That Dark and Bloody River

by Allan Eckert

  586. Because of the Knight account, which blames Simon Girty for this cruel and callous behavior, practically all subsequent accounts have continued to attribute the remark to him, when according to other witnesses, it was actually James Girty who said it and laughed.

  587. One account, in considerable error throughout, claims that the burning of Col. Crawford began at nine P.M. and that he finally died at ten A.M., but that is in variance with all the other accounts, which maintain that the duration of the execution by torture was about two hours or a little more.

  588. The same account that states the execution lasted for 13 hours (Note 587) states that the body was chopped to pieces and that these pieces were thrown into the fire and burned to ashes and that these ashes were scattered in Pimoacan’s Town the next morning. That appears to be a distorted account, since Knight was led by his Shawnee captors to view the remains the following morning.

  589. Tutelu, in some accounts, is shown as being a chief, but that is incorrect; he was merely a warrior of the Kispokotha sept of the Shawnee tribe.

  590. Little more is heard of the Wyandot chief Pimoacan—Captain Pipe—for the next decade or more. He is known to have participated in and survived the Battle of Fallen Timbers in August 1794 and was subsequently a signer of the Treaty of Greenville in August 1795. In 1811 he attended a large Indian feast held at Greentown (in present Ashland Co., O.), after which he removed to Canada, where he died in his own house during the winter of 1813–14.

  591. The winter following the Crawford Campaign, John Rose returned to Ohio with six scouts on a mission to confirm or repudiate reports that the British were building a fort at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River on the site of present Cleveland, O. Inclement weather plagued the party, making travel a great ordeal. Rose was not an agile man when on foot, and on this mission he was afoot a great deal. He seemed to have a special knack for stumbling over every exposed root and falling into every stream and body of water he encountered. The mission disclosed that the reports were false, and no such fortification was under construction. Rose somewhat miraculously returned in one piece, though he did lose his rifle along the way. In March 1783 he was ordered to Philadelphia to aid in expediting payment for the troops at Fort Pitt who were being mustered out of the service. A year later he took a ship home to Estonia, where he married the woman who had formerly been his mistress and, with her, had four children—two sons and two daughters. For his services, Congress gave him tracts of bounty land in both Pennsylvania and Ohio. Though he planned to return to settle in America, he was prevented from doing so by events and obligations in Estonia. One of his sons wound up being killed in a duel, and the other son drowned. His wife and both daughters predeceased him, and he was left without any family in his last years. He died in 1829 and was buried in the family vault built on his estate, but there is no monument or marker of any kind marking his grave.

  592. Dr. John Donathy later received payment from the state of Pennsylvania for “medicines and attendance upon wounded militia.” Pvt. John Walker recovered from his leg wound, but ten years later, in July 1792, while helping to defend Kirkwood’s Blockhouse, he was shot in the stomach and died.

  593. Pvt. Angus McCoy lived up to his promise. Pvt. John McDonald did manage to get home alive, more than 200 miles from where he was wounded, but he lost consciousness shortly after arriving there and died a few days later. McCoy himself returned to his home on the upper Ohio, where for many years afterward he engaged in regular frontier patrols.

  594. David Williamson was later elected to three successive terms of one year each as sheriff of Washington Co., Pa. Later, however, he fell into debt and wound up losing his farm and his home. He died poverty-stricken and, according to unconfirmed reports, in the county jail.

  595. No official tally was ever made of the killed and missing in the Crawford Campaign—or Sandusky Campaign, as it was alternately called—but an unofficial tally of the various accounts of those who were killed, as reported in letters, journals, diaries and incidental reports, indicates that approximately 138 volunteers were killed in the battle or in the retreat that followed or later died of wounds received or were executed after being captured. Of these dead, 41 have been identified by name and rank by the author and include the following: Pvt. David Andrews, Pvt. Thomas Armstrong, Lt. Hankerson Ashby, Pvt. William Bays, Pvt. Robert Bell, Capt. John Biggs, Sgt. Jacob Bonham, Pvt. John Campbell, Col. William Crawford, Pvt. (Ens.) William Crawford, Lt. Joseph Eckley, Pvt. Thomas Ellis, Pvt. John Frazer, Pvt. James Guffee, Pvt. Conrad Harbaugh, Pvt. William Harrison, Pvt. John Hays, Pvt. Thomas Heady, Pvt. Philip Hill, Pvt. Henry Hoagland, Capt. John Hoagland, Pvt. Richard Hoagland, Pvt. John Hughes, Pvt. Robert Huston, Pvt. William Huston, Pvt. William Johnston, Pvt. James Little, Maj. John McClelland, Pvt. John McDonald, Pvt. John McKinley, Ens. —— McMasters, Pvt. Benjamin McQueen, Pvt. Thomas Mills, Pvt. William Nemins, Pvt. Thomas Ogle, Pvt. Cornelius Peterson, Pvt. Lewis Phillips, Ens. Lewis Reno, Pvt. Sam _____ (Negro slave), Pvt. Walter Stevenson, Lt. Edward Stewart. Indian losses were not definitely known, but based on claims made by various individuals to have killed (or seen killed) Indians, the number appears to be about 17. How many were wounded is not determinable.

