Kenton's Life and Sufferings.

Surprise of Kaskaskia.

Capture of the Garrison.

Location of Kaskaskia.

From Corn Island' they proceeded in boats to the mouth of the Tennessee River, and landed upon the site of Paducah. There they met a party of hunters from Kaskaskia and obtained valuable information. They reported that M. Rocheblave, commander of the garrison at Kaskaskia, was an exceedingly vigilant officer, and kept spies continually on the alert to discover the approach of Kentuckians. The hunters believed that a surprise might be effected, and they offered to accompany the expedition as guides. Their services were accepted, and the expedition having dropped down the Ohio to a proper point on the Illinois shore, and concealed their boats, commenced their march through the wilderness to Kaskaskia. They arrived in the vicinity of the town toward the evening of the fourth of July, a where they remained until dark, unperceived by any of the people. Before a 1778. midnight the town and garrison were in possession of the Kentuckians. Philip Rocheblave, the British commander, was surprised in bed, like Delaplace at Ticonderoga. His wife, whom the polite Kentuckians would not disturb, secured or destroyed most of his papers. The rest of his papers, which revealed the fact that the British were stimulating the Indians to hostilities, were sent, with the commandant himself, to Williamsburg, in Virginia. It was a bloodless conquest, and in the course of a few days the prudent policy of Clarke secured the respect of the French people, and they accepted the government of Virginia with satisfaction.

About sixty miles further up the Mississippi was Cahokia, a village coeval in settlement with Kaskaskia. It was a place of considerable trade, and a depository of British arms for distribution among the Indians. Clarke dispatched Captain Joseph Bowman with a little

Falls of the Ohio in 1778, and after the surprise of Kaskaskia he returned to Boonsborough. Toward the close of that year he was captured by the Indians, and finally became a prison laborer in the hands of the British at Detroit. Aided by a trader's wife, he escaped in company with two fellow-prisoners, the renowned Captain Bullitt and Lieutenant Coffee, and arrived at the Falls in July, 1779. Kenton subsequently joined Clarke in his expeditions. It was in 1782 when he heard that he had not killed his rival in love, and that his old father still lived. He went to Virginia, and, after spending some time among the friends of his early youth, he returned to Kentucky, taking his father and family with him. On the way the old man died; the remainder of the family reached Kenton's settlement in safety. From that period, until Wayne's expedition in 1793, Kenton was much engaged in Indian warfare.

Poor Simon Kenton experienced the bitter effects of wrong, ingratitude, and neglect. On account of some legal matters concerning his lands in Kentucky, he was imprisoned for twelve months upon the very spot where he built his cabin in 1775. In 1802, beggared by lawsuits and losses, he became landless. Yet he never murmured at the ingratitude which pressed him down, and in 1813 the veteran joined the Kentucky troops under Shelby, and was in the battle of the Thames. In 1824, then seventy years old, he journeyed to Frankfort, in tattered garments and upon a miserable horse, to ask the Legislature of Kentucky to release the claims of the state upon some of his mountain lands. He was stared at by the boys, and shunned by the citizens, for none knew him. At length General Thomas Fletcher recognized him, gave him a new suit of clothes, and entertained him kindly. When it was known that Simon Kenton was in town, scores flocked to see the old hero. He was taken to the Capitol and seated in the speaker's chair. His lands were released, and afterward Congress gave him a pension of two hundred and forty dollars a year. He died, at the age of eighty-one years, in 1836, at his residence at the head of Mad River, Logan county, Ohio, in sight of the place where, fifty-eight years before, the Indians were about to put him to death. The city of Louisville is at the Falls or Rapids of the Ohio. The rapids, formed by a dike of limestone stretching across the river, extend about two miles. Captain Bullitt, of Virginia, a brave officer, who accompanied Washington in his expedition against Fort Duquesne, visited this spot in 1773, and, it is said, laid out the city there, on the south side of the river. But no settlement was made until 1778, when a small number of families accompanied Mr. Clarke down the Ohio, and were left by him upon Corn Island. In the autumn they moved to the main land, built a block-house of logs, and thus founded Louisville, now (1851) a city and port of entry, with a population of 50,000. In 1780, the Virginia Legislature passed an act for establishing the town of Louisville, the name being given in honor of Louis XVI. of France, then lending his aid to the Americans. A stronger fort was built there in 1782, and was called Fort Nelson, in honor of Governor Thomas Nelson, of Virginia. For several years the settlement was harassed by the Indians, but it soon became too strong to fear them. The commerce of Louisville began in 1783, when Daniel Broadhead took goods from Philadelphia and exposed them for sale there.-Collins, page 360.

