(32KB) booneBoone
In 1755, Boone married and built a log cabin far up the Yadkin, where he had no neighbors; but as the years passed, other families settled near; the smoke of other cabins rose above the woods; his fields were bounded by rude fences; he could scarcely stir out without encountering some neighbor. It was too crowded for Daniel Boone; he felt the same sensation that your nature lover feels to-day in the midst of a teeming city—a sense of suffocation and disgust—and he finally determined to move still further westward, and to cross the mountains into Kentucky, concerning whose richness many stories had reached his ears. He persuaded six men to accompany him, and on the first day of May, 1769, set forth on the perilous journey which was to mark the beginning of his life-work.
Up to that time, the Alleghany Mountains had marked a boundary beyond which white settlers dared not go, for to the west lay great reaches of forest, uninhabited except for wild beasts and still wilder bands of roving Indians. Into this forest, Boone and his companions plunged, and after some weeks of wandering, emerged into the beautiful and fertile country of Kentucky—a country not owned by any Indian tribe, but visited only by wandering war- and hunting-parties from the nations living north of the Ohio or south of the Tennessee. Theparty found game in abundance, especially great droves of buffalo, and spent some months in hunting and exploring. A roving war-party stumbled upon one of Boone's companions, and forthwith killed him; a second soon met the same fate, and Boone himself had more than one narrow escape. The danger grew so great, that the other members of the party returned over the mountains, and Boone was, for a time, left alone, as he himself put it, "without company of any fellow-creature, or even a horse or dog."
His brother joined him after a time, and the two spent the winter together. Game furnished abundant food, and the only danger was from the Indians, but that was an ever-present one. Sometimes they slept in hollow trees, at other times, they changed their resting-place every night, and after making a fire, would go off for a mile or two in the woods to sleep. Unceasing vigilance was the price of safety. When spring came, Boone's brother returned over the mountains, and again he was left alone. Three months later the brother came back, bringing a party of hunters, but no one was inclined to settle in so dangerous a locality, the struggle to possess which was so fierce that it became known as "the dark and bloody ground."
In 1773, Boone himself started to lead a band of settlers over the mountains, but while passing through the frowning defiles of the Cumberland Gap, they were attacked by Indians and driven back, two of Boone's sons being among the slain. Huntingparties crossed the mountains from time to time after that, and made great inroads on the vast herds of game, but the Indians were in arms everywhere, and not until they had been defeated at the battle of Point Pleasant, the bloodiest in the history of Virginia with its Indian foe, did they sue for peace.
The coming of peace marked a new era in the development of the western country. Some years before, a company of men headed by Richard Henderson, had conceived the grandiose project of founding in the west a great colony, and had purchased from the Cherokee Indians a vast tract of land, which they named Transylvania. It included all the land between the Cumberland and Kentucky rivers, and Daniel Boone was selected to blaze a way into the wilderness, to mark out a road, and start the first settlement. He got a party together, crossed the mountains, and on April 1, 1775, began to build a fort on the left bank of the Kentucky river, calling it Fort Boone, afterwards Boonesborough. Some settlers moved in, but the outbreak of the Revolution and the consequent renewal of Indian hostilities under encouragement from the British put a stop to immigration.
The fort, alone and unprotected in the wilderness, was soon attacked by a great war-party, but managed to beat off the assailants. Shortly afterwards, while leading an expedition to the Blue Licks, on the Licking river, to secure a supply of salt, Boone became separated from his men, and was surprised and captured by an Indian war-party. The joy ofthe savages at this capture may be imagined, for they had in their hands their most intrepid foe. After being exhibited to the British at Detroit, he was brought back to the Indian settlements north of the Ohio, and formally adopted into an Indian family, for the savages desired, if possible, to make this mighty hunter and warrior one of themselves. And Boone might have really adopted Indian life, which appealed to him in many ways, but one day he found that preparations were on foot for another great expedition against Boonesborough. Watching his opportunity, he managed to escape, and reached the fort in time to warn it of the impending attack. He covered the distance, 160 miles, in four days, eating but a single meal upon the road—a turkey which he managed to shoot.
He came to Boonesborough like one risen from the dead. The fort was at once put into a state of defense, and endured the most savage assault ever directed against it, the Indians numbering nearly five hundred, while the garrison mustered but sixty-five. The siege lasted for nine days, when the Indians, despairing of overcoming a resistance so desperate, retired.
The succeeding years were full of adventure and hair-breadth escapes, which cannot even be mentioned here. On one occasion, Boone and his brother, Squire, were surprised by Indians; the latter was killed and scalped and Boone escaped with the greatest difficulty. At the battle of Blue Licks, two years later, two sons fought at his side, one ofwhom was killed and the other severely wounded. But Boone seemed to bear a charmed life. His years in the wilderness had developed in him an almost supernatural keenness of sight and hearing; and constant peril from the Indians had made him very careful. Whenever he went into the woods after game or Indians, he had perpetually to keep watch to make sure that he was not being hunted in turn. Every turkey-call might mean a lurking savage, every cracking twig might mean an approaching foe.
On one occasion, his daughter and two other girls were carried off by Indians, and Boone, raising a small company, followed the trail of the fugitives without resting for two days and a night; then came to where the Indians had killed a buffalo calf and were camped around it, never dreaming of danger. So Boone and his men crept up on them, shot down the Indians and rescued the girls. On still another occasion, he was pursued by Indians, who used a tracking dog to follow his trail. Boone turned, shot the dog, and then made good his escape. Such incidents might be related by the dozen. No wonder Boone was considered one of the most valuable men on the frontier, and was a very tower of strength in defending it against the Indians.
The end, however, was sad enough. When Kentucky was admitted to the Union, Boone's titles to the land he had laid out for himself were declared to be defective; it was all taken from him, and he moved first to Ohio, and then to Missouri, where he spent his last years. He was hale and hearty almostto the end, leading a hunting-party to the mouth of the Kansas when he was eighty-two years old, and completely tiring out its younger members. Nearly at the end of his life, Congress recognized his services to his country by granting him eight hundred and fifty acres of land in Missouri, and on this grant, the last years of his life were spent. Chester Harding visited him just before the end and painted a portrait of him which remains the best delineation of the redoubtable old pioneer, whose striking face tells of the resolute will, and unshrinking courage which made the settlement of Kentucky possible.
Scarcely less prominent than Boone on the Kentucky frontier, and with a career in many ways even more adventurous, was Simon Kenton. Born in Virginia in 1755, he had grown to young manhood, rough and uncultivated, and with little evidence of having been raised in a civilized community. At the age of sixteen, he had a desperate affray with a neighbor named William Veach, during which he caught Veach around the body, whirled him into the air, and dashed him to the ground with such violence, that he thought he had broken his neck. Not daring to return home or to linger in the neighborhood, for fear his crime would be discovered and he himself arrested and hanged, he plunged into the wilderness and made his way westward over the mountains, changing his name to Simon Butler.