  596. One account suggests that Mills saw no Indians at all but merely elected to desert at this point, but there is no substance or corroboration to the allegation.

  597. The Indian Springs were located in present Belmont County, about two miles east of the present city of St. Clairsville. The first whites to settle there and claim the spring were the John McMahon family.

  598. One account states that Mills was shot in the heel.

  599. One exaggerated account says there were 40 Indians in the party, but that is incorrect; there were only 12.

  600. One account states that at this point Mills yelled out to Wetzel, “For God’s sake, Lewis, don’t leave me!” Whether Mills issued such a call is moot; whatever the circumstance, Wetzel and Davis had no option but to flee as swiftly as they could.

  601. One account states that Wetzel “pulled the trigger & blew the Indian’s head nearly to atoms.” Exaggeration is endemic in many of the initial accounts.

  602. Some of the more fanciful accounts attribute Long Pine with exclaiming, “No catch him; gun loaded all the time.” This is hardly likely, since Long Pine knew only a few individual words of English and Davis knew nothing of the Delaware tongue. Another larger-than-life account states that Wetzel stopped to scalp one of the Indians pursuing him and, having done so, started cutting his head off but had to give up and run on when the other pursuers approached. Though not opposed to taking scalps when he could, Wetzel, in such a perilous circumstance as this, simply would not have attempted something so foolhardy.

  603. Wetzel and Davis made it back to Wheeling without incident. Wetzel did not, as one account has it, have to run 12 miles to outrun his pursuers. A couple of days later a party of 20 men went out, guided by Davis and led, according to one account, by Samuel Brady. They found and buried the stripped and scalped body of Mills. One account says they found the bodies of three Indians and buried them hurriedly in a common grave, but this is unlikely since the Delaware party would not have left their dead behind to be scalped and otherwise mutilated unless their own lives were in jeopardy, which was not the case. That same account also says that in swimming back across the river on the return Wetzel caught a chill that lasted “several years” before it was allegedly cured by a French doctor named Pettee at Marietta; again a tall story without much foundation, especially since Marietta was not even founded until September 1786, more than four years later.

  604. The direct trail from the Delaware and Wyandot villages of the upper Sandusky River to the villages of the Shawnees on the upper Mad River took approximately the course presently followed southwestward by State Route 67 to present Kenton, Hardin Co., O., where it crosses the upper Scioto River, and then continued on present U.S. Route 68 to present Bellefontaine, Logan Co., O., then to Wapato
mica, just southeast of Bellefontaine. Yet the place where Tutelu and Dr. Knight prepared to make this second camp was at the site of the present village of La Rue, Marion Co., O., about 13 miles down the Scioto from where the main Indian trail crosses it at present Kenton. Why Tutelu would have taken such a circuitous route to reach Wapatomica is a question to which the author has been unable to find a satisfactory answer.

  605. Tutelu bore the scar of the injury on the back of his head for the rest of his life. After the peace that came about as a result of the Greenville Treaty, he took up residence in the Zanesville area and called himself Col. George Washington. The story of how Dr. Knight escaped from him was common knowledge, and he took a good deal of ribbing about it from Indians and whites alike. Tutelu would grin and reply, “Dr. Knight was a good man. He cured sick folks, and I did not want to hurt him.” Seven years after the peace, he became drunk at a tavern in Zanesville, O., and got into an argument with a white settler and threatened to kill him and take his scalp. When he finally staggered out of the tavern he was followed by some drinking companions of the settler who had been threatened. Tutelu was never again seen or heard of and was evidently killed and his body hidden.

