he stamped below Prairie Edition The Winning of the West By Theodore Roosevelt Author of "American Ideals," " The Wilderness Hunter, " Huntlng'Trips { a Ranchu?an,' ! v.tc. PART I. The Spread of English-Speaking Peoples G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS NEW YORK & LONDON tlbe "Knickerbocker press 1903 COPYRIGHT, 1889 BY c; K HVXA'M;* j<^' THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED, WITH HIS PERMISSION TO FRANCIS PARKMAN TO WHOM AMERICANS WHO FEEL A PRIDE IN THE PIONEER HISTORY OF THEIR COUNTRY ARE SO GREATLY INDEBTED " O strange New World that yit wast never young. Whose youth from thee by gripin' need was wrung. Brown foundlin' o' the woods, whose baby-bed Was prowled roun' by the Injun's cracklin' tread, And who grew'st strong thru shifts an' wants an' pains, Nursed by stern men with empires in their brains, Who saw in vision their young Ishmel strain With each hard hand a vassal ocean's mane ; Thou skilled by Freedom and by gret events To pitch new states ez Old World men pitch tents, Thou taught by fate to know Jehovah's plan, Thet man's devices can't unmake a man. Oh, my friends, thank your God, if you have one, that he 'Twixt the Old World and you set the gulf of a sea, Be strong-backed, brown-handed, upright as your pines, By the scale of a hemisphere shape your designs." LOWELL. PREFACE MUCH of the material on which this work is based is tc be found in the archives of the American Government, which date back to 1774, when the first Continental Congress assembled. The earliest sets have been published complete up to 1777, under the title of " American Archives," and will be hereafter designated by this name. These early volumes contain an immense amount of material, because in them are to be found memoranda of private individuals and many of the public papers of the various colonial and State governments, as well as those of the Confederation. The documents from 1789 on nc longer containing any papers of the separate States have also been gath- ered and printed under the heading of " American State Papers " ; by which term they will be hereafter referred to. The mass of public papers coming in be- tween these two series, and covering the period extending from 1776 to 1789, have never been published, and in great part have either never been examined or else have been examined in the most cursory manner. The original documents are all in the De- partment of State at Washington, and for convenience will be referred to as " State 8 PREP. -ICE Department MSS.'' They are bound in two or three hundred large volumes ; ex- actly how many I cannot say, because, though they are numbered, yet several of the numbers themselves contain from two or three to ten or fifteen volumes apiece. The volumes to which reference will most often be made are the following: No. 15. Letters of Huntington. No. 16. Letters of the Presidents of Congress. No. 18. Letter-Book B. No. 20. Vol. i. Reports of Committees on State Papers. No. 27. Reports of Committees on the War Office. 1776 to 1778. No. 30. Reports of Committees. No. 32. Reports of Committees of the States and of the Week. No. 41. Vol. 5. Memorials E. F. G. 1776-1788. No. 41. Vol. 5. Memorials K. L. 1777- 1789. No. 50. Letters and papers of Oliver Pollock. 1777-1792. No. 51. Vol. 2. Intercepted Letters. 1779-1782. No. 56. Indian affairs. No. 71. Vol. i. Virginia State Papers. No. 73. Georgia State Papers. No. 81. Vol. 2. Report- of Secretary John Jay. No. 1 20. Vol. 2. American Letters. PREFACE 9 No. 124. Vol. 3. Reports of Jay. No. 125. Negotiation Book. No. 136. Vol. i. Reports of Board of Treasury. No. 136. Vol. 2. Reports of Board of Treasury. No. 147. Vol. 2. Reports of Board of War. No. 147. Vol. 5. Reports of Board of War. No. 147. Vol. 6. Reports of Board of War. No. 148. Vol. i. Letters from Board of War. No. 149. Vol. i. Letters and Reports from B. Lincoln, Secretary at War. No. 149. Vol. 2. Letters and Reports from B. Lincoln, Secretary at War. No. 149. Vol. 3. Letters and Reports from B. Lincoln, Secretary at War. No. 150. Vol. i. Letters of H. Knox, Secretary at War. No. 150. Vol. 2. Letters of H. Knox, Secretary at War. No. 150. Vol. 3. Letters of H. Knox, Secretary at War. No. 152. Vol. n. Letters of General Washington. No. 163. Letters of Generals Clinton, Nixon, Nicola, Morgan, Harmar, Muhlen- burg. No. 169. Vol. 9. Washington's Letters. No. 180. Reports of Secretary of Con- gress. to PREFACE Besides these numbered volumes, the State Department contains others, such as Washington's letter-book, marked War De- partment 1792, '3, '4, '5. There are also a series of numbered volumes of " Letters to Washington," Nos. 33 and 49 containing reports from Geo. Rogers Clark. The Jef- ferson papers, which are likewise preserved here, are bound in several series, each con- taining a number of volumes. The Madi- son and Monroe papers, also kept here, are not yet bound ; I quote them as the Madison MSS. and the Monroe MSS. My thanks arc due to Mr. W. C. Hamil- ton, Asst. Librarian, for giving me every facility to examine the material. At Nashville, "Tennessee, I had access to a mass of original matter in the shape of files of old newspapers, of unpublished let- ters, diaries, reports, and other manuscripts. I was given every opportunity to examine these at my leisure, and indeed to take such as were most valuable to my own home. For this my thanks are especially due to Judge John M. Lea. to whom, as well as to my many other friends in Nashville, I shall always feel under a debt on account of the unfailing courtesy with which I was treated. I must express my particular ac- knowledgments to Mr. Lemuel R. Camp- bell. The Nashville manuscripts, etc., of which I have made most use are the fol- lowing: The Robertson MSS., comprising two PREFACE ii large volumes, entitled the " Correspond- ence, etc., of Gen'l James Robertson," from 1784 to 1814. They belong to the library of Nashville University; I had some diffi- culty in finding the second volume but finally succeeded. The Campbell MSS., consisting of letters and memoranda to and from different mem- bers of the Campbell family who were prominent in the Revolution ; dealing for the most part with Lord Dtmmore's war, the Cherokee wars, the battle of King's Mountain, land speculations, etc. They are in the possession of Mr. Lemuel R. Camp- bell, who most kindly had copies of all the important ones sent me, at great per- sonal trouble. Some of the Sevier and Jackson papers, the original MS. diaries of Donelson on the famous voyage down the Tennessee and up the Cumberland, and of Benj. Hawkins while surveying the Tennessee boundary, memoranda of Thos. Washington, Overtoil and Dunham, the earliest files of the Knox- ville Gazette, from 1791 to 1795, etc - These, are all in the library of the Tennessee Historical Society. For original matter connected wil-h Ken- tucky, I am greatly indebted to Col. Reuben T. Durrett, of Louisville, the founder of the " Filson Club," which has done such admirable historical work of late years. He allowed me to work at my leisure in his library, the most complete in the world on 12 PREFACE all subjects connected with Kentucky his- tory. Among other matter, he possesses the Shelby MSS., containing a number of letters to and from, and a dictated autobi- ography of, Isaac Shelby; MS. journals of Rev. James Smith, during two tours in the western country in 1785 and '95; early files of the " Kentucke Gazette "; books owned by the early settlers ; papers of Boone, and George Rogers Clark; MS. notes on Ken- tucky by George Bradford, who settled there in 17/9; MS. copy of the record book of Col. John Todd, the first governor of the Illinois country after Clark's conquest ; the McAfee MSS., consisting of an Account of the First Settlement of Salt River, the Autobiography of Robert McAfee, and a Brief Memorandum of the Civil and Nat- ural History of Kentucky: MS. autobi- ography of Rev. William Hickman, who visited Kentucky in 1776, etc., etc. I am also under great obligations to Col. John Mason Brown of Louisville, another member of the Filson Club, for assistance rendered me : particularly for having sent me six bound volumes of MSS., containing the correspondence of the Spanish Minister Gardoqui, copied from the Spanish archives. At Lexington I had access to the Breck- cnridge MSS., through the kindness of Mr. Ethel'bert D. Warfield ; and to the Clay MSS. through the kindness of Miss Lu- cretia Hart Clay. I am particularly in- debted to Miss Clay for her courtesy in PREFACE 13 sending me many of the most valuable old Hart and Benton letters, depositions, ac- counts, and the like. The Blount MSS. were sent to me from California by the Hon. W. D. Stephens of Los Angeles, although I was not personally known to him; an instance of courtesy and generosity, in return for which I could do nothing save express my sincere apprecia- tion and gratitude, which I take this oppor- tunity of publicly repeating. The Gates MSS., from which I drew some important facts not hitherto known concerning the King's Mountain campaign, are in the library of the New York His- torical Society. The Virginia State Papers have recently been published, and are now accessible to all. Among the most valuable of the hitherto untouched manuscripts which I have ob- tained are the Haldimand papers, preserved in the Canadian archives at Ottawa. They give, for the first time, the British and In- dian side of all the northwestern fighting; including Clark's campaigns, the siege of Boonesborough, the battle of the Blue Licks, Crawford's defeat, etc. The Canadian archivist, Mr. Douglass Brymner, furnished me copies of all I needed with a prompt courtesy for which I am more indebted than I can well express. I have been obliged to rely mainly on these collections of early documents as my I 4 PREFACE authorities, especially -for that portion of western history prior to 1783. Excluding the valuable, but very brief, and often very inaccurate, sketch which Filson wrote down as coining from Boone, there are no printed histories of Kentucky earlier than Mar- shall's, in 1812; while the first Tennessee history was Hay wood's, in 1822. Both Marshall and I laywood did excellent work ; the former was an able writer, the latter was a student, and (like the Kentucky historian Mann Butler) a sound political thinker, devoted to the Union, and prompt to stand up for the right. But both of them, in deal- ing with the early history of the country beyond the Alleghanies, wrote about mat- ters that had happened from thirty to fifty years before, and were obliged to base most of their statements on tradition or on what the pioneers remembered in their old age. The later historians, for the most part, merely follow these two. In consequence, the mass of original material, in the shape of official reports and contemporary letters, contained in the Haldimand MSS., the Campbell MSS.. the McAfee MSS.. the Gardoqui MSS., the State Department MSS., the Virginia State Papers, etc., not onlv cast a flood of new light upon this early history, but necessitate its being en- tirely re-written. For instance, they give an absolutely new aspect to. and in many cases completely reverse, the current ac- counts of all the Indian fighting, both PREFACE 1.5 against the Cherokees and the Northwest- ern tribes; they give for the firs': time a clear view of frontier diplomacy, of the in- trigues with the Spaniards, and even of the mode of life in the backwoods, and of the workings of the civil government. It may be mentioned that the various proper names are spelt in so many different ways that it is difficult to know which to choose. Even Clark is sometimes spelt Clarke, while Boone was apparently indifferent as to whether his name should or should not contain the h'nal silent e. As for the original Indian titles, it is often quite impossible to give them even approximately ; the early writers often wrote the same Indian words in such differ- ent ways that they bear no resemblance whatever to one another. In conclusion I would say that it has been to me emphatically a labor of love to write of the great deeds of the border people. I am not blind to their manifold shortcom- ings, nor yet am I ignorant of their many strong and good qualities. For a number of years I spent most of my time on the frontier, and lived and worked like any other frontiersman. The wild country in which we dwelt and across which we wan- dered was in the far west ; and there were of course many features in which the life of a cattleman on the Great Plains and among the Rockies differed from that led by a backwoodsman in the Alleghany for- ests a century before. Yet the points of 16 PREFACE resemblance were far more numerous and striking. We guarded our herds of brand- ed cattle and shaggy horses, hunted bear, bison, elk, and deer, established civil gov- ernment, and put down evil-doers, white and red, on the banks of the Little Missouri and among the wooded, precipitous foot- hills of the Bighorn, exactly as did the pio- neers who a hundred years previously built their log-cabins beside the Kentucky or in the valleys of the Great Smokies. The men who have shared in the fast vanishing frontier life of the present feel a peculiar sympathy with the already long-vanished frontier life of the past. THEODORE ROOSEVELT. SAGAMORE HILL ; May, 1889. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. THE SPREAD OF THE ENGLISH- SPEAKING PEOPLES 17 II. THE FRENCH OF THE OHIO VALLEY, 1763-1775 47 III. THE APPALACHIAN CONFEDER- ACIES, 1765-1775 71 IV. THE ALGONQUINS OF THE NORTHWEST,, 1769-1774 96 V. THE BACKWOODSMEN OF THE ALLEGIIANIES, 1769-1774. . . 132 VI. BOONE AND THE LONG HUNT- ERS ; AND THEIR HUNTING IN NO-MAN'S-LAND, 1769-1774, 172 VII. SEVIER, ROBERTSON, AND THE WATAUGA COMMONWEALTH, 1769-1774 210 VIII. LORD DUNMORE'S WAR, 1774. . 244 APPENDICES : APPENDIX A To CHAPTER IV. . 273 APPENDIX B -To CHAPTER V. . . 280 APPENDIX C To CHAPTER VI.. 283 APPENDIX D To CHAPTER VI. . 285 APPENDIX E To CHAPTER VII. 286 THE WINNING OF THE WEST CHAPTER I THE SPREAD OF THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES DURING the past three centuries the spread of the English-speaking peo- ples over the world's waste spaces has been not only the most striking feature in the world's history, but also the event of all others most far-reaching in its effects and its importance. The tongue which Bacon feared to use in his writings, lest they should remain for- ever unknown to all but the inhabitants of a relatively unimportant insular kingdom, is now the speech of two continents. The Common Law which Coke jealously upheld in the southern half of a single European island, is now the law of the land through- out the vast regions of Australasia, and of America north of the Rio Grande. The names of the plays that Shakespeare wrote are household words in the mouths of mighty nations, whose wide domains were to him more unreal than the realm of Prester John. Over half the descendants 17 1 8 THE ll'INXING OF of their fellow countrymen of that day now dwell in lands which, when these three En- glishmen were born, held not a single white inhabitant; the race which, when they were in their prime, was hemmed in between the North and the Irish seas, to-day holds sway over worlds, whose endless coasts are washed by the waves of the three great oceans. There have been manv other races that at one time or another had their great periods of race expansion as distinguished from mere conquest, but there has never been another whose expansion has been either so broad or so rapid. At one time, many centuries ago, it seemed as if the (lermanic peoples, like their Celtic foes and neighbors, would be absorbed into the all-conquering Roman power, and, merging their identity in that of the victors, would accept their law, their speech, and th<'ir habits of thought. But this danger vanished forever on the day of the slaughter by the Teutobnrger \Vald, when the legions of Yarns were broken by the rush of Hermann's wild warriors. Two or three hundred years later the Germans, no longer on the defensive, them- selves went forth from their marshy forests conquering and to conquer. For century after century they swarmed out of the dark woodland east of the Rhine, and north of the Danube: and as their force spent itself, the movement was taken up by their breth- THE WEST 19 ren who dwelt along the coasts of the Baltic and the North Atlantic. From the Volga to the Pillars of Hercules, from Sicily to Britain, every land in turn bowed to the warlike prowess of the stalwart sons of Odin. Rome and Novgorod, the imperial city of Italy as well as the squalid capital of Muscovy, acknowledged the sway of kings of Teutonic or Scandinavian blood. In most cases, however, the victorious invaders merely intruded themselves among the original and far more numerous owners of the land, ruled over them, and were ab- sorbed by them. This happened to both Teuton and Scandinavian ; to the descend- ants of Alaric, as well as to the children of Rurik. The Dane in Ireland became a Celt; the Goth of the Iberian peninsula be- came a Spaniard ; Frank and Norwegian alike were merged into the mass of Ro- mance-speaking Gauls, who themselves finally grew to be called by the names of their masters. Thus it came about that though the German tribes conquered Eu- rope they did not extend the limits of Ger- many nor the sway of the German race. On the contrary, they strengthened the hands of the rivals of the people from whom they sprang. They gave rulers kaisers, kings, barons, and knights to all the lands they overran ; here and there they imposed their own names on kingdoms and principalities as in France, Normandy, Burgundy, and Lombardy ; they grafted the 20 THE WINNING OF feudal system on the Roman jurisprudence, and interpolated a few Teutonic words in the Latin dialects of the peoples they had conquered ; but, hopelessly outnumbered, they were scon lost in the mass of their subjects, and adopted from them their laws, their culture, and their language. As a re- sult, the mixed ra:es of the south the Latin nations as they are sometimes called strengthened by the infusion of northern blood, sprang anew into vigorous life, and became for the time being the leaders of the European world. There was but one land whereof the win- ning made a lasting addition to Germanic soil ; but this land was destined to be of more importance in the future of the Ger- manic peoples than all their continental possessions, original and acquired, put to- gether. The day when the keels of the low-Dutch sea-thieves first grated on the British coast was big with the doom of many nations. There sprang up in con- quered southern Britain, when its name had been significantly changed to England, that branch of the Germanic stock which was in the end to grasp almost literally world-wide power, and by its over-shadowing growth to dwarf into comparative insignificance all its kindred folk. At the time, in the gen- eral wreck of the civilized world, the ma- king of England attracted but little atten- tion. Men's eyes were riveted on the em- pires conquered by the hosts of Alaric, THE WEST 21 Theodoric, and Clovis, not on the swarm of little kingdoms and earldoms founded by the nameless chiefs who led each his band of hard-rowing, hard-fighting henchmen across the stormy waters of the German Ocean. Yet the rule and the race of Goth, Frank, and Burgund have vanished from off the earth; while the sons of the un- known Saxon, Anglian, and Friesic war- riors now hold in their hands the fate of the coming years. After the great Teutonic wanderings were over, there came a long lull, until, with the discovery of America, a new period of even vaster race expansion began. Du- ring this lull the nations of Europe took on their present shapes. Indeed, the so-called Latin nations the French and Spaniards, for instance may be said to have been born after the first set of migrations ceased. Their national history, as such, does not really begin until about that time, whereas that of the Germanic peoples stretches back unbroken to the days when we first hear of their existence. It would be hard to say which one of half a dozen races that ex- isted in Europe during the early centuries of the present era should be considered as especially the ancestor of the modern Frenchman or Spaniard. When the Ro- mans conquered Gaul and Iberia they did not in any place drive out the ancient own- ers of the soil ; they simply Romanized them, and left them as the base of the popu- 22 THE WINNING OP lation. By the Prankish and Visigothic in- vasions another strain of blood was added, to be speedily absorbed ; while the invaders took the language of the conquered people, and established themselves as the ruling class. Thus the modern nations who sprang from this mixture derive portions of their governmental system and general policy from one race, most of their blood from another, and their language, law, and culture from a third. The English race, on the contrary, has a perfectly continuous history. \Yhcn Al- fred reigned, the English already had a distinct national being; when Charlemagne reigned, the French, as we use the term to-day, had no national being whatever. The Germans of the mainland merely over- ran the countries that lay in their path. ; but the sea-rovers who won England to a great extent actually displaced the native Britons. The former were absorbed by the subject- races; the latter, on the contrary, slew or drove off or assimilated the original inhab- itants. I'nlike all the other Germanic swarm-, the English took neither creed nor custom, neither law nor speech, f n >m their beaten foes. At the time when the dvna^tv of the Capets had become firmly established at Paris. France was merely part of a coun- try where Latinized GnuU and Basques were ruled hv Latinized Franks. Goth 1 ;, Bur- gun'K and Xormans ; but the people across the Channel then showed little trace of Cel- THE WEST 2 3 tic or Romance influence. It would be hard to say whether Vercingetorix or Caesar, Clovis or Syagrius, has the better right to stand as the prototype of a modern French general. There is no such doubt in the other case. The average Englishman, American, or Australian of to-day who wishes to recall the feats of power with which his race should be credited in the shadowy dawn of its history, may go back to the half-mythical glories of Hengist and Horsa, perhaps to the deeds of Civilis the Batavian, or to those of the hero of the Teutoburger fight, but certainly to the wars neither of the Silurian chief Caractacus nor of his conqueror, the after-time Emperor Vespasian. Nevertheless, when, in the sixteenth cen- tury, the European peoples began to extend their dominions beyond Europe, England had grown to differ profoundly from the Germanic countries of the mainland. A very large Celtic element had been intro- duced into the English blood, and, in ad- dition, there had been a considerable Scandi- navian admixture. More important still were the radical changes brought by the Norman conquest ; chief among them the transformation of the old English tongue into the magnificent language which is now the common inheritance of so many wide- spread peoples. England's insular position, moreover, permitted it to work out its own fate comparatively unhampered by the pres- 24 THE WINNING OF ence of outside powers ; so that it devel- oped a type of nationality totally distinct from the types of the European mainland. And this is not foreign to American his- tory. The vast movement by which this continent was conquered and peopled cannot be rightly understood if considered solely by itself. It was the crowning and greatest achievement of a series of mighty move- ments, and it must be taken in connection with them, its true significance will be lost unless we grasp, however roughly, the past race-history of the nations who took part therein. When, with the voyages of Columbus and his successors, the great period of extra- European colonization began, various na- tions strove to share in the work. Most of them had to plant their colonies in lands across the sea ; Russia alone was by her geo- graphical position enabled to extend her frontiers by land, and in consequence her comparatively recent colonization of Siberia bears some resemblance to our own work in the western I'nited States. The other countries of Europe were forced to find their outlets for conquest and emigration beyond the ocean, and, until the colonists had taken firm root in their new homes the mastery of the seas thus became a matter of vital conse- quence. Among the lands beyond the ocean Amer- ica was the first reached and the most im- THE WEST 25 portant. It was conquered by different European races, and shoals of European settlers were thrust forth upon its shores. These sometimes displaced and sometimes merely overcame and lived among the na- tives. They also, to their own lasting harm, committed a crime whose shortsighted folly was worse than its guilt, for they brought hordes of African slaves, whose descendants now form immense populations in certain portions of the land. Throughout the con- tinent we therefore find the white, red, and black races in every stage of purity and in- termixture. One result of this great tur- moil of conquest and immigration has been that, in certain parts of America, the lines of cleavage of race are so far from coincid- ing with the lines of cleavage of speech that they run at right angles to them as in the four communities of Ontario, Quebec, Hayti, and Jamaica. Each intruding European power, in win- ning for itself new realms beyond the seas, had to wage a twofold war, overcoming the original inhabitants with one hand, and with the other warding off the assaults of the kindred nations that were bent on the same schemes. Generally the contests of the lat- ter kind were much the most important. The victories by which the struggles be- tween the European conquerors themselves were ended deserve lasting commemoration. Yet, sometimes, even the most important of them, sweeping though they were, were in a6 THE WINNING OF parts less sweeping than they seemed. It would be impossible to overestimate the far- reaching effects of the overthrow of the French power in America ; but Lower Canada, where the fatal blow was given, itself suffered nothing but a political con- quest, which did not interfere in the least with the growth of a French state along both sides of the lower St. Lawrence. In a somewhat similar way Dutch communities have held their own, and indeed have sprung up in South Africa. All the European nations touching on the Atlantic seaboard took part in the new work, with very varying success; Germany alone, then rent by many feuds, having no share therein. Portugal founded a single state, Brazil. The Scandinavian nations did lit- tle; their chief colony fell under the control of the Dutch. The English and the Span- iards were the two nations to whom the bulk of the new lands fell ; the former getting much the greater portion. The conquests of the Spaniards took place in the sixteenth century. The West Indies and Mexico, Peru and the limitless grass plains of what is now the Argentine Confederation. all these and the land- lying between them had been conquered and colonized bv the Span- iards before there was a single settlement in the Xew \Yorld, and while the ileeis of the Catholic king still held for him the lordship of the ocean. Then the cumbrous Spanish vessels succumbed to the attacks of the swift THE WEST 27 war-ships of Holland and England, and the sun of the Spanish world-dominion set as quickly as it had risen. Spain at once came to a standstill ; it was only here and there that she even extended her rule over a few neighboring Indian tribes, while she was utterly unable to take the offensive against the French, Dutch, and English. But it is a singular thing that these vigorous and powerful new-comers, who had so quickly put a stop to her further growth, yet wrested from her very little of what was already hers. They plundered a great many Spanish cities and captured a great many Spanish galleons, but they made no great or lasting conquests of Spanish territory. Their mutual jealousies, and the fear each felt of the others, were among the main causes of this state of things ; and hence it came about that after the opening of the seven- teenth century the wars they waged against one another were of far more ultimate con- sequence than the wars they waged against the former mistress of the western world. England in the end drove both France and Holland from the field ; but it was under the banner of the American Republic, not under that of the British Monarchy, that the English-speaking people first won vast stretches of land from the descendants of the Spanish conquerors. The three most powerful of Spain's ri- vals waged many a long war with one an- other to decide which should grasp the 2 8 THE U'lXXlXG OF sceptre that had slipped from Spanish hands. The fleets of Holland fought with stubborn obstinacy to wrest from England her naval supremacy; but they failed, and in the end the greater portion of the Dutch domains fell to their foes. The French likewise began a course of conquest and colonization at the same time the English did, and after a couple of centuries of ri- valry, ending in prolonged warfare, they also succumbed. The close of the most im- portant colonial contest ever waged left the French without a foot of soil on the North American mainland ; while their victorious foes had not only obtained the lead in the race for supremacy on that continent, but had also won the command of the ocean. They thenceforth found themselves free to work their will in all seagirt lands, un- checked by hostile European influence. Most fortunately, when England began her career as a colonizing power in America, Spain had already taken possession of the populous tropical and subtropical regions, and the northern power was thus forced to form her settlements in the sparsely peo- pled temperate zone. It is of vital importance to remember that the English and Spanish conquests in America differed from each oilier very much as did the original conquests which gave rise to the English and the- Spanish nations. The English had exterminated or assimilated the Celts of Britain, and they THE WEST 29 substantially repeated the process with the Indians of America; although of course in America there was very little, instead of very much, assimilation. The Germanic strain is dominant in the blood of the aver- age Englishman, exactly as the English strain is dominant in the blood of the aver- age American. Twice a portion of the race has shifted its home, in each case under- going a marked change, due both to out- side influence and to internal development; but in the main retaining, especially in the last instance, the general race characteris- tics. It was quite otherwise in the countries conquered by Cortes, Pizarro, and their successors. Instead of killing or driving off the natives as the English did, the Spaniards simply sat down in the midst of a much more numerous aboriginal popu- lation. The process by which Central and South America became Spanish bore very close resemblance to the process by which the lands of southeastern Europe were turned into Romance-speaking countries. The bulk of the original inhabitants re- mained unchanged in each case. There was little displacement of population. Roman soldiers and magistrates, Roman merchants and handicraftsmen were thrust in among the Celtic and Iberian peoples, exactly as the Spanish military and civil rulers, priests, traders, land-owners, and mine-owners settled down among the In- 30 THE WIXX1XG OF dians of Peru and Mexico. By degrees, in each case, the many learnt the language and adopted the laws, religion, and govern- mental system of the few, although keep- ing certain of their own customs and habits of thought. Though the ordinary Spaniard of to-day speaks a Romance dialect, he is mainly of Celto-Iberian blood; and though most Mexicans and Peruvians speak Span- ish, yet th.e great majority of them trace their descent back to the subjects of Mon- tezuma and the Incas. Moreover, exactly as in Europe little ethnic islands of Breton and Basque stock have remained unaffected by the Romance Hood, so in America there are large communities where the inhabit- ants keep unchanged the speech and the customs of their Indian forefathers. The English-speaking peoples now hold more and better land than any other Ameri- can nationality or set of nationalities. They have in their veins less aboriginal American blood than any of their neighbors. Yet it is note worth v that the latter have tacitly allowed them to arrogate to themselves the title of " Americans," whereby to designate their distinctive and individual nationality. So much for the difference between the way in which the English and the way in which other Europe-ail nations have con- quered and colonized. But there have been likewise very great differences in the methods and courses of the English-speak- THE WEST 3I ing peoples themselves, at different times and in different places. The settlement of the United States and Canada, throughout most of their extent, bears much resemblance to the latter settle- ment of Australia and New Zealand. The English conquest of India and even the English conquest of South Africa come in an entirely different category. The first was a mere political conquest, like the Dutch conquest of Java or the extension of the Roman Empire over parts of Asia. South Africa in some respects stands by it- self, because there the English are con- fronted by another white race which it is as yet uncertain whether they can assimilate, and, what is infinitely more important, be- cause they are there confronted by a very large native population with which they cannot mingle, and which neither dies out nor recedes before their advance. It is not likely, but it is at least within the bounds of possibility, that in the course of cen- turies the whites of South Africa will suf- fer a fate akin to that which befell the Greek colonists in the Tauric Chersonese, and be swallowed up in the overwhelming mass of black barbarism. On the other hand, it may fairly be said that in America and Australia the English race has already entered into and begun the enjoyment of its great inheritance. When these continents were settled they contained 3 2 THE WINNING OF the largest tracts of fertile, temperate, thinly peopled country on the face of the globe. We cannot rale too highly the im- portance of their acquisition. Their suc- cessful settlement was a feat which hy com- parison utterly dwarfs all the European wars of the last two centuries ; just as the impor- tance of the issues at stake in the wars of Rome and Carthage completely over- shadowed the interests for which the var- ious contemporary Greek kingdoms were at the same time striving. Australia, which was much less impor- tant than America, was also won and set- tled with far less difficulty. The natives were so few in number and of >uch a low type, that they practically offered no re- sistance at all, being but little more hin- drance than an equal number of ferocious beasts. There was no rivalry whatever by any European power, because the actual settlement not the mere expatriation of convicts onlv began when England as a result of her struggle with Republican and Imperial France, had won the absolute con- trol of the seas. Unknown to themselves, Nelson and his fellow admirals settled the fate of Australia, upon which they probably never wasted a thought. Trafalgar decided much more than the mere question whether Great Britain should temporarily share the fate that so soon befell Prussia: for in all probability it decided the destiny of the island-continent that lay in the South Seas, THE WEST 33 The history of the English-speaking race in America has been widely different. In Australia there was no fighting whatever, whether with natives or with other for- eigners. In America for the past two cen- turies and a half there has been a constant succession of contests with powerful and warlike native tribes, with rival European nations, and with American nations of Eu- ropean origin. But even in America there have been wide differences in the \vay the work has had to be done in different parts of the country, since the close of the great colonial contests between England, France, and Spain. The extension of the English westward through Canada since the war of the Revo- lution has been in its essential features merely a less important repetition of what has gone on in the northern United States. The gold miner, the trans-continental rail- way, and the soldier have been the pioneers of civilization. The chief point of differ- ence, which \vas but small, arose from the fact that the whole of western Canada was for a long time under the control of the most powerful of all the fur companies, in whose employ were very many French voy- ageurs and coureurs des bois. From these there sprang up in the valleys of the Red River and the Saskatchewan a singular race of half-breeds, with a unique semi-civiliza- tion of their own. It- was with these half- breeds, and not, as in the United States, with 34 THE U'LVXIXG OF the Indians, that the settlers of northwestern Canada had their main difficulties. In what now forms the United States, taking the country as a whole, the foes who had to be met and overcome were very much more formidable. The ground had to be not only settled but conquered, some- times at the expense of the natives, often at the expense of rival European races. As already pointed out the Indians themselves formed one of the main factors in deciding the fate of the continent. They were never able in the end to avert the white conquest, but they could often delay its advance for a long spell of years. The Iroquois, for in- stance, held their own against all comers for two centuries. Many other tribes stayed for a time the oncoming white Hood, or even drove it back; in Maine the settlers were for a hundred years confined to a nar- row strip of sea-coast. Against the Span- iards, there were even lure and there Indian nations who definitely recovered the ground they had lost. When the whites first landed, the supe- riority and, above all, the novelty of their arms gave them a very great advantage. But the Indians soon became accustomed to the new-comers' weapons and style of war- fare. By the time the F.nglish had con- solidated the Atlantic colonies under their rule, the Indians had become what they have remained ever since, the most for- midable savage foes ever encountered by THE WEST 35 colonists of European stock. Relatively to their numbers, they have shown themselves far more to be dreaded than the Zulus or even the Maoris. Their presence has caused the process of settlement to go on at unequal rates of speed in different places ; the flood has been hemmed in at one point, or has been forced to flow round an island of native population at another. Had the Indians been as help- less as the native Australians were, the con- tinent of North America would have had an altogether different history. It would not only have been settled far more rapidly, but also on very different lines. Not only have the red men themselves kept back the settlements, but they have also had a very great effect upon the outcome of the strug- gles between the different intrusive Euro- pean peoples. Had the original inhabitants of the Mississippi valley been as numerous and unwarlike as the Aztecs, de Soto would have repeated the work of Cortes, and we would very possibly have been barred out of the greater portion of our present do- . main. Had it not been for their Indian ( allies, it would have been impossible for the I French to prolong, as they did, their strug- I gle with their much more numerous Eng-/ lish neighbors. The Indians have shrunk back before our advance only after fierce and dogged resist- ance. They were never numerous in the land, but exactly what their numbers were -6 THE fF/.VA7A"G OP tj when the whites first appeared is impossible to tell. Probably an estimate of half a mill- ion for those within the limits of the present United Stales is not far wrong; but in any such calculation there is of necessity a large clement of mere rough guess-work. For- merly writers greatly over-estimated their original numbers, counting them by mill- ions. Now it is the fashion to go to the other extreme, and even to maintain that they have not decreased at all. This last is a theory that can only be upheld on the supposition that the whole does not con- sist of the sum of the parts ; for whereas we can check off on our fingers the tribes that have slightlv increased, we can enu- merate scores that have died out almost be- fore our eyes. Speaking broadly, they have mixed but little with the English (as dis- tinguished from the French and Spanish) invaders. They are driven back, or die out, or retire to their own reservations; but they are not often assimilated. Still, on every frontier, there is alwavs a certain amount of assimilation going on, much more than is commonly admitted 1 ; and 1 To this I can testify of my own knowledge as regards Montana. Dakota, and -Minnesota. The mixture u.