* Kaskaskia, the present capital of Randolph county, Illinois, is situated on the west side of Kaskaskia River, seven miles from its junction with the Mississippi. It was settled by some French Jesuits about 1683, and was one of the towns which went into the possession of the British by the treaty of 1763, at the eonclusion of the Seven Years' War. It then contained about one hundred families, and that was about the amount of its population at the time of Clarke's expedition.

Terrible March over the "Drowned Lands."

Surprise of Cahokia. Capture of Vincennes. Its Loss and Recapture.

less than two companies, a to reduce that post, and also to capture two other small a July 8. towns. Several inhabitants of Kaskaskia gladly accompanied them. The expedition was successful at the small towns, and reached Cahokia unobserved. The surprise was complete. The inhabitants were greatly alarmed; but when the Kaskaskia people explained the whole matter, the fears of the people were changed to emotions of joy, and the American flag was saluted with three hearty huzzas. They took the oath of allegiance, and the conquest was thorough. The region thus brought under the sway of Virginia was erected into a county, and named Illinois.

The stronger and more important post of Vincennes' was yet unsubdued, and Clarke felt that the object of his mission would be but half accomplished if he did not gain possession of that place. It was necessary to garrison Kaskaskia and Cahokia, in order to retain them, and to do this would so weaken his little army that he could scarcely hope for victory in an attack upon Vincennes, unless he should be as successful in effecting a surprise as he had in capturing the posts already in his possession. While thus perplexed, and doubting what course to pursue, he communicated his desires to Father Gibault, a French priest, who agreed to endeavor to bring those inhabitants of Vincennes, over whom he had pastoral charge, to the support of the American cause. The influence of the priest was successful; the inhabitants arose in the night and cast off their allegiance to the British, expelled the garrison from the fort, and pulled down the English standard Aug., 1778. The American flag floated in triumph over the ramparts in the morning.b Major Clarke, just promoted to colonel by the Virginia authorities, now applied himself to the pacification of the Indian tribes. His reputation as a warrior was great among them, and, as the qualities of a hero inspires the Indian with respect, his influence was also great. He was a successful negotiator, and the prejudices of many of the tribes against the provin cials were subdued. While thus engaged, he received no news from Vincennes, and he began to have fears for its safety. On the twenty-ninth of January, 1779, he received intelligence that Governor Hamilton had marched an expedition against that place, from Detroit, nearly a month previously, and that the town was again in possession of the enemy. He was also informed that another and more formidable expedition was to be sent out in the spring to recapture Kaskaskia, and to assail the various posts on the Kentucky frontier. With his usual promptness and energy, Colonel Clarke prepared to anticipate the enemy, and strike the first blow. He planned an expedition against Vincennes, and on the seventh of Februaryc commenced his march through the wilderness, with one hundred and seventy-five men. He had previously dispatched Captain Rogers and forty men, two four-pounders, and a boat, with orders to force their way up the Wabash to a point near the mouth of White River, and there wait for further orders. For a whole week Colonel Clarke's party traversed the drowned lands of Illinois, suffering every privation from wet, cold, and hunger. When they arrived at the Little Wabash, at a point where the forks of the stream are three miles apart, they found the intervening space covered with water to the depth of three feet. The points of dry land were five miles apart, and all that distance those hardy soldiers waded the cold snow-flood, sometimes armpit deep! On the

e 1779.

evening of the eighteenth,d they halted a little distance from the mouth of Emd Feb., 1779. barrass Creek, and so near Vincennes that they could hear the booming of the evening gun. Here they encamped for the night, and the next morning at dawn, with their faces blackened with gunpowder to make themselves appear hideous, they crossed the river in a boat they had secured, and pushed on through the floods toward the town. Just as they reached dry land, in sight of Vincennes, they captured a resident, and sent him into the town with a letter demanding the immediate surrender of the place and fort. The people, taken by surprise, were greatly alarmed, and believed the expedition to be from Kentucky, composed of the fierce and strong of that advancing commonwealth. Had armed men dropped in their midst from the clouds, they could not have been more astonished, for it

Vincennes is the capital of Knox county, Indiana. It is situated on the east bank of the Wabash River, one hundred miles above its entrance into the Ohio. A French trading post was established there in 1730.

Colonel Hamilton made Prisoner. Detroit.