  606. Slover finally reached Fort Henry at Wheeling in remarkably good condition on June 25, eleven days after his escape. He remained on the upper Ohio for a few years after that but eventually married and emigrated to the Red Banks in Kentucky, where he and his wife raised seven children. He finally died in his own home at an advanced age.

  607. Hugh Henry Brackenridge did, in fact, take down and edit the detailed recollections of Dr. John Knight, which were then published under the title Dr. Knight’s Narrative. It struck the American people, in its own way, with the same kind of impact that, half a century later, was produced by Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, though with even greater distortion and manipulation of facts than utilized by Stowe. Both Dr. Knight’s Narrative and John Slover’s Narrative were published in Philadelphia the following year in April and in May, vol. 3 of Freeman’s Journal. They made the anticipated enormous impact, painting the Indians, the British and Simon Girty with the bloodiest of brushes. Only in recent years have historians taken a closer look at the historical records, especially the accounts—of which there are many—that are at variance to the long-accepted “facts” as presented in Dr. Knight’s Narrative. These investigations have caused many of them to blame Dr. Knight for presenting a grossly biased and even in some respects false presentation of what transpired. But an even closer investigation indicates that it was not Dr. Knight who distorted history but, rather, the man who edited what the surgeon dictated, Hugh Henry Brackenridge. Some critics have been outraged by this shift in interpretation and portray it as an attempt to whitewash America’s most diabolical renegade, Simon Girty. That is not at all the case, and one of the more sterling examples of this detailed research and questioning of the assertions attributed to Knight is the excellent article by Parker B. Brown entitled “The Historical Accuracy of the Captivity Narrative of Doctor John Knight,” which appeared on pages 53–67 of The Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine, vol. 70, no. 1 (January 1987). Brown’s research is extensive, penetrating and highly illuminating. He accepts as reasonably accurate the account of Knight’s journey from Mingo Bottom to the Sandusky, the elements of the surgeon’s escape from the Indians and the ordeal he overcame on his journey home through the wilderness. Where he takes great exception, however, is in regard to the capture of Knight and Crawford and the subsequent torture and death of Crawford. As Brown states in this respect: “Here the editor [Brackenridge] had several objectives in mind when he polished his notes. He desired, first, to produce a popular, salable story. He also wanted to stir the western populace into such a rage that it would immediately rise up to turn back marauding war parties and revenge the tortured commander, Col. Crawford. In addition, he wished to shame eastern politicians so that they would release more government troops for frontier duty. To do this, Brackenridge accented every gruesome aspect of Crawford’s ordeal. In so doing, he ignored important Indian motivations and circumstances, omitted significant recollections, and unjustly besmirched the character of Simon Girty, the British agent.… It is thus the editing that concerns us. Did Brackenridge, to guarantee the patriotic immortality and monetary success of the narrative, knowingly suppress pertinent facts and misrepresent significantly the behavior of participants in Crawford’s captivity? The answer is yes.” Dr. John Knight served at Fort Pitt to the end of the Revolution and then married a niece of William Crawford. He served in Wayne’s campaign in the Northwest in 1793–95. After that, he and his wife moved to Shelby Co., Ky., where he became widely esteemed for his medical skill, and prior to 1820 he was performing successful cancer surgery.

  608. An eighth child had been born to Ebenezer and Elizabeth Zane the preceding May 12. The child, a son, was named Samuel. His siblings were Catherine (13), Ann (10), Sarah (9), Rebecca (6), Noah (4), and John (2). Another brother, Noah, had died in infancy eight years earlier. Samuel, sickly since birth, also soon died.

  609. Cane fishing poles were one of the first items of commerce to come out of Kentucky. They were harvested from the vast fabled wild canelands that occurred in a long swath of land running from near present Washington, Kentucky, almost to the Blue Licks of Licking River. Early hunters were attracted to the canelands because of the herds of buffalo that roamed through them and fed upon the tender young plants. The cane, long, limber and strong, had much the appearance of bamboo, growing to a height of 30 feet. The most favored for fishing were those from 10 to 15 feet in length.

  610. One account, unsupported by confirming evidence from others, states that a fourth man, Briggs Steenrod, also accompanied the party.

