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The
Conquest of the Old Southwest:
The Romantic Story of the Early
Pioneers into Virginia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Kentucky 1740
- 1790
By
Archibald Henderson, Ph.D., D.C.L.
Published by The Century Co.; New York; 1920
Contents
Introduction
Chapter
I. The Migration of the Peoples
Chapter
II. The Cradle of Westward Expansion
Chapter
III. The Back Country and the Border
Chapter
IV. The Indian War
Chapter
V. In Defense of Civilization
Chapter
VI. Crushing the Cherokees
Chapter
VII. The Land Companies
Chapter
VIII. The Long Hunters in the Twilight Zone
Chapter
IX. Daniel Boone and Wilderness Exploration
Chapter
X. Daniel Boone in Kentucky
Chapter
XI. The Regulators
Chapter
XII. Watauga—Haven of Liberty
Chapter
XIII. Opening the Gateway—Dunmore's War
Chapter
XIV. Richard Henderson and the Transylvania Company
Chapter
XV. Transylvania—A Wilderness Commonwealth
Chapter
XVI. The Repulse of the Red Men
Chapter
XVII. The Colonization of the Cumberland
Chapter
XVIII. King's Mountain
Chapter
XIX. The State of Franklin
Chapter
XX. The Lure of Spain—The Haven of Statehood
Some
to endure and many to fail,
Some to conquer and many to quail
Toiling over the Wilderness Trail.
TO
THE HISTORIAN OF OLD WEST AND NEW WEST
FREDERICK JACKSON TURNER
WITH ADMIRATION AND REGARD
The country
might invite a prince from his palace, merely for the pleasure of
contemplating its beauty and excellence; but only add the rapturous
idea of property, and what allurements can the world offer for the
loss of so glorious a prospect?—Richard
Henderson.
The established
Authority of any government in America, and the policy of Government
at home, are both insufficient to restrain the Americans . . . .
They acquire no attachment to Place: But wandering about Seems engrafted
in their Nature; and it is a weakness incident to it, that they
Should for ever imagine the Lands further off, are Still better
than those upon which they are already settled.—Lord Dunmore,
to the Earl of Dartmouth.
The
romantic and thrilling story of the southward and westward migration
of successive waves of transplanted European peoples throughout
the entire course of the eighteenth century is the history of the
growth and evolution of American democracy. Upon the American continent
was wrought out, through almost superhuman daring, incredible hardship,
and surpassing endurance, the formation of a new society. The European
rudely confronted with the pitiless conditions of the wilderness
soon discovered that his maintenance, indeed his existence, was
conditioned upon his individual efficiency and his resourcefulness
in adapting himself to his environment. The very history of the
human race, from the age of primitive man to the modern era of enlightened
civilization, is traversed in the Old Southwest throughout the course
of half a century.
A
series of dissolving views thrown upon the screen, picturing the
successive episodes in the history of a single family as it wended
its way southward along the eastern valleys, resolutely repulsed
the sudden attack of the Indians, toiled painfully up the granite
slopes of the Appalachians, and pitched down into the transmontane
wilderness upon the western waters, would give to the spectator
a vivid conception, in miniature, of the westward movement. But
certain basic elements in the grand procession, revealed to the
sociologist and the economist, would perhaps escape his scrutiny.
Back of the individual, back of the family, even, lurk the creative
and formative impulses of colonization, expansion, and government.
In the recognition of these social and economic tendencies the individual
merges into the group; the group into the community; the community
into a new society. In this clear perspective of historic development
the spectacular hero at first sight seems to diminish; but the mass,
the movement, the social force which he epitomizes and interprets,
gain in impressiveness and dignity.
As
the irresistible tide of migratory peoples swept ever southward
and westward, seeking room for expansion and economic independence,
a series of frontiers was gradually thrust out toward the wilderness
in successive waves of irregular indentation. The true leader in
this westward advance, to whom less than his deserts has been accorded
by the historian, is the drab and mercenary trader with the Indians.
The story of his enterprise and of his adventures begins with the
planting of European civilization upon American soil. In the mind
of the aborigines he created the passion for the fruits, both good
and evil, of the white man's civilization, and he was welcomed by
the Indian because he also brought the means for repelling the further
advance of that civilization. The trader was of incalculable service
to the pioneer in first spying out the land and charting the trackless
wilderness. The trail rudely marked by the buffalo became in time
the Indian path and the trader's "trace"; and the pioneers
upon the westward march, following the line of least resistance,
cut out their, roads along these very routes. It is not too much
to say that had it not been for the trader—brave, hardy, and
adventurous however often crafty, unscrupulous, and immoral—the
expansionist movement upon the American continent would have been
greatly retarded.
So
scattered and ramified were the enterprises and expeditions of the
traders with the Indians that the frontier which they established
was at best both shifting and unstable. Following far in the wake
of these advance agents of the civilization which they so often
disgraced, came the cattle-herder or rancher, who took advantage
of the extensive pastures and ranges along the uplands and foot-hills
to raise immense herds of cattle. Thus was formed what might be
called a rancher's frontier, thrust out in advance of the ordinary
farming settlements and serving as the first serious barrier against
the Indian invasion. The westward movement of population is in this
respect a direct advance from the coast. Years before the influx
into the Old Southwest of the tides of settlement from the northeast,
the more adventurous struck straight westward in the wake of the
fur-trader, and here and there erected the cattle-ranges beyond
the farming frontier of the piedmont region. The wild horses and
cattle which roamed at will through the upland barrens and pea-vine
pastures were herded in and driven for sale to the city markets
of the East.
The
farming frontier of the piedmont plateau constituted the real backbone
of western settlement. The pioneering farmers, with the adventurous
instincts of the hunter and the explorer, plunged deeper and ever
deeper into the wilderness, lured on by the prospect of free and
still richer lands in the dim interior. Settlements quickly sprang
up in the neighborhood of military posts or rude forts established
to serve as safeguards against hostile attack; and trade soon flourished
between these settlements and the eastern centers, following the
trails of the trader and the more beaten paths of emigration. The
bolder settlers who ventured farthest to the westward were held
in communication with the East through their dependence upon salt
and other necessities of life; and the search for salt-springs in
the virgin wilderness was an inevitable consequence of the desire
of the pioneer to shake off his dependence upon the coast.
The
prime determinative principle of the progressive American civilization
of the eighteenth century was the passion for the acquisition of
land. The struggle for economic independence developed the germ
of American liberty and became the differentiating principle of
American character. Here was a vast unappropriated region in the
interior of the continent to be had for the seeking, which served
as lure and inspiration to the man daring enough to risk his all
in its acquisition. It was in accordance with human nature and the
principles of political economy that this unknown extent of uninhabited
transmontane land, widely renowned for beauty, richness, and fertility,
should excite grandiose dreams in the minds of English and Colonials
alike. England was said to be "New Land mad and everybody there
has his eye fixed on this country." Groups of wealthy or well-to-do
individuals organized themselves into land companies for the colonization
and exploitation of the West. The pioneer promoter was a powerful
creative force in westward expansion; and the activities of the
early land companies were decisive factors in the colonization of
the wilderness. Whether acting under the authority of a crown grant
or proceeding on their own authority, the land companies tended
to give stability and permanence to settlements otherwise hazardous
and insecure.
The
second determinative impulse of the pioneer civilization was wanderlust—the
passionately inquisitive instinct of the hunter, the traveler, and
the explorer. This restless class of nomadic wanderers was responsible
in part for the royal proclamation of 1763, a secondary object of
which, according to Edmund Burke, was the limitation of the colonies
on the West, as "the charters of many of our old colonies give
them, with few exceptions, no bounds to the westward but the South
Sea." The Long
Hunters, taking their lives in their hands, fared boldly forth
to a fabled hunter's paradise in the far-away wilderness, because
they were driven by the irresistible desire of a Ponce de Leon or
a De Soto to find out the truth about the unknown lands beyond.
But
the hunter was not only thrilled with the passion of the chase and
of discovery; he was intent also upon collecting the furs and skins
of wild animals for lucrative barter and sale in the centers of
trade. He was quick to make "tomahawk claims" and to assert
"corn rights" as he spied out the rich virgin land for
future location and cultivation. Free land and no taxes appealed
to the backwoodsman, tired of paying quit-rents to the agents of
wealthy lords across the sea. Thus the settler speedily followed
in the hunter's wake. In his wake also went many rude and lawless
characters of the border, horse thieves and criminals of different
sorts, who sought to hide their delinquencies in the merciful liberality
of the wilderness. For the most part, however, it was the salutary
instinct of the homebuilder—the man with the ax, who made a
little clearing in the forest and built there a rude cabin that
he bravely defended at all risks against continued assaults—which,
in defiance of every restraint, irresistibly thrust westward the
thin and jagged line of the frontier. The ax and the surveyor's
chain, along with the rifle and the hunting-knife, constituted the
armorial bearings of the pioneer. With individual as with corporation,
with explorer as with landlord, land-hunger was the master impulse
of the era.
The
various desires which stimulated and promoted westward expansion
were, to be sure, often found in complete conjunction. The trader
sought to exploit the Indian for his own advantage, selling him
whisky, trinkets, and firearms in return for rich furs and costly
peltries; yet he was often a hunter himself and collected great
stores of peltries as the result of his solitary and protracted
hunting expeditions. The rancher and the herder sought to exploit
the natural vegetation of marsh and upland, the cane-brakes and
pea-vines; yet the constantly recurring need for fresh pasturage
made him a pioneer also, drove him ever nearer to the mountains,
and furnished the economic motive for his westward advance. The
small farmer needed the virgin soil of the new region, the alluvial
river-bottoms, and the open prairies, for the cultivation of his
crops and the grazing of his cattle; yet in the intervals between
the tasks of farm life he scoured the wilderness in search of game
"and spied out new lands for future settlement".
This
restless and nomadic race, says the keenly observant Francis Baily,
"delight much to live on the frontiers, where they can enjoy
undisturbed, and free from the control of any laws, the blessings
which nature has bestowed upon them." Independence of spirit,
impatience of restraint, the inquisitive nature, and the nomadic
temperament—these are the strains in the American character
of the eighteenth century which ultimately blended to create a typical
democracy. The rolling of wave after wave of settlement westward
across the American continent, with a reversion to primitive conditions
along the line of the farthest frontier, and a marked rise in the
scale of civilization at each successive stage of settlement, from
the western limit to the eastern coast, exemplifies from one aspect
the history of the American people during two centuries. This era,
constituting the first stage in our national existence, and productive
of a buoyant national character shaped in democracy upon a free
soil, closed only yesterday with the exhaustion of cultivable free
land, the disappearance of the last frontier, and the recent death
of "Buffalo Bill". The splendid inauguration of the period,
in the region of the Carolinas, Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky,
during the second half of the eighteenth century, is the theme of
this story of the pioneers of the Old Southwest.
Inhabitants
flock in here daily, mostly from Pensilvania and other parts of
America, who are over-stocked with people and Mike directly from
Europe, they commonly seat themselves towards the West, and have
got near the mountains.—Gabriel Johnston, Governor of North
Carolina, to the Secretary of the Board of Trade, February 15,
1751.
At
the opening of the eighteenth century the tide of population had
swept inland to the "fall line", the westward boundary
of the established settlements. The actual frontier had been advanced
by the more aggressive pioneers to within fifty miles of the Blue
Ridge. So rapid was the settlement in North Carolina that in the
interval 1717-32 the population quadrupled in numbers. A map of
the colonial settlements in 1725 reveals a narrow strip of populated
land along the Atlantic coast, of irregular indentation, with occasional
isolated nuclei of settlements further in the interior. The civilization
thus established continued to maintain a close and unbroken communication
with England and the Continent. As long as the settlers, for economic
reasons, clung to the coast, they reacted but slowly to the transforming
influences of the frontier. Within a triangle of continental altitude
with its apex in New England, bounded on the east by the Atlantic,
and on the west by the Appalachian range, lay the settlements, divided
into two zones—tidewater and piedmont. As no break occurred
in the great mountain system south of the Hudson and Mohawk valleys,
the difficulties of cutting a passage through the towering wall
of living green long proved an effective obstacle to the crossing
of the grim mountain barrier.
In
the beginning the settlements gradually extended westward from the
coast in irregular outline, the indentations taking form around
such natural centers of attraction as areas of fertile soil, frontier
posts, mines, salt-springs, and stretches of upland favorable for
grazing. After a time a second advance of settlement was begun in
New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, running in a southwesterly
direction along the broad terraces to the east of the Appalachian
Range, which in North Carolina lies as far as two hundred and fifty
miles from the sea. The Blue Ridge in Virginia and a belt of pine
barrens in North Carolina were hindrances to this advance, but did
not entirely check it. This second streaming of the population thrust
into the long, narrow wedge of the piedmont zone a class of people
differing in spirit and in tendency from their more aristocratic
and complacent neighbors to the east.
These
settlers of the Valley of Virginia and the North Carolina piedmont
region—English, Scotch-Irish, Germans, Scotch, Irish, Welsh,
and a few French—were the first pioneers of the Old Southwest.
From the joint efforts of two strata of population, geographically,
socially, and economically distinct—tidewater and piedmont, Old
South and New South—originated and flowered the third and greatest
movement of westward expansion, opening with the surmounting of
the mountain barrier and ending in the occupation and assumption
of the vast medial valley of the continent.
Synchronous
with the founding of Jamestown in Virginia, significantly enough,
was the first planting of Ulster with the English and Scotch. Emigrants
from the Scotch Lowlands, sometimes as many as four thousand a year
(1625), continued throughout the century to pour into Ulster. "Those
of the North of Ireland . . .," as pungently described in 1679
by the Secretary of State, Leoline Jenkins, to the Duke of Ormond,
"are most Scotch and Scotch breed and are the Northern Presbyterians
and phanatiques, lusty, able bodied, hardy and stout men, where
one may see three or four hundred at every meeting-house on Sunday,
and all the North of Ireland is inhabited by these, which is the
popular place of all Ireland by far. They are very numerous and
greedy after land." During the quarter of a century after the
English Revolution of 1688 and the Jacobite uprising in Ireland,
which ended in 1691 with the complete submission of Ireland to William
and Mary, not less than fifty thousand Scotch, according to Archbishop
Synge, settled in Ulster. Until the beginning of the eighteenth
century there was no considerable emigration to America; and it
was first set up as a consequence of English interference with trade
and religion. Repressive measures passed by the English parliament
(1665 1699), prohibiting the exportation from Ireland to England
and Scotland of cattle, beef, pork, dairy products, etc., and to
any country whatever of manufactured wool, had aroused deep resentment
among the Scotch-Irish, who had built up a great commerce. This
discontent was greatly aggravated by the imposition of religious
disabilities upon the Presbyterians, who, in addition to having
to pay tithes for the support of the established church, were excluded
from all civil and military office (1704), while their ministers
were made liable to penalties for celebrating marriages.
This
pressure upon a high-spirited people resulted inevitably in an exodus
to the New World. The principal ports by which the Ulsterites entered
America were Lewes and Newcastle (Delaware), Philadelphia and Boston.
The streams of immigration steadily flowed up the Delaware Valley;
and by 1720 the Scotch-Irish began to arrive in Bucks County. So
rapid was the rate of increase in immigration that the number of
arrivals soon mounted from a few hundred to upward of six thousand,
in a single year (1729); and within a few years this number was
doubled. According to the meticulous Franklin, the proportion increased
from a very small element of the population of Pennsylvania in 1700
to one fourth of the whole in 1749, and to one third of the whole
(350,000) in 1774. Writing to the Penns in 1724, James Logan, Secretary
of the Province, caustically refers to the Ulster settlers on the
disputed Maryland line as "these bold and indigent strangers,
saying as their excuse when challenged for titles, that we had solicited
for colonists and they had come accordingly." The spirit of
these defiant squatters is succinctly expressed in their statement
to Logan that it "was against the laws of God and nature that
so much land should be idle while so many Christians wanted it to
work on and to raise their bread."
The
rising scale of prices for Pennsylvania lands, changing from ten
pounds and two shillings quit-rents per hundred acres in 1719 to
fifteen pounds ten shillings per hundred acres with a quit-rent
of a halfpenny per acre in 1732, soon turned the eyes of the thrifty
Scotch-Irish settlers southward and southwestward. In Maryland in
1738 lands were offered at five pounds sterling per hundred acres.
Simultaneously, in the Valley of Virginia free grants of a thousand
acres per family were being made. In the North Carolina piedmont
region the proprietary, Lord
Granville, through his agents was disposing of the most desirable
lands to settlers at the rate of three shillings proclamation money
for six hundred and forty acres, the unit of land-division; and
was also making large free grants on the condition of seating a
certain proportion of settlers. "Lord Carteret's land in Carolina,"
says North Carolina's first American historian, "where the
soil was cheap, presented a tempting residence to people of every
denomination. Emigrants from the north of Ireland, by the way of
Pennsylvania, flocked to that country; and a considerable part of
North Carolina . . . is inhabited by those people or their descendants."
From 1740 onward, attracted by the rich lure of cheap and even free
lands in Virginia and North Carolina, a tide of immigration swept
ceaselessly into the valleys of the Shenandoah, the Yadkin, and
the Catawba. The immensity of this mobile, drifting mass, which
sometimes brought "more than 400 families with horse waggons
and cattle" into North Carolina in a single year (1752-3),
is attested by the fact that from 1732 to 1754, mainly as the result
of the Scotch-Irish inundation, the population of North Carolina
more than doubled.
The
second important racial stream of population in the settlement of
the same region was composed of Germans, attracted to this country
from the Palatinate. Lured on by the highly colored stories of the
commercial agents for promoting immigration—the "newlanders,"
who were thoroughly unscrupulous in their methods and extravagant
in their representations—a migration from Germany began in the second
decade of the eighteenth century and quickly assumed alarming proportions.
Although certain of the emigrants were well-to-do, a very great
number were "redemptioners" (indentured servants), who
in order to pay for their transportation were compelled to pledge
themselves to several years of servitude. This economic condition
caused the German immigrant, wherever he went, to become a settler
of the back country, necessity compelling him to pass by the more
expensive lands near the coast.
For
well-nigh sixty years the influx of German immigrants of various
sects was very great, averaging something like fifteen hundred a
year into Pennsylvania alone from 1727 to 1775. Indeed, Pennsylvania,
one third of whose population at the beginning of the Revolution
was German, early became the great distributing center for the Germans
as well as for the Scotch-Irish. Certainly by 1727 Adam Miller and
his fellow Germans had established the first permanent white settlement
in the Valley of Virginia. By 1732 Jost Heydt, accompanied by sixteen
families, came from York, Pennsylvania, and settled on the Opeckon
River, in the neighborhood of the present Winchester. There is no
longer any doubt that "the portion of the Shenandoah Valley
sloping to the north was almost entirely settled by Germans."