Tory Emissaries. Dr. Connolly. Official Tampering with the Indians.

seemed impossible for this little band to have traversed the deluged country. The people were disposed to comply with the demand, but Governor Hamilton, who commanded the garrison in person, would not allow it. A siege commenced, and for fourteen hours a furious conflict continued. The next day the town and fort were surrendered, and the garrison were made prisoners of war.' The stars and stripes took the place of the red cross of St. George; a round of thirteen guns proclaimed the victory, and that night the exhausted troops of Colonel Clarke reposed in comfort.

While Boone and his companions were beating back the Indians from the Kentucky frontier, and Colonel Clarke was prosecuting his conquests and establishing the American power over the more westerly posts, Detroit was a position toward which the Continental Congress, and the Assemblies of Pennsylvania and Virginia, looked with anxiety, for it was the focal point of British influence over the Western Indians, and the rendezvous for expeditions against the frontier settlements. Colonel Hamilton, the commandant at that post, was actively engaged, from the commencement of the war, in winning the Indians over to the British interest, and in organizing parties to go out upon the war-path for blood and spoil. Among his most active emissaries were three Tories-Girty, M.Kee, and Elliot, whom I have alluded to on page 264, of the first volume of this work. Governor Dunmore, too, was implicated, as early as the summer of 1775, in the nefarious business of exciting the Indian tribes to fall upon the white settlements on the frontiers of his province, hoping thereby to weaken the powers and resources of the people, then engaged in their struggle for independence. "The capture of Connolly, his chief agent in the business, exposed the whole plot, and made the Continental Congress more vigilant, as well as more determined. General Gage also appears to have been concerned in the measure, and there can not be a doubt that the representatives of royalty in British America were secretly engaged, after the battle of Bunker Hill, in a grand scheme for uniting the various Indian tribes, and bringing them down upon the white people with the desolating fury of a tornado The fidelity of some of the Indian chiefs impeded the consummation of the plan until countervailing measures were taken by Congress, and the darling project of Dunmore and his

associates was frustrated.

Simon Girty, who with Elliot and M Kee had been confined by the patriots at Pittsburgh, burned with a spirit of revenge. He collected about four hundred Indian warriors at Sandusky, in the summer of 1777, and marched toward Limestone (now Maysville), on the Kentucky frontier. Fort Henry, a small establishment near the mouth of Wheeling Creek (now Wheeling), was garrisoned by about forty men, under the command of Colonel Sheppard. The movements of Girty were known at that post, and scouts were kept on the

Governor Hamilton and several of his chief officers were sent to Williamsburg, in Virginia, where, on account of their having incited the Indians to their cruel deeds, they were confined in jail, and heavily ironed. Governor Jefferson used his influence in favor of relieving them of this rigorous treatment. He was successful, and Hamilton and his associates were allowed to go to New York on parole.

John Connolly was a physician, and resided at Pittsburgh, where he and Washington became acquaint ed. At the commencement of the war he took sides with Dunmore, and doubtless suggested to the gov ernor the plan of arousing and combining the Indian tribes against the colonists. He visited General Gage in the autumn of 1775, and ten days after his return to Williamsburg, in Virginia, he left Dunmore and departed for the Ohio country with two companions, Allen Cameron, and Dr. John Smythe. Near Hagerstown, in Maryland, they were stopped as suspicious characters, and taken back to Frederickton. Connolly's papers were concealed in the tree of his saddle. They revealed the whole nefarious plot. It appeared that Connolly had received from Dunmore the appointment of colonel, and was to raise a regiment in the western country and Canada. Detroit was to be his place of rendezvous, from whence, as soon as his forces could be collected, he was to enter Virginia, march to Alexandria in the spring, and there meet Lord Dunmore with a naval armament and another body of troops. Connolly and his papers were sent to Philadelphia; the first was placed in the custody of the jailer, the latter in that of Congress. Connolly was afterward a prisoner in Baltimore, and he was left in durance until about the close of the war.

3 This fort was erected in 1774, during Dunmore's campaign, as a place of refuge. It was first called Fort Fincastle; afterward its name was changed to Henry, in compliment to the great Virginia orator. The fort stood on the south branch of the Ohio, about a quarter of a mile below the mouth of Wheeling Creek.

Girty before Fort Henry. Massacre of a Reconnoitering Party. Attack upon the Fort.

