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^/r/Jlf)t tmesttuarti JHobement

THE COLONIES AND THE
REPUBLIC
WEST OF THE ALLEGHANIES
1 763-1 798

WITH FULL CARTOGRAPHICAL ILLUSTRATIONS
FROM CONTEMPORARY SOURCES

BY

JUSTIN WINSOR

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
1897

Copyright, 1897,
By HOUGHTOM", MIFFLIN & CO.
All rights reserved.

Tlie Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass.y U. S. A,
Eleotrotyped and Printed by 11. 0- Ilonghton & Company.

Sie henry W. DYKE ACLAND, Bart.,
K. C. B., D. C. L., LL. D., F. E. S.,
Honorary Physician to His Royal Highness, the Pkince of Wales.

Mt dear Sie Heney, —
When a few days ago at the Bodleian you addressed a party of sixty
American librarians, you showed what I have long known, that you
have a kind appreciation of my countrymen, with some of whom your
friendship has lasted from the time when you accompanied the Prince
of Wales to the States in 1860.
You have since then traversed our land on other visits, during which
you have evinced to me your interest in our history, particularly when
some years ago we together looked over the ground hallowed by the
devotion of Lady Harriet Acland.
I therefore like to connect your name with this book, which is a story
of how much of our territorial integrity we owe to British forbearance,
when the false-hearted diplomacy of France and Spain would have
despoiled us. Ever your friend,

UliulStijoiMO

Great Malvern, Wobcestershibe,
August 8, 1897.

CONTENTS AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

CHAPTER I.
PAGE
An Introductory Survey . ... .  1
CHAPTER IL
The Property Liiste, 1763-1764  4
Illustrations . Guy Johnson's Map of the Fort Stauwix Line,
15 ; Hutohins's Map of the Indiana Grant, 17 ; Guy Johnson's
Map of the Country of the Six Nations, 18, 19.
CHAPTER III.
Louisiana, Florida, and the Illinois Country, 1763-1768 . . 22
Illustrations : Hutohins's Map of the American Bottom, 27 ;
Country of the Southern Indians (1762), 31 ; Evans and Pow-
nall's Map of the Northwest, 39.
CHAPTER IV.
The Kentucky Region, 1767-1774  43
Illustrations : Portrait of Daniel Boone, 45 ; View of Pitts
burg, 51 ; Kitchin's Map of Pennsylvania, 54, 55.
CHAPTER V.
The Quebec Bill and the Dunmobe War, 1774  63
Illustration : Crfevecosur's Map of the Scioto Valley, 67.
CHAPTER VI.
South of the Ohio, 1769-1776  77
Illustrations : Boonesborough Fort, 83 ; Map of Colonel An
drew WUliarason's Campaign in the Cherokee Country, 94, 95.

vi , CONTENTS AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
CHAPTER VII.
The Fortunes of the Mississippi, 1766-1777  101
Illustrations : Portrait of Jonathan Carver, 102 ; Carver's Map
of his Proposed Colonies, 105 ; Map of the Vicinity of New
Orleans (1778), 109. CHAPTER VIII.
George Rogers Clark, Arbiter and Suppliant, 1776-1779 . . 116
Illustration : Map of the Rapids of the Ohio, 119.
CHAPTER IX.
The Sinister Purposes of France, 1774-1779  144
CHAPTER X.
A Year of Suspense, 1780  166
Illustration : Fortifications of St. Louis, 172, 173.
CHAPTER XI.
East and West, 1781  188
Illustration : Map of the Disputed Boundaries of Pennsylvania
and Virginia, 197. CHAPTER XII.
Peace, 1782  203
Illustrations : Bonne's Map of the Thirteen United States,
bounded by the Alleghanies, 211 ; Dunn's Map of the Source
of the Mississippi (1776), 214 ; Carver's Map of the Source of
the Mississippi, 215. CHAPTER XIII.
The Insecurity op the Northwest, 1783-1787  225
Illustrations : Imlay's Map of Kentucky, 249 ; Washington's
Sketch of the Potomac Divide, 253 ; Heckewelder's MS. Map
of the Muskingum and Cuyahoga Valleys, 255 ; Cr^vecoeur's
Map of the Western Country, with the Divisions under Jeffer
son's Ordinance, 259 ; View of Fort Mcintosh, 269.

CONTENTS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. vii
CHAPTER XIV.
The Northwest Occupied, 1786-1790  . 280
Illustrations : Map of the Ohio Company's Purchase by Collot,
291 ; View of Fort Harmar, 293 ; Crevecoeur's Map of the
Ohio Country, 294, 295 ; Chart of the Ohio River, 297 ; Cr6ve-
cceur's Map of the Mouth of the Muskingum, 300, 301 ; Har
ris's Map of Marietta, 303 ; Collet's View of Marietta, 305 ;
View of the Campus Martius, 307 ; Barlow's Map of the Ohio
Company's Purchase, 312, 313 ; Sketch of Fitch's Map of the
Northwest, 322. CHAPTER XV.
The Southwest Insecure, 1783-1786  326
Illustration : Filson's Map of Kentucky, 332, 333.
CHAPTER XVI.
The Spanish Question, 1787-1789  351
Illustrations : Plan of New Madrid, 363 ; Jedediah Morse's
Map of the Northwest, 364, 365.
CHAPTER XVII.
Uncertainties in the Southwest, 1790 .  375
Illustrations : Morse's Map of Georgia, 377 ; Samuel Lewis's
Map of the Alabama Region, 381 ; Country of the Creeks, 383 ;
Pond's Map of the Grand Portage, 391 ; Morse's Map of the
Northwest Coast, 393. CHAPTER XVIII.
The Conditions of 1790  398
Illustrations : Portrait of Brissot, 403 ; Ohio Flatboat, 412.
CHAPTER XIX.
Harmar's and St. Clair's Campaigns, 1790-1791  415
Illustration : Map of Moravian Settlements, 423.
CHAPTER XX.
The North ivEfeT Tribes at Last Defeated, 1792-1794 .... 434
Illustrations : Map of Pittsburg and Wayne's Camp, 445 ;
View of Niagara River, 449 ; Camp at Greenville, 452.

viii CONTENTS AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
CHAPTER XXI.
Jay's Treaty and the Territorial Integrity of the North
west Secured, 1794-1796  462
Illustrations : Guthrie's Map of Lake Superior and the Grand
Portage, 469 ; Pond's Map of the Source of the Mississippi,
471 ; Lewis's Map of the Genesee Country, 475.
CHAPTER XXII.
Wayne's Treaty and the New Northwest, 1794-1797 .... 485
Illustrations : Grants and Reservations in .the Ohio Country,
489 ; Morse's Map of the Northwestern Territory, 492, 493 ;
Scott's Northwest Territory, 494, 495 ; Rufus Putnam's Map
of Ohio, 496, 497 ; The Genesee Country, 499 ; Tlie Mohawk
and Wood Creek Route, 501 ; Map of the Lake Erie Route,
503 ; Scott's Northwest Territory, 505 ; Heckewelder's Map of
the Alleghany and Big Beaver Rivers, 507 ; Map of A^'estern
Routes, 509 ; CoUot's Map of Pittsburg and Wheeling, 510 ;
Morse's Map of Pennsylvania, 513. /
CHAPTER XXIII.
The Unrest of the Southwest, 1791-1794  515
Illustrations . Map of the Tennessee Government, 517 ; The
Chickasaw Country, 522 ; Map of Kentucky, 524, 525 ; Bar
ker's Map of Kentucky, 527 ; Toulmiu's Map of Kentucky,
529 ; Spanish Map of the Grand Portage, 534, 535 ; River of
the West, 537 ; Map of the Tennessee Region, 545.
CHAPTER XXIV.
Pinckney's Treaty and the Kentucky Intrigue, 1795-1796 . 548
CHAPTER XXV.
The United States Completed, 1796-1798 .... . 558
INDEX  575

THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT.

CHAPTER I.
AN INTRODUCTORY SURVEY.
The public and secret treaties of 1763 left France without
a foothold on the American main. By the terms of the Peace
of Paris, the Bourbon flag fluttered in the islands of St. Pierre
and Miquelon. The suspicion of what lay beyond these little
fishing stations at the entrance of the Gulf of St. Lawrence
had two centuries and a half before prompted the ambition of
France to penetrate the continent by the great river of Canada.
A century later her pioneers, following that current to its upper
sources, had passed on to the Mississippi, which forms the
central artery of the continent. Here, a third of the way across
the land's broad expanse, and not suspecting the greater dis
tance beyond, France had nurtured the hope of ascending the
western affluents of that parent stream, till she had com
passed, with her survey and jurisdiction, a greater France,
stretching from the AUeghanies to the South Sea. This expec
tation had been dashed. Where she had counted upon seeing
her royal standard shadowing soil and native alike, her flag
was now seen drooping at a few posts beyond the Mississippi,
and awaiting the demands of Spain to lower it.
During the period which followed the Treaty of Ryswick
(1697), a scheme had often been broached among the English,
bnt had never prospered, which looked to thwarting the policy
of France in the Great Valley. This was to unite England and
Spain in a movement to drive the French from the continent,
and divide the northern parts of the New World between their
respective crowns. This conjunction had now come to pass,
but not by any such international pact.

2 AN INTRODUCTORY SURVEY.
In the same treaty of 1763, Great Britain had acknowledged
a limit to the western extension of her seaboard colonies by
accepting the Mississippi Kiver as a boundary of her American
possessions. The Atlantic colonies, with their impracticable
sea-to-sea charters, took no exception to such a reasonable cur
tailment of their western limits ; but when the king's xiroclama-
tion foUowed, and the colonies found themselves confined to the
seaward slope of the Appalachians, their western extension
made crown territory to be given over to the uses of the
Indians, and all attempts to occupy it forbidden, — there were
signs of discontent which were easily linked with the resentment
that defeated the Stamp Act. So the demand for a western
existence was a part of the first pulsation of resistance to the
mother country, and harbingered the American Revolution.
To keep the opposition, which had thus been raised, within
bounds, and once more to apply a territorial check, the Quebec
bill, in 1774, afforded one of the weighty charges, colored with
current political rancor, which made up the Declaration of In
dependence. Britain had always denied that New France could
cut athwart her colonial charters by any natural, geographical
definition and extend to the Ohio and Mississippi ; but in the
Quebec bill it served her purpose to assume that Canada had
of right that convenient extension.
In the war which ensued, Virginia took the lead which she
had always taken in respect to this western region, and her
expedition under George Rogers Clark rendered it easier for the
American commissioners, who negotiated the treaty of 1782, to
include this ample domain within the American union. In
doing this they loyally defeated the intrigues of all the other
parties to the general treaty, — France, whom in the earlier war,
with England's help, the colonies had overcome ; England,
from whom, with French assistance, they had gained their inde
pendence ; and Spain, whose insidious and vacillating policy
they were yet further and successfully to combat. Each of
these powers had hoped to curtail the ambition of the young
Republic. Vergennes had succeeded in crippling England, but
he feared the stalwart figure of the young nation born of Eng
land's misfortune. He was ready, if he could, to use England
in her new complacency to cripple the youthful America.
The treaty of Independence was not so effective but that

AN INTRODUCTORY SURVEY. 3
there soon followed other efforts to prevent for a while the
rounding out of the Republic to its legitimate bounds. Eng
land, on the side of Canada, and Spain, on the side.of Louisiana,
sought to regain something they had lost. The retention by
Great Britain of the lake posts, including as they hoped the
lake front, though with some show of right, was disgraced by
base intrig-ues with Kentucky. All her schemes were brought
to an end by Jay in the treaty of 1794. The occupation of
the eastern bank of the Mississippi from the Yazoo country,
southward, by Spain, and the plotting of Miro with Wilkinson
and his associates to establish a Spanish protectorate south of
the Ohio, were defeated at last by the treaty of San Lorenzo
in 1795.
Adding the time which was necessary to carry out these
treaties, it is now an even hundred years since the title of the
United States to this vast region lying between the Appala
chians, the Great Lakes, and the Mississippi was unmistakably
confirmed. For more than thirty years after the peace of 1763,
the colonies and the Republic struggled to maintain the Ameri
can spirit on this eastern-central area of the continent. Inde
pendence achieved, for twelve or fifteen years the United States
strove to round out its territorial promise. The history of this
western region during all these years was constantly moulded
by its geography, and it is the purpose of the present volume to
show the ever varying aspects of this struggle.
To establish what was called the Property Line was the first
signal step taken in behalf of the seaboard to assert a right to
enter upon this territory, and to that initiatory measure we
devote the opening of the story.

CHAPTER II.
THE PROPERTY LINE.
1763-1761.
Two years before the Treaty of Paris (1763), James Otis had
argued in Boston against issuing Writs of Assistance to detect
evasions of the revenue. A service of law, which in England
had been constantly accepted, aroused in an unwilling people a
rebellious spirit. How to restrain this threatening impulse was
already a serious question ; and there was regret with some that
Canada had not been left at the peace in French hands, to
remain a menace to the colonies, and hold them dependent on
England's protection.
The existence of this recalcitrant temper had been often cited
in the arguments of those who preferred Guadaloupe to Canada
in the settling the account with France. Lookers-on in the
colonies, like Kalm, had perceived the force of this view.
Choiseul saw it, and predicted the fatal outcome of England's
final choice. Vergennes, chagrined at the drop in political
influence which France had experienced, welcomed this hope of
disaster to an ancient rival of France, which her sacrifice of
Canada might produce.
Colden and others iu the colonies were conscious that the
loyal subjects of England must face new hazards when the
British flag was hoisted at Quebec. This New Yorker repre
sented to the Board of Trade in London that New England was
the nursery of this threatening passion, and that it was neces
sary, if her republican hopes were to be chilled, to curtail the
Yankees' bounds by extending New York to the Connecticut
River. In September, 1764, word reached Albany that the
king in council had stretched the jurisdiction of New York over
what is now known as Vermont. Francis Bernard went farther.
He not only urged this extension to the Connecticut, but he
wished that the boundaries of the rest of New Enaiand should

THE FRENCH AND INDIAN. 5
be redistributed, in a sort of gerrymandering wa}', so as to
insure a government majority in every part, and during 1766
and 1767 he was in close correspondence with the home govern
ment on this point.
Murray, who had been appointed governor at Quebec in
October, 1763, did not reach his post till August of the next
year. It was not long before he was making reports to the
home government which were startling on two points. One was
that the British then in Canada " were the meanest and most
immoral people he ever saw, while the [French] Canadians
were frugal, industrious, and moral, and had become reconciled
to the English rule." The report also anticipated the action
which, ten years later, the daring of the seaboard colonies forced
the English ministry to take in the Quebec bill. Murray's
proposition was to annex the region lying beyond the Allegha
nies to Canada, as a means of overawing the older colonies.
The gentleness of Murray with the Canadians was in rather
painful contrast with Gage's plan of using them against the
Indians. He advised Bradstreet (May 3, 1764) "to employ
them in every service that can render them the most obnoxious
to the Indians. Whatever is to be done most disagreeable to
the Indians, let the Canadians have a large share in it. This
will convince them, if anything will, how vain their hopes are
of success from that quarter." If this policy was inspired
by the home government, as well as another policy which was
aimed at the repression of the natural subjects of the crown,
one could well have predicted the later alliance of 1778.
A recent historian, in his Expansion of England, speaks of
the prevalence in the mother country at this time of a " not
unnatural bitterness," which accompanied the fear that Britain
had enabled her colonies to do without her. Seeley once again,
writing of the century of English history from Louis XIV. to
Napoleon, advises the English reader to recognize the fact that
his country's real history during this interval was in the New
World, where England successively fought France and her own
colonies, in the effort to sustain her power. With this in mind,
the student of British rule would not find, he adds, "that
century of English history so uninteresting."
The fall of New France had produced sharp effects upon the

6 THE PROPERTY LINE.
relations of America and England. The war had increased the
British debt by £350,000,000. The rights of the mother coun
try, which affected the commerce and industry of her colonies,
were at this time both brutal and mercenary. Viscount Bury
says : " It may fairly be stated that the advantage reaped by
a few shipowners from the operation of the navigation laws
was purchased by an actual money expenditure of more than
£200,000,000, in less than half a century." England was con
tent to let the American pioneers break out the paths for a
newer and perhaps greater Britain ; but it was her policy first
of aU to make these plodders of the wilderness pay tribute to
the stay-at-home merchant. That such injustice was according
to law and precedent did not meet the questions which the
Americans raised, — questions such as are constantly needing
adjustment to newer environments.
The population in the seaboard colonies was doubling, as
Franklin computed, in twenty-five years. The bonds of inter
colonial sympathies were strengthening, and the designations of
New Englander and Virginian were beginning to give place to
American. With these conditions among the colonists, it was
not unnatural that a proposition of the ministry to tax them on
a system repellent to colonial views created distrust. A period
of doubt is always one of rumors. Bernard's plea for readjust
ing the New England bounds made John Adams and others
suspect that the British government intended to revoke the
colonial charters and make the colonies royal provinces. The
terms of the royal proclamation of 1763, which Gage received
in New York on November 30, indicated, as ah-eady said, that
under the new dispensation the westward extension of the
colonies' boimds would be curtailed by the mountains, and the
spaces of the Great Valley would be confirmed to savagery.
There were further symptoms of this in the movement now
going on in Pennsylvania to induce the king to recompense its
proprietary and make it a royal domain. The king might
indeed be preferable to a stubborn master.
If the heady motions of the ministry were without tact, there
was some warrant for its belief that the colonies, despite acts
of trade and navigation, were prosperous enough to share the
burdens of the mother country. Maryland and Virginia were
dispatching large shipments of wheat to England. Philadel-

THE PROCLAMATION OF 170S. 7
phia alone, the readiest port for shipping such products as came
over the mountains, was now sending abroad four hundred ves
sels annually carrying exports to the value of £700,000. New
England built and sent across the sea for sale fifty ships a year.
If such things indicated to the government a source of reve
nue, it was beginning to warn some observers that the colonies
had it quite within their power to sustain a practical autonomy.
When, in 1762, the ministry secured an uncompromising adher
ent in making William Franklin the governor of New Jersey,
the act had no such effect upon his father, and it was not long
before Benjamin Franklin was warning the ministry that " griev
ous tyranny and oppression " might drive his compatriots to
revolt. The colonies had indeed struggled on, in facing the
French, without cohesion ; but injustice — and it mattered
little whether it was real or imagined — was yet to bind them
together, as the dangers of a common foe had never done.
The immediate struggle over the Stamp Act, which was
closed by its repeal in 1766, produced for a time at least that
political quiet which induces enterprise. The attention of the
pioneers was again drawn to the western movement, and the hu
mane spirit once again dwelt on the prohibition which the
luckless proclamation of 1763 had put upon the ardent pioneer.
Bouquet, falling in with the views of the ministry, was now urg
ing that all grants west of the mountains should be annulled.
This would include the abolishment of the Ohio Company, and
would very closely affect the Virginia gentlemen.
It was also Bouquet's opinion that the policing of this west
em wilderness and the enforcement of the proclamation should
be intrusted to the military. There was need of it. Since
Governor Penn in June, 1765, had again opened the Indian
trade by proclamation, the packmen had crossed the moun
tains, and a following of vagabonds was occasionally provoking
the Indians to retaliate for the wrongs which were done them.
Thus occasional scenes of devastation on the frontiers of Penn
sylvania and Virginia were calling for mutual explanations
between the white and the red man ; still the great body of the
Indians had, since the close of Pontiac's war, ceased their havoc.
The trouble was mainly with the whites. " I am really vexed,"
wrote Gage to Johnson (May 5, 1766), " at the behavior of the
lawless banditti upon the borders ; and what aggravates the

8 THE PROPERTY LINE.
more is the difficulty to bring them to punishment." There
was a limit to the Indian forbearance, but there were ten years
yet to pass before the warwhoops of the Dunmore turmoil
awoke the echoes of the Ohio woods.
During this interval the main dispute of the frontiers, be
tween the home government and the natives, was how to protect
the hunting-grounds of the tribes and at the same time give
some scope to the ambition of the pioneer. Sir WiUiam John
son, as Indian agent, had faced hard problems before ; but he
never had a more difficult question than that which now con
fronted him. The French had indeed publicly withdrawn from
the situation, but he could not divest himself of the belief that
they were still exerting a clandestine influence, which was more
difficult to deal with. A part of this influence lay in the ex
periences of the Indians with the French. " When I was in
Canada," said Gage, " I could not find that the French had
ever purchased land of the Indians, — only settled amongst
them by permission and desire." Again he writes to Johnson,
" We are plagued everywhere about lands. The French had
never any dispute with the Indians about them, though they
never purchased a single acre ; and I believe the Indians have
made difficulty with us because we have gone on a different
plan." Things had now come to such a pass on the frontier that
Johnson saw the necessity of establishing some definite line of
separation between the colonies and their Indian neighbors, and
of maintaining it. When a savage said to him that the Eng
lish always stole the Indian lands by the rum bottle, Johnson
knew well all that it implied. With a purpose on each side, the
one to sell and the other to buy, and with liquor as the barter
ing medium, nothing could shield the Indian from wrong. In
order to make a beginning in the interests of right and to pro
mote peace, Johnson dispatched George Croghan to England
to sound the government on the project of such a line ; and
while Croghan was there Johnson instructed him to memorial
ize the Board of Trade about the desirability of securing land
south of the Ohio to satisfy the demands of the Ohio Company,
and the claims of the soldiers enlisted by Dinwiddie in 1754,
under a promise of land. Preliminary to this, and for the pur
pose of bringing the Indians to terms of mutual confidence

THE SOUTHERN BOUNDARY. 9
among themselves, Johnson had exerted himself to make peace
between the leading tribes of the North and South. The Vir
ginians, as Gage wrote to Johnson some time before (March 3,
1766), were intent on such a plan, hoping thereby to prevent
the Cherokees taking revenge on the Iroquois, for some murders
committed by the young men of the latter. In December,
1767, three Cherokee chiefs presented themselves at Johnson
HaU, on this errand. The Iroquois were summoned, and on
March 4, 1768, the friendly pact between them was made.
The movement for this boundary settlement had in the start
a greater impulse at the South than at the North. It had for
some time devolved upon John Stuart, as the Indian agent for
the southern colonies, to deal with the Cherokees in matters
touching both the whites and the savages. He had brought
about a conference at Augusta, where the Creeks had ceded
some territory to Georgia " in proof of the sense they have of
His Majesty's goodness in forgetting past offenses."
As it happened, the irresponsible conduct of the Carolina
traders was rendering it necessary to act promptly, particularly
if peace was to prevail among its tribes, since the whites always
suffered in such times. The rivalry of the French had much
conduced in the past to make the English liberal in their gra
tuities. That open rivalry failing, the generous habit of the
English had slackened, and the Choctaws had not failed to
remark upon it. The French at New Orleans used this neglect
to point a moral for the occasion.
The inroads of the whites upon the tribal territories had
always been a source of alarm to the Indians, and Stuart had, in
August, 1765, urged restraining them by a fixed line. We find,
in 1766, that a deputation of Indians was in England, pleading
with the governinent against the injustice of the colonists ;
and this may have had something to do with the repeated warn
ings which Stuart received in 1766 to avoid an Indian rupture.
The instances of encroachment were cumulative, but the Indians
took new alarm when these trespasses seemed to be made on a
system, as was implied in the movement to extend the province
bounds to the west. This purpose had been in part determined
upon to protect the few settlers who were well within the

10 THE PROPERTY LINE.
Indian territory. The bounds of South Carolina had been
already pushed upon the country of the Catawbas, and in April
and May, 1766, there had been preliminary surveys towards
the Cherokees ; but in December, the running of the line had
been postponed till the spring, and when completed it was not
carried to the North Carolina limit.
Governor Tryon had succeeded Dobbs in the executive chair
of North Carolina in 1764, and it fell to him to handle this
question of bounds, as it did later some more serious questions.
In February, 1767, Shelburne had advised him to deal tenderly
with the Indians, for tidings had reached the ministry of what
he thought unaccountable risks which the people of the back
country were taking in their treatment of the Indians. On the
1st of June, Tryon met the Cherokees at Tyger River, and he
had what was called "a straight and good talk" with them.
There were mutual phrases of concession, and each confessed
that it would be much easier to live in harmony, but for the
" rogues " on either side. A line planned in October, 1765,
was considered, and on June 13 it was agreed upon. This
line, beginning at Reedy River, ran north to Tryon Mountain,
which is described as being within three or four miles of the
springs of the streams flowing towards the Mississippi. Thence
the line ran to Chiswell Mines, and along the Blue Ridge, east
of north, sixty or seventy miles. On July 16, the decision was
made public, and all who had settled beyond were warned to
withdraw by New Year's of 1768. It was further determined
that no grants should be made reaching within a mile of the line.
There was stiU the region back of Virginia and extending to
the Ohio, which it was even more necessary to bring under
control. Hillsborough had instructed Stuart to force the Cher
okees, who were the main southern claimants of this region, to
an agreement. This agent met the tribe at Hardlabor, S. C,
on October 14, 1768. These Indians professed to hold the
territory east and north of the Cherokee [Tennessee] River —
their usual route to the Mississippi — as a hunting-ground, but
were content to yield all east of the Kanawha, from its mouth
upwards, and on this basis the treaty was made. This deci
sion was approved by the Board of Trade and recommended to
the king. This was necessary, as it threw open to the pioneers

THE VIRGINIANS. 11
the valley of the Greenbrier and other eastern affluents of the
Kanawha on the west of the Atlantic divide, and was thus at
variance with the royal proclamation. It was at once so far
established as a " ministerial line " that HiUsborough included
it in the prohibition which he had attached in April to the line
farther south, when he warned aU who should transgress by
passing it. He had already informed Stuart that the king-
would never consent to new grants below the Kanawha, and
might recall some already made. This meant much, for the
king's " friends," under Grafton, had come into power, and it
seemed they were to be his thralls, not his advisers.
This definition of bounds by the Kanawha was only less offen
sive to Virginia than the proclamation of 1763 had been, for
it was stiU a virtual curtailment of her territorial pretensions.
Washington and others interested in the Ohio Company had
looked upon the proclamation as simply an ostensible show of
words for satisfying the Indians without really abridging the
rights of the colony. A pact of the government with the Indians,
as the Hardlabor agreement had been, was somewhat more
serious, and it was not long, as we shall see, before this difficulty
was almost entirely removed.
There was among the colonists of the Old Dominion a
marked difference of character between the tide-water people
and those who had crossed the mountains, or had entered the
Shenandoah Valley from the north. Burnaby, who had trav
ersed the colony a few years before, had found "a spirit of
enterprise by no means the tum of Virginia ; " but he derived
his opinion from his intercourse with the large landed propri
etors near the Atlantic rivers. These found nothing more
exciting than their Christmas revelries, their hunts in the wil
derness, their county politics, and their annual shipments of
tobacco at the river fronts of their plantations. They showed
little disposition to develop the country away from their own
neighborhoods. "V\^hile, however, this was true of most of the
gentlemen of the lower country, there were a few among them
quite ready, as we shall see, to act in the faith which Bur
naby shows he imbibed, when he speaks of the Potomac as a
water-way to the great divide, and "of as great consequence
as any river in America."
But the development of the frontiers of Virginia was not

12 • THE PROPERTY LINE.
dependent on the tide-water gentry and their inferior servitors,
but rather upon the virile folk, particularly the Scotch-Irish,
who had brought the valley of Virginia into subjection, and
were now adding to their strength by an immigration from
Maryland, Pennsylvania, and north Virginia. These, crossing
the divide by Braddock's road, were pushing down the Monon
gahela, and so on to the Ohio country. They carried with them
all that excitable and determined character which goes with a
keen-minded adherence to original sin, total depravity, predesti
nation, and election, and saw no use in an Indian but to be a
target for their bullets.
No region in North America at this time had the repute of
being so inviting and fertile as this valley of the great eastern
tributary of the Mississippi. In 1765, the present town of
Pittsburg had been laid out at the forks of the Ohio, two hun
dred feet from the old fort which had sprung in air from a
mine, at the time of Forbes's approach in 1759, and of which
we have a relic of Bouquet's enlargement in a brick bastion,
still or of late preserved as a dwelling in the modern town.
The place was now the centre of a frontier vigor, which kept
pace with the growing influence of the anti-Quaker element in
the province. It was to this latter conservative and sluggish
faction that the Germans mainly adhered. These were in large
part a boorish people, impregnated with the slavish traits of
the redemptioners ; good farmers, who cared more for their
pigs than for their own comfort, uniting thrift with habits that
scorned education, clannish, and never forgetful of the Rhine.
They with the Quakers had made a party in the govemment,
which, from principle and ajjatlw, had in the late war sorely
tried the patience of Franklin and those jealous of the credit
of the province. There had already begun to appear a palpa
ble decline of the Quaker power before the combined energies
of the Philadelphia traders and the frontier woodsmen, with
not a little assistance from the enlightened activities of the
better class of Germans. It was the energy of this restless
faction which induced Burnaby to speak of the Pennsylvanians
as " by far the most enterprising people of the continent." He
contrasted them with the Virginians, who, though having every
advantage of easier communication beyond the mountains, had
shown much less spirit.

CROGHAN AND THE INDIANS. 18
From Pittsburg the current of the Ohio carried a depth of
three feet for seventy-five miles, to a settlement of some sixty
native famiUes, known as the Mingo town. This was the only
cluster of habitations at this time between the forks and the
rapids at the modern LouisviUe. Beyond this Indian town,
the water was deep enough. The variegated banks, with the
windings of the current, offered, as Colonel Gordon, a recent
voyager, had said, "the most healthy, pleasant, commodious,
and fertUe spot of earth known to European people," and a
little later it was represented to Hillsborough that "no part
of North America would require less encouragement for the
production of naval stores and raw material for manufactures
in Europe." Such praise as this was later to reach a wider
public in Thomas Hutohins's Description of Virginia, etc.,
when published in London. This topographer had been a cap
tain in Bouquet's army, which put an end to the Pontiac war.
He first surveyed the country through which. Bouquet marched
in 1763-64. We have a map, which is the residt of his obser
vations at that time and on later visits.
The movement by the Monongahela and by the vaUey of
Virginia had naturaUy opened the way into what is now Ken
tucky and Tennessee. All this had alarmed the Indians, and
in AprU and May, 1768, about 1,100 warriors of the Iroquois,
Delawares, and Shavraees, beside women and children, assem
bled at the instigation of George Croghan at Fort Pitt. " With
this string of wampum," said that interpreter to them, " I
clean the sweat off your bodies, and remove all evil thoughts
from your minds, and clean the passage to your hearts. . . .
^Vith this string I clean your ears that you may hear." Then
followed apologies for the murder of certain Indians by wicked
whites. Another propitiation was made. " With this belt
I clean the blood off the leaves and earth, whereon it was
sprinkled, that the sweet herbs may have their usual verdure."
Beaver, a Delaware chief, replied : " Take hold of the end of
this belt, which we may stretch along the road between us, in
order to clean it of the briars and brush, that we may aU travel
it in peace and safety."
There was next a little altercation between a Shawnee and
an Iroquois chief. The Shawnee wished the English to pull

14 THE PROPERTY LINE.
down their forts, and thought that the boats which the English
were building signified an evil purpose of going in them down
the river. The Iroquois stood for the English, and advised them
to hold the forts they had taken from the French. When it
was proposed to send messengers to the interlopers on the
Monongahela at Red Stone and warn them off, the Indians
refused to lend a hand in the ejectment. The Shawnees again
made bold to dispute the Iroquois pretensions to the Ohio
country. So the symptoms were clear that trouble could easily
be fostered in the valley, and during the previous summer some
Indians had stopped the bateaux of pioneers, and the river
route was in general made dangerous by the mutual hostilities
of the Cherokees and the northern tribes. *
In December, 1767, the Board of Trade had deemed the
Kanawha River an equitable limit for the English settlements.
Such a limit, restricting what HiUsborough judged the danger
ous extension of agriculture, also met the approval of that
minister. Franklin, now in London as the agent of Pennsylvania,
pointed out to the_ government how delays were only making
the colonies drift into a savage war. Shelburne was soon
moved to action, and in April, 1768, Gage, who had received
Shelburne's instructions to run the line, forwarded them to
Johnson with a suspicion that it would be difficult to satisfy
the demands of New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, in
whatever line was run. Gage had already urged, in February,
that the plan had been satisfactorily carried out at the south
by Georgia and the Carolinas.
The task of establishing such a line imposed difficulties upon
the negotiator. Johnson had only recently had difficulty in
getting the Indians to consent to the running of the line between
Pennsylvania and Maryland beyond the mountains, and he felt
sure that both French and Spanish were endeavoring to entice
the Ohio tribes to a counter conference on the Mississippi.
When Johnson had first broached the subject of a Hne at a
conference of Iroquois in the spring of 1765, he had found
some difficulty in bringing them to his conception of what such
a line should be. Wlien the Indians had made some conces
sions, he was obliged to confess he had no authority to" settle
the question. Accordingly, after three years of delay, during

FORT STANWIX TREATY.

15

which the ministry had been instructing him to keep a peace
with the Indians, and with some untoward happenings in the
interval, it was not without misgivings that Sir William,
accompanied by two himdred boats of merchandise for presents,
reached Fort Stanwix on September 20, 1768. Prominent

Note. — This map ia a section of Guy Johnson's map of the Fort Stanwix line, sent by Sir
William Johnson to Lord Hillsborough, and reproduced iu Does. ret. to the Colon. Hist, of N. Y.,
vol. viii. p. 136.
among his advisers in attendance were Governor Franklin,
Guy Johnson, and George Croghan. The Indians assembled
so slowly that it was October 24 before it was deemed prudent
to open the conference. By this time it was certain that nearly
thirty-two hundred cavernous mouths were to be fed, and that
other entertainments must be provided with equal prodigality.
Johnson, indeed, soon found that there was difficulty in get
ting a sufficient allowance from the treasury at headquarters,
owing to the great cost of quartering troops in Boston, now
going on to meet the rebellious manifestations of that commu
nity. So the seven' weeks of feasts and talks went on. Thomas
Walker had come -with authority from Virginia to undo the
Stuart treaty and the Kanawha line, if he could. There were
other delegates from New York, New Jersey, and Pennsyl
vania, together with a number of agents representing the
traders who had suffered losses in the Pontiac war.

16 THE PROPERTY LINE.
This large assembly of savages was, in fact, a considerable
part of the whole number of tribes interested in the outcome
of the conference. Johnson at this time estimated that the
Iroquois numbered perhaps ten thousand souls, and of these
two thousand could be considered warriors. Their aUies could
furnish probably another two thousand, made up among others
of three hundred Shawnees from the Ohio country, six hundred
Delawares from the Susquehanna, and two hundred Wyandots
from Sandusky. These four thousand Iroquois and depend
ents, so great had been their losses, were probably not more
than half as many as the Ottawa confederacy. This larger
amalgamation of the savage power, including the Twightwees
and Miamis, hemmed in the others on the west, and blocked
the way to the Mississippi. Johnson now reckoned them at
eight thousand warriors, of whom about three thousand were
on the Detroit River. He makes no mention of any tribes in
what is now Kentucky, and Croghan seems to confirm the
belief that the territory between the Ohio and the Tennessee
was destitute of savage dwellers, and this was the region now
the particular object of negotiation.
It was not till November 5 that a conclusion was reached
at Fort Stanwix, when, in consideration of a considerable sum
of money, the Indians consented to a line, beyond which the
English agreed to prohibit settling. The Iroquois chiefs signed
with the colonial delegates ; but the Delawares and Shawnees,
though assenting, were not aUowed to sign, since they were
dependent upon the Iroquois.
The territory which was thus aUenated was vested, under the
terms of the treaty, in the crown, and could only be occupied
by royal grant. It was soon claimed that, so far "as these lands
were concerned, the royal proclamation was annulled.
Johnson, in directing the negotiations, had exceeded his
authority, and, as the Virginians claimed, he had thwarted the
purposes which Dr. Walker had been sent to advance. John
son had been directed to confirm Stuart's line by the Kanawha,
and to yield to the Cherokee pretensions as respects the terri
tory west of that river. The Iroquois, however, asserted their
rights in this region against the Cherokees, and Johnson thought
it imprudent to arouse their resentment by declining their
cession of it. Johnson satisfied his own conscience in the

FORT STANIVIX TREATY.

17

^a, Ciyrat le tnyJa

[From the French translation of Hutchins, Description topographique de la l"h-giina, Paris,
1781.]matter by recalling that the Cherokees some j^ears before had
recognized the Iroquois rights to It. He felt also that, by con
firming it to the crown, the govei-nment would not be embar
rassed in controlling its settlement as they liked. In this way
what became later known as " The Property Line " practically
gave Kentucky over to present occupation.

18

THE PROPERTY LINE.

thf rest i^Atr't u />f Vasi *jrti'tif.hf4fi^ rJitf/ly oc^uptfU fyt/i£t*-deflf-ndm»i*^ TA< .Vi-^i'i \ .irr n. •
ast/iry restt/f ^li^ntf f^^ /i/n,/.' ••/ .V f^'rA ui fi.rtffkfil^r£ tbntyoiar^ p*.rt ^eJtr i'^ru/rt *<••-.

Note. — The line is shown on a largfer scaJe in a map constructed by Johnson upon Evans's
Kittanning followed that river to its mouth.
The region east of the Kanawha and west of the Mononga
hela had already two days before (November 3) been deeded by
the Indians to Trent, as the agent of the traders, whose prop
erty in the recent war had been despoiled to an extent, as was
contended, of £86,000. Out of this transaction difficulties soon
arose. The Ohio Company held the land thus conveyed to be

THE " INDIANA " GRANT.

19

W/

Part

--¦; i

of

^sachus

S I'v'V

¦t

- ' tonupi-dciit

'"^^^^ To H^^^xceUency:^
j^yjl^ AViLLiAM Trto.X' Esqr A\^
General & Govern on iti <5i»«t il <L

Province of NEW-YorK.« ij^
. ,,,. ^.,, This Map vg
. .y)./-s^ K-vV "^ "^^ Country ol f he VI.Natioii.s , i'^/
, , ,/ y „ / l//P>'o)jer,vva6 7V( o/t*e flc^/acffit 6'-/cW' ' ,4

map, improved, in the Documentary Hist, of X. Y., vol. i. p. 587. The line reaching the Ohio at

included in their own prior grants, which were known as
" Indiana," and stood in the names of Samuel "Wharton, Wil
liam Trent, George Morgan, and others. Virginia recognized
no rights in it but her own, as coming within her charter, and
she claimed that some of her own people had already settled
within the disputed territory. All disputes were finally sunk
in the troubles of the Revolution.

20 THE PROPERTY LINE.
The line, as established at Fort Stanwix, foUowed up the
Ohio from the Cherokee River, jJassed the forks, and went up
the Alleghany to Kittanning. It then ran west to the most
westerly branch of the west fork of the Susquehanna ; thence
over Burnet's Hills to Awandoe Creek, and so to the Delaware.
It then ascended this river towards Owegy and Wood Creek,
and stopped at a point half way between Fort Stanwix and
Lake Oneida.
The line, by reason of Johnson's Independent action, was not
approved by the king, but the government did not venture to
invalidate It. When it thus practically became the law, new
conditions arose. It opened a larger area to settlement than
the royal proclamation had decreed, and vesting new rights in
the crown, it was held by most, except tlie Virginians, to place
a bar, to the extent of the territory ceded by the Indians, to
the westward claims of Virginia.
This line of demarcation between the Indians and the settle
ments was now unbroken from where It started at the earlier
grant near Lake Ontario to thfe southern end of the Appala
chians, except for an interval where the bounds back of South
and North Carolina had not been made to join. This debatable
ground remained for some time the scene of insecurity ; the
doubtful jurisdiction invited vagabonds and lawless traders,
who traversed the country between the Catawbas and the
Cherokees. It was of such hazardous conditions that Stuart,
the Indian agent, spoke, when he commented upon the " rage for
settling far back," which crowded settlers upon the boundary,
and left the country scant of Inhabitants ou the way thither.
" The Indians detest such back Inhabitants," he adds, " which
accounts for their reluctancy to give up any of their lauds,
being anxious to keep such neighbors at a distance."
The dispute between the Iroquois and the Cherokees would,
it was feared, seriously Involve the Interests of such as received
grants In what are now the States of Kentucky and Tennessee.
It was not long before Gage was warning Johnson of " an agi
tation among the Indians." That the Iroquois should have been
paid for territory which the Cherokees claimed was galling to
the pride of the latter.
The Cherokee [Tennessee] River bends near Cumberland

MOVEMENTS FUR OCCUPATION. 21
Gap, separated by a divide from the springs of the Kanawha.
The area In controversy, including the valley of the Cumber
land, lay between these rivers and the Ohio. The purposes of
the home government and those of the pioneers regarding this
territory were equally at variance, the one sustaining, in opinion
at least, the treaty of Stuart, and the other that of Johnson.
Gage was fully aware of the risks of occupying the region south
of the Ohio. To do so. In his judgment, could hardly fail to
bring on a war with the southern Indians. The ministry, in
view of the opposition which had been developed to the royal
proclamation, was not miwise in winking at what it dared not
undo. This opening of a fertile coimtry to occupation induced the
steady movements westward to and beyond Cumberland Gap
which took place in the next few years. Dr. Thomas Walker,
whose name is so often associated with these early movements,
and who had been more or less familiar with Powell's VaUey
and the neighboring region for twenty years, soon secured a
grant hereabouts. Throwing it open to the pioneers, a rush of
settlers to occupy it followed. In the spring of 1769, there
was a race of rival parties seeking to reach the spot first and
secure the land. Victory came to Joseph jNIartln and his com
panions, and they were earliest squatted in the rich vaUey,
shadowed with black walnuts and wild cherries, which lies
between Cumberland and Powell mountains. The modern
Martin's Station, where they pitched their tents, was on the
hunter's trail to Kentucky, and twenty miles from Cumberland
Gap. The situation, however, was precarious, for there were
roving bands of southern Indians, who were incensed that the
pledge given In the Stuart treaty had not been observed.
While ^lartin and some of his people were exploring farther
west, hostile savages swooped down on those in camp, and the
settlement was broken up. There is no lack of suspicion that
In this and other marauding, the vicious trader was supplying
the barbarian with his gun and powder.
So it was that the proclamation of ,1763 was practically de
fied, and the ministry had not dared to interpose its authority.

CHAPTER in.
LOUISIANA, FLORIDA, AND THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY.
1763-1768.
It is curious to find the French traveler. Pages, in 1767,
speaking of the Mississippi as bounding on New England!
The reservation of the trans- Alleghany country to the Indians'
use, by the proclamation of 1763, had not eradicated from the
conceptions of the French the old sea-to-sea claims of the
English charters. They had too long confronted this English
pretension to do more than recognize the curtailment of their
claims by making that river the western boundary of those
colonies, as required by the recent treaty.
In the colonies themselves, the claim was certainly dormant.
Massachusetts, for her rights, was abiding her time. Connecti
cut was even now, on the strength of such a title, claiming a
portion of Pennsylvania, and for the next few years. In the
struggle between the two provinces, the New England colony
was to be in the main successful In sustaining her Susquehanna
Company, though It was at the cost of life and property. Both
colonies. In the effort to defend what they thought their own,
had devastated homes and wasted crops, and each was alter
nately the aggressor.
Virginia was stiU vigilantly looking after her western inter
ests, and she did it to some purpose ten years later, when her
George Rogers Clark did much to save the Northwest to the
young Republic. Franklin, In 1754, would have swept all such
pretensions away by his barrier colonies. During the years
that had intervened, he had not forgotten his purpose, as we
shall see.
The peace of 1763 had had its efeect upon the Indian trade
of the far West. The EngUsh seaboard merchants had become
conscious how much this traffic had slipped away from their

ST. LOUIS AND THE FRENCH. 23
western agents. Such diminution had been the subject; of
repeated representations. George Croghan was explaining; it
to General Gage in New York and to Dr. Franklin in London.
Carleton complained that French and Spanish traders were
gathering furs within twenty leagues of Detroit. Gage com
mented upon It to Conway, and hinted at the clandestine ways
which were used by the Indians and French. Sir William
Johnson also found artifice in the French methods, but it would
seem to have been nothing more than that the traders got ten-
pence a pound more for skins in New Orleans than in any
British market.
The unwelcome outcome of the business was the preeminence
which the new settlement at St. Louis, under French enter
prise, was Ukely to acquire. Hutchins speaks of the site of the
new town as '' the most healthy and pleasurable situation of
any known in this part of the country," and hither (he adds),
"by concUiating the affections of the natives," the French
traders have drawn the traffic of the [Missouri, jNIississippI,
Wisconsin, and Illinois rivers away from the English posts.
St. Louis had become In a few years a town of about one hun
dred and twenty stone-built houses. The occupants of these
dwellings, including a hundred and fifty negroes, numbered
about eight hundred. Not far off was Ste. Genevieve, a place
of more than four hundred Inhabitants. These two settlements
constituted the only French villages on the western bank of the
Mississippi. Neighboring, but on the eastern bank, and so
within the English jurisdiction, were some three hundred more
French, with a serving body of nearly as many blacks. These
were the communities which were seeking to turn the Indian
products into channels which would carry them down the INIIs-
sissippi on their way to the sea. The French Canadians, who
were now looking to the English to protect their western
trade, complained that unless the English were more enter
prising and built new posts, the Indian trade toward the j\Hs-
sissippi would aU slip away. Neither did the English, who were
now coming into Canada in order to reap a harvest in the fur
trade, view the conditions with more complacency. Carleton,
who had ruled in Quebec since September, 1766, opened a
correspondence with Johnson in order to seek a remedy, but
Gage saw it was simply a game of sharp practice at which both

24 LOUISIANA, FLORIDA, AND THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY.
sides were privileged to play. When It was reported to him
that the French and Spanish were endeavoring to lure the
savages to their interest, he replied that " we have no reason to
reproach them, as we aim at the same thing," and he spoke the
truth. He was quite as complacent when one warned him" of
the Indians' efforts to embroil the English with the French.
" They might well like to do It," he said, " for our quarrels are
the Indian harvests."
The trade of that part of this distant country lying west of
the Lake of the Woods had been drawn in large part to the
EngHsh factors at Hudson's Bay. From Lake Superior the
traders were already pushing to Rainy Lake, and by 1770 they
had established posts on Lake Winnipeg and beyond, as well as
farther south on the upper branches of the [Mississippi.
Trading west of Detroit had been prohibited except by
license, and under such a privilege Alexander Henry had en
joyed the freedom of Lake Stiperlor. But police control In
such conditions was impossible, and It was not unlikely that
the trader without a license turned his tracks down the Great
VaUey, rather than risk detection on the St. Lawi-ence. The
English commander at Fort Chartres was alwavs complaining
that the traders on the opposite sides of the [Mississippi acted
in collusion. There were ninety carrying places between the
Lake of the Woods and Montreal. It was not strange that the
trading canoes were oftener seen gliding on the almost uninter
rupted current of the Mississippi, where they were easily thrown
into companionship with the French paclunen, as far north as
the Falls of St. Anthony and higher up. Such intercourse
boded no good to the English.
Unfortunately, Major Rogers, their commandant at [Mack
inac, was hardly a man to be trusted. He had become badlj' In
debt to the traders, and had schemes of detaching that post
from Canadian control and using it to secure welcome and
advancement from the French. This movement demoralized the
Indians, and Gage soon found it necessarj^ to instruct Joliusou
to use his Interpreters to ensnare the traitor, and in December,
1767, he was arrested for treason.
The effect of Rogers's disaffection upon the Indians was to
be dreaded, as convincing them of the weakness of the Enghsh'
rule and the ultimate return of the French domination. There

\ ! THE AMERICAN BOTTOM. 25
were too apparent grounds for believing in the hold which the
Frehch still had upon the Indians. Johnson assured Gage that
the savages were as fond as ever of the French.. "Whatever
th^y ardently wish for, it is natural for them to expect even
after several disappointments," said that observer. It seemed
to the French themselves that the savages greatly desired a
Reinstatement of the French power.
To unsettle this savage regard for their rivals and to rehabili
tate this Indian trade, so that the seaboard could profit by It,
was now a vital question with the English. The obvious move
ment was to make the Illinois country subservient to such a pur
pose, just as the French In the earlier days had always made
it. The author of a tract on The Expediency of securing our
American Colonies hy settling the Country adjoining the River
jMississippji had, as early as 1763, pointed out how the forks of
the Mississippi, as its junction with the Ohio was termed, cover
ing a region stretching to the Illinois, was " the most necessary
place of any in America, — the key of all the inland parts."
Gage, on April 3, 1767, wrote to Shelburne that It was desir
able to have an English fort at this point in order to control
the dependent country ; and just before Captain Harry Gordon,
Chief Engineer of North America, had pointed out the situation
of Fort Massac as admirable for that purpose. Beck, in his
Gazetteer (1823), points out that the first settlements at Cahokia
and Kaskaskia were made in the most fertile land in Illinois.
They were upon a piece of alluvial land, later knovni as the
American Bottom, whose existing aboriginal mounds showed
that it had long before supported an affluent population. This
region, lying between a range of bluffs and the river, extended
north from Kaskaskia for a hundred miles, and contained an
area of about five hundred and twenty square miles. It was
mostly a treeless prairie, but there was a fringe of heavy timber
along the river. Its very fertility rendered it miasmatic, but
steady cultivation had improved its salubriousness. As an
agricultural region, Hutchins called it " of a superior soil to
any other part of North America " that he had seen. Carver
tells us that this was the general reputation which the country
bore. During the years immediately following the peace, and par
ticularly before the cession of the trans-Mississippi country to

26 LOUISIANA, FLORIDA, AND THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY.
Spain was known, there had been some confusion among the
population, owing to a general exodus of the French across the
Mississippi. The village neighboring to Fort Chartres had
become almost depopulated in this way, and the flight of its
inhabitants was not altogether untimely. In view of the speedy
encroachments which the current of the river was making on
the soil. The English a little later (1772) found it necessary
to abandon Fort Chartres, " the most commodious and best
built fort In North America," as Pittman caUed it, because the
river had undermined its walls in places. To understand how
the very qualities which rendered this bottom-land so rich
made it also unstable, we find this fort, when it was rebuilt in
1756, two miles Inland ; at the time we are now considering,
sixteen years later, it was partly washed away, while to-day the
ruined magazine and the ragged waUs are again more than a
mile from the river. In 1772, a new defense, caUed Fort Gage,
was built on the bluff opposite Kaskaskia, and thither the Eng
lish garrison was transferred. There was need of it, if England
was to give the region the protection it needed.
The Cherokees and Chickasaws, not long before, had invaded
the country and committed depredations in the neighborhood
of Kaskaskia. The native defenders, the tribes of the IDInois,
had at this period lost their vigor. Early In 1768, or at least
in time for Gage to have heard of it in New York in the sum- .
mer of that year, — and this evidence seems better than what
induced Parkman to put it a year later, — Pontiac had been
treacherously killed in Cahokia. " The French at lUinois and .
Post Vincent," says Gage (Jidy 15, 1768), " complain of our
setting the Cherokees and Chickasaws to molest tliem, and that
the death of Pontiac, committed by a Peorie of the Illinois,
and believed to have been excited by the English to that action,
had drawn many of the Ottawas and other northern Indians
towards their country to revenge his death." Johnson, from
reports which reached him, feared, as a consequence, another
outbreak like the Pontiac war. But the lUinois were the only
sufferers, and their misfortunes lay them open to the revenge
of the Pottawattamies, the Winnebagoes, and the Kickapoos,
and there was a direful scene of suffering at Starved Rock. To
such " a poor, debauched, and dastardly " condition had these
people come, who in La Salle's time had crossed from the west-

THE ILLINOIS TRIBES.

27

KASKASKIA AND CAHOKIA AND THE AMERICAN BOTTOM.

ern bank of the Mississippi and confronted the Iroquois, that
Hutchins describes them as too indolent to obtain skins enough
to barter for clothing.
Pittman's account of them is much to the same effect. He
counts their male adults at three hundred and fifty, whom it

28 LOUISIANA, FLORIDA, AND THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY.
is a mockery to call warriors. If they slunk before the braver
tribes towards the Wisconsin, they had, in the Miami confeder
acy, other warlike neighbors to repress them on the side of the
Wabash. The white population of all this country, including
that at Vincennes, was perhaps not far from two thousand,
consisting almost wholly of French, who from ties with the
Indians, or from habits of content, had not sought to escape the
English rule, though they objected to serve as British militia.
Perhaps English observers exaggerated their social degradation,
but Lieutenant Fraser, who had just been among them, caUed
them debauched and every way disgraced by drunken habits.
Such was the country, in climate, soil, and denizen, white and
red, which was now attracting attention. Sir William Johnson
was writing of its capabilities to the Board of Trade, and di
recting thither the notice of Conway. The reasons which he
urged for making it the seat of a British colony were that an
English population would prevent the practice promoted by
the four hundred French families already there, of sending furs
down to New Orleans. The commander at Fort Chartres had
been unsuccessful in prohibiting this, and the Spanish traders
went with impunity up the Illinois and Wabash rivers. Gen
eral Gage asked Don UUoa at New Orleans to j)revent this, and
a little later ordered armed boats to patrol the river to Inter
cept the outlaws. Johnson's plan included the maintaining of
English posts on the east bank of the Mississippi, the acquir
ing lands of the Indians and settling soldiers upon them, and
the creation of a land company, which would agree to settle aa
occupant on every hundred acres.
Meanwhile, General Phineas Lyman, in behalf of some offi
cers of the late war, was writing to Shelburne, and developing
schemes by which he would establish colonies all along the
Mississippi from western Florida to the Falls of St. Anthony.
The active mind of Haldimand worked over, as we shall see,
the problem In his quarters at Pensacola, and he sent a plan to
Gage, now in New York, who forwarded It to the home govern
ment. This plan outlined a military colony at the Natchez,
and advocated the making of small grants of land to the Louisi
ana French along the river, in order to induce them to settle
upon them and so escape a servitude to the Spanish, which had
now become their palpable fate.

NEW ORLEANS. 29
To understand the attitude of Haldimand's mind and the con
ditions which prevailed in the lower parts of the Mississippi, it
is necessary to revert to the influences which the secret treaty
of 1763 were exerting in that realon.
New Orleans at this time contained, within a stockade having
a circuit of about two and a half miles, not far from four thou
sand souls. This population for the most part was living In
some seven or eight hundred dwellings, standing as a rule In
gardens of their own. These houses, built of timber, with brick
filling, were of a single floor, elevated about eight feet from the
soil so as to furnish storage below. The wet ground, in fact,
did not admit of digging cellars. The occupants of the out
skirts were mostly Germans and Acadians, scattered along the
river on both sides, nearly to the Iberville. Including these,
the entire population of the town and its dependencies may
have reached near ten thousand souls. In seasons of high water
they were all living in some danger of inundation, for the rush
ing river at such times was only kept to its channel by an
unsubstantial levee, which extended for about fifty miles up and
down its banks.
Several travelers have left us their observations of New
Orleans at a period just subsequent to the Peace of Paris.
Captain de Pages, of the French navy, whom we have already
mentioned, speaks of seeing Tonlcas and Choctaws in the town,
bringing fish, fruit, and game to barter for brandy and trinkets.
The more active merchants, however, were rarely in the town
except to replenish their supjilles, and were usually up the river
in search of peltry. They oftener than otherwise wintered on
the St. Francis River, which entered the Mississippi on the
western side, ninety miles below the Ohio. From this place
they sent their furs and salted meats to New Orleans for a
market. In the season of travel, they moved up the river in
little flotillas of bateaux, which were generally of about forty
tons burden, and were manned by eighteen or twenty hands. It
took about three months to row, pole, and warp such crafts
from New Orleans to the Illinois country, and the bargemen
were often obliged at night to guard their camps from the
attacks of the Chickasaws and other marauders. Arrived at
the upper waters of the Mississippi, the packmen scattered
along the various trails. They were found on the higher reaches

30 LOUISIANA, FLORIDA, AND THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY.
of the Missouri, and were known to be in the habit of ascend
ing that river three and four hundred leagues, gathering that
trade of which the English were now so covetous. They went
among the Sioux In the region west of Lake Superior. They
even turned east towards Canada, and are thought to have
instigated the savages of the Great Lakes to hostile demonstra
tions against the English. We find more or less contemporary
testimony on these points in such observers as Lieutenant John
Thomas, of the Royal Artillery, and Philip Pittman, who had
passed from the Illinois region down the valley to Pensacola.
But in March, 1764, a Colonel Robertson, who had just arrived
at New York from New Orleans, assured Gage that the French
in Louisiana were certainly not instigating the upper tribes
against Detroit.
Pensacola was now become the centre of English interests on
the Gulf shore, and had attained a prominence that it never had
possessed under the Spanish rule. It had been promptly occu
pied by the English in 1763. The post then consisted of a high
stockade, inclosing some miserable houses, and there were a few
equally dismal habitations without the defenses. Such was the
place where Bouquet, now a brigadier, had been put in com
mand in August, 1765, as a fit field for his recognized abilities,
and where the southern fever was in a few days to cut short a
brilliant career. Whoever the commander, Pensacola was des
tined to be the centre from which the English were to control,
as best they could, the conflicting interests of the neighbor
ing tribes, and gain what advantage was possible from their
treaty rights of navigation along the Mississippi. The prin
cipal savage peoples within the radius of this influence were the
Choctaws, the Creeks, and the Chickasaws, and they presented
some perplexing problems. The Choctaws were for a time dis
tracted by the rival solicitations of the French and English
and warring with the Chickasaws ; but this conflict the English
after a while checked, only to turn the Choctaws against the
Creeks, now angry with the English traders, and discontented
with the absence of gifts, which the French had taught them
to expect of Europeans. In their restless condition they were
marauding along the English borders, but they promptly dis
owned their young warriors if they were apprehended, — per-

[The above map, showing the relative positions of the Chickasaws, Clierokees, Creelss, and Choctaws, is a section from one in Ihe An

¦.riam Gazilteer, vol. i., London, 1762.]

32 LOUISIANA, FLORIDA, AND THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY.
haps more promptly than the English disowned the " crackers,"
as the lawless whites of the borders were called. The English
would have been glad to play off some of the lesser tribes
against both Choctaws and Creeks, but the Alibamons were
flying north to escape the toils. The English even thought of
luring the Natchez, because of their hatred of the French, to
cross the Mississippi and stand as a barrier against their savage
neighbors ; but the scheme was hardly practicable. The Creeks
growing troublesome. Governor Johnston, who had succeeded
Bouquet, had determined. In October, 1766, to attack them,
while Gage was advising that Johnston should draw in for
safety his distant garrisons. When Johnston's purpose was
known to the home government, It dreaded a general uprising
of the tribes, and recalled him for his rashness. Haldimand
was now ordered to take his place, and enforce a more peaceful
policy. So one of the first matters to which the new governor,
on his arrival early in 1767, directed his attention was how
to divert from the lower Mlsslsslj)pi the trade of the IlUnois
country. The obvious solution of this problem was to establish a post
on the Mississippi, just north of the Iberville River, and then
deepen the channel of that stream, so as to render its naviga
tion easy and at all times certain.
This would carry the stream of traffic through Lake Pont-
chartraln to Mississippi Sound, and on to ]MobIle and Pensa
cola, which might thus be made to flourish at the expense of
New Orleans. Already In March, 1767, Gage at New York
had received reports of measures looking to this end, and had
ajjproved them.
The engineering feat was not an easy one, and Its difBculties
were palpable. When the Mississippi was at a low stage, the
bed of the Iberville was twelve feet above it ; in the season of
freshets it was as much or more below, but the current was
then aU the more obstructed by driftwood. Three years before
(1764), the English had made one futile attempt to divert the
scanty flow of the great river so as to deepen the lesser channel.
It now happened that before any serious effort could be made
to attack the difficulty afresh, a new policy of strengthening
the English garrisons at St. Augustine, ]Mobile, and Pensacola,
in view of needing the troops to quell disturbances now brew-

THE SPANIARDS IN LOUISIANA. 33
ing in New England and likely to spread south, drew away the
troops at the mouth of the Iberville and at the Natchez. On
this policy Haldimand and the civil governor were at variance,
and the general reported to Gage not only the bad effect on
the Indians of the evacuation of the Mississippi posts, but the
detriment it would prove to the trade which they had hoped to
create. Aubry, the French governor at New Orleans, had not
been unmindful of these events, and they gave him some relief
from his anxieties as respects his English neighbors.
The hope of the English to possess New Orleans by some
device had not been out of sight, even when the Iberville pro
ject seemed promising, for the outlet of the [Mississippi was
looked to as a means of lessening the financial obligations of
the colonies to the mother countrj-, which had accumulated
between 1756 and 1765 to near £11,000,000. There was a
prospect, if the mouth of that river was left in the hands of
the French, that they would outrival the English in tobacco
as they had in sugar, and cotton was just beginning to be an
export from New Orleans. John Thomas, in his record of
events, is confident that fifteen hundred English and two hun
dred Indian auxiliaries could conquer Louisiana. Haldimand
was questioned by Gage as to the feasibility of such an effort.
That officer thought it not a difficult task, and counted upon
the readiness of the French inhabitants to throw themselves on
the English side in case of a ruj)ture with the Spaniards, which
now seemed probable.
It Is necessary to go back a little to see how this condition
of a French antagonism to Spain had become supposable. At
the beginning of 1764, Gage In New York had learned of the
proposed change of masters in New Orleans, which had been
assured by the secret treaty of 1763. " I have a very extraor
dinary piece of good news to tell you," Gage wrote to John
son, Januarj'' 23, " which is that the French are to cede all
Louisiana to the king of Spain, by which we shall get rid of
a most troublesome neighbor and the continent be no longer
embroiled with their intrigues. The French minister has de
clared this to Mr. Neville, with the compliment that it was
done purely to avoid future disputes and quarrels with the
English nation. I don't know whether they are yet acquainted

34 LOUISIANA, FLORIDA, AND THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY.
with these resolutions on the Mississippi." They were not.
The secret provisions for a transfer were not known In New
Orleans tUl October, and a few months later, February 4, 1765,
d'Abbadie, the French governor, died, and Aubry became the
actino- governor. In the following summer, he and the council
received word from Havana that a Spanish commandant had
been appointed, and would soc^n present himself at New Orleans.
This official was Antonio de UUoa, now a man of nearly fifty,
who had acquired some name by being associated with a scien
tific expedition to the equator to measure the arc of the me
ridian. On March 5, 1766, he arrived at New Orleans and
became aware of a strong opposition among the Louisianians
to the Intended transfer.
Some time before, there had been a large, meeting in New
Orleans, which resulted in a leading merchant — Milhet by
name — being sent to France in the hope of inducing the
government to revoke the treaty of cession. This messenger
found Bienville in Paris, then a man of eighty-five, and with
him he sought an audience of the king, which Choiseul man
aged to avert. It was a cherished hope of that minister, that
the time was coming when France could be avenged upon Eng
land for all she had lost. In 1764—66, he had kept a spy,
Monsieur Beaulieu, In the English colonies watching for events
that he could take advantage of. Some time afterwards we know
that De Kalb, on January 12, 1768, arrived in Philadelphia, to
see how nearly ripe the colonial discontent was for that break
with the mother country which Turgot believed imminent.
The minister was again actuated by this same hope a little
later, when Spain had secured herself at New Orleans, and he
pointed out that her true policy was not to try to colonize
Louisiana, for which she had no aptness, but to rule her new
province so liberally, even to fostering it as a republic, that the
Americans would be lured by sympathy to declare their own
Independence, — a movement that Choiseul had no hesitation
in desiring at whatever cost.
It seemed at first as if UUoa was going to impede such a
tendency by acts of conciliation towards the unwiUIng French,
but the atmosphere soon changed. He had brought with him
two companies of infantry, but they were not sufiicient to
enforce authority, and it was evident that the French — neither

ULLOA AND AUBRY. 35
troops nor populace — would tamely submit to a change of
flag. Indeed, Aubry was apparently the only friend whom the
Spanish governor had found. UUoa had tried in various ways
to appease the opposition, and in May, 1766, he had Issued a
conciliatory order, permitting continued Intercourse with the
French West Indies ; but within four months aU such commu
nication was interdicted.
Thus the situation became critical. The French were doubt
less unfortunate ; and UUoa, put to the test, was shown to be
destitute of tact, and in some acts seemed inhuman. Aubry
was soon convinced of the Spaniard's inability to govern. With
a hostUe population of six thousand, not Including blacks, —
for UUoa had ordered a census and obtained some definite fig
ures, — it was clearly imprudent for him to set up his authority
without further communication with his government. Aubry
had had definite instructions (April 20, 1766) to cede the
province, and in his intercourse with UUoa was complacent, if
not time-serving ; but he was without the hardihood of char
acter needed in such an emergency, either to make UUoa banish
his indecision, or to control the French. Accordingly, when
UUoa felt it prudent to retire to the Balize, Aubry soon followed
him. Here the two made a documentary record of the transfer
of government, but there was not the courage to publish it.
UUoa now established his headquarters on the opposite side
of the stream from the French fort, which, in the growing of
the delta seaward, was now two miles from the Gulf, when, in
1734, it had been built directly upon the open water. At that
time, the island which UUoa now occupied did not exist.
In December, 1767, Jean Milhet returned from France, and
declared that there was to be no effect from the colony's pro
test. The immediate result was that Aubry and UUoa agreed
upon a plan of joint rule till their European masters could
interpose more effectively. Detachments were now sent up the
river to establish three posts, the better to patrol the river and
to be prepared for decisive action, and when the Spaniards
deserted from UUoa's regiments, French were enlisted to take
their places. One of these detachments was at the mouth of
the Iberville, opposite the position which the English later
tried to occupy. Another was opposite Natchez, and a third
was at the mouth of the Missouri. All these posts were distinct

36 LOUISIANA, FLORIDA, AND THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY.
obstacles to the English project of securing the trans-Mississippi
trade ; but the forts were too far apart for mutual support in
any contest with the English. Gage had already determined on
a stricter observation of the river, and had ordered the arrest
of aU French traders found on its eastern banks ; and before
August, 1768, he had sent a message to UUoa of his purpose.
[Events which were taking place in Boston — royal regiments
landing under cover of shotted guns — prefigured the coming
revolution of the English colonies, and the tidings were to carry
joy to Choiseul's heart. A fear of this outbreak had necessi
tated, as we have seen, the evacuation of the British posts on
the Mississippi, and it had proved the best protection of the
Spaniards. The attitude which the Louisianians were now
assuming showed doubtless some of that revolutionary fervor
which characterized the New England patriots. Indeed, Aubry
suspected that it was not so much devotion to France as a
desire for Independence which was now impeUing the growing
discontent. He even Informed his government that some of
the Imprudences of Ulloa might drive a part, at least, of the
French over the river to the protection of the English flag.
The stubbornness of Ulloa brought a natural result when, in
October, 1768, a conspiracy organized' in secrecj^, in which some
of the leading colonists were concerned, broke forth. The crisis
was reached. Ulloa fled to a frigate In the river, and before
the month was closed the Supreme Council decreed, notwith
standing Aubry's protest, that the Spaniards must leave. On
October 31, Ulloa sailed out of the river, and on December 4,
1768, he announced the result to Grimaldi, the Spanish minister.
Such a daring act on the part of the council needed explana
tion, and this body dispatched a messenger to Paris to make a
representation. Ulloa was in advance, and when his report was
made known in France, it was not an unwelcome thought to
the enemies of England that revolutions were contagious, and
that the English colonies were growing ripe for the infection.
.Though such encouraging sentiments were lacking, the French
government itself proved steadfast in their obligations with
Spain. As soon as the Louisianians became aware by a return mes
sage that there was no hope in Paris, they turned to the Enghsh
in Florida for sympathy and aid, but got none.

O'REILLY IN NEW ORLEANS. 37
The anxious days slipped on, and In July, 1769, it was known
in New Orleans that O'Reilly, an Irish Catholic in the Spanish
service, with a fleet at his back, had arrived at the Balize.
The next day, this Spanish commander sent to the town instruc
tions committed to him for Aubry. He informed the French
governor at the same time of his purpose to assume command,
whatever obstacles were interposed. He had three thousand
troops to add weight to his determination.
The town grew excited over the news. White cockades
appeared on the streets. There was prospect of trouble. La
Freniere, and other leaders of the conspiracy which had sent
Ulloa off, recognized the gravity of the situation, and success-
fidly exerted themselves to allay the excitement. To help
restore confidence, these conspirators, now more prudent, went
down the river to welcome the new governor.
The way seemed open for a peaceful occupation. It was
hoped the past would be forgotten. But appearances were
ensnaring. O'ReiUy reached the town on August 17, and on
the next day Aubry made a formal surrender.
The purpose of O'Reilly was for a brief period cloaked ; but
in the end La Freniere and the other conspirators were seized
ancl executed, while stiU others were Imprisoned. By the latter
part of November, 1769, the new government was in possession
everywhere. O'ReiUy's conduct was doubtless shaped by his
instructions, and Jay, who later knew him in Spain, thought
him " a man of exceUent abilities, and possessed of great know
ledge of men as weU as of things."
O'ReiUy had found the English merchants in complete con
trol of the commerce of New Orleans, and he took immediate
measures to dispossess them, ancl to cut off English communi
cations across the Mississippi. As soon as Gage had heard of
O'Reilly's success, he congratulated himself that if he could
only spread the tidings among the Western Indians, he could
effectuaUy dispel their hopes of further French aid.
While the Spaniards were thus endeavoring to form a barrier
against the English, they were dispatching messages to the
Indians of Florida, — a region to whose loss, under the treaty
of 1763, they had not become reconciled. These added new
difficulties to those which beset the loyal officers of the British

38 LOUISIANA, FLORIDA, AND THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY.
crown all along the Gulf and Atlantic coast. They had little
time to think further of the forcible acquisition of New Orleans,
for the prowling savages were hanging about their interior
posts, so as to compel their abandonment, one by one. The
Tombigbee fort was evacuated in the spring of 1768, and not
an armed station now protected the English traders in the
upper country. A wavering and sinister policy, as Adair com
plains, had well-nigh alienated all the neighboring tribes from
the English, and made it a common reproach among them to
be an ally of that treacherous race which sold firearms to friend
and foe alike.
Meanwhile the new political commotions in the older English
colonies were checking the unfolding of English power on the
Ohio and by the Illinois. To such projects we must now turn.
Governor FrankUn of New Jersey and Sir WilUam Johnson,
feeling with their Tory instincts fuU confidence in the mainte
nance of the royal power on the seaboard, were together plan
ning the establishment of a colony in the Illinois region. To
advance their schemes. Sir WiUiam addressed the ministers and
Governor Franklin wrote to his father, then in London, who,
from his Important services In the recent war, was recognized
even there as a man of influence. The elder Franklin proved
an earnest advocate of the new measures, which were not un
like in their purpose the project of barrier colonies, to which
he had committed himself at the time of the Albany congress
m 1754. The expectation at first was to buy needed territory
from the French settlers, and Franklin marked out for Lord
Shelburne the limits that were proposed on the small-scale map
which makes a part of Evans and PownaU's larger, sheet. This
plan of compensation was soon abandoned, and the government
was petitioned for a grant. General Gage and a body of Phila
delphia merchants joined the others in this new memorial.
1 heir aim was to acquire a tract of 63,000,000 acres stretching
rom Lake Erie to the Mississippi, and bounded In one direction
by the Fox and Wisconsin rivers and on the other bythe Ohio,
Wabash, and Miami (Maumee). Against the eastern bounds
ot the proposed colony, and along the Wabash and Miami, lay
a French population of some five or six hundred, which were
grouped at Vincennes, and at Forts Ouiatanon and Miami.

A CORNER MAP IN EVANS AND POWNALL'S LARGE MAP.

40 LOUISIANA, FLORIDA, AND THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY.
These settlers were In the main agricultural, and gave much
of their labor to the vine ; while they varied life with an occa
sional hunting season. They had pined under the change of flag
much less than the French nearer the Mississippi, and had in
fact established family ties with the neighboring Indians, which
served to bind them to the soil, and there was Indeed much In
their country to attract. Wharton had said of it in 1770 :
" The Wabash is a beautiful river, with high and upright
banks, less subject to overflow than any other river (the Ohio
excepted) in this part of America. It is navigable to Ouiata
non, 412 miles, in the spring, summer, and autumn, with bat-
toes drawing about 3 feet of water. Boats go 197 miles further
to the Miami carrying place (nine miles)."
The severest wrench to the feelings of the French, whether
here or along the Mississippi, came with the establishment,
under orders from Gage, of a court and jury according to Eng
lish usage, whither all causes were to be taken. The change
from the civil law of the French, applied by judges In their
own villages, was a dismal reminder of their new aUegiance to
a distant master.
The project of a new colony, which should seek to harmonize
conflicting interests, give a stable government to the uncertain
French, and protect the trading body, appealed variously to
those who were lookers-on or had responsibihties. Some like
Lord Clare looked to It, as he told Franklin, solely with a view
to securing the country against a possible revolt of its French
inhabitants. Such also was. In effect, the opinion held by Haldi
mand, studying the problem at Pensacola, and dreaming of the
reciprocal interests of his own province and the upper Missis
sippi. He had urged his view upon Gage, .and had expressed
the belief that such a post on the Illinois could be made to sus
tain itself by agriculture. Shelburne feU in with the broader
views which were pressed by Franklin, and so became In a way
the sponsor of the project when he laid the scheme before the
Board of Trade in October, 1766, who. If constant to the views
which they had expressed more than once during the last twenty
years, might be reasonably expected to favor the project.
It was held by the sponsor and advocates that such a colony
would raise up a population to demand British manufactures;

ENGLISH COLONIAL AIMS. 41
that by it the fur-trade could be wrested from the French ancl
Spanish ; that its settlements would serve as a barrier against
the Indians ; that the country coidd provision the forts ; and that
it would be the means of giving a civil government to the French
people now scattered there, and repining under the martial law.
Such views, however, availed nothing. The Lords of Trade
in March, 1767, reported adversely on the project. They held
that such a colony could but poorly answer the end for which
colonies should be created. A pamphleteer of the time clearly
defines the views, current not only with the Lords of Trade, but
with the generally conservative, better-class English subjects.
" A colony is profitable," says this writer, " according as its
land is so good, that by a part of the labor of the inhabitants
bestowed on its cultivation, it yields the necessaries of life
sufficient for their sustenance ; and by the rest of their labor
produces staple commodities in such quantity, and of such
value, as brings for the mother country, in the way of com
merce and traffic, all manufactures necessary for the proper
accommodation of the colonists, and for the gradual improve
ment of the colony, as the number of people increase." Be
lieving in such conditions, Hillsborough, the first colonial sec
retary, contended that Murray's scheme of extending Quebec
to the Mississippi was the only prudent measure. Indeed, in
his conservative view the object of colonization being " to Im
prove the commerce, navigation, and manufactures of England,
upon which her strength and security depend," the creating of
colonial power distant from the sea, and causing delay in com
munication, was expressly detrimental to public policy and an
unwarranted charge upon the public treasury. Further there
seemed, in his judgment, no occasion to annul the proclama
tion of 1763, in order to promote settlements which were cer
tain in the end to make their own wares instead of buying them
from the mother country. Such sweets of commercial Inde
pendence, once tasted, were sure, he contended, to create a desire
for political autonomy. Further, he argued, there were no
people to spare for building up an effective colony, and Ireland,
in particular, ought not to be depopulated in the interests of
such a settlement, while the seaboard communities of America
needed, as he thought, rather to be strengthened than depleted.
In his counter arguments Franklin had depended, not so much

42 LOUISIANA, FLORIDA, AND THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY.
upon drawing his colonists from the border settlements, as
securing them in the more distant plantations like Connecticut ;
and he and many others felt sure that the efforts of the minis
try to keep settlements on the Atlantic slope and to increase
the growth of Florida and the maritime provinces would cer
tainly be thwarted by the climatic conditions of those regions.
To Hillsborough's plea for a restriction of manufactures,
Shelburne replied that an active people cooped up by the
mountains was much more likely to engage in handicrafts than
if aUowed to subdue a virgin soil like that beyond the Alle
ghanies. Wynne argued the point in his British Empire in
America (1770). " Great Britain," he says, " a country of
manufactures without materials ; a trading nation without
commodities to trade upon ; and a maritime power without
either naval stores or sufficient material for shipbuilding, could
not long subsist as an independent state without her colonies."
He then argues that to secure intervals for the soil to lie
fallow required, for a country aiming to subsist by agriculture
alone, that such laborers should have on an average forty or
fifty acres of land. In fact, some of the seaboard colonies had
no more than ten or twenty acres to the man. Prohibit such
colonies from sending their surplus population beyond the
mountain, and you force them, he said, to live in part hy
manufactures, and prepare the way for Indejiendence. That
it is not possible to restrain a people hungry for land is indi
cated, he further said, in the continual disregard which had
been shown to the proclamation of 1763.
No such arguments, however, prevailed, and the ministry
were supported in their conservative views generaUy by most
of the royal governors, and by prerogative men in the colonies.
The opponents contended that a purely military control of such
distant regions was best adapted to retain the French settlers
in subjection. Amherst was urging such establishments, not
only on the Mississippi, but on the Ohio and at Detroit.
Early in 1768, the movement lost force, Franklin bowing to
the will of the ministry ; but Lyman, who had been a strenuous
advocate and impatient at the obstacles, had already intimated
a willingness to proceed without the sanction of the govern
ment. More prudent council, however, followed, and the pro
ject before long took another shape.

CHAPTER IV.
THE KENTUCKY REGION.
1767-1774.
The prohibition of settlement under the royal proclamation
of 1763, after five years of mingled distrust and indifference,
had been practicaUy annulled over the greater part of Ken
tucky by the treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1768. Washington had
always under his breath caUed that edict " a temporary expedi
ent to quiet the Indians. It must faU, of course," he said,
" when the Indians consent to our occupying the lands." In
anticipation of such consent he had, in 1767, taken into his
confidence an old acquaintance. Colonel Crav?ford, who was now
living on the Youghiogheny. It had been agreed between
them that Cra's\'f ord should proceed quietly beyond the Monon
gahela as if bound on a hunting expedition, and select and de
fine the most desirable lands. The object of secrecy was to
prevent rivalry, and while Crawford inspected and surveyed the
lands, Washington was to bear the cost as well as the fees for
subsequent patenting. He avowed his purpose to secure pre
emption of large areas, of compact acreage and as near Pitts
burg as possible. Such a frontier service meant not a little
risk, for the Indians were everywhere jealous of the encroach
ments of the whites. Charles Beatty, who at this time was
traversing the country west of Fort Pitt, encountered the slgTis
of devastations at all points, and even the Chippeways were
known to be plundering the bateaux on the Ohio. It was one
of the strongest grounds of remonstrance against the royal proc
lamation, that it prevented settled ways and police control over
a region where the government was powerless to bar out ad
venturous and vagrant occupants. The House of Burgesses in
Virginia were representing to the king that, if settlements were
not permitted, this over-hill country would become " the resort
of fugitives and vagabonds, defiers of law and order, who in

44 THE KENTUCKY REGION.
time might form a body dangerous to the peace and civil gov
ernment of this colony."
The royal proclamation had been a part of the policy of the
government to strengthen, by turning the current of population
thima!i(!jtbe newly acquired provinces of Nova Scotia and the
Floridas: Still the Board of Trade had not yet taken the ad
verse stand which it later assumed towards the trans-AUeghany
movements, and though j)repared to check settlements in so
remote regions as the Illinois country, were not quite ready to
deny the possibility of a westward extension to the seaboard
colonies, if made by easy advances beyond the mountains.
The pioneers were, in fact, well on their march. We have
seen how, in 1767, their movements had alarmed the Indians,
and Croghan had tried to quiet the tribes in a conference at
Fort Pitt in May, 1768. Gage had little confidence in the re
sults. " When the proposed limits shaU be fixed," he said, " I
despair not of living long enough to hear that the frontier
people have transgressed them ; " and there were, he felt, diffi
culties ahead In the determination of the Indians not to aUow
settlers on the prescribed lands till they were paid for them.
Johnson, while he was arranging for the gathering of the tribes
at Fort Stanwix in the autumn of that year, had been fearful
lest Colonel Cresap's purchasing Indian lands near the Green
brier River, during the previous season, would disturb the tribes.
But the daring hunters had gone much farther west. James
Smith, now a man of thirty, who had passed his early manhood
in captivity among the savages, was at this date spending eleven
months in coursing the valleys of the Cherokee and Cumber
land rivers, — the earliest, perhaps, except one Henry Scrag-
gins, a hunter, to traverse this region. William Bean and his
family had built a hut on a branch of the Watauga, — the first
permanent habitation In the northeast corner of the modern
Tennessee. Further south, James Harrod and Michael Stover
had ventured to the neighborhood of the modern Nashville.
But fate was playing with a moi-e famous name. The promi
nence which Daniel Boone maintains in this western story is
due to his own recitals as preserved by his contemporaries.
The honest habit of his talk is not completely hidden in the
ambitious tone which Filson has given to Boone's language, in
his early account of Kentucky. Boone's ruo-ced, but tender

DANIEL BOONE. 45
personality was hard to shroud. We see his tall and slender
figure, too muscular to be gaunt. His eyes idealized his head.
He was old enough at five-and-thirty for a ripened manhood
to make him thoughtful. His experience had both toughened
his sinews and made his senses alert. Any emergency brought

DANIEL BOONE.
him weU-nigh to the normal perfection of a man. His kind
ness draws us to him. His audacity makes us as confident as
himself. Naturally, what we know of him are glimpses at his
best, but we imagine for a background the dreary monotony of
the wilderness. Such a character becomes subdued to the land
scape about his figure. His fringed hunting-shirt, belted so that

46 THE KENTUCKY REGION.
its ample folds carried his food, may be ragged ; his leggings
may be tattered by the brush ; his moccasins cut by the ledge ;
his knife clotted with the blood of_a wolf ; but the rich copse
and the bounding elk share our scrutiny with his person, and we
look to the canopy of magnolia, laurel, and ash, to the spread
of the buckeye and graceful catalpa, to the foaming stream and
the limestone vagaries, — and all that the man stands for in
bravery and constancy is mated with the enchantments of
nature. John Finlay, a trader from North Carolina, had before this
thridded the Cumberland Gap, and trudged on to the striking
scenes on the Kentucky River. Impressed with the country,
he had returned to the banks of the Yadkin, and had there
imbued Boone with a desire to go thither too. The two, with
some companions, started to make a new trial of the region.
It was in the later spring of 1769 that Boone with James Rob
ertson, a young Scotch-Irishman, stood on a mountain path and
looked down upon the rapid flow of the Watauga, winding in
its rich valley, two thousand feet above the sea. We shall
see that this first sight of the vale of the Watauga was not
forgotten by Robertson and Boone. Two years' further wander
ing beyond, amid newer delights In the landscape, carried them
back to the Yadkin valley in the spring of 1771, with instant
purposes and resolves.
While these tentative efforts were making by wandering
hunter and trader, projects of larger scope were developing.
In 1769, Dr. Lee of Virginia, with thirty-twQ other Americans,
— Washington cooperating, — and two Londoners, were organ
ized as the Mississippi Company, and were petitioning the
crown for a grant of some back lands to the extent of two and
a half inlUIon acres. Gage, who was watching the movement,
advised (November 9, 1769) that the new province be put on
a military basis, as a barrier between the present provinces and
the Indians. Lee's application was in effect pigeon-holed by
the Board of Trade, while, under other influences, a better rec
ognition was made of a rival movement. This was a project of
speculators, mostly Americans from north of tlie Potomac,—
a combination not unUkely to incite the jealousy of the Virgin
ians. The petitioners included among them a London banker,

THE WALPOLE COMPANY. 47
Thomas Walpole by name, who was so put in the front of the
negotiations that his name became attached to the scheme.
Franldin and Governor Pownall were the two most conspicuous
advocates from the colonies. The stock of the company was
divided into seventy-two shares. PownaU intended that the
government of the new colony should be modeled upon the
charter of Massachusetts, whose workings he had known. The
company craved permission to buy of the Indians two million
four hundred thousand acres of land, situated between latitude
38° and 42°. In general terms, the tract they desired lay west
of the AUeghanies and south of the Ohio, and above the bound
ary of North Carolina. It was bounded on the west by a line
drawn from the Ohio opposite the mouth of the Scioto to Cum
berland Gap. These limits covered the tract caUed " Indiana,"
which the traders had bargained for at Fort Stanwix in recom
pense for their losses in the Pontiac war. These sufferers now
petitioned the king to be otherwise recompensed. The bounds
also embraced the patent of the old Ohio Company, and it was a
point of grievance with the members of this older company that
the new organization shoidd be " indebted to discoveries made
at the expense of the Ohio Company." Colonel George Mercer,
who was in London watching the interests of the Ohio Com
pany, failing to receive instruction for which he had applied,
finally agreed, on his own responsibility, to merge that com
pany's interest In the new project, so that the old Virginia
claimants received a thirty-sixth part of the shares in the Wal
pole Company. By the end of that year (1770), Colonel
Mercer wrote to Washington that he had prevailed upon the
new company to allow out of their intended grant two hundred
thousand acres, which, under a proclamation by Governor
Dinwiddie, had been granted to Washington and the soldiers
who served with him In the opening campaign of the recent war.
By these measures there was gained a certain solidarity of
interest, needful in negotiating with the government. An
opposition to the project, not unexpected, as in the contest for
the Illinois colony, was headed by the colonial minister.
Lord Hillsborough — representing under Lord North a Tory
government destined to last for nearly a half century — made
an adverse report to the king in council on behalf of the
Commissioners of Trade and Plantations. This report enforced

48 THE KENTUCKY REGION.
what was called the " two capital objects " of the royal procla
mation. These were, first, to keep the colonists within reach of
the trade of the mother country, and, second, to hold them In
due subjection. Any permission to settle the reserved Indian
territory would be detrimental to these aims. The report was,
of course, as we see it now, a failure to discern the inevitable
exj^anslon of the British peojole. As the contest moved on, no
one In the discussion warmed with the throes of prescience more
effectively than Edmund Burke. " Many of the people in the
back settlements," he said, " are already little attached to jDar-
ticular situations. Already they have topped the Appalachians.
From thence," he went on to say, with scant knowledge of the
country, " they behold an immense plain, one vast, rich, level
meadow." He intimated' that such a jiopulation, if alienated,
might turn upon the oppressor. They could elude any police
in flying from section to section, if grants were denied them.
Such independence, he said, " would be the hapless result of an
endeavor to keep, as a lair of wild beasts, that earth which God
by an express charter had given to the children of men." There
happened, when he was speaking upon the point in Parliament,
to be a season of want among the English communities. He
used it with effect. " The scarcity which you have felt would
have been a devastating famine, if this child of your old age,
with a Roman charity, had not put the fuU breast of its youth
ful exuberance to the mouth of Its exhausted parent." At
another moment, making it the occasion for a graceful compli
ment to Lord Bathurst, as having a memory to cover the Inter
val, Burke reminded the House that in 1772 the trade of
England with the American colonies alone was nearly what it
had been In 1704 with the entire world.
Hillsborough said that the timely supplies to which Burke
referred were practically interdicted by the distance and by the
tardy service of transportation over the mountains. It was
asserted, in reply, that produce could be carried from the Ohio
country by the river, and over the passes to tide-water at Alex
andria, cheaper than it could be hauled from Northampton to
London. Flour, beef, and naval stores could be floated down
the Ohio to Florida and the West Indies easier than they could
be taken to such markets from New York or Philadelphia ; and
if forwarded by river and sea to those ports from the Ohio, it

ADVANCE OF SETTLERS. 49
would cost but half the expense of land carriage. It was said
that to go by sea from Philadelphia to Pensacola took a month,
and it took no longer by the river from Pittsburg. The Ohio,
said Franklin, is navigable for large boats at all times, and from
January to April it can carry vessels of large tonnage. Since
the war, he added, the distance by a new road from Fort Cum
berland to navigable water over the mountains has been reduced
from seventy to forty miles. Thus easy is it, he reasoned, to
put this temperate and much-producing region into close com
munication with the sea, — a region that has its silkworm and
the mulberry, flax and cotton, for the manufacturer, hemp and
iron for naval stores, and grapes and tobacco for the solaces
of life.
No such statements availed, however, to swerve Hillsborough
from his position. Lord Dunmore did much to strengthen the
opposition when he wrote from Virginia that any such grant
would be sure to bring on an Indian war.
These were two years of uncertainty In London. It seemed
at times as if the applicants would get their grant, but every
period of hope was succeeded by another of disheartenment.
Meanwhile on the Ohio and its tributaries events were going
on which made the decision less dependent on the government.
Already in 1770, settlers were moving steadily on, and there
was a proposal in the air to found a colony on the lands ceded
at Fort Stanwix and call it Pittsylvania. The packhorse and
the shirt of jeans, buckskin leggings scraping together with
lithe steps, were seen and heard everywhere along the route,
whether by Fort Bedford and Loyalhannon, or by Fort Cum
berland and Redstone old fort. Plunging into the shelter of
the large timber of the Kanawha and its branches, startling the
elk, the bear, and the wild turkey, often following the beaten
" traces " of the buffalo, the pioneers opened of themselves the
paths which Captain Legge had thought to have done by an
organized company of axemen. Blazing a tree near a spring,
they marked it with a date and the acreage, and established the
tacitly recognized " Tomahawk Claim ; " on clearing and plant
ing, they established what passed under the designation of a
" corn title." Sometimes adventurous parties of hunters pushed
on even so far as the Green River and the mouth of the Cum
berland, and wandered about the site of the modern Nashville.

50 THE KENTUCKY REGION.
The Walpole movement found little favor in Virginia.
This combination of northern interests ignored the claim of
Virginia to a western extension under her charter. If this
expansion was not maintained, her right to give patents of
this over-mountain domain was lost. Hillsborough, in July,
1770, had notified the Virginia authorities of the movement,
but in their reply in October they made no protest, and ac
knowledged that " when that part of the country shaU become
sufficiently populated, it may be a wise and prudent measure."
Before It became known that provision had been made to pre
serve Dinwiddle's grant to the soldiers of the late war, there
was a strong feeling of injury In which Washington shared.
Moreover, the claims of the Cherokees — who were to be ap
peased by the recognition, for they had been of late, as Cameron
the Indian agent discovered, in a hostile mood — had been es
poused by Virginia against the pretensions of the Iroquois as
recognized at Fort Stanwix.
While the Walpole petition was pending in London, and
before Mercer's message about the engulfing of the old Ohio
Company in the new project had been received, Washington
started west to take for himself a new look at the country.
He left Mount Vernon on October 5, 1770, and in a little more
than a week was with Crawford on the Youghiogheny. He
had various motives, — one was to see land which Crawford
had already selected for him, another was to understand better
the difficulties of the portage connecting the Potomac and Ohio,
so as to further the trade of what he called " a rising empire."
Near Redstone old fort, at the head of navigation on the
Monongahela, where for some years the authorities had been
trying unsuccessfully to oust the settlers, he found that Michael
Cresap had built himself a house. Here he talked with that
frontiersman about what he then supposed was the injury to
his comrades of 1754, In their rights being covered — at least
to the extent of four fifths — by the proposed Walpole grant. I
He looked upon himself as In some degree — so he had written
in April to Lord Botetourt — "the representative of the officers '
and soldiers who claim the right to two hundred thousand
acres of this very land." Settlements at this time had fairly
Note. — The opposite view ot Pittsburg is from the Atlas of Collot'a Journey in North Ammtd.

52 THE KENTUCKY REGION.
begun along the Monongahela, and two years later occupancy
was in full progress, and was stretching on to Laurel Ridge.
Most of the settlers were coming by the Braddock route, which
Washington had followed, but a lesser number poured in by
the Pennsylvania route from Bedford and Ligonier.
On October 27, 1770, Washington was at Fort Pitt, now
garrisoned by two companies of Royal Irish. He found rows
of traders' houses along the Monongahela side, but the most
active of the packmen were evidently the Pennsylvanians, di
verting the trade over the gaps toward Philadelphia, whUe they
met the Indians in Virginia territory south of the Ohio. This,
with the neglect which the petition of the Lees and himself
had received, could but convince Washington that the interests
which supported Forbes and Bouquet in preferring a new route
over the hills, ten years and more ago, were not short-lived.
These rival agencies were further kept alive by the controversy
over counter claims to this over-hill country about the forks
of the Ohio. Everything was favoring the prominence Penn
sylvania was now acquiring among the older colonies. From
1771 to 1773, something like twenty-five thousand Presbyterian
Scotch-Irish arrived at either Philadelphia or Newcastle, and
they added greatly to the sturdier stock of the colony. Frank
lin, now in England, was considering how the prosperity of the
colony could be increased by a system of canalking her rivers.
This western contest of Pennsylvania with Virginia was an
evil destined to be surmounted, but during these years when
Westmoreland County was formed, it proved irritating and even
dangerous. Both colonies had, after the treaty at Fort Stan
wix, been issuing warrants for the same territory, while they
bid against each other by alternately lowering the selling price.
Washington, leaving Pittsburg in October, 1770, went with
a party down the Ohio to the Kanawha, and early in November
he was examining the land about that stream. Returning to
Pittsburg, he gave an entertainment at an inn in that place,
and here met for the first time a nephew of George Croghan,
Connolly by name, who, as a creature of Lord Dunmore, be
came a few years later notorious In furthering his lordship's
schemes in this region in opposition to the claims of Pennsyl
vania. This land dispute turned upon the meaning to be given
to the rather impracticable definition of Penn's charter for his

WASHINGTON'S LANDS. 53
western bounds, — five degrees west of the Delaware, a stream
of in-and-out reaches. It was of importance for Pennsylvania
to hold the forks within her jurisdiction, which it could do if
Pittsburg could be made to lie within a westward curve to
match a similar bend of the Delaware. To accomplish this, it
was claimed by Croghan that certain interested parties, work
ing with ScuU's map of the province, undertook to misplace the
forks to accommodate that locality to some favoring curve.
Such an act, if fraudulent, wronged in its consequences the
new Walpole colony by depriving it of so eligible a site as
the forks.
No one since Weiser's death had been so Important a medi
ator with the Ohio tribes as Croghan. Gage was writing of
him : •' Croghan Is generous ; gives all he has, and whilst he
has anything to give the Indians will flock about him." The
new patentees had made it for Croghan's advantage to watch
their Interests at the forks. He had thought that their lands
would find purchasers at £10 the hundred acres, and half-penny
sterling quitrent. When he had offered some of his own lands,
lying between the Monongahela and Raccoon Creek, to Wash
ington, that vigilant speculator refused the chance because of
the unsettled conditions, both as regards the controverted
bounds of Virginia and Pennsylvania, and the pending Walpole
grant, aU of which might affect Croghan's title as derived from
the Indians. StiU Washington did not hesitate to add to his
own rights under the Dinwiddie proclamation by buying simi
lar claims of others, and when he died, nearly thirty years
later, his will shows that he still owned various lots on the
Kanawha, aggregating nearly fourteen thousand acres in four
parcels, beside a fine area above the modern Charleston, which
he and Andrew Lewis had secured after being attracted by a
bituminous spring upon it.
When it was known that the Dinwiddie grant was preserved,
Washington, who had returned to Mount Vernon by the first
of December, 1770, sent Captain WiUiam Crawford In the
following May to mark out its bounds. Washington's journey
had convinced him that /the wagon road then in use, extending
about two hundred miles from where it left the Monongahela to
Alexandria, could be shortened to sixty and perhaps to twenty
miles. If the Potomac could be made navigable by some system

54

THE KENTUCKY REGION.

Note. — This map shows an attempt to define the westem bounds of Peuusylvania hy

of canalization, such as Franklin was contemplating for the
Susquehanna and its branches. Some such enterprise was
necessary if Virginia was going to hold a successful rivalry
with Pennsylvania. No other Virginian added so much pei--
sonal interest to his urgency for the province's behoof, inas
much as he eventually held over thirty thousand acres through
out the Ohio valley. Washington's interest in the soldier's
claims was superadded to his own, and he wrote to Dunmore in
June, 1771, that " the . officers and soldiers confide in me to
transact this business for them."

FRANKLIN AND HILLSBOROUGH.

55

At the same time
Washington repre
sented that a report
of the ultimate suc
cess of the Walj)ole
petitioners was gain
ing ground notwith
standing the opposi
tion of the Board of
Trade. The advo
cates had carried the
question to the king
in council, and on
July 1, 1772, Franklin
read before that body
his masterly answer
to Hillsborough's ob
jections. Franklin's
statement was an em
phatic denial of the
Virginian claim to a
western extension, for
he held that the Alle
ghanies bounded the
province, while the
rights of all the colo
nies were derived from
the Iroquois cession of
lands, which they had
obtained by conquest
from the Shawnees.
He was in due time answered by George Mason, in behalf of
the Virginians. The Iroquois argument had been often used
against the French, and it indicated how the policy of the min
istry had changed since the war, that it was now necessary to
use this reasoning against the government's position.
Treaties with the southern Indians, held at Hardlabor In
1768, and again at Lochabar, In South CaroUna, October 18,
had acknowledged that the Cherokees' right to this region to
wards the Kanawha was superior to that of the Iroquois, but

corves corresponding to those of the Delaware River.

56 THE KENTUCKY REGION.
that tribe got no recognition from Franklin, and a large emi
gratlon had already begun to flow west, looking to the security
which the treaty of Fort Stanwix gave them. Franklin said
that he relied, to keep up this western exodus, " on the voluntary
superflux of the inhabitants of the middle provinces."
The brothers Zane had built their cabin at the mouth of
Wheeling Creek, the first white man's habitation, perhaps,
in that section of the wilderness. Franklin reckoned that not
less than five thousand families, averaging six heads each, un
able to meet the demands of the large landowners east of the
mountains, had before this sought lands on the Ohio. This
computation did not Include several thousand families which
had passed the gaps, but had tarried within the proposed limits
of Pennsylvania.
Among these last, in 1769, had been Zeisberger and his [Mo
ravians, but in 1772, to escape the troubles of Pennsylvania
with the Susquehanna Company, they had pushed up the west
branch of the Susquehanna In search of a. new home. We have
Bishop Ettwein's journal of their flight. Having worshiped
for the last time in their old church, on June 11, 1772, they be
gan their wearisome march. On July 18, they were climbing
a precipitous mountain " to a spring, the headwaters of the
Ohio." " Here," says the bishop, " I lifted up my heart in
prayer as I looked westward." The band was probably now
on the north branch of the Mahoning, an affluent of the AUe
ghany. They floated down the stream to Beaver Creek, and in
August they had laid the foundations of a white settlement
In Ohio, on the " second bottom " of the Tuscarawas valley
(Muskingum), amid its walnuts and sycamores, its cedars,
locusts, and laurels.
Such was the varied complexion of the emigration which
Burke had perceived that it was impossible to withdraw, and
against which Gage's proclamation was to be so fruitlessly
directed. Instead of threats, these people needed protection
and the service of a stable government. This population, as
Franklin argued, was now become, in part at least, " so ungov-
erned and lawless " that nothing but some sort of subjection to
the forms of government could prevent an Indian war. There
was a tendency. In all considerations of the government ahout
America, to delay, but Franklin's urgency and arguments at last

VANDALIA. 57
prevailed, and on August 14, 1771, the king, in council, ap
proved the Walpole grant. The immediate result was that
HiUsborough, who in the beginning was desirous of pushing
the advocates to larger demands than they thought prudent, and
apparently with a purpose in this way to compass their ultimate
discomfiture, now resigned in disgust. After this, Frankhn's
reply, having accompUshed its purpose, disappeared from the
book-stalls. The effect in America was only the beginning of
new delays. A message was at once sent to Sir W illiam John
son, who instructed Croghan to cause "the different nations
and tribes to be made acquainted that it was His Majesty's
pleasure to form a new colony or settlement in Ohio."
This movement had been sedulously watched In Virginia, not
only by those who sought the cover of a Virginia patent to
tliese same lands, but there is some reason to believe it had
been observed by Dunmore in no friendly spirit to the claims
of the soldiers. In the following spring (1773), Dunmore
and Washington had planned a journey beyond the mountains,
but the governor went finally alone. In an interview which he
had with Crawford, the governor promised to Issue to Wash
ington a patent for lands at the mouth of the Kanawha, "in
case the new government did not take place before he got
home." Washington, meanwhile, had found much discourage
ment In all his Ohio plans. Crawford was obliged to Inform
him that he had to work hard to keep squatters off the property
which had been surveyed for him, and that nothing but hiring
men constantly to occupy a claim was sufficient to prevent
intruders building houses upon it.
We find Washington accordingly prompted to turn to other
claims, which the proclamation of 1763 had reserved for the
participants in the war, and he thought for a while of the pos
sibilities of patenting lands in Florida, amid those " scorching
and unwholesome heats " of which Franklin had of late been

writmg.

