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Alden, who appears to have been extremely negligent in his military duties and to have failed to provide against such an attack. As a result, the Indians completely surprised the little settlement. The most wanton acts of of cruelty were were committed, among which probably the best known is the murder of Miss Jane Wells, a full account of which is given by Judge Campbell.*

"She was a young lady, not distinguished for her personal beauty, but endeared to her friends by her amiable disposition, and her Christian charities; one in whom the friendless found a friend,' and to whom the poor would always say 'God speed thee.' She fled from the house to a pile of wood near by, behind which she endeavored to screen herself. Here she was pursued by an Indian, who, as he approached, deliberately wiped his bloody knife upon his leggings, and then placed it in its sheath; then drawing his tomahawk, he seized her by the arm; she possessed some knowledge of the Indian language, and remonstrated, and supplicated, though in vain. Peter Smith, a tory, who had formerly been a domestic in Mr. Wells's family, now interposed, saying she was his sister, and desiring him to spare her life. He shook his tomahawk at him in defiance, and then, turning round, with

* See also Stone's Life of Brant, vol. i.. pp. 379381; Lossing, Field-Book of the Revolution, vol. i., pp. 267-270; E. T. Tomlinson, Red Chief: a Story of the Massacre of Cherry Valley (1905).

one blow smote her to the earth. John Wells, Esq., at this time deceased, and the father of Robert Wells, had been one of the judges of the courts of Tryon County; in that capacity, and as one of the justices of the quorum, he had been on intimate terms with Sir William Johnson and family, who frequently visited at his house, and with also Colonel John Butler, likewise a judge. The family were not active either for or against the country; they wished to remain neutral, so far as they could, in such turbulent times; they also performed military duty, when called out to defend the country. Colonel John Butler, in a conversation relative to them, remarked: 'I would have gone miles on my hands and knees to have saved that family, and why my son did not do it God only knows.'"'*

On the other hand, while the savages were spreading desolation along the borders of Pennsylvania and New York, Colonel George Rogers Clark prevented the same calamity on the Virginia borders. Clark believed that the time had now come for the conquest of the Northwest, and in December, 1777, laid before Governor Patrick Henry of Virginia a plan by which this might be accomplished. On January 2, 1778, Henry gave Clark two sets of instructions, one for raising 350 men for military service in Kentucky, the other, secret, ordering him to use this force to capture

* Border Warfare of New York, pp. 138-139. See also Roberts, New York, vol. ii., pp. 427-428.

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upon the Virginia frontiers.* Clark soon received intelligence that Hamilton, believing himself safe because of his distance from danger and the difficulty of sending an expedition against him, had dispatched his Indians to harass the frontier, and had taken post at Vincennes, with only about 80 soldiers and three field pieces and some swivels. Though he could muster only 170 effective men, Clark determined to seize the opportunity to attack Hamilton; this being the only means by which he could save himself and disconcert Hamilton's plans. About February 7, 1779, therefore, Clark sent out a small galley, mounting two four-pounders and four swivels and manned with a company of soldiers. This vessel was to proceed up the Wabash until she reached a point a few miles below Vincennes, instructions being given that no person be allowed to pass her. Clark himself then set out and spent sixteen days in crossing the country between Kaskaskia and Vincennes, being compelled to undergo all manner of hardship in the woods and marshes. In crossing the drowned lands of the Wabash about five days were spent, and for miles at a time the members of the little band were compelled to wade through water up to their breasts. At times the men almost

*Michigan Pioneer Collections, vol. ix., p. 489 et sen.

† Roosevelt, Winning of the West, vol. ii., p. 68. Illinois Historical Collections, vol. i., pp. 246253; Roosevelt, p. 69 et seq.

See Bowman's Journal in Ohio Valley His

mutinied, but such was Clark's influence that all who were able continued on with him and soon reached their destination.* On February 24 Clark reached Vincennes and completely surprised the town. The inhabitants readily submitted to Clark's authority, but Hamilton, the governor, made an effort to defend the fort. On the next day, however, he was compelled to surrender himself and the garrison prisoners of war. Because of his activities in inciting the Indians to atrocities, Hamilton had become so obnoxious to the Americans that the cxccutive council of Virginia placed him and some of his agents in prison under irons. Several months afterward, however, they were released on

torical Series, vol. iii., p. 99 et seq.; Dunn, Indiana, pp. 142-144. See also the excerpts from Bowman's Journal in Henry, Life of Patrick Henry, vol. i., pp. 597-601, and Clark's letter of April 29, 1779, to Governor Henry, vol. iii., p. 233 et seq.

Roosevelt, pp. 72-73.

See Law, The Colonial History of Vincennes; Ogg, Opening of the Mississippi, pp. 362-366; Smith in Powell's Historic Towns of the Western States; E. A. Bryan, Indiana's First Settlement; Clark's Important Conquest of Post Vincennes, in Magazine of American History, vol. xxi., pp. 386403; Roosevelt, The Winning of the West, vol. ii.,

chap. iii.; English, The Conquest of the Northwest, vol. i., chaps. x.-xi.; Hamilton's report previously quoted; Dillon, Indiana, chaps. xii-xv.; Dunn, Indiana, pp. 138-151; Smith, Indiana, vol. i., chap. iv.; C. W. Butterfield, History of George Rogers Clark's Conquest of the Illinois and Wabash Towns, 1778 and 1779 (1904); Moore, The Northwest under Three Flags, pp. 219-244; Illinois Historical Collections, vol. i., p. 255 et seq.; Cooke, Virginia, p. 450 et seq.