Elizabeth Zane and Mrs. Merrill.

alert. Girty's design seemed to be to cross the Ohio and attack the Kentucky frontier; but, with dextrous caution, he pushed up the river, and, undiscovered by Sheppard's scouts, he appeared before Fort Henry with his fierce followers, early on the morning of the twentysixth of September. Fortunately for the settlers of Wheeling, then a scattered village of about twenty-five log-huts, they had intimations of savages being near on the evening previous, and all had taken refuge in the fort.

The first attack was made upon a reconnoitering party under Captain Mason. The Indians were ambushed, and fell upon the little band without a moment's warning. More than one half of them perished. Captain Ogle, with twelve men, sallied out to the assistance of Mason, and only four of his company escaped. Bullet and tomahawk cut them down, and the garrison was thus reduced to only twelve men and youths, among whom Colonel Sheppard, and Ebenezer and Silas Zane, were the most prominent.1 The women and children of the little settlement were within the pickets, overwhelmed with grief and fear, and all hope for the salvation of the fort and its inmates faded away: At that critical moment, Simon Girty appeared with a white flag, and demanded the unconditional surrender of the fort. Although the assailants outnumbered the garrison forty-fold, the beleaguered resolved to resist, and Colonel Sheppard promptly told the scoundrel that it should never be surrendered to him, nor to any other man, while there was an American left to defend it. Girty was enraged, and immediately ordered a siege The Indians entered the loghouses near the fort for protection, and for six hours they kept up an ineffectual fire against the pickets (for they had no artillery), while the sharp-shooters within seldom sent a bullet upon a fruitless errand of death. At meridian the Indians fell back to the base of Wheeling Hill, and the firing ceased. This season of quiet was employed by the garrison in a bold attempt to bring some powder into the fort, for their ammunition was almost exhausted. This feat was accomplished by an intrepid young woman, a sister of the Zanes.❜

1 Ebenezer Zane became the founder, of Zanesville, in Ohio, twenty years afterward.

2 Elizabeth Zane was the sister of Ebenezer and Silas Zane. She had just returned from Philadelphia, where she had completed her education, and was but little accustomed to the horrors of border warfare. With other females in the fort, she assisted in casting bullets, making cartridges, and loading rifles. When the powder in the fort was exhausted, Ebenezer Zane remembered that there was a keg of the article in his house, sixty yards distant from the fort. The man who should attempt to go for it would be exposed to the close and numerous shots of the Indians. Only one man for the service could be spared from the fort. Colonel Sheppard was unwilling to order any one to the duty; he asked for a volunteer. Every man present eagerly offered to undertake the hazardous duty. They contended so long for the honor, that it was feared that the Indians would return to the siege before an attempt to get the powder should be made. At this moment Elizabeth Zane came forward and asked permission to go for the powder, giving as a reason that her life was of less value to the garrison than that of a man. At first she was peremptorily refused, but so earnest were her solicitations, that consent was reluctantly given. She went out the gate, and fearlessly passed the open space to her brother's house. The Indians saw her, and watched her movements. When she came out of the house, and, with the keg of powder in her arms, sped with the fleetness of a fawn toward the fort, they sent a full volley of bullets after her, but not a ball touched her person. The shield of God's providence was about her, and the noble girl entered the fort in safety with her valu able prize. A loud shout welcomed her, and every man, inspired by her heroism, resolved to repulse the foe or die in the trench. Elizabeth Zane was twice married. The name of her first husband was M'Laughlin; of the second, Clarke. She resided on the Ohio side of the river, near Wheeling, until withThe story of Elizabeth Zane ought to be perpetuated in marble, and preserved in the Valhalla of our Revolutionary heroes. The history of our Western States is full of the chronicles of heroic women, who boldly battled with the privations incident to new settlements, or engaged in actual conflicts with the Indian tribes upon lands which the white men wrongfully invaded. Elizabeth Zane was a type of the moral, and Mrs. Merrill of the physical heroines of that day. During the summer of 1787, the house of John Merrill, in Nelson county, Kentucky, was attacked by a party of Indians. It was midnight when the approach of the savages was announced by the barking of a dog. Mr. Merrill opened the door to ascertain the cause of the disturbance, when he received the fire of five or six rifles, and his thigh and arm were broken. He fell, and called to his wife to close the door. She was an Amazon in strength and courage, and seizing an ax for defense, closed the door just as several Indians approached with tomahawks. They soon made a breach and attempted to enter. Mrs. Merrill killed or badly wounded four of them with the ax, and maintained her post. The Indians ascended the roof, and essayed to enter the house by the broad chimney. Mrs. Merrill seized her only feather-bed, ripped it open, and cast the contents upon the fire. The suffocating smoke

in the last ten years.

