Still, the Indian war parties were often checked or scattered; and occasionally one of them received some signal discomfiture. Such was the case with a band that went up the Kanawha valley just as Clark was descending the Ohio on his way to the Illinois.
Finding the fort at the mouth of the Kanawha too strong to be carried, they moved on up the river toward the Greenbriar settlements, the chiefs shouting threateningly to the people in the fort, and taunting them with impending destruction of their friends and kindred. But two young men in the stockade forthwith dressed and painted themselves like Indians, that they might escape notice even if seen, and speeding through the woods reached the settlements first and gave warning. The settlers took refuge on a farm where there was a blockhouse with a stockaded yard. The Indians attacked in a body at daybreak when the door was opened, thinking to rush into the house; but they were beaten off, and paid dear for their boldness, for seventeen of them were left dead in the yard, besides the killed and wounded whom they carried away.66 In the same year a blockhouse was attacked while the children were playing outside. The Indians in their sudden rush killed one settler, wounded four, and actually got inside the house; yet three were killed or disabled, and they were driven out by the despairing fury of the remaining whites, the women fighting together with the men. Then the savages instantly fled, but they had killed and scalped, or carried off, ten of the children. Be it remembered that these instances are taken at random from among hundreds of others, extending over a series of years longer than the average life.
The Indians warred with the odds immeasurably in their favor. The Ohio was the boundary between their remaining hunting - grounds and the lands where the whites had settled. In Kentucky alone this frontier was already seventy miles in length.67 Beyond the river stretched the frowning forest, to the Indians a sure shield in battle, a secure haven in disaster, an impenetrable mask from behind which to plan attack. Clark, from his post at the Falls, sent out spies and scouts along the banks of the river, and patrolled its waters with his gunboat; but it was absolutely impossible to stop all the forays or to tell the point likely to be next struck. A war party starting from the wigwam-towns would move silently down through the woods, cross the Ohio at any point, and stealthily and rapidly traverse the settlements, its presence undiscovered until the deeds of murder and rapine were done, and its track marked by charred cabins and the ghastly, mutilated bodies of men, women, and children.
If themselves assailed, the warriors fought desperately and effectively. They sometimes attacked bodies of troops, but always by ambush or surprise; and they much preferred to pounce on unprepared and unsuspecting surveyors, farmers, or wayfarers, or to creep up to solitary, outlying cabins. They valued the scalps of women and children as highly as those of men. Striking a sudden blow, where there was hardly any possibility of loss to themselves, they instantly moved on to the next settlement, repeating the process again and again. Tireless, watchful, cautious, and rapid, they covered great distances, and their stealth and the mystery of their coming and going added to the terror produced by the horrible nature of their ravages. When pursued they dextrously covered their trail, and tarted homeward across a hundred leagues of trackless wilderness. The pursuers almost of necessity-went slower, for they had to puzzle out the tracks; and after a certain number of days either their food gave out or they found themselves too far from home, and were obliged to return. In most instances the pursuit was vain. Thus a party of twenty savages might make a war-trail some hundreds of miles in length, taking forty or fifty scalps, carrying off a dozen women and children, and throwing a number of settlements, with perhaps a total population of a thousand souls, into a rage of terror and fury, with a loss to themselves of but one or two men killed and wounded.
Throughout the summer of 1781 the settlers were scourged by an unbroken series of raids of this kind. In August McKee, Brant, and other tory and Indian leaders assembled on the Miami an army of perhaps a thousand warriors. They were collected to oppose Clark’s intended march to Detroit; for the British leaders were well aware of Clark’s intention, and trusted to the savages to frustrate it if he attempted to put it into execution. Brant went off for a scout with a hundred warriors, and destroyed Loughry’s party of Westmoreland men, as already related, returning to the main body after having done so. The fickle savages were much elated by this stroke, but instead of being inspired to greater efforts, took the view that the danger of invasion was now over. After much persuasion Brant, McKee, and the captain of the Detroit rangers, Thompson, persuaded them to march toward the Falls. On September 9th they were within thirty miles of their destination, and halted to send out scouts. Two prisoners were captured, from whom it was learned that Clark had abandoned his proposed expedition.68 Instantly the Indians began to disband, some returning to their homes, and others scattering out to steal horses and burn isolated cabins. Nor could the utmost efforts of their leaders keep them together. They had no wish to fight Clark unless it was absolutely necessary, in order to save their villages and crops from destruction; and they much preferred plundering on their own account. However, a couple of hundred Hurons and Miamis, under Brant and McKee, were kept together, and moved southward between the Kentucky and Salt rivers, intending “to attack some of the small forts and infest the roads.”69 About the middle of the month they fell in with a party of settlers led by Squire Boone.
