The Spanish conspiracy

Front matter

OassJ- i-^^-i—

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT

THE

Chapter II

The Settlement op the West — Kentucky — Indian Hostilities — Geo. E.. Clark.

Before the commencement of the French and Indian War, companies had been formed and had obtained grants of land with a view to the settlement of the country on the Monongahela and Upper Ohio. The prospecting tour of Dr. Thomas Walker, Captain Charles Campbell, the gallant Colonel James Patton, and their sssociates into Kentucky, as early as 1750, was not a mere idle voyage of adventure, but was made with a definite purpose of future colonization.* These various projects were interrupted by the breaking out of hostilities, but the struggle for supremacy between France and Britain had scarcely been terminated by the treaty of 1763, when the thoughts of the enterprising were once more seriously turned towards the West. , The preparations for the contemplated movement were for only a brief time delayed by the wide spread conspiracy of Pontiac, which made the border streams of Pennsylvania and Virginia run with the blood of the frontier settlers. The confederation organized by the sagacious and warlike chief speedily dissolved upon his failure to capture the strongholds at Detroit, Niagara and Fort Pitt; and the apprehensions and jealousies of the red men were in a measure and for a time allayed by the proclamation of 1763, to which reference has been made. The pacificatory effect of the assurances given in this proclamation was increased by the expedition of General Bradstreet upon the Erie, and of the gallant

* The journal of Dr. Thomas Walker mentions the loss of his tomahawk during a tremendous rain-storm. It was found long afterwards by one of the McAfee's on the banks of Dick's river ; this circumstance proves that he had penetrated as far as that stream. 3

Swiss, Colonel Henry Bouquet, who penetrated to the Forks of the Muskingum, and on the 9th of ISTovember, 1764, concluded a peace with the Shawanese and Delawares, securing- from them two hundred and six of their unfortunate captives, who were restored to their friends and homes. Bradstreet had already, about the 21st of August, concluded a treaty at Detroit with the head men of more than twenty tribes. The successes of Bradstreet and Bouquet paved the way for the yet more general treaty of peace made with the various tribes by Sir William Johnson, in April, 1765, at the German Flats; where the Indians proposed as a boundary beyond which the whites should not go the Ohio or Alleghany and Susquehanna, to which Johnson had no authority to accede ; and where the red men agreed to give the traders whom they had despoiled in the uprising of 1763, a large tract of land in compensation.

In spite of the royal proclamation of 1763, the aggressive pioneers pushed their settlements not only to the Watauga, in the Cherokee country, but upon the Redstone, the Monongahela, and the Cheat rivers, in regions claimed by the I^orthern Indians, and for which they had not yet received compensation ; — so that a general border war was once more feared. In the meantime, the Ohio Company, the soldiers claiming under Dinwiddle's proclamation, and individuals claiming under grants made by Virginia, were all clamoring for a perfection of their grants or a completion of their claims, while the Indians were raging at the constant encroachments upon them. The orders of General Gage, the Commander-in-Chief of his Majesty's forces, and of Sir William Johnson, the Indian Agent, for their removal were defied by the settlers, who remained upon and stoutly held their clearings. Every circumstance demanded that the boundary line suggested by the Indians at the conference in 1765, at the German Flats, should be fixed, and that their title to the lands ceded by that boundary should be extinguished. In the spring of 1768, Sir William Johnson received orders relative to a new treaty with the Indians for that purpose,

The Spanish Con^nracy. 35

and at once took measures to secure a full attendance of their representatives. The Congress, which was attended by deputies from all the Six Nations and the Shawanese and Delawares, met at Fort Stanwix, in October, 1768, and sat for nearly seven weeks. The boundary agreed upon began on the Ohio at the mouth of what is now called the Tennessee river; thence it ran up the Ohio and Alleghany to Kittauing, and thence across to the Susquehanna ; — thus transferring to the British all of the country south of the Alleghany and Ohio to which the Six Nations had any claim. The tract between the Monongahela and the Kanawha was conveyed to the traders who had been despoiled in 1763, who named it Indiana. The remainder, from the Kanawha down, was deeded to King George, for which the consideration in money and goods, aggregating more than £10,000, was paid down. It was agreed that no claim should ever be based upon the previous treaties at Lancaster and Logstown.

Upon this treaty, which was not extorted from the Indians under a pressure of disaster to them, nor by hard persuasion backed by force, but was made voluntarily and at once, rested the title of the crown to -Western Pennsylvania, Western Virginia and Kentucky. The lands ceded were not occupied by any of the Six Nations, nor were they hunted over by the tribes of that confederacy, whose habitations and hunting lands were far distant. The cession was made by chiefs of tribes who were in no way directly or practically interested in the lands ceded, under the manipulations of Sir William Johnson, who had in contemplation the founding of a new and independent colony in the territory designated ; while the Ohio and Western Indians, who were immediately and greatly interested, had no voice in the treaty. It is true the treaty itself states that the Delawares and Shawanese were present and acquiescing, but it is certain it was not signed by their chiefs, and that neither those nor any of the other tribes of the West recognized the validity of the grant which gave away their beautiful hunting lands. It is scarcely valuable to inquire into the right of the Six Natious over this territory by reasou of their alleged conquests of the Shawanese, Delawares, Miamis, and other tribes, nearly a century before ; the former exerted no practical dominion over the latter, who did not by any means assent to the " dependency " on their own part to the Six N'ations, which was asserted in the treaty by which they steadily refused to be bound. After all, the title was essentially and practically worthless, and the results to the settlers who planted themselves upon the lands, and to the tril^es from whom tljey were wrested, would not have been different had the treaty never been made. But the Cherokees also claimed Kentucky, and the histories contain vague allusions to a purchase made of their rights in a portion of the territory embraced in what is now ciClled by that name, by Colonel John Donaldson and by Dr. Thomas Walker at later dates. However, these treaties served the purpose of quieting the conscience of the white man, who could cite them as his authority for locating amid the rich canebrakes and sightly groves of beautiful Kentucky, where the Indians did not live, but for the possession of which as their hunting lands the warlike tribes from the South and North had battled from remote ages.

Settlements were made on the Kanawha in 1772. The hunters, traders, and explorers who had traversed Kentucky during the years following 1767, were but the precursors of the surveyors, who, in 1773, advanced to the Ohio and made numerous surveys along that river and in the contiguous territory. Among others. Captain Thomas Bullitt had received a commission from Dr. John Conolly to run the lines for a tract of 2,000 acres at the falls of the Ohio, and in the fall of that year a patent was issued therefor by Virginia to that mischievous intriguer. Before proceeding upon his mission, BuUitt took the precaution to obtain the consent of the Indians at Chillicothe, to whom he was introduced by Richard Butler, and who assented on condition that they should not be disturbed in their hunting south of the Ohio; — which sufficiently exhibits their contemptuous disregard for, if not their entire ignorance of, the treaty of Fort Stanwix. But the circumstance of most potent influence upon the future settlement of the country on the Ohio was the liberal bounty in western lands given to the officers and soldiers of the Virginia troops who had served in the British army in the war of 1763. All Kentucky was then included in the vague boundaries of Fincastle county, Virginia, of which William Preston was at the time the surveyor. It was as the deputies of Preston, therefore, that John Floyd, Hancock Taylor, James Douglas, Hancock Lee, and others made their surveys for man}' of these officers and soldiers in 1774, all along the south bank of the Ohio, up the Kentucky, and among the cane lands which skirted the Elkhorn.

"While the relations between the white and the red men during the ten years succeeding 1763 were nominally peaceful, and were really so between the Indians and the Pennsylvanians, who were traders ; in fact there were frequent individual collisions between the Indians and the Virginians, who were settlers, and whose evident purpose it was to permanently possess and occupy the lands south of the Ohio. That the jealousy and animosity of the Indians were thoroughly aroused by the advent of these numerous parties of hunters, explorers and surveyors, upon the hunting grounds of Kentucky, over which they had roamed for unknown centuries, was but natural. From 1769, when Stewart fell the first victim in Kentucky in the war between the races, it continued to be waged with equal and inextinguishable ferocity and cruelty on both sides, until this fair portion of creation had been finally wrested from the savage, and teemed with a manly, brave, and generous people. Here the white and the red man seldom or never met without instant aggression from the one side or the other.

It is foreign to the purpose of these pages to more than mention the dispute between Virginia and Pennsylvania concerning the boundary between those colonies, as indirectly connected with the events which, in 1774, converted the aggressive belligerency of individuals into open and general hostility between the races. The chief fomenter of the disturbances which grew out of that dispute was Dr. John Conolly; by whom also was issued the circular to all the settlers on the Ohio below Fort Pitt, which led to the murder by Michael Cresap and his party of the friendly Indians whom William Butler had sent as messengers to his agents and employes to return to Fort Pitt with the peltries on hand ; to the murder by Cresap of the peaceable Indians at Captina ; and to the murder by Greathouse of the family of the Mingo Chief, Logan, at Yellow creek, with every attending circumstance of mingled treachery, cruelty and cowardice. These were the outrages which immediately led to the gathering of his dusky warriors by Logan, and their descent with avenging hate upon the settlers on the Monongahela, and to the various kindred acts of retaliation and revenge, on both sides, which speedily culminated in Dunmore's war of 1774. The surveying operations in Kentucky were suspended, the country was at once abandoned by the various parties of hunters, explorers and surveyors, to whom Boone and Stoner conveyed the warning messages of Dunmore, and who returned to Virginia, many of them to participate in the victory at Point Pleasant or to march with Dunmore into the Indian country in Ohio.

They did not return to Kentucky until the ensuing year of 1775, when the first permanent settlements were made by Boone, Harrod, the McAfees, Logan and others. In the meantime, in spite of the well understood proclamation of King George prohibiting all purchases of lands from the Indians by private persons, and notwithstanding the treaty of Fort Stanwix (of which they probably were not ignorant), Richard Henderson and his associates of Korth Carolina, concluded in March, 1775, at the Sycamore Shoals, on the Watauga river, a treaty with the Cherokees ; by which those Indians sold to the company all of whatever vague, shadowy ancl disputed claims they had upon a large part of the territory which the Six Nations had already sold to the King, and to which lands the Ohio Indians insisted that neither the Six Xations nor the Cherokees had any right or title. Before the arrival of the alleged new proprietors, Boone and his hardy woodsmen, acting as pioneers for this Transylvania Company, had erected the first cabins at Boonevsboro. The associates immediately proceeded to organize what they designed as a proprietary government, independent of Virginia, (by which colony the right of dominion was claimed), and having its own separate executive, legislative and judicial officers ; and not only did they assume the authority to sell lands and convey titles, but also to put in operation all the machinery and to exert all the powers of government. Conflicts of titles and of jurisdiction at once sprung up, Virginia interfered and asserted her paramount authority, and, the proprietors acquiescing in the decision, the existence of the new republic was transitory, leaving no ripple behind to show that it had been even contemplated. Thus, in the very inception of the settlement of Kentucky, when but a few hunters, woodsmen, adventurers and surveyor^ inhabited its entire expanse of hill and valley, of woodland, canebrake and prairie, and when but a few monarchs of the primeval forest with which to construct the scattering huts and weak stockades had been felled, was witnessed the first effort for independence. But in the movement there is not discernible a trace of disloyalty to the cause of republican liberty, to which Virginia and her sister colonies were soon to become irrevocably committed.

Most notable of the daring spirits who had sought the west in 1774. was one of the gallant sons of a plain farmer of Albemarle county, Virginia, whose narrow and straitened circumstances did not permit him to afford his boys the educational advantages then within the reach of the offspring of wealthier Virginian planters. He was not in any sense well educated, even as that word was understood at the time in Virginia, where education was less general than it was in New England, but the more fortunate class of whose youth was not inferior to the same class in the more northern colonies in broad and liberal culture. A scanty knowledge of orthography and syntax, and a little acquaintance with backwoods surveying was about all the learning to be gleaned from the text books which the young Virginian possessed. But strong native powers, quick perception, and an intuitive knowledge of men, more than compensated for his deficiency in the learning of the schools. His mental faculties were as ready and active as they were clear and vigorous. In enterprise he was as alert and audacious as he was cool, decided and intrepid in action. His open and handsome countenance invited the confidence of all; his eminently manly and martial bearing at once secured respect. A life passed in the open air, sometimes in labor, but more 'generally in surveying or in hunting, had strengthened a hardy constitution, had accustomed him to feats of endurance and endued him with uncomplaining fortitude. Instinctively men recognized in him a leader in all the vicissitudes of life on the border and in a debatable land. But to many of the highest and more valuable qualities was added the curse of passions he did not curb, and of appetites he could not control, which became his master, and which early sapped his strength, clouded his mind, undermined his character, and wrought his downfall. "While the story of the achievements of George Rogers Clark as related by the historians is the most brilliant of all that illumine the annals of the west, that of his life, if truthfully written, would be found one of the saddest and most pitiful.

In 1772, Clark had come as far west as the Kanawha. Two years later he was on his way to Kentucky, and had reached a point some distance below Wheeling, in April, 1774, when he and the band of hunters with whom he was journeying determined to inaugurate a war against the Indians, under the leadership of Michael Cresap. It is ascertained from Clark's letter written in defense of Cresap, that the former was with the latter when the Indian messengers of William Butler were killed, and when the peaceful encampment at Captina was assailed ; and it is mainly to his testimony that Cresap is indebted for his vindication from the charge brought by Jefferson, that he was the butcher of the family of Logan. Returning with Cresap to Redstone, Clark and most of the huuters with him enlisted under Dunmore in the war which quickly followed, and the speedy recognition of Clark's singular capacity for command and personal intrepidity obtained for him a captain's commission. He was with Dunmore in his march into Ohio. During that fall and winter Clark, and many of the other soldiers under Dunmore and Andrew Lewis, made arrangements to proceed in their purpose to establish themselves in Kentucky, which had been interrupted b}' the brief . but bloody struggle with the Indians; and the early spring of 1775 found him at Harrodsburg, where he at once assumed the leadership of as hardy and as brave a band of adventurers as any the world ever saw. In the fall he returned to Virginia, but the next spring made his way a second time to Kentucky, with whose settlement, defense and progress his name during the next ten years is inseparably and most honorably associated. He found the public mind, as well as public affairs in the new settlements all in confusion. The claims of proprietorship asserted by the Transylvania Company were repudiated by many of the settlers, who preferred a formal request to Virginia to assert her paramount authority. l!^orth Carolina also denounced and rejected the private treaty made between Henderson and the Cherokees, and it was a disputed question whether the alleged purchase was within the jurisdiction of Virginia or in that of Forth Carolina. This knot the prompt mind of Clark decided to cut without waiting for it to be untied. At his suggestion a public meeting was held at Harrodsburg in June, 1776, which elected himself and John Gabriel Jones as members of the Virginia Assembly, provision for which was made by the convention of 1776. It is said, in the sketch published in Collins and written by a friendly and most partial hand,* that this action was a disappointment to Clark, who wished to be appointed as an agent to negotiate terms with Virginia and not as a mere representative of a handful of the people of the new commonwealth. It may well be doubted if he had as yet fully

Probably tbe late Judge Pirtle, who married a relative of Clark.

formulated any plan, except that if Virginia failed at once to assert her jurisdiction, lie intended to use the lands of Kentucky as a fund to invite settlers and with them to establish an independent state [Collins]. Yet, accepting the inferior commission confided to their hands, he and his associate set out at once for Virginia. They found the convention adjourned, and the assembly not yet met. Their application to the council for ammunition with which to defend the west being met with a proposition to le7id instead of give the needed supplies, it is stated by his eulogist in Collins, that Clark rejoined "that a country which is not worth defending is not worth claiming;" plainly intimating his intention to carry out his original design, to disregard the jurisdiction which the squeamish council hesitated to maintain for Virginia, and at once to assert and to endeavor to establish for the settlers who were huddled together at Boonesboro, St. Asaphs and Harrod's an absolute independence and sovereignty. The thread which bound spirits lil<:e his in the west to their countrymen in the east was indeed slender. Whether he could have carried with him the earnest men who had sent him as their representative, and not as their ambassador, to Virginia; and what might have been the effect of the action which he contemplated in a contingency which did not arise, are themes for conjecture. The powder which Clark demanded was furnished by the council, was conveyed by Clark and Jones and seven others from Pittsburg to Cabin creek, and thence was taken to the stockades of the interior.

The lirst assembly of the new State of Virginia met in October, 1776. The record of the proceedings of its house of delegates on the second day of the session shows, that on that day was presented the petition of the "inhabitants on the western parts of Fincastle county," stating their grievances against the Transylvania Company, recognizing the jurisdiction and authority of Virginia, announcing their action in the election of two persons as members of the assembly, and requesting their admission as such, and avowing their readiness " to assist in the present laudable cause, by contributing their quota of men and money." Two days later the committee reported to the house that the said persons could not be admitted as members because the " western part of Fincastle " was not allowed by law a distinct representation, but that "the said inhabitants ought to be formed into a distinct county, in order to entitle them to such representation ; " and, after disagreements between the house and senate had been reconciled, a bill was finally passed abolishing Fincastle and dividing its territory into three distinct counties, one of which was Kentucky. The qualification for electors and representatives in the said county were " the possession of twenty-five acres of land with a house or plantation thereon, or one hundred acres without a house and plantation, and having right to an estate for life at least in the said land in his own right, or in right of his wife."

Having returned to Harrodsburg late in December, 1776, during the next two years Clark was constantly alert, active and energetic. Now in the interior of Kentucky defending the settlers and their stations; again along the Ohio, watching the Indians and guarding against invasion ; then passing to and from Virginia, planning offensive measures and perfecting the organization necessary to their execution ; — his vigilance was as ceaseless as his resolution was dauntless. The winter of 1778-9 witnessed his daring capture of Vincennes and Kaskaskia, which transferred our boundary to the northern lakes and added to the repubhc five states, rich in all the resources of boundless material development, and teeming with a population of restless energies. Had the achievement been less far-reaching and splendid in its ultimate results, it would still excite the admiration of all, by the endurance, hardihood, and courage of the men engaged, and by the audacity and skill of the hero by whom it was planned and executed. Henceforth the services of Clark were of a national character. The fort established by him at the Falls was of no avail to protect the settlers of the interior from forays by small bands of savages which crossed the Ohio at many points above and below. Still less could it prevent those

44 The Sjjanish Conspiracy.

larger expeditions of warriors and trained savages under the leadership of white mpn, which were organized and equipped at Detroit, and which in secret wound their ways up the valleys of the Kentucky and the Licking until they reached points from which to vent their hate upon detached settlers, or to strike at the stations destined for assault or siege. Their defense devolved upon other gallant men, who in turn carried havoc, reprisal, aud vengeance to the Indian towns of Ohio and Indiana. But it is foreign to our purpose to name them or to dwell upon, their feats of daring, upon the instances of generous selfsacrifice which proved them noble, upon the sufferings and horrors to which they were subjected, or upon the dangers they braved with unquailing hearts aud unflinching nerve. The last invasion of Kentucky by any large body of Indians ended at the disastrous battle of the Blue Licks. The preliminary treaty of peace with Great Britain was made known in Kentucky in the spring of 1783, and in July of that year, George R. Clark was formally notified by the governor of Virginia, in terms of praise and gratitude, that the state was no longer able to employ him as a general ofl&cer in her service.*

* On the 103d page of his " Pohtical Beginnings," referring to the passage of the Ordinance of 1787, Colonel John Mason Brown says : " That wide domain, from the Scioto to the Father of Waters, over which the unaided valor of Virginia's sons in Kentucky had established dominion, was readily absorbed into the new nation that was forming." The writer has been unable to find in the " Beginnings " any reference to the fact, that a large part of the men who marched with Clark against Kaskaskia and Vincennes were recruited in Virginia for that purpose. This omission, coupled with the statement just quoted, would convey the impression that the Illinois was captured by Clark and such soldiers as he was able to obtain in Kentucky alone, unaided from Virginia or any other source. This would seem to render proper the correction : That not only were a large part of the arms and all the ammunition obtained from Pittsburg, and paid for by Virginia ; not only were the men paid, the supplies bought, and all the expenses borne, by Virginia; — but, in addition, a considerable portion of the men engaged were recruited in Virginia, and were transported by her from Pittsburg to the rendezvous at the falls, while others under Colonel Bowman marched by way of the Cumberland Gap and joined Clark. The impression has prevailed among many that nearly all the warfare in Kentucky and the West was the result of merely individual effort. But, so far from that being the case, the men engaged in all this fighting acted as a part of the regular militia system of Virginia, and while in active service were regularly paid by that state. Formal reports of the ammunition and commissary supplies furnished to Boonesboro, Harrod's, and St. Asaphs were made by quartermasters to the Virginia executives, and the bills were settled bj'^ them. Some of those made by Joseph Lindsey (who fell at Blue Licks) the writer has examined. In every respect they would do credit to any quartermaster-general in the regular army.

Chapter III

The Indian Question at the Close op the Revolution — Efforts op Congress to Preserve Peace— They are Rendered Ineffective BY the Jealousy of the States.

That during the Revolution the Indian aggressions upon the Iventuckians were inspired and aided, and even planned and led by the Eritish, is not open to dispute. It was fondly hoped that, upon the conclusion of the definitive treaty of peace in 1783, the ratification of which, by the parties was exchanged in May, 1784, the British military posts in the north-west would be at once surrendered, and that the Americans would then be able to control the Indians. But one of the articles of the treaty prohibited tbe British from carrying away slaves belonging to the citizens of any of the States, and this was disregarded ; the British contending that the agreement did not apply to negroes who had been previously freed by acts of war, and denying that they had taken away any others. While there may have been force in their argument, it is unquestionable that some of the negroes carried ofi" by them were not in their hands, and had not become free by the acts of war, at the time the treaty was signed. It was also agreed in the treaty, that Congress would recommend to the States the repeal of all laws which interposed obstacles to the recovery of debts due to British citizens; and this Congress did, but, having no power to enforce this advice, it was rejected by several of the States, and notably by Virginia. It is probable that Great Britain had never entirely abandoned the hope of regaining the country west of the AUeghanies, or, at least, of separating it from the Atlantic States, and of extending over it her protection.

At any rate, the failure by Virginia and other States to repeal their laws obstructing the collection of debts due to British citizens, was made the pretext for refusing to surrender the military posts on the northern frontier, which were within the acknowledged limits of the United States as defined in the treaty of 1783. For a time after the declaration of peace the Indians continued pacific in their actions, if not in their intentions. But having never acknowledged the sovereignty of Great Britain, nor having ever been conquered by the United States, they found it impossible to comprehend how a treaty between those powers, with which they had had nothing to do, could extend over them the dominion of one of the parties thereto. They were divided into many tribes having between them no bond, while the 'several tribal organizations themselves, sometimes strong in the numbers and prowess of their warriors, were always Aveak in the absence of power to control the vicious of their own members. Thus it often happened that, while the great mass of the Indians might desire peace, a single tribe would be resolved on war ; or, that a few bad men in a tribe would engage in rapine, for which the larger portion of the tribe were not willingly responsible. Nor was the wrong all on one side. In a country situated as Kentucky then was, it was inevitable that it should become a place of refuge for a full quota of the lawless from other sections, who found a vent upon the red men for their murderous and predatory passions. The savage blows in Kentucky invariably descended upon the innocent ; and, if reprisal was sought by the whites across the river, the chances were a hundred to one that the guilty escaped while the unofiending perished. Thus, under conditions of a nominal peace, occurrences having all the features of the most horrible and relentless war were only too frequent ; and though these were individual rather than general, they were not the less potent to keep the passions of the populations on both sides of the river in a condition of constant irritation. It is true that the acts which occasioned so much recrimination and retaliation were often and designedly exaggerated ; yet enough was real and undoubted to constitute a serious grievance which loudly called for action and redress. That the Indians on their part were incited and encouraged by the retention of the posts by the British is certain ; and the charge was as sincerely believed as it was generally made at the time, that, after the declaration of peace, the murders and depredations by the savages in Kentucky were directly aided and countenanced by his majesty's officers at Detroit and elsewhere.