It
was about the middle of the century that these pioneers of the Old
Southwest, the shrewd, industrious, and thrifty Pennsylvania Germans
(who came to be generally called "Pennsylvania Dutch"
from the incorrect translation of Pennsylvanische Deutsche), began
to pour into the piedmont region of North Carolina. In the autumn,
after the harvest was in, these ambitious Pennsylvania pioneers
would pack up their belongings in wagons and on beasts of burden
and head for the southwest, trekking down in the manner of the Boers
of South Africa. This movement into the fertile valley lands of
the Yadkin and the Catawba continued unabated throughout the entire
third quarter of the century. Owing to their unfamiliarity with
the English language and the solidarity of their instincts, the
German settlers at first had little share in government. But they
devotedly played their part in the defense of the exposed settlements
and often bore the brunt of Indian attack.
The
bravery and hardihood displayed by the itinerant missionaries sent
out by the Pennsylvania Synod under the direction of Count Zinzendorf
(1742-8), and by the Moravian Church (1748-53), are mirrored in
the numerous diaries, written in German, happily preserved to posterity
in religious archives of Pennsylvania and North Carolina. These
simple, earnest crusaders, animated by pure and unselfish motives,
would visit on a single tour of a thousand miles the principal German
settlements in Maryland and Virginia (including the present West
Virginia). Sometimes they would make an extended circuit through
North Carolina, South Carolina, and even Georgia, everywhere bearing
witness to the truth of the gospel and seeking to carry the most
elemental forms of the Christian religion, preaching and prayer,
to the primitive frontiersmen marooned along the outer fringe of
white settlements. These arduous journeys in the cause of piety
place this type of pioneer of the Old Southwest in alleviating contrast
to the often relentless and bloodthirsty figure of the rude borderer.
Noteworthy
among these pious pilgrimages is the Virginia journey of Brothers
Leonhard Schnell and John Brandmuller (October 12 to December 12,
1749). At the last outpost of civilization, the scattered settlements
in Bath and Alleghany counties, these courageous missionaries—feasting
the while solely on bear meat, for there was no bread—encountered
conditions of almost primitive savagery, of which they give this
graphic picture: "Then we came to a house, where we had to
lie on bear skins around the fire like the rest . . . . The clothes
of the people consist of deer skins, their food of Johnny cakes,
deer and bear meat. A kind of white people are found here, who live
like savages. Hunting is their chief occupation." Into the
valley of the Yadkin in December, 1752, came Bishop Spangenberg
and a party of Moravians, accompanied by a surveyor and two guides,
for the purpose of locating the one hundred thousand acres of land
which had been offered them on easy terms the preceding year by
Lord
Granville. This journey was remarkable as an illustration of
sacrifices willingly made and extreme hardships uncomplainingly
endured for the sake of the Moravian brotherhood. In the back country
of North Carolina near the Mulberry Fields they found the whole
woods full of Cherokee Indians engaged in hunting. A beautiful site
for the projected settlement met their delighted gaze at this place;
but they soon learned to their regret that it had already been "taken
up" by Daniel Boone's future father-in-law, Morgan Bryan.
On
October 8, 1753, a party of twelve single men headed by the Rev.
Bernhard Adam Grube, set out from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, to trek
down to the new-found haven in the Carolina hinterland—"a corner
which the Lord has reserved for the Brethren"—in Anson County.
Following for the most part the great highway extending from Philadelphia
to the Yadkin, over which passed the great throng sweeping into
the back country of North Carolina—through the Valley of Virginia
and past Robert Luhny's mill on the James River—they encountered
many hardships along the way. Because of their "long wagon,"
they had much difficulty in crossing one steep mountain; and of
this experience Brother Grube, with a touch of modest pride, observes:
"People had told us that this hill was most dangerous, and
that we would scarcely be able to cross it, for Morgan Bryan, the
first to travel this way, had to take the wheels off his wagon and
carry it piecemeal to the top, and had been three months on the
journey from the Shanidore [Shenandoah] to the Etkin [Yadkin]."
These
men were the highest type of the pioneers of the Old Southwest,
inspired with the instinct of homemakers in a land where, if idle
rumor were to be credited, "the people lived like wild men
never hearing of God or His Word." In one hand they bore the
implement of agriculture, in the other the book of the gospel of
Jesus Christ. True faith shines forth in the simply eloquent words:
"We thanked our Saviour that he had so graciously led us hither,
and had helped us through all the hard places, for no matter how
dangerous it looked, nor how little we saw how we could win through,
everything always went better than seemed possible." The promise
of a new day—the dawn of the heroic age—rings out in the pious carol
of camaraderie at their journey's end:
We
hold arrival Lovefeast here,
In Carolina land,
A company of Brethren true,
A little Pilgrim-Band,
Called by the Lord to be of those
Who through the whole world go,
To bear Him witness everywhere,
And nought but Jesus know.
In
the year 1746 I was up in the country that is now Anson, Orange
and Rowan Counties, there was not then above one hundred fighting
men there is now at least three thousand for the most part Irish
Protestants and Germans and dailey increasing.—Matthew Rowan,
President of the North Carolina Council, to the Board of Trade,
June 28, 1753.
The
conquest of the West is usually attributed to the ready initiative,
the stern self-reliance, and the libertarian instinct of the expert
backwoodsmen. These bold, nomadic spirits were animated by an unquenchable
desire to plunge into the wilderness in search of an El Dorado at
the outer verge of civilization, free of taxation, quit-rents, and
the law's restraint. They longed to build homes for themselves and
their descendants in a limitless, free domain; or else to fare deeper
and deeper into the trackless forests in search of adventure. Yet
one must not overlook the fact that behind Boone and pioneers of
his stamp were men of conspicuous civil and military genius, constructive
in purpose and creative in imagination, who devoted their best gifts
to actual conquest and colonization. These men of large intellectual
mold—themselves surveyors, hunters, and pioneers—were inspired
with the larger vision of the expansionist. Whether colonizers,
soldiers, or speculators on the grand scale, they sought to open
at one great stroke the vast trans-Alleghany regions as a peaceful
abode for mankind.
Two
distinct classes of society were gradually drawing apart from each
other in North Carolina and later in Virginia—the pioneer democracy
of the back country and the upland, and the planter aristocracy
of the lowland and the tide-water region. From the frontier came
the pioneer explorers whose individual enterprise and initiative
were such potent factors in the exploitation of the wilderness.
From the border counties still in contact with the East came a number
of leaders. Thus in the heart of the Old Southwest the two determinative
principles already referred to, the inquisitive and the acquisitive
instincts, found a fortunate conjunction. The exploratory passion
of the pioneer, directed in the interest of commercial enterprise,
prepared the way for the great westward migration. The warlike disposition
of the hardy backwoodsman, controlled by the exercise of military
strategy, accomplished the conquest of the trans-Alleghany country.
Fleeing
from the traditional bonds of caste and aristocracy in England and
Europe, from economic boycott and civil oppression, from religious
persecution and favoritism, many worthy members of society in the
first quarter of the eighteenth century sought a haven of refuge
in the "Quackerthal" of William Penn, with its trustworthy
guarantees of free tolerance in religious faith and the benefits
of representative self-government. From East Devonshire in England
came George Boone, the grandfather of the great pioneer, and from
Wales came Edward Morgan, whose daughter Sarah became the wife of
Squire Boone, Daniel's father. These were conspicuous representatives
of the Society of Friends, drawn thither by the roseate representations
of the great Quaker, William Penn, and by his advanced views on
popular government and religious toleration. Hither, too, from Ireland,
whither he had gone from Denmark, came Morgan Bryan, settling in
Chester County, prior to 1719; and his children, William, Joseph,
James, and Morgan, who more than half a century later gave the name
to Bryan's Station in Kentucky, were destined to play important
roles in the drama of westward migration. In September, 1734, Michael
Finley from County Armagh, Ireland, presumably accompanied by his
brother Archibald Finley, settled in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
According to the best authorities, Archibald Finley was the father
of John Finley, or Findlay as he signed himself, Boone's guide and
companion in his exploration of Kentucky in 1769-71. To Pennsylvania
also came Mordecai Lincoln, great grandson of Samuel Lincoln, who
had emigrated from England to Hingham, Massachusetts, as early as
1637. This Mordecai Lincoln, who in 1720 settled in Chester County,
Pennsylvania, the great-great-grandfather of President Lincoln,
was the father of Sarah Lincoln, who was wedded to William Boone,
and of Abraham Lincoln, who married Anne Boone, William's first
cousin. Early settlers in Pennsylvania were members of the Hanks
family, one of whom was the maternal grandfather of President Lincoln.
No
one race or breed of men can lay claim to exclusive credit for leadership
in the hinterland movement and the conquest of the West. Yet one
particular stock of people, the Ulster Scots, exhibited with most
completeness and picturesqueness a group of conspicuous qualities
and attitudes which we now recognize to be typical of the American
character as molded by the conditions of frontier life. Cautious,
wary, and reserved, these Scots concealed beneath a cool and calculating
manner a relentlessness in reasoning power and an intensity of conviction
which glowed and burned with almost fanatical ardor. Strict in religious
observance and deep in spiritual fervor, they never lost sight of
the main chance, combining a shrewd practicality with a wealth of
devotion. It has been happily said of them that they kept the Sabbath
and everything else they could lay their hands on. In the polity
of these men religion and education went hand in hand; and they
habitually settled together in communities in order that they might
have teachers and preachers of their own choice and persuasion.
