Part 6 (1/2)
Colonel Henderson made a remarkable and admirable speech. This extraordinary legislature represented only a const.i.tuency of one hundred and fifty souls. But the Colonel presented to them very clearly the true republican principle of government. He declared that the only legitimate source of political power is to be found in the will of the people, and added:
”If any doubts remain among you with respect to the force and efficiency of whatever laws you now or hereafter make, be pleased to consider that all power is originally in the people. Make it their interest, therefore, by impartial and beneficent laws, and you may be sure of their inclination to see them enforced.”
Rumors of these extraordinary proceedings reached the ears of Lord Dunmore. He considered the whole region of Kentucky as included in the original grant of Virginia, and that the Government of Virginia alone had the right to extinguish the Indian t.i.tle to any of those lands. He therefore issued a proclamation, denouncing in the severest terms the ”unlawful proceedings of one Richard Henderson and other disorderly persons, his a.s.sociates.” The legislature continued in session but three days, and honored itself greatly by its energetic action, and by the character of the laws which it inaugurated. One bill was introduced for preserving game; another for improving the breed of their horses; and it is worthy of especial record that a law was pa.s.sed prohibiting profane swearing and Sabbath breaking.
The moral sense of these bold pioneers was shocked at the desecration of the Creator's name among their sublime solitudes.
The controversy between the Transylvania Company and the Government of Virginia was short but very sharp. Virginia could then very easily send an army of several thousand men to exterminate the Kentucky colony. A compromise was the result. The t.i.tle of Henderson was declared ”null and void.” But he received in compensation a grant of land on the Ohio, about twelve miles square, below the mouth of Green River. Virginia a.s.sumed that the Indian t.i.tle was entirely extinguished, and the region called Transylvania now belonged without enc.u.mbrance to the Old Dominion.
Still the tide of emigration continued to flow into this beautiful region. Among others came the family of Colonel Calloway, consisting of his wife and two daughters. For a long time no Indians had been seen in the vicinity of Boonesborough. No one seemed to apprehend the least danger from them, and the people in the fort wandered about as freely as if no foe had ever excited their fears. An accident occurred which sent a tremor of dismay through the whole colony, and which we will describe as related to the intelligent historian, Peck, from the lips of one of the parties, who experienced all the terrors of the scene:
”On the fourteenth of July, 1776, Betsey Calloway, her sister Frances, and Jemima Boone, a daughter of Daniel Boone, the two last about fourteen years of age, carelessly crossed the river opposite Boonesborough in a canoe, at a late hour in the afternoon. The trees and shrubs on the opposite bank were thick, and came down to the water's edge. The girls, unconscious of danger, were playing and splas.h.i.+ng the water with their paddles, until the canoe floating with the current, drifted near the sh.o.r.e. Five stout Indians lay there concealed, one of whom, noiseless and stealthy as the serpent, crawled down the bank until he reached the rope that hung from the bow, turned its course up the stream, and in a direction to be hidden from the view of the fort. The loud shrieks of the captured girls were heard, but too late for their rescue.
”The canoe, their only means of crossing, was on the opposite sh.o.r.e, and none dared to risk the chance of swimming the river, under the impression that a large body of savages was concealed in the woods.
Boone and Calloway were both absent, and night came on before arrangements could be made for their pursuit. Next morning by daylight we were on the track, and found they had prevented our following them by walking some distance apart through the thickest canes they could find.
We observed their course, and on which side they had left their sign and traveled upwards of thirty miles. We then imagined they would be less cautious in traveling, and made a turn in order to cross their trace, and had gone but a few miles when we found their tracks in a buffalo path. We pursued and overtook them on going about ten miles, as they were kindling a fire to cook.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
”Our study had been more to get the prisoners without giving the Indians time to murder them, after they discovered us, than to kill them. We discovered each other nearly at the same time. Four of us fired, and all of us rushed on them, which prevented them from carrying away anything, except one shot-gun without ammunition. Mr. Boone and myself had a pretty fair shoot, just as they began to move off. I am well convinced I shot one through, and the one he shot dropped his gun. Mine had none.
The place was very thick with canes, and being so much elated on recovering the three broken-hearted girls, prevented our making further search. We sent them off without their moca.s.sins, and not one of them with so much as a knife or a tomahawk.”
The Indians seemed to awake increasingly to the consciousness that the empire of the white man in their country could only exist upon the ruins of their own. They divided themselves into several parties, making incessant attacks upon the forts, and prowling around to shoot every white man who could be found within reach of their bullets. They avoided all open warfare, and fought only when they could spring from an ambush, or when protected by a stump, a rock, or a tree. An Indian would conceal himself in the night behind a stump, shoot the first one who emerged from the fort in the morning, and then with a yell disappear in the recesses of the forest. The cattle could scarcely appear for an hour to graze beyond the protection of the fort, without danger of being struck down by the bullet of an unseen foe.
