ii Border Fights ^ Fighters M ^- " They came on with fixed bayonets without firing." Border Fights ^ Fighters ^S ^5 ^? •5 ^r ^? ^5 ^¥ ^5 ^5 ^5 ^P: ^ff ^? ^5 ^5 ^5 ^5 ^5 ^? ^5 ^ff ^¥ ^ff ^5 ^5 ^y^ ^5 ^ff ^ff ^B ^S'^^C^c STORIES OF THE PIONEERS BETWEEN THE ALLEGHENIES AND THE MISSIS- SIPPI AND IN THE TEXAN REPUBLIC BY CYRUS TOWNSEND BRADY, LL.D. Author of American Fights & Fighters, Colonial Fights & Fighters, ^c. ¥ With Maps, Plans, & many Illustrations by- Louis Betts, Howard Giles, J, N. Mar- chand, Roy L. Williams, Harry Fenn & A. de F. Pitney NEW YORK MCCLURE, PHILLIPS ^ CP MCMII ^---^\Oa^ ^ THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, Two Cop.Es Received SEP. 23 1902 •COPVWOHT ENTHy CLAlS O'XXfc. No. OOPY A. V Copyright, 190a, by S. S. McClure Co. Copyright, 1 902, by McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO. Published, October, 1902, N I dedicate this book in the bonds of an old affection to that venerated and admired Scholar & Gentleman CDtoarD I3roofe0^ ^.M*, p^.^*, LL*?^.^ etc»j Superintendent of Public Education, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, whose varied learning, philo- sophic CULTURE, WIDE EXPERIENCE, and most of all, UNFAILING CHRISTIAN COURTESY and kindliness of HEART, have so endeared him to all those who, like myself, are privileged to call him frienti Prefatory Note FROM De Soto, who opens the first book of this Fights and Fighters Scries, to Houston, who closes the third, is just three centuries. The salient incidents of these three hundred years, from the Conquistador to the Pioneer, have engaged the greater part of my attention for a long time, and with the completion of this book they are set before the reader. To me this last book of the series has been the most interesting. It is more thoroughly American and the men come more closely home to us therefore. Two of them come especially close to me, since Captain John Brady was my great-great-grandfather, and Captain Samuel Brady my great-granduncle. It has been a pleasure and pride to me to find them worthy of inclu- sion in this category of heroes. As I look back upon the history of America through my studies therein, I seem to catch a glimpse of the great purpose and plan back of it all. The story of our land has been the story of a struggle for the possession of a continent, a story of the rise to domination of that branch of the Germanic Race known as the Anglo-Saxon. Whatever be the continental affiliation of the early or late settler, whether Irish, Dutch, Scots, German, or Latin, he has been modified, changed, absorbed by the dominant racial solvent, primarily into a Germano-Anglo- Saxon, latterly into an American — the new racial type. Our social habits and political practices, like our Ian- viii Prefatory Note guage, law, and religion, are English, with just enough modification to differentiate us and give us an originality of our own. The struggle by which this has been brought about is the true meaning of our history, and that is the story told in these books. Alien races were compelled either to affiliate or go out; absorption or destruction were the unconscious alternatives, and if they could not be ab- sorbed they had to disappear in one way or another. The French, the Spanish, the Indians, have gone, and so jealous of control have we been that even the ties that bound us to older civilizations of Europe had to be ruthlessly broken. To anticipate a little, the dominant idea of America for the free Americans persisted through a Civil War of appalling magnitude, and until we had driven the Spanish flag from Cuba and the Antilles; and if I dare venture a prophecy, though I personally am called an Anti- Imperialist, this supreme idea of American Continental Domination will not reach its limit until there is but one flag from the Isthmus of Panama to the Arctic Circle, and that the Stars and Stripes. One of the greatest questions that troubles the Ameri- can mind is the ultimate solution of what is known as the race problem. How far modern ethics may modify ancient habit cannot be said, yet the experience of the past presented but two possibilities to the alien, assimila- tion or disappearance — and we cannot assimilate the negro! As to the particular volume in which this note appears let me say that to these unfamiliar subjects I have given more thought, study, and investigation, than to both the preceding books. Again, I admit the free use of all Prefatory Note ix authentic printed authorities, — among them only citing by name Roosevelt's great Epic, " The Winning of the West," — much old manuscript unprinted and some per- sonal recollections of ancient men, together with family traditions. Many of the incidents depicted, while more or less familiar, are not easy to come at in detail, even in the larger histories accessible to the people. The period treated of was a most important one in our history, and its masters must be judged according to their tasks. The President in a recent speech well said : " To conquer a continent is rough work. All really great work is rough in the doing, though it may seem smooth enough to those who look back upon it or gaze upon it from afar. The roughness is an unavoidable part of the doing of the deed. We need display but scant patience with those, who, sitting at ease in their own homes, delight to exercise a querulous and censorious spirit of judgment upon their brethren who, whatever their shortcomings, are doing strong men's work as they bring the light of civilization into the world's darkest places." And Stuart Edward White, a welcome young apostle of the west, in a recent clever novel writes: " When history has granted him the justice of per- spective, we will know the American Pioneer as one of the most picturesque of her many figures. Resourceful, self-reliant, bold; adapting himself with fluidity to di- verse circumstances and conditions; meeting with equal cheerfulness of confidence and completeness of capabil- ity both unknown dangers and the perils by which he has been educated; seizing the useful in the lives of the beasts and men nearest him, and assimilating it with marvellous rapidity; he presents to the world a picture Prefatory Note of complete adequacy which it would be difficult to match in any other walk of life." In this book I have striven to do the Pioneer justice, as I have striven to lay aside prejudice all through the series and to write fairly even of the enemy, be he Briton, or Indian, or Mexican, or whatever he may. And in ad- dition to a mere recital of heroic incidents I have endeav- ored to depict the characters of men like Boone, Hous- ton, Crockett, Brady, Sevier, Tecumseh, Bouquet, Santa Anna, and the rest. More pressing literary engagements will probably pre- vent the issuance of the fourth volume of the series in 1903, as I had wished, but the next book is already planned under the title of Beyond the Mississippi Fighis and Fighters, and I hope to have it ready in 1904. C. T. B. The Normandie, Philadelphia, Penna., June, 1902. CONTENTS ¥ Part I PENNSYLVANIA PAGE HOW HENRY BOUQUET SAVED PENNSYLVANIA . . i I. A Veteran Soldier and His Problem .... 3 II. The March Over the Mountains .... 8 III. The Battle of Bushy Run 13 IV. The End of Bouquet -19 CAPTAIN SAMUEL BRADY, CHIEF OF THE RANGERS . 21 I. A Family of Fighters 23 II. The First of the Borderers 27 III. The Adventure at Bloody Spring . . . .28 IV. Brady's Famous Leap $3 V. An Expedition with Wetzel and Other Adventures 36 ¥ Part II VIRGINIA, TENNESSEE, THE CAROLINAS ON THE EVE OF THE REVOLUTION 41 I. Andrew Lewis and His Borderers . . . -43 II. The Battle of Point Pleasant 48 III. The Fate of the Participants in the Campaign . 56 Xll Contents THE PIONEERS OF EAST TENNESSEE I. John Sevier a.nd the Watauga Men . II. "The Rear Guard of the Revolution" . III. The State of Franklin and its Governor IV. The Assembling of the Mountaineers V. The Dash to Catch Ferguson VI. King's Mountain; Launching the Thunderbolt VII. After the Battle 6i 63 67 68 72 79 83 91 UNPUBLISHED ACCOUNT OF THE BATTLE OF KING'S MOUNTAIN, BY THE REV. STEPHEN FOSTER, A PAR- TICIPANT 95 Part III KENTUCKY DANIEL BOONE, GREATEST OF PIONEERS I. The Land Beyond the Mountains II. The Greatest of the Pioneers . III. The Exploration of Kentucky IV. The Settlement of Kentucky V. Adventures with Indians VI. The Defence of Boonesborough . VII. The Last Battle of the Revolution . VIII. The End of the Old Pioneer III "3 116 118 122 127 134 138 146 THE WOMEN AND CHILDREN OF BRYAN'S STATION . 149 I. The Wives of the Pioneers 151 II. An Oldtime Frontier Fort 153 III. Ruse against Ruse 155 IV. The Story of the Morgans . . . . . . 163 Contents Xlll Part IV THE FAR SOUTH THE MASSACRE AT FORT MIMS . I. The Beginning of the Creek War II. Careless Defenders III. P.wiNG THE Awful Penalty . JACKSON'S VICTORY AT TOHOPEKA . I. The Last Stand of the Creeks . II. The Heroism of Young Sam Houston WHEN THE SEMINOLES FOUGHT FOR FREEDOM I. The Injustice of the United States . II. The Massacre of Dade and His Men . HI. After the Battle PAGE 165 167 171 173 179 181 186 191 193 197 202 Part V THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY GEORGE ROGERS CLARK AND THE GREAT NORTH- WEST 209 I. The Origin of a Great Idea 211 II. The First Success 218 III. "The Hair-Buyer General" 224 IV. The Terrible March 229 V. The Capture of Vincennes 234 VI. Forgotten ! 238 TECUMSEH AND WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON . . 241 I. The Greatest of the Indians 243 II. The Protagonist of the League 248 III. The Battle of Tippecanoe 257 IV. The Battle of the Thames 264 xiv Contents PAGE THE MASSACRE ON THE RIVER RAISIN . . . .269 I. The Army of the West 271 II. A Hazardous Expedition 274 III. The Battle of Frenchtown 280 IV. The Murder of the Wounded 286 GEORGE CROGHAN AND THE DEFENCE OF FORT STEPHENSON 289 I. A Boy in Command of Other Boys .... 291 II. The Impudence of the Young Captain . . . 296 III. Desperate Fighting . 300 ¥ Part VI TEXAS DAVID CROCKETT AND THE MOST DESPERATE DE- FENCE IN AMERICAN HISTORY . . .305 I. A Typic.-vl American 307 II. The Lone Star Republic 312 III. The Mission del Alamo 314 IV. The Hundred and Eighty against the Five Thou- sand 316 THE WORST OF SANTA ANNA'S MISDEEDS . . .327 I. The Delay at Fort Defiance 329 II. The Battle of the Coleta 334 III. The Massacre at Goliad 338 SAM HOUSTON AND FREEDOM 345 I. Some Characteristics of the Man .... 347 II. In the Service of the Texan Republic . . . 353 III. "The Runaway Scrape" 354 IV. Santa Anna is Trapped 357 V. The Battle of San Jacinto 363 INDEX 369 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE They came on with fixed bayonets without firing" ....... Frontispiece That war party was annihilated" . . . .32 Cornstalk received them standing with wide open arms" 58 Ferguson showed himself a very paladin of courage" 88 The Kentuckians stood to their ground manfully and returned the fire" 142 It was indeed a fearful moment for the women" . 158 The major bent his back and pushed like mad" . 174 ■ They plunged dauntlessly into the ford, only to be met by the fire from coffee's riflemen on the farther side " 1 88 ' i can give you no more orders, lads. do your BEST ! " 202 • Clark, with tragic intensity, bade them go on WITH THE dance" 220 ' Messengers brought letters . . . appealing for vengeance or protection " 250 XV xvi List of Illustrations FACING PAGE " Proctor . . . had a fiery interview with the American commander" 284 "The young subaltern did not scare a little bit". 300 The Mission del Alamo 314 "So he Makes a Fine End!" 324 "She took the family far over the Allegheny Mountains" 348 LIST OF MAPS AND PLANS PAGB I. Plan of the Battle of Bushy Run . . .15 II. Plan of the Battle of King's Mountain . . 86 III. Plan and Perspective View of Boonesborough . 126 IV. Plan of Fort Mims 170 V. Map of the Horse-Shoe Bend and Plan of the Battle 182 VI. Plan of the Battle of Tippecanoe . . . 256 VII. Map of Frenchtown and the Massacre on the Raisin ......... 278 VIII. Map of Fort Stephenson 294 IX. Plan of the Battle of San Jacinto , . .361 Part I PENNSYLVANIA I How Henry Bouquet Saved Pennsylvania HOW HENRY BOUQUET SAVED PENNSYLVANIA " At once there rose so wild a yell Within that dark and narrow dell. As all the fiends, from heaven that fell Had peal' d the banner-cry of hell / " I. A Veteran Soldier and His Problem IN the far western part of the province of Pennsyl- vania on the night of the 5th of August, 1763, a little party of English soldiers found themselves con- fronted by as desperate a situation as ever menaced a military expedition. They were encamped upon a low barren hill with a few stunted trees upon it, which was surrounded on all sides by a thick dense forest. Not a fire was burning on the hill, not a light of any kind could be shown. The sky was overcast and no star sparkled like a beacon of heaven above them. The troops, numbering four hundred and fifty, were ^ posted on the slopes of the hill in a large circle. Within this circle some three hundred pack-horses were tethered. On the very crest of the elevation, in the centre of the cordon of soldiery, a temporary breastwork had been made by piling in a circle bags of flour and meal which had been the burden of the pack-horses. Within the meagre shelter afforded by the enclosure so formed, some thirty-five desperately wounded officers and men 3 4 Border Fights and Fighters were lying. What slight attention the suffering soldiers received was given them in the darkness. There was not a drop of water on the hill. At irregular intervals a flash of light would lance the darkness of the mass of trees enclosing them like a wall, and the report of a musket, followed by a terrifying war- cry, would break the stillness of the night, apprizing the anxious soldiers that their 'watchful enemies were still there. The pickets crouching down on the slopes and peering into the blackness about them, kept fearful watch while the rest of the exhausted soldiers lay upon their arms full of dismal forebodings for the morrow, vainly endeavoring to stifle the pangs of thirst or to get a little sleep. Across a little ravine in front of the position they held, upon the slopes of a similar hill, the bodies of some twenty-five of their fellow-soldiers lay still and ghastly under the trees. The well-aimed bullet, the brutal tomahawk, and the terrible scalping-knife had done their fell work. There were no wounded there. The soldiers on the hill were alone in the wilderness. Back at Fort Ligonier, some fifty miles away, there was a little garrison, the major part composed of sixty in- valids too weak to accompany their comrades on the expedition. About twenty miles before them another small body of English soldiers, hopefully awaiting for the arrival of the very party in such sore straits, were tena- ciously defending Fort Pitt, situated at the confluence of the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers. On all sides of them extended the unbroken wilderness, virgin woods, forests primeval, covering mountain range and valley. The soldiers on the hill, therefore, could hope for no assistance and must depend upon their own endeavors to extricate themselves from their desperate position. How Bouquet Saved Pennsylvania 5 The locality in which they found themselves was preg- nant with menacing history. A few miles away, a few years before, twice their number of English troops had been utterly defeated with dreadful loss, and some of the same Indians who had overwhelmed Braddock with such terrible success, lay encamped about these men that night. Still nearer in time as the place was closer in distance, these same red men could recall the disas- trous beating they had given Major Grant and his High- landers. They had never been conquered by the white men — they did not mean to be then. Every military post on the western Pennsylvania bor- der, except those two mentioned, had been captured by these selfsame savages during the spring; their gar- risons had been first tortured and then murdered and the forts themselves burned and destroyed. All over the northwest the Indians had risen, animated by the genius and inspired by the enthusiasm of Pontiac, and they had fed fat their ancient grudge against the hap- less English. Not yet glutted by their successes and the ensuing slaughter, they were slowly making their way eastward into the populous and well-settled portions of Pennsylvania. Such a scene of rapine and murder as had followed the destruction of the military posts has never been equalled. The frontier was left entirely unprotected. In every clearing, where, a few months before, had dwelt the settler in comparative peace and security, tilling the soil, planting his crops and wresting from the wilder- ness his hard-earned livelihood; and with his wnfe and children devoting himself to the conquest of the country to the arts of peace and to the spirit of civilization, now stood the tottering remnants of a chimney amid the 6 Border Fights and Fighters ashes of a home. Unburied bodies by hundreds, the prey of the wild beasts of the forest, the wolves and the vultures, aye, of the very swine that ranged the wilder- ness, gave mute attestation to the thoroughness with which the border had been swept by the desolating Indian. The struggling little towns clustering about the walls of some feeble fort, such as Shippensburg, Carlisle, and Bedford, were crowded with terrified fugitives. With their limited accommodations they were able to afford a shelter to but few of those who sought their protec- tion. Their already depleted stocks of provisions were soon exhausted, and famine and privation added their pangs to the troubles of the people. And there were many wounded and ill, some who had been tortured, shot, even scalped, who yet lived, for whom nothing could be done, who must needs suffer without any alle- viation of their anguish. Distracted wives who had been bereft of their hus- bands gathered their children about them and lay house- less in the fields. Starving children who had lost their parents wandered from group to group, their pitiful wailings almost unnoticed in the general misery. Here a mother mourned a son, there a friend longed for a friend. And there were many haggard desperate men, too, who had seen their dear ones taken from them and submitted to a fate too horrible to mention. These kept watch and ward over the huddled fugitives; and, as they grasped their rifles with nervous hands, with breaking hearts they swore eternal vengeance against the red man. And the colony of Pennsylvania did nothing to pro- tect its children! How Bouquet Saved Pennsylvania 7 Fortunately, however, there happened to be at the time an officer named Henry Bouquet in command of the king's forces at Philadelphia. He was one of the most accomplished soldiers and gentlemen of his time; an officer, the variety of whose talents was only equalled by his bravery and sagacity. He had for some seven years held a command in America. During this time he had so mastered the tactics of the savage foeman, against whom he most often warred, that in address and cun- ning he proved himself able to give even the wiliest Indian chief a bitter lesson. Though the service he rendered America was of the utmost importance, though he manifested in the performance of it the steadiest courage, and exhibited the highest skill; though he fought, all things considered, the most brilliant and effective battle which was probably ever waged against the Indians — certainly the most notable engagement in which a British officer commanded — he is a forgotten hero and his services are now but little remembered. This great and gallant soldier was born in 1719, at Rolle in Switzerland, on the north shore of the beautiful lake of Geneva. Springing from an humble family and possessed of little fortune, he made his way upward by sheer force of natural ability and talent. As did many Swiss, he chose to follow a military career, and entered the Dutch service as a cadet when only seventeen years of age. Shifting his allegiance, as was the habit of sol- diers of fortune, he later became adjutant to the King of Sardinia, in whose employ he saw much hard service, in which he greatly distinguished himself. The Prince of Orange made him lieutenant-colonel of the Swiss Guards of Holland in 1748. After the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle he spent his time 8 Border Fights and Fighters in mastering not merely military art but the polite learn- ing of his day as well. In 1756 he was appointed lieutenant-colonel commanding one of the four battalions of the regiment called the "' Royal Americans " which King George III had directed should be raised in Amer- ica for service in the French and Indian War. This was a regiment composed mainly of Pennsylvania Germans, and it was necessary, as the majority of the men spoke little or no English, that officers who should be conver- sant with their language should be appointed to command them. A special act of Parliament had been required in order that Bouquet and other foreigners could be commissioned by the English king, a most fortunate act indeed. The regiment performed superb service on many hard-fought battle-fields in the French War; and various detachments, since the Peace of Paris had ended that conflict, had made up most of the garrisons of the different posts in the west and northwest which had just been overwhelmed by the savage onslaught. II. The March Over the Mountains Sir Jeffrey Amherst, who commanded all the English forces in America, when he received news of the Indian outbreak, immediately directed Colonel Bouquet to ad- vance to relieve Fort Pitt, and to afford some protection to the distressed inhabitants of western Pennsylvania with whatever forces he could assemble without delay. Bouquet could only gather up about six hundred men and this he did by ordering the remnants of two regiments, the Forty Second Highlanders and the Seventy Seventh infantry, which had just been invalided home from the West Indies, to the front. The men were so broken by How Bouquet Saved Pennsylvania 9 their arduous and wearing service in the tropics that they were really fit for nothing but garrison duty. Some of them had to be carried along on the march in wagons on account of their weakness. There were no other troops available, however, and they had to go. They cheerfully undertook the campaign for the relief of the suffering people. On the 3rd of July, 1763, the expedition arrived at Carlisle, to which point orders had been sent that sup- plies and transportation should be in readiness. Noth- ing had been done, owing to the panic of the inhabitants. In fact, so far from finding any supplies, Bouquet, who was a man of extreme sensibility, felt obliged to share the meagre provisions of his little army with the starv- ing women and children. The situation was apparently hopeless, but such was the energy, ability, and tact of the commander that eighteen days after his arrival the ex- pedition left Carlisle with a large number of wagons fully provided. Fort Ligonier, the most westerly post, except Fort Pitt, which still held out, was relieved by a party of thirty of the strongest men, who were sent ahead on forced march and succeeded in breaking through the be- sieging Indians and gaining the fort. Bouquet arrived at Fort Bedford on the 25th and on the 28th he reached Fort Ligonier. There, putting what supplies he could on pack-horses, and leaving his wagons and heavy baggage he pushed forward toward Fort Pitt in much apprehension. The little army followed Forbes' road,* which, through neglect, had become almost im- passable; and their progress led them through such scenes of desolation that the hearts of the men were in- ♦ See my book Colonial Fights and Fighters: The Struggle for the Valley of the Ohio. lo Border Fights and Fighters flamed with an ever-growing desire for vengeance upon the red authors of the ruin. The army marched with the greatest care. A little body of backwoodsmen scouted before them, followed by a strong advance party, then came the main body, then the baggage train, then the rear-guard, while another party of frontiersmen covered the rear and the flanks. There were only thirty of these valuable adjuncts, how- ever, and the protection they could give and the scout- ing they could do, was limited. Bouquet had left the weakest of his men in the forts and his force now amounted to about five hundred men all told. On the 5th of August they had arrived in the vicinity of a little creek called Bushy Run, about twenty-five miles from their goal. Their advance had been subjected to desultory firing from time to time, so that it was per- fectly well known that savages were marking their progress. Early in the afternoon, in a dense wood, they came in touch with the Indians. The firing, which began with startling suddenness, was too heavy for a mere skirmish. The Indians were in great force and had determined to intercept them, having temporarily raised the siege of Fort Pitt for that purpose. The continual rattle of arms and the wild yells which rang through the wood, apprized the experienced leader that the engagement was fast be- coming serious. In fact twelve out of the eighteen men who led the advance were shot down almost instantly. Ordering the baggage and convoy to halt where they were on the top of the hill mentioned, and leaving the rear company to look after it. Bouquet hurried to the front followed by the main body of his soldiery. Ad- vancing his troops and deploying them into such a line How Bouquet Saved Pennsylvania n as the forest growth permitted, Bouquet charged through the woods with the bayonet. The Indians at once gave way before the onrush of the Highlanders and the Hght infantry, but when Bouquet haUed the charge and re- called his men lest they should become scattered, and he lose control of them, the savages crept back through the trees and resumed the engagement. As they had done years before to Braddock's men, so now they extended themselves through the wood on either side and endeavored to attack the British on the flanks. But whatever they did the soldiers met them. There was no panic this time on the part of those weak and feeble half-invalid soldiers. Bouquet was an entirely different man from Braddock and he had won the confi- dence of his men. They trusted him entirely and they had seen and heard too much of the Indian customs on their march not to know that to break and run meant destruction. Bouquet carefully manoeuvred his men through the trees, skilfully checking and driving back the advancing Indians from time to time by well-delivered volleys or short rushes with the bayonet. The battle was going favorably when firing in the rear told him that the Indians, who much outnumbered the English, had en- gaged the rear-guard. Still keeping his front to the enemy Bouquet withdrew his troops and posted them around the hill in rear of the first position, thus afford- ing protection to the convoy and the baggage. It was late in the afternoon now and until night fell the battle was kept up. The Indians surrounded the camp and fought from behind the trees. There v;as no more volley firing by the British, but they lay on the ground availing themselves of all possible cover, firing 12 Border Fights and Fighters slowly and endeavoring to make every shot tell. When- ever the impatient Indians, growing bolder as they ap- parently saw their prey within their grasp, left cover and advanced they were driven back to the woods with the deadly bayonet. Presently the welcome night came and the attack ceased. The situation of the British was indeed deplo- rable. A line of dead men from the first hill where the first onset had been met, back to the camp, showed how faithfully they had fought and how resolutely they had been attacked. There were no wounded out in the forest glades either. The Indians ruthlessly butchered and scalped all who fell. Some sixty of the English had been killed or wounded. They were surrounded by a large force of savages and it appeared likely that the terrible experiences of the past would be repeated upon them on the morrow. Bou- quet wrote to Amherst that night, commending in brief soldier-like words, the steadiness and valor of his men, but preparing him for the worst possible results of the expected action, which he realized would take place on the morrow. He was too good a soldier not to recog- nize the peril of their situation and too brave a man not to admit it. With almost any other commander in the English service in a similar situation, the result would have been certain. Bouquet, however, was in himself a host. He knew that his only chance of escaping annihilation would be in bringing the savages to a stand, where he could deliver with his veterans such a decisive blow as would completely defeat them, otherwise he was doomed. The Indians could keep him on that hill picking ofif his men until they died of hunger or thirst, if nothing else. To retreat was impossible. How Bouquet Saved Pennsylvania 13 III. The Battle of Bushy Run There was no sleep for the anxious commander that night. As he walked around the circle among his ex- hausted men lying on their arms, as he passed the heavy cordon of sentries who kept watch over those who sought to snatch a few moments of needed rest, as he thought of the helpless wounded stifling their groans with heroic resolution in the little enclosure on the crest of the hill, as he recalled the wretched women and children, the ter- rified inhabitants of the forts and towns who were look- ing to him for protection, and praying God for the success of his expedition which was the only barrier interposed between them and the red scourge sweeping through the forests from the westward, he sustained a weight of responsibility which would have crushed a man less stout of heart. In his desperation he concocted a plan whereby he fondly hoped he could extricate his forces from their deadly peril, and at the same time de- liver a crushing blow upon the Indians. It was a plan worthy of the keenest warrior that ever endeavored to conquer his foe by savage subtlety and woodland stratagem. Feverishly he waited for the morning and prayed for a favorable time and opportu- nity to put the plan from which he hoped so much, upon which so much depended, into execution. The night was marked by one instance of conspicuous heroism. From a little brook hard by the hill, practically- gone dry in the summer weather and therefore neglected by the besieging Indians, one of the frontiersmen named Byerly, unobserved by the savages, succeeded in the darkness in bringing in his hat from a hidden pool which 14 Border Fights and Fighters he had discovered, a few mouthfuls of precious water which was given to the most severely wounded. A slight rain which fell toward morning also refreshed them somewhat, but most of the men suffered greatly from thirst during the night; they had had no water since noon of the day before. When the day broke over the haggard but desperate and determined band, the Indians resumed the attack. As soon as it was light enough to see, the firing began again. Steadily the men fought on, lying crouched behind such shelter or cover as they were able to come by, while the slow hours of the hot morning dragged away. The Indians, having learned by the experience of the preced- ing day, at first took great care not to expose themselves and the British sustained their fire as best they could. The savage warriors at once marked their commander from his brilliant uniform, and fired at him so constantly that upon the insistence of his oiiicers he changed his clothing to render himself less conspicuous. The small tree behind which he took shelter while he did this was hit by no less than fourteen bullets during the time. Many of the soldiers were struck down, and of the pack-horses numbers were killed and others broke through the lines, plunging upon the men, especially the wounded, and creating wild confusion in the camp. Their drivers as a rule proved cowardly and left the terri- fied animals to their own devices. Still Bouquet did not dare to drive the horses away. He would need them when he had won the battle. So he clung tenaciously to his position and his heroic men fought on uncomplainingly while he waited for the favorable opportunity to display the stratagem he had planned. For four hours the men lay on that open hill How Bouquet Saved Pennsylvania 15 in the hot sun of August, without food or water, and kept up the engagement. The Indians, as Bouquet had foreseen, grew bolder from their immunity, being adepts at fighting under cover, and as the certainty of success grew upon them, they began creeping nearer and fight- S!l, — ■ »l/* w- /oil. It Large /5WAMP ^//nft^WTiNl^. Z.l/CMT /MrANTRY. 3. BATTALION MSN. V. fiANCCRS. 5. CATTLE. 6. HOKSeS. TiNTQENCHMeNTS OF «!«Uto,\l)//^ Bags fo« wounded ^ ,v^»i*>% '^^fi.FiRSTPoiirioNOfTRocpy # .•/ ..vi^ .^ 9. CRAVeS ON MILLOCH. 