CHAPTER V.

CHAPTER V.Wayne, The Scourge Of The Indians

Wayne, The Scourge Of The Indians

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Scioto Company fell into financial difficulties and, after making an attempt to build up a French colony at Gallipolis, collapsed. But General Putnam and his associates kept their affairs well in hand and succeeded in planting the first legal white settlement in the present State of Ohio. An arduous winter journey brought the first band of forty-eight settlers, led by Putnam himself, to the mouth of the Muskingum on April 7, 1788. Here, in the midst of a great forest dotted with terraces, cones, and other fantastic memorials of the moundbuilders, they erected a blockhouse and surrounded it with cabins. For a touch of the classical, they called the fortification the Campus Martius; to be strictly up to date, they named the town Marietta, after Marie Antoinette, Queen of France. In July the little settlement was honored by being made the residence of the newly arrived Governor of the Territory, General Arthur St. Clair.

Before the close of the year Congress sold one million acres between the two Miamis to Judge Symmes of New Jersey; and three little towns were at once laid out. To one of them a pedantic schoolmaster gave the nameL-os-anti-ville,"the town opposite the mouth of the Licking." The name may have required too much explanation; at all events, when, in 1790, the Governor transferred the capital thither from Marietta, he rechristened the place Cincinnati, in honor of the famous Revolutionary society to which he belonged.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

At last, in desperation St. Clair ordered his men to break through the deadly cordon and save themselves as best they could. The Indians kept up a hot pursuit for a distance of four miles. Then, surfeited with slaughter, they turned to plunder the abandoned camp; otherwise there would have been escape for few. As it was, almost half of the men in the engagement were killed, and less than five hundred got off with no injury. The survivors gradually straggled into the river settlements, starving and disheartened.

The page on which is written the story of St. Clair's defeat is one of the gloomiest in the history of the West. Harmar's disaster was dwarfed; not since Braddock and his regulars were cut to pieces by an unseen foe on the road to Fort Duquesne had the redskins inflicted upon their hereditary enemy a blow of such proportions. It was with a heavy heart that the Governor dispatched a messenger to Philadelphia with the news. Congress ordered an investigation; and in view of the unhappy general's high character and his courageous, though blundering, conduct during the late campaign, he was exonerated. He retained the governorship, but prudently resigned his military command.

The situation was now desperate. Everywhere the forests resounded with the exultant cries of the victors, while the British from Detroit and other posts actively encouraged the belief not only that they would furnish all necessary aid but that England herself was about to declare war on the United States. Eventually a British force from Detroit actually invaded the disputed country and built a stockade (Fort Miami) near the site of the present city of Toledo, with a view to giving the redskins convincing evidence of the seriousnessof the Great White Father's intentions. Small wonder that, when St. Clair sought to obtain by diplomacy the settlement which he had failed to secure by arms, his commissioners were met with the ultimatum: "Brothers, we shall be persuaded that you mean to do us justice, if you agree that the Ohio shall remain the boundary line between us. If you will not consent thereto, our meeting will be altogether unnecessary."

It is said that Washington's first choice for the new western command was "Light-Horse Harry" Lee. But considerations of rank made the appointment inexpedient, and "Mad Anthony" Wayne was named instead. Wayne was the son of a Pennsylvania frontiersman and came honestly by his aptitude for Indian fighting. In early life he was a surveyor, and in the Revolution he won distinction as a dashing commander of Pennsylvania troops at Ticonderoga, Brandywine, Germantown, Stony Point, and other important engagements. Finally he obtained a major-general's commission in Greene's campaign in Georgia, and at the close of the war he settled in that State as a planter. His vanity—displayed chiefly in a love of fine clothes—brought upon him a good deal of criticism; and Washington, who in a Cabinetmeeting characterized him as "brave and nothing else," was frankly apprehensive lest in the present business Wayne's impetuosity should lead to fresh disaster. Yet the qualities that on a dozen occasions had enabled Wayne to snatch success from almost certain defeat—alertness, decisiveness, bravery, and sheer love of hard fighting—were those now chiefly in demand.

The first task was to create an army. A few regulars were available; but most of the three or four thousand men who were needed had to be gathered wheresoever they could be found. A call for recruits brought together at Pittsburgh, in the summer of 1792, a nondescript lot of beggars, criminals, and other cast-offs of the eastern cities, no better and no worse than the adventurers who had taken service under St. Clair. Few knew anything of warfare, and on one occasion a mere report of Indians in the vicinity caused a third of the sentinels to desert their posts. But, as rigid discipline was enforced and drilling was carried on for eight and ten hours a day, by spring the survivors formed a very respectable body of troops. The scene of operations was then transferred to Fort Washington, where fresh recruits were started on a similar course of development. Profittingby the experience of his predecessors, Wayne insisted that campaigning should begin only after the troops were thoroughly prepared; and no drill-master ever worked harder to get his charges into condition for action. Going beyond the ordinary manual of arms, he taught the men to load their rifles while running at full speed, and to yell at the top of their voices while making a bayonet attack.

In October, 1793, the intrepid Major-General advanced with twenty-six hundred men into the nearer stretches of the Indian country, in order to be in a position for an advantageous spring campaign. They built Fort Greenville, eighty miles north of Cincinnati, and there spent the winter, while, on St. Clair's fatal battle-field, an advance detachment built a post which they hopefully christened Fort Recovery. Throughout the winter unending drill was kept up; and when, in June, 1794, fourteen hundred mounted militia arrived from Kentucky, Wayne found himself at the head of the largest and best-trained force that had ever been turned against the Indians west of the Alleghanies. Even before the arrival of the Kentuckians, it proved its worth by defending its forest headquarters, with practicallyno loss, against an attack by fifteen hundred redskins.

On the 27th of July the army moved forward in the direction of the Maumee, with closed ranks and so guarded by scouts that no chance whatever was given for surprise attacks. Washington's admonitions had been taken to heart, and the Indians could only wonder and admire. News of the army's advance traveled ahead and struck terror through the northern villages, so that many of the inhabitants fled precipitately. When the troops reached the cultivated lands about the junction of the Maumee and Auglaize rivers, they found only deserted huts and great fields of corn, from which they joyfully replenished their diminished stores. Here a fort was built and given the significant name Defiance; and from it a final offer of peace was sent out to the hostile tribes. Never doubting that the British would furnish all necessary aid, the chieftains returned evasive answers. Wayne thereupon moved his troops to the left bank of the Maumee and proceeded cautiously downstream toward the British stronghold at Fort Miami.

A few days brought the army to a place known as Fallen Timbers, where a tornado had piled thetrunks and branches of mighty trees in indescribable confusion. The British post was but five or six miles distant; and there behind the breastworks which nature had provided, and in easy reach of their allies, the Indians chose to make their stand. On the morning of the 20th of August, Wayne, now so crippled by gout that he had to be lifted into his saddle, gallantly led an assault. The Indian fire was murderous, and a battalion of mounted Kentuckians was at first hurled back. But the front line of infantry rushed up and dislodged the savages from their covert, while the regular cavalry on the right charged the enemy's left flank. Before the second line of infantry could get into action the day was won. The whole engagement lasted less than three-quarters of an hour, and not a third of Wayne's three thousand men actually took part in it.

The fleeing redskins were pursued to the walls of the British fort, and even there many were slain. The British soldiery not only utterly failed to come to the relief of their hard-pressed allies, but refused to open the gates to give them shelter. The American loss was thirty-three killed and one hundred wounded. But the victory was the most decisive as yet gained over the Indiansof the Northwest. A warfare of forty years was ended in as many minutes.

From the lower Maumee, Wayne marched back to Fort Defiance, and thence to the junction of the St. Mary's and St. Joseph rivers, where he built a fort and gave it the name still borne by the thriving city that grew up around it—Fort Wayne. Everywhere the American soldiers destroyed the ripened crops and burned the villages, while the terrified inhabitants fled. In November the army took up winter quarters at Fort Greenville.

At last the Americans had the upper hand. Their arms were feared; the British promises of help were no longer credited by the Indians; and it was easy for Wayne to convince the tribal representatives who visited him in large numbers during the winter that their true interest was to win the good-will of the United States. In the summer of 1795 there was a general pacification. Delegation after delegation arrived at Fort Greenville, until more than a thousand chiefs and braves were in attendance. The prestige of Wayne was still further increased when the news came that John Jay had negotiated a treaty at London under which the British posts on United States soil werefinally to be given up; and on August 3rd Wayne was able to announce a great treaty wherein the natives ceded all of what is now southern Ohio and southeastern Indiana, and numerous tracts around posts within the Indian country, such as Fort Wayne, Detroit, and Michilimackinac—strategic points on the western waterways. "Elder Brother," said a Chippewa chief in the course of one of the interminable harangues delivered during the negotiation, "you asked who were the true owners of the land now ceded to the United States. In answer, I tell you, if any nations should call themselves the owners of it, they would be guilty of falsehood; our claim to it is equal; our Elder Brother has conquered it." The United States duly recognized the Indian title to all lands not expressly ceded and promised the Indians annual subsidies. The terms of the treaty were faithfully observed on both sides, and for fifteen years the pioneer lived and toiled in peace.

Wayne forthwith became a national hero. Returning to Philadelphia in 1796, he was met by a guard of honor, hailed with the ringing of bells and a salute of fifteen guns, and treated to a dazzling display of fireworks. Congress voted its thanks, and Washington, whose fears had longsince vanished, added his congratulations. There was one other service on the frontier for the doughty general to render. The British posts were at last to be surrendered, and Wayne was designated to receive them. By midsummer he was back in the forest country, and in the autumn he took possession of Detroit, amid acclamations of Indians, Americans, Frenchmen, and Englishmen alike. But his work was done. On the return journey he suffered a renewed attack of his old enemy, gout, and at Presqu'isle (Erie) he died. A blockhouse modeled on the defenses which he built during his western campaign marks his first resting-place and bears aloft the flag which he helped plant in the heart of the Continent.

CHAPTER VI.The Great Migration

The Great Migration

Whilethe fate of the Northwest still hung in the balance, emigration from the eastern States became the rage. "Every small farmer whose barren acres were covered with mortgages, whose debts pressed heavily upon him, or whose roving spirit gave him no peace, was eager to sell his homestead for what it would bring and begin life anew on the banks of the Muskingum or the Ohio." ¹ Land companies were then just as optimistic and persuasive as they are today, and the attractions of the western country lost nothing in the telling. Pamphlets described the climate as luxurious, the soil as inexhaustible, the rainfall as both abundant and well distributed, the crops as unfailingly bountiful; paid agents went among the people assuring them that a man of push and couragecould nowhere be so prosperous and so happy as in the West.

¹ McMaster,History of the People of the United States,vol. III, p. 461.

As early as 1787 an observer at Pittsburgh reported that in six weeks he saw fifty flatboats set off for the down-river settlements; in 1788 forty-five hundred emigrants were said to have passed Fort Harmar between February and June. Most of these people were bound for Kentucky or Tennessee. But the census of 1790 gave the population north of the Ohio as 4,280, and after Wayne's victory the proportion of newcomers who fixed their abodes in that part of the country rapidly increased. For a decade Ohio was the favorite goal; and within eight years after the battle at Fallen Timbers this region was ready for admission to the Union as a State. Southern Indiana also filled rapidly.

For a time the westward movement was regarded as of no disadvantage to the seaboard States. It was supposed that the frontier would attract a population of such character as could easily be spared in more settled communities. But it became apparent that the new country did not appeal simply to broken-down farmers, bankrupts, and ne'er-do-wells. Robust and industrious men, with growing families, were drawn off in greatnumbers; and public protest was raised against the "plots to drain the East of its best blood." Anti-emigration pamphlets were scattered broadcast, and, after the manner of the day, the leading western enterprises were belabored with much bad verse. A rude cut which gained wide circulation represented a stout, ruddy, well-dressed man on a sleek horse, with a label, "I am going to Ohio," meeting a pale and ghastly skeleton of a man, in rags, on the wreck of what had once been a horse, with the label, "I have been to Ohio."

The streams of migration flowed from many sources. New England contributed heavily. Marietta, Cincinnati, and many other rising river towns received some of the best blood of that remote section. The Western Reserve—a tract bordering on Lake Erie which Connecticut had not ceded to the Federal Government—drew largely from the Nutmeg State. A month before Wayne set out to take possession of Detroit, Moses Cleaveland with a party of fifty Connecticut homeseekers started off to found a settlement in the Reserve; and the town which took its name from the leader was but the first of a score which promptly sprang up in this inviting district. The "Seven Ranges," lying directly south of the Reserve,drew emigrants from Pennsylvania, with some from farther south. The Scioto valley attracted chiefly Virginians, who early made Chillicothe their principal center. In the west, and north of the Symmes tract, Kentuckians poured in by the thousands.

Thus in a decade Ohio became a frontier melting-pot. Puritan, Cavalier, Irishman, Scotch-Irishman, German—all were poured into the crucible. Ideals clashed, and differing customs grated harshly. But the product of a hundred years of cross-breeding was a splendid type of citizenship. At the presidential inaugural ceremonies of March 4, 1881, six men chiefly attracted the attention of the crowd: the retiring President, Hayes; the incoming President, Garfield; the Chief-Justice who administered the oath, Waite; the general commanding the army, William T. Sherman; the ex-Secretary of the Treasury, John Sherman; and "the Marshal Ney of America," Lieutenant-General Sheridan. Five of the six were natives of Ohio, and the sixth was a lifelong resident. Men commented on the striking group and rightly remarked that it could have been produced only by a singularly happy blending of the ideas and ideals that form the warp and woof of Americanism.

Amalgamation, however, took time; for there were towering prejudices and antipathies to be overcome. The Yankee scorned the Southerner, who reciprocated with a double measure of dislike. The New England settlers were, as a rule, people of some education; not one of their communities long went without a schoolmaster. They were pious, law-abiding, industrious; their more easy-going neighbors were likely to consider them over-sensitive and critical. But the quality that made most impression upon others was their shrewdness in business transactions. They could drive a bargain and could discover loopholes in a contract in a fashion to take the average backwoodsman off his feet. "Yankee trick" became, indeed, a household phrase wherever New Englander and Southerner met. Whether the Yankee talked or kept silent, whether he was generous or parsimonious, he was always under suspicion.

What of the "Long Knives" from Virginia, the Carolinas, and Kentucky who also made the Ohio lands their goal? Of books they knew little; they did not name their settlements in honor of classic heroes. They were not "gentlemen"; many of them, indeed, had sought the West to escape a society in which distinctions of birth and possessionshad put them at a disadvantage. They were not so pious as the New Englanders, though they were capable of great religious enthusiasm, and their morals were probably not inferior. Their houses were poorer; their villages were not so well kept; their dress was more uncouth, and their ways rougher. But they were a hardy folk—brave, industrious, hospitable, and generous to a fault.

In the first days of westward migration the favorite gateway into the Ohio Valley was Cumberland Gap, at the southeastern corner of the present State of Kentucky. Thence the Virginians and Carolinians passed easily to the Ohio in the region of Cincinnati or Louisville. Later emigrants from more northern States found other serviceable routes. Until the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, New Englanders reached the West by three main avenues. Some followed the Mohawk and Genesee turnpikes across central New York to Lake Erie. This route led directly, of course, to the Western Reserve. Some traveled along the Catskill turnpike from the Hudson to the headwaters of the Allegheny, and thence descended the Ohio. Still others went by boat from Boston to New York, Philadelphia, or Baltimore, in order to approach the Ohio by a more southerly course.

The natural outlet from Pennsylvania was the Ohio River. Emigrants from the western parts of the State floated down the Allegheny or Monongahela to the main stream. Those from farther east, including settlers from New Jersey, made the journey overland by one of several well-known roads. The best of these was a turnpike following the line that General Forbes had cut during the French and Indian War from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh by way of Lancaster and Bedford. Baltimore was a favorite point of departure, and from it the route lay almost invariably along a turnpike to Cumberland on the upper Potomac, and thence by the National Road across the mountains to Wheeling. In later days this was the route chiefly taken from Virginia, although more southerly passes through the Blue Ridge were used as outlets to the Great Kanawha, the Big Sandy, and other streams flowing into the Ohio farther down.

Thus the lines of westward travel which in the East spread fan-shape from Maine to Georgia converged on the Ohio; and that stream became, and for half a century remained, the great pathway of empire. Most of the emigrants had to cover long distances in overland travel before theyreached the hospitable waterway; some, especially in earlier times, made the entire journey by land. Hundreds of the very poor went afoot, carrying all their earthly possessions on their backs, or dragging them in rude carts. But the usual conveyance was the canvas-covered wagon—ancestor of the "prairie schooner" of the western plains—drawn over the rough and muddy roads by four, or even six, horses. In this vehicle the emigrants stowed their provisions, household furniture and utensils, agricultural implements, looms, seeds, medicines, and every sort of thing that the prudent householder expected to need, and for which he could find space. Extra horses or oxen sometimes drew an additional load; cattle, and even flocks of sheep, were occasionally driven ahead or behind by some member of the family.

In the years of heaviest migration the highways converging on Pittsburgh and Wheeling were fairly crowded with westward-flowing traffic. As a rule several families, perhaps from the same neighborhood in the old home, traveled together; and in any case the chance acquaintances of the road and of the wayside inns broke the loneliness of the journey. There were wonderful things to be seen, and every day brought novel experiences.But exposure and illness, dread of Indian attacks, mishaps of every sort, and the awful sense of isolation and of uncertainty of the future, caused many a man's stout heart to quail, and brought anguish unspeakable to brave women. Of such joys and sorrows, however, is a frontier existence compounded; and of the growing thousands who turned their faces toward the setting sun, comparatively few yielded to discouragement and went back East. Those who did so were usually the land speculators and people of weak, irresolute, or shiftless character.

An English traveler, Morris Birkbeck, who passed over the National Road through southwestern Pennsylvania in 1817, was filled with amazement at the number, hardihood, and determination of the emigrants whom he encountered.

Old America seems to be breaking up [he wrote] and moving westward. We are seldom out of sight, as we travel on this grand track, towards the Ohio, of family groups, behind and before us.… A small wagon (so light that you might almost carry it, yet strong enough to bear a good load of bedding, utensils and provisions, and a swarm of young citizens—and to sustain marvelous shocks in its passage over these rocky heights) with two small horses; sometimes a cow or two, comprises their all; excepting a little store of hard-earnedcash for the land office of the district; where they may obtain a title for as many acres as they possess half-dollars, being one fourth of the purchase money. The wagon has a tilt, or cover, made of a sheet, or perhaps a blanket. The family are seen before, behind, or within the vehicle, according to the road or the weather, or perhaps the spirits of the party.… A cart and single horse frequently affords the means of transfer, sometimes a horse and pack-saddle. Often the back of the poor pilgrim bears all his effects, and his wife follows, naked-footed, bending under the hopes of the family." ¹

¹ Quoted in Turner,Rise of the New West, pp. 79-80.

Arrived at the Ohio, the emigrant either engaged passage on some form of river-craft or set to work to construct with his own hands a vessel that would bear him and his belongings to the promised land. The styles of river-craft that appeared on the Ohio and other western streams in the great era of river migration make a remarkable pageant. There were canoes, pirogues, skiffs, rafts, dugouts, scows, galleys, arks, keelboats, flatboats, barges, "broadhorns," "sneak-boxes," and eventually ocean-going brigs, schooners, and steamboats. The canoe served the early explorer and trader, and even the settler whose possessions had been carried over the Alleghanies on a single packhorse. But after the Revolution the needs of an awakeningempire led to the introduction of new types of craft, built to afford a maximum of capacity and safety on a downward voyage, without regard for the demands of a round trip. The most common of these one-way vessels was the flatboat.