In
little-known letters and diaries of travelers and itinerant ministers
may be found many quaint descriptions and faithful characterizations
of the frontier settlers in their habits of life and of the scenes
amidst which they labored. In a letter to Edmund Fanning, the cultured
Robin Jones, agent of Lord
Granville and Attorney-General of North Carolina, summons to
view a piquant image of the western border and borderers:
"The
inhabitants are hospitable in their way, live in plenty and dirt,
are stout, of great prowess in manly athletics; and, in private
conversation, bold, impertinent, and vain. In the art of war (after
the Indian manner) they are well-skilled, are enterprising and
fruitful of strategies; and, when in action, are as bold and intrepid
as the ancient Romans. The Shawnese acknowledge them their superiors
even in their own way of fighting . . . . [The land] may be truly
called the land of the mountains, for they are so numerous that
when you have reached the summit of one of them, you may see thousands
of every shape that the imagination can suggest, seeming to vie
with each other which should raise his lofty head to touch the
clouds . . . . It seems to me that nature has been wanton in bestowing
her blessings on that country."
An
excellent pen-picture of educational and cultural conditions in
the backwoods of North Carolina, by one of the early settlers in
the middle of the century, exhibits in all their barren cheerlessness
the hardships and limitations of life in the wilderness. The father
of William Few, the narrator, had trekked down from Maryland and
settled in Orange County, some miles east of the little hamlet of
Hillsborough.
"In
that country at that time there were no schools, no churches or
parsons, or doctors or lawyers; no stores, groceries or taverns,
nor do I recollect during the first two years any officer, ecclesiastical,
civil or military, except a justice of the peace, a constable
and two or three itinerant preachers . . . . These people had
few wants, and fewer temptations to vice than those who lived
in more refined society, though ignorant. They were more virtuous
and more happy . . . . A schoolmaster appeared and offered his
services to teach the children of the neighborhood for twenty
shillings each per year . . . . In that simple state of society
money was but little known; the schoolmaster was the welcome guest
of his pupil, fed at the bountiful table and clothed from the
domestic loom . . . . In that country at that time there was great
scarcity of books."
The
journals of itinerant ministers through the Valley of Virginia and
the Carolina piedmont zone yield precious mementoes of the people,
their longing after the things of the spirit, and their pitiful
isolation from the regular preaching of the gospel. These missionaries
were true pioneers in this Old Southwest, ardent, dauntless, and
heroic—carrying the word into remote places and preaching the gospel
beneath the trees of the forest. In his journal (1755-6), the Rev.
Hugh McAden, born in Pennsylvania of Scotch-Irish parentage, a graduate
of Nassau Hall (1753), makes the unconsciously humorous observation
that wherever he found Presbyterians he found people who "seemed
highly pleased, and very desirous to hear the word"; whilst
elsewhere he found either dissension and defection to Baptist principles,
or "no appearance of the life of religion." In the Scotch-Irish
Presbyterian settlements in what is now Mecklenburg County, the
cradle of American liberty, he found "pretty serious, judicious
people" of the stamp of Moses, William, and James Alexander.
While traveling in the upper country of South Carolina, he relates
with gusto the story of "an old gentleman who said to the Governor
of South Carolina, when he was in those parts, in treaty with the
Cherokee Indians that 'he had never seen a shirt, been in a fair,
heard a sermon, or seen a minister in all his life.' Upon which
the governor promised to send him up a minister, that he might hear
one sermon before he died." The minister came and preached;
and this was all the preaching that had been heard in the upper
part of South Carolina before Mr. McAden's visit.
Such,
then, were the rude and simple people in the back country of the
Old Southwest—the deliberate and self-controlled English, the aggressive,
landmongering Scotch-Irish, the buoyant Welsh, the thrifty Germans,
the debonair French, the impetuous Irish, and the calculating Scotch.
The lives they led were marked by independence of spirit, democratic
instincts, and a forthright simplicity. In describing the condition
of the English settlers in the backwoods of Virginia, one of their
number, Doddridge, says:
"Most
of the articles were of domestic manufacture. There might have
been incidentally a few things brought to the country for sale
in a primitive way, but there was no store for general supply.
The table furniture usually consisted of wooden vessels, either
turned or coopered. Iron forks, tin cups, etc., were articles
of rare and delicate luxury. The food was of the most wholesome
and primitive kind. The richest meat, the finest butter, and best
meal that ever delighted man's palate were here eaten with a relish
which health and labor only know. The hospitality of the people
was profuse and proverbial."
The
circumstances of their lives compelled the pioneers to become self-sustaining.
Every immigrant was an adept at many trades. He built his own house,
forged his own tools, and made his own clothes. At a very early
date rifles were manufactured at the High Shoals of the Yadkin;
Squire Boone, Daniel's brother, was an expert gunsmith. The difficulty
of securing food for the settlements forced every man to become
a hunter and to scour the forest for wild game. Thus the pioneer,
through force of sheer necessity, became a dead shot—which stood
him in good stead in the days of Indian incursions and bloody retaliatory
raids. Primitive in their games, recreations, and amusements, which
not infrequently degenerated into contests of savage brutality,
the pioneers always set the highest premium upon personal bravery,
physical prowess, and skill in manly sports. At all public gatherings,
general musters, "vendues" or auctions, and even funerals,
whisky flowed with extraordinary freedom. It is worthy of record
that among the effects of the Rev. Alexander Craighead, the famous
teacher and organizer of Presbyterianism in Mecklenburg and the
adjoining region prior to the Revolution, were found a punch bowl
and glasses.
The
frontier life, with its purifying and hardening influence, bred
in these pioneers intellectual traits which constitute the basis
of the American character. The single-handed and successful struggle
with nature in the tense solitude of the forest developed a spirit
of individualism, restive under control. On the other hand, the
sense of sharing with others the arduous tasks and dangers of conquering
the wilderness gave birth to a strong sense of solidarity arid of
human sympathy. With the lure of free lands ever before them, the
pioneers developed a restlessness and a nervous energy, blended
with a buoyancy of spirit, which are fundamentally American. Yet
this same untrammeled freedom occasioned a disregard for law and
a defiance of established government which have exhibited themselves
throughout the entire course of our history. Initiative, self-reliance,
boldness in conception, fertility in resource, readiness in execution,
acquisitiveness, inventive genius, appreciation of material advantages—these,
shot through with a certain fine idealism, genial human sympathy,
and a high romantic strain—are the traits of the American national
type as it emerged from the Old Southwest.
Far
from the bustle of the world, they live in the most delightful
climate, and richest soil imaginable; they are everywhere surrounded
with beautiful prospects and sylvan scenes; lofty mountains, transparent
streams, falls of water, rich valleys, and majestic woods; the
whole interspersed with an infinite variety of flowering shrubs,
constitute the landscape surrounding them; they are subject to
few diseases; are generally robust; and live in perfect liberty;
they are ignorant of want and acquainted with but few vices. Their
inexperience of the elegancies of life precludes any regret that
they possess not the means of enjoying them, but they possess
what many princes would give half their dominion for, health,
content, and tranquillity of mind.—Andrew Burnaby: Travels
Through North America.
The
two streams of Ulstermen, the greater through Philadelphia, the
lesser through Charleston, which poured into the Carolinas toward
the middle of the century, quickly flooded the back country. The
former occupied the Yadkin Valley and tile region to the westward,
the latter the Waxhaws and the Anson County region to the northwest.
The first settlers were known as the "Pennsylvania Irish,"
because they had first settled in Pennsylvania after migrating from
the north of Ireland; while those who came by way of Charleston
were known as the "Scotch-Irish." The former, who had
resided in Pennsylvania long enough to be good judges of land, shrewdly
made their settlements along the rivers and creeks. The latter,
new arrivals and less experienced, settled on thinner land toward
the heads of creeks and water courses.
Shortly
prior to 1735, Morgan Bryan, his wife Martha, and eight children,
together with other families of Quakers from Pennsylvania, settled
upon a large tract of land on the northwest side of the Opeckon
River near Winchester. A few years later they removed up the Virginia
Valley to the Big Lick in the present Roanoke County, intent upon
pushing westward to the very outskirts of civilization. In the autumn
of 1748, leaving behind his brother William, who had followed him
to Roanoke County, Morgan Bryan removed with his family to the Forks
of the Yadkin River. The Morgans, with the exception of Richard,
who emigrated to Virginia, remained in Pennsylvania, spreading over
Philadelphia and Bucks counties; while the Hanks and Lincoln families
found homes in Virginia—Mordecai Lincoln's son, John, the great-grandfather
of President Lincoln, removing from Berks to the Shenandoah Valley
in 1765. On May 1, 1750, Squire Boone, his wife Sarah (Morgan),
and their eleven children—a veritable caravan, traveling like the
patriarchs of old—started south; and tarried for a space, according
to reliable tradition, on Linville Creek in the Virginia Valley.
In 1752 they removed to the Forks of the Yadkin, and the following
year received from Lord
Granville three tracts of land, all situated in Rowan County.
About the hamlet of Salisbury, which in 1755 consisted of seven
or eight log houses and the court house, there now rapidly gathered
a settlement of people marked by strong individuality, sturdy independence,
and virile self-reliance. The Boones and the Bryans quickly accommodated
themselves to frontier conditions and immediately began to take
an active part in the local affairs of the county. Upon the organization
of the county court Squire Boone was chosen justice of the peace;
and Morgan Bryan was soon appearing as foreman of juries and director
in road improvements.