3 i i ? # 0^ 9- C« A Ve5 ON MILLOCH . V 5 '^ 'h^'^^MX^'^ ii^'*"t ^'■'"llW//(\\<^ Plan of the Battle of Bushy Run. ing more recklessly. At last the colonel determined that the moment for striking had arrived. Fortunately one side of the hill was cleft by a ravine which gave entrance upon the surrounding valley. The front of the English line where the main attack was 1 6 Border Fights and Fighters being made, was held by two companies of the High- landers. Explaining clearly to all his men what he pro- posed doing, and why, so there would be no panic and they would cany out his orders intelligently, Bouquet ordered these two companies suddenly to withdraw from the line and retreat rapidly across the hill until they reached the ravine, which they were to enter, advance down it, and hold themselves in readiness to attack from it. At the same time the companies on either side of the gap they left were ordered to extend across it in open order to keep the circle intact. At the word, the Highlanders immediately ran to the rear and plunged into the ravine, where their movements were sheltered from the view of the Indians by its depth and by the bushes growing on its edge. The movement was carried out perfectly. As the Scots rushed away from the field the men of the companies to the right and left closed the opening. The Indians of course saw the manoeuvre. Imagin- ing, naturally, that it was the beginning of a retreat, they abandoned their cover and came swarming out into the open. Pouring a furious fire upon the weakened line, with most unusual courage they charged deliber- ately at it, tomahawk and scalping-knife in hand. The thin line of soldiers could not stand the massed onset of the horde of the braves, and, although they fought hero- ically hand to hand for a moment, they were about to give way. In the very nick of time the Highlanders in the ravine, came running out into the open. As they appeared on the right flank of the Indians, without halt- ing they poured in a volley at point-blank range. Though they were greatly surprised by this unexpected dis- charge; the savages, who displayed the most astonishing How Bouquet Saved Pennsylvania 17 resolution in this battle, at once faced about and returned the fire, but when they saw through the smoke the fierce Highlanders springing upon them, bayonet in hand, revenge and triumph in their stern faces, they gave way and fled. " For life I For life ! they plight their ply — And shriek, and shout, and battle-ay. And plaids a?id bonnets waving- high. And broadstvords flashing to the sky. Are maddening iti the rear ! " Staking everything on this manoeuvre. Bouquet, when he saw the Highlanders advance, broke his line again and threw two companies of Light Infantry out of the circle on the other flank. The flying Indians ran right into them and a final volley swept them from the field. The Indians in the rear of the camp had advanced to attack at the same time those in the front had endeavored to break the weakened line, but, witnessing the repulse of those in front, they gave way on all sides before a general advance and abandoned the field. More than sixty dead Indians lay upon the ground where the Highlanders and Light Infantry had charged, and bloody trails through the woods in the direction of their retreat, showed how many men had been wounded. They had been beaten by an inferior force in a pitched battle, in a fair field and an open fight. On the English side the loss had been very heavy. One hundred and fifteen, or nearly one fourth of the troops, had been killed or wounded. The loss of the Indians was probably equally as great, if not greater. But one Indian prisoner was taken and the men, with the memory of the scenes through which they had passed to animate them, shot him to death as he had been a mad dog. i8 Border Fights and Fighters Tactically this engagement, called the Battle of Bushy Run, was one of the most brilliant fights against Indians which ever took place on the continent, and it was ren- dered memorable by the fact that the savages had ex- hibited a willingness to join in hand to hand fighting which was as remarkable as it was unusual. During Forsyth's defence of the Arickaree in western Kansas, a hundred years later, the Indians there made a charge in the open and endeavored by close fighting to win the day, but that is about the only similar instance I recall. The expedition had been saved from destruction by Bouquet's brilliant tactics alone. The English were still, however, in a desperate state. Many of the pack- horses had been shot and most of the precious supplies had to be destroyed or abandoned. It was with the greatest difficulty that the w^ounded could be transported, yet Bouquet, making such dispositions for their comfort as he could, resumed their march. Camped on the bank of Little Turtle Creek that same evening, they were again attacked, but the Indians manifested little diposi- tion to fight after the decisive and costly defeat they had sustained in the morning, and they were easily driven away. On account of the condition of his men it took Bouquet five days to march the twenty miles between him and Fort Pitt. He reached it, at last, however, and relieved the garrison. The Indians crushed and broken by their defeat and seeing no prospect of making head against the combined forces, withdrew from that section of Penn- sylvania. As the various posts were re-established and garrisoned when re-enforcements were forwarded from the east, many of the old settlers, and some new ones, reoccupied their deserted clearings. How Bouquet Saved Pennsylvania 19 IV. The End of Bouquet The Indians were eventually defeated everywhere in the general conflict which was raging through the north- west; and the year after his splendid hght, Bouquet led a brilliantly successful expedition through the country west of the Ohio, which brought about their complete submission and which resulted in the restoration of hun- dreds of captives to those who thought they had lost them forever.* For his extraordinary skill and courage and for the success of his expedition, Bouquet was thanked by the king and promoted to be brigadier-general. He died in the service at Pensacola three years afterward while still in the prime of life. In addition to his other claims upon our consideration, romance appropriates him, since he was the victim of an unrequited passion for a beauti- ful Philadelphian. Anne Willing refused to accept him because he was a soldier, and she married another and less noted man! Poor, lonely Henry Bouquet, it almost broke his heart. It seems a heartless thing to say, but the bullet that struck down Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham, and the fever that carried Bouquet away at Pensacola, did good * There is a touching little story of a mother with this expedition whose child had forgotten her and who had vainly endeavored to awaken her recol- lection, which illustrates one phase of Bouquet's character. "Sing her the song with which you put her to sleep as a baby," he said to the agonized woman, with a touch of inspiration. And the woman sang this hymn : — " Alone yet not alone am I Though in this solitude so drear, I feel my Saviour always nigh, He cotnes tny weary hours to cheer." When the little girl heard the familiar strain of her infancy, memory came back to her with the first verse, and at last she knew her mother. 20 Border Fights and Fighters service to the country destined to become the United States of America ; for they were such accomphshed sol- diers, men of such talent and genius, that had they been in command of the British forces in the War of the Revo- lution, that struggle might have been shorter and its results possibly vastly different. They were both young enough men when they died to have been available for service in 1775. We do not find such another Indian fighter as this gallant Swiss in the colonial records, and it is n.oteworthy that the same sort of troops as were found entirely inade- quate to the situation when led by Braddock, proved themselves heroes indeed when under the command of a greater and abler man. Part I PENNSYLVANIA II Captain Samuel Brady, Chief of the Rangers CAPTAIN SAMUEL BRADY, CHIEF OF THE RANGERS I. A Family of Fighters AS a typical pioneer and Indian fighter I have chosen to include in this series some account of a few of the exploits and adventures of Captain Samuel Brady, whose name for cool daring, unremitting vigilance, unsparing energy, fertility of resource, and suc- cessful enterprise, was a household word in western Pennsylvania during the beginnings of the nation. Few families among our early settlers contributed more generously and freely of their best to the service of their country than that from which Brady sprang. His father, Captain John Brady — son of Hugh, the Prcrpositus of the family in America, who was descended from that famous Irish family of which the noted versifier of the Psalms w-as a member — like Washington and George Rogers Clark, was a surveyor. He was commissioned captain in the 2nd Pennsylvania Battalion in 1764 in Bouquet's expedition. He was a noted frontiersman prior to the Revolution, and when that war broke out was appointed a captain in the 1 2th Pennsylvania Continental Line. At the Battle of the BrandyW'ine his regiment w'as cut to pieces in the des- perate fighting near the Birmingham Meeting House. He was badly wounded and his son John, a lad of fifteen 23 24 Border Fights and Fighters who had come Hke David of old with supplies for the camp, and had remained for the battle, was also wounded, and only saved from capture by the act of his colonel in throwing the boy upon a horse when the troops re- treated. So fierce was the fighting that every ofiicer in Captain Brady's company was killed or wounded, to- gether with most of his men. In 1778, Captain Brady was ordered to Fort Pitt and attached to the regiment of Colonel Brodhead, who was charged by Washington personally with the duty of pro- tecting the western Pennsylvania frontier from the in- cursions of the savages. It is estimated that there were at one time or another more than twelve thousand Indians in arms in the pay of the British. Campbell states that four hundred Seneca warriors in three years on the border, took more than one thousand scalps, two hundred and ninety-nine of them having belonged to women and tw-enty-nine to children! They were sent by the Indians to the Governor of Canada, to be by him sent as a present to the King of England. As most of the able-bodied men west of the moun- tains had enlisted in the Continental Line the valleys were without protection until Washington sent Brodhead thither. One of the frontier posts by which it was hoped to protect the country was located near Muncy and called Fort Brady in honor of its commander. James Brady, Captain John's second son, who was himself a militia captain, w'as killed near there by the Indians. A small party of men w^ere reaping in one of the fields a short distance from Loyalsock, in the fall of 1778. Captain James Brady was in command of them. Four men watched while the others w^orked. A large party of the Indians stole upon them unperceived Brady, Chief of the Rangers 25 and opened fire, whereupon the most of them fled. Captain Brady ran for his gun. According to one ac- count, he secured it, shot one of the Indians dead, seized another gun, was shot himself, then stabbed by a spear, tomahawked, and scalped. He had long red hair. It is related that one of his frontier friends a week before his death, watching him dress and plait it in the queue, which was the fashion of the day, remarked to him: " Jim, the Indians will get that red scalp of yours yet." The young captain, who was only twenty at the time, laughingly replied that if they did they would have something to lighten their darkness for them! The red hair was characteristic of the family and has persisted in many members to the present day. Young Brady sur- vived his frightful wound for five days and died at Fort Brady in the arms of his mother, an heroic pioneer woman. A year after this, Captain John was shot and instantly killed by Indians, who fled from the scene of the murder with such precipitation that they did not scalp him, and his body with his watch, seals, and weapons, was re- covered intact. His son, Hugh, too young to fight in the Revolution, rose to be a Major-General in the United States Army. As commander of the 22nd Infantry, he was shot through the body in the first charge at Lundy's Lane. A letter from Hugh's nephew. Captain John's grandson, who was an officer in his uncle's regiment, tells how the general fell and fainted from loss of blood but w^as lifted to his horse and continued in command until nearly the close of the action. He had two horses killed under him in this battle and only gave up the command when he was unable to sit or stand from loss i6 Border Fights and Fighters of blood.* Another of Captain John's grandsons, Will- iam, volunteered for service in Perry's squadron and fought in the Battle of Lake Erie. There were thirteen children born to this old Pioneer Captain, of whom five were girls. Two boys died in infancy and another just before the War of 1812. The other five fought in every war which took place while they were alive. The most distinguished of them all, however, unless it be General Hugh, was the oldest, Captain Samuel Brady, Chief of the Rangers. On August 3rd, 1775, he enlisted, being then only nineteen years of age, as a private soldier, and was ordered to Massachusetts. He participated in the operations around Boston, and in the Battle of Long Island, where he so distinguished himself for bravery that he was promoted to a lieutenancy, skip- ping the grade of ensign. He fought at White Plains and was one of that ragged starved little band of men who clung to Washington and with which he made that desperate strike back at Trenton and Princeton in the darkest hour of the Revolution. f As one of Hand's riflemen at Princeton, he barely escaped capture on ac- count of his impetuous gallantry. He was brevetted a captain for gallant service at the Brandywine and Germantown. At the Massacre of Paoli, he was surrounded, pursued, and narrowly escaped with his life. So close were the British to him that as he leaped a fence they pinned him to it by thrusting bayonets through his blanket-coat. He tore himself away, shot dead a cavalryman who had overtaken him * See my book American Fights and Fighters. Niagara Campaign. \ See my book American Fights and Fighters. Washington's Greatest Campaign. Brady, Chief of the Rangers 27 and ordered him to surrender, found safety in a swamp, where he gathered up some fifty-five men who had escaped and led them safely to the army in the morning. He, too, was ordered to western Pennsylvania with his regiment, in wdiich he appears at first as a captain- lieutenant. He was borne on the rolls successively of the Third, Sixth, and Eighth Pennsylvania Line until the termination of the Revolution. II. The First of the Borderers It was his services as a borderer, however, that espe- cially entitle him to attention. What Boone w'as to Kentucky and Kenton to Ohio, that Sam Brady was to western Pennsylvania. His services were so great that Colonel Brodhead successfully urged his promotion to a full captaincy and commended him specifically in a personal letter to General Washington. Indeed, on more than one occasion, he was selected by Washing- ton, through Colonel Brodhead, for certain specific and important duties; and there is a letter of Colonel Brod- head's extant, which is published in the Pennsylvania archives, in which the colonel states that he has just received a special letter of commendation for Captain Brady from the great Commander-in-Chief himself. Al- though he was only twenty-seven years old when the war closed he was by universal consent regarded as the chief ranger, hunter, scout, and frontiersman on the Pennsylvania border. The Allegheny and Ohio rivers constituted the west- ern and northern boundaries of the colonies. George Rogers Clark, Boone, and others ranged over the north- ern Kentucky line to protect the settlements, Poe and 28 Border Fights and Fighters Wetzel around Wheeling, and Brady and his men from Fort Pitt to Lake Erie. His services were well-nigh continuous. He was always in the woods. No enter- prise was too dangerous for him to undertake. No danger was so great as to deter him. He was constantly employed until the war was over, and when General Wayne mustered an army to avenge St. Clair's defeat and crush the Indians, Brady was given command of all his scouts, rangers, and pioneers. Captain Brady died on Christmas Day, 1795, leaving a name which is still remembered in western Pennsyl- vania, and which has been much referred to by those who have written the annals of the west. Indeed the old settlers in their letters, reminiscences, and early records, do not hesitate to compare him — and not to his disadvantage — to the great Daniel Boone himself. Partly from these records and partly from family tra- ditions and old letters, some of his exploits have been preserved. I shall not attempt to give them in chrono- logical order. Indeed it is impossible to date some of them. Like every other famous borderer he has been made the subject of myth and legend, and heroic tale has grown about him, but there is good authority for the adventures here set down. III. The Adventure at Bloody Spring On one occasion he was ordered by Colonel Brodhead upon a scouting expedition. He took with him two tried comrades named Biggs and Bevington. Ranging northward from Fort Pitt, at a place above the mouth of the Beaver, near the present village of Fallston, where there was a clearing, they came upon the ruins of the Brady, Chief of the Rangers 29 cabin of a settler named Gray. The Indians had just visited the cabin, the walls and chimney of which were still blazing from the torch which they had applied. There was not a living person to be seen. They were carefully reconnoitring the place when the keen ears of the captain detected the sound of a horse approaching. Fearful lest the Indians who had committed the depreda- tion might not have departed, Brady and his men scat- tered and concealed themselves. The horseman proved to be Gray, the master of the cabin, who had been away some distance on that morning. Brady and his companions, as was the usual custom on such expeditions, were dressed to resemble Indians and had painted their faces further to disguise themselves. The captain knew if he showed himself to Gray in that guise the settler would probably shoot him before he could explain, so he waited concealed until Gray passed him, leaped upon the horse, seized the settler in his arms and whispered, " Don't struggle. I'm Sam Brady." When the man became quiet he told him of the catas- trophe at his cabin. Summoning Bevington and Biggs the whole party cautiously made their way to the ruined home. Gray's state of mind may well be imagined, for he had left in the cabin that morning his wife, her sister, and five children. A careful search of the ruins satisfied them that there were no charred remains among the ashes. They were confident, therefore, that the Indians had taken the women and children away with them. The experienced woodsmen soon picked up the trail, which they cautiously but rapidly followed. The Ind- ians, who seemed to be in some force, made not the slightest effort at concealment. Brady's men had wanted 30 Border Fights and Fighters to return to Fort Mcintosh and get assistance before they pursued. The captain of the rangers pointed out that to do that would cause them to lose so much time that they could not hope to overtake the Indians, so the four men resolved to press on and do the best they could. They swore to follow Brady's leadership and he promised not to desert Gray, who would have gone on alone if the others had failed him. Brady's knowledge of the country enabled him to foresee the path the Indians would probably take and by making short cuts, toward evening the party caught a glimpse of the Indians they were pursuing, trailing over a mountain a mile away. They counted thirteen Indians, eight of them on horseback, together with the two women and five children. Bringing his woodcraft again into play, Brady concluded that the Indians would stop for the night in a deeply secluded dell in a ravine in the mountains where there was a famous spring. The configuration of the ground made it possible to light a fire there without betraying the whereabouts of the fire- builders to the surrounding country. He therefore led his party up a little creek, which thereafter was known as Brady's Run, until about seven o'clock they reached a spur of the mountain from which they could look down upon the spring. Sure enough, there were the Indians. There, too, were the weary, dejected women, and the children too exhausted and too frightened to cry. Utterly unsuspicious of observation the savages made camp, built a fire and prepared their evening meal. For three mortal hours the four woodsmen lay con- cealed watching the camp. Finally the Indians disposed themselves in a semicircle, surrounding the women and Brady, Chief of the Rangers 31 children, with the fire in the centre. The muskets, rifles, and tomahawks were piled at the foot of a tree some fifteen feet from the right point of the circle. One by one the Indians sank into slumber, as did the poor dejected prisoners. Brady had long since made his plan. There was only one way to kill those Indians, and that was without waking them. If they had fired on them they might have killed four, yet the odds would have been still more than two to one, besides which the rangers could hardly have fired without killing some of the women and chil- dren. He decided that the Indians should be knifed while they slept. Appointing Gray to take the right of the semicircle, Bevington the left, choosing the centre himself, and di- recting Biggs to secure the guns and tomahawks, the three men approached to within three hundred yards of the sleeping camp and then crept on their knees toward the Indians. They were forced to leave their guns be- hind them and trust only to scalping-knife and toma- hawk. It was a frightful risk, but their only chance. With snake-like caution and in absolute silence they crawled over the ground. When within fifty feet of the camp a dead twig cracked and broke under Biggs' hand. The sound woke an Indian, who lifted himself on his hands and stared sleepily over the fire. The four men were as still as death. Hearing nothing further the Indian sank back again. They waited fifteen minutes for him to get sound asleep and once more began their stealthy and terrible advance. They so timed their manoeuvres that they reached the line simultaneously. Three knives quietly rose and fell. Frontier knowl- edge of anatomy was sufficient to enable them to strike 32 Border Fights and Fighters accurately, and three Indians died. Again they struck. And yet again. The third Indian that Gray struck was not instantly killed. He partially rose, whereupon Gray finished him with his tomahawk. The body of the Indian fell across the legs of the man next him. He opened his mouth to cry out, but before he could make a sound Brady's ready knife struck him in the heart. There were now only three Indians left alive. The women and children were awakened at the same time and the woods rang with their frightened screams. As they saw the supposed Indians, bloody knife in hand, looking horribly in the flickering light of the fire, the women and children fled to the woods. Gray pursued them calling their names. The three remaining Indians, now wide awake, at- tempted to rise. Brady's terrible knife accounted for one, his tomahawk did for the other, and Biggs, who had at last reached the rifles, shot the last one dead. Brady had killed six, Bevington and Gray each three, and Biggs one. That w^ar party was annihilated. The women and children were soon found. The horses, arms, and other plunder of the Indians were se- cured, every one of the savages was scalped, and the party returned in si "ty to Fort Mcintosh. The place bears the name of Bloody Spring to this day. It was the constant practice of frontiersmen to scalp the Indians whenever they could. It is impossible for us to enter into the spirit prevalent at that time, but it is evident that the settlers thought no more of killing an Indian than they would of killing a rattlesnake, or a pan- ther; and indeed the horrors they witnessed and which every one of them had felt, either in his own person, Brady, Chief of the Rangers 33 or in the persons of those near and dear to them — as Brady's father and brother — had rendered them abso- hitely ruthless so far as Indians were concerned. Be- sides, the scalp of an Indian had a commercial value. In the Colonial Records of Pennsylvania, under date of Monday, February 19, 1781, Philadelphia, in the Minutes of the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania, of which Joseph Reed was President, I find the following: " v\n order was drawn in favor of Colonel Archibald Lochry Lieutenant of the County of Westmoreland, for the sum of 12 lbs, los. state money, equal to 2500 dol- lars, Continental money, to be by him paid to Captain Samuel Brady, as a reward for an Indian scalp, agreeable to a late proclamation of ihis board.'' (Italics mine.) This interesting document is signed by his Excellency Joseph Reed. He, with his associates, therefore, is particeps criminis in the scalp-taking business ! It was a government affair. IV. Brady's Famous Leap On another occasion Brady led a party of rangers into what is now Ohio, in pursuit of some of the Sandusky Indians. He ambushed them at a small lake in Portage County, which was known thereafter as Brady's Lake. The ambush was successful in that the party they were pursuing were most of them killed, but unfortunately a second and larger war party of Indians unexpectedly appeared on the scene in the middle of the action. Brady was captured after a desperate fight. Most of his men were killed and scalped and but few escaped. Rejoicing at the importance of their capture, the Indians deferred his torture until they could take him to 3 34 Border Fights and Fighters the Sandusky Towns which were the head-quarters for all the Indians in that part of the country. They re- solved to make his burning a memorable one and kept him in confinement until they could communicate with the surrounding tribes. The day of his punishment finally arrived. He was bound to a stake and the fires were kindled around him. They were in no hurry to kill him and the fires were kept rather low while different bodies of Indians arrived on the scene. In the confusion attendant upon these arrivals the watch upon Brady was somewhat relaxed. He was a man of great physical strength. He cautiously strained at the withes with which he was bound and finally succeeded in loosing them. According to some accounts the heat of the fire enabled him to break them. Although he was badly scorched, for he had been stripped of his clothing when he was tied to the stake, he leaped across the barrier of flame, seized, according to one account, an Indian squaw, the wife of the princi- pal chief, according to another, her child, pitched her into the fire, and in the alarm caused by his bold action, broke away. He had kept himself in as good physical condition as possible, taking what exercise he could though confined, and he dashed madly for his life through the woods with several hundred Indians upon his heels. He actually made good his escape. He had no arms, no clothing, nothing to eat. The Indians pursued him with implaca- ble persistence. Yet, sustained by his dauntless resolu- tion, he managed to keep ahead of them. For over a hundred miles he plunged through the woods, subsisting upon roots, berries or whatever he could get, until Brady, Chief of the Rangers 35 finally he came to the Cuyahoga River, near what is now Kent in Portage County. He had intended to cross the river at Standing Rock, a noted ford, but found that the Indians had intercepted him. The river at the point where he struck it, flowed between steep rocky banks rising some twenty-five feet from the water's edge. It was a deep roaring torrent. At the narrowest point, at that time, it was between twenty-five and thirty feet across to the opposite bank, which was not quite so precipitous as that upon which he stood, being rough and somewhat broken. Having cut him off from the ford, the Indians be- Heved that they could take him without fail in the cul de sac formed by the river. There was no other ford for miles up and down. Running back into the woods tow- ard the approaching Indians whose shouts he could hear to get a start, Brady desperately jumped from the bank. He cleared the river and struck the bank on the other side a few feet below the edge and scrambled up it just as the first pursuer appeared. " Brady," said the man, " make damn good jump. Indian no try." The Indians, however, shot at Brady and wounded him in the leg before the captain could escape. Without waiting he resumed his flight, but his wounded leg so hampered him that the Indians who had crossed the ford were again hard upon his heels. In this extremity he plunged into the water at Brady's Lake, where he had been captured, stooped beneath the surface, and concealed himself among the lilies, breathing through a hollow reed. The Indians followed his bloody trail to the lake, around which they searched for some time and seeing no sign of his exit concluded that he had plunged in 36 Border Fights and Fighters and was drowned. He afterward succeeded in getting safely back to the fort. V. An Expedition with Wetzel and Other Adventures The year 1782 was a remarkable one for savage Indian outbreaks. It was known in local border history as " The Bloody year," or " The Bloody '82." Rumors of a grand alliance between the western tribes to descend upon the settlements and finally wipe them out, reached Washington, and the general requested Colonel Brod- head to send reliable persons to spy on the Indians and if possible find out what they were about to do. The choice, as usual, fell upon Brady. He asked but for one companion, who was the famous Lewis Wetzel. Brady and Wetzel were familiar with the Indian tongue. They could speak Shawnese or Delaware like the natives themselves. Contrary to the family habit Brady was a swarthy man, with long black hair and bright blue Irish eyes, taking after his mother in that. The two men disguised themselves as Indians, de- liberately repaired to the grand council at Sandusky,, representing themselves to be a deputation from a distant sept of Shawnees, which was desirous of joining in the projected conspiracy. They moved freely about among the Indians at first entirely unsuspected. They partici- pated in the council and obtained a complete knowledge of the plans and purposes of the Indians. One veteran chief, however, finally became suspicious. Perhaps he detected the white man through the guttural syllables, or the white faces under the war paint. The two men whose every nerve had been pressed into ser- Brady, Chief of the Rangers 37 vice and whom nothing escaped, caught the suspicious glances of the old man. Consequently when he sprang to his feet and seizing a tomahawk started toward them, it was the work of a second for Brady to shoot him dead. Concealment being no longer possible, Wetzel shot a prominent chief, the men clubbed their rifles, beat down, opposition, sprang away from the council fires, dashed through the lines, seized two of the best horses — Ken- tucky stock which had been captured in a raid — and rode for their lives. They were pursued, of course, by a great body of Indians, and had many hairbreadth escapes. Wetzel's horse finally gave out and thereafter the two men, one riding the other running, pressed madly on. Finally the second horse, fairly ridden to death, gave way, but reaching a village of some friendly Delawares, they got another horse and dashed on. Several times they doubled on their trail and shot down the nearest pursuers, checking them temporarily. Finally they reached the Ohio. It was bank full, a roaring torrent. It was early in March, and the weather was bitterly cold. They forced their horse into the water, Brady on its back, Wetzel, who was the better swimmer, holding its tail and swimming as best he could. They had a terrible struggle but reached the other bank at last. The water froze on their bodies. Wetzel was entirely exhausted and almost perished with the cold. Brady killed the horse, disembowelled it and thrust his companion's body into the animal, hoping that the ani- mal heat remaining in it might keep Wetzel alive while he built a fire, which he recklessly proceeded to do. As soon as the fire was kindled he took Wetzel out of the body of the horse and brought him to the fire where he chafed his limbs until the circulation was re- 38 Border Fights and Fighters stored. The Indians gave over the pursuit at the Ohio, and the two men escaped. The plans of the Indians being discovered by this daring exploit, the settlements prepared for them, the conspiracy fell to pieces, and the projected incursion came to naught. Words fail to tell of the many incidents in which this dashing young pioneer bore a prominent part. The enterprise for which he was commended by Washington was similar to the one just described. He went alone to the Sandusky Towns in 1780 and made a map of the region, located the towns, crept near enough to the principal village to learn the plans of the Indians, capt- ured two squaws, mounted them on captured horses and made good his escape. Near the Ohio one of the squaws escaped. With the other, ranging through the forest, he came across an Indian on horseback with a woman on the pommel of the saddle and two children running alongside. Recog- nizing the woman as the wife of a frontiersman named Stupes, Brady, by a wonderful exhibition of marksman- ship, shot the Indian dead without injuring the woman. " Why," said Jenny Stupes, as she saw the painted figure of the captain, for he was still in his disguise, dashing toward her scalping-knife in hand, " did you shoot your brother? " " Don't you know me, Jenny? I am Sam Brady," said the captain, grasping the terrified woman by the hand. Taking Jenny and her children and still retaining his prisoner, he rapidly retreated toward the settlements. The Indian he had shot had been separated from a small band which happened to have retained Jenny Stupes' Brady, Chief of the Rangers 39 little dog. By the aid of the animal, which naturally ran after its mistress, the fugitives were trailed. At the time he shot the Indian Brady had but three loads for his rifle. He could not afford to expend one of them on the dog yet it had to be killed or it would betray its mistress. They sat down and waited until the dog came running up to them, when he was speedily despatched with a tomahawk, and Brady succeeded in bringing the party safely to Fort Pitt. He was several times captured. On one occasion he rolled to a fire in the night, burnt his bonds, brained one of the Indians with a stake and got away. At another time, after a long scouting expedition, he suddenly came upon two Indians near a huge tree. One was standing on the shoulders of the other cutting bark for a canoe. Brady had but one load for his rifle. Quickly deciding what to do he shot the lower Indian through the heart, whereupon the other one came tum- bling heavily to the ground. He was partially stunned. Brady ran toward him knife in hand but the Indian stag- gered to his feet and fled, by which the captain came in possession of two guns and a supply of ammunition and was enabled to proceed on his expedition. Whenever there was danger or loss his services were at command. Not only did he serve his country in sev- eral of the battles in which he commanded his company both in the east against the British, and in several expe- ditions against the Indians in the west, but he did more to guard the helpless settlers, rescue captured women and children, and to discover and thwart the Indian plans than any man in Pennsylvania. The women and chil- dren loved him and the men swore by him, for he was the protector of the frontier. 