The Winning of the West

by Theodore Roosevelt

  At once the frontier was in a blaze, and the Indians girded themselves for revenge. The Mingos sent out runners to the other tribes, telling of the butchery, and calling on all the red men to join together for immediate and bloody vengeance.31 They confused the two massacres, attributing both to Cresap, whom they well knew as a warrior;32 and their women for long afterward scared the children into silence by threatening them with Cresap’s name as with that of a monster.33 They had indeed been brutally wronged; yet it must be remembered that they themselves were the first aggressors. They had causelessly murdered and robbed many whites, and now their sins had recoiled on the heads of the innocent of their own race. The conflict could not in any event have been delayed long; the frontiersmen were too deeply and too justly irritated. These particular massacres, however discreditable to those taking part in them, were the occasions, not the causes, of the war; and though they cast a dark shade on the conduct of the whites, they do not relieve the red men from the charges of having committed earlier, more cruel, and quite as wanton outrages.

  Conolly, an irritable but irresolute man, was appalled by the storm he had helped raise. He meanly disclaimed all responsibility for Cresap’s action,34 and deposed him from his command of rangers; to which, however, he was soon restored by Lord Dunmore. Both the earl and his lieutenant, however, united in censuring severely Greathouse’s deed.35 Conolly, throughout May, held a series of councils with the Delawares and Iroquois, in which he disclaimed and regretted the outrages, and sought for peace.36 To one of these councils the Delaware chief, Killbuck, with other warriors, sent a “talk” or “speech in writing”37 disavowing the deeds of one of their own parties of young braves, who had gone on the warpath; and another Delaware chief made a very sensible speech, saying that it was unfortunately inevitable that bad men on both sides should commit wrongs, and that the cooler heads should not be led away by acts due to the rashness and folly of a few. But the Shawnees showed no such spirit. On the contrary they declared for war outright, and sent a bold defiance to the Virginians, at the same time telling Conolly plainly that he lied. Their message is noteworthy, because, after expressing a firm belief that the Virginian leader could control his warriors, and stop the outrages if he wished, it added that the Shawnee headmen were able to do the like with their own men when they required it. This last allegation took away all shadow of excuse from the Shawnees for not having stopped the excesses of which their young braves had been guilty during the past few years.

  Though Conolly showed signs of flinching, his master the earl had evidently no thought of shrinking from the contest. He at once began actively to prepare to attack his foes, and the Virginians backed him up heartily, though the Royal Government, instead of supporting him, censured him in strong terms, and accused the whites of being the real aggressors and the authors of the war.38

  In any event, it would have been out of the question to avoid a contest at so late a date. Immediately after the murders in the end of April, the savages crossed the frontier in small bands. Soon all the back country was involved in the unspeakable horrors of a bloody Indian war, with its usual accompaniments of burning houses, tortured prisoners, and ruined families, the men being killed and the women and children driven off to a horrible captivity.39 The Indians declared that they were not at war with Pennsylvania,40 and the latter in return adopted an attitude of neutrality, openly disclaiming any share in the wrong that had been done, and assuring the Indians that it rested solely on the shoulders of the Virginians.41 Indeed the Shawnees protected the Pennsylvania traders from some hostile Mingos, while the Pennsylvania militia shielded a party of Shawnees from some of Conolly’s men;42 and the Virginians, irritated by what they considered an abandonment of the white cause, were bent on destroying the Pennsylvania fur trade with the Indians.43 Nevertheless, some of the bands of young braves who were out on the warpath failed to discriminate between white friends and foes, and a number of Pennsylvanians fell victims to their desire for scalps and their ignorance or indifference as to whom they were at war with.44

  The panic along the Pennsylvania frontier was terrible; the out-settlers fled back to the interior across the mountains, or gathered in numbers to defend themselves.45 On the Virginian frontier, where the real attack was delivered, the panic was more justifiable; for terrible ravages were committed, and the inhabitants were forced to gather together in their forted villages, and could no longer cultivate their farms, except by stealth.46 Instead of being cowed, however, the backwoodsmen clamored to be led against their foes, and made most urgent appeals for powder and lead, of which there was a great scarcity.47

