The Winning of the West

by Theodore Roosevelt

  He had advised against delegates to the convention being chosen, thinking that instead the Kentuckians should send accredited agents to treat with the Virginian Government. If their terms were not agreed to, he declared that they ought to establish forthwith an independent State; an interesting example of how early the separatist spirit showed itself in Kentucky. But the rest of the people were unwilling to go quite as far. They elected two delegates, Clark of course being one. With them they sent a petition for admission as a separate county. They were primarily farmers, hunters, Indian fighters—not scholars; and their petition was couched in English that was at times a little crooked; but the idea at any rate was perfectly straight, and could not be misunderstood. They announced that if they were admitted they would cheerfully co-operate in every measure to secure the public peace and safety, and at the same time pointed out with marked emphasis “how impolitical it would be to suffer such a Respectable Body of Prime Riflemen to remain in a state of neutrality” during the then existing revolutionary struggle.23

  Armed with this document and their credentials, Clark and his companion set off across the desolate and Indian-haunted mountains. They traveled very fast, the season was extremely wet, and they did not dare to kindle fires for fear of the Indians; in consequence they suffered torments from cold, hunger, and especially from “scalded” feet. Yet they hurried on, and presented their petition to the Governor24 and Council—the Legislature having adjourned. Clark also asked for five hundredweight of gunpowder, of which the Kentucky settlement stood in sore and pressing need. This the Council at first refused to give; whereupon Clark informed them that if the country was not worth defending, it was not worth claiming, making it plain that if the request was not granted, and if Kentucky was forced to assume the burdens of independence, she would likewise assume its privileges. After this plain statement the Council yielded. Clark took the powder down the Ohio River, and got it safely through to Kentucky; though a party sent under John Todd to convey it overland from the Limestone Creek was met at the Licking and defeated by the Indians, Clark’s fellow delegate being among the killed.

  Before returning Clark had attended the fall meeting of the Virginia Legislature, and in spite of the opposition of Henderson, who was likewise present, he procured the admission of Kentucky as a separate county, with boundaries corresponding to those of the present State. Early in the ensuing year, 1777, the county was accordingly organized; Harrods-town, or Harrodsburg, as it was now beginning to be called, was made the county-seat, having by this time supplanted Boonesborough in importance. The court was composed of the six or eight men whom the Governor of Virginia had commissioned as justices of the peace; they were empowered to meet monthly to transact necessary business, and had a sheriff and clerk.25 These took care of the internal concerns of the settlers. To provide for their defence a county lieutenant was created, with the rank of colonel,26 who forthwith organized a militia regiment, placing all the citizens, whether permanent residents or not, into companies and battalions. Finally, two burgesses were chosen to represent the county in the General Assembly of Virginia.27 In later years Daniel Boone himself served as a Kentucky burgess in the Virginia Legislature;28 a very different body from the little Transylvanian Parliament in which he began his career as a law-maker. The old backwoods hero led a strange life: varying his long wanderings and explorations, his endless campaigns against savage men and savage beasts, by serving as road-maker, town-builder, and commonwealth-founder, sometimes organizing the frontiersmen for foreign war, and again doing his share in devising the laws under which they were to live and prosper.

  But the pioneers were speedily drawn into a life-and-death struggle which engrossed their whole attention to the exclusion of all merely civil matters; a struggle in which their land became in truth what the Indians called it—a dark and bloody ground, a land with blood-stained rivers.29

  It was impossible long to keep peace on the border between the ever-encroaching whites and their fickle and bloodthirsty foes. The hard, reckless, often brutalized frontiersmen, greedy of land and embittered by the memories of untold injuries, regarded all Indians with sullen enmity, and could not be persuaded to distinguish between the good and the bad.30 The central government was as powerless to restrain as to protect these far-off and unruly citizens. On the other hand, the Indians were as treacherous as they were ferocious; Delawares, Shawnees, Wyandots, and all.31 While deceiving the commandants of the posts by peaceful protestations, they would steadily continue their ravages and murders; and while it was easy to persuade a number of the chiefs and warriors of a tribe to enter into a treaty, it was impossible to make the remainder respect it.32 The chiefs might be for peace, but the young braves were always for war, and could not be kept back.33

  In July, 1776, the Delawares, Shawnees, and Mingo chiefs assembled at Fort Pitt and declared for neutrality34; the Iroquois ambassadors, who were likewise present, haughtily announced that their tribes would permit neither the British nor the Americans to march an army through their territory. They disclaimed any responsibility for what might be done by a few wayward young men; and requested the Dela wares and Shawnees to do as they had promised, and to distribute the Iroquois “talk” among their people. After the Indian fashion, they emphasized each point which they wished kept in mind by the presentation of a string of wampum.35