-ua!iy take> place in the ranks of the population where individuals lo.-e all trace of their ancestry after two or three g< neration^- ; so it is often honestly ignored, and -onu-tinie-. mention of it is suppressed, the man regarding it a- a taint. But I a!-' > know many very wealthy old frontiers- men who.-e half-breed children are now being edu- THE WEST 37 whenever a French or Spanish community has been absorbed by the energetic Ameri- cans, a certain amount of Indian blood has been absorbed also. There seems to be a chance that in one part of our country, the Indian territory, the Indians, who are con- tinually advancing in civilization, will re- main as the ground element of the popula- tion, like the Creoles in Louisiana, or the Mexicans in New Mexico. The Americans when they became a na- tion continued even more successfully the work which they had begun as citizens of the several English colonies. At the out- break of the Revolution they still all dwelt on the seaboard, either on the coast itself or along the banks of the streams flowing into the Atlantic. When the fight at Lex- ington took place they had no settlements beyond the mountain chain on our western border. It had taken them over a century and a half to spread from the Atlantic to the Alleghanies. In the next three quarters of a century they spread from the Alle- ghanies to the Pacific. In doing this they not only dispossessed the Indian tribes, but they also won the land from its European owners. Britain had to yield the territory between the Ohio and the Great Lakes. By a purchase, of which we frankly announced cated, generally at convent schools, while in the Northwestern cities I could point out some very charming men and women, in the best society, with a strain of Indian blood in their veins. 3 8 THE WINNING OP that the alternative would be war, we ac- quired from France the vast, ill-defined re- gion known as Louisiana. From the Span- iards, or from their descendants, we won the lands of Florida, Texas, New Mexico, and California. All these lands were conquered after we had become a power, independent of every other, and one within our own borders; when we were no longer a loose assem- blage of petty seaboard communities, each with only such relationship to its neighbor as was implied in their common subjection to a foreign king and a foreign people. Moreover, it is well always to remember that at the day when we began our career as a nation we alreadv differed from our kinsmen of Britain in blood as well as in name ; the word American already had more than a merely geographical significa- tion. Americans belong to the English race only in the sense in which Englishmen be- long to the (Jerman. The fact that no change of language has accompanied the second wandering of our people, from Brit- ain to America, as it accompanied their first, from (lermany to Britain, is due to th? further fact that when the second wander- ing took place the race possessed a fixed literary language, and, thanks to the ease of communication, was kept in touch with the parent stock. The change of blood was probably as great in one case as in the other. The modern Englishman is de- THE WEST 39 scended from a Low-Dutch stock, which, when it went to Britain, received into itself an enormous infusion of Celtic, a much smaller infusion of Norse and Danish, and also a certain infusion of Norman-French blood. When this new English stock came to America it mingled with and absorbed into itself immigrants from many Euro- pean lands, and the process has gone on ever since. It is to be noted that, of the new blood thus acquired, the greatest pro- portion has come from Dutch and German sources, and the next greatest from Irish, while the Scandinavian element comes third, and the only other of much conse- quence is French Huguenot. Thus it ap- pears that no new element of importance has been added to the blood. Additions have been made to the elemental race- strains in much the same proportion as these were originally combined. Some latter-day writers deplore the enor- mous immigration to our shores as making us a heterogeneous instead of a homogen- eous people ; but as a matter of fact we arc less heterogeneous at the present day than we were at the outbreak of the Revolution. Our blood was as much mixed a century ago as it is now. No State now has a smaller proportion of English blood than New York or Pennsylvania had in 1775. Even in New England, where the English stock was purest, there was a certain French and Irish mixture ; in Virginia 40 TIII-: JF/.Y.Y/.YC or there were Germans in addition. In the other colonies, taken as a whole, it is not probable that much over half of the blood was English ; Dutch, French, German, and Gaelic communities abounded. But all were being rapidly fused into one people. As the Celt of Cornwall and the Saxon of \Ycssex are now alike English- men, so in 1775 Hollander and Huguenot, whether in New York or South Carolina, had become Americans, undistinguishable from the Xew Englanders and Yirginians, the descendants of the men who followed Cromwell or charged behind Rupert. When the great western movement began we were already a people by ourselves. Moreover, the immense immigration from Europe that has taken place since, had little or no effect on the way in which we extended our boundaries ; it only began to be imjx)rtant about the time that we acquired our present limits. These limits would in all probability- be what the\' now are even if we had not received a single European colonist since the Revolution. Thus the Americans began their work of western conquest as a separate and individ- ual people, at the moment when they sprang into national life. It has been their great work ever since. All other questions save those of the preservation of the Union itself and of the (.-mancipation of the blacks have been of subordinate importance when compared with the great question of how THE WEST 41 rapidly and how completely they were to subjugate that part of their continent lying between the eastern mountains and the Pacific. Yet the statesmen of the Atlantic seaboard were often unable to perceive this, and indeed frequently showed the same nar- row jealousy of the communities beyond the Alleghanies that England felt for all America. Even if they were too broad- minded and far-seeing to feel thus, they yet were unable to fully appreciate the magni- tude of the interests at stake in the west. They thought more of our right to the North Atlantic fisheries than of our owner- ship of the Mississippi valley ; they were more interested in the fate of a bank or a tariff than in the settlement of the Oregon boundary. Most contemporary writers showed similar shortcomings in their sense of historic perspective. The names of Ethan Allen and Marion are probably better known than is that of George Rogers Clark ; yet their deeds, as regards their effects, could no more be compared to his, than his could be compared to Washington's. So it was with Houston. During his lifetime there were probably fifty men who, east of the Mississippi, were deemed far greater than he was. Yet in most cases their names have already almost faded from re- membrance, while his fame will grow steadily brighter as the importance of his deeds is more thoroughly realized. For- tunately, in the long run, the mass of east- 4 2 THE WINNING OP crners always backed up their western brethren. The kind of colonizing conquest, whereby the people of the United States have ex- tended their borders, has much in common with the similar movements in Canada and Australia, all of them standing in sharp contrast to what has gone on in Spanish- American lands. But of course each is marked out in addition by certain peculiar- ities of its own. Moreover, even in the United States, the movement falls naturally into two divisions, which on several points differ widely from each other. The way in which the southern part of our western country that is, all the land south of the Ohio, and from thence on to the Rio Grande and the Pacific was won and settled, stands quite alone. The region north of it was filled up in a very different manner. The Southwest, including therein what was once called simply the West, and afterwards the Middle West, was \\-on by the people themselves, acting as individuals, or as groups of individuals, who hewed out their own fortunes in advance of any gov- ernmental action. On the other hand, the Northwest, speaking broadly, was acquired by the government, the settlers merely tak- ing possession of what the whole country guaranteed them. The Northwest is es- sentially a national domain ; it is fitting that it should be, as it is, not only by THE WEST 43 position but by feeling, the heart of the na- tion. North of the Ohio the regular army went first. The settlements grew up behind the shelter of the federal troops of Harmar, St. Claire, and Wayne, and of their successors even to our own day. The wars in which the borderers themselves bore any part were few and trifling compared to the contests waged by the adventurers who won Ken- tucky, Tennessee, and Texas. Tn the Southwest the early settlers acted as their own army, and supplied both leaders and men. Sevier, Robertson, Clark, and Boone led their fellow pioneers to battle, as Jackson did afterwards, and as Houston did later still. Indeed the Southwesterners not only won their own soil for themselves, but they were the chief instruments in the orig- inal acquisition of the Northwest also. Had it not been for the conquest of the Illinois towns in 1779 we would probably never have had any Northwest to settle ; and the huge tract between the upper Mississippi and the Columbia, then called Upper Louis- iana, fell into our hands, only because the Kentuckians and Tennesseeans were reso- lutely bent on taking possession of New Orleans, either by bargain or battle. All of our territory lying beyond the Alle- ghanies, north and south, was first won for us by the Southwesterners, fighting for their own hand. The northern part was after- 44 THE II' IX XING OF wards filled up by the thrifty, vigorous men of the Northeast, whose sons became the real rulers as well as the preservers of the Union ; but these settlements of Northerners were rendered possible only by the deeds of the nation as a whole. They entered on land that the Southerners had won, and they were kept there by the strong arm of the Federal Government ; whereas the Southerners owed most of their victories only to themselves. The first-comers around Marietta did, it is true, share to a certain extent in the dan- gers of the existing Indian wars ; but their trials are not to be mentioned beside those endured by the early settlers of Tennessee and Kentucky, and whereas these latter themselves subdued and drove out their foes, the former took but an insignificant part in the contest by which the possession of their land was secured. Besides, the strongest and most numerous Indian tribes were in the Southwest. The Southwest developed its civilization on its own lines, for good and for ill; the Northwest was settled under the national ordinance of 17^7. which absolutely de- termined its destiny, and thereby in the end also determined the destiny of the whole nation. Moreover, the gulf coast, as well as the interior, from the Mississippi to the Pacific, was held bv fmvign powers; while in the north this was only true of the coun- try between the Ohio and the Great Lakes THE WEST 45 during the first years of the Revolution, until the Kentucky backwoodsmen con- quered it. Our rivals of European race had dwelt for generations along the lower Mis- sissippi and the Rio Grande, in Florida, and in California, when we made them ours. Detroit, Vincennes, St. Louis, and New Or- leans, St. Augustine, San Antonio, Santa Fe, and San Francisco are cities that were built by Frenchmen or Spaniards ; we did not found them, but conquered them. All but the first two are in the Southwest, and of these two one was first taken and gov- erned by South westerners. On the other hand, the Northwestern cities, from Cincin- nati and Chicago to Helena and Portland, were founded by our own people, by the people who now have possession of them. The Southwest was conquered only after years of hard fighting with the original owners. The way in which this was done bears much less resemblance to the sudden filling up of Australia and California by the practically unopposed overflow from a teem- ing and civilized mother country, than it does to the original English conquest of Britain itself. The warlike borderers who thronged across the Alleghanies, the rest- less and reckless hunters, the hard, dogged, frontier farmers, by dint of grim tenacity overcame and displaced Indians, French, and Spaniards alike, exactly as, fourteen hundred years before, Saxon and Angle had overcome and displaced the Cymric and 46 THE WINNING OF Gaelic Celts. They were led by no one commander ; they acted under orders from neither king nor congress ; they were not carrying out the plans of any far-sighted leader. Tn obedience to the instincts work- ing half blindly within their breasts, spurred ever onwards by the fierce desires of their eager hearts, they made in the wilderness homes for their children, and by so doing wrought out the destinies of a continental nation. They warred and settled from the high hill-valleys of the French Broad and the Upper Cumberland to the half-tropical basin of the Rio Grande, and to where the Golden Gate lets through the long-heaving waters of the Pacific. The story of how this was done forms a compact and continuous whole. The fathers followed Boone or fought at King's Mountain ; the sons marched south with Jackson to overcome the Creeks and beat back the British ; the grandsons died at the Alamo or charged to victory at San Jacinto. They were doing their share of a work that began with the conquest of Britain, that en- tered on its second and wider period after the defeat of the Spanish Armada, that cul- minated in the marvellous growth of the United States. The winning of the West and Southwest is a stage in the conquest of a continent. CHAPTER II THE FRENCH OF THE OHIO VALLEY, 1763-1775 THE result of England's last great colo- nial struggle with France was to sever from the latter all her American dependencies, her colonists becoming the subjects of alien and rival powers. England won Canada and the Ohio valley ; while France ceded to her Spanish allies Louis- iana, including therein all the territory vaguely bounded by the Mississippi and the Pacific. As an offset to this gain Spain had herself lost to England both Floridas, as the coast regions between Georgia and Louisiana were then called. Thus the thirteen colonies, at the outset of their struggle for independence, saw them- selves surrounded north, south, and west, by lands where the rulers and the ruled were of different races, but where rulers and ruled alike were hostile to the new people that was destined in the end to master them all. The present province of Quebec, then called Canada, was already, what she has to this day remained, a French state acknowl- edging the English king as her over-lord. 47 48 Tin: u'lxxixc OF Her interests did not conflict with those of our people, nor touch them in any way, and she has had little to do with our national his- tory, and nothing whatever to do with the history of the west. In the peninsula of East Florida, in the land of the cypress, palmetto, and live oak, of open savannas, of sandy pine forests, and impenetrable, interminable morasses, a Euro- pean civilization more ancient than any in the English colonies was mouldering in slow decay. Its capital city \vas quaint St. Au- gustine, the old walled town that was founded by the Spaniards long years before the keel of the Half-Moon furrowed the broad Hudson, or the ships of the Puritans sighted the Xew England coast. In times past St. Augustine had once and again seen her harbor rilled with the huge, cumbrous hulls, and whitened bv the bellying sails, of the Spanish war vessels, when the fleets of the Catholic king gathered there, before set- ting out against the seaboard towns of Georgia and the Carolinas : and she had to suffer from and repulse the retaliatory in- roads of the English colonists. Once her priests and soldiers had brought the Indian tribes, far and near, under subjection, and had dotted the wilderness with fort and church and plantation, the outposts of her do- minion : but that was long ago, and the tide of Spanish success had turned and begun to ebb many vear- before the English took pos- session of E'orida. The Seminoles, fierce and THE WEST 49 warlike, whose warriors fought on foot and on horseback, had avenged in countless bloody forays their fellow-Indian tribes, whose very names had perished under Span- ish rule. The churches and forts had crum- bled into nothing : only the cannon and the brazen bells, half buried in the rotting mould, remained to mark the place where once stood spire and citadel. The deserted plantations, the untravelled causeways, no longer marred the face of the tree-clad land, for even their sites had ceased to be distinguishable ; the great high-road that led to Pensacola had faded away, overgrown by the rank luxuri- ance of the semi-tropical forest. Throughout the interior the painted savages roved at will, uncontrolled by Spaniard or Englishman, ow- ing allegiance only to the White Chief of Tallasotchce. 1 St. Augustine, with its Brit- ish garrison and its Spanish and Minorcan townsfolk. 2 was still a gathering place for a few Indian traders, and for the scattered fish- ermen of the coast : elsewhere there were in all not more than a hundred families. 3 Beyond the Chattahooche and the Appa- 1 " Travels by William Bartram," Philadelphia, 1791, pp. 184. 231, 232, etc. The various Indian names are spelt in a dozen different ways. 1 Reise, etc. (in 1783 and 84), by Johann David Schopf. 1788, II. 362. The Minorcans were the most numerous and prosperous; then came the Spaniards, with a few Creoles, English, and Ger- 3 J. D. F. Smyth. " Tour in the United States " (1775), London, 1784, II. 35. 5 o THE WINNING OF lachicola, stretching thence to the Mississippi and its delta, lay the more prosperous region of West Florida. 4 Although taken by the English from Spain, there were few Span- iards among the people, who were controlled by the scanty llritish garrisons at Pensa- cola, Mobile, and Natchez. On the Gulf coast the inhabitants were mainly French Creoles. They were an indolent, pleasure- loving race, fond of dancing and merriment, living at ease in their low, square, roomy houses on the straggling, rudely farmed plantations that lay along the river banks. Their black slaves worked for them ; they themselves spent much of their time in fish- ing and fowling. Their favorite arm was the light fowling-piece, for they were expert wing shots ' ; unlike the American back- woodsmen, who knew nothing of shooting on the wing, and looked down on smooth- bores, caring only for the rifle, the true weapon of the freeman. In winter the Cre- oles took their negroes to the hills, where they made tar from the pitch pine, and this thev exported, as well as indigo, rice, to- bacco, bear's oil, peltry, oranges, and squared 4 Do. ""Momoire oti Cnup-d'CKil Rapide sur mes differentes voyage^ et mon scjnur dans la nation ("reck, par T.e Gal. Milfnrt, Tastnncgy ou grand clief de guerre de la nation Cn-ck et General de Brigade an service do la Rcpublique Francaise." Paris, 1^02. Writing in 17.^1, lie said Mobile contained about forty proprietary families, and was " tin petit paradis terrestre." THE WEST 51 timber. Cotton was grown, but only for home use. The British soldiers dwelt in stockaded forts, mounting light cannon ; the governor lived in the high stone castle built of old by the Spaniards at Pensacola. 6 In the part of west Florida lying along the east bank of the Mississippi, there were also some French Creoles and a few Spaniards, with of course negroes and Indians to boot. But the population consisted mainly of Americans from the old colonies, who had come thither by sea in small sailing-vessels, or had descended the Ohio and the Tennes- see in flat-boats, or, perchance, had crossed the Creek country with pack ponies, follow- ing the narrow trails of the Indian traders. With them were some English and Scotch, and the Americans themselves had little sym- pathy with the colonies, feeling instead a cer- tain dread and dislike of the rough Carolin- ian mountaineers, who were their nearest white neighbors on the east. 7 They there- fore, for the most part, remained loyal to the crown in the Revolutionary struggle, and suffered accordingly. When Louisiana was ceded to Spain, most of the French Creoles who formed her popu- lation were clustered together in the delta of the Mississippi ; the rest were scattered out here and there, in a thin, dotted line, up the left bank of the river to the Missouri, near * Bartram, 407. 1 Magazine of American Plistory, IV., 388. Let- ter of a New England settler in 1773. 52 Tin- inxxixG 01-' the mouth of which there \vcre several small villages, St. Louis, St. Genevieve, St. Charles/ A strong Spanish garrison held New Orleans, where the Creoles, discontented with their new masters, had once risen in a revolt that was speedily quelled and severely punished. Small garrisons were also placed in the different villages. Our people had little to do with either Florida or Louisiana until after the close of the. Revolutionary war; hut very early in that struggle, and soon after the movement west of the mountain.-, begun, we we re- thrown into contact with the French of the Northwestern Territory, and the result was of the utmost importance to the future wel- fare of the whole nation. This northwestern land lay between the Mississippi, the Ohio. ;>ud the Great Lakes. It now constitutes five of our large States and part of a sixth. lUit when independence was declared it was quite as much a foreign territory, considered from the standpoint of the oM thirteen colonies, as Florida or Can- aria; the difference was that, whereas during the war we failed in our attempts to conquer Florida and Canada, we succeeded in con- quering the Northwest. The Northwest formed no pnrt >i~ >ur country a^ it originally stood: it had no portion in the declaration of independence. It did not revolt ; it was con- quered. Its inhab-'tants. at the outset of the ""Annals of St. Louis." Frederic L. Billon. St. Louis, 1886. A valuable book. THE ]]'EST 53 Revolution, no more sympathized with us, and felt no greater inclination to share our fate, than did their kinsmen in Quebec or the Spaniards in St. Augustine. We made our first important conquest during the Revo- lution itself. beginning thus early what was to be our distinguishing work for the next seventy years. These French settlements, which had been founded about the beginning of the century, when the English still clung to the estuaries of the seaboard, were grouped in three clus- ters, separated by hundreds of miles of wil- derness. One of these clusters, containing something like a third of the total population, was at the straits, around Detroit. 9 It was 9 In the Haldimand MSS., Series B, vol. 122, p. 2. is a census of Detroit itself, taken in 1773 by Philip Dejean, justice of the peace. According to this there were 1.367 souls, of whom 85 were slaves; they dwelt in 280 house?, with 157 hams, and owned 1.494 horned cattle, 628 sheep, and 1.067 hogs. Acre is u.>cd as a measure of length; their united farms had a frontage of 512. and went hack from 40 to So. Some of the people, it is specified, were not enumerated because they were out hunting or trading at the Indian villages. Besides the slaves, there were 93 servants. This only refers to the settlers of Detroit proper, and the farms adioining. Of the numerous other farms, and the small villages on both sides of the straits, and of the many families and individuals living as traders or trappers with the Indians, I can get no good record. Perhaps the total popu- lation, tributary to Detroit was 2,000. It may have been over this. Any attempt to estimate this creole population perforce contains much guess-work. 54 THE U' IX \I.\G OF the seat of the British power in that section, and remained in British hands for twenty years after we had become a nation. The other two were linked together by their subsequent history, and it is only with them that we have to deal. The village of Yincennes lay on the eastern bank of the Wabash, with two or three smaller villages tributary to it in the country round about; and to the west, beside the Mississippi, far above where it is joined by the Ohio, lay the so-called Illinois towns, the villages of Kas- kaskia and Cahokia, with between them the little settlements of Prairie du Rocher and St. Philip. 10 Both these groups of old French hamlets were in the fertile prairie region of what is now southern Indiana and Illinois. We have taken into otir language the word prairie be- cause when our backwoodsmen first reached the land and saw the great natural meadows of long grass sights unknown to the gloomv forests wherein they had always dwelt they knew not what to call them, and borrowed the term already in use among the French inhabitants. The great prairies, level or rolling, stretched from north to south, separated by broad belts of high timber. Here and there copses of woodland lay like islands in the sunny seas of tall. wav ; ng grass. Where the rivers ran. their al'uv.al bottoms were "State Department MSS., No. 150, Vol. III., p. 89. THE WEST 55 densely covered with trees and underbrush, and were often overflowed in the spring freshets. Sometimes the prairies were long, narrow strips of meadow land ; again they were so broad as to be a day's journey across, and to the American, bred in a wooded country where the largest openings were the beaver meadows and the clearings of the frontier settlers, the stretches of grass land seemed limitless. They abounded in game. The buffalo crossed and recrossed them, wandering to and fro in long files, beating narrow trails that they followed year in and year out ; while bear, elk, and deer dwelt in the groves around the borders. 11 There were perhaps some four thousand inhabitants in these French villages, divided almost equally between those in the Illinois and those along the Wabash. 12 11 Do. Harmar's letter. 12 State Department MSS., No. 30, p. 453. Me- morial of Frangois Carbonneaux, agent for the inhabitants of the Illinois country. Dec. 8, 1784. " Four hundred families [in the Illinois] ex- clusive of a like number at Post Vincent " [Vin- cennes]. Americans had then just begun to come in, but this enumeration did not refer to them. The population had decreased during the Revolu- tionary war ; so that at its outbreak there were probably altogether a thousand families. They were very prolific, and four to a family is probably not too great an allowance, even when we con- sider that in such a community on the frontier there are always plenty of solitary adventurers. Moreover, there were a number of negro slaves. Harmar's letter of Nov. 24, 1787, states the adult males of Kaskaskia and Cahokia at four hundred 5 6 THE irV.VA7.VC OF The country came into the possession of the British not of the colonial English or Americans at the close of Pontiac's war, the aftermath of the struggle which decided against the French the ownership of Amer- ica. It was held as a new British province, not as an extension of any of the old col- onies; and finally in 17/4. by the famous Quebec Act, it was rendered an appanage of Canada, governed from the latter. It is a curious fact that England immediately adopted towards her own colonists the policy and forty, not counting lho-e at St. Philip nr Prairie du Rocher. This tallies very well with the preceding. But of cour-e the number given can only be con-idered approximately accurate, and a pas-age in a letter of I.t.-Gov. Hamilton would indicate that it \va- considerably smaller. Tiiis letter is to he found in the Haldimand MSS., Series B. Vol. i2.v p. 53: it is the "brief account" of hi- ii!--tatTed expedition atrain.st Vin- eenncs. He says: "On taking an account of the Inhabitants ;;t th;- place [Vincennes], of all ages and -exe-. we found iheir number to amount to 621 : of this 217 fit to hear arms mi the -pot. sev- eral being ab-ent hunting Ruffaloe for their win- ter provision." P. 1 .;! elsewhere in. the same letter he allude- to the adult arm--bearing men as being three hundred in number, an'' of course the outly- ing farms and small tnhutary vil'age- arc iv>t counted in. Thi.- \va- in December, I7/K. Possi- bly -omr familie- !;ad left for the Spani-b pn,ses- sion- after 'he war broke out. aiv! returned after it was ended But a- al! ob-ervers seem to unite in stating that the settlement- either -too,] -.till or went backward- during the Revolutionary strug- gle, it U -omewhat difficult to reconcile the figures of Hamilton and Carbonneaux. THE WEST 57 of the very nationality she had ousted. From the date of the triumphant peace won by Wolfe's victory, the British government be- came the most active foe of the spread of the English race in America. This position Britain maintained for many years after the failure of her attempt to bar her colonists out of the Ohio valley. It was the position she occupied when at Ghent in 1814 her com- missioners tried to hem in the natural prog- ress of her colonists' children by the erection of a great " neutral belt " of Indian territory, guaranteed by the British king. It was the role which her statesmen endeavored to make her play when at a later date they strove to keep Oregon a waste rather than see it peo- pled by Americans. In the northwest she succeeded to the French policy as well as the French position. She wished the land to remain a wilderness, the home of the trapper and the fur trader, of the Indian hunter and the French voy- ageur. She desired it to be kept as a barrier against the growth of the seaboard colonies towards the interior. She regarded the new lands across the Atlantic as being won and settled, not for the benefit of the men who won and settled them, but for the benefit of the merchants and traders who stayed at home. It was this that rendered the Revo- lution inevitable ; the struggle was a revolt against the whole mental attitude of Britain in regard to America, rather than against any one special act or set of acts. The sins 5 8 THE ll'INXIXG OF and shortcomings of the colonists had been many, and it would be easy to make out a formidable catalogue of grievances against them, on behalf of the mother country; but on the great underlying question they were wholly in the right, and their success was of vital consequence to the well-being of the race on this continent. Several of the old colonies urged vague claims to parts of the Northwestern Terri- tory, basing them on ancient charters and Indian treaties; but the British heeded them no more than the French had, and thev were very little nearer fulfilment after the defeat of Montcalm and I'ontiac than before. The French had held adverse possession in spite of them for sixty years ; the Kritish held sim- ilar possession for fifteen more. The mere statement of the facts is enough to show the intrinsic worthlessness of the titles. The Xorthwest was acquired from France by Great Britain through conquest and treaty; in a precisely similar way Clark taking the place of Wolfe it was afterwards won from Britain by the United States. \Ve gained it exactly as we afterwards gained Louisiana, Florida, Oregon. ( 'a'ifornia, Xew Mexico, and Texas: partly hv arms, partly by diplo- macy, partly by the -heer growth and pres- sure of our spreading population. The fact that the conquest took place just after we had declared ourselves a free nation, and while we were still battling to maintain our independence, does not alter its character in THE WEST 59 the least; but it has sufficed to render the whole transaction very hazy in the minds of most subsequent historians, who generally speak as if the Northwest Territory had been part of our original possessions. The French who dwelt in the land were at the time little affected by the change which transferred their allegiance from one Euro- pean king to another. They were accus- tomed to obey, without question, the orders of their superiors. They accepted the re- sults of the war submissively, and yielded a passive obedience to their new rulers. 13 Some became rather attached to the officers who came among them ; others grew rather to dislike them ; most felt merely a vague sentiment of distrust and repulsion, alike for the haughty British officer in his scarlet uni- form, and for the reckless backwoodsman clad in tattered homespun or buckskin. They remained the owners of the villages, the till- ers of the soil. At first few English or American immigrants, save an occasional fur trader, came to live among them. But their doom was assured ; their rule was at an end forever. For a while they were still to compose the bulk of the scanty population ; but nowhere were they again to sway their "In the Haldimaml MSS., Series B, Vol. 122, p. 3, the letter of M. Ste. Marie from Vinccnnes, May 3, 1774, gives utterance to the general feeling of the Creoles, when he announces, in promising in their behalf to carry out the orders of the Brit- ish commandant, that he is " remplie de respect pour tout ce qui porte 1'emprinte de 1'otorite." [sic.] 60 THE WINNING OF own destinies. In after years they fought for and against both whites and Indians ; they faced each other, ranged beneath the rival banners of Spain, England, and the insurg- ent colonists ; but they never again fought for their old flag or for their own sover- eignty. From trie overthrow of Pontiac to the out- break of the Revolution the settlers in the Illinois and round Vincennes lived in peace under their old laws and customs, which were continued by the British command- ants. 14 They had been originally governed, in the same way that Canada was, by the laws of France, adapted, however, to the cir- cumstances of the new country. Moreover, they had local customs which were as bind- ing as the laws. After the conquest the British commandants who came in acted as civil judges also. All public transactions were recorded in French by notaries public. Orders issued in English were translated into French so that they might be under- stood. Criminal cases were referred to Eng- land. Before the conquest the procureur du roi gave sentence by his own personal de- cision in civil cases; if the matters were im- portant it was the custom for each party to name two arbitrators, and the procureur du roi a fifth ; while an appeal might be made to the council superieur at Xew Orleans. The " State Department MSS., No. 48, p. 51. State- ment of M. Ccrre for Carre), July, 1786, trans- lated by John Pintard. THE WEST 6 1 British commandant assumed the place of the procureur du roi, although there were one or two half-hearted efforts made to introduce the Common Law. The original French commandants had ex- ercised the power of granting to every per- son who petitioned as much land as the peti- tioner chose to ask for, subject to the condition that part of it should be cultivated within a year, under penalty of its reversion to " the king's demesnes." 15 The English followed the same custom. A large quan- tity of land was reserved in the neighborhood of each village for the common use, and a very small quantity for religious purposes. The common was generally a large patch of enclosed prairie, part of it being cultivated, and the remainder serving as a pasture for the cattle of the inhabitants. 10 The portion of the common set aside for agriculture was divided into strips of one arpent in front by forty in depth, and one or more allotted to each inhabitant according to his skill and in- dustry as a cultivator. 17 The arpent, as used by the western French, was a rather rough measure of surface, less in size than an acre. 18 The farms held by private owner- 15 Do. 18 State Department MSS., No. 48, p. 41. Peti- tion of J. B. La Croix, A. Girardin, etc,, dated "at Cohoe in the Illinois nth July, 1786." 17 Billon. 91. 18 An arpent of land was 180 French feet square. MS. copy of Journal of Matthew Clarkson in 1766. In Durrctt collection. 62 THE 11' IX XING OP ship likewise ran back in long strips from a narrow front that usually lay along some stream. 