  611. Thomas Mills, Sr., survived his wounds and, though convalescent for two years following, suffered no lasting effects from any of them except the one that broke his leg, which left him with a permanently stiff knee. Henry Smith healed well and, until his death at age 80, bored all friends and relatives with repeated accounts of his great battle with a fair-size portion of the Wyandot tribe. Hamilton Carr suffered no wounds at all.

  612. Some accounts say that these Indians were part of a war party of some 300 led by Simon Girty and that this portion had deliberately placed themselves to waylay the McCulloch brothers as they passed. The evidence, however, indicates that the Indians had been merely passing through the woods when they spotted the McCullochs and that they took advantage of the situation as best they could; had they known in advance of the approach of the McCulloch brothers and had time to better position themselves for ambush, almost certainly both Samuel and John McCulloch would have been killed. There are at least half a dozen accounts of the killing of Sam McCulloch, varying widely in respect to the circumstances of when and how the attack occurred. The version presented here seems the most accurate based on available evidence. Simon Girty could not possibly have been involved in this incident, since only a few days previous to this he had met and diverted an advancing force of several hundred Indians under British Indian agent Alexander McKee, Capt. William Caldwell and Chief Joseph Brant—Thayendanegea—marching toward the upper Ohio. This diverted force immediately went to a Grand Council of tribes that convened at the Shawnee village of Chalahgawtha on the Little Miami River where, three days after the death of McCulloch, Girty laid out his proposed plan of attack against Lexington and Bryan’s Station in Kentucky.

  613. Samuel McCulloch’s widow, Mary, sister of frontiersman Alexander Mitchell, subsequently married a settler named Andrew Woods. The small graveyard where McCulloch was buried has long since disappeared, and its exact location is not definitely known.

  614. The captive alluded to by Girty was Charles Beasley, brother of Capt. John Beasley, who was held by the Shawnees for a fortnight, during which time Girty had questioned him about the strength of Bryan’s Station. Beasley finally managed to escape and made his way back to Bryan’s, arriving there only two days befo
re the attack.

  615. Greater details of the invasion and ambush will be found in the author’s A Sorrow in Our Heart: The Life of Tecumseh.

  616. Hefler, his hand treated, returned to Wheeling on September 11, not knowing the place was then under siege. Two miles from Wheeling he stumbled into the Indians and tried to escape by running up Wheat’s Run—present Wood’s Run—but he was overtaken, tomahawked and scalped.

  617. Though Catfish Camp had been laid out by the Hoge brothers in 1781 as the new village of Washington, it did not officially become a borough until 1810 and finally acquired city status in 1923.

  618. Col. Ebenezer’s fortified house was located at what is now the southeast corner of Eleventh and Main streets in present Wheeling, W.Va., Fort Henry itself was located to the rear of the stores that presently front on the west side of Main Street, half a block from the corner of Eleventh.

  619. A peculiar circumstance in respect to this period developed 67 years later. Lydia Boggs Cruger, daughter of Capt. William Boggs, on November 28, 1849, dictated a deposition stating—untruthfully, as it turns out—that her father was in command of Wheeling and Fort Henry at this time, when she was a girl of 18, the eldest of his daughters; and that while the fort was under siege, it was Molly Scott who ran through a hail of bullets to get ammunition from the fort and bring it to the fortified Zane house, an act that had heretofore been credited to Elizabeth Zane during the first Wheeling siege five years earlier. Some accounts, it should be noted, report that it was at this second siege of Wheeling, not the first, in which Elizabeth Zane made her famous dash for the gunpowder. It is not known what motivations may have prompted the 85-year-old Mrs. Cruger to make such false statements at a time when she was one of the last (if not the very last) living survivors of the second siege of Wheeling and could not be refuted. No other survivor, after this second siege, ever attributed the earlier powder run of Elizabeth Zane to Molly Scott, though the heroic act of Elizabeth Zane was well known by all. It did not seem to be a matter of self-aggrandizement by Mrs. Cruger, except for giving her father a more important role than he actually played, but rather an effort to attribute the earlier heroic act of Elizabeth Zane to Molly Scott, with whom she seemed to have no real connection. This curious act on Lydia Cruger’s part has never been satisfactorily explained, although it may have stemmed from a misinterpretation of Molly’s run from Zane’s house to the fort on the morning of September 12, 1782, to get bacon to prepare for breakfast for the defenders in Zane’s house—a passage she made to and fro without drawing any shots from the enemy.