Meanwhile, the new Company of the Ohio was nurturing
larger views, and on May 6, 1773, the king in council extended
the bounds of the projected government, now spoken of as
Vandalia, to the line of the Kentucky River. Already the
brothers McAfee were preparing to take squatters' rights along
this stream, near where Frankfort now stands, whither the

58 THE KENTUCKY REGION.
traces of the buffalo had led them, through the uninhabited
limestone region. Not far from the same time. Captain Wil
liam Thompson, an agent for the war claimants In Pennsylvania,
had sent a party along the Kentucky, and these had reported
that the lands were the finest they had ever seen, and likely
soon " to sell at twenty-five shillings an acre."
The attractive aspect of this country was now weU under
stood, adorned as it was with broad-leaved trees without under
brush, with ripening grass beneath the shade showing blue to
the distant eye, with the earth teeming from a fertility that
was constantly nurtured by the decay of the underlying rock,
and with occasional broad stretches, where the trees had been
burned and vast herds of buffalo roamed.
This extension of the grant had rendered the mouth of the
Kanawha more central than before, and strengthened the
opinion which Washington had held, that it was the natural
seat for the new government. Towards the middle of May, it
became common talk In Pittsburg that Dunmore had granted
patents for the two hundred thousand acres due to Washington
and his comrades in the neighborhood of the Kanawha, and
Croghan wrote to Wharton about it and said, " It is creating
great confusion on the frontier, both among the whites and the
Indians." The tribes had been taught to look upon the pro
jected colony as an alternative which could be turned to their
advantage in the recompense they expected for their lands.
The Shawnees, in particular, were aroused, and considered the
Virginia claims inimical. Frontiersmen so experienced as Dr.
Walker were advocating an escape from conflict with the
Cherokees by turning their thoughts to western Florida. This
large grant of the soldiers, already recognized, as we have seen,
by the Walpole Company, produced new difficulties by its very
extent. With an eye to improvements, AVashington sought to
have It surveyed so as to include as much tillable ground as pos
sible. He soon discovered fi-om the reports which he received
that he must secure it in at least twenty different localities,
unless he was content to include contiguously large unproduc
tive mountain areas. It is not easy from Washington's letters
always to distinguish which of these western lands he had
patented as a private venture from his claims either under the
Dinwiddie or the later royal proclamation. By July, 1773,

BULLITT AND LOUISVILLE. 59
he had certainly got such hold of more than twenty thousand
acres of these Ohio vaUey lands as to warrant an advertisement
of them in the 3Iaryland Journal. These lands were among
the first surveyed, and he describes them as " by the beautiful
hand of nature almost fit for the scythe." To render them
more attractive to settlers, he represents that in due time the
land carriage to them by the Monongahela route would be
reduced to a few miles.
Just what these lands were is not clear, but it is apparent
that Washington had secured the favor of the royal governor,
and was wiUing to profit by it to the exclusion of his war-time
comrades, if his caution to Crawford to be discreet in speaking
of the patents wiU bear that inference. Dunmore had said
(September 24) that he did not intend to make any grants on
the Ohio under the proclamation of 1763, but at the same time
Washington believed the contrary, and that these grants were
to be made below the Scioto, on the supposition entertained at
that time that the meridian of the Scioto was to be the western
Umit of VandaUa.
A certain Captain Thomas Bullitt, In company with one Han
cock Taylor, was at this time moving down the Kanawha and
the Ohio, locating prospective towns on a grant of over a thou
sand acres, awarded under the Dinwiddle proclamation, one
of which included the present Charleston on the Kanawha.
BuUitt was invested by the CoUege of William and Mary, one
of Its prerogatives, with the authority to approve surveys, and
had thus become conspicuous in these western movements,
though there were complaints that when wanted, to give such
approval, he was not always to be found. He was, as it seems,
moving on about his own business, and as the summer wore
on, Taylor and he had separated at the mouth of the Kentucky,
and while Taylor went up that stream, making survey about
the modern Frankfort, Bullitt went on to the rapids of the
Ohio, and laid out the plot for a settlement where Louisville
now stands, the first regular town mapping In Kentucky. The
spot was not occupied till two years later, though, on a lot above
the falls, John Cowan had built a log house In 1774.
Washington had instructed this same Bullitt in September,
1773, to survey for him a tract of ten thousand acres, as far
below the Scioto as it may be necessary to go to get good

60 THE KENTUCKY REGION.
bottom-lands In one, two, or three lots. He had already bought
out the rights of Captain Stobo and Lieutenant Van Braam,
other soldiers of the recent war, which, added to his own claim
for five thousand acres, made up the ten thousand held by him
under the Dinwiddie proclamation. But the destiny of this
Ohio country turned, it was thought, upon the future of the
Walpole movement, and the delays in organizing the govern
ment of the colony on the spot — Dartmouth seems on May 17,
1773, to have offered Major Legge the governorship of some
new colony on the Ohio, with a salary of £1,000 — were greatly
embarrassing to Croghan, who at Pittsburg was acting, as we
have seen, as its agent.
Haldimand had arrived in New York In July, 1773, to suc
ceed Gage In the chief command in North America. He was
early made aware of the strearti of settlers passing down the
Ohio to the lower parts of that river, and Croghan had reported
how Bullitt and others were " going down the river with num
bers of people to settle the country, which, they were informed
by the king's message, was not to be settled." General Brad-
street had not long before bargained with the Indians for a
tract of three hundred thousand acres, but the Board of Trade
had refused confirmation of an act " which cannot be reconciled
with the sj^irlt and intent of the king's instructions." Haldi
mand urged Sir William Johnson to take steps to stop such
Infringements of the royal proclamation, but that Indian agent
felt himself powerless, with no government on the river to en
force the prohibition. This lawless infiux had begun here and
there, as in Bradstreet's case. In private purchases from the
Indians. Such clouded titles led Chief Justice Marshall, at a
later day, when the United States succeeded to the royal rights,
to invalidate claims well earned by the hardships of pioneers.
By December, 1773, Croghan Is representing " the emigra
tion as surprising. I am told [he says] that there can't be less
than sixty thousand souls settled between Pittsburg and the
mouth of the Ohio, — so that the policy of the people In Eng
land in delaying the grant of the new colony, in order to pre
vent emigration, answers not their purpose, as it does not
prevent the settling of the country."
The delays further produced much discontent among the

WASHINGTON'S PLANS. 61
Indians, eager to profit by the settlement. Croghan says that
these anxious savages flocked by hundreds to Pittsburg, expect
ing food and gratuities. The leaders of the colony had promised
their agent what was needed for this hospitable purpose, but
they forgot their pledge, and Croghan complains that the Indians
were " eating up what he had gathered for the winter's use
of his family." To give the presents which were necessary,
he says, he was forced " to pawn what little plate he had and
some other valuable things."
While the company held back and left Its agent in this
unseemly plight, private enterprise revived with the spring
(1774). During the winter Washington had been consider
ing a plan of bringing over two or three hundred Palatines to
Alexandria, and passing them over the mountains to settle his
lands. He sought information as to the best measures to that
end, hoping to " give up indentures and make them freemen
and tenants " as soon as they could raise a crop of corn. He
proposed to remit their rent for four years if they took un
cleared land, and for two years if there was a house on it and
five acres cleared. His inquiries did not encourage him. The
Palatines preferred Pennsylvania with greater religious liberty,
and did not look kindly upon the Episcopal tithes to be encoun
tered under Virginia rule. The restrictive navigation laws
were also in the way, for these people were to be shipped from
Holland, and outward cargoes for payment must incur charges
in England by transshipment there. This led Robert Adam to
suggest that Washington might find it less burdensome to get
Scotch or Irish, or even convicts and Indented servants might
be more handily found in Baltimore. By spring the obstacles
seemed no less, and on May 1 we find the scheme laid aside.
Washington had reckoned that he had land enough for three
hundred families ; but the outcome of all his plans was that
two small parties of servants and hired men went over the
mountains, and were soon scattered.
In April, John Floyd led a surveying party down the Kana
wha, and did some surveying for Washington and Patrick
Henry. Simon Kenton and a party were strolling near the
lower Blue Licks. Both parties, however, soon discovered
indications of the rising Indian war. During the early summer

62 THE KENTUCKY REGION.
(1774), James Harrod and a j)arty of forty laid out In central
Kentucky the town of Harrodsburg, not the earliest settlement
of the future State, but the first to have in it, perhaps, the ele
ments of perpetuity, with all the initial flourish of a tomahawk
claim and a patch of corn.
The year wore out, and nothing was done to relieve the anx
iety either of Croghan or the soldiers. The king turned a deaf
ear to the urgency for dispatching a governor to the new col
ony; and Dunmore dallied, as Washington alleges, for "other
causes" than procrastination in considering the soldiers' grants.
Political events strained the relations of the mother country and
the colonies, and In April, 1775, the first gun at Lexington in
Massachusetts pushed aU into the limbo of forgotten things.
While the news of the conflict near Boston was still fresh in
London, Walpole did not despair (May 30) of those "better
times on which the country now depends for its preservation."

CHAPTER V.
-THE QUEBEC BILL AND THE DUNMORE WAR.
1774.
In 1774, there came for the first time a sharp conflict be
tween Virginia and the home government as to jurisdiction over
the territory north of the Ohio. The interpretation which Vir
ginia had always given to the very obscure definition of her
bounds in the charter of 1609 had been long denied by France,
and when that contested region was wrested from France, the
peace of 1763 had limited its western extension by the Missis
sippi. The royal proclamation, which soon followed, had pre
vented the pushing of the settlements thither, but had not given
it over absolutely to other jurisdiction. Ten years or more
later, while Virginia was waging war against the savages there
abouts,, to enforce her claim and protect her .settled frontiers,
the British Parliament strove to put a limit to her territorial
pretensions In this direction by giving the Quebec government
an absolute jurisdiction over the region. There were other
purposes, both ostensible and latent, in this legislative move
ment, which were entered upon to curb not only Virginia, but
the other seaboard colonies, in an inevitable westward march.
Ever since Carleton had been in command in Quebec, he had
felt the necessity of yielding something more to the French
Canadians than had been allowed by the capitulation at [Mon
treal in 1760, and by the acts of 1763. He contended that a
further concession could alone make them good British sub
jects, and that a guarded revival of French law, customs, and
religion, while placating one hundred and fifty thousand Cath
olics of the province, — as Carleton counted them, though his
estimate is jjrobably much too large, — would not seriously
impair the fortunes of four hundred Protestants, their fellow-
subjects. In 1770, Carleton had gone to England, leaving in
his place Cramahe, a Swiss Protestant in the English service.

64 THE QUEBEC BILL AND THE DUNMORE WAR.
During the four years of his absence, Carleton was in occasional
consultation with the ministry about what seemed to him some
needed transformation of the government of the province. This
consideration was at times affected, and perhaps shaped, by
petitions of the Canadians, not largely signed, and forwarded
by Cramahe. They touched the restoration of the French
laws and a rehabilitation of the Catholic reUgion.
While such questions were in abeyance, the revolutionary
commotions in Boston did not fail to render of doubtfid con
tinuance the loyalty of the seaboard colonies, now numbering
probably, according to the most careful estimates, considerably
under three millions of people. If such disaffection could not
be stamped out, it became a question of restraining it by terri
torial bounds, and covertly If not openly. This danger had
already delayed the entire fulfillment of the Vandalia project
south of the Ohio. It was known that there was a tide of
immigration rolling along the Ohio, and, In spite of the agree
ment at Fort Stanwix, threatening its northern banks. It was
necessary, then, to find some barrier to check the current, lest
it should buoy up and carry along the seething commotions of
the seaboard. No such barrier was so obvious as that which the
French had attempted to maintain iu the recent war, — the line
of the St. Lawrence ancl the AUeghanies. To make this barrier
effective, it was necessary to consolidate, as far as possible, the
region behind It In a single government. Murray and his suc
cessor, Carleton, had already urged an extension of their execu
tive authority from Quebec westward, and the opportune time
had come for doing it, under an ostensible plea of regulating the
fur trade of the region. If the traders were gratified by such
professions, the debates and remonstrances show that the pro
posed reinstatement of the Roman Church and the suppression of
English law drew out fervent opposition ; and there is, more
over, no evidence that the Canadians themselves, as a popular
tion, felt any elation over the prospect. This may have been
due in some 'part to a latent sympathy among them with the
revolutionary classes of the older colonies, — a sympathy with
which Congress, as it turned out, blundered in an attempt to
deal. A new petition from Canada, dated February, 1774, and
signed by only sixty-five persons, asked for a restoration of the

VIRGINIA AND PENNSYLVANIA. 65
" old bounds of Canada," over which the English and French
had so long disputed, and the ministry in granting it were
ensnared into the somewhat ridiculous acknowledgment of what
they had formerly denied. To restore such limits, however,
would please the Canadians and some fur traders, and became
a good cloak for ulterior purposes respecting the seaboard
colonies. The jealousy of New York was aroused, and for a while it
was uncertain if the western part of that province would not be
sacrificed to the ministerial purpose. New York owed it to
Edmund Burke that this territory was saved to its jurisdiction.
Immediate opposition naturally came from the Penns, whose
proprietary rights would be curtailed, .and from Virginia, whose
royal governor, interested with many of her people in land
schemes in the lUinois country, was already preparing for an
invasion of the territory. The movement for a colony north of
the Ohio, over which Franklin and Hillsborough had contended,
had come to naught, much to the relief of Virginia ; but here
was a project seeking the active sanction of Parliament, and
likely to thwart any purpose which her royal governor might
have of issuing patents to this very land.
Dunmore, the governor, was a man not easily balked. He
had already taken possession of Fort Pitt despite the protests
of Penn, and was determined to hold it as a gate to the over-
river country of Virginia. This precipitate conduct had alarmed
Haldimand, the military head of the continent, lest the distrac
tions of this intercolonial land-dispute should embolden the
savages to take an advantage. Both sides arrested settlers
engaged in vindicating their respective colonies, and the trouble
had become so alarming in the spring of 1774 that surveyors
of both sides were rushing to the contested region, and plotting
their claims.
This dispute, serious enough in itself, was embittered by the
craft of Connolly, the creature of Dunmore, and complicated
beside by the diversity of individual claims, whether based on
Indian deeds or tomahawk titles, or on the assertion of might
against right. The spring of 1774 led to renewed negotiations
between the colonies in the midst of mutual criminations.
Penn offered the calculations of Provost Smith of the coUege
at Philadelphia and of Dr. Rittenhouse, that Pittsburg was

66 THE QUEBEC BILL AND THE DUNMORE 'WAR.
at least six miles within the bounds which he claimed, and in
May, James Tilghman and Andrew Allen, commissioners sent
by Penn to WlUiamsburg, offered as a compromise a curved
line for the western boundary, paraUel to the tortuous course
of the Delaware. Dunmore insisted that the five degrees of
longitude should be measured on the 42° paraUel, and that
a meridian boundary line should be run at the western end
of this measurement. Neither side would yield, and Dunmore
continued to Issue patents covering the controverted area.
The Indians, observing this antagonism, and disappointed
that the delay in the organization of the VandaUa colony had
deprived them of purchase money for their lands, and fearing
to lose them through occupation by rival claimants, grew
troublesome along the frontier. One Walter KeUy had hutted
his family on a creek up the Kanawha, eighty miles from a
stockade of the Greenbrier Company, which was the nearest
support. Warnings, which were bringing nearly aU the re
moter settlers under cover, were neglected, and KeUy's little
home was devastated by ruthless Shawnees. But such was the
fearlessness of the frontier that two brothers, Morris by name,
soon occupied the same spot, and planted a family stock, where
it flourishes to-day.
This baleful condition of the border was not altogether
unwelcome to Dunmore. It gave the color of necessity to a
proclamation (April 25, 1774) ordering the militia to be in
readiness. By this force he might intimidate Pennsylvania,
punish the Indians, and maintain the sovereignty of Virginia
beyond the Ohio.
A few score men, land-grabbers and adventurers, had already
assembled at the mouth of the Kanawha, and a hunting party
sent out by them had been attacked by wandering Shawnees.
As the spring wore on, these bold fellows at the Kanawha,
animated by a desire for revenge, resolved on a sudden onset
upon the Indian towns on the Scioto, in the disputed territory.
They sought a famous frontiersman, Michael Cresap, and made
him their leader. He had only recently moved to the upper
Ohio from the frontier of Maryland. There was also in their
number a young and daring spirit, George Rogers Clark, who
Note. — The map on the opposite page, based on information afforded by Oeneral Richard But
ler, is taken from Crevecoeur's Lettres d'un CuUivateur, vol. iii., Paris, 17S3.

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68 THE QUEBEC BILL AND THE DUNMORE WAR.
had been brought thither to look after a grant which he had
obtained at Fish Creek. This body of borderers, with its
impromptu organization, was further recruited at the site of
the modern Wheeling by additional hotheads, with whom it
mattered little whether the stories of murders, which were in
creasing, were of whites by savages, or of the Indian by the
frontiersman, — and there was no dearth of either kind of tale.
Ebenezer Zane, the principal settler of this spot, had made
here a tomahawk claim in 1769, where he was joined the next
year by his brothers, Jonathan and Silas. There was at this
date (1774) a number of log houses clustering about those of
the Zanes.
The hotheads were counseled to be prudent by the leader of
this settlement, and Cresap seemed inclined to be cautious, hut
the trepidation was too widespread for perfect restraint. One
observer tells us that in a single day a thousand bewildered
settlers crossed over the Monongahela towards the east, and the
whole country was finally stripped of inhabitants, except they
were " forted."
The war, if it came, was sure to have one advantage for the
whites, and that was the single and unhampered purpose of
Virginia to maintain her own, and this she was prepared to do
without the aid of her neighbors.
Sir William Johnson, in New York, was doing his 'best to
hold back the Iroquois, but that part of these confederates
which had advanced into the modern State of Oliio could not
be restrained from making common cause with the Delawares
and Shawnees.
Logan was one of these migrated Iroquois, and it was his
fate to become the pivot of events. He had been bred at
Shamokin, and had long been known as a friend of the English.
A small camp of his family and foUowers, on the north side
of the Ohio, crossing the river to get rum, was set upon and
killed by some lawless whites. Indian runners spread the news
of the massacre, and Logan was soon, with such a band as he
could gather, spreading devastation along the Monongahela
and Holston, — and Dunmore's war was begun.
The country north of the Ohio, where Dunmore expected to
operate, was designated in the ParUamentary bill, now near its
passage, as "heretofore a part of the territory of Canada."

THE FRENCH ON THE WABASH. 69
This phrase struck sharply at the pride of Dunning and others,
jealous of English honor, and Lord North at one time proposed
to leave the words out. It was urged by the opposition that
under such an acknowledgment, if the time should ever come
for France to regain Canada in a diplomatic balance, she could
fairly contend for this conceded limit. While this apprehen
sion strengthened the opponents of the bill in England, the
news of its progress through Parliament brought other fears to
land speculators in Virginia. Some travelers and adventurers
in the summer of 1773 had, under the lead of one WiUiam
Murray, formed a company at Kaskaskia which became known
as the lUinois Land Company, and with these the governor
and various gentlemen of tide-water Virginia were associated.
They had bargained with the Indians for large tracts of land,
bounded by the Wabash, the Mississippi, and the Illinois, and
the deed had been passed. Was their purchase now Imperiled
by this biU ? What was to be the effect of the measure upon
the French traders and denizens of that country, and upon their
relations to the Indians ?
The French on the Wabash and beyond, occupying lands
which the royal proclamation of 1763 had pledged to the
Indians, had been for ten years a source of perplexity to the
commanding general in New York. In September, 1771, Gage
had reported that the tribes thereabouts were constantly im-
periUng the English traders, and " it is natural to suspect," he
says, " that the French instigate the Indians against us to keep
the trade to themselves." He then intimates that it may be
come necessary to dislodge the French at Vincennes. Early in
March, Gage received royal orders to warn the French at that
place to remove immediately, and it is for us, he adds, " to let
the neighboring Indians know that we shall have traders among
them to take the place of the French." In AprU, 1772, Gage
issued a proclamation of his intent to remove all settlers from
that country, English as well as French. They were given
time to withdraw voluntarily. The warning was a cruel one
to the French, who had enjoyed unquestioned homestead titles
for seventy years. When their protests were sent to New
York, Gage dalUed in his decision. This gave time for the
resignation of Hillsborough, forced by Franklin, to throw the
control of the question into the tenderer hands of Lord Dart-

70 THE QUEBEC BILL AND THE DUNMORE WAR.
mouth, and the poor French were respited. They went on,
pursuing their avocations, hunting and trading, and Patrick
Kennedy, who was at this time exploring the Illinois, reports
meeting them on its banks. It seems clear that the routes from
Detroit, the home of the congeners of these lUinoIs French,
were constantly traversed by these people, either by the Mau
mee or the Illinois River, — a journey in either case of near
nine hundred miles to the Mississippi, often the depot for their
furs. Haldimand, in succeeding Gage, opened communica
tion with their western aliens. He had advised Gage that it
would be difficult to controvert their land titles. Now under
Dartmouth's orders he had cautioned the English commander
at Fort Gage to be conciliatory towards them. A little later,
Haldimand was endeavoring to get more direct information
of their condition. He was instructing Lieutenant Hutchins
to leave Pensacola and take the route north by the Mississippi,
so as to bring him reports. Later stiU, he sent Lieutenant
Hall to placate the Indians and prepare the French settlers
for the stabler ride of the new bill. Gage, in London, was
not less anxiously consulting with North and Dartmouth, and
conferring with Carleton about its provisions. Haldimand
was meanwhile constantly reporting new disorders on' the Ohio,
with a suspicion of French intrigue behind the savage Irrup
tions, and there was need of haste in applying the assuaging
effects of the bill. But Its opponents were questioning the
scheme because they thought it hopeless and unpatriotic to
check an inevitable westward progress. Haldimand under
stood the real purpose of its promoters, when he said that the
bill was aimed at preventing the Americans getting possession
of the continent. Lord Lyttelton recognized the fact that to
confine the Americans by such a barrier was to thwart their
contest for empire. Wedderburn said distinctly that it was
one object of the biU to prevent the EngUsh settling in that
country, and that the new barrier would allow " little temptar
tion " to send settlers north from the VandaUa gr.ant.
It was not only this territorial expansion of Quebec, but the
concessions which the bUl made to French Catholics, greater
than any English Romanist could dare expect, and the grant of
French law In British territory, which increased the steady
aversion to It of English merchants, and which aroused the lord

THE BILL PASSED. 71
mayor and magistrates of London, because they supposed it
imperiled British honor. For the seaboard colonists to enter
that territory and find French law instead of English law, and
to encounter an established Catholic religion, was not likely to
strengthen the loyalty whose decadence the ministry was de
ploring in the older colonies. " Does not your blood run cold,"
said Hamilton, " to think that an English Parliament could
pass an act for the establishment of arbitrary power and popery
in such an extensive country ? " However politic the modern
historian may think this rehabilitating of French customs to
have been for the vastly preponderating French element north
of the St. Lawrence, to Include the Ohio country in such provi
sions is not approved even by such defenders of the ministerial
policy as Kingsford, the latest historian of Canada. There is
indeed little to support the charges that the bill was but the
first step in reducing " the ancient, free, Protestant colonies to
the same state of slavery," by setting up " an example and fit
instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these
colonies." These were phrases used by Congress in an address
to the people of Great Britain a few months later (October 21,
1774), and stiU more solemnly in the Declaration of Independ
ence. They were simply loose sentences used for political ends.
The Parliamentary opposition, which was dignified by the sup
port of Chatham and Burke, never ventured to think of any
such effect on the Atlantic side of the Alleghanies from these
untoward provisions, whatever the bravado utterances of Thur-
low may have indicated. " I do not choose," said Burke at one
time, " to break the American spirit, because it is the spirit
that has made the country."
¦ The bUl was introduced on May 2, 1774, into the House of
Lords, weary with the long sessions which the discussion of the
Massachusetts coercive acts had caused. It went to the Com
mons, and passed that body on June 13, while Logan was ren
dering an Indian war in the designated region inevitable,
and was sent back with amendments to the Lords. In this
body, by a vote of fifty to twenty in a house that seated five
hundred and fifty-eight members, and after the season was so
far advanced that many peers had gone to their estates, it was
passed on June 18, and four days later was approved by the
king. In this way the government stultified itself.

72 THE QUEBEC BILL AND THE DUNMORE WAR.
Before the news could reach Virginia, but while the prospect
seemed certain that such a biU would become law, Dunmore,
on July 12, instructed Andrew Lewis to descend the Kanawha
with a force and cross the Ohio into the Shawnee country.
Meanwhile, Major Angus McDonald passed the mountains with
a body of militia, and, moving down the Ohio to the modem
Wheeling, he found himself in command of about seven hun
dred sturdy fighters. Here, with the aid of the Zanes and
following plans suggested by George Rogers Clark, he built
Fort Fincastle, later known as Fort Henry. Towards the end
of July, he dropped down the river to Fish Creek, whence he
made a dash upon the Shawnee vUlages on the Muskingum, —
creating the first success of the war.
Dunmore himself had left Williamsburg on July 10, and by
the last of September he was at the head of about thirteen hun
dred men at Fort Fincastle. He kept out some experienced
scouts, Clark, Cresap, Simon Kenton, and Simon Girty among
the number. He sent Crawford forward to build Fort Gower
at the mouth of the Hockhocking.
The Indian agents, Johnson and his deputy, Croghan, — who
was now living on the Alleghany just above the forks, —
watched this war of Virginia and the Shawnees with solicitude.
Sir WUliam got his tidings of it through the Iroquois, and they
associated all the barbarity of the whites with the name of
Cresap. Logan certainly agreed, as his famous speech shows.
Rev. William Gordon had some time before transmitted to
Dartmouth what purported to be a letter addressed by the
French king to the Six Nations. In this they were told to
keep up their courage, and they would, as they found oppojv
tunity, enter Canada with eighty ships, while " an equal number
entered the Mississippi to the aid of his southern children."
The English were well aware of the uncertainties of a general
savage uprising, with France on the watch. " There is too
great a spirit in the frontier people for killing Indians," said
Croghan, " and if the assembly gives in to that spirit, instead
of securing the friendship of the Six Nations and the Dela
wares by negotiation, no doubt they will soon have a general
rupture." He adds that the Six Nations have tried to prevent
the war with the Shawnees. With such an Iroquois as Logan
aroused, there was little chance of peace.

FIGHT AT POINT PLEASANT. 73
The real stroke of the war came on the very site of the con
templated capital of Vandalia, in the angle formed by the junc
tion of the Kanawha with the Ohio, — Point Pleasant, as it
was caUed. The conflict here was the most hotly contested
fight which the Indians ever made against the English, and it is
aU the more remarkable as it was the first considerable battle
which they had fought without the aid of the French. Lewis,
on arriving at the spot, learned from Dunmore's messages,
which the governor's scouts had hidden near by, that the gov
ernor with his forces would be on the Ohio at a point higher
up, where Lewis was instructed to join him. The next day new
orders came, by which it appeared that Dunmore intended to
tum up the Hockhocking River, and that Lewis was expected
to cross the Ohio and join him in the Indian country. When
Lewis was thus advised, his rear column had not come up, and
his trains and cattle were stiU struggling in the wilderness.
The force which he had with him at Point Pleasant was a
motley one, but for forest* service a notable body, and not a
frontier settlement but had contributed to it. There were in
it Shelby, Christian, Robertson, and Morgan, — heroic names
in these western wilds.
While Lewis was making ready to obey orders, a squad of
men, out hunting, discovered that a horde of Indians was upon
them. Cornstalk, a Shawnee chief, had divined Dunmore's
plan, and, with a strategic skill unusual with Indians, had
crossed the Ohio for the purpose of beating his adversary in
detail. The opposing armies were much alike in numbers, say
eleven hundred each, — perhaps more, — and in forest wiles the
difference was hardly greater. Cornstalk soon developed his
plan of crowding the whites toward the point of the peninsula.
Lewis pushed forward enough men to retard this onset, while
he threw up a line of defense, behind which he could retire if
necessary. He sent, by a concealed movement, another force
along the banks of the Ohio, which gained the Indians' fiank,
and by an enfilading fire forced the savage line back. In the
night. Cornstalk, thus worsted, recrossed the Ohio.
Meanwhile, Dunmore, ascending the Hockhocking, marched
towards the Scioto, making some ravages as he went. Corn
stalk, after his defeat, had hurriedly joined the tribes opposing
Dunmore, but he found them so disheartened by his own dis-

74 ' THE QUEBEC BILL AND THE DUNMORE WAR.
comfiture that he soon led a deputation to Dunmore's camp
and proposed a peace. The governor, hearing of Lewis's ap
proach, and not feeling the need of his aid in the negotiations,
and fearing that the elation of the victorious borderers might
disquiet the now complacent tribes, sent messages to Lewis
that he should withdraw, which Lewis reluctantly did. A
treaty followed. All prisoners were to be given up ; all stolen
horses returned. No white man was to be molested on the
Ohio, and no Indians were to pass to its southern bank. It
was also agreed — In mockery, as the tribes must have felt —
that no white man should cross to the north. Four chieftains
were given to the whites as hostages.
Logan kept aloof, and was sullen. He was a fighter and not
a councilor, he said ; but he sent in the speech to which refer
ence has been made, an eloquent burst of proud disdain, if we
can trust the report of it. His string of scalps had satisfied his
revenge. There were acts on Dunmore's part, such as his failure to
succor Lewis, and his refusal to let him share In the treaty,
which, when his conduct and that of his minion, Connolly, were
later known In his eagerness to quell the patriotic uprising In
tide-water Virginia, led many to suspect him of treachery in the
negotiation with the Indians, and of a purpose to secure them
to the royal side in the impending revolutionary struggle.
There Is no evidence that, at the time, this distrust prevailed.
As late as March, 1775, the Virginia Assembly thanked him for
his success. Yet it is true that he had, before he entered upon
his campaign, dissolved the Virginia Assembly in May, 1774,
in disapproval of their votes of sympathy for oppressed Boston.
Dunmore had, indeed, obtained all he hoped for by bring
ing peace. In reestablishing a new hold for Virginia upon the
territory, which, as he later learned, was on the first of the
following May to pass, by action of Parliament, under a new
jurisdiction. The grasp which Virginia had now taken had
cost her £150,000, but It was to be of great importance In the
coming struggle with the king, for she had administered a de
feat to the Indians, which was for some time to paralyze their
power In that region. It was a grasp that Virginia was not to
relax till she ceded her rights in this territory to the nascent
union when the revolt of the colonies was ended, — a hold that

THE COMMISSION TO CANADA. 75
before long she was to strengthen through the wisdom and
hardihood shown in her capture of Vincennes.
Before the battle of Point Pleasant had decided the fate of
the Indians, the passage of the bill, which in early summer had
created so little attention in Parliament, was met in London by
" a prodigious cry " in September, — ¦ a clamor that WiUiam
Lee, then in England, did his best to Increase by " keeping a
continual fire in the papers." The bill was not to go into effect
till the spring of 1775, and Carleton having returned to Canada,
Dartmouth, in January, sent him instructions about putting it
in force. The minister's letters must have crossed others from
the governor, informing him of the opposition to the bill even
among the French people of the province, and of the measures
which the revolting colonies were taking to gain the Canadians
to their cause. In Montreal the bust of the king had been
defaced. Already in the previous September, Congress had reechoed
the " prodigious cry " of London, and had declared the re-
estabUshment of the Catholic religion in Quebec to be " danger
ous in an extreme degree ; " but this mistake in language was
discovered, and John Dickinson drafted for that body a concil
iatory address to the Canadians, which, in March, 1775, Carle
ton informed Dartmouth the disaffected on the St. Lawrence
were printing and distributing in a translation. Within a
year the lesson of prudence had been forgotten, and singularly
enough while Congress (February, 1776) was appointing, a
commission, with one Catholic jnember (Charles Carroll) and a
Catholic attendant, to proceed to Montreal, the ardent Hugue
not blood of John Jay had colored an address of Congress to
English sympathizers by characterizing the Catholic faith " as
a religion fraught with sanguinary and impious tenets." It
was only necessary for the loyal Canadians to translate and cir
culate Jay's imprudent rhetoric to make the efforts of the com
missioners futile. Congress again grew wiser when it framed
the Declaration of Independence, and Dr. Shea has pointed out
that the allusion to the -Quebec Bill in that document is " so
obscure that few now understand it, and on the point of religion
it is silent."
Congress thus failed to undo the Quebec Act by gaining the

76 THE QUEBEC BILL AND THE DUNMORE WAR.
people it was intended to shield ; and it was left for Virginia,
under a pressure Instigated by Maryland, to do what she could
to make the territory, of which Parliament would have deprived
her, the nucleus of a new empire beyond the mountains.
England stubbornly adhered to her efforts to maintain the
act north of the Ohio, as long as the war lasted. Before the
actual outbreak, Franklin, in his Informal negotiations in Lon
don, had told the ministry that there could be no relief from
the dangers of " an arbitrary government on the back of the
settlements " but in a repeal of the Quebec Act. He claimed
it to be the right of the Americans to hold the lands which the
colonists had acquired from the French, while at the same time
it was their duty to defend them and set up new settlements
upon them. Dunmore was naturally of another mind, and we
know that after his treaty was made he schemed with the Dela
wares and the ministry to get a royal confirmation to that tribe
of the country north of the Ohio and east of the Hockhocking,
as a ready means to bar out the Virginians.

CHAPTER VI.
SOUTH OF THE OHIO.
1769-1776.
Numerous rivulets, springing along the Blue Ridge in North
Carolina, and broadening as they leap down the slopes, ulti
mately gather and flow towards the sea in two principal streams,
— the Yadkin and the Catawba. There was a Scotch-Irish
stock in this mountainous region, which was proving difficult
for Governor Tryon, the royalist executive of that province, to
manage. This recalcitrant spirit of independence found an
attractive seclusion in the free wilderness life which returned
hunter and adventurer pictured beyond the mountains. One
of these restless spirits dwelling on the Yadkin has already
been presented to us In Daniel Boone.
In the vaUey interposing between the Blue Ridge and Iron
Mountain, — the present western boundary of North Caro
Una, — a network of smaU streams unite and flow north to
the Kanawha and Ohio. Other spraying threads of glistening
life, drawing into a single channel, break through the Iron
Mountain, when, increased by various tributaries, it becomes
known as the Watauga, an affluent of the Holston, one of the
chief branches of the Tennessee. To the valley of this stream,
lying in what is now the northeast corner of the State of Ten
nessee, Daniel Boone had come, as we have seen, in 1769.
There was soon after planted across the Indian war-path which
this vaUey afforded — up and down which the northern and
southern Indians had for years followed one another — the
first permanent settlement beyond the mountains south of the
Virginia grants. William Bean had built himself a cabin here,
and his son was the first white child born In Tennessee. The
communications of the region were easiest from Virginia and
down the tributaries of the Kanawha.
On October 18, 1770, a treaty of Virginia with the Chero-

78 SOUTH OF THE OHIO.
kees, made at Lochaber, In South Carolina, had extended the
bounds of the Old Dominion so far westerly as to correspond in
the main with the present eastern line of Kentucky. Virginia
thus^ secured from the Cherokees, in the very year in which
thelrV^ious Sequoyah, the subsequent inventor of their alpha
bet, was born, their rights to much the same territory which
had been ceded by the Iroquois at Fort Stanwix in 1768. If
the southern bounds of Virginia (36° 31' north latitude) were
where these Watauga people sujDposed, this Cherokee cession
covered their valley, and they were under the protection of
Virginia laws, so far as those ordinances could prevail in so
distant a region. The new Lochaber line began at a point on
the Holston — into which the Watauga flowed — and extended
northward, and there was little knowledge of what it encoun
tered, till it struck the mouth of the Kanawha, whose springs
were adjacent to those of the Watauga. The line reaUy threw
the upper parts of the valley of the Big Sandy River and the
southwest angle of West Virginia — excepting the extreme
jioint of that angle — into the conceded territory. The main
object of the treaty was to placate the Indians for the encroach
ments along the alluvial bottoms of the Kanawha, which the
surveyors had been making in that region under the Fort
Stanwix grant. That concession of the Iroquois had proved
extremely irritating to the Cherokees, because it assumed to
deal with their territory.
Before the truth about the latitude of the Watauga settle
ment was known, there was a significant Immigration thither,
bringing upon the stage of western settlement some notable
personages. In 1770, a supple and robust young man, whose
blue eye had the alert habit of a hunter, and whose native air
of command attracted notice wherever he went, and perhaps the
weightiest man of all these trans-AUeghany pioneers, passed
that way, bound on further explorations. In him, James Eob-
ertson was first introduced to the little stockaded hamlet, where
a few hardy adventurers were breasting the wilderness. The
next year (1771) he came among them again, this time resolved
to stay, for he had brought with him a train making sixteen
families, whom he had Induced to enter upon this new world.
It was after the battle of the Alamance (May 16, 1771), where
Tryon's force had dispersed the Regulators, — a body of asso-

WATAUGA ASSOCIATION. 79
dates against horse thieves and tax-gatherers, — and some of
that disaffected body, eager to find other control than a royal
governor, were in this emigration. Robertson built himself a
cabin, on an island in the river, and events soon placed him in
the forefront of a Uttle colony, organized on manhood suffrage
and reUgious liberty. In it he acquired leadership, though he
was more deficient in education than was usual with pioneers,
for he was only beginning to acquire the penman's art.
In the same year (1771), Jacob Brown had formed a settle
ment on the NoUichucky, a branch of the Holston next south
of the Watauga, and it was he who, on the discovery being
made, by the surveyors extending the southern line of Virginia,
that both of these settlements were without the government
of Virginia, entered into an agreement with the Cherokees, by
which the joint communities, now numbering eighty souls,
secured a lease of these vallej's, in consideration of six thousand
doUars' worth of goods, for a term of eight years. By this they
avoided such an infringement as a purchase would be of the
proclamation of 1763.
These little communities, thus thrown out of the control of
Virginia, and having no connection with North Carolina, though
within her charter limits, were placed in much the same condi
tion in these western wilds that the Mayflower pilgrims were in
a hundred and fifty years before, when, stranded beyond the
patent of Virginia, they were forced into forming a compact of
government. It was thus, in the spring of 1772, that Robertson undertook
a leading part in making what was called the Watauga Associa
tion. This was a combination of the people of the Watauga,
Carter's, and the NoUichucky valleys, under written articles, for
civil government and the protection of law. It was also a
imion, based on necessity and the Indian consent. With these
environments they were ready to face the demand for their
removal made by Cameron, the British Indian agent, on the
ground of their defying the royal proclamation. The govern
ment, which the articles instituted, proved rugged enough to
survive aU strains that were put upon it for six years. In
August, 1776, the association petitioned the North Carolina
Assembly to be aUowed to come under its protection. This
paper is stiU existing in Sevier's handwriting. They ¦professed

80 SOUTH OF THE OHIO.
a desire " to share in the glorious cause of liberty " with their
brothers on the seaboard. In 1778, the region was organized
as Washington County in North Carolina. This change brought
but slight disturbance to the existing forms of government.
That this little republic of the wilderness lasted so success
fully was indeed owing to the character of the men who formed
it. While in the throes of birth, the little community wel
comed to its shelter two other remarkable persons. Captain
Evan Shelby was a frontier cattleman of no uncertain charac
ter, whose Welsh blood had been invigorated by his mountain
career. John Sevier brought to the wilderness a handsome
mien, which befitted his gentle Huguenot blood. His life as an
Indian trader had given him an eager air, but a certain self-
conscious dignity beamed from his blue eyes, and waves of
brown hair haloed a well-poised head, carried erect, and show
ing a countenance lightened at times with gleams of merriment.
He was now not more than six and twenty years old, with a hfe
of striking incident and humane interests stiU before him. He
was, says Phelan, the " most brilliant military and civil figure "
in the history of Tennessee. In these three men, Robertson,
Shelby, and Sevier, the Watauga settlement was fortunate in
these formative days, for being without the pale of estabUshed
civil control, the colony became easily the asylum of vagabonds
and culprits escaping justice by fiying over the mountains.
With such intestine disturbances, and with the savages ahout
them, the character of its chief rulers could be the only security
which such an isolated community could possess. No copy of
their self-imposed constitution of restraint has been preserved;
but we know enough of the workings of their simple govern
ment to see how the laws of Virginia, so far as applicable, with
an executive committee to enforce them, and a sufficient method
of record for lands, sufficed to answer all requirements. It was
the earliest instance of a governinent of the people by the peo
ple, and under a written compact, beyond the mountains, and
was established by men of American birth.
In the year 1773, following this organization, Boone headed
a party and started west. He had with him the first women
and children who had passed the Cumberland Mountains. They
passed beyond all civilization after they had tarried for a brief
interval among a few families settled west of the Holston and

COLONEL HENDERSON. 81
along the Clinch River, the other principal fork of the Ten
nessee. It was in September, 1773, when Boone and his
ad-<reiituxous families were joined by a band of hunters, and the
company numbered eighty when a few weeks later (October 10)
they were attacked in PoweU's valley by the Indians. In the
fight they lost enough to discourage them, and so turned back
to the settlements on the Clinch. It was now apparent that an
Indian war was coming, and in the following spring (1774) the
signs of it were everywhere, as has been depicted in the pre
ceding chapter. There were at the time various stray wanderers,
hunters, and surveyors, pursuing devious ways, or squatted here
and there throughout this remoter country. Now that Lewis,
as we have seen, had been ordered with the Virginia forces
down the Kanawha, and since the gage of war had been ac
cepted, Boone was sent to thrid this country and give warning.
He and his companions found Harrod, McAfee, and their com
pany just beginning a settlement at the modern Harrodsburg.
After [Boone's caution, they abandoned their purpose. Other
parties of whites, which they encountered, were informed of
their danger. Boone's farthest point was the rapids of the
Ohio. After an absence of sixty days and more, during which
he had covered over eight hundred miles, he returned to his
friends on the Clinch.
Lewis's victory at Point Pleasant in October, 1774, rendered
the navigation of the Ohio comparatively safe, and opened the
way for easy transportation to the regions of the lower Cum
berland and Tennessee. The blow which the savages had
received proved enough to paralyze them for a while, and Ken
tucky, at this particular juncture, owed much to this respite.
The new opportunity encouraged a inovement which for a time
promised to regulate the western emigration on a more extended
scale than had been before attempted. The reports which
Boone had made of this western region had aroused many,
among others Colonel Richard Henderson, a Virginian, now
about forty years old. It was under his direction that a com
pany had been formed in North Carolina to buy land of the
Indians and establish a colony beyond the mountains. In the
early days of 1775, Martin, with a party of eighteen or twenty,
had built some cabins and a stockade at what was later known

82 SOUTH OF THE OHIO.
as Martin's Station, about fifty miles beyond the Clinch River
hamlet. The McAfees, about the same time, began a settle
ment on Salt River. Benjamin Logan had in another region
begun a fort, to which the next year he brought his family. On
March 18, James Harrod and a party of fifty reoccupied the
ground which he had abandoned on Boone's warning in 1774.
This reoccupation of the region was in progress when Hen
derson and eight other North Carolinians, on March 17, 1775,
at Sycamore Shoals on the Watauga, concluded a treaty with
the Cherokees, by which they acquired the Indian title to about
one half of the modern State of Kentucky and the adjacent
part of Tennessee lying within the southerly bend of the
Cumberland. The ceded territory was bounded by the Ken
tucky, Holston, Cumberland, and Ohio rivers, and received
the name of Transylvania, — the particular grounds for bestow
ing which name, beyond its apparent meaning, are not known.
The negotiation was not a sudden dash of business, for twelve
hundred savages looked on and increased the usual Indian
deliberation. They heard the speeches on both sides. One
harangue, at least, from the Indians was a mournful protest
against the white man's encroachments. The purchaser's blan
dishments at last prevailed, and for £110,000 worth of goods
the instrument conveying not far from eighteen mUlion acres
of territory received the assent of Oconostota, an aged chief.
The Raven and The Carpenter, other head men of the tribe, also
joined in the conveyance. Two days later, the Watauga asso
ciates, with less regard for the royal proclamation than before,
by the payment of £2,000 worth of merchandise, converted
their existing lease Into a purchase, and threw their interests
into the general scheme.
When a successful termination of the negotiation seemed
certain, and a week before the deed was signed, Boone started
under Henderson's direction to open a traU to the Kentucky,
blazing and clearing a way which eventually was known as The
Wilderness Road. It formed a connection between Cumber
land Gap and the remoter borders of the new colony. He was
attacked on the way (March 25), losing some men, but push
ing on to a level bit of ground, with sulphur springs near by, '
he halted. Here, on April 18, he began a fort which took the
name of Boonesborough. It served for the protection of the

BOONESBOROUGH.

83

score of companions which he had with him. Henderson later
joined the Uttle posi adding about thirty new men for the
garrison, and, to give life to the movement, opened a land office.
On May 23, there was a meeting of
delegates in the fort. This assem
bly adopted some laws, including
one for ' improving the breed of
horses, and stands for the first legis
lative body which was ever held be
yond the mountains. Henderson,
as the moving spirit in this action,
was credited with having "epito
mized and simpUfied the laws of
England." The population at that
time throughout this district was
variously estimated at from one
hundred and fifty to three hundred,
including land jobbers, squatters,
and domiciled settlers, with as yet
but few women among them. These
scattered knots of people had such
contact with the old plantations
as could be made through the more

BOONESBOROUGH FORT.

[From James Hall's Sketches of His
tory, Life, and Manners in the ^Vest,
Philadelphia, 1835. There were block
houses at the angles (1 is Colonel Hen-
dereon'.s, with his kitchen at 3). At
the comers and at the gates (9) were
easterly hamlets on the \ V atauga, ^BtoBt/Laes (2 2, etc.). The intervals
" ' ^^' ^ "' '' presenting

NoUichucky, and Clinch
They formed a wedge of
tion, thrust between the Chero^
Shawnees on the other
were pushing reconnoissanc
of the principal rivers.
was an excess of Scotch
pioneers, there was a
spirit. This dominant
to a single purpose
May 16, 1775, it
which was now
this, one Charles
in this region,
or ten thousai
in large pa

rivers.

wejte Ailed with cabins,
t walls to the enemy.]

the one hand and the
'ous spirits among them
many a tributary stream
pretty clear that if there
utonic blood in this body of
erating influence of English
the varied racial impulses
a convention held at Pittsburg,
nmistakable support to the revolt
on the seaboard. Just before
found rebellious sentiments prevalent
sed Dartmouth that the coming of eight
In one year, " uncultivated banditti," was
iource of such disloyalty. That English

84 SOUTH OF THE OHIO.
minister obtained much the same advice from the Bishop o
Derry, who told him that nearly thirty-three thousand " fanat:
cal and hungry republicans " had gone thither within a fei
years. The over-mountain country was doubtless attracting ;
fair share of this rampant overplus of Ireland.
In the autumn of 1775, there were marks of a detemiinati
future in this pioneer life. Boone, much to the colony's loss
had gone back to North Carolina during the summer, and nov
In September returned to his stockade with his wife and chil
dren. There were in his train the families of various others
who like himself were seeking new homes. The influence oJ
aU this was most fortunate.
There was, meanwhile, a purpose in the older communities
to hold the course of the Ohio against any force which the
troublous times might array. In September, the Virginia
militia had taken possession of Fort Pitt, and outposts were
established at Fort Henry (Wheeling) and at Point Pleasant.
Henderson's scheme, with its feudal tendencies, was proving
inopportune. He was, as one observer said, " a man of vast
and enterprising genius," but an exacting domination made
him enemies. Some who had been his adherents petitioned the
Virginia Assembly to be relieved of the oath of fealty which
he had exacted. The. proprietors under his grant met in Sep
tember, 1775, and merftorialized Congress for admission to the
united colonies. They claimfid a title to their lands acquired
in open treaty " from inii|epB;ial possessors." They appealed
for countenance to Jeffeljpa ..and Patrick Henry, but got no
encouragement. Dunmore, who had now l5|^me^active on the royal side, was
as impatient of Henderson's ^nw as the patriots were, and
fulminated a proclamation ^g^Hflv'^ foi' ^^i^ contempt of the
royal prohibitions, and for i^ffoH^K' an asylum for debtors
and other persons of desperatJIH^Unstances." Governor
Tryon, of North Carolina, who ha^^^self been ambitious of
territorial dignities and a baronetcy, was ^ jirompt as Punniore
in launching his disapprobation. Tht©*, obstacles on all sides
were more than Henderson could overc<|B8^^d his project was
abandoned, though there was later, as ^H^Kl see, an effort
made in Congress to effect some equitable I^^B^i^ f o^" ^^^ °^^

INDIAN DEPARTMENTS. 85
lay. " His scheme," says John Mason Brown, " was the last
appearance on American soil of the old idea of government by
lords proprietor. It was too late for success."
In AprU, 1775, Dunmore had threatened to incite a servile
insurrection in the east ; and in May he informed the home gov
ernment that he was planning to arouse the western Indians.
Dr. ConnoUy, then at Pittsburg, had already been instructed
by Dunmore " to endeavor to incline the Indians to the royal
cause," and ConnoUy succeeded so far as to induce the tribes
to transmit a large belt to the governor. While ConnoUy
was doing this he was in correspondence with Washington, and
lekrned from him " that matters " on the seaboard " were draw
ing to a point." As the summer wore on, ConnoUy found that
the same sort of danger as on the coast — which in June had
driven Dunmore on board a British frigate at York — grew
apace along the frontiers.
On June 30, the Continental Congress had set up three In
dian departments : the northern, including the Six Nations and
tribes at the north; the southern, embracing the Cherokees
and other tribes farther towards the Gulf ; while the middle
department had its central point at Pittsburg. Here three
commissioners, later appointed, were expected to deal with the
tribes and counteract the sinister efforts of the royalists. Dun
more, who had expected at this time to meet Indian delegates
at Fort Pitt, so as to ratify the treaty which he had made in
1774 at Camp Charlotte, found it prudent not to trust himseff
on such a mission. The Virginia Assembly sent instead James
Wood, with Simon Girty as guide, to seek the Indians and keep
them quiet. Their efforts were effective enough to induce the
tribes (October) to decide for neutrality.
The outbreak near Boston in April had precipitated the inev
itable. A band of hunters, encamping on a branch of the Elk-
horn In the Kentucky wilds, hearing of the act of war on Lexing
ton green, gave that name to the spot on which they were, and
the name survives in Kentucky, as in Massachusetts, to attest
the brotherhood of the hour. It was another manifestation of
this fraternal sympathy which made Franklin bring forward his
plan of confederation. The same sympathy prompted Thomas
Paine to say that "nothing but a Continental form of gov-

86 SOUTH OF THE OHIO.
ernment can keep the peace of the Continent." It gave the
Tories of the frontiers occasion to feel the coercive power of the
men who were shaping the political views of the West in a con
vention at Pittsburg. It made Michael Cresap enlist his old
companions of the frontiers, and march them to Boston.
A narrative of ConnoUy has been preserved, which shows his
movements during the summer and autumn. He had been in
Boston, and had there planned with General Gage — who had ar
rived in that town in May, 1774 — a movement which Dunmore
had hoped to assist in carrying out. In November, he was In
Williamsburg in conference with Dunmore, now sheltered on his
man-of-war. It was then arranged that Connolly, accompanied
by Cameron and Smyth, — who has left an account in his Trav
els, — should make a " secret expedition to the back country,"
going In a flatboat up the Potomac, and thence passing by the
Ohio, Scioto, and Sandusky to Detroit. They started on [No
vember 13. It was expected that a considerable force would
gather at Detroit, some coming from the Dlinois. In the spring
this little army was to advance by Presqu'Isle to Pittsbm-g
and crush the rebellion thereabouts. Leaving a garrison here,
It was intended to take and fortify Fort Cumberland and seize
Alexandria, to which point Dunmore was to come with a fleet.
A successful result would have cut off the southern colonies
from the northern. They had provided that if Pittsburg suc
ceeded in resisting, the force should faU down the Mississippi,
collect the garrison at Fort Gage (Illinois), and on reaching
New Orleans take transports to Norfolk, where Dunmore would
await them.
The plan soon miscarried through Connolly's sending a letter
of effusive Toryism to Pittsburg, and the later recognition of
him at Hagerstown on November 19, 1775, by an officer just
from the American camp before Boston, who had seen him on
his recent visit to that vicinity. While being conducted east,
he managed at Fredericktown, in Maryland, to ^vrite to McEae,
who was in Pittsburg, teUing him of his capture, and that
their " scheme " must fail, and directing McRae to go down the
river, warning by messenger the commander at Detroit and in
the Illinois, and then to descend the Mississippi and return by
water to Virginia.

INDIANS IN WAR. 87
ConnoUy's companion, Smyth, managed to escape, but was
recaptured, and found to be bearing other letters from Con
noUy, further attesting his Intrigues.
The arrest of ConnoUy probably deferred for two years the
active participancy of the Kentucky settlers in the war on the
western borders. There were lying along the western frontiers
from New York to the Mississippi, at this time, a body of Indians
that might perhaps have furnished ten thousand braves to
any hostile movement which enlisted their sympathies. As it
turned out, there was little Tory influence for these two years
brought to bear upon them, and Zeisberger and Kirkland, by
their missionary efforts, held ¦ in restraint at least the western
Iroquois and the Delawares.
WhUe ConnoUy was arranging in Virginia for this north
western movement. Colonel Henry Hamilton, formerly a cap
tain in the fourteenth regiment, had been put by Carleton in
command of Detroit. This town and its dependencies stretched
up and down the river, with a population mainly French and
perhaps two thousand in numbers. Only four days before Con
noUy left WlUiamsburg, Hamilton had reached (November 9,
1775) his post. He soon made up his mind that it was simply
a question whether he or the Virginians should first secure
the alliance of the savages. There is little doubt that either
side, British or Americans, stood ready to enlist the Indians.
Already before Boston the Americans had had the help of the
Stockbridge tribe. Washington found the service committed
to the practice when he arrived at Cambridge early in July.
Dunmore had taken the initiative in securing such allies, at
least in purpose, but the insurgent Virginians had had of late
more direct contact with the tribes, and were now striving to
secure them, but with little success. It was evident, with Ham
ilton in command at Detroit, and with the lurking enmity sub
sisting between the savages and the frontier pioneers, that in the
end a conflict must come.
Had Dunmore's plan been successful at the north, a counter
plan, which we shall see was developed later, might earlier
have found a body of British troops with Indian aUies march
ing from the Gulf, up through the country of the Creeks and

88 SOUTH OF THE OHIO.
Chickasaws, and gaining their assistance in an attack upon the
back country of Virginia and Carolina.
To make any such project effective, it was necessary for the
English agents among the Indians to accustom the tribes to a
policy quite different from that which had fostered dissensions
among them, in order to turn their savage wrath from the
colonial borders. The political revulsions on the seaboard had
convinced the British commanders In America that instead of
repelling the Indians from the Appalachian border, as of old,
it was become politic to mass them and hurl them against it
This change of front in the Indian agents created some suspi
cion in the savage breast. The Creeks particularly were wary,
and some of them had already lent assistance to the rebellious
colonists. Of the thirty thousand to thirty-five thousand warriors which
it is estimated there were at this time living east of the [Mis
sissippi, there were nearly ten thousand among the southern
tribes which Stuart was intriguing to combine. Among them
the Cherokees, a mountain folk, had lost something of their old
prominence through their long wars. They had been forced by
the Creeks to make common cause with them in land treaties
with the English, having in this way joined them in June, 1773,
at Augusta (Georgia) In ceding something like two mlUion
acres on the Savannah, stretching towards the Oconee. In this
way the two tribes had striven to liquidate, by what they re
ceived for the lands, the claims against them of the Enghsh
traders. The Chickasaws were less numerous, but they maintained
their old reputation as hard fighters. The Catawbas, who in
times past had so defiantly stood their ground against the Iro
quois, were now reduced so much as to be of Uttle moment in
any enumeration. The Choctaws were nearest the Spaniards,
and a ruder people than the other tribes ; but the Creeks were
certainly the most powerful of all. Early in 1772, they had
resisted all importunities of the northern tribes to make com
mon cause with them ; yet for some years they had given the
borderers of Georgia and Carolina much ground to dread their
treacherous savagery. They had, however, been quiet since
October, 1774, when they had been forced to a peace. Under
Stuart's instructions, the personal assiduity of his lieutenant

HOSTILE CHEROKEES. 89
Cameron was doing much to band aU these southern tribes in
the British interest, though Cameron himself felt some com
punctions in urging them to actual conflict. The Americans,
by an intercepted letter, learned that the British agents had
been instructed to maintain " an immediate communication with
our red brothers," through Florida.
The British ministry had planned an attack on Charleston
(S. C.) for the early summer of 1776, and Germain had di
rected Stuart, in conjunction with the loyal borderers of Caro
lina, to time an Indian rising so as to produce a distraction
among the rebeUious Carolinians at the same time. Stuart
formed, as the ministry intended, a double base at Mobile and
Pensacola ; he carried thither a supply of ammunition, to be
conveyed thence into the Indian country, and so make up to the
tribes the resources from which they had been cut off by the
attitude of the revolting Georgians and Carolinians. It was a
game at which both sides could play, and Wilkinson, the Ameri
can commissary, was doing what he could to secure the neu
trality, if not the active aid of the savages, by a rival distribu
tion of rum and trinkets, — a measure that before long Germain
was asking Stuart to copy. That agent, coursing through the
up-country, says that he encountered on the Tennessee River
several boats, conveying settlers from the Holston to river sites
as far down the Mississippi as Natchez, whither, it was no un
usual complaint at this time, persons flying from justice be
took themselves, mingled with others who fled from the turmoil
which the war was creating on the seaboard. Stuart thought
that the present exodus was helped by the promised neutrality
of the Creeks and Cherokees.
Stuart wrote to the colonial secretary that this apathy of
these tribes did not disturb him, for he had no doubt that, when
the pinch came, the savages could be induced to aid the British.
Early in 1776, Stuart had confidently reported that every
where the Cherokees were painted black and red for war, and
that the rebels had succeeded in enticing only a few of their
head men to meet commissioners at Fort Charlotte.
Nothing was stirring the southern tribes so effectually as
northem emissaries, who brought tidings of a widespread pur
pose among the Indians beyond the Ohio to make common
cause with the British against the colonial rebels. These mes-

90 SOUTH OF THE OHIO.
sengers also alleged that the French in Canada, appeased by
the Quebec Bill, were assisting them. These northern dele
gates, particularly the Delawares, assured their southern kins
folk that their fathers, the French, who had been long dead,
were alive again, and were quite a match for the four or five
thousand armed provincials which they had seen or heard of at
Pittsburg and in other posts on the way.
There was indeed a long^cherished purpose, on the part both
of the home government and of Carleton at Quebec, that the
movement upon the southern frontiers should be supported by
an equally hostile demonstration along the borders of Penn
sylvania and Virginia. The task of arousing these northern
tribes, as it happened, was not so easy as to fire the southern
Indians, for the lesson which Lewis had given them at Point
Pleasant was not forgotten.
Hamilton, the new commander at Detroit, possessed of verbal
instructions from Carleton, had reached that post in November,
1775, and it was soon a struggle between him, instructed to
mass the Indians for a raid of the borders, and Morgan, the
American agent for the Indians, whose task was to detach the
Indians from the British interests. Morgan had succeeded
Richard Butler in charge of the Indians of the middle depart
ment in the previous April, and found for his support at Pitts
burg a Virginia comj)any under Captain John NeviUe. In
June, he had sent messengers to the Shawnees and Wyandots
to meet him in council, and in October, he got together some
six or seven hundred Mingoes, Shawnees, and Delawares, and
exacted from them a promise of neutrality. Hamilton's influ
ence was too great with the Ottawas, Wyandots, Pottawattar
mies, and Chippewas for Morgan to prevail upon them to jom
in the pact.
The retreat of the Americans from Canada had made It pos
sible for Carleton In June to send word to the western stations
that he no longer needed their help. This gave Hamilton the
freedom he desired, and he notified Dartmouth that he and his
Indians were ready for the contest. He says that an embassy
from the eastern tribes to the great western confederacy had
just been at Detroit with a belt, and that he had torn it before
their faces. These messengers were an Englishman, a Delaware

WATAUGA ATTACKED. 91
chief, and Montour, the half-breed. They had brought a copy
of the Pennsylvania Gazette, and from this Hamilton had
learned of the action of Congress on July 4, and how the
Declaration of Independence had declared his dependent braves
" merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an
undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions,"
— a description which he knew how to reveal to his Indian allies.
Meanwhile, the savage conflict had been precipitated at the
south. The Cherokees had decided upon war, and they had
reason to count upon aid from the very tribes which Morgan
was striving to coerce. As early as May, 1776, Stuart had sent
warning messages to the Watauga settlements, declaring what
they might expect if they encouraged rebelUon. These colonists
at once drew in their outposts, and sent to Virginia for rein
forcements. In June, the blow fell. The Powell vaUey com
munity was raided and broken up, and there was alarm through
out the various Tennessee settlements, now numbering perhaps
six hundred souls. The main assaults were from two bands
moving at the same moment, and counting, perhaps, three or
four hundred each. The borderers fortunately had received
warning of the point of attack from a friendly half-breed
woman. The threatened neighborhoods had therefore ample
time to draw their dependents within their stockades. Such
a force, " forted " at Eaton's Station, aroused by the devasta
tions of an approaching band, sallied on July 20, one hundred
and seventy in number, and marched to confront it. The
whites had encountered .only a small party of savages, and,
while returning, were near the Long Island Flats of the Holston,
when the Indians, supposing them on the retreat, fell impetu
ously on their rear, but not before the borderers had time to
deploy. A sharp contest followed and the enemy fled, only
four of the whites being hurt.
The same day, another body of savages attacked the stockade
at Watauga, where James Robertson commanded and Sevier
was second. The fort held one hundred and forty souls, of
whom forty were fit to fight. The enemy hung about the spot
for three weeks, and then retreated, just as there appeared a
force of three hundred men to succor the besieged. These two
movements were the principal ones, intended as a diversion to

92 SOUTH OF THE OHIO.
assist the British attack on Charleston, but they were ill-timed.
Parker, the English admiral, had been repulsed at Fort Moul
trie . nearly a month earlier, so these savage demonstrations
failed In every way to advance the British plans, and in the end
left the southern colonies free to retaliate upon the Cherokees,
the head and front of the harrowing work along the borders.
The united tribes of this nation, so long the aUies of the Eng
lish against the French, had been stirred by Stuart and Hamil
ton's friends among the Ohio Indians to these acts of hostility,
and were destined to have their power completely broken. The
Cherokee people were grouped In three settlements. Their
lower towns lay against the South Carolina frontiers, and could
send between three and four hundred men upon the warpath.
The middle towns farther north, joined with their viUages m
the mountain valleys, were more than twice as powerful; while
the over-hill settlements, the most northern of their positions,
were nearly as strong for defense as the middle tovras. Accord
ingly, the several sections could furnish, perhaps, two thousand
braves for a campaign, and the more remote districts of the
same stock might add enough to make their available fighting
force not far from two thousand five hundred.
Respecting the retaliatory campaign of the whites which we
are now to touch upon, there is much confusion of statement
among those who have in large part told the story from hear
say, and there are few contemporary records to help us to a
certainty as to dates, movements, and numbers. In the lead
ing features of the- campaign, however, there is little obscurity.
The patriots in Georgia appear to have been the earliest to
move. In March (1776), Colonel Bull, with a force of militia,
had marched toward Savannah to overawe the Tories, and he
is said to have had some Creeks in his ranks, for that tribe
had of late been propitiated by a show of justice on the part
of the Georgia authorities in the punishment of offenses com
mitted against members of their body. In July, Governor
Bullock was preparing a force to Invade the lower Cherokee
lands, and under Colonel Jack about two hundred savages
devastated some of their hamlets on the Tugaloo River.
While this was going on, General Charles Lee, now in com
mand at Charleston, begged (July 7) the Virginia authorities to
league the southern colonies in a joint expedition, and on the

THE CHEROKEES ATTACKED. 93
30th, Congress recommended such a project to Virginia, the
Carolinas, and Georgia. The Virginians were quite ready for
their task. Jefferson, iu August, was urging a foray into the
heart of the Indians' country, with a determination to drive
them beyond the Mississippi. President Page began prepara
tions, and notified the governors of the Carolinas that he was
going to send a force against the upper towns of the Cherokees,
and pressed them to attack the middle and lower towns. Colonel
WUUam Christian was selected for the command of the Vir
ginia forces. He was joined, as he went on, by a company from
Pennsylvania under Martin, and by some recruits from the
parts of North CaroUna contiguous to the Virginia bounds.
His force grew to be some two thousand strong. A trader,
Isaac Thomas, served him as guide. His plan was to rendez
vous on the Holston, and on October 1, he started with such
other contingents from Watauga and the Tennessee settlements
as could be recruited. His expectation was to reach Broad
River on October 15, where he looked for resistance. His
orders were to make a junction with General Rutherford, who
commanded a North Carolina force, moving at the same time ;
but his communication with him failed, and on October 6, he
wrote to Governor Henry that Rutherford might possibly be
fortunate enough to reach the over-hill towns before him, and
begin the work of devastation. Christian reached the Broad
River a little ahead of his expectations, and crossed it by an
unfamiliar ford in the night. He now found that the Indians
had fled and lay In force before their towns, at a distance of
four or five days' march. Early in November, he reached the
towns, without a battle, and began destroying cabin and crops.
For two weeks he was thus employed, and then, forcing the
Indians to a truce and exacting an agreement from them to
meet commissioners and arrange for a permanent peace in the
spring, he began his return march. He had not lost a man.
His force was generally impressed with the attractions of this
over-hill country.
During this march he had not seen or heard of Rutherford,
who, with an army of two thousand men and a train of supplies,
had started from the head-Streams of the Catawba on Sep
tember 1. He is thought to have had with him a small body
of the vanishing Catawbas. He kept about a thousand of his

94

SOUTH OF THE OHIO.

Zillfr^/totcllA

most effective troops and a small body of
horse well ahead, and making a forced march,
he found the Cherokee towns abandoned.
He had expected to meet here Colonel An
drew Williamson with a force from South
Carolina, but that falling, he ravaged the
valley towns alone, and then pushed over
the mountains and made havoc among the
middle towns. He escaped on the way an
ambush which had been prepared for him,
by reason of taking an unaccustomed path.
Returning on September 18 to the middle
towns, he met the South Carolinians there.
Williamson had, since the early days of Au
gust, been leading a force of some eleven or
twelve hundred rangers among the lower
towns, burning and destroying aU he could.
He now pushed ahead by the route which
Rutherford had avoided and fell Into the
ambush. He was staggered for a while, but
rallying his men, he drove the savages back
and crossed the mountains successfuUy.
Rutherford coming on, the two devastated
the settlements, and late In September turned
back. Here, again, a fearful penalty had
been imposed upon the enemy, and the lar
gest force of all the Cherokee bands had
been brought to obedience, though they had
inflicted more loss upon Williamson than any other contingent
had suffered. His casualties counted up on October 7, when he
reached Fort Rutledge on his return, ninety-four In killed and
wounded. The whites could reckon as the outcome of the campaign the
almost complete prostration of the Cherokee nation. It proved
an effectual warning to the neighboring tribes, and a respite for
the frontiers. The government at Philadelphia were as much
relieved as the frontiers, and the Committee of Secret Corre
spondence wrote to their agents in Europe that " they had now
little to apprehend on account of the Indians.'"' The whites
had established new and enlarged bounds to the territory open

%

WILLIAMSON'S CAMPAIGN.

95

for their occupancy. They had brought the Tennessee settle
ments well within the jurisdiction of the older governments,
and Watauga, as we have seen, was now ready to be annexed
to North Carolina. During the next year (May 20 and July
20, 1777) definitive treaties were made by which lands on the
Savannah were ceded to Georgia and South Carolina, and on
the Holston to North Carolina and Virginia. The Chicka
mauga tribe of the Cherokees refused to join in the cessions,
and moving down the Tennessee, a hundred miles below the
mouth of the Holston, they settled on what is known as the
Chickamauga Creek. Other sections of the nation withdrew
from immediate contact with the English. Though humbled

96 SOUTH OF THE OHIO.
they were not quelled, and the intermittent outrages which
were reported in the settlements told how revenge still swayed
them. Sevier and his rangers had enough to do in hovering
about them to repress their audacity.
Of the two movements in the regions beyond the mountains
likely to bring the claims of Virginia for a western extension
to a sharp issue, — of which beginnings have been already
sketched, — one was the resurrection of what was known as the
Indiana grant. This had been made at the time of the Fort
Stanwix treaty to an association of traders, seeking in this way
to recoup themselves for losses incurred in the Pontiac war.
Nothing had happened to make the grant of use, from the time
it was secured in 1768 till the proprietors held a meeting in
September, 1775. Four months later (January 19, 1776) they
transferred their interests under this Indian title to three Phila
delphia merchants, who not long after (March, 1776) deter
mined to open a land office for the sale of the lands. With the
unsettled quarrel which then existed between Pennsylvania
and Virginia about their bounds, it was far from propitious for
these merchants that their project must encounter the landed
interests of a rival province. The new grantees were quite
willing to make allowances to such settlers as were already in
possession, but with the pretensions of Virginia to back them,
these squatters did not propose to be mulcted at all.
Meanwhile, the people of the upper Ohio regions determined
to bring an end, if possible, to the harassing complications Im
posed upon them by the rival States and aspiring companies.
They sought (August, 1776) an autonomy of their own, hy
asking Congress to set them up as the State of West Sylvania.
They claimed, rather extravagantly, that there were twenty-five
thousand families between the mountains and the Scioto, and
they would include them in a territory to be carved from Vir
ginia and Pennsylvania beyond the mountains, and to extend
well into Kentucky. The project failed, and three years later
(1779) Virginia forced an issue by declaring the native title
of the Indiana grant invalid. The Vandalia and Indiana com
panies memoriaUzed Congress (September 14, 1779) against
the Virginia pretensions. In the end Congress (1782) sus
tained the grant, and a new company took the question (1792)

TRA NS YL VA NIA . 97
to the Supreme Court of the United States. Here the cause
lingered till Virginia secured a change in the Constitution.
This, the eleventh amendment (1794), prohibited individuals
of one State bringing suit against another, and the question
dropped. The other movement to effect Virginia's western claims was
more rapidly closed, notwithstanding an attempt to bring it
before Congress. This was the Transylvania project already
traced in Its initial stages. By the close of 1775, Henderson
had established an agent at Philadelphia. In December, this
person was reporting to his principal that John and Samuel
Adams were agreed to induce Congress to give countenance to
the new colony. Even Jefferson was quite wiUing to forget the
charter limits of Virginia, if a firm government could be estab
lished at the back of that province, and Its jurisdiction main
tained as far as the Mississippi, in opposition to the provisions
of the recent Quebec Bill. In such views he had a natural
abettor in John jk.dams, who was anxious lest the British, reach
ing this western country by the St. Lawrence, should stir the
tribes to embrace Dunmore's plan of harrying the country be
yond the Alleghanies. It was in part this fear that had induced
Congress, in March (1776), to send a commission to Canada,
whose work, as we have seen, was so hampered by Jay's out
spoken denunciation of the Catholic Church.
Jefferson, notwithstanding his sympathy with Henderson's
movement, was not quite prepared to favor congressional recog
nition of the new colony until Virginia had first agreed to it.
But he reckoned too surely upon Virginia recognizing that the
borders needed any such sacrifice on her part.
The war with the mother country had gone too far to be
controlled by any moderate faction. France had already made
ready to afford the revolting colonies the pecuniary assistance
which they needed. Events were fast drifting to the verge of
independence, and there were warnings of it everywhere. A
Scotch-Irish settlement at Hanna's Town in western Pennsyl
vania had but just (May, 1776) given encouragement to such
a movement, and not far from the same time the loyalists of
the Watauga settlement had been drummed out of the valley.
With the inevitable in view. Congress in May, 1776, had

98 SOUTH OF THE OHIO.
called upon each State to set up a form of government suffi
cient for the crisis. In June, Fort Moultrie had been attacked,
while Stuart sought, as we have seen, by an Indian uprising
in the South, to make a diversion to assist the attack. Three
days later, resolutions of Independence were laid before Con
gress (June 7), and the die was cast. Within a week Virginia
passed her declaration of rights, and two weeks and a half
later (June 29) she adopted her constitution. This last docu
ment gave her the opportunity to make a solemn declaration
of her territorial rights. It was the beginning of a long con
troversy, which settled the destiny of the American West. She
recognized the diminution of her charter limits of 1609, so far
as the subsequent grants to Maryland and Pennsylvania im
paired them, but she insisted on her own definitions of those
grants, and abated otherwise nothing of her trans-AUeghany
claims. Jefferson shortly after tried to improvise a temporary
line to divide the region on which Virginia disputed with Penn
sylvania, but no line could prevent existing settlers of one
province becoming occupants of the other. Maryland, mean
while, had raised a question which was far-reaching. Congress
on September 16, 1776, in decreeing grants of land for services
in the army, put Maryland (being a province of definite west
ern bounds) to a disadvantage as compared with Virginia as
well as with other States, whose original charters gave them a
western extension. So Maryland began that movement, in
which In the sequel her persistency acquired that trans-AUe
ghany domain jointly for aU the States.
Virginia herself removed all complications that the existence
of such an independent government as Transylvania could in
terpose by declaring private purchase from the Indians without
validity, and by promptly throwing the protection of her law.s
over the whole region. So Transylvania vanished, when ail
Kentucky was set up, December 7, 1776, as a county of the
Old Dominion.
Two years later, in accordance with the recommendations of
a committee headed by George Mason, Virginia made the Tran
sylvania proprietors some recompense for legislating them out of
existence, by making to them a grant of two hundred thousand
acres, between the Ohio and the Greenbrier River. In accept
ing this the proprietors disavowed their Cherokee title. This

KENTUCKY. 99
denial of autonomy to Transylvania was the beginning of a new
life in the great forest-shaded country of Kentucky, where the
limestone lay bedded below and the blue grass flourished above.
Jefferson said that nothing could stay the tide of emigration.
It was indeed not a little swelled by the timid and half-hearted
in the patriot cause whom the war was turning away from old
associations. Some northern Indians passing athwart the west
ward paths of these wayfarers were struck with the multitude
of fresh tracks of man and beast. This emigrant march fol
lowed what was known as the Wilderness Road, — already re
ferred to, — which, passing Cumberland Gap, proceeded, by the
route which Boone had marked out. In a northwesterly direction
to the great gateway of the enticing level lands of Kentucky.
These began in the neighborhood of Crab Orchard, just short by
a score of miles of the site of Danville, first laid out in 1784.
Its course is at present intertwined with the modern railway.
Not far away was Crow's Station, just coming into prominence
as a sort of political centre of these distant communities. This
vicinity was in the southeastern angle of a tract of country,
roughly square, of about a hundred miles on each side, of which
the three remaining angles were at the falls of the Ohio (Louis
viUe), at the most northern turn which that river makes some
twenty miles below Cincinnati, and at Limestone, the present
MaysvIUe, three hundred miles below Pittsburg and one hundred
from Wheeling. So this fertile tract, with three of its angles
touching the encircling Ohio, ancl a fourth at its mountain-gate,
included the territory watered by the Licking and Kentucky
rivers In their more level courses. These streams thridded a
vast forest of broad-leaved trees, whose lofty trunks, unembar
rassed by undergrowth, supported a canopy of verdure beneath
which the country was easily traversed. The entrance for the
overland pioneers near Crab Orchard was also the exit for
nearly all who were returning to the Virginia settlements. In
this way the traveler avoided the laborious pull against the cur
rent of the Ohio, whether bound for Pittsburg, or taking the
alternative route up the Kanawha and Greenbrier. From near
Crab Orchard, the pioneers seeking settlement turned much
In the same direction In which the railways cross the country
to-day. The borderer descending by the Ohio, and landing at
Limestone, followed along the outline of this squarish tract to

100 SOUTH OF THE OHIO. '^'^
Crab Orchard, and so could pass south to the Tenness^^eaqj^^
try, by what Evans and Gibson's map marked as " the only
way passable with horses from the Ohio three or four hundred
miles southward." The overland wanderer less often took this
same route in reverse. Commonly he passed by another trail
through Harrodsburg, and so crossed the Kentucky near Frank
fort, and went on to the mouth of the Licking, opposite the
later Cincinnati. A lesser number, probably, j)assed by a south
westerly curve, within sight of the mountainous barrier In that
direction, and came upon the Ohio at the site of the modern
Louisville. It was complained, as respects this latter spot, that
a few gentlemen " had engrossed all the lands at and near the
falls of the Ohio," which with the sanguine was likely to be
" the most considerable mart in this part of the world."

CHAPTER VII.
THE FORTUNES OF THE MISSISSIPPI.
1766-1777.
The war, which in the end had wrested the valley of the St.
Lawrence from the French, and, as it turned out, had made the
English share the valley of the Mississippi with the Spaniards,
had in its beginning put an end to all schemes for penetrating
the country lying west of the Mississippi and beyond the sources
of the St. Lawrence. There was still the same uncertainty
that there had always been regarding the sources of both these
great rivers. It had been a question, even, if they did not
unite somewhere, just as the waters of Lake Michigan ancl
the lUinois commingled in the spring freshets. At aU events,
their sources might not be far apart. Wynne, in his General
History of the British Empjire in America (1770), rather slur-
ringly mentions a pretense that the St. Lawrence " was derived
from remote northwestern lakes, as yet unknown to Europeans."
To solve this question and the other antiquated notion that
there was, not far from these neighboring springs, yet another
fountain, whose waters flowed to the Pacific, was a dream that
had puzzled a Connecticut Yankee who had been brooding
over the speculations of Hennepin, La Hontan, and Charlevoix.
This man, Jonathan Carver, now four-and-thirty years old, was
harboring some rather lordly notions of the future of the Mis
sissippi. "As the seat of empire," he says, "from time imme
morial has been gradually progressive towards the West, there
is no doubt but that, at some future period, mighty kingdoms
will emerge from these wildernesses, and stately palaces and
solemn temples supplant the Indian huts." In this frame of
mind, and three years after the Peace of Paris, he had deter
mined to probe the great western mysteries, and started from
Boston in June, 1766, on a quest for he hardly knew what. Ar
riving at Mackinac, the westernmost of the English posts, he

102

THE FORTUNES OF THE MISSISSIPP?.^-

secured some goods for presents to the Indians and, on Sep
tember 3, he proceeded by the Green Bay portage and, entering
the Mississippi, turned north and, passing the Falls of St.
Anthony, reached his northernmost point at the St. Francis
River. When near the site of the modern city of St. Paul,
he comprehended what he conceived to be the vantage-ground

JONATHAN CARVER.
[From his Travels, London, 1781.]

of that pivotal region of the northern valley of the Mississippi,
with its down-current access to the Gulf of Mexico, and by the
Iberville River to Mobile and Pensacola. Looking to the east,
he dreamed of a water-way, yet to be made practicable, through
the lakes to New York. Towards the setting sun, an up-current
struggle along the Minnesota River might reveal some distant
portage or centring watei-, whence a descending stream would
carry the trader to the Pacific on his way to China. At a later
day. Carver's heirs claimed that, as evidence of his confidence in ^
the future of this spot, he had acquired from the Sioux a titlej

JONATHAN CARVER. 103
to the site of St. Paul, but unquestionable evidence of any deed
was never produced. The British held it to be a transaction
in contravention of the proclamation of 1763, and later, the
United States, succeeding to all rights, through the Committee
on Public Lands reported adversely on the claim in 1823 to the
Senate of the United States. It was Carver's notion that the
continent was broadest on the paraUel which went athwart this
commanding region, about the mouth of the Minnesota, which
was almost midway in the passage from sea to sea. Here was
destined to be a seat of British power. One of his maps marks
out a north and south belt, bounded by the Mississippi on the
west and by the meridian of Detroit on the east, and stretch
ing from the Chickasaw country on the south to the Chippewas
and Ottawas on the north. Within this area he pricks out the
bound of eleven prospective colonies of English. On the east,
the Ohio and other tributaries of the Grreat River opened the
way for these prospective populations to the passes of the AUe
ghanies and the old colonies of the seaboard. Carver found the
country north of the Illinois and as far as the Wisconsin little
known to the traders, and charged the French with having
deceived the English about it in their maps. Farther north, up
to the MiUe Lacs region and the springs of the Mississippi, he
stiU found the French maps at variance with the Indian reports.
It was here at the north, within a radius of thirty miles or
less, that Carver placed the great continental divide, and in the
midst of the best of hunting countries, where the white man
had not yet penetrated. From this point, he said, one could go
east by streams that connect with Lake Superior and the
water-ways leading to the Atlantic. One went north from Red
Lake through Winnipeg and the Bourbon River to Hudson's
Bay, making the passage to Europe through Davis's Strait, as
has been advocated in our day.
Just south of these northern springs lay the White Bear
Lake, with a passage from it open to the Gulf of Mexico. In
either direction there was a route of not far from two thousand
miles, as he calculated, to the salt sea. Speaking of the conti
guity of these sources, and referring to a belief, long current,
of a common source for streams flowing to different seas, he
says : " I perceived a visibly distinct separation in aU of them,
notwithstanding in some places they approached so near that

104 THE FORTUNES OF THE MISSISSIPPI
I could have stepped from one to the other." In one of his
maps, close by this source of the Mississippi, Carver places
a smaller lake, out of which flows the "Origan" River, — a
name now first used, — which, becoming in its passage the great
river of the west, — the ultimate Columbia, — debouches at last
somewhat vaguely Into the Pacific near the Straits of Anian,
a supposable northwest passage, long known In speculations.
This was to be the great western outlet of his manifold colonies
of the Mississippi basin. This seaside spot was already pre
empted for the English, as he avers, by the discoveries of Sir
Francis Drake, while to this distant west the trails of French
fur-traders for nearly a century running from Prairie du Chien,
near the mouth of the Wisconsin, had opened a land carriage In
the same direction.
Carver himself explored but a single one of the western
affluents of the Mississippi, and that was the St. Peter, as the
Minnesota was then caUed. It was on this water among the
Sioux of the plains that he passed the winter of 1766, and he
says he found that the French had jsrejudiced that tribe against
the English. Of the physiography of the more distant west;
he gives us some hints as he got them from the savages, the
marked feature of which is unbounded plains " which probably
terminate on the coast of the Pacific." The spur of the Rocky
Mountains discovered by Verendrye is, to Carver's mind, nothing
but an isolated " mountain of bright stones " lying north of the
river of the west. It was in a lake near this mountain that
he makes the Assinibolls River rise, which, flowing to Lake
Winnipeg, is next carried on with a divided current, the one to
Hudson's Bay and the other to Lake Superior. He hears of
natives, living beyond this mountain, small of stature, using
vessels of gold, and suggesting an emigration north from Mex
ico. With a mixed burden on his mind of speculation and
knowledge, and having failed to receive the goods from Mack
inac which he expected. Carver, in the summer of 1767, began
to retrace his steps. After lingering some time at Lake Pepin
he sought the Chippewa River, and ascending it, crossed a port
age which took him by a descending stream to Lake Superior
near its western end. Carver's observations put Lake Supe
rior between 46° and 49° north latitude, not far from its true
position, a correction of earlier EngUsh maps by something

y/tv/ij'i.

\i '

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_^^, 1(1.."'-'

fV7v,/.r^''f 'j >^ "5

:^<:^
yi62Wirfs|i^Zv.;v-'j^. fc,-{c-i
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CAEVEE'S COLONIES.
[From a "New Map of North America, 1778," in Jonathan Carver's Travels through Ihe
Interior Parts of North America, London, 1781. It shows also the connection of Lake Superior
with the Lalte of the Woods and Hudson's Bay (James's Bay).]
106 THE FORTUNES OF THE MISSISSIPPI.
like eight degrees, while Kitchin, who a few years later, in 1774
and before Carver's maps were published, was out by nearly
ten degrees, — both carrying the water by so much too far to
the north. In contour and detail there had been up to this
time no map of this lake so accurate as its first, survey made
by the Jesuits a century before. All the intervening maps had
shown many islands spotting its surface. In Carver's time a
similar ignorance of the interior spaces of the lake prevaUed.
It was due, perhaps, to the barkentines of the French keeping
near the shores, and to the Indians' dread of enchantments
with which they suj^posed such islands to be invested.
Passing through the Sault Ste. Marie in October, 1767,
Carver moved eastward by the lakes, and after an absence of
two years and five months reached Boston in October, 1768,
having traversed, as he reckoned, a course of near seven thou
sand miles. He tells us that an English gentleman, Richard
Whitworth, became so interested in the traveler's views of the
way to find a passage from the Mississippi to the Pacific that,
in 1774, he nearly perfected arrangements for doing it, in
company with Carver himself and a party of fifty or sixty
men, when the opening scenes of the Revolutionary War put a
stop to the enterprise. A proposition made by Bernard Romans,
in 1773, met with a like discouragement. Carver's narrative
was not published tiU ten years later, in 1778, when his recital
found neither England nor her colonies in any better position
to profit by his experiences.
While Carver's book was still in manuscript, and he had been
seeking government employ as an Indian agent in the region
west of Lake Huron, the future of the Mississippi had been
consigned to other hands than his prospective colonists of the
eleven provinces.
Spain StiU controUed the French of Louisiana. In [New
Orleans this aUen power had proved vexatious. In the upper
parts of the vaUey the French had no love for the Enghsh; but
it was a question whether the Spanish rule was not annoying
enough sometimes to give some hope to Gage that a part, at
least, of those who had fled across the river might return to the
English. A few years after the English commanding general
had expressed this anticipation, the progress of the American

ENGLAND, FRANCE, AND SPAIN. 107
revolt had interjected a vigilant power in the young confeder
ation between the English on the one side and the French
and Spanish on the other. Such conditions foreboded a new
struggle for the possession of the Mississippi and its eastern
affluents, but with complications greater than had attended the
conflict which was ended by the Peace of Paris in 1763. It
was once more a question, who should control or share the vast
country lying between the Appalachians and the Great River ?
Each power entered upon the struggle with its own purpose.
In the north, England early (1774) attempted a preemption of
the region above the Ohio through the Quebec Bill. France at
once saw that the terms of that legislation recognized her own
long-defended claim to include that territory within the bounds
of Canada. ¦ It was plainly to be seen that such an acknowledg
ment might make it easier for France to wrest that country in
its entirety from the grasp of England, if the fortunes of war
should lay open to her the chances of a diplomatic triumph
over England. In the south there were the rival interests of
England and Spain. The possession of West Florida and New
Orleans respectively brought these two powers into a dangerous
contiguity. Events seemed tending to bring on a conflict, either
at [New Orleans or higher up the river. It was a question for
the young Republic, if in these opposing interests, north and
south, she could make good her territorial rights beyond the
AUeghanies, to an extent equal to what, as colonies, she had
contended for, and which the treaty of 1763 had recognized.
AU these complications involved the relations of the American
people not only to England, which was trying to subjugate them,
but also to France, which was expected to assist them. It was a
matter of more serious concern that the rulers of France had no
intention of resisting England for any other purpose than re
venge and profit to France. The relations of the young Repub
lic to Spain were more embarrassing, for any assistance from
that country depended upon the Bourbon compact between
France and Spain proving broad enough to force the latter
country into a war with England for the behoof of France in
America. In this event, a common hostility to England might
league the American republic and the Spanish monarchy.
In this impending struggle for the line of the Mississippi,
as bounding the nascent commonwealth, America had military

108 THE FORTUNES OF THE MISSISSIPPI.
resources almost ludicrously Inadequate, and success was only
to be acquired by using this Bourbon rivalry of England in such
a way as would protect American Interests.
Oliver Pollock, a native of Pennsylvania of Irish stock, had
gone as a young man to Havana to engage in business, and
removed, when he was about thirty years old, to [New Orleans
in 1767. Two years later, when. O'Reilly took possession and
the number of his troops produced a famine, this American
merchant received a cargo of flour from Baltimore.
Prices of cereals were ruling high ; but Pollock saw his
opportunity, and publicly sold his produce at from half to two
thirds of the current rates. The Spanish government marked
its gratitude by giving Pollock a license of free trade with the
colony for the rest of his life. The concession gave him a
standing in New Orleans, which was of importance for Pollock's
countrymen in the approaching crisis.
The Spanish authorities at this time were strengthening the
ramparts of New Orleans, and were bringing succor nearer hy
opening a new route to Mexico, for it had not escaped them
that England only needed a pretext to capture New Orleans if
she could. The English reciprocated the anxiety, and found
the Spanish possession of Havana a constant menace to Pen
sacola. Haldimand, when commanding at this latter post, had
been made aware by Gage, writing from his New York head
quarters, that it was wise never to let slip the purpose of seiz
ing New Orleans, if opportunity offered. The canalization of
the Iberville had not Indeed proved a prosperous scheme for
diverting trade to Florida, and the navigation of the Missis
sippi was but a vexatious privilege to the English. When
there had been, in 1770, a passing diplomatic flurry with Spain,
over the Falkland Islands, Gage had cautioned Haldimand
to be prepared for a hostile inovement. If there was any oppor
tune turn of the negotiations. It had long been Gage's plan for
stopping the clandestine traffic across the river by holding its
mouth, which he contended was the only way in which the trade
of the river could properly be developed in the English interest.
Note. —Tlie opposite map is .i section from a "Carte de la Floride, etc., pour le service to
vaisseaux du Eoi, par ordre de M. de Sartine, couseiller d'Etat, 1778," and shows Haldimrf'
Iberville route.

Mil 'WW'!! i- . ^ ' -'

\ ' ^ I ^- ^^

110 THE FORTUNES OF THE MISSISSIPPI.
Much to the discontent of the British settlers at Natchez and
elsewhere, he had refused, with New Orleans In Spanish hands,
to maintain armed posts for their protection.
The English possessions in West Florida, as the bounds of
that province had been defined, included the country about
Natchez. The population in this region had been Increasing
since 1770. Some of the French in Louisiana, disaffected by
the Spanish rule, had passed over the river to the English side ;
but the greater part of the Increase had been emigrants from
east of the Appalachians. Some had come from Pennsylvania
and Jersey ; others from Virginia and Carolina ; but larger
numbers had come from Connecticut, turning a current of emi
gration which, under more favorable circumstances, might have
settled the Wyoming valley in Pennsylvania. General Phineas
Lyman, whom we hkve seen In London a few years before
unsuccessfully urging the formation of a colony in the lUinois
country, had returned to New England In the faith that a grant
which he had urged for the soldiers of the late war would be
made on the lower Mississippi, under royal orders to the gov
ernor of West Florida. He had in December, 1772, asked Dart
mouth to encourage their plan. With this expectation he had
induced a body of " military adventurers " at Hartford to order
a reconnoissance of their proposed home, and in 1773, Lyman
and party sailed from New York for Pensacola. Here they
found that no royal instructions had been received. Pending
the expected arrival of such, Rufus Putnam, as topographer,
headed a party to explore the Mississippi as far north as the
Yazoo. The wished-for orders still not coming, the proposing
settlers agreed to purchase a tract of land on easy terms. The
result was that several hundred families, in May, 1776, came
out from New England, only to find that even this arrange
ment had been forbidden by orders from England. So the
struggling settlers found that they must shift for themselves.
There were some among them wlio scantily sympathized with
the political revolt in New England, and Lyman himself had
congratulated the ministry that the " spirit of Boston " was
not spreading. The new homes, which they too rosily pic
tured, were destined, they thought, to give them a release from
the turmoil they had left. There was, however, enough of the
revolutionary fervor of the Atlantic seaboard in others who had

HAMILTON'S RAIDS. Ill
settled there to make an important factor in shaping the des
tiny of this southern region.
We have seen that Hamilton at Detroit had had some suc
cess in counteracting the influence of Morgan among the north
ern tribes. Though the Delawares had mainly rejected his
hatchet, the Shawnees and Wyandots had generally accepted
it. A comparison of dates seems to show that Hamilton was
acting in anticipation of orders which he had asked of Ger
main. These, when received (dated March 26, 1777), conformed
to Hamilton's suggestions, and directed him to organize Indian
raids against the American frontiers. We have his own state
ment, in the following July, that he had up to that date sent out
fifteen distinct parties on such fiendish errands. The purpose
of the minister was that those loyal to the crown among the
frontier folk should be gathered in bands, and should be encour
aged by a bounty of two hundred acres to each to aid in these
marauding exploits. Dunmore had made out a list of such
loyal adherents, as known to him, which Germain transmitted
to Hamilton. The purpose of all this deviltry, except so far
as they hoped to profit by the savage sympathy, was to distract
the attention of Congress and diminish the numbers of Wash
ington's main army.
The Kentucky posts, with a population, perhaps, of six hun
dred, and only a half of them arms-bearing, had grown confident
In their seclusion. Morgan, who was now commanding at Fort
Pitt, had represented to headquarters in January, 1777, that if
militia were drafted to take the place of the garrisons at Forts
Pitt and Randolph, the regular companies doing duty there
could be sent to reinforce the eastern army. Such self-reliance
gave Hamilton what he thought an opportunity. Some two
hundred of his Indians crossed the Ohio. One horde unsuc
cessfuUy attacked Harrodsburg (March, 1777), the garrison re
ceiving a few hours' warning. Another, consisting of about a
hundred warriors, was repulsed at Boonesborough (April 24).
Before May was passed, they again fell upon the stockade which
Boone had erected, and began on May 30 a more protracted
siege of Logan's Fort, — the modern Standford, — which ended
only with the relief which Colonel Bowman and a hundred
Virginians brought to it in August, as he was scouring the

112 THE FORTUNES OF THE MISSISSIPPI.
country In search of the foe. The Indians contrived to con
vey Hamilton's proclamation to repentant rebels, by leaving
it on the body of a man whom they had kiUed outside the
fort. By the first of June, 1777, Hamilton at Detroit and General
Edward Hand at Pittsburg — now in command of the western
frontier — were each developing their counter movements for
the summer's campaign.
The Americans had begun preparations in the spring by send
ing Philadelphia boat-builders to the Monongahela, to make
ready some bateaux. Early in the summer, American agents at
the Holston River had sought to j)rotect the vaUey approaches
on that side by a pact with the southern Indians. The main
outposts of Pittsburg, subject to Hand's control, were Fort
Randolph on Point Pleasant at the mouth of the Kanawha,
and Fort Henry at the modern Wheeling. Two hundred and
fifty men of Colonel Wood's regiment were garrisoning these
posts. Of the neighboring Indians only the Delawares con
tinued friendly, and they were kept in restraint largely through
the influence of Zeisberger, the Moravian.
The EngUsh were fortunate in holding Niagara, a position
which, as Hutchins said of It, "secured a greater number of
communications through a large country than probably any
other pass in interior America," and it was here, just at this
turn of affairs, that the Indians were gathering to assist St.
Leger, in that attempt to aid Burgoyne which was foUed at
Oriskany. Detroit, however, was the chief strategic point for
the English ; and Hamilton, now in command there, was later
put, by orders from England, In chief control of the militaiy
affairs In the Ohio valley. His main business was to harass
the frontiers, open communication with Stuart at the south,
and watch the Spaniards beyond the [Mississippi. His outposts
were at Sandusky and about the headwaters of the Scioto, and
he had succeeded, as we have said. In banding the Shawnees,
Wyandots, and Mingoes In the British interest.
It was Hamilton's purpose. If possible, to organize a corps
of chasseurs from the French settlers within his control, and
to officer them from their own people. An EngUsh officer,
Abbott by name, was early in the season started towards Viu-

iiii:- wtr

ROCHEBLAVE. 113
cennes, with some such purpose. When he crossed the portage
of the Maumee, he found five hundred Indians there ready for
their savage raids. In the absence of any troojis to support
him, Abbott, who had reached his post on May 19, found that
he had to yield to their exorbitant demands, and in Jidy (1777),
whUe he was stockading Vincennes, he found it necessary to
bind the French settlers by an oath and forego the chasseurs.
The other purpose of intercepting the American supplies by
the river seemed hardly more promising. The cannon 'which
he mounted were sent to him by the commander at Fort Gage
in the lUinois country, to which the armament of Fort Chartres
had been removed in 1772. This officer was Rocheblave, who
had been for some time busy watching the Spanish at St.
Louis, and trying to divine a purpose on their part which in
his imagination took many shapes. He tried at times to induce
the Kickapoos to unravel It, but it did not comfort him to find
that these Indians were receiving messages from the " Boston-
nais," as they caUed the Americans, and were communicating
them to the Spaniards. Upon the Foxes both he and the Span
ish governor played their wiles In the effort to gain them, and
to the savages' advantage, no doubt. The Ottawas were urged
to receive Spanish favors, so that they could fathom, by the op
portunities which dependence could offer, the plots at St. Louis.
Rocheblave seems to have made the best impression upon a
vagrant horde of the Delawares, who frequented his post, and
he reported that he felt he could depend upon them. But the
belts which he found passing between the rebels and Spaniards
on the one side, and the savages on the other, were a constant
riddle to him. He had heard, moreover, that the Spanish com
mander had spoken knowingly of something that was to happen
when the maize grew to be eighteen inches high. Certain
French officers, too, were known to have Spanish commissions,
and he found that, despite his endeavors, French aid was ena
bling the Americans to run supplies up the river.
During aU this Hamilton had submitted to Carleton a plan
for attacking New Orleans ; but Carleton was cautious, and
warned him not to be too j)rovoking with his neighbors, but
rather to be prepared to resist any attack from them. Hamilton
replied that the Spanish hostility was confirmed, and they had
begun to seize English vessels at New Orleans.