19 Several of them generally lay par- allel to one another, each including some- thing like a hundred acres, but occasionally much exceeding this amount. The French inhabitants were in very many cases not of pure blood. The early settle- ments had been made by men only, by sol- diers, traders, and trappers, who took Indian wives. They were not trammelled by the queer pride which makes a man of English stock unwilling- to make a red-skinned wo- man his wife, though anxious enough to make her his concubine. Their children were baptized in the little parish churches by the black-robed priests, and grew up holding the same position in the community as was held bv their fellows both of whose parents were white. Tint, in addition to those free citizens, the richer inhabitants owned both red and black slaves; negroes imported from Africa, or Indians overcome and taken in battle. 20 There were main- freedmen and freedwomen "American State Papers, Public Lands, I., n. 30 Fergus Historical Series, No. 12, "Illinois in the l8th Century/' Edward G. Mason, Chicago, 1881. A most excellent number of an excellent series. The old parish registers of Kaskaskia, going back to 1005. contain some remarkable names of the Indian mothers such as Maria Aramipinchicoue and Domitilla Tehuigouanakiga- boucoue. Sometimes the man is only distin- guished by some >uch title as "The Parisian," or " The Bohemian." THE WEST 63 of both colors, and in consequence much mixture of blood. They were tillers of the soil, and some fol- lowed, in addition, the trades of blacksmith and carpenter. Very many of them were trappers or fur traders. Their money was composed of furs and peltries, rated at a fixed price per pound- 1 ; none other was used unless expressly so stated in the con- tract. Like the French of Europe, their unit of value was the livre, nearly equivalent to the modern franc. They were not very in- dustrious, nor very thrifty husbandmen. Their farming implements were rude, their methods of cultivation simple and primitive, and they themselves were often lazy and im- provident. Near their town they had great orchards of gnarled apple-trees, planted by their forefathers when they came from France, and old pear-trees, of a kind un- known to the Americans ; but their fields often lay untilled, while the owners lolled in the sunshine smoking their pipes. In con- sequence they were sometimes brought to sore distress for food, being obliged to pluck their corn while it was still green. 22 The pursuits of the fur trader and fur trapper were far more congenial to them, and it was upon these that they chiefly depended. The half-savage life of toil, hardship, excite- ment, and long intervals of idleness attracted "Billon, go. 21 Letter of P. A. Laforge, Dec. 31, 1786. Bil- lon, 268. 64 THE ll'INNIXG OP them strongly. This was perhaps one among the reasons why they got on so much better with the Indians than did the Americans, who, wherever they went, made clearings and settlements, cut down the trees, and drove off the game. But even these pursuits were followed un- der the ancient customs and usages of the country, leave to travel and trade being first obtained from the commandant 23 ; for the rule of the commandant was almost patri- archal. The inhabitants were utterly unac- quainted with what the Americans called lib- erty. When they passed under our rule, it was soon found that it was impossible to make them understand such an institution as trial by jury; they throve best under the form of government to which they had been immemorially accustomed a commandant to give them orders, with a few troops to back him up." 4 They often sought to escape from these orders, but rarely to defy them; their lawlessness was like the lawlessness of children and savages ; any disobedience was always to a particular ordinance, not to the system. The trader having obtained his permit, built his boats, whether light, roomy, bateaux made of boards, or birch-bark ca- * State Department MSS.. No. 150. Vol. III., p. 519. Letter of Joseph St. Marin, Aug. 23, 1788. 14 Do., p. 89, Harmar's letter. THE WEST 65 noes, or pirogues, which were simply hol- lowed out logs. He loaded them with paint, powder, bullets, blankets, beads, and rum, manned them with hardy voyageurs, trained all their lives in the use of pole and paddle, and started off up or down the Mississippi, 25 the Ohio, or the Wabash, perhaps making a long carry or portage over into the Great Lakes. It took him weeks, often months, to get to the first trading-point, usually some large winter encampment of Indians. He might visit several of these, or stay the whole winter through at one, buying the furs. 20 Many of the French coureurs des bois, whose duty it was to traverse the wilderness, and who were expert trappers, took up their abode with the Indians, taught them how to catch the sable, fisher, otter, and beaver, and lived among them as members of the tribe, marrying copper-colored squaws, and rear- ing dusky children. When the trader had exchanged his goods for the peltries of these red and white skin-hunters, he returned to his home, having been absent perhaps a year or eighteen months. It was a hard life; many a trader perished in the wilderness by cold or starvation, by an upset where the icy current ran down the rapids like a mill-race, by the attack of a hostile tribe, or even in a drunken brawl with the friendly Indians, 18 Do., p. 519. Letter of Joseph St. Marin. " Do., p. 89. 66 THE ll'IXXIXG OP when voyageur, half-breed, and Indian alike had been frenzied by draughts of fiery liquor.- 7 Next to the commandant in power came the priest. He bore unquestioned rule over his congregation, but only within certain lim- its ; for the French of the backwoods, leav- ened by the presence among them of so many wild and bold spirits, could not be treated quite in the same way as the more peaceful lubitants of Lower Canada. The duty of the priest was to look after the souls of his sovereign's subjects, to baptize, marry, and bury them, to confess and absolve them, and keep them from backsliding, to say mass, and to receive the salary due him for celebrating divine service; but, though his personal in- fluence was of course very great, he had no temporal authority, and could not order his people either to fight or to work. Still less could he dispose of their land, a privi- lege inhering onlv in the commandant and in the commissaries of the villages, where they were expressly authorized so to do by the sovereign. 28 "Journal of Joan Bapti-te Perrault, in 1783; in "Indian Tribes," by Hcnrv R. Sclioolcraft, Part III, Philadelphia. 1855. Sec also Billon. 48.4. for an interesting account of the adventures of Gra- tiot, who afterwards, under American rule, built up a great fur hu-iness. and drove a flourishintr trade with Europe, a.- well a- the towns of the American seaboard. " State Department MSS., No. 48. p. 25. A petition concerning a case in point, affecting the Priest Gibault. THE WEST 67 The average inhabitant, though often loose in his morals, was very religious. He was superstitious also, for he firmly helieved in omens, charms, and witchcraft, and when worked upon by his dread of the unseen and the unknown he sometimes did terrible deeds, as will be related farther on. Under ordinary circumstances he was a good-humored, kindly man, always polite his manners offering an agreeable contrast to those of some of our own frontiersmen, with a ready smile and laugh, and ever eager to join in any merrymaking. On Sundays and fast-days he was summoned to the little parish church by the tolling of the old bell in the small wooden belfry. The church was a rude oblong building, the walls made out of peeled logs, thrust upright in the ground, chinked with moss and coated with clay or cement. Thither every man went, clad in a capote or blanket coat, a bright silk hand- kerchief knotted round his head, and his feet shod with moccasins or strong rawhide san- dals. If young, he walked or rode a shaggy pony ; if older, he drove his creaking, spring- less wooden cart, untired and unironed, in which family sat on stools. 20 " " History of Vincennes," by Judge John Law. Vinccnnes, 1858, pp. 18 and 140. They are just such carts as I have seen myself in the valley of the Red River, and in the big bend of the Mis- souri, carrying all the worldly goods of their owners, the French Metis. These Metis, ex- trappers, ex-buffalo runners, and small farmers, are the best representatives of the old French of 68 THE WINXIXG OP The grades of society were much more clearly marked than in similar communities of our own people. The gentry, although not numerous, possessed unquestioned social and political headship and were the military leaders; although of course they did not' have any thing like such marked preem- inence of position as in Ouehec or Xew Or- leans, where the conditions were more like those ohtaining in the old world. There was verv little education. The common people were rarely versed in the mysteries of read- ing and writing, and even the wives of the gentry were often only ahle to make their marks instead of signing their names. 30 The little villages in which they dwelt the west; they arc a little less civilized, they have somewhat more Indian hlood in their veins, hut they are substantially the same people. It may be noted that the herd- of InifTalocs that during the la-t century thronged the plains of what are now the States of Illinois and Indiana furnished to the French of Kaskaskia and Vincennes their winter meat: exactly a- during the present century the Saskatchewan M<'ti- lived on the wild herds until they were exterminated. 31 See the li-t- of -ignature- in the State De- partment MSS,. al-o Mason's Ka-ka-kia Parish Records and Law'- Yinrenm-. A- an example; the wife of the Chevalier Yin-ennc (who gave his name to Yincenne-. and afterward- fell in the battle where the Crrcka<-aw- ronb-d the Northern French and their Indian allies), was only ahle to make her mark. Clark in his letters -everal time^ mentions the " gentry." in term- that imply their standing above the rest of the people. THE WEST 69 were pretty places, 31 with wide, shaded streets. The nouses lay far apart, often a couple of hundred feet from one another. They were built of heavy hewn timbers; those of the better sort were furnished with broad verandas, and contained large, low- ceilinged rooms, the high mantel-pieces and the mouldings of the doors and windows be- ing made of curiously carved wood. Each village was defended by a palisaded fort and block-houses, and was occasionally itself sur- rounded by a high wooden stockade. The inhabitants were extravagantly fond of mu- sic and dancing 32 ; marriages and christen- ings were seasons of merriment, when the fiddles were scraped all night long, while the moccasined feet danced deftly in time to the music. Three generations of isolated life in the wilderness had greatly changed the charac- ters of these groups of traders, trappers, bateau-men, and adventurous warriors. It was inevitable that they should borrow many traits from their savage friends and neigh- bors. Hospitable, but bigoted to their old customs, ignorant, indolent, and given to drunkenness, they spoke a corrupt jargon of the French tongue ; the common people were even beginning to give up reckoning time by months and years, and dated events, as the Indians did, with reference to the phe- 11 State Department MSS., No. 150, Vol. Ill, p. 89- 11 " Journal of Jean Baptiste Perrault," 1783. 70 THE WINNING OF nomena of nature, such as the time of the floods, the maturing of the green corn, or the ripening of the strawberries. 33 All their at- tributes seemed alien to the polished army- officers of old France" 4 ; they had but little more in common with the latter than with the American backwoodsmen. But they had kept many valuable qualities, and, in especial, they were brave and hardy, and, after their own fashion, good soldiers. They had fought valiantly beside King Louis' mus- keteers, and in alliance with the painted war- riors of the forest : later on they served, though perhaps with less heart, under the gloomy ensign of Spain, shared the fate of the red-coated grenadiers of King George, or followed the lead of the tall Kentucky riflemen. ""Voyage en Amerique " (1796), General Victor Collot, Paris 1804, p. 318. 14 Do. Collot calls them " un compose cle trai- tcurs, d'aventuriers, de courcurs e- arid Nations of America," Phila.. 1/98) with the report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs for 1827. Barton estimated that in 179.3 the Appalachian nations numbered in all 13.000 warriors; considering these as one fifth of the total population, make- it fi.'.ooo. In 18,37 the Commissioner reports their numbers at 65.304 almo-t exactly the ^anie. Probably both state- ments arc nearly correct, the natural rate of in- crease having just about offset the loss in con- THE WEST 75 from a careful comparison of the different authorities, the following estimate of the numbers of the southern trihes at the out- break of the Revolution may be considered as probably approximately correct. The Cherokees, some twelve thousand strong, 3 were the mountaineers of their race. They dwelt among the blue-topped ridges and lofty peaks of the southern Alleghanies, 4 sequence of a partial change of home, and of Jackson's slaughtering wars against the Creeks and Seminoles. But where they agree in the total, they vary hopelessly in the details. By Barton's estimate, the Cherokees numbered but 7,500, the Choctaws 30,000; by the Commissioner's census the Cherokees numbered 21,911, the Choctaws 15,000. It is of course out of the question to be- lieve that while in 44 years the Cherokees had increased three fold, the Choctaws had dimin- ished one half. The terms themselves must have altered their significance or else there was ex- tensive inter-tribal migration. Similarly, accord- ing to the reports, the Creeks had increased by 4,000 the Seminoles and Choctaws had dimin- ished by 3,000. " Am. Archives," 4th Series, III., 790. Dray- ton's account, Sept. 23, '75. This was a carefully taken census, made by the Indian traders. Apart from the outside communities, such as the Chick- amaugas at a later date, there were : 737 gun-men in the 10 overhill towns 908 " 23 middle 356 " 9 lower a total of 2,021 warriors. The outlying towns, who had cast off their allegiance for the time being, would increase the amount by three or four hundred more. 4 " History of the American Indians, Particu- larly Those Nations Adjoining to the Mississippi, 7 6 THE WINNING OF in the wild and picturesque region where the present States of Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, and the Carolinas join one another. To the west of the Cherokees, on the banks of the Mississippi, were the Chickasaws, the smallest of the southern nations, numbering at the outside but four thousand souls 5 ; but they were also the bravest and most warlike, and of all. these tribal confederacies theirs was the only one which was at all closely knit together. The whole tribe acted in unison. In consequence, though engaged in incessant warfare with the far more numerous Choc- taws, Creeks, and Cherokees, they more than held their own against them all ; besides hav- ing inflicted on the French two of the bloodi- est defeats they ever suffered from Indians. Most of the remnants of the Natchez, the strange sun-worshippers, had taken refuge with the Chickasaws and become completely identified with them, when their own nation- ality was destroyed by the arms of New Or- leans The Choctaws, the rudest and historically East and West Florida, Georgia, South and North Carolina, and Virginia." By James Adair Can Indian trader and re-ident in the country for forty years), London, 1775. A very valuable book, but a pood deal marred by the author's irrepres- sible desire to twi^t every Indian utterance, habit and ceremony into a proof that they are de- scended from the Ten Lost Tribes. He gives the number of Cherokee warriors at 2.300. 'Hawkins, Pickens, Martin, and Mclntosh, in their letter, give them 800 warriors ; most other estimates make the number smaller. THE WEST 77 the least important of these Indians, lived south of the Chickasaws. They were prob- ably rather less numerous than the Creeks. 8 Though accounted brave they were treacher- ous and thievish, and w r ere not as well armed as the others. They rarely made war or peace as a unit, parties frequently acting in conjunction with some of the rival Euro- pean powers, or else joining in the plunder- ing inroads made by the other Indians upon the white settlements. Beyond thus furnish- ing auxiliaries to our other Indian foes, they had little to do with our history. The Muscogees or Creeks were the strong- est of all. Their southern bands, living in Florida, were generally considered as a sepa- rate confederacy, under the name of Semi- noles. They numbered between twenty-five and thirty thousand souls, 7 three fourths of them being the Muscogees proper, and the remainder Seminoles. They dwelt south of 6 Almost all the early writers make them more numerous. Adair gives them 4,500 warriors, Hawkins 6,000. But much less seems to have been known about them than about the Creeks, Chero- kees, and Chickasaws ; and most early estimates of Indians were largest when made of the least- known tribes. Adair's statement is probably the most trustworthy. The first accurate census showed the Creeks to be more numerous. ' Hawkins, Pickens, etc., make them " at least " 27,000 in 1789; the Indian report for 1837 make them 26.844. During the half century they had suffered from devastating wars and forced re- movals, and had probably slightly decreased in number. In Adair's time their population was in- creasing. 7 8 THE WINNING OF the Cherokees and cast of the Choctaws, ad- joining the Georgians. The Creeks and Cherokees were thus by their position the barrier tribes of the South, who had to stand the brunt of our advance, and who acted as a buffer between us and the Frencli and Spaniards of the Gulf and the lower Mississippi. Their fate once de- cided, that of the Chickasaws and Choctaws inevitably followed. The customs and the political and social systems of these two tribes were very sim- ilar; and those of their two western neigh- bors were merely ruder copies thereof. They were very much further advanced than were the Algonquin nations of the north. Unlike most mountaineers the Cherokees were not held to be very formidable fighters, when compared with their fellows of the lowlands. 8 In 1760 and 1761 they had waged a fierce war with the whites, had rav- aged the Carolina borders, had captured British forts, and successfully withstood British armies ; but though they had held their own in the field, it had been at the cost of ruinous losses. Since that period they had been engaged in long wars with the Chickasaws and Creeks, and had been worsted by both. Moreover, they had been much harassed by the northern Indians So ' " Am. Archives," 5th Series, I., 95. Letter of Charles Lee. THE WEST 79 they were steadily declining in power and numbers. 9 Though divided linguistically into two races, speaking different dialects, the Otari and Erati, the political divisions did not fol- low the lines of language. There were three groups of towns, the Upper, Lower, and Middle; and these groups often acted inde- pendently of one another. The Upper towns lay for the most part on the Western Waters, as they were called by the Americans, the streams running into the Tennessee. Their inhabitants were known as Overhill Chero- kees and were chiefly Otari ; but the towns were none of them permanent, and sometimes shifted their positions, even changing from one group to another. The Lower towns, inhabited by the Erati, lay in the flat lands of upper Georgia and South Carolina, and were the least important. The third group, larger than either of the others and lying among the hills and mountains between them, consisted of the Middle towns. Its borders were ill-marked and were ever shifting. Thus the towns of the Cherokees stretched from the high upland region, where rise the loftiest mountains of eastern America, to the warm, level, low country, the land of the cypress and the long-leaved pine. Each vil- lage stood by itself, in some fertile river- 8 Adair, 227. Bartram, 390. 8o THE WINDING OF bottom, with around it apple orchards and fields of maze. Lik-e the other southern In- dians, the Cherokees were more industrious than their northern neighbors, lived by till- age and agriculture as much as by hunting, and kept horses, hogs, and poultry. The oblong, story-high houses were made of peeled logs, morticed into each other and plastered with clay ; while the roof was of chestnut bark or of big shingles. Near to each stood a small cabin, partly dug out of the ground, and in consequence very warm ; to this the inmates retired in winter, for they were sensitive to cold. In the centre of each village stood the great council- house or rotunda, capable of containing the whole population ; it was often thirty feet high, and sometimes stood on a raised mound of earth. 10 The Cherokees were a bright, intelligent race, better fitted to " follow the white man's road " than any other Indians. Like their neighbors, they were exceedingly fond of games of chance and skill, as well as of athletic sports. One of the most striking of their national amusements was the kind of ball-play from which we derive the game of lacrosse. The implements consisted of ball sticks or rackets, two feet long, strung with raw-hide webbing, and of a deer-skin ball, stuffed with hair, so as to be very solid, and about the size of a base ball. Some- "Bartram, 365. THE WEST 8 1 times the game was played by fixed num- bers, sometimes by all the young men of a village ; and there were often tournaments between different towns and even different tribes. The contests excited the most in- tense interest, were waged with desperate resolution, and were preceded by solemn dances and religious ceremonies ; they were tests of tremendous physical endurance, and were often very rough, legs and arms being occasionally broken. The Choctaws were considered to be the best ball players. 11 The Cherokees were likewise fond of dances. Sometimes these were comic or las- civious, sometimes they were religious in their nature, or were undertaken prior to starting on the war-trail. Often the dances of the young men and maidens were very picturesque. The girls, dressed in white, with silver bracelets and gorgets, and a pro- fusion of gay ribbons, danced in a circle in two ranks ; the young warriors, clad in their battle finery, danced in a ring around them ; all moving in rhythmic step, as they kept time to the antiphonal chanting 12 and singing, the young men and girls respond- ing alternately to each other. The great confederacy of theMuscogees or Creeks, consisting of numerous tribes, speak- ing at least five distinct languages, lay in a well-watered land of small timber." The 11 Adair, Bartram. " Bartram. 15 " A Sketch of the Creek Country," Benjamin 82 THE WIXXIXG OF rapid streams were bordered by narrow flats of ricb soil, and were margined by cane- brakes and reed beds. There were fine open pastures, varied by sandy pine barrens, by groves of palmetto and magnolia, and by great swamps and cypress ponds. The game bad been largely killed out, the elk and buf- falo having been exterminated and even the deer much thinned, and in consequence the hunting parties were obliged to travel far into the uninhabited region to the northward in order to kill their winter supply of meat. Rut panthers, wolves, and bears still lurked in the gloomy fastnesses of the swamps and canebrakes, whence tlu-v emerged at night to prey on the hogs and cattle. The bears had been exceedingly abundant at one time, so much so as to become one of the main props of the Creek larder, furnishing flesh, fat. and especially oil for cooking and other purposes; and so valued were they that the Indians hit upon the novel plan of preserv- ing them, exactly as Europeans preserve deer and pheasants. F.arh town put aside a great tract of land which was known as " the beloved bear ground." " where the persimmons, haws, chestnuts, muscadines, and fox grapes abounded, and let the bears dwell there unmolested, except at certain seasons, when they were killed in large num- bers. However, cattle were found to be U.-i \vkin ^. Tn mil. Ga. Hih-mallows, and sun- flowers were often grown between the rows of corn. The planting was done on a given day, the whole town being summoned; no man was expected or was allowed to go out hunting. The undcr-headman supervised the work. 20 For food they used all these vegetables, as well as beef and pork, and venison stewed in bear's oil : they had hominy and corn- cakes, and a coo 1 drink made from honey and water.- 1 Kside^ another made from fer- mented corn, which tasted much like cider, 22 19 Hawkins, 30. " Hawkin-. ,v); Adair. 408. 11 Bartram, 184. "Milfort, 212. THE WEST 85 They sifted their flour in wicker-work sieves, and baked the bread in kettles or on broad, thin stones. Moreover, they gathered the wild fruits, strawberries, grapes, and plums, in their season, and out of the hickory-nuts they made a thick, oily paste, called the hick- ory milk. Each town was built round a square, in which the old men lounged all day long, gos- siping and wrangling. Fronting the square, and surrounding it, were the four long, low communal houses, eight feet high, sixteen feet deep, and forty to sixty in length. They were wooden frames, supported on pine posts, with roof-tree and rafters of hickory. Their fronts were open piazzas, their sides were lathed and plastered, sometimes with white marl, sometimes with reddish clay, and they had plank doors and were roofed neatly with cypress bark or clapboards. The eave boards were of soft poplar. The barrier towns, near white or Indian enemies, had log houses, with portholes cut in the walls. The communal houses were each divided into three rooms. The House of the Micos, or Chiefs and Headmen, was painted red and fronted the rising sun ; it was highest in rank. The Houses of the Warriors and the Beloved Men this last being painted white fronted south and north respectively, while the House of the Young People stood opposite that of the Micos. Each room was divided into two terraces ; the one in front being covered with red mats, while that in 86 THE H'lXXIXC Ol' the rear, a kind of raised dais or great couch, was strewn with skins. They con- tained stools hewed out of poplar logs, and chests made of clapboards sewed together with buffalo thongs." The rotunda or council-house stood near the square on the highest spot in the village. It was round, and fifty or sixty feet across, with a high peaked roof ; the rafters were fastened with splints and covered with bark. A raised dais ran around the wall, strewed with mats and skins. Sometimes in the larger council-houses there were painted eagles, carved out of poplar wood, placed close to the red and white seats where the chiefs and warriors sat ; or in front of the broad dais were great images of the full and the half moon, colored white or black; or rudely carved and painted figures of the pan- ther, and of men with buffalo horns. The tribes held in reverence both the panther and the rattlesnake. The corn-cribs, fowl-houses, and hot- houses or dug-outs for winter use were clus- tered near the other cabins. Although in tillage they used only the hoe, they had made much progress in some useful arts. They spun the coarse wool of the buf- falo into blankets, which they trimmed with beads. They wove the wild hemp in frames and shuttles. They made their own saddles. " Hawkins, 67. Milfort, 20.3. Bartram, 386. Adair, 418. THE WEST 87 They made beautiful baskets of fine cane splints, and very handsome blankets of tur- key feathers ; while out of glazed clay they manufactured bowls, pitchers, platters, and other pottery. In summer they wore buckskin shirts and breech-clouts ; in winter they were clad in the fur of the bear and wolf or of the shaggy buffalo. They had moccasins of elk or buf- falo hide, and high thigh-boots of thin deer- skin, ornamented with fawns' trotters, or turkey spurs that tinkled as they walked. In their hair they braided eagle plumes, hawk wings, or the brilliant plumage of the tan- ager and redbird. Trousers or breeches of any sort they despised as marks of effemi- nacy. Vermilion was their war emblem ; white was only \vorn at the time of the Green-Corn Dance. In each town stood the war pole or painted post, a small peeled tree-trunk col- ored red. Some of their villages were called white or peace towns ; others red or bloody towns. The white towns were sacred to peace ; no blood could be spilt within their borders. They were towns of refuge, where not even an enemy taken in war could be slain ; and a murderer who fled thither was safe from vengeance. The captives were tortured to death in the red towns, and it was in these that the chiefs and warriors gathered when they w^ere planning or prepar- ing for war. 88 THE WINNING OF They held great marriage- feasts ; the dead were burned with the goods they had owned in their lifetime. Every night all the people of a town gathered in the council-house to dance and sing and talk. Besides this, they held there on stated occasions the ceremonial dances: such were the dances of war and of triumph, when the warriors, painted red and black, re- turned, carrying the scalps of their slain foes on branches of evergreen pine, while they chanted the sonorous song of victory ; and such was the Dance of the Serpent, the dance of lawless love, where the women and young girls were allowed to do whatsoever they listed. Once a year, when the fruits ripened, they helcl the Green-Corn Dance, a religious fes- tival that lasted eight days in the larger towns and four in the smaller. Then they fasted and feasted alternately. They drank out of conch-shells the Black Drink, a bit- ter beverage brewed from the crushed leaves of a small shrub. On the third day the high priest or fire-maker, the man who sat in the white scat, clad in snowy tunic and mocca- sins, kindled the holy fire, fanning it into flames with the unsullied wing of a swan, and burning therein offerings of the first- fruits of the year. Dance followed dance. The beloved men and beloved women, the priest and priestesses, danced in three rings, singing the solemn song of which the words were never uttered at any other time ; and at THE WEST 89 the end the warriors, in their wild war-gear, with white-plume head-dresses, took part, and also the women and girls, decked in their best, with ear-rings and armlets, and terrapin shells filled with pebbles fastened to the outside of their legs. They kept time with foot and voice ; the men in deep tones, with short accents, the women in a shrill falsetto ; while the clay drums, with heads of taut deer-hide, were beaten, the whistles blown, and the gourds and calabashes rat- tled, until the air resounded with the deaf- ening noise. 24 Though they sometimes burnt their pris- oners or violated captive women, they gen- erally were more merciful than the northern tribes." But their political and military systems could not compare with those of the r\lgon- quins, still less with those of the Iroquois. Their confederacy was of the loosest kind. There was no central authority. Every town acted just as it pleased, making war or peace with the other towns, or with whites, Choctaws or Cherokees. In each there was a nominal head for peace and war, the high chief and the head warrior ; the former was supposed to be supreme, and was elected for life from some one powerful family as. for instance, the families having for their totems the wind or the eagle. But these chiefs had little control, and could not do much more 81 Hawkins and Adair, passim. 83 Do. Also vide Bartram. 9 THE WINNING OF than influence or advise their subjects; they were dependent on the will of the majority. Each town was a little hotbed of party spirit ; the inhabitants divided on almost every question. If the head-chief was for peace, but the war-chief nevertheless went on the war-path, there was no way of restraining him. It was said that never, in the memory of the oldest inhabitant, had half the nation " taken the war talk " at the same time.*" As a consequence, war parties of Creeks were generally merely small bands of marau- ders, in search of scalps and plunder. In proportion to its numbers, the nation never, until 1813, undertook such formidable mili- tary enterprises as were undertaken by the Wyandots, Shawnees, and Delawares ; and, though very formidable individual fighters, even in this respect it may be questioned if the Creeks equalled the prowess of their northern kinsmen. Yet when the Revolutionary war broke out the Creeks were under a chieftain whose con-" summate craft and utterly selfish but cool and masterly diplomacy enabled them for a generation to hold their own better than any other native race against the restless Ameri- cans. This was the half-breed Alexander McGillivray, perhaps the most gifted man who was ever born on the soil of Alabama. 27 2 " Hawkins. 29. 70. Adair, 428. " History of Alabama." by Albert James Pickett. Charleston, 1851, II., 30. A valuable work. THE WEST 9 1 His father was a Scotch trader, Lachlan McGillivray by name, who came when a boy to Charleston, then the head-quarters of the commerce carried on by the British with the southern Indians. On visiting the traders' quarter of the town, the young Scot was strongly attracted by the sight of the. weather-beaten packers, with their gaudy, half-Indian finery, their hundreds of pack- horses, their curious pack-saddles, and their bales of merchandise. Taking service with them, he was soon helping to drive a pack- train along one of the narrow trails that crossed the lonely pine wilderness. To strong, coarse spirits, that were both shrewd and daring and willing to balance the great risks incident to their mode of life against its great gains, the business was most alluring. Young Lachlan rose rapidly, and soon be- came one of the richest and most influen- tial traders in the Creek country. Like most traders, he married into the tribe, wooing and wedding, at the Hickory Ground, beside the Coosa River, a beautiful half-breed girl, Sehoy Marchand, whose father had been a French officer, and whose mother belonged to the powerful Creek fam- ily of the Wind. There were born to them two daughters and one son, Alexander. All the traders, though facing danger at every moment, from the fickle and jealous temper of the savages, wielded immense influence over them, and none more than the elder McGillivray, a far-sighted, unscrupulous 9 2 THE ll'LVXIXG OF Scotchman, who sided alternately with the French and English interests, as best suited his own policy and fortunes. His son was felt by the Creek to be one of themselves. He was born about 1746, at Little Tallasee, on the banks of the clear- flowing Coosa, where he lived till he was fourteen years old, playing, fishing, hunting, and bathing with the other Indian boys, and listening to the tales of the old chiefs and warriors. He was then taken to Charleston, where he was well educated, being taught Greek and Latin, as well as English history and literature. Tall, dark, slender, with commanding figure and immovable face, of cool, crafty temper, with great ambition and a keen intellect, he felt himself called to play no common part. He disliked trade, and at the first opportunity returned to his Indian home. He had neither the moral nor the physical gifts requisite for a warrior; but he was a consummate diplomat, a born leader, and perhaps the only man who could have used aright such a rope of sand as was the Creek confederacy. The Creeks claimed him as of their own blood, and instinctively felt that he was their only possible ruler. He was forthwith chosen to be their head chief. From that time on he remained among them, at one or the other of his plantations, his largest and his real home being at Little Tallasee. where he lived in barbaric comfort, in a great roomy log- house with a stone chimney, surrounded by THE WEST 93 the cabins of his sixty negro slaves. He was supported by many able warriors, both of the half and the full blood. One of them is worthy of passing mention. This was a young French adventurer, Milfort, who in 1776 journeyed through the insurgent colo- nies and became an adopted son of the Creek nation. He first met McGillivray, then in his early manhood, at the town of Coweta, the great wartown on the Chattahoochee, where the half-breed chief, seated on a bear-skin in the council-house, surrounded by his wise men and warriors, was planning to give aid to the British. Afterwards he married one of McGilivray's sisters, whom he met at a great dance a pretty girl, clad in a short silk petticoat, her chemise of fine linen clasped with silver, her car-rings and bracelets of the same metal, and with bright-colored rib- bons in her hair. 28 28 Milfort, 23, 326. Milfort's book is very inter- esting, but as the man himself was evidently a hopeless liar and braggart, it can only be trusted where it was not for his interest to tell a false- hood. His book was written after McGillivray's death, the object being to claim for himself the glory belonging to the half-breed chief. ITe in- sisted that he was the war-chief, the arm, and McGillivray merely the head, and boasts of IT'S numerous successful war enterprises. But the fact is, that during this whole time the Creeks per- formed no important stroke in war; the successful resistance to American encroachments was due to the diplomacy of the son of Sehoy. Moreover, Milfort's accounts of his own war deeds arc mainly sheer romancing. He appears simply to have been one of a score of war chiefs, and there c J4 THE U'L\ 7 .\L\G OF The task set to the son of Sehoy was one of incredible difficulty, for he was head of a loose array of towns and tribes from whom no man could get perfect, and none but him- self even imperfect, obedience. The nation could not stop a town from going to war, nor, in turn, could a town stop its own young men from committing ravages. Thus the \\hites were always being provoked, and the frontiersmen were molested as often when they were quiet and peaceful as when they were encroaching on Indian land. The Creeks owed the land which they possessed to murder and rapine ; they mercilessly des- troyed all weaker communities, red or white; they had no idea of showing justice or gen- erosity towards their fellows who lacked their strength, and now the measure they had meted so often to others was at last to be meted to them. If the whites treated them well, it was set down to weakness. It was utterly impossible to restrain the young men from murdering ami plundering, either the neighboring Indians or the white settlements. Their one ideal of glory was to get scalps, and these the young braves were sure to seek, no matter how much the- older and cooler men might try to prevent them. Whether war was declared or not, made no were certainly a dozen other Creek chiefs, both half-hrccds and native-;, who were far more for- midahle to the frontier than he \va<; all their name- were dreaded by the .