40 Border Fights and Fighters From these gruesome tales it must not be imagined that he was only a blood-thirsty and reckless borderer. On the contrary, like most of his family, he was a devout Presbyterian, and a marvellous student of the Bible. His grandnephews and nieces tell how he used to arrive at the cabin in which they lived, after some expedition, and when the evening meal was over and the lesson of Scripture with which these simple people prepared for rest, was read, Captain Sam Brady would suggest that they read it " varse about; " and they relate that when his turn came he generally recited his verse without the aid of the book, such was his mastery of the Bible ! To his family and friends he was as kind and gentle as a woman. A family tradition says that he was the model for Cooper's famous Leatherstocking. His brother, General Hugh, says that James Brady, who was killed by the Indians, was six feet one inch in height and that there was scarcely an inch difference in height among all the brethren. Sam was a man of great personal strength and activity. His favorite resting-place when at home was on the floor by the open fireplace. There he would lie and tell stories to the children who adored him. There he slept rolled in his blanket. He was a singular mixture of the Puritan and Cavalier. He could pray like an old Covenanter and fight with all the dash and spirit of Prince Rupert. Pennsylvania owes him a debt of gratitude which should never be for- gotten. Part II VIRGINIA, TENNESSEE, THE CAROLINAS I On the Eve of the Revolution ON THE EVE OF THE REVOLUTION I. Andrew Lewis and his Borderers AROUND the pedestal of Crawford's Equestrian Statue of Washington in Richmond, among those of Jefiferson, Patrick Henry, John Marshall, and other worthies, is carved the figure of a huge man dressed in a fringed hunting-shirt and carrying a rifle. It is the efiigy of General Andrew Lewis, one of the greatest of the borderers. Lewis was born in Ireland in 1720. His father was a Huguenot, who came to America after a quarrel when Andrew was a child. The family settled on the western border of Virginia near what is now Staunton, and speedily became prominent. Andrew was the oldest of four brothers, all of whom did good service in the colo- nies and in the Revolution. Three of them were sol- diers, one of whom died in battle, and the last, prevented from active campaigning by physical disabilities, shone as statesman, was an associate of Patrick Henry, after- ward a member of the Virginia Constitutional Conven- tion, and in every way possible did what he could for the cause of liberty. Andrew was the most conspicuous member of the family. He was one of the little band under Washington that fought off Coulon de Villiers at Fort Necessity in the Great Meadows, at the breaking out of the French 43 44 Border Fights and Fighters and Indian War. Lieutenant Lewis was wounded on this occasion. As captain he formed part of Braddock's army in 1756, where, although he was not in the ac- tual battle on the Monongahela, he did good service under Washington in endeavoring to protect the rav- aged border after the overwhelming defeat of the British.* In 1759 he was major of Washington's regiment under General John Forbes. He participated in Grant's foray against Fort Duquesne, where he was involved in the defeat of that rash officer's foolish enterprise. He was there captured after a desperate hand to hand tight in which he was wounded again. When Grant, seeking a scapegoat, strove to cast upon Lewis the odium of his defeat, the Virginian in a towering rage at the false ac- cusation, spat in his face and knocked him down. Grant did not press the charge thereafter. Promoted a colonel in 1759 he led an expedition against the Shawnees which, through no fault of his, was without decisive results, and which is known as the " Sandy Creek Voyage," or campaign. He was a com- missioner from Virginia at the celebrated treaty at Fort Stanwix in 1768. Lewis was six feet two in height, and of Herculean proportions and strength otherwise, al- though he carried himself with great activity. " His countenance was stern and forbidding — his deportment distant and reserved; this rendered his person more awful than engaging." So writes a contemporary, who further relates that the Governor of New York, one of his fellow commissioners at Fort Stanwix, wrote of him, " that the earth seemed to tremble at his tread." * See my book Colonial Fights and Fighters : The Struggle for the Valley of the Ohio. On the Eve of the Revolution 45 In 1774 there was a little war with the Indians at first known as Cresap's War, but latterly as Lord Dun- more's War, the importance of which was so over- shadowed by the Revolution that followed hard upon it that, but for one incident, it would be quite forgotten to-day. Yet the student now sees it was quite essential to the prosecution of the greater war, to the first success of which it contributed in no small degree. The treaty consequent upon Bouquet's expedition in 1764, was not rigidly observed by the Indians. There was constant trouble on the border, although nothing like what had before obtained. The Indians continued restless and active; there was a continual clashing of arms everywhere and, in this instance decidedly, the sav- ages were mainly the aggressors. That is not saying that the settlers were blameless. Far from it, but the balance of wrong-doing was against the Indians. To these unsettled conditions the unseemly strife be- tween Virginia and Pennsylvania for the possession of the lands west of the Blue Ridge and Alleghenies largely contributed. In 1774 matters had reached such a state that it was felt that an open war must soon break out. Active hostilities were begun, under great provocation, in the spring by a certain Captain Cresap, who led a party of frontiersmen to the wilderness surveying, etc. Some Indians were fired upon by Cresap's party and killed, and the action, though small, was known as the " Captina Affair." Some forty miles west of Pittsburg on the Ohio, there lived among the Mingos, or Shawnees, a Cayugan — that is, an Iroquois — warrior, named Tah-gah-jute, who is more commonly known to posterity by the name given him by the settlers, Logan. Among the warring 46 Border Fights and Fighters tribes, Logan had exercised a strict neutrality. Rather more. He had befriended the white men on many occa- sions. The most serious happening, which finally put an end to possibilities of even the quasi-peace which might have been maintained, was the unprovoked murder of Logan's entire family, including women and children, by a ruf- fianly trader named Greathouse, on April 30th, 1774. These Indians were first made drunk and then ruthlessly butchered without opportunity of defence, and for no occasion whatsoever. The cruel murder turned the peaceable Logan into a fiend. With a few companions he declared war on his own account at once. Thinking that Cresap had ordered the massacre, although he was entirely innocent of it, and was, as frontiersmen go, too honorable a man to have done it, Logan sent him a defiance and began to raid the border. As usual, the vengeance fell on the in- • nocent. No less than thirty people were killed by him before the authorities were awakened. Lord Dunmore, the Royal Governor of Virginia, acted with commendable promptness. He embodied the mili- tia of the counties west of the Blue Ridge and called for volunteers. The left wing was ordered to rendezvous at the Great Levels of the Greenbriar, now Lewisburg, and was placed under the command of General Andrew Lewis. The other division, under the command of Dunmore himself, assembled at Frederick. Lewis was ordered to lead his men over the mountains until he struck the Kanawha, down which he was to march until he came to the place where it flowed into the Ohio. There Dunmore, who was to march through Potomac Gap to the Ohio, was to meet him, and the two divisions On the Eve of the Revolution 47 conjoined were to march up the Scioto to the Shawanee Indian towns, which they were to destroy. The movement was vastly agreeable to the old back- woodsman, and the sturdy pioneers of western Virginia were embodied under their local officers and repaired to his standard at Camp Union with joyous alacrity. Colo- nel Charles Lewis, the brother of the general, led some four hundred men from Augusta; Colonel William Flem- ming an equal number from Botetourt. From over the mountains came the settlers from the Holston and the Watagua in Fincastle County, led by Colonel William Christian. There was also an independent company led by Colonel John Field. Among the subordinate officers were men destined afterward to achieve a wide reputation. Captain Evan Shelby commanded a company in which his son Isaac was first lieutenant. Isaac was afterward one of that dauntless band which wiped out Ferguson, and when he was a very old man and the Governor of Kentucky, he led his volunteers to the assistance of William Henry Harrison, and participated in the defeat of Tecumseh at the Battle of the Thames—" Old King's Mountain " they called him. Another captain was Benjamin Harri- son, one of the signers of the Declaration of Indepen- dence from Virginia, and the ancestor of two of our Pres- idents. Valentine Sevier, brother of the great pioneer of Tennessee, was with the force. A humble sergeant in the ranks was one James Robertson, whose name is held in the highest esteem in western Tennessee. Others who participated in the war, although not with Lewis' command, were George Rogers Clark, Simon Kenton, Daniel Morgan, and the afterward infamous renegade Simon Girty. In one way or another nearly 48 Border Fights and Fighters everyone of prominence afterward in the then far west, served in the war. Daniel Boone commanded three small frontier forts. John Sevier was a captain, and among the ofificers and soldiers were many men Hke General George Matthews, the hero of Germantown, General Andrew Moore, the first and only man ever elected to the United States Senate by Virginia from the west of the Blue Ridge, and many others of importance, although most of them are now more or less forgotten. In quality Lewis' force was remarkably high. They were in the main an undisciplined lot, who submitted grudgingly to his rule and would probably have utterly refused to obey anybody else. They knew nothing of the tactics of soldiers, but they were an unsurpassed body of border fighters. II. The Battle of Point Pleasant The assemblage began about the first of September and was nearly completed on the seventh. On the eighth, the first division started accompanied by four hundred pack-horses loaded with flour and driv- ing one hundred and eight beef cattle. Field and his company followed them and soon joined them. A few days afterward the second division marched out with two hundred pack-horses and the balance of the cattle. The march led straight across the mountains. There was no road ; not even a trail. The men had to cut their way through the timber. Such a thing as wagon transporta- tion was absurd and unheard of. They made good time, however, all things considered, and their progress was greatly facilitated when they reached the Kanawha at the mouth of the Elk, and marched down its banks. On the Eve of the Revolution 49 They arrived at the mouth of the river on the 6th of October, having traversed one hundred and sixty-five miles of primeval forest and rugged mountain range. Colonel Christian, with some two hundred men, had been left behind at the camp to bring up the rear-guard and the balance of the supplies. The pack-horses were un- loaded when they reached the Kanawha and the supplies were floated down the river in canoes or on rafts. The horses were then sent back to the Greenbriar to bring up the remainder of supplies under the direction of Colo- nel Christian, who was very unwilling to delay his ad- vance to take the part assigned. Arrived at the mouth of the Kanawha, according to one account they found a note in a hollow tree which had been put there by Kenton and Girty; according to another, they were met by these men with letters from Dunmore ordering Lewis to march up the Ohio to join Dunmore's force. Lewis' men were greatly exhausted by their terrible march. They were not yet all assem- bled, and it would not be safe to leave Colonel Christian and his three hundred men alone in the wilderness, so he determined to delay his departure until the rear-guard had joined him. The ninth was Sunday. The assemblage was by no means the godless, reckless crowd which we naturally imagine it might have been, for it is related that they had services conducted by a chaplain in which the hardy Scotch-Irish Presbyterians lustily took part, Lewis set- ting the example, although personally he was an Episco- palian. On the morning of the tenth two young men started out before daybreak on a hunting expedition. Some four or five miles from the camp they ran into a large body of Indians. One was shot dead before he so Border Fights and Fighters could get away and the other killed an Indian, made his escape, and ran post-haste to the camp bearing the alarm. The chief of the Shawnees, who were to the middle west what the Iroquois were to the north and the Creeks to the south, was a veteran warrior named Cornstalk. In every war on the border he had borne a prominent part. Ruthless and ferocious, as all the Indians were, he was not without redeeming qualities. He was a man of the greatest courage and capacity. Indeed he showed a grasp of military science and tactics unusual in one of his race. The Indians were perfectly aware of the ad- vance of the Virginians. They knew they were coming in two widely separated armies, and Cornstalk determined to fall upon the weaker body and crush it before it had time to effect a junction with the other, with which he could then deal. It was sound strategy. Massing his warriors, whose number about equalled the Americans — say eleven hundred on each side — he led them down the river designing to fall upon Lewis' camp in the night and annihilate his force. The fortunate dis- covery by the two hunters in a measure frustrated his plans. Realizing that the escaping fugitive would give the alarm. Cornstalk at once put his band in motion.. They were ferried across the Ohio in rafts and came tear- ing through the woods close on th'e heels of the fugitive, thinking, as they phrased it, to drive the borderers " like bullocks into the river." As soon as the alarming message had been delivered Lewis ordered the long roll to be beaten. Some of the men were not yet awake when the first rattle of the drum echoed through the forest. They sprang to their arms instantly, however, and fell into such line as their undis- ciplined condition permitted. On the Eve of the Revolution 51 The camp had been made at the confluence of, and between, the two rivers. On the left lay the Ohio, on the right the Kanawha. There was little chance, there- fore, of either flank being turned. It was a good place for defence, although if the American line were thor- oughly broken the troops would be annihilated, for there would be no way of escape, being penned in between the Indians and the river. No one at the time believed that the Indians were more than a scouting party; they never dreamed that the whole hostile force w'as upon them. Colonel Charles Lewis with one hundred and fifty men was ordered to march up the right flank along the Kanawha, Colonel Flemming with a like force was ordered up the left flank. Colonel Field was ordered to hold himself in readiness to advance in the centre with another party. The rest of the men were put in a state of preparation and kept in hand by Lewis himself until he could determine what was to happen. The time was not long in coming. First one musket- shot, then another and another, then a roaring fusillade, apprized the listeners that here was no skirmishing party but an attack in heavy force, and not three quarters of a mile from the main camp. It w^as evident that the Indians were in sufficient numbers to cover the whole line between the rivers. Back with the main body Lewis was calmly waiting. He had just taken out his pipe when the first rifle-shot rang out. Coolly waiting until he had completed the lighting of his pipe, the sturdy backwoodsman quickly sent Field's column forward to connect the two columns led by Charles Lewis and Flemming. The men dashed eagerly and gallantly through the woods until they reached the battle line. 52 Border Fights and Fighters The Americans had taken to the trees as the Indians had done and the battle was raging fiercely. Colonel Charles Lewis, a veteran of the French and Indian War, with a brilliant record for courage and skill, disdained the use of cover and walked about through his command encouraging his men. He was shot and mortally wound- ed. On the other f^ank Colonel Flemming, another veteran, while holding his men bravely up to the battle, was shot through the lung so severely that his life was despaired of. The Indians were massed in force in front of these two bodies. There were probably three Indians to one white man at the point of contact and their firing was terrible. The trees ofi^ered little or no protection. Disheartened by the loss of the two commanding officers the Virgin- ians began to give ground. One moment more would have turned their w^ithdrawal into a disastrous retreat, which would have ruined the whole command, when Colonel Field arrived on the ground with his column and restored the line. Captain Evan Shelby, who had succeeded to the com- mand of the right flank after the wounding of Charles Lewis, managed to rally his men and the line held; Seeing now that the battle was general, leaving a small force to protect the camp and watch the river flanks. General Lewis led his force forward into the battle, the men extending in a long line which reached from river to river for a distance of a mile and a quarter. He got to the front just in time; Colonel Field had been killed and the fine was wavering again. The Indians exhibited a most desperate and gallant offence. They made charge after charge upon the Vir- ginians, hurling themselves on the lines again and again; On the Eve of the Revolution S3 and many a grim, hand-to-hand conflict was fought out in the depths of woods between white and red man. The forest was full of smoke and fire, and rang with shots, yells, and cheers. Tomahawks and knives were freely used. Lewis was everywhere in the thick of the fray, cool and calm, encouraging his men and doing every- thing that a brave commander could do to ensure a vic- tory, but what the end was to be was not easy to foresee. The Indians were brilliantly led by old Cornstalk, who showed himself a hero. His voice could be heard above the din of the battle exhorting his braves to stand like men, to fight it out, to be strong. The suddenness of his attack and the tactics employed, wdiich consisted in alternate advance and retreat, made the battle the most fiercely contested of any the Indians had ever taken part in on the continent. During the heat of the action Corn- stalk was seen to cut down a cowardly savage with his tomahawk. All day long the battle raged, but toward the late afternoon the superior steadiness of the Americans began to tell. Cautiously covering themselves, they advanced from tree to tree, slowly forcing the stubborn Indians to retreat. There was no rout, however, on the part of the savages, and Cornstalk managed his retreat in a way that would have done credit to a veteran European captain. His tactics were masterly. He would hurl a body of his Indians on the American advance, throw them into con- fusion for a moment, and before they could rally he would withdraw his attacking party, and when the Amer- icans came on again they would be confronted by a new line. The loss among the Americans was fearful. Finally toward evening the Indians reached a heavily wooded rise of ground from which they could not be 54 Border Fights and Fighters driven. The battle so far was a drawn one, the advan- tage if anything, being with the Americans, except in the matter of loss. Lewis, finding that Cornstalk had at last definitely stopped the advance of his army, detached three com- panies with Isaac Shelby in the lead, to march up the Kanawha until they came to Crooked Creek, up which they were to proceed until they got in rear of the Ind- ian line, which they were immediately to assault. The movement was a brilliant one, and as soon as the crack of muskets and rifles apprized the general that Shelby's detachment had engaged, he ordered a final advance on the Indian line, which, however, did not wait the Ameri- can attack. Mistaking Shelby's party for the re-enforcements un- der Colonel Christian, which they knew were due, the Indians withdrew in good order, carrying most of their dead with them, and the battle ended leaving the Ameri- cans in possession of the field. They had paid a heavy price for their victory. Seventy-five officers and men had been killed and one hundred and forty wounded, over half of them very seriously. The loss among the officers was unusually severe. The Indian loss has never, been ascertained, but it was very heavy, although not so great as that of the Americans, which was over twenty per cent. Logan was not present at this battle. Colonel Christian, to whom expresses had been sent, arrived on the field that night. Waiting several days to bury the dead, attend to the wounded, and erect a fort for their protection, Lewis left three hundred men on the battle field at Point Pleasant — so the place was called — crossed the Ohio and marched up the Pickaway plains to join Dunmore. His men were filled with wrath On the Eve of the Revolution 55 against that commander. They thought he had betrayed them to the Indians, that he had placed them in a posi- tion subject to attack, and then had left them without succor; that he never intended to meet them. It was charged afterward that Dunmore would not have been disappointed if the Virginians had been wiped out on this occasion. The disaffection which culminated in the Revolution six months later, was already widely prevalent in Virginia, and the men thought that Dun- more, as Royal Governor, would have been glad to have weakened the forces of the colonies by the annihilation of this large detachment. There is not much to admire in the character of Dun- more. When the Revolution came, it is plain that he en- deavored to incite not only a servile insurrection among the slaves but also to throw the savages upon the border; but there is absolutely no foundation for the assertion that he played false in this instance, and we must acquit him of the charges made which have remained current for many years. Indeed he seems to have acted with considerable ca- pacity as well as courage, for he adroitly took advantage of the victory to make a treaty with the Indians, to which they assented in spite of the strenuous efforts of Corn- stalk and others to constrain them to continue the war. And the peace was of lasting benefit to the rebellious colonies, for the remembrance of their defeat kept the Indians quiet during the early years of the Revolution; just at the time, in fact, when their antagonism would have been most serious in the colonies. None of these things were then realized, and when Dunmore and Lewis met, such was the state of affairs that a guard of fifty men was required to prevent the S6 Border Fights and Fighters undisciplined pioneers from taking summary vengeance for the supposed treachery of Dunmore by putting him to death. Lewis himself cherished great animosity to Dunmore. III. The Fate of the Participants in the Campaign When the chiefs met at Camp Charlotte to sign the treaty, Logan was not with them. He had refused to be present, professing that he would be unable to con- trol himself in the presence of the race which had so bitterly wronged him. Knowing that no peace could be permanent or valid without Logan's assent to it, an en- voy, a veteran frontiersman, was sent to him to secure his ratification. To him Logan made a speech, very famous indeed, and much quoted in history and in reading books, and which used to be a great favorite with the youthful de- claimers of the public schools, though now fallen into disuse and neglect. It is this speech which, in a meas- ure, has kept alive the remembrance of the war and of Logan himself. It is undoubtedly the finest specimen of savage eloquence extant, and compares with any effort of the kind, civilized or otherwise. Although its authenticity has been questioned, it may be fairly considered as a faithful report of the old chief- tain's impassioned words. Most investigators now ac- cept it as genuine. The messenger took it down in writing and translated it literally at the first opportunity, and it was immediately given to the world. Several versions of it exist. Although it does an injustice, un- wittingly, to the brave Cresap, a soldier in the Revolu- tion until he died — he is buried in Trinity churchyard, On the Eve of the Revolution 57 New York, by the way — it is here subjoined in its ap- proved form : " I appeal to any white man if he ever entered Logan's cabin hungry and he gave him no meat; if ever he came cold and naked and he clothed him not? During the course of the long and bloody war, Logan remained idle in his camp, an advocate for peace. Such was my love for the whites that my countrymen pointed as I passed and said, ' Logan is the friend of the white man.' I had even thought to have lived with you, but for the injuries of one man. " Colonel Cresap, the last spring, in cold blood and unprovoked, murdered all the relations of Logan, not even sparing my women and children. There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of any living creature. This called on me for revenge. I have sought it. I have killed many. I have fully glutted my vengeance. " For my country I rejoice at the beams of peace; but do not harbor a thought that mine is the joy of fear. Logan never felt fear. He will not turn on his heel to save his life. " Who is there to mourn for Logan? Not one." Roosevelt aptly calls it " no message of peace, nor an acknowledgment of defeat, but instead, a strangely pathetic recital of his wrongs, and a fierce and exultant justification of the vengeance he had taken." Logan afterward fell into bad habits; he drank to excess, and constantly. He participated in the attacks on the Kentucky settlements during the Revolution, particularly in the massacres at Martin's and Ruddle's Stations. He was killed by another Indian in a drunken brawl — a melancholy end indeed. Lewis' conduct in the battle has been called in ques- tion by no less an historian than Bancroft, but unjustly, and most modern investigators give him full credit for 58 Border Fights and Fighters undaunted courage and devotion. That Washington continued to be his warm personal friend and that he recommended him for a major-generalcy at the outbreak of the Revolution, and privately implored him to con- tinue in the service when his merits were passed over and he was given only a brigadier's commission, is evi- dence enough of his efficiency and the esteem in which his contemporaries held him. Singularly enough to Lewis in the Revolution was committed the task of finally expelling Dunmore from the state of Virginia. He accomplished this in his usual thoroughgoing manner. He did not make much of a mark in the war subsequently, however. The fact that he had been passed over imjustly rankled in his mind and at last he resigned his command as John Stark and many others had done. His health, too, gave way; he had been subjected to much exposure in his many hard campaigns, and he died in 1780. The fate of Cornstalk is a melancholy example fre- quently met with in our records, of our dealings with the Indian. In 1777, the old chief came to the com- mander of Point Pleasant, Captain Matthew Arbuckle, to warn him that the Sha\Miees were contemplating going on the warpath; that he was endeavoring to re- strain them, but he feared his success would be slight. He also said that if they declared war he should be forced to join them as they were his people. With a fatuity which can hardly be understood, for he was removing the sole check upon the Shawnees, the American captain thereupon immediately made Cornstalk a prisoner, in defiance of ever}- law or custom of civilized nations. The old chief seems to have had a premonition that his race was run and for himself he did not greatlv care. On the Eve of the Revolution 59 He had warred enough to satisfy even the heart of a savage and was ready for his end. After he had been a captive for some time his son Ellinipsico came to visit him accompanied by two or three other Indians. The day after their arrival two soldiers ranging the woods were fired upon by a party of Indians and one was killed. Charging that the Indians who had committed this of- fence had been brought there by Ellinipsico, the enraged soldiers proceeded to mob the fort shouting in their fury, *' Death to the Indians ! " Old Cornstalk heard the cries and realized what they meant. Although Ellinipsico was in no way privy to the attack by which the soldier had been killed, and the murder it was learned afterward was not committed by any of his tribe, there was no use in remonstrating. The ofificers were powerless to restrain the men — indeed they manifested little desire to interfere. The soldiers burst into the hut where the Indians had been confined. Cornstalk received them standing with wide open arms. He was pierced by seven bullets and instantly killed. Ellinipsico was also shot, as w'as Red Hawk, another famous chief who had been at Point Pleasant battle, and there was still a fourth Indian left, who was brutally tortured. Cornstalk had been a dreadful scourge on the border. He had ravaged and burned and murdered in his time, as few other Indians had ever done. In the French and Indian War, in Pontiac's War, and in Dunmore's War, he had taken the prominent part. All that, however, does not make it right to have detained him as a pris- oner when he came on a peaceable, helpful errand, nor to have allowed him to be shot for an action with which he had no possible connection. Part II VIRGINIA, TENNESSEE. THE CAROLINAS II The Pioneers of East Tennessee THE PIONEERS OF EAST TENNESSEE I. John Sevier and the Watauga Men UPON a pleasant spring morning in the year 1772, three horsemen dressed in hunting shirts, the most convenient garb ever devised for wood ranging, rode up to the cabin of James Robertson, the principal man of the little settlement of North Carolina pioneers in the valley of the Watauga, in what is now eastern Tennessee. All three of them were destined to play important parts in the building of the nation, and one of them especially was to tower far above his con- temporaries in character and achievement. That man was John Sevier, the organizer of the first free and independent democratic government upon the continent, the leader of a great commonwealth; an Indian fighter whom few have ever equalled; a soldier who could meet the finest troops on the continent in the field, and with inferior numbers win success from adverse circumstances; an administrator who could conduct the affairs of his fellow-men under circumstances of the greatest dif^culty; a statesman who takes rank not far behind those colossal men who watched the travail pains and facilitated the delivery of the new nation to be. Yet in the long roll of books telling of our national heroes I find singularly few which adequately treat of the char- acter and career of this remarkable man. And the one 63 64 Border Fights and Fighters series which professes to discuss his achievements with authority is interesting but highly traditional and little to be depended upon. Save perhaps in the great state of Tennessee he is more or less unknown or forgotten. Even his decisive connection with one of the most notable battles of our Revolution is obscured by the reflection cast by men of less fame. To the trio of great Tennesseans, Crockett, Houston, and Jackson, with whose career the world is familiar, must be added the name of Sevier. He may dispute pre-eminence fairly enough with all but a man of such colossal characteristics as Andrew Jackson. Crockett and Jackson came from the same people. Their origin w^as humble, their opportunities limited, and the success they achieved the more creditable. Hous- ton was a man of fairly good family of the middle class, Sevier, in the original sense of the term, when the word specified degree instead of character, was a gentleman; yes, a gentleman in modern sense, as well. His family, it is claimed, was an ancient one in France and his name was derived from the town of Xavier in Navarre at the foot of the French Pyrenees, where his family had an considerable estate and an old chateau. Possibly, as is sometimes urged, the name may have been originally de Xavier. Sevier came naturally by his love for the mountains, for his people had for centuries dwelt on the slopes of that forbidding range. It is alleged that there was a relationship between his family and that of the great Jesuit St. Francis Xavier, than whom no more heroic soul ever lived; but be that as it may, unlike their Spanish namesake the French Xaviers were Huguenots, who fled the country when Louis XIV perpetrated that atrocious The Pioneers of East Tennessee 6s blunder — nay, that ineffable crime — known as the Revo- cation of the Edict of Nantes. Abandoning their home the family went first to Lon- don and then migrated to America, seeking freedom in the land across the sea. The Old Dominion opened hospitable arms to people of their gentle blood, and as they had saved something from the wreck of their fortunes they presently became people of prominence among the planters of Virginia. There in 1745 young John Sevier, for so the family name became anglicized, was born. He was given the best education which it was possible to receive in Virginia, and of which, with his usual ambition, he made the most of in his life. He was twenty-seven years of age, therefore, when he rode up to Robertson's house on the Watauga. He had been married some years at that time and was the father of two promising sons. While a mere boy he had made a name for himself as a hunter, trader, and pioneer, and now held a commission as captain in the Virginia line, the same corps in which Washington was afterward a colonel. He had come across the Alleghenies to the settlement on the Watauga to build himself a new home in this recently opened country. I cannot doubt but that God led him across the hills, for charmed by what he saw, he determined to cast his lot with the people there, of whom he speedily became the idol and leader. His two companions, the elder a grizzly veteran, who also held the rank of captain in the Virginia line, were Evan and Isaac Shelby, father and son, two sterling patriots of Welsh descent. Evan Shelby rose to the rank of general in the Revolution and although he had a distinguished career, may be dis- missed from our consideration. Isaac Shelby, the son, 5 66 Border Fights and Fighters however, reappears again in this narrative, and was asso- ciated with Sevier in many heroic undertakings. When Daniel Boone, redoubtable hunter, explorer, adventurer, man of heroic mould, first toiled over the tree-crested summits of the Alleghenies and surveyed the vast expanse of mountain and valley and river stretch- ing inimitably before him toward the setting sun, country which no white man had ever trod, a doubtful legend says that he gave vent to his feelings in an outburst of enthusiasm to his comrades, in these words : " I am richer than the man in Scripture, who owned cattle on a thousand hills. I own the wild beasts in a thousand valleys ! " Whether he said it or no, he probably thought it. It is characteristic of the genius of the white race, that to see a place, to set foot upon it, was sufficient to establish a claim to any domain, any aboriginal inhabi- tants to the contrary, notwithstanding. The great waste of territory between the Ohio and the Tennessee, which the English claimed had been ceded to the king in the famous treaty of Fort Stanwix by the Iroquois, — who had no more right nor title to it than Germany has to France, for instance, — was the hunting ground, the place of resort, of great tribes of the most enlightened and warlike savages south of the Six Nations, upon the continent. De Soto had visited it in 1540, and an Irish trader, named Dougherty, had settled within its confines within the latter part of the seventeenth century, but no one had ever presumed to attempt to colonize, or hold it, not even the Cherokees, whose country lay adjacent to the beautiful valley of the Watauga. The Pioneers of East Tennessee 67 II. "The Rear Guard of the Revolution" The first actual settlement was made in 1769-70 by Robertson and a party of North Carolinians, who climbed the mountains and built their huts in the fertile valley on the other side. There in a well-watered plateau, some two thousand feet above the level of the sea, in a coun- try which was remarkable for the fertility of its soil and the salubrity of its climate, they purchased land from the Cherokees, erected cabins, and endeavored to make the place a home. Thither Sevier resorted. Possessed of ample means, indeed, being a man of wealth for the time and place, his house became the resort of the hardy settlers, whom he received with true Virginia hospitality. A man of urbane and charming disposition, gay and debonair, yet of inflexible resolution and matchless daring, he became the idol of the settlers. Thenceforward for forty-three years he led them in all their enterprises and undertakings; he conducted thirty-four battles against the Indians and met no defeat; he participated as the ani- mating spirit in one great expedition against the British, with overwhelming success. In 1772, he and his asso- ciates in the trans-mountain settlements, organized the first free and independent government on this continent, administering the laws of their agreement and dealing justice in the vast region across the Alleghenies. During the Revolutionary War many times he broke up the plans of the British for launching the savages upon the borders and thus overwhelming the American colonists; plans which, had they succeeded, might have been as fatal to American hopes of independence as would have been the success of Burgoyne's expedition. 