A flatboat trip down the great river was likely to be filled with excitement. The sound of the steam-dredge had never been heard on the western waters, and the stream-bed was as Nature had made it, or rather was continually remaking it. Yearly floods washed out new channels and formed new reefs and sand-bars, while logs and brush borne from the heavily forested banks continually built new obstructions. Consequently the sharpest lookout had to be maintained, and the pilot was both skilful and lucky who completed his trip without permitting his boat to be caught on a "planter" (a log immovably fixed in the river bed), entangled in the branches of overhanging trees, driven on an island, or dashed on the bank at a bend. Navigation by night and on foggy days was hazardous in the extreme and was avoided as far as possible. If all went well, the voyage from Pittsburgh to Cincinnati could be completed in six or eight days; but delays might easily extend the period to a month.

One grave danger has not been mentioned—the Indians. From the moment when the slow-moving flatboat passed beyond the protection of a white settlement, it was liable to be fired on, by day or by night, by redskins; and the better-built boats were so constructed as to be at least partially bullet-proof. Sometimes extra timber was used to give safety; sometimes the cargo was specially placed with that aim in view. The Indians rarely went beyond the water's edge. Their favorite ruse was to cause captive or renegade whites to run along the bank imploring to be saved. When a boat had been decoyed to shore, and perhaps a landing had been made, the savages would pour a murderous fire on the voyagers. This practice became so common that pioneer boats "shunned the whites who hailed them from the shores as they would have shunned the Indians," and as a consequence many whites escaping from the Indians in the interior were refused succor and left to die.

When the flatboat reached its destination, it might find service as a floating store, or even as a schoolhouse. But it was likely to be broken up, so that the materials in it could be used for building purposes. Before sawmills became common, lumberwas a precious commodity, and hundreds of pioneer cabins in the Ohio Valley were built partly or wholly of the boards and timbers taken from the flatboats of their owners. Even the "gunnels" were sometimes used in Cincinnati as foundations for houses. In later days the flatboat, if in reasonably good condition, was not unlikely to be sold to persons engaged in trading down the Mississippi. Loaded with grain, flour, meats, and other backwoods products, it would descend to Natchez or New Orleans, where its cargo could be transferred to ocean-going craft. But in any case its end was the same; for it would not have been profitable, even had it been physically possible, to move the heavy, ungainly craft upstream over long distances, in order to keep it continuously in service.

CHAPTER VII.Pioneer Days And Ways

Pioneer Days And Ways

Arrivedon the lower Ohio, or one of its tributaries, the pioneer looked out upon a land of remarkable riches. It was not a Mexico or a Peru, with emblazoned palaces and glittering temples, nor yet a California, with gold-flecked sands. It was merely an unending stretch of wooded hills and grassy plains, bedecked with majestic forests and fructifying rivers and lakes. It had no treasures save for the man of courage, industry, and patience; but for such it held home, broad acres, liberty, and the coveted opportunity for social equality and advancement.

The new country has been commonly thought of, and referred to by writers on the history of the West, as a "wilderness"; and offhand, one might suppose that the settlers were obliged literally to hew their way through densely grown vegetation to the spots which they selected for their homes.In point of fact, there were great areas of upland—not alone in the prairie country of northern Indiana and Illinois, but in the hilly regions within a hundred miles of the Ohio—that were almost treeless. On these unobstructed stretches grasses grew in profusion; and here roamed great herds of herbivorous animal-kind—deer and elk, and also buffalo, "filing in grave procession to drink at the rivers, plunging and snorting among the rapids and quicksands, rolling their huge bulk on the grass, rushing upon each other in hot encounter, like champions under shield." Along the watercourses ducks, wild geese, cranes, herons, and other fowl sounded their harsh cries; gray squirrels, prairie chickens, and partridges the hunter found at every turn.

Furthermore, the forests, as a rule, were not difficult to penetrate. The trees stood thick, but deer paths, buffalo roads, and Indian trails ramified in all directions, and sometimes were wide enough to allow two or three wagons to advance abreast. Mighty poplars, beeches, sycamores, and "sugars" pushed to great heights in quest of air and sunshine, and often their intertwining branches were locked solidly together by a heavy growth of grape or other vines, producing a canopy which during thesummer months permitted scarcely a ray of sunlight to reach the ground. There was, therefore, a notable absence of undergrowth. When a tree died and decayed, it fell apart piecemeal; it was with difficulty that woodsmen could wrest a giant oak or poplar from its moorings and bring it to the ground, even by severing the trunk completely at the base. Here and there a clean swath was cut through a forest, for perhaps dozens of miles, by a hurricane. This gave opportunity for the growth of a thicket of bushes and small trees, and such spots were equally likely to be the habitations of wild beasts and the hiding-places of warlike bands of redskins.