114 THE FORTUNES OF THE MISSISSIPPI.
While the season closed at Kaskaskia with Rocheblave dream
ing of a Spanish conquest and a governorship at New Orleans,
some bloody work was going on around the little fort near
Wheeling Creek. This stockade had been known as Fort Fin
castle, till lately being improved (1776), it was renamed Fort
Henry, after Patrick Henry, now governor of Virginia. Gen
eral Hand had not succeeded in raising the two thousand
men which he bad hoped for his campaign, and with no more
than -eight hundred men on his rolls he had not felt strong
enough to take the aggressive during the summer, and had
accordingly kept himself rather on the defensive. He was,
moreover, not quite sure of certain men who were about him.
One of them, Alexander McKee, who had been deputy Indian
agent under Sir William Johnson, was put under oath to have
" no communication with the British." Simon Girty, who had
also been arrested, had been wily enough to reestablish himself
in Hand's opinion. Girty had for some time absented himself,
but in August some friendly Moravian Indians had come in,
bringing word that Girty was leading a force thither, and that
Fort Henry was to be the point of attack. This defense was
an oblong stockade In open ground, inclosing about half an
acre of ground, bastioned, and supplied with water. The occu
pants of the surrounding vlUage were stiU in their cabins out
side the walls ; but scouts were out, and they had passed a quiet
summer. As the season closed, confidence had been so far
restored that some of the militia had gone home, and only two
companies, of not over forty men in all, remained under Colonel
David Shepherd. Hand did what he could to cover the Inhab
itants before the stroke came. During the night of August 31,
from two hundred to four hundred of Hamilton's Indians —
accounts differ — ambushed themselves near by, and threw the
community into confusion the next morning by a sudden ap
proach. There was time enough, however, to enable the out
side settlers to get within the defenses before the attack began.
The garrison made some hazardous sallies, much to its loss of
numbers ; but they served to keep the assailers at bay. The
leader of the enemy, finding his followers discouraged, turned
to destroying what he could in the surrounding village. Suc
cor for the besieged arriving, he disappeared with his savages
in the forest. There is a good deal of confusion in the accounts

EVENTS OF 1777. 115
which have come down to us, and though Wither says that
Girty was the leader of the assault, it is by no means certain
that he was present at all.
The whole region was soon alarmed, and Hand, uncertain
for a while whether to make counter incursions, at last drew in
the men from his lesser outposts. Kittanning, for one, was
abandoned, and the season in this part of the valley ended
with little hope.
The neighboring Delawares had proved steadfast, but a band
of Shawnees adhering to Cornstalk had wavered. That leader
and some of his people a little later ventured to Fort Randolph,
where some mUitia, aroused by recent atrocities, ensnared and
murdered them. It was hopeless to keep any of the Shawnees
neutral after this.
The campaign of 1777, in Washington's loss of Philadelphia,
had not been propitious for those struggling beyond the moun
tains, who were thus cut off from their main seaboard connec
tions ; but the defeat of St. Leger and the surrender of Bur
goyne at the north had happily intervened to put a new aspect
upon the contest of the trans-Alleghany country, where so much
desultory warfare had of late confused the outcome.

CHAPTER VIII.
GEORGE EOGEKS CLARK, ARBITER AND SUPPLIANT.
1776-1779.
In the early part of 1776, George Rogers Clark had cast his
lot among the Kentuckians. He found them Uving amid dan
gers and stirred by political unrest. Virginia, as the parent
colony, was too remote to afford them protection. There were
ugly rumors of savage contests in store for them through the
concerted action of the British commanders at Detroit and
Pensacola. There were those on the frontiers — and it suited
Clark's nature to be in sympathy — who would not shrink
from the responsibility of Independent action ; but a soberer
judgment prevailed, and it was decided not to take any decisive
step before the authorities at WlUiamsburg were informed of
the situation. On July 17, 1776, delegates from these forest
communities met at Harrodsburg and chose Clark and another
to undertake such an embassy. The people had already, on
June 20, drawn up a memorial. In which they affirmed that the
" prime riflemen " of Kentucky were not a body whose aid
should be declined In troublous times. They recognized that
the colonies were drifting towards that independence of whose
declaration it was too early then for them to have heard. The
delegates found difficulty, without intimating an alternative
of their own independence, to make the council listen to their
demands for powder; but Patrick Henry, then governor, as
well as Jefferson, George Mason, and George Wythe, threw a
strong influence In favor of the frontiers, and the grant was
made. On August 2, the Assembly was induced to declare the
sovereignty of Virginia over the Kentucky region, and her
purpose to protect it. Later, the legislature, on December T,
created the county of Kentucky.
During the spring of 1777, the tidings from the Indian
country north of the Ohio had alarmed Colonel Crawford at

CLARK'S PLANS. 117
Fort Pitt. When the summer opened, Clark sent two young
hunters to make their way to the Illinois settlements, and to
discover the situation there. They reported on their return
(June 22) that the French were in the main quiet In their
villages, and that only a few of their young men were partici
pating in the British and savage raids, which were directed
from Detroit. These centres of the French population were,
however, used as starting-places of these marauding parties.
Clark was fired by these reports with a purpose to attempt the
conquest of this region, and on October 1 he again left Har
rodsburg for the Virginia capital. He tells us that he met on
his way many adventurers struggling through the wilderness to
find new homes. When he reached WlUiamsburg, he found
the community rejoicing over the surrender of Burgoyne, — a
good omen that gave him increased enthusiasm.
On December 10, 1777, Clark laid his scheme before the
governor. In case &f failure in the plan, he proposed to join
the Spaniards beyond the Mississippi. The Virginia council
having approved Clark's plan, on January 2, 1778, the governor
gave Clark a colonel's commission, and committed to him two
sets of instructions, one expressing a purpose to defend Ken
tucky only, and the other, which was to be kept secret, author
izing him to attack Kaskaskia. In both he was given author
ity to raise, west of the Alleghanies, seven companies of forty
men each. He was to apply to General Hand, who, as we have
seen, had been in command at Fort Pitt since June 1, 1777, for
a portion of the stock of powder which had been brought up
the Mississippi from New Orleans, and such other supplies
as could be furnished. Twelve hundred dollars in paper were
given to him, and he was told to draw for further sums on
Oliver Pollock at New Orleans, who would be Instructed to
honor his drafts. The legislature of Virginia, as Jefferson,
Mason, and Wythe in their letters of congratulation assured him,
was expected to appropriate as bounty to each man three hun
dred acres of the conquered territory. So the whole inovement
was a Virginia one, intended to secure her dominion over what
she believed to be her charter limits. The men were enlisted
under the Impression conveyed by his public instructions.
Three companies were raised, one hundred ancl fifty men In all,
and these were rendezvoused at Redstone on the Monongahela,

118 GEORGE ROGERS CLARK.
where the boats were assembled. In May, 1778, having beside
his troops a train of adventurous settlers, Clark moved On
to Pittsburg and Wheeling. At both these places he picked up
supplies. At the moutli of the Kanawha he found reinforce
ments. On his way down the Ohio, some of the accompanying
emigrants left him at points where they could easily enter the
wilderness. Others remained on the flotilla till May 27, when
he reached the falls, near the modern Louisville. Here they
were landed on Corn Island, where the rushing river broke up
the reflections of canebrakes, vines, and lofty trees. A stockade
was built to protect the eighty settlers, and to furnish a store
house for his excess of supplies. Ten of his soldiers were left
as a guard. He had lost something by desertion on the way,
and was glad of a small company from the Holston, which
now joined him. They did not ]3rove steadfast, however, for as
soon as lie made known his real Instructions, they left him,
His total available force had now been reduced to about one
hundred and seventy-five men. If it had been larger, he might
at once have advanced on Vincennes ; but hoping for other
accessions, he determined to go to Kaskaskia first.
While making his preisarations to leave, intelligence of the
French alliance reached him from Fort Pitt. It was good
tidings which he hoped to break to the French at Kaskaskia
with some effect. On June 24, he poled his boats up the river
from the island in order to gain the main channel, and then,
it being a high stage of the water, the flotilla shot down the
rapids " at the very moment of the sun being in a great eclipse."
It was a nearly total obscuration, and it was nine o'clock in
the morning. It took two days to reach a creek just above
Fort Massac, relays of rowers working day and night. He met
on the way some hunters, who the week before had been in
Kaskaskia, and engaged one or two of them as guides.
The men were landed, and there was not a horse or cannon
among them to give 'a show of efficacy to the courageous little
army. It was on June 26 that they began their march over a
route of one hundred and twenty miles, the first fifty of which
lay through a swampy country. The open prairie, which came
next, encouraged them in their weariness. On the afternoon
of July 4, they were within three miles of Kaskaskia, and their
food was exhausted. That post was in command of Rocheblave,

CLARK TAKES KASKASKIA.

119

>»^.

['•%\
i
[From CoUot's Atlas.l
a French officer who had joined the British after they had oc
cupied the region. To save expense, and without much appre
hension of the exposure of the post, its garrison had been
greatly diminished, and Rocheblave had been kept there to
watch the country and report upon events. The men that were
left to him were in the guard hall of the fort making merry in
a dance when Clark, after dark, and accompanied by his men,
suddenly sprung into their company. There could be no resist-
120 GEORGE ROGERS CLARK.
ance, and " the self-styled Colonel, Mr. Clerke," as Rocheblave
reported him to Carleton, was thus easily put in possession of
the post and of all within the town. The next morning the
oath of fidelity was administered. After this the townspeople,
whose spirits were distinctly gladdened by the news of the
French alliance, were suffered to go about their business.
The successful commander now turned for sympathy to the
Spanish over the Mississippi, with whom he opened communi
cation. He found the commandant at St. Louis more than
ready to countenance him. Wherever he turned, the French
about him were ready to serve him. They had much disturbed
Rocheblave of late by keeping up a trade with the Spaniards,
which that officer was powerless to stop. With Kaskaskia in
American hands, there was nothing to prevent such traffic across
the Mississij)pi being carried on openly.
Clark went to Cahokia — to which he had sent Bowman and
thirty horsemen on the first day of his occupation of Kaskaskia
¦ — and met the northern Indians, and though he ran some
hazards ancl encountered some treachery, the French stood by
him, and in outward seeming, at least, the tribes were gained
over. He sent a commission to the chief of the distant Foxes,
but the British Intercepted it.
Gibault, a priest at Kaskaskia, in company with Dr. Lafont
and a few others whom Clark could trust, was sent, on July
14, to Vincennes. Lieutenant Leonard Helm was also of the
party, and was detailed to take the military command of the
j)lace. He administered the oath to those he found, and sent
belts to the neighboring Wabash Indians.
Gibault returned to Kaskaskia on August 1, and reported
his success. Clark now enlisted enouali resident Creoles to
supply the gaps In his companies, made by the expiration of
the term of his three months' men. The men thus released
were sent to Virginia under an officer, who also took charge
of Rocheblave as a prisoner of war.
There soon arrived from St. Louis a man in whom Clark
found a fast friend. This was Franc^ols Vigo, a native of
Sardinia, now a man somewhat over thirty j^ears of age, accord
ing to the best accounts, though his gravestone makes hini born
in 1739. He had come to New Orleans in a Spanish regiment,
early In the days of the Spanish control. After leaving the

POLLOCK AND VIGO. 121
army he turned trader, and had of late been living at St. Louis,
where he had become a person of influence and property.
Hearing of Clark's success, he had hastened to Kaskaskia to
see him. Without the financial aid of Vigo at St. Louis and
of PoUock at New Orleans, it is doubtful if Clark could have
sustained himself in the coming months. Governor Henry had
already directed Pollock to draw on France for money to be
sent to Clark, and at a later day Clark gave an affidavit that he
received Pollock's remittances In specie. In September, 1778,
PoUock wrote to Congress that he had just sent a new remittance
of seven thousand three hundred dollars to Clark. During that
year he borrowed a large amount from the Spanish governor
for like uses. Vigo let Clark have twelve thousand dollars,
and took Clark's drafts on Pollock for that sum. When these
drafts reached New Orleans, Pollock, who had been sending
powder and swivels up the river to Clark, found himself obliged
to raise money at 12|- per cent, discount to meet the obUgation.
Later, Pollock drew on Delap of Bordeaux on account of a
cargo shipped to that port. In order to amass funds for Clark's
continued drafts. Fearing that the vessel might not arrive and
Delap would dishonor his draft, he solicited Congress in April,
1779, to direct Franklin, then in Paris, to assume If necessary
the burden. Transactions like these before the close of the war
reduced Pollock to penury. When Vigo died at Terre Haute
in 1836, neglected and childless, something like twenty thou
sand doUars which he had paid to Clark remained unsettled.
Ten years later (1846), Vigo's heirs memorialized Congress for
restitution, but with little effect. In 1848, a committee of the
House of Representatives recognized the obligation. Here the
. matter rested till 1872, when Congress referred the question to
the Court of Claims, which gave a decision in favor of Vigo's
heirs. The government carried the case to the Supreme Court
In 1876, when long-delayed justice was rendered, but the appli
cants who received, including interest, fifty thousand dollars,
were mainly claim agents and lobbyists. The particular draft
which was the basis of the suit was one drawn on Pollock,
December 4, 1778, for f 8716.40, which Vigo had cashed.
While Clark was thus engaged securing funds, measures
were in progress to organize the conquered territory under a

122 GEORGE ROGERS CLARK.
civil government. The provisions were quite at variance with
the purpose which the' English ministry had had in view in
pushing through the Quebec BiU, and threw back the bounds
of Canada, where both the colonists and the parent govemment
had long, through many wars, insisted that they belonged.
The Virginia Assembly, in the autumn of 1778, had here
created the county of Illinois, and had given to Governor
Henry the authority to raise five hundred men for its defense,
and to keep open communication with and through it.
Henry selected, as governor of the new county, an active
Virginian, who had gone, in 1775, to Kentucky, where he had
played a part in the Transylvania movement, and had later
been in Clark's command, — Captain John Todd. Henry sent
him instructions which required him " to cultivate and emulate
the affections of the French and Indians," to command the
county militia, and to use them to assist Clark. Todd, on
receiving these papers, returned to Virginia to perfect plans,
and when he again reached Kaskaskia in May, 1779, he bore
a letter of friendship to the Spanish governor at Ste. Genevieve,
which he was expected to deliver in person. He was also en
joined to take under his special care the family of Rocheblave,
now a prisoner In Virginia. In appointing the county officers,
Todd was quite ready to give the French a large part of them,
and he endeavored to fill the country with actual settlers, to the
exclusion of speculators in land.
It was a relief to Clark to find the civil administration of
the region in so good hands, for events were demanding his
anxious attention.
All along the valley north of the Ohio, the American cause
had not prospered, and in Kentucky there had been turmoil
enough, though it was not always favorable to the British and
their savage allies. During the summer there were bands of
Tories, horse thieves, and other renegades, traversing the Ten
nessee country. The Watauga community, bestirring itself,
had mustered and sent out two companies of militia. These
effectually scoured the country, and those of the marauders
who were not captured fled to the Cherokees, or escaped north
ward to the British.
There was now only a hunter's hut on the site of the later

BOONESBOROUGH. 123
Nashville, and perhaps a dozen families were clustered about
Bledsoe's Lick, stockaded together and surrounded by Chick
asaws. These were relieved. Farther north, however, at
Boonesborough, Hamilton, through his rangers and savages,
tried hard to deliver a serious blow.
Boone, who had been earlier captured at the Salt Licks,
had been taken to Detroit, where Hamilton treated him con
siderately. Later he was carried into the Shawnee country
a prisoner, and succeeded in ingratiating himself with his mas
ters. Here he learned that Hamilton had gathered a band of
over four himdred warriors, and was intending to let them loose
upon the Kentucky settlements. In June, managing to escape,
Boone reached his home in time to improve its defenses. The
enemy not appearing, and anxious for definite knowledge,
Boone started out with a squad of men to reconnoitre. He
crossed the Ohio, and had a sharp conflict with the Indians
on the Scioto. Learning that Hamilton's expedition was now
on the march, led by both French and British officers and fly
ing the flags of both, it soon became a race for the goal. Boone
surpassed them in speed, and reached Boonesborough in time to
drive in the cattle and dispose his forty effective men for the
onset. He had a score other men not equal to a steady fight.
The enemy approached the fort on September 8, 1778, — if
this is the date, for there Is a conflict of testimony. The leader,
whom Boone caUs Du Quesne, but whom the English call De
Quindre, demanded a parley. This was accorded by Boone,
only to find it had been treacherously asked for, and he and his
men, who went to the meeting, had a struggle to escape the
snare. Gaining the stockade, the siege began, and lasted sev
eral days, tiU the enemy finaUy disappeared in the woods. This
repulse and the raid of the Watauga men relieved the region
south of the Ohio to the end of the year.
Farther east, however, results had not been so cheering. In
May, 1778, Congress had voted to raise three thousand men for
service on the western frontiers. It was hoped that it might
prove practicable to push this force across the country south of
Lake Erie and capture Detroit. General Hand was relieved,
and General Lachlan Mcintosh, a Scotchman, now somewhat
over fifty years old, who had been with Oglethorpe in Georgia,

124 GEORGE ROGERS CLARK.
and bad attracted Washington's attention, was assigned to the
command at Fort Pitt. Washington, at Valley Forge, had
ordered the Eighth Pennsylvania regiment, under Colonel Brod-
head, to the frontiers, and the Thirteenth Virginia regiment,
under Colonel Gibson, was directed to be in readiness. Vir
ginia was at the same time expected to concentrate a large
force of militia. This army, when ready, was to advance in
two divisions of about fifteen hundred men each, — one by the
Kanawha and the other by the Ohio, and to unite at Fort
Randolph (Point Pleasant). News had already been received
of an attack by two hundred savages. In May, at the mouth of
the Kanawha, and later on the Greenbrier ; but the assailants
had been foiled at both places.
It was well Into June, 1778, when Mcintosh began his march,
but the ravages which were taking place In the Wyoming
valley rendered it necessary to detach for a while Brodhead's
command. It was August when the general, with this dimin
ished force, reached his headquarters at the forks of the Ohio.
Before he was ready to move on, Brodhead rejoined him.
There were at this time three main posts west of the AUe
ghanies, — Forts Pitt, Randolph, and Hand ; but there were
beside nearly two-score movable camps of rangers, who were
patrolling the border. Mcintosh called them in, and hoped
with his force thus strengthened to advance on Detroit. It
was necessary to his plan to leave friendly tribes behind him,
and at Pittsburg, on September 17, with a supply of ten thou
sand dollars' worth of presents, he began conciliatory methods
with the Delawares, who were stretched along his expected path.
The Moravians had pretty well established themselves among
these Indians, though not so effectually but that a part of this
heterogeneous people stood aloof In the British interests. The
enemy had a firm foothold among the Shawnees who occupied
the lower valleys of the Great and Little [Miami and of the
Scioto. The upper waters of these same streams were given
over to the inimical Mingoes. Beyond these were the Wyan
dots on the Sandusky — not always steadfast in the English
interests — and the Ottawas on the Maumee, whom Hamilton
could better depend upon. Mcintosh tried to gather these hos
tile tribes to a conference, but fewer came than he had wished.
Nevertheless, he thought he had gained over enough for his

MCINTOSH'S MARCH. 125
purpose, and the Shawnees had consented to his traversing their
country. But in doing this he had lost time, and the season
was become inauspicious for an active campaign. Accordingly
he began the erection of a fort on the right bank of the Ohio,
thirty miles below Fort Pitt, and near the mouth of Beaver
Creek. Here, at Fort Mcintosh, as he called it, he established
his headquarters on October 8, 1778. It was a good position
to afford succor, when necessary, to the settlements which had
already begun to extend to the Muskingum, and thirty miles
up that river. The new fort was the first built north of the
Ohio, and Mcintosh had, in and around it, a body of twelve
hundred or more soldiers, mainly Virginians, — a larger number
of armed men than had before operated in this country. His
delay here in building what Brodhead, his successor, called a
" romantic " fort was thought to have prevented the main ob
ject of his campaign, — the capture of Detroit.
Mcintosh, checked in his advance as he was, had got far
ahead of his trains. A herd of cattle, which was driven after
him, did not come up till November 3, when there was still a
lack in his supplies of salt and other things. Two days later,
the general started again, but with cattle to drive and other
obstacles, he made only fifty miles in a fortnight, and was then
sufficiently ahead of his main supplies to cause alarm, for there
were rumors of an opposing force. He was foUowing pretty
much the route which Bouquet had taken fourteen years before.
He had not met the enemy ; but fearing concealed dangers, and
needing a nearer refuge than Fort Mcintosh, in case of disaster,
and believing in the policy of holding the country by a chain of
posts, he built a stockade on the west branch of the Tuscara
was, an affluent of the Muskingum, and named it Fort Laurens,
after the president of Congress. Its site was near the modern
Bolivia and close to a spot where Bouquet had built a stockade,
some distance above the Moravian settlements.
This was Mcintosh's farthest point, and Detroit was safe, for,
without supplies and the season far gone, there was no longer
hope to reach his goal. He put a bold fighter. Colonel John
Gibson, in command of the post, with a force of one hundred
and fifty men, to be used, if possible. In another advance in the
spring. In December, the general returned to Fort Pitt, put
his regulars into winter quarters, and sent his militia to their

126 GEORGE ROGERS CLARK.
homes. The year had ended with the American hopes nearly
dashed in the upper regions of the Ohio valley.
Farther west the enemy had made a bold stroke against
Clark. It looked all the more serious, if the British attack on
Savannah should succeed and they should hold Augusta, — as
they later did, — since it gave them two bases, not so very re
mote from each other. From these, with their available forces
strengthened " by redeeming the army of the Convention," as
Burgoyne's captured troops were called, they hoped to make a
counter movement south of the Ohio.
The expedition which once more gave them Vincennes, while
Mcintosh was Inauspiciously withdrawing to Fort Pitt, was
conducted by Hamilton without the approval of Haldimand,
now commanding at Quebec. That general held that such a
movement carried the invading force beyond the reach of aid,
while the government's policy had been to depend upon maraud
ing parties. Hamilton himself had suggested this alternative
course of flying bands early in the conflict, and Germain had
ordered him, March 26, 1777, to pursue it. In June such
orders were received at Detroit, accompanied by injunctions to
restrain the barbarities of the savages. Such precautions were
necessarily inoperative, and it might have been known they
would be.
The responsibility for the use of Indians during the war Is
pretty evenly divided between the combatants. The practice of
it, however, by the ministerial party meant attacks on women
and children and the spoliation of homes. The practice of it
by the Americans gave no such possible misery to an invading
army, which was without domestic accompaniments. The use of
the Stockbridge Indians during the investment of Boston doubt
less antedated the employment of such allies by the royal com
manders. On Gage's reporting to Dartmouth this fact, the
minister (August 2, 1775) told that general " there was no
room to hesitate upon the propriety of pursuing the same meas
ure." The British government at the same time began the
shipment (August, 1775) of presents to reward the constancy
of the Indians.
It was on September 2, 1776, that Hamilton, writing from
Detroit to Dartmouth, urged that "every means should be

HAMILTON AND THE INDIANS. 127
employed that Providence has put into his Majesty's hands,"
— a sentiment which, later expressed by Lord Suffolk, brought
upon him (November, 1777) the scathing rebuke of Chatham.
Congress did not formally sanction the use of Indians till
[March, 1778, and then it was conditioned on Washington's
judging it to be " prudent and proper."
Few if any British officers brought themselves so much under
severe criticism for inciting savage barbarities as Governor
HamUton. He sang war songs with the braves, he made gifts to
parties that returned with scalps ; but that he explicitly offered
rewards as an incentive to taking scalps would be hard to prove,
though the Council of Virginia, after Flamllton became their
prisoner, charged him with doing so. His glee at the successful
outcome of savage raids was not unshared by many in the royal
service. We have abundant testimony of this in the observa
tions of John Leech and others while prisoners in the British
posts. This gruesome hilarity was far, however, from being
universal. Such a cynical Tory as Judge Jones shuddered at
it. Lieutenant-Governor Abbott, at Detroit, in June, 1778, pro
tested against the use of Indians, and urged only the securing
of their neutrality. De Peyster at Mackinac once addressed a
band of braves as follows : " I am pleased when I see what you
caU live meat, because I can speak to it and get information.
Scalps serve to show you have seen the enemy, but they are
of no use to me; I cannot speak with them." Even Hamilton
himseU at times grew tender, and on hearing that Haldimand
had assumed command at Quebec, he hastened to inform him
that the Indians " never fail [at his hands] of a gratuity on
every proof of obedience in sparing the lives of such as are
incapable of defending themselves."
In June, 1777, Hamilton notified Carleton of a coming
Indian council, and told him that he could assemble a thousand
warriors in three weeks, " should your Excellency have occasion
for their services." Shortly after this, Carleton was relieved
of all responsibility in the matter, as the conduct of the war
about the upper lakes had, under orders from England, been
put entirely in the hands of Hamilton. When this new gov
ernor reached Detroit to take command, he at once began the
enrollment of five hundred militia.
At Detroit, Hamilton was advantageously situated for an

128 GEORGE ROGERS CLARK.
offensive war. A British fleet consisting of the " Gage," car
rying twenty-two guns and swivels, beside various smaUer craft,
— it was less than ten years since the British had launched
their first keel at Detroit, — had command of the lakes, and
could keep the post at Detroit in communication with De
Peyster at Mackinac and with the British commander at [Ni
agara, the other strategic points on these inland waters. Unfor
tunately for Hamilton, there was more or less disaffection at
and around bis post, and the health of Clark was a common
toast even in the press-gang, which he kept at work on the for
tifications. The governor was never quite sure that somebody
was not betraying his plans, nor was he certain that for a quart
of rum an Indian would not carry tidings to General Hand,
who was striving to open the road from Pittsburg to Detroit.
Hamilton's force was perhaps five hundred In aU, consisting of
four companies of the King's Regiment under Lernoult, a single
company of the 47th, and two companies of Butler's Rangers.
While Clark had been preparing to descend the Ohio, Hand
with five hundred men had made (February, 1778) an incursion
into the Ohio country, but his movement had only that kind of
success which gave his expedition the bitter designation of the
" squaw campaign." His purpose was to destroy some stores
which Hamilton had sent to Cayahoga (Cleveland) as a base
for a campaig-n against Fort Pitt, and in this he utterly failed.
Late in March, Hand was distressed at new developments.
Alexander McKee, Simon Girty, Matthew EUiot, and others,
had for some time been exciting suspicion at Fort Pitt, where
they lingered, and at last they disappeared. There was little
doubt they had gone over to Hamilton, and would try on
their v/ay to Detroit to turn the friendly Delawares against
the Americans. They did this, though Heckewelder, the [Mo
ravian, was sent on their tracks to prevent it. This emissary
found that the renegades had passed to the Scioto, and were
doing further mischief among the Shawnees. It was early
summer (June) when Girty and his companions reached De
troit, and found Hamilton In the midst of councils held with the
Indians. On July 3, on presenting a battle-axe to a chief, the
governor said, " I pray the Master of Life to give you success,"
and with such prayers he was sending out parties to intercept
the boats ascending the Ohio with supplies for Fort Pitt.

HAMILTON ALERT. 129
Thus occupied, Hamilton might well have thought he was on
the whole the master of the situation, when, on August 1, 1778,
he received the news of the capture by Clark of Kaskaskia.
He did not at once comprehend the character of the conquest.
He supposed that the captors were a party from the flotilla
commanded by Willing, whom he describes as coming " of one
of the best families in Philadelphia, but of Infamous character
and debauched morals." He further suspected that the Span
iards had as much to do with the incursion as Willing had.
He looked upon the Wabash tribes now as his main depend
ence in resisting further raids, and sent Celoron among them
with a belt. In a letter which he wrote to Germain he pite-
ously complains that there was not now a British fort or garri
son between the lakes and the Gulf. Haldimand, before he
could have got inteUigence from Hamilton, was already coun
seling him to use the tribes of the Wabash, and fill the Ohio
valley with rangers, so as to keep communication with Stuart
and the Cherokees. This plan was the gist of the British
policy, and Haldimand, as soon as he learned how matters had
gone with Rocheblave, was urging Hamilton to active endeav
ors ; but he never quite approved permanent posts so far remote
from the lakes.
As soon as more detailed news reached Hamilton about the
real actors in the capture of Kaskaskia and Vincennes, he lost
no time in planning a recapture. He was still somewhat dis
trustful of the French about his post, and felt that all traders
were rebels at heart, and so he watched them warily. It was
necessary that Stuart in the south should know his purpose, and
he sent a verbal statement to him by a messenger, who was to
seek that Indian agent by way of the Chickasaw country.
Hamilton at this time was dreaming of some large measures.
He informed Haldimand that the forks of the Ohio should be
seized and fortified, as weU as those of the Mississippi at the
mouth of the Ohio. The occupation of Vincennes he looked
upon as but a first step to these plans. On September 28,
1778, he wrote to Haldimand that "the Spaniards are feeble
and hated by the French ; the French are fickle and have no
man of capacity to lead them ; the rebels are enterprising and
brave, but want resources ; and the Indians can obtain their
resources but from the English, if we act without loss of, time."

130 GEORGE ROGERS CLARK.
It was Important to Hamilton's plans that De Peyster, at
Mackinac, should cooperate with him, and that the rebels should
not be allowed to obtain a foothold on the lakes in that direc
tion. The commander at Detroit had sent off messages to
Mackinac on September 16, asking De Peyster to send his
Indians down the Illinois River by the Chicago portage.
Arent Schuyler de Peyster, of a New York family, a some
what rattle-brained person, given to writing illiterate letters, but
in some ways an enterprising and prudent commander, had been
in charge at Mackinac since 1774. There had grown up about
that post a considerable trade, ancl a portion of it in the direc
tion of the Mississippi employed a fleet of sixty canoes. Lately,
and in ignorance of Clark's success at Kaskaskia, De Peyster
had allowed one Charles Gratiot to go down to the Illinois
country for trade, where he found the rebels ready purchasers
of his wares. De Peyster learned of the true state of affairs at
Kaskaskia only a few days before Hamilton had dispatched his
message to him, and on September 21, 1778, he wrote to Hal
dimand : " The rebels are so firmly fixed In Illinois that I fear
if they are not routed by some means, the whole Mississippi
trade is knocked up."
De Peyster, though he had feared an attack at Mackinac,
met Hamilton's demand by dispatching Langlade and Gautier,
with a band of Indians, towards St. Joseph, to create a diver
sion In Hamilton's favor. Their instructions were dated Octo.
ber 26. At that time Hamilton, well posted on the doings of
Clark through an Ottawa chief, had already left Detroit. Be
fore he started, he drew up his force on the common, read the
articles of war, exacted a renewed oath from the French, and
got Pere Potior, " a man of respectable character and venerable
figure," to give the Catholics a blessing.
On October 7, the invading force, consisting of about one
hundred and seventy-five whites, regulars and volunteers, and
three hundred and fifty Indians, left Detroit by the river. The
flotilla, on its passage to the mouth of the Maumee, experienced
such stormy weather that Hamilton in his anxiety suffered
" more than can be expressed." That river was then ascended
to the rapids, and above these obstructions they pushed on in
boats, lightening them when it was necessary to pass the rifts.
On October 24, 1778, they reached the nine-mile portage, and

VINCENNES RETAKEN. 131
carrying over this, they shot rapidly down the Wabash on a
freshet which Hamilton had created by cutting the beaver
dams. The force was within three miles of Vincennes when Lieu
tenant Helm, still in command at that post, first obtained defi
nite tidings of the approach, though he had been disturbed by
rumors some days earlier.
Helm's men, who had been about seventy in number, began
to desert under apprehension. We have a letter, which at this
time he wrote to Clark, and which Hamilton later forwarded.
In this he says he has only twenty-one men left. He continued
inditing the letter till the enemy were within three hundred
yards, and closes it with expressing a doubt if he had four men
upon whom he could-depend. Major Hay, representing Hamil
ton, had appeared in the place the day before (December 16),
giving warning of the danger of resistance to the townspeople.
On the 17th, Helm was summoned to surrender, and did so, —
the usual story of his marching out with one man may perhaps
be questioned. Two days later, the British oath was admin
istered to the residents, numbering not far from six hundred
souls, of whom a third were capable of bearing arms. The com
munity doubtless included at other seasons some hunters and
traders, who were absent at this time.
Almost the first act of Hamilton was to dispatch messengers
to Stuart to propose a meeting of their respective forces in the
spring on the Cherokee (Tennessee) River, whence, assisted by
the southern Indians, the united detachments could harry the
rebel frontiers. Hamilton also notified the Spanish commander
on the Mississippi that while he and Stuart struck the Alle
ghany frontier, a force from Mackinac would sweep the rebels
out of the Illinois country, and warned him that if he expected
immunity from attack, he must not harbor the Americans.
In this defiant spirit Hamilton began to fortify himself, keep
ing only eighty or ninety men with him, beside some French
volunteers. He sent his militia back to Detroit and scattered
his Indians. In the spring, he counted on their rejoining him
with other reinforcements.
The next year, 1779, opened with both parties anxious over
the situation in the Ohio basin. The British, flanking it at
Detroit, had by Hamilton's success pushed in a wedge at Vin-

182 GEORGE ROGERS CLARK.
cennes. The communications of this latter post were through
a friendly country, but its situation was exposed, with such a
vigilant foe as Clark observing It. Kaskaskia in American
hands had tolerably secure communications with New Orleans,
and It was neighboring to Spanish sympathizers. But the
British enjoyed far greater facilities of relief by the lakes than
could be given to Clark by the Mississippi.
Between the Wabash and the Alleghany there was a wide
extent of country, inhabited in the main by those friendly to the
British, though a portion of the Delawares still stood by the
Americans, and there were symptoms of hesitancy on the part
of the Wyandots. The advanced posts of the revolutionists in
this direction were at Fort Laurens and at Point Pleasant,
both in almost chronic alarm from the prowling savages.
The general suspense was to be broken by a fortunate move
ment from Kaskaskia. Clark had for some time been busy in
gaining over the neighboring tribes, and in sealing his friend
ship with the Spaniards and French. His success in these
endeavors had not led him to anticipate the daring incursion
of Hamilton, which released the American hold on Vincennes.
Clark's confidence in his immunity from danger ajDpears In his
letters to Governor Henry and to the Virginia delegates in Con
gress, whom he had addressed in November, 1778. Henry and
Jefferson no doubt saw the great Importance of sustaining Clark,
for his success could but tell upop the ultimate negotiations for
peace, and his continued hold on the Illinois country would
work a practical annulment of the pretensions of the Quebec
Bill. The Virginia Assembly proved itself ready to give Clark's
men such encouragement as would come from a promise of
bounty lands, and later (November 23) its records bore an entry
of the formal thanks which they voted to the leader himself.
To cause him to be unhampered by civic duties, the new county
of Illinois had been set up. But a belief in the wisdom of this
western campaign was not universal, and there were those who
questioned the propriety of Henry's divergence from the single
purpose of protecting the Kentucky and Tennessee settlements.
Clark, however, was to silence opposition by a briUiant
stroke. While Hamilton at Vincennes was preparing his plans
for the spring, Clark was devising a sudden move upon the en
emy on the Wabash. A corporal and six men, deserting from

CLARK'S ADVANCE. 133
Hamilton in January, 1779, had brought Clark the confirma
tion of rumors, if not indeed the first news of Helm's surrender.
Already Hamilton's Indian scouting parties were hovering about
Kaskaskia, and one of them, under an Ottawa chief, barely
missed Clark one day, when he was returning to Kaskaskia
from Cahokia. But more comprehensive tolls were threaten
ing him and the American cause without his knowing it.
Hamilton's couriers had already come to a plan with the
southern Indians for four separate movements. Kaskaskia was
to be attacked for one. The Shawnees were to be assisted in an
onslaught on Fort Laurens for another. A third was to com-
bine the Wabash Indians in a promiscuous swoop. A fourth
was to station other savages at the mouth of the Cherokee River
to intercept any flotilla of supplies and men passing either way.
To these several bands Hamilton was to supply British officers
and a horde of Ottawas, Hurons, and Chippewas.
While Clark was brooding on his own projects and Hamilton
was developing his plans, each in ignorance of the other's con
dition, Vigo had left Kaskaskia on December 18, 1778, before
news of Hamilton's success had reached that place, in order to
carry supplies to Helm. One of Hamilton's scouting parties
captured him on the 24th, and he was carried into Vincennes
as a prisoner.
Hamilton suspected that Vigo's professions of trade were a
cover for other purposes, and kept him under arrest. Father
Gibault interceded, and Vigo was set free on a promise that
he would do nothing at Kaskaskia on his way back detri
mental to the king's interest. Vigo avoided Kaskaskia, and
went to St. Louis Instead. It was not long before Clark knew
from a source not difficult to divine that Hamilton had but
eighty men with him. It was necessary for Clark to move
quickly, and Vigo's readiness to back the American credit
helped Clark to get his supplies for the march. Vigo himself
came to Kaskaskia on January 29, 1779. A galley, carrying
small guns and munitions, was dispatched on February 4, under
the command of John Rogers, down the Mississippi and up the
Ohio and Wabash to a point ten leagues below Vincennes,
where it was to await the arrival of Clark with a force which
was to march overland. The leader, with a band of one hundred
and seventy — some accounts say two hundred — adventurous

134 GEORGE ROGERS CLARK.
spirits, American and French, began a day or two later his
painful march of about one hundred and seventy-five miles.
He had one hundred and twenty miles to go, in an inclement
season, finding his way In parts through drowned lands, broken
with Ice. There were swollen rivers to cross, now by wading
and now by ferrying. Supplies grew scant, and it was almost
impossible to keep powder dry. If there is no exaggeration in
Clark's narrative, there were times when he despaired of life;
but " the finest stallion there is in the country," come of a New
Mexican stock, bore the commander through, and his men fol
lowed him with dauntless pluck.
His course was at first northwest, and he probably struck
the St. Louis trail near the modern town of Salem, following
a trail which fifty years ago was still visible ; and after this
his track lay nearly east. On February 23, the weary and
famished men, kept up by the inspiration of their leader, ap
proached the town. The Wabash was flowing by it, through a
broad three leagues of submerged country, making a picture
of desolation. Clark sent in a scout to the French inhabitants,
and his message was kept from the garrison. Lying concealed
till after dark, and taking as guides five men, whom he had
captured, he rapidly entered the town. A scouting party, which
Hamilton had sent out three hours before, fortunately missed
them. Clark told off a part of his force to occupy the town,
while a band of riflemen approached the fort, — SackviUe, as it
was called, — and, throwing up some earthworks, estabhshed
themselves within range. During the night, after the moon
went down, the party which Hamilton had sent out got safely
in. By daylight the assailants' trenches were near enough to
annoy the garrison with the dropping fire of their rifles, for
which the townspeople had made good Clark's damaged powder.
They had also given the hungry troops the only good meal they
had had for a week.
There was pretty soon a passing and repassing of flags.
Helm, now on parole, bringing Hamilton's messages. Clark
replied in a note which Haldimand, in sending it later to Clin
ton, caUed " curious for its impertinence of style." In a
personal interview, the two commanders indulsred in mutual
crimination, and Hamilton was charged with a barbarous
spirit. Clark was stubborn for an unconditional surrender,

VINCENNES GARRISONED. 135
and Hamilton manceuvi'ed for some modification, but all to no
purpose. Before the day was gone, the fort was surrendered,
with nearly eighty officers and men. There had been little
bloodshed, and Clark had only one man slightly wounded.
Three days later, on the 27th, the " Willing," as Rogers's
galley was called, arrived. She had buffeted longer than was
expected with the strong currents of the Wabash. She added
forty-eight men to Clark's little army, with some small guns
and swivels. Very soon Clark sent Helm and a detachment
up the river, which succeeded in capturing a train, under an
escort of forty men, which was bringing supplies and dispatches
for Hamilton. The party returned to Vincennes on February
27. On March 8, HamUton and such prisoners as were not
paroled, accompanied by a guard, were started on their way to
Virginia. It was a long journey, and at least two thirds of the
route they made on foot. They reached Richmond in May,
and brought the first news of Clark's success, his earlier dis
patches having been intercepted. Hamilton remained in con
finement at Williamsburg till October, 1780, when he was sent
on parole to New York. Later, on July 6, 1781, he made a
report to Haldimand, which is our main source for the study of
these campaigns for the British side.
Two days after Hamilton had started, Clark wrote (March
10) to Harrison, the speaker of the Virginia Assembly, thank
ing him for the vote of thanks which that body had passed,
and expressing his great satisfaction at the prospect of rein
forcements. " This stroke will nearly put an end to the Indian
war," he said, and he expressed the expectation of finishing it
in two months, if amply supported by a new detachment. " I
hope to do something clever If they arrive," he added, referring
to his project of a march on Detroit. He did not attempt to
di.sguise his purpose in a note which he addressed a few days
later (March 16) to the commander at that post, to which he
had sent others of his prisoners, who had taken an oath of
neutrality. " My compliments to the gentlemen of the garri
son," he says ; " if they are building works, it will save us the
trouble." Clark, in this buoyant mood, leaving in Vincennes a garrison
of some forty men, under Helm, took seventy or eighty others,
and on March 20 embarked in the " Willing," accompanied by

136 GEORGE ROGERS CLARK.
tive other armed boats. His purpose was to make ready in Kas
kaskia for further movements in the spring. Arrived there, he
prepared, on April 29, duplicate dispatches to Henry and Jef
ferson, describing his campaign, and these have come down to
us. His earlier letters had been taken, as has been said, from
his messenger near the Ohio falls, where a party of Hurons
had waylaid their bearer.
But movements were already In progi-ess south of the Ohio
destined to cause disappointment to Clark. Cameron, now
working in the British Interests among the southern Indians,
supposed that Hamilton was secure In Vincennes. He had
already planned an inroad of Chlckamaugas and other Chero
kees on the Carolina border, to distract attention from Hamil
ton's contemplated raid over the Ohio. When James Robert
son, the pioneer of the Cumberland region, heard of it, he sent
warnings to the Watauga people. That hardy colony immedi
ately sprang to the task which was Implied. A considerable
body of riflemen, under Evan Shelby, were, by April 10, on
their way down the Clinch. A part of this force was a regi
ment which made up the five hundred men Intended for Clark
and his Detroit campaign. Their diversion to a new field was
never atoned for.
Shelby's onset was rapid. He destroyed a large deposit of
corn among the Chickamaugas, which had been gathered for
Hamilton's intended invasion. He burned the towns of that
ferocious tribe, and lost not a life amid all his acts of devasta
tion. All immediate danger to the Kentucky settlements was
now at an end.
During the respite a new immigration set in by the Ohio
and the Wilderness Road, and to the number of eight or ten
thousand souls a year, if statements of this kind are not in
excess of truth. The Virginia surveyors, to help the Influx,
laid out a new road over the Cumberland Mountains towards
" the open country of Kentucky," so as " to give passage to
packhorses." While this success of Shelby checked tlie southern Indians
and dashed the hopes which the British had based on their ad
vantage In Georgia, there was among the royalists in the north

HALDIMAND ANXIOUS. 137
great anxiety lest Clark's prestige and the use of Fort Laurens
as a base for a new advance from Fort Pitt should together
put In great hazard their signal position at Detroit. If lost,
however, the blow would not be irreparable, for the Ottawa
River route would stIU afford an easy communication with Lake
Huron and the western tribes.
De Peyster at Mackinac did not hear of Hamilton's capture
till about the time of Shelby's raid. Langlade and Gautier
had just reached MUwaukee, or as some say St. Joseph, when
the unwelcome tidings scattered their Indians. De Peyster 's
position was an embarrassing one, for his intentions to succor
Vincennes had been utterly foiled. He felt constrained to pro
tect his own post as well as he could, and to animate the Sioux
agaiilst the French, in retaliation for their encouragement of
the Americans.
Haldimand, at his remote headquarters, remained for some
time In dread lest Clark would send a force against Mackinac.
The British commanding general, in New York, was sending
word west in February, 1779, before it was known that Vin
cennes was in danger, that one hundred and thirty carpenters
and two hundred wood-cutters had been sent by the rebels over
the mountains to open a way, and that every saddler in Phila
delphia was hard at work making pack-saddles. We know that
in May one hundred and fifty boat-builders were at work near
Fort Pitt.
Lernoult, at Detroit, received word of Hamilton's capture on
March 26, 1779. An interpreter, having escaped from Vin
cennes in the confusion, had carried the tidings. Lernoult felt
apprehensive, at once, of the safety of the train which Clark had
captured, and saw how the route by the Maumee was thrown
open to the Americans. He promptly sent to Haldimand for
aid. While troops were on the way thither from Niagara, and
before they arrived, Clark, just about being relieved by Todd
of the civil government, had made up his mind (April 29) that
his available force was Insufficient to advance, and so expressed
himself to the governor of Virginia.
To add to Haldimand's anxiety, he was also uncertain about
the fate of the Vincennes convoy, and knew how its supplies
would aid Clark, if he had captured it. He was also painfully
conscious how difficult it had become to satisfy the Indians

138 GEORGE ROGERS CLARK.
with the supplies and gratuities which Hamilton, in his confi-
dence, had promised them. Farther than this, he was at his
wits' end to know who among the French, and almost under his
hand, was corresponding with the rebels, for a letter of Lafay
ette and D'Estaing's proclamation to his countrymen, which had
been issued at Boston, October 28, 1778, were insidiously cir
culating among them, creating not a little responsive excitement,
not only among the old Canadians, but among the Indians. If
this sympathy should invite raids from over the border, Haldi
mand had scarce a thousand men to guard a multitude of
points, and of these he had learned to place small confidence
upon the German regiments.
Sending his aid. Captain Brehm (May 25), to Detroit to
insure better information in that direction, tidings after a
while reached Haldimand from the Scioto and Muskingum
valleys, which showed that the war was again starting with the
spring. Colonel John Bowman, in May, had crossed the Ohio near
the mouth of the Licking, with nearly three hundred Kentucky
volunteers. He made a sudden dash upon a Shawnee town
near the modern Chillicothe. Having burned the houses and
secured some plunder, he returned. He had dealt a blow which
disinclined the savages of the north to follow EngUsh leaders
in a projected movement into Kentucky. So another concerted
movement of the British was checked, for ComwaUis, after
Lincoln's surrender at Charleston (May 12), had counted on
sending a band of Tories to lead the aroused Creeks and Chero
kees upon the frontiers of Tennessee, while the northern In
dians came down on the other side.
Meanwhile, the American plans on the upper Ohio were not
more successful. AU through the spring of 1779, scalping
parties of Wyandots and Mingoes had been prowling about the
exposed fort on the Tuscarawas, and ambushing convoys from
Fort Pitt. Twice in the winter the savages attacked the fort,
and Gibson being warned by Zeisberger, the enemy were forced
to retire through the stubbornness of the almost starved garri
son, for Mcintosh had failed to get in supplies by way of the
Muskingum. The most strenuous effort of the enemy had been
made in February, 1779, after Girty had intercepted some of

SULLIVAN'S CAMPAIGN. 139
Gibson's letters. Captain Bird, of the King's Regiment, accom
panied by Simon Girty and a few soldiers, now led a horde
of savages. Starting up from a concealment near by, they
surprised a party which Gibson had sent out, and gave the
first notice of an investment of the fort. For nearly a month
the blockade continued, and a few days after the enemy disap
peared, Mcintosh arrived with relief, and found the garrison
living on rawhides and roots. On the general's return to Fort
Pitt, he was soon relieved of the command of the department by
his second in command. Colonel Brodhead, whom Washington
had selected on March 5, 1779. The new commander assumed
charge of the department with small confidence in the condi
tions which Mcintosh's course had imposed, and with still less
content with the huckstering element about Fort Pitt. " The
cursed spirit of monopoly is too prevalent," he wrote (May 26),
"and greatly injures the soldiers." At the end of May, he
heard that Fort Laurens was again threatened, and was to be
attacked "when the strawberries are ripe." He succeeded at
once in throwing suppUes into that fort, now garrisoned by a
body of seventy-five men, though the country which the convoy
traversed was swarming with Indians. But in August it was
thought prudent to abandon the post.
The position of aU the other forts in the department had
been for some time precarious. In June, Fort Randolph at the
mouth of the Kanawha was abandoned, leaving Fort Henry at
Wheeling the most advanced post, while an inner line of stock
ades from Fort Ligonier to the new Fort Armstrong at Kittan
ning (built In June) were the chief protections of the frontier.
While the region north of the Ohio was thus abandoned,
Shelby's rapid movements had quieted, for the most part, that
south of the Ohio, and encouraged some adventurous frontiers
men to cross the river and seek lands among the Delawares,
relying upon their friendship. Brodhead had little confidence
In that incongruous people, and did what he could to prevent
the risks.
In August, 1779, General Sullivan was well started on his
exasperating inroad among the Iroquois lakes of New York,
partly to punish the Indians for their treachery, and partly to
render more open the communication with the West. His

140 GEORGE ROGERS CLARK.
devastation was ample, but its effect was not lasting. Some
portions of the Six Nations were beyond his reach. Such were
some of the Senecas and Munseys, whose lands stretched into
the northwestern parts of the present State of Ohio. To make
a diversion in Sullivan's favor, and similarly to chastise this
portion of that people, Brodhead, by calling in his outposts
and summoning volunteers from the county lieutenants, suc
ceeded in gathering about six hundred men near Fort Pitt.
The response for volunteers had not been as general as he
had wished, and he gave as a reason that the people are " Intent
upon going to Kentuck ; " but he succeeded in getting some,
who. In the guise of Indians, were content to scour the country
for scalps.
Brodhead had been anxious to start on this expedition so as
to get some advantage out of two hundred of his men, whose
term of service expired on August 10 ; but it was not imtil the
llth that he set out, and in such spirits that he hoped he would
be allowed, after punishing the Senecas, to march on Detroit
He inarched up the Alleghany, and set to work burning houses,
and destroying cornfields, and gathering plmider, later to be
sold for the benefit of his men. He had lost neither man nor
beast when, on September 14, he was back in Fort Pitt, having
temporarily, at least, quelled the savage temper in this region.
In October, he sent a force to drive off trespassers who had
left the Monongahela and had crossed the Ohio, while he tried
to persuade the Delawares not to molest any who escaped his
vigilance. He was still dreaming of an attack on Detroit, and In Novem
ber he asked Washington's permission to make it before Feh
ruary, when the floods would interfere. He was advised by
Washington to wait till spring, and gather supplies and infor
mation in the interim. It was discourasina: when Brodhead
heard of the death of David Rogers and the capture of the
supplies which he was bringing up the river from [New Orleans,
If the reports which reached Fort Pitt were true, — and Brod
head had asked Zeisberger to get him information, — the garri
son at Detroit counted but about six hundred, regulars and
militia. While thus neither Mcintosh nor Brodhead had accomplished

GENERAL SUSPENSE. 141
much, there had been in Jefferson and others a lai'ger confi
dence in the daring backwoods spirit of Clark. By Julj' 1,
1779, Clark had returned to Vincennes, only to be disappointed
in meeting there but one hundred and fifty of the recruits
whom he had expected from Virginia, and but thirty of the
three hundred Kentuckians who had been promised to him.
AAith an inadequate force, he was not tempted to carry out
" the clever thing " which he had set his heart upon, and so, in
August, leaving Helm at Vincennes, he returned to the falls of
the Ohio. Here he again raised the question of an attack on
Detroit ; but it was the opinion of his council of war that at
least a thousand men were necessary for such a stroke, while
with half that number he could successfully hold his own.
To do this, it was thought, required a force of two hundred at
the mouth of the Ohio, and a hundred and fifty each at Vin
cennes and Cahokia.
Clark's position at the falls, where his men had been prom
ised one hundred and fifty thousand acres in bounty land, alarmed
De Peyster during the winter, lest Clark should fortify so good
a strategic point. It was Clark's purpose to spend the time tiU
spring In an incursion among the Shawnees on the Miami and
Scioto ; but the river fell and rendered transportation difficult,
and the plan was abandoned. On November 19, he wrote a
letter to George Mason, which, with his letters of February 24
from Vincennes, and AprU 29 from Kaskaskia, constitutes the
main sources for the study of his campaigns. Clark's memoirs,
said to have been written at the request of Jefferson and Madi
son, though more in detail, were written (1791) too long after
wards to be of comparable value.
So the year (1779) was closing almost everywhere beyond the
mountains with suspense on both sides, but with the opposing
generals intent on preparations for a new campaign In the
spring. In August, 1779, Haldimand had sent some aid to Detroit,
and had taken measure to reassure the Six Nations, whose spir
its had been rudely shattered by Sullivan and Brodhead. It
• seemed doubtful if Clinton could keep his promise of large rein
forcements for Canada, for by September the negotiations for
exchanging the Convention troops which surrendered at Sara-

142 GEORGE ROGERS CLARK.
toga had faUen through, and South Carolina, where the British
were strengthening their foothold, had made large demands
on the resources at headquarters in New York. So Detroit,
thouo'h a new fort had been built there, was far from secure
when, late in the year, De Peyster came from Mackinac to take
charge. That commander had left the garrison at the straits hardly
more confident. The effect of Hamilton's discomfiture, when
news of it had reached them in May, had been discouraging.
It rendered the French uneasy, and, as De Peyster said, " cowed
the Indians in general." Haldimand, when he heard of these
results, asked De Peyster to send some Puants, Sacs, and Foxes
down to Quebec to give them new courage at the sight of a
British fleet, and later he sent a speech, for De Peyster to
render to the tribes, in which he advised them " to keep the
Bostonians [Americans] out of the country in order to enjoy
peace and plenty."
De Peyster had by this time asked to be relieved, and Sin
clair was sent to take the post, which in his superior's judg
ment was "in a critical situation." Not long before, a French
trader, Godefroy Linctot, had deserted to the rebel cause, and
in July, 1779, it had been believed at Mackinac that the rene
gade was preparing to attack St. Joseph with four hundred
men. After this the Indians were slowly rehabilitated in the
English interest, and before De Peyster left he had himself
begun to be hopeful that " the Indians would clear the Illinois
at one stroke," and welcome the Cherokees coming up from the
south. Haldimand hardly shared De Peyster's confidence, and
when Sinclair arrived in October, 1779, he found it not so easy
to arouse the Indians for a spring campaigTi to the Illinois.
Sinclair had been sent there with a distinct plan of campaign on
the part of the home governinent. He was expected to descend
the Mississippi, while Campbell from Pensacola took New Or
leans and came up to meet him. Germain in the previous June
had notified Haldimand of this plan, and at a later date he had
instructed Stuart to keep the southern Indians in open eouimu-
nication with Detroit. Germain's purpose had already been,
temporarily at least, dashed by Galvez's prompt movement in
September, 1779, on Natchez, later to be explained, and by all
efforts at the north failing.

THE CUMBERLAND REGION. 143
Before the yeai- (1779) closed, a new movement in the west
ern regions had been consummated, which gave the pioneers a
firm hold on the Cumberland valley. During a season which
was the severest the frontiersmen had experienced, and which
was marked by suffering and famine throughout the west, James
Robertson, now closing a ten years' residence on the Holston,
had spent the previous year among the Cherokees, laboring
to keep them quiet. About November 1, 1779, with a train of
immigrants from the AVatauga hamlets, he started west. By
the close of the year they had built a fort and a few cabins,
which were the beginnings of the later Nashville. It was a
region then known as the French Lick, and had been, since
1714, occasionally occupied by the French hunters. Vast herds
of buffalo had long found the lick an attraction. Within the
next three months Robertson's party built a stockade, and scat
tered their huts about the ground.
This occupation of a new region was the most decided gain
for the American cause which a year of anxiety had developed.
Clark still held the Illinois country, to be sure, but he was
surrounded with little of that domesticity which comforted Rob
ertson at the French Lick. With little homogeneousness in
the lUinois population, there was scant confidence in its future.
Now and for some time yet, Clark's ability to maintain himself
depended on the pecuniary aid which Vigo and Pollock ren
dered. In November (1779), the Virginia Assembly had de
cided to strengthen Clark's position, but their action was wholly.
dependent on the credit which the governor of that State could
obtain at New Orleans. For three and a half years from
March, 1778, Clark dispensed fifty thousand dollars in specie,
or nearly two and a quarter miUions in currency. Up to the
close of 1779, he drew in nearly equal parts fifty thousand dol
lars or more in specie from Pollock and from the Virginia
treasury. PoUock's account with Virginia, mainly for the sup
port of Clark, shows that he advanced In specie down to Au
gust, 1781, over ninety thousand dollars.

CHAPTER IX.
THE SINISTER PURPOSES OF FRANCE.
1774-1779.
Louis XV. of France had died in 1774, and in the mid
summer of that year, Maurepas, affable and courtly, but what
ever you please in principle and a known enemy of England,
had been put at the head of the cabinet of the new king, Louis
XVI. The minister of foreign affairs was Vergennes, now a
man of fifty-three, a jDatlent and polite diplomat of the intrigu
ing school. He was perfectly unscrupulous when occasion re
quired, and an adept in the arts of deceit. " A Uttle good-
natured wisdom," said Jay at a later day, " often does more in
politics than much slippery craft. By the former, the French
acquired the esteem and gratitude of America, and by the
latter their minister is impairing it." It was his policy to be
prepared for war, and to watch for an opportunity to catch
England at a disadvantage.
He must have looked on with some satisfaction when he saw
his Anglican rival strive, by the Quebec Bill, to hem in her
revolting colonies by the same geographical confines which
France in claiming to the AUeghanies had so long struggled to
maintain. A few years later, as we shaU see, Vergennes him
self would gladly have pressed the same restraint upon the nas
cent American Republic, if Franklin, Adams, and Jay had given
him the opportunity. Already the alliance which was to follow
the downfall of Burgoyne was a purpose of Vergennes, hut
he could not at this juncture escape anxiety lest the concil
iatory counsels of Chatham would prevail, and lest England, by
plunging into a French war, would, as her cabinet dared to
hope, succeed In winning back the loyalty of her colonies. He
was, indeed, astounded at the imbecility of the English ministry
in neglecting opportunities of appeasing the rebels. He was
told that the obstinacy of the king was at fault. The monarch

VERGENNES. 145
might indeed be stubborn, but the real fault was the blindness
of the Tory party to the change which was taking place in what
that age caUed the prerogative of the king, and in the principles
of the British Constitution. There was an unwIUingness to
recognize the fact that revolutions are no respecters of vested
political interests. The Tories failed to understand that civic
progress is often made on the wreck of the present.
A'^ergennes was possessed by a similar obtuseness. Still, an
occasional light was thrown into his mind by his consuming
desire to humble England. Egregiously perfidious himself, he
was continually prating of English perfidy.
Congratulating himself, somewhat prematurely, that Spain
was won to his views, Vergennes, on August 7, 1775, in a
communication addressed to the Spanish minister, distinctly
foreshadowed his purpose of active intervention in the Amer
ican war. In October, M. Bonvouloir sailed in the " Charm
ing Betsy " for Philadelphia, under secret instructions from
Vergennes, to observe what was going on in the American
Congress. He was also to seek occasions to let the Americans
know of the sympathy of France.
Donlol's bulky acknowledgment of French heartlessness, as
his great work has proved to be, as well as Stevens's Facsimiles,
show us how detestably insincere Vergennes could be. Near
the end of 1775, he put on record his opinions for the edifica
tion of his king. He told his royal master that French aid
alone could make sure the success of the colonies. He assured
him that it was the true policy of France to cripple her natural
enemy. When the struggle in America had weakened Eng
land, the time, he said, would come publicly to assist the revolt.
Meanwhile, he explained, France must keep the American
courage up, by promises, till such a propitious turn of the con
test comes.
The American Congress was at the same time playing into
Vergennes's hands. Late In November, they had instituted a
Committee of Secret Correspondence, with Franklin at Its
head, and on December 12 this committee instructed Arthur
Lee, then in London, to make approaches to the Continental
powers. When the new year (1776) opened, Vergennes found himself,
through the intrigues of his enemies, in a degree of embarrass-

146 THE SINISTER PURPOSES OF FRANCE.
ment which was increased by the indecision of the king. Be
fore January was gone, a letter from Beaumarchais, saying that
England was nearly hopeless, was so sklUfuUy used in Ver
gennes's hands that the king withdrew his opposition, and the
way seemed clear.
Still, the influence of Maurepas and Turgot was against pre
cipitating a war, which, in the latter's judgment, might, by
emancipating the British colonies, give the signal for the revolt
of aU colonies of whatever power. Turgot was indeed in a
fair way to prove too much of an obstacle, and in May he was
dismissed. Early in March, encouraging reports came from Bonvouloir,
and Gerard de Rayneval formulated the results for Vergennes's
eye. It was represented that if the humiliation of England
was carried to an extent of assuring the independence of the
colonies, France could have no fear of them in their exhaustion.
War with England was represented as inevitable, whatever the
result of their assisting the colonies.
Vergennes had no disposition to retreat, and on May 2, 1776,
he definitely requested the king to approve a grant of money to
the colonies, and the royal assent was given. Up to this time
the minister had abstained from positive action in aid of the
colonies ; but he had winked at the help which was being given
in the French ports. It was a turning-point, and a policy was
begun of decided significance.
The troops which England had already dispatched to America
alarmed Vergennes, lest a way be found in the sequel to hurl
them against the French West Indies. At the same time, he
aroused Spain by picturing a like danger, if these troops should
be moved against New Orleans. The ministers at [Madrid
were not slow to see how ¦Louisiana could aggrandize Spain, if
England, in the first Instance, and, after that, if her severed de--
pendencies, could be kept back from the Mississippi. Nothing
could conduce so much to this end as the exhaustion of both
parties in the war, and the greater the exhaustion, the better
prospects for France and Spain. It was thus, with Spanish
connivance, the hope of Vergennes to lure the Americans to a
collapse by giving them hope that they could obtain a subsidy
of money. On May 3, 1776, A^ergennes proposed to Spain
that she should advance a million doUars to the Americans.

FRANCE AND SPAIN. 147
Grimaldi, in advising his royal master to accede to the propo
sition and sharing Vergennes's sinister aims, congratulated him
on a movement which might. not only force England to destruc
tion, but would at the same time exhaust the Americans. The
colonists would in this way become in the end an easy prey to
the Bourbons.
Meanwhile, the American Congress, ignorant of the con
cealed purposes of France, had sent Silas Deane to Paris as its
agent. The Committee of Secret Correspondence had given
him, on March 3, his instructions. Deane soon found himself
the sport of two parties in the gay capital. On the one side
he was shadowed by a complacent American named Bancroft,
who reported everything to the English ministry. On the other,
Vergennes, with whom Deane had his first meeting in July,
(1776), played the sympathizing friend to conceal his inimical
wiles. With diplomatic blandness the French minister prom
ised aU that America could need.
Not long afterwards came tidings of the Declaration of In
dependence. Vergennes was now aroused, and active inter
ference seemed imminent, while Beaumarchais had attained a
position where he could assure the American Committee of
Secret Correspondence that his fictitious house of Hortales et
Cie was ready to be an intermediary in bringing Congress
and the French government into closer relations. StiU later,
(August, 1776), Vergennes, while urging his royal master that
the time for action had come, also suggested to Spain that she
could now throw off the mask. Spain hesitated, as Portuguese
affairs perplexed her, but on October 8, she assented. Almost
at the same time, news reached Paris of Washington's defeat
on Long Island, and that untoward event called a halt in the
autumn of 1776. >
Meanwhile, events were moving rapidly in America, and
Spanish officials were winking at aid given the colonies at New
Orleans. IntelUgence of the action on July 4, 1776, at PhUadelphIa,
. had hardly reached Fort Pitt when, under orders of Congress,
. and by direction of the State of Virginia, Captain George
Gibson and Lieutenant Linn started, on July 19, down the
river in the disguise of traders. When, in August, they arrived

148 THE SINISTER PURPOSES OF FRANCE.
at New Orleans, they found the Spanish governor, Unzaga, In
no complacent mood. He had been uneasy under the suspicion
that in diplomatic ways all was not going well. He was appre
hensive that England would succeed in pacifying her colonies,
and could then, with their aid, turn upon Louisiana. To get
information, he had already sent a spy to Philadelphia.
Gibson and his companion found, however, prompt sympathy
in Oliver Pollock. This American had begun active exertions
in behalf of his countrymen In April, 1776, when he had unsuc
cessfully tried to persuade Unzaga to protect American vessels
against British warships. With PoUock's aid Gibson's acts
were partly concealed from the British spies, and he bought
twelve hundred pomids of powder. A part of it, under Pol
lock's direction, was shipped north by sea, while the greater
bulk of it, nine thousand pounds, in one hundred and fifty kegs,
was placed on barges to ascend the river. This was done while
English spies were watching for some overt act, and, to make
it appear that he was committing some offense against Spanish
law, Gibson allowed himself to be thrown Into prison.
Linn, in charge of the barges, started homeward on Septem- ,
ber 22, 1776. It was a long puU against the current for nearly
eight months, and It was May 2, 1777, before the lieutenant
deUvered his dangerous burden to Colonel AA^'IUiam Crawford,
at Wheeling, " for the use of the Continent." The expedition,
in its slow progress, had run great risks of being Intercepted.
After Linn had started north, PoUock wrote from New Or
leans to Congress, tendering renewed services and recounting
the beneficial effect which the Declaration of Independence had
made in that town. He said that the governor was ready to
open trade with the Americans, and would protect their cruisers
and prizes, should they come into the river. He also added
that this Spanish official was ready to unite with Congress in
maintaining a regular express by the Mississippi and Fort
Pitt, between Philadelphia and New Orleans. Pollock's sym
pathies had not escaped the notice of the English spies. His
surrender was demanded by the British commander at Pensa
cola, but was refused. An English sloop-of-war was lying down
the river, and PoUock was fearful that some untoward accident
might throw him into its commander's hands. Accordingly
he desired Congress to give him a commission in some capacity,

GALVEZ AND POLLOCK. 149
so that he could have its protection in an emergency. In the
same letter PoUock adds that the Spanish governor had sent
orders to the mouth of the river to put American vessels enter
ing the passes under the Spanish flag.
On the 1st of February preceding (1777), Don Bernardo
de Galvez, the commander of a regiment in the garrison at
New Orleans, succeeded to the governor's chair. He very soon
opened communication through Major Cruz, at St. Louis, with
Colonel Morgan on the Ohio, and took Pollock Into his confi
dence as one whom Unzaga assured him he could trust.
Galvez was a young man of twenty-one, of powerful family
connection, and likely to bring Spanish and French interests
into close relations. Jay, who later knew his relatives in Spain,
informed the president of Congress that " the one on the Mis
sissippi has written favorably of the Americans to his brothers
here, and It would be well to cultivate this disposition."' The
opportunity to do so was not lost.
The new governor soon strengthened himself by bringing
emigrants from the French West Indies. In retaliation for
British captures on the lakes back of New Orleans, he boldly
seized some English vessels trading between the Balize and
Manchac. He began to build some boats to carry long-range
guns, which would be more than a match for the light guns
which any vessel could take over the bar at the mouth of the
Mississippi. Pollock soon devised some audacious plans. In April, 1777,
he sent a vessel north under Lemire to inform Congress that
Galvez stood ready to furnish cash and supplies to any American
force intending to capture Pensacola, and a little later (May 5)
he urged Congress to make a decision, and, if favorable, to send
blank commissions to be used in raising troops in New Orleans.
Colonel George Gordon, commanding at Fort Pitt, had fore
stalled any action of Congress, and before Linn's return he had
sent word to Galvez that If the Spaniards would supply trans
ports, he was hoping to send one thousand men down the river
prepared to attack Mobile and Pensacola. A little later, the
Spanish governor was assured that he need have no apprehen
sion, but that the Creeks, Choctaws, and Chickasaws could be
depended upon to stand neutral. Nothing came of the project,
but the Committee of Secret Correspondence took on their part

150 THE SINISTER PURPOSES OF FRANCE.
an important step when they appointed, In June, 1777, PoUock
their commercial agent, and directed him to ship at once forty
or fifty thousand dollars' worth of cloths and strouds to Phila
delphia by three or four swift vessels, promising to send flour
in return to balance the account.
It was not long before the British bloc[kade of the Atlantic
coast had become so close that Congress found it impossible to
send the flour out of port. In October, Pollock was told to run
the necessary risks of forwarding supplies along the coast, as
transportation by the river was too slow and, because of Indian
forays, too hazardous for their present exigencies.
On September 26, 1776, a few days after Linn's barges had
cast off their moorings at New Orleans, Congress had appointed
some commissioners to Europe. At their head was Franklin,
and he was not without hope that in the final settlement he
could Induce the British ministers to sell Florida and Quebec
to the new Republic. His companions in the mission were to
be Arthur Lee, now In London (for Jefferson had declined to
be one), and Deane, already in Paris. The latter, active In
mind, had conceived a new plan for relieving the stagnation of
events, and on December 1, before Franklin arrived, he had
written home, outlining a scheme to attract immigration, and
to find money for the depleted treasury of the colonies. He
thought that the country which the Quebec Act had aimed to
alienate from the colonies would be " a resource amply ade
quate, under proper regulations, for defraying the whole ex
pense of the war, and for providing the sums necessary to pur
chase the native right to the soU." To give this land its value
he proposed that it should be made a distinct State, of twenty-
five million acres, to be confederated with those other colonies
which had made a declaration of independence. The settling
of it was to be left to one hundred or more grantees, while
Congress reserved for their own advantage one fifth of the land,
mines, etc. To induce immigration, he relied upon the sym
pathy with the American struggle which, despite the calcu
lating selfishness of the Vergennes ministry, was marked among
the French people. Before the month (December) closed, the
American commissioners, FrankUn being now on the spot,
had their initial meeting both with Vergennes and the Count

FLORIDA BLANCA. 151
d'Aranda. They got some encouragement in the promise that
American privateers should have equal protection in the French
and Spanish ports. Vergennes, however, had lost some of his
boldness, or was veiling it, when, a few weeks later (February,
1777) Grimaldi was succeeded at Madrid by the Count Florida
Blanca. This man, who thus became the Spanish king's prime minis
ter, was forty-six years old ; he had risen from an inconspicuous
' station, and by force of character had well crowded with action
his mature life. He disliked England, was jealous of France,
and hated revolutions. He certainly was not quite ready to
make good aU the promises which Grimaldi had made. He
had his eye on Portugal, and he wished rather to have French
aid In securing that little kingdom, than to join in the struggle
in British America. He thought, also, that France and Spain
could work together better In Brazil, a Portuguese dependency,
than in North America. Vergennes felt otherwise, and this
lack of accord, as weU as the bad news from Washington's
army, seemed at present to be fatal to an agreement.
To offset the ill effects of the military miscarriages near New
York, Congress was quite prepared (December, 1776) to prom
ise its assistance in capturing Pensacola from the British and
share its advantages as a port, as well as the navigation of the
Mississippi, with Spain ; but this willingness was not known
till April, when Franklin opened the question with Aranda.
A few weeks before (March 4, 1777), Arthur Lee had met Gri
maldi at Burgos, but he could get no promise of active assist
ance. He further learned that Florida Blanca was apologizing
to England and playing shy with Vergennes. Nevertheless, it
was intimated that the Americans would find powder and other
supplies at New Orleans, which they could take, if they liked,
on credit.
In France there was an active public opinion, asking for ac
tion, largely induced by the influence of FrankUn. But Ver
gennes repeUed the request of the American commissioners for
guns and ships, and made a show of preventing Lafayette and
De Kalb embarking for America. By April 20, however, La
fayette, who had fled to Spanish territory, put to sea, though
ostensibly for the West Indies.
This exodus, or some other Incident, had aroused Stormont,

152 THE SINISTER PURPOSES OF FRANCE.
the British ambassador in Paris, to a belief that an expedition
to aid the rebels was arranged by a French general officer, and
he suspected that he could get more particular information If he
could pay fifteen hundred guineas for it. His government was
not quite as credulous, and directed him not to ]3ay the money.
Before long the French cabinet was assuring the London states
men of their determined neutrality. This led the British .min
istry in July to propose a treaty, in which both England and
France should guarantee their respective possessions in America. "
Vergennes was not to be caught, and before many days had
passed, he and the king were pretty well agreed that the ex
pected crisis for determinate action had come. There was some
difficulty in making the king see wisdom in abetting a rebellion
against a royal brother ; but Vergennes had little sympathy with
any such sentiments, when the purpose to punish England was
in the balance. It had come to be simply a question of the
opportune moment for a public declaration. Franklin, in Sep
tember, was assuring Congress that the commissioners were
much too far from accomplishing their object. The final fruition
of all his hopes was nearer than Franklin could have judged.
The autumn had brought mingled elation and regret in the
colonies. Washington had failed at Brandywine and German-
town ; but Burgoyne had capitulated at Saratoga. An army
worsted was no offset to an army captured, and Jonathan Aus
tin Loring, when he sailed, on October 30, as the messenger of
good tidings to the American commissioners in Paris, carried
also conviction to the hesitating cabinet of France.
Early in December, 1777, and not many hours apart, the
startling news reached Lord North in London, just as he had
returned at midnight from a debate in Parliament, and it was
broken to Franklin at Passy by the Boston messenger. It was
soon heard by Vergennes. " There must be no time lost," he
said. He let the king, who was wondering what Spain would
do, understand that an advantage was likely to accrue to whom
ever first welcomed the Americans to the company of nations.
Beaumarchais, when he was trying to induce the French
king to advance the Americans a million, told him that " to
sacrifice one million to make England spend a hundred is hut
advancing a million to obtain nine and ninety." The present
news was a stronger plea than any argument of his could be,

BURGOYNE'S SURRENDER. 153
and having received it from London, he had hopes of being the
first to break it in Paris. He was hurrying to that capital
as fast as his horses could gaUop, when his carriage over
turned, ancl he was put to bed in agony In a neighboring house.
It was December 6, and he sent a message ahead, dictated from
a couch of pain. It was too late. The king was already en
gaged in inviting propositions from Franklin. Two days later
(December 8), the American commissioners, in language that
had probably been arranged with Vergennes, made their re
sponse in a document which was at once dispatched to Spain.
It had no immediate effect. Spain's Mexican and Brazilian
fleets, with their treasure, were still awaited, and it was not pru
dent to incite England to their capture. Beside, Spain's rup
ture with Portugal was still unhealed. At least, such were the
professions. '
Vergennes, meanwhile, was having conference with the
American commissioners, and on December 17 they were in
formed that France was ready for an alliance and would make
an acknowledgment of their independence. Ten days later
(December 27), Vergennes was sending word to Madrid that
Spain was losing the opportunity of centuries to cripple the
power of England, and recover Gibraltar, Minorca, and Florida.
France had already pledged her power to the extent, in one way
and another, of about three million livres, as Vergennes and
Franklin both knew.
The new year (1778) opened in France with the American
commissioners greatly satisfied with the outlook. " Ever since
Burgoyne's fate was known," wrote William Lee, " we are
smiled at and caressed everywhere." Louis XVI., following up
the arguments of his minister, was sending word to his Bour
bon brother of Spain that he had come to an understanding
with the American commissioners, " to prevent the reunion of
America with England." Every obstacle removed, on Febru
ary 6, 1778, the treaty was signed. Stormont, the English
ambassador in Paris, divined what was In progress, and a cer
tain " Mr. Edwards " was probing the secrets for him, — per
haps, under a new guise, the same Dr. Edward Bancroft who
had been dogging the steps of Deane. Stormont was paying
well for what information he secured, and was naturally Im
mersed in the misery of not knowing just how much to believe

154 THE SINISTER PURPOSES OF FRANCE.
of all that was betrayed to him, while, as the negotiations pro
ceeded, Maurepas, in his intercourse with him, was blandness
itself in his denials. Within two days, it was confidently be
lieved in London that the French king had at last succumbed,
and had banished his qualms of conscience in recognizing
rebels. It was supposed that the aUied parties had agreed to
give Canada and the West Indies to France, if the fortunes of
war threw those regions Into their hands.
On March 10, 1778, Vergennes instructed NoalUes in London
to break the news to Lord Weymouth, and on the 13th it was
done. The respective ambassadors of the two countries were
withdrawn, and when Stormont reached London on the 27th,
he found bank stocks at 69, a drop to less than a moiety of the
value of two and a half years before.
This condition to a mercantile people was very alarming.
GrenvIUe Sharp and others were already outspoken for an
accommodation with America on the basis of her independence.
It would prevent, they claimed, a rupture with France and
Spain. North had inclined to the same view ; but it was not
a grateful one to the king and the rest of the cabinet. They
so far felt the pressure, however, as to introduce into Parha
ment (February 17) acts of conciliation with America on the
ground of continued allegiance. They were passed, and reached
America by the middle of April.
France, fearful of their effect, was soon reassured by a
prompt rejection of them by Congress. The movement of the
English ministry encouraged Florida Blanca to offer mediation
for the purpose of curbing the ambition both of the colonies and
of England, and of assuring some territorial aggrandizement to
Spain. It was Spain's proposition to confine the revolted colo
nies to the Alleghany slope, while she guaranteed to England
the valley of the St. Lawrence and the region north of the Ohio,
taking to herself all south of the Ohio between the mountains
and the Mississippi. England was not so much in straits that
she could come to such an agreement, and the arbitration was
refused. Spain got nothing for her pains, and France was content,
both with the failure of Lord North, and with the disappoint
ment of Florida Blanca. It aU looked well in the mind of Ver
gennes for securing deeper revenge upon England. Vergennes

ALLIANCE WITH FRANCE. 155
cared nothing for America, if only her exhaustion was increased
so that France could the better become the arbiter of her future.
His simple purpose was to degrade England first, and America
next. The defeat of Florida Blanca' s plot with England was felt
by Vergennes to open the way to secure the alliance of Spain,
and it was well known what Spain wanted. " The Court of
Spain," wrote Lee to Congress, March 19, 1778, " will make
some difficulties about settling the dividing line between their
possessions and those of the United States. They wish to have
the cession of Pensacola." Ten days later (March 29), Ver
gennes wrote to Gerard at Philadelphia that Spain would
probably require a promise of Florida before she would accede
to the aUiance, and Gerard was instructed to prepare Congress
for yielding that point. To insure the continuance of the alli
ance with France, Gerard was reminded that the United States
should be made to understand that Canada must remain to
England, France renouncing any purpose of regaining that
province. When Congress, on May 4, 1778, had ratified the treaty, at
tention had already been directed to the Spanish problem on the
GuK. Patrick Henry, as governor of Virginia, had as early
as October, 1777, been urging upon the Spanish authorities at
New Orleans the opening of trade with the States by the Missis
sippi, and now again in January, 1778, he was making a dis
tinct proposition to Galvez to accept produce sent down from
Kentucky In return for munitions and cash. In the following
June, Colonel David Rogers started from Fort Pitt, in two
boats built by General Hand's orders, to make a beginning of
the trade. Reaching New Orleans in October, he found that
Galvez was so ignorant of the geography of the valley that he
had sent the goods intended for Virginia to St. Louis. Thither
Rogers was obliged to return for them. The passage of the
' Mississippi to and fro was made with little danger, as ever since
¦ April, the river above New Orleans had been freed of the Eng
lish flag ; but later, while ascending the Ohio, and near the
mouth of the Licking, the little flotilla was waylaid, as we have
; seen, by Hamilton's Indians, and its commander killed.
; Meanwhile, a more active career awaited Captain James

156 THE SINISTER PURPOSES OF FRANCE.
AA'illlng of Philadelphia. This officer had. departed from Pitts
burg, bearing a commission from Congress. He had less than
fifty men ; but as his business was mainly to plunder, he picked
up recruits as he went. One of his aims was to placate or in
timidate the Tory settlement about Natchez, where a body of
loyalists had bought of the Choctaws, In 1777, a stretch along
the river from 31° to the mouth of the Yazoo, a distance of
something over one hundred miles. During January, Willing
had carried a rather ruthless hand among the upper settlements
of the river. In February, he was at Natchez, devastating the
estates of such as had fled across the river. He seized one of
the Tory leaders. Colonel Anthony Hutchins, and took him to
New Orleans, where he was put on parole. The plunder which
Willing also took away was estimated by those who suffered at
a million ancl a half dollars in value. The agents of France
in New Orleans were not altogether pleased at this kind of
domination for the American flag, inasmuch as too much suc
cess might give the Republic such territorial claims on the river
as it was not French policy to encourage. Rocheblave, who
commanded the British post in the Illinois, when he heard of
the f aU of Philadelphia, and that it was reported that some of
the chief rebels were " flying by way of Fort Pitt," imagined
that Willing's exploits were simply preparing the lower [Missis
sippi as a refuge for disheartened patriots.
In April, 1778, Pollock complained to Congress that a British
sloop-of-war was still capturing vessels at the river's mouth, hut
he had at least ground for rejoicing in the new commission from
Congress, which Willing had delivered to him, and in that offi
cer's destruction of the Tory nest at Natchez, which had been
supplying provisions to Pensacola and Jamaica.
Pollock now dispatched one Reuben Harrison to Natchez
to preserve the neutrality which A\^illing had instituted ; bnt
Hutchins, breaking his parole, reached that post ahead, and,
gathering his old associates, Harrison's boat was lured to the
banks and captured. This for a while ended the neutrality.
To keep the river open for the passage of supplies to the Ohio
looked now hopeless, for the " Plound," a vessel sent from Pen
sacola, was likely before long to reach a station at Manchac,
near Baton Rouge, where her boats could patrol the river.
Pollock's plan was for American boats coming down from i
to avoid capture by being put under the Spanish flag.

POLLOCK AT NEW ORLEANS. 157
AA^iUing was now raising men in New Orleans, and was in
tending to risk passing up the river with a flotilla in time to
reach the falls of the Ohio in October, which, with his lading
of supplies for Fort Pitt, he could best pass at that season.
In April, 1778, Galvez issued a proclamation permitting trade
with the United States. Pollock, at the same time, was fitting
out a captured letter of marque as an American cruiser. He
was somewhat embarrassed for money, as he had not yet re
ceived from Philadelphia the $36,000 due him for the supplies
which he had sent up the river.
Notwithstanding there had been no adhesion given as yet In
Madrid to the American cause, it was apparent that the rep
resentatives of Spain and America were acting now in much
harmony at New Orleans. The price of this informal connec
tion might put Spain, possessed ultimately of Florida, in a
position to contest with the Republic the eastern bank of the
Mississippi, as it turned out she did.
As the summer (1778) came on, the British plans had worked
out to their satisfaction. They controlled Natchez with a force
of two hundred men. Another sloop-of-war, the " Sylph," with
a crew of one hundred and fifty men, kept a body of sixty
British rangers under cover at Manchac. Others were expected,
for Clinton, in New York, had been aroused to the exigency.
PoUock was accordingly obliged to bestir himself and send
warnings up to the Arkansas to meet any boats descending the
river. In July, two Scotch merchants in New Orleans, Ross
and Campbell, were found to be sending tidings to Natchez of
intended attempts to send supplies up the river. They were
seized and sent to Pensacola. The reestablished Tories at
Natchez had indeed rendered the blockade of the river so effec
tual that WiUing hesitated to start with his supplies. In
August, however, under the escort of an armed force, led by
Lieutenant George, he hoped to ascend the river for other
exploits, — the expense of the undertaking being met in part
by a loan of $6,000 from Galvez ; but nothing came of the plan.
PoUock had been long anxious for some decisive stroke. In
May, he had urged Congress to start an expedition from Fort
Pitt to sweep the British from the river, and then to advance
on Pensacola. He was confident there was not in that post, be
side Indians, more than eight hundred to a thousand men. He

158 THE SINISTER PURPOSES OF FRANCE.
thought a thousand Americans could clear the Mississippi, and
that three thousand could capture Pensacola. He had himself,
he adds, secured a prize ship, the " Rebecca," and put a suitable
armament on board with one hundred and fifty men, and in two
months he hoped to cooperate in attacking the English ship.
at Manchac. But his plans miscarried. In the autumn, the
British control of the river was so well maintained that he was
obliged to send Willing and his men north by sea. In Decem
ber, he dispatched a vessel to Havana with merchandise to be
exchanged for supplies, which were to be sent thence to the
United States. He had gone on spending his own money and
receiving no remittances from Congress, which was now over
$40,000 in his debt. He was selling his own slaves to enable
him to meet his outstanding obligations.
As the summer and autumn (1778) wore on, the purpose of
France was developed. Franklin, as sole commissioner, was
treating with Vergennes in Paris, and Gerard and Gouverneur
Morris were conferring in Philadelphia. The object of Ver- '
gennes was unmistakable. He would, in confining the new
Republic to the Atlantic slope, propitiate Spain, and in giving
the region north of the Ohio, with Canada, to England, he
would establish a constant menace between the colonies and the
mother country, and cripple the future of the nascent Republic.
So he talked with Franklin with as much bland concealment of
his Intention as he could, while he Instructed Gerard to prepare
Congress for submission to Spain's demand. France at this
time had eighty ships of the line and sixty-seven thousand
sailors, and for ten years she had been drilling ten thousand
gunners for her navy. Nevertheless, she urged that England
with her one hundred and fifty ships of the line (and two hun
dred and twenty-eight in all) was an overmatch, unless the
sixty great ships of Spain could be added. D'Estaing, with
his fleet, had not certainly, during the summer, justified in
American waters the hopes which had been entertained. There
fore it was necessary for America, as Vergennes represented,
to abate her territorial pretensions and secure the aUiance of
Spain for a common good. By October (1778), it seemed as if
Vergennes had brought Florida Blanca to consent to join the
alliance on certain conditions. These were that the war should

GERARD IN PHILADELPHIA. 159
be continued tUl Gibraltar was gained for her, either by cap
ture, or by agreement at the peace ; and that America should
agree to her having Florida and the trans-Alleghany region.
Morris, in Philadelphia, was unfortunately showing how the
RepubUc might yet give in to such demands. He was con
fessing to Gerard that yielding the Mississippi to Spain and
Canada to England might the better restrain the western com
munities in any arrogant hope they felt of future independence.
There was no such hesitation about Canada in Lafayette. He
and D'Estaing had planned for an invasion north of the St.
Lawrence, and had sent from Boston a proclamation to arouse
the native French of Canada. This done, D'Estaing had In
November sailed for the West Indies, while Lafayette, two
months later (January, 1779), went to France to work out this
aggressive movement for the coming season. Washington saw
.the dangers of it for the Republic, as a Frenchman like Lafay
ette could not. The fear of the American leader that France,
reestabUshed in Canada, would help the schemes of Spain on
the Mississippi, led very soon to the abandonment of the
project. Nor did a scheme of Vergennes and Charles III. of Spain,
planned at the same time, result in any action. Gerard was
instructed to sound Congress cautiously in the rnatter, but we
know little more of it than as a proposition to the United States
to accept a long truce with England instead of a peace, during
which France and Spain would have time for arranging ulterior
projects. England, however, was in no mood to come to terms
of France's proposing after her own approaches to Qongress
had been repelled, and while France kept a fleet in the Ameri
can waters. It was apparent that both England and Spain
preferred to gain time, rather than commit themselves to any
definite arrangement.
Early in 1779, Congress had decided (January 14) to make
no peace without the concurrence of France, and it was apjjar-
ent at what price Spain would render her aid in the war, and
that the United States were mainly to pay the cost. Gerard,
instructed by Vergennes, was assiduously impressing upon Con
gress that the demands of Spain were proper and should be
met ; that it was meet for America to renounce territorial am
bition and be content with thirteen States along the Atlantic

160 THE SINISTER PURPOSES OE FRANCE.
slope, and that there was great danger of an Anglo-Spanish
league, unless Pensacola and the free navigation of the Missis
sippi were assured to Spain.
Spain, meanwhile, was toying with Grantham at Madrid,
professing a desire for alliance with England, and suggesting
the benefits of the proposed long truce with her colonies as best
to calm the internecine passions. At the same time she was
shuffling with France, and waiting the results of Gerard's in
trigues at Philadelphia, buoyed up the while by the hope of
regaining something of that Imperial dominion in the New
World which the bull of demarcation had assigned to her at the
end of the fifteenth century. While Vergennes (February. 12)
was submitting to Sp)aln a proposition to fight England unceas
ingly till America's independence was secured, leaving Spain's
aspirations to be satisfied by wresting something from America
in the future, Florida Blanca set no less a price on the adhe
sion of Spain than the old demand of Gibraltar. AAhen their
demands were known. Congress, on March 19, with considerable
spirit, announced that while Spain might possess Florida, the
American States had no Intention of releasing claim to all
that England gained below the Great Lakes by the treaty of
1763, and to the full navigation of the Mississippi. To make
their intentions .definite. Congress defined the bounds by a line
from the northwest angle of Nova Scotia, along the height of
land between the Atlantic and the St. Lawrence to the north
west head of the Connecticut, and thence direct to the south
end of Lake NIpissing, and on to the sources of the Mississippi,
— of course in ignorance of just where those sources were. It
was provided as an alternative that, if it became necessary, the
line beyond Lake NIpissing might be run farther south, but not
below 45°. On the south they claimed the left bank of the
Mississippi above 31°, — the oid southern bounds of the Caro
lina charter of 1663, which had indeed never been acknowledged
by Spain. There was also a distinct demand on Spain for a
port of entry on the river within Spanish Louisiana.
While this action was pending, and the British commander
m New York was strengthening Pensacola with General Camp
bell's force of fifteen hundred men, Spain, fearing England less
now that she had lately augmented her fieets, entered into
a secret treaty with France on April 12, 1779, and thus joined

SPAIN AND ENGLAND. 161
hands in the new triple-combination against Great Britain.
The professed object of this clandestine alliance was to secure
Gibraltar, and to distract England by an invasion of the British
islands, and by attacks on Minorca, Pensacola, and Mobile. It
is only of late years that the full text of this convention has
become known, and Bancroft, in his earlier editions, had allowed
larger pretensions for Spain than were given to her.
Six days after the treaty had been concluded, Spain made
other perfidious propositions for aUiance with England, and
these being rejected, on May 3, 1779, she openly declared war.
There was now no further doubt on England's part of what she
was to encounter. In the early part of the summer the Euro
pean parties to the conflict were manoeuvring for an advan
tage, while Congress was at the same time facing a serious
complication in the evident purpose of France and Spain to
insist on recognizing England's territorial pretensions in the
Quebec act. France saw that this gave Spain a better chance
of wresting the country north of the Ohio from England, — as
indeed was attempted by Spanish troops In 1781, — than from
the grasp which Virginia was preparing to make upon it, and
did make in 1779.
On June 17, 1779, Germain notified Haldimand of the Span
ish war, and instructed him to reduce the Spanish posts on the
Mississippi and assault New Orleans. At the very beginning
of the year (1779) Hamilton, at Vincennes, had reported that
the southern Indians, Chickasaws, Cherokees, Choctaws, and
Alibamons, had been banded in the British interests, and that
were he sure that Spain had declared war, he could, with the
aid of the savages, push the Spaniards from the Mississippi,
since, as he affirms, the Spanish authorities had but slender
influence with the tribes. The British commander at Pensacola
had also had his emissaries among the Cherokees, and within
a month from the time when Haldimand was prompted by Ger
main to attack the Spanish, these savage marauders were harry
ing the confines of Carolina. Arthur Lee had anticipated this,
and while Germain was writing to Haldimand, Lee was warning
Spain that a British foothold in Carolina meant the use of it
as a base to dispatch the Indians against the Spaniards on the
Gulf. Already, by a pact with the tribes, the Chickasaws and
Choctaws were scattered along the Ohio and Mississippi to

162 THE SINISTER PURPOSES OF FRANCE..
intercept supplies from New Orleans, in case they had run the
gauntlet at Natchez, where some EngUsh rangers under Captain
Bloomer were now stationed.
This was the condition in the Great Valley, and such were the
English Intentions, when Galvez, the young Spanish governor
at New Orleans, threw himself Into the war with admirable
spirit. As early as March, 1779, Patrick Henry had urged
upon Washington to dispatch an expedition against Natchez
to preserve communications with New Orleans from the up-
country, since Pollock's shipments of munitions and supplies
by the river had become uncertain. Little heed, however, had
been given to the advice, and at this time there was a small
chance that Campbell at Pensacola and Hamilton at Vincennes
might be able to work in conjunction and maintain the blockade
of the river, if not drive the Spaniards out.
On July 8, the Madrid authorities had sent instructions to
Galvez for an active campaign. The proclamation of hostili
ties with England had been made at Havana on July 22, and
Galvez was soon aware of the British purpose, which he learned
from an intercepted dispatch.
By August 18, he bad fitted out a flotiUa, when a hurricane,
sweeping the river, sank his vessels. His energy soon replaced
them. Accompanied by Pollock — to whom Galvez had un
successfully offered a Spanish commission — and a few other
Americans, who p)referred to carry their own flag as a separate
detachment, and with a following of six hundred and seventy
men, Galvez began the ascent of the river. On September 7,
with a force increased at this time to over fourteen hundred
men, he approached the southernmost point held by the Britisli,
Bayou Manchac, where be carried Fort Bute by assault. He
was now one hundred and fifteen miles above New Orleans, and
from this point to Natchez the British were in possession. A
week afterwards (September 13), be began regular approaches
before the fort at Baton Rouge, and eight days later It surren
dered, and carried with it Fort Panmure at Natchez, the suc
cessor on the same site of the old Fort Rosalie of the Natchez
wars. Colonel Hutchins, the paramount British authority in the
region, and a traitorous sneak by nature, left it to Colonel
Dickson to make the surrender.
Several hundred prisoners, large supplies, and various trans-

JOHN ADAMS. 163
ports thus fell into Spanish hands, and Galvez returned to New
Orleans to extend Louisiana over Florida, as far as the Pearl
River, and to welcome in October some reinforcements from
Havana. These successes encouraged PoUock, who was just now much
In need of good cheer. With Continental money In circulation
to about $200,000,000, and reduced to an insignificant value.
Congress had failed to keep with him its promises of remittances,
and, to make matters worse, not a single vessel of those he had
sent north by sea with supplies had escaped the British block-
aders. About the only produce which Congress could depend
upon to keep Pollock in funds was flour, and it was practically
under an embargo In the Atlantic ports, so much of it had
been needed to feed the army and D'Estaing's fleet. Nor could
relief be immediate. There had never before been so fine a
crop of wheat in the States, but It would take time to grind
and bolt it, and to send it to New Orleans amid the risks of
capture. While affairs were thus prosperous at New Orleans for
Spain, and American Interests were with increasing difficulty
sustained by Pollock, Congress [had been struggling with the
question of the ultimate bounds of the new Republic, and now
In the instruction given (August 14) to John Adams, who was
about going abroad prepared to treat with Great Britain, it
had substantially agreed upon the limits set by that body some
months before.
Adams was just at this time in a rampant state of mind, — a
condition not unusual with him, — and In a letter from Brain-
tree (August 4), while Congress was coming to its purpose, he
had not only objected to the surrender to Great Britain of
Nova Scotia and Canada, but he had pictured. In ignorance of
her secret intentions, the great complacency of Spain, which he
judged would make her an agreeable neighbor in the future.
But Congress, before Its president could have received Adams's
letter, declared, on August 5, that if Great Britain persisted
¦'in the prosecution of the present unjust war"' advances
should be made to enter into a defensive and offensive alliance
with France and Spain jointly, to the end of gaining Canada,
Florida, and' the free navigation of the Mississippi. It only

164 THE SINISTER PURPOSES OF FRANCE.
shows how little the true character of Spanish and French pur
poses was understood in Congress, that it could have hoped to
bring at that time those powers to assure the States any one of
those three conditions.
The same propositions were again brought under discussion
on September 9, when the terms of a treaty with Spain were
considered, and two days later it was determined to agree to
join Spain in an invasion of Florida and the conquest of Pensa
cola, but only on condition of her granting the free navigation
of the Mississippi, with a port of entry below 31°. Matters
between them would run smoother, it was interjected. If Spain
would advance the States the sum of five miUion doUars. In
this frame of mind Congress committed the Spanish mission to
Jay on September 27, and two days later passed his instruc
tions in accordance.
Neither France nor Spain was prepared to accept such
terms, and the French minister at Philadelphia renewed his
protests and pictured the future misery of a republic too large
to hold together, — a future of disintegration that was much to
the mind of Vergennes. Virginia, the most Interested of the
colonies in this territorial integrity, was urgently instructing
her delegates never to think of yielding to the Spanish claim.
Meanwhile, on August 2, a successor to Gerard in Luzerne
had landed at Boston. Thence he made his way to AA'est Point,
to confer with Washington. The new envoy inquired of the
commander-in-chief how far his army could be depended upon
in an attack on Florida. Washington was wary, and we have
the notes of the talk, made by Hamilton, who acted as inter
preter. By these it appears that AA'ashington thought it might
be possible to assist In that enterprise, if Congress thought well
of It, and the British were driven from Georp-ia and South Car-
olina. There was here a confirmation of Arthur Lee's opinion
of the difficulty of holding Florida, with the enemy In those
States. This attempt to engage AVashington independent of Con
gress was quite In accordance with the purpose of Vergennes to
make the several States agree on their own parts to the treaties.
Vergennes's object was thereby to perpetuate better the influence
of France among them, — a condition which that minister never
lost sight of In view of an ultimate aofreement with Great Brit-

THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 165
aln. In September, he plainly intimated to his confidants that
while it was to be hoped that the United States would hold
compact tUl their Independence was secured, the interest of
France required after such an event that the union should be
broken, in order that it should not become a power dangerous to
France and her aspirations. That there was among the French
people and in the French military and naval contingent a wide
sympathy for the cause of American independence Is true ; but
it was emasculated by the perfidy of their ministry. America's
obligation to what stood at that time politically for France was
much like the dependence of an unfortunate spendthrift upon
a calculating pawnbroker. It is a misuse of words to call this
obligation by the name of gratitude.
What Hamilton divined in that day has been abundantly
proved by the publication of evidence in our day : " The dis
memberment of this country from Great Britain was both a
determinary motive and an adequate compensation to France
for the assistance afforded." Again he says : " If a service Is
rendered for . . . the immediate Interests of the party who
performs it, and Is productive of reciprocal advantages, there
seems scarcely an adequate basis for a sentiment like that of
gratitude. . . . To suppose that France was actuated by friend
ship ... is to be ignorant of the springs of action which Inva
riably regulate the cabinets of princes."
In following the course of France In our Revolutionary War,
there is every reason to emancipate ourselves from predilec
tions, prejudice, ancl tradition, the three great ensnarers of
seekers for historical truth.

