of Cross Creek. Griffith had been hired to do so by the original settler of the area, Charles Prather, who registered the new village at the county court today, naming it Charlestown, and there was every indication it was a town the Indians would not be able to dislodge.704
[September 30, 1790—Thursday]
Gen. Josiah Harmar stared at the letter on the desk before him in his Fort Washington quarters and reached again for the bottle of rum, almost knocking it over with his hand as his alcohol-fogged vision misjudged the distance.
“Bastard!” he murmured, looking at the signature at the end of the letter and slurring his words. “What the hell do you know about anything?”
His epithet was directed at the far-distant secretary of war and his lips curled down into a sneer as he thought about what that official had said in his letter. How did Henry Knox dare write to the first commander of the United States Army in such a manner? How did he presume to place such restrictions upon him or make such personal comments? The fact that Knox was probably parroting comments and instructions he’d received from President Washington made no difference; Washington, too, so far as Harmar was concerned, had lost the military edge and grown soft where the Indians were concerned. They should be wiped out, not mollycoddled!