  The confusion was heightened by the anarchy in which the government of the Northwestern district had been thrown in consequence of the quarrel concerning the jurisdiction. The inhabitants were doubtful as to which colony really had a right to their allegiance, and many of the frontier officials were known to be double-faced, professing allegiance to both governments.48 When the Pennsylvanians raised a corps of a hundred rangers there almost ensued a civil war among the whites, for the Virginians were fearful that the movement was really aimed against them.49 Of course the march of events gradually forced most, even of the neutral Indians, to join their brethren who had gone on the warpath, and as an example of the utter confusion that reigned, the very Indians that were at war with one British colony, Virginia, were still drawing supplies from the British post of Detroit.50

  Logan’s rage had been terrible. He had changed and not for the better, as he grew older, becoming a sombre, moody man; worse than all, he had succumbed to the fire-water, the curse of his race. The horrible treachery and brutality of the assault wherein his kinsfolk were slain made him mad for revenge; every wolfish instinct in him came to the surface. He wreaked a terrible vengeance for his wrongs; but in true Indian fashion it fell, not on those who had caused them, but on others who were entirely innocent. Indeed he did not know who had caused them. The massacres at Captina and Yellow Creek occurred so near together that they were confounded with each other; and not only the Indians but many whites as well51 credited Cresap and Greathouse with being jointly responsible for both, and as Cresap was the most prominent, he was the one especially singled out for hatred.

  Logan instantly fell on the settlement with a small band of Mingo warriors. On his first foray he took thirteen scalps, among them those of six children.52 A party of Virginians, under a man named McClure, followed him; but he ambushed and defeated them, slaying their leader.53 He repeated these forays at least three times. Yet, in spite of his fierce craving for revenge, he still showed many of the traits that had made him beloved of his white friends. Having taken a prisoner, he refused to allow him to be tortured, and saved his life at the risk of his own. A few days afterward he suddenly appeared to this prisoner with some gunpowder ink, and dictated to him a note. On his next expedition this note, tied to a war-club, was left in the house of a settler, whose entire family was murdered. It was a short document, written with ferocious directness, as a kind of public challenge or taunt to the man whom he wrongly deemed to be the author of his misfortunes. It ran as follows:

  “CAPTAIN CRESAP:

  “What did you kill my people on Yellow Creek for? The white people killed my kin at Conestoga, a great while ago, and I thought nothing of that. But you killed my kin again on Yellow Creek, and took my cousin prisoner. Then I thought I must kill too; and I have been three times to war since; but the Indians are not angry, only myself.

  “CAPTAIN JOHN LOGAN.54

  “July 21, 1774.”

  There is a certain deliberate and bloodthirsty earnestness about this letter which must have shown the whites clearly, if they still needed to be shown, what bitter cause they had to rue the wrongs that had been done to Logan.

  The Shawnees and Mingos were soon joined by many of the Delawares and outlying Iroquois, especially Senecas; as well as by the Wyandots and large bands of ardent young warriors from among the Algonquin tribes along the Miami, the Wabash, and
the Lakes. Their inroads on the settlements were characterized, as usual, by extreme stealth and merciless ferocity. They stole out of the woods with the silent cunning of wild beasts, and ravaged with a cruelty ten times greater. They burned down the lonely log-huts, ambushed travelers, shot the men as they hunted or tilled the soil, ripped open the women with child, and burned many of their captives at the stake. Their noiseless approach enabled them to fall on the settlers before their presence was suspected; and they disappeared as suddenly as they had come, leaving no trail that could be followed. The charred huts and scalped and mangled bodies of their victims were left as ghastly reminders of their visit, the sight stirring the backwoodsmen to a frenzy of rage all the more terrible in the end, because it was impotent for the time being. Generally they made their escape successfully; occasionally they were beaten off or overtaken and killed or scattered.

  When they met armed woodsmen the fight was always desperate. In May a party of hunters and surveyors, being suddenly attacked in the forest, beat off their assailants and took eight scalps, though with a loss of nine of their own number.55 Moreover, the settlers began to band together to make retaliatory inroads; and while Lord Dunmore was busily preparing to strike a really effective blow, he directed the frontiersmen of the Northwest to undertake a foray, so as to keep the Indians employed. Accordingly, they gathered together, four hundred strong,56 crossed the Ohio, in the end of July, and marched against a Shawnee town on the Muskingum. They had a brisk skirmish with the Shawnees, drove them back, and took five scalps, losing two men killed and five wounded. Then the Shawnees tried to ambush them, but their ambush was discovered, and they promptly fled, after a slight skirmish, in which no one was killed but one Indian, whom Cresap, a very active and vigorous man, ran down and slew with his tomahawk.57 The Shawnee village was burned, seventy acres of standing corn were cut down, and the settlers returned in triumph. On the march back they passed through the towns of the peaceful Moravian Delawares, to whom they did no harm.