CHAPTER X.
A YEAR OF SUSPENSE.
1780.
Virginia had persistently nurtured her territorial claims to
the northwest ever since the treaty of 1763 had brought this
over-mountain region under British control, and the royal proc
lamation had formulated an issue. She had resented the pre
tensions of that proclamation in constituting this territorv
" crown lands " for Indian occupancy. She had rehearsed her
claims till the other colonies were tired of them. She had
never once questioned, as others had, that the English king, in
1609, had any right to assume jurisdiction beyond the springs
of her rivers. She made no account of the annulment of her
charter in 1624, and claimed that the recognition of her
" aiiclent bound " by the English Commonwealth in 1651 dis
posed of that objection. She recaUed how, in 1749, the royal
instructions to Governor Gooch had recognized both banks of
the Ohio as being " within our colony of Virginia." When
England got her real title to the trans-Alleghany regions in
1763, she called it merely a confirmation of her immutable
'charter. She pronounced solemnly, by legislative enactment,
that the Indiana deed of 1768 was void. She saw no reason
why Trent and the traders should be recompensed for losses in
the Pontiac war any more than others who suffered damage
from the same cause, and if the traders were to be favored, she
held that Pennsylvania and not Virginia should recoup them,
since they belonged to that colony. George Mason, in her
behalf, charged Sir William Johnson " with mysterious and
clandestine conduct " In furthering that grant, for Virginia had
already preempted the very land from tlie Indians at the treaty
of Lancaster. She saw nothing in the AA^alpole grant of 1772
as sustaining the rights of the crown against her claims. She
saw no way for the RepubUc to maintain its rights at the future

THE CONFEDERATION. 167
peace against the limits of the Quebec Bill, but In standing
squarel}- upon Virginia's chartered rights.
AA'e have seen how soon the frontiersmen began to make
inroads on this royal reservation of 1763, and how the rights
of the Iroquois and Cherokees, as affiliated with the northern
and southern colonies respectively, were played off against each
other. If the New York claim, as derived from the Iroquois,
was iUusory, Franklin could, on the other hand, charge Vir
ginia with Inventing the claims of the Cherokees to the Ken
tucky region in order to bolster up her charter right. In a
draft of an act of confederation for the colonies, when war had
become inevitable, Franklin had, in 1775, aimed to bring the
claims of Virginia to a tribunal. In this draft he made all
disputes as to bounds between colonies referable to Congress.
In It he also gave to that body the same right which he had
recognized earlier to be in Parliament, to plant new colonies in
this western wilderness. The next year, June 29, 1776, Vir
ginia, in adopting her new State Constitution, which the war
had forced upon her, stood squarely by her old pretensions of
jurisdiction in this region, with the right of establishing one
or more States within her charter limits.
A few weeks later, In Congress, John Dickinson presented
(July 12, 1776) the articles for confederation in a new shape,
destined in the main to be those under which the States finally
achieved their independence. The draft provided that no lands
could be purchased of the natives, either by any colony or by
an individual, before the limits of the colonies westward were
adjudicated upon, and that, when these limits were determined,
the confederacy was to guarantee such bounds to the colonies,
and no purchases were to be made beyond them except by the
United States for the general benefit of all the States. It dis
tinctly provided that Congress should have the power to settle
intercolonial boundary disputes ; to " limit those bounds which
by charter, or proclamation, or under any pretense, are said to
extend to the South Sea ; " and to " assign territories for new
colonies and ascertain their boundaries," which maybe admitted
to the confederacy by the assent of nine States. Canada, at the
same time, could join the confederacy at her own pleasure. These
articles, if adopted and assented to, practically made Congress
the arena in which Virginia must contend for her pretensions.

168 A YEAR OF SUSPENSE.
While this matter was still in abeyance. Congress made a dis
tinct assertion of Its control over these western regions by
resolving on September 16, 1776, to grant lands over the moun
tains as bounties to the Continental troops. This meant recom
pensing Virginia for yielding for this purpose such lands as
should be selected. Maryland at once (October 9) announced
her objection to making such jDayments a charge upon all the
States and a benefit to one, and on November 13, 1776, Mary
land's i^rotest to this effect was laid before Congress. The
position of this dissentient State is best expressed in instructions
to her delegates at a later stage of the controversy : " Policy
and justice require that a country unsettled at the commence
ment of this war, claimed by the British crown, and ceded to
it by the Treaty of Paris, if wrested from the common enemy
by the blood and treasure of the thirteen States, should be con
sidered as a common property, subject to be parceled out with
free governments."
It was now clear that the smaller States, and those which had
no such western claims, were prepared to insist up)on making
these trans-AUeghany lands a common source of financial sup-
Y>\j in the struggle with the mother country. Congress moved
slowly in a matter which produced such variances of opinion,
and it was not till October 14, 1777, that it dared even ap
proach the question. It then directed that the colonies should
have a common treasury, and that there should be a system of
proportionate taxation among the States to supply this treasury.
The next day, October 15, 1777, Maryland tried to force the
issue by proposing that Congress should have the power to
set a western limit to the States claiming to the Mississippi, so
as to create a public domain beyond. Maryland stood alone
in the vote. Within a fortnight, the larger States combined
(October 27) to make it a provision of the Impending act of
confederation that no State without its consent should be
stripped of Its territory for the benefit of the United States.
Within three weeks, the Dickinson draft, with all the land
amendments which Virginia had insisted upon, was adopted
(November 15, 1777), subject to the ratification of the States.
It was soon apparent that" the confederation would not have
the support of Maryland without some acknowledgment of the
rights of all the States in these western lands. By early summer

VIRGINIA LAND OFFICE. 169
in the following year (June, 1778), Maryland, with Delaware,
New Jersey, and Rhode Island acting mainly In accord with
her, tried to induce Congress to remove difficulties by voting
that commissioners should determine the limits of the States
claiming to the Mississippi, and that the fee of the old " crown
lands," under the proclamation of 1763, should belong to the
United States, while the original claimant States should retain
jurisdiction. Congress declined to accede to the proposition,
and on July 10, 1778, appealed to the hesitating States to
accept the articles, and leave the settlement of their demands
to the future.
It soon became known that Virginia had substantiated her
claim north of the Ohio by the success of Clark, and In October
she set up, as we have seen, a civil government at Kaskaskia.
Two months later, Maryland set forth the grounds of her
position in refusing to accept the Act of Confederation, and the
new year opened with Congress further temporizing by post
poning on January 6, 1779, the consideration of Maryland's
declaration. Iu May, 1779, Virginia aggressively determined to open a land
office In the territory, offering the land at forty pounds the hun
dred acres, and declaring valid all her existing miUtary grants.
This again aroused Maryland, and she instructed her delegates
to lay before Congress her protest against this project. This
forced Virginia to a new rehearsal of her claims. There was
with some an attempt to throw disrepute upon Maryland's will
ingness to exempt from her general contention such tracts as
had been " granted to, surveyed for, or purchased by individuals
before the commencement of the present war," by tracing it to
a purpose to save a grant between the Wabash and the Illinois,
which, in 1773, had been made to Governor Johnston of Mary
land in conjunction with Dunmo];e and Tryon.
Some of these earlier grantees did unite in September, 1779,
in presenting a memorial to Congress, In which the representa
tives of the Indiana and Vandalia companies were included.
In this paper they asked to have Virginia's purpose of disposing
of these lands in October prevented. This led to a vote asking
the States to make no grants of such lands while the war lasted.
Virginia defended her right to open a land office, but the mo
tion prevailed (October 30) despite the opposition of herself
and [North Carolina.

170 A YEAR OF SUSPENSE.
The manifestly increasing antagonism to Virginia's extreme
claim did not prevent her still making grants (October) of
these same lands to her soldiers, and taking stepis to open new
routes over the Cumberland Mountains. As confidence in
creased in the ultimate solution of the question against the
Virginia pretensions, Delaware had already accepted the Act of
Confederation in February, 1779, and in November New Jersey
did the same, but both States had done it under protest. Near
the end of the year (December 14, 1779), Virginia's remon
strances grew milder. She was wiUing to listen to " just and
reasonable propositions for removing ostensible causes of delay
to the complete ratification of the Confederation," and to grant
lands within her charter bounds to the continental line of any
or all the States. In obtaining this concession, Maryland had
scored a triumph.
Such was the condition of the controversy in Congress, when,
in the opening of 1780, it had become generaUy recognized that
the future trans-Alleghany extension, both of the claimant
States and of the new Republic, depended on the success of the
military and pioneer movements on each side of the Ohio.
Haldimand bad begun a system of canals round the rapids of
the St. Lawrence, which did much to facIUtate pushing of sup
plies to his western posts, but British attempts to enforce the
pretension of the Quebec Bill on the north of the Ohio, in
efforts directed from Detroit and Mackinac, had so far failed,
notwithstanding the sympathy of the Indian tribes. South of
the Ohio the adventurous pioneers had strengthened their hold
upon the regions of Kentucky and Tennessee in spite of British
and savage raids from north of the Ohio, and threats of the
British agents, Stuart and Cameron, from the side of Florida.
The frontiersmen's success had also so far put an obstacle in
the way of the Spanish pretensions, which France was anxious
to advance.
The Americans had Uttle more than a hope of holding their
western positions north of the Ohio. The expectation of ad
vancing on Detroit was for the present, at least, kept in abey
ance. On the British side the plans of the ministry, committed
in the north to Haldimand, were thus in the hands of one who
had no hesitation in espousing all that the Quebec BiU intended.

ST. LOUIS THREATENED. 171
The plan of Germain to maintain a line of communication be
tween Canada and Florida had indeed been checked by the
precipitate action of Galvez at New Orleans, but it did not, in
their ignorance of the Spanish successes, seem altogether imjDrac-
ticable to Sinclair, or to his superior officer at Quebec. The
commandant at [Mackinac was not informed of the fall of
Natchez till midsummer (July 30), when the tidings came from
Haldimand, who had learned of the misfortune but six weeks
before. Thus in the dark, and supposing that Brigadier Campbell,
leaving Pensacola, would enter the Mississippi some time in
May, Sinclair, when in February the days were palpably length
ening, sent messages to the Sioux and other tribes to unite in
the early spring of 1780 at the Wisconsin portage, and to bring
with them supplies of corn for a campaign. At the same time
he urged AA^'abasha, his Sioux ally, "• a man of uncommon abili
ties," to move with his " people undebauched and addicted to
war " dovsTi the Mississippi towards Natchez, there to act as
circumstances might require.
To divert the rebel attention from this main part of the cam
paign, Haldimand had instructed (February 12) De Peyster, at
Detroit, to arouse the Wabash Indians, and " amuse " Clark,
or drive him from the Ohio rapids, " otherwise the Indian
country wiU be open to the continual incursions of the rebels,
and safe communication will be formed between Fort Pitt and
the Mississippi." The British authorities were soon to learn,
if they had not already been informed, by an intercepted letter,
of Clark's purpose to build a new fort on the Mississippi.
It was March (1780) when the Spaniards at St. Louis learned
of Sinclair's plans, and a few weeks later, in April, some boats,
with supplies which Gratiot had carried up to Prairie du Chien,
were captured by the approaching band.
St. Louis was now a town of a hundred and twenty houses,
principally of stone, with a population of perhaps eight hun
dred, mainly French, and a hundred and fifty negroes. On
May 26, 1780, a force, thought to have comprised about nine
hundred Indians, feU upon some farmers, who incautiously —
for the enemy's approach was known — had gone beyond the
protection of the stockade. Sinclair had hardly feared that
the savages would fail in an assault ; but he was not so confi-

172

A YEAR OF SUSPENSE.

I
FORTIFICATIONS
The cut, showing their relations to the town as it was inlS22. is from L. E. Beck's Oa-'etleerof
g. round tower, h. blockhouse, i. Catholic Chapel, lc. Baptist Church. /. jaU. m. Presby-
dent in holding the place, if once taken. But no assault fol
lowed, partly because of the usual savage unwIUingness to
attack a post which had been forewarned, and partly because
of the lukewarmness. If not insincerity, of Calve and the other
French leaders of the Indians. The break came when the Sacs
and Foxes, alleged to be under Calve's influence, swerved from
the task.
It Is thought that the whole force, which Sinclair had organ
ized, consisted of perhaps fifteen hundred warriors with Mi'O-
pean leaders, while a body of other savages with a number o

SINCLAIR'S EXPEDITION.

173

OF ST. LOTTIS, 1780.
Jllinois and. Miami ri,'AXb!my,lS23. Key : a. line of works. J. tower, c. demi-lunar. /.gates.
terian meeting-house, n. market, u. Missouri bank. p. ferry, g. old windmUl. t. ox-miU.
French traders, inspired by Sinclair's promise to reserve to them
the traffic of the Missouri valley, had been led by Langlade by
way of the Chicago portage. This contingent was expected to
fall upon Kaskaskia in case of success at St. Louis, and to
place the Illinois vlUages under contribution, and to send sup
plies from them to Green Bay and Mackinac, — the support of
which post was at this time creating much complaint in the
communications of Germain. Langlade had for a guide a
certain Monsieur Dnrrand, who had been found with a quantity
of continental money In his possession, and to secure his fidelity
Sinclair had taken possession of all his property.

174 A YEAR OF SUSPENSE.
When the commander at St. Louis had learned of his danger
he had sent word to Clark. Early In the year, Jefferson, the
better to secure the Virginia title to the Kentucky region, had
directed Colonel Thomas AA^alker and Colonel Smythe to extend
the line which separated Virginia from Carolina to the Missis
sippi, and at a point where it reached that river (36° 30')
Clark had been Instructed to build a fort. The site of this pro
posed stockade, known as Iron Banks, was about five miles
below the mouth of the Ohio, in the country of the Chickasaws
and Choctaws, who soon manifested their enmity. The spot
had attracted Governor Henry's attention as early as January,
1778, and Clark in September, 1779, had Issued orders to Induce
settlers to occupy it. Todd had at the same time made sundry
grants, not far distant. Leaving that post to protect the Ken
tucky settlements from other raids, when the news reached him
from St. Louis Clark immediately responded, and twenty-four
hours before Wabasha and his horde approached St. Louis, he
was on the opposite side of the river at Cahokia, watching for
his opportunity. He had no occasion either to cross the [Mis
sissippi or to defend Kaskaskia, and found nothing to do but
to dispatch Lieutenant Montgomery to pursue the retreating
enemy. By June 4 (1780), the first of the fugitive savages reached
Mackinac, those under Calve coming by Green Bay, while
others returned by Chicago. They reported that they had
killed about seventy piersons, had taken thirty-four prisoners,
and they showed forty-three scalps. Sinclair at once sent two
vessels to the Chicago River to bring off the main body of
Langlade's men. This was done in time for them to escape
the attack of a mounted American force, which a few days later
appeared at that point.
So ended Ignominlously the attempt to control the [Missis
sippi from the north. Sinclair brooded on his disappointment
for seven or eight weeks before he got some relief by learning, as
we have seen, that he had not been alone disappointed, for there
had been a similar disaster inflicted nine months before by
Galvez in the lower parts of the Mississippi.
The British force, with which Haldimand had Intended to
" amuse " Clark while Sinclair's expedition followed the [Missis-

BIRD'S EXPEDITION. 175
sippi, left Detroit near the middle of April, 1780, under the
command of Captain Henry Bird. It consisted of about six
hundred men, led by EUiot and the Girtys. It had been fitted
out at a charge of about $300,000. Logan, with a band of
savages, accompanied It, while a force of Huron warriors had
at the same time started In the direction of Fort Pitt, to rivet
the rebels' attention in that direction and intercept any foray
of Virginians on the upper Ohio. It was supposed by the tribes
that retaliation for the continual attacks on emigrant boats
might incite such inroads, and for the fear of such reprisals the
Mingoes and Delawares bad been much alarmed.
Bird had passed by the Maumee portage to the Great Miami,
and on the way Alexander McKee had joined him with some
five hundred Shawnees. The varying reports of his entire force
would seem to Indicate that the fickle savages came and went on
the march as they liked. The Information which Bird got at
Lorimer's Station showed that Clark, was at the falls with two
hundred men, poorly supplied. Bird's purpose, as Haldimand
had directed, was to attack that post, and be had with him two
small cannon, the first guns that had been taken into Indian
warfare. His Indians, however, proved unruly. Haldimand had
warned him that savages cared more to have raids projected
for which they could get advanced gifts, than to participate in
unrequited forays, and Bird's experience did not belie the warn
ing. His red brutes killed his cattle, grew insubordinate, and
finally refused to advance towards the falls. Not wholly to
fail of results. Bird turned towards the mouth of the Licking
and, ascending that stream, captured several Kentucky stations,
and took a large number of prisoners. Having accomplished
no strategic purpose, he suddenly turned back, his captives
bearing the plunder, and reached Detroit on August 4. He
might have inflicted serious mischief on the river by stopping
to waylay the emigrant boats, for something like three hundred
of them, averaging perhaps fifty feet In length, and carrying-
ten persons each, it is supposed, reached the falls during the
season. His precipitate retreat, however, saved him from
Clark, who was now afield with a force he had raised in Ken
tucky. Clark carried a rather high hand In gathering his men,
for he shut the land offices to throw the speculators out of em-

176 A YEAR OF SUSPENSE.
ployment, and stationed guards on the outward trails to take
the arms from fugitives. In this way he gathered at the site of
Cincinnati — opposite the Licking — about a thousand riflemen,
mounted or afoot, and built there a blockliouse on the site of
the future city. It was August 2 — the reports of the date
are somewhat uncertain — when he went forward, carrying a
single cannon in his train. Having moved some fifty or sixty
miles, in dismal weather, he found, on August 6, the Indian vil
lage at Chillicothe in flames. Pie hurried on to PIqua on the
Little Miami, in the region of the modern Springfield. After
a conflict, in which he got no assistance from Benjamin Logan,
who had gone astray with one division of his force, he scattered
the Indians, who under two of the Girtys somewhat stubbornly
confronted him, though Clark brought his three-pounder into
action. He then burned the town and destroyed the neighbor
ing cornfields. He had succeeded in infiicting such a retaliatory
stroke as to save Kentucky from savage raids for the rest of
the season. Clark returned to the f aUs, his force scattering, on
the way, to their homes.
All this, however, was too late to alarm Detroit seriously.
If Jefferson could have compassed it, he would have kept Clark
to the larger project of seizing the straits. Early In the year
(February 10), while uninformed of Sinclair's intentions, Jef
ferson had written to AA'asblngton to inquire if there was truth
in the rumor that Colonel Brodhead was to be sent against
Detroit from Fort Pitt. He added that " these officers [Clark
and Brodhead] cannot act together," and if Brodhead was to
lead an attack on the straits, he would see that Clark was sent
in some other direction. Ten days later (February 21), Brod
head had learned from prisoners that there were four hundred
and fifty men at Detroit and eighteen hundred at Niagara, beside
large hordes of Indians. The numbers troubled him, and he
begged Washington to make a diversion on the Susquehanna
to check any hostile Incursion by the Alleghany.
On March 18, Brodhead Informed AA'ashington that he had
heard from Clark, who was willing to cooperate with him,
" either for the reduction of one of the enemy's posts or against
the Indian towns," and that Clark expected to be reinforced in
the spring. At the same time (March) Jefferson, who had

DETROIT. 177
perhaps misjudged Clark, wrote to this officer that he must
abandon all hope of advancing on Detroit. This letter was
intercepted, and probably banished the anxiety which De Pey
ster had before that felt.
By April, reinforcements and supplies not reaching him,
Brodhead informed AA^ashington (24th) that unless Clark could
join bim, Detroit could not be threatened. Pie complained that
the boundary dispute between Virginia and Pennsylvania, and
the necessity of protecting the local frontiers, had prevented his
suimnoning any mUItia. Clark, as we have seen, was too much
needed at this time at St. Louis to think even of making a
diversion up the Ohio. Brodhead did not willingly abandon
all hope, and tried to get other and perhaps better tidings of
the British force. A scouting party which he sent towards
Sandusky had returned (June 30) without success. Ten days
later (July 10), Brodhead outlined to his lieutenants a march
so far as Sandusky at least, but his purpose was discovered, and
the plan was abandoned. Just as this proved futile, an onset
from the side of Cahokia was attempted and likewise failed.
Colonel La Balme, a man bred to the cavalry service, with a
few score (perhaps a hundred) French and Indians, had started
to surprise Detroit, thinking to arouse the French of the straits
to welcome him. His force, however, was entrapped one night
on the Miami, their leader killed, and his papers taken. This
must have relieved Haldimand of some anxiety.
So the season (1780) ended with much the same equal dis
tribution of loss and sain which had characterized the last two
years, north of the Ohio. The English had pretty well kept
their hold on the tribes. The death of White Eyes, the friend
of Zeisberger and the chief of the peace party of the Delawares,
had left that faction without a head, and it had gone over to
the royal side. At the west, however, the Sacs and Foxes had
pronounced for the Americans. PracticaUy, neither side could
claim to have made good their territorial pretensions ; and there
was continued apprehension on both sides well on to snow-fly
ing. Guy Johnson, commanding at Niagara, and Governor
Todd in Kentucky, were growing more and more anxious ; Clark,
at the falls, was in greater trepidation than De Peyster, at the
straits. Brodhead, at Pittsburg, was complaining of the want

178 A YEAR OF SUSPENSE.
of money, credit, and provisions, and was alarmed at rumors of
a British advance from Detroit.
But on the whole the year (1780) had given better promise
south of the Ohio. Clark had established Fort Jefferson, but
it had only been maintained by fighting the Indians about
it. The situation was insalubrious ; it was difficult to keep it
supplied ; settlers did not like the neighborhood, and finally,
its garrison being needed elsewhere, it was the next year
abandoned. The fight at King's Mountain (October 7) had drawn off a
large part of the fighting militia of Virginia and North Caro
lina, and the Cherokees had seized the opportunity to rise upon
the exposed settlements. Retribution came to them suddenly.
The heroes who had gained the briUiant victory — which is
later to be described — rendezvoused, under Sevier, [Martin,
and Campbell, on the French Broad, and rushed upon the Cher
okee towns. These attacks laid twenty-nine of the savages
low ; seventeen were taken prisoners, and fifty thousand bushels
of corn were destroyed. But one American was kiUed. The
campaign over. Colonel CampbeU (January 16, 1781) reported
to Congress the desirability of erecting a fort at the junction
of the Tennessee and Holston rivers, the better to hold the
country. But nothing, meanwhile, seemed to daunt the eager settlers..
For some years to come, they came into this wilderness at the
rate of four or five thousand annually. They came both by flo
tilla on the Ohio, and by the Wilderness road. Two years later,
there were twelve thousand souls in Kentucky, and in 1784, it
is computed there were as many as thirty thousand. The dis
covery of numerous salt-springs had conduced to this surprising
influx, for the price of that condiment had for some "time been
almost prohibitory. Virginia had divided the country into
three counties, each with its lieutenant, and all three subordi
nate to Clark as general commanding. The old system of gain
ing a fixed extent of soil by squatter right had given place to
treasury warrants, carrying acreages, which were variable, but
defined. The new system was hardly in consonance with the
habits of the squatter population earlier on the soil. In some ,

CUMBERLAND SETTLEMENTS. 179
respects, the ways of life in Kentucky were becoming irksome.
The laws of Virginia were in some aspects burdensome under
their remote conditions. To carry appeals from local justices
to WlUiamsburg was costly. There was a constant tendency
in the older communities to underrate their forbearance with
the Indians.
As the result of such discontent, some six hundred and forty
residents on both sides of the Ohio, in Kentucky and Illinois,
united in May, 1780, in a petition to Congress to be set up as
a separate State, and left to manage their own internal affairs.
The movement proved premature, and was doubtless immature,
and there was no evidence that it was countenanced by many of
the stabler and more experienced pioneers. The east had its
complaints at the same time, and it was not unusual to hear in
Congress more or less apprehension that the "freedom from
taxes, militia duties, and other burdens," as weU as the aUure-
ments of the land offices. In Kentucky, were enticing deserters
from the Continental armies.
Robertson of Watauga, accompanied by some Holston adven
turers, seeking new trails and fairer lands, had, as we have
seen, during the previous autumn (1779), seized upon the bend
of the Cumberland, known as the French Lick, and was now
compacting the new settlement. Late in the winter of 1779-
80, Colonel Donelson, a sharer with Robertson in the move
ment, with thirty boats, carrying some two or three hundred
souls, including the less hardy of the men, but largely composed
of the women and children, — and among them the future wife
of Andrew Jackson, — had started on a perilous voyage down
the Tennessee, and up the Ohio and Cumberland, to the ap
pointed spot. It was not the first nor the last of such river
expeditions ; but it has become better known than the others,
owing to the preservation of the leader's diary. This record
shows the hazards of the wintry stream, and how the flotilla,
beset by small-pox, was whirled in the rifts, and ran the fusil
lades of the cunning Chickamaugas. After all their trials, the
new-comers poled their bateaux up to the Cumberland bluffs
on April 24, 1780, and were welcomed by Robertson. They
found that a stockaded village had been laid out. It was
named Nashborough, after the governor of North Carolina,

180 A YEAR OF SUSPENSE.
when it had been found to be within the charter limits of that
State. The population now scattered along the banks of the
Cumberland was thought to number not far from five hundred.
Some among them had been renegades from the Atlantic slope,
to escape the marauding forces of ComwaUis. Robertson,
before the decision of the settlement's aUegiance was settled,
had been In conference with Clark about a title to the lands ;
but the same survey, as conducted by Henderson for North
Carolina and Walker for Virginia, which had fixed for Clark
the site of Fort Jefferson, had also determined the new settle
ment to be beyond the jurisdiction of Virginia.
Three hundred miles of forest separated it from all neigh
borly succor. Its people were adventurers, but they had
known the value of orderly government on the Holston, and
accordingly, at a meeting convened at Nashborough on [May
1, 1780, Robertson presented some articles of association, and
they were readily adopted. They are supposed to reflect the
form of the constitution of VA^ atauga, which has not been
saved for us, but of this imitation we fortunately have nearly
the whole, with the amendments shortly after adopted. The
two hundred and fifty-six males who signed it declared their
purpose to " restrain the licentious and supply the blessings
fiowing from a just and equitable government." It is a token
of the bloody conditions of their life, that of these two hundred
and fifty-six subscribers, mainly in vigorous early manhood,
scarce a score were alive a dozen years later, and it is said that ,
only one man among the departed had been known to die a
natural death. Nothing better than this shows what living was
in these isolated settlements. If food and powder gave out, it
meant a stealthy march, amid lurking savages, to the nearest
and better supplied settlements. Nothing but the dauntless-
ness of a military leader like Robertson could hold such com
munities to the task of subduing the wilderness. He was now,
under their new articles, the chairman of their board of " judges,
triers, and general arbitrators," and with universal suffrage to
support him, he was to administer the executive business of the
little community till North Carolina set up a county govern
ment in the region in 1783.
The whole region of Tennessee and Kentucky had been
threatened by the success of the British at Charleston in [May

GALVEZ AND POLLOCK. 181
(1780), and by the imbecility of Gates at Camden iu August.
But the over-mountain men from Holston, under Shelby and
Sevier, aided by a regiment of Virginians under Colonel Wil
liam Campbell, had rallied to a self-imposed task and retrieved
those defeats. Mounted almost to a man, with evergreen sprigs
in their coon-skin caps, they had followed their leaders through
the passes, a thousand in number, and perhaps many more, for
the reports are at variance. At King's Mountain, in October,
1780, they encompassed Fergusson and the loyalist militia from
the Carolina coast. The backwoodsmen wonderfully proved
their wily courage, man to man alike in numbers, but it Is to
be regretted that their victory was darkened by some dastardly
acts. Their success had caused a lull, which prepared the way for
tunately for Greene to assume the command of the southern
department before the year closed.
Further south, the success of Galvez in the autumn of 1779,
on the Mississippi, had been followed by the Spanish attack
on Mobile in the foUowing March. Reinforcements joining
him from Havana, Galvez left New Orleans with about two
thousand men, and on the 15th took Fort Charlotte on the
Mobile River in season to defy Campbell, who came to succor
it. The Spanish rule was thereby extended from the Pearl to
the Perdido River.
Meanwhile, Oliver Pollock, in New Orleans, was doing his
best to send powder and supplies to Todd ancl Clark. He
found difficulty, however, in negotiating the paper sent him by
Clark because of the scarcity of specie. He obtained temporary
relief from the private fortune of a Spanish official, and from
the generous acceptance of Virginian bills by one Daniel Clark,
an American whose claim on that State long remained unsettled.
All the while trying to keep up the credit of continental bills.
Pollock was daily diminishing his available cash to the extent
of nearly nine thousand dollars in the aggregate. The depre
ciation of these bills was, on the whole, much less In the Great
Valley than on the Atlantic coast.
There had been throughout the year two problems deeply
affecting this trans-Alleghany region, which had closely engaged
the attention of Congress.

182 A YEAR OF SUSPENSE.
With a population in the States rising three million, and
likely to increase abnormaUy, there was no disposition among
the representatives of the people either to accept the dictates of
France and Spain south of the Ohio, or those of England
towards the lakes. The question practically turned on the free
navigation of the Mississippi as bounding the empire acquired
by the treaty of 1763, and on the control of this western coun
try as a public domain supposed to be capable of meeting the
cost of the war.
Jay, who had been chosen minister to Spain (October 4), to
enforce its claim to the Mississippi just at the time that Galvez
was grasping the lower parts of that river, had found in Madrid
great difficulties in his suits. Congress drew money-biUs on
him, hoping for his success with the Spanish ministry, but that
government broadly intimated to him that their assistance
would depend on obtaining exclusive control of the Mississippi.
Ever since the Continental Congress had sought the recognition
and aid of Spain, the Mississippi question, iu one form or
another, had been a perijlexlng problem. It was made aU the
more difficult through the combined Bourbon interests of Spain
and France, and by the embarrassing dlsjpositlon of a strong
faction in Congress to sacrifice the future of the West by sur
rendering to Spain this control of the Mississippi. The purpose
of this faction was, as Richard Henry Lee said, nothing but a
studied " depreciation of our back country."
The Madrid cabinet insisted that the proclamation of 1763
had divested the colonies of all territorial rights beyond the
Alleghanies. To meet such pretensions. Jay, on his arrival in
Spain, had instructed his secretary, who preceded him on the
way to Madrid, " to remember to do justice " to the rights of
Virginia to the western country.
Jay soon discovered, upon confronting the minister himself,
that it was the object of Spain to entrap the Americans into an
alliance which would have compelled them to continue the war
" for objects which did not Include ours." This sinister pur
pose dawning upon Jay's mind, he had resolved, so far as he
had the power, to yield nothing. " France is determined," he
wrote home, " to manage between Spain and America so as to
make us debtors to French influence with Spain, and to make
Spain obligated to their influence with us."

GARDOQUI. 183
As the negotiations with Gardoqui went on, it was suggested
to Jay that matters between Spain and the United States would
go more smoothly if Jay would only offer the surrender of the
Mississippi. Jay replied " that the Americans, almost to a man,
believed that God Almighty had made that river a highway for
the people of the upper country to go to the sea by ; that this
country was extensive and feeble ; that the general, many offi
cers, and others of distinction and influence in America were
deeply interested in it ; that it would rapidly settle ; and that
the inhabitants would not be readily convinced of the justice of
being obliged either to live without foreign commodities or lose
the surplus of their productions ; or be obliged to transport
both over rugged mountains and through an immense wilder
ness to and from the sea, when they daily saw a fine river flow
ing before their doors and offering to save them all that trouble
and expense, and that without injury to Spain."
Gardoqui replied that the present generation would not need
the river, and that it might be left to future ones to manage
their own affairs. When these complexities were reported to
Franklin in Paris, he replied to Jay (October 2, 1780) : " Poor
as we are, yet as I know we shall be rich, I would rather agree
with them to buy at a great price the whole of their rights
in the Mississippi than sell a drop of the waters. A neighbor
might as well ask me to sell my street door." Congress gave
Jay all the support he needed. " If," they wrote to him, " an
express acknowledgment of our rights cannot be obtained from
Spain, it is not by any stipulation on the part of America to be
relinquished." The French minister at Philadelphia was meanwhile eagerly
abetting the Bourbon interest in the same spirit. He repre
sented to Congress that the United States had no rights to
territory westward from the settlements as they existed at the
date of the proclamation of 1763, and that the east bank of
the Mississippi was British territory, open to Spanish Inroads.
The understanding between France and Spain was apparently
complete, and, as the season wore on, Carmichael, Jay's secre
tary, became convinced that Spain was manoeuvring for delays,
trusting rather to prompt interposition at the general peace to
attain her ends.
MeanwhUe, John Adams, who, in February, 1780, had

184 A YEAR OF SUSPENSE.
reached Paris, clothed with authority to treat for peace, was
flattering Vergennes in May that " an alliance with France was
an honor and a security which had been near his heart." It
was not many weeks, however, before this importunate Yankee
was offending Vergennes by his self-aggression and want of
tact. Fortunately, he saw behind the diplomacy of the wily
Frenchman what Jay, released from his Spanish toils, later
discerned, and what Franklin, In his belief that gratitude to
France was both a duty and good policy, was loath to see.
At Madrid, Jay's Impulses and his instructions allowed him
to go no farther than to promise the aid of America in estab
lishing Spanish hold on Florida, and before this, MIrales, the
Spanish minister in Philadelphia, had been instructed to engage
with Congress for a body of American troops to enter the
S23anish service for that purpose.
On October 4, 1780, Congress had further upheld Jay by
new instructions, and Madison drew uj) the case of the United
States. It was reported to Congress on October 17, and was
at once sent to Franklin and Jay. It represented that the
Illinois and Wabash regions were under American jurisdiction,
and that the mouth of the Ohio and the course of the Missis
sippi down to 31° were controlled at Fort Jefferson. It was put
to the credit of the United States, and not to that of Virginia,
that this condition prevailed ; and Virginia, at the same time,
proposed that the Mississippi below 31° should be guaranteed
to Spain, if Spain would guarantee " to the United States " all
above that parallel.
The Americans were making rather than confirming principles
in international law. Claims to the free navigation of a river
whose mouth was held by an alien were not then to be settled
by any well-established conclusions In which all nations agreed.
The freedom of the Rhine had been determined by the Treaty
of Westphalia In 1648 ; but that of the Scheldt was yet to be
left unsettled by the Peace of Fontalnebleau in 1785.
This action of Congress in October was hardly done when
the IU success of Gates in the south and the sense of insecurity
which Arnold's treason bad caused produced one of those
revulsions to which strenuous times are liable, and in Novem
ber, 1780, there were signs that Congress, on the urgency of
South Carolina and Georgia, was weakening its position. It

VIRGINIA AND THE NORTHWEST. 185
was known that, on the one hand, England was endeavoring
to disjoin Spain from the French alliance, and, on the other,
it was an every-day occurrence that Luzerne, in Philadelphia,
was bringing to bear all the pressure be could to effect the pur
pose of France and the interests of Spain. With this turn of
affairs. Congress approached the end of 1780 with not a little
unrest from sectional discord. Virginia was admonishing New
England that if she weakened on the Mississippi question, she
might rue it when the question of the fisheries was to be settled.
In respect to the other problem, the year (1780) had opened
with an encouraging outlook. New York had stepped forward
with a proposition to cede to the States the claim which she
professed to have acquired (1701, 1726) from the Iroquois to
the western lands. She argued that the grant to the Duke of
York had barred the claims of the New England colonies, while
that of Virginia was estopped by the rescinding of her charter
and the grant to Penn, which preventions gave precedence to
the Indian claim which she advanced. It was in fact the least
valid of any of the claims, but was good enough to give away
as a precedent. On February 19, the New York Assembly
authorized her delegates to make either an unreserved or a
limited cession. The act was read In Congress on March 7.
Six weeks later, that State authorized Congress to restrict her
western limits.
These actions had their effect in Virginia. Late in June,
Joseph Jones wrote to Jefferson : " Could Virginia but think
herself, as she certainly is, full large enough for vigorous gov
ernment, she, too, would moderate her desires, and cede to the
United States, on certain conditions, her territory beyond the
Ohio." George Mason, In July, formulated the Virginia i^ropo-
sitions. These were to give up the country between the west
bounds of Pennsylvania and the Ohio, north of Mason and
Dixon's line (being the region since known as the Panhandle), If
Congress guaranteed to Virginia her remaining territory, which
he claimed to be bounded by the north bank of the Ohio on one
side, and by the North Carolina line (36° 30') on the other.
This cession of the territory north of the Ohio was contingent
upon seven conditions : First, that the territory should eventu
ally be made Into not less than two States. Second, that Vir-

186 A YEAR OF SUSPENSE.
ginia should be reimbursed for Clark's expedition and aU other
attending expenses. Third, that the French settlers should be
protected In their titles, and defended against incursions from
Detroit. Fourth, that one hundred and fifty thousand acres
should be reserved as bounty lands for Clark's soldiers. Fifth,
that the cession at the falls made to Clark by the Wabash In
dians should be confirmed to him. Sixth, In case Virginia did
not have land enough south of the Ohio to make good her mili
tary bounties, that she should have it on the north. Seventh,
that all the territory not thus reserved should be held in com
mon by aU the States, and that all Individual purchases of land
should be void. '
An impulse to hasten the completion of the confederation
was palpably growing, and, on September 6, Congress urged
the States claiming a western extension to " remove the only
obstacle to a final ratification of the articles of confederation,"
and make a united cession of these disputed territories. Con
gress had been brought to this, not only by the New York act
of February 19, but by consideration of counter representa
tions made by Virginia and Maryland. A few days later (Sei>
tember 12), Madison felt sure that the crisis had passed. In
October, there were new hopes for a while. Connecticut offered
to cede her charter claims beyond the mountains, provided she
could retain jurisdiction. Congress, with the otherwise encour
aging prospect, was not disposed to hamper the transfer, and
declined to meet the conditions. On the same day. Congress
ordered that all ceded lands should be held for the common
benefit of all the States, — the initial legislation for a pubhc
domain, — but at the same time recognized the rights of the
States to be reimbursed for the cost of maintaining their claims,
It was further agreed that these lands should be divided into
republican States and become candidates for admission to the
confederation. ,
The year closed with Tom Paine in his Public Good attack
ing (December 30) the Virginia pretensions to their charter
rights. Pie dwelt on the vague definition of the charter of
1609, as admitting no such precision of bounds as Virginia
claimed, and in the belief which at that time prevaUed of the
narrowness of the continent, no such imperial range of bounds
could have been contemplated. Contemporary newspapers

RESULTS IN 1780. 187
aUege that Paine's sense of justice was based on promise from
the Indiana Company of twelve thousand acres of this same
land, though Conway, his latest biographer, disputes the state
ment. Paine outlined a plan of setting up a new State of nearly the
same limits as the present Kentucky ; and by the sales of its
territory he expected to replenish the national treasury. Ham
ilton was one of the few who did not expect much aid to the
treasury in this way. " Back lands," he says, " are a very good
resource in reserve ; but I suspect they will not have so much
present financial efficacy as to be useful to procure credit."
So, upon the whole, the year 1780 closed in the west with
good omens, if with checkered results in actual accomplish
ment.

CHAPTER XL
EAST AND WEST.
1781.
The year 1781 was practically the last year of the war on
the Atlantic slope. Greene had shown the highest ability in
the south in snatching the fruits of victory from defeat, and
ComwaUis had been entrapped at Yorktown. The year had
opened sadly in the revolt of the Pennsylvania line, and the
depreciation of the continental paper had gone on, so that by
midsummer the bills were In effect valueless. Scarce a sixth
of the taxes could be collected ; and the confederation, after it
was perfected, seemed but a mockery of " the firm and per-
p)etual league of friendship " which it professed to be. No one
felt its futility more than Washington, and he had complained
to his personal friends, " I see one head graduaUy changing
into thirteen. I see one army branching into thirteen." Yet
with all this, there came the flash at Yorktown, and the year
closed along the seaboard with hope.
Beyond the mountains there had been, during the year, the
old iteration of cross movements, with no real gain to either
combatant ; but in Congress a first step, as will be later shown,
had been taken in giving a continental control to the " crown
lands " reserved in the proclamation of 1763. While these
cession movements bade fair to solve the problem of the con
federation's asserted extension to the Mississippi, and to estab
lish a ground for a boundary at the peace, the Spanish claim t»
that river was still a source of anxiety. On the same day on
which Virginia had proposed an inadmissible cession (January
2), Congress, as we shall see, had Instructed Jay to yield the
Mississippi to Spain, rather than lose her aUiance. Likewise
on the same day (January 2), an ex]iedition left St. Louis to
plant the Spanish flag within the disputed territory. Under the
lead of Captain Pourre (or Plerro), a force of sixty militia and

GALVEZ IN FLORIDA. 189
sixty Indians marched two hundred leagues across the Illinois
region, and fell upon an EngUsh post at St. Joseph (near the
modern Niles in Michigan), captured it, secured prisoners, and
then quickly retreated, and were back in St. Louis in March.
Both Franklin and Jay, when they heard of it, were prepared
to believe that Spain had attempted the incursion merely to
establish a claim to be advanced at the peace when, under pos
sible diplomatic complications, a mere dash across the country
might count against the steady hold which Clark had flxed
upon the Illinois.
Before Pourre had returned to St. Louis, Galvez, on February
28, started with a fleet, conveying fourteen hundred men, to in
vade Florida. He appeared before Pensacola and, despite some
defection In his naval auxiliaries, he pushed his transports,
under fire, past the English fort into the inner bay. The ad
miral was chagrined, and followed in Galvez's wake. The fort
beat off the fleet, and Galvez brought up his land forces and
opened trenches. A breach was made in the waUs by the ex
plosion of a magazine, and while storming parties were organiz
ing, the British, on May 9, hoisted the white flag. Thus all of
west Florida feU into Spanish hands, and Spain had secured
a coveted foothold on the flank of the Southern States. Eight
hundred troops, with which Campbell, under Germain's orders,
had expected to secure the lower Mississippi, were sent pris
oners to New York under parole, but to the discontent later of
the Spanish government. During the absence of Galvez, and
on the rumor of his defeat and of a British fleet being in the
Gulf, the British settlers and the loyalists, including the Con
necticut colony, living about Natchez, rose (April 22) upon
the Spaniards and by a ruse overawed them. Colonel Hutch
ins once more (April 29) spread the British flag upon Fort
Panmure, while the Spanish garrison marched to Baton Rouge.
Upon Galvez's triumphant return, the insurgents were In dan
ger of his resentment, and fled across the country to Savannah,
making a painful march of one hundred and thirty-one days.
Some of them feU into the hands of the hovering bands of
patriots, and the rest reached that town in October. It is a
story of prolonged misery which Pickett has told in his Ala-
hama.

190 EAST AND WEST.
While Spain was thus successful at the south and had, by a
dash at St. Joseph, attempted to give effect to her diplomatic
pretensions in the northwest, the real struggle as to the future
ownership of the great stretch of country between the AUegha
nies and the Mississippi was to drag on for another year along
the Ohio and on its affluents.
It was still in the autumn of 1780, and at the close of the
active campaigning of that year, the dream of Jefferson to make
at last an effective demonstration against Detroit, by which
Virginia would be relieved of maintaining five hundred or a
thousand men in the westem wilds to protect her frontiers and
outlying settlements. Jefferson had appealed to Washington
to give the movement continental sanction, and to furnish the
munitions and supplies, while Virginia caUed on her militia.
To give and to take counsel in the initiatory steps, Clark had
come over the mountains, and was representing in Richmond
that the government must be prepared to confront the coming
season something like two thousand British and Indians In the
western country. The problem was how to anticipate the as
saults of such a body and carry the war Into the enemy's coun
try. When Jefferson, in September, 1780, had been sendmg
prisoners from Richmond to New York for exchange, he had
not given up Hamilton, for fear of the active energies that
officer might Impart at Detroit if he should rejoin his old com
mand. Clark's futile attempts to reach Detroit had already
cost Virginia something like half a million pounds of the cur
rent money, and it was computed that another three hundred
thousand must be added to that, if the present expedition should
succeed. Jefferson hoped, as we have said, that this pecuniary
aid would come from the Continent, while Virginia supplied
the men. He sent out orders for the frontier militia to gather
at Pittsburg, on March 1, 1781, but he imparted to the county
officers no definite plan for the campaign. There was, how
ever, no misunderstanding as to the purpose between Clark and
the governor, and Clark was in his daily councUs.
Steuben was during the winter trying to impede the raids
of Benedict Arnold along the James River, and Clark, still at
the east, entered into these defensive movements with alacrity,
leaving Jefferson, meanwhile, to direct the preparations which
were going on at Fort Pitt. Late In December, 1780, Jeffer-

CLARK'S NEW PLANS. 191
son drew up Clark's instructions, charging him not only with
the capture of Detroit, but with securing control of Lake Erie.
He promised him two thousand men, and assured him that
ammunition and packhorses would be at the falls of the Ohio
by March 15. If preparations were then completed, Clark
would be able to take advantage of the early break of the ice in
the AYabash, and reach Lake Erie before the enemy could move
their forces across it. Washington, in reply to Jefferson's ap
peals, was at the same time dispatching orders (December 28,
1780) to Brodhead, commanding at Fort Pitt, to furnish all
the troops he could, including an artillery company, and to
avoid raising questions of rank with Clark. Jefferson had asked
Washington to give Clark a continental commission, to prevent
any question of rank, but Washington had declined because
Glark was on strictly state service. In January, 1781, Clark,
fingering still at Richmond, was made a brigadier-general of the
Virginia forces, " to be embodied In an expedition westward of
the Ohio." They were destined for a campaign which was
to be rendered unusually active by a widespread uprising of the
Indians In the British interests. At least, so felt Slaughter,
who held the faUs in Clark's absence, and who was disturbed by
the rumors which reached him. Stories of this kind induced
Jefferson, on January 13, to ask Steuben to release Clark from
his engagements on the seaboard, in order that he might pro
ceed Immediately to the western country. Thus withdrawn
from further participation in the movements on the James,
Clark, who proceeded to Pittsburg, found little to encourage
him. Weeks went on, and there seemed to be little chance of Clark's
securing the two thousand men which Jefferson had promised,
though, on February 13, the governor had informed him that
Steuben had consented to Gibson's acting as his lieutenant
and taking his regiment with him to the west. Continual
alarms in Kentucky and the invasion of tide-water Virginia
were keeping the fighting men at home, and Jefferson, finding
the militia loath to march from their settlements, had called
(February 16) upon some ' of the county lieutenants to urge
volunteers to rally around Clark.
Washington had sent Clark little aid, and it may be doubted
if the commander-in-chief felt much confidence in a hazardous

192 EAST AND WEST.
movement of militia, liable to scatter at any sudden rumor of
an Indian raid upon their homes. We find Clark in March,
1781, complaining to Washington that Brodhead, who had de
clined to detach Gibson's regiment, kept men from his ranks,
but the commanding general could well make allowance for the
environments of danger at Fort Pitt, where Brodhead hardly
knew whom to trust. He had, however, more than once (Feb
ruary 25 ; March 27) assured Washington that Clark should
have his best support, while he accounted to the commanding
general for the apathy of the militia by saying that " they are
availing themselves of the unsettled jurisdiction." Brodhead's
condition was Indeed desperate. He could get no supplies, and
there was every Indication of his being very shortly enveloped
by hostile savages.
Late in the winter (February, 1781) it was known that the
Delawares outside the Moravian influence were moving west
ward along Lake Erie, professedly in search of game ; but it
soon became certain that they were putting themselves within
the range of British Influence. When the spring fairly opened
and the Cherokees were making hostile demonstration In the
southwest. It was only too apparent that the Americans had
hardly a friend among the warring tribes of the Ohio valley.
With this condition of things, Brodhead, on April 7, led, with
something of desperation, one hundred and flfty regulars from
F'ort Pitt against the recusant Delawares. At AA'^heeling his
little force was strengthened by about as many militia under
Colonel David Shepherd. Brodhead crossed the Ohio, feU upon
the Indian town at Coshocton, laid it waste, destroyed the cat
tle and stores, and returned with his plunder. He had by this
movement pushed the Delawares back from the Muskingum
and Tuscarawas, and forced them to the Scioto and Sandusky,
and they never returned. Some Christian Delawares, whom he
had encountered at the Moravian stations, followed him back to
Fort Pitt. Brodhead's success was in part owing to the misap
prehension which Simon Girty, now by De Peyster's orders
among the Wyandots, bad of Brodhead's strength. While the
American expedition was pursuing its devastating march, Girty
supposed that It comprised at least a thousand men, and that
Clark had already started down the Ohio with as many more,
It was this false information that held the Wyandots back.

CLARK'S INSTRUCTIONS. 193
That Clark's enlistments suffered from these movements by
Brodhead was clear; and the failure of Washington to send
him recruits, as well as the uncertain jurisdiction of Pennsylva
nia and Virginia, rendered it very doubtful if he could move
down the river by the middle of June, as he hoped to do. More
than once in May (21st and 26th), Clark appealed to Wash
ington. " It has been the influence of our post on the Illinois
and Wabash," he says, " that has saved the frontiers, and in a
great measure baffled the designs of the enemy at Detroit. If
they get possession of them, they will be able to command three
times the number of valuable warriors they do at present."
The difficulty between Brodhead and Gibson was ripening.
The latter officer, prevented by Brodhead from aiding Clark,
was restless under the deprivation, and Clark intimated to
Washington that positive orders from him would give Gibson
the release he longed for.
The exact scope of Jefferson's instructions to Clark had not
yet been divulged, and what Clark let fall favored the belief
that his purpose was in reality to succor the exposed Kentucky
settlements. This pretense of Clark was evidently accepted by Haldimand,
when he heard of it, as his true intent, for as early as May that
general was sending word to Sinclair and De Peyster that the
Americans would not enter Canada, and they must be attacked
along their frontiers. He advised De Peyster to cease pamper
ing the Sandusky Indians, and to keep them busy in breaking
up American settlements north of the Ohio.
It was thus while the British were thinking themselves safe
from assault north of the lakes, and intent on making their
Indians wage a vicarious warfare, that Clark, near the close of
July, 1781, embarking a force of only four hundred, out of the
two thousand promised to him, and carrying three fieldpieces,
began to move down the river from Pittsburg. On reaching
AVheeling, he wrote to the governor — no longer Jefferson, who
had resigned on June 1 — that he had " relinquished all expec
tations. I have been at so much pains," he says, " that the dis
appointment is doubly mortifying." His only hope was that
he should learn that Detroit had not been reinforced, which
might yet encourage him to attempt its capture. As he went
on, his force alternately diminished and grew by desertions and

194 EAST AND WEST.
additions, and It bore a rather heterogeneous aspect when, on
September 1, he reached Fort Nelson at the falls. De Pey
ster, at Detroit, better Informed at last than Girty, had rather
tardily sent down to the Ohio a force of a hundred rangers
under Captain Andrew Thompson, and three hundred Indians
under McKee, to watch for a favorable moment to waylay Clark.
Joseph Brant and George Girty — the latter formerly one of
Willing's marauders — were, fortunately for De Peyster, already
astir. On August 24, at a point eleven miles below the Great
Miami, they fell upon a flotilla of mounted Pennsylvania volun
teers, one hundred and seven in number, under Colonel Archi
bald Lochry (Loughrey), foUowing In the wake of Clark, and
seeking to overtake him. A letter to Clark, sent forward hy
this lieutenant, had been intercepted and revealed the situation.
Clark had not reached the f aUs when every man of this force
was either killed or captured. They had landed to cook their
breakfast and feed their horses, when they were suddenly at
tacked from both sides of the river. A third of them were
kiUed, and the rest surrendered ; but the colonel and others,
unable to march, were later murdered.
Three days afterward, the victors, moving up the Great Miami,
met McKee coming laggardly down from Detroit. The com
bined bodies were not deemed to be sufficient to assail Clark,
now in his stockade at the f aUs, as they had learned on Septem
ber 9, when within thirty miles of that point.
The enemy soon broke up, and a part, some two hundred in
number, bent on mischief, were led by McKee and Brant to
wards the Kentucky settlements. Meanwhile Clark, fearmg
attack, lay inactive at the falls. About the same time, a Chero
kee chief, aided by some of these raiders, threatened the
Cumberland settlements ; but Robertson effectuaUy repulsed
the assailants, and gained prestige enough to hold, for a time
at least, his neighbors, the Choctaws and Chickasaws, In the
interests of his people.
As the summer advanced, the northern Indians gathered for an
attack on Wheeling. Zeisberger, the Moravian, who had learned
of the savage purpose, sent (August 18) warning messages, so
that the attack when it came was expected, and the garrison of
Fort Henry was prepared. The enemy were baffled, and with-

BRODHEAD AND GIBSON. 195
drew, but not tiU they had taken some prisoners, and from one
of them they had learned that the Moravians had forewarned
the garrison. The result was hardly to be avoided. The Mo
ravians had proved spies and tale-bearers, while claiming immu
nity as neutrals, and, if the evidence is to be believed, they had
been tortuous in their replies when accused of it. Gnadenhiitten,
their settlement on the Tuscarawas, was therefore broken up
by a party of Indians, Tories, and French partisans, under Mat
thew Elliot, who drove the missionaries and their Delaware
neophytes to Sandusky first, and later to Detroit (October 25),
where they coidd do less mischief.
Brodhead, who had been complaining (August 29) to Wash
ington of the dissensions in his camp, owing to a divided head
ship between himself and Gibson, could have had little regret
when, on September 17, he withdrew from Fort Pitt, leaving
Gibson in command. Neither this new commander, nor Clark
at the falls, had any longer a hope of reaching Detroit. Brod
head had been withdrawn by order of Washington, who at the
moment of the change was closing about ComwaUis and York-
town. The brilliant outcome in October of this movement in
the Virginia peninsula gave W^ashington for a time little oppor
tunity to think of the situation on the Ohio, and of the barren
issues there of the year's campaign.
But neither Clark's abortive aims at Detroit, nor Greene's
defeats in Carolina, were without results that told in the end.
Greene could say of Eutaw (September 8) that it was " the
most obstinate fight he ever saw," and that " victory was his."
Notwithstanding the distresses of the campaign, Greene had
rendered Yorktown possible. Clark had still a stronger hold,
feeble as it was, on the northwest than De Peyster had. He
had some seven hundred and fifty men at the falls, fed on rot
ten buffalo meat, and the savages surrounded him, and far and
near the settlers were forted, but, as Haldimand acknowledged,
Clark had still kept the British on the defensive between the
Ohio and the lakes, a condition which occasional raids of the
savages did not relieve. Haldimand charges it upon the capri
cious conduct of the Indian allies of the British that Clark's
fate had not been decided, and the terror of Clark's name
had done much to create that capriciousness. That Clark had

196 EAST AND WEST.
escaped the expected fate determined, as it turned out, the
future territorial allegiance of the great northwest.
Cold weather settled down in November with Haldimand still
Ignorant of the fate of CornwaUis, and looking forward to
another season of hostilities on the Ohio. Now that Yorktown
had determined so much on the seaboard. Congress, which re
ceived an official notice of that victory on October 24, was
within a month, as Livingston informed Franklin (November
26), preparing for an active campaign for the next season.
When Franklin heard the great news from the Virginia penin
sula, he wrote from Paris to John Adams : " The infant Hercules
in his cradle has now strangled his second serpent," referring
to the news from Saratoga which sealed the French alliance
four years before.
Washington, scanning the future, saw the necessity of forc
ing decisive results beyond the mountains in the next cam
paign, and for this object General William Irvine was sent to
take command at Fort Pitt. One of the earliest reports which
Irvine made to Washington was that Lochry's neighbors of
Westmoreland County, in Virginia, were disheartened at the
havoc which that officer's defeat had made among the flower of
their young men. They were accordingly seriously thinking of
abandoning their county in the spring. On the other hand,
the fact that the Indecisive campaign of the last season in that
region had not deprived the Americans of any territory had
already, ,as Irvine reported (December 3), instigated " people
of different places to concoct plans to emigrate into the [Indian
country, there to establish a government for themselves." This
Impulse was in large measure owing to the continued uncer
tainty of the limits of the jurisdiction of Pennsylvania and
Virginia. An agreement had been reached in the preceding
April by which the five degrees from the Delaware should be
determined on the southern boundary line of Pennsylvania.
There had, however, been delays In running the bounds, so that
the weary settlers were threatening to migrate beyond the dis
puted territory, and Irvine was reporting to Washington, In De
cember, that until the lines were drawn the militia were useless.
There was also, doubtless, an adventurous spirit and some am
bitious projects interwoven with these restless motives. It was

PENNSYLVANIA BOUNDS.

197

owing, perhaps, to the stringent acts which Pennsylvania passed
against such an exodus that the Virginians in greater numbers
than the Pennsylvanians were joining in the removals. The
line which was expected to set at rest these disturbances was
not in fact actually run in a provisional way till November of
the next year (1782), and it was not confirmed till three years
later (1785).
Irvine felt that while the present time demanded, first of all,
military success, it was not wise to inaugurate such remote

 12°~N-Lat-

y\

PENNSYLVANIA

\W- fOKT PITT

VV

-'¦¦-39'' N.L

PENNSYLVANIA AND VIEGnSTlA BOUNDAET DISPUTE.
Note. —This cut is from N. B. Craig's Olden Time, Pittsburg, 1846, vol. i. p. 449.
¦ff^ ¦¦  is the finally established Pennsylvania line  (curved and straight) is the
line claimed by Pennsylvania.  is the line proposed by Dunmore. — o — o — o is the
line proposed by Virgima to be continued north by the curved line.
autonomies. He was doubtful If even the established Kentucky
settlements, or such posts as Fort Mcintosh, could be sustained
till more peaceful times came. His purpose was to prepare the
immediate frontiers against savage raids, and then to devote all
available resources to following up the Indians to their destruc
tion, and to waste no time in merely burning their towns. He
planned in the end to make, if he could, a sudden attack upon

198 EAST AND WEST.
Detroit. He had no purpose to hold the straits, if he got pos
session of them, for the distance to Detroit was too great to
transport supplies, and the British would still command the
lakes. He expected only to make a dash and do as much damage
as he could, and then retire, hoping in this way to impress the
Indians and acquire a temporary respite tlU the final influence
of Yorktown towards a peace was made clear. Washington,
In his correspondence with Irvine, recognized the necessity and
expediency of the movement, but nothing could weU come of
the project during the winter.
The tenacity with which, under all his disappointments, Clark
had maintained his grasp on the northwest during 1781, made
that year such a turning-point in the struggle with the mother
country beyond the mountains as Yorktown had proved to be
on the Atlantic slope. Not less important was the firm step
forward which the States had made in the same interval in
determining their political relations to this western country.
Just one year from the time when New York had indicated a
scheme of compromise, Virginia had retreated from her first
pretensions so far as to offer (January 2, 1781) a cession of
jurisdiction over the country north of the Ohio, if Congress
would agree to certain conditions. To one of these, that the
region should ultimately be partitioned into States, there could
be no objection. Nor was it unreasonable to require Congress
to reimburse her for defending this same region from the as
saults from Detroit, for there was then unsettled on her hands
the just claim of Oliver Pollock for a very large sum which he
had advanced to Clark in his necessities. Congress knew well
enough its own indebtedness to the same ardent patriot, who
had beggared himself in the cause, and had parted with all
his property in New Orleans at a sacrifice, in his efforts to
repay the money which he had borrowed from the chest of
the Spanish king. Congress, as well as Virginia, had caused
Pollock's embarrassment, and it might well meet the obligations
of both. It was furthermore no unexpected stipulation that
the French Canadians inhabitins: this region, and who had so
readily changed their allegiance, should be protected in then
landed rights ; that all bounty lands which had been promised
to the soldiers should be respected. It was no hardship for

THE CONFEDERATION FORMED. 199
Congress to agree that all royal grants in that country should
be held to be void. But when, by implication, Virginia asked
that the claims of New Y'ork, Massachusetts, and Connecticut,
and that aU claimants under native grants, both those of indi
viduals and of the Indiana Company, should be disregarded,
and that the Kentucky country should be guaranteed to her, she
arrogantly asked more than Congress could possibly concede.
To take these and all other propositions, from whatever source,
into consideration. Congress on January 31, 1781, instituted a
committee, who proceeded to caU upon all the claimant States
and grantees to make a showing of their rights.
New York moved promptly, and directed her delegates to
execute a deed to Congress of the territory west of a self-im
posed boundary following the meridian of the westem end of
Lake Ontario, but requiring a guarantee of her territory east
of that Une if Virgima secured such a pledge. This deed was
executed on March 1, and Maryland, having authorized her
delegates in anticipation, on the same day signed the articles of
confederation, in the belief that the crisis was passed. The
next day Congress began to head its bills, " Tfhe United States
in Congress assembled."
Matters rested till October, when, just as the toils were tight
ened about CornwaUis, and a committee of Congress stood
ready to hear Virginia and her rivals formulate their respective
claims, that State stood aloof (October 16) and contended that
any presentation of her position was not consistent with her
dignity, and ten days later she vainly tried to embarrass the
committee and limit its powers.
On November 3, the committee made its report. They rep
resented that they had not obtained from Virginia the same
assistance which had been furnished them by the rival claim
ants. The committee, as was expected, made the most of the
opportunity to aggrandize the Iroquois claim of New York,
both north and south of the Ohio, and to belittle that of Vir
ginia. They attempted to show this depreciation by setting the
rights of the Iroquois, the grants which the traders of the Indi
ana Company had received, and the limits fixed by the procla
mation of 1763, against the charter rights of 1609. [ft was
farther claimed that the crown lands as George the Third had
defined them had fallen naturally to the revolting colonies as

200 EAST AND WEST.
a whole. The grant to the Vandalia Company, though legally
instituted, was held to be too large for public poUcy, while it
might be expedient to make some compensation to the propri
etors in the final settlement ; but that the assumed holding of
the lUinois and Wabash Company had no warrant in law what
ever. The committee closed with urging Virginia to make an
unrestricted cession. Madison, who was fea'^ful that Virginia
would take deep umbrage at the report, still hoped that the
seven States necessary to act on the committee's report would
save Virginia from such humiliation, and Indeed the report as
a whole was never acted upon, since it was seen that the cession
movement could get on better without such friction. And here
the matter rested at the close of 1781.
We have seen that, beneath the lowering skies of the open
ing of the year (1781), Congress had taken the initiative and
Virginia, notwithstanding her recent reproach to New Eng
land, had abandoned her demand for the free navigation of
the Mississippi in order better to gain the adherence of Spain.
Jefferson sent Instructions to that effect to the Virginia dele
gates on January 18. Some weeks later, Virginia moved in
Congress that the river below 31° be yielded to Spain, if she
would guarantee the free navigation to the United States above
that point. On February 15, Congress, supine and In despair,
instructed Jay to yield, if it was found necessary to the securing
of a Spanish alliance. As the weeks went on, there was a prac
tical abandonment of all beyond the mountains, except so far
as France might dictate the retention. Congress was even
ready, pending an acknowledgment of independence, to agree to
a truce with England, if France and Spain would deny that gov
ernment the occupation of all it had claimed. The degradation
was complete when, on June 11, to Luzerne's delight, nine States,
which were mainly those occupied by the enemy, forced through
Congress a vote, leaving absolutely to France the definitions of
the American bounds. Luzerne felt so sure of his victory that
he Informed his governinent that Congress would be content
with the Ohio, if not with the Alleghanies, as a frontier. The
surrender to France once made, all sorts of notions prevailed as
to what could be saved of the westem country. It was hoped,
by yielding the Fort Stanwix grant of 1769 i3eyond the Kanar

J4Y IN MADRID. 201
wha, — requiring at tb6 same time the destruction of aU neigh
boring fortified post^aj^to satisfy France ; but if more was
demanded, theyJippejlTto appease the Franco-Spanish avidity
by yielding, " fpp t^jSse of the Indians," Niagara and western
New York, aq^-jaMps western slope of the Alleghanies, except
so far as tbe JfejaPTof Pennsylvania covered the territory about
the forks o^^Hwiio. These alternative schemes are outlined
in a paper^^HRverneur Morris, preserved in the Sparks man
uscripts. 4RHp^a at one time (June 8) tried in vain to get
a vote in_Wpi» the western bounds were defined as leavlne' the
St. LawW^ej^here the 45th parallel struck that river, and then
proceejpfeljY the lake to the Miami (Maumee), and so to the
sourc^v^^e IlUnois, and down that river to the Mississippi,
but not another State had the courage to insist upon it and
save the conquest of Clark.
While everything was fluttering to the death in Philadelphia,
the soul of Jay in Madrid was rasped almost beyond endur
ance. He knew the ministry to be " insincere and mysterious,"
and it is pretty well proved, as he then feared, that his letters
were opened in the Spanish post-office. He was conscious that
those to whom he was granting diplomatic courtesies knew
more of what Congress had done than was permitted him to
know. He got intimations from Gouverneur Morris that led
him to conjecture the truth.
FinaUy, however, he obtained his luckless instructions, and
on July 13 delivered them formally to Florida Blanca. He
could now, at least, talk with him for the future upon terms
more equal.
By August, Congress had received Jay's response. Joseph
Jones gives us his version of Jay's chagrin : "• The Dons are
playing a game wholly for themselves."
When Congress awoke to this, with a spurt of valor, it voted
August 10, unanimously, to yield nothing to Spain. Before
this determination could have reached Jay, he sought to force a
decision out of the laggard and tortuous Spanish ministers. On
September 22, he made a formal proposition to relinquish the
navigation of the Mississippi below 31°, intimating the great
ness of the concession, inasmuch as it must retard the settle
ment of the country. He told the minister that the concession
' must be accepted immediately, for it could not be held to if

202

EAST AND WE'ST.

deferred to the general peace. He assuiaed this bold front with
the same spirit with which he had tried- fc. impress on Congress
that their wavering was a mistake, arm^^i any spirit was
better than one "of humiUty and comf^^b." The bluster
failed, and Jay was obliged to confess taH^gress, when he
next wrote (October 3), that Spain insiste^^^Mbe entire con
trol of the Gulf of Mexico, and the exclusiv^^^^^tion of the
Mississippi. " The cession of the navigation c^HHliississIppi
will. In my opinion," he added, "render a ^H^war with
Spain unavoidable. "
Before the president of Congress had receiveci^'s, |^liver
Pollock at New Orleans, with ample knowledge, walwAag to
the same official that the United States must insist ^fakiort
of deposit near the Houmas village, twenty-two leagd|§^fcve
New Orleans, where there was high land, and that they n^Et
claim a pilot stand at the Balize.
Four days after Pollock wrote this, CornwaUis surren
and there was clearing weather.

1

CHAPTER XII.
peace, 1782.
The surrender of CornwaUis ; the disposition of Parliament
to peace ; Conway's successful motion (February 22) to dis
continue the war, which led North to exclaim, " We are beat
completely ; " Burke's triumphant hopes, — all were recognizar
ble signs of the coming end of the dragging conflict. The
British held a few ports on the seaboard, but by July they had
evacuated Savannah. Such Atlantic footholds were not likely
to interfere with America's securing an unbroken coast from
Maine to Florida, though there was to be an attempt to make
the country east of the Penobscot the price of the final surren
der of such ports.
While there was little opportunity for French machinations
along the eastern slope of the Appalachians, it was otherwise
beyond the mountains, and the progress of events in the great
western vaUeys might in the coming months (1782) be of
cardinal importance in settling the ultimate bounds of the
Republic. Possessions in the northwest, as' they stood, favored the per
manence of the American occupation, if there should be no
great disaster during the coming season (1782). Haldimand,
as commanding along the northern frontier, showed no disposi
tion to be active. Guy Johnson was eager to make a dash on
Fort Pitt, and Rocheblave, now restored to the Canadian ser
vice, thought that a show of force on the Ohio might swerve
the Kentuckians from their allegiance to the confederated
States ; but Haldimand gave little encouragement to any move
ments beyond a projected one of De Peyster to dislodge the
American settlers about Chicago.
Clarke stiU held his post at the falls, and was anxious to
make it the rallying-place of patrol boats on the Ohio, but with
a treasury of four shillings and " no means of getting more,"

204 PEACE, 1782.
he could do little. The place, however, was already beginning
to bustle with a transit trade. One Jacob Yoder, an adventur
ous trafficker, had brought in the spring some merchandise
from the seaboard to the Monongahela, and from Old Redstone
on that stream he had floated it down the river to the falls. In
search of an ultimate market in New Orleans.
There was a belief that by faithless acts, some Moravian
Indians, who had returned to the Muskingum, had threatened
the quiet of the river. So, with little hesitation, a party of
Pennsylvanians, under David WUliamson, had ruthlessly fallen
upon them. It was a natural retribution when, in June, Colonel
Crawford, under Irvine's orders, led a party against the Dela
wares on the Sandusky, and this unfortunate leader was captured
and burnt at the stake. In August, a stiU harder blow was
dealt by Captain Caldwell, with a p)arty of British rangers and
Indians, dispatched by De Peyster, when an attack was made
on Bryant's Station, resulting, a day or two later. In a counter
struggle of some mounted Kentuckians at the Blue Licks.
This conflict proved to be one of the severest defeats which the
frontiersmen ever sustained. A few weeks later, a force of
British and Indians made an assault on Fort Henry (Wheehng).
Colonel Zane and a feeble garrison happily sustained themselves
till succor arrived. Before the season closed. Major Craig,
sent from Fort Pitt, made a useless reconnoissance (November)
towards Sandusky, while at the same time Clark, animated by
revenge for the season's disasters, starting from the faUs, led a
thousand men against the Miamis, and devastated their towns.
It was the last brilliant dash of a man who, amid the whirls of
disappointment, was soon to surrender himself to evU habits,
and drop out of memorable history. He had now made the
final rude onset against British power in the northwest, as he
had made the first four years before.
Though Haldimand, on the British side, had, in the main,
throughout the season counseled defensive measures, it had not
been easy for him to prevent retaliatory strokes. Brant had
hoped, while the year was closing, to give a finishing blow.
Before the progress of the negotiations in Paris were known
to presage peace, this savage chieftain had planned an attack
on Fort Pitt, but learning of the excellent condition in which
Irvine had put that post, he desisted.

NEW YORK AND VERMONT. 205
Thus it happened that negotiations for peace were going on
in Paris while the fortunes of a desultory conflict were swaying
hither and thither beyond the mountains. There was in the
west, as in the east, no marked change in the position of the
combatants as the season closed.
It was, consequently, as we shaU see, mainly the attitude of
France and Spain touching this very western country, rather
than the demands of England, which caused perplexity in the
settlement of the boundaries of the new nation. Indeed, the
good results of the final treaty we mainly owe to England, for
by playing into the hands of our more bitter enemies, France
and Spain, she could have seriously hampered the young Re
public at its birth.
While the surgings of the war had not affected the relative
possessions of the beUIgerents in the west, the relations of the
States to that territory had, pending the negotiations for peace,
been carried to an effective stage. Congress was brought in
January (1782) squarely to affirm that the confederated States
had succeeded to aU the charter rights of the sea-to-sea colonies,
as abridged by the Treaty of 1763. Thus the ground was con
veniently cleared when, on May 1, 1782, Congress set itself to
consider the committee's report of the preceding November 3.
The main thing to be dealt with was the acceptance or refusal
of the deed which had been offered by New York. There were
reasons why Virginia kept a jealous and watchful eye upon her
Northern rival. The Southern State saw danger in the press
ing Vermont question, for if that district was admitted to the
Union, it meant, as New York claimed, that Congress could
decide between a State and a portion of the same State seeking
autonomy. Such a result might prove a precedent, as Virginia
saw, for Congress to partition that State's domain in accepting
Kentucky. The success of Vermont would bode further ill to
Virginia, in that the admission of that Northem State to the
confederation would swell the vote of the non-claimant States,
in considering the proposition of the committee to despoil Vir
ginia of her rights, by accepting the conflicting claims of her
rival. New York. It was clear to Virginia that if Congress
decided for New York, it threw the whole force of the confed
eration against her.

206 PEACE, 178S.
The country was In something like a death struggle, and was
impressed with a belief (however futile It proved to be) that a
public domain at the west was going to furnish means to pay
the expenses of the war. Under these circumstances, there was
little chance that the rival claims of Virginia and New York
would be dispassionately weighed, since measures in legislative
bodies are not always, under the stress of war, pushed to just
conclusions. The question of the relative value of these rival claims has
not indeed proved easy of solution in later times. Bancroft
holds all claims but Virginia's to be invalid. The Supreme
Court of the United States, In Johnson v. Mcintosh, while pro
nouncing against Indian titles as opposed to European pre
emption, may seem so far to have sustained the position of
Virginia. But the historical question is complicated by the
royal annulment of her charter in 1624, though the Virginia
publicists have contended that further action in 1625 showed
that the consequent possession by the crown of the original
territorial limits did not deprive "the colony of its rights of juris
diction ; nor was this again affected, as they further claimed,
by the proclamation of 1763. In Congress, at least, at this time
and later, the native grant was sustained, and pointedly, for the
Indiana title, being a native one, was upheld, and the A'^andalia
title, being a royal preemption, was voided.
We have seen that Thomas Paine had raised a new issue in
giving a construction to the terms of the charter of 1609 which
was opposed to that maintained by Virginia. The charter, it
will be remembered, makes one of the lines running back from
the coast proceed due west, while the other turns northwest,
and both by a vague implication were supposed to strike the
western ocean. Virginia's due west line was the North Caro- ^
Una boundary, and the northwest one that which cut off the
western parts of Maryland and Pennsylvania and extended
indefinitely towards Alaska, abridging thereby also the west
ern extension of Massachusetts and. Connecticut. Paine's due
west line struck back from the coast at the Maryland line,
while his northwest line struck inland at the south till it joined
the west line or entered the western sea. This water was
held at that time (1609), as Paine contends, to be so near the
Alleghanies and beyond their western slope that the two lines,

NEW YORK CESSION. 207
as he understood them, would probably touch the sea before
they coUided, and so warrant the expression of the charter,
that they extended to that sea. Paine contended that this
construction gave a more reasonable limit to the colony than
the extent claimed by Virginia, which was large enough to
embrace fifty colonies. It wIU be seen that this view disposed
at once of the controversy so long and bitterly waged by Vir
ginia with Maryland and Pennsylvania, and affected the juris
diction of the upper Shenandoah.
Congress, however, was clearly determined not to decide be
tween disputed interpretations, if a settlement could be reached
by the voluntary quitclaims of the rival States. The mani
festations of the hour were easily colored by predilections.
Madison fancied the Middle States, which had been opposed
to Virginia by reason of the numbers of their citizens who
were interested in land companies, were now drawing to the
Virginia side. The Northern people said that Virginia was, on
the contrary, losing ground, and even Madison, rather than con
tinue the contest, at last felt disp)osed to yield everything that
would not benefit the arrogant land companies. The purpose
of these he thought might be thwarted by setting Kentucky up
as a new government. Indeed, if Irvine's observations were
correct, there had grown during the sunimer, beyond the moun
tains, a strong disposition for more than one such separate
government. The question of the acceptance of the New York deed came
up in Congress a month before the peace commissioners in Paris
had closed their labors, ancl Virginia Stood alone in casting her
vote against it. After a struggle of six years, the policy to
which the constancy of Maryland had contributed, but which
Congress had more wisely shaped, was now established. The
New York deed, based on the various treaties with the Iroquois
in 1684, 1701, 1726, 1744, and 1754, as the committee's report
of August 16, 1782, enumerated them, conceded to Congress
the fee in the territory between the lakes and the Cumberland
Mountains, with a stretch westward, and all under a title which
' Madison styled " flimsy." He charged New York with urging
her jurisdiction, not so much to maintain it, as to secure some
'' credit for her cession of it. The true Virginian plea was that
•¦ the Iroquois, while they could confer the right of occupancy,

208 PEACE, 1783.
could give no title against the prior discovery of other Chris
tian people. If the New York title had validity, it reaUy left
to Virginia but a remnant of her supposed jurisdiction to be
surrendered as Indisputably hers. Congress had decided that
to accept this New York claim was- sufficient for the occasion, as
setting an example to be followed by the other claimant States,
and its action practically banded the confederation In that ob
ject. Unless Virginia was bound to stand for her rights, — and
the event proved she was not, — and unless Connecticut and
Massachusetts and the States south of Virginia were to assume
a position equaUy perverse, — and the event proved they were
iiot, — the question of a great public domain was thus oppor
tunely settled, a month before the provisional treaty of peace
was signed at Paris, when Congress, on October 29, voted to
accept in due form the deed offered by New York.
While thus in two important ways the relation of the AVest
to the new Republic had been settled on its own soil, we need
now to turn to a consideration of the diplomatic foil and fence
at Paris, which were ended on November 30, 1782, in a provi
sional treaty of peace.
This diplomatic struggle had resulted in a distinct American
triumph, owing In large measure to the prevision and "daunt
less convictions of Jay, and to a natural revulsion in the minds
of the other American commissioners against both open and
sinister efforts of Vergennes, — a revulsion reluctantly reached,
however, by Franklin. John Adams was confident that the
western population could not be appeased if their expectations
were abridged, and he had proved himself a courageous ally of
Jay, and had Insisted that with firmness and delicacy — the
latter not precisely his own trait — the commissioners could
get all for which they contended. Franklin was never any
thing if not politic. Shelburne's opinion of him was that "he
wanted to do everything by cunning, which was the bottom of
his character," and most Englishmen have taken that view of
him ever since. He was certainly never more astute — which
may be a more pleasing word — than in now yielding to Adams
and Jay : and he was never more successfully judicious than in
disarming the resentment of Vergennes, when that minister dis
covered how he had been foiled. So peace and independence

PEACE SECURED. 209
were triumphantly won, and what the AYest most needed for its
future development was gained.
The new boundaries had been settled on lines that ultimately
startled even those who had conceded them, and constituted one
of the grounds for the later assaults by Fox and his adherents.
Of the eight hundred thousand square miles of territory with
which the young Republic entered upon her career, one half of
it, of which France and Spain would have deprived her, lay west
of the Alleghanies. This broad extension was but the begin
ning of an ultimate domain, which is measured to-day by three
and a haff miUions of square miles. The courts in the United
States have always held that the territory secured through this
treaty was not a concession of conquered lands. It was rather
the result of a rightful partition of the British empire upon
lines which had bounded the American colonies. Livingston, in
letters to Franklin in January, 1782, had enforced this view:
"The States," he says, "have considered their authority to grant
lands to the westward coextensive with the right of Great
Britain." This extension to the Mississippi, he again says, " is
founded on justice; and our claims are at least such as the
events of the war [referring to Clark's successes] give us a
right to Insist upon," while the settlements in the West "render
a relinquishment of the claim highly unpolitic and unjust."
To secure these bounds, the American commissioners had
acted almost defiantly towards France. Lee understood their
spirit when he asked in Congress : " Shall America submit the
destiny of the west to France, while Spain, her ally, stands
ready to grasp It? " Hamilton read Congress a lesson, when he
said that it was not France who could have extorted from us
" humiliating or injurious concessions as the price of her asslsi>-
ance," but Congress, who placed France in a condition to do it,
by imposing on the commissioners the obligation of deferring to
Vergennes. This degradation had been felt in Congress, and
to a demand to recede from it, the friends of those Instructions
had apologized for the injunctions by declaring them only for
mal ; but no one then knew that France had Intrigued to secure
their enactment as a means to save the western country to
Spain. It was fortunate that under Jay's lead the commission
ers disregarded those instructions, and Adams certainly did not
construe them as imposing the necessity of following the advice
of Vergennes.

210 PEACE, 1782.
When Livingston, after the treaty wa;s signed, called the
conduct of the commissioners in question for making the treaty
without the privity of Vergennes, Jay. fittingly replied that
France could have no complaint, since the treaty had nothing in
contravention of the treaty of 1778 ; that it could not be bind
ing till France had concluded a general treaty ; and that the
instructions presupposed France would act in the interest of
America, while It was proved she was planning for Spain's and
her own advantage. This explanation of Jay gave the tone to
the advocates of the commissioners in Congress. Richard
Henry Lee said that France deprived herself of the right of
privity when she began to plot against her American ally.
Rutledge and Arthur Lee contended that the public good re
quired the action of the commissioners.
" The English," said Vergennes, when it was all over, " had
bought rather than made a peace." While aU Europe was
wondering at the British concessions, it is not difficult to under
stand the British motive. The party of peace, which Grenville
Sharp represented, had got the upper hand. The stubbornness
of King George and his advisers had given way to those indu-
'^itable principles which often wreck the present to settle the
future. It had become necessary to decide whether Canada
should be environed with a kindred people, or with the race of
Bourbon aliens.
As early as January, 1782, Livingston, in the uncertainty of
the future, had Intimated to Franklin that a neutral Indian
territory beyond the mountains would be preferable to a direct
British contact in that direction. In this the American foreign
secretary was not probably fully aware of the purposes of France
and Spain. In June, D'Aranda gave to Jay a copy of Mitch
ell's map, on which he had marked what he proposed to make,
if he could, the western limits of the American States. It
showed a line running north on the back of Georgia to the
mouth of the Kanawha, and so to Lake Erie. It afforded a
recognition of the grants which had been later made in the ter-
Note. — The opposite section ot n Carle gfnerale lies Treize Etats Unis et IndipendaiUs dl
I'Amerique Septentrionale d'apris M. Buniie, Iiigeiunir Hydrography, dela Marine deFra"":
1782, shows the French view of the limits of the United States, to be allowed by the treaty,-*
line running south from " Sandoskg fort " on Lake Erie. The dotted line at the top of He map
extends to Sandusky on Lake Erie.

,*/""*5i— v.'"^^.

212 PEACE, 1782.
ritory restricted by the proclamation of 1763. AU this was
as far as the Bourbon cabinets were inclined to go. To this
was opposed the American argument that the very prohibitions
under that proclamation were an acknowledgment of the States'
inherent charter rights, which that instrument had only tempo
rarily assailed, as Livingston had rehearsed to Franklin.
This line drawn on Mitchell's map was the first clear indicar
tion of what Spain was striving for. D'Aranda coupled his
graphic argument with claiming that the Spanish capture of
the Illinois fort had pushed their rights eastward tlU they
reached the territory belonging to the Indians. Jay hardly
needed the promptings of recent instructions from Livingston
to deny the Spanish conquest and to maintain the American
rights. Rayneval now put Into Jay's hands a paper in which he tried
to show that after 1763 England had never considered the
western country a part of her " established " colonies, and that
Spain never acquired the territory above the Natchez. The
country between the Spanish possessions and the AUeghanies
was, as he claimed, the inheritance of the natives, and to secure
them in their rights he proposed a tortuous line, running north
from the Gulf to the mouth of the Cumberland, on the east
of which the Indians should be under the protection of the
Americans, and on the west the Spanish should have a similar
supervision, with an exclusive right to the navigation of the
Mississippi. In September, Jay acquainted Vergennes that it
was his determination to abate nothing of the Mississippi claim.
It was a sign to the French minister that he had both alertness
and firmness to deal with in the American commissioners.
De Grasse, after being captured by the British fleet in the
West Indies, had been taken to England, and, passing on
parole from London to Paris, he Is thought to have carried an
intimation from the EngUsh cabinet which induced Vergennes
to send Rayneval to the English capital. Oswald believed that
Rayneval's object was to bring Shelburne to allow that both
banks of the Mississippi should go to Spain. If he could have
accomplished this, Vergennes, as Rayneval intimated in a paper
which he gave to Jay, was prepared to support England at the
final settlement in a demand for the limits of the Quebec Act.
Rayneval had never agreed with Jay's views, and had thought

VERGENNES AND SHELBURNE. 213
any concession made by the American commissioner too small.
[Ln pressing upon Shelburne the necessity of hemming the
Americans in on the west, he revealed for the first time to
the English cabinet what was reaUy the purpose of France
and Spain, and opened the English mind to what North had
warmly contended for, — the integrity of the bounds of 1774 in
the Ohio valley, both as a justice to their Indian allies, and as
preserving the forts which they had erected north of the Ohio.
It brought back the old proposition of Vergennes, made two or
three years before, of closing the war by dividing the western
country between England and France.
Vergennes's present purpose was patent. He wished to
weaken the United States, and he desired to have England
acknowledge that the bounds of Canada ran to the Ohio, so
that if ever a tum in fortune rendered it possible, France
could recover by treaty her possessions in the St. Lawrence
vaUey. Just what Rayneval's purpose was in this EngUsh
mission has been a subject of controversy. Diplomatic denials
in the mouth of such a man count for little. If we take his
ostensible instructions as evidence, they contravene the charac
ter of both Vergennes and his creature. It is necessary always
to remember that Vergennes never had any purpose but to
aggrandize France.
Shelburne was clearly suspicious. He saw that to release
the Americans from the French toils, and from any evil to
Britain resulting therefrom, was to give the new nation an
extent of territory which would conduce to its dignity and
buttress its independence against Bourbon intrigue.
Oswald, the English agent, in talking with Franklin, signifi
cantly hinted at the recent Russian discoveries " on the back
of North America" as affording a possible base for a friendly
power to move against Spain, if that country drove both Eng
land and the United States to extremities. " This appeared a
Httle visionary at present," said Franklin, " but I did not dis
pute it." •
So the Spanish and French Bourbons were thwarted in reality
by the adhesion of England to her old colonial charters, and by
her purpose to make them an inheritance for her emancipated
colonies. The conquest of the northwest by Clark told In the
final result rather more against the pretensions of Spain than

214 PEACE, 1782.
against those of England. Clark himself, in March, 1780, had
suspected that Spain would gladly have had the British capture
all posts east of the Mississippi, so that they might be retaken
by her troops, to establish there a claim which would serve to
help her to their possession at the peace.
Congress had indeed formulated its right to the trans-AUe-

SOUROE or THE MISSISSIPPI.
[A reference to BO well known a map as this of " North America " by Samuel Dunn, dated in
1774 (nearly twenty years later than Mitchell's), and making part of the American MiUlary
Pocket Atlas, issued for the use of British officers, by Sayer and Bennett, London, 1776, only six
years before the negotiations of 1782, might have thrown doubt on the geography of the earlier
map, if much attention had been paid to the point.]
ghany country on these ancient charters, and It had not recog
nized that there was in the proclamation of 1763 any abatement
of those rights. Neither In the negotiations at Paris, nor in
the planning for a public domain, had this profession been lost
sight of.
Of the territory which the treaty had saved to* the Ameri
cans, Jefferson said at the time in his Notes on Virginia: " The
country watered by the Mississippi and its eastern branches
Note. — The opposite map is from " A Plan of Captain Carver's Travels in 1766 and 1767," in
his Travels, London, 1781. It shows the relation of White Bear Lake (toucliing 47°), the supposed
source of the Mississippi, to the Lake of the Woods.

.:^J

l^ed'

iteBe

haksi

^ATJDOWESSI

^[LAIIirs

216 PEACE, 178S.
constitutes five eighths of the United States, two of which five
eighths are occupied by the Ohio and its waters ; the residuary
streams which run into the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic, and
the St. Lawrence make the remaining three eighths."
Under her treaties with France and Spain, England claimed
a right to use the Mississippi from Its source to the sea, and
the new treaty following an offer which Jay had made through
Vaughan, when he sent him to England to counteract the plots
of Rayneval, confirmed to the United States an equal share
with England in that navigation, and Shelburne, at the time
in ignorance of the attendant geography, imagined that Brit
ish manufactures were by this privilege likely to find a new
market. The denial of this British right to the river by Spain
led, as we shall see, to complications which gave some romantic
interest In the near future to the history of the western settle
ments. England's claim to that right rested now, curiously
enough, on the supposition that the upper reaches of the Great
River were available for shipment or travel from Canadian
territory, ancl when the source of the Mississippi was found to
lie wholly within the American domain, and when the purchase
of Louisiana in 1803 bad secured both banks of the Mississippi
to the United States, England abandoned the right, and made
no reference to it In the treaty of 1814.
The concession of territory which the treaty made to the
United States In the extreme northwest was everywhere a sur
prise. Luzerne wrote to Vergennes : " The Americans, in push
ing their possessions as far as the Lake of the Woods, are
preparing for their remote posterity a communication with the
Pacific." The prophecy has been fidfiUed.
A discontent, much like that of France, was at once mani
fested in Canada at the line which the treaty had given the
United States on the north. There was a widespread feeling
among the Americans that England would never consent to
dividing the Quebec of 1774. General Irvine, when in com
mand at Fort Pitt, had felt confident of this. Haldimand had
long struggled to make the Quebec Bill effective. Now when
he saw that his efforts had not only failed on the Ohio, but that
farther east the Americans had gained Niagara and Oswego,
he felt a sense of shame in the necessity which it involved of

THE TORIES. 217
removing the Iroquois, the British allies, to the other side of
Lake Ontario. This necessity made Sir John Johnson call the
treaty an " infamous " one.
The surging of the war had not made the fate of the Ohio
country certain, notwithstanding the brilliant exp)loits of Clark.
The negotiations at Paris had accordingly lingered, with many
counter-plots, as we have seen, over the destiny of that region.
Franklin at one time had feared that England was trying to
detach France from the American alliance by offering to restore
Canada to her, and but for Rodney's defeat of De Grasse
(April, 1782), there might have been some chance of it. The
English, on the other hand, had had their fits of distrust for
fear that France might prevent the United States coining to
an independent negotiation, when the Ohio country would have
been the consideration In other diplomatic bargains. That Eng
land had a lingering hope in some way to secure that country
as a refuge for the loyalists is evident. " We did not want
such neighbors," said Franklin, who had been too much ex
asperated against the Tories soberly to estimate what a loss
the country was to suffer by their expulsion. Franklin Indeed
had suggested to Oswald that these political outlaws should
even be denied a home In Canada, and that the American juris
diction ought to extend to the Arctic circle and so accomplish
their exclusion. He added, with a mock graciousness, that per
haps some of the Canadian waste lands could be sold to Indem
nify the royalists for the confiscation of their estates. This
was an intimation that he very soon regretted he had given.
He confessed, however, that there might be some Americans
who felt that Canada In British hands would be the best guar
antee of the American Union.
It has been claimed by Dr. Wharton, in his International
Law Digest (Hi. 913), that if Franklin had not been hampered
by his fellow negotiators, he would probably have secured
Canada to the United States, but there is Uttle ground for such
a belief. He could have had as little hope of it, when the test
came, as Vergennes had of restoring the ancient reign of France
within its borders. Grenville, in a letter to Fox, stated the
question squarely when he said that England would naturally
see little reason to give away a fourteenth province, after she
had lost thirteen.

218 PEACE, 1782.
The acquisition of the country between the Ohio and the
lakes, the joint control of most of the midland seas and the en
tire jurisdiction over others, was of itself a prosperous stroke.
It carried a sufficient success, even though England did not
concede the navigation of the lower St. Lawrence, which she in
fact denied down to the conclusion of the reciprocity treaty
In 1854.
There had been, during the closing months of the negotia
tions, more than one proposition as to these northern bounds
submitted to the English ministry.
Rayneval, as we have shown, had been content to leave the
question to English diplomacy, never once questioning that she
would stubbornly stand by the Quebec Bill, and Vergennes,
when the final negotiations were approaching, had written to
Luzerne that the Americans had no claim whatever to carve
away any part of the Quebec of 1774. Oswald, however, had
felt the pressure of Franklin, and he had pointedly reported to
Townshend that to reduce Quebec to the limits which It had
mider the proclamation of 1763 was "necessary and Indispen
sable " to a j)eace. Accordingly, Townshend, on September 1,
instructed the British agent to consent " to a confinement of the
boundaries of Canada, at least, to what they were before the act
of Parliament of 1774, if not to a still more contracted state
on an ancient footing." This was practically an acceptance of
the NIpissing line of 1763. Jay met the occasion within a
short time, and on October 5 put into Oswald's hands some
articles which Franklin had approved, and which embraced
this NIpissing Une, which turned from the St. Lawrence at 45°
north latitude, and ran straight to Lake NIpissing, and thence
to the source of the Mississippi. Three days later, Oswald
forwarded the draft to London for his Majesty's consideration.
The line did not, as Franklin had anticipated, prove satis
factory, and Strachey, one of the under-secretaries, was sent to
Paris to strengthen Oswald's hands, bearing a letter to him
dated October 23. There had intervened some mUitary suc
cesses for the British arms, and the ministry felt more encour
aged In their ablUty to press a recognition by the United States
of the loyalists' claims to the Ohio country. Accordingly,
Strachey was expected either to secure this, or, as an alterna
tive, to push the northeastern boundary from the St. Croix

THE BOUNDARIES. 219
westward to the Penobscot. But it was too late, and the Amer
ican commissioners were as firm as ever.
In November, Strachey sent to the foreign secretary a new
draft of a treaty, accompanied by a map which showed Os
wald's line, and two others, now submitted by the Americans,
who were prepared to accept either one of them. One of these
lines foUowed the 45th paraUel due west to the Mississippi,
thereby accepting the peninsula between Lake Ontario and
Lake Huron in lieu of what now constitutes the upper parts of
Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. The other proposition
was a line starting from where the 45th parallel touched the
St. Lawrence, and foUowing the mid-channel of river and lakes
westward and beyond Lake Superior. This line took the re
verse in the exchange of peninsular territories. Strachey, in
his letter accompanying the draft, recommended that certain
" loose " expressions in it should be " tightened " in the en
grossment of it in London, and premised that the American
commissioners were " the greatest quibblers " he had ever
known. They had been quibbling to some effect.
The foreign secretary, on November 19, at the instance of
the Duke of Richmond, adopted the mid-lake line, and urged
the signing of the treaty before the assembling of Parliament.
Eleven days later it was signed, and in sending it the same day
to London, Strachey wrote : " God forbid. If I should ever
have a hand in another peace ! " John Adams said : " The
peace, depended absolutely upon the critical moment when it
was signed, and haste was inevitable."
On December 10, Strachey, who bad in the mean while gone
to London, wrote back to Oswald that he had found " Mr.
Townshend and Lord Shelburne perfectly satisfied." The sat
isfaction did not prove, however, sufficient to insure quiet.
The American commissioners might well congratulate Liv
ingston that the bounds which they had secured showed little to
complain of and not much to desire. But in England upon
second thought, and In Canada at once, there was little of such
complacency, because of the weighty loss which befell the mer
cantile interests. The trade of Canada was not very great, but
it was Its all. Shelburne congratulated himself that while
Canada afforded only £50,000 annual revenue, he had put an

220 PEACE, 1782.
end to the war which had cost £800,000 a year. The treaty's
partition of the valley of the Great Lakes had, moreover, dealt
a blow to Canada in throwing more than half of the west
ern trade in skins — reckoned at £180,000 — into the con
trol of the Americans. It was estimated that not far from
four thousand Indians of the watershed of the upper lakes were
accustomed to gather for trade at Mackinac, which was also
by the treaty brought within the American bounds. Haldi
mand, by dispatching Calve to them, lost no time in trying by
seductive speeches to keep these tribesmen faithful to British
interests. The North AVest Company of Montreal stood ready
to profit by such opportunities as long as the surrender to the
Americans of the western posts could be delayed. Through
this jDOstponement the company was enabled for some years to
control the trade of the more distant west through stations at
La Baye and Prairie du Chien.
The traffic which the Canadians had long conducted through
out the region northwest of Lake Superior was now likewise
threatened by the Grand Portage becoming, under the treaty,
the American boundary. This passage was the water-way —
called by a misconception in the treaty Long Lake — which with
some interruptions connected Lake Superior with the Lake of
the Woods. The trade passing along this communication had
amounted to about £50,000 annually, and there were nearly
three hundred men yearly following it at the end of a course of
eighteen hundred miles from Montreal. Haldimand, prompted
by the solicitude of the Canadian traders, had advised them
not at present to throw any doubt on the divisionary line which
was to be tracked along these linked and unlinked waters.
To question it would, he feared, lead to a joint survey, and that
to a disclosure to the Americans of the channels of trade in
that direction. Meanwhile the Canadians had beg-un to search
for another portage wholly on British ground, and one Frobisher
had speedily found it by the way of Lake Nepigon.
This passage of the Grand Portage was supposed by the
commissioners in Paris to be the true source of the St. Lawrence
waters by a water-way of a steady incline, but broken by darry-
ing-places. It was really known by those more famiUar with
the country to be cut by a divide which turned the streams on
one hand to Lake Superior and on the other to the Lake of the

THE GRAND PORTAGE. 221
AA''oods. Modern exploration, indeed, as the line is run, has
shown several minor divides in addition. It is said that the
suggestion of making this broken current the line of the treaty
came from one Peter Pond, a native of Boston, who had been
connected with the North West Company, and whose represen
tations were accepted by the English commissioners. This
was easier for them, because Pond's statements seemed to be
in accordance with Mitchell's map of 1755, the principal one
used by the negotiators. In this map, as in all the contempo
rary maps. Lake Superior is shown to be well fiUed with islands ;
and the mid-water line, athwart the lake, was defined as passing
the northern end of Phillipeaux Island on Its way to the Grand
Portage. This was in accordance with a belief that the north
end lay nearly opposite 'the entrance of the , water-way. The
fact is, .that it is much more nearly on a line vath the south end,
and ky thij misconception the intemational line on modern
maps makes a^jm^^ected turn in order to throw that island
on the Amelfcati side. .
It was at lfhat time ^rafo suppled that a . line passing from
Lake Superior up this ,waler-way and crossing the Lake of the
Woods would at the tior^west angle of that lake strike the
49° of latitude, and if ^eJI continued due west on that parallel,
that it would strike the Mississippi somewhere in its upper
parts. Mitchell bad not exactly figured this condition in his
map, but it could be inferred from what he did show.
In 1785, this same vagrant Bostonian Pond made, as we shall
see, a plot of this region, in which he was the first to emphasize
the fact that the Mississippi really rose far south of the 49° of
latitude, and so cut off Englishmen from the chance of navigat
ing that river. This development actually left a space of about
one hundred miles between the springs of the Great River and
the Lake of the Woods. In this interval there was, of course,
by the treaty no definition of bounds, — a difficulty solved after
Louisiana was acquired by dropping the line due south from
the lake till it reached the 49th parallel, along which the
boundary was then carried west to the mountains.
The proclamation of 1763 was the cause of other difficul
ties on the southern border. Florida at the general peace was

222 PEACE, 1782.
restored to Spain, England having held it since 1763. It was
the sole success of the miserable intrigue in which Spain had
been engaged, and if the later admission of Lord Lansdowne
(Shelburne) is to be believed, England yielded it now in the
hopes that it would embroil the United States and Spain In the
future. Whether yielded for that purpose or not, It certainly
became a bone of contention, and D'Aranda is said to have
warned his sovereign that it would.
Its retention by England would, under the secret clause of the
new treaty which had been agreed upon, have stopped the bounds
of the Republic at the latitude of the mouth of the Yazoo, 32°
28', Instead of carrying them farther south to 31°, — another
result of the proclamation of 1763, and equally the source of
later troubles with Spain. Notwithstanding such a diminution
of the Republic's area. Jay had hoped the negotiation would
have left west Florida in the hands of England, and in the
usual ignorance of the geography of the source of the Missis
sippi, he urged it upon the English commissioners as affording
near the mouth of that river a complement of the commercial
rights which they acquired at the source.
The fact that England in the proclamation of 1763 had an
nexed this debatable territory — now containing perhaps ten
thousand Inhabitants — to west Florida, as weU as Galvez's
successes in capturing the English posts within It, was the
ground of the claim which Sj)ain urged for possessing to the
Yazoo. If Congress, in 1779, had yielded to the importunities
of Patrick Henry, and had succeeded in doing what Galvez
later did, the secret clause of 1782 might have proved effective.
As it was, the success of Galvez had been at the time grateful
to Congress, and when, at the close of the war, Oliver PoUock
presented to that body a portrait of his friend, the Spanish gov
ernor. It was accepted " In consideration of his early and jealous
friendship, frequently manifested in behalf of these States."
If the United States, in the conclusions which had been
reached, had any occasion for gratitude. It was because In the
perilous issue England for a brief Interval showed something of
that " sweet reconciliation " which Hartley and Franklin had
talked so much about, for that temporary blandness came, as
John Adams said, at the right moment to serve America's terri-

VERGENNES. 223
torial ambition. Certainly, the United States had no ground
for gratitude to France or Spain, neither of which had any other
intention than to aggrandize the other, humiliate England, and
cripple America. Fortunately, to secure these results the inde
pendence of the United States was necessary, and this was the
only proposition to which Vergennes was constant. There was
indeed no reason to expect anything else of the Bourbon polit
ical twins. " The Americans know too much of politics," said
TaUeyrand, " to believe in the virtue called gratitude between
nations. They know that disinterested services are alone enti
tled to that pure sentiment, and that there are no such services
between States." This was the key to the diplomacy of that
age, and times have not much changed.
Sparks in his time, and Wharton of late years, trusting too
implicitly in the public and even confidential professions of Ver
gennes and Rayneval, — two so expert masters of duplicity that
they needed constantly to struggle to prevent duplicity becom
ing masters of them, — have believed that the suspicions of Jay
and Adams as to the purposes of France were without founda
tion, and that Franklin had the clearest conception of the situa
tion ; but the publications of Circourt, Fitzmaurice, Doniol,
and Stevens have indicated that the insight and prevision of
Jay was true, when, a fortnight before the treaty was signed,
he wrote to Livingston as follows : " This court is interested in
separating us from Great Britain, and on that point we may, I
believe, depend upon them ; but it is not their interest that we
should become a great and formidable people, and therefore
they wUl not help us to become so. It is their interest to keep
some point or other in contest between us and Britain to the
end of the war, to prevent the possibility of our sooner agree
ing, and thereby keep us employed in the war and dependent
on them for supplies. Hence they have favored and will con
tinue to favor the British demands as to matters of boundary
and the Tories."
The provisional treaty was made definitive on September 3,
1783, after England, France, and Spain had agreed among
themselves to other terms of peace in the preceding January.
The interval since the signing of the preliminary treaty had
aUowed England time, through new political leaders in the coali-

224 PEACE, 1782.
tion with North, which Fox managed, to recover from her trac
table mood, and the final treaty was signed by those who did
not formulate it. It was useless to hope in the revision for the
rectification of what John Adams called " inaccuracies," and
its language was unchanged.