The two or three years following were spent by him in roaming along the Ohio valley, sometimes alone, sometimes with two or three companions, andalways surrounded by danger. On one occasion, his camp was surprised by Indians, and he and his companion were forced to flee for their lives without weapons of any kind, and with no clothing but their shirts. For six days and nights, they wandered without fire or food, suffering from the cold, for it was the dead of winter, and so torn and lacerated that on the last two days they covered only six miles, most of it on hands and knees. Staggering and crawling forward, they came out at last upon the Ohio river, and by good fortune fell in with a hunting-party and were saved.
Kenton's life was full of just such incidents. Daniel Boone found in him a most valuable ally, incapable of fear and with a knowledge of woodcraft surpassed only by Boone himself. Kenton was inside Boone's fort whenever it was in danger, and on one occasion saved Boone's life. Let us tell the story, for it is typical of the border warfare in which both Boone and Kenton were so expert.
One morning, having loaded their guns for a hunt, Kenton and two companions were standing in the gate of Fort Boone, when two men, who were driving in some horses from a near-by field, were fired upon by Indians. They fled toward the fort, the Indians after them, and one of them was overtaken and killed and was being scalped, when Kenton and his companions ran up, killed one of the Indians and pursued the others to the edge of the clearing. Boone, meanwhile, had heard the firing, and came hurrying out with reinforcements, only, a momentlater, to be cut off from the fort by a strong body of savages. There was nothing to do but to cut their way back through them, and in the charge, Boone received a ball through the leg, breaking the bone. As he fell, the Indian leader raised his tomahawk to kill him, but Kenton, seeing his comrade's peril, shot the Indian through the heart, and succeeded in dragging Boone inside the fort.
During the Dunmore war, Kenton ranged the Indian country as a spy, carrying his life in his hand, and accompanied George Rogers Clark on his famous Illinois campaign. A short time later, with one or two others, he started on an expedition to run off some horses from the Miami villages, and had nearly succeeded, when he was captured. The Indians hated him more bitterly than they hated Boone himself, and they prepared to enjoy themselves at his expense. They bound him to a wild horse and chased the horse through the forest until their captive's face was torn and bleeding from the lashing of the branches; they staked him down at night so that he could not move hand or foot, and when they reached their town, the whole population turned out to make him run the gauntlet. The Indians formed in a double line, about six feet apart, each armed with a heavy club, and Kenton was forced to run between them. He had not gone far when he saw ahead of him an Indian with drawn knife, prepared to plunge it into him as he passed. By a mighty effort, he broke through the line, but was soon recaptured, lashed with whips, pelted with stones, branded withred-hot irons, and condemned to be burnt at the stake.
But before killing him, the Indians concluded to lend him to other towns to have some sport with, so he was taken from town to town, compelled to run the gauntlet at each one, and subjected to a variegated list of tortures. Three or four times, he was tied to a stake for the final execution, but each time the Indians decided to wait a while longer. Finally, an Englishman got the Indians to consent to send Kenton for a visit to Detroit, and he spent the winter there. Then, with two other captives, and with the help of a kind-hearted Irish woman, he managed to escape, and made his way back to Kentucky—over four hundred miles through the Indian country, narrowly escaping death a hundred times—in thirty-three days.
There he learned that he need not have fled from Pennsylvania, that the man with whom he had fought years before was not dead, but had recovered. For the first time since his appearance in the west, he assumed his real name, and was known thereafter as Simon Kenton. Soon afterwards he returned to his old home, and brought the whole family back with him to Kentucky. One would have thought he had had enough of fighting, but he was with Wayne at the Fallen timbers and with William Henry Harrison at the battle of the Thames. Sadly enough, the last years of this old hero were passed in want. His land in Kentucky was taken from him by speculators because he had failed to have it properly registered,and he was imprisoned for debt on the spot where he had reared the first cabin in northern Kentucky.
In the spring of 1824, an old, tattered, weather-beaten figure appeared on the streets of Frankfort, the capital of Kentucky. So strange and wild it was that a gang of street boys gathered and ran hooting after it. Men laughed—till suddenly, one of them, looking again, recognized Simon Kenton. In a moment a guard of honor was formed, and the tattered figure was conducted to the Capitol, placed in the speaker's chair, and for the first and only time in his life, Simon Kenton received some portion of the respect and homage to which his deeds entitled him.
Boone and Kenton, with a handful of hardy and fearless pioneers, laid the foundations of Kentucky; but in the history of the "Old Northwest," the country north of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi, one name stands out transcendent; the name of a man as daring, as brave, as resourceful as any on the border—George Rogers Clark. He was greater than Boone or Kenton in that he had a wider vision; they saw only the duties of the present; he saw the possibilities of the future, and his exploits form one of the most thrilling chapters of American history.
Clark, a Virginian by birth, started out in life as a surveyor, and early in 1775, removed to Kentucky to follow his profession. There was, no doubt, plenty of surveying to be done there, since the whole country was an uncharted wilderness, but the beginningof the Revolution was accompanied by an immediate outbreak of Indian hostilities, so serious that the very existence of the Kentucky settlements was threatened. Soon all but two of them, Boonesborough and Harrodsburg, had to be abandoned. Boone was, of course, in command at his fort, and Clark, who had seen some service in Dunmore's war, became the natural leader at Harrod's. His influence rapidly increased, and he was chosen as a delegate to journey to Williamsburg and urge upon Virginia the needs of the western colony, which lay within her chartered limits.
Clark set off without delay on the long and dangerous journey, reached Williamsburg, gained an audience of Patrick Henry, the governor of Virginia, and painted the needs of Kentucky in such colors that he soon gained the sympathy of the impulsive and warm-hearted governor, and together they secured from the Assembly a large gift of lead and powder for the protection of the frontier. More than that, they succeeded in making Virginia acknowledge her responsibility for the new colony by constituting it the county of Kentucky. This, it may be added, put an end forever to Henderson's dream of the independent colony of Transylvania.
Clark got his powder and ball safe to Harrodsburg just in time to repel a desperate Indian assault; but it was evident that there would be no safety for the Kentucky settlements so long as England controlled the country north of the Ohio. All that region formed a part of what was known as the Provinceof Quebec. Here and there dotted through it were quaint little towns of French Creoles, the most important being Detroit, Vincennes on the Wabash, and Kaskaskia and Kahokia on the Illinois. These French villages were ruled by British officers commanding small bodies of regular soldiers, and keeping the Indians in a constant state of war against their Kentucky neighbors, furnishing them with arms and ammunition, and rewarding them for every expedition they undertook against the Americans. They had no idea that any band of Americans which could be mustered west of the mountains would dare to attack them, and so were careless in their guard, and maintained only small garrisons at the various forts.