The
Great Trading Path, leading from Virginia to the towns of the Catawbas
and other Southern Indians, crossed the Yadkin at the Trading Ford
and passed a mile southeast of Salisbury. Above Sapona Town near
the Trading Ford was Swearing Creek, which, according to constant
and picturesque tradition, was the spot where the traders stopped
to take a solemn oath never to reveal any unlawful proceedings that
might occur during their sojourn among the Indians. In his divertingly
satirical "History of the Dividing Line" William Byrd
in 1728 thus speaks of this locality: "The Soil is exceedingly
rich on both sides the Yadkin, abounding in rank Grass and prodigiously
large Trees; and for plenty of Fish, Fowl and Venison, is inferior
to No Part of the Northern Continent. There the Traders commonly
lie Still for some days, to recruit their Horses' Flesh as well
as to recover their own spirits." In this beautiful country
happily chosen for settlement by Squire Boone —who erected
his cabin on the east side of the Yadkin about a mile and a quarter
from Alleman's, now Boone's, Ford—wild game abounded. Buffaloes
were encountered in eastern North Carolina by Byrd while running
the dividing line; and in the upper country of South Carolina three
or four men with their dogs could kill fourteen to twenty buffaloes
in a single day."Deer and bears fell an easy prey to the hunter;
wild turkeys filled every thicket; the watercourses teemed with
beaver, otter, and muskrat, as well as with shad and other delicious
fish. Panthers, wildcats, and wolves overran the country; and the
veracious Brother Joseph, while near the present Wilkesboro, amusingly
records: "The wolves are not like those in Germany, Poland
and Lifland (because they fear men and don't easily come near) give
us such music of six different cornets the like of wh. I have never
heard in my life." So plentiful was the game that the wild
deer mingled with the cattle grazing over the wide stretches of
luxuriant grass.
In
the midst of this sylvan paradise grew up Squire Boone's son, Daniel
Boone, a Pennsylvania youth of English stock, Quaker persuasion,
and Baptist proclivities. Seen through a glorifying halo after the
lapse of a century and three quarters, he rises before us a romantic
figure, poised and resolute, simple, benign—as naive and shy
as some wild thing of the primeval forest—five feet eight inches
in height, with broad chest and shoulders, dark locks, genial blue
eyes arched with fair eyebrows, thin lips and wide mouth, nose of
slightly Roman cast, and fair, ruddy countenance. Farming was irksome
to this restless, nomadic spirit, who on the slightest excuse would
exchange the plow and the grubbing hoe for the long rifle and keen-edged
hunting knife. In a single day during the autumn season he would
kill four or five deer; or as many bears as would snake from two
to three thousand pounds weight of bear-bacon. Fascinated with the
forest, he soon found profit as well as pleasure in the pursuit
of game; and at excellent fixed prices he sold his peltries, most
often at Salisbury, some thirteen miles away, sometimes at the store
of the old "Dutchman," George Hartman, on the Yadkin,
and occasionally at Bethabara, the Moravian town sixty odd miles
distant. Skins were in such demand that they soon came to replace
hard money, which was incredibly scarce in the back country, as
a medium of exchange. Upon one occasion a caravan from Bethabara
hauled three thousand pounds, upon another four thousand pounds,
of dressed deerskins to Charleston. So immense was this trade that
the year after Boone's arrival at the Forks of Yadkin thirty thousand
deerskins were exported from the province of North Carolina. We
like to think that the young Daniel Boone was one of that band of
whom Brother Joseph, while in camp on the Catawba River (November
12, 1752) wrote: "There are many hunters about here, who live
like Indians, they kill many deer selling their hides, and thus
live without much work."
In
this very class of professional hunters, living like Indians, was
thus bred the spirit of individual initiative and strenuous leadership
in the great westward expansionist movement of the coming decade.
An English traveler gives the following minute picture of the dress
and accoutrement of the Carolina backwoodsman.
"Their
whole dress is very singular, and not very materially different
from that of the Indians; being a hunting shirt, somewhat resembling
a waggoner's frock, ornamented with a great many fringes, tied
round the middle with a broad belt, much decorated also, in which
is fastened a tomahawk, an instrument that serves every purpose
of defence and convenience; being a hammer at one side and a sharp
hatchet at the other; the shot bag and powderhorn, carved with
a variety of whimsical figures and devices, hang from their necks
over one shoulder; and on their heads a flapped hat, of a reddish
hue, proceeding from the intensely hot beams of the sun.
Sometimes
they wear leather breeches, made of Indian dressed elk, or deer
skins, but more frequently thin trowsers.
On
their legs they have Indian boots, or leggings, made of coarse
woollen cloth, that either are wrapped round loosely and tied
with garters, or laced upon the outside, and always come better
than half-way up the thigh.
On
their feet they sometimes wear pumps of their own manufacture,
but generally Indian moccossons, of their own construction also,
which are made of strong elk's, or buck's skin, dressed soft as
for gloves or breeches, drawn together in regular plaits over
the toe, and lacing from thence round to the fore part of the
middle of the ancle, without a seam in them, yet fitting close
to the feet, and are indeed perfectly easy and pliant.
Their
hunting, or rifle shirts, they have also died in a variety of
colours, some yellow, others red, some brown, and many wear them
quite white."
No
less unique and bizarre, though less picturesque, was the dress
of the women of the region—in particular of Surry County, North
Carolina, as described by General William Lenoir:
"The
women wore linses [flax] petticoats and 'bedgowns' [like a dressing-sack],
and often went without shoes in the summer. Some had bonnets and
bedgowns made of calico, but generally of linsey; and some of
them wore men's hats. Their hair was commonly clubbed. Once, at
a large meeting, I noticed there but two women that had on long
gowns. One of these was laced genteelly, and the body of the other
was open, and the tail thereof drawn up and tucked in her apron
or coat-string."
While
Daniel Boone was quietly engaged in the pleasant pursuits of the
chase, a vast world-struggle of which he little dreamed was rapidly
approaching a crisis. For three quarters of a century this titanic
contest between France and England for the interior of the continent
had been waged with slowly accumulating force. The irrepressible
conflict had been formally inaugurated at Sault Ste. Marie in 1671,
when Daumont de Saint Lusson, swinging aloft his sword, proclaimed
the sovereignty of France over "all countries, rivers, lakes,
and streams . . . both those which have been discovered and those
which may be discovered hereafter, in all their length and breadth,
bounded on the one side by the seas of the North and of the West,
and on the other by the South Sea." Just three months later,
three hardy pioneers of Virginia, despatched upon their arduous
mission by Colonel Abraham Wood in behalf of the English crown,
had crossed the Appalachian divide; and upon the banks of a stream
whose waters slipped into the Ohio to join the Mississippi and the
Gulf of Mexico, had carved the royal insignia upon the blazed trunk
of a giant of the forest, the while crying: "Long live Charles
the Second, by the grace of God, King of England, Scotland, France,
Ireland and Virginia and of the territories thereunto belonging."
La
Salle's dream of a New France in the heart of America was blotted
out in his tragic death upon the banks of the River Trinity (1687).
Yet his mantle was to fall in turn upon the square shoulders of
Le Moyne d'Iberville and of his brother—the good, the constant Bienville,
who after countless and arduous struggles laid firm the foundations
of New Orleans. In the precious treasury of Margry we learn that
on reaching Rochelle after his first voyage in 1699 Iberville in
these prophetic words voices his faith: "If France does not
immediately seize this part of America which is the most beautiful,
and establish a colony which is strong enough to resist any which
England may have, the English colonies (already considerable in
Carolina) will so thrive that in less than a hundred years they
will be strong enough to seize all America." But the world-weary
Louis Quatorze, nearing his end, quickly tired of that remote and
unproductive colony upon the shores of the gulf, so industriously
described in Paris as a "terrestrial paradise"; and the
"paternal providence of Versailles" willingly yielded
place to the monumental speculation of the great financier Antoine
Crozat. In this Paris of prolific promotion and amazed credulity,
ripe for the colossal scheme of Law, soon to blow to bursting-point
the bubble of the Mississippi, the very songs in the street echoed
flamboyant, half-satiric panegyrics upon the new Utopia, this Mississippi
Land of Cockayne:
It's
to-day no contribution
To discuss the Constitution
And the Spanish war's forgot
For a new Utopian spot;
And the very latest phase
Is the Mississippi craze.
Interest
in the new colony led to a great development of southwesterly trade
from New France. Already the French coureurs de bois were following
the water route from the Illinois to South Carolina. Jean Couture,
a deserter from the service in New France, journeyed over the Ohio
and Tennessee rivers to that colony, and was known as "the
greatest Trader and Traveller amongst the Indians for more than
Twenty years." In 1714 young Charles Charleville accompanied
an old trader from Crozat's colony on the gulf to the great salt-springs
on the Cumberland, where a post for trading with the Shawanoes had
already been established by the French. But the British were preparing
to capture this trade as early as 1694, when Tonti warned Villermont
that Carolinians were already established on a branch of the Ohio.
Four years later, Nicholson, Governor of Maryland, was urging trade
with the Indians of the interior in the effort to displace the French.
At an early date the coast colonies began to trade with the Indian
tribes of the back country: the Catawbas of the Yadkin Valley; the
Cherokees, whose towns were scattered through Tennessee; the Chickasaws,
to the westward in northern Mississippi; and the Choctaws farther
to the southward. Even before the beginning of the eighteenth century,
when the South Carolina settlements extended scarcely twenty miles
from the coast, English traders had established posts among the
Indian tribes four hundred miles to the west of Charleston. Following
the sporadic trading of individuals from Virginia with the inland
Indians, the heavily laden caravans of William Byrd were soon regularly
passing along the Great Trading Path from Virginia to the towns
of the Catawbas and other interior tribes of the Carolinas, delighting
the easily captivated fancy and provoking the cupidity of the red
men with "Guns, Powder, Shot, Hatchets (which the Indians call
Tomahawks), Kettles, red and blue Planes, Duffields, Stroudwater
blankets, and some Cutlary Wares, Brass Rings and other Trinkets."
In Pennsylvania, George Croghan, the guileful diplomat, who was
emissary from the Council to the Ohio Indians (1748), had induced
"all-most all the Ingans in the Woods" to declare against
the French; and was described by Christopher Gist as a "meer
idol among his countrymen, the Irish traders."