CHAPTER XIII.
THE INSECURITY OE THE NORTHWEST.
1783-1787.
The war for independence was over. Jefferson reckoned
that the struggle had cost the people of the United States
something like $140,000,000, while it had caused England the
ineffectual expenditure of at least five times as much. It was
acknowledged in the House of Commons that every soldier sent
across the sea had cost £100 sterling. Brissot, with only ap
proximate correctness, put it rather strikingly : " The Ameri
cans pay less than a mlUIon sterling a year for having main
tained their liberty, whUe the EngUsh pay more than four mil-
Hon sterling additional annual expense for having attempted
to rob them of it."
But this monetary disparity was no test of the far greater
loss which Great Britain had suffered. Her dominion had been
curtailed by a miUion square miles, as it was then computed,
and this territory constituted an area best assured of a future
among aU her possessions. Her prestige was Injured, and her
hereditary enemy across the Channel gloated on the spectacle.
Her colonial children had been divided : a part of them were
left suspicious of her, the rest were looking to her for substan
tial recognition of their loyalty. Her savage allies had been
turned over to the tender mercies of those whose possessions
they had ravaged. There was a population of about three and
a quarter miUIon, mostly her kin in blood, whom she had alien
ated when she most needed their support. All this had hap
pened because her ministry were blind to the advance of human
ideas, and were stubborn in support of an obstinate king, who
could not see that the world moved on, and that there was an
inevitable waning of old assumptions in the royal prerogative
and Parliamentary rights.
The American commissioners had made a triumph under the

226 THE INSECURITY OF THE NORTHWEST.
guiding infiuence of Jay and Adams, as Hamilton at the time
recognized, which cut by a double edge. Not only had Eng
land felt one edge, but France had felt the other. " The
Count de Vergennes and I," said one of these commissioners,
" were pursuing different objects. He was endeavoring to
make my countrymen meek and humble, and I was laboring to
make them proud." It proved, indeed, the pride that goeth
before a fall, and that fall was very near being a fatal one
when, some years later, John Adams's predictions were verified.
" England and France," he said to the president of Congress,
September 5, 1783, " will be most perfectly united in aU artifices
and endeavors to keep down our reputation at home and abroad,
to mortify our self-conceit, and to lessen us in the opinion of the
world." A few days after the signing of the preliminaries, John
Adams, addressing Oswald, one of the British commissioners,
deprecated any resentment which the mother country might* be
disposed to harbor. " Favor and promote the interests, reputa
tion, and dignity of the United States," he said, " in everything
that is consistent with your own. If you pursue the plan of
cramping, crippling, and weakening America, on the supposi
tion that she will be a rival to you, you will make her really so ;
you will make her the natural and perpetual ally of your natu
ral and perpetual enemies," — and she came near doing so.
Some days after Adams had written thus. Jay, In addressing
the secretary of foreign affairs (December 14, 1782), said in
explanation of the complacency shown by Britain in the pre
liminaries, and in the king's speech : " In the continuance of
this disposition and system, too much confidence ought not to
be placed, for disappointed violence and mortified ambition are
certainly dangerous foundations to build implicit confidence
upon." A few months later. Jay again wrote (April 22, 1783):
" They mean to court us, and in my opinion we should avoid
being either too forward or too coy. . . . There are circum
stances which induce me to believe that Spain is turning her
eyes to England for a more intimate connection. They are
the only two European powers which have continental posses
sions on our side of the water, and Spain, I think, -wishes for
a league between them for mutual security against us."

CRITICAL CONDITIONS. 227
Similar apprehensions were shared by sagacious observers
on both sides. Madison wrote to his father (January, 1783) :
'¦ The insidiousness and instability of the British cabinet forbid
us to be sanguine." Hamilton warned (March 17, 1783) Wash
ington of the " insincerity and duplicity of Lord Shelburne."
Benjamin Vaughan wrote in February from London that the
treaty " had put many good people into ill humor, and it
has given a thousand pretexts to the bad people among us."
FrankUn found it easy to believe that any change of affairs in
Europe, or mishaps among the Americans, would flnd the min
istry ready to renew the war, for, as he wrote, the British court
" is not in truth reconciled either to us or the loss of us." He
maintained this opinion steadily, and wrote (September 13) to
the president of Congress that the English court " would never
cease endeavoring to disunite us." These views were reflected
in the expressions of Richard Henry Lee, WiUiam Bingham,
and many others.
In entering upon its new career, the young Republic was in
deed surrounded by hazards greater than she had surmounted.
When, on January 20, 1783, hostilities were declared at an
end, they gave place to internal dissensions and external in
trigues. These things startled the steadfast patriots. " There
has not been a more critical, delicate, and interesting period
during the war," wrote Elias Boudinot to Washington. Wash
ington at one time was forced to say of the sad conditions : " I
think there is more wickedness than ignorance mixed with our
councils." Jay, in September, 1783, was urging upon Gouverneur Mor
ris: " Everything conducing to union and constitutional energy
of government should be cultivated, cherished, and protected,
and all counsels and measures of a contrary complexion should
at least be suspected of impolitic views and objects."
A better spirit of union might have parried some of the
dangers, but there were others naturally inseparable from
having for neighbors on the northern frontiers those who, when
the treaty was soberly reviewed, saw how much they had lost.
Still greater peril came from the inherent weakness of the con
federacy. Edmund Randolph wrote to Washington : " The nerves of

228 THE INSECURITY OF THE NORTHWEST.
government are unstrung, both in energy and money, and the
fashion of the day is to calumniate the best services if un
successful." Franklin felt that these rumors of incapacity and
wrong were doing the State much injury, and persistently held
that matters were better than they seemed. " Our domestic
misunderstandings," he wrote to Hartley, "are of small extent,
though monstrously magnified by your microscopic newspapers."
Hartley had warned Franklin while the negotiations of peace
were jDcndlng that the victorious States might, after aU, reject
the authority of Congress, as they had that of Britain, so that
the peace would be but the ill-fated moment for relaxing all
control. Hamilton wrote to Washington on March 17, 1783 :
" There is a fatal opposition to continental views. Necessity
alone can work a reform. But how produce this necessity?
how apply It ? how keep it within salutary bounds ? I fear we
have been contending for a shadow." There was no better
proof of it than the fact that not a quarter of the requisi
tions which Congress had made, and was to make, on the States
for the necessary expenses of government were and could be
met. The need of a central controlling power was more and
more engaging the attention of circumspect observers. Hamil
ton now undertook to devise a plan of a military establishment
for the peace. He urged that a system Independent of and
controlling the separate States was essential, if the western
country was to be protected and the navigation of the Missis
sippi to be secured.
It was soon evident, such was the laxity of the bonds between
the States, that the stipulations of the recent treaty could not he
enforced. The only power to hold the States to their obligar
tions in this respect was that same Congress whose demands were
of no avail in asking pecuniary support for the government.
That there existed a disposition on both sides not honestly to
observe the conditions of the treaty was only too apparent,
— on the part of the British because they did not wish to oh-
serve them, and on the part of the American Congress because
they could not. Jefferson spoke of Congress as " inactive spec
tators of the Infractions because they had no effectual power
to control them." Adams contended that the British ministry

THE LAKE POSTS. 229
were in the first instance responsible for a breach of the com
pact. Jay maintained that the blame lay with the Americans,
and he said to John Adams " that there had not been a single
day, since the treaty took effect, in which it had not been vio
lated by one or other of the States."
It is safe, however, to assume with Richard Henry Lee, " that
both countries were to blame, and transgressions were on each
side coequal." Hamilton said, "The question is one so mixed
and doubtful as to render a waiver expedient on our part." At
the end of a long controversy over this point of first responsi
bility, it was " Curtius's " opinion that " the parties were as
remote from agreement as when they began." The real appre
hension was whether either side, actuated by passion, should
take advantage of the infractions of the other, and deliberately
put common concessions out of reach. Hamilton remonstrated
with Govemor Clinton on such " Intemperate proceedings " In
New York as really put the treaty in jeopardy.
That breach of the treaty which seriously affected our westem
history was in the detention of the military posts on the Great
Lakes, which were, by the terms of the treaty, included in the
concessions to the Republic. There was, perhaps, some ground
for the fear, on the part of the British, that the concession had
seemed like abandoning their Indian allies, and that some time
was needed to reconcile them to the change. Such had been
the fear of Hartley, and he had proposed for the definitive
articles a delay of three years in which to pacify the tribes.
The suppression on the part of the English, however, for a
long time of any reason for the detention was in a high degree
irritating. When it was announced, it proved an allegation
that threw the blame upon the Americans, since it was held
that there had been obstruction in the several States to the col
lection of British debts, which were to be paid under the terms
of the peace, and that the posts were retained as security for the
unpaid indebtedness. There can be no doubt that the rightful
processes of law for collecting debts had been impeded, as Jay
in his report acknowledged. Hamilton, in his Observations on
Jay's Treaty, points out that various acts respecting the British
debts, in New York, Virginia, and South Carolina, antedated
the conclusion of the treaty, as fixed in the final ratifications.

230 THE INSECURITY OF THE NORTHWEST.
Rhode Island, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Georgia had
made the debts payable in depreciated paper money, when the
obligation was in sterling. Congress virtuaUy acknowledged
this- when it called upon the States (April 13, 1787) to repeal
these same laws. Hamilton further urged it was " an usurpar
tion upon the part of any State to take upon itself the business
of retaliation." Indeed, Pennsylvania, in showing that one of her
acts complained of had In reality been passed before the treaty
was made, pointedly affirmed that " when treaties are broken
on the one part, representatives from the other contracting
party to repair the breach should always precede retaliation."
MeanwhUe, the debtors themselves were flying over the
mountains, where they could not be followed, impoverishing
in some degree the producing power of the east, and adding
to that population which Franklin, in his Sending Felons to
America, charged the British government with pouring Into the
States. Boudinot, then president of Congress, had early fore
seen the difficulty. On April 12, 1783, he -wrote to Lafayette:
" The terms of peace give universal satisfaction, except that
no time is mentioned for the American merchants paying their
English debts. Having the greatest part of their estates in the
public funds, and having suffered greatly by the depreciation of
the money, inevitable ruin must be their portion If they have not
three or four years to accomplish the business." Congress did,
indeed, in the following June, send instructions to have a limit
of three years for paying the debts inserted in the definitive
treaty, but no change was made. Franklin, in a more exasper
ated spirit, rebuked the British importunity, when he said it was
British depredations that had made Americans unable to meet
the demands of their British creditors. As the years went on,
and the liquidation of the debts was still arrested, Tom Paine
reminded the British creditors that it was their commercial
restrictions that interfered with the course of justice, in de-
IDrivIng the American merchant of his legitimate gains. It
was estimated that these debts amounted to about 128,000,000,
and to this 114,000,000 in interest was to be added, making
142,000,000 in all. It was Jay's advocacy of paying this In
terest that came near at a later day (1794) defeating his con
firmation as special envoy to England. Rufus King thought
that no jury would award interest. John Adams claimed that
the war had annulled England's rights to interest.

DEPORTATION OF SLAVES. 231
The chief infringements of the treaty on the American side
were "due to Virginia. It was owing to her tobacco crop that
her planters now owed nearly as much as all the other States
combined. Brissot put it in this way : " The independent
Americans have but little money. This scarcity rises from two
causes. First, from the kind of commerce they heretofore have
carried on with England, and afterwards from the ravages of a
seven years' war. This commerce was purely one of exchange,
and in certain States, as Virginia, the importations always sur
passed the exportations, and the result was that they could not
but be debtors to England."
This question of the creditors' obligations was mixed up in
the public mind with a rightful demand for compensation due
the Americans for the loss of fugitive slaves, carried off by the
British at the evacuation of New York. The president of Con
gress wrote to Franklin, June 18, 1783 : " It has been an ill-
judged scheme in the British to retain New York so long, and
send off the negroes, as it has roused the spirit of the citizens
of the several States greatly." The value of such slaves was
placed by their former possessors at more than $400,000, and
they were said to number, adults and children, less than three
thousand, as commissioners, sent to watch the evacuation of New
York, reported.
That this deportation of the blacks took place was acknow
ledged by Pitt, but it was contended that when the slaves fled
within the British lines, in some Instances in response to Carle-
ton's proclamations, they became British property, and could
be rightfully carried off like other acquired chattels, and that
the terms of the treaty had reference only to seizing slaves for
the purpose of carrying them off, which had not been done,
though there was a doubt in some cases if the slaves had not
come within the British lines after the signing of the treaty.
Joseph Jones wrote to Madison that this rape of the blacks
would inevitably be used to justify delay in paying the British
debts. Hamilton contended that if it was infamous in Great
Britain to seduce the negroes, it would have been stiU more
infamous to surrender them back to slavery. He held that the
British interpretation had much in its favor, and the act was
not " such a clear breach of treaty as to justify retaliation." On

232 THE INSECURITY OF THE NORTHWEST.
much the same grounds the British might demand. It was
contended, the deserters from their service who had yielded to
American seductions. At all events, this carrying off of slaves
instigated the Virginia Assembly in May, 1784, to put statu
tory obstacles in the way of English creditors. Patrick Henry
was a warm advocate of these retaliatory acts. Richard Henry
Lee and others of less passionate mood opposed them, but in
vain. Among the soberer remonstrants was George Mason,
who wrote to Mr. Henry : " On the whole, we have better terms
of peace than America had cause to expect, and I cannot but
think it would be highly dangerous and Imprudent to risk a
breach of the peace." In the sequel, Virginia grew more mod
erate, and there was talk of a p)lan to liquidate the debts in
seven annual InstaUments. Jefferson could flatter himself that
before the last installment of the debts was paid, the value of
the deported slaves could be reserved. Virginia, meanwhile,
had made her compliance contingent upon that of the other
States, and upon the surrender of the deported negroes. In
these demands, as in her Imperative demands for the evacuation
of the posts, she was led by Patrick Henry. Congress In the
end, and on a report from Jay, did, as we have seen, what it
could to induce the recalcitrant States to purge their statute-
books of all laws hindering the coUection of such debts ; the
relief, however, was not absolute till the adoption of the Federal
Constitution gave such matters into other hands.
Thus the most serious risk of the peace came from that State
which. In her territorial extension, claimed to have gained most
by the persistent efforts of the peace commissioners to carry
the Republic's bounds to the Mississippi.
There was another British plea for the retention of the west
ern posts which had far less justiflcatlon. The American com
missioners had resolutely refused to guarantee any compensa
tion to loyalists for their losses, and the British agents had as
persistently refused to make reparation for private property
of the patriot party destroyed during the war. It was Jay's
opinion that " Dr. Franklin's firmness and exertion " on the
American side did much to maintain their ground. All which
the American commissioners would concede was in the fifth
article of the treaty, that Congress should recommend to the

THE TORIES. 233
several state assemblies to repeal their confiscation acts, and
make such restitution of property already confiscated as they
could consistently. The sixth article, however, required that
there should be no future confiscations or persecutions, — a pro
vision which, it must be confessed, was subjected by some, as
Hamilton said, to a " subtle and evasive interpretation."
The American people naturally rated the Tories by the worst
of them, and how little sympathy there was for them can be con
ceived from Franklin's statement of their case : " The war
against us was begun by a general act of Parliament declaring
all our States confiscated, and probably one great motive to the
loyalty of the royalists was the hope of sharing in these confis
cations. They have played a deep game, staking their estates
against ours, and they have been unsuccessful." "As to the
Tories," said Jay, " who have received damage from us, why so
much noise about them and so little said or thought of Whigs,
who have suffered ten times as much from these same Tories ? "
Carleton, with undue haste, had pressed Congress to do what
had been promised for it ; but Livingston repUed that no action
could be taken till the articles of peace were ratified, when, as
he aUeged, the recommendation of Congress would be received
with more respect, after the " asperities of the war shall be worn
down." When Lady Juliana Penn appealed to Jay for the
restoration of her rights in Pennsylvania, he replied (December
4, 1782) : " There is reason to expect that whatever undue
degree of severity may have been infused into our laws by a
merciless war ancl a strong sense of injuries will yield to the
influences of those gentler emotions which the mild and cheerful
season of peace ancl tranquillity must naturally excite." The
recommendation called for by the treaty was in due time made
by Congress, but the States, having the matter in their own
discretion, showed no inclination to favor the loyalists.
The commissioners, who were aware that the terms of the
treaty in this respect were considered in Europe " very humili
ating to Britain," insisted, in a communication to Congress
(September 10, 1783), that the provisions of the treaty should
be carried out " in good faith and in a manner least offensive to
the feelings of the king and court of Great Britain, who upon
that point are extremely tender. The unseasonable and unne
cessary resolves of various towns on this subject," they added.

234 THE INSECURITY OF THE NORTHWEST.
"the actual expulsion of Tories from some places, and the
avowed implacability of almost all who have published their
sentiments about the matter, are circumstances which are con
strued, not only to the prejudice of our national magnanimity
ancl good faith, but also to the prejudice of our government."
Nevertheless, the States were content to feel, as apparently
Franklin in his heart felt, that the recommendatory clause of
the treaty was simply embodied to dismiss the matter, and, If
any relief was to be afforded the loyalists, there was naturally a
general acquiescence in the belief that their relief should wait
the withdrawal of the British forces. The fate that should then
bef aU them was perhaps expressed as considerately as was likely
to be the case in what Jay wrote : " I think the faithless and
cruel should be banished forever and their estates confiscated ;
it is just and reasonable. As to the residue, who have either
upon principle openly and fairly opposed us, or who from
timidity have fled from the storm and remained inoffensive,
let us not punish the first for behaving like men, nor be ex
tremely severe to the latter because nature had made them like
women." So the debts and the loyalists were made by the British min
istry to justify as best they could the retention of these lake
posts for the next twelve years, with all the repression which it
implied upon the development of the northwest, which amounted,
in Hamilton's opinion, to the value of £100,000 a year.
Two or three months after the preluninaries of peace had
been received, Congress, with the same precipitancy which char
acterized Carleton in urging action about the loyahsts, in
structed Washington to arrange with Flaldimand for the same
speedy transfer of these posts at the west and on the lakes as
had been made of the port of New York. The stations in
question were those at Mackinac, Detroit, AA^abash, Miami,
Fort Erie, Niagara, Oswego, and a few minor points, including
two on Lake Champlaln. The post at Detroit carried with it
some two or three thousand neighboring inhabitants, and there
were, in addition, some other settlers near Dutchman's Point.
Accordingly, on July 12, 1783, Washington wrote to Haldimand
and dispatched Steuben with the letter. On August 3, the
American general, having reached Chambly, sent his credentials

THE INDIANS AND THE TREATY. 235
forward, and Haldimand hastened to the Sorel to meet him.
It was then that Haldimand, with great civility, orally declined
to discuss the matter without definite orders from his superiors,
and a few days later took the same position in letters which he
addressed to Steuben and to Washington. The English general
also declined to aUow Steuben to proceed to an inspection of the
posts. Steuben later told the president of Congress that in his
opinion the British were " planning their schemes in Canada for
holding the frontier posts for a year or two longer."
Hartley, indeed, had anticipated in the course of the nego
tiations at Paris, as has been shown, that the Indians would
find themselves by the treaty " betrayed into the hands of that
people against whom they had been incited to war," and that
it was as necessary to treat them warily as it was that pro
vision should first be made for the traders. Already, in August,
1783, the British traffickers at the upper posts had complained
of American interference with their profits in a trade which
was known to be worth £50,000, in the region beyond Lake
Superior. A little later the Montreal merchants represented
that the trade of Mackinac comprised three quarters of the
entire trade in the Mississippi valley between 39° and 60° of
latitude. The finest fur country was represented to be that
south of Lake Superior, but here hardly a quarter of its pos
sible yield was secured, owing to the irascibility of the Sioux.
Well might Frobisher, one of the leading traders, contend that
It would be a "fatal moment" when the posts were given up.
Hartley's reasons for delay in surrendering this trade were
precisely those now advanced by Haldimand in reporting his
action to Lord North, and he was doubtless right in alleging
that undue haste might incite the savages about the posts to
war, while the traders dependent on them needed time to close
their accounts. After waiting nearly a year for such molli
fying and conclusive effects, Haldimand on his part in April,
1784, asked instructions from Lord North ; and Knox, on the
other hand, on May 12, 1784, was ordered to make a new
demand, and sent Colonel Hall, who in July was dismissed by
Haldimand with the same courtesy, because no orders to sur
render the posts had been received. Previous to this, on April
9, Great Britain had ratified the definitive treaty, as Congress
had done on January 14 preceding, and in August Haldimand

236 THE INSECURITY OF THE NORTHWEST.
was in possession of the verified document. It was now appar
ent that the issue had become a serious one. The question was
not only upon the language of the treaty, " with all convenient
speed," but also upon the propriety of considering the provi
sional or the definitive treaty as the true date for release. The
Atlantic ports had indeed been given up after the provisional
treaty, but that was an act of mutual convenience. It was
Hamilton's opinion that the practice of nations in similar cases
was not decisive ; while the United States had seemed to agree
to the longer period by deferring its legislative recommenda
tions till after the final treaty had been ratified.
It has sometimes been alleged that the retention of the posts
was simply an expedient to force the Americans to make such
terms with the Indians as the British commissioners had failed
to make by the treaty, and possibly to gain some vantage-
ground in case there might be a further rectification of the
frontier. The relation of the frontiers with the tribes was certainly a
critical one, and largely because of the neglect of the Indian
interests by the British. Patrick Henry was urging at this
time an amalgamation of races, and he desired to have bounties
offered for half-breed children as a means of pacification ; but
there was generally greater faith in muskets. General Jedediah
Huntington was now recommending to Washington the sending
of some five or six hundred regulars to the frontiers, for the
military situation in the west was looking serious. At the peace,
according to Pickering's estimate, it had been thought that more
than eight hundred troops would be necessary to garrison the
entire frontier, north, west, and south. That officer had then
assigned one hundred and twenty men to Niagara, " the most
important pass in America," sixty to Detroit, and one hundred
to the farther lake posts. In June, 1784, Monroe urged Con
gress to be prepared to maintain a western force ; but all he
could accomplish was to secure some seven hundred twelve
months' militia from Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and
Pennsylvania, to protect the frontier.
Indian outrages were renewed on the frontiers in the spring
of 1783, and in April, Dickinson of Pennsylvania was moving
Congress to take some effective steps. On May 1, Congress
ordered that the northwestern tribes should be officially in-

THE FUR TRADE. 237
formed of the terms of the peace, and one Ephraim Douglas
was sent to Detroit. De Peyster, the British commander at
that post, was found by Douglas to have given the Indians the
impression that the posts were still to be retained by the Brit
ish. On July 6, in the presence of the American agent, De
Peyster urged the Indians to be quiet, and told them that he
could no longer keep them, and gave Douglas an opportunity to
explain the treaty. A few days later, Douglas went to Niagara,
where General McLean was now feeding three thousand Indians,
and there had an interview with Brant. This chieftain disclosed
that the Indian lands must be secured to the tribes before any
treaties could be made. Douglas reported to General Lincoln,
now secretary of war, that he was neither permitted to accom
pany Brant to the Mohawk villages, nor to address the Indians.
Simon Girty, who was -De Peyster's Interpreter, served in the
same capacity later for Sir Jobn-Johnson, when another confer
ence was held with the Indians at Sandusky, and Johnson warned
them not to permit the Americans to occupy their lands. It was
advice which led to many difficulties, though Congress itself
was not without responsibilities for the long and harassing
conflict which followed upon their occupation of the territory
north of the Ohio, though it may be claimed that the results
were worth the cost. " As to originating the Indian war," said
Boudinot, ten years later, while president of that body, " so
far from its being originated by Great Britain, I know that it
originated in the false policy of Congress In 1783 ; I foretold
it then, with aU its consequences."
It Is necessary now to broaden our survey somewhat in order
to understand better the real reasons which had induced Flaldi
mand to devise a plan for retaining the posts, — a scheme into
which the ministry easily entered. " Who are these mighty
and clamorous Quebec merchants ? " exclaimed William Lee,
when the news reached Brussels in February, 1783, that they
were complaining of the peace. It was. In fact, these Cana
dian fur traders who saw in the concessions of the bounds
which had been made in the treaty that their traffic could no
longer be protected from the rivalry of the Americans. As
Brissot reckoned, the annual sales in furs at London, coming
from Canada, amounted for a few years succeeding the peace to

238 THE INSECURITY OF THE NORTHWEST.
about five million " livres tournois." " It is from this consider
ation," he adds, " that the restitution of these forts Is withheld."
It was supposed at the time that one of the objects in prolong
ing British intrigues with the disaffected Vermonters, so as to
detach them from the Union ^ was, as Hamilton expressed it, to
" conduce to the security of Canada and to the preservation of
the western posts."
The British furthermore felt that these American rivals would
find no longer any obstacles to their wish to open an inter-
oceanic channel of trade. Carver tells us of a purpose w[hich had
been entertained by the Atlantic colonists, before the outbreak
of the Revolution, to send an expedition under Colonel Rogers to
wards the Pacific, with the expectation of discovering the long-
hidden Straits of Anian. The clash of arms had prevented the
fulfillment. While the war was progressing, however, the English
government had sent Captain Cook on his famous voyage, with
instructions (1776) to make the Pacific coast at 45° north lati
tude, and to follow it north to 65°, in the hopes of finding that
long-sought strait, for the discovery of which the British gov
ernment had recently offered a reward of £20,000. Little was
then known of what Spain had already done on that same coast,
for the Spanish flag had really been shown above 42° and up to
50°, while Haceta had actually surmised the existence of the
Columbia in 1775.
When Cook, at Nootka Sound, saw the natives tremble at
the noise of his guns, he was convinced that the Spaniards had
not already accustomed them to ordnance. He himself missed
the Straits of Juan de la Fuca, but by recording the presence
of the sea otter In those waters, he intimated a future Industry
of the region. His journals were not published tiU 1784-85 ;
but a brief official report had already been made public, which
John Ledyard, a Connecticut adventurer, used In preparing an
account of the voyage, published at Hartford (1783) just at
the close of the war. Ledyard had been a corporal of marines
on Cook's ship. It was an indication of the interest, since the
pressure of war had been removed, which was taken in adven
turous traffic that Ledyard, eager to be the first to open trade
on the northwest coast, now euffaffed the attention of Robert
Morris in his plans. Ledyard was through life the sport of
freakish fortune, and no effort of his could mould the passing

NORTH WEST COMPANY. 239
encouragement even of Morris into practical shape, and he
went to Europe to enter new fields. Jefferson, then the Ameri
can minister at Paris, feeling him to be "a person of ingenuity
and information, but unfortunately of too much imagination,"
gently encouraged him, and Ledyard started to pass through
Russia and approach his goal by way of Kamschatka. Sir
Joseph Banks, who had encountered him, had reached a high
opinion of him, and thought him the only person fitted for such
an exploration. His attempt failed, and it was left for some
Boston merchants, a few years later, to accomplish by a voyage
around Cape Horn the preemption of the vaUey of the Columbia,
to become the goal of fur-trading competitors.
An organized effort on the part of the British merchants had
been made in 1783, just at the time when the retention of the
posts was under consideration, by the formation of the North
West or Canada Company. This trading organization almost
immediately started up rival companies. Some bloody contests
in the wilderness followed between their respective pioneers,
which were ended only by their combining in 1787. Sepa
rately, and later jointly, the trading instincts of these associates
pushed adventurers on the one hand up the Ottawa ancl so to
the Peace River, and by the Mackenzie to the Arctic seas ; and
on the other hand ultimately to and beyond the Rockies. By
1785, they had begun to plant the British flag north of the
Mississippi and upon the Missouri, as well as on the lesser
of the upper affluents of the main river. The headquarters
of these operations were maintained on that portage, between
Lake Superior and the Lake of the Woods, which the treaty
had just made the line of boundary of the new Republic, in
ignorance of the real ultimate source of the Great Lakes In the
springs of the river which enters Lake Superior at Duluth. A
correct knowledge of geography would In reality have lost the
United States a large part of the modern Minnesota. The
traffic along this treaty route was conducted with a policy too
like that which had enfeebled New France on the same soil,
to insure an equal contest with the American settler in the later
struggle for the possession of the Columbia valley. There was,
however, on the part of some, a conception that American
enterprise must seek its channel to the Pacific and the nations
beyond not so much in the north, in conflict with the British,
as in the south, in the rivalry of the Spanish.

240 THE INSECURITY OF THE NORTHWEST.
By the time that Carleton had withdrawn (November, 1783)
the British troops from the Atlantic coast. It had become
apparent to the British government, on the prompting of the
merchants of Canada, that the conditions of the peace were
far from favorable to that class of subjects. These trading
combinations had of late been extending their operations from
Detroit and Mackinac as centres, and their movements had
conduced to the founding of Milwaukee and other new posts
on and beyond the lakes. A later attempt to carry a larger
vessel than had before been used on Lake Superior through
the rapids at the Sault failed ; but with such craft as still
sailed on those waters, the volume of the trade was large, and
more than half of it was conducted by the merchants, through
the posts which rightfully fell to the Americans by the treaty
and were still in British hands. Hamilton put it more strongly,
and said that by surrendering half the lakes, England quit
claimed a much larger part of the fur trade. Of the two thou
sand troops now holding Canada, less than eight hundred
occupied the posts from Oswego westward, while less than four
hundred held Lake Champlaln and its approaches. Preserving
the posts by such a force as this, it was hoped to prevent the
transfer of allegiance to the new Republic of the allied mer
chants, who might otherwise prefer to cling to their profits
under the new Republic rather than to their birthright without
them. It was, perhaps, safe to trust to the future for some
vindication of a refusal to give up these stations, and the delay
had convinced the traders that there was no immediate need of
discovering other portages to the far West, as at first they had
begun to do. Thus not only were mercantile interests to he
served, but pride also, for there was a growing sense of mor
tification at the loss by the treaty of the principal carrying
places, and the hope was entertained that some rectification of
the boundary might yet be possible, through the failure of the
American government to maintain Itself, as was indeed later
attempted by those who negotiated a treaty with Jay in 1794.
In arguing the question of priority of infractions, the British
agents claimed that, until the ratifications of the treaty were
exchanged in May, 1784, it was not incumbent on the British
government to issue orders to evacuate the posts, and that such
orders. If issued then, could not have reached Quebec before

THE LOYALISTS. 241
July, 1784, and that prior to this the American States had
enacted laws impeding the collection of the British debts.
The fact is, however, that the British policy had been deter
mined even before the two governments had respectively rati
fied the definitive articles, for the day before Parliament con
firmed the treaty, Sydney had sent Instructions to Haldimand,
which reached him before June 14, 1784, to hold fast to the
posts. It Is thus certain that a month before the time came
for relieving the British government of an imputation of un
fairness, this action was taken. If it was not an infraction of
the treaty, then no enactment of the American States, anterior
to the same date, could be held to be such. The facts are, that
both sides were faithless, and practically by acts of even date ;
nor was there any disposition on either side to undo promptly
what had been done, when both sides were fully informed of
the ratification. The motives in both cases were those of mer
cantile gain.
The retention of the posts meant a profit to the English in
excess of what would be gained by the possession of New York,
and larger than any possible loss by repudiation of the debts.
When Governor Clinton of New York, after Congress had
ratified the treaty, demanded the evacuation of Oswego and
Niagara by sending, in March, 1784, an agent who made the
demand at Quebec in May, Haldimand, who did not, as it
turned out, get word of the British ratification till the following
August, would not recognize the right of a single State to make
such a demand ; and as if to screen the real object of the posts'
retention, intimated that the posts might not be surrendered at
all, if the claims of the loyalists were not better respected. In
August, that general was pointedly warned by his superiors
to refrain from such explanations, and In November, he left his
successor, St. Leger, instructions to observe the same warning.
Jay, on September 6, 1785, when the loyalists were moving
into Ontario almost by thousands, notified John Adams that
" some of the loyalists advise and warmly press the detention
of the posts;" but when, in the latter part of 1785, Adams, then
the American minister in London, first learned officially of the
grounds for still holding the post, It was not ascribed to the
neglect of the loyalists, but accounted a means of securing
payment of the debts.

242 THE INSECURITY OF THE NORTHWEST.
When Haldimand, in making answer to the demand for the
posts within the jurisdiction of New York, had referred to
the loyalists, their fate had long been uppermost in his mind.
By August, 1783, the pioneers of this expatriated body were
beginning to reach Canada from New York in large numbers,
to seek for new homes. Dunmore, while the negotiations for
peace were going on, had proposed ' to settle these faithful sub
jects on the Mississippi, with a view of using them from that
base in continuing the war, just as Washington at one time had
looked beyond the mountains to find an asylum if irretrievable
disaster overtook him on the sea coast. But the peace had
changed all. Franklin and his associates would not listen to
any scheme of making the confederation responsible for the
security of the loyalists, while there was no provision for which
the English commissioners had contended so steadfastly, and if
Jay was correct in his assurance to Livingston, December 12,
1782, the British commissioners did not expect that restorations
would be made to all that class. But their constancy had been
of no avail, and the fortunes of the luckless Tories had been left
to the uncertain consideration of the several States. There was
nothing then left for the British commissioners to do but, in
the choice of northern bounds which the Americans gave- them,
to select those which left the southern peninsula of Canada
between Lakes Ontario and Huron in British hands. It was
here, in a region which had been previously almost unoccupied,
that it was now proposed to settle these unhappy refugees,
though Haldimand, in November, 1783, recommended that a
settlement be made near Cataraqui. Beside those who had
come overland from New York in the summer of 1783, others
left the same port by ship in the following autumn, to join such
as had gone before. In the exodus it is supposed that about
fifty thousand fled to Canada, and if the flgures of the Tory,
Judge Jones, can be trusted, there were one hundred thousand
of these exiles who departed from New York to seek some
asylum between March and November of that year (1783).
Within a twelvemonth, there were certainly ten thousand of
them who found their way to these upper Canadian lands, and
some twenty thousand are known to have gone to the maritime
provinces. These outcasts carried Into Canada just the blood, hardihood.

INDIAN RAIDS. 243
and courage which were so needed in a new country. From
their devotion to an undivided empire, they later assumed the
name of United Empire Loyalists, to distinguish them from
other settlers. They were a band that the States could ill
afford to drive from their society. Not a few of the Americans
then felt that these defeated countrymen could have been much
better dealt with within the Republic than as refugees In a
neighboring land, where they would be stirred by animosities.
John Adams said of them: "At home, they would be impotent ;
abroad, they are mischievous." No one felt it at the time more
warmly than Patrick Henry, who urged that they should be
encouraged to settle beyond the Appalachians. " Thej"- are,"
he said in a speech to the Assembly of Virginia, "an enterpris
ing, moneyed people, serviceable in taking off the surplus prod
ucts of our lands." He added that he had no fear that those
who had " laid the proud British lion at their feet should now
be afraid of his whelps."
While what is now the Province of Ontario was coming into
being north of the lakes, there was a parallel movement going
on south of Lake Erie, which was in the end to reach a far
greater development. Before the tidings of peace had reached
this more southern wilderness, and late in the winter of 1782-
83, the frontiersmen and the Shawnees, with other confederated
tribes, were stIU keeping up the hostile counter-movements
which had long tracked that country with blood. Hamilton
was reaching the conclusion that " the most just and humane
way of removing them is by extending our settlements to their
neighborhood." The Indians north of the Ohio had not re
ceived from Haldimand the aid for which they had hoped, for
the pohcy of the British made at this time for peace. Never
theless, the old feuds, quite as madly foUowed by white as by
savage, were not to be quelled, and they continued for some
years. Judge Innes shows by figures that from 1783 to 1790,
at least fifteen hundred frontiersmen were killed in these impla
cable raids, and that twenty thousand horses were stolen from
oi^e side or the other. General Irvine, who was watching these
' lawless actions from Fort Pitt, did his best to prevent settlers
passing north of the Ohio, and he believed that nothing but the
extirpation of the Indians or driving them beyond the lakes
and the Mississippi could ever render this region habitable.

244 THE INSECURITY OF THE NORTHWEST.
This was the condition of that country when American offi
cers, now looking forward to a respite from war, were hoping
to provide within it new homes for some part at least of a dis
banded army. This peaceful movement had begun in the spring
of 1783, at Newburgh on the Hudson, while Washington was
awaiting the official promulgation of peace from Carleton in New
York. The movement was at the start in the hands of Gener
als Huntington and Rufus Putnam. On June 16, two hundred
and eighty-eight officers of Washington's weary army, mainly
New Englanders, petitioned Congress that the lands granted
for military service in 1776 should be surveyed in what Is now
eastern Ohio, so that they could be occupied, and In time con
stitute a separate State of the Union. The lands to which they
referred were east of a meridian which left the Ohio twenty-
four miles west of the Scioto, and struck northward to the [JVIau-
mee, whence the line foUowed that stream to Lake Erie. Put
nam bespoke Washington's Influence in behalf of the petition,
and suggested for the protection of the intended settlements
that a chain of forts, twenty miles apart, should be placed on
the western bounds of this tract. AA'^ashlngton transmitted to
Congress the letter of the officers, with Putnam's letter and his
own approval ; but nothing came of the appeal.
Meanwhile, various projects had been broached looking to a
more comprehensive appropriation of the region to civilized
uses. Jefferson, with the instincts of a politician, was contem
plating the planting of a State on Lake Erie as a northern ap
pendage, which should be offset by a southern one on the Ohio.
This was a revival of a project of Franklin some years before.
Colonel Pickering, with a northern fervor, was thinking of a
State to be set up at once, with a military spirit, and from
which slavery should be excluded. On June 5, 1783, Colonel
Bland of Virginia introduced in Congress an ordinance for
erecting a territory north of the Ohio and dividing it into dis
tricts, with the ultimate purpose of making States of them,
when their populations reached two thousand each. This ter
ritory was to be defended by frontier posts, and seminaries of
learning were to be encouraged.
While all these measures were thus still inchoate, unauthorized
appropriations of the Indian country by reckless parties seemed
likely to revive lingering hostilities. To avert this danger. Con-

WASHINGTON AND THE WEST. 246
gress, in September, 1783, issued a proclamation against such
unlawful occupation of the Indian lands. This action did little
to accomplish its object. AA'e soon find McKee, in September,
telUng Sir John Johnson that the Sandusky Indians suspect
the Americans of a design to encroach upon their tribal lands.
The steady flow of settlers across the Ohio did seem to point
to such a purpose. Haldimand was confldent that these provo
cations would end in a war, which would be ruinous to the sav
age. This meant that the retained posts would be deprived of
a natural barrier ; and be accordingly urged Sir John Johnson
to inculcate moderation upon the Indians.
With these dangers impending, Washington, on September 7,
1783, recommended In a letter the laying out of two new States
iu this western region. In language nearly following- that of
AA'^ashington, Congress, on October 15, In preparing the way
for the ordinance of the next year, resolved to erect a distinct
government north of the Ohio, but at the same time a commit
tee reported to Congress that the Indians were not prepared
"¦ to relinquish their territorial claims without further strug
gles," and recommended that emigrants be invited to enter the
region east of a line drawn from the mouth of the Great Miami,
up that stream, and down the Maumee to Lake Erie. The next
month, November, 1783, Washington, in taking leave of the
army, pointed to the west as promising a happy asylum for the
veteran soldiers, " who, fond of domestic enjoyments, are seek
ing for personal independence."
We need now to consider the existing state of the controversy
over the title to these same lands. The steps for a western gov
ernment, both north and south of the Ohio, were doubtless in
part owing to a wish to bring Virginia to an unrestricted ces
sion of her alleged or established rights to the country. There
had been a memorial addressed to her Assembly in December,
1783, asking to have Kentucky set up as a State, and urging
that more States would add to the dignity of the Union. Re
ferring to this desire for self-government, it added, " A fool can
put on his clothes better than a wise man can do it for him."
When we consider the almost inexplicable language of the
Virginia charter of 1609, it shows how state pride can obscure
the mind to flnd George Mason pronouncing its definition of

246 THE INSECURITY OF THE NORTHWEST.
bounds " intelligible and admitting of natural and easy con
struction." However this may be, Virginia was now content to
hold that, defining her limits in her constitution of 1776, and
the confederation accepting her adherence, with full knowledge
of that constitution, the other States were bound to recognize
the confederation's declared principle, " that no State shall be
deprived of territory for the benefit of the United States."
This precluded the Union, It was held, making any demand for
cessions. With these convictions, the Virginia Assembly had
proved little inclined to brook any opposition, such as Tom
Paine had made in his Public Good, when he represented the
United States at the peace becoming " heir to an extensive quan
tity of vacant land " In the west. The Assembly was so In
censed at Paine for such opinions that it stopped, at the second
reading, a bill which had been introduced to compensate him
for his services in the Revolution.
Congress had already determined to accept cessions, as it had
that of New York, without inquiring into title. A committee
had been appointed to look into the terms of the cession pro
posed by Virginia, and on September 13, 1783, this committee
had recommended that Congress should accept the Virginia ces
sion, if that State would withdraw the guarantee that Kentucky
should be secured to her. This action was supplemented by an
order establishing the undivided sovereignty of the United
States over the west. There was little now for recalcitrant
Virginia to do but to hasten her action. Edmund Randolph
had seen the unfortunate predicament into which the State was
thrusting herself, and some months before had written (March
22, 1783) to Madison : " I imagine that the power of Congress
to accept territory by treaty will not be denied. This wUl
throw a plausibility against us [Virginia] which never before
existed in the contest with Congress," — for the treaty of peace
had, in fact, buttressed the exclusive claim of the United States.
Jefferson, too, was becoming fearful lest Kentucky, applying to
be received as a State, would be favored by Congress with
bounds stretching east to the Alleghany. This, he felt, would
deprive the parent State of that barrier of " uninhabitfible
lands " which she ought to have to separate her from a neigh
bor on the west, if Virginia maintained her bounds on the
Kanawha.

VIRGINIA'S CESSION. 247
On October 19, 1783, Monroe had written to George Rogers
Clark, urging that a new State should be set up with the tradi
tion of Virginia, so that the old commonwealth, now becoming
aware of her isolation among her sisters, might have an efficient
aUy in the federal councils. The pressure had become so great,
both within and without, that the next day, October 20, the
Assembly authorized her delegates in Congress to make a deed
of cession, without the objectionable reservations. This they
did March 1, 1784. The instrument provided that " the neces
sary and reasonable expenses," later estimated at £220,000,
connected with Clark's conquest and rule in the northwest,
should be paid back to Virginia by the United States, If the
claims were aUowed before September 24, 1788. This had been
consented to, not without apprehension that the charges would
be inordinate, since few or no vouchers could be produced.
This time-Umit proved sufficient to protect all claims but Vigo's,
for he was at the time beyond notice.
The deed had also made reservation of bounty lands for
soldiers. In December, 1778, and again in Maj--, 1779, Vir
ginia had set aside for this purpose a tract in Kentucky, part of
which was later found to lie within North Carolina ; and to
make this loss good, in November, 1781, she had substituted a
new tract bounded by the Mississippi, the Ohio, and the Ten
nessee rivers and by the Carolina Une. This embraced nearly
10,000,000 acres, and one third was for the Continental line and
two thirds for the state troops. If this did not prove suffi
cient, it was now provided by the deed of cession, In order to
satisfy some objectors to a cession, that a tract north of the
Ohio and between the Scioto and the Little Miami should be
added. There proved to be no objection to these provisions,
and Virginia congratulated herself that she had made in the
cession " the most magnificent sacrifice upon the altar of public
good which was, perhaps, ever recorded in the history of States,"
since by it she " chiefly paid the bounty claims of all the Conti
nental officers and soldiers of all the old States." This over-
elated commonwealth had no apprehension, apparently, that she
had been making free with territory to which other States had
as good a title as her own or even a better one, though all their
titles were poor enough, it must be confessed, compared with
that which the treaty of peace had given to the confederation.

248 THE INSECURITY OF THE NORTHWEST.
A renewed effort upon the part of the Vandalia Company to
obtain the recognition of Congress, now that it had acquired
this western region, failed of success.
There was one way beyond her ostentatious sacrifice in which
Virginia hoped to gain, and that was in the use of her rivers
as channels of communication between the seaboard and this
western country. Patrick Henry, in one of his speeches in the
Virginia Assembly, said : " Cast your eye, sir, over this exten
sive country, and see its soil intersected in every quarter with
bold, navigable streams, flowing to the east and to the west, as
if the finger of heaven were marking out the course of your
settlements, inviting you to enterprise and pointing the way
to wealth." There would be the greatest aclvantage to Vir
ginia, said Washington, " if she would open the avenues to the
trade of that country, and embrace the present moment to
establish It."
Jefferson, in 1782, in speaking of the Mississippi as likely to
be the route outward — but not inward — for the western coun
try, for heavy commodities, looked to the Potomac and the
Hudson as lines of communication for the lighter burdens. He
had, indeed, in his graphic description of the combined energies
of the Potomac and Shenandoah in bursting through the barrier
of the Blue Ridge, invested that tidal avenue of Virginia with
popular interest. In comparing the rival routes to the coast
from Cayahoga, on Lake Erie, Jefferson pointed out that to
reach New York by the Mohawk and Hudson required eighty-
five portages In eight hundred and twenty-five miles, while it
was but four hundred ancl twenty-five miles to tide-water at
Alexandria on the Potomac, with only two portages, and this
route, he said at one time, "promises us almost a monopoly
of the western and Indian trade." One of these portages
was between the Cayahoga and the Beaver, where, as General
Hand had Informed Jefferson, a canal could be cut, connecting
lagoons, in a flat country. The other interruption was between
the Ohio valley and the Potomac, where a distance of fifteen
to forty miles was to be overcome, " according to the trouble
Note. — The opposite map is a section of the " Map of the western part of the territories be
longing to the United States," in Georce Imlay's Topog. Description, London, 1793. It sliows
the different routes from Richmond and Alexandria over the mountains.

250 THE INSECURITY OF THE NORTHWEST.
which shall be taken to approach the two navigations." Wash
ington, two years later, figured it more carefuUy, when he made
the distance from Fort Pitt to Alexandria three hundred and
four miles, including thirty-one miles of land carriage. This
was by the Youghiogheny ; but if the course by the Mononga
hela and Cheat River was followed, the distance would be found
to be three hundred and sixty-five miles, with a portage of
twenty miles.
Beside the rival plan of using the Hudson and the Mohawk,
there was still the route from Philadelphia, which was a dis
tance of about three hundred and twenty miles, whoUy by land.
If water carriage be sought, this communication would be
lengthened to four hundred and seventy miles, and would foUow
the course of the Schuylkill, Susquehanna, and Toby's Creek,
the last an affluent of the Ohio. Charles Thomson, the sec
retary of Congress, was directing attention to two other Penn
sylvania channels. One was to leave Lake Erie at Presqu'Isle,
and proceed by the AUeghany and one of its branches to a
portage connecting with the Juniata. The other joined Ontario
with the east branch of the Delaware, through the Iroquois
country. Virginians were aware of the spirit of the Pennsyl
vanians, and Madison wrote to Jefferson that " the efforts of
Pennsylvania for the western commerce did credit to her public
councils. The commercial genius of Virginia is too much in its
infancy to rival her example."
No one took more interest than Washington in this question
of western transit. He expressed himself not without appre
hension lest the new settlements on the Ohio, left alone, would
find It for their commercial interests to bind themselves with
their British neighbors on the north, and seek an exit for their
produce through the St. La-wrence, or with the Spaniards on
the west and south, and find an outlet In the Gulf of Mexico.
This might happen, he felt, all the more easily because ahens
in considerable numbers, bound by no tradition or affinities of
blood, were casting In their lots with the people of the remoter
frontiers. It was with these fears, and seeking to avert them,
that Washington turned to find some practicable communica
tion through the Appalachians. He could but be struck, he
said, " with the immense diffusion and importance of the vast

WASHINGTON AND THE WEST. 251
inland navigation of the United States. Would to God," he
exclaimed, " that we may have wisdom enough to improve
them." Madison looked to this " beneficence of nature " as the
sure protection for the evUs of an over-extension of territory.
Just after the close of the war, Washington had visited the
battlefields along the upper Hudson and the Mohawk, and had
been impressed with the capabilities of canalization in that
direction, so as to form a western route. He described his
course to the Chevalier cle Chastellux as " up the Mohawk to
Fort Schuyler (formerly Fort Stanwix)," whence he " crossed
over to Wood Creek, which empties into Oneida Lake and
affords the water communication with Ontario. I then [he
adds] traversed the country to the head of the eastern branch
of the Susquehanna, and viewed Lake Otsego and the portage
between that lake and the Mohawk River at Canajoharie."
Later, when once again in Virginia, in Marchj 1784, Wash
ington was urged by Jefferson to weigh against these New York
routes the advantages of the course by the Potomac. In the fol
lowing September (1784) Washington, going west to see some
of his own lands, — on the Kanawha and the Ohio, which he
was yet to hold for ten years and more, — followed the upper
Potomac, and made observations of the most accessible ways
to reach the waters of the Ohio. On his return, he addressed
from Mount Vernon (October 10, 1784) a letter to Benjamin
Harrison, then governor of Virginia, In which he said : "It has
long been my decided opinion that the shortest, easiest, and least
expensive communication with the invaluable and extensive
country back of us would be by one or both of the rivers of
this State, which have their sources In the Appalachian Moun
tains. Nor am I singular in this opinion. Evans, In his Map
and Analysis of the Middle Colonies, which, considering the
early period in which they were given to the public, are done
with amazing exactness, and Hutchins, since, in his Topograph
ical Description of the Western Country, a good part of which
is from actual surveys, are decidedly of the same sentiments,
as indeed are all others who have had opportunities and have
been at the pains to investigate and consider the subject."
Washington then goes on to point out that Detroit is farther
from tide-water on the St. Lawrence by one hundred and sixty-
eight miles, and on the Hudson by one hundred and seventy-

252 THE INSECURITY OF THE NORTHWEST.
six miles, than it Is from a port for sea-going vessels on the
Potomac. He proceeds to recommend the appointment of a
commission to inspect the portages between the Potomac and
the waters flowing Into the Ohio, as well as to report upon a
route by the James and the Great Kanawha, where the overland
connection was thought to be about thirty miles. Jefferson had
said of the Kanawha, as a suitable avenue for transit, that,
rising in North Carolina, it " traversed our whole latitude," and
offered to every part of the State " a channel for navigation
and commerce to the western country."
Samuel Wharton, in 1770, had said of the Kanawha vaUey
that barges could be easily moved to the falls. " Late discover
ies have proved," he adds, " that a wagon road may be made
through the mountain which occasions the faUs, and that by a
portage of a few miles only a communication can be had be
tween the waters of the Great Kanawha and the James."
Washington closed his letter to Harrison with a reference to
a new proposition of propelling vessels by mechanism : " I con
sider Rumsey's discovery for working boats against the stream,
by mechanical power principally, as not only a very fortunate
invention for these States in general, but as one of those cir
cumstances which have combined to render the present time
favorable above all others for fixing, if we are disposed to avail
ourselves of them, a large portion of the trade of the western
country In the bosom of this State irrevocably."
James Rumsey, to whom AVashington referred, was a machin
ist living on the upper Potomac, now a man of little more than
forty years, who had exhibited to Washington a month before
(September 6) a model of a double boat, which, by the applica
tion of mechanical power to setting poles, was intended "to
make way against a rapid stream by the force of the same
stream." This exhibition drew a certiflcate of approval from
Washington (September 7), but Rumsey soon abandoned this
device for another, as we shall later see.
Note. —The opposite map is Washington's sketch (17S4) of the divide between the Potomac
and the Youghiogheny, as engraved in U. S. Docs., XIX. Cong., 1st Session, House of Rep., Report,
No. 228. The committee making this report point out that the road (dotted hne) from Cumber
land to the Youghiogheny is almost precisely the route of the later Cumberland road, and the
dotted line A  B, across the Dividing Ridge, is almost identical with the recommendation of
the government engineers (1826) for the course of the Ches,apeake and Ohio Canal. These corre
spondences the committee consider to be proofs of the insight of this " great and extraordinary
man."

254 THE INSECURITY OF THE NORTHWEST.
This letter to Harrison was communicated to the Virginia
Assembly, and led to the formation of the James River and
Potomac Canal Company. By December, 1784, the project
of such an organization was well in hand, and Washington went
to Annapolis to consult with the Assembly. Shortly afterwards
(January 5, 1785) he wrote, from Mount Vernon, to General
Knox that the bills which had been prepared both for the Vir
ginia and for the Maryland legislatures, in which each State had
pledged £1,000 to the project, were drafted to his liking. The
plan embraced two measures. One was to clear a road, say
forty miles in length, from the north branch of the Potomac to
Cheat River, an affluent of the Monongahela, — a route which
Jefferson considered " the true door to the western commerce."
The other scheme was to carry a road from AViU's Creek, and
connect with the Youghiogheny, another branch of the Monon
gahela. This, however, required the concurrence of Pennsyl
vania, and in December, 1784, the Virginia Assembly had asked
of Pennsylvania the privilege of free transit for goods through
that governinent. The Assembly of that State had discovered
by a survey that a canal wholly through her own territory, and
connecting Philadelphia with the Susquehanna, would require
£200,000 for its construction. This large cost inspired Jefferson
with the hopie that the Youghiogheny route would prevail, and
Washington was convinced that this last channel was "the
most direct route by which the fur and peltry of the lakes
could be transported, while it is," as he added, " exceedingly
convenient to the people who inhabit the Ohio (or Alleghany)
above Fort Pitt." In anticipation of this route being selected,
Brownsville was. In the spring of 1785, regularly laid out on the
Monongahela, near Red Stone Old Fort, which had for some
years become the usual starting-point for boats carrying emi
grants down the Ohio to Kentucky, and around which landing-
place there had grown up a settlement of boat-builders and of
traders in supplies.
A route for which surveys by the new bill were also ordered,
and which was more satisfactory to the mass of tide-water AHr-
ginians, was by the James River, whence a short portage, say
twenty-five or thirty miles, conducted to New River, and then to
the Kanawha below Its faUs, and finally to the Ohio. It was
on this route that Washington earlier secured some lands, and

AU/

[The above map is from a MS. map by Heckewelder (1796), «.P™^™!^ '" f/^^^^f "/the i"
ffL. Soc. Trad No. 64 (1884). It shows the valleys of Muskingum and Cayahoga, and
dian paths.]

256 THE INSECURITY OF THE NORTHWEST.
Albert Gallatin was at this time surveying some adjacent prop
erty on the Kanawha for himself.
When these plans were well devised, Washington, on Novem
ber 30, 1785, wrote to Madison : " It appears to me that no
country In the universe is better calculated to derive benefit
from inland navigation than this is ; and certain I am that the
conveniences to the citizens generaUy, which will be opened
thereby, will be found to exceed the most sanguine . expecta
tion." Very likely this letter expresses exactly the opinions
which Washington In the previous spring had disclosed to the
commissioners of Maryland and Virginia, when, after their
conferences at Alexandria in the interests of intercolonial trade,
they had accepted an invitation to Mount Vernon, and spent
several days with Its owner, — a meeting that proved one of the
preliminary steps to the federal convention at a later day.
Whatever the favorite route from tide-water, it was neces
sary, when once the Ohio basin was reached, to discover the
best avenue to the lakes. On this point Washington had been
actively seeking information. He had applied to Richard
Butler, then Superintendent of Indian Affairs, particularly in
reference to a connection which Jefferson had recommended
between the Muskingum and the Cayahoga, so as to reach Lake
Erie at the modern Cleveland. Later, in 1786, Congress made
all the portages between the lakes and the Ohio basin common
highways, — a provision that was the next year embodied in the
ordinance of 1787. At a still later day (January, 1788), the
New York portage by Lake Chautauqua was, at the instance of
General Irvine, made the subject of other action.
While these physical difficulties were under consideration, it
was clear to Washington's mind that, to develop any such busi
ness as these rival routes contemplated, it was necessary not
only that a large immigration should be sent beyond the moun
tains, but that It should be directed in the right way. It was
apparent that for the present the contemplated channels of
trade might suffice and serve to keep the nascent common
wealths of the west In touch with the older communities ; but
Washington did not disguise his continued apprehension that
"whenever the new States became so populous and so ex
tended to the westward as really to need the Mississippi,
there could be no power to deprive them of its use." There

CANAL COMPANY. 257
was, particularly among the Virginians, a growing conviction
that this Mississippi question was a burning one, and its solu
tion could not be far ahead. It was a necessary outgrowth of
that caballing of Vergennes and Spain which Jay and his asso
ciates, in 1782, had so boldly and dexterously overcome. France
was stiU as treacherous and Spain was as weakly obstinate as
they had been then. ' In the summer of 1784, Madison had
met Lafayette at Baltimore, and endeavored to make him com
prehend that France needed, in order to preserve the friendship
of the United States, to persuade Spain to give up her exclu
sive pretensions to the Mississippi. " Spain is such a fool that
allowances must be made," said Lafayette. It was only a ques
tion how long she could afford to be a fool, while her unfriend
liness was not altogether distasteful to Washington, since it
helped his ulterior projects about the westem connections of
Virginia. After the James River and Potomac Canal Company had been
formed, Washington was induced to become Its first president.
He remained long enough in control of it to take a broad view
of its future development. Just after he had resigned his pres
idency, and was about to assume the executive chair under the
Federal Constitution, he congratulated Jefferson that the recent
surveys had shown the sources of the Ohio and Potomac nearer
than was supposed, and two or three boats had lately passed
from Fort Cumberland to Great Falls, nine miles above tide
water, showing what progress had been made in opening the
Potomac. In appreciation of the value to the company of his services,
the Virginia Assembly made Washington a considerable sharer
in Its stock. He hesitated long about embarrassing his action
by accepting such a gratuity, and was persuaded to do so only
by the urgent representations of Patrick Henry. He reserved,
however, the right to make its advantages ultimately accrue to
the public, as later under his wiU was provided.
As to the political needs of the country thus to be reached
and developed, there had been movements in Congress looking
to the formation of States out of it, while the war was still in
progress. It had been proposed, in 1780, to constitute States
of dimensions not more than one hundred or one hundred and

258 THE INSECURITY OF THE NORTHWEST.
fifty miles square. Washington had been urging James Duane
to action In this matter, and on October 15 Congress resolved
on some step towards setting up such Western States, and Jeffer
son was made the chairman of a committee to consider the ques
tion. On March 1, 1784, he reported an ordinance which gave
to the proposed States some such area as had been suggested In
1780. His original plan, however, was more comprehensive than
an organization of the northwestern region merely, for he de
sired, with the consent of Virginia ancl the other Southern States,
to include also their over-hill country, and to exclude slavery
therefrom after the year 1800. By this plan there could be
laid out fourteen States south of the 45th paraUel and north of
the 31st. He proposed to give two degrees of latitude to each
State in horizontal tiers. The most westerly north and south
column would have six States below the 43d parallel and one
above, lying west of Lake Michigan, and a second stiU farther
north, stretching to the bounds of Canada. Those below the
4Bd would be bounded on the east by a meridian cutting the
falls of the Ohio. Near this point Louisville was already a
town of a hundred motley bouses, including the only variety
store In the Ohio vaUey, kept in stock by the traders who passed
down the river from Pittsburg. North of the 43d paraUel, and
lying between Lakes Michigan and Huron, was another State,
with four other States lying directly south, and extending to
the 35tli parallel. South of that the country east of the me
ridian already named was to be joined to South CaroUna and
Georgia. The eastern boundary of this second column of States
was to be a meridian cutting the mouth of the Kanawha. This
left an irregular piece of territory lying east of this last me
ridian, and Inclosed by it, by the Alleghany River, by the west
em bounds of Pennsylvania, and by Lake Erie, which was to
make an additional State. By this division the Ohio bisected
the two States lying between the 37th and 39th paraUels. It
was provided that these States could become members of the
confederation as they successively attained a population equal
to the smallest of the original States. A series of curious and
pedantic names, rather ludicrously mixed with more famihar
Note. —The opposite map is a section of a " Carte Gi^nSrale des Etats-Unis" in Crivecoeur's
Lrllri:s d'un Ctillivalevr, Paris, 1787. It shows the proposed divisions of the western territory
under Jefferson's ordinance of 1784. Frankland is misplaced.

F L 0\ R I D ^ ' '

260 THE INSECURITY OF THE NORTHWEST.
appellations, was given to the group. The most northern of
all was named Sylvania. Michigania and Chersonesus lay
respectively west and east of Lake Michigan. Just south of
these lay Assenislpla and Metropotamla ; then came in the next
tier lUinoia and Saratoga ; while Polypotamia embraced the
country holding the various rivers that joined the Ohio in Its
lower course, and Pelisipia lay to the east of the last named,
and mainly south of the Ohio. The State of irregular outhne
was to be called Washington.
The ordinance was recommitted, somewhat modified, again
reported March 22, and was later by amendment subjected to
other changes. Jefferson's uncouth names were abandoned.
The Ohio, Instead of the 39th paraUel, was made the boundary
between the States which had earlier been called Saratoga and
Pelisipia. The territory north of 45° up to 49° was added to
what Jefferson had caUed Michigania. The clause abolishing
slavery after 1800 was removed. The ordinance thus reformed
was adopted on April 23, 1784. The essential feature of the
new law was that the States could adopt constitutions Uke that
of any of the original States, and when they reached a popula
tion of 20,000, they could be admitted to Congress by delegates,
and they could have the right to vote when a census showed
their State to have a population equal to the smaUest of the
old States. All provisions were in the nature of a compact
between the new communities and the old.
Though an act of Congress had thus indicated the future of the
northwest, there was little disposition among the people to give it
force, and it remained practicaUy a dead letter for the next three
years. . During this Interval tentative efforts were made from
time to time to improve the scheme. Washington objected to
the ordinance as being too ambitious. He thought a plan of
" progressive seating," by which States should be caUed one after
another into being, as population demanded, would have been
wiser. There was a feeUng among the frontiersmen In favor of
natural boundaries rather than for astronomical ones. This
objection was met by Pickering : " This -will make some of the
States too large, and In many of them throw the extremes at
such unequal distances from the centres of government as must
prove extremely inconvenient." This terminal question took
a definite issue when. In January, 1785, the settlers west of the

OHIO SURVEYS. 261
Alleghanies sent a memorial to Congress, asking that a sepa
rate government should be set up with bounds upon the Kana
wha and Tennessee rivers ; but the movement was premature.
Pickering now developed an active agency in two directions.
It is probable that he incited Rufus King to move, on March
16, 1785, that the ordinance of April 23, 1784, should be
amended so as to abolish slavery after 1800. The proposition
was referred to a committee, who reported on April 6, but the
matter dropped without definite action.
At the same time (March 16, 1785), Jefferson's plan for a
survey of the western territory was referred to a grand commit
tee. Pickering had, at the beginning of that month, sent a plan
to Gerry, In which he deprecated the Virginia habit of scram
bling for aUotments and of setting up " tomahawk claims,"
which had prevailed in the Kentucky region, and which had
proved an incentive to Indian outbreaks. He outlined instead
a scheme of township surveys, with indications of the quality
of the lands, in order that there might be a more systematic
assignment of rights by constituted authority. On April 12,
1785, the grand committee, of which Grayson was chairman,
reported an ordinance of such a character, which provided also
that a section of a square mile should be reserved in each town
ship for the support of religion, and another for schools. The
educational clause alone was retained. The township was made
six mUes square ; and five ranges of townships were to be sur
veyed between the Ohio and Lake Erie, beginning west of the
Pennsylvania line. The district between the Scioto and the
Little Miami was reserved to meet the bounties due the troops
who took part in Clark's campaign. On April 26, an observer
wrote to Gerry that Congress had spent a month on the prob
lem, while Virginia made many difficulties. " The Eastern
States," he added, " are for actual surveys and sale by town
ships; the Southern States are for indiscriminate locations."
On May 20, 1785, the reported plan was adopted as in effect an
adjunct of the ordinance of 1784, and Grayson wrote to Wash
ington that it was the best that under existing circumstances
could be procured.
It was evidently the purpose of Congress, in this ordinance
of [May 20, to follow Washington's advice and push westward
by stages, and make settlements by " compact and progressive

262 THE INSECURITY OF THE NORTHWEST.
settlements." The expansive tendency had, moreover, earned
Jay's reprobation. " The rage for separation and new States,"
he wrote to John Adams, October 14, 1785, " is mischievous ;
it will, unless checked, scatter our resources and In every view
enfeeble the Union." What territorial limits to give the new
States became an inherent element of any scheme. Monroe,
who was interested, journeyed west on a tour of observation.
He found the discomforts of the way fatiguing, and doubtless
looked upon the country in a spirit which was influenced by
his irksome experiences. He saw and heard enough about the
country to believe that the stories of the inordinate fertility of
the soil were the work of land speculators. Nevertheless, there
was, as Jay expressed it, " a rage for emigrating to the western
country," and the Continental Land Office was thronged with
those seeking " to plant the seeds of a great people beyond the
mountains." In Monroe's judgment, no more than five States
could be profitably laid out where Jefferson bad counted on
perhaps double that number. When Monroe returned, a move
ment was vigorously made In Congress to discredit the astro
nomical bounds and substitute natural ones, and to reduce the
number of States to be laid out to three or five. It was neces
sary, in the first instance, that the conditions of the cessions
of Virginia and Massachusetts — later explained — should be
made to conform to the new disposition of States, and this was
in due time accomplished. Grayson now proposed a division
like this : An east and west line should be drawn from the
westem bounds of Pennsylvania so as to touch the southern
head of Lake Michigan. This gave one State In the lower
Michigan peninsula and another west of that lake, extending
north to 49°, and bounded west by the [Mississippi. Between
the Ohio and the east and west line there were to be three
States, to complete the five, and the lines to separate them
were to be meridians cutting the mouths of the Great Miami
and the Wabash. This last line was later changed, so that the
division followed the AA^abash north till it reached Vincennes,
and then went due north by the river and by a meridian.
Jefferson saw danger in this smaller number of States. He
would have them of about thirty thousand square miles each,
and not one hundred and sixty thousand. It was like the differ
ence between Virginia, east of the mountains, and a common-

MASSACHUSETTS CESSION. 263
wealth three times as large, as he contended. He feared that
the people in such large States could not be kept together, and
that they would very likely break up their territory. In this
way they might, in part at least, withdraw to join either the
British or the Spanish. He wrote to Madison (December,
1786) that he thought this policy of making large States " re
versed the natural order of things." Pie then reverted again
to the chance of distractions arising from the disposition of
Spain to monopolize the Mississippi, and said that the prospect
gave him " serious apprehension of the severance of the eastern
and western parts of our confederacy. A forced connection
[with the west] is neither our interest nor within our power."
Jefferson was not alone certainly In perceiving trouble ahead
in this direction, but there were measures more pressing which
must be put In train, before any congressional action regulat
ing the civic government of the northwest could be satisfac
torily applied. The first of these was to complete the release
of territorial claims, urged by some of the seaboard States ;
and the other was to quiet the Indian title sufficiently, at least,
to open areas to settlement. It is necessary now to consider
these two measures.
The cessions of New York and Virginia had thrown the
further responsibility upon Massachusetts and Connecticut.
Connecticut was still governed under her original charter,
which gave her a sea-to-sea extension. Massachusetts had had
a similar charter taken from her by the king in council ; but
she did not recognize the power of the monarch, and now with
a new and revolutionary constitution, she stood for her original
territorial rights.
The first charter of Massachusetts placed her northern
bounds on a parallel three miles north of the Merrimac River
on any part of it. In early days she had contended that this
meant three miles north of that river's source in Lake Win-
nlpiseogee, while New Hampshire was willing to accept a
hne which started west three miles north of its mouth. The
dispute culminated at a time when Massachusetts was little
ineUned to favor the royal prerogative. The Privy Council,
being called upon to arbitrate, punished the older colony by
curving the line from a point on the coast three miles north of

264 THE INSECURITY OF THE NORTHWEST.
the mouth of the Merrimac, so that it ran parallel to that river
till it reached its southernmost bend, from which point it was
carried due west, — as defined in the maps of to-day. Massa
chusetts, in recognizing, at that time, this p>aramount authority
of the sovereign as settling her bounds east of the Hudson,
argued that west of that river, beyond the rights acquired by
New York, — which were allowed to extend to the upper
waters of the Delaware, — her independence secured her orig
inal rights so far as they had been untouched. Therefore she
claimed that ber rights were unimpaired in the northwest, be
tween the latitude of Lake Winnlplseogee and a continuation
of her bounds on Connecticut. This gave a belt westward,
eighty miles wide, north of 42° 2'. These limits gave Massa
chusetts pretensions to the larger part of western New York, —
wherein she was a rival claimant with New York, — and the
southern parts of Michigan and Wisconsin, where Virginia,
holding rival claims, had already released them. The Mohawk
basin was unsettled beyond Cherry VaUey, at the headwaters
of the Susquehanna, and German Flats. New York, while
claiming jurisdiction in the country farther west than the Mo
hawk, particularly in the valley of the Genesee, after having,
for a year or two before, presumed to sell the lands which were
in dispute, entered into an agreement with Massachusetts made
at Hartford, December 12, 1786, by which she recognized the
fee of that region west of Seneca Lake to be in Massachusetts,
but subject to the native title. This arrangement covered six
miUIon acres, which Simeon de Witt was to survey and plot
in a map, subsequently published in 1802. Massachusetts sold
these lands in 1788 to Phelps and Gorham, who had sought in
vain to enlist the aid of Rufus King in the purchase, but that
portion of It, about four million acres, west of the Genesee,
later reverted to Massachusetts, and was again sold by her to
Robert Morris. He retained what was known as the Morris
Reserve, and sold the rest to the Holland Land Company. It
is not necessary to go into details about this particular part
of the western claims of [Massachusetts. When her western
bounds — of the State jiroper — had been fixed in 1773 by a
line, roughly parallel to the Hudson and say twenty niUes east
of it, Thomas Hutchinson, one of her commissioners, had for
tunately insisted that the acceptance of that line was -without

CONNECTICUT CESSION. 265
prejudice to the claims of Massachusetts farther west, so that
this State was not now debarred from claiming in the far AVest.
This was but one of the obligations under which Massachusetts
lay to her later exiled governor, one of the loyalists who was
best provided for, in England. What Hutchinson saved for
Massachusetts east of Niagara was not indeed to be yielded to
the public domain ; but this was not the case with the fifty-four
thousand square miles in Michigan and beyond, whose fee and
jurisdiction she ceded to Congress by an act of April 19, 1785.
This was prior, as we have seen, to the movement for reducing
the number of States proposed to be set up in the northwest.
To remove the last bar to a clear title to this public domain,
there was now nothing left but for Connecticut to do what
Massachusetts had done, in regard to a strip west of Pennsyl
vania and south of Lake Erie and of the Massachusetts cession,
or between 41° and 42° 2', and stretching to the Mississippi.
This claim covered about forty thousand square miles. In
assertion of her charter rights. Governor Trumbull of Connecti
cut, on November-15, 1783, had, by proclamation, warned all
intruders off. Connecticut had had a long and, at times, some
what ferocious quarrel with Pennsylvania over a similar strip
which cut off a northern segment of the territory of William
Penn's charter, and only a year before (1782) it had been
settled by the intervention of Congress, which gave no reasons,
but upheld the claim of Pennsylvania. So what was left for
Connecticut to contribute was this same strip further westward,
where it covered what is now a part of the States of Ohio, Indi
ana, and Illinois. Within it were the sites where Cleveland
was to be founded a few years afterwards in 1791, and Toledo
and Chicago at a later day. This was the cession which Con
necticut made, September 14, 1786. She imposed a condition,
however, which, but for her promise to settle the country on
Lake Erie, might have failed of acceptance in Congress. This
was reserving a section along Lake Erie in the present State of
Ohio, which is stiU known as the Western Reserve ; and whose
settlement, soon to follow, realized the hope of Franklin, twenty
years before, of a barrier State in that position. After a
struggle in Congress, in which there was much opposition to
any recognition of the Connecticut's charter rights in this res-

266 THE INSECURITY OF THE NORTHWEST.
ervation, the act of cession was accepted on May 26. It was
supposed that the reservation as defined included about six
million acres, but it proved to contain only about three miUion
two hundred and fifty thousand acres, when it was finally
surrendered to the United States In 1800. This Connecticut
cession, barring what was temporarily withheld with some
doubt as to the retention of jurisdiction with the fee, compacted
the great public domain of the northwest. There was still a
small unclaimed area on Lake Erie. The long controversy over
the westem boundary of Pennsylvania had been closed in 1784
by running her southern line due west from the Delaware for
five degrees, when It turned at right angles and was extended
north to 42°. This point proved to be contiguous to Lake
Erie, but there were five or six miles of lake shore east of it that
did not belong to New York, since the western bounds of that
State had recently been run by Andrew EUicott on a meridian
twenty miles west of the most westerly point on the banks of
the Niagara River. Thus a bit of territory nearly triangular
In shape and known as the " Erie triangle," measuring some
thing over two hundred thousand acres, was considered to be
a part of the public domain, not embraced In the ordinances
of 1784, or in the later one of 1787. In 1788, the United
States extinguished the Indian title in it for £1,200 and then
sold it to Pennsylvania, by which that State secured on the
lake the old port of Presqu'Isle, now the city of Erie.
Meanwhile, before the cession of Connecticut had been made.
Congress had in connection with the ordinance of May 20,
1785, created the office of Geographer of the United States,
electing to that position Thomas Hutchins, who had been
Bouquet!s engineer In a campaign in this western country
twenty years before. After the Connecticut Reserve had been
made, Hutchins was directed to survey seven, instead of five,
longitudinal ranges of townships, north of the Ohio, west of
Pennsylvania, and south of the Reserve.
This plan of a rectangular survey was first suggested in the
report of a committee, of which Jefferson was chairman, on
May 7, 1784, and it was in accordance with his distrust of
rivers and ridges as suitable lines of demarcation. It has been
suggested that the hint of such a survey came from Dutch

THE INDIAN TITLE. 267
practice in a country too flat for natural divides. What Hutch
ins now undertook to do constituted the flrst systematic survey
west of the mountains, and was known as the Seven Ranges.
To start it, a " geographer's line," so called, was run due west
for forty-two miles from a point where the bounds of Penn
sylvania crossed the Ohio to a meridian that struck the Ohio a
few miles above Marietta, and formed the western bounds of
nineteen towns in the most western of the ranges. A post was
set at each mile, and every six miles a spot was indicated as a
township comer, through which a meridian line was run to the
Ohio and to the line of the Reserve (41°), cut by other east
and west lines at regular distances of six miles. In this way
the lines were marked, at first, without any very nice regard to
the magnetic variation, though Rufus King had tried in Con
gress to insure a record of it. Another difficulty was soon pointed
out by Pickering and others, which was that there was no rec
ognition of the converging of the meridian going north. " A
difference of six hundred yards in ten miles must surely pro
duce material errors," said Pickering. This was remedied at
a later period (May 10, 1800, Act of Congress) by running
other base lines occasionaUy, with new six-mile subdivisions.
WhUe the work was going on, it was necessary sometimes to
protect the surveyors from inroads of the savages. Tupper
had been engaged with Hutchins, and it was his report on the
country to Putnam that helped start the later Ohio Company.
Hutchins did not live to complete the work, and when he died
in 1788, at Pittsburg, the charge of the survey was assumed by
the treasury. Hutohins's work has given him fame, as by it he
introduced that universal square plotting of the public lands
which makes the map of our Western States and Territories
so unattractive to an eye accustomed to the diversity of geo
graphical boundaries.
The quieting of the Indian title has been mentioned as the
other necessary preliminary to the successful settlement of these
western lands. The red man had first recognized in 1784, in
the treaty of Fort Stanwix, the authority of the new Republic ;
and this meant, in an enforced dealing with the Indians, a
more extensive governmental relation than had been main
tained with them in the past. The confederation had of late

268 THE INSECURITY OF THE NORTHWEST.
years spent annually less than |2,500 In the Indian problem,
the greater cost devolving upon Individual States. In 1784,
the cost, to the extent of |4,500, fell upon the United States.
It was held in later years by Chief Justice Marshall that a
European nation making discovery of a territory had the sole
right of extinguishing the Indian title within that territory,
and that individual bargains with Indians for land were of no
binding effect. This principle had been established by Con
gress in 1781.
The earlier treaty of Fort Stanwix, in 1768, had, according
to the claim of the Indians, considered the Ohio as the bound
ary between them and the whites ; and recognizing this, it now
devolved upon Congress to take steps to enlarge the territory
open to settlement. In March, 1784, that body deemed it
desirable that the Indian title should be quieted on the hither
side of the meridian of the falls of the Ohio. To do this, it was
necessary to bring the tribes to treaty stipulations, and some
what unadvisedly It was determined to enter into pacts, tribe
by tribe, rather than to deal with them in a mass. There were
two obstacles in sight. One was the difficulty of finding the
money necessary for the presents required in a successful agree
ment with the savages. The other was the obstinacy with
which the Indians, in some part at least, and under British
instigation, were opposed to abandoning the Ohio limits.
It was politic to begin at the Immediate frontiers. Richard
Butler, with whom Washington had been consulting about the
Ohio portages, was In October, 1784, joined in a commission
with Oliver Wolcott and Arthur Lee, to whom representatives
of Pennsylvania should be added, to meet the New York In
dians at Fort Stanwix, in order to extinguish their title to lands
lying north and west of the Ohio, and within the limits of
Pennsylvania and New York. A treaty was made, and by it
the Iroquois, who had been pressing west along the southern
shores of Lake Erie, were in fact shut out from any further
advance in that direction. The pretensions of the Six Nations
to make sale of this territory angered the western tribes, who
claimed it as within their own patrimony. This rendered it
necessary to placate those discontents.
Fort Mcintosh had fallen into disrepair since 1783, and was
now refitted; and here, on January 21, 1785, the American

INDIAN RESERVATION.

269

commissioners, Isaac Lane, George Rogers Clark, and Samuel
H. Parsons, met representatives of the Wyandots, Delawares,
Chippewas, and Ottawas. It was now agreed for a satisfactory
consideration that a region in the northwest of the present
State of Ohio should remain inviolably in the Indian posses
sion, except that the whites' should be allowed tracts, six miles
square, about any military post which was within the territory.
The region thus reserved stretched on Lake Erie from Caya-

FORT Mcintosh.

[After a plate in The Columbian Magazine, January, 1790.
Pennsylvania Archives, second series, vol. xiv.]

See the same sketch revamped in

hoga to the Maumee. Its easterly line ran by the Cayahoga
and the Tuscarawas to near Fort Lawrence. The southern line
extended thence to the portage connecting the Miami and the
[Maumee, and by the latter stream the line extended to the lake.
Gerry, on February 25, 1785, writing from New York, informed
Jefferson that Arthur Lee had just returned from the Indian
country, and had reported that the new treaty had secured
thirty million acres for coming settlements. There were all
the while opposing -views as to the desirability of acquiring
the Indian title beyond the Miami, and so to the Mississippi.

270 THE INSECURITY OF THE NORTHWEST.
Pickering was among those who opposed any such movement
as opening the lands to " lawless emigrants," who were rather
incited than restrained by any prohibitory enactments. On the
other hand, there were those who contended that such purchases
were necessary to give the color of right to "lawless emigra
tion," and so prevent an Indian wa*.
There was another pressing difficulty, and that was the
invasion of these lands, north of the Ohio, by irresponsible
land-grabbers. In January, 1785, Governor Henry had warned
all intruders of the dangers they incurred. Congress was deter
mined to prevent the occupation of the acquired lands till they
had been surveyed. On January 24, 1785, General Harmar,
now in command on the Ohio, had been instructed to drive
out all squatters, ancl he did not hesitate to brand them as
"banditti, whose actions were a disgrace to human nature."
In March, he sent Ensign Armstrong along the north bank of
the Ohio as far as a point opposite Wheeling, to dispossess the
intruders, and this officer reported that he had heard of many
hundred more, as far west as the Miami. The work was fol
lowed up by a proclamation from Harmar on April 2, 1785 ;
and by vigilant action that general succeeded in preventing a
combination of the adventurers, for the piu'pose of resisting
under some organized form of govemment. By May 1, Har
mar reported that the cabins of such squatters had been burned.
The immigration by the Ohio, which had now been going
on for some years, was estimated at the close of 1785 to have
carried something like fifty thousand souls west of Pittsburg,
and there was enough community of interest among them,
EngUsh, Scotch, Irish, and German, to warrant in the summer
of 1786 the setting up of the first newspaper west of the
Alleghanies, the Pittsburg Gazette. The stream of emigrants,
aggregating year by year from five to twenty thousand, and
sometimes in a twelvemonth making a procession of a thousand
boats, had been stranded mainly on the Kentucky side of the
river, but the lateral valleys on the north bank had received no
inconsiderable numbers, as Armstrong was now reporting.
While these measures were in progress, it had occurred to
the philanthropic Countess of Huntingdon (February, 1785) to
send a company of English colonists to settle on lands adjacent

SURVEYS AND SETTLEMENTS. 271
to the Indians, in order to influence the savage character through
Christian neighbors, and so bring them to civilized ways.
There was no doubt that a spirit In the white man, different
from that prevailing among the wild adventurers of the west,
was needed on the frontiers ; but there was a fear that colonists
direct from English homes would feel more sympathy with the
English of the retained posts than with the neighboring bush
rangers, and that accordingly the philanthi-oplc experiment was
too dangerous for trial. So nothing came of it.
All these movements did not escape the notice of Simon
Girty and other emissaries of the British at Detroit. Very
likely it was by the instigation of such men that a disaffected
remnant of the Shawnees, Mingoes, and Delawares, ancl a few
Cherokees, got together in council on May 18, 1785, and gave
warning through one John Crawford, a Virginian whom they
held, that resistance would be made to encroachments north of
the Ohio, if such were persisted in. Ten days later (May 29),
we find McKee informing Sir John Johnson of the growing
discontent of the tribes, and the pressure which those along the
Wabash were exerting on the easterly Indians to combine In
order to enforce their rights.
In August, an Indian council at Niagara, and the move
ments of the autumn months, showed that it was difficult to
insure quiet, especially as there were rumors of an American
attack on Detroit. Such had been the uncertain condition
when, on June 15, .1785, Congress, to give higher authority to
Harmar's action, proclaimed that the surveys of the new lands
must be completed before settlement could be allowed. It was
felt by Hatnilton and others that the proclamation was likely
to be futile, and that the territory must Inevitably become the
theatre of a savage war, and in April, militia had been called
out for three years' service on the frontiers. There were fore
boding symptoms In the active agencies which Simon Girty
and Joseph Brant were exerting along the frontier. As an
Iroquois chieftain. Brant had felt deeply the manner in which
his tribesmen had been driven from their old homes and forced
to find hunting-grounds on Canadian soil, and had turned a
deaf ear to Monroe's entreaty to join the American rather than
the British interests. Nothing had more perplexed Haldimand
than making-suitable provision for these old allies of the British.

272 THE INSECURITY OF THE NORTHWEST.
Despite their antipathy to the Americans, Brant and his coun
trymen were not a little incensed, moreover. In seeing what
measures the British Parliament -had taken to provide for the
losses of the loyalists, while the losses of his own people had
been left without corresponding relief. He was threatening
during the summer (1785) to proceed to England and lodge
his complaint with the ministry, while Haldimand tried to
assuage his resentment.
In the autumn (1785), the commissioners, of whom General
Robert Howe was now one, began to prepare for a further treaty
to carry out the wishes of Congress expressed the preceding
June. Monroe accompanied them " for private considerations,"
as it was said. Captain Doughty, stationed at Fort Mcintosh,
was persuaded that a more generous treatment of the Indians
would be better, and recommended to the secretary of war a
greater outlay in gifts. Jay, as a looker-on at the centre of
govemment, was far from content with what the Indian depart
ment was doing, and by no means sure that there were not
sinister agencies at work. " Our Indian affairs do not prosper,"
he wrote, January 9, 1786 ; " I fear Britain bids higher than
we do. Our surveys have been checked, and peace -with the
savages seems somewhat precarious."
Doughty detailed a company of infantry to escort the com
missioners as they proceeded. west. Arrived at the mouth of
the Miami, a field was cleared, stockades and blockhouses were
built, and the post was named Fort Finney. The Indians had
been notified that this was the spot for a conference. On
November 13, 1785, General Samuel H. Parsons joined his
fellow members, and the commission was ready for its task.
The Shawnees on the Scioto, who had kept aloof from the
meeting in January, 1785, now came in, and a treaty was con
cluded on much the same terms as at Fort Mcintosh. They
agreed to confine themselves in the territory between the Great
Miami and the Wabash. This was on January 31, 1786, and
the Indians left five hostages to insure the release of white
prisoners, which were held among the tribes. Another effect
of the treaty was that It afforded for a whUe protection to the
government surveyors on the western lands.
These several treaties had at last secured from the Indians

COUNCIL AT NIAGARA. "273
participating a recognition of the title of this great northwestern
country which the United States had received from Great Brit
ain. This recognition, however, bad not been obtained without
exciting the jealousy of some portion of the conceding tribes,
particularly of such as had sought an asylum under British
authority in Canada, and were in December sitting in council
at Detroit. Brant, despite Haldimand's endeavors to prevent
him, had proceeded to England, and we find bim there on
January 4, 1786, presenting his claims, and, in behalf of the
whole Indian race, appealing to Sydney for countenance and
aid In the savages' efforts to keep the Americans south of the
Ohio. John Adams says that he saw the chieftain at the
queen's drawing-room. " The ministerial runners," adds this
observer, " give out that Brant is come to demand compensation
for the Indian hunting-grounds ceded by the English, and to
get something for himself as half-pay as colonel." Brant was
deeply chagrined to find that there had really been a cession of
the Indian territory to the Americans, and made the best he
could of Sydney's promise to pay £15,000 for the certified
losses of the Indians. Brant's disappointment was apparent to
the ministry, but they counted on his pacifying his tribe, and
advised his abstaining from revengeful hostilities against the
Americans. While the govemment in London was struggling with the
importunities of this chieftain, the American commissioners had
been only partially successful, as we have seen, at the mouth
of the Miami, inasmuch as the Cherokees and Mingoes were
raiding along the Ohio, rather than to join the conference at
^ Fort Finney, while the tribes near Sandusky were holding aloof.
[Major Doughty, In March, 1786, sent one Philip Liebert to the
lake shore to gain, if he could, these suspected bodies. It Is
doubtfid If the savages who had seemed complacent at Fort
Finney were acting In the best faith, for by April they knew
in Detroit that their signing of the treaty was only to gain
time and prevent the harrying of their villages by the whites.
By midsummer (1786), Sir John Johnson and Brant, who
had now returned from [England, had called upon the Niagara
a council of the Six Nations and the westem tribes. From
Brant's bearing, CampbeU of the twenty-ninth regiment, which

274 THE INSECURITY OF THE NORTHWEST.
was at Niagara, reported that the Mohawk chieftain was in IU
humor, and cared only for his own Interests. Girty, McKee,
and their Indians soon joined the council, and on July 25, 1786,
the Indians had gathered there in good numbers. Brant now
did his best to unite them in a campaign against the Americans.
His speeches had not their usual effect, and he next tried per
sonal solicitation among their viUages, but he was no more suc
cessful here ; and In September he was telling the British lead
ers in Detroit that he could do nothing more. Indeed, there
was already a movement among the Indians to start westward,
and find homes beyond the Mississippi, but It did not go far.
As the summer of 1786 wore on, it was by no means sure
that the danger was over. There was a disposition in Virginia
to bring matters to an issue. Rufus King records how the gov
ernor and Assembly of that State were " clamoring for a war
against the Indians," but Congress without a quorum stood
still. King further comments on " the lawless and probably
unjust conduct of the inhabitants of Kentucky towards the In
dians bordering on the western side of the Ohio." The secre
tary of war was powerless. When, in June, 1786, he needed a
thousand dollars to transport powder to the western troops, the
treasury board were not able to supply the funds, and the troops
deserted because they were not paid.
The Indian bureau of the confederation had set up two de
partments, one north, the other south of the Ohio. The instruc
tions of their respective agents on the spot were to regulate
the relations of the settlers to the Indians, and to protect the
savages in their territorial rights. To aid in this. Congress,
which In March had declined to aid Knox in reorganizing the
militia, voted (October 19, 1786) to raise a body of thirteen
hundred and forty troops, so as to increase the western force to
a legionary corps of two thousand men, but the condition that
they should be raised In New England soon aroused suspi
cion that, under the color of protecting the western settlers, it
was the real jmrpose of Congress to overawe the participants
in Shays's rebellion in Massachusetts. On November 29, Gerry
wrote to King of the Massachusetts legislature that " the coun
try members laugh and say the Indian war Is only a pohtical
one to obtain a standing army." On the Canadian side there
was something of the same indirection. The British government

CLARK AT VINCENNES. 275
¦were not ready to espouse the cause which Brant had not been
able to set afoot in the west, but they were not averse, as
Dorchester's instructions to Sir John Johnson show (November,
1786), to furnishing supplies to the Indians, and in October
there were two hundred savage warriors waiting at Niagara for
powder. So things were uncertain at every point just beyond the
mountains ; but farther west, on the Wabash, there were other
complications arising from the discontent of the old French set
tlers at Vincennes. There were in this place, and near the Illi
nois, perhaps a thousand French, and they numbered four to one
American. In the confusion following the war, with their alle
giance deprived of an object, they had petitioned the American
Congress to set up a government among them, to be in some
sort stable, and there was at the same time some talk of bring
ing additional French thither to increase that population In the
Ohio vaUey. This being denied, the situation had become
grave. Vincennes was a town of some three hundred houses,
but the sixty American families who made a portion of the
population lived apart from their French neighbors. The out
lying American squatters had withdrawn from the dangers at
tending their exposure to the savage marauders, and had sought
shelter among their compatriots in the town. The Indians, on
their part, were harbored among the resident French. So the
partisans on both sides lived in much insecurity, facing and fear
ing each other.
It was an opportunity for the Kentuckians, who, seeking the
leadership of George Rogers Clark, now but the wreck of his
former self, organized at Harrodsburg on August 2, 1786, and
advanced to relieve the Americans by scattering the Indians.
In this they sought to do what the general government seemed
indisposed to attempt. Gathering towards the middle of Sep
tember, at the falls of the Ohio, on the 17th, some twelve hun
dred in number, horse and foot, they started out. Harmar,
when he heard of it, had no confidence in their success, so bad
was their organization, and such difficulty had Clark experi
enced in holding the men to his standard. The apprehension
was well founded, for he accomplished little, and fell back
upon Vincennes. Here, in an attempt to support a garrison,
he seized stores from the Spanish merchants, and it was for a

276 THE INSECURITY OF THE NORTHWEST.
while supposed that he intended to attack the Spanish across
the Mississippi.
The weeks through the autumn of 1786 were disturbed ones.
Kentuckians stiU pursued the Shawnees and ravaged their
towns. The Indians were everywhere uneasy, and aU through
Georgia and Virginia the inhabitants were in arms. It was
the old story of encroachments and counter raids. A hundred
thousand doUars In specie, said Rufus King, had been paid in
ten years to satisfy the savages. In the hope of pacifying them,
but the sacrifice was futile.
Late in October, Lord Dorchester reached Quebec to assume
the supreme command. He had come with special instructions
to prevent, if possible, the Indians bringing on a war with the
Americans. On November 27, we find him inf orming Sir John
Johnson that this was the king's desire, and in December he
writes to the commandant at Detroit to " confine the war in as
narrow bounds as possible," if it should inevitably come. Brant
was at this time at the straits, and had summoned there a gen
eral assembly of the tribes from the Hudson to the Mississippi.
It was his jDurpose to formulate the last Indian appeal to be sent
to the American Congress. A paper was drawn up with such
skill as Brant possessed, embodying a protest against the con
gressional policy of treating with separate tribes, instead of cov
enanting with the entire body of the Indians. It insisted upon
the Invalidity of the Indian cessions of land as individual tribes
had made them. It stood stubbornly for the Ohio as the In
dian boundary, and deprecated the sending of surveyors across
that river. There was too much reason to believe, as most
Americans then thought, not only that British sympathy sup
ported the hostility of the Indians, but also their demand for an
Ohio frontier.
Brant certainly felt that in making this stand, it was neces
sary to have the countenance of the English ; but it was a
question how far they would sustain him in actual war. It
turned out that Sydney, In April, 1787, instructed Dorchester
to avoid assisting the Indians openly, but to see that they had
what ammunition they needed. This disguised aid was appar
ently become the British policy, while the troops with which
they manned their posts were insufficient for an active de
fense. The forts themselves were in a " ruinous" condition, and

MONARCHICAL VIEWS. 211
Dorchester had only two thousand men to hold them along a
line eleven hundred miles in length. The governor depended,
however, upon the assistance of the loyalists and Canadians, if
the forts were attacked. Sydney had instructed him to retake
the posts, if they were lost. Nevertheless, it was the manifest
policy of the British cabinet not to come to extremities, if It
could be avoided.
The English ministry were quite prepared for the Information
which Dorchester now began to transmit, and the public press
was only too ready to augment the stories of a gradual disin
tegration in the new Republic. The governing class was eager
to beUeve such tales. Lord Lansdowne so felt, and Jay tried
to disabuse his mind. " We are happy," said the American,
" In the enjoyment of much more interior tranquillity than the
English newspapers allow, or their writers seem to wish us."
Unfortunately, the question of debts and loyalists had shown
them the insubordination of the States, and they were in doubt
if it was possible for any representative of the confederation
which could be sent to their court to be sure of his position.
Sheffield predicted that, sooner or later, the westem country
would revolt and seek the rest of the world through the Missis
sippi. AU these things incited in England the hope that intes
tine disorders and a half-hearted interest in the proposed new
constitution would urge public feeling to seek social and political
stability in a return to monarchy, and it was fancied that Ham
ilton was latently the leader of a growing monarchical party,
against which the newly organized government was only a tem
porary barrier. Hamilton had indeed privately vouched for his
confidence in the British Constitution ; but his public action was
opposed. Speaking of the Federal Constitution, he said, " Not
more than three or four manifested theoretical opinions favora
ble in the abstract to a constitution Uke that of Great Britain ;
but every one agreed that such a constitution would be out of
the question." So there lingered, not without cause, a feeling
among the English that public sentiment would some time find
a reason propitious for an offer of one of the king's sons as a
sovereign of an allied kingdom, and there were broad intimations
made that a prince of the house of Hanover would serve them
better than a French Bourbon. The chance was not untalked
of in the States. " I am told," said Washington to Jay, August

278 THE INSECURITY OF THE NORTHWEST.
1, 1786, " that even respectable characters speak of a monar
chical government without horror." " I cannot believe," said
Benjamin Lincoln, " that these States ever will or ever can be
governed by laws which have a general operation. Were one
under an absolute monarch, he might find a remedy, but some
other mode of relief must be provided." Lincoln was further of
the opinion that the extent of the country along the seaboard,
embracing such a variety of climate and production, rendered
a uniform government less easy of exercise than if its area
stretched westward in an isothermal belt. " Shall we have a
king ? " asked Jay. " Not, in my opinion, while other expedients
remain untried." " No race of kings," said Jefferson In com
menting, " has ever presented above one man of common sense
in twenty generations." But John Adams, in his essay on
constitutions, had distinctly shown himself, it was thought,
friendly to the British Constitution, — a point that at a later
day Fauchet made the most of in his dispatches to the French
government. There were certainly great provocations to these dangerous
sentiments. Shays's rebellion in Massachusetts had unsettled
the national hopes, because, as Hamilton said, that State had
thrown her citizens into rebeUIon by heavier taxes, "for the
common good," than were paid In any other American com
munity. To make matters worse, Jefferson in his wild unbal
ance had welcomed the revolt, or proposed to cherish it, as a
benignant sign, and based his consolation on what Hamilton
caUed a " miserable sophism."
The reckless financial course of Rhode Island had made dark
the future of all. " The turbulent scenes in Massachusetts and
the Infamous ones in Rhode Island " were the words In men's
mouths. " The bulk of the people," said one observer, " will
probably prefer the lesser evil of a partition of the Union into
three more practicable and energetic governments," and the
advocates of such a partition were a force to be combated by
the writers of The Federalist, one of whose saUent points was
that a dismemberment of the Union would reopen the question
of the right to the western lands, lodged in the seaboard States,
and expose the territorial disputes among the States to the
arbitrament of war.
Whatever the result, whether the caU for a king, or disinte-

BRITISH DELAYS. 279
gratlon, it had become clear to the British leaders that time
would work to their advantage. So any dilatory poUcy which
would put off a hostile demonstration on the part of the In
dians, into which the posts might be drawn, was a manifest
prudence. Meanwhile, it was true that a good deal of the recur
rent bitterness in reference to the retention of the posts, which
the Americans had shown, had gone. Whatever truth there
may have been in it, Dorchester was beginning to think that. If
they could not recover these military stations, the Americans
were content to accept the situation, and seek to rival them in
trading-posts by establishing new ones on the lakes. When he
learned that a considerable number of Americans were en
camped on the Great Miami, and making their way towards
Vincennes, the alternative presented itself to his mind that if
they were not aiming to attack the posts, they were Intending
to afford support in founding these rival stations.