All this Clark found out by means of spies which he sent through the country, and finally, having his plan matured, he went again to Virginia in December, 1777, and laid before Governor Henry his whole idea, explaining in detail why he thought it could be carried out successfully. Henry was at once enthused with it, so daring and full of promise he thought it, and he enlisted the aid of Thomas Jefferson. The result was that when Clark set out on his return journey, it was with orders not only to defend Kentucky, but to attack Kaskaskia and the other British posts, and he carried with him £1,200 in paper money, and an order on the commander of Fort Pitt for such boats and ammunition as he might need.
With great difficulty, Clark got together a force ofabout a hundred and fifty men, one of whom was Simon Kenton. He could not get many volunteers from Kentucky because the settlers there thought they had all they could do to defend their own forts without going out to attack the enemy's and only a few men could be spared. In May, 1778, this little force started down the Ohio in flat boats, and landing just before they reached the Mississippi, marched northward against Kaskaskia, where the British commander of the entire district had his headquarters. Clark knew that his force was outnumbered by the garrison and that it would be necessary to surprise the town. After a six days' march across country, he came to the outskirts of the village on the evening of July 4th, and found a great dance in progress in the fort. Waiting until the revelry was at its height, Clark advanced silently, surprised the sentries, and surrounded the fort without causing any alarm. Then with his men posted, Clark walked forward through the open door, and leaning against the wall, watched the dancers, as they whirled around by the light of the flaring torches.
Suddenly an Indian, after looking at him for a moment, raised the war-whoop; the dancing ceased, but Clark, shouting at the top of his voice to still the confusion, bade the dancers continue, asking them only to remember that thereafter they were dancing under the flag of the United States, instead of that of Great Britain. A few moments later, the commandant was captured in his bed, and the investment was complete. The other settlements in theneighborhood surrendered at once, so that the Illinois country was captured without the firing of a gun.
But when the news reached the British governor, Hamilton, at Detroit, he at once prepared to recapture the country. He had a much larger force at his command than Clark could possibly muster, and in the fall of the year he advanced against Vincennes at the head of over five hundred men. The little American garrison was unable to oppose such a force and was compelled to surrender. Instead of pushing on against Clark at Kaskaskia, Hamilton disbanded his Indians and sent some of his troops back to Detroit, and prepared to spend the winter at Vincennes. He repaired the fort, strengthened the defenses, and then sat down for the winter, confident that when spring came, he would again be master of the whole Illinois country.
Clark, at Kaskaskia, realized that it was a question of his taking the British or the British taking him, and that, if he waited for spring, he would have no chance at all; so he gathered together the pick of his men, one hundred and seventy all told, and early in February, 1779, set out for Vincennes. The task before him was to capture a force nearly equal to his own, protected by a strong fort well supplied for a siege.
At first the journey was easy enough, for they passed across the snowy Illinois prairies, broken occasionally by great stretches of woodland, but when they reached the drowned lands of the Wabash, the march became almost incredibly difficult. The icehad just broken up and everything was flooded; heavy rains set in, and when the men were not wading through icy water, they were struggling through mud nearly knee-deep. After twelve days of this, they came to the bank of the Embarass river, only to find the country all under water, save one little hillock, where they spent the night without food or fire. For four days they waited there for the flood to retire, with practically nothing to eat; but the rain continued and the flood increased, and Clark, finally, in desperation, plunged into the water and called to his men to follow. All day they waded, and toward evening reached a small patch of dry ground, where they spent a miserable night. At sunrise Clark started on again, through icy water waist-deep, this time with the stern command to shoot the first laggard. Some of the men failed and sank beneath the waves, to be rescued by the stronger ones, and by the middle of the afternoon they had all got safe to land. By good fortune, they captured some Indian squaws with a canoe-load of food, and had their first meal in two days. Soon afterwards the sun came out, and they saw before them the walls of the fort they had come to capture.
The British had no suspicion of their danger, and they thought the first patter of bullets against the palisades the usual friendly salute from an Indian hunting party. But they were soon undeceived, and answered the rifles with ineffective fire from their two small cannon. All night the fight continued, and at dawn an Indian war-party, which had been ravagingthe Kentucky settlements, entered the town, ignorant that the Americans had captured it. Marching up to the fort, they suddenly found themselves surrounded and seized. In their belts they carried the scalps of the settlers—men, women and children—they had slain, and, infuriated at the sight, the Americans tomahawked the savages, one after another, before the eyes of the British.
Then Clark sent to the fort a peremptory summons to surrender, adding, that "his men were eager to avenge the murder of their relatives and friends and would welcome an excuse to storm the fort." To the British, it seemed a choice between surrender and massacre. They had seen the bloody vengeance wreaked upon their Indian allies, and they had every reason to believe that they would be dealt with in the same manner, since it was they who had set the Indians on. Clark was himself, of course, in desperate straits, without means for carrying on a successful siege, but the British were far from suspecting this, and at ten o'clock on the morning of February 25, 1779, marched out and stacked arms, while Clark fired a salute of thirteen guns in honor of the colonies, from whose possession the Northwest was never again to pass.
For eight years longer, Clark devoted his life to protecting the border from British and Indian invasion. The war over, he returned to Kentucky, and took up his abode in a little log cabin on the Ohio near Louisville. He was without means, and a horrible accident marred his last years, for, whilealone in his cabin, he was stricken with paralysis, and fell with one of his legs in the old-fashioned fire-place. There was no one to draw him out of danger, and before the pain brought him partially to his senses, his leg was so badly burned that it had to be amputated. There were no anaesthetics in those days, but while the leg was being removed, a fife and drum corps played its hardest at the bedside, and the doughty old warrior kept time to the music with his fingers.
He lived for ten years thereafter, though his paralysis never left him. He felt keenly the ingratitude of the Republic which he had served so well, and which yet, in his old age, abandoned him to want, and the story is told that, when the state of Virginia sent him a sword of honor, he thrust it into the ground and broke it with his crutch.
"I gave Virginia a sword when she needed one," he said; "but now, when I need bread, she sends me a toy!"
In the settlement of the country north of the Ohio, one man, a veteran of the Revolution, was foremost. His name was Rufus Putnam, and he was a cousin of that Israel Putnam, some of whose exploits we will soon relate. He has been well called the "Father of Ohio," for he was the founder of the first permanent white settlement made within the borders of the state. He was born in 1738, at Sutton, Massachusetts, and his early life was a hard and rough one. Left an orphan while still a child, he was put towork as soon as he was big enough to be of any use, and received practically no education, although he managed to teach himself to read and write. He earned a few pennies by watering horses for travelers, and with this money purchased a spelling-book and arithmetic.