  Yet at this very time a party of Mingos tried to kill the American Indian agents, and were only prevented by Cornstalk, whose noble and faithful conduct was so soon to be rewarded by his own brutal murder. Moreover, while the Shawnee chief was doing this, some of his warriors journeyed down to the Cherokees and gave them the war belt, assuring them that the Wyandots and Mingos would support them, and that they themselves had been promised ammunition by the French traders of Detroit and the Illinois.36 On their return home this party of Shawnees scalped two men in Kentucky near the Big Bone Lick, and captured a woman; but they were pursued by the Kentucky settlers, two were killed and the woman retaken.37

  Throughout the year the outlook continued to grow more and more threatening. Parties of young men kept making inroads on the settlements, especially in Kentucky; not only did the Shawnees, Wyandots, Mingos, and Iroquois38 act thus, but they were even joined by bands of Ottawas, Pottawat-omies, and Chippewas from the lakes, who thus attacked the white settlers long ere the latter had either the will or the chance to hurt them.

  Until the spring of 177739 the outbreak was not general, and it was supposed that only some three or four hundred warriors had taken up the tomahawk.40 Yet the outlying settlers were all the time obliged to keep as sharp a lookout as if engaged in open war. Throughout the summer of 1776 the Kentucky settlers were continually harassed. Small parties of Indians were constantly lurking round the forts, to shoot down the men as they hunted or worked in the fields, and to carry off the women. There was a constant and monotonous succession of unimportant forays and skirmishes.

  One band of painted marauders carried off Boone’s daughter. She was in a canoe with two other girls on the river near Boonesborough when they were pounced on by five Indians.41 As soon as he heard the news, Boone went in pursuit with a party of seven men from the fort, including the three lovers of the captured girls. After following the trail all of one day and the greater part of two nights, the pursuers came up with the savages, and, rushing in, scattered or slew them before they could either make resistance or kill their captives. The rescuing party then returned in triumph to the fort.

  The names of the lovers, in their order, were Samuel Henderson (a brother of Richard), John Holder, and Flanders Callaway. Three weeks after the return to the fort Squire Boone united in marriage the eldest pair of lovers, Samuel Henderson and Betsy Callaway. It was the first wedding that ever took place in Kentucky. Both the other couples were likewise married a year or two later.

  The whole story reads like a page out of one of Cooper’s novels. The two younger girls gave way to despair when captured; but Betsy Callaway was sure they would
be followed and rescued. To mark the line of their flight she broke off twigs from the bushes, and when threatened with the tomahawk for doing this, she tore off strips of her dress. The Indians carefully covered their trail, compelling the girls to walk apart, as their captors did, in the thick cane, and to wade up and down the little brooks.

  Boone started in pursuit the same evening. All next day he followed the tangled trail like a bloodhound, and early the following morning came on the Indians, camped by a buffalo calf which they had just killed and were about to cook. The rescue was managed very adroitly; for had any warning been given the Indians would have instantly killed their captives, according to their invariable custom. Boone and Floyd each shot one of the savages, and the remaining three escaped almost naked, without gun, tomahawk, or scalping-knife. The girls were unharmed; for the Indians rarely molested their captives on the journey to the home towns, unless their strength gave out, when they were tomahawked without mercy.

  Thus for two years the pioneers worked in the wilderness, harassed by unending individual warfare, but not threatened by any formidable attempt to oust them from the lands that they had won. During this breathing spell they established civil government, explored the country, planted crops, and built strongholds. Then came the inevitable struggle. When in 1777 the snows began to melt before the lengthening spring days, the riflemen who guarded the log forts were called on to make head against a series of resolute efforts to drive them from Kentucky.

  1 Imlay, p. 55, estimated that from natural increase the population of Kentucky doubled every fifteen years,—probably an exaggeration.

  2 Hale’s “Trans-Alleghany Pioneers,” p. 251.

  3 “Pioneer Life in Kentucky,” Daniel Drake, Cincinnati, 1870, p. 196 (an invaluable work).

  4 MS. autobiography of Rev. William Hickman. He was born in Virginia, February 4, 1747. A copy in Col. Durrett’s library at Louisville, Ky.

  5 There were at least three such “Crab-Orchard” stations in Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. The settlers used the word “crab” precisely as Shakespeare does.

  6 A Mr. Finley. Hickman MS.

  7 McAfee MSS.

  8 Do.

  9 Such was the case with the Clarks, Boones, Seviers, Shelbys, Robertsons, Logans, Cockes, Crocketts, etc.; many of whose descendants it has been my good-fortune personally to know.

  10 This is as true to-day in the Far West as it was formerly in Kentucky and Tennessee; at least to judge by my own experience in the Little Missouri region, and in portions of the Kootenai, Cœur d’Alêne, and Bighorn countries.

  11 McAfee MSS. See also “Trans-Alleghany Pioneers,” p. III. As Mr. Hale points out, this route, which was traveled by Floyd, Bullitt, the McAfees, and many others, has not received due attention, even in Colonel Speed’s invaluable and interesting “Wilderness Road.”

  12 Up to 1783 the Kentucky immigrants came from the backwoods of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, and were of almost precisely the same character as those that went to Tennessee. See Imlay, p. 168. At the close of the Revolutionary war, Tennessee and Kentucky were almost alike in population. But after that time the population of Kentucky rapidly grew varied, and the great immigration of upper-class Virginians gave it a peculiar stamp of its own. By 1796, when Logan was defeated for governor, the control of Kentucky had passed out of the hands of the pioneers; whereas in Tennessee the old Indian fighters continued to give the tone to the social life of the State, and remained in control until they died.

  13 McAfee MSS. Just as the McAfee family started for Kentucky, the wife of one of their number, George, was con fined. The others had to leave her; but at the first long halt the husband hurried back, only to meet his wife on the way; for she had ridden after them just three days after her con finement, taking her baby along.

  14 “Pioneer Biography,” James McBride (son of a pioneer who was killed by the Indians in 1789 in Kentucky), p. 183, Cincinnati, 1869. One of the excellent series published by Robert Clarke & Co., to whom American historians owe a special and unique debt of gratitude.

  15 McAfee MSS.

  16 McBride, II, 197.

  17 McAfee MSS.

  18 Do.

  19 Morehead, App. Floyd’s letter.

  20 They retained few Indian names; Kentucky in this respect differing from most other sections of the Union. The names were either taken from the explorers, as Floyd’s Fork; or from some natural peculiarity, as the Licking, so called from the number of game licks along its borders; or else they commemorated some incident. On Dreaming Creek Boone fell asleep and dreamed he was stung by yellow-jackets. The Eikhorn was so named because a hunter, having slain a monstrous bull elk, stuck up its horns on a pole at the mouth. At Bloody Run several men were slain. Eagle Branch was so called because of the many bald eagles round it. See McAfee MSS.

  21 Marshall, 45.

  22 Afterward General William Ray. Butler, p. 37.

  23 Petition of the committee of West Fincastle, dated June 20, 1776. It is printed in Col. John Mason Brown’s “Cattle of the Blue Licks” pamphlet.

  24 Patrick Henry.

  25 Among their number were John Todd (likewise chosen burgess—in these early days a man of mark often filled sev eral distinct positions at the same time), Benj. Logan, Rich ard Calloway, John Bowman, and John Floyd; the latter was an educated Virginian, who was slain by the Indians before his fine natural qualities had time to give him the place he would otherwise assuredly have reached.

  26 The first Colonel was John Bowman.

  27 John Dodd and Richard Calloway. See Diary of Geo. Rogers Clark, in 1776. Given by Morehead, p. 161.

  28 Butler, 166.

  29 The Iroquois, as well as the Cherokees, used these expressions concerning portions of the Ohio Valley. Hecke-welder, 118.

  30 State Department MSS., No. 147, Vol. VI, March 15, 1781.

  31 As one instance among many see Haldimand MSS., letter of Lt.-Col. Hamilton, August 17, 1778, where Girty reported, on behalf of the Delawares, the tribe least treacherous to the Americans, that even these Indians were only going in to Port Pitt and keeping up friendly relations with its garrison so as to deceive the whites, and that as soon as their corn was ripe they would move off to the hostile tribes.

  32 State Department MSS., No. 150, Vol. I, p. 107. Letter of Captain John Doughty.

  33 State Department MSS., No. 150, Vol. I, p. 115. Examination of John Leith.

  34 “Am. Archives,” 5th Series, Vol. I, p. 36.

  35 “The Olden Time,” Neville B. Craig, II, p. 115.

  36 “Am. Archives,” 5th Series, Vol. I, p. III.