CHAPTER XIV.
THE NORTHWEST OCCUPIED.
1786-1790.
During 1785, General Benjamin Tupper of Massachusetts,
who was one of Hutchins's surveyors, had opportunities of
traversing the Ohio country. On his return east, he wrote to
Washington that he had been charmed with the aspect of the
west. Later, he spent a night in Rutland, Massachusetts, In a
house still standing, where with its master. General Rufus
Putnam, a project was considered of leading a colony of old
soldiers to this attractive region. The midnight talk of these
old companions in arms revived the longings shown at New
burgh two years before. It was accordingly agreed between
them to issue a call to the disbanded officers and men of the
army living In New England, to meet In Boston on March 1,
1786, to consider a new project of westward emigration.
The caU met with a good response. Eleven delegates ap
peared from different New England communities, and within
two days the Ohio Company was organized. Not only officers
of the army were welcome, but those who had served on the sea
as weU, and among the naval veterans was Commodore Whipple
of Rhode Island. There was a good deal of preliminary work
to be done, for it was necessary to seek those who held land
certificates for service In the war, as these credits were to be
accepted In payment for the soil. There being already a tide of
settlers turning. towards Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine,
it was also necessary to set forth by advertisement the greater
attractions of this western country. In due time, such business
methods were well arranged under Generals Putnam and Par
sons as directors, to whom a third, Manasseh Cutler, skillful
with the pen and fertile in counsel, was added.
Rufus Putnam had made a creditable record in the war,
though, as is often the case with engineer officers, he had not

CUTLER AND DANE. 281
gained a conspicuous position in the public eye. He was of a
Massachusetts stock that had always been well known. Samuel
Holden Parsons was a Connecticut man, of good standing,
though of late years some disclosures, principally in the secret
service books of Sir Henry Clinton, have raised an unfortunate
suspicion that he failed at times in loyalty to the revolutionary
cause. Friendly efforts have thrown these charges Into the
category of things not proven, but it still remains a fact that
his good faith in relation to the Ohio Company was. In some
respects, questioned by his associates in that undertaking.
But the chief spirit in this colonizing movement was a minis
ter of the gospel in Ipswich, Massachusetts, who gained distinc
tion enough in his pulpit to become a Doctor of Divinity, and
he knew scarce less of law and medicine. Manasseh Cutler
was a self-reliant man, and had that confidence in his star which
characterizes a certain type of New Englander. Moreover, he
believed, as that sort of a man often does, in making his neigh
bors and those he knew best his associates in any hazardous
undertaking. He was as shrewd and as politic as any among
the people he favored, not above telling half the truth and bar
gaining for the rest. He was equal to cajoling when he could
not persuade, and by that token not a poor politician. With
whatever skiU he had in subduing opposition, he was a master
in observation, both of man and nature, and naturalists look
back to his botanical records to-day as among the earliest in
New England of much scientific value. He knew, above all,
how to stand up against opposition, whether in man or the
devU. Such qualities gave him the leading place among those
who were devising plans for a new life, and seeking, under his
inspiration, a new career in the distant AVest.
While these measures were being shaped in Boston, Nathan
Dane, an Essex County man, representing Massachusetts in
Congress, had opened the way for a committee, of which Monroe
was made the chairman, to report an ordinance for the govern
ment of the northwest, and in considering the matter, Monroe
had invited Jay to confer with the committee. It was the
purpose of the new movement to supplant Jefferson's ordi
nance of 1784. Its progress was delayed, quorums failed, and
a new Congress intervened before, on April 26, 1787, the
revised ordinance was reported. There were some features in

282 THE NORTHWEST OCCUPIED.
it not in the earlier law, but there was nothing in the nature of
a compact to prevent repeal without common consent. The
question of preventing slavery bad been so squarely met and
thrown out In Jefferson's experience that the subject was now
ignored. A fortnight later, on May 9, the biU came up for a second
reading. At this time. General Parsons, now in attendance,
put in a memorial for a grant of land within the jurisdiction of
the proposed ordinance. There was, however, something in the
manner of his application that disturbed both Cutler and
Putnam when they heard of it, and even excited suspicions of
Parsons's honesty. A third reading was in order ou the next
day, but there was no quorum, and all business was laid over.
A month and more now passed, during which interest was
centred In the federal convention, which assembled at Philar
delphia on May 14. In this interval the work of Congress was
blocked by the absence of delegates. During- these Idle days
Cutler had appeared in New York, prepared to supersede
Parsons in directing the application for land in behalf of the
Ohio Company, now representing two hundred and fifty shares
at a thousand dollars each. Cutler reached that city on July 5,
and found Congress with a quorum, the first It had had since
May 11 ; but its president, Arthur St. Clair, was absent. Hutch
ins had advised that the company ask for Its territory near the
Muskingum. Cutler now, in presenting the subject anew,
showed that he was determined, If land was purchased, that a due
recognition should be made in the pending ordinance of those
social and political principles which had been formulated of
late in the constitution of Massachusetts, and in the laws of the
States which the new era had fashioned. • Cutler's proposition
came before the committee on July 6, and Included a payment
for the land which he asked for of sixtj-'-six and two thirds
cents the acre, In soldiers' certificates, which, reduced to specie
value, was equivalent to eight or ten cents.
Congress at this time hardly knew where to turn to meet its
financial obligations, and such a proposition was a welcome
relief in Its distresses. Three days later, on July 9, the ordi
nance was recommitted to see if it could not be modified to suit
the demands for which Cutler stood. These conditions and
expectations brought a new atmosphere about the deliberations

CUTLER AND THE ORDINANCE. 283
of Congress. The new proposals, it was found, opened the way
to pay off about one tenth of the national debt, and in addition,
the prospect seemed good of combining into a code of funda
mental principles the numerous social and political ideas which
were flying about in the air, and many of which had, in one
way or another, from time to time, been brought directly to
the observation of Congress. Some of them Involved, however,
a smothering of cherished antipathies on the part of some of
the members, particiUarly a demand for the extirpation of
slavery north of the Ohio. Cutler was in his element in stand
ing as the champion of freedom, and he was politician enough
to know how the Virginia opposition could be quieted by show
ing to the representatives of the Southern States the better
chance they had of compacting their interests south of the Ohio,
if they conceded something on the other side of that river to
the principles of the North, since such concessions might
strengthen the obligations of the North to protect the products
of slave labor in the South, and to stand by that section of the
country in an inevitable contest with Spain over the free navi
gation of the Mississippi. This was to be the chief victory of
Cutler in paving the way for the later motion of Dane. The
other points upon which Cutler insisted were more easily carried.
Such were reservations of land for the support of religion and
education. The latter object received a double recognition.
Five sections in each township were set aside for the benefit of
schools, and two whole townships were devoted to the advance
ment of liberal learning.
While in the hands of the new committee, it would seem
that the draft of the ordinance was submitted to Cutler for bis
scrutiny, and under his influence, doubtless, some other of the
final social provisions of the instrument found their place In It.
AVith these amendments, it was reported back to Congress on
July 11, and went promptly through successive readings. It
became a law on the 13th " with great unanimity," the eight
States present aU voting for it. Rufus King was not present In
the final stages of the question, and Dane, after the passage of
the ordinance, wrote to him : " We wanted to abolish the old
system and get a better one, and we flnally found it necessary
to adopt the best we could get." All that was desired was not
obtained; but it was nevertheless a triumph for Cutler and those

284 THE NORTHWEST OCCUPIED.
who sympathized with hiin. The Virginians had yielded much.
There were, in fact, potent reasons other than those already
mentioned for them to accede, since it gave them the hope of
using the proposed trans-montane community to further their
scheme of opening communication with the west through the
Virginia rivers. So the tricks of give and take, as politicians
understand them, did their part in the work.
It is of little consequence, if not futile, to try to place upon
any one the entire credit, such as it was, of this famous ordi
nance of 1787. Cutler's interposition was doubtless opportune.
What the Massachusetts country parson was from the outside,
very likely the Massachusetts lawyer, Nathan Dane, was from
the inside ; and with both combining, with Congress ready to
bargain and be complacent, and with the example of Jefferson's
earlier ordinance, and the personal influence of King and others
according, the instrument took its final shape, as the natural
and easy outgrowth of surrounding conditions. It was also,
as Rufus King called it, " a compromise of opinions," and he
added, in writing to Gerry, " When I tell you the history of
this ordinance, you shall acknowledge that I have some merit
in the business."
Congress, as we have seen, had caused a large tract of ter
ritory to be surveyed west of the mountains, thinking, by dis
posing of it, to place the finances of the young Republic on a
healthy basis ; but there had been few or no sales of the land.
Cutler, as a buyer, had now appeared, ready and anxious to
make a purchase and give a vital flow to the revenue.
The federal convention, just at this time sitting in Philar
delphia, was seeking to find a way out of a dismal political
environment. It needed, in one aspect, the encouragement of
just the outcome which a copy of the perfected ordinance, as
printed in a Philadelphia newspaper on July 25, afforded it.
The bold assumption of Congress to regulate the public domain
was a stroke which helped the convention better to understand
the relations of the States to the unorganized territory in the
west. The enlarged conception which the new ordinance gave
of the future problem of western power, and its effect on the
original States, clarified the perplexities which had excited in
the convention the apprehensions of Gerry and others. The
influence which the new outlook had upon the different mem-

CHARACTER OF THE ORDINANCE. 285
hers was naturally in accordance with their individual habits
of mind. Morris expressed a fear at granting any new western
state privileges like those enjoyed by the seaboard common
wealths. The chief advocate of equal rights was George Mason
of Virginia. " If it were possible," he said, " by just means
to prevent- emigration to the western country, it might be good
policy. But go the people will, as they find it for their in
terest ; and the best policy is to treat them with that equality
which will make them friends, not enemies." He had, too, a
just anticipation of the time " when they might become more
numerous and more wealthy than their Atlantic brethren."
King, whom Brissot was reporting as " the most eloquent man
in the United States," evinced wherein his hope lay : " The
eastern State of the three proposed will probably be the first,
and more important than the rest ; and will, no doubt, be
settled chiefly by eastern people, and there Is, I think, full an
equal chance of its adopting eastern politics." So wlth^some a
hope to bolster the power of the North as against the South was
not the least consideration in the movement.
The ordinance shows, in its conglomerate character and some
what awkward combinations, the rapid changes which took
place in it during the brief interval while it was upon the
anvil of Cutler and the reformers. The company which was to
act under it was waiting, and there was no time to spend
to weld into symmetry its independent parts. The instrument
was peculiarly the outcome of prevalent ideas. Congress by
previous legislation had experimented with many of them.
The statutes of several of the States, the constitution of Massa
chusetts, and the Bills of Rights largely patterned upon that of
Virginia, and which the new fervor of independence and liber
ated humanity had elicited, were but other expressions of cur
rent hopes drawn upon, while devoted hands were moulding the
provisions of the ordinance. Thus it was an embodiment of
current aspirations, and had not a single new turning-point in
human progress ; but it was full of points that had already been
turned. Let us pass in review its leading features so as to
show this.
The ordinance was Intended to provide security and politi
cal content in a territory of two hundred and seventy thousand

286 THE NORTHWEST OCCUPIED.
five hundred and fifty square miles, or thereabouts, which was
larger than any known in Europe, except Russia, and twice as
large as Great Britain and Ireland combined. This country
lay above the Ohio, east of the Mississippi, and was bounded
on the north by Lakes Erie, Huron, and Superior. It was to
be divided eventually Into five States, and the Eastern States
had welcomed this provision as a substitute for the smaller
commonwealths which Jefferson had proposed.
As this provision was made a part of a compact, it was sup
posed that this territorial distribution was binding. Everybody
counted blindly. They did not sufficiently comprehend that
any planning for the future of an extensive and little-known
territory must necessarily, compact or no compact, depend for
its perp)etuity on a sustaining public interest. The question of
bounds of these five States, as provided in the fifth compact
of the ordinance, was peculiarly liable to such vicissitudes. In
defining the latitudinal line which was to make the northern
boundary of the three lower States, the framers of the ordi
nance had overlooked the more accurate configurations of
Hutchins's map of 1778, and had gone back to MItcbeUs map
of 1755. In this way they accepted a false position for the
southern bend of Lake Michigan, which that divisionary hne
was to touch. The question of sharing in some equitable way
the frontage on the lakes, ancl the plea that an Infringement of
the compact of the ordinance was necessary to afford such a
frontage so as to prevent Illinois casting in her lot with the
South, In due time, threw to the winds, as a matter of course,
that obligation of the Instrument, and a majority vote dissolved
the compact, as it did In another question of Inherent national
interest when the acquisition of Louisiana was confirmed. A
similar disregard of the .igreement, also, in time abridged the
rightful claim of Wisconsin to the region east of the upper
Mississippi and south of the Lake of the Woods. In this re
spect any modern map shows how futile the compact was.
The provision of the fourth section of the compact seeking to
promote trade in transit, by declaring streams and connecting
portages common highways, bad already been anticipated, in
connection with Virginia's project for opening channels to west^
em trade, by a resolution of Congress on [May 12, 1786. Pick
ering had urged it before In a letter to Rufus King : " It seems

SLAVERY CLAUSE. 287
f
very necessary to secure the freedom of navigating water com
munications to all the inhabitants of all the States. I hope we
shaU have no Scheldts in that country."
The assurance for a representative government, which the
ordinance gave, was accompanied by a provision which allowed,
as was permitted in the ordinance of 1784, the adoption of
the laws of any of the older States. The provision sometimes
proved an onerous one amid environments which rendered mod
ifications of such laws necessary to a healthful condition of
public life. It was provided that when a State reached a
population of sixty thousand free j)ersons. It could form a con
stitution and be admitted to Congress by delegates aUowed to
vote, while with a less population such delegates could not vote.
A property qualification was rendered necessary in order to
be either voter or magistrate, and, if manhood suffrage Is an
advance, the ordinance made a backward step, for Jefferson's
ordinance had given every man the right to vote. The new
act nearly mated the provision of the Virginia constitution of
1776, where a vague requirement of " sufficient evidence of per
manent common interest with, and attachment to, the commu
nity" had been considered to mean the possession of a freehold.
The section for the exclusion of slavery, which was intro
duced by Dane on the second reading of the bill, was a matter
that had been for a long time bandied about between North and
South, and between factions for and against, both in the North
and in the South. The phrase, " all men are born free and
equal," In some of its forms, used In the Virginia Constitution
in 1776, repeated in the Declaration of Independence, and cop
ied in the Bills of Rights of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania,
was simply a hackneyed expression of political assertion, as
John Adams said at the time. It meant what it pleased any
body to say it meant. There was no thought In Virginia that
it touched the question of slavery, while in Massachusetts,
under the pressure of public opinion, it was seized ujDon by
the Supreme Court of the State, in 1783, to signify the legal
abolishment of slavery in that community. AVith the same
language to deal with in the New Hampshire constitution
(1783), it was early construed as freeing those only who were
born after the enactment. Similar phraseology in the Vermont
constitution, in 1777, had not been held to abolish slavery.

288 THE NORTHWEST OCCUPIED.
With such " rights and liberties " as Virginians acquired
under ber constitution, with her interpretation of that phrase,
she covenanted with the Union in her deed of cession of March
1, 1784, that they should still pertain to her citizens then in
the northwest territory. Notwithstanding this, her representa
tives had voted for Cutler's bill, which he thought in conflict
with that covenant. While, then, this professed prohibition of
slavery in the northwest was in July, 1787, enacted in New
York, George Mason was saying in August, in the federal con
vention in Philadelphia, that " the western people are already
callino- out for slaves for their new lands, and wiU fUl that
country with slaves, if they can be got through South Carohna
and Georgia." Mason's reference was of course mainly to the
people south of the Ohio ; but it is by no means certain that
Cutler knew just what this prohibition of the ordinance meant
for the north side of the Ohio. There were four or five thou
sand French and half-breeds in the lUinois country, whose
rights of property had been guaranteed in the treaties of 1763
and 1782, and human servitude prevailed among them. Did
this ordinance provide for its extinction and without compen
sation to the owners of slaves ? Some evidently feared it, for
there was some emigration of such over the Mississippi from
Kaskaskia. Fortunately, in the awkward dilemma, the faith
and justice of Congress, careless of promoting- them, were estab
lished for that body by St. Clair when he became governor of
the territory. He reported to the President that he had con
strued the ordinance with something of the same freedom that
had been used with the glittering words of the Bills of Eights,
as Intending only to prevent the introduction of slaves, and
not aimed at emancipating such as were there and had been
introduced " under the laws by which they had formerly been
governed." He hoped, he said, that in doing this he had not
misunderstood " the intentions of Congress," as by his inter
pretation he had quieted the apprehension of the people and
prevented their flying beyond the Mississippi.
Therefore the ordinance failed to abolish slavery, and it was
not, moreover, any novelty In its professions of abolishment.
When there had been, under Pickering's influence, a movement
in the army, in 1783, to provide homes for the war-stained vet
erans, it had been a condition too emphatic for misinterpreta-

RELIGION AND EDUCATION. 289
tion that the total exclusion of slavery should be " an essential
and Irrevocable part of the constitution of the proposed State."
Mason and other Virginians had been,' as we have seen, advo
cates for the abolition of slavery. Jefferspn's preliminary
ordinance of 1784 had rooted it out of every part of the trans-
AUeghany region, though this section had received only the
votes of six States, when seven were required. Cutler had
indeed, with Dane's aid, turned the southern adherence to negro
bondage so adroitly to his own purpose that he had secured,
futile though it was, the expression in the last article of the
compact which was intended to extirpate slavery. For this in
tention due credit must be given ; but King and Pickering had
been pubUc advocates of abolition before ever Cutler was heard
of. The American Anti-Slavery Society had been founded In
PhUadelphIa In 1775. Tom Paine had written the preamble
of the Abolition Act of Pennsylvania in 1780. A society for
the liberating of slaves had been organized in New York in
1785. Notwithstanding these signs, it is apparent that the
provision of the new ordinance for this end was never pro
claimed, for fear of the influence it might have to prevent emi
gration to the territory. There is indeed no evidence that the
supposed fact of prohibition was ever used in any advertisement
of the Ohio Company to advance settlement. The ordinance
can hardly be said to have been instrumental in keeping human
bondage out of the northwest in later years. It afforded a
rallying cry ever after 1795, when the movement of the slavery
faction began in that region to overcome and eradicate the aver
sion of the people to such bondage, but it was the constancy of
a later generation, and the leading of such as Governor Coles,
and not an ordinance which was never in its entire provisions
effective, which had been annulled by the adoption of the con
stitution, and substantially reenacted by the first Congress, that
did the work which was really consummated in the constitu
tion of Illinois at a much later day.
CongTess had for some time played fast and loose with the
question of religion and education. George Mason had long
been the redoubtable champion of both. In the revision of the
Virginia laws in 1777, Jefferson had contended for " reUgious
freedom with the broadest bottom." Though the provision for

290 ~ THE NORTHWEST OCCUPIED.
the support of religion had been once lost in Congress, the sus
tenance of education had been a part of Bland's motion in June
1783, and again in the bill for surveys in 1785, when lot six
teen was set aside in each township. The aUowing of all kinds
of orderly worship and the furtherance of religious interests,
the support of education and the protection of Indian rights,
were now secured — as they had been often aUowed before In
other parts of the country — in the first and third articles of
the compact.
The provisions of the second compact for the regulating of
social life were aU ordinary observations pertaining to common
law processes, the writ of habeas corpus, and trial by jury.
The conditions developed in Massachusetts by Shays's rebellion
had induced Richard Henry Lee and Nathan Dane to become
sponsors of the clause which prohibited laws Impairing the ob
ligations of private contracts. The absolute o\A'nership of lands,
the equal sharing of property, and the prevention of primo
geniture and entail were all In the creeds of Jefferson, Monroe,
Johnson, and others, and had before been embodied in the laws
of Virginia and other States. Hamilton had pointed to the
common observance of an equal Inheritance as insuring the
country from the evils of a moneyed aristocracy.
So the ordinance of 1787 Introduces us to nothing new in
human progress. There was doubtless that in it which proved
a guiding star for future legislation, as in the struggle over the
slavery question in Illinois ; but it may well be questioned if
later enactments, without such a beacon, and keeping In sight
the interests of the community as they arose, would not have
made of the northwest all that it has become. The pro-visions
of this fundamental law were operative just so far as the public
interests demanded, and no farther, and the public interests
would have had their legitimate triumph unaided by it. The
ordinance simply shared this condition with all laws in commu
nities which are self-respecting and free.
The ordinance disposed of, Congress, on July 23, authorized
the Board of the Treasury to sell to the Ohio Company a tract
of land lying between the Seven Ranges and the Scioto, and
beginning on the east five miles away from the left bank of the
Muskingum. The tract was supposed to contain one million

THE OHIO COMPANY.

291

THE OHIO COMPANY'S PURCHASE.
[From a General Map of the Course of the Ohio from its Source to its Junction with the
Mississippi, in Collet's Atlas.'\
five hundred thousand acres, for which there was to be paid, if
the measurement proved correct, a million doUars in soldiers'
certificates, one half down and the other half when the land was
surveyed. In order to increase the inducement for the govern
ment to sell, — for there had arisen a doubt If Cutler's terms

292 THE NORTHWEST OCCUPIED.
of payment were to be accepted, — and at the same time to
play furtively into the hands of Colonel Duer, an ardent specu
lator and " representative of some of the principal characters
in the city," this New England parson and trusted agent of the
Ohio Company, on the same day, and keeping Duer's partici
pancy in the shade, suddenly increased his proposal for terri
tory. He asked now for five mlUion acres, and offered a
payment of 13,500,000. Cutler by this time had discovered
that St. Clair, who since the 17th had been in his chair as
presiding officer of Congress, was not averse to receiving the
governorship of the new territory, and though St. Clair was not
Cutler's choice, the latter found it politic to favor the presi
dent's somewhat disguised aspirations so as to advance his
own enlarged piroject. Under this reinforcement. Cutler's lag
ging project had been resuscitated, and the bargain was con
cluded, and the desired area was secured. It was to include
country north from the Ohio, ten townships of an eighth range,
and to extend west, south of the upper boundary of the tenth
township, till seventeen ranges of six miles each had been cov
ered. Hutchins thought that the meridian making the western
bounds of the last range would come nearly opposite the mouth
of the Kanawha, thus by a considerable stretch falling short of
the Scioto. This was indeed a misjudgment, which, with other
mishaps, led to some serious complications, as we shall see.
The bargain clinched. Cutler and Winthrop Sargent, the
later secretary of the colony, to whom the grant had been
made, sold on the same day a half interest to Colonel WiUiam
Duer, as had been understood, who, on his part, agreed to ad
vance money to help meet the payment on the whole. The
other moiety of the purchase remained with Cutler and those
associated with him In the subterfuge.
Three months later, after the surveys had been made, the
bargain was finally consummated on October 27, 1787. It was
then found that the Ohio Company's part of the purchase was
but nine hundred and sixty-four thousand two hundred and
eighty-five acres, for which only 1642,856.66 was to be paid.
The transaction had absorbed something less than one half of
the two million acres pledged by warrant to the soldiers of the
recent war. Congress had, August 8, 1786, made the Ameri
can silver dollar very like the Spanish, and this specie basis

FORT HARMAR.

293

was to govern the value of the warrants, however variable the
current paper value of the scrip.
It was fortunate for the new settlement that it was to have,
at the mouth of the Muskingum, an assured safety in the neio-h-
borhood of Fort Harmar, which had been built there in 1785
for the protection of the surveyors and as a refuge for the traf
fickers on the river. This post and Fort Mcintosh at the
mouth of the Big Beaver were the only stations now held by

FORT HARMAR.

[After a cut in the American Pioneer, vol. i., Cincinnati, 1844, The small house in the left
foreground is where St. Clair made the treaty of 1789. Just above this house is the mouth of
the Muskmgum, and over that the point on which Marietta was buUt.]
the government north of the Ohio. They commanded the
routes to two different portages, both leading to the Cayahoga
and Lake Erie. Wharton, in 1770, in addressing Lord HiUs
borough, had spoken of the Cayahoga as having a wide and
deep mouth large enough to receive great sloops from the lake.
" It will hereafter be a place of great importance," he added.
It was considered in Virginia that one of the most effective
^ ,._ '—The map on the two following pages is from Crfevecceur's Lettres d^un CuUivateur,
¦ !»•, Pans, 1787, and shows the valleys of the Hockhocking, Muskingum, and Big Beaver, and
P«rport8 to be based on observations of Bouquet, and on information from the Shawnee chief,
White Eyea.

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296 THE NORTHWEST OCCUPIED.
measures to be fostered was the opening of canals where now
these portages necessitated a land carriage. The country, irre
spective of its value for transit, was of itself an attractive one
and at this time, as General Harmar tells us, buffalo swarmed
along its alluvial bottoms, not to disappear tiU ten or twelve
years later, leaving memories with the settlers of many a savory
haunch. Putnam, when he came to know the country, caUed
its climate as " healthy as any on the globe ; " and of the land
itself he said that it was the " best tract, all circumstances
considered, which the United States had or ever wUl have to
dispose of, to such an extent." In respect to its numerous
intervales, he held it to be a more advantageous settlement than
either the Scioto or Miami regions, which, as we shaU see, were
at the same time seeking other occupants.
The new movement was as encouraging to the government
as it was promising to those embarked in it. Before the sale
was consummated, Richard Henry Lee had written (October 11,
1787) to Washington that the lands at the west were becoming
" productive very fast," and he was hopeful enough to believe
that " the lands yet to be disposed of, if well managed, would
sink the whole thirty millions [of debt] that are due."
During the summer of 1787, Harmar with a military force
bad advanced to Vincennes to take its French population under
protection, while Major Hamtramck was left in command at
Fort Harmar to watch the coming immigrations. With the
following spring, the tide of settlers flowed actively. The
Conestoga wagons, which of late years had superseded the pack-
mule in passing the mountains, poured into Red Stone on the
Monongahela, bringing some discontents, if current reports are
believed, who were escaping from subjection to the new Federal
Constitution. Pittsburg, with a population, as Colonel May-
expressed it, "two dogs to a man," was in itself federal m
sympathy ; but the surrounding country afforded all the sym
pathy that was wanted by the flying democrats. This western
community was now for the flrst time kept in some corre-
S]Dondence with the seaboard, through a post.al service on horses
which had just been established, connecting Philadelphia at a
Note. — The map on the opposite page is from T/ic VnOT^ntoi- (Pittsburg, Sth ed., ISW), and
shows how the navigiible channel passes the Muskingum. The islands are : 34, Duvall's ; 35,
Muskingum ; 36, Second ; 37, James's ; 38, Blennerhasset's. It is the earliest published river chart.

THE NAVIGATOR.
^ Marietta
Muskingum

298 THE NORTHWEST OCCUPIED.
fortnight's Interval with the Ohio. The flatboats in which the
new-comers descended the Monongahela to the main river were
fitted with wagon tops over their after-parts, affording some
shelter to the women and children. The men picked off the
buffalo and wild turkeys on the banks to keep the company
supplied with fresh meat. It was not easy to make an accurate
record of the number of boats which were constantly passing
Into the Ohio at Pittsburg, for many floated by in the night ;
but in 1788, up to May 11, at least two hundred boats, averag
ing twenty persons to each, passed that point In the daytime.
When land In Pennsylvania in large tracts was seUing at half
a guinea an acre, there was naturally a large exodus over the
mountains. Not a boat of this moving flotilla was freighted with so much
of promise as one long, bullet-proof barge which, in the hazy air,
passed unguardedly by the mouth of the Muskingum, tiU its
company was first made aware of their nearing their destina
tion by the walls of Fort Harmar looming through a thick mist.
With some aid from the garrison, for which they had signaled,
the overjoyed company pushed their boat back against the
current, and brought it up against the eastern bank of the
Muskingum. The name of this fateful craft was the " May
flower," a reminiscence of that other vessel, which nearly a
hundred and sixty-eight years before, and freighted -with a still
greater promise, cast her anchor under the shelter of Cape Cod.
The bleak shores of New England, without a sign of welcome
on that November day, 1620, were a strong contrast on this 7th
of April, 1788, to the limpid stream reflecting the verdure of
spring, and the welcoming flag of the new Republic floating
above the fort.
Let us go back a few months. At a meeting of the pro
moters of the Ohio enterprise in Boston on the 21st of the
preceding November, It had been determined to found their
future city at the mouth of the Muskingum, and two days later
Rufus Putnam was chosen the leader of the pioneers. Boat-
builders were sent forward, and by the last of January, 1788,
they bad begun their work on the Youghiogheny. Putnam,
with the surveyors and engineers, joined them by the middle of
February. ' Everything was ready, and by the 2d of AprU the

MARIETTA. 299
" Mayflower " floated out upon the stream, and five days later
she reached the Muskingum. " No colony in America," said
Washington, " was ever settled under such favorable circum
stances." The position which had been chosen was a striking
one. Samuel Wharton, in 1770, had extoUed the country.
Evans and Hutchins had publicly joined in glowing descriptions
of it. The confluence of the Ohio and the Muskingum formed
two attractive peninsulas, with high banks, and a breadth of
two hundred and flfty yards of limpid water flowing between
them. On the lower point Fort Harmar had been built. On
the upper were the scattered mounds of a long-vanished people.
Here, amid a growth of trees, some of which, surmounting the
earthworks, attested their great age, the labors of the new
colony were to begin. Through the late spring and summer
the Initial work of the pioneers, and of those that soon joined
them, was carried on. Ground was cleared for many an allotted
home lot, and for their stockade, called the Campus Martius.
Some built huts of the planks that had made their boats.
Others feUed trees and constructed ruder shelters. The few
yokes of oxen which they had brought dragged the timber
among the stumps, where lately the forest stood. They sank
saw-pits, and turned tree-trunks into planks. Some were at
tracted by the comely grain of the black walnut, and saved It
against need to make household tables and chests.
They gained acquaintance during these summer months with
every subtly changeable quality which the climate could show.
There was at one time intense heat and myriads of gnats. The
river water, which was their dependence, was sickening in its
tepidness. Then there came cloud-bursts, followed by rainbows.
Away in the mountains, beyond their observation, there were
deluges, and the rivers that skirted their acres became wonder-"
fiiUy agitated, and they looked on In wonder. They had never
before seen rivers rise so rapidly. Again, the torrid air would
flee suddenly before an atmosphere which in June seemed like
September. All such changes induced a rapid vegetation,
which surprised M. Saugrain, the naturalist, who was on the
spot during the year. Their gardens leaped from sprout to
Note, — The map on the two following pages shows Fort Harmar and the site of Marietta, to
gether with ancient earthworks of the " Mound-builders." It is from Crevecoeur's Voyage dans
>" haute Pensylvanie, Paris, 1801.

^S^-v-

802 THE NORTHWEST OCCUPIED.
bud, and from blossoms to edibles. Fifteen thousand fruit
trees were in bearing within a few years. Brissot found the
soil " from three to seven feet deep, and of astonishing fertility.
It is proper," he adds, "for every kind of culture, and it multi
plies cattle almost without the care of man." These and the
game — buffalo, deer, bear, with turkeys, pheasants, geese, and
ducks — and the marvelous flsh of the streams — carp, stur
geon, and perch — furnished their tables with a rich abundance.
Those who were invited to the mess of the officers In the fort
were gladdened with a still greater variety. But their New
England bringing-up did not let many of them forget their
Sunday " dinner of beans," as one of their diaries shows.
The neighboring Indians, who ventured among the settlers
to shake hands and barter, soon perceived that a policy differing
from what the savages had known In the whites was governing
their new neighbors. The New Englanders were making then-
settlement much compacter than had been the habit of the
squatters upon tomahawk claims on the other side of the Ohio.
Parsons was soon reporting to his friends at the east how the
natives were struck by this. That Individual irresponsIbUity
which had been found in the long knives of Kentucky was on
the very next day after the arrival of the first barge banished
from the new colony by the promulgation of a code of laws.
These were temporarily devised, pending the arrival of their
governor, and made public by being nailed to a tree. They
selected a man of repute among them. Return Jonathan Meigs,
to be responsible for their enforcement.
Within a few seasons, something Uke twenty thousand souls
fioated down the Ohio to such expectant, law-abiding communi
ties, and It remained to be seen whether these novel conditions
of civilized life In the western wilderness would have a benefi
cent effect upon the five thousand savage warriors who made
their homes between the Ohio and the lakes.
The colony's working- parties in the field were from the first
prudently protected by armed patrols. There were, indeed,
occasional alarms, compelling the withdrawal of everybody to
the shelter of the stockade, but there was no serious disturbance
of their quiet beyond an attack upon an outpost which they
soon estabUshed up the Muskingum. A few Mingoes and
other savage desperadoes wandered on the Scioto, and from a

MARIETTA.
[This cut is from Harris's Journal of a Tour in 1803.1

304 THE NORTHWEST OCCUPIED.
high rock on the Virginia bank, nearly opposite its mouth, the
Indian lookouts watched for the descending boats, and some
times lured them to destruction ; but above the Muskingum
there was little danger, and the bed and blanket linings of the
low cabins on the emigrants' boats rarely received in these
upper reaches of the Ohio the buUets of the skulking foe. So
it was that they who passed beyond, bound for Kentucky, ran
the larger hazard ; but the risks did not produce great hesitancy
among them. By the end of the summer of 1788, there were
less than one hundred and fifty adult males in the Muskingum
colony ; while for the previous twelve months, something like
five hundred boats, carrying ten thousand emigrants, were
known to have passed Fort Harmar, to take the chances of the
savage gauntlet and land their passengers for the Kentucky
settlements, with which there was now talk of uniting those on
the Cumberland.
The New England element on the Ohio became eventuaUy
mixed with a large infusion of that Presbyterian Scotch-Irish
blood which had been long strengthening the fibre of the Ken
tucky spirit. Those of this blood that passed into the Ohio
region came over the mountains from New York and Pennsyl
vania, and have left their descendants in the east and central
regions of the present State of Ohio. Those that fled from the
uncongenial surroundings of Carolina and its slave code were
scattered along the river shelves and back of them, between the
Muskingum and the Miamis.
The spring of 1788 was a busy one for Putnam and his com
panions. There had been the labor of gathering and trans
shipping their supplies at Pittsburg, now a muddy and coal-
blackened little village of a few score houses and a thousand
people. When Parsons and Sargent reached there on May 12,
the former was soon approached by British emissaries, anxious
to make commercial connections for the new settlement. Their
choice of negotiator has a sinister look, when we remember
how Cutler had distrusted Parsons. Nothing came of it. Pnt-
nam, a safer man, was much more Interested in what Con
gress was likely to do with Brant. This Mohawk leader was
still restless. " The Indians are having a critical time," he
said. " The Yankees are taking advantage of them, and the
English are getting tired of them." If Congress showed no

ARTHUR ST. CLAIR. 305
disposition to redress the wrongs of his people, would Brant
yield to the Indian passion for war? A desolating conflict
seemed likely from the lawlessness of the remoter squatters,
and was apparently to be forced on the Wabash by the inroads
of the Kentuckians, who were unhappily most of the time be
yond the control of the government. " Not a single Indian war,"
said Jay later in one of his Federalist papers, " has yet been
occasioned by the aggressions of the present federal govern
ment, feeble as it is ; but there are several instances of Indian

MARIETTA.
[From CoUot's Atlas.l
hostilities having been provoked by the improper conduct of
individual States, who, either unable or unwilling to restrain or
punish offenses, have given occasion to the slaughter of many
innocent Inhabitants."
Before the arrival of St. Clair as governor, the colony had
compacted itself and given to their town, in commemoration of
Marie Antoinette, the French queen, the name of Marietta,
by running together parts of her double name. As they had
recognized in this the aid of France in their revolutionary
struggle, they celebrated the fruition of the war in a festival on
Independence Day, when venison, bear, and buffalo meat regaled
the appetite, and General Varnum, who with others had left
Rhode Island to escape the tyranny of her paper-money faction,
deUvered an acceptable address. Five days later, they received
their new executive with a salute of fourteen guns.
This man, Arthur St. Clair, was of Scotch and noble birth,
and had been educated at Edinburgh. He had come to Amer
ica thirty years before, and had served under Amherst at Louis-
burg and under Wolfe at Quebec. He had been sent later on
staff business to Boston, and had there married, in 1760, the

306 THE NORTHWEST OCCUPIED.
daughter of a family of social standing, and secured with her
a competence. This he later lost In Pennsylvania, where he
had settled In 1764. Joining the patriot side in the war for
independence, he had, though much in service, attracted little
favorable notice. He perhaps met undue censure for his fail
ure to thwart Burgoyne, at Ticonderoga, in an " unexpected and
unaccountable " evacuation of that post, as Hamilton said. He
later engaged in the civil service, and was president of Con
gress when Cutler, playing upon his vanity, helped on his own
projects by favoring St. Clair's aspirations to be governor of the
new territory. It is fair to remember, however, that St. Clair
professed this was an honor thrust upon him. He was now a
man of fifty-four, and not in his political opinions without some
what advanced views, as appeared in part when he made his
inaugural address. Eleven days later. In July, he created, by
proclamation, the county of Washington, which embraced the
eastern half of the present State of Ohio, and the machinery
of government was set in motion. He and the three judges —
Samuel H. Parsons, J. M. Varnum, and J. C. Symmes — now
fashioned a permanent code of laws which, in its provisions,
was very strict and even cruel. Debt and petty offenses were
harshly treated, and " in punishment of crime " the statutes insti
tuted a barbaric kind of ser-vdtude, compared with which the
bondage of the slaves at Vincennes was mild. On September
22, the governor marched in the procession of magistrates which
opened on that day the first session of their organized court.
St. Clair found, however, his most difficult task not in gov
erning his immediate dependents, but in carrying out the wishes
of Congress to extinguish the Indian title everywhere south of
41°, and west to the Mississippi. Mated with this was the per
haps greater difficulty of controlling the recldessness of the
irresponsible squatter and the wild bushranger's provocation of
the Indian.
Soon after Brant had presented his memorial to Congress,
insisting upon the Ohio as the Indian boundary, the govern
ment of the confederation had addressed itself to accomplish
by treaty what it hardly dared attempt by war, while the north
ern posts were in the hands of the British. The chief impedi
ments in this action had been found in the rampant propensi
ties of the Kentuckians. "It is a mortifying circumstance,"

CAMPUS MARTIUS.

307

wrote Harmar on December 9, 1787, to the secretary of war,
"that while under the sanction of the federal authority negotia^
tions for treaties are holding with the Indians, there should be
such presumption in the people of Kentucky as to be forming
expeditions against them." The natural result of such irregu
lar warfare was the forming among the tribes of " confedera
tions and combinations," whose mischief-making it was expected
that St. Clair would thwart.
It was a question then, and has been since, in all surveys of
this period, how far the British government, or its individual

308 THE NORTHWEST OCCUPIED.
agents, were responsible for the Indian hostilities. St. Clair,
in January, 1788, wrote to the secretary of war: "Notwith
standing the advice the Indians received from Lord Dorches
ter to remain at peace with the United States, there can be
but little doubt that the jealousies they entertain are fomented
by the agents of the British crown." Hamilton wrote in The
Federalist : " The savage tribes on our western frontiers ought
to be regarded as our natural enemies and their [Great Brit
aln] natural aUies, because they have most to fear from us and
most to hope from them," and for this reason he was urging a
standing national army instead of local protection of the fron
tiers. A lack of unity of purpose in the States, and a setting
of local interests before those of the confederation, was a con
stant source of jjerplexity In many ways. In dealing with the
Indians, this lack of a common policy was most harassing. In
July, 1788, St. Clair complains of the government of New
York distracting the Six Nations by caUing them to council
at Fort Stanwix and making a treaty, at the same time that the
federal authorities were inviting them to a conference at Fort
Harmar. Since 1786, when the tribes had been summoned to a council
by George Rogers Clark, the Indians as a body, on one pre
tense or another, had avoided making a treaty with the whites.
In the summer of 1788, St. Clair had urged such a meeting
upon them, not, however, without a suspicion that they would
decide upon war as an alternative. In this beUef he was de
termined to be forearmed,- and by the first of September, 1788,
he had called upon the governments of Virginia and Pennsyl
vania to hold in readiness some three or four thousand mihtia,
while he equipped his regulars for forest service, and hoped to
add to them some three or four hundred recruits from the
French on the Wabash.
It was with some apprehension lest they were more deter
mined on war than on peace that St. Clair saw the warrior chief
tains begin to assemble at Fort Harmar on the 9th of Sep
tember, 1788. Representatives of the various tribes came in
slowly. Meanwhile, a dubious character, one John Connolly,
known to be a British emissary, was disquieting the governor,
lest to the Indian difficulty another was to be added. The gov
ernor heard in November that Connolly had gone to Kentucky

ST. CLAIR'S TREATIES. 309
in behalf of Lord Dorchester, and It was not quite clear whether
Connolly's purpose was to detach the Kentuckians from the
American cause by offering them better security under British
protection, or his mission had some connection with the Span
iards and the Mississippi. We now know that Dorchester had
a month before (October, 1788) informed his home government
that the people of Kentucky were both planning to force the
Mississippi and to bargain with the English for an outlet
through the St. Lawrence, and this throws some light on the
way in which Parsons had been approached at Pittsburg.
Before this, in August, 1788, Madison had written to Jeffer
son : " Spain is taking advantage of disgust In Kentucky, and
Is actually endeavoring to seduce them from the Union, — a
fact as certain as It is important."
While St. Clair was in the uncertain frame of mind that
suspicions of this kind engendered, by December 12, those of
the Six Nations and other tribes who had been proof against
the persuasions of Brant and McKee had assembled at Fort
Harmar in such numbers that the governor was ready to open
the conference. There was by this time, because of St. Clair's
constant professions, no hope on the Indians' part that Brant's
contention for the Ohio as a boundary would be recognized.
Brant and his Mohawks had withdrawn to Detroit. This
development distressed St. Clair, as it well might, and it gave
him further anxiety to learn that Dorchester was strengthening
the fortifications of Detroit. He also received further proofs
that the Spaniards were seeking to undermine the loyalty of
the settlers on the Cumberland and Tennessee, and that Colonel
George Morgan, who had received a grant from the Spanish
for a settlement on the west bank of the Mississippi, was hold
ing out inducements for settlers disposed to expatriate them
selves. This settlement of New Madrid, which Brissot called
" a pitiful project of granting to those who shall establish them
selves there the exclusive right of trading to New Orleans,"
proved a movement which Brissot thought in reality " the first
foundation of the conquest of Louisiana."
Amid such anxieties as these, St. Clair went on with his nego
tiation tiU In the course of January, 1789, he concluded two
treaties. The first was with the Six Nations, except the Mo
hawks, whom Brant had withdrawn. It confirmed the provi-

310 THE NORTHWEST OCCUPIED.
sions made at Fort Stanwix in 1784. The other was with the
Wyandots and other western tribes, and confirmed the grants
towards Lake Erie made at Forts Mcintosh and Finney In 1785.
In some respects the new agreements were more advantageous
to the whites than the earlier ones. At aU events, they con
firmed all the grants made by the Indians north of the Ohio
which Brant had labored to prevent.
St. Clair made proclamation of the result on January 24,
1789, and, as Parsons said, the treaty ended " to the satisfac
tion of all concerned." St. Clair himself was confident that
the Indian confederations had been broken and " Brant had
lost his infiuence," though, as the governor wrote to Knox, it
was not possible for him to extend the bounds beyond the lines
earlier agreed upon. St. Clair soon discovered that the tribes
who were not " concerned " in It were far from being satisfied,
and this meant the distrust of a large part of the twenty to
forty thousand Indians — for the estimates are not very pre
cise — scattered over the northwest. The Shawnees particu
larly were insolent and began their restless maraudings, which
had a tendency for a while to check western immigration, — a
condition not unacceptable to the British fur traders at Detroit.
Knox wrote to Washington a few months after the treaty was
signed that the Indians possessed a right to the soil in these
western lands, and it was only to be taken from them by their
consent or a just war, — a principle easy enough to compre
hend, and ever since maintained by the American courts ; but
the fact that there are always likely to be tribes or bands not
uniting in agreements opened then, and has raised since, a
question of title which has usually to be settled by force.
Meanwhile the fair fame of the Ohio Company was suffering
from the remote results of the conduct of its chief promoters.
When it was known what was meant by the sudden increase of
the purchase which Cutler made, by which he obtained more
than three times as much land as the company itself had in
tended to acquire, there was by no means among his associates
a general approval of his purposes.
Cutler's furtive manoeuvre in the purchase, in order to screen
so many " principal characters of the country," gave place to
questionable devices in subsequent efforts to make the most of

JOEL BARLOW. 311
what had been acquired as the reward of collusion. It is not
clear just how far Cutler was responsible for the extravagant
representations which were used in Paris to promote a bewilder
ing speculation and to dupe innocent enthusiasts. Brissot, In
defending the promoters, claimed that these seductive descrip
tions were original, not with Cutler and his allied contrivers,
but with Hutchins; stiU it is certain the company adopted them.
The compact of the two companies, as represented by Duer and
Cutler, professed that they were " jointly and equally concerned
in Europe and America in the disposal of their lands," which
connects Cutler on its face with any nefarious practices of Duer
and Ills agents. Putnam, at least, as one of the trustees of the
company, could hardly have been ignorant of much that was
done, and was indeed actively engaged in some part of it. The
object which these scheming confederates had in view was to
draw into the Scioto speculation for their own gain, the public
securities of the United States which were held in Europe,
and to entice to the Ohio country those who were dismayed at
the sudden murkiness which portended and accompanied the
French Revolution. There was, moreover, a purpose to whet
the eagerness to engage in such American ventures, now that
Jefferson's consular convention with France was calculated to
keep the United States subservient to that country, and that
such participation was likely to prove advantageous to French
commerce. The agent who was employed to accomplish this,
after other agencies had failed, was Joel Barlow, a man now
four-and-thirty years old, of Connecticut stock, who had just
become known as one of the " Hartford wits," and the author
of The Vision of Columbus. Sailing from New York, he
reached Havre on June 24, 1788, and was soon at his task in
Paris. In what this agent did, he may have exceeded the
authority committed to him, and in such acts his principals
are relieved from complete responsibility for what followed.
The next year, 1789, Barlow formed a company In Paris, and
sold to It three million acres on the Ohio, west of the seven- -
teenth range. The payments for it were to run in part till
Note. —The map on the foUowing pages is from a map. Plan des Achats des Compagnies de
I'Ohic et du Scioto, grave par P. F. Tardieu, and used by Barlow in Paris to advance his decep
tive measures. It represents the " Seven Ranges " and the lands of the Ohio Company as
"cleared and i'nhabited," and places the " Premiere Ville " as without the bounds of the Ohio
Company, when it was within them. Marietta is called " Mariana."

>l'e/'f /¦•mir'.:- i(r .//mii'ii/iii/il/n ) \y

'1 -

314 THE NORTHWEST OCCUPIED.
1794. To advance the speculation. Barlow caused to be turned
into French an overdrawn description of the country, which
Cutler had printed at Salem in 1787, couched in language
showing the inevitable vices and devices of land speculators.
This translation was published at Paris in 1789, and it was
accompanied by a map, prepared by the associates In America,
as Todd, Barlow's biographer admits, though he acknowledges
that he keeps the worst side of the transaction out of sight.
This map aimed to further the deceit, begun in Cutler's adver
tising description, and If that was drawn from Hutchins, the
false statements of the map, representing both in the Seven
Ranges and In the Ohio and Scioto Company's land a settled
country, were certainly the associates' and Barlow's fabrications.
Barlow, it may be allowed, was not alone in hopeful cheer for
the future, if he was deceptive in the present, when he claimed
that there would be in twenty years a larger population beyond
the mountains than was then on the Atlantic slope, and that,
" sooner or later," the capital of the whole country must be In
the centre of it, for Hamilton not long before, in the federal
convention, had prophesied a doubling of the representation in
Congress in five-and-twenty years.
If the business of the Scioto associates was a nefarious one,
not a little of the mischance must be ascribed to the feverish
condition of France. The infatuated Parisians were easily led
to their ruin, and there is little evidence that they put Barlow's
persuasions to any test, though existing caricatures, issued at
the time, show that something like correct knowledge of the
Ohio country existed, for one of them indicates a belief that
the company were selling imaginary acres, and offering maps
— as was the case — on which rocky deserts were represented
as fertile plains and the territory was supplied with all the
appurtenances of civilized life, while in but one corner ai It a
few pioneers were completely isolated in their incipient struggles
with the wilderness.
If this Scioto venture, as we shall later see, proved a grievous
misery, an experiment more creditable to those concerned had
taken place In the Miami country. In August, 1787, John
Cleve Symmes, who was one of the three judges associated with
St. Clair in the government of the northwest, applied to the

SYMMES'S COLONY. 315
land office for a miUion acres lying between the Great and
Little Miami, offering terms the same as the Ohio Company
had paid. The increasing demand for land had carried up the
value of the military scrip, so that the completion of the trans
fer was not reached till May 15, 1788. Thomas Ludlow, a
New Jersey man, who had made the survey, found that the
million acres supposed to lie between the two Miamis were
diminished to something over a quarter of that extent. In the
foUowing July, Symmes started to reach his grant. He had
fourteen four-horse wagons and about sixty persons in his train.
With this equipment he landed from his barges at the Little
Miami on September 22, 1788, accompanied by Ludlow, Den
man, and Filson, names associated with the beginnings of this
venture. Here, on a site opposite to the spot where, coming
from the Kentucky mountains, the Licking poured into the
Ohio, they planned for a town, but before much could be done,
the Indians prowled about in a hostile manner, and it was
thought prudent to return to Limestone (MaysvIUe), sixty miles
up the river, on the Kentucky shore, where a settlement had been
begun four years before. In November (1788), a party returned
to the same spot and built a blockhouse. About Christmas,
Denman, Ludlow, and another party left Limestone, and push
ing their boats through the floating Ice-cakes, they landed on
December 28, on the same ground. Some eight hundred acres
of the immediate region had been bought by Mathias Denman
and two others, whom he admitted to the enterprise, for some
thing less than two hundred and fifty dollars. In the party
was John Filson, who was to employ his skill for surveying in
laying out the streets of a town. It fell to Ludlow to take
measurements, so as to find out where the purchased area
began, at a spot twenty miles from the mouth of the Great
Miami. Denman and Ludlow began to consider what name to
give the projected settlement, and thought of Cincinnati, In
commemoration of the society of which Washington was then
the head ; but Filson, who had been a schoolmasta^ exercised
his unpolished wits in fashioning a strange name. He was not
quite sure which of the two endings to his conglomerated desig
nation he preferred, burg or mile ; but he had no doubt about
the rest of the composition, and his pedantry prevailed. So
LosantivIUe was adopted, signifying the town (yille') opposite

316 THE NORTHWEST OCCUPIED.
(^anti') the mouth (os) of the Licking (X). When St. Clair
later came upon the spot, he preferred Cincinnati, and the future
city was saved a ridiculous designation. Filson, being soon
killed by the Indians while venturing inland, was not destined
to make a similarly bizarre combination of the city lines, and its
streets were really laid out by Ludlow.
This and other settlements in the neighborhood assured, Gen
eral Harmar sent a detachment to protect the colony, and on
September 26, 1789, the troops began to erect a stockade on a
reservation of fifteen acres. The post was named Fort Wash
ington, and in December Harmar, accompanied by about three
hundred men out of the six hundred in his department, arrived
and established there his headquarters. Cincinnati, under such
military protection, outstripped the other neighboring settle
ments on the Great and Little Miami, and soon became the
county seat.
The use that was to be made of the Mississippi and its eastern
affluents had now become a burning political problem. The stren
uous contention which Franklin had made in 1783 to secure the
main current of that river as a boundary of the young Repub
lic had brought its sequel. The Ohio, which had already be
come the main avenue to the Kentucky and Cumberland regions,
was now the principal approach to the new settlements on the
northern banks. So long as the British retained the lake posts,
the Ohio was to have no rival as a western route. Washington,
soon after he became President, bad addressed himself to this
perplexing- question. In October, 1789, he had asked St. Clair
to investigate the portages between the Ohio basin and Lakes
Erie and Michigan, as forming a connection with the posts,
which he hoped now to demand with the weight of a better
organized government behind him. So he instructed Gouver
neur Morris to sound the British authorities about entering upon
a commercial treaty. He also directed him to reopen the ques
tion of the posts, while Hamilton Intimated to the British agent
in New York that his government need no longer fear that
the United States did not offer a stable administration to deal
with. While this matter was pending, the use of the Mississippi was

THE MISSISSIPPI VOYAGE. 317
a more vital consideration for the west. The Ohio, from Pitts
burg to the rapids at Louisville, had a course of ten hundred
and seventy-four miles, as It was then reckoned. Hutchins
had described it as carrying " a great uniformity of breadth,
from four hundred to six hundred yards, except at its confluence
with the Mississippi and for a hundred miles above it, where it
is a thousand yards wide. For the greater part of the way It
has many meanders amid rising ground upon both sides. . . .
The height of the banks admit everywhere of being settled, as
they are not liable to crumble away. . . . There is scarce a
place between Fort Pitt and the rapids where a good road maj''
not be made and horses employed in drawing up large barges
against a stream remarkably gentle, except in high freshes."
A down voyage on the Ohio was easy and pleasant, barring
the risk of the savage bullets, and the barges of the emigrants
went on at three or four miles an hour in ordinary stages of
the water ; but their progress was accelerated to double that
speed in the spring freshets. The return voyage was altogether
trying. Any plan of an ocean commerce for the West by an
outlet in the Gulf of Mexico presented so serious an obstacle
In the stemming of this current that the canal companies of
Virginia derived their chief impulse from this obstruction in a
rival route.
From New Orleans to Louisville, now a town of some sixty
dwellings, boats of forty tons, manned by eighteen and twenty
hands, could hardly accomplish the trip in less than eight or ten
weeks, — a voyage which the first steamboat which accomplished
it made, in 1815, in five-and-twenty days. It was a serious
question If any method could be devised to overcome this obsti
nate current so as to reduce this time. There were those who
contended that some scheme of artificial propulsion, such as
Rumsey and Fitch were now experimenting with, would yet
reduce the cost of transportation on this up-voyage to a tenth
of the expense of carriage by land and water from Philadelphia
to the same point. When Cutler had tried to Impress the sus
ceptible public by that vein of prophecy which blinded the
poor settlers of GaUipoUs, he added : " The current down the
Ohio and Mississippi for heavy articles that suit the Florida
and West India markets . . . will be more loaded than any
stream on earth. ... It is found by late experiments that sails

318 THE NORTHWEST OCCUPIED.
are used to great advantage against the current of the Ohio,
and it is worthy of observation that. In aU probability, steam
boats will be found to be of Infinite service in all our river navi
gation." Cutler himself had had hopes of substituting the screw
for oars in the ordinary manual labor of the boats. In August,
1788, he had tried an experiment on the Ohio, with the help
of Tupper, in which he claimed to have " succeeded to admira
tion " in propelling a boat by a screw worked by hand.
If this question of artificial propulsion was one factor in the
Mississippi question, there was another in the opposition of
Spain to the claim of the West to seek the ocean by the Gulf
of Mexico, and Jay was soon aware that Spain " did not mean
to be restricted to the limits established between Britain and
the United States." In May, 1785, Gardoqui had come to
negotiate a treaty of commerce in behalf of Spain. In confer
ences which he later had with Jay, it was proposed that the
United States should abandon for twenty-five years aU claims to
descend the Mississippi to the Gulf in recompense for the com
mercial privileges which Spain, on those terms, was disposed to
grant. Rufus King recounted the arguments of those ready to
accede to this demand. He believed that if the free navigation
of the Mississippi was secured, the east and west must separ
rate, for the commerce of the west would inevitably follow the
Mississippi. To populate the west would indeed make a mar
ket for the western lands, but the disposing of them at this
risk would pay too dearly for replenishing the treasury of the
country. He acknowledged that the cry for the Mississippi
was a popular one, but to insist on the point was a sure way to
a war -(vlth Spain, and such a conflict, with a probable loss of
territory and the fisheries, was too great a risk. Edward Eut-
ledge of South Carolina told Jay that " the majority of those
with whom I have conversed believed that we should be bene
fited by a cession of it [the Mississippi] to Spain for a limited
time." •
Jay himself was ready to accede to the demand of Spain, but
on bringing it to the attention of Congress, in August, 1786, It
was apparent that the country had become clearly divided on
the issue, and there was great heat in the controversy. The
members from tlie South and West, with few such exceptions
as Rutledge,. insisted on opening that river in opposition to the

SPAIN AND THE MISSISSIPPI 319
commercial classes of the North, which valued the professed
opportunities of trade even at the cost which Spain demanded.
Otto wrote to Vergennes in September, 1786, that he feared the
heated opposition of the two sections would lead to open advo
cacy of disunion. Jay's purposes had aroused Virginia. On
March 1, 1787, Randolph wrote to Madison : " The occlusion
of the Mississippi will throw the western settlers into an imme
diate state of hostility with Spain. If the subject be canvassed,
it will not be sufficient to negative it merely, but a negative
with some emphasis can alone secure Mr. Henry to the objects
of the convention at Philadelphia." Mason said In the federal
convention in July : " Spain might for a time deprive the west
of their natural outlet for their productions, yet she will, be
cause she must, finally yield to their demands." Henry Lee, in
August, when it seemed that Jay might carry his point, wrote
to Washington : " The moment our western country becomes
populous and capable, they will seize by force what may have
been yielded by treaty." In October, Lafayette said to Jay :
" In a little time we must have the navigation, one way or the
other, which I hope Spain may at last understand." In De-^
cember, Madison, observing as Randolph had done, represented
to Washington that Patrick Henry, heretofore a warm advocate
of the federal cause, was now become cold because of Jay's
project, and was likely, if Congress acceded, to go over to the
other side. Monroe and Grayson, to avoid a rupture, were
inclined to compromise, so as to agree with Gardoqui that
exports from the west should have free passage by the Missis
sippi, while imports should enter the Atlantic ports.
As the months went on, the feeling in sympathy with the
west increased. Jefferson wrote of Jay's project in January,
1T87, as " a relinquishment of five parts out of eight of the
territory of the United States ; an abandonment of the fairest
subject for the payment of our public debts, and the chaining
of those debts on our own necks." If, by virtue of this deser
tion of the west, he added, " they declare themselves a separate
people, we are Incapable of a single effort to retain them." In
•A^pril, Harmar, at the rapids of the Ohio, found the question
"the greatest subject of discourse," and the opinion prevailed
there that, If the Spanish demands were met. It would be " the
greatest of grievances." The Spaniards were warned that their

320 THE NORTHWEST OCCUPIED.
obstinacy might throw the western people into the arms of
England, who could offer them the St. Lawrence as an outlet.
Brissot said that If Spain would only open the Mississippi,
"New Orleans would become the centre of a lucrative com
merce." Brissot believed Spain woidd do this, except that she
feared " the communication of those principles of independence
which the Americans preach wherever they go."
By February, 1787, Jay's party in Congress showed signs
of weakening, and later, when New Jersey, Pennsylvama, and
Rhode Island deserted him. Jay abandoned all hope. But
Spain was firm for an exclusive use of the river, and the time
was only put off when the question would come to an issue.
Virginia might resolve, as her Assembly did on November 12,
1787, that the free use of streams leading to the sea was guar
anteed " by the laws of God and man," but something more
than legislative votes was necessary to secure the boon. There
was a lingering suspicion that England, at the peace, had so
readily yielded the western country because she was sure it
would eventually involve the new Republic in controversy with
Spain, and rumors of a coming conflict were, as it now turned
out, constantly in the air. Harmar -wrote in January, 1788,
to the secretary of war : " I very much question whether the
Kentucky and Cumberland people and those below will have
the audacity to attempt to seize Natchez and New Orleans. I
know of no cannon and the necessary apparatus which they
have in their possession to carry on such an expedition." It
was at the time evident that though Kentucky had something
like a hundred thousand population, the wiser course for attain
ing success was to bide the time when Spain and western
Europe were embroiled in a war.
The question, particularly in Virginia, entered into the dis
cussions over the adoption of the federal constitution, which,
now that Massachusetts had adopted it, trusting to the future
for amendments, was in a fair way to become the law of the
land. Madison intended, in the debates in Richmond, that
the constitution, by creating a strong government, would render
the opening of the Mississippi certain. Patrick Henry doubted
it much. " To preserve the balance of American power," he
said, "it is essentially necessary that the right to the Mississippi
should be secured." The distrust which Jay's purpose had

STEAMBOATS. 321'
created was hard to eradicate. " This affair of the Mississippi,"
said Jefferson to Madison In June, 1789, "by showing that
Congress is capable of hesitating on a question which proposes
a clear sacrifice of the western to the maritime States, will with
difficulty be obliterated." In a well-known letter which Rufus
Putnam wrote to Fisher Ames in 1790, that leader of the Mari
etta settlement strove to show bow nothing but necessity could
wean the West from the East, while the seaboard towns must
be the natural market for the western products ; but to preserve
this mutual dependence, the Ohio region must be sustained by
Congress in its demand for the free navigation of the Missis
sippi, and he urges Ames to press Congress to that conclusion.
A second factor ip the Mississippi problem was some method,
as already indicated, of stemming Its current by artificial
means. We have seen in the preceding chapter that, in 1784,
Kumsey had gained the approbation of Washington for a me
chanical method of using setting-poles In pushing- boats up
stream. Very soon after this, he had grasped a notion of using
steam for power, as indeed William Henry of Lancaster had
suggested to Andrew EUicott as early as 1776. Rumsey's new
notion was to use this power in forcing water out of the stern
which had been taken in at the bow, and in this way to propel
the boat. In the autumn of 1784, the legislatures of Virginia
and Maryland had granted him the exclusive use of the inven
tion in their waters. At the same time (November) he com
municated his plans to Washington, but they did not gain his
fuH confidence. On March 10 of the next year (1785), he
wrote to Washington: "I have quite convinced myself that
boats may be made to go against the current of the Missis
sippi or Ohio rivers . . . from sixty to a hundred miles a day."
It Is difficult to reconcile all the conflicting statements circu
lated and vouched for by Rumsey and his rival, John Fitch,
each claiming priority in the use of steam. It is certain that in
March, 1785, Fitch, who had traveled much in the western
country, and was countenanced by Hutchins, professed with
some httle reserve to Patrick Henry that his knowledge of the
northwest was not equaled by that of any other man, and that
be Intended to put his knowledge to use in the construction of
a map of that region, which he soon actually executed, cutting

322

THE NORTHWEST OCCUPIED.

^e.«"^"^'^Vo|,i„

COhJ-a

KoTE. — The above cut is a sketch from Fitch's map. The dot-and-dash line is the boundary
on Canada. The dash line defines the western part of Pennsylvania. The dot lines show the
bounds of the proposed States under the ordinance of 17S-J. There are various legends on the
map in the places indicated by the capital letters, thus : —
A. A map of the northwest parts of the United States of America.
B. The several divisions on the N. W. of the Ohio is the form which that country is to be laid
off into States according to an ordinance of Congress of May the 20">, 17S5.
C. The author presents this to the public as the production of his leisure hours, and Sattera
himself that altho' it is not perfect, few capital errors will be found in it. He has not attempted
to take the exact meanders of the Waters, but only their general course. In forming this map
he acknowledges himself to have been indebted to the ingenious labours of Thomas Hutchins and
Will'" M'Murray, Esq". But from his own surveys and observations he was led to hope lie
could make considerable improvements on those and all that have gone before him, Hov/ far ae
has succeeded is now submitted to the impartial public by their very hble serv', John FrrCH.

FITCH'S MAP. 323
the copper himself, and working off the copies in a hand-press
of his own construction. He had hopes that, by traversing the
country and selling his maps, he could obtain what money he
needed to carry out a project which seems very soon afterwards
to have entered his mind. He later claimed that when the
conception of using steam to propel a boat against the current
of the western waters dawned upon him, he had not heard that
any one had evej? broached the idea. The scheme, when he
advanced it, did not altogether commend itself to those who
had had experience with the Ohio and Mississippi currents, and
Jacob Yoder, who, it appears, was the first to take a boat with
merchandise to New Orleans, had expressed his distrust. Fitch,
with his earnest vigor, set to work on a model, and before long
had it afloat on a little stream in Pennsylvania. It was a boat
propelled by paddle-wheels. On August 29, he wrote to the
president of Congress that he had invented a machine to facili-
D. To Thomas HuTcmNs, Esq^. , Geographer to the United Stales. Sir : It is with the greatest
diffidence I beg leave to lay at your feet a very humble attempt to promote a science of which you
are so bright an ornament. I wish it were more worthy your patronage. Unaccustomed to the
busineaa of engraving, I could not render it as pleasing to the eye as I would have wished. But,
as I flatter myself, will be easily forgiven by a gentleman, who knows how to distinguish between
form and substance in all things. I have the hon^ to be, sir, your very hble serv*, John Fitch.
E. The falls of Niagara are at present in the middle of a plane about five miles back from
the annunit of the mountain, over which the waters once tumbled, we may suppose. The action
of the water in a long course of time, has worn away the solid rock and formed an immense ditch
which none may approach without horror. After falling perpendicular 150 feet (as some have
computed) it continues to descend in a rapid seven miles further to the Landing place.
F, Copper ore in great abundance found here.
G. The falls of St. Anthony exhibit one of the grandest spectacles in nature ; the waters dash
ing over tremendous rocks from a height of about forty feet perpendicular.
H. From Fort Lawrauce and thence to the mouth of Sioto, a westerly course to the Illinois is
generally a rich level country abounding with living springs and navigable waters ; the air pure
and the climate moderate.
T. This country has once been settled by a people more expert in the art of war than the pres
ent inliabitants. Regular fortifications, and some of these incredibly large are frequently to be
found. Also many graves or towers, like pyramids of earth.
J. Pioria'a wintering groimd.
K. On the Miamis are a large number of Indian towns, inhabited by Shawanoes, Delawares,
Miugoa, &c.
L. The lands on this lake are generally flat and swampy ; but wiU make rich pasture and
meadow land.
M. From Fort Lawrance to the mouth of Yellow Creek and northward to the waters of Lake
Erie is generaUy a thin soil and broken land.
N. From the mouth of Sioto to Fort Lawrance, between that line and the Ohio, the soil is tol-
erahle good ; but generally much broken with sharp hills.
' ^'¦oni the Pennsylvania line to Great Sandy, and thence a southwesterly course to the
rolina une, is generally very poor land and very mountanous, rocky and broken.
H- The Kentucky country is not so level as it is generaUy represented to be, there being a
range of hilly land, running thro' it N. E. & S. W. ; also very deep valleys on the larg streams.
^ Ironbanks, settled in the year 80 and evacuated the same year.
The original map, from which this sketch is made, is in Harvard College library, and I have
eard of but one other copy. A photograph of it, nearly full size, was taken for the late Judge
^- C. Baldwin of Cleveland.

324 THE NORTHWEST OCCUPIED.
tate internal navigation, and laid his plans before that body.
In September, he outlined his scheme to the American Philo
sophical Society, and eight or ten weeks later, on December 2,
he offered a model for their consideration.
Meanwhile, Fitch had petitioned the Virginia Assembly for
aid In pushing his Invention, and Governor Henry entered Into
a bond with him, by which Fitch agreed that if he could sell
a thousand copies of his map at six shillings each, he woidd
exhibit his steamboat in Virginia, giving " full proof of the
practicability of moving by the force of a steam engine ... a
vessel of not less than one ton burthen." This agreement was
dated on November 16, 1785, and Fitch was to forfeit £350 If
the conditions were not fulfilled. The maps were not sold, and
he lost the aid of Virginia. He successively asked, but without
avail, similar assistance from Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New
Jersey. He had had before this, in September, an interview
with Gardoqui. To induce the Spanish minister to patronize the
scheme, he had set forth the future of the west under the influ
ence of such an invention, and had given him a copy of his map.
He had intimated, also, an alternative project of working his
paddles by horses. Gardoqui sought first to secure an exclusive
right to Spain in the results, and to this Fitch would not agree.
He now resorted to forming a company ia Philadelphia, where
he had received the aid of a Dutch mechanic, Voight by name,
and In the summer of 1786, he made some experimental trips
with a new craft on the Delaware, attempting, on July 20, to
use a screw, and doing better a week later with paddles. This
furthered his plan of subscription, but when Franklin offered
him a gratuity, instead of a subscription, he confesses he was
stung to the quick. In December, 1786, he printed in the
Columbian Magazine a description of his boat, with a cut of
the little craft, and this still more animated the pubhc interest.
A new vessel, forty-five feet long, with upright paddles, was com
pleted in the following May, 1787, and on August 22 he made
an exhibition of It on the Delaware for the delectation of the
members of the federal convention. This gave him some addi
tional notoriety, and he announced a scheme of building a boat
for lake use with two keels. He proposed, also, to edge its
wheels with spikes, so that in winter it could be run on the ice
at thirty miles an hour.

FITCH AND RUMSEY. 325
Though there is some discrepancy in evidence as to the date,
it would seem that his final success was achieved in the spring
of 1788, when he moved a vessel called the " Perseverance," of
sixty tons burthen, for eight miles on the Schuylkill. Brissot,
who saw the experiment, says that the power was exerted by
"three large oars of considerable force, which were to give
sbcty strokes a minute." In July, he used stern paddles In a
trial on the Delaware, and went twenty miles. Notwithstand
ing this. Fitch did not escape ridicule from the incredulous, and
Brissot expresses some indignation " to see Americans discour
aging him by their sarcasms."
The now active rivalry of Rumsey added personal bitterness
to the controversy between them, as shown in a pamphlet which
was printed. Rumsey, being as Impecunious as his antagonist,
had sought in the same way to get the assistance of the legis
latures of some of the States. He claimed in his memorials
that his boat could make twenty-five to forty miles a day against
a strong current, using for the power a current of water taken
in at the bow and ejected at the stern.
When Rumsey memorialized the Virginia Assembly in 1785,
the project was thought chimerical, and gained no attention
till Washington, to whom he had disclosed his method, gave
him a certificate. It was not till the early winter of 1787 that
he made a public trial of a boat, eighty feet long, on the Poto
mac, making three miles an hour on December 3, and four miles
on December 11.
While Fitch was, by his experiments, creating some enthusi
asm in Philadelphia in 1788, Rumsey was making j^romises in
England, and foretelling the possibility of crossing the ocean
in fifteen days. He died of apoplexy four years later (Decem
ber 23, 1792), a disappointed man. Some abortive attempts
had been made in Scotland by Miller in 1788, and by Syming
ton In 1800, to solve the problem, but the first real success did
not come till 1807, when Fulton ran the " Clermont " on the
Hudson, and when, two years later (November, 1809), the " Ac
commodation " steamed from Montreal to Quebec in thirty-six
hours of actual progress, having anchored on three nights.

CHAPTER XV.
THE SOUTHWEST INSECURE.
1783-1786.
The peace of 1783 had brought no better security south of
the Ohio than had been attained on the north of it.
In May, 1782, just as the English cabinet was making up Its
mind to grant the independence of the colonies, a Kentucky
German, Jacob Yoder, had pushed off from Redstone on the
Monongahela, in a big boat laden with flour, to risk the passage
to New Orleans, and reap, if he could, some profit from his
venture. He was fortunate. The Spanish authorities on the
Mississippi were waiting then for the outcome of the war, and
had no reason to stop this adventurous trader, who had suc
cessfully run the gauntlet of the Indians. He reached New
Orleans in safety and sold his flour for furs. These skins he
took to Havana, where he bartered them for sugar, which In
turn he shipped to Philadelphia. With much money in his
pocket, the result of his speculation, he recrossed the mountains
to his Kentucky home.
Meanwhile, the negotiations at Paris were hurrying to a close,
and when it became known that by a secret provision of that
treaty, England and the States, in order to reconcile their dis
cordant views, had agreed in any event to ignore the Spanish
claim to territory above 31°, there was no chance of Yoder's
venture being repeated, and such peaceful commerce soon gave
place to stagnation on the river, only relieved by an occasional
freebooting sally of the wild Cumberland frontiersmen, who
wanted to get what sport and plunder they could out of harrying
the Spanish settlements along the river. Cruzat, commanding at
St. Louis, complained to Robertson of these lawless acts ; but it
was difficult to fasten responsibility anywhere, though the au
thorities at Nashborough labored to prevent such incursions.
For twelve years or more to come, Spain was to be the covert

SPANISH HOSTILITY. 327
enemy of the new Republic. All this while she was seeking to
lure any who would act in concert with her, both among the
wild tribes of the southwest and among the almost as wild
frontiersmen of the outlying settlements of the confederacy and
the later Union. Events seemed at times distinctly fashioned
for her advantage. The whites in Georgia and along the Ten
nessee were recklessly invading the Indian lands, and inciting
them to retaliate. Before the Revolutionary War had closed,
it had seemed plain to Governor Harrison of Virginia thttt
bounds must be agreed upon to restrain the white squatters,
and be and Governor Martin of North Carolina had con
sulted In November, 1782, about appointing commissioners to
settle a line. When Pickering, in April, 1783, was planning
a peace establishment, he had provided for the southwest only a
modest quarter of the eight hundred troops which he destined
to garrison the exposed posts, as a protection against the dan
gers to be apprehended from "the Indians and the Spanish."
As early as May 31, 1783, a treaty had been made at Augusta
with the Cherokees, and later (November) with the Creeks, by
which the Americans secured the title to a tract of land west
of the Tugaloo River, but the result failed to secure the ap
proval of the great body of those tribes ; nor was the warlike
faction of the Creeks won by other agreements, which had been
made with the same tribe and the Chickasaws, in July and
November. The Creeks and their Spanish backers were thus
become a serious problem In the southwest.
The general peace of 1782 had been a vexatious one to the
court at Madrid. Spain had not secured Gibraltar, as she had
hoped to do, and matters on the Mississippi, with the understand
ing that existed between England and her now Independent
colonies, were no less a disappointment. Lafayette, who In the
spring of 1783 had been in Madrid, wrote thence to Livingston,
the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, that he " could see that
American independence gave umbrage to the Spanish ministry."
Before the war closed, Virginia had already pressed her
claim to an extension to the Mississippi, where Clark bad built
Fort Jefferson, but North Carolina had never officially pushed
ber jurisdiction beyond the mountains till in May, 1783, her
legislature by an act stretched her southern boundary by the
parallel of 36° 30' likewise to the Mississippi. This enactment

328 THE SOUTHWEST INSECURE.
was not only a warning to Spain that her claim to the eastern
bank of the Mississippi would be contested, but it also showed
the people of the Holston and Cumberland valleys that they
had not escaped the jurisdiction of the parent State in going
westward to subdue the wilderness. Both of these settlements
had steadily grown. There was perhaps a population of three
thousand five hundred souls in the Cumberland district. The
older communities along the Clinch and the Holston had begun
to form some of those religious consolidations which the Metho
dist communion carries in its spreading circles, while the
Scotch-Irish in southwestern Virginia and in the neighboring
2:)arts of Kentucky and Tennessee had set up the presbytery of
Abingdon, an offshoot of the larger one of Hanover, which had
been formed in 1749.
In this extension of her western jurisdiction North Carolina
had not failed to reserve a certain tract of this territory for the
use of the Indians ; but she had done it of her own option, and
without consulting the tribes. This was an arrogant act, which
the Creeks quickly resented.
The Kentucky settlements between the Cumberland and the
Ohio had, in March, 1783, been divided by the Virginia authori
ties into three counties. The principal seat of local business
was at first placed at Harrodsburg, but later at Danville.
These settlements showed signs of civil regularity which did
not prevail to the south of them, and invited renewed Immi
gration. This In some part pursued the Virginia path by the
Cumberland Gap, following what was known as the Wilderness
Road, which, however, was but a mere bridle trace for pack-
horses. The larger part of the migration floated down the Ohio
from Pittsburg, which had just been formally laid out as a town
by the agents of the Penns, with a population of about a thou
sand. As a rule, however, the Virginia emigrant struck the
Ohio ninety miles below, at Wheeling, and thereby avoided
some of the difficulties of the shoaler water between that point
and Pittsburg. In either case they disembarked, as had been
the custom from the beginning, at Limestone, and thence made
their way over a well-beaten road to the valleys of the Licking
and Kentucky, not failing to remark how the buffalo had de
serted their old traces, and taken to the less-frequented portions
of the country. It is not easy to determine with accuracy the

McGILLIVRA Y. 329
extent of this inflow during the years immediately following the
peace ; but it has been reckoned as high as twelve or fifteen
thousand a twelvemonth, with proportionate trains of pack-
horses and cattle. These numbers included, doubtless, a due
share of about four thousand European Immigrants, who sought
the States yearly.
Whenever these wanderers encountered the red man, it was
not difficult for the new-comers to discover that, to the savage
mind, the enforced transfer of allegiance from the English crown
to the new Republic was a change that wronged and incensed
the victims of it. To the military man, who was not an uncom
mon member of the new emigration and who had seen service
under Bradstreet and Sullivan, this attitude of the Indian mind
boded no little mischief.
The restless conditions of the tribes In the southwest offered
to Miro, now the Spanish commander at New Orleans, an
opportunity for conference and intrigue. The way was opened
by the ceaseless endeavors of Alexander McGIUivray to form
a league of the southern tribes against the Americans, in order,
with Spanish countenance and with a simultaneous revolt on
the part of the northern tribes, to force the exposed settlers
back upon the seaboard. The scheme was a daring one, and
no such combination among the redskins had been attempted
since the conspiracy of Pontiac. But McGIUivray, with all his
craft, had little of the powers of mind which the Ottawa chief
had possessed, and his efforts fell short of even the temporary
success which Pontiac had achieved. McGIUivray was a half-
breed Creek, whose mother was of a chief family of that nation.
His father was a Scotchman. He had something of the Scotch
hard-headedness, and had received an education by no means
despicable. Adhering to the royal side In the late war, bis
property had been confiscated, and he was now' adrift, harbor
ing hatred towards the Americans, while he was not amiable
towards the British, who had betrayed, as he claimed, himself
and his race. As early as January 1, 1784, he had communi
cated with the Spanish commander at Pensacola, with a propo
sition for a Spanish alliance. He also intimated the possibility
01 detaching the over-mountain settlements from the confeder
acy, maintaining that the west contained two classes of discon
tents, who might well be induced to play into the hands of

330 THE SOUTHWEST INSECURE.
Spain. One of these included the tribes, indignant at the
desertion of them by Great Britain. The other was the body of
Tories now tracking over the mountains to begin a new career,
mingled with runaways escaping the federal tax-gatherers.
On such representations Miro was ready in May, 1784, to
hold conferences with these southwestern tribes. On the 22d,
he met representatives of the Chickasaws, Alabamas, and Choc
taws at Mobile, and sanctioned a treaty of friendship and
mutual support, while he enjoined upon them the necessity of
refraining from taking scalps or otherwise maltreating their
prisoners. On the 30th, he met McGilllvray and a large body
of Creeks, Seminoles, and Chickamaugas at Pensacola, and
entered into a like agreement. By the 6th of June, this half-
breed chieftain was on his way back to the tribal centres, bear
ing promises of full supplies and munitions from the Spanish
posts. The desultory conflict which followed through a course
of years, known as the Oconee war, was on the whole a great
disappointment to McGIUivray, for he never succeeded for any
length of time in making the Creeks and their abettors main
tain a solid front for the task which he had set.
While this savage warfare kept the frontiers anxious, the
sinister purposes of Spain were only partly veiled in her at
tempts to aid the Indians. The federal government knew per
fectly, as Pickering had intimated, that the enmity of Spain
was a constant factor in this southwestern problem. Lafayette,
in February, 1783, had written to Livingston from Cadiz that
" among the Spanish, the Americans have but few well-wishers,
and their government wIU insist upon a pretended right all
along the left shore of the Mississippi."
During the summer of 1783, there were constant attempts of
the Spaniards to stop American boats trading on the Mississippi,
and it was believed that the renewed activity of the Indian
depredations along the Ohio was by their instigation. To
prevent these evils, the Kentucky people looked to the parent
State in vain. They soon discovered that with military move
ments directed from Williamsburg, as the militia laws required,
delays interposed that were dangerous, while self-protection
could not allow hesitancy of action. This led them to consider
the advantages of autonomy, while its necessity and justice were
not unrecognized in the tide-water region of Virginia. Wash-

BENJAMIN LOGAN. 331
ington was outspoken, and favored confining the western limits
of the old State to a meridian cutting the mouth of the Great
Kanawha. He revealed to Hamilton bis anxiety when he told
him that, unless such concessions were made, it would take but
the touch of a feather to turn the western people to other mas
ters. Jefferson wrote to Madison that Virginia ought to let
Kentucky go, and that promptly, lest aU the over-mountain
people should unite, when Congress would sustain their claim,
to make the mountains instead of the Kanawha the boundary.
He thought it no small advantage for Virginia to have the
hundred mUes and more of mountains beyond that river as a
barrier between the two States.
Filson, a Pennsylvania schoolmaster who had turned sur
veyor, had lately run through these Kentucky settlements and
estimated their population at about thirty thousand. His map,
made at this time, shows fifty-two settlements and eighteen
scattered houses. He had also just published an account of
Kentucky, in which he had had the aid of Daniel Boone,
David Todd, and James Harrod. Boone had also connected
the early days of the pioneers with the present In a sketch of
his hfe, which Filson had taken down at the dictation of his
friend. The movement which McGIUivray was inciting at the south
grew to look ominous. In this crisis Colonel Benjamin Logan
assembled his militia captains at Danville to take measures for
protection. This body of counselors was law-abiding enough to
shrink from any movement not purely defensive, but their mili
tary organization, in the absence of civil control, opportunely
offered the best initiative towards a representative convention
to be held at Danville on December 27. Still holding to the
mihtary divisions of the people, it was directed that a single
delegate from each company should be elected to attend. When
the convention met, the question of withdrawing from the gov
ernment of Virginia divided the conference. In this uncer
tainty it was readily seen that independence was rather a civil
than military question. Accordingly, a new notice was issued,
recommending the people, by delegates, to be assembled at Dan
ville in May, 1785, to take the problem into full consideration.
Nora.— The map on the two loUowing pages is the principal part oi Filson's map of Ken
tucky,

mJ crForh.

334 THE SOUTHWEST INSECURE.
While this Kentucky movement was making progress under
the forms of law, more headlong action was taken beyond the
mountains of North Carolina, which for a while threatened
serious complications. That State, in her BiU of Rights in 1776,
had anticipated the formation of one or more other States In
due time out of her western territory. There had been laid,
as we have seen, in this over-mountain region, the foundations
of two separate communities. They were destined to be united
in one commonwealth, but they held at this time little commu
nication with each other, though the more distant was sprung,
as it were, from the loins of the nearer. The one in which
James Robertson was the leading spirit was scattered In the
valley of the Cumberland, tributary to Nashborough, or Nash
ville, as It was now becoming the fashion to call the collection
of huts which bore that name. Miro had already his eye upon
Robertson as a likely ally In his future schemes, while yet he
was sending him friendly messages, explaining how he was
doing what he could to restrain the savages who were raiding
the Cumberland frontiers. The time was not yet ripe for the
Spanish intriguer to show his hand in this region.
Farther east, the country originally settled from Virginia,
and lying just below the southwestern corner of that State, was
the valley in which the Watauga Association had moulded a
self-centred community. With its growth the North Carolina
legislature had divided the region Into four counties, — Wash
ington, Green, Sullivan, and Davidson, and all but the last were
infected with the same unrest as was pervading Kentucky.
These settlements were separated from the support of North
Carolina by the mountains on the east, while in the west It was
a long distance beyond the Cumberland Gap before the more
western communities were reached. Their closest ties were
with their neighbors across the Virginia line on the north, and
near it their principal town, Jonesboro', was built. This Wa
tauga region — as a whole it might be called — lay between the
Alleghany and Cumberland mountains, and was drained by the
Clinch, Holston, and other tributaries of the Tennessee. It was
exposed towards the southwest by the course of that river, along
which it was open to inroads of the Cherokees, and particularly
of the Chickamaugas, the most relentless branch of that tribe.
It was also in this direction that the settlements looked to

JONESBORO' CONVENTION. 335
increase their territory, and they had already begun to extend
beyond the agreed allotments by the tribes, and were building
stockades in close proximity to the Indian viUages. The peace
of the vaUey was still farther jeopardized by the occupation in
February, 1784, of a tract of territory near the great bend of
the Tennessee in the present State of Alabama, under a move
ment led by Sevier and Blount. The position was too ad
vanced for support, and had soon to be abandoned under the
savage threats. With this aggressive temper, the authorities
of North Carolina had little sympathy, and the frontiersmen
complained that the legislature made no appropriations for
gifts with which to appease the plundered savages.
At this juncture the state Assembly at Hillsborough, in
June, 1784, voted to cede to the confederacy their charter lands
lying west of the mountains and extending to the Mississippi.
This cession covered twenty-nine million acres, and the act gave
Congress two years in which to accept it. The report of this
action, spreading over the mountains, was all that was neces
sary to arouse the rebeUIous spirit of a people who felt that
without their concurrence they were cast off by the parent State
and left to shift for themselves. It was to them, at least, ap
parent that If they were to find any protection against their
hostile neighbors, in the interval before the acceptance by Con
gress of the cession, it was to be in their own vigilance.
In this state of affairs a convention met at Jonesboro' on
August 23, 1784, and organized under the presidency of Sevier.
It was agreed by delegates of the three counties already named,
and by a two-thirds vote, that they be erected at once into an
Independent State. When this decision was known to the
rabble of hunters and woodsmen who surrounded the court
house, there were shouts of turbulent joy. The convention
framed an address, setting forth the plan and advantages of
independence, and determined on holding another convention
m November, to adopt a constitution. It was decided to appeal
to Congress for countenance and advice as to the proposed con
stitution. There was a disposition to induce the contiguous
part of Virginia to join in the movement. This was a note
which alarmed the authorities at Williamsburg, and Patrick
Henry saw in it the finger of the Spanish devil.
While these things were taking place at Jonesboro', the legis-

336 THE SOUTHWEST INSECURE.
lature at New Berne, taking alarm, repealed the act of cession.
This reversal for a while tempered the impetuosity of the Sepa
ratists in the valley, and when a new body of delegates convened
in November, it was found that the party for independence had
lost strength, and the convention broke up amid a confusion of
aims. Governor Martin took advantage of the seeming disper
sion of the rebellious party, and invested Sevier with a commis
sion and authority to lead the disaffected back to their loyalty.
In December, accordingly, we find the man who had been
counted upon to perfect the revolutionary scheme, and who was
yet to head the revived movement, doing his best to hold the
people to obedience to the laws.
So the year 1784 ended with great uncertainty as to the
jDolitlcal future of "the three leading communities west of the
mountains. In Kentucky, the soberer sense of the people plainly
deprecated any hasty action. In the Holston region It seemed
as if a division of public opinion would delay action, at least.
At Nashville, In its remote situation, more connected with Ken
tucky than with the Holston region, there was nothing as yet to
incite alarm.
How far these Initial measures for independence were made
with Spanish concurrence Is not clear ; but it is not probable
that Miro had as yet ventured upon any direct assurance of
support. The Spanish authorities, however, were certainly
cognizant of McGIUIvray's aims and hopes.
The Americans, when the United States made Oliver Pol
lock Its agent at Havana, had already lost a vigilant friend
at New Orleans, who might now have divined what time has
since disclosed. He left the Mississippi for his new mission in
debted to the royal treasury in the sum of 1151,696, which he
had borrowed to assist the American cause in the days when
Spain was playing with the sympathies of the struggling col
onies. At this time, while Virginia was perplexed with her
western problem. Pollock was imprisoned in Havana during
eighteen months for debts which be had incurred in her behalf,
a rigor doubtless Instigated by the changed feehngs which
Spain was harboring towards the new Republic.
There was little doubt in the minds of Congress that a strug-

OPENING OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 337
gle with Spain was imminent for the control of the Mississippi.
Lafayette, who had written from Madrid such unassuring opin
ions of the Spanish temper, had now returned to the States,
and in Baltimore he disclosed to Madison his belief in the
determination of the Madrid cabinet to stand by what they
deemed their interest In the matter. Madison was so Impressed
both with Lafayette's assurances and with the absolute neces
sity of thwarting Spain in her purpose, that he saw no way of
avoiding a war except for France and Britain to intervene
jointly, and profit by the trade that the free navigation of the
Mississippi would bring them. America's demand, as Madi
son formulated it, was not only for the free use of the river,
but for an entrepot below 32°, for he felt assured the west
would never consent to shift the lading of their descending
boats to sea-going vessels higher up the river. Free trade down
the stream would make, he contended. New Orleans one of the
most flourishing emporiums of the world, and Spain ought to
see it. The French in New Orleans, he again affirmed, cannot
be denied this trade by their Spanish masters.
While all these views were common. Congress on June 3,
1784, instructed its diplomatic agents that the navigation of the
Mississippi must in any event be rendered free.
During 1785, events took a more decided color from Spanish
diplomacy. The opening of the Mississippi became with the
possession of the northern posts the two objects nearest the
heart of the west. In January, Madison said discouragingly,
" We must bear with Spain for a while," and trust to the future
to develop a sale for our western lands through the opening of
the Mississippi. " All Europe," he added, " who wishes to
trade with us, knows that to make these western settlements
ilourish Is their gain." To such terms Lafayette replied :
"Spain is such a fool that allowances must be made." Just
what these allowances might be were soon to be disclosed, when
Don Diego de Gardoqui, with the ultimatum of Spain, arrived
in Philadelphia in May, 1785. He did not present his creden
tials till July 2, and at that time Jay was authorized by Con
gress to treat with him.
Meantime, the rumors from the west made people fearful of
they knew not what sudden developments. It was heard with

338 THE SOUTHWEST INSECURE.
alarm that Georgia had sent messengers to New Orleans, de
manding the surrender of Natchez, only to be rebuffed by
Miro with a profession that he had no authority to comply.
It was not this so much as the assurance of a single State In
exercising diplomatic functions In violation of the federal com
pact that seemed serious. It was well known that Washington
did not share the Impatience of his southern brethren about the
Mississippi. He looked upon delay in the settlement with
Spain as likely to promote what he deemed of more Imi)ortanee,
— the development of trade channels across the mountains. In
June, 1785, he wrote to Marbois : " The emigration to the
waters of the Mississippi is astonishingly great, and chiefly of
a description of people who are not very subordinate to the
laws and constitution of the State they go from. Whether the
prohibition, therefore, of the Sjianiards is just or unjust, politic
or impolitic, it will be with difficulty that people of this class
can be restrained in the enjoyment of natural advantages."
Again, on September 7, Washington wrote to Rochambeau:
" I do not think the navigation of the Mississippi is an object
of great importance to us at present," and he added that it
might be left till the full-grown west would have it " In spite of
all opposition."
AiDprehensions of difficulty prevailed, when, on July 26, Jay
began his negotiations with Gardoqui. The American secre
tary very soon saw that the Spanish agent would interpose few
direct hindrances to a treaty of commerce whereby the Atlantic
ports would profit. Jay knew that there was nothing which
the country needed more than a season of business prosperity.
Taxes were burdensome, and those who could were flying across
the mountains to escape the gatherers of them. To pay such
demands and to appease England by meeting her claims for
debts, commercial opportunities were needed. But it soon be
came evident to Jay that Spain had no intention of enriching
the Americans except by acquiring corresponding advantages
to herself, and these were the best security for her claims on
the Mississippi In the absolute control of its navigation. To
meet such demands Jay could do nothing while Congress ad
hered to the vote, which we have seen was passed a year before,
that In any event the Great River must be left open. Nothing
which Jay could suggest weakened the firmness of Gardoqui

JAMES WILKINSON. 339
on this point. So there grew in the American's mind the be
lief that all would go weU if Congress would consent to yield
the Mississippi for a term of years — say twenty-five — with
out prejudice to later claims. This, he thought, would certainly
satisfy the Northern States, whic^ were to gain most by com
mercial privileges, while the South and West might agree that
any imperative demand for the free navigation of the river
would not arise for a generation. This was known to be Wash
ington's view of the exigency. Virginia had just appointed
commissioners to open a wagon road from the head of James
Elver to the Kanawha faUs, and beyond to Lexington, in Ken
tucky. Washington claimed that it was likely to be cheaper
to carry western produce through the mountains to tide-water
than down the Mississippi, if it started from any point east of
the Kanawha, or even from the falls of the Ohio. Congress,
hesitating in such a belief, on August 25 instructed Jay to
close no agreement with Gardoqui without their approval.
While the thrifty German and slovenly Celt were raising
more flour in Kentucky than could possibly be consumed, there
was small chance that any scheme of closing the great channel
of western commerce for a lifetime would find favor. Nor,
indeed, could any plan of repressing the marvelous expansion of
the west be acceded to. Before Jay began his negotiations, he
had written to Lafayette that this western increase was going
on "with a degree of rapidity heretofore unknown," and that it
would continue, " notwithstanding any attempts of anybody to
prevent it."
The prevalence of views in the East and in Congress antago
nistic to western progress, as they were deemed, could but arouse
the latent spirit of independence which we have seen existed
in more than one over-mountain region. They particularly
aroused a recent comer to Kentucky, who was gifted with all
that makes for subtle leadership and unscrupulous political
daring, — a smooth affability, a cunning mind, a ready speech,
and a fascinating address. The possessor of these insinuating
qualities was James Wilkinson, an officer of the Revolution,
who, in 1784, had resigned the adjutant-generalship of Pennsyl
vania and had appeared in Lexington. His reputation, even
then, was not without tarnish, but he had left suspicions behind,
and had thrown himself at once into mercantile life. The men

340 THE SOUTHWEST INSECURE.
he dealt with had little cause to inquire sharply into a charac
ter which Roosevelt not undeservedly caUs " the most despicable
in our history." Wilkinson was soon vigilant as a speculator
in skins and salt, — sharp enough, doubtless, but where every
body about him was a rasping bargainer, he was not conspic
uous for moral delinquencies. He wrote to a friend, whom
he had left in Philadelphia : " If I can hold up cleverly for a
couple of years, I shall lay the foundation of opulence for pos
terity." He claimed to the same correspondent that " his local
credit and consequence, vanity apart, were not inconsiderable."
He always had had a belief in his star.
At the time when delegates met in May, 1785, to consider
the question of independency, Wilkinson was too IU to attend,
and we very likely owe it to his absence that the convention
persisted in holding to constitutional grounds, and agreed to
solicit the permission of Virginia to become a separate State.
It also took an advanced stand In political policy when the
members declared for equal representation and manhood suf
frage, as against the Virginia practice of equal county repre
sentation irrespective of population. In order to make the
circulation of an address effective, it was also determined In
the convention to set up a printing-press.
It was Wilkinson's boast that determinate action was delayed
till another meeting in August, in order that the members
might have the advantage of his presence. When, on August
14, the new convention met, he made a passionate demand
for an immediate unconditional separation from Virginia. He
claimed that he had been at the start one of those adverse
to Independence; but that the renegade spirit in Congress on
the Mississippi question had convinced him of the necessity
of such action. Before the members assembled, he had again
advised his distant friend that " free trade out of the Missis
sippi would push Kentucky most rapidly. Our products are
so prodigious," he added, " that our exports would exceed our
imports fivefold. We are unanimously ready to wade to it
through blood." He closed his fierce prophecy with a sugges
tion that the Mississippi would be no sooner cleared than the
Spanish mines beyond it " might be possessed with the greatest
facility." With these views he entered the convention, but its
members resisted his violent urgency, and deferred to another '¦
convention the final settlement of the question.