The war of the American Revolution was just commencing. Dreadfully it added to the perils of these distant emigrants. The British Government, with infamy which can never be effaced from her records, called in to her aid the tomahawk and the scalping knife of the savage. The Indian alone in his wild and merciless barbarity, was terrible enough. But when he appeared as the ally of a powerful nation, guided in his operations by the wisdom of her officers, and well provided with guns, powder, and bullets from inexhaustible resources, the settler had indeed reason to tremble. The winter of 1776 and 1777 was gloomy beyond expression. The Indians were hourly becoming more bold. Their predatory bands were wandering in all directions, and almost every day came fraught with tidings of outrage or ma.s.sacre.
The whole military force of the colony was but about one hundred men.
Three hundred of the pioneers, dismayed by the cloud of menace, every hour growing blacker, had returned across the moutains. There were but twenty-two armed men left in the fort at Boonesborough. The dismal winter pa.s.sed slowly away, and the spring opened replete with nature's bloom and beauty, but darkened by the depravity of man. On the fifteenth of April, a band of a hundred howling Indians appeared in the forest before Boonesborough. With far more than their ordinary audacity, they rushed from their covert upon the fort. Had they been acquainted with the use of scaling ladders, by attacking at different points, they might easily, by their superior numbers, have carried the place by storm.
But fortunately the savages had but little military science, and when once repulsed, would usually retreat in dismay. The garrison, behind their impenetrable logs, took deliberate aim, and every bullet killed or wounded some Indian warrior. The savages fought with great bravery, and succeeded in killing one man in the garrison. Dismayed by the slaughter which they were encountering, they fled, taking their dead and wounded with them. But so fully were they conscious, that would they retain their own supremacy in the wilderness, they must exterminate the white man, that their retreat was only in preparation for a return with acc.u.mulated numbers.
An intelligent historian writes:
”Daniel Boone appears before us in these exciting times the central figure towering like a colossus amid that hardy band of pioneers who opposed their b.r.e.a.s.t.s to the shock of the struggle which gave a terrible significance and a crimson hue to the history of the old dark and b.l.o.o.d.y ground.”
The Indians were scattered everywhere in desperate bands. Forty men were sent from North Carolina and a hundred from Virginia, under Colonel Bowman, to strengthen the feeble settlements. The latter party arrived on the twentieth of August, 1776. There were at that time skirmishes with the Indians almost every day at some point. The pioneers within their log-houses, or behind their palisades, generally repelled these a.s.saults with but little loss to themselves and not often inflicting severe injury to the wary savages. In the midst of these constant conflicts and dangers, the winter months pa.s.sed drearily away.
Boonesborough was constantly menaced and frequently attacked. In a diary kept within the fort we find the following entries:
”_May 23._--A large party of Indians attacked Boonesborough fort.
Kept a warm fire till eleven o'clock at night. Began it next morning, and kept a warm fire till midnight. Attempting several times to burn the fort. Three of our men were wounded, but not mortally.
”_May 26th._--A party went out to hunt Indians. One wounded Squire Boone, and escaped.”
Very cruel warfare was now being waged by the majestic power of Great Britain to bring the revolted colonies back to subjection to their laws.
As we have mentioned they called into requisition on their side the merciless energies of the savage, openly declaring to the world that they were justified in making use of whatever weapons G.o.d and nature might place in their hands. From the strong British garrisons at Detroit, Vincennes and Kaskaskia, the Indians were abundantly supplied with rifles, powder and bullets, and were offered liberal rewards for such prisoners, and even scalps, as they might bring in.
The danger which threatened these settlements in Kentucky was now such as might cause the stoutest heart to quail. The savage had been adopted as an ally by the most wealthy and powerful nation upon the globe. His marauding bands were often guided by the intelligence of British officers. Boone organized what might be called a corps of explorers to go out two and two, penetrating the wilderness with extreme caution, in all directions, to detect any indication of the approach of the Indians.
One of these explorers, Simon Kenton, acting under the sagacious counsel of Colonel Boone, had obtained great and deserved celebrity as among the most heroic of the remarkable men who laid the foundation of the State of Kentucky. It would be difficult to find in any pages of romance incidents of more wonderful adventure, or of more dreadful suffering, or stories of more miraculous escape, than were experienced by this man.
Several times he was taken captive by the Indians, and though treated with great inhumanity, succeeded in making his escape. The following incident in his life, occurring about this time, gives one a very vivid picture of the nature of this warfare with the Indians: