1779.

Hamilton sent to Virginia.

213

IV. Three days time to be allowed the garrison to settle their accounts with the inhabitants and traders of this place.

V.-The officers of the garrison to be allowed their necessary baggage, &c.

Signed at Post St. Vincent, [Vincennes,] 24th February, 1779.

Agreed for the following reasons: the remoteness from succor; the state and quantity of provisions, &c.; unanimity of officers and men in its expediency; the honorable terms allowed; and lastly, the confidence in a generous enemy.

[Signed,]

HENRY HAMILTON,

Lt. Gov. and Superintendent.

The business being now nearly at an end, troops were posted in several strong houses around the garrison, and patroled during the night to prevent any deception that might be attempted. The remainder on duty lay on their arms; and, for the first time for many days past, got During the siege I got only one man wounded: not being able to lose many, I made them secure themselves well. Seven were badly wounded in the fort, through ports.*

some rest.

Hamilton's surrender of St. Vincent's, or Fort Sackville, put a stop of course to the proposed purging of the West from the Long Knives. The Governor and some others were sent prisoners to Virginia, where the Council ordered their confinement in jail, fettered and alone, in punishment for their abominable policy of urging barbarians to ultra barbarism, as they surely had done by offering rewards for scalps but none for prisoners, a course which naturally resulted in wholesale and cold-blooded murder; the Indians driving captives within sight of the British forts and then butchering them. As this rigid confinement, however just, was not in accordance with the terms of Hamilton's surrender, General Phillips protested in regard to it, and Jefferson, having referred the matter to the commander-in-chief, Washington gave his opinion decidedly against it, in consequence of which the Council of Virginia released the Detroit "hair-buyer" from his irons.†

Clark returned to Kaskaskias, where, in consequence of the competition of the traders, he found himself more embarrassed from the depreciation of the paper money which had been advanced him by Virginia, than he had been by the movements of the British; and where he was forced to pledge his own credit

*Our extracts from Clark's Journal we owe to Dillon, i. 157 to 173.

+ Sparks' Washington, vi. 315.-Almon's Remembrancer for 1779, pp. 337. 340.—Jefferson's Writings, i. 451 to 458.

214

Conduct of the Iroquois.

1779.

to procure what he needed, to an extent that influenced vitally his own fortune and life thenceforward.

After the taking of Vincennes, Detroit was undoubtedly within the reach of the enterprising Virginian, had he but been able to raise as many soldiers as were starving and idling at Forts Laurens and McIntosh.* He could not; and Governor Henry having promised him a reinforcement, he concluded to wait for that, as his force was too small to both conquer and garrison the British forts. But the results of what was done were not unimportant; indeed, we cannot estimate those results. Hamilton had made arrangements to enlist the southern and western Indianst for the next spring's campaign; and, if Mr. Stone be correct in his suppositions, Brant and his Iroquois were to act in concert with him.‡ Had Clark, therefore, failed to conquer the Governor, there is too much reason to fear, that the West would have been, indeed, swept, from the Mississippi to the mountains, and the great blow struck, which had been contemplated, from the outset, by Britain. But for his small army of dripping, but fearless Virginians, the union of all the tribes from Georgia to Maine, against the colonies, might have been effected, and the whole current of our history changed.

Turning from the west to the north, we find a new cause of trouble arising there. Of the six tribes of the Iroquois, the Senecas, Mohawks, Cayugas, and Onondagas, had been, from the outset, inclining to Britain, though all of these, but the Mohawks, had now and then tried to persuade the Americans to the contrary. During the winter of 1778-9, the Onondagas, who had been for a while nearly neutral, were suspected, by the Americans, of deception; and, this suspicion having become nearly knowledge, a band was sent, early in April, to destroy their towns, and take such of them, as could be taken, prisoners. The work appointed was done, and the villages and wealth of the poor savages were annihilated. This sudden act of severity startled all. The Oneidas, hitherto faithful to their neutrality, were alarmed, lest the next blow should fall on them, and it was only after a full explanation that their fears were quieted. As for the Onondagas,

Clark in his letter to Jefferson, (Jefferson's Writings, i. 451,) says that with 500 men, when he first reached Illinois, or with 300 after the conquest of St. Vincents, he could have taken Detroit. The people of Detroit had great rejoicings when they heard of Hamilton's capture, and the garrison of the fort was but eighty strong.

1779.

General Sullivan attacks Iroquois.

215

it was not to be hoped that they would sit down under such treatment; and we find, accordingly, that some hundred of their warriors were at once in the field, and from that time forward, a portion of their nation remained, and, we think, justly, hostile to the United Colonies.*

Those colonies, meanwhile, had become convinced, from the massacres at Wyoming and Cherry Valley, that it was advisable to adopt some means of securing the north-western and western frontiers against the recurrence of such catastrophes; and, the hostile tribes of the Six Nations being the most numerous and deadly foes, it was concluded to begin by strong action against them. Washington had always said, that the only proper mode of defence against the Indians was to attack them, and this mode he determined to adopt on this occasion. Some difference of opinion existed, however, as to the best path into the country of the inimical Iroquois; that most lovely country in the west of New York, which is now fast growing into a granary for millions of men. General Schuyler was in favor of a movement up the Mohawk river; the objection to which route was, that it carried the invaders too near to Lake Ontario, and within reach of the British. The other course proposed was up the Susquehanna, which heads, as all know, in the region that was to be reached. The latter route was the one determined upon by Washington for the main body of troops, which was to be joined by another body moving up the Mohawk, and also by detachments coming from the western army, by the way of the Alleghany and French Creek; upon further thought, however, the movement from the West was countermanded. All the arrangements for this grand blow were made in March and April, but it was the last of July before General Sullivan got his men under way from Wyoming, where they had gathered; and, of course, information of the proposed movements had been given to the Indians and Tories, so that Brant, the Johnsons, and their followers stood ready to receive the invaders.