-ettlers, but his was hardly known. THE WEST 95 difference. At one time the English exerted themselves successfully to bring about a peace between the Creeks and Cherokees. At its conclusion a Creek chief taunted the medi- ators as follows : " You have sweated your- selves poor in our smoky houses to make peace between us and the Cherokees, and thereby enable our young people to give you in a short time a far worse sweat than you have yet had." 29 The result justified his predictions ; the young men, having no other foe, at once took to ravaging the settlements. It soon became evident that it was hopeless to expect the Creeks to behave well to the whites merely because they were themselves well treated, and from that time on the Eng- lish fomented, instead of striving to put a stop to, their quarrels with the Choctaws and Chickasaws. The record of our dealings with them must in many places be unpleasant reading to us, for it shows grave wrong-doing on our part ; yet the Creeks themselves lacked only the power, but not the will, to treat us worse than we treated them, and the darkest pages of their history recite the wrongs that we our- selves suffered at their hands. "Adair, 279. CHAPTER IV THE ALGONQUIN'S OF THE NORTHWEST, 1769-1774 BETWEEN the Ohio and the Great Lakes, directly north of the Appala- chian confederacies and separated from them by the unpeopled wilderness now forming the States of Tennessee t be remembered that the Shawne.es. Delawares. and \Yyan- dots were closely united and their villages were often mixed in together. Still farther THE WEST 99 to the west, the Miamis or Twigtees, lived between the Miami and the Wabash, to- gether with other associated tribes, the Piankeshaws and the Weas or Ouatinous. Farther still, around the French villages, dwelt those scattered survivors of the Illi- nois who had escaped the dire fate which befell their fellow-tribesmen because they murdered Pontiac. Northward of this scanty people lived the Sacs and Foxes, and around the upper Great Lakes the numerous and powerful Pottawattamies, Ottawas, and Chippewas ; fierce and treacherous warriors, who did not till the soil, and were hunters and fishers only, more savage even than the tribes that lay southeast of them. 1 In the works of the early travellers wf the Indian numbers in any battle given by British or Americans soldiers or civilian-, are ludicrously exaggerated as a rule; even now it -eem< a common belief of historians that the whiter were generally outnumbered in battles, while in reality they were generally much more numerous than their foes, 11 Ilarri-on (!>>c. cit.) calls them "the finest light troops in the world " ; and he had had full experience in serving with American and against British infantry. THE WEST 107 men who have not his training. A hardy soldier, accustomed only to war in the open, will become a good cragsman in fewer weeks than it will take him years to learn to be. so much as a fair woodsman ; for it is beyond all comparison more difficult to attain profi- ciency in woodcraft than in mountaineer- ing. 13 The Wyandots, and the Algonquins who surrounded them, dwelt in a region of sun- less, tangled forests; and all the wars we waged for the possession of the country be- tween the Alleghanies and the Mississippi were carried on in the never-ending stretches of gloomy woodland. It was not an open forest. The underbrush grew, dense and rank, between the boles of the tall trees, mak- ing a cover so thick that it was in many places impenetrable, so thick that it no- where gave a chance for human eye to see 11 Any one who is fond of the chase can test the truth of this proposition for himself, by trying how long it will take him to learn to kill a bighorn on the mountains, and how long it will take him to learn to kill white-tail deer in a dense forest, by fair still-hunting, the game being equally plenty. I have known many novices learn to equal the best old hunters, red or white, in killing mountain game ; I have never met one who could begin to do as well as an Indian in the dense forest, unless brought up to it and rarely even then. Yet, though woodcraft is harder to learn, it does not imply the possession of such valuable qualities as mountaineering; and when cragsman and woodman meet on neutral ground, the former is apt to be the better man. io8 THE WINNING OF even as far as a bow could carry. No horse could penetrate it save by following the game trails or paths chopped with the axe; and a stranger venturing a hundred yards from a beaten road would be so helplessly lost that he could' not, except by the merest chance, even find his way back to the spot he had just left. Here and there it was broken by a rare hillside glade or by a meadow in a stream valley ; but elsewhere a man might travel for weeks as if in a per- petual twilight, never once able to see the sun, through the interlacing twigs that formed a dark canopy above his head. This dense forest was to the Indians a home in which they had lived from child- hood, and where they were as much at case as a farmer on his own acres. To their keen eyes, trained for generations to more than a wild beast's watchfulness, the wilderness was an open book; nothing at rest or in mo- tion escaped them. They had begun to track game as soon as they could walk ; a scrape on a tree trunk, a bruised leaf, a faint indenta- tion of the soil, which the eye of no white man could see, all told them a tale as plainly as if it had been shouted in their ears. 14 With moccasined feet they trod among brittle twigs, dried leaves, and dead branches as si- lently as the cougar, and they equalled the "To this day the \vild -not the half-tame In- dians remain unequal]! <1 as trackers. F.ven among the old hunters iv>t one white in a hundred can come near them. In my experience I have known a THE WEST 109 great wood-cat in stealth and far surpassed it in cunning and ferocity. They could no more get lost in the trackless wilderness than a civilized man could get lost on a high- way. [Moreover, no knight of the middle ages was so surely protected by his armor as they were by their skill in hiding; the whole forest was to the whites one vast ambush, and to them a sure and ever-present shield. Every tree trunk was a breastwork ready prepared for battle ; every bush, every moss- covered boulder, was a defence against as- sault, from behind which, themselves unseen, they watched with fierce derision the move- ments of their clumsy white enemy. Lurk- ing, skulking, travelling with noiseless ra- pidity, they left a trail that only a master in woodcraft could follow, while, on the other hand, they could dog a \vhite man's footsteps as a hound runs a fox. Their si- lence, their cunning and stealth, their ter- rible prowess and merciless cruelty, makes it no figure of speech to call them the tigers of the human race. Unlike the southern Indians, the villages of the northwestern tribes were usually far from the frontier. Tireless, and careless of all hardship, they came silently out of un- very few whites who had spent all their Jives in the wilderness who equalled the Indian average ; but I never met any white who came np to the very best Indian. But, because of their better shooting and their better nerve, the whites often make the better hunters. no 77/71 U' I XX ING OP known forests, robbed and murdered, and then disappeared again into the fathomless depths of the woods. Half of the terror they caused was due to the extreme difficulty of following them, and the absolute impossi- bility of forecasting their attacks. Without warning, and unseen until the moment they dealt the death stroke, they emerged from their forest fastnesses, the horror they caused being heightened no less by the mystery that shrouded them than by the dreadful nature of their ravages. \Yrapped in the mantle of the unknown, appalling by their craft, their ferocity, their fiendish cruelty, thev seemed to the white settlers devils and not men ; no one could say with certainty whence they came nor of what tribe they were; and when they had finished their dreadful work they retired into a wilderness that closed over their trail as the waves of the ocean close in the wake of a ship. They were trained to the use of arms from tlu'ir youth up, and war and hunting were tlu'ir two chief occupations, the business as well as the pleasure of their lives. They were not as skilful as the white hunters with the rifle ir ' though more so than the 15 It is curious how to this day the wild Indians retain tin- ^ann- traits I have se< n and taken part in many mntchr- '>rUvfrn frontiersmen and tin* Sioux. Cheyenne-, Hro-venircs. and Mandans, rind the Indian 1 : \\-<-re heafen in almost every one. On the other hand the Indian-; will -tand faticrue. Jumper, and privation better, but they ?ecm more susceptible to cold. THE WEST in average regular soldier, nor could they equal the frontiersman in feats of physical prowess, such as boxing and wrestling; but their superior endurance and the ease with which they stood fatigue and exposure made amends for this. , A white might outrun them for eight or ten miles ; but on a long journey they could tire out any man, and any beast except a wolf. Like most barbarians they were fickle and inconstant, not to be relied on for pushing through a long cam- paign, and after a great victory apt to go off to their homes, because each man desired to secure his own plunder and tell his own tale of glory. They are often spoken of as undisciplined ; but in reality their discipline in the battle itself was very high. They at- tacked, retreated, rallied or repelled a charge at the signal of command ; and they were able to fight in open order in thick covers without losing touch of each other a feat that no European regiment was then able to perform. On their own ground they were far more formidable than the best European troops. The British grenadiers throughout the eighteenth century showed themselves su- perior, in the actual shock of battle, to any infantry of continental Europe ; if they ever met an over-match, it was when pitted against the Scotch highlanders. Yet both grenadier and Highlander, the heroes of Min- den. the heirs to the glory of Marlborough's campaigns, as well as the sinewy soldiers H2 THE U'lXXIXG OF who shared in the charges of Frestonpans and Culloden, proved helpless when led against the dark tribesmen of the forest. On the march they could not be trusted thirty yards from the column without get- ting lost in the woods "'' the mountain training of the highlanders apparently stand- ing them in no stead whatever. and were only able to get around at all when convoyed by backwoodsmen. In fight they fared even worse. The I'.ritish regulars at Braddock's battle, and the highlanders at (irant's de- feat a few years later, suffered the same fate. Both battles were fair fights; neither was a surprise; yet the stubborn valor of the red- coated grenadier and the headlong courage of the kilted Scot proved of less than no avail. Not only were they utterly routed and destroyed in each case hv an inferior force of Indians (the French taking little part in the conflict), but they were ab 1 e to make no effective resistance whatever ; it is to this day doubtful whether these superb regulars were able in the battles where- they were destroyed, to so much as ki 1 ! om- Indian for every hun- dred of their own men who fell. The pro- vincials who were with the regulars were the only troops who caused anv I "A- wa> tii 'iic to the fath<-r of Simon Girty. Any history of any Indian inroad will give ex- amples such as I have mentioned above. See THE WEST 127 Thus it is that there are so many dark and bloody pages in the book of border warfare, that grim and iron-bound volume, wherein we read how our forefathers won the wide lands that we inherit. It contains many a tale of fierce heroism and adventurous ambi- tion, of the daring and resolute courage of men and the patient endurance of women ; it shows us a stern race of freemen who toiled hard, endured greatly, and fronted adversity bravely, who prized strength and courage and good faith, whose wives were chaste, who were generous and loyal to their friends. But it shows us also how they spurned at re- straint and fretted under it, how they would brook no wrong to themselves, and yet too often inflicted wrong on others ; their feats of terrible prowess are interspersed \vith deeds of the foulest and most wanton aggres- sion, the darkest treachery, the most revolt- ing cruelty ; and though we meet with plenty of the rough, strong, coarse virtues, we see but little of such qualities as mercy for the fallen, the weak, and the helpless, or pity for a gallant and vanquished foe. McAfee MSS., John P. Male's " Trans-Alleghany Pioneers," De Haas' " Indian Wars," Wither' s " Border War," etc. In one respect, however, the Indians east of the Mississippi were better than the tribes of the plains from whom our borders have suffered during the present century; their female captives were not invariably ravished by every member of the band capturing them, as has ever been the custom among the horse In- dians. Slill, they were often made the concubines of their captors. 128 THE WIXNIXG OF Among the Indians of the northwest, generally so much alike, that \ve need pay little heed to tribal distinctions, there was one body deserving especial and separate men- tion. Among the turbulent and jarring ele- ments tossed' into wild confusion by the shock of the contact between savages and the rude vanguard of civilisation, surrounded and threatened by the painted warriors of the woods no less than by the lawless white rifle- men who lived on the stump-dotted clear- ings, there dwelt a group of peaceful beings who were destined to suffer a dire fate in the most lamentable and pitiable of all the trag- edies which were played out in the heart of this great wilderness. These were the Mora- vian Indians." 7 They were mostly Dela- wares. and had been converted by the in- defatigable German missionaries, who taught the tranquil, Quaker-like creed of Count Zinzendorf. The zeal and success of the mis- sionaries were attested by the marvellous change they had wrought in these converts; for they had transformed them in one gen- eration from a restless, idle, bl or moccasins. Fine clothes 18 For the opinion of a foreign military observer on the phenomena! arnirnry of backwoods tnark- mansliip, see (ieneral Victor Collot's "Voyage en Amerique." p. 24^. * J MS. copy of Matthew Clarkson's Journal in 1766. M McAfee MSS. (Autobiography of Robert R. McAfee). "Do. THE WEST 151 were rare ; a suit of such cost more than 200 acres of good land. 33 The first lesson the backwoodsmen learnt was the necessity of self-help; the next, that such a community could only thrive if all joined in helping- one another. Log-rollings, house-raisings, house-warmings, corn-shuck- ings, quiltings, and the like were occasions when all the neighbors came together to do what the family itself could hardly accom- plish alone. Every such meeting was the oc- casion of a frolic and dance for the young people, whisky and rum being plentiful, and the host exerting his utmost power to spread the table with backwoods delicacies bear- meat and venison, vegetables from the " truck patch," where squashes, melons, beans, and the like were grown, wild fruits, bowls of milk, and apple pies, which were the acknowledged standard of luxury. At the better houses there was metheglin or small beer, cider, cheese, and biscuits. 34 Tea was so little known that many of the back- woods people were not aware it was a bever- age and at first attempted to eat the leaves with salt or butter. 35 33 Memoirs of the Hist. Soc. of Perm., 1826. Account of first settlements, etc., by John Watson (1804). 34 Do. An admirable account of what such a frolic was some thirty-five years later is to be found in Edward Eggleston's " Circuit Rider." 35 Such incidents are mentioned again and again by Watson, Mil fort, Doddridge, Carr, and other writers. 152 THE WINNING OF The young men prided themselves on their bodily strength, and were always eager to contend against one another in athletic games, such as wrestling, racing, jumping, and lifting flour-barrels; and they also sought distinction in vicing with one another at their work. Sometimes they strove against one another singly, sometimes they divided into parties, each bending all its ener- gies to be first in shucking a given heap of corn or cutting (with sickles) an allotted patch of wheat. Among the men the bravos or bullies often were dandies also in the backwoods fashions, wearing their hair long and delighting in the rude finery of hunt- ing-shirts embroidered with porcupine quills ; they were loud, boastful, and profane, given to coarsely bantering one another. Brutally savage fights were frequent ; the combatants, who were surrounded by rings of interested spectators, striking, kicking, biting, and gouging. The fall of one of them did not stop the fight, for the man who was down was maltreated without mercy until he called " enough." The victor always bragged sav- agely of his prowess, often leaping on a stump, crowing and flapping his arms. This last was a thoroughly American touch : but otherwise one of these contests was less a boxing match than a kind of backwoods pankrdtion, no less revolting than its ancient prototype of Olympic, fame. Yet, if the un- couth borderers were as brutal as the highly polished Greeks, they were more manly; de- THE WEST 153 feat was not necessarily considered disgrace, a man often fighting when he \vas certain to be beaten, while the onlookers neither hooted nor pelted the conquered. We first hear of the noted scout and Indian fighter, Simon Kenton, as leaving a rival for dead after one of these ferocious duels, and fleeing from his home in terror of the punishment that might follow the deed. 36 Such fights were specially frequent when the backwoodsmen went into the little frontier towns to see horse races or fairs. A wedding was always a time of festival. If there was a church anywhere near, the bride rode thither on horseback behind her father, and after the. service her pillion was 18 McClung's " Western Adventures." All east- ern and European observers comment with horror on the border brawls, especially the eye-gouging. Englishmen, of course, in true provincial spirit, complacently contrasted them with their own box- ing fights; Frenchmen, equally of course, were more struck by the resemblances than the differ- ences between the two forms of combat. Milfort gives a very amusing account of the " Anglo-Ameri- cains d'une espece particuliere," whom he calls " crakeurs ou gaugeurs," (crackers or gougers). He remarks that he found them " tons borgnes," (as a result of their pleasant fashion of eye- gouging a backwoods bully in speaking of an- other would often threaten to " measure the length of his eye-strings,") and that he doubts if there can exist in the world " des homines plus me- chants quo ces habitants." These tights were among the numerous back- woods habits that showed Scotch rather than English ancestry. " I attempted to keep him I 5 4 THE ll'INXLVG OF shifted to the bridegroom's steed. 37 If, as generally happened, there was no church, the groom ami his friends, all armed, rode to the house of the bride's father, plenty of whisky being drunk, and the men racing recklessly along the narrow bridle-paths, for there were few roads or wheeled vehicles in the backwoods. At the bride's house the ceremony was performed, and then a huge dinner was eaten ; after which the fiddling and dancing began, and were continued all the afternoon, and most of the night as well. A party of girls stole off the bride and put her to bed in the loft above ; and a party of young men then performed the like service for the groom. The fun was hearty and coarse, and the toasts always included one to the young couple, with the wish that they might have many big children ; for as long as they could remember the backwoodsmen had lived at war, while looking ahead they saw no chance of its ever stopping, and so each son was regarded as a future warrior, a help to the whole community. 3S The neighbors all joined again in chopping and rolling the logs for the young couple's future house, then in raising the house itself, and finally in feast- ing and clancing at the house-warming. Funerals were simple, the dead body be- down, in order to improve my success, after the manner of my own country " (" Roderick Ran- dom "). " Watson. M Doddridge. THE WEST 155 ing carried to the grave in a coffin slung on poles and borne by four men. There was not much schooling, and few boys or girls learnt much more than read- ing, writing, and ciphering up to the rule of three. 39 Where the school-houses existed they were only dark, mean log-huts, and if in the southern colonies, were generally placed in the so-called " old fields," or aban- doned farms grown up with pines. The schoolmaster boarded about with the fami- lies ; his learning was rarely great, nor was his discipline good, in spite of the frequency and severity of the callings. The price for such tuition was at the rate of twenty shil- lings a year, in Pennsylvania currency. 40 Each family did every thing that could be done for itself. The father and sons worked with axe, hoe, and sickle. Almost every house contained a loom, and almost every woman was a weaver. Linsey-woolsey, made from flax grown near the cabin, and of wool from the backs of the few sheep, was the warmest and most substantial cloth ; and when the flax crop failed and the flocks were destroyed by wolves, the children had but scanty covering to hide their nakedness. The man tanned the buckskin, the woman was tailor and shoemaker, and made the deer-skin sifters to be used instead of bolt- ing-cloths. There were a few pewter spoons in use ; but the table furniture consisted 89 McAfee MSS. <0 Watson. 86 ;;5 THE HY.V.V/.VG O/ 7 main!;, of hand-made trenchers, platters, noggins, an 1 ! y.vls. The cradle was of pee.ed hick r;. :. ark. 41 Ploughshares had to be imported, but harrows and sleds were made without iirnculty : and the cooper work was well done. Char: beds were thrown on the floor of the loft, if the house-owner was well off. Each :abin had a hand-mill and a hominv ':. 1 . _!-: : the last was borrowed from t .".-_ Indians, an . v.as on.y a .arge bloc.-; 01 '.. with a hole burned in the top. as a mortar, where t::e pest.e was worked. If tnere were an~.' -u^'ar ntap.es accessiD.e. tr.ey were tapped ever;.' vear. could not be prc luced in the back'-v^ods. In order to get them each family collected dtir- ing the year all the furs possible, these bc- :n^" valuable an . yet easily carried on pack- h.orses, the sole n:van- of fan-port. Then, after seeding time, in the fall, the people of a rh '. ordinarily ;oir.ed in sending a train ;f peltry-laden pack-horse; to some large sea-c as: :-r tidal-river trading a., na i ',:. - .'.vi.j roun '. tneir ner.< i tne c.ap- p-rr^ were ^topped : "rin- the day. but when the train v.as halted for the night, and the h:rses were ho 1 ' ! : an ! turn.( the Several ei an interesting THE -.VEST '57 158 THE WINNING OF the wolves sometimes went mad, and the men who then encountered them were almost cer- lain to be bitten and to die of hydrophobia. 44 Every true backwoodsman was a hunter. \Vild turkeys were plentiful. The pigeons at times filled the woods with clouds that hid the sun and broke down the branches on their roosting grounds as if a whirlwind had passed. The black and gray squirrels swarmed, devastating the corn-fields, and at times gathering in immense companies and migrating across mountain and river. The hunters' ordinary game was the deer, and after that the bear ; the elk was already grow- ing uncommon. Xo form of labor is harder than the chase, and none is so fascinating nor so excellent as a training-school for war. The successful still-hunter of necessity pos- sessed skill in hiding and in creeping noise- lessly upon the wary quarry, as well as in imitating the notes and calls of the different beasts and birds : skill in the use of the rifle and in throwing the tomahawk he already had ; and he perforce acquired keenness of ("Hunting Trips of a Ranchman"). Even the wolves occasionally attacked man; Aububon gives an example. 44 Doddridge, 104. Dodge, in his " Hunting Grounds of the Great West." gives some recent instances. Bears were sometimes dangerous to human life. Doddridge, 64. A slave on the plan- tation of my great-grandfather in Georgia was once regularly scalped by a she-hear whom he had tried to rob of her ciib<, and ever after he wa> called, both by the other negroes and by the children on the plantation, " Bear Bob." THE WEST 159 eye, thorough acquaintance with woodcraft, and the power of standing the severest strains of fatigue, hardship and exposure. He lived out in the woods for many months with no food but meat, and no shelter whatever, unless he made a leanto of brush or crawled into a hollow sycamore. Such training stood the frontier folk in good stead when they were pitted against the Indians ; without it they could not even have held their own, and the white advance would have been absolutely checked. Our frontiers were pushed westward by the war- like skill and adventurous personal prowess of the individual settlers ; regular armies by themselves could have done little. For one square mile the regular armies added to our domain, the settlers added ten, a hundred would probably be nearer the truth. A race of peaceful, unwarlike farmers would have been helpless before such foes as the red In- dians, and no auxiliary military force would have protected them or enabled them to move westward. Colonists fresh from the old world, no matter how thrifty, steady-going, and industrious, could not hold their own on the frontier ; they had to settle where they were protected from the Indians by a living barrier of bold and self-reliant American borderers. 45 The west would never have been settled save for the fierce courage and the eager desire to brave danger so charac- teristic of the stalwart backwoodsmen. 40 Schopf, I., 404. 160 THE WINNING OF These armed hunters, \voodchoppers, and farmers were their own soldiers. They built and manned their own forts; they did their own fighting under their own commanders. There were no regiments of regular troops along the frontier. 40 In the event of an In- dian inroad each borderer had to defend him- self until there was time for them all to gather together to repel or avenge it. Ev- ery man was accustomed to the use of arm-'. from his childhood ; when a boy was twelve years old lie was given a rifle and made a fort-soldier, with a loophole where he was to stand if the station was attacked. The war was never-ending, for even the times of so- called peace were broken by forays and mur- ders ; a man might grow from babyhood to middle age on the border, and yet never re- member a year in which some one of his neighbors did not fall a victim to the Indians. There was everywhere a rude- military or- ganization, which included o 1 ! the able-bodied men of the community. F.vcrv settlement had its colnnels and captain;; : but these of- ficers, both in their training and in the au- thority they exercised, corresponded much more nearly to Indian chiefs than to the reg- ular army men whose titles they bore. They had no means whatever of enforcing their orders, and their tumultuous and disorderly levies of sinewy riflemen were hardly as well 49 The insignificant garrisons at one or two places need not be taken into account, as they were of absolutely no effect. THE WEST 161 disciplined as the Indians themselves. 47 The superior officer could advise, entreat, lead, and influence his men, but he could not com- mand them, or, if he did, the men obeyed him only just so far as it suited them. If an officer planned a scout or campaign, those who thought proper accompanied him, and the others stayed at home, and even those who went out came back if the fit seized them, or perchance followed the lead of an insubordinate junior officer whom they liked better than they did his superior. 48 There was no compulsion to perform military duties 17 Brantz Mayer, in " Tah-Gah-Jute, or Logan and Cresap " (Albany, 1867), ix., speaks of the pioneers as " comparative few in numbers," and of the Indian as " numerous, and fearing not only the superior weapons of his foe, but the or- ganization and discipline which together made the comparatively few equal to the greater num- ber." This sentence embodies a variety of popular misconceptions. The pioneers were more numer- ous than the Indians; the Indians were generally, at least in the northwest, as well armed as the whites, and in military matters the Indians were actually (see Smith's narrative, and almost all competent authorities) superior in organization and discipline to their pioneer foes. Most of our battles against the Indians of the western woods, whether won or lost, were fought by superior numbers on our side. Individually, or in small parties, the frontiersmen gradually grew to be a match for the Indians, man for man, at least in many cases but this was only true of large bodies of them if they were commanded by some one naturally able to control their unruly spirits. 4S As examples take Clark's last Indian cam- paign and the battle of Blue Licks. 162 THE WINNING OF beyond dread of being disgraced in the eyes of the neighbors, and there was no pecuniary reward for performing them ; nevertheless the moral sentiment of a backwoods commu- nity was too robust to tolerate habitual re- missness in military affairs, and the coward and laggard were treated with utter scorn, and were generally in the end either laughed out, or " hated out," of the neighborhood, or else got rid of in a still more summary manner. Among a people naturally brave and reckless, this public opinion acted fairly effectively, and there was generally but lit- tle shrinking from military service. 49 A backwoods levy was formidable because of the high average courage and prowess of the individuals composing it; it was on its own ground much more effective than a like force of regular soldiers, but of course it could not be trusted on a long campaign. The backwoodsmen used their rifles better than the Indians, and also stood punishment better, but they never matched them in sur- prises nor in skill in taking advantage of cover, and very rarely equalled their disci- pline in the battle itself. After all, the pioneer was primarily a husbandman ; the time spent in chopping trees and tilling the soil his foe spent in preparing for or prac- tising forest warfare, and so the former, thanks to the exercise of the very qualities which in the end gave him the possession of the soil, could not, as a rule, hope to rival his * Doddridge, 161, 185. THE WEST 163 antagonist in the actual conflict itself. When large bodies of the red men and white borderers were pitted against each other, the former were if any thing the more likely to have the advantage. 50 But the whites soon copied from the Indians their system of in- dividual and private warfare, and they prob- ably caused their foes far more damage and loss in this way than in the large expedi- tions. Many noted border scouts and In- dian fighters such men as Boone, Kenton, Wetzel, Brady, McCulloch, Mansker 51 grew to overmatch their Indian foes at their own game, and held themselves above the most renowned warriors. But these men car- ried the spirit of defiant self-reliance to such an extreme that their best work was always m At the best such a frontier levy was com- posed (it men of the type of Leatherstocking, Ish- mael Bu-h, Tom Hutter, Harry March, Bill Kirby. and Aaron Thousandacres. When ani- mated by a common and overmastering passion, such a body would be almost irresistible ; but it could not hold together long, and there was gen- erally a plentiful mixture of men less trained in woodcraft, and therefore useless in forest fighting, while if, as must generally be the case in any body, there were a number of cowards in the ranks, the total lack of discipline not only per- mitted them to flinch from their work with im- punity, but also allowed them, by their example, to infect and demoralize their braver companions. " Haywood, DeHaas, Withers, McClung, and other border annalists, give innumerable anec- dotes alxnit these and many other men, illustrating their feats of fierce prowess and, too often, of brutal ferocity. 8 6B 1 64 THE ll'INXIXG OP done when they were alone or in small par- ties of but four or five. They made long forays after scalps and horses, going a won- derful distance, enduring extreme hardship, risking the most terrible of deaths, and harry- ing the hostile tribes into a madness of ter- ror and revengeful hatred. As it was in military matters, so it was with the administration of justice by the frontiersmen ; they had few courts, and knew but little law, and yet they contrived to pre- serve order and morality with rough effect- iveness, by combining to frown down on the grosser misdeeds, and to punish the more flagrant misdoers. Perhaps the spirit in which they acted can be best shown by the recital of an incident in the career of the three McAfee brothers, who were among the pioneer hunters of Kentucky/''- Previous to trying to move their families out to the new country, they made a cache of clothing, im- plements, and provisions, which in their ab- sence was broken into and plundered. They caught the thief, " a little diminutive, red- headed white man," a runaway convict servant from one of the tide-water counties of Virginia. Tn the first impul-e of anger at finding that he was the criminal, one of the McAfees rushed at him to kill him with his tomahawk : but the weapon turned, the man was only knocked drmn. and his assailant's "McAfee MSS. The story i<= t..M Loth in the " Antnliiojjrnhy of Rnhrrt McAfee." and in the "History < f the- Fir~t Settlement on Sa'.t River." THE WEST 165 gusty anger subsided as quickly as it had risen, giving way to a desire to do stern but fair justice. So the three captors formed themselves into a court, examined into the case, heard the man in his o\vn defence, and after due consultation decided that "' accord- ing to their opinion of the laws he had for- feited his life, and ought to be hung " ; but none of them were willing to execute the sen- tence in cold blood, and they ended by tak- ing their prisoner back to his master. The incident was characteristic in more than one way. The prompt desire of the backwoodsman to avenge his own wrong ; his momentary furious anger, speedily quelled and replaced by a dogged determina- tion to be fair but to exact full retribution ; the acting entirely without regard to legal forms or legal officials, but yet in a spirit which spoke well for the doer's determina- tion to uphold the essentials that make honest men law-abiding; together with the good faith of the whole proceeding, and the amus- ing ignorance that it would have been in the least unlawful to execute their own rather harsh sentence all these were typical fron- tier traits. Some of the same traits appear in the treatment commonly adopted in the backwoods to meet the case of painfully frequent occurrence in the times of Indian wars where a man taken prisoner by the savages, and supposed to be murdered, re- turned after two or three years' captivity, only to find his wife married again. In the 166 THE U'IN.\L\G 01' wilderness a husband was almost a necessity to a woman ; her surroundings made the loss of the protector and provider an appalling calamity; and the widow, nomatter how sin- cere her sorrow, soon remarried for there were many suitors where women were not over-plenty. If in such a case the one thought dead returned, the neighbors and the parties interested seem frequently to have held a sort of informal court, and to have decided that the woman should choose either of the two men she wished to be her husband, the other being pledged to submit to the decision and leave the settlement. Evidently no one had the least idea that there was anv legal irregularity in such proceedings. 53 The McAfees themselves and the escaped convict servant whom they captured typify the two prominent classes of the backwoods people. The frontier, in spite of the out- ward uniformity of means and manners, is preeminently the place of sharp contrasts. The two extremes of society, the strongest, best, and most adventurous, and the weak- est, most shiftless, and vicious, are those which seem naturally to drift to the border. Most of the men who came to the backwoods to hew out homes and rear families were stern, manly, and honest : but there was also a large influx of people drawn from the worst ' 3 Incidents of this sort arc frequently men- tioned. Generally the \vnnian \vent hack to her liiM husband. " Farly Time- in Middle Tennes- see," John Carr, Nashville, 1859, p. 231. THE WEST 167 immigrants that perhaps ever were brought to America the mass of convict servants, redemptioners, and the like, who formed such an excessively undesirable substratum to the otherwise excellent population of the tide- water regions in Virginia and the Carolinas. 5 * Many of the southern crackers or poor whites spring from this class, which also in the backwoods gave birth to generations of vio- lent and hardened criminals, and to an even greater number of shiftless, lazy, cowardly cumberers of the earth's surface. They had in many places a permanently bad effect upon the tone of the whole community. Moreover, the influence of heredity was no more plainly perceptible than was the extent of individual variation. If a member of a bad family wished to reform, he had every opportunity to do so ; if a member of a good family had vicious propensities, there was nothing to check them. All qualities, good and bad, are intensified and accentuated in the life of the wilderness. The man who in civilization is merely sullen and bad-tem- pered becomes a murderous, treacherous ruf- fian when transplanted to the wilds ; while, on the other hand, his cheery, quiet neighbor develops into a hero, ready uncomplainingly to lay down his life for his friend. One who in an eastern city is merely a backbiter and slanderer, in the western woods lies in wait M See " A Short History of the English Col- onies in America," by Henry Cabot Lodge (New York, 1886), for an account of these people. 1 68 THE II' I. \.\L\G OF for his foe with a rifle ; sharp practice in the east becomes highway robbery in the west; but at the same time negative good- nature becomes active self-sacrifice, and a general belief in virtue is translated into a prompt and determined war upon vice. The ne'er-do-well of a family who in one place has his debts paid a couple of times and is then forced to resign from his clubs and lead a cloudy but innocuous existence on a small pension, in the other abruptly finishes his career by being hung for horse-stealing. In the backwoods the lawless led lives of abandoned wickedness; they hated good for good's sake, and did their utmost to des- troy it. Where the bad element was large, gangs of horse thieves, highwaymen, and other criminals often united with the uncon- trollable young men of vicious tastes who were given to gambling, fighting, and the like. They then formed half-secret organi- zations, often of great extent and with wide- ramifications ; and if they could control a community they established a reign of ter- ror, driving out both ministers and magis- trates, and killing without scruple those who interfered with them. The good men in such a case banded themselves together as regu- lators and put down the wicked \vith ruth- less severity, by the exercise of lynch law, shooting and hanging the worst off-hand. 155 "The regulators of backwoods ^ocioty corres- ponded exactly to the vigilante-, of the western border to-day. In many of the cases of lynch law THE WEST 169 Jails were scarce in the wilderness, and often were entirely wanting in a district, which, indeed, was quite likely to lack legal officers also. If punishment was inflicted at all it was apt to be severe, and took the form of death or whipping. An impromptu jury of neighbors decided with a rough and ready sense of fair play and justice what punish- ment the crime demanded, and then saw to the execution of their own decree. Whip- ping was the usual reward of theft. Occa- sionally torture was resorted to, but not often ; but to their honor be it said, the back- woodsmen were horrified at the treatment accorded both to black slaves and to white convict servants in the lowlands. 56 They were superstitious, of course, believ- ing in witchcraft, and signs and omens ; and it may be noted that their superstition showed a singular mixture of old-world survivals and of practices borrowed from the savages or evolved by the very force of their strange surroundings. At the bottom they were deeply religious in their tendencies ; and al- though ministers and meeting-houses were rare, yet the backwoods cabins often con- which have come to my knowledge the effect has been healthy for the community ; but sometimes great injustice is done. Generally the vigilantes, by a series of summary executions, do really good work ; but I have rarely known them fail, among the men whom they killed for good reason, to al c o kill one or two either by mistake or to gratify private malice. M See Doddridge. 1 7 o THE WINNING OF tained Bibles, and the mothers used to instil into the minds of their children reverence for Sunday, 57 while many even of the hunters refused to hunt on that day. &8 Those of them who knew the right honestly tried to live up to it, in spite of the manifold temp- tations to backsliding offered by their lives of hard and fierce contention. r ' But Cal- vinism, though more congenial to them than Episcopacy, and infinitely more so than Ca- tholicism, was too cold for the fiery hearts of the borderers ; they were not stirred to the depths of their natures till other creeds, and, above all, Methodism, worked their way to the wilderness. Thus the backwoodsmen lived on the clear- ings they had hewed out of the everlasting forest; a grim, stern people, strong and sim- ple, powerful for good and evil, swayed by gusts of stormy passion, the love of free- dom rooted in their very hearts' core. Their lives were harsh and narrow; they gained their bread by their blood and sweat, in the unending struggle with the wild ruggcdness of nature. They suffered terrible injuries at the hands of the red men, and on their foes they waged a terrible warfare in return. "McAfee MSS. " Doddridge. 18 Said one old Indian fighter, a Col. Joseph Brown, of Tcnnosee, with quaint truthfulness, " I have tried also to he a religious man, hut have not always in a life of so much adventure and strife, heen able to act consistently." South- ii'cstcrn Monthly, Nashville, 1851, I., 80. THE WEST 171 They were relentless, revengeful, suspicious, knowing neither ruth nor pity ; they were also upright, resolute, and fearless, loyal to their friends, and devoted to their country. In spite of their many failings, they were of all men the best fitted to conquer the wilder- ness and hold it against all comers. CHAPTER VI BOONE AND THE LONG HUNTERS J AND THEIR HUNTING IN NO-MAN'S-LAND, 1769-1774 THE American backwoodsmen had surged up, wave upon wave, till their mass trembled in the troughs of the Alle- ghanies, ready to flood the continent beyond. The people threatened by them were dimly conscious of the danger which as yet only loomed in the distance. Far off, among their quiet adobe villages, in the sun- scorched lands by the Rio Grande, the slow Indo-Ibcrian peons and their monkish masters still walked in the tranquil steps of their fathers, ignorant of the growth of the power that was to overwhelm their children and successors ; but nearer by, Spaniard and Creole Frenchman, Algonquin and Ap- palachian, were ail uneasy as they began to feel the first faint pressure of the American advance. As yet they had been shielded by the forest which lay over the land like an un- rent mantle. All through the mountains, and far beyond, it stretched without a break ; but towards the mouth of the Ken- 172 THE WEST 173 tucky and Cumberland rivers the land- scape became varied with open groves of woodland, with flower-strewn glades and great barrens or prairies of long grass. This region, one of the fairest in the world, was the debatable ground between the northern and the southern Indians. Neither dared dwell therein, 1 but both used it as their hunting-grounds ; and it was traversed from end to end by the well marked war traces 2 which they followed when they in- vaded each other's territory. The whites, on trying to break through the barrier which hemmed them in from the western lands, naturally succeeded best when press- ing along the line of least resistance; and so their first great advance was made in this debatable land, where the uncertainly de- fined hunting-grounds of the Cherokee, Creek, and Chickasaw marched upon those of Northern Algonquin and Wyandot. Unknown and unnamed hunters and In- dian traders had from time to time pushed some little way into the wilderness ; and they had been followed by others of whom we do indeed know the names, but little 1 This is true as a whole; but along the Mis- sissippi, in the extreme west of the present Ken- tucky and Tennessee, the Chickasaws held pos- session. There was a Shawnee town south of the Ohio, and Cherokee villages in .southeastern Ten- nessee. 1 The hackwoodsmen generally used " trace," where western frontiersmen would now say " trail." ; 74 THE WIXXIXG OP more. One explorer had found and named the Cumberland river and mountains, and the great pass called Cumberland Gap/ 1 Others had gone far beyond the utmost limits this man had reached, and had hunted in the great bend of the Cumberland and in the woodland region of Kentucky, famed amongst the Indians for the abund- ance of the game. 4 But their accounts ex- ' Dr. Thomas Walker, of Virginia. He named them after the Duke of Cumberland. Walker was a genuine explorer and surveyor, a man of mark as a pioneer. The journal of his trip across the Cumberland to the headwaters of the Kentucky in 1750 ha- been preserved, ami has just been published by William Cabell Rives (Boston: Little, Brown & Co.). It is very interesting, and Mr. Kive-> has done a real service in publishing it. Walker and five com- panions were absent six months. He found traces of earlier wanderers probably hunters. One of his companion- wa- bitten by a bear; three of the dogs were wounded by bears, and one killed by an elk; the hor.-t> were frequently bitten by rattlesnakes; once a bull-buffalo threatened the whole party. They killed 13 buffaloes, 8 elks, 53 bears, jo deer. 150 turkeys, and .some other game. 'Hunters and Itv'ian traders visited portions of Kentucky and Tenne-r-ce years before the country became generally known even <.n the bonier. (' Xot to '-peak of the French, who had long known something of the country, where they had even made trading po-N and hu;lt furnaces, as sec llaywood. etc.) We kn^w the name-- of a few. Those who went down the Ohio, merely landing on the Kentucky shore, do not deserve mention; the French had done a- much for a century. Whites who had been captured by the Indians, THE WEST 175 cited no more than a passing interest ; they came and went without comment, as lonely stragglers had come and gone for nearly a century. The hack woods civilization crept slowly westward without heing influenced in its movements by their explorations. 5 were sometimes taken through Tennessee or Ken- tucky, as John Sailing in 1730, and Mrs. Mary Inglis in 1756 (see " Trans-Alleghany Pioneers," Collins, etc.). In 1654 a certain Colonel Wood was in Kentucky. The next real explorer was nearly a century later, though Doherty in 1690, and Adair in 1730, traded with the Cherokees in what is now Tennessee. Walker struck the head- water of the Kentucky in 1750; he had been to the Cumberland in 1748. He made other ex- ploring trips. Christopher Gist went up the Ken- tucky in 1751. In 1756 and 1758 Forts Loudon and Chissel were built on the Tennessee head- waters, but were soon afterwards destroyed by the Cherokees. In 1761, '62, '63, and for a year or two afterwards, a party of hunters under the lead of one Wallen, hunted on the western waters, going continually farther west. In 1765 Croghan made a sketch of the Ohio River. In 1766 James Smith and others explored Tennessee. S toner, Harrod. and Lindsay, and a party from South Carolina were near the present site of Nashville in 1767; in the same year John Finley and others were in Kentucky; and it was Finley who first told TCoone about it and led him thither. 5 The attempt to find out the names of the men who first saw the different portions of the west- ern country is not very profitable. The first vis- itors were hunters, simply wandering in search of game, not with any settled purpose of explora- tion. Who the individual first-comers were, has generally been forgotten. At the most it is only possible to find out the name of some one of sev- eral who went to a given locality. The hunters i ? 6 THE W1NNIXG OF Finally, however, among these hunters one arose whose wanderings were to bear fruit ; who was destined to lead through the wil- derness the first body of settlers that ever established a community in the far west, completely cut off from the seaboard col- onies. This was Daniel P>oone. lie \\a.s born in Pennsylvania in 1734," but when only a boy had been brought with the rest of his family to the banks of the Yadkin in North Carolina. Here he grew up, and as soon as he came of age he married, built a log hut, and made a clearing, w r hereon to farm like the rest of his backwoods neigh- bors. Thev all tilled their own clearings, guiding the plow among the charred stumps left when the trees were chopped down and the land burned over, and they were all, as a matter of course, hunters. \Yith Boone hunting and exploration were passions, and the lonely life of the wilderness, with its bold, wild freedom, the only existence for which he really cared. He was a tall, spare, sinewy man, with eyes like an eagle's, and were wandering everywhere. By chance some went to places \ve no\v consider imp* irtant. By chance the name- of a le\v "f the-c have been preserved. But the cred.it he!nng< to the whole backwoods race, not to the individual backwoods- man. 8 August 22. 1/34 (according to Tames Parton, in h ; s sketch of Bonne). Hi- grandfather was an English immigrant: his fatlvr had married a Quakeress. When he lived on the banks of the Delaware, t 1 !; O'lin'rv was -till a wilderness. He war- IM.IH m Berks Co. THE WEST 177 muscles that never tired ; the toil and hard- ship of his life made no impress on his iron frame, unhurt by intemperance of any kind, and he lived for eighty-six years, a backwoods hunter to the end of his days. His thoughtful, quiet, pleasant face, so of- ten portrayed, is familiar to every one ; it was the face of a man who never blustered or bullied, who would neither inflict nor suffer any wrong, and who had a limitless fund of fortitude, endurance, and indom- itable resolution upon which to draw when fortune proved adverse. His self-com- mand and patience, his daring, restless love of adventure, and, in time of danger, his absolute trust in his own powers and re- sources, all combined to render him pecu- liarly fitted to follow the career of which he was so fond. Boone hunted on the western waters at an early date. In the valley of Boone's Creek, a tributary of the Watauga, there is a beech tree still standing, on which can be faintly traced an inscription setting forth that " D. Boone cilled a bar on (this) tree in the year 1760." 7 On the expeditions of which this 7 The inscription is first mentioned by Ramsey, p. 67. See Appendix C, for a letter from the Hon. John Allison, at present (1888) Secretary of State for Tennessee, which goes to prove that the inscription has been on the tree as long as the district has been settled. Of course it cannot be proved that the inscription is by Boone; but there is much reason for supposing that such is the case, and little for doubting it. 178 THE WEST is the earliest record he was partly hunting on his own account, and partly exploring on behalf of another, Richard Henderson. Henderson was a prominent citizen of North Carolina, 8 a speculative man of great ambition and energy. He stood high in the colony, was extravagant and fond of display, and his fortune being jeopardized he hoped to more than retrieve it by going into speculations in western lands on an un- heard of scale ; for he intended to try to establish on his own account a great pro- prietary colony beyond the mountains. He had great confidence in I'.oone ; and it was his backing which enabled the latter to turn his discoveries to such good account. Boone's claim to distinction rusts not so much on his wide wanderings in unknown lands, for in this respect he did little more than was done by a hundred other back- woods hunters of his generation, but on the fact that he was able to turn his daring woodcraft to the advantage of his fellows. As he himself said, he was an instrument " ordained of ( lod to settle the wilderness." lie inspired confidence in all who met him, n so that the men of means and influence 8 lie was by birth a Virginian, of mixed Scotch and \Vel.>h de-cent. See Collins, II., 336; also Ramsey. For Room-'-; early connection with Hen- derson, in 1/64. -ee Haywood, 35. " Kven anumfT hi- foe ; he i- almost the only American praised by Lt.-Gov. Henry Hamilton of Detroit, for instance (see Royal Gazette, July 15, 1780). THE WEST 179 were willing to trust adventurous enter- prises to his care ; and his success as an ex- plorer, his skill as a hunter, and his prowess as an Indian fighter, enabled him to bring these enterprises to a successful conclusion, and in some degree to control the wild spirits associated with him. Boone's expeditions into the edges of the wilderness whetted his appetite for the un- known. He had heard of great hunting- grounds in the far interior from a stray hunter and Indian trader, 10 who had him- self seen them, and on May I, 1769, he left his home on the Yadkin " to wander through the wilderness of America in quest of the country of Kentucky." n He was accompanied by five other men, including his informant, and struck out towards the northwest, through the tangled mass of rugged mountains and gloomy forests. During five weeks of severe toil the little band journeyed through vast solitudes, whose utter loneliness can with difficulty be understood by those who have not themselves 10 John Finley. 11 " The Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boone, formerly a hunter '' ; nominally written by Boone himself, in 1784, but in reality by John Filson, the first Kentucky historian, a man who did history good service, albeit a true sample of the small hedge-school pedant. The old pioneer's own language would have been far better than that v.hich Fiison used; for the latter's composition is a travesty of Johnsonese in its most aggravated form. For Filson see Durrett's admirable " Life " in the Filson Club Publications. i So THE iriXXIXC OF dwelt and hunted in primaeval mountain for- ests. Then, early in June, the adventurers broke through the interminable wastes of dim woodland, and stood on the threshold of the beautiful blue-grass region of Ken- tucky ; a land of running waters, of groves and glades, of prairies, cane-brakes, and stretches of lofty forest. It was teeming with game. The shaggy-maned herds of unwieklly buffalo the bison as they should be called had beaten out broad roads through the forest, and had furrowed the prairies with trails along which they had travelled for countless generations. The round-horned elk, with spreading, massive antlers, the lordliest of the deer tribe throughout the world, abounded, and like the buffalo travelled in bands not only through the woods but also across the reaches of waving grass land. The deer were extraordinarily numerous, and so were bears, while wolves and panthers were plentiful. Wherever there was a salt spring the country was fairlv thronged with wild beasts of many kinds. For six months Boone and his companions enjoyed such hunting as had hardly fallen to men of their race since the Germans came out of the Hercynian forest. 1 -' "The Nieblung Lied tells of Siegfried's feats with hear, buffalo, elk, wolf, and deer: " Danach schlug er wieder cinen Buffel und einen Elk THE WEST 181 In December, however, they were at- tacked by Indians. Boone and a companion were captured ; and when they escaped they found their camp broken up, and the rest of the party scattered and gone home. About this time they were joined by Squire Boone, the brother of the great hunter, and himself a woodsman of but little less skill, together with another adventurer; the two had travelled through the immense wilder- ness, partly to explore it and partly with the hope of finding the original adventurers, which they finally succeeded, in doing more by good luck than design. Soon afterwards Boone's companion in his first short captiv- ity was again surprised by the Indians, and Vier starkes Auer nieder und einen grim- men Schelk, So schnell trug ihn die Mahre, dasz ihm nichts entsprang ; Hinden und Hirsche wurden viele sein Fang. ein Waldthier fiirch- terlich , Einen wilden Baren." Siegfried's elk was our moose; and like the American frontiersmen of to-day, the old German singer calls the Wisent or Bison a buffalo Eu- ropean sportsmen now committing an equally bad blunder by giving it the name of the extinct aurochs. Be it observed also that the hard fight- ing, hard drinking, boastful hero of Nieblung fame used a " spur bund," just as his representa- tive of Kentucky or Tennessee used a track hound a thousand years later. 1 82 THE ll-'LVXIXG OF this time was slain 13 the first of the thousands of human beings with whose life-blood Kentucky was bought. The at- tack was entirely unprovoked. The In- dians had wantonly shed the first blood. The land belonged to no one tribe, but was hunted over by all, each feeling jealous of every other intruder; tlu-y attacked the whites, not because the whites had wronged them, but because their invariable policy was to kill anv strangers on any grounds over which they themselves ever hunted, no matter what man had the best right thereto. The Kentucky hunters were promptly taught that in thi> no-man's-land, teeming with game and lacking even a soli- tary human habitation, every Indian must be regarded as a foe. The man who had accompanied Squire Bonne was terrified bv the presence of the Indians, and now returned to the settle- ments. The two brothers remained alone on their hunting-grounds throughout the winter, living in a little cabin. About the first of May Squire set off alone to the set- tlements to procure burses and ammunition. For three month- Daniel I'.oone remained absolutely alone in the wilderness, without salt, sugar, or il"ur. and without the com- panionship of so much as a horse or a dog. 14 I'.ut the solitude-loving hunter. 1S His name was John Stewart. 14 His remaining absolutely alone in the wilder- ness for such a length of time is often spoken of THE WEST 183 dauntless and self-reliant, enjoyed to the full his wild, lonely life ; he passed his days hunting and exploring, wandering hither and thither over the country, while at night he lay off in the canebrakes or thickets, without a fire, so as not to attract the In- dians. Of the latter he saw many signs, and they sometimes came to his camp, hut his sleepless wariness enabled him to avoid capture. Late in July his brother returned, and met him according to appointment at the old camp. Other hunters also now came into the Kentucky wilderness, and Boone joined a small party of them for a short time. Such a party of hunters is always glad to have any thing wherewith to break the irksome monotony of the long evenings passed round the camp fire ; and a book or a greasy pack of cards was as welcome in a camp of Kentucky riflemen in 1770 as it is to a party of Rocky Mountain hunters in with wonder; but here again Boone stands merely as the backwoods type, not as an exception. To this day many hunters in the Rockies do the same. In 1880, two men whom I knew wintered to the west of the Bighorns, 150 miles from any human beings. They had salt and flour, however; but they were nine months without seeing a white fare. They killed elk, buffalo, and a moose; and had a narrow escape from a small Indian war party. T.ast winter C 1887-88) an old trapper, a friend of mine in the days when he hunted buffalo, spent five months entirely alone in the mountains north of the Flathead country. 1 84 THE If IX. \I.\G OF 1888. Boone has recorded in his own quaint phraseology an incident of his life during this summer, which shows how eagerly such a little band of frontiersmen read a book, and how real its characters became to their minds. lie was encamped with five other men on Red River, and they had with them for their " amusement the history of Samuel Gulliver's travels, wherein he gave an account of his young master. Gluinde- lick, carcing [sic] him on a market day for a show to a town called Lulbegrud." In the party who, amid such strange surround- ings, read and listened to Dean Swift's writings was a young man named Alexan- der Xeelv. One night he came into camp with two Indian scalps, taken from a Shawnese village he had found on a creek running into the river; and he announced to the circle of grim wildernes- veterans that " he had been that day to Lulbegrud, and had killed two Brobdignags in their capital." To this day the creek by which the two luckless Shawnces lost their lives is known as Lulbegrud Creek. 18 "Deposition of D;,n : >l Rur.nr. September 15. i7. Certified ropy fY"in D'-po-it'-m B/>nk \n. r. pape I'fi. Clarke Crmnv d-urt. Ky. Fir-f pub- lished by Col. John Ma-oti Br-.'.vn. in "Battle of the Blue I. irks." p. 40 ( Frankfort. iR,2V The book \vbirb the-e nb! hunter- read aroutv! hr'ir canip-fire in tlv Indian-ha'intfd primrrvnl f"re ; t a century and a quarter ae> > ha^ by preat pood- luck been preserved, and i^ in Col. Durrett's libran.- at Louisville. It is entitled the " Works THE WEST 185 Soon after this encounter the increasing danger from the Indians drove Boone back to the valley of the Cumberland River, and in the spring of 1771 he returned to his home on the Yadkin. A couple of years before Boone went to Kentucky, Steiner, or Stoner, and Harrod. two hunters from Pittsburg, who had passed through the Illinois, came down to hunt in the bend of the Cumberland, where Nashville now stands ; they found vast numbers of buffalo, and killed a great many, especially around the licks, where the huge clumsy beasts had fairly destroyed most of the forest, treading down the young trees and bushes till the ground was left bare or covered with a rich growth of clover. The bottoms and the hollows be- tween the hills were thickset with cane. Sycamore grew in the low ground, and to- wards the Mississippi were to be found the persimmon and cottonwood. Sometimes the forest was open and composed of huge of Dr. Jonathan Swift, London, MDCCLXV," and is in two small volumes. On the title-page is written "A. Neelly, 1770." Frontiersmen are often content with the merest printed trash ; but the better men among them appreciate really good literature quite as much as any other class of people. In the long winter evenings they study to good purpose books as varied as Dante, Josephus, Macaulay. Longfellow, Partori's " Life of Jackson," and the Rollo stories to mention only volumes that have been es- pecial favorites with my own cowboys and hun- ters. 1 86 THE IVINNIXG OF trees ; elsewhere it was of thicker, smaller growth. 16 Everywhere game abounded, and it was nowhere very wary. Other hunters of whom we know even the names of only a few, had been through many parts of the wilderness before Boone, and earlier still Frenchmen had built forts and smelting furnaces on the Cumberland, the Tennessee, and the head tributaries of the Kentucky. 17 Boone is interesting as a leader and explorer ; but he is still more interesting as a type. The west was neither discovered, won, nor settled by any single man. No keen-eyed statesman planned the movement, nor was it carried out by any great military leader ; it was the work of a whole people, of whom each man was im- pelled mainly by sheer love of adventure; it was the outcome of the ceaseless striv- ings of all the dauntless, restless backwoods follc to win homes for their descendants and to each penetrate deeper than his neigh- bors into the remote forest hunting-grounds where the perilous pleasures of the chase and of war could be best enjoyed. \Ye owe the conquest of the west to all the backwoodsmen, not to any solitary individual among them ; where all alike were strong and daring lfl MS. diary of Benj. Hawkins, 170/1. Preserved in Xa^h. Historical Snr. Tn 1/96 buffalo were scarce; hut some fresh signs of them were still seen at licks. 17 TTaywood, p. 75. etc. It is a waste of time to quarrel over who first discovered a particular tract of this wilderness. A great many hunters THE WEST 187 there was no chance for any single man to rise to unquestioned preeminence. In the summer of 1769 a large band of hunters 1S crossed the mountains to make a long hunt in the western wilderness, the men clad in hunting-shirts, moccasins, and leggings, with traps, rifles, and dogs, and each bringing with him two or three horses. They made their way over the mountains, forded or swam the rapid, timber-choked streams, and went down the Cumberland, till at last they broke out of the forest and came upon great barrens of tall grass. One of their number was killed by a small party of Indians ; but they saw no signs of human habitations. Yet they came across mounds and graves and other remains of an ancient people who had once lived in the land, but had died out of it long ages before the in- coming of the white men. 19 traversed different parts at different times, from 1760 on, each practically exploring on his own account. We do not know the names of most of them ; those we do know are only worth pre- serving in county histories and the like ; the credit belongs to the race, not the individual. 18 From twenty to forty. Compare Haywood and Marshall, both of whom are speaking of the same bodies of men ; Ramsey makes the mistake of supposing they are speaking of different parties; Haywood dwells on the feats of those who de- scended the Cumberland; Marshall of those who went to Kentucky. 19 The so-called mound builders; now generally considered to have been simply the ancestors of the present Indian races. 8-7 i88 THE WINNING OF The hunters made a permanent camp in one place, and returned to it at intervals to deposit their skins and peltries, Be- tween times they scattered out singly or in small bands. They hunted all through the year, killing vast quantities of every kind of game. Most of it they got by fair still- hunting, but some by methods we do not now consider legitimate, such as calling up a doe by imitating the bleat of a fawn, and shooting deer from a scaffold when they came to the salt licks at night. Neverthe- less, most of the hunters did not approve of "crusting" the game that is, of running it down on snow-shoes in the deep mid- winter snows. At the end of the year some of the adven- turers returned home ; others 20 went north into the Kentucky country, where they hunted for several months before recross- ing the mountains; while the remainder, \-'\ by an old hunter named Kasper Man- sker, 21 built two boats and hollowed out of logs two pirogues or dugouts clumsier but tougher craft than the light birch-bark canoes and started down the Cumberland. At the French Lick, where Nashville now stands, they saw enormous quantities of buffalo, elk, and other game, more than they had ever seen before in any one place. 10 T.ed by one James Knox " Tlis real name was Kasper Mansker, as his Menaliire shows, but he was always spoken of as Mansco. THE WEST 189 Some of their goods were taken by a party of Indians they met, but some French tra- ders whom they likewise encountered, treated them well and gave them salt, flour, tobacco, and taffia, the last being especially prized, as they had had no spirits for a year. They went down to Natchez, sold their furs, hides, oil, and tallow, and some, re- turned by sea, while others, including Mansker, came overland with a drove of horses that was being taken through the Indian nations to Georgia. From the length of time all these men, as well as Boone and his companions, were absent, they were known as the Long Hunters, and the fame of their hunting and exploring spread all along the border and greatly excited the young men. 22 In 1771 many hunters crossed over the mountains and penetrated far into the wilderness, to work huge havoc among the herds of game. Some of them came in bands, and others singly, and many of the mountains, lakes, rivers, and creeks of Ten- nessee are either called after the leaders among these old hunters and wanderers, or else by their names perpetuate the memory of some incident of their hunting trips. 23 "McAfee MSS. _(" Autobiography of Robt. McAfee"). Sometimes the term Long Hunters was used as including Roonc, Finley, and their companions, sometimes not : in the McAfee MSS. it is explicitly used in the former sense. 23 See Haywood for Clinch River, Drake's Pond, Mansco's Lick, Greasy Rock, etc., etc. 1 9 o THE U'lXXIXG OP Mansker himself came back, a leader among his comrades, and hunted many years in the woods alone or with others of his kind, and saw and did many strange things. One winter he and those who were with him huilt a skin house from the hides of game, and when their ammunition gave out they left three of their number and all of their dogs at the skin house and went to the settlements for powder and lead. When they returned they found that two of the men had been killed and the other chased away by the Indians, who, however, had not found the camp. The dogs, having seen no human face for three months, were very wild, yet in a few days became as tame and well trained as ever. They killed such enormous quantities of buffalo, elk, and especially deer, that they could not pack the hides into camp, and one of the party, dur- ing an idle moment and in a spirit of pro- test against fate," 4 carved on the peeled trunk of a fallen poplar, where it long re- mained, the sentence : " 2 wo deer skins lost ; ruination by God ! " The soul of this thriftv hunter must have been further grieved when a partv of Chcrokees visited their camp and took away all the camp utensils and five hundred hides. The whites found the broad track thev made in coming in, but could not find where they had gone out, each wilv redskin then cover- 14 A hunter named Bledioe; Collins, II., 418. THE WEST 191 ing his own trail, and the whole number apparently breaking up into several parties. Sometimes the Indians not only plundered the hunting camps but killed the hunters as well, and the hunters retaliated in kind. Often the white men and red fought one another whenever they met, and displayed in their conflicts all the cunning and merci- less ferocity that made forest warfare so dreadful. Terrible deeds of prowess were done by the mighty men on either side. It w r as a war of stealth and cruelty, and cease- less, sleepless watchfulness. The contest- ants had sinewy frames and iron wills, keen eyes and steady hands, hearts as bold as they were ruthless. Their moccasined feet made no sound as they stole softly on the camp of a sleeping enemy or crept to ambush him while he himself still-hunted or waylaid the deer. A favorite stratagem was to imitate the call of game, especially the gobble of the wild turkey, and thus to lure the would-be hunter to his fate. If the deceit was guessed at, the caller was him- self stalked. The men grew wonderfully expert in detecting imitation. One old hunter, Castlcman by name, was in after years fond of describing how an Indian nearly lured him to his death. It was in the dusk of the evening, when he heard the cries of two great wood owls near him. Listening attentively, he became convinced that all was not right. " The woo-woo call and the woo-woo answer were not well 192 THE nV.YA7.YG OF timed and toned., and the babel-chatter was a failure. More than this, they seemed to be on the ground." Creeping cautiously up, and peering through the brush, he saw something the height of a stump between two forked trees. It did not look natural ; he aimed, pulled trigger, and killed an Indian. Each party of Indians or whites was ever on the watch to guard against danger or to get the chance of taking vengeance for former wrongs. The dark woods saw a myriad lonely fights where red warrior or white hunter fell and no friend of the fallen ever knew his fate, where his sole memorial was the scalp that hung in the smoky cabin or squalid wigwam of the victor. The rude and fragmentary annals of the frontier are filled with the deeds of men, of whom Mansker can IK- taken as a type. lie was a wonderftil marksman and woods- man, and was afterwards made a colonel of the frontier militia, though, being of Ger- man descent, he spoke only broken Eng- lish. 25 Like most of the hunters he became specially proud of his rifle, calling it " Xancv " ; for they were vcrv apt to know each his favorite weapon by some homely or endearing nickname. Every forest sight or sound was familiar to him. lie knew the cries of the birds and beasts so well that no imitation could deceive him. Once he " Carr's "Early Times in Middle Tennessee," PP. 52, 54, 56, etc. THE WEST 193 was nearly taken in by an unusually per- fect imitation of a wild gobbler; but he finally became suspicious, and " placed " his adversary behind a large tree. Having perfect confidence in his rifle, and knowing that the Indians rarely fired except at close range partly because they were poor shots, partly because they loaded their guns too lightly he made no attempt to hide. Feigning to pass to the Indian's right, the latter, as he expected, tried to follow him; reaching an opening in a glade, Mansker suddenly wheeled and killed his foe. When hunting he made his home sometimes in a hollow tree, sometimes in a hut of buffalo hides ; for the buffalo were so plenty that once when a lick was discovered by himself and a companion, 26 the latter, though on horseback, was nearly trampled to death by the mad rush of a herd they surprised and stampeded. He was a famous Indian fighter ; one of the earliest of his recorded deeds has to do with an Indian adventure. He and three other men were trapping on Sulphur Fork and Red River, in the great bend of the Cumberland. Moving their camp, they came on recent traces of Indians : deer- carcases and wicker frames for stretching hides. They feared to tarry longer unless they knew something of their foes, and Mansker set forth to explore, and turned 19 The hunter Bledsoe mentioned in a previous note. i 9 4 THE WINNING OF towards Red River, where, from the sign, he thought to find the camp. Travelling some twenty miles, he perceived by the sycamore trees in view that he was near the river. Advancing a few steps farther he suddenly found himself within eighty or ninety yards of the camp. He instantly slipped behind a tree to watch. There were only two Indians in camp; the rest he sup- posed were hunting at a distance. Just as lie was about to retire, one of the Indians took up a tomakawk and strolled off in the opposite direction; while the other picked up his gun, put it on his shoulder, and walked directly towards Mansker's hiding- place'. Mansker lay close, hoping that he would not be noticed; but the Indian ad- vanced directly towards him until not fifteen paces off. There being no alterna- tive, Mansker cocked his piece, and shot the Indian through the body. The Indian screamed, threw flown his gun, and ran to- wards camp; passing it he pitched headlong down the bluff, dead, into the river. The other likewise ran to camp at the sound of the shot ; but Mansker outran him, reached the cani]> first, and picked up an old gun that was on the ground ; but the gun would not go off. and the Indian turned and es- caped. Mansker broke the old gun. and re- turned speedily to his comrades. The next day they all went to the spot, where they found tin' dead Indian and took away his tomahawk, knife, and bullet-bag; but they THE WEST 195 never found his gun. The other Indian had come back, had loaded his horses with furs, and was gone. They followed him all that day and all night with a torch of dry cane, and could never overtake him. Finding that there were other bands of In- dians about, they then left their hunting grounds. Towards the close of his life old Mansker, like many another fearless and ignorant backwoods fighter, became so much impressed by the fiery earnestness and zeal of the Methodists that he joined him- self to them, and became a strong and help- ful prop of the community whose first foun- dations he had helped to lay. Sometimes the hunters met creole trap- pers, who sent their tallow, hides, and furs in pirogues and bateaux down the Missis- sippi to Natchez or Orleans,, instead of hav- ing to transport them on pack-horses through the perilous forest-tracks across the mountains. They had to encounter dangers from beasts as well as men. More than once we hear of one who, in a cane- brake or tangled thicket, was mangled to death by the horns and hoofs of a wounded buffalo. 27 All of the wild beasts were then comparatively unused to contact with rifle- bearing hunters ; they were, in consequence, much more ferocious and ready to attack man than at present. The bear were the most numerous of all, after the deer; their "As Haywood, 81. 