Squire Boone had built a fort, some distance from any other, and when rumors of a great Indian invasion reached him, he determined to leave it and join the stations on Bear Grass Creek. When he reached Long Run, with his men, women, and children, cattle, and household goods, he stumbled against the two hundred warriors of McKee and Brant. His people were scattered to the four winds, with the loss of many scalps and all their goods and cattle. The victors camped on the ground with the intention of ambushing any party that arrived to bury the dead; for they were confident some of the settlers would come for this purpose. Nor were they disappointed; for next morning Floyd, the county lieutenant, with twenty-five men, made his appearance. Floyd marched so quickly that he came on the Indians before they were prepared to receive him. A smart skirmish ensued; but the whites were hopelessly outnumbered, and were soon beaten and scattered, with a loss of twelve or thirteen men. Floyd himself, exhausted and with his horse shot, would have been captured had not another man, one Samuel Wells, who was excellently mounted, seen his plight. Wells reined in, leaped off his horse, and making Floyd ride, he ran beside him, and both escaped. The deed was doubly noble, because the men had previously been enemies.70 The frontiersmen had made a good defence in spite of the tremendous odds against them, and had slain four of their opponents, three Hurons and a Miami.71 Among the former was the head chief, a famous warrior; his death so discouraged the Indians that they straightway returned home with their scalps and plunder, resisting McKee’s entreaty that they would first attack Boonesborough.
One war party carried off Logan’s family; but, Logan, following swiftly after, came on the savages so suddenly that he killed several of their number, and rescued all his own people unhurt.72
Often French Canadians, and more rarely tories, accompanied these little bands of murderous plunderers73—besides the companies of Detroit rangers who went with the large war parties,—and they were all armed and urged on by the British at Detroit. One of the official British reports to Lord George Germaine, made on October 23d of this year, deals with the Indian war parties employed against the Northwestern frontier. “Many smaller Indian parties have been very successful… . It would be endless and difficult to enumerate to your Lordship the parties that are continually employed upon the back settlements. From the Illinois country to the frontiers of New York there is a continual succession … the perpetual terror and losses of the inhabitants will I hope operate powerfully in our favor”74 ;—so runs the letter. At the same time the British commander in Canada was pointing out to his subordinate at Detroit that the real danger to British rule arose from the extension of
the settlements westward, and that this the Indians could prevent75; in other words, the savages were expressly directed to make war on non-combatants, for it was impossible to attack a settlement without attacking the women and children therein. In return, the frontiersmen speedily grew to regard both British and Indians with the same venomous and indiscriminate anger.
In the writings of the early annalists of these Indian wars are to be found the records of countless deeds of individual valor and cowardice, prowess, and suffering, of terrible woe in time of disaster and defeat, and of the glutting of ferocious vengeance in the days of triumphant reprisal. They contain tales of the most heroic courage and of the vilest poltroonery; for the iron times brought out all that was best and all that was basest in the human breast. We read of husbands leaving their wives, and women their children, to the most dreadful of fates, on the chance that they themselves might thereby escape; and, on the other hand, we read again and again of the noblest acts of self-sacrifice, where the man freely gave his life for that of his wife or child, his brother or his friend. Many deeds of unflinching loyalty are recorded, but very, very few where magnanimity was shown to a fallen foe. The women shared the stern qualities of the men; often it happened that, when the house-owner had been shot down, his wife made good the defence of the cabin with rifle or with axe, hewing valiantly at the savages who tried to break through the door, or dig under the puncheon floor, or, perhaps, burst down through the roof or wide chimney. Many hundreds of these tales could be gathered together; one or two are worth giving, not as being unique, but rather as samples of innumerable others of the same kind.
In those days76 there lived beside the Ohio, in extreme Northwestern Virginia, two tall brothers, famed for their strength, agility, and courage. They were named Adam and Andrew Poe. In the summer of ‘81 a party of seven Wyandots or Hurons came into their settlement, burned some cabins, and killed one of the settlers. Immediately eight backwoodsmen started in chase of the marauders; among them were the two Poes.
The Wyandots were the bravest of all the Indian tribes, the most dangerous in battle, and the most merciful in victory, rarely torturing their prisoners; the backwoodsmen respected them for their prowess more than they did any other tribe, and if captured esteemed themselves fortunate to fall into Wyandot hands. These seven warriors were the most famous and dreaded of the whole tribe. They included four brothers, one being the chief Bigfoot, who was of gigantic strength and stature, the champion of all, their most fearless and redoubtable fighter, yet their very confidence ruined them, for they retreated in a leisurely manner, caring little whether they were overtaken or not, as they had many times worsted the whites, and did not deem them their equals in battle.
The backwoodsmen followed the trail swiftly all day long, and, by the help of the moon, late into the night. Early next morning they again started and found themselves so near the Wyandots that Andrew Poe turned aside and went down to the bed of a neighboring stream, thinking to come up behind the Indians while they were menaced by his comrades in front. Hearing a low murmur, he crept up through the bushes to a jutting rock on the brink of the watercourse, and, peering cautiously over, he saw two Indians beneath him. They were sitting under a willow, talking in deep whispers; one was an ordinary warrior, the other, by his gigantic size, was evidently the famous chief himself. Andrew took steady aim at the big chief’s breast and pulled trigger. The rifle flashed in the pan; and the two Indians sprang to their feet with a deep grunt of surprise. For a second all three stared at one another. Then Andrew sprang over the rock, striking the big Indian’s breast with a shock that bore him to the earth; while at the moment of alighting, he threw his arm round the small Indian’s neck, and all three rolled on the ground together.