They were not, however, strong enough to withstand the Americans; and, having been defeated at the battle of Newtown, were driven from village to village, and their whole country was laid waste. Houses were burned, crops and orchards destroyed, and every thing done that could be thought of, to render the country uninhabitable. Of all these steps Mr. Stone speaks fully. Forty

Stone, vol. i. p. 405.

Sparks's Washington, vol. vi. pp. 183 et seq.

216

Brodhead attacks Iroquois.

1779. towns, he tell us, were burnt, and more than one hundred and sixty thousand bushels of corn. Well did the Senecas name Washington, whose armies did all this, "the Town Destroyer." Having performed this portion of his work, Sullivan turned homeward from the beautiful valley of the Genesee; leaving Niagara, whither the Indians fled, as to the strong hold of British power in that neighborhood, untouched. This conduct, Mr. Stone thinks "difficult of solution," as he supposes the conduct of that post to have been one of the main objects of the expedition. Such, however, was not the fact. Originally it had been part of the proposed plan to attack Niagara ; † but, early in January, Washington was led to doubt, and then to abandon, that part of the plan, thinking it wiser to carry on, merely, some operations on a smaller scale against the savages.”‡

One of the smaller operations was from the West. On the 22d of March, 1779, Washington wrote to Colonel Daniel Brodhead, who had succeeded McIntosh at Fort Pitt, that an incursion into the country of the Six Nations was in preparation, and that in connection therewith, it might be advisable for a force to ascend the Alleghany to Kittaning, and thence to Venango, and having fortified both points, to strike the Mingoes and Munceys upon French creek and elsewhere in that neighborhood, and thus aid General Sullivan in the great blow he was to give by his march up the Susquehanna. Brodhead was also directed to say to the western Indians, that if they made any trouble, the whole force of the United States would be turned against them, and they should be cut off from the face of the earth. But on the 21st of April these orders were countermanded, and the western commander was directed to prepare a rod for the Indians of the Ohio and western lakes; and especially to learn the best time for attacking Detroit. Whether this last advice came too late, or was withdrawn again, we have no means of learning; but Brodhead proceeded as originally directed; marched up the Alleghany, burned the towns of the Indians, and destroyed their crops.||

The immediate results of this and other equally prompt and severe measures, was to bring the Delawares, Shawanese, and even Wyandots, to Fort Pitt, on a treaty of peace. There Brod

*Vol. ii. p. 36.

+Sparks's Washington, vol. vi. pp. 120, 146. Ibid., pp. 162–166.

I Sparks's Washington, vi. 205. 224. 384. 387.

1779.

Rogers and Benham Defeated.

217

head met them, on his return in September, and a long conference was held, to the satisfaction of both parties.

Farther west during this summer and autumn the Indians were more successful. In July, the stations being still troubled, Colonel Bowman undertook an expedition into the country of the Shawanese, acting upon Washington's principle, that to defend yourselves against Indians, you must assail them. He marched undiscovered into the immediate vicinity of the towns upon the Little Miami, and so divided and arranged his forces, as to ensure apparent success; one portion of the troops being commanded by himself, another by Colonel Benjamin Logan; but from some unexpected cause, his division of the whites did not co-operate fully with that led by Logan, and the whole body was forced to retreat, after having taken some booty, including a hundred and sixty horses, and leaving the town of the savages in cinders, but also leaving the fierce warriors themselves in no degree daunted or crippled.*

Nor was it long before they showed themselves south of the Ohio again, and unexpectedly won a victory over the Americans of no slight importance. The facts, so far as we can gather them, are these:

An expedition which had been in the neighborhood of Lexington, where the first permanent improvements were made in April of this year, upon its return came to the Ohio near the Licking, at the very time that Colonel Rogers and Captain Benham reached the same point on their way up the river in boats. A few of the Indians were seen by the commander of the little American squadron, near the mouth of the Licking; and supposing himself to be far superior in numbers, he caused seventy of his men to land, intending to surround the savages; in a few moments, however he found he was himself surrounded, and after a hard fought battle, only twenty or twenty-five, or perhaps even fewer, of the party were left alive.‡ It was in connection with this skirmish that a coincidence occurred which seems to belong rather to a fanciful story than to sober history, and which yet appears to be well authenticated. In the party of whites was Captain Robert Benham. He was one of those that fell, being shot through both hips, so as to be powerless in his lower limbs; he dragged himself, however, to a tree-top, and there lay concealed from the savages after the contest was over. On the *Marshall i. 91. See General Ray's opinion, note to Butler, 110.

+ Holmes's Annals, ii. 304; note. American Pioneer, ii. 346. Butler, 101. Marshall, i. 89. + Butler, 2d edition, 102. (In this account there is confusion; the Indians are represented as coming on their return from Kentucky, down the Little Miami.) McClung, 148.