THE HOLSTON PEOPLE. 341
When this healthy and moderate action was known at the
east, Madison recog-nlzed in gratification that " the first in
stance of the dismemberment of a State had been conducted
In a way to form a salutary precedent." Washington stood less
for their order of going, and was prepared to meet the people
of Kentucky " upon their own ground, and draw the best line
and make the best terms, and part good friends."
To turn to the people of the Holston. They proved to have
shared only a temporary calm after their convention had dis
solved. Sevier had been unable to uproot the latent passion for
independence. Early in the year (1785), the Separatist leaders
had petitioned Congress for the right of setting up their new
State between the Alleghany River and the meridian of Louis
ville. Its northern bounds were to run from the junction of
the Great Kanawha and Greenbrier and along the 37° parallel.
Its southern were to be by the 34°. This would have given them
a large part of Kentucky, and have carried their territory weU
down to the bend of the Tennessee. With these rather mag
nificent visions, their Assembly met at GreenviUe, now selected
as a capital, and in March began their work, in a rude log
cabin, which had an earth floor and a clapboard roof. This
hasty body stood for a population which it was supposed num
bered about five-and-twenty thousand. But it was a community
with no other currency than that supplied by fox and mink
skins, varied with such agricultural products as could be passed
from hand to hand. With this money they proposed to pay
their civil servants, and, upon an apportioned salary of such
products, Sevier, now in the headlong stream like everybody
else, was chosen governor. Their new chief magistrate very soon
sent a letter to Congress asking for recognition, but it was
unheeded, as Governor Martin had warned them it would be.
Patrick Henry, alarmed at their territorial ambition, feared
that it would arouse the tribes and cause impediments in the
Spanish negotiations. Meanwhile, as governor, he cautioned
the State's Indian agent not to commit Virginia to any partici
pation in coming events.
In May, Congress urged North Carolina to renew her cession
and thus place the territory of the Separatists under federal
control ; but a state pride declined to part with any portion of

342 THE SOUTHWEST INSECURE.
her territory with a rebellion unqueUed. On the last of May,
Sevier's people made a covenant with such of the Cherokees
as coidd be enticed, and got a questionable title to lands south
of the French Broad, and east of the ridge which parted the
waters of the Tennessee River. They invaded without any such
pretended right other lands of the Cherokees and Creeks.
Such acts added an Indian war to their other difficulties.
Against aU these usurped functions Governor Martin Issued
a manifesto ; and In June Sevier replied, taking the ground
that the Separatist movement had foUowed upon their being
cast off from the parent State by the act of cession, and no
revocation of that cession could undo their action.
In September, 1785, Benjamin Franklin, sharing now with
Washington the highest veneration of their countrymen, had
landed In Philadelj)hia on his return from his long and distin
guished service in Europe. He soon received a letter wliich
Sevier had written to him in July, in which the Separatist gov
ernor communicated the purpose of the Holston communities
to perpetuate Franklin's signal name as that of their new com
monwealth, and asked his counsel and support. Sevier at much
the same time had written a propitiatory letter to the Vir
ginia authorities ; but in neither case did the new magistrate
elicit what he wanted. Indeed, the struggling and unkempt
little republic was to find few friends outside its own limits.
In October, 1785, Massachusetts had moved in Congress and
Virginia bad favored a motion that Congress would support
any State against a secession of a part of it ; but the members
were not quite prepared to act. Patrick Henry was at the same
time warning the Virginia delegates of the dangerous proximity
of this rebeUious State. If Congress hesitated, the Virginia
Assembly promptly made it high treason for any attempt to
dismember her territory in such a revolutionary way, and au
thorized the governor to employ the military power of the
State In suppressing any such movement.
While the future of the south frontiers was uncertain through
all these movements. Congress made an effort to act in a na
tional capacity and soothe the irritated tribes. In the preceding
March, that body had authorized the appointment of commis
sioners to treat with the Indians. As the summer wore on,

GREENVILLE CONVENTION. 343
rumors of war were frequent, and in September, Colonel Mar
tin, now living on the Holston, as the Indian agent of Vir
ginia, had informed Patrick Henry that the southern Indians
were preparing, in conjunction with the Wabash tribes at the
north, to raid the frontiers. There was need of prompt action,
and In October the commissioners sought to open negotiations
with the Creeks at Galphinton, but those wary savages kept
aloof. In the latter part of November, 1785, they succeeded
better with the Cherokees, and met nearly a thousand of them at
Hopewell on the Keowee (November 18-28). It was a principle
with these national agents to act as if no private or state
agreements had already been made with the tribes. It was not
unexpected, therefore, that both North Carolina and Georgia
complained that lands which they had reserved as bounties for
their soldiers, in the late war, were recklessly acknowledged to
belong to the Cherokees. The Indians showed by a map that
the territory which they had not parted with covered more or
less of Kentucky, Tennessee, the Carolinas, and Georgia. It
included both the Henderson purchase and the lands of the
Cumberland communities, but they were not disposed to dis
place their occupants. The line, as agreed upon, was to run from
the mouth of Duck River (where it joins the Tennessee) to the
ridge separating the Cumberland and Tennessee vaUeys, and on
leaving this water-parting it was to strike the Cumberland, forty
mUes above Nashville. The whites within the Indian territory
were to have six months to remove ; but those who were living
— some three thousand in number — between the French
Broad and the Holston were to remain till their case could be
adjudicated by Congress. The treaty Included a formal ac
knowledgment of the supremacy of the United States, and made
it obligatory upon the Indians to give prompt notice of any
intended hostilities of the Spaniards.
These were the conditions when, late in 1785, a new conven
tion met at GreenviUe to adopt a permanent constitution for
the new State. One Samuel Houston drafted the document
which was first considered. It gave the name of Frankland to
the State, and was in various ways too ideal for a practical
people. It has only very recently been brought entire to the
attention of scholars. It called for a single legislative chamber,
niade land-owning necessary to office-holding, but even this

344 THE SOUTHWEST INSECURE.
qualification must be unaccompanied by membership in the
professions of law, medicine, and theology, while an adhesion
to Presbyterian forms of church government was required. A
smaU majority settled the question both of rejecting this consti
tution and substituting substantially the existing one of North
Carolina. The final vote displaced the name of Frankland and
adopted that of Franklin.
And so the year 1785 closed with no improvement in the
affairs of the western country.
The year 1786 was perhaps the most hopeless of the long
coUapse which followed upon the peace, — hopeless not so
much from accumulating misfortunes, as from an aimless un
certainty. The affairs of the several States were more critical,
or were thought to be more critical, than the condition of the
whole confederacy. So each commonwealth demanded at home
the services of Its best men, and sent its less serviceable citi
zens to Congress. The business of that body lagged through
the lack of assiduity In its members. A scant attendance either
blocked work entirely, or, on the spur of an unlooked-for
quorum, impulse rather than wisdom directed their counsels.
Throughout the States the paper money problem disquieted
trade, and the famous case of Trevett against Weedon In
Rhode Island showed how the courts stood out against the
populace. The Shays rebellion in Massachusetts had shown
that the rottenness of the core could break out on the surface,
while the promptness of Governor Bowdoin and General Lin
coln in suppressing the insurrection gave some encouragement
that the old spirit which had won independence stiU lingered.
Washington summed up the general apprehension when he
said, " That experience has taught us that men will not adopt
and carry into execution measures the best calculated for their
own good, without the intervention of a coercive power." No
such power existed. The treaty of Hopewell, on which the
federal authority had staked its reputation for ability to deal
with the Indians, was proving an empty act, and the later treaty
which the same commissioner had made with the Choctaws and
Chickasaws in January, 1786, was only less empty because it
concerned bounds more remote from the whites ; nevertheless,
its provisions were not beyond the observation of Robertson and

CLARK AND LOGAN. 345
the Cumberland people, who resented what they deemed federal
interference with their rights. When Congress ratified both
treaties iu April, it had little effect but to make the federal
purpose seem more impotent than before.
This antagonism of the central authority and the frontiers
men was naturally the occasion of a savage unrest, and as the
spring opened, the exposed settlements were in great alarm. On
the north, the tribes of the Wabash were giving way to a long-
harbored enmity. The Shawnees, at a conference on the Miami,
had but grudgingly acknowledged the new Republic, while their
promises of peace lasted no longer than there was white man's
rum to drink. So the western settlements were beset on all sides.
Patrick Henry sent the appeal of Virginia to Congress for help,
and in July its secretary informed him that two companies of
infantry had been sent to the faUs of the Ohio to cooperate
with the militia. Henry urged upon the Virginia delegates in
Congress that the only way to prevent " loss and disgrace " was
to rush upon the hostile towns. The result of a spasm of energy
on the part of some Kentucky colonels was that in the face of
the political turmoils which the settlements were experiencing,
as we shaU see, a thousand men gathered at the rapids of the
Ohio, and were organized by George Rogers Clark for a dash
upon the Wabash towns. The expedition, which was made in
the autumn of 1786, proved a failure. Clark, now but a shadow
of his former self, could not control his men, and with an ex
hausted commissariat, and having accomplished nothing In pro
portion to the outlay which had been incurred, he turned back
with a disordered rabble. His disgrace was In some measure
offset when Colonel Logan, with five hundred mounted rifle
men, by way of diverting the savages from retaliatory move
ments, shpped hastily among them and disconcerted them by
the rapidity of his havoc. This and a dash of Sevier at the
south, later to be mentioned, were the only relief of a pitiful
season of Indian war. During it all, the federal government,
by the aid it gave here and elsewhere, met drafts on its treas
ury for five times the amount which its Indian department had
required in any previous year since the Revolutionary War had
closed. In the autumn. Congress made a new effort to control
the Indian affairs, when, on November 29, Dr. James White
was made its agent for the southern tribes. Virginia at once

346 THE SOUTHWEST INSECURE.
yielded to the federal action by withdrawing her own agent,
General Martin, though this officer was still retained by North
Carolina in his old service.
Amid this bustle of savage war, which was beating the fron
tiers on all sides, the communities of the Tennessee, Cumber
land, and Kentucky were still struggling with their political
problems, and Congress was warming in debate over the ques
tion of the Mississippi.
Let us turn first to the latter anxiety. Miro, in his capital
of New Orleans, now a motley town of some five thousand souls,
in which the French masses were far from being content under
their Spanish masters, was pursuing a policy of trade that
stretched far out into the American territory, as the peace of
1783 had defined It. As director of this trade, Miro had a
divided purpose. He felt that he must not gather too large
gains by imposing upon the tribes prices which the Americans
could cut down, for he well understood how the Indians could
be led to hostile aUiances by reason of better bargains.
MIro's organization of this trade was a successful one. He
carried on a considerable part of it up the Mississippi, beyond
the Arkansas to the Illinois, and here, among the Sacs, his fac
tors contended in rivalry with the Canadians coming down from
Mackinac. From Mobile, now an active little settlement of
some seven hundred and fifty people, he sent some sixty thou
sand dollars' worth of goods north to the Choctaws and Chicka
saws. From Pensacola he distributed about forty thousand dol
lars' worth of goods among the Creeks and Cherokees ; but Miro
found it good policy to relinquish to McGIUivray some share
of the profits, while aUowing that chief a pension of six hundred
dollars beside. From all these channels, it was calculated that
the Spaniards reaped a profit of about a quarter of the outlay.
This trade up the Mississippi necessarily brought the Span
ish agents into contact with the adventurous Kentuckians who
dared to traffic down its current, and it could only be a ques
tion of time before some violent rencontre would take place.
Natchez, at this, time, was a place of some fifteen hundred inhab
itants. It lay within the bounds claimed by the Americans, but
was still occupied by Spain. This possession was a standing
challenge to the unruly frontiersmen, and even on the seaboard

JAY AND GARDOQUI 347
an expedition would have been formed to capture it, could a
certain swaggerer, John Sullivan by name, have commanded the
following which his ambition coveted.
There were still some lingering English in Natchez who had
been engaged in trade there, when Miro, in June, 1786, warned
them of the necessity of leaving or becoming Spanish subjects.
In this he was acting under orders from Madrid, by which he was
told to aUow them an interval to close up their affairs. Just
about the same time, an Ohio flatboat, laden with flour and
kickshaws, floated to the landing. Spanish officers seized the
vessel and confiscated the cargo. The owner was aUowed to
journey homeward, and as he went he told, with such embeUish-
ment as his injured sense suggested, the story of this Spanish
outrage. The news, spreading like wildfire, reached Clark at
Vincennes, while on the expedition which he made so ruin
ous ; and here, in retaliation and to appease the cupidity of bis
men, he seized the stock of a Spanish trader in the town. The
news of Clark's indiscretion reached Wilkinson in December,
while he and his adherents were waiting at Danville for the
convention to gather, to which reference will be later made.
Wilkinson, already In correspondence with Miro, and looking
forward to a complicity in trade with the Spanish governor,
seized the restless interval to frame a remonstrance against
Clark's act, and signing it with others, it was dispatched to
Williamsburg, accompanied by affidavit affirming the unfit
ness of Clark for command, arising from habits of drink. The
memorial pointed out the danger that such lawless conduct
would create, and how the fortunes of the west were put In
jeopardy. These representations had, in due time, their effect.
Meanwhile Jay, struggling with Gardoqui, had been embar
rassed by the positive position which Congress had taken as to
the occlusion of the Mississippi in its vote of June 3, 1784. So
m May, 1786, Jay had asked Congress to appoint a committee
to counsel with him ; and on this committee. Indicating the pre
dominating views of Congress, were Rufus King and Colonel
"ettit of Pennsylvania, who shared Jay's opinions, while Mon
roe, sure to be outvoted, was made a third member, and repre
sented the southern interests. With the backing of a majority
of his advisers, Jay, on August 3, reported to Congress a plan

348 THE SOUTHWEST INSECURE.
involving the closing of the Great River for a term of years, as
a price for commercial advantages. The scheme immediately
aroused the indignant oppiosition of the southern members.
Grayson of Virginia protested. Madison wrote in heat to Jeffer
son, and wondered if New England would sacrifice her fisheries
for the tobacco trade. Monroe fancied he saw in the opposition
of New York a purpose to profit by the closing of the river
so as to gain time to develop western communications by the
Hudson. Washington, however, stiU adhered to his dilatory
policy. The debates in Congress which foUowed showed that It
was a contest between the North and South, with the Middle
States in the balance. Jay carried seven States, and there were
five against him. The Articles of Confederation required nine
States to decide such questions, and with a clear majority of
two for rescinding the vote of June 3, 1784, it became a ques
tion whether the articles or a majority should control. If
pressed to an issue, it might cause serious danger to the confed
eration itself. Monroe wrote to Patrick Henry on August 12
that the majority, if they could not force the minority to con
cede their point, intended to dismember the Union and set up
an eastern confederacy. He was furthermore moved to suggest
that the South should use force to prevent Pennsylvania going
with the North. Madison was more moderate, and trusted to time
to convince the Eastern States that, as carriers of the country,
the Mississippi was really of paramount importance to them.
The year (1786) closed In a ferment. The North was told that
it understood the South and the West no better than England
understood the seaboard when she brought on the Revolution,
and that the West had no intention of cultivating its sod for
the benefit of Spain. The West claimed that it could put twenty
thousand troops in the field to protect its interest, and that it
could recruit this force from two to four thousand yearly.
If not united on the Mississippi question. Congress had no
divisions on maintaining the bounds which Great Britain had
conceded in the treaty of 1783, and on August 30 Jay was
instructed to stand by its provisions. A few weeks later, when
the incident at Natchez became known, and Clark's retaliatory
act was reported, feelings ran so high that Jay and his friends
did not think it prudent to be too urgent. Madison and those

VIRGINIA AND KENTUCKY. 349
working for a convention to reform the government had be
come conscious that the Mississippi question was creating a
sentiment antagonistic to any movement to reinforce a central
government. He accordingly brought the question before the
Virginia Assembly, and late in November that body gave an
unequivocal expression of its views in opposition. It was ap
parent now, as the vsinter came on, that a hasty step on the part
of Jay and bis friends must produce irretrievable disaster, not
only on the seaboard but through the west, where the proceed
ings of Congress had been narrowly watched.
To go back a little. In January, 1786, Virginia had agreed
to an act of separation from Kentucky, if the act should be
accepted by a convention to be held in September. She also
made it a condition that Congress should admit the new State
to the Union after September, 1787. When this action became
known in Kentucky, it is probable that among the body of the
people there was a general assent to its provisions. Not so,
however, with some ambitious designers who had already begun
to look to the advantages of Spanish trade ; and as the election
of delegates approached, it became evident that measures would
be set on foot, intended to move the community bej'ond a mere
acquiescence in the conditions of the parent State. The occur
rence at Natchez and the debates in Congress were opportune
aids to such schemers. Wilkinson entered upon the stage to
remove what he called the ignorance of the people. " They
shall be Informed," he said, " or I will wear out all the stirrups
at every station." The chief contest was to come in the district
where Wilkinson was the candidate of the absolute Separatists.
He was opposed In the canvass by Humphrey Marshall, and
took unfair means for victory, as Wilkinson's opponents said.
The revolutionists carried the election " two hundred and forty
ahead," as he wrote. " I spoke three and a half hours. I pleased
myself and everybody else except my dead opponents." As
the time for the convention approached, Wilkinson wrote (Au
gust 18) to a friend : " Our convention will send an agent to
Congress in November to solicit our admission into the confed
eracy, and to employ the ablest counsel in the State to advocate
our cause. I could be this man, with ^1,000 for the trip, if I
could take it." He was thus quite ready to anticipate the date

350 THE SOUTHWEST INSECURE.
which the Virginia Assembly had prescribed, but was not yet
l^repared for that complete independence which he was yet to
advocate, after his interview with Miro the following year.
Mere commercial success seemed now his ardent hope, and he
was buying tobacco in large quantities. " I look forward to
independence," he said, with villainous glee, " and the highest
reputation in this western world."
When the convention met in September, it was apparent that
the draft upon Its members, which the expeditions of Clark and
Logan had made, was going to prevent a quorum for some time
at least. The convention thus falling of an organization, Wil
kinson and his friends found time to draw up a representation
in censure of Clark's acts at Vincennes, which was dispatched
to the Virginia Assembly. So the year (1786) passed out in
this respect in comparative inaction.
Now, to glance at the Franklin communities. They were
growing more and more distraught. The anti-Separatists had
set up a magistracy representative of North CaroUna, and the
two factions brawled at each other. Every attempt at a con
ference was met by an unbending adhesion to their respective
principles. To darken the sky still more, some reckless hordes
of Cherokees and Chickasaws hovered about the exposed star
tions, and bid defiance to any restraint of their head men, who,
on the first of August, had made a new concession to the whites
in granting other lands between the Blue Ridge and the navigar
ble rivers. Things finally got to such a pass with the maraud
ers that Sevier mustered a band of one hundred and sixty
horsemen, and made a dash which scattered their forces.
So, a third year (1786) of the uneasy peace closed beyond
the mountains with little chance of confirmed tranquIUity. An
attempt had been made in July to control more effectually
public sentiment by the starting of a newspaper. The Pitts
burg Gazette, at the forks of the Ohio ; and to strengthen the
bonds of union with the parent State, the settlers had opened a
road from Louisville to Charleston on the Kanawha. But in
December, some disaffected spirits prepared and circulated a
manifesto, that " Great Britain stands ready with open arms to
receive and support us." It was a sign that the coming year
was to have new developments.

CHAPTER XVI.
the SPANISH QUESTION.
1787-1789.
Six years had passed since the colonies had become a recog
nized Republic. It was daily becoming a more and more serious
question if the country could disentangle itself from the diffi
culties which environed it. There were divided counsels among
those who had done the most to achieve its independence. Pat
rick Henry still believed in the confederation, for the good it
had done, and thought the South in discarding its articles would
lose a safeguard. George Mason was suspicious of the grow
ing power of the North. Under such champions as these, Vir
ginia was likely to unite as one body and lead a compacted
South, If the question of the Mississippi was pushed much
farther by the commercial North. Madison and Washington
represented more moderate sentiments, — the one felt that a
stronger union must be attained at some risks of southern
rights ; the other had little sympathy with the feverish resent
ment of Patrick Henry. Jefferson was sure that the West,
while it had such a dominion in view as the navigation of the
Mississippi would secure, could not be held back by the North.
The vast bulk of the American people lay within two hundred
and fifty miles of the Atlantic coast, — possibly four millions
in all. Beyond the mountains, and excited over this question
of Spanish arrogance, lay but a small fraction of this population.
This relatively scant body of people was almost entirely south
of the Ohio, for the region to the north could hardly be called
settled as yet, though the French along the Illinois and Wabash
were mixed with a small proportion of English and Scotch.
Living beyond the Mississippi, and mainly towards its mouth,
and in the adjacent Floridas, were perhaps thirty or forty thou
sand French and Spaniards, not without jealousies of each
other, and by no means confident of maintaining a successful

352 THE SPANISH QUESTION.
front against the banded rifles of the Kentucky and the Ten
nessee. Miro and Gardoqui, each aiming at the same result, but
hardly less jealous of each other than the discordant parties of
Louisiana, knew very well that there were two Important fac
tors in this problem of the west, viewed from the Spanish side.
One was the active loyalty of McGIUivray and the sympathy
of the southern tribes, whose adherence must be secured by
gifts and favoring traffic. It was not long before the Chlckar
saws disclosed to General Martin, the Indian agent of Caro
lina, that Spanish emissaries were intriguing for their trade.
The other factor was the disaffection of the western people
towards the federal union, which Navarro, the Spanish intend-
ant, was trying to make the most of by holding out lures for
migration to the Spanish territory. The policy of Miro and
the intendant was hardly more compatible than those of the
governor and Gardoqui. It was the hope of Navarro to show
a bold front towards the American frontiersmen ; Miro believed
in seducing them by the relaxation of commercial requirements
at New Orleans.
The Mississippi question had become, in the western mind,
inextricably mixed with the danger which it was thought a
stronger government, the likely outgrowth of the proposed fed
eral convention, would imj)ose on the south. The substitution
of a majority rule, a probable result of such a change of gov
ernment, for a two-thirds' rule, now their protection In all ques
tions like that between the new Republic and Spain, could but
portend the downfall of their southern Influence. The part of
the west nearest the seaboard, and likely to maintain by water
ways an intercourse with the coast, as was the case with what
is now West Virginia, was little affected by the pressing exi
gency of the Mississippi question. But as one went farther
beyond the Kanawha, indifference gave place to excited feeling
when the Spanish demands were mentioned. This was distinctly
seen a year or two later, when the proposed Federal Constitution
was under debate. While ninety-seven per cent, of the nearer
west was pledged to the support of that instrument, ninety per
cent, of the Kentucky settlements were as strongly adverse.
Yet even in the most settled parts of Kentucky, commercial rea^
sons, as they did in the tide-water districts, stood for adhesion.

DANVILLE CONVENTION. 353
and the two votes which Kentucky gave for the constitution in
the Virginia convention came from Jefferson County, the best
compacted of the settlements.
With all this western discontent, the people were very far from
unanimity on any remedial plan. Some were strenuous for forc
ing Congress to legislate in their interests. Others strove for
absolute independence, with or without the alliance of Spain.
Still others looked to union with Louisiana, whether that province
remained Spanish or French. The most audacious spirits talked
of attacking New Orleans, and wresting Louisiana from Spain
to use it as a counter influence against northern overbearing.
It was a difficult task to reconcile all these opposing views.
There was one man who thought that he could mesh aU in his
own net, and he was the vain, smooth, and dashing Wilkinson.
The convention at Danville, in which he expected to be a
power, and which for want of a quorum had failed of an organ
ization, finally got to work in January, 1787. This delay had
disarranged the plan which Virginia in her enabling act had
set, and opened the way for revolutionary measures ; but the
members proved temperate despite Wilkinson's adverse persua
sions, and simply voted to ask Virginia to rearrange her dates,
while Kentucky waited in patience. This sober negation was
a signal triumph of good temper, for there can be little doubt
that the new-fledged political club of Danville, a gathering of
representative spirits, had reflected the current aspiration when,
at a meeting on January 6, 1787, they had voted that immediate
separation from Virginia would tend to the benefit of Ken
tucky. Whether from ignorance or for mischief, there had
come rumors that Jay's measure of closing the Mississippi had
become a law, and to spread this untruth a circular was given out
in some quarters in March, which also kept concealed the really
strenuous efforts made by the parent State to promote the west
ern interests. All such forced manoeuvres were but a part of
the pohcy of the Wilkinson faction to coerce public opinion. To
increase the disquiet, Gardoqui was at the same time making
incautious advances to such western leaders of opinion as he
could reach. Madison, in March, 1787, disclosed the evidence
01 this to Jefferson, expressing dread of the consequence of
such appeals to the wild ambition of the frontiers. Nor were
tne reports which reached him of British intrigue less disquiet-

354 THE SPANISH QUESTION.
Ing, for he knew that emissaries from Canada " had been feel
ing the pulse of some of the western settlements." It was
pretty certain, too, that there were those south of the Ohio who
met them with listening ears. Meanwhile, Gardoqui had been
in conference with the Virginia delegates, who had been charged
to deliver to him the not uncertain opinions of their Assembly,
- — demands which we have seen Wilkinson found It convenient
to ignore. The minister and his interlocutors had indulged to
their liking in menace and expostulation, but to little effect.
By March, 1787, these incidents and alarming reports from
the west had brought Jay's project to at least a temporary
stand. Madison did not view with unconcern the trail which
the debates in Congress on the Mississippi question had laid on
the southern consciousness. " Mr. Henry's disgust exceeds all
measure," he wrote to Jefferson, and at times it seemed as If
the movement towards a federal convention, which he had so
much at heart, had reicelved an irrevocable setback.
' On April 11, 1787, Jay finally reported to Congress the draft
of an agreement with Gardoqui for the closing of the Mis
sissippi, as an accompaniment of a commercial treaty with
Spain. It was at once apparent that Congress had lost much
of its sympathy for, the project, and after an acrimonious debate
on the 23d, in which the Northern States were charged with
trying to protect their vacant lands against the competition of
the west, the rival feelings began to subside, and Jay soon grew
quite of the mind to make, either by treaty or force, Spain
yield to the inevitable.
So the burning question passed ; and for the next eighteen
months we hear little of it, except as It offered a ready excuse
to the intriguers in their efforts to sway the western people in
their own private interests. But for this, it would have been
accepted as finally disposed of by Congress till at least the am
bitious hopes of the west could find more propitious times. The
trials of savage warfare and the seething condition of western
internal politics were not favorable, at present, to any decisive
aggression on the power of Spain.
The Franklin movement was nearing a coUapse. There was
a hope in March that Evan Shelby, representing North Caro
lina, might effect a compromise with Sevier, but all signs failed.

WILKINSON AT NEW ORLEANS. 355
It next looked as if the Chickamaugas might entrap the luck
less governor, and his last appeal to Benjamin Franklin had
failed. The Holston Separatists seemed cowed, and in the nick
of time (May 21) a firm and judicious address from Governor
Caswell satisfied most people that the end of the upstart com
monwealth had come.
In Kentucky, the convention met in May, 1787, and the
tricks of the Intriguers were discovered when it was learned
that there was no warrant for the circular of March. Soberer
counsels prevailed, and the members accepted anew the trials
of patience.
Wilkinson, with a growing consciousness of bis loss of polit
ical power, had turned to fostering his own pecuniary gains.
In the preceding autumn (1786), he had visited Natchez, and
had opened friendly relations with Gayoso, the Spanish com
mander. He had established them in part by an intimation
that if Kentucky felt it necessary, she might invite England to
descend with her the Mississippi and effect a joint occupancy of
Louisiana and New Mexico.
Some time in the winter, Steuben had applied to Gardoqui
for a passport to enable a gentleman to visit New Orleans, but
the request was refused. Steuben's friend was Wilkinson, who
at a later day explained that, under the guise of a commer
cial venture, his real object was to open confidential communi
cations with Miro. Gardoqui's refusal did not daunt him, and
gathering together his flour, bacon, butter, and tobacco, he had
everything ready to send a flotilla down the river in the spring.
In June, 1787, his barges were tied up to the banks at New
Orleans, without an attempt of any Spanish officer to seize
them. There is some mystery as to the way in which Wilkin
son secured this prompt exemption. It is not improbable that
Gayoso's reports to Miro had made the Spanish governor timid,
and that he had learned that Gardoqui, who was not accom
plishing aU he wished, needed more time for further efforts
before a rupture with the Republic was forced. If Miro hesi
tated at aU, Wilkinson seems to have succeeded in teaching
jiim that there was more profit in trade than in war. He speed
ily exemplified his maxim by driving such bargains with the
Spanish merchants that he sold his tobacco for five hundred

i i. b

356 THE SPANISH QUESTION.
times its cost. Whether Wilkinson deceived the governor or
betrayed his country mattered little to himself as long as he
accomplished his object In ensnaring Miro in his commercial
plot, through which a division of profits was to enrich both.
The sanguine American had already entered upon ambitious
projects in Kentucky, for which bountiful returns in trade were
quite necessary. In October, 1786, he had bought the site of
the future Frankfort, and had secured the passage of a biU In
the Virginia Assembly to erect a town upon it. He was to have
a fine house of his own there, and to make improvements suited
to establish the new settlement as the headquarters of his busi
ness operations. Indeed, its situation admirably fitted the
place to become the scene of busy labors in the construction of
barges for the river trade.
Gardoqui, in Philadelphia, had kept a jealous eye upon MIro's
activity in New Orleans, and in the previous January the Span
ish governor had found the minister's emissaries watching his
movements. If there was to be any sharing of profits, Gar
doqui was not Inclined to be forgotten, and to propitiate him
Miro had shipped a lading of three thousand barrels of flour to
Philadelphia. In all this Wilkinson was shrewd, and supposed he perma
nently covered his tracks, as he did to his contemporaries, but
researches at Madrid at a later day revealed his rascality. He
is said to have filled his pockets with f 35,000 from his venture,
and with these gains he took ship for Philadelphia. He carried
away also a permit for further trade, which was renewed in
1788 and 1790, with aU the advantages which came from the
power to bribe by it whoever was prompted by avarice to sell
his independence. Before Wilkinson was ready to leave, Miro
obtained from him an outline of what the Spanish faction pro
posed to do in Kentucky. In September, Miro transmitted it
to Madrid, where it teUs a damning tale to-day. The sleek
American did not quite succeed in inspiring confidence, for
both Miro and Navarro were themselves too much entangled in
the plot to be conscious of rectitude ; nor was he altogether
trustful of it in an accomplice. They accordingly in Novem
ber, just as Wilkinson was setting sail, and not certain of the
turn of affairs, appealed to the home government for aid m
fortifying the line of the Mississippi, whereby to hold back

KENTUCKY AND TENNESSEE. 357
from the mines of Mexico " a poor, daring, and ambitious
people, like the Americans," for as such Navarro, whose phrase
this is, not Inaptly rated the people he was dealing with.
Wilkinson, on his way home, passed through Richmond just
after Christmas, 1787. He here heard of the outcome of the
federal convention. The result alarmed him, and he declared
that the first Congress under the new government would pass
Jay's measure and settle the destiny of the west.
Before following Wilkinson over the mountains for other
intrigues, let us glance a moment at the condition In which, on
his return in the early months of 1788, he found Kentucky.
The revolutionist party had, in the preceding August, estab
hshed at Lexington The Kentuclcy Gazette, as an organ in
their interests. It appeared on a half-sheet of coarse paper,
ten inches by nineteen, with the imprint of John Bradford,
who two years before had come to Kentucky, a man of some six-
and-thlrty years. The press had been carried from Philadelphia
to Pittsburg, and thence floated down the river to Limestone,
and so transported by packhorses to Lexington. By a mishap
on the way the type " feU into pi," as the publisher announced
in his first issue.
This initial number of the revolutionary organ was barely
circulated before, on September 17, 1787, the convention of
which so much was expected, and for which a remarkable
patience had been exercised, came together. Its opinion was
now unanimous for separation from Virginia, and the necessary
vote to propitiate Congress to accept the new State was passed,
— aU being done in accordance with the requirements of the
enabling act of Virginia. It seemed now fairly certain that the
dignity of Statehood was at hand. The recent setting up, in
July, of the northwest territory at Marietta was deemed an
earnest of the purpose of Congress to apportion the western
country into States.
Looking to a similar movement south of Kentucky, the un
fortunate Franklin experiment had delayed the final cession of
the North Carolina lands. These lay still farther south, and
stretched to the Mississippi in a strip of territory which, by
some interpreters of the South Carolina charter, belonged to that

358 THE SPANISH QUESTION.
State. Georgia, however, was thought to have at least as good
a title to It. It was a question where the due west line began,
and as the Savannah had different tributaries at the northwest,
the point selected by each was to give as much territory as pos
sible to its own jurisdiction. South Carolina claimed to run
the line from the junction of the Tugaloo and Keowee rivers,
where they form the Savannah. Georgia claimed the source of
the Keowee as the real head of the Savannah, and that the line
should start westward at that fountain. The claims of the two
States were before Congress in May, 1786, for adjudication,
and the decision had not been reached when South Carolina,
on March 8, 1787, made a cession of her rights, and on August
9, Congress accepted it.
The year 1787 had, from the exasperation of the Indians,
been a restless one throughout the regions watered by the aiHu-
ents of the Gulf, as well as upon the adjacent waters which
flowed into the Atlantic. Savannah had even been threatened,
and new defenses were planned. The Tennessee region had
been hard pressed under the assaults of the Creeks, and Rob
ertson was forced to ask assistance of Kentucky and Sevier.
Finding, as he said, that the Creeks " talked two tongues,"
he had marched In June, 1787, against the savage strongholds
near the Muscle Shoals, and had found among their villages
some French traders, who had supplied them with arms, and
he had other proofs that emissaries from the French on the
Wabash had for two years been inciting them against the
Cumberland people. There had been some Indians murdered
near the Clinch River, and Governor Randolph of Virginia
sought as best he could to stop the retaliatory countermarches,
and to hold Logan and Crockett in check. Amid all this
savagery, James White and James Conner visited the site of
Knoxville, and located here a warrant for land which they
had received for service in the revolutionary army. So a new
western town was started.
Early In 1788, Wilkinson was back among his Kentucky
friends, nursing his secret. If not disclosed to his nearest con
federates to its full extent, it was to be better understood, many
years later, when MIro's dispatch of January 8, 1788, to his

THE CUMBERLAND PEOPLE. 359
government was found, and it appeared how traitorously the
wUy Kentuckian had bargained away the western settlements.
His correspondence with Miro in the spring of this year
(1788), which was sent down the river by boat, and has also
been preserved, shows how he attempted to augment the hopes
of the Spanish governor by assuring him that all was well ;
that there was no likelihood of Congress thwarting their plans ;
and that he had succeeded in blinding Washington, "the
future king of America," as he caUed him. With these assur
ances, Miro had little difficulty in writing to Madrid that the
frontier colonies were secure for Spain.
WeU he might think so, for both from Cumberland and the
Holston, as weU as from Kentucky, came the welcome tidings.
In the Cumberland district, Robertson and McGIUivray had
indeed been running a tilt at each other. The Cumberland
leader, supposing that Spanish intrigue had aroused the Creeks
and the Chickamaugas, had made, as we have seen, a dash upon
them at the Muscle Shoals. Miro had protested against Rob
ertson's suspicions, and McGIUivray had taken his revenge
upon the whites. After this bloody satisfaction, that half-breed
Creek intimated to Robertson that if he would consider the ac
count closed, he was quite wiUing to bury the hatchet. Where
upon reconciliation went so far that in the spring of 1788,
McGIUivray informed Miro that Robertson and the Cumber
land people were preparing to make friends with the Creeks
and throw themselves into the arms of Spain. This meant a
substantial triumph of Spanish interests, for Nashville,, the
Cumberland capital, which had grown to be a settlement of
eighty or ninety log huts gathered about a court-house, had
become the rallying-point for some five thousand hardy pio
neers. These were scattered along eighty odd miles of the
river bank, and constituted a self-sustaining community, thrown
upon its own resources, and separated by a trackless wilder
ness from the dweUers on the Kentucky. With the settlement
about Jonesboro', one hundred and eighty-three miles away,
these Cumberland people had more intercourse, but still it was
not very close. The track lay through a dangerous country,
in which Martin had had many a struggle with the irascible
Chickamaugas; but the way was soon made safer, when the
trail was improved, and armed patrols passed to and fro. It

360 THE SPANISH QUESTION.
was over this trail that the North Carolina judges came at
times, under the escort of such a guard, to administer back
woods justice in the court-house at Nashville.
Passing over this route from North Carolina, young Andrew
Jackson, now in his twenty-first year, and armed with a commis
sion as public prosecutor, had stopped on his way at Jonesboro',
where he found the legitimate government restored and Sevier
a fugitive. Hard pressed in his disappointment, that luckless
magistrate had courted the authorities of Georgia, and proposed
to occupy a part of its territory on the great bend of the Tennes
see with such followers as he could make adhere to his fortunes.
This failed. At times he thought that he could jdunge into
an Indian war, or lead an attack on the Spaniards, and in this
way prolong his power. Then he thought he could do better
to offer his services to Miro and Gardoqui, as he did on Sep
tember. 12, 1788, and throw himself and his State " Into the
arms of his Spanish Majesty," just at a time when Congress,
rising to the exigency, had determined (September 16) to insist
at all hazards on the navigation of the Mississippi. McGIUivray
got wind of Sevier's purpose, and confirmed the Spanish author
ities in the hopes which Sevier raised. With aU this tergiver
sation, Sevier had seemingly no heart to turn upon the parent
State, and when Gardoqui sent Dr. James White to open terms
of agreement with Sevier, the latter is said to have informed
Shelby of the plot that Gardoqui was proposing.
So Sevier lived on for a while in this uncertainty. At last,
trusting to his popularity to save him, he put himself within
reach of one Tipton, an old enemy, and in October he was
arrested and carried before a judge. There is a story, admit
ting of embellishments, which goes to show that he was rescued
under the eyes of the judge and suffered to vanish into the
devious ways of the wilderness, and that the youthful Jackson
stood by and witnessed the escape. This was the tale which
Jackson told to amuse the loungers when, a short time after
wards, he reached Nashville ; but he carried more important
tidings when he took to the Cumberland settlers the story of
the adoption of the new Federal Constitution, and disclosed the
preparations which were making, when he left the seaboard, for
the election of Washington as the first President.
After March, 1788, Miro had been left alone in New Orleans,

THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION. 361
Navarro havfcg departed for Spain with reports. While the
governor wa^ still worrying over seven hundred hungry souls
who had be^ burned out in New Orleans and thrown upon the
resources of his granaries, he had some satisfaction in believing
that he had at last got into close touch with different sections
of the American southwest. He would not have been so com
placent in his joy if he had known that his rival, Gardoqui, at
about the same time, had received orders from Madrid to play
into Wilkinson's hands.
The critical time for Kentucky had come in June, 1788, just
as Miro, at New Orleans, was receiving renewed assurances
from Wilkinson, brought by a flotilla which that speculator had
dispatched from Frankfort. On the 2d of that month. Congress
had voted to make Kentucky a State of the Union, and had
appointed a committee to draft the bill. This was no sooner
done than, on July 2, 1788, the news of New Hampshire's
adoption (June 21) of the constitution came. This counted
the ninth State In the column, and made the trial of the new
government a certainty.
Virginia had been for some time considering whether she
also should accede, and the question in her convention was
turning largely upon what would be the effect on the West and
the navigation of the Mississippi by the operation of the new
constitution. It had long been felt that the risk was great, and
that the acceding of Virginia was doubtful. Washington, in
April, thought that the widespread apprehension in Kentucky
would swing Virginia into opposition. At that time, it was
supposed that nine of the fourteen Kentucky members of the
Virginia convention had committed themselves against the new
constitution. When the convention met, it proved that seven
members instead of nine stood out, and rallied with the rest
about Grayson and Henry. These leaders, however, proved
unequal to force a majority of the convention to agree with
them, and on June 26, Virginia, to make a tenth State, by a
sufficient majority in the convention, had wheeled into line
before the news from New Hampshire had come.
It seemed now in Congress that Virginia, having been com
mitted to the federal experiment, and the old Congress hav
ing become moribund, it was best to leave the question of
setting up Kentucky as a State to the approaching government.

362 THE SPANISH QUESTIONS
Accordingly, on July 2, the day on which the ninth , State was
knovra to have been secured, the committee ^^h had been
appointed to grant an enabling act asked to be discharged.
This outcome caused a sore disappointment 'in Kentucky.
Public sentiment was inclined to charge the majority of Con
gress with jealousy of the west. It was aUeged tltet its mem
bers had a direct purpose of delay till, under the new order of
things, Vermont could be brought into the Union to offset the
new Southern State.
This apparently was the conviction of John Brown, one of
the representatives in Congress from Kentucky, and in this
frame of mind he had had an interview with Gardoqui. This
agent had intimated to the Kentuckian that Spain was ready to
bargain with his constituents for the navigation of the Missis
sippi. Brown disclosed by letter the proposition to some friends
in Kentucky, and probably took Madison into the secret. It is
not certain that Gardoqui was as guarded, and in the attempt
to vindicate Brown's loyalty, which has been made of late
years by his grandson, it is said that the Spanish agent made
no secret of his purpose. It seems certain that Gardoqui's
proposition never took the form of a settled understanding. On
the other hand, it is not known that It elicited from Brown any
repugnance. He may have kept silence the better to draw
Gardoqui into actions which could be used to force Congress
to uphold vigorously Kentucky's demands of Spain and her
requirements of Statehood. Brown had indeed already com
mitted himself as an advocate of the independence of Kentucky
within tiie Federal Union. In April and May, Madison had per
suaded him that the Mississippi question stood a better chance
of solution under the new government than under the old.
Jefferson had told him that " the navigation of the Mississippi
was, perhaps, the strongest trial to which the justice of the
federal government could be put." In July, Brown had written
to his Kentucky friends that Spain would not give up the Mis
sissippi as long as Kentucky was a part of the United States,
and there is small doubt of Brown's serious apprehensions.
There is little question that Gardoqui, in some way, brought
similar importunate claims to Henry Innes and George Nicho
las, two other influential Kentuckians. The extent to which
these three friends went at Gardoqui's bidding shows them at

THE WILKINSON FACTION.

363

least to have been indiscreet, while it Is just as certain that the
conduct of Wilkinson and Judge Sebastian, in the way in which
such advances were met by them, proved themselves unmistak
able traitors. Sebastian made a bold acknowledgment in the
end. Wilkinson sneakingly sought ever after to cover his tracks.
When, on July 29, the Kentucky convention met, Wilkinson
made a show of causing Brown's suspicions of Congress to be
disclosed; but he did not think it prudent to reveal Brown's
account of Gardoqui's insinuating promises. A considerable

NEW MADRID.
[From CoUot's Atlas.l

part of the convention, irritated by the procrastination of Con
gress, was ready to f oUow Wilkinson and Sebastian in declaring
for the Immediate independence of Kentucky, but the majority
was against It. The conservative stability of the Scotch-Irish
did much to produce the result, though the efforts of the east-
em merchants to close the Mississippi, and the avowed purpose
to seat the new government in New York, instead of further
south, brought contrary influences to bear.
The Wilkinson faction finally succeeded in getting another
convention ordered for November, but before it met there were
two new phases of the complex political condition rapidly de
veloping, and they need consideration.
Note. —The map on the two following pages is from a " Map of the Northern and Middle
Btatea " in Jedediah Morse's American Geography, Elizabethtown, 1789, engraved by Amos Doo-
little. It was repeated in the Boston, 1793, edition.

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j ^^^O/ ,^' .V >

o

V;;^^_^—I- 'i era,,/ ISM
(pSift Vincent , \ "^

j^KMT I,^

0

-4

I orris 1. 1

0

E isr T W

366 THE SPANISH QUESTION.
It had been an object of Spain to induce the American fron
tiersmen to settle on lands beyond the Mississippi. Miro had
invited Robertson to this end. Gardoqui had sent emissaries
to the western country to disclose a like plan. His agents found
little willingness to accept such offers, though some adventurous
spirits like Steuben and George Rogers Clark were ready to
lend their Influence.
In July, 1788, Spanish troops had been sent to fortify New
Madrid, a position on the river some distance below St. Louis.
As a part of the scheme to strengthen the line of the Missis
sippi against piratical inroads of the Americans, Natchez was
further fortified, and a fleet of patrol boats was soon placed
on the river.
Colonel George Morgan of New Jersey, a revolutionary soldier,
had of late been trying to induce Congress to help him found
a colony near Kaskaskia. This pending, Gardoqui sought him
with an offer of conceding twelve or fifteen mlUiou acres of
land at New Madrid. On October 3, 1788, the terms were set
tled. It was expected that his followers would be Protestants,
and guarantees against religious interference were made. Free
trade down the river satisfied the commercial requirements.
The position of New Madrid, nearly opposite the mouth of the
Ohio, gave earnest of a large town. Morgan issued a circular
setting forth the advantages of the plan. It promised land at
an eighth of a dollar an acre, with aid in building dweUings. It
set forth the richness of the country, the abundance of buffalo
and other game, which, if furnished by contractors, would cost
a penny the pound. Free transportation down the Ohio of all
household effects would be given. Schoolmasters would accom
pany the emigrants.
One of these circulars coming to the hands of Madison, he
wrote to Washington (March 26, 1789) that it contained "the
most authentic and precise evidence of the Spanish project that
has come to my knowledge." He also wrote to Jefferson that
" no doubt the project has the sanction of Gardoqui," and the
Mississippi is " the bait for a defection of the western people."
This movement of Gardoqui was but one of the rival meas
ures which estranged Miro from the Spanish agent at the seat
of government, and neither the latter nor Wilkinson was satis
fied with the prospect. It was too evidently a sinister stroke at

DORCHESTER AND KENTUCKY. 367
the secret plans of the Spanish faction in Kentucky. Wilkin
son had just obtained (August) a renewal of his license from
Miro, and a cargo of dry goods had been sent up the river to
him, accompanied by the prudent advice from his confederate
not to put too high a price upon his wares, for fear of diminishing
among the Kentuckians the advantages of Spanish intercourse.
The other new phase of western condition, to which reference
has been made, on being developed in the autumn of 1788,
was not on the side of the Mississippi, but on that of Canada.
There was a faction, as has been indicated, among the Kentucky
politicians, who looked rather to France thaii to Spain for the
solution of their difficulties. It was hoped that France would
assert her right to Louisiana, and invite the west to a share in it.
Some such representation had been made to the French minis
try, when it came to the notice of the English. It was through
some one at Detroit that Lord Dorchester's attention was first
called to the chance of making common cause with the disaffected
west. The same informant told the Canadian governor of the
movement then gathering head for the occupation of the Mus
kingum country. A hint was also given of that disloyal spirit
which the secret service books of Sir Henry Clinton have fas
tened, justly or unjustly, upon a soldier of the Revolution who
was at this time a leader in the Ohio movement. This corre
spondent of Dorchester adds that " a General Parsons among
them has made advances to establish commercial interests with
Canada." If this could happen north of the Ohio, there was a
glimmering hope that some sirhilar leader might be found south
of the Ohio, to be clandestinely beckoned into toils. Very
likely this secret informer in Detroit was a half-pay British
officer. Colonel John ConnoUy, a Pennsylvanian by birth, who
in 1775 had served the royal cause under Lord Dunmore. For
this he had suffered a long imprisonment. He had also a disr
tmct personal grievance against the Americans for the confis
cation of some property at the falls of the Ohio. He saw, or
thought he saw, how it was the commercial instinct of the east,
partlcidarly of New England, which had started the new life on
the Ohio, and had sent adventurous people, possessed " of a
universal facility," to fiU up " this tempting, though remote
country."

368 THE SPANISH QUESTION.
Connolly was such a person as Dorchester needed to probe
the secret impulses of the settlers south of the Ohio. He left
Detroit in October, and, proceeding by the Miami, reached Lou
isville in time to witness the canvass which was then going on
among the electors of the new convention. In this he saw the
Spanish and anti-Spanish factions striving for mastery. He
heard much of the outspoken advocacy of Wilkinson on the
Separatist side.
While Connolly thus looked on, he gave out that he was on
the spot simj)ly to see after his own interests in confiscated
property. He admitted his real object cautiously, and probably
never committed himself to many persons. Among those whom
he approached was Colonel Thomas Marshall, who very promptly
reminded him that if Lord Dorchester meant kindness, he had
best first stop the raids of the Indians on the frontiers. Later,
on November 18, 1788, or thereabouts, Connolly met Wilkin
son at his own house. To him he disclosed his full plans. Ten
thousand men were to be sent from Canada down the Missis
sippi, while a British fleet forced the river on the Gulf side.
WUkinson was not more pleased with seeing his own plans
foiled by this new scheme than he had been with Gardoqui's
projects. Accordingly, by the aid of confederates, he caused a
feigned personal attack to be made on ConnoUy, which made the
spy apprehensive of assassination, and prompted him to leave
hastily for Detroit.
Connolly, who on reflection thought he had escaped a private
plot, and that really half the Kentuckians were ready for his
scheme, made a rather sanguine report to Dorchester. The
governor's letters to Sydney show that certainly there had been
some considerable response to his overtures. The late Jolm
Mason Brown, in his vindication of John Brown, brings to
light, from the English archives, a paper of reflections from
one of these seeming clandestine partisans. A few weeks
after Connolly's disappearance, both Marshall and Harry Innes
communicated to Washington what they knew of Connolly's
doings. While Connolly was still in Kentucky, the convention, whose
preliminary canvass he had been watching at LouisviUe, met at
Danville on November 3. It had appeared at one time as if

BROWN AND WILKINSON. 369
wnkinson would be rejected in his candidature, but his skiUful
dissembling saved him, while his confederates were defeated.
The convention adopted an address to Congress, in which
it was said : " As it is the natural right of the people of this
country to navigate the Mississippi, so they have also a right,
derived from treaties and national compacts," and these rights
"we conjure you to procure."
Brown, with an air of knowing more than he expressed, ad
vised the convention to wait patiently until what they wanted
came. What he meant by this enigma is clear enough, when
Oliver Pollock informs Miro that there is, in Brown's opinion,
no salvation for Kentucky but in swinging over to Spain.
A motion was made to send a temperate and respectful ad
dress to the Virginia Assembly, urging an act of separation.
Wilkinson tried in vain to substitute a vote instructing the
' delegates in the Assembly ; and then read to the convention a
memorial which he said he had left with Miro to be sent to
Madrid. From the best evidence obtainable Wilkinson in this
paper had unreservedly committed himself to the Spanish plot.
In aU these steps his purpose, by his own confession to Miro,
was to foster a spirit of revolt, and to irritate Congress to some
incautious act. When such views obtained as Governor Clin
ton had openly professed to Gardoqui, namely, that the peopling
of the West from the East was a national calamity, it was not
difficult to hope for Congress to be equally indiscreet. To
help on such a plot, Wilkinson told Miro that he looked to
Spain to sow other seeds of discord between the East and the
West, and Miro sent his friend five thousand doUars to use in
tampering with the conscience of the unyielding.
As a blind, Wilkinson further moved to ask Congress to take
decided action against Spain, and it was so agreed.
Before the year closed, Wilkinson had begun to think that,
alter all, his plans might irretrievably fail. Such a mischance
was perhaps hinted at by his confederate, Dunn, to whom St.
Uair, now on the Ohio with a show of military authority, and
Knowing Wilkinson's intrigues, was writing in a warning vein,
and begging him to " detach Wilkinson from the Spanish party."
in this conjunction Wilkinson and his friends sent a petition
^ Gardoqui for a grant of land on the Yazoo and the Mlssis-
*'PPi ; and writing to Miro about It, he informed him that his

370 THE SPANISH QUESTION.
purpose was merely to secure a place of refuge for himself and
his adherents, in case it should become necessary to have one.
This measure off his mind, Wilkinson made haste to show
Gardoqui how important a factor he might become in thwarting
British intrigue, by informing that Spanish agent (January 1,
1789) that the emissaries from Detroit were still active in the
west. Just at the same time, Robertson, thinking to propitiate
Miro by naming a district on the Cumberland after him, wrote
(January 11, 1789), as did later General Robert Smith (March
4), that the time was approaching for the Cumberland people
to join with Spain. Wilkinson almost simultaneously was dis
patching a new flotilla of twenty flatboats to continue his com
mercial connection with New Orleans. So it seemed to the
Spanish intriguers north and south that there were to be renewed
efforts in behalf of Spain, before her American confederates
slunk away to the Yazoo.
The inauguration of the new government at New York, set
for March, was not far distant, and time would, therefore, before
long show what its effect was to be on Wilkinson's purposes,
Washington, with the interval rapidly shortening before great
responsibilities would devolve upon him, and fuUy informed of
what was doing in the west, caused a warning to be Inserted In
the Alexandria Gazette that this Spanish intrigue " was preg
nant with much mischief." Later, in March, 1789, not long
before he was to be inaugurated, he wrote to Innes : " I have
little doubt but that a perseverance in temperate measures will
produce a national policy mutually advantageous to all parts of
the American Republic." It was significant of a steady hand
ready to grasp the helm.
From a letter addressed by Wilkinson to Miro, on February
12, 1789, we learn just how the situation seemed to that conspir
ator, or rather how he chose to make it seem to his confederate.
He assured him that the leading men in Kentucky, with the
exception of Colonels Marshall and Muter, were committed to
" the important objects to which we aim ; " and that some delay
was inevitable till the new government had assembled and de
clared itself, and that if it would be in the way of resentment,
the securing of the Yazoo grant might prove timely. Mean
while, he trusted that Spain would not relax her efforts to sow
dissension in the west. He recounted the circumstances of Con-

WILKINSON AND McGILLIVRAY. 371
noUy's mission and of his ignominious flight. He said there is
a current rumor that England is trying to restore Gibraltar to
Spain at the price of New Orleans and the Floridas.
Two days later (February 14, 1789), Wilkinson dispatched
a second letter. In this be regrets that Gardoqui, instead of
Miro, had been given the power to treat with Kentucky, and
hopes that the Yazoo country will enable him and Miro to defeat
the plans of Gardoqui and Morgan at New Madrid. Miro, as
it appears from a remonstrance which he sent on May 20 to
Madrid, did not conceal his fears that Gardoqui had been over
reached by Morgan, and that the true object of the American
was to plant a new American State west of the Mississippi.
With this apprehension, Miro later (July) ordered the com
mandant at New Madrid to strengthen his defenses, while he
did ostensibly what he could for the comfort of the new colony.
There might well be ground for fear on MIro's part that with
all his magnificent vision of an extended Spanish dominion, he
was himself, as he deemed Gardoqui to be, dealing with traitors,
who at any moment might turn upon him. His position was
certainly a trying one. Sent to govern a province, his govern
ment had dispatched a covert enemy, with powers that war
ranted him to Invade this province and set up other jurisdictions.
Amid all this perplexity came in May the news of the death of
the Spanish king and the accession of Charles IV., and he knew
not what change of policy.
The Mississippi, although coveted, was in fact the weak side
of Louisiana, for it opened a path to her enemies, both up and
down Its course. The river once passed and in control, the
mines of New Mexico were within the invaders' grasp. New
Orleans, with its five thousa*nd people, sheltering a disaffected
French preponderance, was a prize for any daring commander.
The forty-two thousand inhabitants of Louisiana had little better
cohesion to make a defensive front.
It had been, if it was not now, clear to Miro's mind that the
two main supports of his hopes were Wilkinson and McGIUi-
^ay, — the one to seduce the west, the other, supposed to hold
more or less control over the seventy thousand Indians of the
southwest, to make them serve as a barrier to Spanish territory.
To add to Miro's perplexities, he had become, through the
communications of Wilkinson and Pollock, aware of the rival

372 THE SPANISH QUESTION.
intrigues of France and England. France had given up Lou
isiana to Spain because she had failed to secure the returns she
wished from its trade and mines. Since then, the American
subduers of the wilderness had shown her that the true wealth
of the Great Valley was not in Its deposits or in its furs, but
in Its agricultural products. This development was relied upon
to arouse French cupidity. It was said that not au acre had
been cleared about Natchez but by Americans, who were now
supplying the markets of New Orleans from their farms, — now
reported, with probable exaggeration, by one observer as three
thousand in number, averaging four hundred acres each. Pro
ductiveness like this made something more of the country than
a bulwark of the New Mexican mines. The French must re
member, it was set forth, that by gaining the west, they would
gain supremacy in the market for flax, hemp, and wool, and
could drive aU tobaccos out of the trade by their own. There
were thirty thousand old subjects of France, they were reminded,
who stood ready to welcome them in place of their Spanish
masters. Beside these, they could depend on the sympathy and
aid of the French on the Wabash and in Canada, and open an
asylum to the disaffected, who were already flying from the
French shores before the seething agitations of the Revolution.
In aid of this Frencli scheme, some interested persons in Ken
tucky had transmitted to the French representative in New
York a memoir upon the condition of the western country, calcu
lated to affect the Gallic Imagination. Fortunately, it did not
bring the direful effects which Barlow's promises had produced
on the Ohio. Indeed, Kentucky at this time had much more to
offer to immigrants than the territory north of the Ohio. The
migration of settlers was so rapid and so large that it is diffi
cult to reach a conservative estimate of it. The Ohio and the
road from Limestone and the Wilderness Road were crowded
with the trains of pioneers. During the twelve months divided
between 1788 and 1789, to take no account of the overland
movements, twenty thousand persons had passed down the Ohio,
past Fort Plarmar, in eight or nine hundred boats. With them
were counted seven thousand horses, three thousand cows, nine
hundred sheep, and six hundred wagons, — and all were, with
few exceptions, bound for the Kentucky settlements.
There were at this time, as contrasted with the scant popula- v

FRENCH AND ENGLISH FACTIONS. 373
tion north of the Ohio, not a great deal short of one hundred
thousand souls in the settlements of Kentucky, Cumberland,
and Watauga. What disturbed Miro most, and offered the
greatest inducement to the French and English factions, was
that more than twenty thousand riflemen, a large part mounted,
were ready to belt their fringed shirts for any emergency.
Kentucky alone, it was thought, could send ten thousand mili
tia to a point of danger, and her mounted patrols were always
alert in the traveled ways.
In urging an alliance with France, its advocates claimed that
the Alleghanies forbade for the west aU communication with
the Atlantic ; that the unity of the Republic " was broken by
the mountains ; " that the success of the seaboard could not
contribute to the prosperity of the west. " The west, in short,
requires a protector. The first who will stretch out its arms
to it will have the greatest acquisition that could be desired in
the New World."
It Is not probable that this project of a French alliance,
looming as it did at times in excitable minds, ever made much
progress. Its real effect was to thwart and incite by turns the
energies of both the English and the Spanish.
The British scheme had more of reality in it ; but it also
failed of maturity. That there were In the west supporters
of an English connection, beyond the numbers which ConnoUy
encountered, would seem to be evident from the correspondence
of Dorchester with the home government. In one of the gov
ernor's dispatches (April 11, 1789) he transmitted some " des
ultory reflections of a gentleman of Kentucky," which, if not
the work of Wilkinson, was in quite his manner, and would have
emphasized that intriguer's faithlessness to Miro, had he known
of it. The writer says that " the politics of the western country
must speedily eventuate In an appeal to Spain or Britain." In
transmitting this paper, Dorchester wrote that the factions in
Kentucky that promised best looked to an alliance with Great
Britain, for the purpose of detaching that region from the
Union and capturing New Orleans. The people urge, said
Dorchester in effect, that Spain had helped the United States
against England, and that there was now the chance to pay
them off. StiU, they wanted no active assistance till New
Orleans was captured. Having thus put the case, Dorchester

374 THE SPANISH QUESTION.
asked the ministry how far he could safely go in responding to
such appeals.
In this, as in other problems, the newly installed federal gov
ernment was likely to prove an antagonist to deal with, different
from the defunct confederation. GrenvIUe seems to have sus
pected this, and cautioned Dorchester against active interference.
Wilkinson was well aware of the changed conditions, and on
September 17, 1789, he wrote to Miro, in a pitiable and self-
convicting spirit : " I have voluntarily alienated myself from the
United States, and am not yet accepted by Spain. I have re
jected the proffered honors and rewards of Great Britain, while
declining the preeminence which courted my acceptance in the
United States. I have given my time, my property, and every
exertion of my faculties to promote the interests of the Spanish
monarchy. By this conduct I have hazarded the indignation of
the American Union."
W^hile this despondency was growing upon him, Wilkinson
had failed of an election to the convention, which met on July
20, 1789. Without his leadership the Separatist faction hardly
dared assert itself. The new proposition of Virginia which
came before the convention had some objectionable provisions
as to the public lands, and it was found necessary to take fur
ther time to settle the differences. So, the convention adjourn
ing, Kentucky was not yet a State ; but the Spanish question
had lost a great deal of its importance, and was for a while
about dropping out of local politics.

CHAPTER XVII.
UNCERTAINTIES IN THE SOUTHWEST.
1790.
When the new federal government was put in operation,
there was one Northern and one Southern State stiU without
the Union. In November, 1789, North Carolina had adopted
the constitution. Many questions touching the western country
south of Kentucky could not be considered till North Carolina
had thus acted. This region rounded out the country, in con
ception at least, to the Mississippi, and although Rhode Island
still remained recusant, not acceding till May, 1790, Oliver
Wolcott might weU say, because of Rhode Island's insignifi
cance, that the " accession of North Carolina has blasted the
hopes of the anti-federalists." With smaU delay, on February
25, 1790, through a deed signed by her senators. North Caro
lina ceded to the United States the region now caUed Tennessee,
a territory then reckoned as extending east and west three hun
dred and sixty mUes, and north and south over a degree and a
half of latitude. The occupants of this territory, now some
thirty thousand more or less, were not consulted, and the Indian
title still covered it, except at the east, where the Franklin ex
periment had been tried, and towards the west, where some two
thousand square miles surrounded Nashville as a political centre.
Within the cession lay lands assured to the Chickasaws by the
treaty of HopeweU (January 10, 1783), and others confirmed
to the Cherokees by the treaty of November 28, 1785, which
were still further to be increased by the treaty of Holston, July
A 1791. The lands thus preserved to the tribes made about
five miUion acres in the east and central regions, with about
half as much more towards the Mississippi. In addition. North
Wolma had already pledged considerable areas to her revolu
tionary soldiers, to individual grantees, and for the redemption
of her scrip, so that the United States got Uttle or nothing

376 UNCERTAINTIES IN THE SOUTHWEST.
under the cession beyond the jurisdiction over the forty-five
thousand square miles which constituted the territory. Indeed
it was thought that North Carolina in her previous grants had
exceeded the area of the country by half a miUion acres.
On April 2, Congress accepted the cession, and in May, that
body set up the ceded territory, to which was presumably
added the narrow east and west strip already made over by
South Carolina, as " the Territory south of the river Ohio."
This act created a governor, and also three judges, who were to
yield to a territorial assembly when the population could show
a body of five thousand voters. The new government was to
be guided by provisions similar to those of the ordinance of
1787, except that slavery was not prohibited. WiUiam Blount,
a North Carolinian of popular yet dignified manners, who en
joyed the confidence of the people, was made governor, reaching
his post in October. The territory was divided into two mili
tary districts, the eastern of which was placed under Sevier,
now made brigadier-general, and the western under Robertson,
to whom was accorded a like rank.
As to the country south of the new government, there was a
conflict of claims between the United States and Georgia. The
federal government insisted that it was acquired from Great
Britain by the treaty of 1782, the mother country having
yielded thereby the title which she assumed under the procla
mation of 1763 in making It a part of west Florida. When
she thus took it from that region and allowed it to the United
States, it was her purpose, If Lord Lansdowne's confession is to
be believed, to make discord thereby between the young Repub
lic and the house of Bourbon. Whether intending or not, she
succeeded in that purpose. Georgia contended for prior rights
to this debatable region under her charter, and she was now
holding It, as the county of Bourbon, bounded on the south by
the international line of 31°, and on the north by the Yazoo
River. Georgia's pretension of acquiring the Indian title
within this territory was adjudged to be illegal, since the right
of preemption was reserved to the United States under the
Federal Constitution which Georgia had accepted. She had
refused to guarantee the title, however, to large tracts of lands
in the Yazoo country, which she had granted, in the first m-

GEORGIA.

377

ir 2\r E s s js E

"^^'...i Correct MAP ef the
yiESTERlV^J^RIilTOmr.

[From Jedediah Morse's American Gazetteer, Boston, 17OT.]

stance, to a company formed in Charleston, and known as the
South Carolina Company, and later to other companies known
as the Virginia, Tennessee, and Georgia companies. These
grants had been made in December, 1789, that to the South
Carohna Company embracing ten million acres, that to the Vir
ginia Company eleven million four hundred thousand acres, and
that to the Tennessee Company four mlUIon acres. She threw
the burden of protecting the settlers upon the companies, and
this opened complications with Spain, further affecting the
question of the navigation of the Mississippi.

378 UNCERTAINTIES IN THE SOUTHWEST.
Of the territory thus handed over to another military direc
tion, the Choctaws and Chickasaws laid claim to parts of, it,
and throughout the whole of It, Spain professed that she had
jurisdiction. One Dr. James O'Fallon, a man about forty-five, and an
adventurer, was made agent of the South Carolina Company.
He wrote on May 24, 1790, from Lexington to Miro, stating
that he was prepared to treat for making this debatable country
a province of Spain, and hinting that if their negotiations suc
ceeded, other western communities were prepared to take simi
lar steps. He said that within eighteen months he should have
at bis beck some ten thousand men, capable of bearing arms,
and that in June he would visit New Orleans for a conference.
Miro could not fail to see Wilkinson's hand in all this, and
O'Fallon had indeed been in conference with that so far disap
pointed treason-monger, who had beeh watching the movement,
as affording a new field for his intrigues. As early as Janu
ary, 1790, he had tried to ingratiate himself with O'Fallon
and his associates, pleading his ability to induce the Spanish
authorities to quiet the adverse interests of the Choctaws. In
June, 1790, writing from Frankfort, Wilkinson notified Miro
that O'Fallon's plans were in the Spanish Interests, though the
man himself was somewhat vain and flighty. " I am, never
theless," wrote Wilkinson, " inclined to put faith in him."
O'Fallon's scheme was to organize a force in Kentucky, and,
floating with It down the Mississippi, to take possession of the
country, with George Rogers Clark, as rumor went, in military
command. It was given out that the federal authorities favored
the undertaking, and would adopt the military establishment.
Wilkinson and Sevier, with a body of disappointed Franklin
men, were expected to follow and make the settlement.
In this state of affairs, Miro wrote to Madrid (August 10),
describing the land of the South Carolina Company as extend
ing from eighteen miles above Natchez to thirty miles above
the Yazoo, all of which, as he represented, was within the
Spanish jurisdiction. He doubted the policy of harboring on
Spanish territory a separate community with its own military
organization. It does not appear that he was aware that the
company, in order to secure settlers, had given out a purpose
to make in due time an American State of their colony, and it

LAND COMPANIES. 379
may weU be doubted if the projectors had any such real inten
tion. Miro, who was never quite sure of Spain's maintaining
herself on the Mississippi, had enough suspicion of the com
pany's avowed aim to fear that it would become an aggressive
enemy, unless Spain should in some way obtain control. Wil
kinson, with that devilish leer which he knew how to employ
upon occasions, had intimated that the best way to secure this
control was to make the Choctaws so harass the settlements
that the colonists would turn to Miro for protection. In the
same letter the governor informed the minister at Madrid that
he had already taken steps to act on W^ilkinson's advice.
The lands of the Virginia Company lay north of those of the
South Carolina Company, being a stretch of a hundred and
twenty miles along the river and running to 34° 40' north lati
tude, and so comprising what he calls a part of the hunting-
ground of the Chickasaws, a tribe in the main friendly to the
whites, but not always controlling their young bucks. Still
farther north were the lauds of the Tennessee Company. All
the companies' territories extended one hundred and twenty
mUes back from the river. To the lands of the latter com
pany, Miro acknowledged the Spanish claim to be less certain.
In one way these new developments gave Miro some hope.
He felt that Wilkinson, who had so far talked much and done
little, might now find a better field for his intrigue. The gov
ernor complained of the small gain which Morgan had made
farther up the river, and charged him with preferring rather
to en joy his, ease in New Jersey than to endure the hardships
of the new colony. He thought further that the trade which
Wilkinson had been suffered to develop between Kentucky and
New Orleans had worked to embarrass the rival scheme at New
Madrid. Miro told the minister that if O'Fallon's proposition was
refused, the alternative for Spain was to push in settlers in
such numbers as to hold the region, and he adds that if the
Americans oppose, he will use the Indians as Wilkinson bad
suggested. There were other chances which Miro was glad to recognize,
for the Creek half-breed, McGIUivray, who we shall see had
just been invited to New York, had written to the governor in

380 UNCERTAINTIES IN THE SOUTHWEST.
May, 1790, that though he was indeed going thither to conclude
a peace with the Americans, he had no intention of deserting
his Spanish friends, and was even prepared in due time to
assist the Spaniards in attacking the South Carolina intruders.
Miro took courage from this as he wrote to McGIUivray in
August, 1790.
But the movement of O'Fallon was not to come to any such
conclusion, for a finishing blow had been dealt in New York
just at the time when McGIUivray was amusing Knox and his
fellow negotiators. In August, 1790, Washington, who was
kept informed of the military preparations in Kentucky, issued
a proclamation, signifying his intention to suppress by force any
hostile movement against the Spanish. So it was that, in the
spring of 1791, the project was abandoned. On March 22,
Jefferson had instructed George Nicholas to arrest O'Fallon.
By this time Hamilton's scheme of finance had so carried up the
national and state scrip that it could be used to better advan
tage than in buying Yazoo lands, and there were no securi
ties for the adventurers to work with ; and furthermore the
national government was preparing to protect the Indians
against state machinations in the disposal of the Indians'
lands. So the companies and O'Fallon vanished from sight.
In the following August, the agent of the South Carolina Com
pany, who had been placed at Walnut Hill, abandoned his
post, and hostilities on the Mississippi were averted.
It is now time to look after McGIUivray and his treaty. The
Spanish traders in Mobile, since the English surrendered the
Indian traffic in 1782, bad never been able to keep it up to
the prosperous condition in which they received it ; but such as
it was they found the readiest channel for it In ascending the
MobUe and Alabama rivers, — sluggish streams that offered no
great obstacles. By an upper affluent, the Tombigbee, they
reached a village of the Chickasaws near its source, and thence,
by a three-mile portage through a region ceded for trading-
posts by the treaty of Hopewell, they could get into the basm
of the Tennessee. Thither passed trader and warrior with
equal ease. Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Cherokee, coining
Note. — The opposite map, showing the country between Mobile and Pensacola and the Ten
nessee River, is a section of Samuel Lewis's Map of the United States, 1795.

382 UNCERTAINTIES IN THE SOUTHWEST.
from different directions, had often combined here for fatal
forays along the Tennessee and Cumberland settlements, or
had scattered in scalping parties to appear and disappear in
a night. The most restless of the savages were the Chicka
maugas, a small and independent band of Cherokees, youthful
bucks themselves, and likely to be joined at times by the roving
youngsters of the other tribes. They had caused Colonel Mar
tin, In his efforts to keep the frontiers quiet, more anxiety than
any of the other tribes, and he had, under varying fortunes,
advanced upon them and retired time and again. Of late,
Knox, the secretary of war, had kept the local forces as much
on the defensive as could be done, in the hopes that the provo
cations to war would cease. It was the hostUity of this ruthless
band, after Sevier had lost his hold upon the abortive Franklin
commonwealth, which had Induced the settlers south of the
Holston and French Broad rivers to unite for protection, despite
any appeal for forbearance.
It is not easy to reach any satisfactory estimate of the num
bers at this time of these southern tribes. There were, perhaps,
two thousand five hundred warriors among the Cherokees, and
they came in closer contact with the Americans than any others,
and had of late been talking of migrating beyond the Missis
sippi. They had easily learned the timely art, when the whites
pushed them too hard, of sending complaints to the authorities.
" We are drove as it were into the sea," they said on one occa
sion. " We have hardly land sufficient to stand upon. We
are neither fish nor birds. We cannot live in the water, nor
in the air ! " They were fond of making treaties, and not very
faithful in the observance of them.
The Creeks were more numerous, and spent their varying
rage more readily upon the Georgians, who, with the Span
iards in Florida, were their nearest neighbors on the east and
south. The Choctaws were supposed to be much more nu
merous than the nearer tribes, but their remoteness generally
prevented more than small parties of vagrant warriors joining
the other tribes. The Chickasaws were as a rule the most tract
able of all. They were a handsome race, and rode a fine breed
of horses.
Note. —The opposite map of the Creek country, and the home ot McGillivray, is from a map
of Georgia in Careifs A merican Atlas, Philadelphia, 1795.

384 UNCERTAINTIES IN THE SOUTHWEST.
The year 1790 had opened with some warnings of a new com
bination among the southern Indians. One WiUiam Augustus
Bowles, a young English vagabond, who had been In the Eng
lish army during the Revolution, had for some years espoused
the English, Spanish, or American Interests indifferently, and
had played fast and loose with savage and civUized life bv
turns. Pie now compacted portions of the Creeks and Chero
kees, and Induced them to send him and some of their tribes
men to England, bearing an address to the British king. The
party managed to reach the Bahamas, where Lord Dunmore
furnished them a passage to Halifax, and in July, 1790, they
were at Quebec. Here Dorchester tried to detain them, but
they insisted on going to London, where they presented the ad
dress, and promised to put their tribes under British protection,
and asked for arnjs and other help. Meanwhile, among the fac
tions of those tribes, where an active rival of Bowles was more
powerful, an effort had been made during 1789 to unite them
in a league against the whites. This plot, in August, 1789,
had come to the knowledge of Colonel Arthur CampbeU, and
he had communicated the news to Washington.
This other leader, whom we have already mentioned as the
son of a Scotch trader by a Creek woman, whose father had
been French, had already made the name of Alexander McGU-
livray notorious along the border, for, during the Revolutionary
War, he bad, like Bowles, been active in the royal interest.
His losses by confiscation in that contest had spurred him with
a revenge which of late years had been well known to the bor
derers. He was a man of an active inteUect, and not lacking in
educational training. In physical bearing he was a noticeable
figure : spare of limb, but lofty in stature, while under a beet
ling brow he moved with great alertness a pair of large and
lustrous eyes. He bad an Indian's wary artfulness, a French
man's grace of demeanor, and something of the Scotchman's
canniness and love of trade. He was under binding obUgations
to the Spaniards, and as we have seen In his communication
with Miro, he did not mean to forget them, while he was ready
to settle with their rivals, hoping in each case to serve his own
interests. As a go-between in the Indian trade he had his
price, and the London house of Strahan & Co., acting in Pensa
cola, found him convenient in negotiating for trading permits

McGILLIVRAY. 385
with the Spanish officials, who were said to receive more than
i612,000 a year from that commercial house. It is hardly to be
denied that McGIUivray got a good store from both of the bar
gainers. He had before this sought to make the Georgians buy
at a good price an immunity from the raids of his people, and
on their refusal he had taught them that his price was much
less than the cost of war.
In this pass, Georgia, whose frontiers faced the Creeks all
along the Altamaha and Oconee, had appealed to the general
government for aid, at a time when rumors multiplied in New
York that Spain was inciting the Creeks, and the EngUsh the
Shawnees, to make a general war.
Knox saw in a Creek war a pretty certain forerunner of
one with Spain, and having some intimations of McGIUIvray's
greed, importuned Washington to invite that leader to come
to the seat of government. At the same time he prepared for
a failure by dispatching troops to the Georgia frontiers. The
messenger of peace was Colonel Willet. The invitation was
accepted, and in June McGillivray and twenty-eight of the
principal men of the Creeks, marching through the New York
streets under an escort of Tammany sachems, were conducted to
General Knox's house, where McGillivray was lodged.
As in all Indian negotiations, the interchange of views went
on slowly, amid untoward rumors. Miro, with his usual suspi
cion, which was not wholly removed by McGIUIvray's parting-
letter, was thought to have sent an agent after the Creeks to
spy out their acts in New York and prevent action hostile to
Spain by a free distribution of gifts. It was at the same time
believed that an Iroquois agent had cautioned McGillivray of
the risks he was taking, and had tried to lead him to an alliance
with the northem tribes.
But no allurements could turn the greedy ambassador from
his purpose after the government had disclosed to him their
generous intentions. In consideration of the Creeks' recognition
of the United States as their guardians, and acknowledging the
protection "of no other nation whatsoever," the American
negotiators confirmed to the Creek chieftain and his friends
the sole privUege of trade with that tribe, and agreed to make
^od with $100,000 that leader's losses in the Revolutionary
" ar. The government ceded back to the Creeks certain territo-

386 UNCERTAINTIES IN THE SOUTHWEST.
ries which had made the Oconee the line of the whites, and which
Georgia had paid for. This act later aroused the indignation
of Patrick Henry, who bad invested in some of these same
lands, and who, as he professed, had hoped to find a refuge
there from the despotism which he sometimes believed was to
transplant the republicanism of his country.
The authorities further created McGillivray a brigadier-gen^
eral- in the American army, with a yearly stipend of |1,200.
So, in good humor, that chieftain doffed bis new uniform and
signed the treaty. It mattered little to him that, at the same
moment, he held both from the Spanish and English govern
ments other commissions. Washington, as he said, had greatly
honored him in giving him some books and his own epaulets,
which he took with him on his home journey by sea, lauding at
St. Mary's in Georgia.
While in New York, McGillivray wrote to Lord Dorchester :
" In the present treaty I have been obliged to give up some
thing in order to secure the rest, and guarding at the same
time against what might shake my treaty with Sj)aln." Such
double-faced professions, however, did not succeed. The treaty
with Spain had, for a large faction of the Creeks, been im
periled too greatly ; and the United States had bargained with
a deceiver. The hostilities at the south saw little abatement,
and Spain continued to have an ally in the irate Creeks.
But these Indian affairs suffered an eclipse In the sudden
apparition of war along the Mississippi, and the McGIUivray
treaty was doubtless hastened by it, for the United States was
at once brought face to face with a serious problem, in the solu
tion of which she needed a free hand. It is necessary to go
back a little and see how the Mississippi question seemed has
tening to a conclusion at the time the Spanish complication with
England turned the federal governinent from an aggressive to
a waiting mood.
Gardoqui, on returning to Spain in 1789, had given there the
impression that the navigation of the Mississippi had ceased to
be a burning question on the American seaboard. He gave as
a reason for this apathy that the drain upon the coast popula
tion, through the opening of the river, would cause a setting
back of the prosperity of the older States. There was also a

CHARACTER OF THE WEST. 387
prevalence of fear that the free river passage to the sea of
tobacco, now becoming an important staple in Kentucky, would
bring a powerful competitor into the market for the product
of Virginia and Maryland, whose soil was already becoming-
exhausted. With these views accepted, there could but be In Spain an
imperfect comprehension of the real attitude of the western
country, and there was doubtless in some parts of the American
east hardly better information. Nor was there an adequate
conception of revived Spanish efforts to stop the Kentucky
boats on the river. Miro at New Orleans could hardly have
failed to observe the growing prosperity of the Americans about
Natchez. Brissot had said, with French enthusiasm, that " the
French and Spaniards settled at the Natchez have not for a
century cultivated a single acre, while the Americans furnish
the greater part of the provisions for New Orleans." We have
seen how the attempts of the South Carolina Company to ex
tend this activity above Natchez had excited the governor's
apprehensions. The fact was that the Declaration of Independence had failed
to make quite the same sort of self-centred Americans west of
the mountains as had been created on their eastern slope. The
western life was breeding a more dauntless and aggressive race,
which rejoiced rather in obstacles, and placed upon a higher
plane than human law the rights which they felt belonged to
them by nature. They were not a little impatient to have their
right to an open navigation of the Mississippi based upon
treaty obligations, as acquired from France by England in 1763,
and transmitted to the Republic from the mother country in
1782. They looked by preference to the inalienable rights of
their position on the upper waters of the Great River, as carry
ing an incontestable claim to a free passage to the ocean. What
Thomas Walcott, journeying on the Ohio In 1790, heard in
a debating club in Marietta gave an unmistakable indication
of the prevailing temper. There was, as he says, a diversity of
sentiment as to the treatment of Spanish arrogance, while all
were of one mind in. the certainty, within a few years, of the
river being opened " by strength or force, if not by right or
treaty."' % 1790, the danger which had been felt, of accomplishing

388 UNCERTAINTIES IN THE SOUTHWEST.
this result by some pact of the western leaders with Spain, had
practically vanished before the rising power of the constitu
tional Republic, which had marshaled men in new ranks, mak
ing bold those who had been timid, and conservative those who
had been aggressive. It was this change that had caused Wil
kinson to tremble for his power. When he saw Washington
putting in office at the west the known enemies of Spain, he
had grasped the hand of O'Fallon almost in despair. Conceiv
ing that Congress suspected him, he had written to Miro:
" My situation is extremely painful, since, abhorring duplicity,
I must dissemble." Miro, on his part, was aware that all Wil
kinson's abettors, save Sebastian, had fallen away from him.
The latter was by this time reduced to begging a gratuity from
the Spanish governor, who seemed by no means sure that the
time had not come for pensioning each of the confederate trai
tors, in order that he might use one as a spy upon the other.
In this condition of things the intriguers could weU be left to
spoil their own game, and the federal government were freer
far than the confederation had been to deal with the pretenses
of Spain, both as to the river and as to the territory which she
coveted to the east of it. From the time when she was con
niving with France to deprive the United States, by the Treaty
of Independence, of a large part of the western country, Spain
had indeed abated something from the claims which would have
given her all west of a line drawn from the St. Mary's River
to the Muscle Shoals, and down the Tennessee and Ohio to the
Mississippi. Later, she had sought to accomplish her purpose
by the conspiracies of Wilkinson. While these were pending
with diminishing chances of success-, Spain had been prac
ticing aU that vexatious hesitancy which has always charac
terized her diplomacy. The time had come for this to cease,
as Jefferson thought, and in August, 1790, he instructed Car
michael, then the American representative in Madrid, to bring
matters to a crisis, urged thereto, doubtless, as we shall see, by ,
the precarious relations which had arisen between Spain and
England. Jefferson's instructions were to assume the right of
navigating the Mississippi, and to raise a question only about
a port of deposit near its mouth. At the same time, he advised
Short, in Paris, to persuade Montmarin, the Spanish ambas
sador in that capital, to further the American suit. In the

THE NORTHWEST COAST. 389
heads which Jefferson drew up for Carmichael's guidance
(August 22), he says that more than half the American terri
tory is in the Mississippi basin, where two hundred thousand
people, of whom forty thousand can bear arms, are Impatient of
Spanish delays. If we cannot by argument force Spain to a
conclusion, he adds, we must either lose this western people,
who wiU seek other alliances, or we must, as we shall, wrest
what we want from her. If Spain will only give us New
Orleans and Florida, he adds further, she should see that we
are in a position to help her protect what lies beyond the Mis
sissippi. This was a direct bid for a Spanish alliance In
the sudden complications which had arisen upon the action of
a few Spanish ships on the Pacific coast, and, in September,
false rumors prevailed in New York that Spain had made the
concession. To understand this Pacific entanglement, it is necessary to
take a brief retrospect.
The fur trade of the northwest coast was a prize for which
Spain and England had long been contending. The efforts to
find an overland passage had been far more striking with the
Enghsh, while the Spaniards had for the most part pushed up
the coast from California.
As early as 1775, Cadotte, who had long been a trader at the
Sault Ste. Marie, had explored with Alexander Henry north
west of Lake Superior, and, in their wandering, had fallen in
with one Peter Pond. This adventurer was, according to some
accounts, a native of Boston, but was probably born, as Ledyard
had been. In Connecticut. He was strong in body, eager for
hazards, intelligent In spirit, with a knack for scientific obser
vation, and an eye for mercantile profit without many scruples
as to the method of it. He had, in AprU, 1785, in behalf of
the North West Company of Montreal, a fur-trading organiza
tion, addressed a memorial to Governor Hamilton at Quebec,
proposing to undertake, in connection with other members of
that company, the exploration of " the whole extent of that
unknown country between the latitudes of 54° and 67° to the
Pacific Ocean." He informs the governor that he had learned
from the Indians that the Russians had already established a,
trading station on that coast, and that other posts were sure to

390 UNCERTAINTIES IN THE SOUTHWEST.
be established there by Americans, who had been shipmates
of Captain Cook. He further said that if the delivery of the
lake posts, as contemplated in the treaty of 1782, was ever
made, the way would be opened for enterprising Americans to
reach by the Lake Superior route that distant region, and rein
force their countrymen, who had sought it by water. For these
reasons he urged upon Hamilton the necessity of protecting
the North West Company in the undertakings which they had
outlined. The explorations of Pond about Lake Athabasca had con
vinced bim, as his map, which has come down to us, shows, that
the western end of that lake was not very far distant from the
Pacific. The accounts of Cook's voyage had just then been pub
lished (1784-85), and a comparison of Cook's charts and this
map, by differences of longitude, seemed to show that the fresh
and salt waters were within a hundred miles of each other. On
a map preserved in the Marine at Paris, and which is given by
Brymner in his Canadian Archives Report for 1890, and which
is said to be a copy of Pond's drawing made by Crevecoeur
for La Rochefoucault, the coast of " Prince WiUiam Sound, as
laid down by Captain Cook," is separated from the affluents of
" Aranbaska Lake " by a coast range, beyond which, as the
legend reads, the Indians say they have seen bearded men. As
signifying an inviting route to the western sea. Pond had re
ported the climate of Athabasca as moderate, and said it was
owing- to the ocean winds, which we, in our day, recognize as
the chinooks.
Pond, as we have intimated, was not averse to playing off
one master against another, and while he was assuring Hamil
ton that his interests were for Britain, he seems to have sent
another copy of his map to Congress, which fell Into Creve
coeur's hand, and upon a copy which he made, that traveler
wrote of its author : " This extraordinary man has resided seven
teen years in those countries, and from his own discoveries, as
well as from the reports of the Indians, he assures himself of
having at last discovered a passage to the [western] sea." This
memorandum is dated, " New York, 1 March, 1785."
Note. — The map on the opposite page is a section of Pond's map (as reproduced in Brymner'a
Canadian Archives, 1890), showing the Grand Portage and the source of the Mississippi. The
river " Winipique" connects Lake Winnipeg with the Lake ot the Woods.

392 UNCERTAINTIES IN THE SOUTHWEST.
But Pond's ambition to reach the Pacific had not been accom
plished when, in 1790, Vancouver was on that coast, establish
ing new claims for England. He passed, without knowing it
the mouth of the great river that heads near the springs of the
Missouri. It was left for the Boston ship " Columbia," under
Captain Kendrick, in the same season, to enter that river and
bestow the name of his vessel upon it.
Not far from the same time, Spain and England, the two
great European rivals for North America, who were each intent
on contracting the limits of the young Republic, came Into coUi
sion on the western coast of Vancouver's Island. Spain, by
virtue of Balboa's discovery in 1513, and subsequent explora
tions up the coast, and England, by reason of Drake's assump
tion of New Albion In 1579, and the recent explorations of
Cook and others, set their respective claims to this region in
sharp conflict. Spain, being at the moment more powerful at
Nootka Sound, seized some English vessels trading there. It
was this act that was now likely to bring the armed forces of
the rivals to leveling muskets on the Mississippi, and to open a
conflict of which the United States, with grudges against each of
the contestants, might find it difficult to be a passive observer.
When the news of the seizure at Nootka reached England,
and it was known that the Spanish authorities had simply
released the captured ships without making reparation, the Eng
lish king, on May 5, 1790, announced In Parliament that war
with Spain was Imminent. Great activity followed In the dock
yards and arsenals. Louisiana was at once recognized as the
most vulnerable part of the Spanish empire. To engage the
western Indians for a campaign against New Orleans by the
river, large stores of gifts were hastily sent to Canada. Dor
chester was, at the same time, Instructed to secure if possible the
active aid of the United States, and, in case this failed, he was
told to play upon the passions of some of the disaffected regions
of the Republic. While the northern and southern factions of
the country were being brought to a sharp issue on the question
of a site for a capital, and were seeking at the same time to
play off Vermont and Kentucky against each other In the
balance of power, by fixing periods for their admission to the
Union, the British government was seeking to make a breach

NORTHWEST COAST.
[Showing Nootka Sound as on the main land, when really on the outer coast of Vancouver's
"land; also Mackenzie's track and the supposed waters west of Lake Superior and Hudson's
Bay. The map is a part of a " Chart of the N. W. Coast of America, showing discoveries lately
made," in Jedediah Morse's Avierican Universal Geooraphy, Boston, 1st ed., 1789; 4th ed.,
1802.] y J^ if^

394 UNCERTAINTIES IN THE SOUTHWEST.
between each of those States and the Union. It was thought
that the discontent in Vermont, not wholly stilled by the out
come of Yorktown, was rendered at this juncture peculiarly
susceptible while she was appealing to a laggard Congress to
give her sisterhood in the Union. So Dorchester was instructed
to op>en communication with such as he could approach.
A convention in the Kentucky country was about deter
mining to take fiaal measures for securing Statehood, — it was
to take place in July, — but it was not certain that the majority
for it would be large. To take advantage of any such indiffer
ence, Dorchester wa's further instructed to picture to the Ken
tuckians the advantages which would accrue if they accepted
the help of England to force the Spaniards from the Missis
sippi. There was also, Dorchester was expected to show, an
unmistakable gain for them in an English alUance in open
ing the lakes and the St. Lawrence for the export of their
produce. Such were the terms of GrenviUe's dispatches to the
Canadian governor in May, 1790, at the time that prepara
tions were making in England for a Spanish war.
The conditions on all sides were perplexing. Great Britain
was anxious lest war with Spain would give the Americans an
opportunity to wrest from their feeble garrisons the lake posts,
and there was danger that such hostilities might lead to the
dispatch of a crowd of privateers from the American ports.
There was a chance that the military power of the Republic
would have more than it could do to protect and hold in alle
giance the western country, and Dorchester's Information from
the Ohio region was encouraging to British hopes. He learned
that the " discontented Continental soldiers " at the Muskingum
colony were " attached to the United States by no other tie
than personal regard for the President, considering themselves
sacrificed by Congress, and defrauded even in the sales of the
lands they occupy ; " and this feeling, said a correspondent,
gave them " an extreme tenderness toward the British govern
ment." Early in the year, Dorchester had sent to the States an emis
sary on an ostensibly friendly errand, but reaUy to spy out the
feelings of the people, and to ascertain what preparations were
in hand for any armed excursion. This messenger was a cer
tain Major Beckwith, and his instructions were dated on June

WASHINGTON'S CABINET. 395
27. He was specially directed to learn the chances of the
United States joining England in the threatened war, and the
hkelihood of their resisting the persuasions of Spain to rely
upon her aid in attacking the lake posts. Dorchester had an
American correspondent, who was assuring him that General
Knox would be only too glad to attack the Spanish posts on
the upper Mississippi, while an English fleet forced the river
from the Gulf. This letter-writer had outlined a further plan
of a joint expedition to the Santa Fe region, the west being
counted on to recruit an adequate force from its three hundred
thousand inhabitants. This occupation of the Spanish mines
was a favorite aim with Dorchester, and he had in contempla
tion to found a base for such an expedition on the Mississippi,
north of the Missouri, whence it was only eight days' march to
Santa Fe, through a country fit for military operations. It was
certain that Spain feared such an attack, and was striving to
strengthen her Indian alliances beyond the Mississippi, and
was seeking to induce the Indians on the east of that river to
migrate to the other bank, and her persuasion had had some
influence among the Cherokees.
The policy of the United States, so far as Washington's cab
inet was to form it, rested in councils far from harmonious.
Hamilton could not forget the irritating vacillation of Spain
during the Revolution, and her inimical conduct ever since.
He thought she had no reason to expect that the United States
would shield her from British enmity. He was, on one point
at least, in sympathy with Jefferson in contending that Spain
must either open the Mississippi or take the consequences. " If
Great Britain sides with us," he said, " and France with Spain,
there wUl be a revolution in our foreign politics." When Beck
with sought to sound him, Hamilton was cautious, and rather
vaguely promised an aUiance with England " as far as may be
consistent with honor."
Jefferson's anti-English views were too notorious for England
to expect any countenance from him. Dorchester had been
warned of this, though his American correspondent assured
him that the Americans, as a body, were " by no means favor
able to Spanish interests." It was Jefferson's belief that a
Spanish war — -with the Americans neutral — would be sure
to throw both Louisiana and Florida into the hands of Britain.

396 UNCERTAINTIES IN THE SOUTHWEST.
This would mean, he contended, that England, possessing the
west bank of the Mississippi, would control the trade of the
east bank, and hold the navigation of that river as the price
and lure of an alliance with the western States. It would,
moreover, surround the Republic on aU the land sides with
British power and with British fleets at the seaward. It was,
perhaps, some consolation to him, in a possible alliance of the
States with England, that, in the division of the spoils of war,
Florida might fall to the Americans. His expectation was
that France could not help being drawn into the war on the
side of Spain, and if the States could maintain neutrality he
saw a chance of "the New World fattening on the foUies of
the Old." If American neutrality could not be preserved, he
much preferred that the Republic should take sides with Spain.
For this end be was ready to guarantee the trans-Mississippi
region to Spain, if she would cede New Orleans and Florida
to the United States. He thought that to enter upon the war
in this way would induce a popular support, and that Spain
should agree to subsidize the Americans, if such a stand brought
on a conflict with England. To prepare for such a consumma
tion, Jefferson instructed Carmichael to let the Spanish coiui;
understand that, if such a plan was not acceded to, there might
be great difficulty in restraining the west. Such a guarantee
of the distant west was not, fortunately, in the way when Jef
ferson himself, not many years later, bargained for this same
Louisiana, and forgot how he had so recently professed that
the United States would not for ages have occasion " to cross
the Mississippi."
There was one consideration which, in case of war, had caused
Washington much uneasiness. It was whether Dorchester
would, with or without permission, cross the American territory
to reach the Mississippi, in an effort to descend to New Orleans.
The President consulted his cabinet in August on the stand to
take in case Dorchester should ask permission. His advisers
were at variance, as before. Hamilton was for allowing the
passage rather than hazard hostilities. Jefferson said that,
while circumstances did not warrant giving the negative which
the request deserved, it was best to avoid an answer, and if the
passage was made, to treasure the memory of it against a time

THE DILEMMA OF SPAIN. 397
of England's distress. Adams, the Vice-President, differed only
from Jefferson in advising a dignified refusal and waiting tiU
an indemnity could be enforced.
The dilemma of Spain was the most serious of aU. She rec
ognized that the United States might assist ber, but she was not
prepared to pay the cost, and she knew what risks she was run
ning of an Anglo-American alUance, with the aim of forcing
the Mississippi.
So the Spanish policy was to shuffle as long as it would be
prudent ; to embroil France if she could ; to organize an In
dian expedition against the Pacific posts of the English, and
take advantage of developments.
Affairs in this way could not drift long, with such a deter
mined adversary as England, and on October 28 Florida Blanca
yielded to the British demands, and so avoided war, in conclud
ing the convention of Nootka, wherein he acknowledged the
equal rights of England on the Pacific coast. When, on No
vember 12, the ratifications were exchanged, England ceased
to be a factor in the Mississippi question.

CHAPTER XVIII.
THE CONDITIONS OF 1790.
The federal government in coming to power found the North
and the South not unequally matched. Pennsylvania and the
States northward showed about two million inhabitants, and
there was an equal population in Maryland with the farther
south. It was thought that the valuation of the thirteen States
was approximately $800,000,000, and this aggregate was nearly
equaUy divided between the two sections. In some aspects of
business activity, they were also nearly equal, and the 15,000,-
000 exports of the North could be set against a corresponding
sum for the South. In domestic trade the North doubtless
held some preponderance, for the one hundred and fifty thou
sand tons of shipping engaged in fishing and in coastwise traffic
was mainly owned and employed in the North, and this section
claimed a large part of the three hundred and sixty thousand
tons engaged in the foreign trade.
The territory which was assured to the United States by the
treaty of independence, but which was as yet, west of the moun
tains, but precariously held for the most part, was variously
reckoned, according- to the Imperfect estimates of the time, as
between eight and nine hundred thousand square mUes. Of
this imperial domain, not far from two thirds was unoccupied
except by vagrant Indians. The great buUi of the four mlUion
people, whom the world was learning to call Americans, occu
pied a region stretching along the Atlantic seaboard. It ex
tended back to a line which roughly followed the crest of the
somewhat disjointed Appalachian range, and measured from
Maine to Florida not far from three thousand miles. This
more compactly settled territory which the French maps repre
sented as the United States, and in this were followed by some
English maps, contained not far from two hundred and twenty-
five thousand square miles, or probably a scant quarter of the

POPULATION OF THE WEST. 399
entire acreage of the Republic. Of the gross population of
four million, considerably less than half a million souls were
scattered occupants of the remaining- three quarters of the
national domain. There was great uncertainty in estimating
this outlying population. Some placed it as low as two hun
dred and fifty thousand, while others reckoned it at over four
hundred thousand, and it was thought it had the capability of
doubling, through immigration and the prevalence of large
families, in fifteen years. Burke had said of it, when Parlia
ment was struggling with the problem of controlling it : " Your
children do not grow faster from infancy to manhood, than the
Americans spread from families to communities, and from
villages to nations." Much the larger part of this western
population was settled in confined areas, isolated by stretches
of wUderness, and thickest along the streams in West Virginia,
western Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and Tennessee. There were
only the beginnings of settlements north of the Ohio, except as
one moved on to the Wabash, the lUinois, and the Mississippi,
where the mongrel communities, originally French, at Vin
cennes and Kaskaskia, were encountered, mixed with Canadian
traders and Spanish interlopers. This isolated class offered a
life little consonant with that which the American pioneers were
establishing in the Intervening country.
There is the same uncertainty in apportioning this aggregate
over-mountain population among the several districts. Perhaps
there were seventy thousand, or as some reckoned nearer one
hundred thousand, which found a centre in Pittsburg. This
Pennsylvania folk stretched up the Alleghany and Mononga
hela, and their lateral valleys, and there was some talk of their
ultimately acquiring Statehood. Kentucky, which with respect
to soil and climate was usuaUy spoken of as more favored than
any other American region, claimed to have about seventy-four
thousand inhabitants. Including twelve or thirteen thousand
blacks. It is still more difficult to determine the population
of Tennessee, divided between the Holston and Cumberland
regions. The enumeration has gone as high as eighty thousand
and as low as thirty or forty thousand.
The immigrants to these regions south of the Ohio had prob
ably. In the largest numbers, come from Virginia, now the most
populous of the thirteen States. The impoverishing of Vir-

400 THE CONDITIONS OF 1790.
ginia soil by tobacco was serving to Increase the spread of her
people beyond the mountains. The current was not yet whoUy
checked, which in the middle of the century had brought other
pioneers from Pennsylvania and Maryland through the vaUey
of the Shenandoah on the way to the Kanawha and beyond.
The opening of the river route from the Monongahela to
Limestone on the Ohio, " the most beautiful river " of the
world, as it was customary to call it, had diverted a large part
of the stream of adventurous settlers, but they mostly went to
Kentucky, for there was still difficulty In the land questions on
the Muskingum, which was preventing its fuU share of the
intending settlers. Further south, an emigrant stream was con
stantly passing from Carolina.
There was possibly a preponderance of English blood in aU
these diversified currents ; but the Scotch-Irish and the Ger
mans were numerous enough to give a strengthening fibre
in this mingling of ethnic strains. There was, in this south
western race, little mixture of the New England stock, though
a few families from Connecticut and Massachusetts had made
a mark among them. This northern element, however, was
just beginning to assert itself north of the Ohio, in communi
ties destined to become more mixed in blood than those south
of that river. The Ohio Company, as we have seen, had taken
shape in the New England spirit. The region between the two
Miamis was controlled by the racial quality of the middle
States. The lands reserved for bounties to the Virginia sol
diers, something over four million acres, and more open to In
dian attacks than other parts of the northwest, invited still
other Individualities. When ChiUicothe was founded, Kentucky
and Tennessee sent thither a restless horde. In this there was
good blood mixed with less desirable strains coming from the
poorer elements of Holston and Carolina. It was left for New
England to restore a good average when the Western Reserve
along Lake Erie came to be settled, its reputation for having
a damp and cold soil tending to deter immigration for some
years. It is generaUy computed that there were, iu 1790, nearly
four thousand three hundred people, other than Indians, north
of the Ohio. Of these there were about a thousand in and
around Marietta, to be increased during the year by more than

THE ILLINOIS SETTLEMENTS. 401
one hundred and thirty new families. The hostility of the
Indians prevented their hunters going far beyond the support
of their armed guards, and the buffalo by this time had dis
appeared from Kentucky, except about the sources of some of
the rivers, and were rarely to be found north of the Ohio,
unless in similar feeding-grounds near the fountains of the
northern tributaries of that river. So a scarcity of food was
not an unusual condition, and, during- the early months of 1790,
there had been danger of famine but for the kind help of a
Virginia hunter and farmer, who was settled on the opposite
side of the Ohio. The next year, however, the crop proved a
good one.
On the lands of Judge Symmes, between the Great and
Little Miami, there were reckoned to be one thousand three
hundred souls. St. Clair, in January, had visited these settle
ments, and set them up as the county of Hamilton, and made
at Cincinnati the seat of government for the shire.
The settlement on the Wabash was supposed to have about
a thousand souls, among whom St. Clair early in the year had
been, and had found them thriftless. They were dreading a
scarcity of food, and the governor relieved them. He officially
confirmed their occupancy of the lands, which had been origi
nally secured to them under the French rule. Another thou
sand of this trans-Ohio population was to be found in the other
old French settlement at Kaskaskia and in the adjacent region.
St. Clair had found these also fearing a famine, and he had
Issued orders to prevent the Spanish, in St. Louis, crossing the
river to kiU buffalo and to carry off the timber. This scarcity
of food had driven off a good many to join Morgan's settlement
at New Madrid, and it was the general complaint that much of
their distress was owing to the failure of Virginia to pay for
the suppUes which they had furnished to George Rogers Clark
twelve years before. These difficulties were increased by the
obscuring of land titles, which a transfer of allegiance had pro
duced, and St. Clair had had poor success in endeavors to
remedy the evil. He found that the passage of supplies by
ascending the Mississippi from the Ohio was jeopardized by the
velocity of the current, and he at once urged upon the federal
government the construction of a road for a distance of fifty or
sixty miles, leaving the Ohio at Fort Massac, so that the region

402 THE CONDITIONS OF 1790.
could be better brought into communication with the crops of
Kentucky. There was urgent need of some such closer connec
tion, for St. Louis, now a flourishing village, was drawing- away
the old settlers of Kaskaskia and Cahokia. This was particu
larly the case with slave-owners, for there was a widespread
belief that the ordinance of 1787 would eventuaUy work the
emancipation of their blacks. It was charged that Morgan
was encouraging this view In order to ofetain accessions to his
colony. To place the federal interests in this distant region
under more efficient supervision, St. Clair, on leaving for his
headquarters in June, 1790, placed them under the immediate
control of Winthrop Sargent, the secretary of the Northwest
Territory. In turning from this older alien element and ascending; the
Ohio, the newer and luckless French colony, for whose coming
Putnam had been preparing, did not escape St. Clair's atten
tion. He says he found about four hundred souls here, " not
usefully employed and much discontented." There were a hun
dred more at Muskingum, and another hundred at Buffalo Creek,
waiting to move on with the opening season. The beginnings
of this movement have been recounted in an earlier chapter.
The Scioto Company, of which Joel Barlow, as already
explained, was now the principal agent in Europe, had aimed
to attract the longings and cupidity of the French people by
presenting what he called the allurements of the American
wilderness. The French government suspected the snare, and
endeavored to warn the eager victims by caricatures, as we
have seen, but to little purpose. By wanton promises. Barlow
succeeded in selling a hundred thousand acres of what he pro
fessed was the company's domain to hundreds of deluded cli
ents. Among them were ten persons of some notoriety, if not
consideration, who had been founders of the National Assem
bly. There was a reckless folly in these people, who were seek
ing to escape from France, quite equal to that of those who
were beginning to make that country the abhorrence of Europe.
Brissot, who was also a member of the Assembly, and who had
been in America two years before, was chattering in the cafes
in the vein in which he was the next year, in a published book,
to help on the movement. He warned the loyal aristocrats, who

THE SCIOTO COMPANY.