196 THE U'' I. \XIXG OP chase was a favorite sport. There was just enough danger in it to make it exciting, for though hunters were frequently bitten or clawed, they were hardly ever killed. The wolves were generally very wary ; yet in rare instances they, too, were dangerous. The panther was a much more dreaded foe. and lives were sometimes lost in hunting him ; but even with the panther, the cases where the hunter was killed were very ex- ceptional. The hunters were in their lives some- times clean and straight, and sometimes im- moral, with a gross and uncouth vicious- ness. \Ye read of one party of six men and a woman, who were encountered on the Cumberland River ; the woman acted as the wife of a man named Big John, but de- serted him for one of his companions, and when he fell sick persuaded the whole party to leave him in the wilderness to die of dis- ease and starvation. Yet those who left him did not in the end fare better, for they were ambushed and cut oft, when they had gone down to Natchez, apparently bv Indians. At first the hunters, with their small-bore rifles, were unsuccessful in killing buffalo. Once, when George Rogers Clark had long resided in Kentuckv, he and two compan- ions discovered a ("imp of some fortv new- comers actuallv starving, though buffalo were plentv. (.'lark and his friends speedily relieved their necessities bv killing fourteen of the great beasts ; for when once the THE WEST 197 hunters had found out the knack, the buf- falo were easier slaughtered than any other game. 28 The hunters were the pioneers ; but close behind them came another set of explorers quite as hardy and resolute. These were the surveyors. The men of chain and compass played a part in the exploration of the west scarcely inferior to that of the heroes of axe and rifle. Often, indeed, the parts were combined ; Boone himself was a surveyor. 29 Vast tracts of western land were contin- ually being allotted either to actual settlers or as bounties to soldiers who had served against the French and Indians. These had to be explored and mapped and as there was much risk as well as reward in the task, it naturally proved attractive to all adventur- ous young men who had some education, a good deal of ambition, and not too much fortune. A great number of young men of good families, like Washington and Clark, went into the business. Soon after the return of Boone and the Long Hunters, parties of 28 This continued to he the case until the buffalo were all destroyed. When my cattle came to the Little Missouri, in 1882, buffalo were plenty; my men killed nearly a hundred that winter, though lending the cattle; yet an inexperienced hunter not far from us, though a hardy plainsman, killed only three in the whole time. See also Parkman's " Oregon Trail " for an instance of a party of Missouri backwoodsmen who made a character- istic failure in an attempt on a buffalo band. 29 See Appendix. 198 THE jr/.v.vm; or surveyors came down the Ohio, 30 mapping out its course and exploring the Kentucky lands that lay beside it. 31 Among the hunters, surveyors, and ex- plorers who came into the wilderness in 1773 was a band led by three young men named McAfee, typical backwoodsmen, hardy, adventurous, their frontier reckless- ness and license tempered by the Calvinism they had learned in their rough log home. They were fond of hunting, but they came to spy out the land and see if it could be made into homes for their children; and in their party were several surveyors. They descended the Ohio in dugout canoes, with their rifles, blankets, tomahawks, and fish- ing-tackle. They met some Shawnees and gut on well with them ; but while their leader was visiting the chief, Cornstalk, and listening to his fair speeches at his town of Old Chilicothe, the rest of the partv were startled to see a band of young Shawnee braves returning from a successful foray on the settlements, driving before them the laden pack-horses they had stolen/" 2 Thev explored part of Kentuckv, and vis- ited the different lick's. One. long named *" An Knpli-h engineer mafic a rude survey or table of distances of the Ohio in 1766. 11 Collin- -tales that in 1770 and \~~2 Washing- ton surveyed -mall tracts in what i- now north- ea-tern Kentucky; l":t thi- i- more than doubtful. "All of tin, is talo-n from the McAfee MSS., in Colonel Durrett's library. Big Bone Lick, was famous because there were scattered about it in incredible quan- tity the gigantic remains of the extinct mas- todon ; the McAfees made a tent by stretch- ing their blankets over the huge fossil ribs, and used the disjointed vertebra:: as stools on which to sit. Game of many kinds thronged the spaces round the licks ; herds of buffalo, elk, and deer, as well as bears and wolves, were all in sight at once. The ground round about some of them was trod- den down so that there was not as much grass left as would feed a sheep ; and the game trails were like streets, or the beaten roads round a city. A little village to this day recalls by its name the fact that it stands on a former " stamping ground " of the buffalo. At one lick the explorers met with what might have proved a serious ad- venture. One of the McAfees and a com- panion were passing round its outskirts, when some others of the party fired at a gang of buffaloes, which stampeded directly towards the two. While his companion scampered up a leaning mulberry bush, Mc- Afee, less agile, leaped behind a tree trunk, where he stood sideways till the buffalo passed, their horns scraping off the bark on either side ; then he looked round to see h!s friend " hanging in the mulberry bush like a coon." 38 33 McAfee MSS. A similar adventure befell my brother Elliott and my cousin John Roosevelt 200 THE WINNING OF When the party left this lick they fol- lowed a buffalo trail, beaten out in the for- est, " the size of the wagon road leading out of Williamsburg," then the capital of Virginia. It crossed the Kentucky River at a rifile below where Frankfort now stands. Thence they started homewards across the Cumberland Mountains, and suf- fered terribly while making their way through the " desolate and voiceless soli- tudes " ; mere wastes of cliffs, crags, cav- erns, and steep hillsides covered with pine, laurel, and underbrush. Twice they were literally starving and were saved in the nick of time by the killing, on the first occasion, of a big bull elk, on the next, of a small spike buck. At last, sun-scorched and rain- beaten, foot-sore and leg-weary, their thighs torn to pieces by the stout briars, 34 and their feet and hands blistered and scalded, they came out in Powell's Valley, and followed the well-worn hunter's trail across it. Thence it was easy to reach home, where the tale of their adventures excited still more the young frontiersmen. Their troubles were ended for the time being; but in Powell's Valley they met other wanderers whose toil and peril had just begun. There they encountered the while they were hunting buffalo on the staked plain^ of Texas in 1877. " They evidently wore breech-clouts and leg- gings, not trousers. THE WEST 201 company 35 which Daniel Boone was just leading across the mountains, with the hope of making a permanent settlement in the far distant Kentucky. 36 Boone had sold his farm on the Yadkin and all the goods he could not carry with him, and in September, 1773, he started for Kentucky with his wife and his children ; five families, and forty men besides, went with him, driving their horses and cattle. It was the first attempt that was made to settle a region separated by long stretches of wilderness from the already inhabited districts ; and it was doomed to failure. On approaching the gloomy and forbidding defiles of the Cum- berland Mountains the party was attacked by Indians. 37 Six of the men, including Boone's eldest son, were slain, and the cat- tle scattered ; and though the backwoods- men rallied and repulsed their assailants, yet they had suffered such loss and damage that they retreated and took up their abode temporarily on the Clinch River. In the same year Simon Kenton, after- wards famous as a scout and Indian fighter, in company with other hunters, wandered through Kentucky. Kenton, like every one else, was astounded at the beauty and fer- tility of the land and the innumerable herds s ; McAfee MSS. " Filson's " Boone." "October TO. 17/3, Filson's ''Boone.'' The McAfee MSS. speak of meeting Boone in Pow- ell's Valley and getting home in September; if so, it must have been the very end of the month. 202 THE ll'IXXIXG OP of buffalo, elk, and other game that thronged the trampled ground around the licks. One of his companions was taken by the Indians, who burned him alive. In the following year numerous parties of surveyors visited the land. One of these was headed by John Floyd, who was among the ablest of the Kentucky pioneers, and afterwards played a prominent part in the young commonwealth, until his death at the hands of the savages. Floyd was at the time assistant surveyor of Fincastle County ; and his party went out for the pur- pose of making surveys " by virtue of the Governor's warrant for officers and soldiers on the Ohio and its waters." 38 They started on April 9, 1774, eight men in all, from their homes in Fincastle Count}-. 39 They went down the Kanawha in a canoe, shooting bear and deer, and " The account of this journey of Floyd and his companions is taken from a very interesting MS. journal, kept by one of the party Thomas Han- son. It \vas funiMied me. together with other valuable papers through the courtesy of Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Trieg. of Abingdon, Ya.. and of Dr. George Ben. Johnston, of Richmond, to whom I take this opportunity of returning my warm thanks "From the house of Col. William Preston, "at one o'clock, in hisjh =pirits." They took the canoe at the mouth of Flk River, on the i6th. ATost of the diary is, of cour-e. taken up with notes on the character and fertility of the lands, and memo- randa of the Mirveys made. Imperial comment is made on a burning ^pring by the Kanawha. which is dubbed " one of the wonders of the world." THE WEST 203 catching great pike and catfish. The first survey they made was one of two thousand acres for " Colo. Washington " ; and they made another for Patrick Henry. On the way they encountered other parties of sur- veyors, and learned that an Indian war was threatened ; for a party of thirteen would- be settlers on the upper Ohio had been at- tacked, but had repelled their assailants, and in consequence the Shawnees had de- clared for war, and threatened thereafter to kill the Virginians and rob the Pennsylvan- ians wherever they found them. 40 The rea- son for this discrimination in favor of the citizens of the Quaker State was that the Virginians with whom the Indians came chiefly in contact were settlers, whereas the Pennsylvanians were traders. The marked difference in the way the savages looked at the two classes received additional emphasis in Lord Dunmore's war. At the mouth of the Kanawha 41 the ad- venturers found twenty or thirty men gath- ered together ; some had come to settle, but most wished to explore or survey the lands. All were in high spirits, and reso- lute to go to Kentucky, in spite of Indian 40 They received this news on April i7th, and confirmation thereof on the iQth. The dates should be kept in mind, as they show that the Shawnees had begun hostilities from a fortnight to a month before Crcsap's attack and the murder of Logan's family, which will be described here- after. u Which they reached on the 20th. 204 THE BINNING OF hostilities. Some of them joined Floyd, and raised his party to eighteen men, who started down the Ohio in four canoes. 42 They found " a hattoe loaded with corn," apparently abandoned, and took about three bushels with them. Other parties joined them from time to time, as they paddled and drifted down stream; and one or two of their own number, alarmed by further news of Indian hostilities, went back. Once they met a party of Delawares, by whom they were not molested ; and again, two or three of their number encountered a couple of hostile savages ; and though no one was hurt, the party kept on the watch all the time. They marvelled much at the great trees one sycamore was thirtv-sevcn feet in circumference. and on a Sunday, which they kept as a day of rest, they examined with interest the forest-covered embank- ments of a fort at the mouth of the Scioto, a memorial of the mound-builders who had vanished centuries before. When they reached the mouth of the Kentucky 43 they found two Delawares and a squaw, to whom they gave corn and salt. Here they split up, and Floyd and his orig- inal party spent a week in the neighbor- hood, surveying land, going some distance up the Kentucky to a salt lick, where they saw a herd of three hundred buffalo. 4 * "On the 22d. "On May ijth. " There were quarrels among the surveyors. THE WEST 205 They then again embarked, and drifted down the Ohio. On May 26th they met two Dela wares in a canoe flying a red flag ! they had been sent down the river with a pass from the commandant at Fort Pitt to gather their hunters and get them home, in view of the threatened hostilities between the Shawnees and Virginians. 45 The ac- tions of the two Indians were so suspicious, and the news they brought was so alarming, that some of Floyd's companions became greatly alarmed, and wished to go straight on down the Mississippi ; but Floyd sw r ore that he would finish his work unless actually forced off. Three days afterwards they reached the Falls. Here Floyd spent a fortnight, making surveys in every direction, and then started off to explore the land between the Salt River and the Kentucky. Like the others, The entry for May I3th runs: "Our company divided, eleven men went up to Harrad's com- pany one hundred miles up the Cantucky or Louisa river (n. b. one Capt. Harrad has been there many months building a kind of Town &c) in order to make improvements. This day a quarrel arose between Mr. Lee and Mr. Hyte ; Lee cut a Stick and gave Hyte a Whiping with it, upon which Mr. Floyd demanded the King's Peace which stopt it sooner than it would have ended if he had not been there.'' " They said that in a skirmish the whites had killed thirteen Shawnees, two Mingos, and one Delaware (this may or may not mean the massa- cres by Cresap and Greathouse ; see, post, chapter on Lord Dunmore's War). 20 6 THE WINNING OF he carried his own pack, which consisted of little but his blanket and his instruments. He sometimes had difficulties with his men ; one of them refused to carry the chain one day, and went off to hunt, got lost, and was not found for thirty-six hours. Another time it was noticed that two of the hunters had become sullen, and seemed anxious to leave camp. The following- morning, while on the march, the party killed an elk and halted for breakfast ; but the two hunters walked on, and, says the journal, " we never saw them more " ; but whether they got back to the settlements or perished in the wilderness, none could tell. The party suffered much, hardship. Floyd fell sick, and for three days could not travel. They gave him an " Indian sweat," probably building just such a little sweat- In use as the Indians use to this day. Others of their number at different times fell ill; and they were ever on the watch for In- dians. In the vast forests, every sign of a human being was the si^n of a probable enemv. Once they heard a gun, and an- other time a sound as of a man calling to another; and on each occasion they re- doubled their caution, keeping guard as they rested, and at night extinguishing their camp-fire and sleeping a mile or two from it. They built a bark canoe in which to cross the Kentucky, and on the ist of July they met another party of surveyors on the banks THE WEST 907 of that stream. 46 Two or three days after- wards, Floyd and three companions left the others, agreeing to meet them on August ist, at a cabin built by a man named Har- wood, on the south side of the Kentucky, a few miles from the mouth of the Elkhorn. For three weeks they surveyed and hunted, enchanted with the beauty of the country. 47 They then \vent to the cabin, several days before the appointed time ; but to their sur- prise found every thing scattered over the ground, and two fires burning, while on a tree near the landing was written, ''Alarmed by finding some people killed and we are gone down." This left the four adventur- ers in a bad plight, as they had but fifteen rounds of powder left, and none of them knew the way home. However there was no help for it, and they started off. 48 When they came to the mountains they found it such hard going that they were obliged to throw away their blankets and every thing else except their rifles, hunting-shirts, leg- gings, and moccasins. Like the other par- 48 Where the journal says the land " is like a paradise, it is so good and beautiful." " The journal for July 8th says: " The Land is so good that I cannot give it its due Praise. The undergrowth is Clover, Pea-vine, Cane & Nettles ; intermingled with Rich Weed. It's timber is Honey Locust, Black Walnut, Sugar Tree, Hick- ory, Iron-W r ood, Hoop Wood, Mulberry, Ash and Elm and some Oak." And later it dwells on the high limestone cliffs facing the river on both sides. 4S On July 25th. 2o8 77/7: ll'lXXIXG OF ties of returning explorers, they found this portion of their journey extremely distress- ing ; and they suffered much from sore feet, and also from warn of food, until they came on a gang of buffaloes, and killed two. At last they struck Cumberland Clap, followed a blazed trail across it to Powell's Valley, and on August <;th came to the outlying settle- ments on Clinch River, where they found the settlers all in their wooden forts, be- cause of the war with the Shawnees. 49 In this same- year many different bodies of hunters and surveyors came into the countrv, drifting down the Ohio in pi- rogues. Some forty men led by llarrod and Sowdowsky 50 founded Harrodsburg, 49 I have given the account of Floyd's journey at some length as illustrating the experience of a typical party of surveyors. The journal has never hitherto been alluded t<>. and my getting hold of it was almost accidental. There were three different kinds of explorers; Bonne repre-ents the hunter-: the McAfees rep- re-ent the would-be settlers ; and Floyd's party the surveyors who mapped mit the land for owners of land grant 1 -. In 1774. there were panic- of each kind in Kentucky. Floyd'- experience show- that these panic- were continually meeting others and splitting up: he started out with eight men, at one time wa< in a hody with thirty-seven, and re- turned hnme with f'>ur. The journal i- written in a singularly clear and legible hand, evidently by a man of good educa- tion. *' The latter. iV'tii hi- name presumably of Sclavonic ance-try. came originally fr'Mii New York, always ;> centre of mixed nationalities. He founded a mo-t respectable family, some of whom THE WEST 209 where they built cabins and sowed corn; but the Indians killed one of their number, and the rest dispersed. Some returned across the mountains ; but Sowdowsky and another went through the woods to the Cumberland River, where they built a canoe, paddled down the muddy Mississippi between unending reaches of lonely marsh and forest, and from New Orleans took ship to Virginia. At that time, among other parties of surveyors there was one which had been sent by Lord Dunmore to the Falls of the Ohio. When the war broke out between the Shawnees and the Virginians, Lord Dunmore, being very anxious for the fate of these surveyors, sent Boonc and Stoner to pilot them in ; which the two bush veterans accordingly did, making the round trip of 800 miles in 64 days. The outbreak of the Indian war caused all the hunters and sur- veyors to leave Kentucky ; and at the end of 17/4 there were no whites left, either there or in what is now middle Tennessee. But on the frontier all men's eyes were turned towards these new and fertile re- gions. The pioneer work of the hunter was over, and that of the axe-bearing settler was about to begin. have changed their name to Sandusky; but there seems to be no justification for their claim that they gave Sandusky its name, for this is almost certainly a corruption of its old Algonquin title. "American Pioneer" (Cincinnati, 1843), II., p. 32.5- CHAPTER VII SEVIER, ROBERTSON, AXD THE WATAUGA CO M M O N \V MALT II, 1 769- 1 774 SOOX after the successful ending of the last colonial struggle with France, and the conquest of Canada, the British king issued a proclamation forbidding the English colonists from trespassing on In- dian grounds, or moving \vest of the moun- tains. Hut in 1768, at the treaty of Fort Stamvix, the Six Nations agreed to sur- render to the English all the lands lying between the Ohio and the Tennessee 1 ; and this treaty was at once seized upon by the backwoodsmen as oik-ring an excuse for set- tling beyond the mountains. However, the Iroqnois had ceded lands to which they had no more right than a score or more other Indian tribes; and these latter, not having been consulted, felt at perfect liberty to make war on the intruders. In point of fact, no one tribe or set of tribes could cede Kentucky or Tennessee, because no one tribe or set of tribes owned either. The great hunting-grounds between the Ohio and the Tennessee formed a debatable land, claimed by every tribe that could hold its own against its rivals. 2 1 Then called the Cherokee. ' Volumes could be filled and indeed it is 210 THE WEST 211 The eastern part of what is now Ten- nessee consists of a great hill-strewn, for- est-clad valley, running from northeast to southwest, bounded on one side by the Cumberland, and on the other by the Great Smoky and Unaka Mountains ; the latter separating it from North Carolina. In this valley arise and end the Clinch, the Hol- ston, the Watauga, the Nolichucky, the French Broad, and the other streams, whose combined volume makes the Tennessee River. The upper end of the valley lies in southwestern Virginia, the head-waters of some of the rivers being well within that State ; and though the province was really part of North Carolina, it was separated therefrom by high mountain chains, while from Virginia it was easy to follow the watercourses down the valley. Thus, as elsewhere among the mountains forming the western frontier, the first movements of population went parallel with, rather than across, the ranges. As in western Virginia the first settlers came, for the most part, hardly too much to say, have been filled with worthless " proofs " of the ownership of Iroquois, Shawnees, or Cherokees, as the case might be. In truth, it would probably have been difficult to get any two members of the same tribe to have pointed out with precision the tribal limits. Each tribe's country was elastic, for it included all lands from which it was deemed possible to drive out the possessors. In 1773 the various parties of Long Hunters had just the same right to _ the whole of the territory in question that the Indians themselves had. THE iriXXIXG OF 212 from Pennsylvania, so, in turn, in what was then western North Carolina, and is now eastern Tennessee, the first settlers came mainly from Virginia, and, indeed, in great part, from this same Pennsylvania!! stock.* 'Campbell MSS. " The first settlers on Holston River were a re- markable race of people for their intelligence, en- terprise, and hardy adventure. The greater por- tion of them had emigrated from the counties of Botetourt. Augusta, and Frederick, and others along the same valley, and from the upper conn- tie- of Maryland and Pennsylvania; were mostly descendants of Irish stock, and generally where they had any religious opinions, were Presby- terian-. A very large proportion were religions, and many were members of the church. There were some families, however, and amongst the most wealthv. that were extremely wild and dis- si.pated in their habits. " The fir^t clergyman that came among them was the Rev. Charles Cnmmings, an Irishman by birth, but educated in Pennsylvania. This gen- tleman was one of the first settlers, defended his domicile for years \\ith hi- rifle in band, and built hi' fir-t mectintr-house on the very spot where he and two or three neighbor- and one of his serv- ants had bad a severe -kirmi-h with the Indians, in which one of his party wa- killed and another wounded. Here lie preached to a very large and most respectable congregation for twenty or thirty years. H c was a zealous whig, and contributed much to kindle the patriotic fire which blazed forth among these people in the revolutionary struggle." This is from a MS. sketch of the Holston Pioneer-;, by the Hon. David Campbell, a on of one of the first settlers. The Campbell family, of Presbyterian Irish stock, fir-t came to Pennsyl- vania, and drifted south. In the revolutionary THE WEST 213 Of course, in each case there was also a very considerable movement directly west- ward. 4 They were a sturdy race, enterpris- ing and intelligent, fond of the strong ex- citement inherent in the adventurous fron- tier life. Their untamed and turbulent pas- sions, and the lawless freedom of their war it produced good soldiers and commanders, such as William and Arthur Campbell. The Campbells intermarried with the Prestons, Breck- cnridges, and other historic families; and their blood now runs in the veins of many of the noted men of the States south of the Potomac and Ohio. * The first settlers on the Watauga included both Virginians (as " Captain " William Bean, whose child was the first born in what is now Tennessee; Ramsey, 94) and Carolinians (Hay- wood, 37). But many of these Carolina hill peo- ple were, like Boone and Henderson, members of families who had drifted down from the north. The position of the Presbyterian churches in all this western hill country shows the origin of that portion of the people which gave the tone to the rest; and, as we have already seen, while some of the Presbyterians penetrated to the hills from Charleston, most came down from the north. The Presbyterian blood was, of course, Irish or Scotch; and the numerous English from the coast regions also mingled with the two former kindred stocks, and adopted their faith. The Huguenots, Hollanders, and many of the Germans, being of Calvinistic creed, readily assimilated themselves to the Presbyterians. The absence of Episcopacy on the western border, while in part indicating merely the lack of religion in the backwoods, and the natural growth of dissent in such a society, also indicates that the people were not of pure English descent, and were of different stock from those east of them. 2i 4 THE WINNING OF lives, made them a population very pro- ductive of wild, headstrong characters ; yet, as a whole, they were a God-fearing race, as was but natural in those who sprang from the loins of the Irish Calvinists. Their preachers, all Presbyterians, followed close behind the first settlers, and shared their tuil and dangers ; they tilled their fields rifle in hand, and fought the Indians valorously. They felt that they were dispossessing the Canaanites, and were thus working the Lord's will in preparing the land for a race which they believed was more truly His chosen people than was that nation which Joshua led across the Jordan. They ex- horted no less earnestly in the bare meet- ing-houses on Sunday, because their hands were roughened with guiding the plow and wielding the axe on week-days; for they did not believe that being called to preach the word of God absolved them from earn- ing their living by the sweat of their brows. The women, the wives of the settlers, were of the same iron temper. They fearlessly fronted every danger the men did, and they worked quite as hard. They prized the knowledge and learning they themselves had been forced to do without ; and many a backwoods woman bv thrift and industry, by the sale of her butter and cheese, and the calves from her cows, enabled her hus- band to give his sons good schooling, and perhaps to provide for some favored mem- THE WEST 215 her of the family the opportunity to secure a really first-class education. 5 The valley in which these splendid pio- neers of our people settled, lay directly in the track of the Indian marauding parties, for the great war trail used by the Chero- kees and by their northern foes ran along its whole length. This war trail, or war trace as it was then called, was in places very distinct, although apparently never as well marked as were some of the buffalo trails. It sent off a branch to Cumberland Gap, whence it ran directly north through Kentucky to the Ohio, being there known as the warriors' path. Along these trails the northern and southern Indians passed and repassed when they went to war against each other ; and of course they were ready and eager to attack any white man who might settle down along their course. In 1769, the year that Boone first went to Kentucky, the first permanent settlers came to the banks of the Watauga, 6 the settle- ment being merely an enlargement of the B Campbell MSS. ' For this settlement see especially " Civil and Political History of the State of Tennessee," John Haywood (Knoxville. 1823), p. 37; also " Annals of Tennessee." J. G. M. Ramsey (Charleston, 1853). p. 92; "History of Middle Tennessee," A. W. Putnam (Nashville. 1859), p. 21 ; the " Address " of the Hon. John Allison to the Tennessee Press Association (Nashville, 1887) ; and the " History of Tennessee," by James Phelan (Boston, if" 2 i6 THE WINNING OF Virginia settlement, which had for a short time existed on the head-waters of the Holston, especially near Wolf Hills. 7 At first the settlers thought they were still in the domain of Virginia, for at that time the line marking her southern boundary had not been run so far west. 8 Indeed, had they not considered the land as belonging to Virginia, they would probably not at the moment have dared to intrude farther on territory claimed by the Indians. But while the treaty between the crown and the Iro- quois at Fort Stanwix 9 had resulted in the cession of whatever right the Six Nations had to the southwestern territory, another treaty was concluded about the same time lrt with the Cherokees, by which the latter agreed to surrender their claims to a small portion of this country, though as a matter of fact before the treaty was signed white settlers had crowded beyond the limits al- lowed them. These two treaties, in the first of which one set of tribes surrendered a small portion of land, while in the second an entirely different confederacy surren- dered a larger tract, which, however, in- cluded part of the first cession, are suffi- r Now Abingdon. * It only went to Steep Rock. 8 November q. 1768. 10 October 14. i;r,8. at Hard Labor. S. C, con- firmee by the treaty of October 18. 1/70. at Lock- abar. S. C. Roth of the^c treaties acknowledged the rights of the Cherokees to the major part of these northwestern hunting-grounds. THE WEST 217 cient to show the absolute confusion of the Indian land titles. But in 1771, one of the new-comers, 11 who was a practical surveyor, ran out the Virginia boundary line some distance to the westward, and discovered that the Watauga settlement came within the limits of North Carolina. Hitherto the settlers had sup- posed that they themselves were governed by the Virginian law, and that their rights as against the Indians were guaranteed by the Virginian government ; but this dis- covery threw them back upon their own re- sources. They suddenly found themselves obliged to organize a civil government, un- der which they themselves should live, and at the same time to enter into a treaty on their own account with the neighboring In- dians, to whom the land they were on ap- parently belonged. The first need was even more pressing than the second. North Carolina was al- ways a turbulent and disorderly colony, un- able to enforce law and justice even in the long-settled districts ; so that it was wholly out of the question to appeal to her for aid in governing a remote and outlying com- munity. Moreover, about the time that the Watauga commonwealth was founded, the troubles in North Carolina came to a head. Open war ensued between the adherents of the royal governor, Tryon, on the one hand, "Anthony Bledsoe. 2i8 THE WINKING OF and the Regulators, as the insurgents styled themselves, on the other, the struggle end- ing with the overthrow of the Regulators at the battle of the Alamance. 12 As a consequence of these troubles, many people from the back counties of North Carolina crossed the mountains, and took up their abode among the pioneers on the Watauga 13 and upper Ilolston; the beau- tiful valley of the Nolichucky soon receiv- ing its share of this stream of immigration. Amung the first comers were many mem- bers of the class of desperate adventurers always to be found hanging round the out- skirts of frontier civilization. Horse-thieves, murderers, escaped bond-servants, runaway debtors all, in fleeing from the law, sought to find a secure asylum in the wilderness. The brutal and lawless wickedness of these men, whose uncouth and raw savagery was almost more repulsive than that of city criminals, made it imperative upon the decent members of the community to unite for self-protection. The desperadoes were often mere human beasts of prev ; they plundered whites and "May 1 6, 1771. 11 It is said that the greatest proportion of the early settlers came from Wake County. X. C, as did Robertson ; but many of them, like Robert- son, were of Virginian birth; and the great ma- jority were of the same -tock as the Virpinian and Pennsylvanian mountaineer^. Of the fiye mem- bers of the " court '' or governing committee of \Vatauga, three \vere of Virginian birth, one came from South Carolina, and the origin of the other is not .-pecified. Ramsey, 107. THE WEST 2 i 9 Indians impartially. They not only by their thefts and murders exasperated the Indians into retaliating on innocent whites, but, on the other hand, they also often deserted their own color and went to live among the red- skins, becoming their leaders in the worst outrages. 14 But the bulk of the settlers were men of sterling worth ; fit to be the pioneer fathers of a mighty and beautiful state. They pos- sessed the courage that enabled them to defy outside foes, together with the rough, practical common-sense that allowed them to establish a simple but effective form of government, so as to preserve order among themselves. To succeed in the wilderness, it was necessary to possess not only daring, but also patience and the capacity to endure grinding toil. The pioneers were hunters and husbandmen. Each, by the aid of axe 14 In Collins, II., 345, is an account of what may be termed a type family of these frontier barba- rians. They were named Harpe ; and there is something revoltingly bestial in the record of their crimes; of how they travelled through the coun- try, the elder brother, Micajah Harpe, with two wives, the younger with only one; of the ap- palling number of murders they committed, for even small sums of money; of their unnatural proposal to kill all their children, so that they should not be hampered in their flight ; of their life in the woods, like wild beasts, and the ignoble ferocity of their ends. Scarcely less sombre read- ing is the account of how they were hunted down, and of the wolfish eagerness the borderers showed to massacre the women and children as well as the men. 38 C20 THE II 'I. \XIXG OF and brand, cleared his patch of corn land in the forest, close to some clear, swift-flowing stream, and by his skill with the rifle won from canebrake and woodland the game on which his family lived until the first crop was grown. A few of the more reckless and foolhardy, and more especially of those who were either merely hunters and not farmers, or else who were of doubtful character,, lived entirely by themselves ; but, as a rule, each knot of settlers was gathered together into a little stockaded hamlet, called a fort or station. This system of defensive villages was very distinctive of pioneer backwoods life, and was unique of its kind ; without it the settlement of the west and southwest would have been indefinitely postponed. In no other way could the settlers have com- bined for defence. while yet retaining their individual ownership of the land. The Watauga forts or palisaded villages were of the usual kind, the cabins and block- houses connected by a heavy loop-holed picket. They were admirably adapted for defence with the rifle. As there was no moat, there was a certain danger from an attack with fire unless water was stored within ; and it was of course necessary to guard carefully against surprise. But to open assault they were practically im- pregnable, and they therefore offered a sure haven of refuge to the settlers in case of an Indian inroad. In time of peace, the in- THE WEST 221 habitants moved out, to live in their isolated log-cabins and till the stump-dotted clear- ings. Trails led through the dark forests from one station to another, as well as to the settled districts beyond the mountains ; and at long intervals men drove along them bands of pack-horses, laden with the few indispensable necessaries the settlers could not procure by their own labor. The pack- horse was the first, and for a long time the only, method of carrying on trade in the backwoods; and the business of the packer was one of the leading frontier industries. The settlers worked hard and hunted hard, and lived both plainly and roughly. Their cabins were roofed with clapboards, or huge shingles, split from the log with maul and wedge, and held in place by heavy stones, or by poles ; the floors were made of rived puncheons, hewn smooth on one surface ; the chimney was outside the hut, made of rock when possible, otherwise of logs thickly plastered with clay that was strengthened with hogs' bristles or deer hair; in the great fire-place was a tongue on which to hang pot-hooks and kettle ; the unglazed window had a wooden shutter, and the door was made of great clapboards. 15 The men made their own harness, farming implements, and domestic utensils ; and, as in every other community still living in the 15 In " American Pioneers," II., 445, is a full description of the better sort of backwoods log- cabin. 