Against
these advances of British trade and civilization, the French for
four decades had artfully struggled, projecting tours of exploration
into the vast medial valley of the continent and constructing a
chain of forts and trading-posts designed to establish their claims
to the country and to hold in check the threatened English thrust
from the east. Soon the wilderness ambassador of empire, Celoron
de Bienville, was despatched by the far-visioned Galissoniere at
Quebec to sow broadcast with ceremonial pomp in the heart of America
the seeds of empire, grandiosely graven plates of lasting lead,
in defiant yet futile symbol of the asserted sovereignty of France.
Thus threatened in the vindication of the rights of their colonial
sea-to-sea charters, the English threw off the lethargy with which
they had failed to protect their traders, and in grants to the Ohio
and Loyal land companies began resolutely to form plans looking
to the occupation of the interior. But the French seized the English
trading-house at Venango which they converted into a fort; and Virginia's
protest, conveyed by a calm and judicious young man, a surveyor,
George Washington, availed not to prevent the French from seizing
Captain Trent's hastily erected military post at the forks of the
Ohio and constructing there a formidable work, named Fort Duquesne.
Washington, with his expeditionary force sent to garrison Captain
Trent's fort, defeated Jumonville and his small force near Great
Meadows (May, 1754); but soon after he was forced to surrender Fort
Necessity to Coulon de Villiers.
The
titanic struggle, fittingly precipitated in the backwoods of the
Old Southwest, was now on—a struggle in which the resolute
pioneers of these backwoods first seriously measured their strength
with the French and their copper-hued allies, and learned to surpass
the latter in their own mode of warfare. The portentous conflict,
destined to assure the eastern half of the continent to Great Britain,
is a grim, prophetic harbinger of the mighty movement of the next
quarter of a century into the twilight zone of the trans-Alleghany
territory:
All
met in companies with their wives and children, and set about
building little fortifications, to defend themselves from such
barbarian and inhuman enemies, whom they concluded would be let
loose upon them at pleasure.—The Reverend Hugh McAden—Diary,
July, 1755.
Long
before the actual outbreak of hostilities powerful forces were gradually
converging to produce a clash between the aggressive colonials and
the crafty Indians. As the settlers pressed farther westward into
the domain of the red men, arrogantly grazing their stock over the
cherished hunting-grounds of the Cherokees, the savages, who were
already well disposed toward the French, began to manifest a deep
indignation against the British colonists because of this callous
encroachment upon their territory. During the sporadic forays by
scattered bands of Northern Indians upon the Catawbas and other
tribes friendly to the pioneers the isolated settlements at the
back part of the Carolinas suffered rude and sanguinary onslaughts.
In the summer of 1753 a party of northern Indians warring in the
French interest made their appearance in Rowan County, which had
just been organized, and committed various depredations upon the
scattered settlements. To repel these attacks a band of the Catawbas
sallied forth, encountered a detached party of the enemy, and slew
five of their number. Among the spoils, significantly enough, were
silver crucifixes, beads, looking-glasses, tomahawks and other implements
of war, all of French manufacture.
Intense
rivalry for the good will of the near-by southern tribes existed
between Virginia and South Carolina. In strong remonstrance against
the alleged attempt of Governor Dinwiddie of Virginia to alienate
the Cherokees, Catawbas, Muscogees, and Chickasaws from South Carolina
and to attach them to Virginia, Governor Glen of South Carolina
made pungent observations to Dinwiddie: "South Carolina is
a weak frontier colony, and in case of invasion by the French would
be their first object of attack. We have not much to fear, however,
while we retain the affection of the Indians around us; but should
we forfeit that by any mismanagement on our part, or by the superior
address of the French, we are in a miserable situation. The Cherokees
alone have several thousand gunmen well acquainted with every inch
of the province . . . their country is the key to Carolina."
By a treaty concluded at Saluda (November 24, 1753), Glen promised
to build the Cherokees a fort near the lower towns, for the protection
of themselves and their allies; and the Cherokees on their part
agreed to become the subjects of the King of Great Britain and hold
their lands under him. This fort, erected this same year on the
headwaters of the Savannah, within gunshot distance of the important
Indian town of Keowee, was named Fort Prince George. "It is
a square," says the founder of the fort (Governor Glen to the
Board of Trade, August 26, 1754), "with regular Bastions and
four Ravelins it is near Two hundred foot from Salient Angle to
Salient Angle and is made of Earth taken out of the Ditch, secured
with fachines and well rammed with a banquet on the Inside for the
men to stand upon when they fire over, the Ravelins are made of
Posts of Lightwood which is very durable, they are ten foot in length
sharp pointed three foot and a half in the ground." The dire
need for such a fort in the back country was tragically illustrated
by the sudden onslaught upon the "House of John Gutry &
James Anshers" in York County by a party of sixty French Indians
(December 16, 1754), who brutally murdered sixteen of the twenty-one
persons present, and carried off as captives the remaining five."
At
the outbreak of the French
and Indian War in 1754 North Carolina voted twelve thousand
pounds for the raising of troops and several thousand pounds additional
for the construction of forts—a sum considerably larger than that
voted by Virginia. A regiment of two hundred and fifty men was placed
under the command of Colonel James Innes of the Cape Fear section;
and the ablest officer under him was the young Irishman from the
same section, Lieutenant Hugh Waddell. On June 3, 1754, Dinwiddie
appointed Innes, his close friend, commander-in-chief of all the
forces against the French; and immediately after the disaster at
Great Meadows (July, 1754), Innes took command. Within two months
the supplies for the North Carolina troops were exhausted; and as
Virginia then failed to furnish additional supplies, Colonel Innes
had no recourse but to disband his troops and permit them to return
home. Appointed governor of Fort Cumberland by General Braddock,
he was in command there while Braddock advanced on his disastrous
march.
The
lesson of Braddock's defeat (July 9, 1755) was memorable in the
history of the Old Southwest. Well might Braddock exclaim with his
last breath: "Who would have thought it? . . . We shall know
better how to deal with them another time." Led on by the reckless
and fiery Beaujeu, wearing an Indian gorget about his neck, the
savages from the protection of trees and rough defenses, a pre pared
ambuscade, poured a galling fire into the compact divisions of the
English, whose scarlet coats furnished ideal targets. The obstinacy
of the British commanders in refusing to permit their troops to
fight Indian fashion was suicidal; for as Herman Alriclis wrote
Governor Morris of Pennsylvania (July 22, 1755): " . . . the
French and Indians had cast an Intrenchment across the road before
our Army which they Discovered not Untill they came Close up to
it, from thence and both sides of the road the enemy kept a constant
fireing on them, our Army being so confused, they could not fight,
and they would not be admitted by the Genl or Sir John St. Clair,
to break thro' their Ranks and Take behind trees." Daniel Boone,
who went from North Carolina as a wagoner in the company commanded
by Edward Brice Dobbs, was on the battle-field; but Dobbs's company
at the time was scouting in the woods. When the fierce attack fell
upon the baggage a train, Boone succeeded in effecting his escape
only by cutting the traces of his team and fleeing on one of the
horses. To his dying day Boone continued to censure Braddock's conduct,
and reprehended especially his fatal neglect to employ strong flank-guards
and a sufficient number of Provincial scouts thoroughly acquainted
with the wilderness and all the wiles and strategies of savage warfare.
For
a number of months following Braddock's defeat there was a great
rush of the frightened people southward. In a letter to Dinwiddie,
Washington expresses the apprehension that Augusta, Frederick, and
Hampshire County will soon be depopulated, as the whole back country
is in motion toward the southern colonies. During this same summer
Governor Arthur Dobbs of North Carolina made a tour of exploration
through the western part of the colony, seeking a site for a fort
to guard the frontier. The frontier company of fifty men which was
to garrison the projected fort was placed under the command of Hugh
Waddell, now promoted to the rank of captain, though only twenty-one
years old. In addition to Waddell's company, armed patrols were
required for the protection of the Rowan County frontier; and during
the summer Indian alarms were frequent at the Moravian village of
Bethabara, whose inhabitants had heard with distress on March 31st
of the slaughter of eleven Moravians on the Mahoni and of the ruin
of Gnadenhutten. Many of the settlers in the outlying districts
of Rowan fled for safety to the refuge of the little village; and
frequently every available house, every place of temporary abode
was filled with panic stricken refugees. So persistent were the
depredations of the Indians and so alarmed were the scattered Rowan
settlers by the news of the murders and the destruction of Vaul's
Fort in Virginia (June 25, 1756) that at a conference on July 5th
the Moravians "decided to protect our houses with palisades,
and make them safe before the enemy should invade our tract or attack
us, for if the people were all going to retreat we would be the
last left on the frontier and the first point of attack." By
July 23d, they had constructed a strong defense for their settlement,
afterward called the "Dutch Fort" by the Indians. The
principal structure was a stockade, triangular in plan, some three
hundred feet on a side, enclosing the principal buildings of the
settlement; and the gateway was guarded by an observation tower.
The other defense was a stockade embracing eight houses at the mill
some distance away, around which a small settlement had sprung up.
During
the same year the fort planned by Dobbs was erected upon the site
he had chosen—between Third and Fourth creeks; and the commissioners
Richard Caswell and Francis Brown, sent out to inspect the fort,
made the following picturesque report to the Assembly (December
21, 1756):
"That
they had likewise viewed the State of Fort Dobbs, and found it to
be a good and Substantial Building of the Dimentions following (that
is to say) The Oblong Square fifty three feet by forty, the opposite
Angles Twenty four feet and Twenty-Two In Height Twenty four and
a half feet as by the Plan annexed Appears, The Thickness of the
Walls which are made of Oak Logs regularly Diminished from sixteen
Inches to Six, it contains three floors and there may be discharged
from each floor at one and the same time about one hundred Musketts
the same is beautifully scituated in the fork of Fourth Creek a
Branch of the Yadkin River. And that they also found under Command
of Cap' Hugh Waddel Forty six Effective men Officers and Soldiers,
the said Officers and Soldiers Appearing well and in good Spirits."