  37 Do., p. 137.

  38 Do., Vol. II, pp. 516, 1236.

  39 When Cornstalk was so foully murdered by the whites; although the outbreak was then already started.

  40 Madison MSS. But both the American statesmen and the Continental officers were so deceived by the treacherous misrepresentations of the Indians that they often greatly un derestimated the numbers of the Indians on the war-path; curiously enough, their figures are frequently much more erroneous than those of the frontiersmen. Thus the Madison MSS. and State Department MSS. contain statements that only a few hundred Northwestern warriors were in the field at the very time that two thousand had been fitted out at Detroit to act along the Ohio and Wabash; as we learn from De Peyster’s letter to Haldimand of May 17, 1780 (in the Haldimand MSS.).

  41 On July 14, 1776. The names of the three girls were Betsy and Fanny Callaway and Jemima Boone; See Boone’s Narrative, and Butler, who gives the letter of July 21, 1776, written by Col. John Floyd, one of the pursuing party.

  CHAPTER V

  THE WAR IN THE NORTHWEST, 1777–1778

  IN THE fall of 1776 it became evident that a formidable Indian war was impending. At Detroit great councils were held by all the Northwestern tribes, to whom the Six Nations sent the white belt of peace, that they might cease their feuds and join against the Americans. The later councils were summoned by Henry Hamilton,
the British Lieutenant-Governor of the Northwestern region, whose headquarters were at Detroit. He was an ambitious, energetic, unscrupulous man, of bold character, who wielded great influence over the Indians; and the conduct of the war in the West, as well as the entire management of frontier affairs, was intrusted to him by the British Government.1 He had been ordered to enlist the Indians on the British side, and have them ready to act against the Americans in the spring2; and accordingly he gathered the tribes together. He himself took part in the war-talks, plying the Indians with presents and fire-water no less than with speeches and promises. The headmen of the different tribes, as they grew excited, passed one another black, red or bloody, and tomahawk belts, as tokens of the vengeance to be taken on their white foes. One Delaware chief still held out for neutrality, announcing that if he had to side with either set of combatants it would be with the “buckskins,” or backwoodsmen, and not with the red-coats; but the bulk of the warriors sympathized with the Half King of the Wyandots when he said that the Long Knives had for years interfered with the Indians’ hunting, and that now at last it was the Indians’ turn to threaten revenge.3

  Hamilton was for the next two years the mainspring of Indian hostility to the Americans in the Northwest. From the beginning he had been anxious to employ the savages against the settlers, and when the home government bade him hire them he soon proved himself very expert, as well as very ruthless, in their use.4 He rapidly acquired the venomous hatred of the backwoodsmen, who held him in peculiar abhorrence, and nicknamed him the “hair-buyer” general, asserting that he put a price on the scalps of the Americans. This allegation may have been untrue as affecting Hamilton personally; he always endeavored to get the war parties to bring in prisoners, and behaved well to the captives when they were in his power; nor is there any direct evidence that he himself paid out money for scalps. But scalps were certainly bought and paid for at Detroit5; and the commandant himself was accustomed to receive them with formal solemnity at the councils held to greet the war parties when they returned from successful raids.6 The only way to keep the friendship of the Indians was continually to give them presents; these presents were naturally given to the most successful warriors; and the scalps were the only safe proofs of a warrior’s success. Doubtless the commandant and the higher British officers generally treated the Americans humanely when they were brought into contact with them; and it is not likely that they knew, or were willing to know, exactly what the savages did in all cases. But they at least connived at the measures of their subordinates. These were hardened, imbittered, men who paid for the zeal of their Indian allies accordingly as they received tangible proofs thereof; in other words, they hired them to murder non-combatants as well as soldiers, and paid for each life, of any sort, that was taken. The fault lay primarily with the British Government, and with those of its advisers who, like Hamilton, advocated the employment of the savages. They thereby became participants in the crimes committed; and it was idle folly for them to prate about having bidden the savages be merciful. The sin consisted in having let them loose on the borders; once they were let loose it was absolutely impossible to control them. Moreover, the British sinned against knowledge; for some of their highest and most trusted officers on the frontier had written those in supreme command, relating the cruelties practiced by the Indians upon the defenceless, and urging that they should not be made allies, but rather that their neutrality only should be secured.7 The average American backwoodsman was quite as brutal and inconsiderate a victor as the average British officer; in fact, he was in all likelihood the less humane of the two; but the Englishman deliberately made the deeds of the savage his own. Making all allowance for the strait in which the British found themselves, and admitting that much can be said against their accusers, the fact remains that they urged on hordes of savages to slaughter men, women, and children along the entire frontier; and for this there must ever rest a dark stain on their national history.