222 THE WINNING OF heroic age, the smith was a person of the utmost importance. There was but one thing that all could have in any quantity, and that \vas land ; each had all of this he wanted for the taking, or if it was known to belong to the Indians, he got its use for a few trinkets or a flask of whisky. A few of the settlers still kept some of the Presby- terian austerity of character, as regards amusements ; but, as a rule, they were fond of horse-racing, drinking, dancing, and fiddling. The corn-shuckings, flax-pull- ings, log-rollings (when the felled timber was rolled oil the clearings), house-rais- ings, maple-sugar-boilings, and the like were scenes of boisterous and light-hearted merriment, to which the whole neighbor- hood came, for it was accounted an insult if a man was not asked in to help on such occasions, and none but a base churl would refuse his assistance. The backwoods peo- ple had to front peril and hardship without stint, and they loved for the moment to leap out of the bounds of their narrow lives and taste the coarse pleasures that are always dear to a strong, simple, and primitive race. Yet underneath their moodiness and their fitful light-heartedness lay a spirit that when roused was terrible in its ruthless and stern intensity of purpose. Such were the settlers of the \Yatauga, the founders of the commonwealth that grew into the State of Tennessee, who early in 1772 decided that they must form some THE WEST 223 kind of government that would put down wrong-doing and work equity between man and man. Two of their number already towered head and shoulders above the rest in importance and merit especial mention ; for they were destined for the next thirty years to play the chief parts in the history of that portion of the Southwest which largely through their own efforts became the Slate of Tennessee. These two men. neither of them yet thirty years of age, were John Sevier and James Robertson. 16 Robertson first came to the Watauga early in I770. 17 He had then been married for two years, and had been " learning his letters and to spell " from his well-educated wife ; for he belonged to a backwoods family, even poorer than the average, and he had not so much as received the rudi- mentary education that could be acquired 16 Both were born in Virginia; Sevier in Rock- ingham County, September 23, 1745, and Robert- son in Brunswick County, June 28, 1742. 17 Putnam, p. 21 ; who, however, is evidently in error in thinking he was accompanied by Boone, as the latter was then in Kentucky. A recent writer revives this error in another form, stating that Robertson accompanied Boone to the Wa- tauga in 1769. Boone, however, left on his trav- els on May I, 1/69, and in June was in Kentucky; whereas Putnam not only informs us definitely that Robertson went to the Watauga for the first time in 1770, but also mentions that when he went his eldest son was already born, and this event took place in June, 1769, so that it is certain Boone and Robertson were not together. THE WIN XIX G OF 224 at an "old-field" school. But he was a man of remarkable natural powers, above the medium height, 18 with wiry, robust form, light-blue eyes, fair complexion, and dark hair; his somewhat sombre face had in it a look of self-contained strength that made it impressive; and his taciturn, quiet, masterful way of dealing with men and af- fairs, together with his singular mixture of cool caution and most adventurous daring, gave him an immediate hold even upon such lawless spirits as those of the border. He was a mighty hunter; but. unlike Boone, hunting and exploration were to him sec- ondary affairs, and he came to examine the lands with the eye of a pioneer settler. He intended to have a home where he could bring up his familv, and, if possible, he wished to find rich lands, with good springs, whereto he might lead those of his neigh- bors who, like himself, eagerly desired to ri>e in the world, and to provide for the well-being of their children. To find such a countrv Robertson, then dwelling in North Carolina, decided to go across the mountains. lie started off alone on his exploring expedition, ritle in hand, and a good horse under him. 1 fe crossed the ranges that continue northward the Great Smokies, and spent the summer in " The description of his looks i.s taken from the statements of his rle-.em'ant-. and of the grand- children of his contemporaries. THE WEST 225 the beautiful hill country where the springs of the western waters flowed from the ground. He had never seen so lovely a land. The high valleys, through which the currents ran, were hemmed in by towering mountain walls, with cloud-capped peaks. The fertile loam forming the bottoms was densely covered with the growth of the primaeval forest, broken here and there by glade-like openings, where herds of game grazed on the tall, thick grass. Robertson was well treated by the few settlers, and stayed long enough to raise a crop of corn, the stand-by of the backwoods pioneer ; like every other hunter, explorer, Indian fighter, and wilderness wanderer, he lived on the game he shot, and the small quantity of maize he was able to carry with him. 19 In the late fall, however, when re- crossing the mountain on his way home through the trackless forests, both game and corn failed him. He lost his way, was forced to abandon his horse among impass- able precipices, and finally found his rifle useless owing to the powder having become soaked. For fourteen days he lived almost wholly on nuts and wild berries,, and was on the point of death from starvation, when he met two hunters on horseback, who fed him and let him ride their horses by turns, and brought him safely to his home. "The importance of maize to the western set- tler is shown by the fact that in our tongue it has now monopolized the title of corn. 226 THE in XX ING OP Such hardships were little more than matter-of-course incidents in a life like his ; and he at once prepared to set out with his family for the new land. His accounts greatly excited his neighbors, and sixteen families made ready to accompany him. The little caravan started, under Robert- son's guidance, as soon as the ground had dried after the winter rains in the spring of 1 77 1. 20 They travelled in the usual style of backwoods emigrants ; the men on foot, rifle on shoulder, the elder children driving the lean cows, while the women, the young children, and the few household goods, and implements of husbandry, were carried on the backs of the pack-horses ; for in settling the backwoods during the last century, the pack-horse played the same part that in the present century was taken by the canvas- covered emigrant wagon, the white-topped " prairie schooner." Once arrived at the Watauga, the Caro- lina new-comers mixed readily with the few Virginians already on the ground ; and Rob- ertson speedily became one of the leading men in the little settlement. On an island in the river he built a house of logs with the bark still on them on the outside, though hewed smooth within ; tradition says that it was the largest in the settlement. Cer- tainly it belonged to the better class of " Putnam, p. 24. says it \vas after the battle of the Great Alamanoe, \vliirh took place May 16, 1771. An untrustworthy tradition says March. THE WEST 227 backwoods cabins, with a loft and several rooms, a roof of split saplings, held down by weighty poles, a log veranda in front, and a huge fire-place, of sticks or stones laid in clay, wherein the pile of blazing logs roared loudly in cool weather. The furni- ture was probably precisely like that in other houses of the class ; a rude bed, table, settee, and chest of drawers, a spinning- jenny, and either three-legged stools or else chairs with backs and seats of undressed deer hides. Robertson's energy and his re- markable natural ability brought him to the front at once, in every way ; although, as already said, he had much less than even rhe average backwoods education, for he could not read when he was married, while most of the frontiersmen could not only read but also write, or at least sign their names. 21 Sevier, who came to the Watauga early in 1772, nearly a year after Robertson and his little colony had arrived, differed widely from his friend in almost every re- spect save highmindedness and dauntless, invincible courage. He was a gentleman by birth and breeding, the son of a Huguenot who had settled in the Shenandoah Valley. m In examining numerous original drafts of petitions and the like, signed by hundreds of the original settlers of Tennessee and Kentucky, I have been struck by the small proportion not much over three or four per cent, at the outside of men who made their mark instead of signing. 228 THE tt'INXI.VG OP He had received a fair education, and though never fond of books, he was to the end of his days an interested and intelligent observer of men and things, both in America and Europe. He corresponded on intimate and equal terms with Madison, Franklin, and others of our most polished statesmen ; while Robertson's letters, when he had finally learned to write them himself, were almost as remarkable for their phenom- enally bad spelling as for their shrewd com- mon-sense and homely, straightforward honesty. Sevier was a very handsome man ; during his lifetime he was reputed the handsomest in Tennessee. He was tall, fair- skinned, blue-eyed, brown-haired, of slender build, with erect, military carriage and com- manding bearing, his lithe, finely propor- tioned figure being well set off by the hunt- ing-shirt which he almost invariably wore. From his French forefathers he inherited a gay, pleasure-loving temperament, that made him the must charming of compan- ions. His manners were polished and easy, and he had great natural dignity. Over the backwoodsmen he exercised an almost unbounded influence, due as much to his ready tact, invariable courtesy, and lavish, generous hospitality, as to the skill and dashing prowess which made h ; m the most renowned Indian fighter of the Southwest. He had an eager, impetuous nature, and was very ambitious, bein^ almost as fond of THE WEST 229 popularity as of Indian-fighting. 22 He was already married, and the father of two children, when he came to the Watauga, and, like Robertson, was seeking a new and better home for his family in the west. So far, his life had been as uneventful as that of any other spirited young borderer ; his business had been that of a frontier Indian trader ; he had taken part in one or two un- important Indian skirmishes. 23 Later he was commissioned by Lord Dunmore as a captain in the Virginia line. " See, in the collection of the Tenn. Hist. Soc., at Nashville, the MS. notes containing an account of Sevier, given by one of the old settlers named Hillsman. Hillsman especially dwells on the skill with which Sevier could persuade the backwoods- men to come round to his own way of thinking, while at the same time making them believe that they were acting on their own ideas, and acids " whatever he had was at the service of his friends and for the promotion of the Sevier party, which sometimes embraced nearly all the population." 23 Mr. James Gilmore (Edmund Kirke), in his " John Sevier," makes some assertions, totally un- backed by proof, about his hero's alleged feats. when only a boy, in the wars between the Vir- ginians and the Indians. He gives no dates, but can only refer to Pontiac's war. Sevier was then eighteen years old, but nevertheless is portrayed, among other things, as leading " a hundred hardy borderers" into the Indian country, burning their villages and " often defeating bodies of five times his own numbers." These statements are supported by no better authority than traditions gathered a century and a quarter after the event, and must be dismissed as mere fable. They show a total and rather amusing ignorance not only of the conditions 23 o THE WINNING OF Such were Scvicr and Robertson, the leaders in the little frontier outpost of civ- ilization that was struggling to maintain it - self on the Watauga; and these two men afterwards proved themselves to he, witli the exception of George Rogers Clark, the greatest of the first generation of Trans- Alleghany pioneers. Their followers were worthy of them. All alike were keenly alive to the disad- vantages of living in a community where of Indian warfare, but also of the history of the particular contest referred to. Mr. Gilmore for- get- that \ve have numerous historic? of the war in which Sevier is supposed to have distinguished hini-clf. and that in not one of them is there a syllable hinting at what he says. Neither Sevier nr>r any one else ever with a hundred men de- feated "five times his number" of northwestern Indian-; in the woods; and during Sevier' s life in Virginia, the only defeat ever suffered by such a body of Indians was at Bushy Run, when Bouquet pained a hard-fought victory. After the end of Pontiac's war there was no expedition of import- ance undertaken by Virginians against the Indians until 17/4, and of Pontiac's war it-elf we have full knowledge. Sevier was neither leader nor par- ticipant in any such marvellous feats as Mr. Gil- more de-cribe-- ; <>n the contrary, the ^kirmnhes in which he may have been engaged were of such small importance thai no record remains concern- ing them. Had Sevier done any Mich deeds all ihe colonies would have rung with his exploit-, instead of their remaining utterly unknown for a hundred and twenty-five years. It is extraordi- nary that any author should be willing to put his name to ^uch reckles- mi--tntemenK in what pur- ports to be a history and not a book of fiction. THE WEST 231 there was neither law nor officer to enforce it. Accordingly, with their characteristic capacity for combination, so striking as ex- isting together with the equally characteris- tic capacity for individual self-help, the settlers determined to organize a govern- ment of their own. They promptly put their resolution into effect early in the spring of 1772, Robertson being apparently the leader in the movement. They decided to adopt written articles of agreement, by which their conduct should be governed ; and these were known as the Articles of the Watauga Association. They formed a written constitution, the first ever adopted west of the mountains, or by a community composed of American-born freemen. It is this fact of the early inde- pendence and self-government of the set- tlers along the head-waters of the Tennessee that gives to their history its peculiar im- portance. They were the first men of American birth to establish a free and in- dependent community on the continent. Even before this date, there had been straggling settlements of Pennsylvanians and Virginians along the head-waters of the Ohio ; but these settlements remained mere parts of the colonies behind them, and neither grew into a separate community, nor played a distinctive part in the growth of the west. The first step taken by the Watauga settlers, when they had determined to or- 232 THE WINNING OF ganize, 24 was to meet in general convention, holding a kind of folk-thing, akin to the New England town-meeting. They then elected a representative assembly, a small parliament or " witanagemot," which met at Robertson's station. Apparently the free- men of each little fort or palisaded village, each blockhouse that was the centre of a group of detached cabins and clearings, sent a member to this first frontier legisla- ture. 25 It consisted of thirteen representa- tives, who proceeded to elect from their number five among them Sevier and Rob- ert.-on to form a committee or court, which should carry on the actual business of gov- ernment, and should exercise both judicial and executive functions. This court had a clerk and a sheriff, or executive officer, who respectively recorded and enforced their decrees. The five members of this court, who are sometimes referred to as arbitrators and sometimes as commissioners, had entire con- trol of all matters affecting the common weal; and all affairs in controversy were settled by the decision of a majority. They elected one of their number as chairman, he being also ex-officio chairman of the com- mittee of thirteen ; and all their proceedings " The \Yatatiga settlers and those of Carter's Ya'lcy \vere the first to organize; the Nolichucky ]ici>p'c came in later. '' Putnam, 30. THE WEST 233 were noted for the prudence and modera- tion with which they behaved in their some- what anomalous position. They were care- ful to avoid embroiling themselves with the neighboring colonial legislatures ; and in dealing with non-residents they made them give bonds to abide by their decision, thus avoiding any necessity of proceeding against their persons. On behalf of the community itself, they were not only permitted to con- trol its internal affairs, but also to secure lands by making treaties with a foreign power, the Indians ; a distinct exercise of the right of sovereignty. They heard and adjudicated all cases of difference between the settlers themselves ; and took measures for the common safety. In fact the dwel- lers, in this little out-lying frontier common- wealth, exercised the rights of full state- hood for a number of years ; establishing in true American style a purely democratic government with representative institutions, in which, under certain restrictions, the will of the majority was supreme, while, never- theless, the largest individual freedom, and the utmost liberty of individual initiative were retained. The framers showed the American predilection for a written con- stitution or civil compact ; and, what was more important, they also showed the com- mon-sense American spirit that led them to adopt the scheme of government which should in the simplest way best serve their 234 THE WINNING OF needs, without bothering their heads over mere high-sounding abstractions. 28 The court or committee held their ses- sions at stated and regular times, and took the law of Virginia as their standard for de- cisions. They saw to the recording of deeds and wills, settled all questions of debate, is- sued marriage licenses, and carried on a most vigorous warfare against law-break- ers, especially horse-thieves. 27 For six years their government continued in full vigor; then, in February, 1778, North Car- olina having organized Washington County, which included ail of what is now Tennes- see, the governor of that State appointed justices of the peace and militia officers for the new county, and the old system came to an end. But Sevier, Robertson, and their fellow-committeemen were all members of the new court, and continued almost with- out change their former simple system of procedure and direct and expeditious methods of administering justice; as jus- 18 The original articles of the \Vatauga Associa- tion have been lost, and no copies are extant. All we know of the matter is derived from Haywood, Ramsey, and Putnam, three historians to whose praiseworthy industry Tennessee owes as much as K mucky docs to Marshall, Butler, and Collins. Ramsey, by the way, choose^ rather inappropriate adjectives when he calls the government " pa- ternal and patriarchal." " A very good account of this government is given in Allison's Address, pp. 5-8, and from it the following examples are taken. THE WEST 235 tices of the peace they merely continued to act as they acted while arbitrators of the Watauga Association, and in their sum- mary mode of dealing with evil-doers paid a good deal more heed to the essence than to the forms of law. One record shows that a horse-thief was arrested on Monday, tried on Wednesday, and hung on Friday of the same week. Another deals with a claim- ant who, by his attorney, moved to be sworn into his office of clerk, " but the court swore in James Sevier, well knowing that said Sevier had been elected," and being evi- dently unwilling to waste their time hearing a contested election case when their minds were already made up as to the equity of the matter. They exercised the right of making suspicious individuals leave the county. 28 They also at times became censors of morals, and interfered with straightforward effectiveness to right wrongs for which a more refined and elab- orate system of jurisprudence would have provided only cumbersome and inadequate remedies. Thus one of their entries is to the effect that a certain man is ordered " to return to his family and demean himself as a good citizen, he having admitted in open 28 A right the exercise of which is of course sus- ceptible to great abuse, but, nevertheless, is often absolutely necessary to the well-being of a fron- tier community. In almost every case where I have personally known it exercised, the character of the individual ordered off justified the act. 236 THE WINDING 'OF court that he had left his wife and took up with an-othcr woman." From the character of the judges who made the decision, it is safe to presume that the delinquent either obeyed it or else promptly fled to the In- dians for safety." 9 This fleeing to the In- dians, hy the way, was a feat often per- formed by the worst criminals for the ren- egade, the man who had " painted his face " and deserted those of his own color, was a being as well known as he was abhorred and despised on the border, where such a deed was held to be the one unpardonable crime. So much for the way in which the whites kept order among themselves. The second part ot their task, the adjustment of their relations with their reel neighbors, was scarcely less important. Early in 1/72 Virginia made a treaty with the Cherokee Nation, which established as the boundary between them a line running west from White Top Mountain in latitude 36 30'. Ro Immediately afterwards the agent ;n of the British Government among the Cherokees ordered the Watauga settlers to instantly leave their lands. They defied him. and re- fused to move; but feeling the insecurity of their tenure they deputed t\vo com- missioners, of whom Roliert son was one, to make a treaty with the Cherokees. This : " Allison's Address. ''Ramsey, 109. Putnam says 36 35'. " Alexander Cameron. THE WEST 237 was successfully accomplished, the In- dians leasing to the associated settlers all the lands on the Watauga waters for the space of eight years, in consideration of about six thousand dollars' worth of blankets, paint, muskets, and the like. 32 The amount advanced was reimbursed to the men advancing it by the sale of the lands in small parcels to new settlers, 33 for the time of the lease. 34 After the lease was signed, a day was ap- pointed on which to hold a great race, as well as wrestling-matches and other sports, at Watauga. Not only many whites from the various settlements, but also a number of Indians, came to see or take part in the sports ; and all went well until the evening, when some lawless men from Wolf Hills, who had been lurking in the woods round " Haywood, 43. 33 Meanwhile Carters Valley, then believed to lie in Virginia, had been settled by Virginians; the Indians robbed a trader's store, and indem- nified the owners by giving them land, at the treaty of Sycamore Shoals. This land was leaser! in job lots to settlers, who, however, kept posses- sion without paying when they found it lay in North Carolina. 34 A similar but separate lease was made by the settlers on the Nolichucky, who acquired a beau- tiful and fertile valley in exchange for the mer- chandise carried on the back of a single pack- horse. Among the whites themselves transfers of land were made in very Dimple forms, and con- veyed not the fee simple but merely the grantor's claim. 2 3 8 THE rr7.YA7.YC OF about, 35 killed an Indian, whereat his fel- lows left the spot in great anger. The settlers now saw themselves threat- ened with a bloody and vindictive Indian war, and were plunged in terror and des- pair ; yet they were rescued by the address and daring of Robertson. Leaving the others to build a formidable palisaded fort, under the leadership of Sevier, Robertson set off alone through the woods and fol- lowed the great war trace down to the Cherokee towns. His mission was one of the greatest peril, for there was imminent danger that the justly angered savages would take his life. I'm he was a man who never rushed heedlessly into purposeless peril, and never flinched from a danger which there was an object in encountering. His quiet, resolute fearlessness doubtless impressed the savages to whom he went, and helped to save his life: moreover, the ( 'herokees knew him, trusted his word, and were probably a little overawed by a certain air of command to which all men that were thrown in contact with him bore witness. His ready tact and knowledge of Indian character did the rest. He persuaded the chiefs and warriors to meet him in council, 85 Haywood say> they were named Crabtree; Putnam hints that they had ]<~, They built up a commonwealth which had many successors ; they showed that the frontiersmen could do their work unas- sisted; for they not only proved that they were made of stuff stern enough to hold its own against outside pressure of any sort, but they also made it evident that having won the land they were competent to govern both it and themselves. They were the first 37 Salem Church was founded (Allison, 8) in I 777. hy Samuel Doak. a Princeton graduate, and a man of sound learning, who also at the same time started Washington College, the first real institution of learning south of the Alleghanies. " Annals of Augusta," 21. 89 See Appendix. 242 THE WINNING OF to do what the whole nation has since done. It has often been said that we owe all our success to our surroundings ; that any race with our opportunities could have done as well as we have done. Undoubtedly our opportunities have been great ; undoubtedly we have often and lamentably failed in taking advantage of them. But what na- tion ever has done all that was possible with the chances offered it? The Spaniards, the Portuguese, and the French, not to speak of the Russians in Siberia, have all enjoyed, and yet have failed to make good use of, the same advantages which we have turned to good account. The truth is, that in starting a new nation in a new country, as we have done, while there are exceptional chances to be taken advantage of, there are also exceptional dangers and difficulties to be overcome. None but heroes can succeed wholly in the work. It is a good thing for us at times to compare what we have done with what we could have done, had we been better and wiser; it mav make us try in the future to raise our abilities to the level of our opportunities. Looked at absolutely, we must frankly acknowledge that we have fallen very far short indeed of the high ideal we should have reached. Looked at rela- tively, it must also be said that we have done better than any other nation or race work- ing under our conditions.- Tffc'Wattfuga settler^ outlined* in advapte the nation's work. They tamed the rugged THE WEST 243 and shaggy wilderness, they bid defiance to outside foes, and they successfully solved the. difficult problem of self-government. CHAPTER VIII LORD DUNMORE'S WAR, 1774. ON the eve of the Revolution, in 1774. the frontiersmen had planted them- selves firmly among the Alleghanies. Directly west of them lay the untenanted wilderness, traversed only by the war parties of the red men. and the hunting parties of both reds and whites. Xo settlers had yet penetrated it, and until they did so there could be within its borders no chance of race warfare, unless we call by that name the un- chronicled and unending contest in which, now and then, some solitary white woods- man slew, or was slain by, his painted foe. Jlut in the southwest and the northwest alike, the area of settlement alreadv touched the home lands of the tribes, and hence the horizon was never quite free from the cloud of threatening Indian war; yet for the mo- ment the southwest was at peace, for the Cherokees were still friendly. Tt was in the northwest that the danger of collision was most imminent ; for there the whites and Indians had wronged one an- other for a generation, and their interests were, at the time, clashing more directly 244 THE WEST 245 than ever. Much the greater part of the western frontier was held or claimed by Virginia, whose royal governor was, at the time, Lord Dunmore. He was an ambi- tious, energetic man, who held his allegiance as being due first to the crown, but who, nevertheless, was always eager to champion the cause of Virginia as against either the Indians or her sister colonies. The short but fierce and eventful struggle that now broke out was fought wholly by Virginians, and was generally known by the name of Lord Dunmore's war. Virginia, under her charter, claimed that her boundaries ran across to the South Seas, to the Pacific Ocean. The king of Britain had graciously granted her the right to take so much of the continent as lay within these lines, provided she could win it from the Indians, French, and Spaniards ; and provided also she could prevent herself fron 1 . being ousted by the crown, or by some of the other colonies. A number of grants had been made with the like large liberality, and it was found that they some- times conflicted with one another. The con- sequence was that while the boundaries were well marked near the coast, where they separated Virginia from the long-settled re- gions of Maryland and North Carolina, they became exceeding vague and indefinite the moment they touched the mountains. Even at the south this produced confusion, and induced the settlers of the upper Hoi- 246 THE U'lXX'IXG OP ston to consider themselves as Virginians, not Carolinians ; but at the north the effect was still more confusing, and nearly re- sulted in bringing about an intercolonial war between Pennsylvania and Virginia. The Virginians claimed all of extreme western Pennsylvania, especially Fort Pitt and the valley of the Monongahela, and, in 1774, proceeded boldly to exercise jurisdic- tion therein. 1 Indeed a strong party among the settlers favored the Virginian claim ; whereas it would have been quite impos- sible to arouse anywhere in Virginia the least feeling in support of a similar claim on behalf of Pennsylvania. The borderers had a great contempt for the sluggish and timid government of the Quaker province, which was very lukewarm in protecting them in their rights or, indeed, in punishing them when they did wrong to others. In fact, it seems probable that they would have de- clared for Virginia even more strongly, had it not been for the very reason that their feeling of independence was so surly as to make them suspicious of all forms of con- trol ; and they therefore objected almost as much to Virginian as Pennsylvania!! rule, and regarded the outcome of the dispute with a certain indifference. 2 " American Archives," 4th series Vol. I., p. 454. Report of Perm. Commissioners, June 27, I/74- 3 Man-land was also involved, along her \vestern frontier, in border difficulties with her neighbors; THE WEST 247 For a time in the early part of 1774 there seemed quite as much likelihood of the Vir- ginians being drawn into a fight with the Pennsylvanians as with the Shawnees. While the Pennsylvanian commissioners were trying to come to an agreement con- cerning the boundaries with Lord Dun- more, the representatives of the two con- testing parties at Fort Pitt were on the verge of actual collision. The Earl's agent in the disputed territory was a Captain John Conolly, 3 a man of violent temper and bad character. He embodied the men favorable to his side as a sort of Virginian militia, with which he not only menaced both hostile and friendly Indians, but the adher- ents of the Pennsylvanian government as well. He destroyed their houses, killed their cattle and hogs, impressed their horses, and finally so angered them that they threat- ened to take refuge in the stockade at Fort Pitt, and defy him to open war, although even in the midst of these quarrels with Conolly their loyalty to the Quaker State was somewhat doubtful. 4 The Virginians were the only foes the western Indians really dreaded ; for their the first we hear of the Cresap family is their having engaged in a real skirmish with the Penn- sylvanian authorities. Sec also " Am. Arch.," IV., Vol. I., 547- "Am. Arch.." IV., Vol. I., 394, 449, 469, etc. He was generally called Dr. Conolly. * See do., 463, 471, etc., especially St. Glair's letters, passim. 248 THE WINX1NG OF backwoodsmen were of warlike temper, and had learned to fight effectively in the forest. The Indians styled them Long Knives; or, to be more exact, they called them collectively the " Ijig Knife." There have been many accounts given of the origin of this name, some ascribing it to the lung knives worn by the hunters and backwoods- men generally, others to the fact that some of the noted \ irginian fighters in their early skirmishes were armed with swords. At any rale the title was accepted by all the Indians as applying to their most deter- mined foes among the colonists ; and finally, after we had become a nation, was extended so as to apply to Americans generally. The war that now ensued was not gen- eral. The Six Nations, as a whole, took no part in it, while Pennsylvania also stood aloof ; indeed at one time it was proposed that the Pennsylvanians and Iroquois should jointly endeavor to mediate between the combatants. The struggle was purely between the Virginians and the northwest- ern Indians. The interests of the Virginians and Pennsylvanians conflicted not only in re- spect to the ownership of the line, but also in ' In mo^t of the original treaties, " talk 1 ;," etc., preserved in the Archive- of the State Depart- ment, v.lu-rr the translation is exact, the word " Big Knife " i> user.. "Letter of John Pcnn, June 28, 1774. " Am. Arch./' IV., Vol. IV. THE WEST 249 respect to the policy to be pursued regarding the Indians. The former were armed col- onists, whose interest it was to get actual possession of the soil ; 7 whereas in Penn- sylvania the Indian trade was very import- ant and lucrative, and the numerous traders to the Indian towns were anxious that the redskins should remain in undisturbed en- joyment of their forests, and that no white man should be allowed to come among them ; moreover, so long as they were able to make heavy profits, they were utterly in- different to the well-being of the white fron- tiersmen, and in return incurred the suspi- cion and hatred of the latter. The Virgin- ians accused the traders of being the main cause of the difficulty, 8 asserting that they sometimes incited the Indians to outrages, and always, even in the midst of hostilities, kept them supplied with guns and ammuni- tion, and even bought from them the horses that they had stolen on their plundering ex- peditions against the Virginian border. 9 These last accusations were undoubtedly justified, at least in great part, by the facts. The interests of the white trader from Pennsylvania and of the white settler from Virginia were so far from being identical that they were visually diametrically oppo- site. The northwestern Indians had been nom- " Am. Archives," do., 465. * Do., 722. 9 Do., 872. : 5 o THE WINNING OF inally at peace \vitb the whites for ten years, since the close of Bouquet's campaign. But Bouquet had inflicted a very slight punish- ment upon them, and in concluding an un- satisfactory peace had caused them to make but a partial reparation for the wrongs they had done. 10 They remained haughty and insolent, irritated rather than awed by an ineffective chastisement, and their young men made frequent forays on the frontier. Each of the ten years of nominal peace saw plenty of bloodshed. Recently they had been seriously alarmed by the tendency of the whites to encroach on the great hunt- ing-grounds south of the Ohio; 11 for here and there hunters or settlers were already beginning to build cabins along the course of that stream. The cession by the Iroquois of these same hunting-grounds, at the treaty of Fort Stanwix, while it gave the whites a colorable title, merely angered the north- western Indians. Half a century earlier they would hardly have dared dispute the power of the Six Nations to do what they chose with any land that could be reached by their war parties; but in 1774 they felt quite able to hold their own against their old oppressors, and had no intention of ac- quiescing in any arrangement the latter " Am. Arch.," IV., Vol. I, p. 1015. 11 McAfee MSS. Tlii> is the point especially insisted on by Cornstalk in his speech to the ad- venturers in 1773; he would fight before seeing the whites drive off the game. THE WEST 251 might make, unless it was also clearly to their own advantage. In the decade before Lord Dunmore's war there had been much mutual \vrong-doing between the northwestern Indians and the Virginian borderers ; but on the whole the latter had occupied the position of being sinned against more often than that of sin- ning. The chief offence of the whites was that they trespassed upon uninhabited lands, which they forthwith proceeded to cultivate, instead of merely roaming over them to hunt the game and butcher one another. Doubtless occasional white men would murder an Indian if they got a chance, and the traders almost invariably cheated the tribesmen. But as a whole the traders were Indian rather than white in their sympathies, and the whites rarely made forays against their foes avowedly for horses and plunder, while the Indians on their side were continually indulging in such inroads. Every year parties of young red warriors crossed the Ohio to plunder the outlying farms, burn down the build- ings, scalp the inmates, and drive off the horses. 12 Year by year the exasperation of the borderers grew greater and the tale of the wrongs they had to avenge longer. 13 "In the McAfee MSS., as already quoted, there is an account of the Shawnee war party, whom the McAfees encountered in 1773 returning from a successful horse-stealing expedition. 11 " Am. Archives," IV., Vol. I, 872. Dunmore 252 THE WINXIXG OF Occasionally they took a brutal and ill- judged vengeance, which usually fell on in- nocent Indians, 14 and raised up new foes for the whites. The savages grew contin- ually more hostile, and in the fall of 1773 their attacks became so frequent that it was evident a general outbreak was at hand ; eleven people were murdered in the county of Fincastle alone. 13 The Shawnees were the leaders in all these outrages ; but the outlaw bands, such as the Mingos and Cherokees, were as bad, and parties of Wyandots and Delawares, as well as of the various Miami and Wabash tribes, joined them. Thus the spring- of 1774 opened with every thing ripe for an explosion. The Vir- ginian borderers were fearfully exasperated, and ready to take vengeance upon anv In- dians, whether peaceful or hostile ; while the Shawnees and Mingos, on their side, were arrogant and overbearing, and yet alarmed at the continual advance of the whites. The headstrong rashnes> of Con- oily, who was acting as Lord Dunmore's lieutenant on the border, and who was in his before a drop of Shawnee blood was shed." " Trans-Allegriany Pioneers," p. 262, gives an example that happened in 1772. " Am. Archives," IV., Vol. I. Letter of Col.. Wm. Preston, Aug. 13, 1774. THE WEST 2 53 equally willing to plunge into a war with Pennsylvania or the Shawnees, served as a firebrand to ignite this mass of tinder. The borderers were anxious for a war; and Lord Dunmore was not inclined to baulk them. He was ambitious of glory, and probably thought that in the midst of the growing difficulties between the mother country and the colonies, it would be good policy to distract the Virginians' minds by an Indian war, which, if he conducted it to a successful conclusion, might strengthen his own position. 