68 Border Fights and Fighters He and his men — Gilmore felicitously calls them " The Rear Guard of the Revolution " — kept the Indians in check, dauntlessly interposing their scanty numbers be- tween the fierce warriors and the unprotected settlements on the hither side of the Alleghenies, performing service incalculable thereby. The borders were free, the patri- ots could leave their families without fear of savage foray because they were watched over by Sevier and his men. It was given to him at one of the turning points of the Revolution to inspire, and in large measure to strike the blow which determined that the south land should be free. III. The State of Franklin and its Governor After the Revolution, under Sevier's leadership, North Carolina having cast them off, the mountaineers organ- ized within the limits of the present commonwealth of Tennessee, the state of Franklin,* named for the wise old philosopher, and Sevier was its first governor. He administered its financial affairs with a currency of coon skins ! When North Carolina withdrew the act of cession, by which she had turned the territory over to Congress and sought to assume her state rights again, Sevier conducted himself in the trying crisis with discre- tion and firmness, and had it not been for the machina- tions of some bitter enemies — this is the penalty of great- ness, always to make enemies — he might have succeeded in preserving the integrity of the state he had founded. It is interesting to note that North Carolina, which was quick to follow the lead of her southern sisters in * Commonly and erroneously called the state of Frankland, i.e., land of the Franks or Freemen ! The Pioneers of East Tennessee 69 seceding from the Union in 1861, pointed out at this ancient date that if different communities were permit- ted to withdraw from a mother state and organize states of their own, at their own voHtion, the result would be the disintegration of the Republic. North Carolina was right in this instance, and Sevier was wrong in attempt- ing to maintain his commonwealth. He was treacherously betrayed, captured, and after- ward tried at Morgantown, North Carolina, for high treason. Fifteen hundred men of the trans-Allegheny region, assembled to take him back, and a war between the sections was imminent. Aided by some of his old comrades in arms he made a romantic escape from the custody of the officers; whereupon the people of the Watauga district, having submitted to the inevitable, promptly elected him to the North Carolina legislature, in which, after some feeble protests, he took his seat. When the state ratified the constitution and became thereby a member of the Federal Union, one congress- man was apportioned to the district across the x-Mle- ghenies. Sevier was unanimously elected and was the first man to sit in Congress from that great region be- yond the mountains. He was made general of the militia when Tennessee was a territory, and when she became a state he was chosen governor without opposition. For three succes- sive terms he was elected, and then being ineligible con- stitutionally, for a period of two years, he was thereafter elected for three more successive terms, after which he was sent back to Congress and thrice re-elected ! He died in harness and in the field, in 18 15, in a tent on a surveying expedition for the government, sur- rounded as he had lived, by his soldiers. 70 Border Fights and Fighters He lost his first wife in 1774 and was living at his home on the Nolichucky, from which, by the way, he was sometimes called in border parlance, " Nolichucky Jack," or " Chucky Jack," in 1775, when the Revolu- tionary War broke out. One of the first of the British attempts was to assemble the savages on the Watauga frontier, especially in the southern territory, sweep in- land and ravage the settlements, while Sir Peter Parker and his fleet attempted to capture Charleston, thus plac- ing the colonists between two fires and making their downfall apparently certain. Moultrie and his little handful beat off Parker, and Sevier and a still smaller handful broke up the plan in the west by routing the Indians in a brilliant campaign terminating in the siege at Fort Lee, a rude timber en- closure which had been erected on the banks of the Watauga. The fort was closely beleaguered by the sav- ages for some forty days without a casualty among the defenders, the Indians losing so severely in their attacks that old Oconostota. their head war chief, the inveterate enemy of the Americans so long as he lived, finally with- drew his force in dismay and abandoned the campaign. It was at this siege that there occurred a romantic episode in the life of the young woman who became the second wife of Sevier. In defiance of warnings some of the people of the fort, irked by the confinement, had gone beyond the limits of the walls. A party of savages suddenly appeared and attempted their capture. The people fled to gain the stockade, which was crowded with women and children. It would have risked everything to have left the gate open, indeed there was no time for it. Sevier sent his men to the walls to cover the escaping fugitives by a The Pioneers of East Tennessee 71 smart rifle fire, and drive back the Indians till the set- tlers conld be taken in. One young girl, Katharine Sherrill, in her terror actually leaped to the top of the palisade and fell over the wall into the arms of the com- mander. She leaped into his heart at the same time and they were soon married. Bonny Kate is reported to have said, " I would take a leap like that every day to fall into the arms of a man like my gallant husband." The handsomest man in Tennessee, they called him, and the bravest and best; tall, just under six feet, blue- eyed, sunny-haired, graceful, he was a man to win any woman's heart, and his qualities were equally attractive to men. He was a glutton for work, a giant for endur- ance, a very paladin of courage. After twenty-eight days of marching and fighting in the King's Mountain expedition, with scarcely any rest he set out for another campaign in the wilds of the mountains against the restless Cherokees. Another inveterate ene- my of the white settlers was the chief of the Chicka- maugas, named Dragging Canoe. When the British at- tempted a second time to combine the savages and hurl them upon the backs of the colonists, it was Sevier's brilliant expedition in the heart of the Indian country which broke the spirit of the Cherokees, '' Sons of Fire," and their allies. They smouldered thereafter and until the state of Franklin was organized gave but little trouble. Such was the personal courage of Sevier that in this expedition he slew Dragging Canoe with his own hand, in a terrific hand-to-hand conflict. In thirty-four en- counters with the Indians he was invariably successful. It is difficult to describe any of these actions. They 72 Border Fights and Fighters did not rise to the dignity of pitched battles, but gener- ally consisted of a swift, noiseless approach, a surprise, a wild desperate charge upon the Indians, driving them into headlong rout, a destruction of their villages and crops and then a quick withdrawal to the settlements. Again and again were these tactics pursued. Sevier had many qualities of Francis Marion, another great American of French descent, who fought in the Revolution. Instead of the slow, stealthy concealed ad- vance, the hidden ambush, which the Indians made use of, Sevier adopted other tactics and depended upon audacity and speed. The Napoleonic idea of the value of a small mobile concentrated body hurled swiftly upon a slow-moving scattered if superior force, was exempli- fied in his attempts before the Corsican was born. It was exemplified nowhere so strikingly as in that most remarkable battle of King's Mountain, which, for origi- nality of conception, boldness of execution, success in completion, stands amojig the most picturesque battles of the world; and with the story of that battle in which he won so many of his laurels, we will leave the old hero. IV. The Assembling of the Mountaineers One of the most distinguished ofificers of the king in America during the Revolution was Major Patrick Fer- guson of the Seventy-first Foot, the Royal Americans. He was a brother of Adam Ferguson, the celebrated Scottish philosopher, and in his own way quite as gifted. To a reputation for bravery earned in Europe, he had added new laurels, notably at the Brandywine, receiving there a wound which permanently deprived him of the full use of an arm thereafter, and at the battle of Camden, The Pioneers of East Tennessee 73 where the Seventy-first under his leadership, displayed such splendid courage and where he was again wounded. He was a man of an ingenious turn of mind and had invented a breech-loading rifle, in the use of which he became very expert. Upon one occasion it is claimed that he had a reconnoitring party of Americans headed by a general officer within range of his rifle, and that from motives of humanity he refrained from killing the unsuspecting officer, which he could easily have done. He afterward learned that the man he had spared was George Washington. For a time, after the overwhelming and disgraceful defeat of Gates at Camden, South Carolina, August i6, 1780, Cornwallis virtually had the whole south at his mercy. He moved slowly northward with the main body of his army, sending out columns on either flank, and in all directions in fact, endeavoring to occupy and pacify the country he fondly considered permanently subdued. To Ferguson was given command of the various oper- ations upon the left of the main advance. To him were assigned one hundred and twenty of his own regular regiment, and he was given power to embody and take command of all the Tory volunteers he could win to his following. The Carolinas, be it remembered, with the exception of New Jersey — and New York in part — were the only states which were entirely swept from border to border by the besom of war. There was scarcely a nook or a corner in either one in which the rifle shot was not heard, the torch was not lighted, in which the passions of Hell were not let loose. The rancorous hatreds of civil strife in no section were more in evidence than in these two 74 Border Fights and Fighters brave little southern colonies. Even the animosities en- gendered in central New York between the Whigs and Tories were not so persistent, so rigorous, so bitter, or so desolating in their effects. Cornwallis soon awoke from his dream; for, while partisan bands sprang up on either side and attacked each other without mercy, success generally inclined to the Americans. The British found they could only hold the ground occupied by their armies. In their exasperation, they and the Tories resorted to ferocious cruelties, which were promptly met by reprisals in kind. Many of Corn- wallis' parties and bodies of Tories were cut off without mercy. In fact, except under Cruger, Tarleton, and Ferguson, the British were defeated again and again by Sumter, Marion, Pickens, Davie, McDowell, and Williams. Ferguson had experienced some reverses, but on the whole had been very successful. He succeeded in em- bodying some two thousand Tories, whom he organized into regiments, which he trained and drilled in British tactics with energy and success. He had been brought in contact with a few of the trans- Allegheny men, the first settlers of Virginia west, of the mountains and the pioneers of Tennessee; the " Back Water Men," he called them on several occa- sions and knew their quality, especially from one bloody skirmish at Musgrove's Mills. Seeking to keep them quiet he released a prisoner and sent him across the range to inform the people there that if they did not " desist from their opposition to British arms, he would march his army across the mountains, hang the leaders, and lay the country waste with fire and sword." In Ferguson's army, which was then about sixty miles The Pioneers of East Tennessee 75 from the Watauga, where was the principal settlement in East Tennessee, were several Tories, who had been expelled from the mountain region and who were thor- oughly conversant with the passes through the moun- tains. It was possible for him to have made the attempt, although it is extremely doubtful that he ever had the slightest idea of doing so; for, as he well knew, his chances of success would have been of the very smallest. It is probable that the threat was merely intended to frighten the mountaineers into keeping quiet. They were not the kind to be frightened by idle threats, and Ferguson was to learn that it was a dangerous thing to threaten to do the impossible, or at least he would have learned it if the mountaineers had not killed him trying to teach him the lesson. " Never was threat so impotent, and yet so powerful." Ferguson's messenger went first to Shelby, who acted with instant promptitude. Sixty miles to the south was the residence of Sevier on the NoHchucky. Throwing himself upon his horse, Shelby tore down the valley to apprize his friend and colleague of the news and to con- cert as to the best course of action. The " tall Watauga boys," as they were called, were having a jollification at the time at Sevier's; oxen were being roasted for a barbecue, horse-racing was going on, and rustic sports were being enjoyed. Sevier was keep- ing open house to all comers. One authority says that the occasion was the marriage of the great pioneer to the girl of the stockade episode, but other investigators claim that the marriage occurred in the stockade during the siege, or shortly after, and it is probable that this was a rustic gathering to celebrate the garnering of the harvest. But from whatever cause, a great many of the 76 Border Fights and Fighters inhabitants, men, women, and children, were assembled there having a good time, when Shelby dashed up on his sweat-lathered horse and stopped the merriment in- stantly by the sight of his grim, anxious, and troubled face. The two leaders retired at once for consultation, while the people suspended their sports and with deepening anxiety awaited the results of the deliberation. What was to be done? Should they bid defiance to Ferguson, occupy the mountain passes, and await attack there? This was believed to be Shelby's idea. Sevier was more audacious. They should not wait to be attacked, they should assemble the men, cross the range and fall upon the unsuspecting partisan before he realized that they had more than received his message. His bold counsels prevailed. The news was immediately circulated, and the men and women assembled for the merrymaking received the decision with shouts of approval. A ren- dezvous was appointed at Sycamore Shoals on the Wa- tauga, on the 25th of September. Taking a fresh horse Shelby rode north to enlist for the enterprise Campbell and his Virginians, settled about the head waters of the Holston. Sevier sent messengers to McDowell, who, with a small band of North Carolin- ians, had been chased over the mountains by Ferguson. Sevier was to assemble the Watauga men as well. Campbell at first refused to participate in the expedi- tion, but upon being further approached by argument and appeal, finally consented. Expresses were de- spatched over the mountains and one of the most cele- brated partisans of North Carolina, Colonel Benjamin Cleaveland, promised to join the assemblage with such men as he could secure. On the 25th of September, The Pioneers of East Tennessee 77 Campbell, Shelby, and Sevier, reached the rendezvous at the appointed time. The situation was peculiar. On one side of the little settlement were hordes of savages who had only been kept in check by severe campaigning and constant watch- fulness, and who wanted but an opportunity to fall upon the settlements. On the other side, with the mountains between, were over two thousand well-trained British troops, under a veteran officer. Yet so eager were the men to go on the expedition that they resorted to a draft to see who should stay behind to protect the women and children from the red peril so dangerously near. Four hundred and eighty of the Watauga men were selected and divided into two regiments, commanded by Sevier and Shelby. In Sevier's regiment were no less than six persons who bore his name, including his two sons. Two of his brothers were captains. The Wa- tauga boys were joined by one hundred and sixty of McDowell's men and two hundred Back Water Presby- terians under stout old William Campbell, presently re- enforced by two hundred more of the same sort under Arthur Campbell, his brother. The assemblage, though small, was remarkable for its quality; tall, sinewy, powerful, brave, dead shots, accus- tomed to the fatigues and hardships of frontier life, it would be hard to match this body of borderers on the continent. The little army was without baggage, with- out equipment, without provisions, without everything but arms. Most of the men had no horses, although all were provided with the Deckhard rifle, a piece re- markable in that day for the precision of its shot and the length of its range. Sevier and Shelby had long since exhausted their 78 Border Fights and Fighters private resources, and they were hard put to know where to find money to buy horses and equipments for those who were without them, for they had determined that the expedition should consist only of mounted riflemen. There was one officer of North Carolina, however, on their side of the mountains, who had money. This was John Adair, the entry taker, whose business it was to receive the payments of the settlers for the land which they took up. Sevier and Shelby went to him and asked him for the money in his hands, some twelve thousand dollars, pledging their personal honor and credit that thereafter he should be paid back every farthing — a pledge they scrupulously redeemed. Adair rose to the measure of the situation with true patriotism, as may be seen by his splendid answer to the demand. " Colonel Sevier," he said, " I have no right to make any such disposition of this money; it belongs to the impoverished treasury of North Carolina. But, if the country is overrun by the British, liberty is gone. Let the money go too. Take it. If by its use the enemy is driven from the country, I can trust that country to justify and vindicate my conduct. Take it ! " With this money the men were promptly provided with horses and powder. Even the women entered into the spirit of the occasion, and it is related that some of the powder which was afterward used with such deadly efifect was made by their assistance, for they burned the charcoal on the family hearthstones. The Pioneers of East Tennessee 79 V. The Dash to Catch Ferguson Early on the morning of the 26th of September was the hour appointed for the march. Old Parson Doak, stern Presbyterian, black-gowned, stood in the midst of the one thousand rugged riflemen in their hunting shirts, who doffed their coon-skin caps, or buck-tail hats, and ringed themselves about him, leaning upon their arms, while he invoked the Divine blessing upon the expedi- tion, bidding them to go forth and strike with the sword of the Lord and of Gideon. After this impressive cere- mony, the men, speeded by the cheers of those unwill- ingly left behind, and followed by the prayers of the women, immediately took up the march. With them, rifle in hand, went another clergyman, the Reverend Stephen Foster. Being well mounted, they made great progress. Un- encumbered by baggage train of any sort, they were able to take short cuts and traverse apparently impracticable paths over the range, which they found covered with deep snow. There was no commissariat, a few beeves were driven on the march and slaughtered for the first day's rations, but the men depended upon what they could pick up on the way, or shoot with the rifle, to eke out the supply of parched corn which every man carried for himself. It is not too much to say that the west was won by parched corn and the powder horn. They marched with great swiftness for several days, being joined at the foot of the mountains by Cleaveland, a redoubtable, if merciless and ferocious fighter, with three hundred and fifty men from Wilkes and Surrey Counties, on the 30th of September. On Monday, the 8o Border Fights and Fighters 1st of October, they marched eighteen miles, but were stopped by the rain. On the 2d they determined to select one of the various colonels who should command the expedition, pending the arrival of an officer of rank. Choice fell upon William Campbell of Virginia, who had the largest regiment. McDowell of North Carolina, who was senior, had the smallest regiment, and was not thought sufficiently vigorous for such an undertaking. He relieved the dilemma regarding him, by volunteering to ride express to General Gates and ask him to send an officer of merit to take charge. Campbell hesitated to assume the command, and earnestly urged Sevier, Shelby, or other officers to take it, but they insisted that he should undertake the duty which they had devolved upon him, and at last he consented. On the 3rd of October, while still in the gap at South Mountain, before the march was taken up, Cleaveland, who seems to have been the orator of the assemblage, addressed the men in the followins^ terms : 't> " Now, my brave fellows, I have come to tell you the news. The enemy is at hand, and we must up and at them. Now is the time for every man of you to do his country a priceless service — such as shall lead your chil- dren to exult in the fact that their fathers were the con- querors of Ferguson. When the pinch comes I shall be with you. But if any of you shrink from sharing the battle and glory, you can now have the opportunity of backing out and leaving, and you shall have a few min- utes for considering the matter." Other colonels in brief, terse words seconded old Cleaveland, and then requested those who desired to retire from the proposed expedition to step three paces The Pioneers of East Tennessee 8i to the rear. No one did so, of course. Ferguson was believed to be in the vicinity of Gilbert Town. They proceeded cautiously, therefore, to that point, and the next day learned that he had retreated and that he was thought to have gone southward to Ninety Six. In the vicinity of Beattie's Ford on the Catawba, thirty miles away, were a body of Sumter's men under Colonels Hill, who was too badly wounded to take part in the campaign, and Lacey, and a small party of South Carolinians under Williams, altogether about four hun- dred in number. Williams had been appointed to com- mand the militia, and Sumter had disputed his right. Pending the settlement of the question, Sumter had withdrawn from his troops, otherwise he would have ex- ercised chief command in the battle that was to follow. W^illiams, however, had remained in the neighborhood; although Sumter's troops had refused to acknowledge him, he had gathered a small body of his own. When this assemblage heard these mountain men had come for the purpose of taking Ferguson, Colonel Lacey made an all-night ride through the wilderness to Camp- bell's camp, on the Green River, which he reached an hour or so before daybreak, offering to co-operate with them and informing the mountaineers that Ferguson had not gone to Ninety Six, but was marching toward King's Mountain. They believed at first that Lacey was a Tory spy, but he finally persuaded them of his integrity, and they agreed to meet his party at the Cowpens, south of the Broad, soon to be the scene of another famous victor\\ the next evening, the 6th of October. Selecting some seven hundred of the best men, the mountaineers at once set out, leaving the rest to follow as fast as possible. 6 82 Border Fights and Fighters With scarcely an hour's sleep, Lacey mounted his horse and returned to his men, reaching them about ten o'clock in the morning, having ridden sixty miles in fourteen hours. On the appointed evening the whole party, now amounting to some eleven hundred men, rendezvoused at the Cowpens. The indomitable Lacey had succeeded in getting his men there at the hour agreed upon. Before they took up their march again they carefully selected, by a second weeding out, nine hundred and ten of the most efficient with the freshest horses, with whom they determined to push on to meet Ferguson.* Fifty foot soldiers resolved to keep up with the horsemen if possible. Sure intelligence had been received that Ferguson had halted on King's Mountain. This is a low spur of the Alleghenies, sixteen miles long, running northeast and southwest. Ferguson was encamped on the southern end of it in York County, South Carolina, a mile and a half from the border. He had sent despatches to Corn- wallis, whom he had been endeavoring to join, urging him to send Tarleton to escort him over the thirty miles of rough broken country between his army and Char- lotte, his lordship's head-quarters, for he had been ap- prised by two deserters of the storm that was gathering on his heels. * This number was made up, according to McCrady, as follows : Camp- bell, 200; Sevier, 120; Shelby, 120; Cleaveland, 110; McDowell, a brother of the officer who had gone to seek Gates, 90 ; and Winston, a subordinate to Cleaveland, 60 ; making seven hundred chosen at Green River. Additional troops were selected at the Cowpens, as follows : Lacey, 100; Williams, 60, and Graham and Hambright, 50, making 210: total, 910. 