At this instant they heard sharp firing in the woods above them. The rest of the whites and Indians had discovered one another at the same time. A furious but momentary fight ensued; three backwoodsmen and four Indians were killed outright, no other white being hurt, while the single remaining red warrior made his escape, though badly wounded. But the three men who were struggling for life and death in the ravine had no time to pay heed to outside matters. For a moment Andrew kept down both his antagonists, who were stunned by the shock; but before he could use his knife the big Indian wrapped him in his arms and held him as if in a vise. This enabled the small Indian to wrest himself loose, when the big chief ordered him to run for his tomahawk, which lay on the sand ten feet away, and to kill the white man as he lay powerless in the chief’s arms. Andrew could not break loose, but watching his chance, as the small Indian came up, he kicked him so violently in the chest that he knocked the tomahawk out of his hand and sent him staggering into the water. Thereat the big chief grunted out his contempt, and thundered at the small Indian a few words that Andrew could not understand. The small Indian again approached, and, after making several feints, struck with the tomahawk, but Andrew dodged and received the blow on his wrist instead of his head; and the wound though deep was not disabling. By a sudden and mighty effort he now shook himself free from the giant, and snatching up a loaded rifle from the sand, shot the small Indian as he rushed on him. But at that moment the larger Indian, rising up, seized him and hurled him to the ground. He was on his feet in a second, and the two grappled furiously, their knives being lost; Andrew’s activity and skill as a wrestler and boxer making amends for his lack of strength. Locked in each other’s arms they rolled into the water. Here each tried to drown the other, and Andrew catching the chief by the scalp lock held his head under the water until his faint struggles ceased. Thinking his foe dead, he loosed his grip to try to get at his knife, but, as Andrew afterward said, the Indian had only been “playing possum,” and in a second the struggle was renewed. Both combatants rolled into deep water, when they separated and struck out for the shore. The Indian proved the better swimmer, and ran up to the rifle that lay on the sand, whereupon Andrew turned to swim out into the stream, hoping to save his life by diving. At this moment his brother Adam appeared on the bank, and seeing Andrew covered with blood and swimming rapidly away, mistook him for an Indian, and shot him in the shoulder. Immediately afterward he saw his real antagonist. Both had empty guns, and the contest became one as to who could beat the other in loading, the Indian exclaiming: “Who load first, shoot first!” The chief got his powder down first, but, in hurriedly drawing out his ramrod, it slipped through his fingers and fell in the river. Seeing that it was all over, he instantly faced his foe, pulled open the bosom of his shirt, and the next moment received the ball fair in his breast. Adam, alarmed for his brother, who by this time could barely keep himself afloat, rushed into the river to save him, not heeding Andrew’s repeated cries to take the big Indian’s scalp. Meanwhile, the dying chief, resolute to save the long locks his enemies coveted—always a point of honor among the red men,—painfully rolled himself into the stream. Before he died he reached the deep water, and the swift current bore his body away.
About this time a hunter named McConnell was captured near Lexington by five Indians. At night he wriggled out of his bonds and slew four of his sleeping captors, while the fifth, who escaped, was so bewildered that, on reaching the Indian town, he reported that his party had been attacked at night by a number of whites, who had not only killed his companions but the prisoner likewise.
A still more remarkable event had occurred a couple of summers previously. Some keel boats, manned by a hundred men under Lieutenant Rogers, and carrying arms and provisions procured from the Spaniards at New Orleans, were set upon by an Indian war party under Girty and Elliott,77 while drawn up on a sand beach of the Ohio. The boats were captured and plundered, and most of the men were killed; several escaped, two under very extraordinary circumstances. One had both his arms, the other both his legs, broken. They lay hid till the Indians disappeared, and then accidentally discovered each other. For weeks the two crippled beings lived in the lonely spot where the battle had been fought, unable to leave it, each supplementing what
the other could do. The man who could walk kicked wood to him who could not, that he might make a fire, and making long circuits, chased the game toward him for him to shoot it. At last they were taken off by a passing flat-boat.
The backwoodsmen, wonted to vigorous athletic pastimes, and to fierce brawls among themselves, were generally overmatches for the Indians in hand-to-hand struggles. One such fight, that took place some years before this time, deserves mention. A man of herculean strength and of fierce, bold nature, named Bingaman, lived on the frontier in a lonely log-house. The cabin had but a single room below, in which Bingaman slept, as well as his mother, wife, and child; a hired man slep in the loft. One night eight Indians assailed the house. As they burst in the door Bingaman thrust the women and the child under the bed, his wife being wounded by a shot in the breast. Then having discharged his piece he began to beat about at random with the long, heavy rifle. The door swung partially to, and in the darkness nothing could be seen. The numbers of the Indians helped them but little, for Bingaman’s tremendous strength enabled him to shake himself free whenever grappled. One after another his foes sank under his crushing blows, killed or crippled; it is said that at last but one was left to flee from the house in terror. The hired man had not dared to come down from the loft, and when Bingaman found his wife wounded he became so enraged that it was with difficulty he could be kept from killing him.78
The Winning of the West Page 43