  1 “American Archives,” 4th series, Vol. I, p. 454. Report of Penn. Commissioners, June 27, 1774.

  2 Maryland was also involved, along her western frontier, in border difficulties with her neighbors; the first we hear of the Cresap family is their having engaged in a real skirmish with the Pennsylvanian authorities. See also “Am. Arch.,” IV, Vol. I., 547.

  3 “Am. Arch.,” IV, Vol. I, 394, 449, 469, etc. He was generally called Dr. Conolly.

  4 See do., 463, 471, etc., especially St. Clair’s letters, passim]

  5 In most of the original treaties, “talks,” etc., preserved in the Archives of the State Department, where the translation is exact, the word “Big Knife” is used.

  6 Letter of John Penn, June 28, 1774. “Am. Arch.,” IV, Vol. IV.

  7 “Am. Archives,” do., 465.

  8 Do., 722.

  9 Do., 872.

  10 “Am. Arch.,” IV., Vol. I, p. 1015.

  11 McAfee MSS. This is the point especially insisted on by Cornstalk in his speech to the adventurers in 1773; he would fight before seeing the whites drive off the game.

  12 In the McAfee MSS., as already quoted, there is an account of the Shawnee war party, whom the McAfees en countered in 1773 returning from a successful horse-stealing expedition.

  13 “Am. Archives,” IV, Vol. I, 872. Dunmore in his speech enumerates 19 men, women, and children who had been killed by the Indians in 1771, ‘72, and ‘73, and these were but a small fraction of the whole. “This was before a drop of Shawnee blood was shed.”

  14 “Trans-Alleghany Pioneers,” p. 262, gives an example that happened in 1772.

  15 “Am. Archives,” IV, Vol. I. Letter of Col. Wm. Preston, Aug. 13, 1774.

  16 Many local historians, including Brantz Mayer (Logan and Cresap, p. 85), ascribe to the earl treacherous motives. Brantz Mayer puts it thus: “It was probably Lord Dunmore’s desire to incite a war which would arouse and band the savages of the West, so that in the anticipated struggle with the united colonies the British home-interest might ultimately avail itself of these children of the forest as ferocious and formidable allies in the onslaught on the Americans.” This is much too futile a theory to need serious discussion. The war was of the greatest advantage to the American cause; for it kept the Northwestern Indians off our hands for the first two years of the Revolutionary struggle; and had Lord Dunmore been the far-seeing and malignant being that this theory supposes, it would have been impossible for him not also to foresee that such a result was absolutely inevitable. There is no reason whatever to suppose that he was not doing his best for the Virginians: he deserved their gratitude; and he got it for the time being. The accusations of treachery against him were afterthoughts, and must be set down to mere vulgar rancor, unless, at least, some faint shadow of proof is advanced. When the Revolutionary war broke out, however, the earl, undoubtedly, like so many other British officials, advocated the most outrageous measures to put down the insurgent colonists.

  17 See Brantz Mayer, p. 86, for a very proper attack on those historians who stigmatize as land-jobbers and speculators the perfectly honest settlers, whose encroachments on the Indian hunting-grounds were so bitterly resented by the savages. Such attacks are mere pieces of sentimental injustice. The settlers were perfectly right in feeling that they had a right to settle on the vast stretches of unoccupied ground, however wrong some of their individual deeds may have been. But Mayer, following Jacobs, “Life of Cresap,” undoubtedly paints his hero in altogether too bright colors.

  18 Sappington, Tomlinson, and Baker were the names of three of his fellow-miscreants. See Jefferson MSS.

  19 At Greenbriar. See “Narrative of Captain John Stew art,” an actor in the war.—”Magazine of American History,” Vol. I, p. 671.

  20 Loudon’s “Indian Narratives,” II, p. 223.

  21 See “American Pioneer”, I, p. 189.

  22 Letter of George Rogers Clark, June 17, 1798. In Jefferson MSS., 5th Series, Vol. I. (preserved in Archives of State Department at Washington).