He served through the French war and the Revolution, rendering distinguished service and retiring with the rank of brigadier-general; and at its close, finding that Congress would be unable for a long time to pay many of the soldiers for their services, he became interested in the suggestion that payment be made in land along the Ohio river, and offered to lead a band of settlers to their new homes. In March, 1786, in Boston, he and some others formed the Ohio Company, and one of their directors, Manasseh Cutler, a preacher of more than usual ability, was selected to lay the company's plan before Congress. The result was the famous ordinance of 1787, providing for the establishment and government of the Northwest Territory, of which Arthur St. Clair was named governor. Cutler also secured a large land grant for the new company, and in the following year, Putnam started across the mountains with the first band of emigrants.
They reached the vicinity of Pittsburg after a weary journey, and there built a boat which they named the Mayflower, and in it floated down the river, until they reached the mouth of the Muskingum. On April 17, 1788, they began the erection of a blockhouse, which was to be the nucleus of thenew settlement, and a place of defense in case of Indian attack. The settlement was named Marietta, in honor of Marie Antoinette, the Queen of France; it prospered from the first, and in a few years was a lively little village. There were Indian alarms at first, but General Wayne's victory secured a lasting peace. Putnam served as a brigadier-general in Wayne's campaign, and was one of the commissioners who negotiated the peace treaty.
He lived for many years thereafter, and remained to the last the leading man of the settlement. He was interested in every project for the betterment of the new Commonwealth, helped to found the Ohio University at Athens, was one of the drafters of the state constitution, and founded the first Bible school west of the mountains. A venerable figure, he died in 1824, having lived to see the valley which he had entered a wilderness settled by hundreds of thousands, and the state which he had helped to found become one of the greatest in the Union.
By the end of the eighteenth century, the country between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi was fairly well known, first through the explorations of such pioneers as Boone and Clark and Kenton, and, later on, through the steady advance of civilization, forever throwing new outposts westward. But beyond the great river stretched a mighty wilderness whose character and extent were only guessed at. The United States, of course, had little interest in it, since it belonged to France, and since, east of theriver, there were millions of acres as yet unsettled; but when, in 1803, President Jefferson purchased it of Napoleon Bonaparte for the sum of fifteen million dollars, all that was changed. By that purchase, the area of the United States was more than doubled; but there were many people at the time who opposed the purchase on the ground that the country east of the river would never be thoroughly settled and that there would be no use whatever for the great territory west of it. So mistaken, sometimes, is human foresight!
The President determined that this great addition to the Nation should be explored without delay, and, securing from Congress the necessary powers, he appointed his private secretary, Captain Meriwether Lewis, to head an expedition to the Pacific.
Lewis was at that time twenty-nine years of age. He seems to have been of an adventurous disposition for, despite the fact that he inherited a fortune, he enlisted in the army as a private as soon as he was of age. Five years later, he had risen to the rank of captain, and, attracting the attention of President Jefferson, he was appointed his secretary. He proved to be so capable and enterprising that the President selected him for this dangerous and arduous task of exploration. With him was associated Lieutenant William Clark, a brother of that hardy adventurer, George Rogers Clark.
William Clark, who was eighteen years younger than his famous brother, had joined him in Kentucky in 1784, at the age of fourteen, and soon becameacquainted with the perils of Indian warfare. He was appointed ensign in the army four years later, and rose to the rank of adjutant, but was compelled to resign, from the service in 1796, on account of ill-health. He settled at the half-Spanish town of St. Louis, and in March, 1804, was appointed by President Jefferson a second lieutenant of artillery, with orders to join Captain Lewis in his journey to the Pacific. Clark was really the military director of the expedition, and his knowledge of Indian life and character had much to do with its success.
The party consisted of twenty-eight men, and in the spring of 1804, started up the Missouri, following it until late in October, when they camped for the winter near the present site of Bismarck, North. Dakota. They resumed the journey early in the spring, and in May, caught their first glimpse of the Rocky Mountains. Reaching the headwaters of the Columbia, at last, they floated down its current, and on the morning of November 7, 1806, after a journey of a year and a half, full of every sort of hardship and adventure, they saw ahead of them the blue expanse of the Pacific. They spent the winter on the coast, and reached St. Louis again in September, 1807, having traversed over nine thousand miles of unbroken wilderness where no white man had ever before set foot. It was largely because of this expedition that our government was able, forty years later, to claim and maintain a title to the state of Oregon.
Congress rewarded the members of the expedition with grants of land, and Lewis was appointed governor of Missouri. But the strain of the expedition to the Pacific had undermined his health; he became subject to fits of depression, and on October 8, 1809, he put an end to his life in a lonely cabin near Nashville, Tennessee, where he had stopped for a night's lodging. Clark lived thirty years longer, serving as Indian agent, governor of Missouri, and superintendent of Indian affairs.
While Lewis and Clark were struggling across the continent, another young adventurer was conducting some explorations farther to the east. Zebulon Pike, aged twenty-seven, a captain in the regular army, was, in 1805, appointed to lead an expedition to the source of the Mississippi. He accomplished this, after a hard journey lasting nine months; and, a year later, leading another expedition to the southwest, discovered a great mountain which he named Pike's Peak, and, continuing southward, came out on the Rio Grande. He was in Spanish territory, and was held prisoner for a time, but was finally released upon representations from the government at Washington. He rose steadily in the service, and in 1813, during the second war with England, led an assault upon Little York, now Toronto. The town was captured, but the fleeing British exploded a powder magazine, and General Pike was crushed and killed beneath the flying fragments. He died with his head on the British flag, which had been hauled down and brought to him.
The next step to be recorded in the growth of the United States is a step variously regarded as infamous or glorious—but it was marked by one of the most heroic incidents in history, and dominated by the picturesque and remarkable personality of Sam Houston.
The purchase of Louisiana from the French brought the United States in direct contact with Mexico, which claimed a great territory in the southwest, and, finally, in 1819, a line between the possessions of the two countries was agreed upon. It left Mexico in possession of the wide stretch of country now included in the states of California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas. Most of this country was practically unknown to Americans, and the great stretches of arid land which comprised large portions of it were considered worthless and uninhabitable. But a good many Americans had drifted across the border into the fertile plains of Texas, and settled there. As time went on, the stream of immigration increased, until there were in the country enough American settlers to take a prominent part in the revolt of Mexico against Spain in 1824. The revolt was successful, and the country which had discovered the New World lost her last foothold there.
The settlers in Texas, coming as they did largely from the southern states, were naturally slave-holders, but in 1829, Mexico abolished slavery, an action which greatly enraged them. It is startling to reflect that a country which we consider so inferiorto ourselves should have preceded us by over thirty years in this great step forward in civilization. In other ways, the Mexican yoke was not a pleasant one to the Texans, and within a few years, the whole country was in a state of seething insurrection. President Jackson was eager to annex Texas, whose value to the Union he fully recognized, and offered Mexico five million dollars for the province, but the offer was refused. Such was the condition of affairs when, in 1833, Sam Houston appeared upon the scene.