200 of these were Virginians, 510 were from North and 200 from South Carolina. The foot soldiers mentioned did not arrive until the close of the action, so they are not counted. The rest were to follow as fast as they could. The Pioneers of East Tennessee 83 Not that he had any fear of being able to defend his present position, for he considered his force entirely ad- equate to hold it forever, although not sufficiently strong to take the offensive. The affair at Musgrove's Mills had given his troops, if not himself, a healthy respect for the mountaineers. Unfortunately for him, some of his messengers were captured, and others were forced by the dangers of the way to take such circuitous routes that they did not reach Cornwallis until the battle was over. Ferguson had chosen the position from the point of view of the European soldier, with much skill. Profes- sional soldiers have called it admirable for defence. He is alleged to have said, in various profane ways, that he could hold his post against any force that might be brought against him. A great deal of unscientific criticism has been heaped upon him for this choice of position. To be sure he did not hold it against an inferior force, which seems to bear out the censures; but that force was unique in com- position and its attack was an unusual one, which no theoretical experience could have led Ferguson to ex- pect. He could probably have held the place success- fully against regular soldiers without difficulty. But the men who were after him were not regular troops. They knew nothing of the school of the soldier and cared less; their character was peculiar and their tactics in accord- ance. VI. King's Mountain ; Launching the Thunderbolt About nine o'clock on the night of the 6th, the army set forth from the Cowpens for King's Mountain, some thirty-three miles away. It was pitch dark and to add 84 Border Fights and Fighters to their difficulties and discomforts a chill rain came driving upon them for a large part of the night. To keep their muskets dry the men were forced to take ofT their blankets and shirts and wrap them around the gun- locks. Chilled to the bone they urged their jaded steeds through the clogging mud and cold driving rain of the furious storm during the long night. When day broke they reached the Catawba at Chero- kee Ford, crossed it, still in the pelting rain, and plodded on. Some chroniclers aver, that, oppressed by their long, hard march, the slow progress they had made, the worn-out condition of the men, some of the officers sug- gested that they give over the attempt and return. Shelby, marching in the van, curtly replied, " I will not stop until night if I follow Ferguson into Cornwallis' lines ! " So they pushed resolutely on. It continued to rain harder than ever during the morning until noon, when the storm broke and the sun came out with a fine breeze, to the great refreshment of the army. Spies and scouts sent on ahead confirmed the truth of their impression that Ferguson was on King's Mountain. At one Tory farm-house, from which they could get no information, one of the women came out secretly and ran across the fields until she intercepted the American advance. " How many men have you? " she cried. " Enough to whip Ferguson if we can find him," was the reply. " You will find him on that mountain yonder," she said, pointing to the hill three miles away. It was two o'clock when the army reached the vicinity of the mountain after their eighteen-hour struggle in the dreadful storm. Hard on their heels followed the de- The Pioneers of East Tennessee 85 voted fifty foot, who had made an unparalleled march. The portion of King's Mountain upon which the bat- tle occurred is an isolated hill some six hundred yards long, about one hundred feet high, and varying in width from sixty to one hundred and twenty yards across. It is a long stone-crested ridge, the sides covered with trees, the top bare and desolate. The rocks around the edge of the crest formed a natural breastwork. The narrowest part of the hill was toward the south. At this narrow end of the ridge a man standing could be seen from the foot of either slope. Ferguson's camp was pitched near the northern end, and except for the natural cover afforded by the rocks and bowlders, had no other pro- tection. The baggage-wagons were parked along the northeastern, the most exposed edge, near the widest part. Ferguson had with him one hundred and twenty of the Seventy-first regulars, and some eight hundred Tory militia, about equally divided betw^een the two Carolinas. He had had this militia under his command for some time and had drilled and exercised them with unfailing zeal and success until he rated them equal to British regular soldiery. His own troops, of course, were provided with bayonets, and he caused the hunting knives of the Tories so to be arranged that they could be fitted into the muzzles of the guns; thus the militia contingent was supplied with a formidable weapon for close quarters. His main reliance was upon the bayonet, therefore. There were no bayonets of any sort in the American army, and it was to be rifle bullet against cold steel. The second in command on the mountain was Cap- tain de Peyster of New York, a brave, efficient officer. It is interesting to note that, with the exception of Fer- 86 Border Fights and Fighters guson himself, there were probably no men of British birth in either of the two contending armies. Riding as near the hill as they dared without being discovered, the men dismounted, with the exception of a few of the ranking officers, and were formed up in four O FERCUSON'S HCAOQUARTtR». •f Place wMcne FcacusoN WA»Kikktb. H- PCACe WMCRC HORSCb WCKt LCFT. Plan of Battle of King's Mountain. divisions; Campbell taking the command of the right centre division; Shelby the left centre; Sevier, with McDowell's and some of Winston's men under him, led the right wing; while Cleaveland with Williams, Lacey, and the others took charge of the left wing. A party of horse under Major Winston who knew the The Pioneers of East Tennessee 87 field of battle, were ordered to make a long detour and approach the mountain from the northern end. Camp- bell and Shelby Vv'ere to attack the right and left sides of the mountain at the narrow lower end, Sevier and Cleaveland were to defile past them and range along the east and west sides respectively, while Winston closed the remaining gap. The attack was delivered about three o'clock. The rallying word was " Buford," the name of the commander whom Tarleton had treacher- ously killed in the massacre at Waxhaws. It was not until fifteen minutes before the battle be- gan that Ferguson became aware of the threatened dan- ger. Instantly his men were called to arms. Shelby and Campbell, having the shortest distance to go, were the first to engage the enemy. The honor of beginning the battle must be given to Campbell. The stout old Presbyterian, stripped to his shirt sleeves, led the Vir- ginians up the hill, waving an old claymore, a weapon of his Scottish ancestors, shouting, " Here they are, my brave boys ! Shout like Hell and fight like devils ! " Yelling and firing rapidly they swarmed up the hill. When de Peyster heard these deafening yells, which he remembered from the disastrous fight at Musgrove's Mills, he turned to Ferguson saying, "These things are ominous; these are the d d yelling boys ! " The Englishman was not daunted by the yelling, how- ever. Throwing his regulars upon them in a fierce bay- onet charge, Ferguson drove them down the slope. Meanwhile Shelby had sustained a severe fire while get- ting into position and had hard work restraining the fire of his men; at last yelling, 88 Border Fights and Fighters " Give them Indian play, boys! " he rode up the other slope at their head. A similar bayonet charge by de Peyster and the Tories repulsed their attack. The men gave back so reluc- tantly, however, that several of them were bayoneted as they retreated. Flushed with victory for the moment, Ferguson's enthusiasm was rudely dispelled by the crackling of muskets on the eastern side of the moun- tain. Yelling like fiends, Sevier's men breasted the slope of the hill. Indeed, it is said that the so-called " rebel yell," which was heard on so many battle-fields in the next century, had its origin in this body of mountaineers led by Sevier. Galloping to the threatened point, Fer- guson threw some of his men upon the Watauga boys. The ground here w^as more broken, and the same rocks which served for the British ramparts played a like pur- pose for the Americans. Sevier could not be driven away. He established himself on the crest of the hill behind the rocks, pouring in a deadly fire. At the same instant Colonel Cleaveland came into action. He was a great speech-maker, this Cleaveland, and as his soldiers raced along the base of the hill to get to the position from which they were to make the ascent, he is said to have made the following speech in broken sentences: " My brave fellows, we have beaten the Tories, and we can beat them again. . . . They are all cowards. If they had the spirit of men, they would join us in supporting the independence of the country. . . . When you are engaged, do not wait for the word of command. I will show you by my example how to fight. I can undertake no more. . . . Every man o o 13 (U > T3 o c o 3 bJ3 LX4 The Pioneers of East Tennessee 89 must act on his own judgment. Fire as fast as you can, and stand your ground as long as you can. . , . When you can do no better, get behind trees, or retreat; but I beg you not to run off." Then pointing to the crest of the hill from which a deadly fire was plunging, he cried, " Yonder is your enemy, and the enemy of mankind ! " At the same instant Colonel Hambright with his brave Germans, and Majors Winston and Chronicle of the Car- olinians, closed the gap. Williams, who had sulked be- cause he had not been recognized or consulted by the other officers, could stand it no longer. " Come up, boys ! " he shouted, " the old wagoner never yet backed out ! " and he rushed into action to the right of Cleaveland. The mountain was now completely encircled. Sevier had gained the summit and was clinging to it with grim tenacity. As Ferguson withdrew his troops from the southern end, Campbell and Shelby immediately turned and followed them up the hill. Both sides fought well. Three times did the British and Tories throw themselves upon the approaching Americans. Three times did the deadly bayonet do its work, but they could not drive the men from the fight further than they could continue the charge. They always came back. Campbell had two horses shot under him. Shelby's face had been burned by powder, so close had been the action. The mountain was ringed with fire and covered with smoke. The roar of the rifles and muskets could be heard for miles. Ferguson showed himself a very pala- din of courage. Mounted on a white horse he rode fran- tically up and down the plateau, rallying his men, launch- ing charge after charge upon whatever part of the line 90 Border Fights and Fighters ventured to expose itself on the crest. The bulk of these charges fell upon the regiments of Shelby and Campbell, but the beleaguered force struck out desper- ately on every hand. Finally a last charge furiously hurled upon the Virginians, coupled with shouts that Tarleton was at hand, put the regiment to flight. Im- ploring, protesting, swearing, the brave commander es- sayed to stop the retreat of his men, but it was not until they had been driven some distance from the foot of the hill that he could get them in order again to lead them back. Meanwhile Sevier led his men from the crest of the hill and dashed at the British in the open. At the same in- stant a simultaneous advance all along the lines drove the British back in every direction. The Virginians rallied and came fiercely up again. The British fell in scores. Some one raised a white flag. Ferguson instantly ordered it down, swearing that he would " never surren- der to such a d d set of banditti ! " Blowing the silver whistle which had rung over the field and by which he had given his commands, he rallied his forces for an- other final charge. De Peyster led it with the remnant of the regulars, but before they came in contact with the mountaineers, their deadly discharge reduced his line to twelve people. Another flag was raised and this time Ferguson cut it down. But the day was lost. De Peyster realized it and advised surrender. Ferguson, however, would not see the inevitable and disdained to yield. He put himself at the head of his men for another charge and was shot by a dozen bullets and instantly killed. The British were now crowded in a huddled mass near the northeast end, The Pioneers of East Tennessee 91 surrounded on all sides by the mountaineers. To resist longer was to be slaughtered like sheep in a pen. De Peyster raised the flag a third time. Some of the mountaineers, so ignorant of the customs of war that they did not realize the meaning of the signal, and mad- dened by the fighting, continued their fire, which was returned by some of the desperate British soldiers and Colonel Williams was instantly killed. The Americans yelling " Give them Buford's play," then poured a volley in on the unresisting Tories, most of whom had practi- cally surrendered. There was a scene of wild and terrible confusion on the mountain top. De Peyster wildly protested against the butchery of surrendered men. Sevier, Shelby, and Campbell did their best to restrain their reckless, undis- ciplined soldiers, who continued to fire upon the huddled mass of British crying "Quarter! Quarter!" and the battle bade fair to degenerate into a massacre. Finally the mountaineers were stopped, and at Shelby's words, '* D n you, if you want quarter, throw down your arms ! " the British threw down their guns and were marched away from them. VII. After the Battle The battle was over at four o'clock in the afternoon. It had lasted scarcely an hour. In the confusion some of the Tories, who wore no uniform, escaped, but the results of the battle were some three hundred killed, or so severely wounded that they had to be left on the field, and six hundred captured. On the American side the casualties were twenty-eight killed, and sixty-two wound- ed, the disparity being due in part to the fact that the 92 Border Fights and Fighters British firing down the hill overshot their opponents, in accordance with a natural tendency under the circum- stances. They bivouacked that night upon the hill. It was a night of horror. There was but one surgeon in both armies, Ferguson's. He did what he could to alleviate the sufferings of the wounded but with little success. The Americans had gained a stupendous victory but their position was still most precarious. With a number of prisoners almost equal to their total force, they were in imminent danger of attack, for they believed Tarleton was near. Anxious hours were passed until daybreak and they took up their march in retreat. After the first day's march information was brought them that Cruger at Ninety Six had ruthlessly hanged a number of Whigs whom he had captured. At the in- stance of the Carolina men, with the spirit of revenge hot in their breasts, thirty of the principal men among the Tories were tried by summary court-martial and sentenced to death. Nine of them in bunches of three were at once hanged from a huge tree near the head- quarters. Among those sentenced were the two moun- taineers who had deserted on the march and betrayed the advance to Ferguson. One of them was a mere boy. He was at once reprieved. The other was one of Sevier's men. The gallant soldier claimed him and begged the other officers that he might be permitted to have him. The request was granted, and the grateful man became one of the most zealous partisans of the Revolution thereafter. One of the condemned men had a young brother among the prisoners — a mere boy. After the first group had been executed the lad begged permission to speak The Pioneers of East Tennessee 93 to his brother. Seizing his opportunity he cut the man's bonds, and he made a dash for freedom, the mountain men, cheering the daring of the boy and the desperate courage of the man, refrained from firing on him. Sevier, seconded by Shelby, thereupon interfered and the bloody reprisal ceased. In twenty-eight days the whole army was back over the mountains, and at home again — all but those who slept on the field of their glory or who died from their wounds on the return journey and had been buried on the way. One of these was the brother of Sevier. The heroic courage of the Scotch Presbyterian, Campbell; the resolute determination of the Welshman, Shelby; the dashing gallantry of the Frenchman, Sevier; the enthusiastic devotion of the Irishman, Lacey; the stern valor of the German, Hambright; the stubborn, dogged courage of Cleaveland, the Englishman, had won this most marvellous battle on the hills. Success came in the very nick of time. Cornwallis in great alarm recalled his scattered forces and hastily fell back into South Carolina, thus giving the Americans time to re-create an army under General Greene, that organizer of victory. The annihilation of Ferguson greatly encouraged the South Carolina Whigs, or rebels, and coupled with the victory of the Cowpens shortly after, where Morgan with some of the King's Mountain men to assist him, crushed Cornwallis' only other suc- cessful partisan, Tarleton, paved the way to Yorktown and the end of the Revolution. APPENDIX AN original account, ne-ver before published, of the Battle of King's Moun- tain, by the Rev. Stephen Foster, a participant. The original document has been preser'ved by the descendants of Col. fVilliam Campbell, -who com- manded the American forces in the battle. Its use is allowed by Mr. T. fV. Preston, now of yicksburg, Miss., one of his descendants, and a nati-ve of south ffest Virginia. THIS battle followed the battle of Enaree. From the latter it appears, that Col. Isaac Shelby carried off 200 prisoners beyond the pursuit of the british troops. Major Ferguson with a small party of regulars had been detached by Lord Corn- wallis, to the upper section of the Carolinas, to gathe'- troops to the royal standard and support the interest of his Majesty there. In this service he proved himself a man of energy and skill ; mus- tered a force of a thousand men, resented the afifront of Shelby, and addrefsed to the latter a threatening mefsage, that if he would not cease from such depredations, he would march over the moun- tains and burn those villages which supplied him with men. Shelby, residing at his father's dwelling, in Sullivan county East Tenn. on receiving this message, repaired to the settlements on Watauga river, 40 miles distant. He there had ample opportunity of com- municating its import to Col. John Sevier, who joined him in a sentiment of congenial heroism, for meeting so deserving and re- spectable an army. The mefsage before them told them of the foe. It presented to them an enterprise of a new and daring kind. The object of this enterprize was single and distinct. This was Fer- guson the whole of Ferguson and nothing but Ferguson. The force which these gentlemen were able to muster in the two settlements, was little over 400 men, The army they were to attack was double in number ; and headed by the ablest partisan leader in the land. Shelby therefore addrefsed a letter to Col. William Campbell of Washington Cnty. Va. to come over and join in the enterprize. Campbell at first refused, from a desire 95 96 Border Fights and Fighters to march in a different direction, and unite his troops with those, which were then struggling in the lower sections of his own state. A second mefsage from Shelby was successful. Campbells divi- sion amounted to 400 men. The place of meeting was the Syca- more Flats on Watauga river, at the foot of the Yellow Mountain. They ascended this mountain on horseback about the first of Oct. 1780. They encamped the same night in a gap of the Moun- tain on the opposite side. The ascent of the ^Mountain was not very difficult. It was a road travelled before ; but was impafsable for wag- gons. No provisions were taken but such as each man could carry in his wallet, or saddlebags. The sides and top of the Mountain were covered with snow " shoe mouth deep " — On the top of the Mountain and troops paraded, here were one hundred acres of beautiful table land. A Spring issuing throgh it ran over into the Watauga. On reaching the plain beyond the Mountain, they found themselves in a country covered with verdure and breathed an atmosphere of summer mildnefs. The 2nd night they rested at Cathy's plantation. The third day they fell in with Gen. McDowel, and that night held a general consultation of the Officers. Gen. McDowel was without troops. Yet his rank and former services could not easily be overlooked; and at the same time these young and daring officers, impatient to inflict a decisive blow on Ferguson, were unwilling to brook the delay, that might ensue from entrusting the command to him. It was accordingly stated in council, that they needed an experienced officer to command them ; they knew Gen. Morgan was the man they wanted ; they were unacquainted with Gen. Greene, and feared that their re- quest to him for Morgans services would be little attended to, coming as it necefsarily must, from strangers. To obviate this difficulty so apparently perplexing, McDowel very generously offered to be their mefsenger, being personally acquainted with Greene & Morgan and his offer was gladly and promptly accepted. It was now a matter of immediate consultation who should lead them to the intended attack. Col. Campbell having been nomi- nated by Col. Shelby, both from a principle of courtesy and the superior number of men in his regiment, was elected accordingly. The fourth night they rested at a rich Tory's, where they ob- tained abundance of every nesefsary refreshment. — On pafsing near the Cowpens, they heard of a large body of tories about eight The Pioneers of East Tennessee 97 miles distant. And, although the main enterprize was not to be delayed a single moment, a party of 80 volunteers under ensign Robert Campbell was permitted to go in chase of them during the night. These had removed before our party came to the place, who accordingly after riding all night came up with the main body the next day. On the next night a similar expedition was conducted by an- other Oiificer without succefs, but without adding any delay to the march of the army. At Gilbertown, about two or three days march from the enemy, our troops fell in with Col. Williams, (who was able to select the best Pilots) together with Col Cleave- land, Tracy, and Brandon, each commanding a body of men, and the whole amounting to 300. These were retreating before Ferguson, and were glad to join their forces to ours. On the night before the day of action, a misunderstanding arose in the attempt to crofs a river. Two fords were taken, and the army had separated and was crofsing at both. When this was perceived by the officers, a halt was ordered, and the men rested on this side until morning. Two roads were here. And to pre- vent Spies from pafsing and repafsing, they were both guarded by appointed watchman. The least public of these was guarded by Lieu. John Sawyers, (since Col. Sawyers,) and 25 men were here taken in this single night. Our officers and men were so bent upon their object. So anxious to take Ferguson by surprise, and so apprehensible of his pofsible escape, that they could not brook the delay of footmen. 400 of them were on foot. The other 700 were mounted riflemen. It was proposed now for the sake of despatch, that these should move in the speediest man- ner. And although the whole force was already too small, it was determined to risk the fate of the enterprize, in the bravery and addrefs of 700 men. While preparations were made by the officers for this divifsion, many of the troops in the mean time thought it a fit opportunity for refreshment. Beef was spitted at the fire, and mixed dough was in the very procefs of baking; when the order was given for the troops to march. — The hot meat without roasting, and the hot dough without baking, was rudely thrust by every man into his saddlebags or wallet, and the men galloped off without a murmur. This was in the dead of night. They were 45 miles from the enemy, and nothing but the very best rid- ing, over such roads as the country afforded, would bring them the next day to his quarters, in season to terminate the action 98 Border Fights and Fighters by daylight. They were accordingly there by two O'clock, in the afternoon. Here a few intervening circumstances may be men- tioned. Capt. Craig's and some other companies, on crofsing a river, (probably Broad river) were made to beleive by their com- manding officers, for the sake of trying the courage of their men, that the enemy was upon the opposite bank. The enemy, accord- ingly, which was nothing else than the advanced guards of our own troops, made his appearance for their reception, retiring a little as they approached the river. They crofsed the river, dis- mounted from their horses, and advanced to the proposed attack on the enemy. But finding no enemy there to meet them, they returned to their horses, and proceeded without further delay. Not far onward, they were to pafs a house on the right. This house formed a corner in the road. They turned it and bent their course to the right hand. Here stood a man in the decrepitude of age, leaning on a staff, and watching our men with great earnest- ness of visage. — He called out : " God Blefs you," till his voice died in the distance of the way, and in the noise and hurry of the forward march. They now began to meet with scattered notices of the enemy's encampment in the burnt fences and trod- den ground. As the afternoon advanced, some began to talk of an encamp- ment for our troops, and to give up the hope of meeting the enemy to day. They had now travelled about 45 miles, and during much of this time had been wet with rain. It was about 2 Oclock when coming to a place within two or three miles of the enemy, they intercepted two of his picquets, and captured the same without firing a gun. Ferguson may have had some notice of our troops, though not immediately before their arrival. A deserter from Col. Cleave- land's division, who will be mentioned again in the sequel of the narrative, had arrived at the British quarters a day or two Be- fore and told Ferguson of the approaching attack. His appear- ance was said to be so shabby and unpromising as to detract much from any high regard to his statement. Yet so wary and vigilant an officer, as Ferguson was not to be taken altogether by surprise. He had chosen his position, and afsumed an attitude of rigorous defence. He was confident in his own measures, yet to secure every pre- caution he sent a mefsage to Cornwallis desiring aid, at the same The Pioneers of East Tennessee 99 time stating, he had named the place of his encampment, King's Mountain, in honour of the King, and was so strongly fortified here, that if all the rebels in hell were rained downed upon him, they could not drive him from it. The mefsage was intercepted by our men and Cornwallis knew nothing of the danger, till Fergu- son was no more. King's Mountain is a ridge running east and west, in york dis- trict, S. C. about 10 miles north of the Cherokee ford of Broad river. A ledge of rock skirts the summit of this Mountain on the south side. This formed a natural breastwork for the enemy, behind which they could lie with only their heads exposed, and take leisurely aim at our troops on that side. And it is a remarkable fact, which does credit to the rifles of our men, that an unusual number of the enemy, who fell, were shot through the head. Before the action, Col. Shelby remarked to the army, that he had been twice likely to be killed for an enemy by his own men. He therefore recommended, as an expedient of safety, that every man first strip off his coat and hat, and go to battle without them. This was done by himself, and his regiment, but not by others. Col. Campbell also was induced to lay off his coat which being very peculiar in its color and form, would have rendered him sig- nally conspicuous from others. King's Mountain now emerged to the view of our men, and the British and Tory troops were seen through the forest rising from dinner. The battle line was quickly formed. The main attack was to be made by Campbell's and Shelby's division up the east and steep- est side of the mountain. Sevier was to ascend the left side of the mountain from these and Cleaveland on his right. Of the main body Campbell's division was on the right and Shelby's on the left. Capt. Elliot, in Shelby's division, occupied the extreme left, Lieut. Sawyers next to him, Capt. Maxwell's company next, and Capt. Webb the extreme right. The order of march, in the companies composing Col. Camp- bell's division was, as nearly as the hurry of the transaction would admit, the order of the battle line from right to left, the follow- ing: Capt. Dysart ; Capt. Colvil : Capt. Edmonston ; Capt. Beatie; Lieut. Bowen ; Captain Craig; — But the movement forward was with so much agility, and the retreat so hurried and abrupt, that these companies not only be- come intermixed with one another, but also with those of Col. 100 Border Fights and Fighters Shelby's. The troops were ordered to shout the Indian war- whoop, ascend the mountain and attack the enemy. This was done with great vigour, when the enemy advanced in firm platoons, fired their muskets, charged with fixed bayonets, and obliged them to give way. In the mean time Cols. Williams, Tracy, Brandon, Cleaveland and Sevier, who were to march from the left of the main body and compafs the South and West side of the Moun- tain, in the space of 15 minutes arrived there, and afsailed the enemy from that direction. This gave our troops an opportunity to rally and return to the charge. In the early part of this action, Col. Shelby was employed at some distance from his regiment to reconnoitre the enemy by a movement around the north side of the mountain, to the right of our troops. Here he discovered a spacious opening between the right of Campbell's and the left of Seviers. He viewed it to be an advantageous position for directing a constant and effectual fire upon the backs of a body of Ferguson's troops, which lay guarded in front by the ledge of rocks. He detached Ensign Robert Campbell with about 40 men for this service, and returned to the support of his own division. He found Col. Campbell's men in great disorder from the first shock of the British Platoons ; and called Lieuts. Sawyers and some others, who afsisted to rally and bring them back. In a short time after the rallying began Col. Campbells horse became exhausted; The Col. dismounted and fought through the rest of the action on foot. This was a bay horse of thin appearance and had been nearly overcome by the fatigue of the march. The horse which Col. Campbell ordinarily rode, was a bald face black horse. After the first retreat. Col. Shelby, it is said, saw this horse and some rider on him, whom he mistook for Col. Campbell at the distance of some 200 yds from the scene. Ensign Campbell as above directed by Col. Shelby occupied a spur of the Mountain within 40 yds of the enemy. When leading his men to this place, one of them from a view of its exposed location, exclaimed to his commander ; " what ! Are you taking us there to be marks for the enemy?" " No," said the other, "to make marks of the enemy." And this proved actually to be the case. For after this detachment had plied their rifles in the succefsive discharge of several rounds to a man, Ferguson per- ceived their fire to be so fatal, that he gave orders to his ad- The Pioneers of East Tennessee loi jutant, MCGinnis, to dislodge them. McGinnis marched his party to the charge. Campbell heard him order them to " make ready," and he commanded his own men to " stand fast," that is to stand behind the trees. McGinnis then ordered them to fire on Campbell, who, from the narrownefs of the tree that shielded him, expected to be shot through by several bullets at once. And he escaped this fate, not by the protection of the tree, but by the horizontal aim of the british muskets, which converged their bullets to a place above him, cracking the bark and splinters from the tree and shattering them down upon his head. Campbell had now a load in his gun, which he discharged with aim at the shoulders of McGinnis, and the latter instantly fell. The party now emerged from behind their trees, discharged their pieces with similar exactnefs, and the survivors of the British party retired to the main body. Campbell inspected the body of McGin- nis, and saw a shot through the part of the shoulder he had aimed at. And his party resumed their galling fire upon the backs of Fergusons men. On all sides now the fire was brisk. Our men had become cool from the first panic of the British charge; and were plying their rifles with steady effect. The matter was come to a desperate crisis. Ferguson was still in the heat of battle with characteristic cool- nefs and daring. He ordered Capt. Dupoister with a body of regu- lars to reinforce a position about loo yds distant. But before they arrived at this short distance, they were thined too much by the American rifles to render any effectual support. He then ordered his cavalry to mount, with a view of making a desperate onset at their hedd. But these only presented a better mark for the Ameri- can rifles, and fell as fast, as they would mount their horses. He, then perceiving the thinnest line, which surrounded him, to be that of Ensign Campbell's Riflemen, proceeded on horseback with two militia Cols, with the apparent design to force his pafsage through them and attempt an escape. But before reaching the line of bat- tle he was shot and expired. He had held out with inflexible reso- lution beyond even the hope of resistance. His men once raised the white flag for surrender, and he pulled it down. He had a shrill sounding silver whistle, whose signal was universally known through the ranks, was of immense service on many occasions, and gave a kind of ubiquity to his movements. I02 Border Fights and Fighters Who shot Ferguson remains in uncertainty. Several have claimed it. But the honor seams distinctly accorded to none. Nor does it appear to universal satisfaction whether he was shot on horseback or sitting upon a stone. The Americans were now in regular columns approaching the British. A large section of Col. Campbell's troops advanced with too much rapidity, when a reserved fire from the British breastwork did more fatal execution there than in the whole action beside. Because this forward movement brought them to a level with the British muskets, which in most instances overshot their heads. Lieut. Sawyers to this moment kept his men at their station, from which they had been firing through most of the battle, at the dis- tance of about twenty live steps from the enemy. Seeing the re- served fire discharged, he ordered his men to advance in order to increase the enemy's confusion. The same was done by the other companies on this side of the mountain. And Col. Sevier, who had gallantly borne his share in the conflict, was resolutely crowding up on the other side. The British regulars and American tories, were not only surrounded, but crowded close together, cooped up in a surprisingly narrow spaces, by the sur- rounding prefsure of the American troops, and fatally galled by an incefsant fire. Dupoister, who succeeded in the place of Ferguson, perceived but too plainly, that any further struggle was in vain. He raised the white flag and exclaimed for quarters. Quarters were given by a general cefsation of the American fire. But this cefsation was not by any means complete. Some did not understand the meaning of a white flag. Others, who knew its meaning very well, knew that this flag had been raised before, but quickly pulled down again by the British Commander. Andrew Evans was one of these. He was standing near to Col. Campbell, and in the very act of shooting, when Campbell jerked his gun upwards to prevent its eflfect, exclaiming; "Evans, for God's sake, don't shoot, it is murder to kill them when they raise the white flag." Col. Campbell seems not to have been distinguished as the Ameri- can commander. For, having fought as a foot soldier during most of the action, having climbed over the rocks of the enemy's breast- work with his men, who drove them away from it, he was standing in the front rank of his soldiery, his coat off and his shirt collar open like a sturdy farmer. The Pioneers of East Tennessee 103 Dupoister came riding on a gray horse not far from the place where the Col was standing and inquired, " where is your gen- eral ? " Mr. Beatie and another pointed to the place and Mr. Crow, who was not a guns lenth from Campbell, heard Dupoister ex- claim twice, "Col. Campbell, it was damned unfair;" alluding to the above mentioned continued fire, to which Campbell made no answer but the order to dismount. — He dismounted accordingly and held his sword for deliverance to his Captors, which was in the first place received by Evan Shelby and handed to Col. Camp- bell. The arms were now lying in front of the prisoners, without any orders how to dispose of them. Col. Shelby, from the part of the line which he commanded, rode out of the ranks with the apparent design of finding Col. Campbell. Returning without suc- cefs, he exclaims, "good God, what can we do in this confusion?" " We can order the Prisoners from their arms," said Sawyers. — " Yes," said Shelby, " that can be done." The Prisoners were accordingly marched to another place, and there surrounded by a double guard. This action was on the 7th of Oct. 1780. The lofs of the enemy was, 225 killed, 130 wounded, 700 prisoners, and 1500 stand of arms. The American lofs was 30 killed and 60 wounded. About 700 men achieved this victory. Sevier led about 240, Shelby 200, Campbell 400, the Carolina Cols. 300, making in all about 1140, of which, it has been stated, that about 400 were left behind for want of horses. These were met the next day and reunited with the victors in their march from the scene. So signal an exploit could not long remain a secret to Lord Cornwallis, and numerous rumors soon reached our men that he was in pursuit to recover his prisoners. Our troops, there- fore, moved from the battle ground with as little delay as possible, to make sure of a victory so happily won. And here let us pause for a moment, to answer the following question : — Why were so many killed in the American ranks, when the British platoons so generally overshot them? 1st. Because the great body of Fergusons troops were tories, as good marksman as our own, who always sought an object for their rifles. Lieut. Edmonston was standing a moment seeking a view of an enemy to fire at among Fergusons men behind the breastworks, and was shot by a rifleman from the very place he was inspecting. This incident was an example of many. For the rocks which formed a part of this breastwork, shielded the enemy, and enabled them to fire leisurely at our men. 104 Border Fights and Fighters 2ndly. The eagernefs of our men for action. This was so great that it led them to exposures both dangerous and uselefs. Their surest and most effectual mode of fighting was to stand at the dis- tance of a proper gun shot, and fire with deliberate aim at their enemy. But many of them were too impatient for this delay. Moses Shelby, Fagan and some others, leaped upon the waggons of the enemy's breastwork in the uselefs attempt to storm his camp. But they were soon carried off wounded from the scene. Some were wounded by the charge of the British bayonets, before they would retire from the first afsault. The death of Col. Williams gave a signal instance of this intemperate eagernefs for action. He espied Ferguson towards the close of the action on horseback, and made for him with the full determination of a persona! encounter. William Moore was close to him, and heard him exclaim " I will kill Ferguson or die in the attempt." He spurred his horse to a speedy movement, when a rifle bullet stopped his career. He survived till the white flagg told the enemy's surrender, and said, " I die contented." 