As
to the erection of a fort on the Tennessee, promised the Cherokees
by South Carolina, difficulties between the governor of that province
and of Virginia in regard to matters of policy and the proportionate
share of expenses made effective cooperation between the two colonies
well-nigh impossible. Glen, as we have seen, had resented Dinwiddie's
efforts to win the South Carolina Indians over to Virginia's interest.
And Dinwiddie had been very indignant when the force promised him
by the Indians to aid General Braddock did not arrive, attributing
this defection in part to Glen's negotiations for a meeting with
the chieftains and in part to the influence of the South Carolina
traders, who kept the Indians away by hiring them to go on long
hunts for furs and skinns. But there was no such contention between
Virginia and North Carolina. Dinwiddie and Dobbs arranged (November
6, 1755) to send a commission from these colonies to treat with
the Cherokees and the Catawbas. Virginia sent two commissioners,
Colonel William Byrd, third of that name, and Colonel Peter Randolph;
while North Carolina sent one, Captain Hugh Waddell. Salisbury,
North Carolina, was the place of rendezvous. The treaty with the
Catawbas was made at the Catawba Town, presumably the village opposite
the mouth of Sugaw Creek, in York County, South Carolina, on February
20-21, 1756; that with the Cherokees on Broad River, North Carolina,
March 13-17. As a result of the negotiations and after the receipt
of a present of goods, the Catawbas agreed to send forty warriors
to aid Virginia within forty days; and the Cherokees, in return
for presents and Virginia's promise to contribute her proportion
toward the erection of a strong fort, undertook to send four hundred
warriors within forty days, "as soon as the said fort shall
be built." Virginia and North Carolina thus wisely cooperated
to "straighten the path" and "brighten the chain"
between the white and the red men, in important treaties which Have
largely escaped the attention of historians."
On
May 25, 1756, a conference was held at Salisbury between King Heygler
and warriors of the Catawba nation on the one side and Chief Justice
Henley, doubtless attended by Captain Waddell and his frontier company,
on the other. King Heygler, following the lead set by the Cherokees,
petitioned the Governor of North Carolina to send the Catawbas some
ammunition and to "build us a fort for securing our old men,
women and children when we turn out to fight the Enemy on their
coming." The chief justice assured the King that the Catawbas
would receive a necessary supply of ammunition (one hundred pounds
of gunpowder and four hundred pounds of lead were later sent them)
and promised to urge with the governor their request to have a fort
built as soon as possible. Pathos not unmixed with dry humor tinges
the eloquent appeal of good old King Heygler, ever the loyal friend
of the whites, at this conference:
"I
desire a stop may be put to the selling of strong Liquors by the
White people to my people especially near the Indian nation. IF
THE WHITE PEOPLE MAKE STRONG DRINK, LET THEM. SELL IT TO ONE ANOTHER,
OR DRINK IT IN THEIR OWN FAMILIES. This will avoid a great deal
of mischief which otherwise will, happen from my people getting
drunk and quarrelling with the White people. I have no strong
prisons like you to confine them for it. Our only way is to put
them under ground and all these (pointing proudly to his Warriors)
will be ready to do that to those who shall deserve it."
In
response to this request, the sum of four thousand pounds was appropriated
by the North Carolina Assembly for the erection of "a Fort
on our western frontier to protect and secure the Catawbas"
and for the support of two companies of fifty men each to garrison
this and another fort building on the sea coast. The commissioners
appointed for the purpose recommended (December 21, 1756) a site
for the fort "near the 'Catawba nation"; and on January
20, 1757, Governor Dobbs reported; " We are now building a
Fort in the midst of their towns at their own Request." The
fort thereupon begun must have stood near the mouth of the South
Fork of the Catawba River, as Dobbs says it was in the "midst"
of their towns, which are situated a "few miles north and south
of 38 degrees" and might properly be included within a circle
of thirty miles radius."
During
the succeeding months many depredations were committed by the Indians
upon the exposed and scattered settlements. Had it not been for
the protection afforded by all these forts, by the militia companies
under Alexander Osborne of Rowan and Nathaniel Alexander of Anson,
and by a special company of patrollers under Green and Moore, the
back settlers who had been so outrageously "pilfered"
by the Indians would have "retired from the Frontier into the
inner settlements."
We
give thanks and praise for the safety and peace vouchsafed us
by our Heavenly Father in these times of war. Many of our neighbors,
driven hither and yon like deer before wild beasts, came to us
for shelter, yet the accustomed order of our congregation life
was not disturbed, no, not even by the more than 150 Indians who
at sundry times passed by, stopping for a day at a time and being
fed by us.—Wachovia Community Diary, 1757
With
commendable energy and expedition Dinwiddie and Dobbs, acting in
concert, initiated steps for keeping the engagements conjointly
made by the two colonies with the Cherokees and the Catawbas in
tile spring and summer of 1756. Enlisting sixty men, "most
of them Artificers, with Tools and Provisions," Major Andrew
Lewis proceeded in the late spring to Echota in the Cherokee country.
Here during the hot summer months they erected the Virginia Fort
on the path from Virginia, upon the northern bank of the Little
Tennessee, nearly opposite the Indian town of Echota and about twenty-five
miles southwest of Knoxville." While the fort was in process
of construction, the Cherokees were incessantly tampered with by
emissaries from the Nuntewees and the Savannahs in the French interest,
and from the French themselves at the Alibamu Fort. So effective
were these machinations, supported by extravagant promises and doubtless
rich bribes, that the Cherokees soon were outspokenly expressing
their desire for a French fort at Great Tellico.
Dinwiddie
welcomed the departure from America of Governor Glen of South Carolina,
who in his opinion had always acted contrary to the king's interest.
From the new governor, William Henry Lyttelton, who arrived in Charleston
on June 1, 1756, he hoped to secure effective cooperation in dealing
with the Cherokees and the Catawbas. This hope was based upon Lyttelton's
recognition, as stated in Dinwiddie's words, of the "Necessity
of strict Union between the whole Colonies, with't any of them considering
their particular Interest separate from the general Good of the
whole." After constructing the fort "with't the least
assistance from South Carolina," Major Lewis happened by accident
upon a grand council being held in Echota in September. At that
time he discovered to his great alarm that the machinations of the
French had already produced the greatest imaginable change in the
sentiment of the Cherokees. Captain Raymond Demere of the Provincials,
with two hundred English troops, had arrived to garrison the fort;
but the head men of all the Upper Towns were secretly influenced
to agree to write a letter to Captain Demere, ordering him to return
immediately to Charleston with all the troops under his command.
At the grand council, Atta-kulla-kulla, the great Cherokee chieftain,
passionately declared to the head men, who listened approvingly,
that "as to the few soldiers of Captain Demere that was there,
he would take their Guns, and give them to his young men to hunt
with and as to their clothes they would soon be worn out and their
skins would be tanned, and be of the same colour as theirs, and
that they should live among them as slaves." With impressive
dignity Major Lewis rose and earnestly pleaded for the observance
of the terms of the treaty solemnly negotiated the preceding March.
In response, the crafty and treacherous chieftains desired Lewis
to tell the Governor of Virginia that "they had taken up the
Hatchet against all Nations that were Enemies to the English";
but Lewis, an astute student of Indian Psychology, rightly surmised
that all their glib professions of friendship and assistance were
"only to put a gloss on their knavery." So it proved;
for instead of the four hundred warriors promised under the treaty
for service in Virginia, the Cherokees sent only seven warriors,
accompanied by three women. Al though the Cherokees petitioned Virginia
for a number of men to garrison the Virginia fort, Dinwiddie postponed
sending the fifty men provided for by the Virginia Assembly until
he could reassure himself in regard to the "Behaviour and Intention"
of the treacherous Indian allies. This proved to be a prudent decision;
for not long after its erection the Virginia fort was destroyed
by the Indians.
Whether
on account of the dissatisfaction expressed by the Cherokees over
the erection of the Virginia fort or because of a recognition of
the mistaken policy of garrisoning a work erected by Virginia with
troops sent from Charleston, South Carolina immediately proceeded
to build another stronghold on the southern bank of the Tennessee
at the mouth of Tellico River, some seven miles from the site of
the Virginia fort; and here were posted twelve great guns, brought
thither at immense labor through the wilderness. To this fort, named
Fort Loudoun in honor of Lord Loudoun, then commander-in-chief of
all the English forces in America, the Indians allured artisans
by donations of land; and during the next three or four years a
little settlement sprang up there.
The
frontiers of Virginia suffered most from the incursions of hostile
Indians during the fourteen months following May 1, 1755. In July,
the Rev. Hugh McAden records that he preached in Virginia on a day
set apart for fasting and prayer "on account of the wars and
many murders, committed by the savage Indians on the back inhabitants."
On July 30th a large party of Shawano Indians fell upon the New
River settlement and wiped it out of existence. William Ingles was
absent at the time of the raid; and Mrs. Ingles, who was captured,
afterward effected her escape. The following summer (June 25, 1756),
Fort Vaux on the headwaters of the Roanoke, under the command of
Captain John Smith, was captured by about one hundred French and
Indians, who burnt the fort, killed John Smith junior, John Robinson,
John Tracey and John Ingles, wounded four men, and captured twenty-two
men, women, and children. Among the captured was the famous Mrs.
Mary Ingles, whose husband, John Ingles, was killed; but after being
"carried away into Captivity, amongst whom she was barbarously
treated," according to her own statement, she finally escaped
and returned to Virginia." The frontier continued to be infested
by marauding bands of French and Indians; and Dinwiddie gloomily
confessed to Dobbs (July 22d): "I apprehend that we shall always
be harrass'd with fly'g Parties of these Banditti unless we form
an Expedit'n ag'st them, to attack 'em in y'r Towns." Such
an expedition, known as the Sandy River Expedition, had been sent
out in February to avenge the massacre of the New River settlers;
but the enterprise engaged in by about four hundred Virginians and
Cherokees under Major Andrew Lewis and Captain Richard Pearis, proved
a disastrous failure. Not a single Indian was seen; and the party
suffered extraordinary hardships and narrowly escaped starvation.
In
conformity with his treaty obligations with the Catawbas, Governor
Dobbs commissioned Captain Hugh Waddell to erect the fort promised
the Catawbas at the spot chosen by the commissioners near the mouth
of the South Fork of the Catawba River. This fort, for which four
thousand pounds had been appropriated, was for the most part completed
by midsummer, 1757. But owing, it appears, both to the machinations
of the French and to the intermeddling of the South Carolina traders,
who desired to retain the trade of the Catawbas for that province,
Oroloswa, the Catawba King Heygler, sent a "talk" to Governor
Lyttelton, requesting that North Carolina desist from the work of
construction and that no fort be built except by South Carolina.
Accordingly, Governor Dobbs ordered Captain Waddell to discharge
the workmen (August 11, 1757); and every effort was made for many
months thereafter to conciliate the Catawbas, erstwhile friends
of North Carolina. The Catawba fort erected by North Carolina was
never fully completed; and several years later South Carolina, having
succeeded in alienating the Catawbas from North Carolina, which
colony had given them the best possible treatment, built for them
a fort at the mouth of Line Creek on the east bank of the Catawba
River.
In
the spring and summer of 1758 the long expected Indian allies arrived
in Virginia, as many as four hundred by May—Cherokees, Catawbas,
Tuscaroras, and Nottaways. But Dinwiddie was wholly unable to use
them effectively; and in order to provide amusement for them, he
directed that they should go "a scalping" with the whites—"a
barbarous method of war," frankly acknowledged the governor,
"introduced by the French, which we are oblidged to follow
in our own defense." Most of the Indian allies discontentedly
returned home before the end of the year, but the remainder waited
until the next year, to take part in the campaign against Fort Duquesne.
Three North Carolina companies, composed of trained soldiers and
hardy frontiersmen, went through this campaign under the command
of Major Hugh Waddell, the "Washington of North Carolina."
Long of limb and broad of chest, powerful, lithe, and active, Waddell
was an ideal leader for this arduous service, being fertile in expedient
and skilful in the employment of Indian tactics. With true provincial
pride Governor Dobbs records that Waddell "had great honor
done him, being employed in all reconnoitring parties, and dressed
and acted as an Indian; and his sergeant, Rogers, took the only
Indian prisoner, who gave Mr. Forbes certain intelligence of the
forces in Fort Duquesne, upon which they resolved to proceed."
This apparently trivial incident is remarkable, in that it proved
to be the decisive factor in a campaign that was about to be abandoned.
The information in regard to the state of the garrison at Fort Duquesne,
secured from the Indian, for the capture of whom two leading officers
had offered a reward of two hundred and fifty pounds, emboldened
Forbes to advance rather than to retire. Upon reaching the fort
(November 25th), he found it abandoned by the enemy. Sergeant Rogers
never received the reward promised by General Forbes and the other
English officer; but some time afterward he was compensated by a
modest sum from the colony of North Carolina.
A
series of unfortunate occurrences, chiefly the fault of the whites,
soon resulted in the precipitation of a terrible Indian outbreak.
A party of Cherokees, returning home in May, 1758, seized some stray
horses on the frontier of Virginia—never dreaming of any wrong,
says an old historian, as they saw it frequently done by the whites.
The owners of the horses, hastily forming a party, went in pursuit
of the Indians and killed twelve or fourteen of the number. The
relatives of the slain Indians, greatly incensed, vowed vengeance
upon the whites. Nor was the tactless conduct of Forbes calculated
to quiet this resentment; for when Atta-kulla-kulla and nine other
chieftains deserted in disgust at the treatment accorded them, they
were pursued by Forbes's orders, apprehended and disarmed. This
rude treatment, coupled with the brutal and wanton murder of some
Cherokee hunters a little earlier, by an irresponsible band of Virginians
under Captain Robert Wade, still further aggravated the Indians.
Incited
by the French, who had fled to the southward after the fall of Fort
Duquesne, parties of bloodthirsty young Indians rushed down upon
the settlements and left in their path death and desolation along
the frontiers of the Carolinas. On the upper branch of the Yadkin
and below the South Yadkin near Fort Dobbs twenty-two whites fell
in swift succession before the secret onslaughts of the savages
from the lower Cherokee towns. Many of the settlers along the Yadkin
fled to the Carolina Fort at Bethabara and the stockade at the mill;
and the sheriff of Rowan County suffered siege by the Cherokees,
in his home, until rescued by a detachment under Brother Loesch
from Bethabara. While many families took refuge in Fort Dobbs, frontiersmen
under Captain Morgan Bryan ranged through the mountains to the west
of Salisbury and guarded the settlements from the hostile incursions
of the savages. So gravely alarmed were the Rowan settlers, compelled
by the Indians to desert their planting and crops, that Colonel
Harris was despatched post-haste for aid to Cape Fear, arriving
there on July 1st. With strenuous energy Captain Waddell, then stationed
in the east, rushed two companies of thirty men each to the rescue,
sending by water-carriage six swivel guns and ammunition on before
him; and these reinforcements brought relief at last to the harassed
Rowan frontiers." During the remainder of the year, the borders
were kept clear by bold and tireless rangers under the leadership
of expert Indian fighters of the stamp of Grifth Rutherford and
Morgan Bryan.
When
the Cherokee warriors who had wrought havoc along the North Carolina
border in April arrived at their town of Settiquo, they proudly
displayed the twenty-two scalps of the slain Rowan settlers. Upon
the demand for these scalps by Captain Demere at Fort Loudon and
under direction of Atta-kulla-kulla, the Settiquo warriors surrendered
eleven of the scalps to Captain Demere who, according to custom
in time of peace, buried them. New murders on Pacolet and along
the Virginia Path, which occurred shortly afterward, caused gloomy
forebodings; and it was plain, says a contemporary gazette, that
"the lower Cherokees were not satisfied with the murder of
the Rowan settlers, but intended further mischief". On October
1st and again on October 31st, Governor Dobbs received urgent requests
from Governor Lyttelton, asking that the North Carolina provincials
and militia cooperate to bring him assistance. Although there was
no law requiring the troops to march out of the province and the
exposed frontiers of North Carolina sorely needed protection, Waddell,
now commissioned colonel, assembled a force of five small companies
and marched to the aid of Governor Lyttelton. But early in January,
1760, while on the march, Waddell received a letter from Lyttelton,
informing him that the assistance was not needed and that a treaty
of peace had been negotiated with the Cherokees.
Thus
ended the Cherokee war, which was among the last humbling strokes
given to the expiring power of France in North America.—Hewatt:
An Historical Account of the Rise and Progress of the Colonies
of South Carolina and Georgia. 1779.
Governor
Lyttelton's treaty of "peace", negotiated with the Cherokees
at the close of 1759, was worse than a crime: it was a crass and
hideous blunder. His domineering attitude and tyrannical treatment
of these Indians had aroused the bitterest animosity. Yet he did
not realize that it was no longer safe to trust their word. No sooner
did the governor withdraw his army from the borders than the cunning
Cherokees, whose passions had been inflamed by what may fairly be
called the treacherous conduct of Lyttelton, rushed down with merciless
ferocity upon the innocent and defenseless families on the frontier.
On February 1, 1760, while a large party (including the family of
Patrick Calhoun), numbering in all about one hundred and fifty persons,
were removing from the Long Cane settlement to Augusta, they were
suddenly attacked by a hundred mounted Cherokees, who slaughtered
about fifty of them. After the massacre, many of the children were
found helplessly wandering in the woods. One man alone carried to
Augusta no less than nine of the pitiful innocents, some horribly
mutilated with the tomahawk, others scalped, and all yet alive.
Atrocities
defying description continued to be committed, and many people were
slain. The Cherokees, under the leadership of Si-lou-ee, or the
Young Warrior of Estatoe, the Round O, Tiftoe, and others, were
baffled in their persistent efforts to capture Fort Prince George.
On February 16th the crafty Oconostota appeared before the fort
and under the pretext of desiring some White man to accompany him
on a visit to the governor on urgent business, lured the commander,
Lieutenant Coytomore, and two attendants to a conference outside
the gates. At a preconceived signal a volley of shots rang out;
the two attendants were wounded, and Lieutenant Coytomore, riddled
with bullets, fell dead. Enraged by this act of treachery, the garrison
put to death the Indian hostages within. During the abortive attack
upon the fort, Oconostota, unaware of the murder of the hostages,
was heard shouting above the din of battle: "Fight strong,
and you shall be relieved."
Now
began the dark days along the Rowan border, which were so sorely
to test human endurance. Many refugees fortified themselves in the
different stockades; and Colonel Hugh Waddell with his redoubtable
frontier company of Indian-fighters awaited the onslaught of the
savages, who were reported to have passed through the mountain defiles
and to be approaching along the foot-hills. The story of the investment
of Fort Dobbs and the splendidly daring sortie of Waddell and Bailey
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