Cooley, Michigan, pp. 99-100; Roosevelt, vol. ii., pp. 86-87. See also Jefferson's letters regarding this in Ford's ed. of Jefferson's Writings, vol. ii., pp. 246-256.

the

Washington.* Clark's expedition was of especial benefit to the American cause, for it not only disconcerted Hamilton's plans and saved the western frontier from savage incursions, but also proved to the Indians that the Americans could fight equally as well as the British and that in the long run the Indians would gain nothing by adhering to the British.†

For a long time Congress had endeavored to persuade the Indians to remain neutral, if they could not espouse the cause of the revolutionists; but as the Indians refused to do this and continued their depredations, Congress determined to stop their ravages by inflicting upon them such punishment as their deeds merited. Among the Indians who participated in the massacre of Wyoming were those of the Six Nations, with the exception of a portion of the Oneidas, and Washington determined that these Indians should be taught a lesson they would not soon forget. General Sullivan was placed in command of 3,000 troops and ordered to proceed from Wyoming into the country of the Senecas, where his troops were to be joined by a force under General Clinton, proceeding from the Mohawk River. After the two forces had united, they were to march into the heart of the Indian

Dunn, Indiana, p. 149; Ford's ed. of Jefferson's Writings, vol. ii., p. 258 et seq.

Dunn, Indiana, p. 150. See also Henry's instructions for governing the territory, in Henry, Life of Patrick Henry, vol. iii., p. 209 et seq. VOL. III-10

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country and spread devastation on all sides. Washington directed Sullivan to be unsparing in his severity and ordered him to detach parties" to lay waste all the settlements around, with instructions to do it in an effectual manner, that the country may be not mercly overrun, but destroyed. This should be done before Sullivan considered any overtures of peace. Peabody says:

"It must be owned that orders like these come strangely from the pen of Washington. The most tender mercies of war are sufficiently cruel, when softened by all the mitigations which have resulted from the improved sentiment and feeling of modern times. These mitigations are not unlike the rules of chivalry, which make it dishonorable to strike at particular portions of the body, while each combatant was at perfect liberty to murder his opponent by hard blows on all the rest. But to ravage flourishing settlements with fire, to destroy them so effectually that, as in ancient times, the plough might pass over the places where they stood, and that not a trace of sustaining vegetation might remain in the fields whitening to

the harvest, can hardly be thought of without emotions of pain and horror; they are the dark calamities of war, from which the heart turns shuddering away.

"But we are not to forget that they were designed to fall upon a foe, whose path was always to be traced in blood; against whose fury neither the helplessness of infancy, nor feeble age, nor the defenceless state of woman, could afford the least protection. We have already mentioned their atrocities at Wyoming and Cherry Valley; these had awakened a deep and universal conviction, that the only security against such enemies was to be found in driving them completely from the haunts, where urged on by British agents, or by loyalists more savage and relentless than themselves, they came forth to the work of death. They obeyed the impulses of their wild education, which converted cruelty and revenge into virtues; and the responsibility of the measures adopted

* See the instructions in Sparks' ed. of Washington's Writings, vol. v., p. 264; also Sullivan's letter of April 16, 1779, in Sparks, Correspondence of the Revolution, vol. ii., pp. 264-268.

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against them must certainly rest upon those by whom they were stimulated to aggression, with a full knowledge of the consequences that must follow. It is enough to show how strong must have been the sense entertained of the necessity of such measures, at the time, when we see them planned and ordained by Washington; the last man to devise or desire anything which bore in his view the aspect of wanton cruelty." *

Marshall says:

Great

"The devastation of the country has been spoken of with some degree of disapprobation; but this sentiment is the result rather of an amiable disposition in the human mind to condemn whatever may have the appearance of tending to aggravate the miseries of war, than of reflection. Circumstances existed, which reconciled to humanity this seeming departure from it. Britain possessed advantages, which insured a controlling influence over the Indians, and kept them in almost continual war with the United States. Their habitual ferocity seemed to have derived increased virulence from the malignity of the white men, who had taken refuge among them; and there was real foundation for the opinion, that an annual repetition of the horrors of Wyoming could be prevented only by disabling the savages from perpetrating them. No means in the power of the United States promised so certainly to effect this desirable object, as the removal of neighbors, whose hostility could be diminished only by terror, and whose resentments were to be assuaged only by fear."†

On August 11, 1779, Sullivan's army reached the point of confluence of the Tioga with the Susquehanna. On the 22d General Clinton arrived, and the united forces proceeded upon their work of devastation. The Indians under Brant determined to resist the American troops with all their force, and selected for a battle ground a place about one mile in front of Newtown. According to the estimates of General Sullivan, the

*Life of General Sullivan, pp. 128-129. Marshall, Life of Washington, vol. i., p. 323.

whole Indian force numbered 1,500 men, though the Indians themselves say there were about 800. About 200 whites were also with them. On a piece of rising ground the Indians had constructed a breastwork half a mile in length, the right flank being covered by the river, which, bending to the right and winding round the rear, left only the front and left of the breastwork open to attack. To the left was a high ridge nearly parallel to the general course of the river, which terminated a little below the breastwork.

Still further to the left

and in the same direction ran another ridge leading to the rear of the American army. The battle ground was thickly covered with underbrush and high trees, and the Indians had so constructed their breastwork that this underbrush completely concealed. it from the approaching enemy. Furthermore, the road ran parallel to the breastwork and thus the whole flank of the passing enemy would be exposed to the fire of those within the breastwork. Beside the forces in the breastwork, parties of Indians were stationed on both hills so as to fall on Sullivan's flanks the minute the action should begin.

This arrangement had been discovered by Sullivan on August 29, and before beginning the general action, Sullivan ordered his men to drive the outlying parties toward the breastwork, so that he could not possibly be taken in the rear. When the main army had advanced. Sullivan directed