Books: The Old Northwest, A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond

F >> Frederic Austin Ogg >> The Old Northwest, A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond

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Surrender promptly followed. Hamilton and twenty-five of his men
were sent off as captives to Virginia, where the commandant
languished in prison until, in 1780, he was paroled at the
suggestion of Washington. On taking, an oath of neutrality, the
remaining British sympathizers were set at liberty. For a second
time the American flag floated over Indiana soil, not again to be
lowered.

Immediately after the capitulation of Hamilton, a scouting-party
captured a relief expedition which was on its way from Detroit
and placed in Clark's hands ten thousand pounds' worth of
supplies for distribution as prize-money among his deserving men.
The commander's cup of satisfaction was filled to the brim when
the Willing appeared with a long-awaited messenger from Governor
Henry who brought to the soldiers the thanks of the Legislature
of Virginia for the capture of Kaskaskia and also the promise of
more substantial reward.

The whole of the Illinois and Indiana country was now in American
hands. Tenure, however, was precarious so long as Detroit
remained a British stronghold, and Clark now broadened his plans
to embrace the capture of that strategic place. Leaving Vincennes
in charge of a garrison of forty men, he returned to Kaskaskia
with the Willing and set about organizing a new expedition.
Kentucky pledged three hundred men, and Virginia promised to
help. But when, in midsummer, the commander returned to Vincennes
to consolidate and organize his force, he found the numbers to be
quite insufficient. From Kentucky there came only thirty men.

Disappointment followed disappointment; he was ordered to build a
fort at the mouth of the Ohio--a project of which be had himself
approved; and when at last he had under his command a force that
might have been adequate for the Detroit expedition, he was
obliged to use it in meeting a fresh incursion of savages which
had been stirred up by the new British commandant on the Lakes.
But Thomas Jefferson, who in 1779 succeeded Henry as Governor of
Virginia, was deeply interested in the Detroit project, and at
his suggestion Washington gave Clark an order on the commandant
of Fort Pitt for guns, supplies, and such troops as could be
spared. On January 22, 1781, Jefferson appointed Clark
"brigadier-general of the forces to be embodied on an expedition
westward of the Ohio." Again Clark was doomed to disappointment.
One obstacle after another interposed. Yet as late as May, 1781,
the expectant conqueror wrote to Washington that he had "not yet
lost sight of Detroit." Suitable opportunity for the expedition
never came, and when peace was declared the northern stronghold
was still in British hands.

Clark's later days were clouded. Although Virginia gave him six
thousand acres of land in southern Indiana and presented him with
a sword, peace left him without employment, and he was never able
to adjust himself to the changed situation. For many years he
lived alone in a little cabin on the banks of the Ohio, spending
his time hunting, fishing,and brooding over the failure of
Congress to reward him in more substantial manner for his
services. He was land-poor, lonely, and embittered. In 1818 he
died a paralyzed and helpless cripple. His resting place is in
Cave Hill Cemetery, Louisville; the finest statue of him stands
in Monument Circle, Indianapolis--"an athletic figure, scarcely
past youth, tall and sinewy, with a drawn sword, in an attitude
of energetic encouragement, as if getting his army through the
drowned lands of the Wabash."*

* Hosmer, "Short History of the Mississippi Valley." p. 94.

The capture of Vincennes determined the fate of the Northwest.
Frontier warfare nevertheless went steadily on. In 1779 Spain
entered the contest as an ally of France, and it became the
object of the British commanders on the Lakes not only to recover
the posts lost to the Americans but to seize St. Louis and other
Spanish strongholds on the west bank of the Mississippi. In 1780
Lieutenant-Governor Patrick Sinclair, a bustling, garrulous old
soldier stationed at Michilimackinac, sent a force of some nine
hundred traders, servants, and Indians down the Mississippi to
capture both the American and Spanish settlements. An attack on
St. Louis failed, as did likewise a series of efforts against
Cahokia and Kaskaskia, and the survivors were glad to reach their
northern headquarters again, with nothing to show for their pains
except a dozen prisoners.

Not to be outdone, the Spanish commandant at St. Louis sent an
expedition to capture British posts in the Lake country. An
arduous winter march brought the avengers and their Indian allies
to Fort St. Joseph, a mile or two west of the present city of
Niles, Michigan. It would be ungracious to say that this post was
selected for attack because it was without a garrison. At all
events, the place was duly seized, the Spanish standard was set
up, and possession of "the fort and its dependencies" was taken
in the name of his Majesty Don Carlos III. No effort was made to
hold the settlement permanently, and the British from Detroit
promptly retook it. Probably the sole intention had been to add
somewhat to the strength of the Spanish position at the
forthcoming negotiations for peace.

The war in the West ended, as it began, in a carnival of
butchery. Treacherous attacks, massacres, burnings, and
pillagings were everyday occurrences, and white men were hardly
less at fault than red. Indeed the most discreditable of all the
recorded episodes of the time was a heartless massacre by
Americans of a large band of Indians that had been Christianized
by Moravian missionaries and brought together in a peaceful
community on the Muskingum. This slaughter of the innocents at
Gnadenhutten ("the Tents of Grace") reveals the frontiersman at
his worst. But it was dearly paid for. From the Lakes to the Gulf
redskins rose for vengeance. Villages were wiped out, and
murderous bands swept far into Virginia and Pennsylvania, evading
fortified posts in order to fall with irresistible fury on
unsuspecting traders and settlers.

In midsummer, 1782, news of the cessation of hostilities between
Great Britain and her former seaboard colonies reached the back
country, and the commandant at Detroit made an honest effort to
stop all offensive operations. A messenger failed, however, to
reach a certain Captain Caldwell, operating in the Ohio country,
in time to prevent him from attacking a Kentucky settlement and
bringing on the deadly Battle of Blue Licks, in which the
Americans were defeated with a loss of seventy-one men. George
Rogers Clark forthwith led a retaliatory expedition against the
Miami towns, taking prisoners, recapturing whites, and destroying
British trading establishments; and with this final flare-up the
Revolution came to an end in the Northwest.

The soldier had won the back country for the new nation. Could
the diplomat hold it? As early as March 19, 1779,--just three
weeks after Clark's capture of Vincennes,--the Continental
Congress formally laid claim to the whole of the Northwest; and a
few months later John Adams was instructed to negotiate for peace
on the understanding that the country's northern and western
boundaries were to be the line of the Great Lakes and the
Mississippi. When, in 1781, Franklin, Jefferson, Jay, and Laurens
were appointed to assist Adams in the negotiation, the new
Congress of the Confederation stated that the earlier
instructions on boundaries represented its "desires and
expectations."

It might have been supposed that if Great Britain could be
brought to accept these terms there would be no further
difficulty. But obstacles arose from other directions. France had
entered the war for her own reasons, and looked with decidedly
more satisfaction on the defeat of Great Britain than on the
prospect of a new and powerful nation in the Western Hemisphere.
Furthermore, she was in close alliance with Spain; and Spain had
no sympathy whatever with the American cause as such. At all
events, she did not want the United States for a neighbor on the
Mississippi.

The American commissioners were under instructions to make no
peace without consulting France. But when, in the spring of 1782,
Jay came upon the scene of the negotiations at Paris, he
demurred. He had been for some time in Spain, and he carried to
Paris not only a keen contempt for the Spanish people and Spanish
politics, but a strong suspicion that Spain was using her
influence to keep the United States from getting the territory
between the Lakes and the Ohio. France soon fell under similar
suspicion, for she was under obligations, as everyone knew, to
satisfy Spain; and little time elapsed before the penetrating
American diplomat was semiofficially assured that his suspicions
in both directions were well founded.

The mainspring of Spanish policy was the desire to make the Gulf
of Mexico a closed sea, under exclusive Spanish control. This
plan would be frustrated if the Americans acquired an outlet on
the Gulf; furthermore, it would be jeopardized if they retained
control on the upper Mississippi. Hence, the States must be kept
back from the great river; safety dictated that they be confined
to the region east of the Appalachians.

An ingenious plan was thereupon developed. Spain was to resume
possession of the Floridas, insuring thereby the coveted unbroken
coast line on the Gulf. The vast area between the Mississippi and
the Appalachians and south of the Ohio was to be an Indian
territory, half under Spanish and half under American
"protection." The entire region north of the Ohio was to be kept
by Great Britain, or, at the most, divided--on lines to be
determined--between Great Britain and the United States. From
Rayneval, confidential secretary of the French foreign minister
Vergennes, Jay learned that the French Government proposed to
give this scheme its support.

Had such terms as these been forced on the new nation, the
hundreds of Virginian and Pennsylvanian pioneers who had given up
their lives in the planting of American civilization in the back
country would have turned in their graves. But Jay had no notion
of allowing the scheme to succeed. He sent an emissary to England
to counteract the Spanish and French influence. He converted
Adams to his way of thinking, and even raised doubts in
Franklin's mind. Finally he induced his colleagues to cast their
instructions to the winds and negotiate a treaty with the mother
country independently.

This simplified matters immensely. Great Britain was a beaten
nation, and from the beginning her commissioners played a losing
game. There was much haggling over the loyalists, the fisheries,
debts; but the boundaries were quickly drawn. Great Britain
preferred to see the disputed western country in American hands
rather than to leave a chance for it to fall under the control of
one of her European rivals.

Accordingly, the Treaty of Paris drew the interior boundary of
the new nation through the Great Lakes and connecting waters to
the Lake of the Woods; from the most northwestern point of the
Lake of the Woods due west to the Mississippi (an impossible
line); down the Mississippi to latitude 31 degrees; thence east,
by that parallel and by the line which is now the northern
boundary of Florida, to the ocean. Three nations, instead of two,
again shared the North American Continent: Great Britain kept the
territory north of the Lakes; Spain ruled the Floridas and
everything west of the Mississippi; the United States held the
remainder--an area of more than 825,000 square miles, with a
population of three and one half millions.

Chapter V. Wayne, The Scourge Of The Indians

"This federal republic," wrote the Spanish Count d'Aranda to his
royal master in 1782, "is born a pigmy. A day will come when it
will be a giant, even a colossus. Liberty of conscience, the
facility for establishing a new population on immense lands, as
well as the advantages of the new government, will draw thither
farmers and artisans from all the nations."

Aranda correctly weighed the value of the country's vast
stretches of free and fertile land. The history of the United
States has been largely a story of the clearing of forests, the
laying out of farms, the erection of homes, the construction of
highways, the introduction of machinery, the building of
railroads, the rise of towns and of great cities. The Germans of
Wisconsin and Missouri, the Scandinavians of Minnesota and the
Dakotas, the Poles and Hungarians of Chicago, the Irish and
Italians of a thousand communities, attest the fact that the
"farmers and artisans from all the nations" have had an honorable
part in the achievement.

In laying plans for the development of the western lands the
statesmanship of the evolutionary leaders was at its best. In the
first place, the seven States which had some sort of title to
tracts extending westward to the Mississippi wisely yielded these
claims to the nation; and thus was created a single, national
domain which could be dealt with in accordance with a consistent
policy. In the second place, Congress, as early as 1780, pledged
the national Government to dispose of the western lands for the
common benefit, and promised that they should be "settled and
formed into distinct republican states, which shall become
members of the federal union, and have the same rights of
sovereignty, freedom; and independence as the other states."

Finally, in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 there was mapped out
a scheme of government admirably adapted to the liberty-loving,
yet law-abiding, populations of the frontier. It was based on the
broad principles of democracy, and it was sufficiently flexible
to permit necessary changes as the scattered settlements
developed into organized Territories and then into States.
Geographical conditions, as well as racial inheritances,
foreordained that the United States should be an expanding,
colonizing nation; and it was of vital importance that wholesome
precedents of territorial control should be established in the
beginning. Louisiana, Florida, the Mexican accessions, Alaska,
and even the newer tropical dependencies, owe much to the
decisions that were reached in the organizing of the Northwest a
century and a quarter ago.

The Northwest Ordinance was remarkable in that it was framed for
a territory that had practically no white population and which,
in a sense, did not belong to the United States at all. Back in
1768 Sir William Johnson's Treaty of Fort Stanwix had made the
Ohio River the boundary between the white and red races of the
West. Nobody at the close of the Revolution supposed that this
division would be adhered to; the Northwest had not been won for
purposes of an Indian reserve. None the less, the arrangements of
1768 were inherited, and the nation considered them binding
except in so far as they were modified from time to time by new
agreements. The first such agreement affecting the Northwest was
concluded in 1785, through George Rogers Clark and two other
commissioners, with the Wyandots, Delawares, Chippewas, and
Ottawas. By it the United States acquired title to the
southeastern half of the present State of Ohio, with a view to
surveying the lands and raising revenue by selling them.
Successive treaties during the next thirty years gradually
transferred the whole of the Northwest from Indian hands to the
new nation.

Officially, the United States recognized the validity of the
Indian claims; but the pioneer homeseeker was not so certain to
do so. From about 1775 the country south of the Ohio filled
rapidly with settlers from Virginia and the Carolinas, so that by
1788 the white population beyond the Blue Ridge was believed to
be considerably over one hundred thousand. For a decade the
"Indian side," as the north shore was habitually called, was
trodden only by occasional hunters, traders, and explorers. But
after Clark's victories on the Mississippi and the Wabash, the
frontiersmen grew bolder. By 1780 they began to plant camps and
cabins on the rich bottom-lands of the Miamis, the Scioto, and
the Muskingum; and when they heard that the British claims in the
West had been formally yielded, they assumed that whatever they
could take was theirs. With the technicalities of Indian claims
they had not much patience. In 1785 Colonel Harmar, commanding at
Fort Pitt, sent a deputation down the river to drive the
intruders back. But his agents returned with the report that the
Virginians and Kentuckians were moving into the forbidden country
"by the forties and fifties," and that they gave every evidence
of proposing to remain there. Surveyors were forthwith set to
work in the "Seven Ranges," as the tract just to the west of the
Pennsylvania boundary was called; and Fort Harmar was built at
the mouth of the Muskingum to keep the over-ardent settlers back.

The close of the Revolution brought not only a swift revival of
emigration to the West but also a remarkable outburst of
speculation in western land. March 3, 1786, General Rufus Putnam
and some other Continental officers met at the "Bunch of Grapes"
Tavern in Boston and decided that it would be to their advantage
to exchange for land in the Seven Ranges the paper certificates
in which they had been paid for their military services.
Accordingly an "Ohio Company" was organized, and Dr. Manasseh
Cutler--"preacher, lawyer, doctor, statesman, scientist, land
speculator"--was sent off to New York to push the matter in
Congress. The upshot was that Congress authorized the sale of one
and a half million acres east of the Scioto to the Ohio Company,
and five million acres to a newly organized Scioto Company.

The Scioto Company fell into financial difficulties and, after
making an attempt to build up a French colony at Gallipolis,
collapsed. But General Putnam and his associates kept their
affairs well in hand and succeeded in planting the first legal
white settlement in the present State of Ohio. An arduous winter
journey brought the first band of forty-eight settlers, led by
Putnam himself, to the mouth of the Muskingum on April 7, 1788.
Here, in the midst of a great forest dotted with terraces, cones,
and other fantastic memorials of the mound-builders, they erected
a blockhouse and surrounded it with cabins. For a touch of the
classical, they called the fortification the Campus Martius; to
be strictly up to date, they named the town Marietta, after Marie
Antoinette, Queen of France. In July the little settlement was
honored by being made the residence of the newly arrived Governor
of the Territory, General Arthur St. Clair. Before the close of
the year Congress sold one million acres between the two Miamis
to Judge Symmes of New Jersey; and three little towns were at
once laid out. To one of them a pedantic schoolmaster gave the
name L-os-anti-ville, "the town opposite the mouth of the
Licking." The name may have required too much explanation; at all
events, when, in 1790, the Governor transferred the capital
thither from Marietta, he rechristened the place Cincinnati, in
honor of the famous Revolutionary society to which he belonged.

Land speculators are confirmed optimists. But Putnam, Cutler,
Symmes, and their associates were correct in believing that the
Ohio country was at the threshold of a period of remarkable
development. There was one serious obstacle--the Indians.
Repeated expeditions from Kentucky had pushed most of the tribes
northward to the headwaters of the Miami, Scioto, and Wabash; and
the Treaty of 1785 was supposed to keep them there. But it was
futile to expect such an arrangement to prove lasting unless
steadily backed up with force. In their squalid villages in the
swampy forests of northern Ohio and Indiana the redskins grew
sullen and vindictive. As they saw their favorite hunting-grounds
slipping from their grasp, those who had taken part in the
cession repented their generosity, while those who had no part in
it pronounced it fraudulent and refused to consider themselves
bound by it. Swiftly the idea took hold that the oncoming wave
must be rolled back before it was too late. "White man shall not
plant corn north of the Ohio" became the rallying cry.

Back of this rebelliousness lay a certain amount of British
influence. The Treaty of 1783 was signed in as kindly spirit as
the circumstances would permit, but its provisions were not
carried out in a charitable manner. On account of alleged
shortcomings of the United States, the British Government long
refused to give up possession of eight or ten fortified posts in
the north and west. One of these was Detroit; and the officials
stationed there systematically encouraged the hordes of redskins
who had congregated about the western end of Lake Erie to make
all possible resistance to the American advance. The British no
longer had any claim to the territories south of the Lakes, but
they wanted to keep their ascendancy over the northwestern
Indians, and especially to prevent the rich fur trade from
falling into American hands. Ammunition and other supplies were
lavished on the restless tribes. The post officials insisted that
these were merely the gifts which had regularly been made in
times of peace. But they were used with deadly effect against the
Ohio frontiersmen; and there can be little doubt that they were
intended so to be used.

By 1789 the situation was very serious. Marauding expeditions
were growing in frequency; and a scout sent out by Governor St.
Clair came back with the report that most of the Indians
throughout the entire Northwest had "bad hearts." Washington
decided that delay would be dangerous, and the nation forthwith
prepared for its first war since independence. Kentucky was asked
to furnish a thousand militiamen and Pennsylvania five hundred,
and the forces were ordered to come together at Fort Washington,
near Cincinnati.

The rendezvous took place in the summer of 1790, and General
Josiah Harmar was put in command of a punitive expedition against
the Miamis. The recruits were raw, and Harmar was without the
experience requisite for such an enterprise. None the less, when
the little army, accompanied by three hundred regulars, and
dragging three brass field-pieces, marched out of Fort Washington
on a fine September day, it created a very good impression. All
went well until the expedition reached the Maumee country. On the
site of the present city of Fort Wayne they destroyed a number of
Indian huts and burned a quantity of corn. But in a series of
scattered encounters the white men were defeated, with a loss of
nearly two hundred killed; and Harmar thought it the part of
wisdom to retreat. He had gained nothing by the expedition; on
the contrary, he had stirred the redskins to fresh aggressions,
and his retreating forces were closely followed by bands of
merciless raiders.

Washington knew what the effect of this reverse would be.
Accordingly he called St. Clair to Philadelphia and ordered him
to take personal command of a new expedition, adding a special
warning against ambush and surprise. Congress aided by voting two
thousand troops for six months, besides two small regiments of
regulars. But everything went wrong. Recruiting proved slow; the
men who were finally brought together were poor material for an
army, being gathered chiefly from the streets and prisons of the
seaboard cities; and supplies were shockingly inadequate.

St. Clair was a man of honest intention, but old, broken in
health, and of very limited military ability; and when finally,
October 4, 1791, he led his untrained forces slowly northwards
from Fort Washington, he utterly failed to take measures either
to keep his movements secret or to protect his men against sudden
attack. The army trudged slowly through the deep forests,
chopping out its own road, and rarely advancing more than five or
six miles a day. The weather was favorable and game was abundant,
but discontent was rife and desertions became daily occurrences.
As most of the men had no taste for Indian warfare and as their
pay was but two dollars a month, not all the commander's threats
and entreaties could hold them in order.

On the night of the 3d of November the little army--now reduced
to fourteen hundred men--camped, with divisions carelessly
scattered, on the eastern fork of the Wabash, about a hundred
miles north of Cincinnati and near the Indiana border. The next
morning, when preparations were being made for a forced march
against some Indian villages near by, a horde of redskins burst
unexpectedly upon the bewildered troops, surrounded them, and
threatened them with utter destruction. A brave stand was made,
but there was little chance of victory. "After the first on set,"
as Roosevelt has described the battle, "the Indians fought in
silence, no sound coming from them save the incessant rattle of
their fire, as they crept from log to log, from tree to tree,
ever closer and closer. The soldiers stood in close order, in the
open; their musketry and artillery fire made a tremendous noise,
but did little damage to a foe they could hardly see. Now and
then through the hanging smoke terrible figures flitted, painted
black and red, the feathers of the hawk and eagle braided in
their long scalp-locks; but save for these glimpses, the soldiers
knew the presence of their somber enemy only from the fearful
rapidity with which their comrades fell dead and wounded in the
ranks."

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