10 18 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 In- dians 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 ab- solutely 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. 254 TH E WINNING OF There were on the border at the moment three or four men whose names are so inti- mately bound up with the history of this war, that they deserve a brief mention. One was Michael Cresap, a Maryland frontiers- man, who had come to the banks of the Ohio with the purpose of making a home for his family. 17 lie was of the regular pioneer type; a good woodsman, sturdy and brave, a fearless fighter, devoted to his friends and his country; but also, when his blood was heated, and his savage instincts fairly roused, inclined to regard any red man, whether hos- tile or friendly, as a being who should be slain on sight. Nor did he condemn the bru- tal deeds done by others on innocent Indians. The next was a man named Greathouse, of whom it is enough to know that, together with certain other men whose names have for the most part, by a merciful chance, been When the Revolutionary war broke out, however, the earl, undoubtedly, like so many other British officials, advocated the tno-t outrageous measures to put down the insurgent colonists. See Brantz Mayer, ]>. >%. for a very proper attack on those historians who stigmatize as land- jobbers and speculators tin- perfectly honest set- tlers. who=e encroachments on the Indian hunt- ing-grounds were so bitterly resented by the viv- ages. Such attacks are mere pieces nf sentimental injustice. The settlors were perfectly right in feel- ing that they had a right to -ettle 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. THE WEST 255 forgotten, 18 he did a deed such as could only be committed by inhuman and cowardly scoundrels. The other two actors in this tragedy were both Indians, and were both men of much higher stamp. One was Cornstalk, the Shawnee chief ; a far-sighted seer, gloomily conscious of the impending ruin of his race, a great orator, a mighty warrior, a man who knew the value of his word and prized his honor, and who fronted death with quiet, disdainful heroism; and yet a fierce, cruel, and treacherous savage to those with whom he was at enmity, a killer of women and chil- dren, whom we first hear of, in Pontiac's war, as joining in the massacre of unarmed and peaceful settlers who had done him no wrong, and who thought that he was friend- ly. 19 The other was Logan, an Iroquois warrior, who lived at that time away from the bulk of his people, but who was a man of note in the loose phraseology of the bor- der, a chief or headman among the outlying parties of Senecas and Mingos, and the frag- ments of broken tribes that dwelt along the upper Ohio. He was a man of splendid ap- pearance ; over six feet high, straight as a spear-shaft, with a countenance as open as it 18 Sappington. Tomlinson. and Baker were the names of three of his fellow-miscreants. See Jef- ferson MSS. 19 At Greenbriar. See " Narrative of Captain John Stewart." an act-ir in the war. Magazine of American History, Vol. I., p. 671. 256 THE WINNING OF was brave and manly, 20 until the wrongs he endured stamped on it an expression of gloomy ferocity. He had always been the friend of the white man, and had been noted particularly for his kindness and gentleness to children. Up to this time he had lived at peace with the borderers, for though some of his kin had been massacred by them years before, he had forgiven the deed perhaps not unmindful of the fact that others of his kin had been concerned in still more bloody massacres of the whites. A skilled marks- man and mighty hunter, of commanding dig- nity, who treated all men with a grave court- esy that exacted the same treatment in re- turn, he was greatly liked and respected by all the white hunters and frontiersmen whose friendship and respect were worth having ; they admired him for his dexterity and prowess, and they loved him for his straight- forward honesty, and his noble loyalty to his friends. One of these old pioneer hunters lias left on record ij the statement that he deemed " Logan the best specimen of hu- manity he ever met with, either white or red." Such was Logan before the evil days came upon him. Early in the spring the outlying settlers be- gan again to suffer from the deeds of strag- gling Indians. Horses were stolen, one or two murders were committed, the inhabitants of the more lonely cabins fled to the forts, * London's "Indian Narratives," II., p. 223. 11 See " American Pioneer,'' I., p. 189. THE WEST 257 and the backwoodsmen began to threaten fierce vengeance. On April i6th, three tra- ders in the employ of a man named Butler were attacked by some of the outlaw Chero- kees, one killed, another wounded, and their goods plundered. Immediately after this Conolly issued an open letter, commanding the backwoodsmen to hold themselves in readiness to repel any attack by the Indians, as the Shawnees were hostile. Such a letter from Lord Dunmore's lieutenant amounted to a declaration of war, and there were sure to be plenty of backwoodsmen who would put a very liberal interpretation upon the or- der given them to repel an attack. Its effects were seen instantly. All the borderers pre- pared for war. Cresap was near Wheeling at the time, with a band of hunters and scouts, fearless men, who had adopted many of the ways of the redskins, in addition to their method of fighting. As soon as they received Conolly's letter they proceeded to declare war in the regular Indian style, call- ing a council, planting the war-post, and go- ing through other savage ceremonies, 22 and eagerly waited for a chance to attack their foes. Unfortunately the first stroke fell on friendly Indians. The trader, P.utler, spoken of above, in order to recover some of the "Letter of George Rogers Clark, June 17, 1798. In Jefferson MSS., 5th Series, Vol. I. (preserved in Archives of State Department at Washing- ton). 258 THE WINNING Ol : peltries of which he had been robbed by the Cherokees, had sent a canoe with two friendly Shawnees towards the place of the massacre. On the 27th Cresap and his followers am- bushed these men near Captina, and killed and scalped them. Some of the better back- woodsmen strongly protested against this outrage - :i ; but the mass of them were ex- cited and angered by the rumor of Indian hostilities, and the brutal and disorderly side of frontier character was for the moment up- permost. They threatened to kill whoever interfered with them, cursing the " damned traders" as bung worse than the Indians, 24 while Cresap boasted of the murder, and never said a word in condemnation of the still worse deeds that followed it." 1 " 1 The next day he again led out Ins men and attacked another party of Shawnees, who had been trading near I'ittsburg. k'lled one and wounded two others, one of the whites be- ing also hurt. 1 '" Among the men who were with fresap at this time was a voting Virginian, who after- " Witness the testimony of one of the most gal- lant Indian fiphtcrs of tin- bonier, who was in Wheeling at the lime: letter of fob Ebene/er Zane. February 4. 1800. in Jefferson MSS. "Jefferson MSS. Deposition of John Gibson, April 4, iSoo. " Do. Deposition of YVm. Huston. April 19, 1708- al-o der>o--itir>n<: of Samuel MrKee. etc. M "Am. Archives" IV.. Vol. I., p. 468. Letter of Devereux Smith. June TO, 1774. Gibson's let- ter. Also Jefferson MSS. THE WEST 2 59 wards played a brilliant part in the history of the west, who was for ten years the leader of the bold spirits of Kentucky, and who ren- dered the whole United States signal and ef- fective service by one of his deeds in the Rev- olutionary war. This was George Rogers Clark, then twenty-one years old. 27 He was of good family, and had been fairly well ed- ucated, as education went in colonial days ; but from his childhood he had been passion- ately fond of the wild roving life of the woods. He was a great hunter; and, like so many other young colonial gentlemen of good birth and bringing up, and adventurous temper, he followed the hazardous profes- sion of a backwoods surveyor. With chain and compass, as well as axe and rifle, he pen- etrated the far places of the wilderness, the lonely, dangerous regions where every weak man inevitably succumbed to the manifold perils encountered, but where the strong and far-seeing were able to lay the foundations of fame and fortune. He possessed high daring, unflinching courage, passions which he could not control, and a frame fitted to stand any strain of fatigue or hardship. He was a square-built thick-set man, with high broad forehead, sandy hair, and unquailing b!ue eyes that looked out from under heavy, jhaggy brows. 28 "Historical Magazine, I., p. 168. Born in Albe- marie County. Va., November IQ, 1752. : " Military Journal of Major Ebenezer Denny, \vitb an introductory memoir by William H. S 9 260 THE WIN XING OP Clark had taken part with Cresap in his assault upon the second party of Shawnees. On the following clay the whole band of whites prepared to march off and attack Logan's camp at Yellow Creek, some fifty miles distant. After going some miles they began to feel ashamed of their mission ; call- ing a halt, they discussed the fact that the camj) they were preparing to attack, con- sisted exclusively of friendly Indians, and mainly of women and children ; and forth- with abandoned their proposed trip and re- turned home. They were true borderers brave, self-reliant, loyal to their friends, and good-hearted when their worst instincts were not suddenly aroused ; but the sight of blood- shed maddened them as if they had been so many wolves. "Wrongs stirred to the depths their moody tempers, and filled them with a brutal longing for indiscriminate revenge. When goaded by memories of evil, or when swayed by swift, fitful gusts of furv, the uncontrolled violence of their passions led them to commit deeds whose inhuman bar- barity almost equalled, though it could never surpass that shown by the Indians them- selves. 2:i Denny ( Publication of the Hist. Soc of Perm.). Phil.." iSfio. p. 216. "The fresap apologists including even Brantz Mayer, dwell on Crcsap's nobleness in nnt mas- sacring Logan's family ! Tt was certainly to his credit that he did not do so. but it docs not speak very well for him that ho should even have enter- tained the thought. lie was doubtless, on the THE WEST 261 But Logan's people did not profit by Cre- sap's change of heart. On the last day of April a small party of men, women, and children, including almost all of Logan's kin, left his camp and crossed the river to visit Greathouse, as had been their custom; for he made a trade of selling rum to the sav- ages, though Cresap had notified him to stop. The whole party were plied with liquor, and became helplessly drunk, in which condition Greathouse and his associated criminals fell on and massacred them, nine souls in all. 30 It was an inhuman and revolting deed, which should consign the names of the per- petrators to eternal infamy. At once the frontier was in a blaze, and 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 cred- itable. 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. 40 Devereux Smith's letter. Some of the evil- doers afterwards tried to palliate their misdeeds by stating that Logan's brother, when drunk, in- sulted 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 ac- ceptance, unless backed up by outside evidence. 262 THE WINNING OF 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 imme- diate and bloody vengeance. 31 They con- fused the two massacres, attributing both to Cresap, whom they well knew as a war- rior ' J ' 2 ; and their women for long after- wards 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 remem- bered that they themselves were the first ag- gressors. 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, how- ever 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 re- lieve 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 "Jeffercon MSS., sth Series, Vol. I., Hecke- welder's letter. "Jefferson MSS Deposition of Col. James Smith, May 25, 1798. "Do., Heckewelder's letter. THE WEST 263 raise. He meanly disclaimed all responsi- bility for Cresap's action, 34 and deposed him from his command of rangers; to which, however, he was soon restored by Lord Dun- more. Both the earl and his lieutenant, how- ever, united in censuring severely Great- houses's deed. 30 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 Dela- ware chief, Killbuck, with other warriors, sent a " talk " or " speech in writing " 3T 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 out- right, and sent a bold defiance to the Vir- ginians, at the same time telling Conolly plainly that he lied. Their message is note- worthy, because, after expressing a firm be- lief that the Virginian leader could control his warriors, and stop the outrages if he wished, it added that the Shawnee head 14 " Am. Archives," IV., Vol. I., p. 475. 85 Do., p. 1015. "Do., p. 475. " Do., p. 418. 264 men were able to do the like with their own men when they required it. This last alle- gation took away all shadow of excuse from the Shawnees for not having stopped die 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. 3 * 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 accompani- ments of burning houses, tortured prisoners, and ruined families, the men being killed and the women and children driven off to a horri- v Do., p. 774. Letter of the Earl of Dartmouth. Sept. 10, 1/74. A sufficient answer, by the way, to the ab-urd charge that Dunmore brought on the war in consequence of some mysterious plan of the Home Government to embroil the Americans with the savage-. It is not at all improbable that the Crown advi-crs were not particularly dis- plea^ed at -eeing the attention of the Americans distracted by a war with the Indians; but this is the utmost that can be alleged. THE WEST. 265 ble 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 assur- ing the Indians that it rested solely on the shoulders of the Virginians. 41 Indeed the Shawnees protected the Pennsylvania trad- ers 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 Pennsyl- vania fur trade with the Indians. 43 Never- theless, some of the bands of young braves who were out on the war-path 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 at- tack was delivered, the panic was more jus- 89 Do., p. 808. 40 Do., p. 478. " Do., p. 506. "Do., p. 474. 43 Do., p. 549. "Do., p. 471. " Do., pp. 435, 467, 602. 266 THE WINNING OF tifiable ; xor terrible ravages \vere committed, and the inhabitants were forced to gather together in their forted villages, and could no longer cultivate their farms, except by stealth. 40 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 an- archy in which the government of the north- western district had been thrown in conse- quence of the quarrel concerning the juris- diction. The inhabitants were doubtful as to which colony really had a right to their al- legiance, 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 hun- dred rangers there almost ensued a civil war among the whites, for the Virginians were fearful that the movement was really aimed against them. 40 Of course the march of events gradually forced most, even of the neutral Indians, to join their brethren who had gone on the war-path, 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 ** Do., pp. 405, 707. " Do., p. 808. " Do., p. 677. "Do., pp. 463, 467. "Do., p. 684. THE WEST 267 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 ter- rible vengeance for his wrongs ; but in true Indian fashion it fell, not on those who had caused them, but on others who were en- tirely 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 well r>1 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 w : ith 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 K Do., p. 435. 62 Do., pp. 468, 546. K Do. } p. 470. 268 THE WINNING OF 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 afterwards he sud- denly 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 di- rectness, 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. " 4 "July 21, 1774. There is a certain deliberate and blood- thirsty earnestness about this letter which "Jefferson MSS. Dep. of Win. Robinson, Feb- ruary 28. 1800, and letter from Harry limes, March 2, 1790, with a copy of Logan's letter as made in his note-book at the time. THE WEST 269 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 Dela wares and outly- ing Iroquois, especially Senecas ; as well as by the Wyandots and by large bands of ar- dent young warriors from among the Al- gonquin tribes along the Miami, the Wa- Jjash, 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 cun- ning of wild beasts, and ravaged with a cruelty ten times greater. They burned down the lonely log-huts, ambushed travel- lers, 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 pres- ence 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 vic- tims 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, suc- cessfully ; occasionally they were beaten off or overtaken and killed or scattered. When they met armed woodsmen the fight 270 THE WINNING OF was always desperate. In May a party of hunters and surveyors, being suddenly at- tacked in the forest, beat off their assailants and took eight scalps, though with a loss of nine of their own number. r ' r> Moreover, the settlers began to band together to make retal- iatory 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, 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 discov- ered, 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 tri- umph. On the march back' they passed through the towns of the peaceful Moravian Delawares, to whom they did no harm. ""Am. Archives." p. 373. M Under a certain Antrm MacDonald, do., p. 722. They crossed the Ohio at Fish Creek, I2O miles below Pitt^burg. 11 " Am. Archives," IV, Vol. I., pp. 682, 684. APPENDICES. APPENDICES. APPENDIX A TO CHAPTER IV IT is greatly to be wished that some com- petent person would write a full and true his- tory of our national dealings with the In- dians. 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 Perc.es, might be mentioned, which are in- delible blots on our fair fame ; and yet, in describing our dealings with the red men as a whole, historians do us much less than jus- tice. It was wholly impossible to avoid conflicts with the weaker race, unless we were willing to see the American continent fall into the hands of some other strong power ; and even had we adopted such a ludicrous policy, the Indians themselves would have made war upon us. It cannot be too often insisted that they did not own the land ; or, at least, that their ownership was merely such as that claimed often by our own white hunters. If the Indians really owned Kentucky in 1775, then in 1776 it was the property of 273 274 APPENDICES Boone and his associates ; and to dispossess one party was as great a wrong as to dispos- sess the other. To recognize the Indian own- ership of the limitless prairies and forests of this continent that is, to consider the dozen squalid savages who hunted at long inter- vals over a territory of a thousand square miles as owning it outright necessarily im- plies a similar recognition of the claims of every white hunter, squatter, horse-thief, or wandering cattle-man. Take as an example the country round the Little Missouri. \Yhen the cattle-men, the first actual settlers, came into this land in 1882, it was already scantily peopled by a few white hunters and trappers. The latter were extremely jealous of intrusion ; they had held their own in spite of the Indians, and, like the Indians, the in- rush of settlers and the consequent destruc- tion of the game meant their own undoing; also, again like the Indians, they felt that their having hunted over the soil gave them a vague prescriptive right to its sole occu- pation, and they did their best to keep actual settlers out. In some cases, to avoid diffi- culty, their nominal claims were bought up; generally, and rightly, they were disregarded. Yet they certainly had as good a right to the Little Missouri country as the Sioux have to most of the land on their present reserva- tions. In fact, the mere statement of the case is sufficient to show the absurdity of as- serting that the land reallv belonged to the Indians. The different tribes have always APPENDICES 275 been utterly unable to define their own boun- daries. Thus the Delawares and Wyandots, in 1785, though entirely separate nations, claimed and, in a certain sense, occupied al- most exactly the same territory. Moreover, it was wholly impossible for our policy to be always consistent Nowa- days we undoubtedly ought to break up the great Indian reservations, disregard the tribal governments, allot the land in severally (with, however, only a limited power of alienation), and treat the Indians as we do other citizens, with certain exceptions, for their sakes as well as ours. But this policy, which it would be wise to follow now, would have been wholly impracticable a century since. Our central government was then too weak either effectively to control its own members or adequately to punish aggressions made upon them ; and even if it had been strong, it would probably have proved im- possible to keep entire order over such a vast, sparsely-peopled frontier, with such tur- bulent elements on both sides. The Indians could not be treated as individuals at that time. There was no possible alternative, therefore, to treating their tribes as nations, exactly as the French and English had done before us. Our difficulties were partly in- herited from these, our predecessors, were partly caused by our own misdeeds, but were mainly the inevitable result of the conditions under which the problem had to be solved; no human wisdom or virtue could have 276 APP EX DICES worked out a peaceable solution. As a na- tion, our Indian policy is to be blamed, be- cause of the weakness it displayed, because of its shortsightedness, and its occasional leaning to the policy of the sentimental hu- manitarians ; and we have often promised what was impossible to perform ; but there has been little wilful wrong-doing. Our government almost always tried to act fairly by the tribes ; the governmental agents (some of whom have been dishonest, and others foolish, but who, as a class, have been greatly traduced ), in their reports, are far more apt to be unjust to the whites than to the reds; and the Federal authorities, though unable to prevent much of the injustice, still did check and control the white borderers very much more effectually than the Indian sa- chems and war-chiefs controlled their young braves. The tribes were warlike and blood- thirst}-, jealous of each other and of the white> ; thev claimed the land for their hunt- ing grounds, but their claims all conflicted with "ne another; their knowledge of their own boundaries was so indefinite that they were always willing, for inadequate compen- sation, to sell land to which they had merelv tlu v vaguest title: and yet, when once they had received the goods, were generally re- Inrtant to make over even what they could ; thev coveted the goods and scalps of the whites, and the young warriors were always on the alert to commit outrages when they could do it with impunity. On the other APPENDICES 277 hand, the evil-disposed whites regarded the Indians as fair game for robbery and vio- lence of any kind ; and the far larger num- ber of well-disposed men, who would not willingly wrong any Indian, were themselves maddened by the memories of hideous in- juries received. They bitterly resented the action of the government, which, in their eyes, failed to properly protect them, and yet sought to keep them out of waste, unculti- vated lands which they did not regard as be- ing any more the property of the Indians than of their own hunters. With the best intentions, it was wholly impossible for any government to evolve order out of such a chaos without resort to the ultimate arbi- trator the sword. The purely sentimental historians take no account of the difficulties under which we labored, nor of the countless wrongs and provocations we endured, while grossly mag- nifying the already lamentably large number of injuries for which we really deserve to be held responsible. To get a fair idea of the Indians of the present day, and of our deal- ings with them, we have fortunately one or two excellent books, notably " Hunting Grounds of the Great West," and " Our Wil'cl Indians," by Col. Richard I. Dodge (Hart- ford, 1882), and " Massacres of the Moun- tains," by J. P. Dunn (New York, 1886). As types of the opposite class, which are worse than valueless, and which nevertheless might cause some hasty future historian, un- 278 APPENDICES acquainted with the facts, to fall into griev- ous error. I may mention, " A Century of Dishonor," by H. H. (Mrs. Helen Hunt Jackson), and "Our Indian Wards," (Geo. W. Manypenny). The latter is a mere spite- ful diatribe against various army officers, and neither its manner nor its matter warrants more than an allusion. Mrs. Jackson's book is capable of doing more harm because it is written in good English, and because the author, who had lived a pure and noble life, was intensely in earnest in what she wrote, and had the most praiseworthy purpose to prevent our committing any more injustice to the Indians. This was all most proper ; every good man or woman should do what- ever is possible to make the government treat the Indians of the present time in the fairest and most generous spirit, and to provide against any repetition of such outrages as were inflicted upon the Xcz Perc.es and upon part of the Cheyennes, or the wrongs with which the civilized nations of the Indian ter- ritory are sometimes threatened. The pur- pose of the book is excellent, but the spirit in which it is written cannot be called even technically honest. As a polemic, it is pos- sible that it did not do harm (though the ef- fect of even a polemic is marred by hysterical indifference to facts). As a history it would be beneath criticism, were it not that the high character of the author and her excellent literary work in other directions have given it a fictitious value and made it much quoted APPENDICES 279 by the large class of amiable but maudlin fanatics concerning whom it may be said that the excellence of their intentions but indif- ferently atones for the invariable folly and ill effect of their actions. It is not too much to say that the book is thoroughly untrustwor- thy from cover to cover, and that not a sin- gle statement it contains should be accepted without independent proof ; for even those that are not absolutely false, are often as bad on account of so much of the truth having been suppressed. One effect of this is of course that the author's recitals of the many real wrongs of Indian tribes utterly fail to impress us, because she lays quite as much stress on those that are non-existent, and on the equally numerous cases where the wrong-doing was wholly the other way. To get an idea of the value of the work, it is only necessary to compare her statements about almost any tribe with the real facts, choosing at random ; for instance, compare her accounts of the Sioux and the plains tribes generally, with those given by Col. Dodge in his two books ; or her recital of the Sandy Creek massacre with the facts as stated by Mr. Dunn who is apt, if any thing, to lean to the Indian's side. These foolish sentimentalists not only write foul slanders about their own country- men, but are themselves the worst possible advisers on any point touching Indian man- agement. They would do well to heed Gen- eral Sheridan's bitter words, written when 2 So Al'L'EX DICES many Easterners were clamoring against the army authorities because they took partial vengeance for a series of brutal outrages: " I do not know how far these humanitari- ans should be excused on account of their ignorance; but surely it is the only excuse that can give a shadow of justification for aiding and abetting such horrid crimes." APPENDIX B TO CHAPTER V In Mr. Shaler's entertaining " History of Kentucky," there is an account of the popu- lation of the western frontiers, and Ken- tuckv, interesting because it illustrates some ^ J o of the popular delusions on the subject. lie speaks (pp. 9, 11, 23) of Kentucky as con- taining " nearly pure English blood, mainly derived through the old Dominion, and al- together from districts that shared the Vir- ginian conditions." As much of the blood was Pennsylvania!! or Xorth Carolinian, his last sentence means nothing, unless all the " districts " outside of Xew England are held to have shared the Virginian conditions. Turning to Marshall ( I., 441 ) we see that in 1780 about half the people were from Vir- ginia, Pennsylvania furnishing the next greatest number; and of the Virginians most were from a population much more like that of Pennsylvania than like that of tide-water Virginia ; as we learn from twenty sources, such as Waddell's '' Annals of Augusta APPENDICES 281 County." Mr. Shaler speaks of the Hugue- nots and of the Scotch immigrants, who came over after 1745, but actually makes no mention of the Presbyterian Irish or Scotch Irish, much the most important ele- ment in all the west ; in fact, on p. 10, he impliedly excludes any such immigration at all. He greatly underestimates the German element, which was important in West Vir- ginia. He sums up by stating that the Ken- tuckians come from the " truly British peo- ple/' quite a different thing from his state- ment that they are " English." The " truly British people " consists of a conglomerate of as distinct races as exist anywhere in Aryan Europe. The Erse, Welsh, and Gaelic immigrants to America are just as distinct from the English, just as " foreign " to them, as are. the Scandina- vians, Germans, Hollanders, and Huguenots often more so. Such early families as the Welsh Shelbys, and Gaelic McAfees are no more English than are the Huguenot Seviers or the German Stoners. Even including merely the immigrants from the British Isles, the very fact that the Welsh, Irish, and Scotch, in a few generations, fuse with the English instead of each element remaining separate, makes the American population widely different from that of Britain ; ex- actly as a flask of water is different from two cans of hydrogen and oxygen gas. Mr. Shaler also seems inclined to look down a little on the Tennesseeans, and to consider 282 APPENDICES their population as composed in part of in- ferior elements ; but in reality, though there are very marked differences between the two commonwealths of Kentucky and Tennessee, yet they resemble one another more closely, in blood and manners, than either does any other American State ; and both have too just cause for pride to make it necessary for either to sneer at the other, or indeed at any State of our mighty Federal Union. In their origin they were precisely alike; but whereas the original pioneers, the hunters and In- dian fighters, kept possession of Tennessee as long as thcv lived, Jackson, at Sevier's death, taking the latter's place with even more than his power, in Kentucky, on the other hand, after twenty years' rule, the first settlers were swamped by the great inrush of immigration, and with the defeat of Logan for governor the control passed into the hands of the same class of men that then ruled Virginia. After that date the "tide- water " stock assumed an importance in Ken- tucky it never had in Tennessee ; and of course the influence of the Scotch-Irish blood was greatly diminished. Mr. Shaler's error is trivial compared {o that made by another and even more bril- liant writer. In the " History of the People of the United States," by Professor Mc- Master (Xew York, 1887), p. 70, there is a mistake so glaring that it would not need notice, were it not for the many excellencies and wide repute of Professor McMaster's APPENDICES 283 book. He says that of the immigrants to Kentucky, most had come " from the neighboring States to Carolina and Georgia," and shows that this is not a mere slip of the pen, by elaborating the statement in the fol- lowing paragraphs, again speaking of North and South Carolina and Georgia as furnish- ing the colonists to Kentucky. This shows a complete misapprehension not only of the feeding-grounds of the western emigration, but of the routes it followed, and of the con- ditions of the southern States. South Caro- lina furnished very few emigrants to Ken- tucky, and Georgia practically none ; com- bined they probably did not furnish as many as New Jersey or Maryland. Georgia was herself a frontier community ; she received instead of sending out immigrants. The bulk of the South Carolina emigration went to Georgia. APPENDIX C TO CHAPTER VI OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY OF STATE, NASHVILLE, TENN., June 12, 1888. Hon. THEODORE ROOSEVELT, SAGAMORE HILL, LONG ISLAND, N. Y. DEAR SIR: I was born, " raised," and have always lived in Washington County, E. Tenn. Was born on the " head-waters " of " Boone's 284 APPEX DICES Creek," in said county. I resided for several years in the " Boone Creek Civil District," in Washington County (this some " twenty years ago "), within two miles of the historic tree in question, on which is carved, " D. Boon cilled bar &c." ; having visited and ex- amined the tree more than once. The tree is a beech, still standing, though fast de- caying. It is located some eight miles north- east of Jonesboro, the county seat of Wash- ington, on the " waters of Boone's Creek," which creek was named after Daniel Boone, and on which (creek) it is certain Daniel Boone " camped " during a winter or two. The tree stands about two miles from the spring, where it has always been understood Boone's camp was. More than twenty years ago, I have heard old gentlemen (living in the neighborhood of the tree), who were then from fifty to seventy years old, assert that the carving was on the tree when they were boys, and that the tradition in the commu- nity was that the inscription was on the tree when discovered by the first permanent set- tlers. The posture of the tree is " leaning," so that a " bar," or other animal could ascend it without difficulty. While the letters could be clearly traced when I last looked at them, still because of the expansion of the bark, it was difficult, and I heard old gentlemen years ago remark upon the changed appearance of the inscrip- tion from what it was when they first knew it. APPENDICES. 285 Boone certainly camped for a time under the tree; the creek is named after him (has always been known as Boone's Creek) ; the Civil District is named after him, and the post-office also. True, the story as to the carving is traditionary, but a man had as well question in that community the authenticity of " Holy Writ," as the fact that Boone carved the inscription on that tree. I am very respectfully JOHN ALLISON. APPENDIX D TO CHAPTER VI The following copy of an original note of Boone's was sent me by Judge John N. Lea : July the 20", 1786. Sir, The Land has Been Long Survayd and Not Knowing When the Money would be Rady Was the Reason of my not Returning the Works however the may be Returned when you pleas. But I must have Nother Copy of the Entry as I have lost that I had when I lost my plating instruments and only have the Short Field Notes. Just the Corse Distance and Corner trees pray send me Nother Copy that I may know how to give it the proper bounderry agreeable to the Location and I Will send the plat to the offis medetly if you chose it, the expense is as follows 286 APPENDICES Survayer's fees 9 3 8 Ragesters fees 7 14 o Chanman 8 o o purvisions of the tower. 200 26 17 8 You will also Send a Copy of the agree- ment betwixt Mr. [ illegible] overton and myself Where I Red the warrants. I am, sir, your omble servant, DANIEL BOONE. APPENDIX E TO CHAPTER VII Recently one or two histories of the times and careers of Robertson and Sevicr have been published by " Edmund Kirke," Mr. James R. Gilmore. They are charmingly written, and are of real service as calling attention to a neglected portion of our his- tory and making it interesting. But they entirely fail to discriminate between the provinces of history and fiction. It is great- ly to be regretted that Mr. Gilmore did not employ his powers in writing an avowed his- torical novel treating of the events he discusses ; such a work from him would have a permanent value, like Robert L. Kennedy's " Horseshoe Robinson." In their present fr.rm his works cannot bo accepted even as otTering material on which to form a judg- APPENDICES 287 mcnt, except in so far as they contain repeti- tions of statements given by Ramsey or Put- nam. I say this with real reluctance, for my relations with Mr. Gilmore personally have been pleasant. I was at the outset pre- possessed in favor of his books ; but as soon as I came to study them I found that (except for what was drawn from the printedTennes- see State histories) they were extremely un- trustworthy. Oral tradition has a certain value of its own, if used with great discretion and intelligence ; but it is rather startling to find any one blandly accepting as gospel al- leged oral traditions gathered one hundred and twenty-five years after the event, espe- cially when they relate to such subjects as the losses and numbers of Indian war parties. No man with the slightest knowledge of frontiersmen or frontier life could commit such a mistake. If anv one wishes to get at the value of oral tradition of an Indian light a century old. let him go out west and collect the stories of Custer's battle, which took place only a dozen years ago. I think 1 have met or heard of fifty " solitary surviv- ors " of Custer's defeat : and I could collect certainly a dozen complete accounts of both it and Reno's fight, each believed by a goodly number of men, and no two relating the story in an even approximately similar fashion. Mr. Gilmore apparently accepts all such ac- counts indiscriminately, and embodies them in his narrative without even a reference to his authorities. I particularize one or two 288 APPENDICES out of very many instances in the chapters dealing with the Cherokee wars. Books founded upon an indiscriminate ac- ceptance of any and all such traditions or al- leged traditions are a little absurd, unless, as already said, they are avowedly merely his- toric novels, when they may he both useful and interesting. I am obliged to say with genuine regret, after careful examination of Mr. Gilmore's hooks, that I cannot accept any single unsupported statement they contain as even requiring an examina'ion into its probability. I would willingly pass them by without comment, did I not fear that my silence might be construed into an acceptance of their truth. Moreover, I notice that some writers, like the editors of the " Cyclopedia of American Jliography," seem inclined to take the volumes seriously. 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