There were always adventurous pioneers who scorned the settlements and went off with their families to fix their abodes in isolated places. But the average newcomer preferred to find a location in, or reasonably near, a settlement. The choice of a site, whether by a company of immigrants wishing to establish a settlement or by an individual settler, was a matter of much importance. Some thought must be given to facilities for fortification against hostile natives. There must be an adequate supply of drinking-water; and the location of innumerable pioneer dwellings was selectedwith reference to free-flowing springs. Pasture land for immediate use was desirable; and of course the soil must be fertile. As a rule, the settler had the alternative of establishing himself on the lowlands along a stream and obtaining ground of the greatest productiveness, with the almost certain prospect of annual attacks of malaria, or of seeking the poorer but more healthful uplands. The attractions of the "bottoms" were frequently irresistible, and the "ague" became a feature of frontier life almost as inevitable as the proverbial "death and taxes."

The site selected, the next task was to clear a few acres of ground where the cabin was to stand. It was highly desirable to have a belt of open land as a protection against Indians and wild beasts; besides, there must be fields cleared for tillage. If the settler had neighbors, he was likely to have their aid in cutting away the densest growth of trees, and in raising into position the heavy timbers which formed the framework and walls of his cabin. Splendid oaks, poplars, and sycamores were cut into convenient lengths, and such as could not be used were rolled into great heaps and burned. Before sawmills were introduced lumber could not be manufactured; afterwards,it became so plentiful as to have small market value.

Almost without exception the frontier cabins had log walls; and they were rarely of larger size than single lengths would permit. On an average, they were twelve or fourteen feet wide and fifteen or eighteen feet long. Sometimes they were divided into two rooms, with an attic above; frequently there was but one room "downstairs." The logs were notched together at the corners, and the spaces between them were filled with moss or clay or covered with bark. Rafters were affixed to the uppermost logs, and to one another, with wooden pins driven through auger holes. In earliest times the roof was of bark; later on, shingles were used, although nails were long unknown, and the shingles, after being laid in rows, were weighted down with straight logs.

Sometimes there was only an earth floor. But as a rule "puncheons,"i.e.,thick, rough boards split from logs, were laid crosswise on round logs and were fastened with wooden pins. There was commonly but a single door, which was made also of puncheons and hung on wooden hinges. A favorite device was to construct the door in upper and lower sections, so as to make it possible,when there came a knock or a call from the outside, to respond without offering easy entrance to an unwelcome visitor. In the days when there was considerable danger of Indian attacks no windows were constructed, for the householder could defend only one aperture. Later, square holes which could be securely barred at night and during cold weather were made to serve as windows. Flat pieces of sandstone, if they could be found, were used in building the great fireplace; otherwise, thick timbers heavily covered with clay were made to serve. In scarcely a cabin was there a trace of iron or glass; the whole could be constructed with only two implements—an ax and an auger.

Occasionally a family carried to its new home some treasured bits of furniture; but the difficulty of transportation was likely to be prohibitive, and as a rule the cabins contained only such pieces of furniture as could be fashioned on the spot. A table was made by mounting a smoothed slab on four posts, set in auger holes. For seats short benches and three-legged stools, constructed after the manner of the tables, were in common use. Cooking utensils, food-supplies, seeds, herbs for medicinal purposes, and all sorts of householdappliances were stowed away on shelves, made by laying clapboards across wooden pins driven into the wall and mounting to the ceiling; although after sawed lumber came into use it was a matter of no great difficulty to construct chests and cupboards. Not infrequently the settler's family slept on bear skins or blankets stretched on the floor. But crude bedsteads were made by erecting a pole with a fork in such a manner that other poles could be supported horizontally in this fork and by crevices in the walls. Split boards served as "slats" on which the bedding was spread. For a long time "straw-ticks"—large cloth bags filled with straw or sometimes dry grass or leaves—were articles of luxury. Iron pots and knives were necessities which the wise householder carried with him from his eastern or southern home. In the West they were hard to obtain. The chief source of supply was the iron-manufacturing districts of Pennsylvania and Virginia, whence the wares were carried to theentrepôtsof river trade by packhorses. The kitchen outfit of the average newcomer was completed with a few pewter dishes, plates, and spoons. But winter evenings were utilized in whittling out wooden bowls, trenchers, and noggins or cups, while gourds and hard-shelled squasheswere turned to numerous uses. The commonest drinking utensil was a long-handled gourd.

The dress of the pioneer long remained a curious cross between that of the Indians and that of the white people of the older sections. In earlier times the hunting-shirt—made of linsey, coarse nettle-bark linen, buffalo-hair, or even dressed deerskins—was universally worn by the men, together with breeches, leggings, and moccasins. The women and children were dressed in simple garments of linsey. In warm weather they went barefooted; in cold, they wore moccasins or coarse shoes.

Rarely was there lack of food for these pioneer families. The soil was prodigal, and the forests abounded in game. Thepièce de résistanceof the backwoods menu was "hog an' hominy"; that is to say, pork served with Indian corn which, after being boiled in lye to remove the hulls, had been soaked in clear water and cooked soft. "Johnny cake" and "pone"—two varieties of cornbread—were regularly eaten at breakfast and dinner. The standard dish for supper was cornmeal mush and milk. As cattle were not numerous, the housewife often lacked milk, in which case she fell back on her one never-failing resource—hominy;or she served the mush with sweetened water, molasses, the gravy of fried meat, or even bear's oil. Tea and coffee were long unknown, and when introduced they were likely to be scorned by the men as "slops" good enough perhaps for women and children. Vegetables the settlers grew in the garden plot which ordinarily adjoined the house, and thrifty families had also a "truck patch" in which they raised pumpkins, squashes, potatoes, beans, melons, and corn for "roasting ears." The forests yielded game, as well as fruits and wild grapes, and honey for sweetening.

The first quality for which the life of the frontier called was untiring industry. It was possible, of course, to eke out an existence by hunting, fishing, petty trading, and garnering the fruits which Nature supplied without man's assistance. And many pioneers in whom the roving instinct was strong went on from year to year in this hand-to-mouth fashion. But the settler who expected to be a real home-builder, to gain some measure of wealth, to give his children a larger opportunity in life, must be prepared to work, to plan, to economize, and to sacrifice. The forests had to be felled; the great logs had to be rolled together and burned; crops of maize, tobacco, oats, and caneneeded to be planted, cultivated, and harvested; live stock to be housed and fed; fences and barns to be built; pork, beef, grain, whiskey, and other products to be prepared for market, and perhaps carried scores of miles to a place of shipment.

All these things had to be done under conditions of exceptional difficulty. The settler never knew what night his place would be raided by marauding redskins, who would be lenient indeed if they merely carried off part of his cattle or burned his barn. Any morning he might peer out of the "port hole" above the cabin door to see skulking figures awaiting their chance. Sickness, too, was a menace and a terror. Picture the horrors of isolation in times of emergency—wife or child suddenly taken desperately ill, and no physician within a hundred miles; husband or son hovering between life and death as the result of injury by a falling tree, a wild beast, a venomous snake, an accidental gun-shot, or the tomahawk of a prowling Indian. Who shall describe the anxiety, the agony, which in some measure must have been the lot of every frontier family? The prosaic illnesses of the flesh were troublesome enough. On account of defective protection for the feet in wet weather, almost everybody had rheumatism; mostsettlers in the bottom-lands fell victims to fever and ague at one time or another; even in the hill country few persons wholly escaped malarial disorders. "When this home-building and land-clearing is accomplished," wrote one whose recollections of the frontier were vivid, "a faithful picture would reveal not only the changes that have been wrought, but a host of prematurely broke-down men and women, besides an undue proportion resting peacefully in country graveyards."

The frontiersman's best friend was his trusty rifle. With it he defended his cabin and his crops from marauders, waged warfare on hostile redskins, and obtained the game which formed an indispensable part of his food supply. At first the gun chiefly used on the border was the smooth-bored musket. But toward the close of the eighteenth century a gunsmith named Deckhard, living at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, began making flintlock rifles of small bore, and in a short time the "Deckhard rifle" was to be found in the hands of almost every backwoodsman. The barrel was heavy and from three feet to three feet and a half in length, so that the piece, when set on the ground, reached at least to the huntsman's shoulder. The bore was cut with twisting grooves, and was sosmall that seventy bullets were required to weigh a pound. In loading, a greased linen "patch" was wrapped around the bullet; and only a small charge of powder was needed. The gun was heavy to carry and difficult to hold steadily upon a target; but it was economical of ammunition, and in the hands of the strong-muscled, keen-eyed, iron-nerved frontiersman it was an exceedingly accurate weapon, at all events within the ordinary limits of forest ranges. He was a poor marksman who could not shoot running deer or elk at a distance of one hundred and fifty yards, and kill ducks and geese on the wing; and "boys of twelve hung their heads in shame if detected in hitting a squirrel in any other part of the body than its head."

Life on the frontier was filled with hard work, danger, and anxiety. Yet it had its lighter side, and, indeed, it may be doubted whether people anywhere relished sport more keenly or found more pleasure in their everyday pursuits. The occasional family without neighbors was likely to suffer from loneliness. But few of the settlers were thus cut off, and as a rule community life was not only physically possible but highly developed. Many were the opportunities that served to bring together the frontiersmen, with their families,throughout a settlement or county. Foremost among such occasions were the log-rollings.

After a settler had felled the thick-growing trees on a plot which he desired to prepare for cultivation, he cut them, either by sawing or by burning, into logs twelve or fifteen feet in length. Frequently these were three, four, or even five feet in diameter, so that they could not be moved by one man, even with a team of horses. In such a situation, the settler would send word to his neighbors for miles around that on a given day there would be a log-rolling at his place; and when the day arrived six, or a dozen, or perhaps a score, of sturdy men, with teams of horses and yokes of oxen, and very likely accompanied by members of their families, would arrive on the scene with merry shouts of anticipation. By means of handspikes and chains drawn by horses or oxen, the great timbers were pushed, rolled, and dragged into heaps, and by nightfall the field lay open and ready for the plough—requiring, at the most, only the burning of the huge piles that had been gathered.