Effect of a Log Field-piece.

Arrival of Succor.

Abandonment of the Siege.

Escape of M-Culloch.

The assailants renewed the attack at half past two o'clock. Again they took possession of the cabins near the fort, and were thus covered from the fire of the Republicans. They also attempted to force the gate of the fort, but were obliged to abandon it after six of their number were shot down. Still they eagerly sought to secure their prey within. Approaching darkness did not end the conflict. The Indians converted a hollow maple log into a field piece, and after dark conveyed it within sixty yards of the fort. It was bound with chains, filled to the muzzle with stones, pieces of iron, and other missiles, and discharged against the gates of the fort. The log burst into a thousand fragments, and its projectiles were scattered in all directions. Several Indians were killed, but not a picket of the fort was injured. This failure of their artillery discouraged the assailants, and the conflict ceased for the night. At four o'clock in the morning,a Colonel Swearingen and four- a Sept. 28, teen men arrived, and fought their way into the fort without losing a man; and

1777.

at daybreak Major M Culloch arrived with forty mounted men. His followers entered the fort in safety, but he, being separated from his companions, was obliged to flee to the open country. He narrowly escaped falling into the hands of the Indians, who thirsted for his blood, for he was their most skillful enemy. They hated him intensely, and yearned to sub

ject him to their keenest tortures.'

Girty and his fellow-savages abandoned all hope of capturing the fort, after this augmentation of the garrison, and, setting fire to the houses and fences outside of the palisades, and killing about three hundred head of cattle belonging to the settlers, they raised the siege and departed for the wilderness." Not a man of the garrison was lost during the siege; twentythree of the forty-two in the fort were slain at the first attack, before the siege commenced. The loss of the enemy was between sixty and one hundred." The defense of Fort Henry was one of the most remarkable for courage, on record, and deserves far more prominence in the catalogue of battles for independence than has generally been awarded to it by historians.

Early in 1778, Congress sent three commissioners to Pittsburgh to make observations, and determine the importance of Detroit as a place of rendezvous for the hostile tribes. They reported the activity of the commander, and his influence among the Indians, and represented the necessity of sending an expedition against that post immediately. Congress resolved to do so, but the financial embarrassments of the government, then fearfully increasing, rendered an expedition so expensive quite incompatible. The design was reluct antly abandoned, and in lieu thereof, General Lachlin M'Intosh, then commanding the western department, was ordered to march from Fort Pitt (his head-quarters), with a sufficient force, against the principal Indian towns in the Ohio country, and so to chastise them

4

brought two of the savages down almost insensible. These she dispatched with the ax. The only remaining savage now tried to force his way in through the door. Across his cheek Mrs. Merrill drew the keen blade of the ax. With a horrid yell, he fled to the woods, and, arriving at Chillicothe, gave a terrible account of the strength and fury of the "long knife squaw." I might fill pages with similar recitals. For such records, see M'Clung's Sketches of Western Adventure.

The Indians might have killed Major M'Culloch, but they determined to take him alive and torture him. His horse was fleet, but the savages managed to hem him in on three sides, while on the fourth was an almost perpendicular precipice of one hundred and fifty feet descent, with Wheeling Creek at its base. He had the single alternative, surrender to the Indians, or leap the precipice. His horse was a powerful animal. Gathering his reins tightly in his right hand, and grasping his rifle in his left, M'Culloch spurred his charger to the brow of the declivity and made the momentous leap. They reached the foot of the bluff in safety, and the noble animal dashed through the creek, and bore his rider far away from his pursuers. Simon Girty was the offspring of crime. His father, a native of Ireland, and settler in Pennsylvania, was a sot; his mother was a bawd. They had four sons; Simon was the second. With two brothers, he was made a prisoner by the Indians at Braddock's defeat. His brother James was adopted by the Delawares, and became the fiercest savage of the tribe. Simon was adopted by the Senecas, became a great hunter, and exercised his innate wickedness to its fullest extent. For twenty years the name of Simon Girty was a terror to the women and children of the Ohio country. He possessed the redeeming quality of honesty in all his transactions. It was his earnest wish that he might die in battle. That wish was gratified; he was killed at Proctor's defeat in the battle of the Thames, on the fifth of October, 1813. 3 American Pioneer. * See Journals of Congress, iv., 245 and 305.