3dly. From the enemy's reserved fire at the close of the action. Lieutenant Sawyers saw the companies around him, after a general discharge from the British, go too hastily forward, and checked his own men from doing so. This movement forward near the place of the waggons brought many of our men on a level with the British. — And their reserved fire, which was then discharged in its usual horizontal direction, did fatal execution in our ranks at that place. The number killed in Col. Campbell's division dur- ing the action was 13. The action was on Saturday. On the next Saturday a Court martial was held by our Officers to try from the ranks of the tory prisoners some offenders of a notorious kind. Thirty two persons of this description were condemned to die, of which 23 were pardoned by the commanding officer. The remain- ing nine were executed the same night. This summary procedure was thought necefsary; first from the unsettled condition of affairs, which precluded all hope of trial by jury; 2ndly. from the flagi- tious nature of the offences, one of which was the following. A man went to his neighbor's house and inquired of a little boy, " Where is your father? " to which the lad answered, " he is not at home." And the man shot him without further ceremony ; though fortunately the youth recovered of his wound. 3dly. to deter others from similar offences, and prevent these men from doing them again. The Pioneers of East Tennessee 105 The prisoners and their captors proceeded on their march. The prisoners were every night obliged to sit upon the ground on pain of being shot by the guard, which surrounded them. One night about two weeks after the battle, a boy was acting for one of the sentries. One of the prisoners taking notice of this con- trived to move himself gradually and without rising near to the place where the boy kept guard. As soon as he was near enough to take the requisite advantage, he started with a quick jump, and was making off with speed, when the boy wheeled upon his heel, levelled his rifle and shot the fugitive through the kidneys. The man was now disabled from flight, and was drawn back again into the ranks of the prisoners. In the morning it was ascertained by the testimony of Col. Cleave- land, that he was a deserter from the troops of the latter, and was the very man who had gone to tell Ferguson of our approach. This man, therefore, though in imminent hazard of his life through his wound, must be tried by the laws and usages of war. The court martial was equally divided, and Col. Shelby, who had been absent on a visit for the night, was called on his arrival to decide the life or death of the culprit by a single vote. The march was now de- layed nearly two hours ; and Shelby, though apparently of a rough and careless exterior, was so deeply concerned with his own respon- sibility, that while some were teasing him for an immediate decision, he would not give it in lefs than half an hour. He finally gave it for the man's execution : and preparations were made for it ac- cordingly. Two stakes were put in the ground converging towards each other at the top for him to stand upon, while his neck was fast by a rope from above, ready to hang him when the under support should be drawn away. He was permitted to stand in this attitude an hour, during which time he was constantly entreating Col. Cleaveland; "Oh, Col. Cleaveland, I pray pardon me, and I will be a good and faithful soldier ever after." In the mean time. Col. Campbell comes up and asks ; " was you the de- serter, who left our troops to inform the enemy? " " No," said the other. " Now," added Col. Campbell, " you are quickly to stand be- fore your Maker in judgment. Tell me in truth, if you was that deserter." " Yes," said the other, " I was." And his execution took place accordingly. So many of our troops, as were judged needful for safty, accompanied the prisoners a journey of three weeks from King's Mountain to the Mulberry fields, Wilkesbor- io6 Border Fights and Fighters ough in the state of North Carolina. Here they were met by a detachment of some hundreds of Carolina Militia and with these the prisoners were left in custody. Cols. Campbell ; Shelby and Sevier attended the prisoners to this place ; then left them and re- turned home. In this expedition the exposures and privations were extreme. Four hundred or more were on foot. But these had kept up with the horse some distance beyond the Yellow Mountain. The speed of their march required bodies inured to the hardest service. The last day they rode forty five miles, and then encountered a disci- plined enemy posted on a high and advantageous position. Having no baggage waggons nor public stores, every man was, from ne- cessity, his own provider. His fare was the plainest, the coarsest and the scarcest. His resources of provision, like the Sedonian widow's, were " a hand- full of meal." This placed in his saddle-bags, furnished the amount of his luxury. And when it was exhausted he was left at the mercy of fortune for the rest. Their sick and wounded were hurried from the battle scene with all imaginable speed to avoid the afsault of a pursuing enemy. The softest accommodation that could be made ready for con- veyance, was the fresh hides of the slaughtered cattle, fastened to two poles ; these attached to two horses, one before and one behind, and thus the sufferer carried off in safety. To specify particulars would spin this narrative to a tedious prolixity Two instances only will be here inserted- Alexander McMillan rode all night preceding the action ; of course was without sleep. The second night, that is, the night after the action, he was attending with Henry Dickenson, to the wants of James Laird and Charles Kilgore, the latter was shot with two balls through the side, and the former with one, near the middle — These were constantly in want of water. Water was of very diffi- cult procurement. And the effort to keep them in a constant sup- ply, employed these men with very little intermission, and without allowing them a moment of rest. The next night Mr. McMillan was on guard. Here were three nights without a wink of sleep. The fourth night he was on guard — every two hours, with intervals of rest of the same length of time. The guard stood so thick around the prisoners, as to be able to touch each other hands by reaching. Here stood McMillan, firmly braced, with his gun in his right hand resting upon the ground; The Pioneers of East Tennessee 107 Some time in the night, Major Evan Shelby, going the rounds of the watch to observe its order, comes to him and asks ; " where is your gun?" The latter supposing it to have fallen at his feet, busily moved them without stooping down, in order to find it lying beneath him. But not finding it there, he felt constrained to reply to the unwelcome interrogatory, " really I cannot tell." Shelby stepped aside, took it from a tree, against which it was leaning, and handed it back to the owner, with these words ; " re- member it is death to sleep on guard." McMillan acknowledged that this was law, but added in apology, that he had been four days deprived of sleep, from the above mentioned unavoidable causes, Shelby rejoined: "you must sleep no more upon guard;" but never divulged the secret. And for this generous forbearance on the part of the inspecting officer, McMillan has ever since, cher- ished for him a sense of high personal regard. Though he thinks that if measures had been taken against him, and death adjudged for neglect of duty, the circumstances of the case would have been seen to urge so strong a plea in his own justification, as to secure a reprieve from the designated punishment. The day after Wm. Campbell was chosen to the command he pro- posed to Robt. Campbell to lead off a detachment of men by night, and fall upon a party of tories, eight miles distant. The offer was gladly accepted, and a body of about eighty volunteers set off for the attack. The tories had retreated, our party had no fighting; they returned and rejoined the main body by daylight. — The next night Robert Campbell was on a similar expedition, under the com- mand of another officer. On the next night they began the above mentioned march of 45 miles, previous to the action. Here were three successive nights and days of the hardest service, without a moment of sleep. The next, he was requested to take charge of some part of the guard. But he stated to the officer that this was impossible, from the above mentioned incefsent vigils. He then sunk down by a tree and knew nothing more till at daylight ; he woke shivering in the frost. Col. Shelby that night being officer of the guard, was now seen with others, sitting at the guard fire, Campbell arose, approached the fire, and was presented by Shelby, with a bottle of rum for immediate relief. He drank of this, sat down by the fire, and undoubtedly felt the justice of the old Testament prescription; "Give strong drink to him that is ready to perish and wine to those that be of heavy hearts." io8 Border Fights and Fighters These two instances may perhaps suffice. For how can it be requisite to give publicity here, even if the writers information were adequate, to the individual suffering of the 60 wounded? — to tell of broken limbs and mangled bodies, of bullet holes through the body, probed by a sympathizing fellow-soldier, with a smoothed twig of sassafras, of mortification spreading from one limb to an- other, of the want of all kinds of relief from a surgeon, when none was present but a wrathful swearing British Doctor? — to prove that the privations and sufferings of these men were extreme? Nor does it seem any more necefsary to specify cases of individual valour. Two instances only of faltering courage have been men- tioned to the writer, from Col. Shelby's division. One was of a Captain lying flat upon his back in the beginning of the action. Another was of a captain who exclaimed for bullets to a comrade, who was passing him to go up the mountain. " Bullets, bullets, my dear sir, I have not a bullet in my pouch." " Here is enough of them," said his friend reaching out a handful to give him, " O, they will not fit my gun," said the other, who was accordingly left to this bloodlefs dilemma. The rest of these men were eager for action, and determined on victory, and seemed to have answered well to the sentiment of their Commander, who told them before leaving the waters of the Watauga, that he wanted no man to join the enterprize, who did not wish to fight the enemy. The troops of the other Cols, appear to have been actuated by a similar spirit. And the whole history of the enterprize demonstrates, that our men were led to espouse it, not from a fear, that the enemy would execute his vain threats upon their villages, For to these Moun- taineers, nothing than such a scheme would have made prettier game for their rifles ; nothing more desirable than to entice such an enemy from his pleasant roads, rich plantations, and gentle climate, with his ponderous baggage and valuable armory, into the very cen- ter of their own fastnesses, to hang upon his flank, to pick up his stragglers, to cut off his foragers, to make short and desperate sal- lies upon his camp, and finally to make him a certain prey without a struggle and without lofs. Nor was it the authority or influence of a state, which led them to engage in this hazardous service. They knew not whether to any or to what state they belonged. — From the rude circumstances of their early settlement, the difficulty of pass- ing the wide ridges of Mountains, and their constant seclusion from their eastern friends, they were living in a state of primitive inde- pendence. The Pioneers of East Tennessee 109 And it was not till several years after this, that from the apparent and urgent necessity of the case, they created a temporyry Gov- ernment of their own.* Nor can it be expected, that that gratiu- tous patriotism, from which this enterprise evidently sprung, so different from that of a paper victory, a scramble for office, & for gain, can be fully comprehended by modern politicians. In those days of different principles, to know that American liberty was in- vaded, and that the only apperent alternative in the case, was Amer- ican independence of subjugation, was enough to nerve their hearts to the boldest pulsation of freedom, and ripen their purposes to the fullest determination of putting down the aggressor. The suc- cess at King's Mountain was fraught with signal advantage to America. It broke up the royal interest in the upper section of Carolina. It enabled our Generals to concentrate their forces upon great objects; and was one in that series of happy incidents, which conspired in the progress of the next year, to consummate the splendid achievement at Yorktown.' NOTE BY THE REV. MR. FOSTER The original letter is written on foolscap ; the paper is yellowed with age and very much worn, but the writing is easily decipherable. It appears to have been corrected some time after it was written. There is a peculiarity in the pen work and the ink of the editor, however, which betrays him. The above follows the original in spelling, punctuation, and form in every way, as closely as I could determine it. I have not thought it necessary to correct certain obvious errors in this letter, evidently written some time after the event, into which the writer has been betrayed by his uncertain mem- ory. But it may be well to state that the place of the battle was known as King's Mountain long before Ferguson's ar- rival, and its name did not refer to the English monarch, but to a settler named King who formerly lived at its foot. C. T. B. *The Frankland Government. Part III KENTUCKY I Daniel Boone, the Greatest of the Pioneers DANIEL BOONE, THE GREATEST OF THE PIONEERS " A dirge for the brave old Pioneer! Columbus of the land! Who guided freedom's proud career Beyond the conquered strand, And gave her pilgritn sons a home No monarch's step profanes, Free as the chainless winds that roam Upon its boundless plains." I. The Land Beyond the Mountains BEYOND the Alleghenies, so long the western boundary of the new nation, hes a vast expanse of country between the Ohio and the Cumberland Rivers, cut by the thirty-seventh and thirty-eighth paral- lels of latitude, now known as Kentucky. No more beautiful region is to be found in the United States. Its soil is fertile and productive, its climate agreeable and invigorating. It is to-day one of the most delightful states in the Union, noted for the beauty of its women, the virility of its men, and the speed of its horses — to say nothing of the blueness of its green grass and the quality of its whiskey. One has to be genial and mellow even in speaking of the state and its people. Certainly no other spot on the globe seems to be better designed for humanity, yet from the days of the S 113 114 Border Fights and Fighters mound builders to the time of the Revolution it was an uninhabited wilderness, given over to the buffalo, the elk, the deer, the bear and the wolf, who prowled through its dense forests or played in its grassy glades. From prehistoric times no race or tribe made its domicile there. Hunting parties of the Shawnees and even the distant Iroquois from the north, ranged its wildernesses and met in deadly conflict similar bodies of men from the Chero- kee lands to the south, or from the Chickamauga terri- tories on the west, so that its forests resounded often with war-cries of savage foemen. Why it was not adopted as the settling place of one or the other of the tribes has never been ascertained. It may be that no tribe felt itself strong enough to hold the ground to the exclusion of the others. It was so desirable that its very beauty and fertility operated to make it no man's land. No tribe was strong enough to hold it alone, yet all combined to keep it free. It was not until the advent of that world-claimer, the white man, that it became a home for humanity. Danger, opposi- tion, prior claim, never deterred the pioneers. The first settlers were usually willing to purchase the right of emi- nent domain if they could do so from any recognized authority or power, but if they could not — well, the earth itself belonged to the pioneer and he took any portion of it without compunctions of conscience or questions of law. Who was the first white man to see Kentucky? Some have said that it was Moscosco, the successor of De Soto, in 1542-3, but without doubt the honor of the discovery accrues to another member of the Latin race, the great explorer La Salle, who was the first white man to put foot upon its smiling, pleasant soil in 1669-70. The Greatest of the Pioneers 115 Colonel Wood of Virginia and Captain Thomas Batts of the same mother state, the latter sent by Governor Berkeley, had crossed the mountain barriers in a search for a water route to China in 1664 and in 1671 respec- tively, but it was hardly likely that they went far into Kentucky, if they saw it at all. The first real explorer was Dr. Thomas Walker, also of Virginia, who reached the banks of the Cumberland River in 1750. It was he who first marched through that romantic pass in the mountains, which, with the mountains themselves, and the river upon which he made his camp, he called after His Royal Highness the Duke of Cumberland, the bloody butcher; and that was the first white man's name bestowed in Kentucky. It was indeed a name of ancient lineage traced down through the Cumbrians of the Brit- ish Isles, the Cymry of the continent, the Cimmerians of the Black Sea, directly from Gomer, son of Japhet ! The Walker expedition amounted to little and the in- terior of Kentucky remained a terra incognita until 1767, or thereabouts, when a certain John Finley, or Findlay, explored a small section of it and returned home to North Carolina to fill the minds of the adventurous young men with whom he came in contact, with tales of its romantic possibilities. Among those to whom he told the story of his adventures was a certain Daniel Boone, a settler, farmer, hunter and pioneer, who had already some knowledge of the country.* * This inscription on an ancient beech tree still standing on Boone's Creek, a small tributary to the Watauga in Washington County, Tennessee, " D. Boon cilled a bar on tree in the year 1760," seems to indicate that Boone had hunted across the mountains long before he met Finley. But there is no evidence that the inscription is the work of Boone, and, in spite of local traditions, a probability against it. ii6 Border Fights and Fighters II. The Greatest of the Pioneers Few men have been so written about as Daniel Boone* and most writers have succumbed to the temp- tation to romance about him, too; he is quite the hardest man to tell the truth about that I have ever attempted to discuss. Let the reader who differs from what is here set down give me credit for good intention. The investigator experiences a feeling of relief to find that Boone was born in the state of Pennsylvania. Nearly every other pioneer, explorer, discoverer or ad- venturer of note, in the trans-Allegheny regions, was born in the South. It is only fair to say that the West between the Alleghenies and the Mississippi was discovered, ex- plored, settled, protected and won for the United States by the people of the Southern States — a fact not gener- ally known, I think. Young Boone, one of a numerous family, first saw the light on the 22nd of October, 1733, at his father's farm-house in Exeter township, Berks County, Pennsylvania, near the village of Oley, which is a few miles northeast of the present city of Reading. His fath- er, George Boone, came from Devonshire, where he had filled the humble station of a weaver. The family origi- nally belonged to the Church of England but had be- come Quakers. Tliey removed to Pennsylvania in 171 7, whither three of the older children preceded them, like Caleb and Joshua, to spy out the land. They were plain substantial people, of limited educa- * Miner's excellent Boone Bibliography contains nearly one hundred and seventy-five references to lives and other sources of information con- cerning his career, and I have found several additional references which he does not mention. The Greatest of the Pioneers 117 tion; sturdy, honest, independent, and capable, living simple healthy lives and usually attaining to a great age. Daniel Boone's education in arts and letters was of the most primitive character. His spelling was quite the worst I have ever come across, though, singular to state, his handwriting was rather graceful and flowing, perhaps because it partook of the physical characteristics of the man. His brother George was sufficiently well educated to teach school, and some of the family subsequently be- came rather noted mathematicians. But if young Daniel Boone knew but little about books and their contents, he was one of those who found " tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones " — yes, we may add — " and good in every- thing." It was a wild primitive country in those days. The rifle of the hunter with the plough of the husbandman afforded the only means of support, and more often the hostile Indians caused the plough to be laid aside and the sole dependence put upon the weapon. So Daniel Boone grew up to strong vigorous man- hood in the forest far from urban influence, which in- deed he could never tolerate. His father moved to North Carolina in May, 1750, and established himself on a frontier farm on the Yadkin, then the very outpost of civilization. Daniel, by this time, one of a very nu- merous family, did his share of the work necessitated by the building of a wilderness home in that day, but he was ever fonder of the chase than of the plough, and as he was the most skilful member of the family with the rifle, he speedily became the hunter for them all. This indeed was no sinecure. In the course of time other families followed the ex- ample of the elder Boone and the country began to be ii8 Border Fights and Fighters thickly populated. At a very early age Daniel had mar- ried Rebecca Bryan, daughter of a neighboring settler. One of the most heroic of that splendid breed of pioneer women, she proved herself for over half a century a worthy mate indeed for the great adventurer. Boone had prospered, he had a growing family and a good farm, yet he was not happy. Something, an instinct which he could never explain or understand, drove him forward. He was one of those characters who are bound to be in the advance of civilization, who are made to lead it on, to " blaze " the pathway of progress. He grew rest- less and discontented. The advent of the settlers nat- urally destroyed the primeval character of the wilderness. Game became scarce and the ordinary demands of life more complex and harder to meet. Nomad that he was he felt that he must remove from his present settlement and find a new land to which to lead his family and in which to build his cabin. Often and often he gazed at the mountains soaring into the heavens to the westward of him and wondered what lay on the farther side. When Finley came home with his marvellous tales of the beauty and loneliness of the hunter's paradise beyond the everlasting hills, he found in Boone a ready auditor to his representations. III. The Exploration of Kentucky A party of six men was made up in the spring of 1769 to cross the mountains under Finley's guidance and ex- plore the country. Be it remembered that this was Jo be no thoughtless excursion, no adventurous foray, no mere hunter's trip to a land teeming with game; it was a movement to found a home. They went to examine The Greatest of the Pioneers 119 a land, to discover if it were suitable for settlement or not. Boone was unanimously chosen to lead this expe- dition in spite of the fact that Finley had been over the mountains before. On the 7th of June, 1769, late in the afternoon, they ascended the crowning range of the Alle- ghenies, crossed the ridge of the divide, stood upon the western slope and gazed down upon as enchanting a panorama as was ever spread before mortal vision, their first sight of Kentucky. In popular acceptance that name is supposed to mean '* dark and bloody ground." So far as it can be deter- mined the original meaning of the word Kentucky is " a pleasant meadow, a smiling land, whence the river fiows." How it got its name of " dark and bloody ground " is perhaps not difficult to understand. Some years after- ward when Colonel Henderson was negotiating with the Cherokees for the purchase of the Transylvania territory, they strove to prevent him from acquiring any land south of the Ohio. In the words of old Dragging Canoe, the war chief of the Chickamaugas, it was a bloody land, there was a gloomy shadow over it, the dark spirits dwelt there, and the white man would do well to let it alone. There was no doubt whatever that the words by which it became known, " dark and bloody ground," were ap- posite to its early history. The party immediately descended the mountains and began hunting and exploring until December. There- after the better to cover the country they divided and Boone and a companion named Stewart plunged steadily westward through the forests and openings. Near the Kentucky River they were captured by a band of wan- dering Indians and spent Christmas as prisoners. Boone, already showing that marvellous sagacity he manifested I20 Border Fights and Fighters in dealing with Indians, seeing that resistance would be hopeless, directed his companion to make no opposition but to affect to acquiesce cheerfully in their captivity. Their demeanor so disarmed the suspicions of their cap- tors that after they had been in company with them for a week they found opportunity to escape in the night. They shook off pursuit by their adroit woodmanship and finally reached the main camp. They found it plun- dered and destroyed and Finley and his companions gone. The four men have vanished from the pages of history. There is no record of their ever having returned to their friends across the mountains. It is believed that they were killed by the Indians and that their bones moul- dered away in the country that they had helped to dis- cover — the pioneer martyrs of a long line. Boone and Stewart were sorely depressed by this un- toward happening, but they continued their hunting and exploring, carefully avoiding hunting parties of Indians by their watchfulness. They had almost reached the end of their resources, however, and were considering a re- turn across the mountains, when, ranging through the forest one day in the early winter, they perceived two men coming through the wood, being themselves dis- covered at the same moment. The two parties took to the trees and approached each other cautiously, rifles primed and ready, each striv- ing to " draw a bead " on the other. What was their surprise and relief, however, to find that the two men were countrymen ! And their joy was the greater when Daniel Boone recognized in one of them his brother Squire — Squire being his name, not title. The coincidence was really marvellous, that in sixty thousand square miles of territory, these two parties The Greatest of the Pioneers 121 should find each other. Squire had come to seek for Daniel and had brought him needed supplies of powder and salt. He brought news of the family on the Yadkin, who were prosperous and well under Mrs. Boone's fos- tering care. The four men determined to pass the win- ter in Kentucky. While hunting one day Daniel and Stewart were sur- prised by Indians. Stewart was shot and instantly killed, but Boone after a desperate fight managed to escape. Squire's companion also went off on a hunting expedi- tion and never came back. It is supposed that he lost his way and died of starvation or exposure. The brothers amassed a great store of peltries of much value. In the spring it was decided that Squire should return to North Carolina for supplies, while Daniel re- mained behind to protect the furs that had accumulated and to increase the stock. The redoubtable hunter was thus left entirely and absolutely alone in the midst of that vast territory; as he said, " without salt, bread, or sugar; without the society of a fellow creature; without the companionship of a horse or even a dog, often the affec- tionate companion of a lone hunter." He was desperately lonely and homesick for the sight of his wife and children. Impelled by this loneliness to action he made a long detour of exploration in the south- west along the Salt and Green Rivers. He saw frequent signs of Indians and was often forced to hide himself in the cane brakes without fire to escape their observation. On the 27th of July, 1770, his brother returned and they met at the old camp on the Red River. His brother brought with him ammunition and necessaries and two horses, perhaps the first horses ever ridden by a white man in Kentucky. The two men explored the country 122 Border Fights and Fighters between the Cumberland and Green Rivers thoroughly during the year until March, 1771, when they turned northwest to the Kentucky River, where they decided to form their permanent settlement. Packing as much of their skins as their horses could carry they returned to the settlement on the Yadkin. There is a story that the two men fell in with another body of hunters called, from the duration of their stay in Kentucky, the Long Hunters, and that the party be- guiled the long hours of the evenings in the camp by reading aloud " Gulliver's Travels," which, with the pos- sible exception of the Bible, was the first English book read in the territory. Some of the names in the book still obtain in the state, as for instance, " Lulbegrud " Creek ! Daniel Boone had been absent over two years, during which time he had tasted neither bread nor salt nor seen any white men other than his travelling companions, who had all perished, except his brother, and the Indians. Meanwhile other parties of hunters had been exploring different portions of the country, mostly in the valley of the Cumberland, and at the same time Robertson and his North Carolinians were making the first settlement on the Watauga in the mountains of Tennessee. IV. The Settlement of Kentucky On the 25th of September, 1773, Boone, having dis- posed of all his earthly goods save what could be loaded upon pack-horses, accompanied by his family and that of his brother Squire and several other families amount- ing in all to some fifty persons, set forth for Kentucky. It was a small humble cavalcade, a petty insignificant The Greatest of the Pioneers 123 migration, yet it marks a momentous date in history, for it was the inauguration of " a movement for the annihi- lation of savagery, the extinction of the Latin and the supremacy of the Teutonic civiHzation in North America, parallel to that rolling westward from New England, New York, and Pennsylvania, at the same time." It, with the settlement of Robertson on the Watauga, was the beginning of that great drama of our history which has been described in poetic language as " the winning of the west." Many people played a prominent part in it, but certainly Daniel Boone must stand more nearly as the Columbus of the movement than any other man. But it was to be some years before he established himself and family in that promised land. As they ap- proached the mountains a party of Indians fell upon their rear guard and killed six young men, among whom was Boone's eldest son. Alas, it was only the beginning of tragedies that dogged his family, for the Indians at one time or another made sad havoc among his kith and kin.* The unfortunate incident so discouraged the pioneers that, in spite of Boone's urging, they gave over the at- tempt and settled on the Clinch River in Virginia. Boone's heart was in Kentucky, however, and he made several visits there, one to bring back a party of surveyors who had gone there by the order of Lord Dunmore, the royal governor of Virginia. Boone was commissioned a captain in the royal service in Dunmore's War and had command of three frontier forts, where he did good service. He always carefully preserved his British commission thereafter, and it is *Two sons, a brother, two brothers-in-law, and other relatives were killed by Indians at different times. 124 Border Fights and Fighters alleged frequently saved his life when he was captured by the Indians, who were the allies of the British, by exhibiting it as proof of his loyalty, a perfectly justifiable stratagem, of course. In 1775 he was sent by Colonel Richard Henderson of North Carolina, who had formed a proprietary com- pany and purchased a vast tract of land between the Ken- tucky and Cumberland Rivers, which he called Transyl- vania, to survey a road to the Kentucky River and estab- lish a fort there w^hich should be the head-quarters of the company. At the head of a small party of some twenty men, Boone again entered the promised land. It speaks well for the natural skill of the man as a road builder when we learn that the path he marked out over the mountains and up through the valleys remains a great highway to-day, and that subsequent generations spent thousands of dollars under the direction of skilled engi- neers on that very " Wilderness Road, " which for loca- tion they found could hardly be improved upon. Here is a letter written twenty one years after to General Shelby about that same road : Feburey the nth, 1796. Sir: After my Best Respts to your Excelancy and famyly I wish to inform you that I have sum intention of under- taking this New Rode that is to be Cut through the wil- derness and I think My Self intitled to the ofer of the Bisness as I first Marked out that Rode in March 1775 and Never Re'd anything for my trubel and Sepose I am no Statesman I am a Woodsman and think My Self as Capable of Marking and Cutting that Rode as any other man. Sir if you think with Me I would thank you to write mee a Line by the post the first oportuneaty and he Will Lodge it at Mr. lohn Milerson hinkston The Greatest of the Pioneers 125 fork as I wish to know Where and When it is to be Laet (let) So that I may atend at the time I am Deer Sir your very umble sarvent Daniel Boone To his Excelancy governor Shelby This interesting document proves conclusively that Boone was more familiar with the rifle than the pen. The party fought its way up through the Indians, los- ing several killed on the journey. They arrived at the chosen point on the ist of April and on the 29th of the month, having been joined by Henderson and other pro- prietors, they began the erection of a rude fort which they called in honor of their leader Boonesborough. The fort was begun after the Battle of Lexington and com- pleted just before the Battle of Bunker Hill, two mo- mentous events of which the colonists were in ignorance for a long time. When they did hear the news, however, their rejoicings showed their American patriotism was above proof. The fort, plans of which remain to us, was a very curi- ous one, although all frontier forts, except in dimensions, exactly resembled it. It was situated on the side of a hill with one corner quite near the river. At each of the four corners there was a two story blockhouse, and along the sides of the fort a series of little cabins placed close together, their roofs slanting inward. The loop- holed cabin walls, with the palisades which filled up the spaces where there were no cabins near each of the block- houses, enclosed a space two hundred and sixty feet long by one hundred and fifty wide. There were heavy timber gates in the front and back. The walls were about twelve feet high and there was hardly a nail or a piece of iron used in the whole enclosure. 126 Border Fights and Fighters Here, in the same year, Boone brought his wife and family; and, on the 8th of September, Rebecca Boone and her daughters were the first white women to stand on the banks of the Kentucky. They were followed it ' '^^Pl|ili|i 1. BLOCKHOUSei. 2.. ST0CKAD£S . i. Cabims. *. Gates. 5. COOK Houie. o CD M i^; i r / I o .... o J o ... z Q Plan and Perspective View of Boonesborough. shortly after, however, by other families who settled at Boonesborough, Harrodsburg, and elsewhere, in similar forts throughout the territory. Tlius the settlement of Kentucky was begun, but it was not maintained for many years without hardship and loss The Greatest of the Pioneers 127 of life incredible. In thirteen years hundreds of men and women were killed by Indians. To their natural ferocity and their overwhelming desire to clear the prized hunting ground of settlers, there was added the encour- agement of the British government, which was entirely willing to let loose upon its rebellious subjects the horde of savages and as a definite evidence of its desires paid liberally for the white man's — or white woman's for that matter — scalp. Hamilton, the British Governor of De- troit. " the hair-buyer general, " was the prime mover in this situation. It goes without saying that the colonists were rebels to a man, and it is interesting to know that on Tuesday, May 23rd, 1775, at the instance of Colonel Henderson, President of the Transylvania Company, a representative government was established at Boonesborough, Daniel Boone being one of the legislators. It is characteristic of Boone that in the record of in- troduced bills he seems to have originated but two bills, one to preserve the game, the other to improve the breed of horses. There speaks the Kentucky hunter and sportsman ! Both bills were passed, as was another to prevent " profane swearing," introduced by the Rev. John Lythe, a clergyman of the Church of England, who, on Sunday the 28th of May, under the spreading branches of a grand old elm, in the words of that most ancient liturgy, held the first religious services within the state. V. Adventures with the Indians Boonesborough was twice attacked by bodies of Ind- ians, but the war parties were driven ofT with considerable 128 Border Fights and Fighters loss to themselves and but little loss to the garrison. The prevalence of war parties often prevented the settlers from making a crop and they were forced to live mainly by the chase. Boone was easily the best shot and the keenest hunter in the settlement. This and other quali- ties gave him the practical leadership of all expeditions, although the proprietors were sometimes present. On Sunday, July 14th, 1776, three young girls, the eldest Elizabeth Callaway, aged seventeen, her sister Frances, and Jemima Boone, just turned fourteen, rowed across the river in a canoe during the absence of Boone and Colonel Callaway, another of the fine spirits of the period. When they reached the other side the canoe grounded on a bar and one of a party of six Indians, who had come close to the fort unobserved, seized the bow of the boat, dragged it to land, and the girls were capt- ured. With the spirit of the pioneer women, Elizabeth Callaway attacked the Indians with her canoe paddle and severely wounded one of them in the head. The other two girls also offered a stout resistance, which of course availed nothing. The Indians, elated by the capture, which they rightly judged to be of importance, hurried their captives away from the fort. They strove to get the girls to put on moccasins in order that the betraying tracks of their shoes should not indicate their route in the pursuit which was certain to be made, but Elizabeth Callaway resisted so that they were forced to let her have her own way, and to trust to the rapidity of their movements to effect their escape. The girls, by the intrepid Elizabeth's direction, blazed their trail by breaking twigs from the trees as they passed, and when they were discovered and prohibited, tore their The Greatest of the Pioneers 129 dresses into bits and dropped pieces at intervals. Boone and Callaway came back to the fort that evening, when the girls were missed. Many of the men were still away hunting and it would not have been safe to deprive the fort of all means of resistance. Two parties were organized at once, com- prising some twenty men. Seven of them went with Boone, who easily caught the trail of the Indians. Among them was young Henderson, son of the proprie- tor, who was in love with Elizabeth Callaway, who shortly afterward married him, while strangely enough, two of the other men in the party afterward married the two other girls when they had reached w^hat was then con- sidered a suitable age. Women were scarce in Ken- tucky and the available ones never lacked for lovers and attention. Guided by the traces left by the girls, the party pur- sued the Indians with furious speed, and came upon them encamped in fancied security the second day. How to efifect the recapture of the girls without giving the Ind- ians time to kill them was something of a problem. Boone and Henderson finally crawled as near the camp as they dared, and when four of the others fired on the unsuspicious Indians, they dashed upon them, placed themselves between the girls and the camp and immedi- ately opened fire, each shooting his man as he ran. The Indians fled precipitately and the girls were saved. In the excitement of the little battle, so an ancient account says, one of the rescuers, mistaking Elizabeth Callaway, who was very dark and sat at the foot of the tree with a handkerchief bound around her head, for an Indian, lifted his gun butt to beat out her brains before he recognized her. 130 Border Fights and Fighters A few weeks after there was a wedding in the stockade between the dusky Elizabeth and young Henderson, Squire Boone, who is reputed to have been an elder in the church, performing the ceremony. This was the first marriage solemnized in Kentucky. Boone was many times in danger from Indians. In 1777 his life w^as saved by the famous pioneer Simon Kenton. Several men in the fields near Boonesborough, attacked by a party of Indians, ran toward the fort, one of them being killed and scalped by the way, and their cries led Boone to sally out to their relief with thirteen men. He charged impetuously upon the Indians and was met by a lire from a concealed party. With six of his men he was wounded by a bullet, and as he lay on the ground one of the Indians attempted to scalp him. Kenton shot the Indian dead, lifted Boone in his arms and with the rest of his party succeeded in gaining the fort. Boone was very taciturn, silent and quiet, as one who had spent much time in self-communion in the wil- derness. In a few brief, unemotional words, which yet meant more than a volume from another man, he thanked Kenton for his assistance. " Well, Simon, you have behaved yourself like a man to-day," he said, " indeed you are a fine fellow." On one occasion while out hunting he was captured by a party, who bound him with withes and left him on the. ground in the care of some squaws, who proceeded to get very drunk on the contents of Boone's whiskey bottle. It must have been a very large bottle or con- tained an unusual quality of whiskey. During the night Boone rolled over to the fire, held his hands in the flames until the bonds were burned and made his escape, first blazing a tree with three deep gashes to mark the place. The Greatest of the Pioneers 131 Years after he found the gashed tree and settled a boun- dary dispute by his identification of the landmark. While hunting with his brother Edward near the Blue Licks, his brother was shot dead and again Boone fled for his life. The Indians followed his trail with a dog. The hound and the leading savage were close upon him, one of them only was at his mercy. He wisely shot the dog and escaped. The record of his many adventures would fill a volume. His longest captivity, however, occurred in January, 1773. A great need of the colonists was salt. It was impracticable to bring it from the seaboard over the mountains, and the only w-ay they could get it was by boiling the water from the salt springs, or " licks " as they were called, from the practice of the wild animals in licking the rocks of the ground for the salt with which they were impregnated. With a party of thirty men Boone was engaged in this tedious but very necessary occupation. As usual he left the work to his subordinates while he hunted to provide game for the party. While hunting he was taken by a large party of Indians en route for Boonesborough, which they were by this time determined to capture. The garrison at Boonesborough, small at best, was great- ly weakened by the absence of this party, and as they could capture Boone and his companions and then fall upon the stockade there would be no doubt but that they would take it with the women and children. Boone affected to be delighted with his capture. He said that he and his companions had left Boonesborough for good, that they sympathized with the Indians and were quite willing to go along wath them — perhaps here he exhibited his British commission. He adroitly warned 132 Border Fights and Fighters them at the same time that Boonesborough was heavily re-enforced with Americans, who had in fact driven these British sympathizers away. The Indians, who easily captured the rest of the party, were delighted with their prisoners, who had surrendered by Boone's advice; and, moved by his representations, abandoned their efforts and returned across the Ohio to their own country with their prisoners. Boone's readi- ness undoubtedly saved the women and children from the horrible fate of the Indian captive. His men were scat- tered among the tribes but were in the main well treated, and most of them finally escaped after varying periods of captivity. There seems to have been a singular difference be- tween the Indians of that day and place and our modern savages. Black Fish, the head chief of the Shawnees, and a warrior of no mean prowess, claimed Boone as his personal prisoner, and finally adopted him into his family, renaming him Big Turtle. Boone was separated from his men and taken to Detroit, where Hamilton, to his great credit be it said, treated him kindly and even offered to buy his freedom from the Indians for one hundred pounds. Black Fish was so charmed with his prisoner that he refused to part with him for any sum, and indeed Boone refused to be bought so far as he had anything to say about it, because he did not wish to be under any obhgations of that sort to the British, especially as it might prevent his escape. The Indians left Detroit in the spring and returned south to their own country, again taking Boone with them. He became a great favorite with all the tribe, and as usual was the hunter upon whom they depended. They used to count the charges of powder and the niim- The Greatest of the Pioneers 133 ber of balls which he took with him on his hunting expeditions and when he returned he had to account for every charge and ball. In other words, he had to bring back game or bullets. They made no provision for a miss, which spoke eloquently of their opinion of his marksmanship. But Boone adroitly used only half charges of powder and split the bullets, trusting to his skill in stalking the game to bring him near enough to make a small charge do the work. By degrees he man- aged to accumulate a little ammunition this w-ay. The Shawnees were very busy at the time and he learned, in spite of their efiforts at secrecy, that they were mustering in great force for an attack on Boonesbor- ough, which they hoped to capture in his absence. Fear- fully anxious for his family and others he sought desper- ately for means of escape, and finally succeeded in getting away on the i6th of June, and in four days he traversed the distance between tlie Indian village and Boonesbor- ough, over one hundred and fifty miles, during which time he only had a single meal. Part of the time he was on horseback, it is alleged. He was not a good swimmer. When he came to the Ohio he found a de- serted canoe on the banks which enabled him to cross the wide swift river. When the starved exhausted woodsman reached Boonesborough he was received with rejoicings as one risen from the dead. His wife, deem- ing that he had been killed, had gone back to North Car- olina with her children. 134 Border Fights and Fighters VI. The Defence of Boonesborough The fort, which had fallen out of repair, was at once put in shape for defence when the news that he had brought became known. Boone naturally took charge of everything. Hoping that he might deter the Indians from coming, or stop their advance, while the rest were busily engaged in working on the stockade he led a party of twenty men to the Scioto River, where he encountered a larger force of Indians, defeated them and drove them back. But learning that the main body was already en route for the fort Boone and his companions retraced their steps, succeeded in passing the Indians and reached Boonesborough in safety, after a terrific march, just be- fore the savages appeared. The party entered the fort shortly before sunset, Sun- day, September 6th, and that night the Indians appeared on the other side of the river and the next morning they crossed without opposition and invested the fort. The Indians were not alone, however, for they were accom- panied by eleven French Canadians under a young cap- tain, whose name was Dagniaux de Ouindre, although he is usually referred to in the histories as Du Ouesne, and one extravagant romancer actually identifies him with the family of the great marquis for whom the cele- brated fort was named ! The party advanced under the French and English flags, strange to say. The real com- mander of the expedition, which numbered four hundred and forty-four Indians beside the Canadians, was Boone's adopted father Black Fish, very much cut up at his quondam son's desertion and defection. Contrary to their usual practice, instead of at once be- The Greatest of the Pioneers 135 ginning an attack, the Indians through de Quindre pro- posed a parley, in which the surrender of the fort was demanded under promises of kind treatment and so forth. Boone's conduct in his late captivity inspired them with the hope that they could effect their end without resist- ance. The wily hunter asked for two days to consider, which was at once granted by the unsuspecting allies, who carried their complaisance so far that when the cattle of the settlers, returning in the evening as was their wont, presented themselves before the gate the Indians made no objection to their entrance. Meanwhile the people in the fort, amounting to thirty men, twenty boys, and the women and children, worked like beavers, strengthening the palisades and getting a supply of water from a spring outside. It is a strange thing that almost every fort that was erected in Kentucky was forced to get its water from some external source. At the end of two days, their preparations having been completed, Boone calmly informed the Frenchman that under no circumstances would he surrender and at the same time thanked the besiegers for allowing him time to complete his preparations for defence. Discomfited by this unlooked-for check to their hopes, they did not yet abandon their endeavors for a further treaty. Boone was very anxious to gain time. Ex- presses had been sent to Virginia and North Carolina asking that troops be despatched to aid them and raise the siege. The longer he waited the more was the like- lihood of their arrival. He therefore consented to a fur- ther discussion of the question of surrender. The next day was appointed for a council. Nine Americans were to meet a party of Indians and Cana- dians, all unarmed, outside the walls of the fort. Boone 136 Border Fights and Fighters stationed a number of his best riflemen in the block-house nearest the meeting-place with instructions to fire upon the Indians should any treachery be manifested. The nine Americans, among whom were Boone and his brother, secure in this protection, held a grand pow- wow with the Canadian and Indian delegates, who were present in considerably greater numbers at the treaty place between the fort and the Indian encampment. A singular treaty of peace, hard to understand from the meagre accounts which have come down to us, was pro- posed, to which the Americans agreed. After the matter had been apparently amicably settled de Ouindre and his allies thought that nothing remained to them but to take possession of the post; but before they parted they proposed that the treaty should be ratified by a general handshaking. This request was acceded to by Boone, who, to tell the truth, does not seem to have shone as a diplomatist. Instead of shaking hands singly two Indians at once endeavored to grasp the hands of each American, and as soon as the savages seized the pioneers they started to drag them toward the Indian camp. But they reckoned without their hosts. If Boone was little of a negotiator he was much of a fighter. Shout- ing to his men he jerked himself free from the two who held him and struck out right and left with his fists, in the good old Anglo-Saxon style, a way the Indians knew nothing of. His example was followed by his compan- ions and the whole party ran for the fort pursued by the Indians. At the same time the rest of the savages who had not attended the council ran from their camp by the river bank and opened fire; but a steady and well-di- rected fire from the block-house killed a number of the pursuers and enabled Boone and his men to reach the The Greatest of the Pioneers 137 gate in safety with no one killed, though Squire Boone was severely wounded. Concealment and pretence were now at an end. The Indians poured a furious fire upon the fort, which was returned with deadly effect by the Kentuckians. A ren- egade negro slave who had stolen an extra long-range rifle amused himself by ascending a tall tree and from there picking off the exposed garrison. Boone by an extraordinary shot brought him down. The Indians besieged the fort for nine days, using every stratagem and artifice of which they were capable to effect the capture, and finally resorted to the unheard- of expedient of attempting to undermine the stockade. Their endeavor was detected by the great quantities of mud which they threw in the river and Boone at once began a countermine. Tradition has it that much rude banter was exchanged between the combatants. " ' What are you red rascals doing there? ' an old hunter would yell in Shawnese from the battery to the unseen Indians on the river bank below. ' Digging,' would be the return yell. ' Blow you all to deveil soon; what you do? ' ' Oh ! ' would be the cheerful reply, * we're digging to meet you and in- tend to bury five hundred of you.' " The little garrison was constantly on the walls, its efforts being seconded by those of the women, who moulded bullets, loaded rifles, and in many instances even joined in the actual fighting, when one face or the other was assaulted. On one occasion the Indians set fire to the roofs of the cabins with blazing arrows and torches, but a fortunate rain which had saturated the logs pre- vented the spread of the fires and saved the fort. The rain flooded the badly constructed mine the be- 138 Border Fights and Fighters siegers had made, the bank caved in, and their whole work was ruined just as they had carried it within striking distance of the gate. In utter discouragement they raised the siege on the 16th of September and retired, having sustained a very heavy loss. Exactly what, how- ever, is not known, although the Kentuckians counted at least thirty-seven killed outright beside many wound- ed. Two of the defenders had been killed and four were wounded. So furious had been the fire that after the battle they picked up one hundred and twenty-seven pounds of lead bullets from the ground around the fort, and this takes no account of the vast number which had buried them- selves harmlessly in the trunks of the trees. The gal- lant defence undoubtedly saved the fort from being over- whelmed and the settlement wiped out at this juncture. Indeed it may be said to have saved Kentucky, and the sturdy little band of backwoodsmen desperately defend- ing the fort in the wilderness deserve as well of their country as the men of Bunker Hill and Valley Forge. VII. The Last Battle of the Revolution After the repulse of the Indians from Boonesborough Boone, who was a major in the county militia, was promptly brought to trial before a court-martial, first for surrendering at the Salt Licks, and second for the par- leying and treaty ing at the fort. He was immediately acquitted, being able to show that the motive for his actions had been the protection of the settlement and had resulted for the best in both cases, and he was at once promoted in rank to a lieutenant-colonel. Here- after he is invariably styled Colonel Boone. The Greatest of the Pioneers 139 The disastrous repulse of the Indians and the spring- ing up of other stations nearer the Ohio combined to render Boonesborongh secure from any further attacks. The fort was still maintained, but the constantly increas- ing number of settlers flowed out of its constricted area and built their cabins in its vicinity. Soon a thriving town grew up around the battle-scarred enclosure and then Boone, who had gone to North Carolina and brought his family back to Kentucky, felt it necessary to move on. Abandoning his land claim, to which, indeed, he found through some carelessness he had no complete title, and having lost nearly all his movable property by robbery, he moved across the Kentucky River and settled in the wilderness again at a place which he called Boone's Sta- tion, another small frontier fort where he resumed his occupation of hunting and trading. On the 1 6th of August, 1782, a mounted messenger came dashing up to the station, his horse in a lather of foam, carrying the news that Bryan's Station, a very im- portant point further westward and five miles from the present city of Lexington, had been attacked by an over- whelming force of Indians and white men, and that the place was in desperate straits. Boone himself happened to be at Boonesborongh at the time, but the men at the station immediately mounted their horses and galloped to the succor of their brethren. Meanwhile the messenger was despatched to Boone and the next day found the old pioneer on the march with all the men of the vicinity to the relief of Bryan's Station. The siege there had been raised by as desperate a defence as was ever exhibited in a frontier fort, when the rescuing parties arrived. Messengers had been sent I40 Border Fights and Fighters in all directions and on the evening of Saturday, August 17th, pioneers to the number of one hundred and eighty- two had assembled at Bryan's Station, and several hun- dred men under the command of Colonel Benjamin Logan were hourly expected. There was a great preponderance of officers among the men already at the station, and long and anxious were the councils which were held to determine their course. It was a principle of border warfare that no savage foray should be allowed to go unpunished, al- though it was known that the allies, who were com- manded by Campbell and McKee, renegades from the American cause with the infamous Simon Girty and a large party of Wyandottes, among the fiercest warriors on the continent, greatly outnumbered the Kentuckians, and it was finally determined to pursue them at once, without waiting for the advent of Logan. Early on the next morning the party, consisting of horse and foot under the command of Colonels John Todd, Stephen Trigg, and Daniel Boone, set forth. The Indians and Canadians had marched very deliberately and had taken particular care that their trail should be easily followed, even to the extent of blazing it, by gash- ing the trees as they passed. This itself was a very seri- ous indication, but the backwoodsmen were indifferent to odds and the Kentuckians dashed on rapidly, so rapid- ly that they marched thirty-three miles the first day. In the two days that had elapsed the allies had marched thirty-eight miles, so that the two forces encamped for the night but five miles from one another. The next morning they took up the march again and in a short time came to the Licking River, a stream easily fordable, at a place called Blue Licks, one of the The Greatest of the Pioneers 141 salt springs which from time immemorial had been the haunt of the buffalo and deer. The river here makes a loop enclosing a piece of land shaped like a sugar-bowl. The trail, a buffalo "trace," led straight across the river and up an open ridge, the sides of which w^ere heavily timbered, and cut by ravines running at right angles to the ridge. It w^as the place where Boone had been capt- ured when with the salt party years before. With that wonderful topographical instinct which had enabled him to find his way in the densest wilderness, every detail of the position was fresh in his memory. A few Indians were seen on the other side of the river upon the ridge. As the Kentuckians approached them they leisurely disappeared. A party of scouts was sent forward but found nothing. Their inspection must have been perfunctory, for the woods and ravines w^ere filled with Canadians and Indians in ambush, waiting just such an opportunity as this. There was something very sus- picious about the whole situation, however, and the place was so dangerous that the assemblage was halted while a council of war was held. Boone, as the most experienced Indian fighter and as the man of the highest importance among them, was asked for his opinion. He pointed out that the situation was grave indeed. He felt certain that the Indians were ambushed on the other side of the river, and that the Kentuckians should at once select a defensive position on their own side and hold it until the arrival of Colonel Logan and his men. Only a man of Boone's courage could have offered such counsel and their only salvation, as it happened, would have been in its acceptance. But with all his reputation and powers Boone does not seem to have been a leader of men. His prowess was individ- 142 Border Fights and Fighters ual and his reputation likewise, so his counsel was disre- garded by the majority and it was determined to attack. Boone then proposed that a party should be detached to march secretly up the river and fall upon the rear of the Indians and Canadians, at a prearranged signal, while the main attack was delivered in front. While this dangerous proposition was being discussed, — for there was enough military talent among the allies to have enabled them to overwhelm one detachment before the other arrived, if the manoeuvre were detected, which would almost cer- tainly happen, — a Major McGary, a man of headlong and impetuous valor, but without discretion, disgusted with the apparent hesitation of the Kentuckians, and, as he states, chafing under the taunt of cowardice which had been flung at him the day before when he had suggested w^aiting for Logan, suddenly broke up the council, after much bickering, by turning his horse to the ford of the river and dashing across it shouting, " Let all who are not cowards follow me ! " It was one of those foolish appeals which always pro- duce disaster and the consequences of which are usually terrible. Large parties of the men immediately broke after McGary and the wiser and older of^cers found themselves committed to a course of action entirely at variance with their knowledge and experience. McGary ought to have been shot by someone before he entered the river, but the authority of the officers was of a very in- definite character. The men were all equals and they obeyed just about as it pleased them, or nearly so. There was nothing for Boone, the Todd brothers, Trigg, Harlan, and the rest, to do but follow and endeavor to restore such order as they could in the mob into which their men had degenerated. The Greatest of the Pioneers 143 The force passed the river unmolested, and advanced up the broad buffalo trail toward the top of the ridge. Some semblance of order was restored as they pro- gressed. McGary led the advance party of twenty-five men, Trigg took command of the right, Boone of the left, and Todd of the centre. Preferring to fight on foot a majority of the troops dismounted and left their horses on the bank. The bare ridge was about three hundred and fifty feet long and the thin attenuated line barely covered it. As they approached the top a rifle shot rang out, followed by a stunning volley. Of the twenty-five men in the advance twenty-three were instantly shot down, McGary being one of the two who escaped. Fate must have been asleep at that moment, for if ever a man deserved death it was he. Following the first volley the Canadians appeared in force on the ridge, while on either fiank the Indians opened a deadly fire from the ravines. The Kentuckians stood to their ground manfully and returned the fire, in- flicting quite a heavy loss, but in an instant the open was black with men. Boone and his men, however, advanced gallantly and drove the Indians back on the left, but only temporarily. The Indians, especially the Wyandottes, were as fearless and as reckless as the Iroquois, and after the first volleys they came bursting through the smoke tomahawk in hand. The Kentuckians with unloaded rifles and knives were no match for the Indians with tomahawks, especially when outnumbered three to one. Nearly every ofiicer of rank was instantly killed. The Indians overwhelmed the right wing and extended their lines around that flank, the centre then gave back before the tremendous press- ure and the advancing left became isolated. In another 144 Border Fights and Fighters moment the Kentuckians would have been entirely sur- rounded and a massacre would have ensued. Sauve que pent became the order of the day at once. The Kentuckians fled pell-mell in wild confusion to the river, those mounted galloping madly down the bufTalo trail, others seeking to gain their frightened horses and escape. Boone, fighting desperately with knife and clubbed rifle in defence of his life, his horse having been killed, found himself far in advance of his line, cut ofT by the Indians who had gathered between him and the river. His son Isaac, a private in his com- pany, lay dying at his feet. Seizing the boy in his arms with superhuman strength he burst through the encircling foemen and by his knowledge of the place gained shelter in a ravine through which, still carrying the wounded lad, he made for the river. Although he had escaped observation for the moment his discovery was certain. The Indians and Canadians were ranging the woods and butchering everybody they came across. The helpless wounded upon the field were immediately killed. As it chanced, the poor boy died in his father's arms and Boone put his body in a sheltered recess in the rocks and finally succeeded in escaping across the river. Major Netherland, who was better mounted than the others, gained the opposite bank of the river. With cool hardihood he stopped