Without loss of time the fires were started; and as darkness came on, the countryside glowed as with the light of a hundred huge torches. Theskies were reddened, and as a mighty oak or poplar log toppled and fell to the ground, showers of sparks lent the scene volcanic splendor. Bats and owls and other dim-eyed creatures of the night flew about in bewilderment, sometimes bumping hard against fences or other objects, sometimes plunging madly into the flames and contributing to the general holocaust. For days the great fires were kept going, until the last remnants of this section of the once imposing forest were consumed; while smoke hung far out over the country, producing an atmospheric effect like that of Indian summer.

Heavy exertion called for generous refreshment, and on these occasions the host could be depended on to provide an abundance of food and drink. The little cabin could hardly be made to accommodate so many guests, even in relays. Accordingly, a long table was constructed with planks and trestles in a shady spot, and at noon—and perhaps again in the evening—the women folk served a meal which at least made up in "staying qualities" what it lacked in variety or delicacy. The principal dish was almost certain to be "pot-pie," consisting of boiled turkeys, geese, chickens, grouse, veal, or venison, with an abundance ofdumplings. This, with cornbread and milk, met the demands of the occasion; but if the host was able to furnish a cask of rum, his generosity was thoroughly appreciated.

In the autumn, corn-huskings were a favorite form of diversion, especially for the young people; and in the early spring neighbors sometimes came together to make maple sugar. A wedding was an important event and furnished diversion of a different kind. From distances of twenty and thirty miles people came to attend the ceremony, and often the festivities extended over two or three days. Even now there was work to be done; for as a rule the neighbors organized a house-building "bee," and before separating for their homes they constructed a cabin for the newly wedded pair, or at all events brought it sufficiently near completion to be finished by the young husband himself.

Even after a day of heavy toil at log-rolling, the young men and boys bantered one another into foot races, wrestling matches, shooting contests, and other feats of strength or skill. And if a fiddler could be found, the day was sure to end with a "hoe-down"—a dance that "made even the log-walled house tremble." No corn-huskingor wedding was complete without dancing, although members of certain of the more straitlaced religious sects already frowned upon the diversion.

Rough conditions of living made rough men, and we need not be surprised by the testimony of English and American travelers, that the frontier had more than its share of boisterous fun, rowdyism, lawlessness, and crime. The taste for whiskey was universal, and large quantities were manufactured in rude stills, not only for shipment down the Mississippi, but for local consumption. Frequenters of the river-town taverns called for their favorite brands—"Race Horse," "Moral Suasion," "Vox Populi," "Pig and Whistle," or "Split Ticket," as the case might be. But the average frontiersman cared little for the niceties of color or flavor so long as his liquor was cheap and produced the desired effect. Hard work and a monotonous diet made him continually thirsty; and while ordinarily he drank only water and milk at home, at the taverns and at social gatherings he often succumbed to potations which left him in happy drunken forgetfulness of daily hardships. House-raisings and weddings often became orgies marked by quarreling and fightingand terminating in brutal and bloody brawls. Foreign visitors to the back country were led to comment frequently on the number of men who had lost an eye or an ear, or had been otherwise maimed in these rough-and-tumble contests.

The great majority of the frontiersmen, however, were sober, industrious, and law-abiding folk; and they were by no means beyond the pale of religion. On account of the numbers of Scotch-Irish, Presbyterianism was in earlier days the principal creed, although there were many Catholics and adherents of the Reformed Dutch and German churches, and even a few Episcopalians. About the beginning of the nineteenth century sectarian ascendancy passed to the Methodists and Baptists, whose ranks were rapidly recruited by means of one of the most curious and characteristic of backwoods institutions, the camp-meeting "revival." The years 1799 and 1800 brought the first of the several great waves of religious excitement by which the West—especially Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee—was periodically swept until within the memory of men still living.

Camp-meetings were usually planned and managed by Methodist circuit-riders or Baptist itinerantpreachers, who hesitated not to carry their work into the remotest and most dangerous parts of the back country. When the news went abroad that such a meeting was to take place, people flocked to the scene from far and near, in wagons, on horseback, and on foot. Pious men and women came for the sake of religious fellowship and inspiration; others not so pious came from motives of curiosity, or even to share in the rough sport for which the scoffers always found opportunity. The meeting lasted days, and even weeks; and preaching, praying, singing, "testifying," and "exhorting" went on almost without intermission. "The preachers became frantic in their exhortations; men, women, and children, falling as if in catalepsy, were laid out in rows. Shouts, incoherent singing, sometimes barking as of an unreasoning beast, rent the air. Convulsive leaps and dancing were common; so, too, 'jerking,' stakes being driven into the ground to jerk by, the subjects of the fit grasping them as they writhed and grimaced in their contortions. The world, indeed, seemed demented." ¹ Whole communities sometimes professed conversion; and it was considered a particularly good day's workwhen notorious disbelievers or wrong-doers—"hard bats," in the phraseology of the frontier—or gangs of young rowdies whose only object in coming was to commit acts of deviltry, succumbed to the peculiarly compelling influences of the occasion.

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