  23 Witness the testimony of one of the most gallant Indian fighters of the border, who was in Wheeling at the time; letter of Col. Ebenezer Zane, February 4, 1800, in Jefferson MSS.

  24 Jefferson MSS. Deposition of John Gibson. April 4, 1800.

  25 Do. Deposition of Wm. Huston, April 19, 1798; also depositions of Samuel McKee, etc.

  26 “Am. Archives,” IV, Vol. I, p. 468. Letter of Devereux Smith, June 10, 1774. Gibson’s letter. Also Jefferson MSS.

  27 “Historical Magazine,” I, p. 168. Born in Albemarle County, Va., November 19, 1752.

  28 Military Journal of Major Ebenezer Denny, with an introductory memoir by William H. Denny (Publication of the Hist. Soc. of Penn.). Phil., 1860, p. 216.

  29 The Cresap apologists, including even Brantz Mayer, dwell on Cresap’s nobleness in not massacring Logan’s family! It was certainly to his credit that he did not do so, but it does not speak very well for him that he should even have entertained the thought. He was doubtless, on the whole, a brave, good-hearted man—quite as good as the average borderer; but nevertheless apt to be drawn into deeds that were the reverse of creditable. Mayer’s book has merit; but he certainly paints Logan too black and Cresap too white, and (see Appendix) is utterly wrong as to Logan’s speech. He is right in recognizing the fact that in the war, as a whole, justice was on the side of the frontiersmen.

  30 Devereux Smith’s letter. Some of the evil-doers afterward tried to palliate their misdeeds by stating that Logan’s brother, when drunk, insulted a white man, and that the other Indians were at the time on the point of executing an attack upon them. The last statement is self-evidently false; for had such been the case, the Indians would, of course, never have let some of their women and children put themselves in the power of the whites, and get helplessly drunk; and, anyhow, the allegations of such brutal and cowardly murderers are entirely unworthy of acceptance, unless backed up by outside evidence.

  31 Jefferson MSS., 5th Series, Vol
. I, Heckewelder’s letter.

  32 Jefferson MSS. Deposition of Col. James Smith, May 25, 1798.

  33 Do., Heckewelder’s letter.

  34 “Am. Archives,” IV, Vol. I, p. 475.

  35 Do., p. 1015.

  36 Do., p. 475.

  37 Do., p. 418.

  38 Do., p. 774. Letter of the Earl of Dartmouth, Sept. 10, 1774. A sufficient answer, by the way, to the absurd charge that Dunmore brought on the war in consequence of some mysterious plan of the Home Government to embroil the Americans with the savages. It is not at all improbable that the Crown advisers were not particularly displeased at seeing the attention of the Americans distracted by a war with the Indians; but this is the utmost that can be alleged.

  39 Do., p. 808.

  40 Do., p. 478.

  41 Do., p. 506.

  42 Do., p. 474.

  43 Do., p. 549.

  44 Do., p. 471.

  45 Do., pp. 435, 467, 602.

  46 Do., pp. 405, 707.

  47 Do., p. 808.

  48 Do, p. 677.

  49 Do., pp. 463, 467.

  50 Do., p. 684.

  51 Do., p. 435.

  52 Do., pp. 468. 546.

  53 Do., p. 470.

  54 Jefferson MSS. Deposition of William Robinson, February 28, 1800, and letter from Harry Innes, March 2, 1799, with a copy of Logan’s letter as made in hs note-book at the time.

  55 “Am. Archives,” p. 373.

  56 Under a certain Angus MacDonald, do., p. 722. They crossed the Ohio at Fish Creek, 120 miles below Pittsburg.

  57 “Am. Archives,” IV, Vol. I, pp. 682, 684.]

  APPENDICES

  APPENDIX A—TO CHAPTER IV

  IT IS greatly to be wished that some competent person would write a full and true history of our national dealings with the Indians. Undoubtedly the latter have often suffered terrible injustice at our hands. A number of instances, such as the conduct of the Georgians to the Cherokees in the early part of the present century, or the whole treatment of Chief Joseph and his Nez Perçés, might be mentioned, which are indelible blots on our fair fame; and yet, in describing our dealings with the red men as a whole, historians do us much less than justice.