every man who came across until he had gathered quite a party about him. Charging their rifles they waited until the main battle came roll- ing toward the stream. The Kentuckians in advance plunged into the water, the Indians close after them. Netherland's force by steady firing checked the pursuit at the bank of the river until their exhausted comrades The Greatest of the Pioneers 145 got over, when they immediately scattered in the woods. The Indians attempted little or no pursuit on the other side of the river. Sixty-seven Kentuckians were killed outright or were murdered on the field after the battle. Seven were capt- ured, of whom four died by torture, and many of those who escaped were wounded in some way or other. Half way to Bryan's Station the fugitives met Colonel Logan with four hundred men coming to their support. In the face of this disastrous defeat, in which over forty per cent, had been lost, and ignorant of the number of the allies, which rumor had magnified to an extraordi- nary degree, Logan deemed it prudent to retire to Bryan's Station. The return of the defeated brought desolation and sorrow to the whole territory. A few days after the battle the army, greatly re-enforced, marched out to the battle-field, which was, it may be imagined, a scene of horror. The Indians had carried away their dead, the Canadians had buried theirs, and their loss was never certain. Compared to that of the Kentuckians, how- ever, it was inconsiderable. Logan and Boone buried the dead on the field, covering their remains with a huge mound of stones. What must have been the thoughts of the old pioneer whose advice, if they had taken it, might have prevented this fearful slaughter! He had lost his brother, two of his brothers-in-law, and two of his sons in battles with the Indians. Certainly he had paid a heavy price for his part in the settlement of Kentucky! He accompanied George Rogers Clark in the expedi- tion which was organized after the battle of the Blue Licks, which devastated the Indian country, and did 146 Border Fights and Fighters good service there. But the Indians came no more to Kentucky. The treaty of peace which closed the Revo- lution deprived them of their British backing, and left the United States free to deal with them, and it is a nota- ble fact that this sanguinary and disastrous engagement was the last battle of the Revolution. The contest which began at Lexington, Massachusetts, ended at the Blue Licks, Kentucky, a place that had never been dreamed of when Pitcairn shot down the minute men, so rapid even under adverse circumstances had been the growth and expansion of our country. VIIL The End of the Old Pioneer After the war Boone's carelessness in complying with the legal requirements caused him to be dispossessed of his second attempt at land claim, and in 1795 he re- moved to Missouri, then a part of the Spanish territory of Louisiana. Here, with his children and grandchildren around him, he passed the remainder of his days, his pas- sion for hunting existing to the very last. Long past the age of threescore and ten the old hunter and pioneer made excursion after excursion through that yet unex- plored west which still rose before him with all the allure- ments that it held in the days of his youth. There, in 1813, his faithful wife died. She liad been a helpmeet to him indeed. " A dirge for the brave old pioneer! A dirge for his old spouse! For her who blest his forest cheer And kept his birchen house. Now soundly by her chieftain may The brave old dame sleep on. The red man's step is far away. The wolf's dread howl is gone." The Greatest of the Pioneers 147 When Louisiana passed to the United States Boone again found that he had neglected to secure his land title from the Spanish government and was again dispossessed of his claim, so that he who had spent his lifetime in dis- covering, acquiring, protecting, the vast territory of the United States west of the Alleghenies, found himself at last without a rood of ground to call his own. In his extremity he appealed to the legislature of Kentucky, and at their urgency the government of the United States through Congress granted him a tract of land in Mis- souri, where he died on the 23rd of September, 1820, in the eighty-sixth year of his age. As was fitting and proper, his remains with those of his wife were brought back in 1845 to rest in the soil of Kentucky, which justly cherishes his memory as one of the fathers of the commonwealth. Not often has there been in our history so admired and beloved a pioneer. He stands for a class which has vanished, and which circumstances will never permit to reappear, but a class which performed great services in the develop- ment of this country, and which will always be held in grateful remembrance. The hunting shirt and the axe, the long rifle and the powder horn, the handful of parched corn, and the coon-skin cap, these should be incorporated in our escutcheon, for these were the means by which was won to us that great country between the Alleghe- nies and the Mississippi. Part III KENTUCKY II The Women and Children of Bryan's Station THE WOMEN AND CHILDREN OF BRYAN'S STATION I. The Wives of the Pioneers IN discussing Border Fights and Fighters, the battles, sieges, and adventures whereby was brought about that great winning of the west justly so celebrated in song and story, the attention of the historian is usually given particularly to the men, and well it may be. But in many instances the women played as brave a part as their husbands or fathers, and the chronicles and tradi- tions of the rude times teem with thrilling instances of sturdy courage and heroic daring on the part of the femi- nine pioneers. Generally speaking, the wives of the frontiersmen indeed showed themselves worthy help- mates to their cool and adventurous husbands. If some of the things that these women did were set down for modern delectation they would be regarded as utterly incredible, and the most exuberant imagination of the most daring dime novelist of other days could scarcely match the truth. For instance, in 1787, there was Mrs. John Merrill of Nelson County, Kentucky, who, when her husband des- perately wounded staggered into his cabin and fell on the floor at her feet, succeeded in shutting and barring the door upon the assaulting Indians, and when they broke into the house through a shivered plank of the door, killed four of them in succession with an axe — the axe, 151 152 Border Fights and Fighters strange to say, being the favorite weapon of the women, as the rifle was that of the men ! And when the savages gave over that attempt and tried to enter by the chimney, with ready wit she emptied her feather bed on the flames and smoked them away, keeping them at bay till help came and her loved ones were saved. Then there was Elizabeth Zane, a young miss just come from boarding school in Philadelphia to her father's house on the frontier in 1777. The people of the settle- ment being besieged by Indians and rangers under Girty, in Fort Henry, where Wheeling now stands in West Virginia, suddenly found themselves without powder and facing certain capture. Not a man could be spared from the weakened garrison which had already lost over half its members, but the brave girl volunteered to run to an outlying cabin, her father's, and bring back thence a keg of powder which had been left there. She succeed- ed in her desperate undertaking in spite of a heavy fire poured upon her by the Indians, delivered the powder to the garrison, and saved the fort ! * I recall the story of two other women who held their cabin against an overwhelming force, the husbands of the two weltering in gore upon the floor — one dead, the other dying, in fact. The Indians repeatedly tried to set the cabin on fire and the women put out the flames again and again, first with their scanty supply of water, and when that was exhausted, by the use of raw eggs, and when the store of these in turn was gone, with the blood- stained garments of their husbands, saving their children and themselves from a fate too horrible to dwell upon. And there are hundreds of similar instances that might be mentioned. * See my book Woven with the Ship : Saved by Her Slipper. The Women of Bryan's Station ^S3 But the women of Bryan's Station exhibited a greater degree of heroism than perhaps any other body of women in the new settlement of Kentucky. Bryan's Station was situated about five miles north of the present city of Lex- ington. It was originally founded by the Bryan brothers, their families and friends. One of these brothers had married a sister of the famous Daniel Boone, as had an- other of the settlers, and both men lost their hves in Indian conflicts. Boone's wife, by the way, was a sister of these Bryans. II. An Old-Time Frontier Fort The station was a rude log fort enclosing about forty cabins. It was about six hundred feet long, two hun- dred feet wide and twelve feet high. The cabins were placed at intervals around this parallelogram, and the spaces between filled with a heavy palisade, the outer walls of the cabins, with the palisades, composing the walls of the fort. There were two entrances closed with two heavy wooden gates. In each corner a two-story block-house was built which projected four feet beyond the walls, giving the defenders an enfilading fire. The roofs of the cabins sloped inward from the edge of the palisades, or outer walls, so that a small person crouching upon the inner edge of the roof would not be visible from outside of the stockade. Like almost every other frontier fort in Kentucky there was no water in the enclosure, a terrible mistake, but accounted for by the fact that the springs were gen- erally on low ground not suitable for defensive works — still they might have dug wells in the forts, but the fact remains they rarely did. A short distance from the 154 Border Fights and Fighters northeast corner of the fort there was a bountiful spring from which the garrison could get water when there was nobody there to prevent. There had been terrible doings on the frontier during the spring and summer of 1782. The British and Indians had made raid after raid through the land. Two years before a certain Colonel William Byrd of Westover, Vir- ginia, a Tory, who seems to have been a gentleman and a soldier, led some eight hundred Indians with a detach- ment of soldiers and some artillery into Kentucky. None of the forts was proof against artillery, nor was there any in the territory except that in the possession of George Rogers Clark, which was not available. Two stations, Martin's and Ruddle's, were attacked in succession and easily captured. Their garrisons and inhabitants were murdered and tortured with shocking barbarity. It is to the eternal credit of Colonel Byrd, that, finding him- self unable to control the Indians, he abandoned his ex- pedition and withdrew, otherwise the whole land would have been desolated. The bulk of the invading Indians were Wyandottes, who were easily first among the sav- ages of the northwest for ferocious valor and military skill. The opposing forces being exactly equal, a de- tachment of them defeated a certain Captain Estill by a series of brilliant military manoeuvres which would have done credit to a great captain, being indeed upon a small scale Napoleonic in their conception and execution. Two years after Byrd had withdrawn, William Camp- bell and Alexander McKee, notorious renegades, with the infamous Simon Girty, whose name has been a hiss- ing and byword ever since he lived, led a formidable war party consisting of a few Canadians and four hundred Indians into Kentucky. The first place they attacked The Women of Bryan's Station 155 was Bryan's Station. Another place called Hoy's Sta- tion was menaced by a different party of Indians and express messengers had ridden to Bryan's Station to seek aid, which the settlers were ready to grant. The American party was being made up to go to Hoy's Station early in the morning of the i6th of Au- gust, 1782, when as they approached the gate to ride out of it, a party of Indians was discovered on the edge of the woods in full view. The party was small in num- ber, comparatively speaking, yet its members exposed themselves, out of rifle range, of course, with such care- less indifference to consequences, or to a possible attack, as inevitably to suggest to the mind of Captain John Craig, who commanded the fort at the time, that they were desirous of attracting the attention of the garrison in the hope that their small numbers might induce the men of the station to leave the fort and pursue them. Craig was an old Indian fighter who had been trained in Daniel Boone's own school. He was suspicious of any manoeuvre of that kind. Checking the departure of the relief party, he called his brother and the principal men of the station into a council and they concluded at once that the demonstration in the front of the fort was a mere feint, that the Indians were anxious to be pur- sued and that the main attack would come from the other direction. III. Ruse Against Ruse The surmise was correct. With cunning adroitness Campbell had massed the main body of his forces in the woods back of the fort with strict instructions for them to remain concealed and not show themselves on any 156 Border Fights and Fighters account until they heard the fire coming from the front of the station, which would convince them that their ruse had succeeded. Then they were to break from cover and rush for the back wall of the fort, which they sup- posed would be undefended, scale it, and have the little garrison at their mercy. It so happened that the spring, referred to above, from which the fort got its water sup- ply, lay within a short distance of the main body con- cealed in the thick woods which surrounded the clearing with the fort in the centre. The situation was perfectly plain to Craig and his men. They determined to meet ruse with ruse and if possible defeat the Indians at their own game. Before they could do anything, however, they must have a supply of water. On that hot August day life in that stockade, especially when engaged in furious bat- tle would become unsupportable without water. Only the ordinary amount sufficient for the night had been brought in the day before. The receptacles were now empty. After swift deliberations the commandant turned to the women and children crowded around the officers, and explained the situation plainly to them. He pro- posed that the women, and children who were large enough to carry water, should go down to the spring with every vessel they could carry and bring back the water upon which their lives depended. He also ex- plained to them that the spring was probably covered by concealed masses of the enemy who were waiting for the success of the demonstration in front of the fort to begin the attack. He said further, that it was the opinion of those in command, that if the women would go to the spring as they did under ordinary circumstances, as was their The Women of Bryan's Station 157 custom every morning that is, the Indians would not molest them, not being desirous of breaking up the plan by which they hoped to take the fort and have every- thing at their mercy. The men in the fort would cover the women with their rifles so far as they could. It would be impossible for them to go and get water; as it was not the habit of the men to do that, the unusual proceeding would awaken the suspicions of the Indians and the men would be shot down and the fort and all its inmates would be at the mercy of the savages. Every woman there was able to see the situation. The theory upon which they were proceeding might be all wrong. The Indians might be satisfied with the cer- tainty of capturing the women thus presented, and the women and children might be taken away under the very eyes of the helpless men. On the other hand, it was probable, though by no means certain, that Craig's reasoning was correct and that the Indians would not discover themselves and the women and children would be allowed to return unmolested. Still nobody could tell what the Indians would do and the situation was a terrible one. Capture at the very best meant death by torture. The women in the fort had not lived on the frontier in vain. They realized the dilemma instantly. A shudder of terror and apprehension went through the crowd. What would they do? They must have the water; the men could not get it, the women did! Mrs. Jemima Suggett Johnson, the wife of an intrepid pioneer and the daughter and sister of others, instantly volunteered for the task. She was the mother of five little children and her husband happened to be away in Virginia at the time. Leaving her two little boys and her daughter Sally to look after the baby in his dug-out 15^ Border Fights and Fighters cradle, she offered to go for the water. This baby was that Richard Mentor Johnson, who afterward became so celebrated at the battle of the Thames where Tecum- seh was killed, and who was subsequently Vice-President of the United States. Taking her little daughter Betsy, aged ten, her eldest child, by the hand, the fearless woman headed a little band of twelve women and sixteen children, who had agreed to follow where she led; among them were the wives and children of the Craig brothers. The little ones carried wooden piggins, and the women noggins and buckets. The piggin was a small bucket with one upright stave for a handle — a large wooden dipper as it were — while the larger noggin had two upright staves for handles. Carefully avoiding any suspicious demonstration of force on the part of his men, Captain Craig opened the gate and the women marched out. Chatting and laugh- ing in spite of the fact that they were nearly perishing from apprehension and terror, they tramped down the hill to the spring near the creek some sixty yards away, with as much coolness and indifference as they could muster. It was indeed a fearful moment for the women, and no wonder that some of the younger ones and the older children found it difficult to control their agitation; but the composed manner of those valiant and heroic matrons like Mrs. Johnson somewhat reassured the oth- ers and completely deluded the Indians. Probably the younger children did not realize their frightful danger and their unconsciousness helped to deceive the foes in ambush. It took some time to fill the various receptacles from the small spring, but, by the direction of Mrs. Johnson. The Women of Bryan's Station 159 no one left the vicinity until all were ready to return. This little party then marched deliberately back to the fort as they had come. Not a shot was fired. The Ind- ians concealed within a stone's throw in the underbrush had looked at them with covetous eyes, but such was the unwonted discipline in which they were held that they refrained from betraying themselves, in the hope of afterward carrying out their stratagem. As they neared the gate some of the younger ones broke into a run crowding into the door of the stockade which never looked so hospitable as on that sunny summer morning, and some of the precious water was spilled, but most of of it was carried safe into the enclosure. With what feelings of relief the fifty-odd men in the station saw their wives and children come back again can scarcely be imagined. Despatching two daring men on horseback to break through the besiegers and rouse the country, Craig immediately laid a trap for the Ind- ians. Selecting a small body he sent them out to the front of the fort to engage the Indians there, instructing them to make as much noise and confusion as possible. Then he posted the main body of his men at the loop- holes back of the fort, instructing them not to make a move, nor fire a gun, until he gave the order. The ruse was completely successful. Deceived by the hullabaloo in front the Indians in the rear, imagining that their plan had succeeded, broke from cover and in- stantly dashed up to the stockade, shouting their war cries, and expecting an easy victory. What was their surprise to find it suddenly bristling with rifles as Craig and his men poured a steady withering fire into the mass crowded before them, fairly decimating them. They ran back instantly, and concealment being at an end, re- i6o Border Fights and Fighters turned the fire ineffectually. Immediately thereafter from every side a furious fire from four hundred rifles burst upon the defenders. All day long the siege was maintained. Once in awhile a bullet ploughing through a crevice in the stockade struck down one of the brave garrison, but the casualties in the station were very few. On the other hand, when an Indian exposed himself he was sure to be killed by a shot from some unerring rifle. One or two Indians climbed a tree seeking to command the fort therefrom, but they were quickly de- tected and shot before they had time to descend. At last they attempted to burn the fort by shooting flaming arrows up in the air to fall perpendicularly upon the buildings. The children, the little boys, that is, and some of the older girls, were lifted up on the inclined roofs, where they were safe from direct rifle fire, though in imminent danger of being pierced by the dropping arrows, with instructions to put out the fires as fast as the arrows kindled them, which they succeeded in doing. Meanwhile, the women were busy moulding bullets and loading rifles for the men, and many of them took their places on the walls and aided in the defence. " The mothers of our forest land, Their bosoms pillowed men; And proud were they by such to stand In hammock, fort, or glen; To load the sure old riHe, To run the leaden ball. To watch a battling husband's place, And -fill it should he fall." Finding their efforts unavailing the Indians ravaged the surrounding country. They killed all the cattle be- longing to the pioneers, burned and destroyed the fields The Women of Bryan's Station i6i of grain, and turned the environment into a bloody desert. In the afternoon a succoring party from Boone's Station appeared, but without Boone, for he was absent at the time, and succeeded in entering the fort. The new-comers included some sixteen horsemen with thirty footmen from the Lexington Station. The horsemen approached unobserved and deliberate- ly dashed through the Indian lines. The suddenness of their onset and the great cloud of dust raised by their horses disconcerted the Indians and they succeeded in breaking through without the loss of a single man, al- though they were shot at by numbers of savages. The footmen, however, who were some distance away, hearing the noise of the horsemen's battle, disobeyed orders through friendly gallantry, and instead of endeav- oring to gain the fort turned aside with the intention of succoring the horsemen who had already rushed through. They found themselves in a corn-field, confronted by an overwhelming body of Indians, and incontinently ran. Fortunately for the hunters these Indians had just dis- charged their pieces at the horsemen and there had not been time to reload. The rifles of the Kentuckians were still charged, and even the most implacable savage hesi- tated to attack a loaded rifle with a tomahawk. Keeping the Indians back by threatening them, the footmen gave over the attempt to reach the fort and suc- ceeded, with the exception of six killed, in escaping. These Kentuckians did not fire until they had to, and every time they did they brought down a man. The Indians pursued them for some distance, but as Bryan's Station was their object the pursuit was soon abandoned. The fugitives scattered in every direction rousing the country. II i62 Border Fights and Fighters Meanwhile the battle around the station still kept up. Toward evening, however, the Indians having sustained severe loss, and seeing no prospect of capturing the place, which was as stoutly defended as ever, reluctantly determined to raise the siege and withdraw. Before they did so Simon Girty resolved to try what he could effect with persuasion. Cautiously advancing toward the fort and taking cover behind a huge sycamore tree, he held a parley. Declaiming his name and position, he advised the garrison to surrender at once, promising immunity and kind treatment on the part of Hamilton, the British commander at Detroit. His faith was better than Girty's, but that of both of them amounted to nothing. Girty told the garrison that the beleaguering force would be supplemented on the following day by artillery, and if the station did not immediately surrender it would receive the fate which had been meted out to Martin's and Ruddle's Stations. The address was listened to in gloomy silence. Everybody knew what had happened at those two stations, and small wonder that many a heart sank at the prospect. There happened to be in the fort, however, a young man named Reynolds, a reckless dare-devil sort of a fel- low, who took upon himself without authority the an- swering of Girty. He told him that he knew perfectly well who he was, that he knew his character, also; that he had a little dog that was so utterly worthless that he had named him Simon Girty, because he could think of no other name so beautifully appropriate; that he didn't be- lieve they had any cannon, and that if they would just wait outside the fort until the next day they would have the whole of Kentucky upon them, and if they knew what they were about they would get away in short order ! The Women of Bryan's Station 163 Girty retired in great discomfiture, followed by the laughter of the Kentuckians, and greeted by the sneers of the Indians. It was a long and anxious night they spent in the fort thereafter, the defenders keeping on the alert for any demonstration, but in the morning the Ind- ians were gone. They had decamped as silently as they had approached, the siege was raised, the battle was over. They had taken Reynolds' advice. All day eager settlers from every direction poured into the settlement, and in their hot desire to punish these Indians they sallied out soon after with an inade- quate force and, as we have seen, were badly defeated by Campbell and his allies at the disastrous battle of Blue Licks. IV. The Story of the Morgans One further romantic incident of the siege is worthy of mention. A man named Morgan had settled with his wife and child in a cabin outside the fort. When the Indians appeared, he concealed his wife in a recess be- neath the slab floor of his cabin, I surmise perhaps be- cause she was ill and it was impossible for her to escape. At any rate, thinking he had left her in a place of safety he took his baby in one hand, grasped his rifle in the other, and broke through the Indians and gained the forest. Unfortunately the Indians burned the house, while he looked helplessly on from his place of concealment with his anguish intensified by his utter inability to do any- thing at all. The Indians discovered him after a time, and he had a desperate struggle to get away. He reached Lexington at last, left the baby there, and at once joined the relief party which fought the Indians in the corn-field. 164 Border Fights and Fighters When the siege was raised the frantic man searching among the embers found the charred remains of a human body. Crazed by his loss he was among the first to cross the river and engage the Indians at the battle of Blue Licks. Recognizing a portion of his wife's cloth- ing worn by an Indian, he killed him in a hand-to-hand struggle, but he was shot and frightfully wounded. Re- taining strength enough to crawl away from the battle- field he concealed himself in the wood, lying down to die. There he was found by his wife, who had been taken prisoner and had escaped in the confusion of the battle. She dragged him into a further place of concealment, cared for him as best she could, and when the Indians departed after the battle she contrived to get him back to the fort in safety. The bones he had found in the ashes of the cabin were those of a wounded Indian, who had crawled in there and died. The Indians had set fire to the house and the woman had been forced to discover herself. The sav- ages had not had time to torture her, and so the family was united once more. The men, of course, conducted themselves heroically in the siege, but the honor of the defence which they were enabled to make certainly rests with those pioneer mothers and daughters of Kentucky. A monument around the spring, the tribute of the Daughters of the American Revolution, one of the few that have been erected to women, serves to commemorate their heroic self-sacrifice and valor, for it takes more courage to go to a spring and get water in the face of four hundred Indian rifles pointing at you from out of a dark wood, than it does to stand behind a wall and fight all day long. Part IV THE FAR SOUTH I The Massacre at Fort Mims THE MASSACRE AT FORT MIMS I. The Beginning of the Creek War ON the evening of Tuesday, the 31st of August, 181 3, a Httle canoe floated ashore near Fort Stoddardt, Alabama, a rude frontier stockade on the west bank of the Mobile River, some twenty-five miles above the city of that name. In the bottom of the canoe lay an exhausted, half-delirious negro woman, a slave, whose only name was Hester. She was suffering from a huge, ghastly bullet wound in her breast. Lifted by tender hands from the bloody canoe, in which she was prostrated, she was carried into the fort and questioned by the commander. She told a tale of massacre and destruction which froze the blood of the listeners. She believed herself to be the sole survivor of the garrison, and the people who had collected at Fort Mims, on Lake Tensaw, some twenty miles further up the river, just below the " cut- off," or the confluence of the Alabama and the Tombig- bee, which thereafter make the Mobile River. The story they heard from the lips of the wretched woman, who had managed, she knew not how, to conceal herself till night- fall in the cane brake and then escape in the boat in which they found her, was one of the most appalling recitals of savage fury that has ever been told in any of our Indian wars. The great Tecumseh, in the previous year, had suc- 167 1 68 Border Fights and Fighters ceeded in engaging the major portion of the powerful Creek nation in behalf of his Confederacy. The Creeks were the most notable of the southern Indians. For enterprise and valor, for progress in a rude sort of civili- zation, for the development of an organization which pos- sessed some of the properties of government, they were only to be compared with the Iroquois, or Six Nations, in the north. Those who know the red man only through touch with the modern Indian of the plains are accustomed to sneer at the conception of him which is exploited, let us say, in Cooper's novels; but the Creeks and the Iroquois were very different from the modern Indian, and Coop- er's pictures, so far as these two peoples are concerned, do no violence to the facts. The Creeks were, however, as ruthlessly cruel and bloodthirsty in warfare as, for in- stance, Geronimo and his Mescalero Apaches. The men v^ere tall, magnificent specimens, and some of the women are said to have been beautiful; I think, however, that could only be by comparison with other Indian squaws. The Creek Nation numbered some thirty thousand, of whom at least seven thousand were approved warriors. Among them were many half-breeds, who inclined either to civilization or savagery, as the case might be, and exhibited the traits of the white man or those of the Indian, according to their rearing and environment. There was a division in the tribe as to joining the conspiracy of Tecumseh, and the smouldering embers of a civil war were beginning to glow among them, when the War of 1812 broke out. Such an auxiliary for the British to work with, in conjunction with the Spanish authorities in Florida, was not to be despised. Supplied with English guns and incited by British rewards offered The Massacre at Fort Mims 169 for scalps, even of women and children, the great body of Creeks declared for war, although some remained friendly to the Americans. The half-breeds, or men of mixed blood, were divided between the two sides. The principal war chief of the Indians was a half-breed named Weatherford, who w^as called in the Creek lan- guage, " The Red Warrior." After a skirmish at a place called Burnt Corn, which resulted in the defeat of the settlers, the alarm spread all over Alabama and the frightened inhabitants, including those half-breeds who were, to all intents and purposes, Americans, gathered for protection in the little forts and stockades v/hich dotted the country on every hand. There had lived for many years in Alabama, near Lake Tensaw, a wealthy half-breed named Samuel Mims. His house was a large and substantial wooden structure of one stor}^ with several outbuildings. It was situated some little distance from the water, on low, sandy ground surrounded by woods, marshes and swamps, which on the east were traversed by several ravines overgrown with cane brakes. The house was surrounded by a low stockade, made by driving parallel rows of open stakes at suitable intervals, the spaces between being filled with loosely piled fence-rails. At three and a half feet from the ground five hundred loop-holes were pierced. The stockade was seventy yards square and enclosed an acre of ground. On the southwest corner on a slight rise a block-house was begun but never completed. There were two large gates in the centre of the east and west faces. From the north and south faces projected small square enclosures called bastions, made of the same pickets. Thither at once resorted all the inhabitants of the lyo Border Fights and Fighters vicinage, and many small houses were built in the enclos- ure to shelter them. To them in the latter part of July, General Claiborne, the United States military com- mander of the territory, sent one hundred and seventy- five volunteers, commanded by Major Daniel Beasley, I I Blockhouse. i. Picket! cut awiy bj/ Indi&ns 5 Cudfd's StAtiof). t CiiaKd Mouse, s Westerrt Gate. 6 Gite cut thoujh by Indians. 7. Capt-B&ileii'sHouse. aStcadhams House. 9. Dyfif's House. JO Kitchen. II Mini's House. 12. Randorv's House. /3 Old Gateway Open. 11 Ens^nC/iAmbiissTCnt. (rRandon'j " « Cdpc.Miaoietorv's » 17Capt. Jack's 13 PokC holes bAxenb^ Indlant. 19-zo 21 Capt Jack's Comyonv) .