The story of the life of this extraordinary man reads like a fable. Born in Virginia in 1793, he was taken to Tennessee at the age of thirteen, and promptly began his career by running away from home and joining the Cherokee Indians. When his family found him, he refused to return home, and the next seven years were spent largely in the wilderness with his savage friends. The wild life was congenial to him, and he grew up rough and head-strong and healthy. Then the Creek war broke out, and Houston enlisted with Andrew Jackson. One incident of that war gives a better insight into Houston's character than volumes of description. At the battle of the Horseshoe, where the Creeks made a desperate stand, a barbed arrow struck Houston in the thigh and sank deep into the flesh. He tried to pull it out and failed.
"Here," he called to a comrade, "pull out this arrow."
The other took hold of the shaft of the arrow and pulled with all his might, but could not dislodge it.
"I can't get it out," he said, at last.
"Oh, yes, you can!" cried Houston, and raised his sword. "Pull it out, or it'll be worse for you!"
The soldier saw he was in earnest, and, taking hold of the arrow again, gave it a mighty wrench. It came out, but the barbs of the arrow tore the flesh badly. Houston, however, paused only to tie up the wound roughly, and hurried back into the fight, though Jackson ordered him to the rear. Before long, two bullets struck him down, and he lay between life and death for many days.
Such desperate valor was exactly after "Old Hickory's" heart, and from that time forward, Jackson was Houston's friend and patron. In 1818, he managed to gain admittance to the bar, and his rise was so rapid that within five years he had been elected to Congress, and four years later governor of Tennessee. Then came the strange catastrophe which nearly wrecked his life.
Houston was, after Andrew Jackson, the most popular man in the state. He resembled the hero of New Orleans in many ways, being rough, rude, hot-headed and honest—just the sort of man to appeal to the people among whom his lot was cast. When, therefore, in January, 1829, while governor of the state, he married Miss Eliza Allen, a member of one of the most prominent families in it, everybody wished him well, and the wedding was a great affair. But scarcely was the honeymoon over, when he sent his bride back to her parents, resigned the governorship,and, refusing to give any explanation of his conduct, plunged into the wilderness to the west.
Perhaps the most characteristic feature of frontier society is its chivalry toward women, and Houston's conduct brought about his head a perfect storm of indignation. No doubt he had many enemies who welcomed the opportunity to wreck his fame, and who gladly added their voices to the uproar. From the most popular man, he became the most hated, and it would have been dangerous for him to venture back within the state's borders. Not until after his death, did his wife give any explanation of his conduct. She stated that he had discovered that she loved another, and that he had deserted her so that she could secure a divorce on the ground of abandonment. That explanation, lame as it is, is the only one ever offered by either of the principals.
Meanwhile, Houston had joined his old friends, the Cherokees, now living in Arkansas Territory, and asked to be admitted to the tribe. The Indians expressed the opinion that he should have beaten his wife instead of abandoning her, but nevertheless adopted him, and for three years he lived their life, dressing, fighting, hunting and drinking precisely like any Indian. The papers, meanwhile, were filled with surmises concerning him. No one understood why he should have exiled himself, and it was reported that he intended to lead the Cherokees into Texas, conquer the country and set up a government of his own. President Jackson wrote to him, protesting against "any such chimerical, visionary scheme,"which, needless to say, Houston had never entertained. These rumors grew so annoying, that he issued a proclamation offering a prize "To the Author of the Most Elegant, Refined, and Ingenious Lie or Calumny" about him.
The trouble culminated when Houston, having gone to Washington to plead for his friends, the Indians, caned a member of Congress who had slandered him on the floor of the House. He was arrested, and arraigned before the bar of the House for "breach of privilege," and was reprimanded by the Speaker and fined five hundred dollars—a fine which President Jackson promptly remitted, remarking that a few more examples of the same kind would teach Congressmen to keep civil tongues in their heads. Houston's comment on the affair was, "I was dying out once, and, had they taken me before a justice of the peace and fined me ten dollars for assault and battery, it would have killed me; but they gave me a national tribunal for a theatre and it set me up again."
It did "set him up" in earnest. The President, who always had a warm place in his heart for him, helped by sending him—not, perhaps, without some insight into the future—to Texas, to examine into the value of that country, in case the United States should decide to buy it. What Jackson's private instructions were can only be surmised, but, certainly, Houston showed no hesitation or uncertainty after he reached the scene.
On December 10, 1832, he crossed into Mexicanterritory, and was soon at the head of the Texas insurrectionists, who had determined to establish a government of their own, and who found in Houston a leader after their own hearts. Armed collisions between Texans and Mexican troops became of common occurrence, and the spirit of revolt spread so rapidly that Santa Anna, dictator of Mexico, sent an army under General Cos to pacify the country and drive the Americans out.
It was the spark in the magazine. All Texas sprang to arms under such leaders as Houston, Austin, Travis, Bonham, Fannin, "Deaf" Smith, and "Ben" Milam; took Goliad, where Milam lost his life heading a desperate assault; captured Concepçion and San Antonio, until, by the middle of December, 1836, not a Mexican soldier was left north of the Rio Grande. But Houston, who had been appointed commander-in-chief of the Texan forces, knew they would return, and bent every effort to organize a disciplined army. It was a difficult thing to do with the high-tempered and lawless elements at hand; everything was disorder and confusion, and meanwhile came word that Santa Anna himself, at the head of an army of six thousand men, was entering Texas.
No effective opposition could be offered such an army; the San Antonio garrison was entrapped in the old mission called The Alamo and killed to the last man; Fannin and his force, three hundred and fifty strong, were cornered at Goliad and brutally shot down in detachments after they had surrendered;and Santa Anna, certain that Texas had been conquered, divided his army into columns to occupy the country. Houston only was left, and the fate of Texas hung on his little force; he knew he could strike but once; if he were defeated, the war for independence would end then and there; so he watched and waited, gathering together the stragglers, keeping them in heart, laboring like a very Hercules. Hundreds of miles away, in Washington, old Andrew Jackson, a map of Texas before him, followed with his finger the retreat as far as he knew it, and paused with in on San Jacinto.
"Here's the place," he said. "If Sam Houston's worth one bawbee, he'll stand here and give 'em a fight."
And so it was. It makes the pulses thrill, even yet, the story of that twenty-first of April, 1836; how Houston destroyed the bridge behind them, so that there could be no retreat, and then, on his great gray horse, tried to address his men, but could only cry: "Remember The Alamo"; how old Rusk could say not even that, but choked with a sob at the first word, and waved his hand toward the enemy; how the solitary fife struck up, "Will you come to the bower I have shaded for you?" while those seven hundred gaunt, starved, ragged phantoms, burning with rage at the thought of their comrades foully slain, deployed on the open prairie and charged the unsuspecting Mexican army. It was over in half an hour—the enemy annihilated, 630 killed, 200 wounded, 700 prisoners—among the prisoners SantaAnna himself, begging for mercy. And Aaron Burr, dying in New York with the vision of his Texan empire still before him, reading, weeks later, the news of the victory, cried out, "I was thirty years too soon!"
There was never any question, after that, of Texan independence; Santa Anna, to save a life forfeited a hundred times over, was ready to agree to any terms. Houston was a popular hero; Texas was his child, and he was unanimously chosen President of the new Republic. From the first, Houston, recalling the wishes of his old leader, Andrew Jackson, sought annexation to the United States, and the debates over the question in Congress nearly disrupted the Union. For the North feared the effects of such a tremendous addition to slave territory, from which three or four states might be carved, and so destroy the balance of power between North and South. Again, Mexico, which still dreamed of reconquering Texas, notified the United States that annexation would be considered a declaration of war; but Houston pressed the question with great adroitness, it was evident that Texas really belonged in the Union, and on March 1, 1845, Congress passed the resolution of annexation, and Houston and Husk, the heroes of San Jacinto, were at once elected senators.
In the brief but brilliant war with Mexico which followed, which is considered more in detail in connection with the life of Winfield Scott, and which resulted in the securing of the great Southwest for the United States, Houston played no part, except asa member of the Senate, where he remained until 1859, being defeated finally by a secessionist. For, true to the precepts of Jackson, he was from the first bitterly opposed to nullification and secession. The same year, he was elected governor of Texas, turning a Union minority into a triumphant majority by the wizardry of his personality. He could not prevent secession, however, but he refused to take the oath to the Confederate government required by the legislature and was deposed. Martial law being established, an officer one day demanded Houston's pass.
"San Jacinto," he answered, and went on his way, nor did any dare molest him. But he was worn out and aging fast, and the end came toward the close of July, 1863.
Reference has been made to the capture of the old mission at San Antonio known as "The Alamo," and a brief account must be given of the remarkable group of men who lost their lives there—David Crockett, James Bowie, and William Barrett Travis. Crockett was perhaps the most famous of the three, and his name is still more or less of a household word throughout the middle West, while some of his stories have passed into proverbs. He was the most famous rifle shot in the whole country and the most successful hunter. Born in Tennessee soon after the Revolutionary war, of an Irish father, he ran away from home after a few days' schooling, knocked about the country, served through the Creek war under Andrew Jackson, and gained so muchpopularity by his hunting stories, with which he held great audiences spellbound, that he was elected to the State legislature and then to Congress, though he had never read a newspaper. In Congress, he managed to antagonize Andrew Jackson, not a difficult task by any means, with the result that Jackson, who carried Tennessee in his vest pocket, effectively ended Crockett's political career. Crockett left the state in disgust, seeking new worlds to conquer, and hearing of the struggle in Texas, decided to join the revolutionists.
By boat and on horseback, he made his way toward the distant plains where the Texans were waging their life and death struggle against the Mexicans. More than one hairbreadth escape did the old hunter have from Indians, desperadoes and wild beasts, but he finally got to the neighborhood of San Antonio, and fell in with another adventurer, a bee-hunter, also on his way to join the Texans. They soon learned that a great Mexican army was marching on San Antonio, and that the defenders of the place had gathered in the old mission called "The Alamo." There were only a hundred and fifty of them, while the Mexican army numbered four thousand; but they had made up their minds to hold the place, a mere shell, utterly unable to withstand artillery, or even a regular and well-directed assault. It was plain enough that to attempt to defend the place against such an overwhelming force was desperate in the extreme, but Crockett and his companion kept straight on, and were soon inside TheAlamo. A few days later, Santa Anna's great army camped around it.
In command of The Alamo garrison was Colonel Travis, a young man of twenty-five; an Alabaman, admitted to the bar there, but driven out of his native state by financial troubles, and casting in his lot with the Texas revolutionists, among whom he soon acquired considerable influence. The third of the trio, Colonel Bowie, was a native of Georgia, but had settled in Louisiana, where, nine years before, he had been a participant in a celebrated affray. Two gentlemen, becoming involved in a quarrel, decided to settle it in approved fashion by a duel, and, accompanied by their friends, among whom was Bowie, adjourned to a convenient place and took a shot at each other without doing any damage. They were about to declare honor satisfied and to shake hands, when a dispute arose among their friends, and before it was over, fifteen were killed and six were badly injured. Bowie distinguished himself by stabbing a man to death with a knife made from a large file. The weapon was afterwards sent to Philadelphia and there fashioned into the deadly knife which has ever since been known by his name. The prospect of trouble in Texas naturally attracted him, he was made colonel of militia there, and dispatched to The Alamo with a small force by General Houston early in 1836.
Here, then, in this old and crumbling Spanish mission, toward the end of February, were gathered a hundred and fifty Texans, a wild and undisciplinedband, impatient of restraint or control, but men of iron courage and the best shots on the border, with Travis in command; while without was the army of Santa Anna. On February 24th, Travis, in a letter asking for reinforcements, announced the siege and added that he would never surrender or retreat. Early in March, thirty-two men from Gonzales, knowing they were going to well-nigh certain death, made their way into the fort, raising its garrison to 180.
Santa Anna demanded unconditional surrender, and Travis answered with a cannon-shot; whereat, on the morning of the sixth of March, the Mexican army stormed the fort from all sides, swarmed in through breaches and over the walls, which the Texans were too few to man, and a desperate hand-to-hand conflict followed. To and fro between the shattered walls the fight reeled, each tall Texan the centre of a group of foes, fighting with a wild and desperate courage; but the odds were too great, and one by one they fell, thrust through with bayonets or riddled by bullets. Colonel Travis fell, and so did Bowie, sick and weak from a wasting disease, but rising from his bed, and dying fighting with his great knife red with the blood of his foes. At last a single man stood at bay. It was Davy Crockett.
Wounded in a dozen places, ringed about by the bodies of the men he had slain, he stood facing his foes, his back against a wall, knife in hand, daring them to come on. No one dared to run in upon that old lion. So they held him there with theirlances, while, the musketeers loaded their carbines and shot him down. Not a man of the garrison was left alive, but each of them had avenged himself four times over, for the Mexican loss was over five hundred. So ended one of the most heroic events in American history. "Thermopylae had its messengers of death; The Alamo had none."
One more era remains to be recorded, that in which the United States confirmed its hold upon the Pacific coast, and here again the story is that of the lives of three men—Marcus Whitman, John Augustus Sutter, and John Charles Frémont. It was Whitman who brought home to the Nation the value of Oregon by a spectacular ride from ocean to ocean; it was Sutter who led the way for an American invasion of California, and who gave impetus to that invasion by the discovery of gold; and it was Frémont who led the revolution there against the Mexicans, and who secured the country's independence.
The explorations of Lewis and Clark, early in the century, had made the country along the Columbia river known to the East in a dim way, but it was so distant and so inaccessible that it excited little interest. Just before the second war with England, John Jacob Astor had attempted to carry out a far-reaching plan for the development of the country and the securing of its great fur trade, but the outbreak of the war had stopped all efforts in that direction, and Astor never took them up again.Meanwhile through Canada, the Hudson Bay Company, a great English concern engaged in the fur trade, had extended its stations to the Pacific coast, and was quietly taking possession of the country.
In 1834, the American board of missions, learning of the need for a missionary among the Oregon Indians, appointed Marcus Whitman to the work. Whitman was at that time thirty-two years of age and was just about to be married. His betrothed agreed to accompany him on his perilous mission, and, after great difficulty, he secured an associate in the person of Rev. H.H. Spalding, also just married. What a bridal trip that was! At Pittsburg, George Catlin, who knew the western Indians better than any living man, having spent years among them, warned them of the folly of attempting to take women across the plains; at Cincinnati, they were greeted by William Moody, only forty-five years of age and yet the first white man born there; at the frontier town of St. Louis, they joined a hunting expedition up the Missouri, and by June 6, 1836, were at Laramie.
A month later, they crossed the Great Divide by the South Pass, "discovered," six years later, by Frémont; and toward the end of July, they came to the great mountain rendezvous of traders and trappers high in the mountains near Fort Hall. Some of those men had not seen a white woman for a quarter of a century. You can imagine, then, what a sensation the arrival of Mrs. Whitman and Mrs. Spalding occasioned, and with what warmth theywere welcomed. Ten days they tarried there, then pressed on westward, and on September 2, 1836, after a journey of thirty-five hundred miles, the gates of Fort Walla-Walla, on the lower Columbia, opened to receive them, and the conquest of Oregon began.
Fort Walla-Walla belonged to the Hudson Bay Company, which had undisputed control of the rich Oregon fur trade, and which was determined to retain it at any cost. So the difficulties of the Oregon trail were invariably exaggerated, and immigration from the states systematically discouraged. Nevertheless, in the years following Whitman's arrival, other parties of missionaries and settlers worked their way into the country, until, in 1842, their number reached about a hundred and fifty. The Hudson Bay Company realized that neither England nor America had a clear title to the region, and that its population must, in the end, determine its nationality. Consequently it bent every effort to hurry English settlers into the country. In October, 1842, Whitman was dining with a company of Englishmen at Walla-Walla, when a messenger arrived with news of the approach of a large body of settlers from Canada. A shout arose: "Hurrah for Oregon! America is too late! We've got the country!" And Whitman, at a glance, saw through the plan.
Twenty-four hours later, he had started to ride across the continent to carry the news to Washington. He had caught the import of the news, had grasped its consequences, and he was determined thatOregon, with its great forests and broad prairies, its mighty rivers, and its unparalleled richness, should be saved for the Union. If the Nation only knew the value of the prize, England would never be permitted to carry it off. His wife and friends protested against the desperate venture—four thousand miles on horseback—for it would soon be the dead of winter, with snow hiding the trail and filling the passes, with streams ice-blocked and winter-swollen, and last but not least, with the Blackfoot Indians on the warpath. But he would listen to none of this: his duty, as he conceived it, lay clear before him; he was determined to set out at once. Amos Lovejoy volunteered to accompany him, a busy night was spent in preparation, and the next day they were off,
No diary of that remarkable journey was kept by Dr. Whitman, but most of its incidents are known. Terribly severe weather was encountered almost at the start, for ten days they were snowed up in the mountains, and long before the journey ended, were reduced to rations of dog and mule meat. But they struggled on, more than once losing the way and giving themselves up for lost, and on March 3, 1843, just five months from Walla-Walla, Whitman entered Washington.
His spectacular ride rivetted public attention upon the far western country, and the information which he gave concerning it opened the Nation's eyes to its value. When he returned, later in the year, to the banks of the Columbia, he took back with hima train of two hundred wagons and a thousand settlers—a veritable army of occupation which the British could not match. Three years later, so steadily did the tide continue which Whitman had started, the American population had risen to over ten thousand, there was never any further real uncertainty as to whom Oregon belonged, and the treaty of 1846 settled the question for all time.
The new territory was soon to be the scene of a terrible tragedy. The white man had brought new diseases into it, measles, fevers, and even, smallpox; they spread rapidly among the Indians, aggravated by their imprudence and ignorance of proper treatment, and many died. The Indians became convinced that the missionaries were to blame, and it is claimed, too, that the emissaries of the Hudson Bay Company urged them on. However that may have been, on the twenty-ninth of November, 1847, the Indians fell upon the missionaries and killed fifteen, of them, among the dead being Marcus Whitman and his wife. So ended the life of the man who saved Oregon, and of the woman who was the first of her sex to cross the continent.
Meanwhile, far to the south, a drama scarcely less thrilling was enacting, its chief personage being John Augustus Sutter. Sutter was a Swiss and had received a military education and served in the Swiss Guard before coming to America in 1834. He settled first at St. Louis and then at Santa Fé, where he gained considerable experience as a trader. Finally, in 1838, he decided to cross the Rockies, and aftertrading for a time in a little schooner up and down the coast, was wrecked in San Francisco Bay. He made his way inland, and founded the first white settlement in the country on the site of what is now Sacramento. Here, in 1841, he built a fort, having secured a large grant of land from the Mexican Government, and set up what was really a little empire in the wilderness, over which he reigned supreme. And here, three years later, down from the snow-filled and tempest-swept passes of the Rockies, came a party of starving and frost-bitten scarecrows, the exploring expedition headed by John Charles Frémont, of whom we shall speak presently.
The rest of Sutter's history is soon told. In 1848, when Mexico ceded California to the United States, he was the owner of a vast domain, over which thousands of head of cattle wandered. A few years later, he was practically a ruined man—ruined by gold. On the eighteenth day of January, 1848, one of his men named Marshall, brought to Sutter a lump of yellow metal which he had uncovered while digging a mill-race. There could be no doubt of it—it was gold! News of the great discovery soon got about; there was a great rush for this new Eldorado; Sutter's land was overrun with gold-seekers, who cared nothing for his rights, and when he attempted to defend his titles in the courts, they were declared invalid, and his land was taken from him. To crown his disasters, his homestead was destroyed by fire; finding himself ruined, without land and without money, he gave up the struggle in despairand returned east, passing his last years in poverty in a little town in Pennsylvania.
Frémont, meantime, had done a great work for California. The son of a Frenchman, showing an early aptitude for mathematics, he had secured an appointment to the United States engineering corps, and, after various minor expeditions in which he had acquitted himself well, was put in charge of an expedition for the exploration of the Rocky Mountains. He was fortunate at the start in securing the services as guide and interpreter of that famous hunter and plainsman, Kit Carson, whose life had been passed on the prairies, who knew more Indians and Indian dialects than any other white man, and who was, to his generation, what Davy Crockett was to an earlier one. To Carson a great share of the expedition's success was no doubt due, and it was so successful that in the following year, Frémont was leading another over the country between the Rockies and the Pacific. This one was almost lost in the mountains, and came near perishing of cold and hunger, but, finally, in March, 1844, managed to struggle through to Sutter's Fort.
Frémont found California in a state of unrest amounting almost to insurrection against Mexican rule, and as the number of white settlers increased, this feeling grew, until Mexico, becoming alarmed, sent an armed force to occupy the country. The show of force was the one thing needed to fire the magazine; the settlers sprang to arms as one man, and, under Frémont's leadership, defeated the Mexicansand drove them southward across the border. Soon afterwards, General Kearny marched in from the east, from his remarkable and bloodless conquest of New Mexico, with a force sufficient to render it certain that California would never again be taken by the Mexicans.
On the fourth of July, 1849, Frémont was chosen governor of the new territory, and in the following year, arranged the treaty by which California passed permanently to the United States. The new state was quick to reward him and sent him to the Senate, where he gained sufficient prominence to receive the nomination of the anti-slavery party for the presidency in 1856. He never had any chance of election, for the reform party had not yet sufficient strength, and was defeated by Buchanan. He served with some distinction in the Civil War, gaining considerable notoriety, while in charge of the Western Department in 1861, by issuing a proclamation freeing the slaves of secessionists in Missouri. The proclamation drew forth some laudatory verses from John G. Whittier, but was promptly countermanded by President Lincoln. Soon afterwards, Frémont became involved in personal disputes with his superior officers, was relieved from active service, and the remainder of his life was spent in private enterprises.
Fremont's "pathfinding" virtually completed the exploration of the country. A few secluded nooks and corners became known only as the tide of immigration crept into them; but in its general features,the great continent, on whose eastern shore the white man was fighting for a foothold two centuries before, was known from ocean to ocean. It had been conquered and occupied by a dominant race, and won for civilization.
BOONE, DANIEL. Born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, February 11, 1735; settled at Holman's Ford, North Carolina, 1748; explored Kentucky, 1769-70; founded Boonesborough, 1775; moved to Missouri, 1795; died at Charette, Missouri, September 26, 1820.
KENTON, SIMON, Born in Fauquier County, Virginia, April 3, 1755; fled to the West, 1771; ranged western country as a spy, 1776-78; with George Rogers Clark's expedition, 1778; commanded a battalion of Kentucky volunteers under Wayne, 1793-94; brigadier-general of Ohio militia, 1805; at battle of the Thames, 1813; died in Logan County, Ohio, April 29, 1836.
CLARK, GEORGE ROGERS. Born in Albemarle County, Virginia, November 19, 1752; settled in Kentucky, 1775; major of militia, 1776; sent as delegate to Virginia, 1776; second journey to Virginia, 1777; started on Illinois expedition, June 24, 1778; captured Kaskaskia, July 4, 1778; captured Vincennes, February 24, 1779; defeated Miami Indians and destroyed villages, 1782; died near Louisville, Kentucky, February 18, 1818.
PUTNAM, RUFUS. Born in Sutton, Massachusetts, April 9, 1738; served in campaigns against the French, 1757-60; superintended defenses of New York City, 1776; superintended construction of fortifications atWest Point, 1778; promoted to brigadier-general, January 7, 1783; founded Marietta, Ohio, April 7, 1788; judge of Supreme Court of Northwest Territory, 1789; served as brigadier-general under Wayne, 1792-93; member of Ohio Constitutional Convention, 1803; formed first Bible society west of the Alleghanies, 1812; died at Marietta, Ohio, May 1, 1824.
LEWIS, MERIWETHER. Born near Charlottesville, Virginia, August 18, 1774; entered United States army, 1795; promoted captain, 1800; private secretary to President Jefferson, 1801-03; explored country west of Mississippi, 1804-06; governor of Missouri Territory, 1808; killed himself near Nashville, Tennessee, October 8, 1809.
CLARK, WILLIAM. Born in Virginia, August 1, 1770; removed to Kentucky, 1774; lieutenant of infantry, March 7, 1792; resigned from service, July, 1796; removed to St. Louis, 1796; accompanied Meriwether Lewis on western explorations, 1804-06; governor of Missouri Territory, 1813-21; superintendent of Indian Affairs, 1822-38; died at St. Louis, September 1, 1838.
PIKE, ZEBULON MONTGOMERY. Born at Lamberton, New Jersey, January 5, 1779; entered United States army, 1799; captain, 1806; conducted exploring expeditions in Louisiana Territory, 1805-07; major, 1808; colonel, 1812; brigadier-general, March 12, 1813; died in assault on York (now Toronto), Canada, April 27, 1813.
HOUSTON, SAMUEL. Born near Lexington, Virginia, March 2, 1793; served in war of 1812; member of Congress from Tennessee, 1823-27; governor of Tennessee,1827-29; defeated Mexicans at San Jacinto, April, 1836; President of Texas, 1836-38 and 1841-44; United States senator from Texas, 1845-59; governor of Texas, 1859-61; died at Huntersville, Texas, July 25, 1863.
CROCKETT, DAVID. Born at Limestone, Tennessee, August 17, 1786; member of Congress, 1827-33; served in Texan war, 1835-36; killed at The Alamo, San Antonio de Bexar, Texas, March 6, 1836.
BOWIE, JAMES. Born in Burke County, Georgia, about 1790; notorious in duel of 1827; went to Texas, 1835; made colonel of Texan army, 1835; killed at the Alamo, March 6, 1836.
TRAVIS, WILLIAM BARRETT. Born in Conecuh County, Alabama, 1811; admitted to the bar, 1830; went to Texas, 1832; killed at the Alamo, March 6, 1836.
WHITMAN, MARCUS. Born in Rushville, Ontario County, New York, September 4, 1802; appointed missionary to Oregon, 1834; reached Fort Walla Walla, September 2, 1836; started on ride across continent, October 3, 1842; reached Washington, March 3, 1843; took great train of emigrants back to Oregon, 1843; killed by Indians at Waülatpu, Oregon, November 29, 1847.
SUTTER, JOHN AUGUSTUS. Born in Kandern, Baden, February 15, 1803; graduated at military college at Berne, Switzerland, 1823; served in Swiss Guard through Spanish campaign, 1823-24; emigrated to America and settled at St. Louis, 1834; crossed Rocky Mountains, 1838; settled in California, 1839; built fort on present site of Sacramento, 1841; gold discovered onhis ranch, January 18, 1848; homestead burned, 1864; removed to Litiz, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, 1873; died at Washington, D.C., June 17, 1880.
FRÉMONT, JOHN CHARLES. Born at Savannah, Georgia, January 21, 1813; explored South Pass, Rocky Mountains, 1842; Pacific Slope, 1843-45; took part in conquest of California, 1846-47; United States senator from California, 1850-51; Republican candidate for presidency, 1856; Federal Commander of Department of the West, 1861; governor of Arizona, 1878-82; died at New York City, July 13, 1890.