403

showed a tendency to fly from what was coming, that in thus seek
ing " to preserve their titles, their honors, and their privileges,
they would faU into a new society [In America], where the titles

J.P.ERISvSOT,
[Prom The Commerce of America with Europe, by Brissot de Warvme, etc., London, 1794.]
of pride and chance are despised and even unknown." He
pointed out how Barlow's enterprise appealed rather to the
poor, "who are deprived of the means of subsistence by the
revolution," and who would find open to them " an asylum
where they could obtain a property." So this infatuated
¦frenchman seconded the debased purposes of the Scioto schem-

404 THE CONDITIONS OF 1790.
ers, and went on generalizing, after his somewhat amusing prac
tice, from evidence insufficient but useful in his task. Barlow,
meanwhile, was busy oiling- his machinery. On February 28,
1790, he wrote to St. Clair to bring to his "notice and protec
tion a number of industrious and honest emigrants," who were
seeking new homes on the Ohio, " under the direction of Messrs.
Barth and Thiebauld." Knox, similarly informed, somewhat
later, on May 19, told St. Clair that these Frenchmen were to
settle on lands " contracted for by Messrs. Cutler & Co.," and
asked the governor to protect them. Barlow' further, with a
refined cruelty, wrote to Duer, his principal in New York, urg
ing bim not to omit any measures which could create good first
impressions in these misguided wanderers, for twenty thousand
more, as he said, would soon follow the pioneers. He asked
him to have houses ready for them on a spot opposite the mouth
of the Kanawha, against the arrival of these forerunners. On
this representation, Rufus Putnam, lending himself blindly
to a nefarious scheme, which subsequently cost him $2,000 for
unrecompensed outlays, in the late winter, while in New York,
contracted on behalf of the Scioto Company with one Major
John Burnham to go with a party and erect cottages on the spot
which Barlow had designated, then known by the Indian name
of Chicamago, but later called, as Putnam says, GaUiqpolis,
a name soon contracted to GaUipoUs. In May, 1790, just at
the time when Knox was commending these foreign adventurers
to the care of St. Clair, Burnham arrived at Marietta with fifty
men and a store of provisions to last tiU December, when it
was expected the work would be done. On June 4, Putnam
gave him his instructions. He was to learn from Colonel R.
J. Meigs on the spot where he was to place the four ranges of
huts which he was to build. They were_to be reared of round
logs, with clay in the chinks, and with chimneys of hke con
struction. Each range or block was to have at the end a large
room for meetings and dancing.
Some days later, this working party reached the site of the
future settlement, supposed then, by some at least, to be within
the area which Cutler had gained for the Scioto Company. To
whomever It belonged, it was wholly unfit for occupancy, with
all the germs of disease about it.
While this work was progressing on the Ohio, there was

GALLIPOLIS. 405
among saner observers Uttle confidence in the future of the
undertaking. Oliver Wolcott, who was a classmate of Barlow,
and doubtless knew him weU enough to distrust him, wrote of
the movement : " In consequence of the Bill of Rights, agreed
to by the National Assembly, an association has been formed
for settling a colony in the western country. About one hun
dred Frenchmen have arrived with the national cockades in
their hats, fully convinced that it is one of their natural rights
to go into tlie woods of America and cut down trees for a
living." The first comers had indeed just arrived in the Potomac, six
hundred souls in all, in five ships, which had left Havre just
before New Year's. After a dreary passage of three months,
these luckless vessels tied up at Alexandria on the Potomac.
It was a motley crowd which they bore, and probably never
forerunners of a colonizing scheme were so 111 fitted in all but
gayety of spirits for the task which was before them. There
were carvers and artists with no annual salon to look forward
for. There were gilders and friseurs with no expectation of a
drawing-room. There were carriage-makers going to a country
without a road. There were artisans to make tools without a
farmer to wield them.
It was summer before this extraordinary crowd started their
caravans over the mountains, or at least such part of them as
had not had their eyes opened and refused to go. Those that pro
ceeded were discontented, and showed a refractory spirit. The
provisions that were furnished them proved poor, and if they
tried to procure other supplies of the farmers on the way, quar
rels were pretty sure to ensue. As they passed the Seven
Eanges, there were no signs of the civilization for which Bar
low's lying map had prepared them. Once at the end of their
journey, they discovered that their title-deeds covered lands
which the grantors did not have to convey, and they perhaps
remembered the truth of the Parisian caricatures. They found
Burnham and his laborers looking to Putnam for their pay, and
the company with which they had dealt was nowhere.
It is difficult to place the entire responsibility of this shame
ful deceit. Barlow, as an agent, may perhaps have exceeded his
instructions, though there is no evidence in his correspondence
with his principals to show that they did anything to check his

406 THE CONDITIONS OF 1790.
rampant performances. If the Ohio Company Is to be excul
pated. It was certainly Cutler's overdrav/n descriptions which
were depended upon to delude the poor souls. Barlow's defi
nite instructions from Duer and his associates have never been
made known. The truth seems to be that these speculators,
some of the first people of the land, as Cutler with some satis
faction called them, had counted upon buying continental securi
ties, while depressed under the weakness of the confederation,
and using them at face for meeting their obligations for the
land. The inauguration of the new government checked the
depression and then enhanced the value of such notes, so that
they could no longer be bought at the expected discount. This
frustrated the schemers' plans. To make some amends to the
deluded settlers, Duer and the Ohio Company agreed upon a
transfer of some two hundred thousand acres from the company,
upon which. In fact, by a miscalculation, the huts had been
placed by Meigs and Burnham, but even this restitution in the
end was futile, for Duer soon after became bankrupt, and every
thing was awry.
For a time, however, it seemed as If the trustful Frenchmen
got something for their money, and, occupying the fragile habi
tations which had been prepared, Galllpolis was fairly begun.
But the fettered handicraftsmen, setting to their task, only
found that their numbers grew less as the hardier of them
became weary and deserted. It was no easy job to fell the
enormous sycamores which stood where they needed to plant
their fields. When the trees one by one fell, they found no
way so easy of getting rid of the massive trunks as to dig
trenches and bury them. Then their supplies grew scant, and
famine stared them in the face. They were sometimes warned
by the whoops of prowling savages, and they were beginning to
think that these children of a benignant nature, which the
French philosophers had told them about, were not after all
the most innocent of neighbors. So they encountered shocks
to their sentiments, and blows as to their physical natures.
As autumn came on, they got all the comfort they could from
the gracious messages of the governor, who dared to express to
them the hope that, amid their trials, they had stiU found Inde
pendence and happiness. He assured them that the rascality
of the shameless deceivers would be punished by law, and that

PUBLIC LANDS. 407
the colonists would in the end have justice. He begged them
to be patient a little longer, tiU arrangements for their security
could be made, and the comfort of their community assured.
St. Clair expressed his own views unreservedly to Knox on
November 26, that " an interested speculation of a few men,
pursued with too great avidity, wUl reflect some disgrace on the
American character, while it Involves numbers in absolute ruin
in a foreign land."
All this meant that there was need of much better discern
ment in the use of these Ohio lands than the recipients of the
ordinance of 1787 had devised, and that the precluding of chi
canery should go along for honesty with the prevention of servi
tude. Hamilton had seen the evil easily to accompany the large
speculative mania which Cutler and his colleagues stood for,
and strove, but for the present unsuccessfully, to better the con
ditions in the disposition of these public lands. On July 22,
1790, he made a report for unifying and controlling the sales, in
which he proposed a general land office at the seat of govern
ment, with one local office in the northwest and another in the
southwest, where sales could be made to actual settlers of not
over a hundred acres to each. The Indian titles were first to be
quieted. Tracts were then to be set aside to satisfy subscribers
to the loads. Townships ten miles square were to be offered
for competition. There might in some cases be special contracts.
But the main restraint was to be a fixed sum of thirty cents
per acre, one quarter cash, with security for the rest. It was
an effort to control as much as possible speculative values. In
his report on the public credit, Hamilton had declared that
cultivated lands in most of the States had fallen in value since
the Revolution from twenty-five to fifty per cent., and in the
remoter south still more. Western lands, he says, had been
heretofore sold at a dollar an acre ; but this price was paid
in depreciated paper, worth scarce a seventh of its face. But
Congress was not yet ready for a inovement as Hamilton pro
posed, and the owners of earlier grants were ready at all times
to thwart any plans which would make the government their
rival in the land market.
The public lands of the west, from the time when the States
liad been urged to make cession of them, had been looked

408 THE CONDITIONS OF 1790.
upon as a source of Income to meet the interest and pro
mote, the payment of the national debt. So they played no
insignificant part in shaping the financial policy of the new
federal government. The movement instituted by Hamilton
for resuscitating the credit of the government was complicated
by political and sectional interests. The debt of the Union as
a whole, resulting mainly from the war, was somewhere about
$54,000,000. Of this there were $12,000,000 held in foreign
lands, and this it was Hamilton's plan to pay at once. There
were $42,000,000 of the government securities held by the peo
ple, and this was to be funded. In addition, there were $25,000,-
000, which constituted the outstanding debt of the individual
States, and It was Hamilton's purpose that the federal govern
ment should assume this, with aU its varying proportions among
the States, and fund It alsq. On the policy of assuming these
state obligations there was strong opposition on the part of
those who were already grouping themselves on the side of
state rights, and who saw in the measure only a scheme for In
creasing the paternalism of the government. The debates of
Congress were showing the mutual distrust of these antagonistic
factions. The repelling influences of radical and conservative
dispositions in domestic matters found other grounds for dif
ference in the commotions which were now agitating France,
and which had come home to the sensibilities of people in the
untoward events which had founded Galllpolis. The so-caUed
federal faction rested their plea for breaking the alliance with
France on the downfall of the government of that country,
which had made the treaty of 1778. Hamilton was the cham
pion of this position, as he was of the funding bill and of the
using of the public lands for revenue. Jefferson, with French
tastes and sympathies, as his enemies charged, was the natural
opponent of Hamilton's " mercenary phalanx." The organs of
.these respective parties were the Gazette of the United States,
as conducted by Fenno, In the interests of neutrality if not of
English favor, and the National Gazette, which, under Fre
neau, outdid its rival in the bitterness which hypocrisy, intrigue,
and falsehood combined to exemplify In Jefferson at a period of
his life over which his admirers may well throw a veil. The
blunt John Adams printed in Fenno's paper those Discourses
on Davila in which the Jeffersonians found a plea for mon-

HAMILTON'S FUNDING BILL. 409
archy, abetting what Jefferson called Hamilton's monarchism
" bottomed in corruption." It was not long before like distinc
tions were again sharply drawn, when the English packet
brought over Edmund Burke's Reflections on the French Rev
olution, and when Tom Paine's Rights of Man, in May, 1791,
found an echo in the hearts of the American symjjathlzers with
France, who, as Jefferson said, welcomed the pamphlet of Paine
as " liliely in a single stroke to wipe out all the unconstitutional
doctrines which the beU-wether [of the Federalists], Davila,
has been preaching for a twelvemonth."
While the question of sustaining or abandoning France
caused perhaps warmer controversy in political circles, there
was meanwhUe no lack of ardor In the way in which Congress
had discussed the question of a site for the new federal city.
The question was decided by the most conspicuous example of
pohtical log-rolling which had yet disgusted the soberer citizens
of the new Republic. This compromise prevented, as such
plans are usually intended to prevent, a tension of political feel
ing that might turn threats into action. Severance of the Union
was already intimated, and Washington pertinently asked " if
the Eastern and Northern States are dangerous in the Union,
wiU they be less so in separation ? "
In May, 1790, the Senate rejected a bill to place the capital
on the eastern branch of the Potomac. To prevent a site being
selected farther north, and to sustain an earlier vote for placing
the seat of government in " due regard to the particular situa
tion of the western country," the Senate, on June 28, considered
a bin for forming a district ten miles square, on the Potomac,
as the place for the federal city. It was at this point, and to
reconcile the opposing demands of the two sections of the coun
try, that the political bargain, just mentioned, was made. The
future home of the government was determined to the advan
tage of the South, and as a recompense the debts of the States
were assumed by the central government, to the gain of the
North. So it was that Hamilton's funding bill passed both
Houses, and on July 9, 1790, became a law ; and at the same
time the residence of Congress was established at Philadelphia
till December, 1800, when the new capital was to be occupied.
The biU, both as regards the financial scheme in touching the
importance of western lands, and in respect to the location of

410 THE CONDITIONS OF 1790.
the capital, was in some sense a victory for the west. There
were some, however, like Imlay, who regretted the permanency
of the choice of the Potomac and thought the federal city should
ultimately be transferred to the Great VaUey, and find a
home, for instance, near the Falls of St. Anthony.
As against the Potomac, the advantages of a site on the Sus
quehanna were the most promising, because of the claims which
were urged of its affording easier communication over the moun
tains with the west. It was shown that the distance from tide
water at Alexandria on the Potomac to the Monongahela and
Pittsburg- — the usual portal of the west — was three hundred
and four miles with thirty-one miles of portage. Imlay says
that It is asserted on the best authorities that the land carriage
by this route may be reduced by further canalization of the
rivers to less than twenty miles. This was the natural route
from Baltimore and Richmond, and if the Ohio was reached by
land only. It took a varying time, from ten to twenty days, to
pass the mountains from the principal seaboard towns.
From tide-water on the Susquehanna to Fort Pitt was two
hundred and seventy-five miles, and If the route was carried up
the Juniata, there was the easiest mountain pass of all, making
a portage of twenty-three miles. Another but less favorable
passage went by the west branch of the Susquehanna, leading
to Toby's. Creek and the Alleghany, and thence to the Ohio.
There was still a way by which those passing west, either from
Richmond or Philadelphia, entered the valley of the Shenan
doah, and proceeded to Fort Chlssel on the Kanawha, near the
North Carolina line. Thence the road led through Cumberland
Gap. It was the usual path by which those who sought a land
carriage entered the leafy regions of Kentucky and so passed on
to the rapids of the Ohio, now the liveliest spot in the west,
and to Vincennes and Kaskaskia beyond. It was generally con
ceded at this time that Alexandria was nearer by one hundred
and fifty miles to Kentucky than Philadelphia was, and twenty
to thirty miles nearer than Baltimore was, and this last city
was west of the real centre of population of the whole country.
Philadelphia was now maintaining a weekly post by the Cum
berland Gap with the Kentucky settlements, and it traversed a
road that In one place for a hundred miles was without a house,
and the average rate was about twenty miles a day. If this

WESTERN ROUTES. 411
route shared the streams of travel westward with the water
passage by the Ohio, the return by land was more usual in
avoidance of the struggle against the current of that river.
Those who were bound for the Tennessee country, after strik-
ino- the valley of the Holston, instead of turning to the right for
Cumberland Gap, followed down that river to Fort Campbell,
near where the Holston and Clinch unite to form the Tennessee,
and then struck northwesterly over the mountains to the Cum
berland valley and so on to Nashville. The distance from Fort
Campbell was a little short of two hundred miles. Winter
botham, a contemporary writer, speaks of this route as " a
pleasant passage for carriages, as there will be only the Cum
berland Mountain to pass, and that is easy of ascent, and be
yond it the road is generally level and firm, and abounding with
fine springs of water." Other descriptions of the time are not
so attractive, and they tell of glowing ravines where patrols
were sometimes met, and as night came on, there was some
thing startling in the click of the hoofs of the traders' pack-
horses, hurrying to find a night's rest. The occasional log
huts are spoken of as filthy, with the roughest household furni
ture, for it was not till 1796 that frame houses began to appear
along the way.
At NashvIUe, the traveler found the inevitable whiskey-tap
in its one variety store. The people were just beginning to
open trade with New Orleans, sending thither, mainly by water,
and running the gauntlet of the river pirates, the products of
'the region, — dried beef, hides, tallow, furs, corn, tobacco, and
flax. Those who were not traders were apt to follow the hunt
er's trace, which ran from Nashville to Natchez, through the
territory of the friendly Chickasaws. The portages which con
nected the Tennessee with the Florida rivers sometimes brought
from the south the Spanish traders of Mobile and Pensacola.
The routes thus far enumerated were generaUy adapted to
indicate the Potomac as the best site for the proposed federal
city, to which the water carriage on the Ohio was not so favora
ble. This easier passage to the two hundred thousand square
miles, constituting the valley of the Ohio and its tributaries,
was found by either the Alleghany or the Monongahela, and
was now without a rival. The route westward by the Mohawk,
across the valley of the Genesee to Niagara, was slow in devel-

412

THE CONDITIONS OF 1790.

oping, and the retention of the posts on the northern lakes
operated against a passage by Oswego and the Great Lakes.
The Ohio boat, now become a familiar object in western
experience, was an anomalous construction of various sizes and
shapes. It had sometimes a keel, but, on account of the diffi
culties of the return voyage, it was oftener built as cheaply as
possible, with flat bottom and square corners. It was some
times constructed with stories, ha-ving a level or hipped roof
atop, and was steered by a long sweep at the stern. The usual

OHIO FLATBOAT.
[From CoUot's Atlas.l
cost of these cheaper builds was five doUars a ton, and a boat
twelve feet beam and forty feet long — a common size — meas
ured about forty tons. Some of them were arranged for stall
ing domestic animals, and others afforded rough conveniences
for domestic life, as the temporary homes of journeying immi
grants. The trading-boats sometimes passed on to a distant
market, or tied up at the landings as they went for a local
traffic. When his merchandise was disposed of, the trader
usually sold his boat, and, on his next visit, he would find its
plank and boards matched in new tenements or hucksters'
booths, within the young town. It was of such material that
Fort Harmar and other stockades had been built in part, the
living forest supplying the rest.
The cost of transportation from Philadelphia over the moun
tains, and thence by boat to Louisville, was reckoned at the
rate of <£1,600 for forty tons ; but for the river passage alone,
smaller merchandise was counted at a shilling per hundred
weight, or five shillings per ton for a bulky mass. Toulmin,

RIVER NAVIGATION. 413
buying a boat at Redstone, on the Monongahela, for ,£6-9-0,
in which he carried 13 horses, 21 negroes, 13 whites, and £100
worth of merchandise, took a fair sample of these trading out
fits. It was different with coarse articles, but fine manufactures
could often, at this time, be sent from Philadelphia over the
mountains, and be exposed for sale in the rough booths of the
river settlements, where rent and taxes were of no account, at
prices not much beyond those asked in Chestnut or Market
streets on the Delaware ; and Philadelphia fashions, it was said,
were In vogue in Frankfort in three months after they appeared
in the Pennsylvania capital. The days of barter were passing,
as money was brought in by immigrants, or was brought up
from New Orleans by the traders ; but stiU, slaves, horses, cat
tle, and pigs were not infrequently exchanged for calicoes,
chintzes, and other fabrics.
The most favorable season for these river passages was be
tween February and May, when the Ohio and Mississippi ran
with fuU channel. The flatboats then sped along from Pitts
burg to the Louisville rapids in eight or nine days. If they
passed on to the Mississippi, they were sure to find it a headlong
stream, even well into the summer, but during July it began to
decrease in volume of water. It did not, however, at anytime,
rise to that height which it would have attained had all of its
sixty considerable affluents poured their spring tides into its
bed at once. A devastating overflow was, in fact, prevented by
these incoming rivers being affected by their local freshets at
varying intervals. Recent calculations have shown that in
high-water season the Mississippi might, by the simultaneous
swelling of its branches, pour into the Gulf three million cubic
feet of water a sepond, whereas, in fact, the outpour, because of
this sequence of floods, is only about one million eight hundred
thousand cubic feet. The velocity of the current from the
mouth of the Ohio to Baton Rouge is from four and a half to
five and a half feet per second, with full banks, and much
swifter thence on to New Orleans. In such a current as this, the
river boats made the run from the Ohio rapids to New Orleans
in about twenty days. The usual practice of the pilots, to
insure safety, was to cross from one concave shore to the other
(reversing In going upstream), and to trust to the current when
tlere was doubt about the channel.

414 THE CONDITIONS OF 1790.
At New Orleans, the trader usually sold his produce and the
boat which had brought It. Going to Havana with his gains,
he returned by sea to Philadelphia or Baltimore. There he put
his money into fine fabrics, and returned home over the moun
tains and joined his famUy, from which he had been absent
from four to six months.
The smaller boats sometimes made the return trip by the
river. There were often south winds to help them stem the
current, and experienced boatmen knew how to take advantage
of the eddying up-currents at the river bends. Such boats were
sometimes back in Louisville in forty days. It was estimated
that the coarse lading of ten boats of sixty tons each would
purchase for the return a bulk of finer commodities which
might be carried upstream In three boats of five tons each.
Ascending the river was, however, too costly as yet to make it
the rule, but It was beginning to be believed that from New
Orleans to LouisviUe " by mechanical boats," the cost could be
i-educed to one tenth. Fitch's steamboat on the Delaware was,
however, hauled up to rot this very summer, and the poor, dis
appointed inventor hardly dreamed of the time when a more
perfect vessel, with river obstructions removed, should go in a
single trip from Pittsburg- to Fort Benton, in Montana, a dis
tance of four thousand three hundred and thirty-three mUes,
crossing very nearly the entire Mississippi drainage system, with
its area of one million two hundred and sixty thousand square
miles. But in August of the next year (1791) new improve
ments In steam-engines were patented by Fitch, Rumsey, and
Stevens of Hoboken, and decided steps were registered in the
solution of the great river problem.

CHAPTER XIX.
haemae's and ST. claie's campaigns.
1790-1791. •
The continued retention of the posts and the hostility of the
Indians, closely connected as both the Americans and the In
dians felt, and as the British generally denied, was for the federal
government the perplexing question in the northwest in the
beginning of 1791. Jay, as Secretary of Foreign Affairs under
the confederation, had, as we have seen, contended that the
American breaches of the treaty of 1782 were at least equal to
those of the British, and that there was no good ground for
amicable settlement as long as either contestant failed to purge
his record. Jay was now Chief Justice of the Republic. It
was possible that some test case might come before him, and
the prospect was not a pleasant one to the ardent republicans.
Jefferson was satisfied that the English ministry had no inten
tion of surrendering the posts, and was content to let the matter
rest tiU the United States were strong enough to force an
evacuation. Gouverneur Morris and the Duke of Leeds had
been corresponding In London without result. That American
representative had also intimated to Pitt that the real reason
of the delay was the fur trade, and that the depriving American
merchants of that trade had prevented the profits which might
have liquidated the British debts. It was true that some of the
States were unconverted to Jay's -views. In Georgia, British
debts were stiU confiscated. In Virginia, there were strong
legal and social combinations against the creditors, and Mar
shall and Henry were active in the debtors' behalf.
On the British side there was the Strong support of the Ca
nadian fur traders, who lost no opportunity of pressing their
interests upon the government. One of these, who described
liimself as an " Indian interpreter and trader," Long by name,
had just pubhshed (1791) his Voyages and Travels, and in it
lie said : " It is an undoubted fact that, in case of a dispute

416 HARMAR'S AND ST. CLAIR'S CAMPAIGNS.
with the Americans, the posts would make but a feeble resist
ance " without the aid of the Six Nations, " and, deprived of the
posts, the fur trade would surely be lost to this country," and
he contended for " the propriety of keeping " them. At times
these traders feared that the course of diplomacy might restore
the posts. They were always ready under such apprehensions
to press for an interval of five years in which to collect and
withdraw their property. The offense to the Americans was
not only that the posts on the territory which had been won by
treaty were used in this lucrative traffic, but that the British
traders, as St. Clair represented to his government, presumed
to traverse territory not within the influence of these posts in
pursuit of this same trade. The Great Northern Company of
Canada had, through Todd & Company, secured from Caron-
delet permission to trade on the western bank.of the Mississippi
in its upper parts, though it seems probable that the Spanish
governor had no conception with whom he was dealing in con
ferring this privilege. The result was that British traders
passed to and fro, preferably by the Wisconsin as the shorter
route, but also by the Chicago portage, and in both cases across
American soil in reaching these trans-Mississippi regions to
which the post at Prairie du Chien was the usual portal. It
was pointed out at the time bow Vigo, the old abettor of George
Rogers Clark, in making his trips between. St. Louis and Pitts
burg, had shown that the river route was much cheaper than
the lake route was by way of these portages. It was indicated
how profitable the Americans might make the business if they
could get possession of it. They were at present forced to con
duct a faint rivalry from Vincennes.
There Is no question that an Indian war was detrimental to
the British trading interests by diminishing the supply of skins.
There was, accordingly, little to be gained in bankrupting the
merchants of Detroit and Mackinac by an official incitement
to war. Yet it was, on the other hand, conceived to be for the
advantage of the British government to divert American at
tention from any attempt to assail the posts by keeping it
occupied with movements of the savages, and so to threaten a
war, if not actually provoking an outbreak. It was a dangerous
policy and likely to get beyond control.
It had been very apparent towards the end of 1789 that war

ALARMS. 417
was coming, and Washington had instructed St. Clair to be
prepared by summoning a thousand militia from Virginia and
five hundred from Pennsylvania. There were at this time a
few fortified posts in the northwest, — Fort Knox at Vincennes,
Fort Washington at Cincinnati, Fort Steuben, twenty-two miles
above Wheeling, and Fort Harmar. Not one of them had
more than a few score defenders.
Early in the year (1790), while St. Clair was on the lower
Ohio, he had instructed Hamtramck, commanding at Vin
cennes, to try to propitiate the Indians neighboring to that
post ; but the effort failed there, as it did elsewhere along the
Ohio valley. During the spring- of 1790, there were alarms all
the way from Pittsburg to the Mississippi. Boats were con
stantly intercepted on the Ohio, and mostly near the mouth of
the Scioto. There was here on the Kentucky side a high rock,
which served the Indians as a lookout, whence they could scan
the river up and down. Harmar, in April, 1790, had sent a
force to strike the Scioto some distance up, and swoop down
upon this nest of marauders, but It had little effect. The
stories of this wild foraging carried dismay far and wide.
Zeisberger, at the Moravian station of New Salem, — then on
the traveled route between Pittsburg and Detroit, — heard
of the ravages in April, and ascribed this murderous activity to
the Cherokees. The stories reached St. Clair at Cahokia on the
1st of May, 1790, when he wrote to the secretary of war that
hostilities seemed Inevitable. He charged the British author
ities with Instigating the trouble, and thought it not possible to
stop the river depredations by patrol boats, inasmuch as the
trade with New Orleans had drained Kentucky of the provi
sions which a patrolling force would require.
When St. Clair started up the river in June, 1790, he was
satisfied that the intrigues of Brant had succeeded among the
Wabash tribes, and that they would conspire with the Miamis
for a general war. In this frame of mind the governor reached
I'ort Washington on July 13, 1790. Two days later, he made a
demand on Kentucky for troops, with the determination to take
the offensive. Judge Innes at the same time wrote to Knox
that unless something of that kind was done, the Kentuckians
were "determined to avenge themselves," and the discontent
Was for a while farther increased by a rumor that the govern-

418 HARMAR'S AND ST. CLAIR'S CAMPAIGNS.
ment had determined to abandon the Ohio country. St. Clair's
activity soon satisfied the distrustful that an effort would at
least be made to protect the settlements. The governor now
authorized Richard Butler, commanding in Alleghany County,
to summon the militia of the nearest counties in Pennsylvania
and Virginia to protect that region, and distract the Indians
thereabouts, while Harmar was advancing up the Miami in a
campaign which had been decided upon. On August 23, 1790,
St. Clair reported his plans to Knox, and told him that Ham
tramck had at the same time been instructed to advance on the
side of the Wabash. Harmar's force was ordered to assemble
at Fort Washington on September 15. As this day approached,
it was evident that delays would occur, for Governor Mifflin of
Pennsylvania was sluggish In sending forward his quota. Knox,
meanwhile, was suggesting to St. Clair to keep in mind the
founding of a fort on the upper Miami with a garrison of seven
hundred and fifty men, and to support it by auxiliary posts
on the Scioto and Maumee. The difficulty which confronted
Knox was that eighteen hundred men would be necessary to
carry the plan fully out and maintain communications, while
the government had no more than four hundred regulars to
spare for the object. He anxiously asked St. Clair if his
militia could be depended upon to supply the rest.
There was, at the same time, a division among Washington's
advisers on the question of assuring the English commander at
Detroit that Harmar's movements were not directed against
that post. Jefferson feared that if Dorchester's anxiety in that
respect was quieted, he would be freer to prepare to attack the
Spaniards on the Mississippi, in the impending war with Spain,
though it was possible without such a notice he might suspect
the sudden armament was intended to contest his passage across
American territory to reach the Mississippi. The final result
of weighing opinions was that St. Clair was instructed to com
municate with the British at Detroit, and on September 19 he
sent such a letter from Marietta, in which he expressed a hope
that the English traders might be restrained from giving aid
to the Indians.
The English had already been making up their minds, as
Dorchester had written in March to Grenville, that the posts ^
were really the object of the American campaign, no matter

HARMAR'S CAMPAIGN. 419
what their profession. The Canadian governor thought, as his
letters show, that it was the American plan to advance by
the Potomac to the Ohio, and then proceed against Erie and
Detioit. "The possession, also," he added, "of the great ap
proaches to Canada by the Mohawk and Oswego and up the
Sorel would make them masters of the country." He urged
the sending to Canada of four thousand more soldiers, for
though he could repair and strengthen the upper posts against
an Indian attack, Niagara was the only one which could repel
the Americans. As the summer came on and brousht the
danger of a Spanish war, there was a disposition in London
to think Dorchester's prognostications reasonable, particularly
when the minister learned from him that Congress had voted
to raise five thousand foot and sixteen companies of artillery
to reinforce the western army, though the Senate had indeed
reduced the number to three thousand infantry. This made
matters look serious to the British ministry, — the game was
becoming hazardous, — and in August Dorchester was advised
to prevent the Indians ravaging the American settlements, for
"if the United States send an army against the Indians, embar
rassments will foUow." Dorchester, in further advices, repre
sented St. Clair as a man of firmness and experience, but of no
great ability, while Harmar was frequently Intoxicated.
So under this drunken leader, as British rumor had it, the
little army was gathering at Fort Washington. The militia did
not promise weU, with their bad equipments, and there were
also signs of insubordination. By October 1, Harmar sent for
ward an advance guard to open the road. Three days later,
the general followed with his main body. His whole force
consisted of three hundred and twenty regulars and one thou
sand one hundred and thirty-three militia. The rumor that
had gone north gave him a much larger army, and McKee had
notified Sir John Johnson that the Indians could not stand
before it. It was reported to Zeisberger that the numbers were
right thousand, and the smallest reckoning they had at Detroit
gave him two thousand. The result was that the Indians no
where made a stand, and Harmar, In sixteen days, reached the
Miami and Delaware villages, near where the St. Mary's and
St. Joseph's rivers unite to form the Maumee. Here he found
their three hundred huts deserted, and the storehouses of the

420 HARMAR'S AND ST. CLAIR'S CAMPAIGNS.
Detroit traders bared of their goods, which the Indians had
assisted In carrying away. He however found twenty thousand
bushels of corn, which, with the huts, he burned.
Thus far, Harmar had accomplished what In Indian warfare
was often thought to count for something, and this mere de
struction was the ground of St. Clair's claim that the expedition
was successful in delivering a " terrible stroke " to the enemy.
Hamtramck, who had the same sort of success in his movement
farther west, knew better the significance of such easy warfare.
" The Indians can never be subdued by burning their houses
and corn," he said, "for they make themselves perfectly com
fortable on meat alone, and they can build houses with as much
facility as a bird does his nest."
If his devastations did not count for all he wished, Harmar's
later blunders really negatived his doubtful achievements. His
troops were, on the whole, but unpromising soldiers, many too
old for campaigning and more too young, and he heedlessly
committed them to work which only the best disciplined men
could do. He sent out, beyond support, three several detach
ments, and gave Little Turtle, with better knowledge of the
numbers ne now had to deal with, a chance to overwhelm them
in detail, and a loss of one hundred and eighty was speedily
inflicted. The main body saw no foe, but after November 4,
when they began their disorderly retreat, it might have suf
fered as much as the flanking parties, had the Ottawas not
withdrawn from the savage horde. As it was, Harmar took
back a larger part of his force than could have been expected,
to winter them in scattered posts along the river, so as to pre
vent the ravages of famine.
McKee, on the British side, professed to look upon the fight
ing which had taken place as a victory, and as a trial of arras
it undoubtedly was ; but such partial success did not quiet his
apprehensions, and he promptly appealed to Sir John Johnson
for aid, if the tribes were to be held together east of the Missis
sippi. This indicates a considerable extremity on the enemy's
side. Had Knox's advice been followed, and a stockade built
on the Miami, Harmar might have saved the men which he ^
lioedlessly exposed, and have gained a vantage-ground for a
treaty. The obstacles to the permanence of a reconcilement \
with the Indians were, however, as yet great, and Hamtramck <i

INDIAN MARAUDING. 421
did not exaggerate the risks when he said to St. Clair, In
December, 1790 : "The people of our frontiers will certainly
be the first to break any treaty. The people of Kentucky will
carry on private expeditions and kill Indians wherever they
meet them, and I do not believe there is a jury In all Kentucky
who would punish a man for it," — an opinion that Washing
ton himself certainly shared, when he affirmed that the " fron
tier settlers entertain the opinion that there is not the same
crime (or indeed no crime at all) in kiUing an Indian as in
kiUing a white man."
The Indians, when they counted losses and gains in the late
campaign, showed no signs of distrust of their ability to press
their adversaries stUl harder. They apparently got encourage
ment from their allied whites, and McKee, whom St. Clair
charged with furnishing ammunition to the bands which at
tacked Harmar's detached parties, was, with Simon GIrty's sup
port, hot for further fighting. So it was decided to renew
marauding in December, 1790.
The first attack came on the evening of January 2, 1791,
when a body of Delawares and Wyandots dashed upon a small
settlement at Big Bottom, dependent upon Marietta, but forty
miles up the Muskingum. Here they killed twelve persons,
and leaving their mangled bodies on the ground they suddenly
withdrew, carrying off four prisoners. The sad tidings reached
Marietta the next morning, and Putnam began to call in the
settlers and make ready for warm work. There were twenty
regulars in Fort Harmar, and the settlements within reach could
muster about three hundred men. Belpre, twelve miles down
the Ohio, had not yet been alarmed, but hovering parties of
Indians were seen the same day about Waterford, at Wolf
Creek. The next warning came on the 10th, at Dunlap Station, on
the east bank of the Miami, when Girty appeared with three
hundred warriors. The inhabitants had been advised of their
approach, and summoned aid from Cincinnati. Just as it
arrived, the enemy withdrew. During February, 1791, the
settlements along the Alleghany suffered severely, and by
March fleets of Indian canoes were assailing flatboats along
the Ohio. It was just at this time that Nathaniel Massle,

422 HARMAR'S AND ST. CLAIR'S CAMPAIGNS.
who, as a surveyor of bounty lands, had picked out a site on
the north bank of the river, twelve miles above Limestone
was laying in stockade and blockhouse the foundations of the
later Manchester, the pioneer Virginia settlement on that side
of the river.
Meanwhile, both at Quebec and Philadelphia, the authorities
were intent on military jDreparations. Dorchester, fearing that
Harmar's advance was but preliminary to an attack on Detroit,
issued orders in January, 1791, to the western commanders to
be alert and promptly confront the Americans if they ap
proached. At the same time, Washington notified Congress, in
December, 1790, that he intended another expedition at the
west, and laid before Congress a plan for raising three thousand
troops, to be placed under St. Clair for active work. When
Congress had approved, Knox asked Pickering to accept the
position of quartermaster of a western department, and push
the details, but he declined. In doing so, however, he expressed
his conviction that the tribes could be taught to respect the
reserved power of the Republic. Washington, buoyed in his
hopes by the restoration of the public credit, and depending
on the increasing resources of the country, felt equally sure that
the Indians could be made to understand that the " enmity of
the United States is as much to be dreaded as their friendship
is to be desired." Jefferson had scant sympathy with any mili
tary measures, and wrote to Monroe : " I hope we shall drub
the Indians well this summer, and then change our plan from
war to bribery," for the expenses of a summer's campaign will
buy " presents for half a century."
While the government was thus over-confident, Knox, on
March 9, 1791, issued orders to General Charles Scott of Ken
tucky to move suddenly against the Kickapoos and other
Wabash tribes, to prevent their joining- the Miamis, against
whom the main attack was to be made. It was equaUy desirar
ble that similar or other methods should at the east distract
the Indians of New York, and keep them at least neutral. To
this end, Pickering was asked to put himself in communication
with Brant, while Governor Clinton was urged to win over that
Note. — The map on the opposite page, showing by the black dots Moravian settlements, u
from G. H. Loskiel's Mission of the United Brethren, London, 1794.

424 HARMAR'S AND ST. CLAIR'S CAMPAIGNS.
Mohawk chief by a gift, for he was known to have informed
Kirkland, the missionary among his people, that he had deter
mined to head a western confederacy in forcing the Americans
south and east of the Ohio. These measures were at once
seized upon by the British to prove to the Indians that the
professions of peace on the part of the Americans were insin
cere. Brant was known, in May, 1791, to have gone west with
a following, but with what intent was not known. On June 4,
1791, however, he wrote back to Sir John Johnson that he had
decided to join In the coming fight. He had probably heard
by this time that Scott had, on May 19, crossed the Ohio with
eight hundred mounted Kentuckians, and was advancing on the
Wabash towns. Scott's coming had been heralded, and when
he reached their towns, one hundred and fifty miles away, he
found them deserted, and so encountered no serious opposition
in burning them. He killed a score or two of Indians, and cap
tured a somewhat larger number. When, retreating, he reached
the rapids at LouisviUe, he had been absent about thirty days.
There could be no peace after this. In June, 1791, while
Knox, in Philadelphia, was confident that war was begun, the
Indians were gathering in large numbers. Zeisberger, then at
the mouth of the Detroit River, was informed that four thou
sand had assembled, and he was made anxious lest his peaceful
Moravian converts would be forced to join them.
It is not easy to determine how to apportion the responsi
bility of the savage war to which the Americans now seemed
to be committed. The tribes had a standing grievance against
the Americans in the treaty of Fort Stanwix of 1784, and yet
Washington pointed out to Cornplanter, who with other Seneca
chiefs had come to Philadelphia in December, 1790, that the
very release of lands, of which they complained, had been
confirmed by them in the treaty of Fort Harmar in 1789.
" Therefore the lines must remain established," said the Presi
dent. Cornplanter had, during this conference, urged that cer
tain lands should be restored ; but Washington, taught by the
claims which the Indians presented that the treaty of 1784
had been made by irresponsible chiefs, readily suspected that
any yielding now to the Senecas would encourage similar de
mands from other factions of the tribes. There was Indeed
just now a new grievance, in that Robert Morris had bought

COUNTER RAIDS. 425
for £100,000 the rights of Gorham and Phelps to the lands
sold by Massachusetts in western New York, and Washing
ton had already looked forward to trouble about the Indian
title, and was not unprepared for Cornplanter's accusation of
fraud. Indeed, as AVashington said to Hamilton, " land-jobbing
and the disorderly conduct of the borderers " were a constant
source of irritation to the tribes ; and to these were added the
complications which came of individual States interfering- In
matters which belonged to the general government. The Ken
tuckians raided of their own account the Wabash region ; the
Tennesseeans encroached upon lands at the Muscle Shoals ;
and New York had just in her Assembly voted to buy Immu
nity from hostile depredations, thereby damaging the prestige
of the federal authorities. So the evils which incited the sav
ages to hostilities were not unaccompanied by uncontrollable
mischief to the Republic itself from similar sources.
On the British side the story was not altogether a satisfac
tory one to the tribes, who were slow in forgetting that the
treaty of 1782 had been concluded by the English without any
recognition of their rights to ancestral lands, and that the
promises of aid, which had been implied perhaps rather than
actuaUy promised, had rarely been fulfilled.
While Dorchester, in his communications with the Americans,
professed to desire peace, and the fur merchants deprecated
war, neither contemplated with satisfaction any success for the
Americans which would hazard the British possession of the
posts, or lead to the establishment of other lake stations, which
would admit the Americans to the navigation of the lakes and
affect the profits of the older posts. In these conditions, the
movements of the Indians were watched with anxiety, and
the encouragement given to them to worry the Americans, by
such intriguers as Girty and McKee, was likely at any time
to compromise the public peaceful professions of those in
unmistakable authority. Harmar's report indicated that If
he had chanced to capture the traders at the viUages which he
destroyed, there might have been complications which' would
force Dorchester to retaliation, and bring on a war. Dorchester
himself perceived this, and with some apprehension he asked
Sir John Johnson to discover the terms on which peace could
he arranged between the Indians and the Americans.

426 HARMAR'S AND ST. CLAIR'S CAMPAIGNS.
But, inopportunely, it was just upon the eve of political
change In Canada, which was to bring a new character to bear
upon the overstrained relations of the two countries. In Sep
tember, Dorchester was informed of the constitutional act of
March, which had set up, as distinct from Lower Canada, the
region west of the Ottawa, with ten thousand population, as a
new government, grateful to the loyalists, and preserving such
features of the Quebec Act as were not inconsistent, and placing
in command John Graves SImcoe, whom the Americans had
learned to hate in the Revolutionary War. He probably soon
heard of the proposition of McKee to reestablish the disused
fort at the foot of the Maumee rapids as a necessary outpost
of Detroit, though he was not yet prepared to undertake it.
From early spring, St. Clair had been preparing for his own
work, hoping- to get at it before autumn. In April, 1791, he
reached Pittsburg, and endeavored to prevail upon the Sene
cas to join his army. A few days later, at Fort Harmar, he
warned the Delawares that they must abide the consequences.
If they Interposed themselves between him and the Miamis ;
and It was probably about this time that he sent forward to
the Miamis a speech which McKee said was intended to distract
their councils.
By the middle of May, St. Clair was at Fort Washington,
where his little army was to gather. Symmes, who looked In
on the raw levies arrived from the seaboard towns, wrote to
Elias Boudinot that " men who are to be purchased from
prisons, wheelbarrows, and brothels at two dollars per month
will never answer for fighting Indians.'" Such a force was not
an inspiring one for a man like St. Clair, no longer young, sub
ject to intervals of Illness, and not as alert as he once was. If
the men were poor and came slowly to the rendezvous, the mate
rial for supplies had passed no adequate inspection In being
sent forward. The powder was bad. The saddles did not fit
the horses. The oxen were poor and insufficient In number.
With such things to worry him, St. Clair waited from June to
September. In August, fearful lest the Wabash Indians might have re
covered from the effects of Scott's raid among them, and might
gather with the other tribes athwart his route, which had been

WILKINSON'S RAID. 427
too plainly indicated for the advance, he dispatched another
force, as Knox had counseled, to repeat the blow. A body of
mounted Kentuckians, five hundred and fifty strong, reported
for this service at Fort Washington in July. Wilkinson, who
had found Spanish intrigue getting tiresome, had sold his
Frankfort property and accepted the command of these ardent
volunteers. His enemies said it was a plan of the government
to profit by his restless energy and divert it from mischievous
action at home. On July 31, St. Clair gave him his instruc
tions, and the next day he led his clanking horsemen out Into
the wilderness. The direction which he took seemed towards
the Miami towns, and on this course he traveled four days and
sixty miles, and then turned to the northwest. Passing now a
broken country full of swamps, he fell upon Ouiatanon and
other vUlages of Indians, with French traders among them, and
devastated their cabins. His horses were badly used up, and
but five days' provisions remained. He accordingly marched
towards the Ohio rapids, as Scott had done, and reached them
on August 21. Proceeding thence to Frankfort, three days
later, he dispatched his report to St. Clair. When Washing
ton heard of the results he said that the " enterprise, intrepidity,
and good conduct of the Kentuckians were entitled to peculiar
commendation." The tidings of Wilkinson's success found St. Clair in deep
anxiety. Every messenger from the east had brought urgent
appeals for his advancing before the season was past for success
ful campaigning. His want of supplies, however, still detained
him. He had now two regiments of regulars and some Ken
tucky mihtia, whom he might reasonably trust ; but the boats
from Pittsburg still brought him the wretched scourings of the
eastern towns, towards completing the " two thousand levies
for the term of six months " which Congress had ordered.
St. Clair's instructions, as often as he read them, gave him
disquiet, in the presence of such recruits. He was to establish
a " strong and permanent military post at the Miami village
¦ ¦ . for the purpose of awing and curbing the Indians, and as
the only preventive of future hostilities," and he was to main
tain such a garrison In it that he could upon occasion detach five
or six hundred men on special service. He was warned in his
instructions that such a post was " an important object of the

428 HARMAR'S AND ST. CLAIR'S CAMPAIGNS.
campaign," and to be founded in any event, and to be supplied
with a six months' stock of provisions. It was left to his dis
cretion whether he should employ Indians. In making a treaty
at last, he was told to insist on keeping the tribes beyond the
Wabash and Maumee, and, if he could, to divert the line to the
Mississippi from the Au Pause branch of the Wabash. This
would give a good stretch of country along the Ohio to the
Americans, and dispossess few Indians beyond the Kickapoos.
If this was Insisted on, he was warned to manage it " tenderly."
Still more cautiously must he treat the English, and it was
held to be ImjDroper at present to " make any naval arrange
ments upon Lake Erie."
AU this was the expectation of the government and the not
over-confident hope of St. Clair. The plan had required three
thousand effectives to be ready at Fort Washington by July
10, 1791 ; but the first regiment of two hundred and ninety-
nine men did not arrive till the 15th. It was October before
the general could count two thousand men, exclusive of the
militia and the garrisons of Forts Washington and Hamilton,
— the latter stockade having been begun on September 17,
on the Great Miami. From this point, on October 4, General
Butler, whose appointment had not been whoUy acceptable,
started with the advance, lumbering slowly on with his trains,
five or six miles a day, through a bad country. On the 13th,
the army stopped, and was occupied till the 24th in build
ing a stockade, which he called Fort Jefferson, Intended to
shield his sick and hold his surplus supplies. The country
about it was fertile, but it was too late in the year for his
animals to get much refreshment out of it. When he started
again, on the 28th, he soon discovered that the Indians were
hanging on his flanks. There had been some desertions, and
to check them he had executed one or two who had been re
taken ; but on October 31, a considerable body of militia slunk
away, and St. Clair sent Major Plain tramck back with one of
his regiments of regulars to prevent their robbing his supply
trains. St. Clair had days of almost physical incapacity for
his task, and General Butler, who was next in command, was
scarcely better in health. The discipline and steadiness of the
march would have suffered irretrievably, but for the exertions
of the adjutant-general, Winthrop Sargent. It was Washing-

ST. CLAIR'S DEFEAT. 429
ton's criticism, when the miserable outcome was known, that
there had been insufficient efforts to get Information of the
enemy, and that St. Clair's scouting system was inadequate.
It Is certain that the enemy was not long- in discovering that
St. Clair's scouts were not numerous, to say the least. Pie bad
been pointedly cautioned to be on his guard against surprise ;
and yet when he went into his last camp on November 3, on a
branch of the Wabash, with a benumbing wind sweeping over
icy ground, he was in the immediate neighborhood of his enemy,
and with no chance of suddenly forming his line in case of an
unexpected irruption. So it was not to be wondered at that,
early on the morning- of the 4th, some militia which he had
bivouacked In advance beyond the stream, and too remote for
Instant support, were broken In upon and thrown into a panic.
They feU hastily back upon the rest of the army. While he
was endeavoring to form bis lines within his camp, which was
three hundred and fifty yards In length, the enemy swung around
it, and when St. Clair found that bis position was completely en
veloped, he grew to a conception of the extent of the force which
was opposed to him, though Armstrong, an old Indian fighter,
was sure that five hundred savages, invisible as their habit
was, could have produced all that St. Clair saw. The assail
ants from a thick cover poured a deadly fire upon the huddled
and unprotected troops. St. Clair, with his gray hair stream
ing under his cocked hat, had horse after horse shot under
him as he endeavored to make his force stand steady amid the
frightful carnage. He had eight bullets pierce his garments,
but not one grazed his skin. Butler was soon mortally wounded.
The few guns of the Americans were rendered useless, when
not a cannoneer could stand to them. The regulars lost every
officer. The frenzied men, gaining manhood under the trial,
tried to charge this way and that. The retreat of the Indians
lured them on, when the wily savages would turn and surround
them, party after party. Finally, there being no hope, the guns
were spiked, and St. Clair gathered his men for a last charge
to regain the road of retreat. He secured It; and for four
miles the Indian fire blazed upon the flanks and in the rear.
At last, over-eager for the spoils, dusky warriors drew off and
hegan plundering what had been left behind. This saved
the army from annihilation ; but it did not prevent the men

430 HARMAR'S AND ST. CLAIR'S CAMPAIGNS.
throwing away their muskets, and St. Clair, near the rear of
the line, found the ground covered with these rejected weapons
as he passed along. He complained that the horse he rode
" could not be pricked out of a walk," so it was impossible for
him to ride forward and stop the waste.
The action began a half hour before sunrise, and the re
treat was made at half-past nine. The estimates vary, but it is
probable that St. Clair had in the fight not more than fourteen
hundred men, and of these scarce half a hundred were unhurt.
Very few beyond the killed and desperately wounded fell Into
the enemy's hands.
It is generally recognized that Little Turtle led the Indians.
There was a small body of Mohawks present, but it is not
probable that Brant was among them. Stone, his biographer,
found a belief among the chief's descendants that he was in the
fight ; but there is no evidence of a more trustworthy kind.
The Delawares, who had been stigmatized as women for lack of
courage In past years, wiped out the disgrace by valiant deeds.
It was near thirty miles from the battlefield to Fort Jeffer
son, and the remnant of the army reached that post before
night. Here St. Clair found Hamtramck and his command,
and left about seventy of his wounded.
On November 9, he sent from Fort Washington a messenger
with a dispatch, but rumors had already reached the govern
ment ten or eleven days earlier, and thirty days after the
disaster. About the same time the news of the Indian side,
traveling by the way of Vincennes, reached Frankfort, when it
stirred Wilkinson's rampant energy, who was ready to strike
the war-path on the Maumee or " perish in the attempt."
The Indian question had now become more serious than ever
before, and there was great danger of the disaffection spreading
among the Six Nations. Pickering, during the summer, had
labored hard to propitiate them ; but he had encountered the
adverse influence of Brant. The activity of this chief was sur
prising. No sooner was he heard of at the Maumee rapids,
conferring with the tribes, than he was reported at Niagara, in
council with the British commander. His messengers, in the
interim, were plying back and forth. All the while, as the let
ters now published show, warnings were coming from England,

JEFFERSON AND HAMMOND. 431
and passed on to the upper posts, to prevent an outbreak.
Perhaps the cabinet in London little knew how renegade mis
chief-makers were assuming among the Miamis to represent
British purposes to aid them in a war, and the Canadian
officials were constantly apprehending an attack on the posts,
though Beckwith was writing to them from Philadelphia that
the federal government disclaimed any such intention.
Before the news of St. Clair's defeat had reached Philadel
phia, Jefferson and Hammond, the newly arrived British min
ister, had begun their bootless conferences. It was not long
before" it was apparent that Hammond had come merely to talk
and keep watch. The two representatives were hopelessly at
variance. They opposed each other on every aspect of the
treaty of 1782. Hammond said that Interest on the British
debts constituted a part of the obligation. Jefferson denied it.
Hammond represented and Jefferson disputed that the Ameri
cans had first broken the treaty. This kind of disputatious
fence was going on, when the news of St. Clair's defeat put a
stop to it, and the American cabinet gave itself to other mat
ters. Of course it was necessary to find a scapegoat for the ill
luck at the west. The secretary of war was accused of neg
lect. The quartermaster had not done his duty. St. Clair had
proved a failure. The news from the New England States
showed that that section of the country at least was tired of the
war. They believed with Pickering that pacifying the Indians
cost less than killing them. The old problem of the respon
sibility of the British for aiding the savages came up again.
Hammond promptly denied any complicity in his countrymen.
It was a question whether a schedule of evidences, refuting
Hammond's asseverations, should not be given to Thomas
Pinckney, who was just starting for England. Certain acts
were acknowledged by Hammond, but defended on the ground
of charitable giving of food to famishing beings. Again, it was
confessed guns and powder had been given, but it was a neces
sity of the Indian hunting season, while the Americans claimed
that such gifts in times of peace were quite another thing when
given in time of war, and they became a breach of neutrality.
It did not make a bad matter better if, as the Americans con
tended, McKee scattered the munitions of war with his hands
and talked peace as he did it. Nor was it less to be resented in

432 HARMAR'S AND ST. CLAIR'S CAMPAIGNS.
Sir John Johnson doing the same thing statedly at the mouth
of the Niagara.
The fact was, it was extremely difficult for the British gov
ernment to treat the Indians as wards and administer to their
needs, and not transgress the Umits of neutrality as the Ameri
cans understood It. It was further, no doubt, true that friendly
phrases uttered to the Indians by those wearing the British
uniform were easily conceived to be a promise of help, by those
anxious to receive it. As reports spread west, it was easy for
the remoter tribes, especially if prompted to it, to imagine that
to espouse the quarrel of the nearer people was the way to put
off their own sacrifices to the whites. Rufus Putnam informed
Knox that the Chippeways Inclined to be neutral, but were
played upon in this way till they embraced the cause of the
Miamis. •
When it came to the question of bounds between the Indians
and the Americans, there is no doubt the English were pre
pared to do what could be done, without actuaUy imperiling
the peace, to advance the demands of the tribes, and even to
demand larger sacrifices from the Republic. They talked much
about the desirability of a territorial barrier to keep the reck
less Americans and the heedless Britons apart. Some of the
maps issued In London assumed this barrier as a part of the
political geography of North America. It was Jefferson's opin
ion, from what Hammond had said, that the British government
wanted a new line run, which should leave Lake Ontario by the
Genesee, thence follow the Alleghany to Pittsburg, and so west
in some way to the Mississippi. This would provide a barrier
country and open the Mississippi to British access. If not this,
their purpose was to gain that river by running tlie line from
the Lake of the Woods to Its sources. Instead of due west to
that river, which the treaty required, and which had proved a
geographical Impossibility. Perhaps a Une even better for
England could be secured, as Hammond sometimes claimed, by
starting the westward line at Lake Superior instead. Some
of the current maps of the English give this line as starting
from the westernmost point of Lake Superior. Jefferson, on
his side, claimed that the error of the treaty was remedied
more simply by running the line due north from the sources

THE INDIAN LINE. 433
of the Mississippi, and that the right of England to share in
the navigation of the Mississippi was inserted in the treaty
merely to meet the contingency of Spain's yielding west Florida
to England, in the general treaty made seven weeks later.
Thus broadly were the British scanning the possibilities of a
rectification of the Republic's northern boundary.
The Indian demand gave the tribes all the country north of
the Ohio and west of the Muskingum and the Cayahoga.
They claimed on every occasion that they had never parted
with an acre of this territory by any fair treaty. The Ameri
cans cited the treaty of Fort Harmar, insisted it was not a
fraudident compact, and, as lands had been granted under it,
the grantees must be protected. The British said that in any
event the Americans had, by the treaty of 1782, only the right
of preemption to any lands south of the lakes which had not
been bought of the tribes prior to 1782 ; and that the treaty
gave the Indians the right to decline to sell, if they would.
This view was a common one in the English maps, which ran
the bounds of the United States along the AUeghanies. There
is httle doubt the Indians were taught sedulously this view
of the treaty, for it protected the posts and perpetuated the
British fur trade. It would seem that to sustain this view the
new act creating Upper Canada had studiously avoided giving
any bounds. This view also served the British in appeasing
the savage discontent at the cruel way in which the interests
of the Indians were abandoned by the British commissioners in
negotiating the treaty. It is clear from the letters of Brant
and Sir John Johnson that they understood the matter in the
British way.
It was evident, then, that the combined Interests of the Brit
ish and Indians, in such a line by the Ohio, must be overcome
hy composition or force, before the Republic could achieve the
territorial independence which was thought to be assured to
her by the ti-eaty of 1782.

CHAPTER XX.
THE NOETH-WEST TEIBES AT LAST DEFEATED.
1792-1794.
Befoee the dazing effect of St. Clair's defeat was dispelled,
Knox had planned a legionary reorganization of the western
army, on the basis of five thousand men, -with a supplemental
force of militia and scouts. While there was a probable neces
sity for such military provision, it was deemed prudent to ascer
tain if the intercession of the Six Nations could not end the
northwestern difficulty without a further resort to arms. Before
the close of 1791, Cornplanter, the Seneca leader, had been
invited to Philadelphia, and Kirkland, the missionary, was
sought to use bis Influence with Brant and the Mohawks to
induce them to join the councU. So pressure was brought to
bear upon the two extremes of the New York confederates, in
the hopes to compass the acquiescence of the entire league. On
January 3, 1792, Kirkland wrote to Brant, urging him to accept
the invitation, and giving promise of protection, a guarantee
not altogether unnecessary, for Brant's name was associated
with some of the most fiendish acts of the Revolution, whose
effects were not yet forgotten. A month later, Brant declined
(February 3), and later still (February 25), Knox added a new
appeal. Meanwhile, St. Clair had arrived in New York, ready to face
the charges against him for his failure. He desired first a
court-martial, but there were not officers enough available of
suitable rank. He asked to retain his military commission
until such inquiry as Congress should institute was over. This,
however, as he was told by Washington, who remained through
out kind and considerate, was not practicable, as the law al
lowed but a single major-general, and his successor was impera
tively needed to proceed to the northwest and take command.
So, in April, St. Clair was induced to resign.

DUER AND THE SCIOTO COMPANY. 435
In February, 1792, Congress was canvassing the chances of a
new campaign, and there was little heart for it among the east
ern members, who never quite comprehended the western spirit.
Oliver Wolcott was a good representative t)f those Indifferent
to the demands of the frontiers, and was quite willing to let
them fight out their own salvation, and to run the risk of their
making foreign alliances. " These western people," he said,/
" are a violent and unjust race in many respects, unrestrained
by law and considerations of public policy." Washington was
not quite so sweeping in his belief, but he felt that western
urgency was very embarrassing. Among- those who would make
the western cause that of the country, there was a division of
opinion between the desirability of fixed posts for awing the
tribes, and the propriety of aggressive warfare. Washington
was decidedly on the side of those who had no confidence In
merely defensive measures.
The Indian department. In 1791, had spent $27,000 In sup
porting the St. Clair campaign, which was ten times what had
ever been appropriated before, and there was not a little appre
hension in entering upon another year's warfare, likely to be
more costly still, to find that in financial aspects the spring of
1792 was a discouraging one.
The speculative acts of Duer — and the enemies of Hamilton
charged that that financial minister's funding policy had opened
the way to stock-jobbing — had brought him to bankruptcy, to
add still further to the blackness of the GaUipoUs scandal. The
magnate of the Scioto Company, and one of those eminently
first people of the land whom Cutler rejoiced in, was now a
prisoner for debt. For a result, as Pickering wrote, " New York
was In an uproar, and all business at a stand." Jefferson, with
a hind of satisfaction at the dilemma of the treasury, wrote,
on March 16 : " Duer, the king of the alley, is under a kind
of check. The stock-sellers say he will rise again. The stock-
buyers count him out, and the credit and fate of the nation
seem to hang on the desperate throws and plunges of gambling
scoundrels." Jefferson further affected to beUeve that the
miseries of the South Sea bubble and the Mississippi scheme
were as nothing, proportionally, to the drop in securities which
was now going on. In the midst of this financial crash, Rufus
Pntnam and Cutler appeared in Philadelphia, seeking from

436 THE NORTHWEST TRIBES AT LAST DEFEATED.
Congress their aid in two respects to prevent the collapse of the
Ohio Company. They represented that during 1791 and 1792
they had spent $11,350 in protecting themselves against the
Indians, and they succeeded in inducing the government to
assume a part of this. Their other plea touched the impending
forfeiture of their lands, for their second payment of $50,000
was due, and they had nothing with which to pay it. Their
difficulty came in the main, as they urged, from their additional
purchase of one million five hundred thousand acres, which they
asked to be released from, for Colonel Duer and the other " first
people," who had agreed to buy it of them, had not done so,
and Richard Platt, their treasurer, was in jail, also, with a
shortage of $80,000 in his accounts. They asked, also, that the
charge for land per acre which had been agreed upon should be
reduced, as the governinent was offering land at lower rates,
and they could not compete with it. They made a pitiful plea
of the consideration they should experience as pioneers, and
it had its effect. But the poor aliens at GaUipoUs grubbed
on without such consideration. The Indians yelped in their
ears, they got no letters from home, and it seemed to their mind
a question whether revolutionary France or the " first people
of America " were the most to be abhorred. In the spring of
1792, they began to scatter. Some went to Detroit, others fled
to Kaskaskia. Those that stayed grew hollow-eyed, nervous,
and hungry, while Duer relished his prison fare, and Cutler
talked botany with those he met.
While such was the unprosperous outlook to the world, the
President and his little cabinet were, during March, 1792,
discussing- the vexed problems that confronted them. When
some one raised the question of employing Indians, Washington
replied that they must be with us, or they would be sure to be
against us. He would use them as scouts to embarrass the
enemy's spies, and prevent their getting near enough to our
troops to learn their numbers and purposes.
When Jefferson proposed to build a fort at Presqu'Isle on
Lake Erie, — the modern town of Erie, — so as to indicate the
American right to the navigation of that lake, and interpose
an obstacle thereby to the communication of the Senecas with
the western tribes, he opened a question that for two years stood

PETER POND. 437
in the way of pacifying Brant. The project was sure at all
times to arouse a disposition in the British " to repel force by
force," who looked upon it as fatal to their supremacy In those
waters. At this moment, Hamilton and Knox objected to it as
likely to hurry the country into a war with England. Washing
ton remarked that the fulfillment of such a plan was best left
to a time when the United States could devote a large force to
maintain such a post. Jefferson, in pursuance of his plan, was
' suggesting at the same time to Hammond that the two countries
could agree upon the naval force which was to be kept on the
lakes. -
The question came up again a little later, when Rufus Putnam,
with little regard to available resources, sent In a plan of a line
of posts, beginning- at Big Beaver Creek, on the Ohio, and
extending to Cayahoga Creek. He had traversed the country,
and said it was the easiest communication to maintain between
the Ohio and the lake, fit for a land carriage throughout, except
where a causeway would have to be built through seven or eight
miles of swampy land. Such a passage would not, he contended,
be subject to the interruption at dry seasons which a water-way
was sure to encounter. At the northerly end of this route,
where is now the modern Cleveland, he had planned a strong
fort and naval rendezvous, as the best point for sending supplies
by the cheapest way to the Maumee country : " The sooner we
show ourselves on the shores of Lake Erie, the better," he
added. Washington easily pushed the plan aside as involving
a division of the proposed legionary force, which was not likely
to be more than enough for the main stroke farther west, since
it was as yet by no means sure that recruits would be found In
abundance. Beside, it was certainly Washington's opinion that
defensive posts along a line had but little military effect upon
such a scattered foe as the Indian tribes.
We have seen that one Peter Pond had within a year or two
been trying to -gain at the same time the favor of both the
British and Americans. He had still more recently tried to
reach the west by Niagara, but had been turned back by the
British. He now appeared in Phlladelijbia, and made some
starthng statements to the government. He assured them that
all efforts to estabUsh a peace with the Indians would fail unless
they would accept the mediation of England. He professed to

438 THE NORTHWEST TRIBES AT LAST DEFEATED.
believe that this would have to be accomplished by a joint com
mission of three, representing- respectively the Indians and the
two governments, and that when the line of separation was
determined, the British would guarantee its preservation to the
Indians. Hamilton had little faith In Pond, as he well might
have, and there was still less trust in bis story of the Intention
of the British to settle a thousand families in the lUInoIs coun
try. The idea of British mediation in any way was an ungrate
ful one to the cabinet, and they promptly dismissed it in their
counsels. A little later, Morris, in England, heard a rumor of
the United States asking England to intercede, and communi
cated it to Washington. He replied with something like Indig
nation that any suggestion of it would be promptly dismissed.
As the time approached for the coming of the Senecas to
confer with the President and his advisers, it was decided at
a cabinet meeting that the Indian embassy " should be well
treated, but not over-trusted." Red Jacket and his feUows
reached Philadelphia on March 13, 1792, under the escort of
Kirkland. It was soon apjjarent that whatever friendly dispo
sition the visitors might manifest, a prevalence of it among
the tribes at home could not be depended upon. Red Jacket,
in accounting for this widespread distrust among his people,
charged it upon the fact that the Six Nations were not asked
to have any hand in the treaty of separation in 1782. He
further told Pickering, who conducted most of the conferences
with them, that the western Indians did not understand how the
British and the Americans, " important and proud as they both
were," having made a treaty, did not abide by it. Pickering
said that the Miami and Wabash Indians had always been
averse to a treaty, while the treaties entered upon with the other
tribes were fairly made on both sides, and had been justly
kept. The United States ha-\ing thus acquired lands and made
grants of them, they were under the necessity of protecting
the grantees. It was said In reply that the agreement at Fort
Mcintosh was not a fair one, as those who represented the In
dians were not authorized. Further, there had been a studied
purpose to exclude the Six Nations from these western treaties.
This was. Red Jacket affirmed, another cause of their grievance.
As was usual in such conferences, both sides uttered their
beliefs, and that was about all, except, after Washington had.

ANTHONY WAYNE. 439
on April 25, made them a farewell speech, they had a last
session on AprU 30, 1792, and departed with the promise to
send a deputation to the western tribes. Brant, as we have
seen, had decUned to join in the deliberations, but, on May 27,
he wrote to Knox that if later he found the Miamis approved
it, he would consider the invitation afresh.
While these interviews with the Senecas were golno- on,
Washington had been running over the names of officers,
experienced in the late war, to find a successor to St. Clair.
His first choice was Henry Lee of Virginia, and this gentleman
desired the appointment ; but he was the junior in rank to
those whom Washington wished to make his brigadiers, and
the appointment was passed by in avoidance of resulting jeal
ousies and refusals. Washing-ton confessed he had never been
so embarrassed in making any appointments. When the mat
ter was discussed in the cabinet, Jefferson records that the
President looked upon Wayne as " brave and nothing else."
Washington's studied and written estimate of Wayne, at this
time, is fortunately preserved. He considered him " more
active and enterprising- than judicious and cautious. No econo
mist It is feared. Open to flattery, vain ; easily imposed upon
and liable to be drawn into scrapes." Such a character — and
there is no doubt that such was a prevalent opinion of " Mad
Anthony " — did not indeed promise well for the critical junc
tion at the northwest, with England, if not in open, at least in
equivocal relations with the enemy. Lee, when he heard of
the result, expressed to the President his surprise, and told him
the appointment had, in Virginia, created disgust. The choice
was. In fact, not a little influenced by the restrictions of mili
tary etiquette and the necessity of harmonizing interests and
securing good lieutenants. So in reply to Lee, Washington
not so much vindicated his selection, as apologized for it.
" Wayne," he wrote, " has many good points as an officer, and
it is to be hoped that time, reflection, good advice, and above
all a due sense of the importance of the trust will correct bis
foibles, or cast a shade over them." It grew apparent In the
next few months that Washington was not without anxiety
lest results should reflect on his sagacity, and he kept Knox
promptly to the task of cautioning the new commander.
The appointment naturally caused the English some solid-

440 THE NORTHWEST TRIBES AT LAST DEFEATED.
tude, considering how easily an Indian war could Induce In
advertences that might jeopardize the relations of the two
peoples. Hammond wrote of the new leader that he was " the
most active, vigilant, and enterprising officer In the American
army, but his talents are purely military," and he felt, as he
wrote to SImcoe, that Wayne might be tempted to attack the
British posts, since success in such an act would be sure to
make him the successor of Washington.
The selection of Wilkinson as the first of the four brigadiers
was a bolder step, perhaps, than the choice of Wayne. When
last heard from he had gone with one hundred and fifty
mounted Kentucky volunteers to bury the mutilated dead on
St. Clair's bloody field, and the act was one of the daring sort
to which Wilkinson was quite equal. Washington, in discuss
ing him in the cabinet, had evidently recalled his dubious career
In Kentucky, for Jefferson's summary of the talk makes the
President call him " brave, enterprising to excess ; but many
unapprovable points in bis character." His written estimate
avoids this shadow, when he caUs Wilkinson "lively, sensible,
pompous, and ambitious."
There had been an attempt to give the same rank to Colonel
Marinus Willet, an officer of large experience in forest warfare,
for he had been with Sullivan and had opposed St. Leger. He,
however, shared the doubt of many northern men — being a
New Yorker — of the advisability of an Indian war, and refused
the appointment. In doing so, he gave an opinion that he had
never known it to fail of success, when the Indians were
attacked In a charge, with shouts louder than their own yell.
Wayne wisely profited, as we shall see, by this veteran's ex
perience. Meanwhile, to bring the British minister to some distinct
expression of opinion as regards the posts, Jefferson on May
29, 1792, intimated to that gentleman that, while in managing
with the state governments so complicated a matter as the
recovery of the British debts some time must necessarily be
consumed, it was a very short business for England to set
things right on her side by surrendering the posts, which, as he
said In one of his letters, was occasioning daily cost of " blood
and treasure " to the United States. The story of the initial
Infraction of the treaty, whether it was to be charged to Eng.

RUFUS PUTNAM. 441
land or to the States, had become stale, but Jefferson rehearsed
it. Hamilton, reverting- to the debts, admitted that they were
now only a question south of the Potomac, and that there
were £2,000,000 stiU due in Virginia. The correspondence
shows how the two failed to agree in most points, and that they
were at variance on the rights of the British traders to follow
their business on American soil. Nothing came of this recrimi
nation, and Hammond alleging that European complications
were causing delay in the considerations In London, and other
objects coming in view, the matter was for a while dropped.
Putnam, another of the new brigadiers, had been character
ized by Washington as possessing a " strong mind, and as a
discreet man. No question . has ever been made — that has
come to my knowledge — of his want of firmness. In short,
there is nothing conspicuous In his character, and he is but little
known out of his own State and a narrow circle." Soon after
his appointment, he was selected to follow up a mission to the
Mlanus, which had already been sent forward by a decision of
the cabinet. On reaching Pittsburg In June, 1792, he found
Wayne there, busily working at the problems before him.
Passing down the river, Putnam met at Fort Washington ti
dings of the murder of Captain Alexander Truman, of the First
Infantry, and his companions, who had gone ahead to reach the
Miamis. After this, it was deemed foolhardy to follow in their
track, and on July 5 Putnam sent back to Knox an urgent
opinion that an attempt be made to treat with the Wabash In
dians instead. Hamtramck was still in command at Vincennes,
but it was Washington's opinion that a negotiator of " more
dignified character " should be sent, and Putnam was author
ized to proceed. He engaged Heckewelder, the missionary, to
accompany him, and on September 13 they reached Vincennes.
Ten days later, they entered upon negotiation, and after three
days of belts and speeches, a conclusion was reached, by which
the Pottawattamies and other tribes put themselves under the
protection of the United States. The great point gained was
that it interposed a body of friendly Indians between the hostile
Miamis and the southern Indians, who were accustomed to
hring their aid, by a detour through the west. Putnam had
gone rather farther than the Senate in the end was ready to
approve, in that he had guaranteed to these remote tribes the
safe possession of their lands.

442 THE NORTHWEST TRIBES AT LAST DEFEATED.
These possible abettors of the Miamis on their western flank
being thus placated, much depended, if there was to be peace,
on an Intercession with the Six Nations to secure their aid on
the eastern flank of the Miami confederacy. The vital point
in this endeavor was to gain the interest of Brant, who in the
winter had declined cooperation, but was later persuaded by
Kirkland to resist the dissuasive efforts of Sir John Johnson.
Washington records Brant's arrival in Philadelphia on June
20, 1792, not far from the time that the misfortune to Truman
was taking- place. The President expressed the hope that the
government could impress the chieftain with its equitable inten
tions. If Brant's own words can be believed, he was offered
a thousand guineas and double the amount he was receiving
annually from the British government, if he would adhere to
the American side.
During- his stay in Philadelphia, Brant dined with the Eng
lish minister, but without causing any comment. The cabinet
was pleased with his peaceful disposition, and he promised to go
himself to the western allies and intercede for the fulfiUment
of the Muskingum treaty. This was hopeful, but the expecta
tion was unstable. No sooner, on his return to Niagara, had
be come in contact with adverse interests, than he wrote to
Knox (July 26, 1792) that he could do nothing at the Maumee
council. If the United States insisted upon the Fort Harmar
treaty. Three days later, he communicated with McKee, ask
ing if he should carry the American proposition to the Indian
council. McKee, who informed SImcoe that he had himself
urged the Indians to accept a similar restriction of their de
mands, told Brant to go to the council, but to have no hope
of getting It to agree to the Fort Harmar line; SImcoe, who
was full of the idea that the United States meant to attack the
posts, had arrived at Niagara In August, and bis views were
not modified by what he heard. Brant, falling ill, was obhged
to transmit bis message by his son.
Some weeks later, in September, 1792, the formal embassy
of the Six Nations, In accordance with the agreement of the
Senecas in Philadelphia, left Niagara under the lead of Corn-
planter and Red Jacket. The council of the Miami confed
erates had been going on at the junction of the Auglaize and
Maumee, with some Interruption, since spring. McKee and

THE INDIAN COUNCIL. 443
Simon Girty had been much of the time in attendance, dealing
out powder and hatchets to the scalping parties, which at inter
vals came and went on their miserable errands.
The Shawnees, prominent in the council, had notified the Six
Nations that they would receive no peace proposition except
through them, and so the Senecas had come with some expecta^
tion of better treatment than they got. Cornplanter and Red
Jacket found the smoke of the council fire curling aloft amid
the October leaves. Representatives of many tribes, all the
way from Lake Ontario to Lake Superior, and even from west
of the Mississippi, sat crouched beneath the blue veil that went
twisting upward. When the speaker rose, there were sharp
Unes soon drawn in their opinions. The Shawnees were un
equivocally for war, and the eyes of Simon Girty, the only
white man admitted to their conference, gleamed with satisfac
tion. Amid aU the tedious and reiterative verbiage customary
in such sittings, it was evident that the mission of the Six
Nations was unpropitious. When Red Jacket In his speech
counseled peace, there were murmurs of distrust. So, after all
was said, the urgent appeals of Cornplanter and his followers
produced no other result than that the final plunge into general
hostility would be delayed till the Six Nations could arrange
with the United States for another council at the Maumee
rapids In the spring of 1793, if, in the mean while, the federal
government would withdraw their troops south of the Ohio.
On the 12th of October, 1792, the council broke up. By the
middle of November, Red Jacket was at Buffalo Creek ready
to transmit to Philadelphia the decision of the confederated
tribes. It was hardly a question with some Mohicans, who
had returned from the Maumee with the Senecas, that war
was inevitable.
When Brant was in Philadelphia, Washington had forecast
the alternative. " If they will not listen to the voice of peace,"
he said, "the sword must decide the dispute; and we are, though
very reluctantly, vigorously preparing- to meet the event."
These preparations had been going on all summer. Enlist
ments had not been brisk, and Washington had occasion not
only to urge more active measures, but to check the enroUing
of what he caUed " boys and miscreants," for St. Clair's expe
rience was not to be forgotten. The President had watched

444 THE NORTHWEST TRIBES AT LAST DEFEATED.
anxiously the reports of Wayne to the secretary of war. He
knew how much success depended upon a well-drilled force,
and upon the cordial cooperation of the commander's officers.
Knox had told him of the assiduity of Wilkinson, and he took
occasion to let that brigadier know how much he appreciated.
his "zeal and ability." He cautioned Wayne, however he
might avoid lavish expenditures in other matters, " not to be
sparing of powder and lead to make his soldiers marksmen."
Wayne at one time submitted plans of what, Washington
called " desultory strokes " uj)on St. Joseph and Sandusky, as
calculated to distract the enemy, and to retaliate for the maraud
ing which we have seen McKee and Girty were encouraging
at Auglaize. Washington, however, had little commendation
for strokes at a venture, which might lose more men than the
recruiting could replace. More important, as the President
thought, was it to get correct information by scouts, either from
the Indians or English, of the force to be encountered, so that
when the time came for advancing there might be no groping
in the dark. He also felt constrained to counsel a stricter
supervision of the contractors at Pittsburg, so that the com
plaints which St. Clair had made might not be repeated. Here
was the need of the care of an " economist," for John Pope, a
traveler of this time, says that goods of every description are
" dearer in Pittsburg than in Kentucky, owing to a combinar
tion of scoundrels who infest the place."
All through the summer, the levies, either on their way to
Pittsburg or in camp there, had lost by desertions, and it was
too difficult to enroll men to suffer this to go on. So, as the
autumn advanced, it was under consideration to move the army
onward to some spot better guarded against the chances of
escape, and where the surrounding- country had the features
suited to practice the men in forest paths. Washington had
been inclined to divide the force between Cincinnati, Marietta,
and some spot not far from Pittsburg, where Wayne himself
could remain in easy communication with the government.
Finally, however, it was determined to make a winter camp at
a point about twenty-seven miles below Pittsburg, and In No
vember, 1792, we find the President cautioning Wayne against
Note. — The map on the opposite page, ot Pittsburg and vicinity, is from Victor CoUot's Jour
ney in North America, P.iris, 1826, .Ulas, plate 8.

446 THE NORTHWEST TRIBES AT LAST DEFEATED.
needless outlay in the barracks. When in the same month
Washington met Congress, he confessed that recruiting had so
fallen oft' that some additional stimulus must be devised.
While these military preparations were going on, it remained
the policy of the federal government to avert, if possible, the
actual clash of arms. The proposition of the Miami confed
eracy at their last council opened the way, and there was the
same channel of communication as before in the professed will
ingness of the Six Nations to intercede. Washington had
little hope of appeasing the Indians, so long, he said, as they
were " under an influence which is hostile to the rising great
ness of these States," as the neighboring- British were supposed
to be. The intercourse which the members of the government
had had with Hammond had not, to say the least, removed the
Impression of latent hostility, and of a purpose to interpose, if
possible, a barrier territory, appertaining to the Indians, by
some new disposition of bounds in qualification of the treaty of
1782. Hammond was but a young man, perhaps not as discreef
as he should be, and he doubtless had a difficult part to play,
and It may be that he did not deserve all the suspicion under
which he lay at the time, and which has affected the disposition
of American historians since. Jefferson bluntly told him that
the public was not ready to accept his denial of England's com
plicity In the enmity of the Indians ; though in diplomatic def
erence, the American government might not be so distrustful.
In December, 1792, the cabinet had decidedly disclaimed any
intention of accepting British mediation. If at that time they
had understood Simcoe's character as weU as they did later,
they might not have agreed to allow his presence at the negoti
ations to be renewed. SImcoe was at the time firm In the behef
that the Americans would make the intended conference an oc-
casi(m to assert their rights to the navigation of Lake Erie, by
conveying the provisions which their commissioners required
over Its waters in their own vessels. He accordingly sought
Instructions as to what conduct he should pursue In maintaining
what he called British naval superiority on the lake. Clarke,
who was acting at Quebec in the absence of Dorchester, em
phatically shared Simcoe's views, and the issue was ultimately
avoided by a proposal of the Canadian government to furnish
what supplies were required.

THE AMERICAN COMMISSIONERS. 447
The President, who had failed to induce Charles Carroll of
CarroUton and Charles Thomson, the old clerk of the earlier
Congress, to act as commissioners to the Indians, finally selected
Benjamin Lincoln, Beverly Randolph, and Timothy Pickering.
They were confirmed by the Senate, March 1, 1793. It was
understood that some $50,000 worth of presents would be put
at their disposal, with authority to contribute annually $10,000,
beside $2,000 to the head chiefs, as compensation for the accept
ance by the Indians of the terms of the Fort Harmar treaty of
1789. To afford some play In their conciliatory measures, the
cabinet had already expressed an opinion that if peace could
better be secured by it, the commissioners might consent to a
hne short of the Fort Harmar line, provided it kept secure all
lands which the government had already appropriated, granted,
or reserved. This was yielding what the disputed treaty had,
m Jefferson's opinion, brought within the American jurisdic
tion, and he alone of the President's advisers contended that
the concession was unconstitutional. His alternative was to
retain jurisdiction, but to agree not to settle the unappropriated
territory. It was his opinion, also, that any line was liable to
error of description, because of the insufficient knowledge of
the country, and that Hutchins's map, on which the treaty agree
ments had been marked, did not show the lines with any exact
ness, except where the bounds were brought to the Ohio River.
On May 17, 1793, Randoli^h and Pickering reached Niagara,
and Lincoln, who had been engaged in forwarding supplies,
joined them eight days later. Here they learned of the decla
ration of war In England against France, and were well aware
how It was going to embarrass the government's oouncils In
Philadelphia, and might affect the situation on the Canadian
bounds. To add to their anxieties. Brant had gone forward
on May 5 to attend the preliminary councU, before they had
had a chance to confer with him. Just about this time we
leam from Zeisberger that the Mohawk chief, with eight canoes,
was passing through the Thames country, on his way to the
Maumee. It was understood that the commissioners were to await at
J^iagara a summons to the conference. SImcoe was gracious,
and for a while their days passed pleasantly. When it became
mown that the Miamis had sent messengers to express their

448 THE NORTHWEST TRIBES AT LAST DEFEATED.
inflexible purpose to insist upon the Ohio as the boundary,
and the commissioners had revealed to their host • a determi
nation as resolute to stand by the Fort Harmar treaty, the
British commander saw that there was little chance of war
being averted. Brant always held afterwards, with probably
some knowledge of what the commissioners might on necessity
yield, that, except for English Interference, an accommodation
might have been reached. We now know from Simcoe's letter
that he profoundly distrusted the American purposes, and be
lieved that the commissioners were really aiming to alienate
the Six Nations both from the English and from the western
tribes. Just as the Americans were to embark, on June 26, for San
dusky, some messengers from the Maumee arrived, complaining
that Wayne was making hostile demonstrations whUe the ques
tion of peace or war was stiU undecided, and some days later
the commissioners communicated a wish to the secretary of
war that Wayne should be further cautioned. On embarking,
the Americans found that Butler and McKee had been de
tailed to accompany them, as they had wished. They had only
proceeded to Fort Erie, when they became wind-bound. On
shore there was a stockade inclosing a few rough buildings,
and outside a blockhouse, used for the king's stores. Lying
there on July 5, Brant and fifty chiefs arrived from the Mau
mee, and, desiring a conference, it was decided to return to
Niagara for better accommodations, and to hold the interview
In Simcoe's house. The meeting was quickly over, and Sim
coe's letters tell us that, on July 7, Brant started with his mind
nearly made up to recommend the yielding by the Indians of
the settled lands north of the Ohio. A week later, the com
missioners followed, and landed, on July 21, on the Canada side
of the mouth of the Detroit River. Here they found a depu
tation from the council, bearing a straight inquiry if the
Americans would yield to the Ohio line, ancl the question was
as pointedly answered in the negative. It was soon intimated,
however, that If the Indians would confirm the Fort Harmar
line, and yield up the territory granted to George Rogers Clark
at the Ohio rapids, the commissioners would not ask for any
Note. — The view on the opposite page from Lake Ontario, looking into Niagara River, was
taken by the wife of Governor Simcoe in 1704. Fort Niagara is on the left. It is from D. B
Koad'a Life and Times of Simcoe, Toronto, 1890.

450 THE NORTHWEST TRIBES AT LAST DEFEATED.
right in the soil beyond these limits, but only the right of pre-
emjDtlon. A Wyandot acted as spokesman, and stood firm for
the Ohio.
The next day, the 22d, the commissioners notified the council
that they were ready for a meeting. From what we know of
the proceedings of the Indians when this message was received
It is apparent that the discussions were very angry. The Shaw
nees, Twightwees, and Delawares pronounced loudly for war.
Brant tells us that all hope of diverting them from it was
lost, when messengers arrived from the Creeks announcing re
newed encroachments of the whites on their lands. SImcoe
later professed to believe that Brant, in his advocacy of mod
eration, was in reality striving to embroil England and the
United States, and Brant In return charged the English with
the responsibility, because they promised aid to the Indians
if they would resist American encroachments to the last.
Instead of inviting the commissioners to the council, the
tribes sent, on July 29, a deputation, with Simon Girty as inter
preter, and on the 30th the whole question at issue and the past
history of their respective grievances were rehearsed. Girty,
speaking for the Indians, insisted that the provisions of the
Fort Stanwix treaty should be the basis of an agreement. The
commissioners replied that the Stanwix treaty was made twenty-
five years aback, and that it was modified when the treaty of
1782 placed the bounds of the United States on the line of the
lakes. This was hardly a happy reference, when a standing
grievance of the Indians was that the treaty of 1782 paid them
no consideration whatever, and dealt out their lands as if they
did not belong to them. Nor was it helpful to be told that
the Indians who sided with Great Britain in the revolutionary
contest must accept the consequent necessity of modifying the
original treaty of Fort Stanwix. Such modifications had taken
place in the later treaty of Fort Stanwix, and in those subse
quently made with the Wyandots and Shawnees. To confirm
all these by additional gratuities, the Indians were reminded
that St. Clair had met six hundred Indians at Fort Harmar,
and removed all objections. This having been done, and the
ceded lands parceled out to white settlers, the United States
were bound to keep faith with the grantees. To make the mat
ter stiU smoother with the tribes, they were wiUing, if the ,

WAR INEVITABLE. 451
grant to Clark at the Ohio rapids be Included, to add as a new
gift an unprecedented sum of money and many goods.
These statements made no effect, and the conference ended.
The next day the Indian delegates intimated that the commis
sioners had best go home, or at least such was the form of com
ment which Girty gave to their utterances. After some days
the council sent a defiant answer in due form. They denied
that the United States had any better right to buy their lands
than the English had. They thought that the Americans,
instead of offering money to them, had much better use it in
buying out their grantees, so that they could turn the Indian
land over to its true owners. During these later days of the
conference, aU efforts of Brant to induce Simcoe to interpose In
favor of a compromise having failed, the commissioners had
nothing to do but to declare that the end had come, and on the
same day (August 16) they left Detroit for Fort Erie. At
this point they dispatched a messenger to Wayne, who was
waiting at Fort Washington, informing him of the failure to
negotiate. The outcome was known In Philadelphia in Sep
tember, and it was generally believed, as Wolcott said, that the
failure was " in great measure owing to British influence."
Washington shared this distrust, and, as early as February, had
cautioned Knox not to relax his preparations for war.
Kecruiting was going on slowly, and by March, 1793, Wayne
had not received half his promised force. When the spring
had fairly opened, he had moved his two thousand five hundred
men down the river to Fort Washington, and sent a summons
for the mounted volunteers of Kentucky, which a committee,
consisting of Judge Innes, John Brown, Isaac Shelby, Benjamin
Logan, and Charles Scott, had been organizing.
Wayne, as we have seen, had been directed to act on the
defensive only, till he heard of the failure of the negotiations
at the Detroit River. With this restraint he learned, not
without Irritation, of the raids which the Indians were making
in every direction, but he prudently kept quiet. During the
summer he had asked permission of Knox to send out a body
of six hundred militia, away from the line of his proposed
march, partly to deceive the enemy as to his intentions, and
partly to distract their attention. The matter, as it happened,
came before Washington and his advisers at the very meeting

452 THE NORTHWEST TRIBES AT LAST DEFEATED.

at which they heard from the commissioners of their faUure.
They were in no humor to risk defeat by dividing the western
army, and the same messenger who carried to its general a
confirmation of the tidings, which he had already received, of
the fruitless task of the
commissioners, took also
a refusal to his proposal.
The Indians naturally
knew of the failure in
advance, and In Septem
ber they feU upon one
of Wayne's convoys and
captured some horses. On
October 6, Wayne wrote
to Knox that the next
day he should advance
beyond Fort Jefferson to
a position where he was
to lay out a camp for
winter quarters, and to
be prepared to act as oc
casion required. The
Kentucky volunteers
[This cut, taken from Howe's Historical CoUections Were COmiUg in siowiy,
of Ohio, p. 142, shows the line of the stockade at a,nd he COuld not rCpOrt
GreenviUe, in relation to the modern town.] ' more than twenty-six
hundred regulars, with some four hundred horse militia and
guides, the rest being detailed for garrison duty along his com
munications. He had taken pride in bis cavalry, and he had
divided them into companies, according to the color of the
horses, — sorrel, bay, chestnut, and gray, — and, as he wrote
to Knox, he was anxious lest the Indians would bring on an
action where dragoons could not manoeuvre to advantage.
William Priest, a traveler in the country at the time, says that
" It is generally imagined that Wayne will meet the fate of
Braddock and St. Clair, but a few military men I have dis
cussed with are of another opinion, for the general is forming
a body of - cavalry on principles entirely new, from which much
is expected." His march was accordingly begun on October 7, 1793, and

WAYNE'S PREPARATIONS. 453
six days later he was laying out a winter's camp, six miles be
yond Fort Jefferson, which he named in honor of his old com
mander in the southern department in the revolutionary days,
Fort Greeneville or, as it was commonly written, Greenville.
If his marching force was not all that he had hoped for,
Wayne felt that many months of discipline had made a large
part of them tough and ready warriors, and that he had some
months before him for seasoning them in all the hardship and
skin of forest warfare. They already showed a marked pro
ficiency in loading- and firing on the run, and were not inapt in
springing to their work with loud hallooes, as Willet had recom
mended. Wayne, however, was still conscious of a murmuring
discontent In some of the fresher levies, and he charged it upon
the "baleful leaven " of the democratic clubs, which Genet was
just now patronizing in the east, and whose refractory spirit was
making its way over the mountains.
The British scouts had reported his position as not two days
distant from the Auglaize, and Dorchester heard of it and
reported from Quebec to Dundas that, on October 18, Wayne
had with him three thousand regulars, two thousand militia,
and two hundred Indians, — a not unusual exaggeration.
All through the autumn and winter there was anxiety in
Canada. In February, 1794, Dorchester informed Hammond
that Wayne's language, as reported to him, showed that he had
hostile designs against the English. Evidently fo gain time,
about the end of 1793, the Delawares had opened communica
tion with. Wayne, prevailed to do so "by sinister means," as
McKee said. Nothing came of it, for Wayne insisted, as a
prehminary, on the restoration of prisoners. Dorchester, in
March, was evidently thinking that some coercion had been
applied by the other tribes to make the Delawares firmer.
Wayne was aware of the influence which Simcoe was now
exerting on the Indian councils, and we have Brant's testimony
that the British had given the Indians powder, and had led
them to suppose that in case of disaster they would succor them.
Wayne examined the prisoners his scouts brought in to confirm
such inteUigence, if there was ground for It. He got little
satisfaction, however. There were some who affirmed it, and
others who denied it. There is no doubt, however, that Simcoe
was wishing ardently for Wayne's defeat, and determined in any

454 THE NORTHWEST TRIBES AT LAST DEFEATED.
event to prevent supplies reaching him by the lake from Presqu'
Isle. He could not have been unprepared, later, to receive ad
vices from Dundas that, in case Wayne was beaten, the oppor
tunity should not be lost to secure a barrier territory between
Canada and the Americans. SImcoe had not as yet received
such implicit Instructions, but he could easily divine them. A
speech of Dorchester, which had reached Detroit, served an
immediate purpose, but to arouse the Indians and to counte
nance Simcoe in active agencies in helping them, Dorchester
had lately been in council with the ministry, and his words
stood easily for their opinions. This speech was a reply, which
he had made on February 10, 1794, to an Indian delegation.
Kingsford, a recent historian of Canada, thinks that its indis
cretions were but the natural revulsion which Dorchester felt
when, fresh from England, he saw how great a hold the French
Revolution had taken upon the Americans. Whether this
was so or not, the speech was Intemperate and incendiary, and
when a report of it reached Philadelphia, Hammond sought
to efface its effect by declaring that Dorchester had not been
authorized to make it. It is certain that Dundas later rebuked
the utterer for doing what was more likely " to provoke hostili
ties than to prevent them." The language of the harangue
was so unguarded that there was a tendency even In Phila
delphia to doubt its authenticity, — a belief that later misled
Marshall and Sparks. Washington certainly accepted it, as did
Clinton, who forwarded it to the President. It is now known
to be preserved In the English archives, and Stone, the biogra
pher of Brant, found a certified copy among the papers of that
chief. Another copy was sent to Carondelet.
In this speech Dorchester charged the United States -with
bad faith in the boundary dispute ; that aU advance of settle
ments since 1783 were encroachments, which nullified the Amer
ican right of preemption. He said he should not be surprised
if England and the United States were at war in the course of
the present year, and in that case the warriors would have the
chance to make a new line, and appropriate all improvements
which the Americans had made within it.
Copies of the speech were circulated early in April, 1794,
among the western Indians, Lieutenant-Colonel Butler being an
active agent in the matter. Inspired by it, and acting indeed

AT THE MAUMEE RAPIDS. 455
under Dorchester's express orders, Simcoe, sharing Dorchester's
lack of confidence in the American protestations, took three
companies of regulars to the rapids of the Maumee, and there
hastily constructed a fort, necessary, in his opinion, as an outpost
of Detroit, and intended to be a check in the way of Wayne's
advance. This is the reason which Simcoe gives, on April 11,
in a letter written on the spot to Carondelet, who had asked
him to join Spain in a campaign on the Mississippi, in resist
ance to the proposed French invasion of Louisiana. When
Washington heard of this positive advance upon American ter
ritory, he called it the " most open and daring act " which the
British had attempted, and in sending instructions to Wayne,
Knox conveyed the order of Washington that if, in the course
of the campaign it should become necessary to dislodge the gar
rison of this fort, Wayne must do so.
On June 7, some Indian prisoners were brought in, and from
them Wayne learned of Simcoe's advance. They also reported
that there were two thousand Indians at the Maumee rapids,
and that, including militia, the British of Fort Miami garrison
counted about four hundred. One of the captives said that
the British had promised to have fifteen hundred men in the
coming fight.
During June, 1794, Wayne was occupied with his daily drills.
He exercised his men with sabre and bayonet, and kept out a
cloud of scouts to prevent any spy of the enemy getting within
observation. Besides using his backwoodsmen for this service,
he had a few Chickasaws and Choctaws. His wood-choppers
were opening roads here and there, and serving to deceive the
Indians as to his intended march. He had already sent a detail
to the field of St. Clair's defeat, and had built there a small
fort, which. In recognition of his reoccupation of the ground, he
called Fort Recovery. On the 26th, General Scott reached
Greeneville with sixteen hundred mounted Kentuckians, and
among them was WilUam Clark, the brother of George Rogers
Clark, and later known for his passage of the Rockies. On the
28th, he sent forward a party, and when near Fort Recovery,
on the 30th, they were assailed by a rush of Indians upon some
dragoons, who received the attack, charged in return, somewhat
recklessly, and there was a considerable loss of horses, which
Wayne could ill spare. It was thought that there were whites

456 THE NORTHWEST TRIBES AT LAST DEFEATED.
among the enemy. In order to deceive the Indians, he turned
west and went on to the St. Mary's River, where he built a
fort, which he called Fort Adams. In July, he turned east, and
marched seventy miles to the confluence of the Auglaize and
the Maumee. Here, on August 8, he built Fort Defiance, In
the midst of immense fields of corn. He was now within sixty
miles of the British fort, and his route to it lay along the banks
of the Maumee. He sent forward a converted Shawnee to
announce his readiness to treat for peace. Little Turtle, the
Indian leader, was not disinclined to accept the offer. His
scouts had convinced him of the sleepless vigilance of Wayne.
They had found it impossible to pierce the line of watchful
spies by which the American commander concealed his force.
Simcoe also had lost confidence in the ability of the Indians to
withstand the Americans, and he had written to Dundas that,
while he hoped for Wayne's defeat, he was by no means sure
it would happen. " If Wayne attacks Detroit," he wrote,
" you must be prepared to hear it is taken."
Just at the time that Simcoe was building Fort Miami, the
legislature of Pennsylvania had directed the occupation of
Presqu'Isle, and on March 1, 1794, Governor Mifflin had in
structed Major Denny to raise a company of troops, and to
proceed to that spot and protect the commissioners In laying
out the town. He was enjoined to avoid every unfriendly act
which could possibly irritate the Indians or excite the enmity of
the British garrisons not far off. While the spring came on, it
was apparent that the movement had excited the fears of Brant
and his countrymen, and that there was danger of active oppo
sition on the part of the British. It was even supposed that
the American troops on the way to that point from Le Boeuf
would be met and driven back. In the latter part of May, the
federal government, fearing such complications, and under
standing the hazard which Wayne was confronting, asked Gov
ernor Mifflin to suspend the movement. The request was looked
upon as an interference with the rights of the legislature, which
bad simply ordered the occupation of their own territory, but
Mifflin did not hesitate, and promptly issued orders in conform
ity with Washington's wishes, and at a later day the Assembly
confirmed them. The federal government were nevertheless
fearful lest the resentful spirit shared by the Indians and their

WAYNE ADVANCING. 457
British friends might yet bring peril, and Knox, in writing to
Mifflin on July 17, declared that there could be no certain
avoidance of the danger while British policy controlled the
Indians. Matters were in this critical state when Wayne began his
advance ; and just before the American general delivered his
final stroke, Simcoe, apprehensive of the worst, and ignorant of
Washington's interposition at Presqu'Isle, was writing to his
superiors that unless disaster overtook Wayne, nothing could
prevent the American occupation of the southern shores of
Lake Erie from Buffalo Creek to Miami Bay, when there would
be an end to British supremacy on the lakes.
To revert to the hesitancy of Little Turtle. Had Brant been
on the spot, that Indian leader might have had an abettor In bis
tendency to treat with Wayne, though the movement to occupy
Presqu'Isle had done much to bring back the old antipathy of
the Mohawks. Brant, at a distance, was disquieted over the
rumors which reached him that it was going to be difficult to
keep fast the Mackinac and other northwestern tribes who were
threatening to leave. The messengers which the southern In
dians had sent to offer encouragement to their northern friends
had not been foUowed up by the arrival of southern warriors,
and the Miami confederates, without Brant and his associates
on the one side, and with the Wabash tribes Indifferent on the
other side, found they had little to depend upon except the
British, whose help they remembered had failed them in critical
junctures in the past. So the chiefs had delayed to respond to
Wayne's invitation.
The Americans had nothing to gain by hesitation, and
Wayne, on August 15, again advanced. His army now counted
about two thousand six hundred men. He himself was not in
good condition, for he was suffering from gout, and sat his horse
swathed in flannel. On his staff, yielding him assistance, he
had a hero of later savage warfare, a future President of the
Repubhc, in WiUiam Henry Harrison.
The army was confident. In long drilling they had antici
pated aU possible conditions. They knew there was no chance
of being enveloped as St. Clair had been. They knew that
their flanks were guarded, and ^ a charge was ordered, the gap

458 THE NORTHWEST TRIBES AT LAST DEFEATED.
between the van and its supports, and the hovering dragoons,
would not permit their being cut off. In these and other pos
sibilities, the army enjoyed that sense of security which comes
from knowing the vigilance of Its commander.
The next day, August 16, 1794, a messenger met the advance
and delivered to Wayne a request that the Indians might have
ten days In which to consider his proposals for peace. Wayne
was not in a mood to dally. He hastily built a defense for the
baggage which he intended to leave at that point, and moved
on. On the 18th, he reached the upper end of the rapids. He
threw up another breastwork to protect his provisions, and
began to feel the enemy. He made up his mind there were
from fifteen hundred to two thousand of them. McKee says
they numbered one thousand three hundred. The British flag
flaunted on the fort at the lower end of the rapids, and he
knew not what he might have to encounter. Not far away, in
a ground of their own choosing, encumbered with the trunks
of trees which a whirlwind at some time had prostrated, and
concealed by tall grasses which grew between, the enemy lay
crouched. The action began with the Indians rising upon a band of
mounted volunteers who were ahead, floundering over a ground
where horsemen were at a disadvantage. The first line of in
fantry, flanked by other cavalry, came promptly to their sup
port. Their orders were to fire, charge, and continue firing as
they ran. They put their practice in this difficult movement
into play, and on they went, scrambling over and under the
trunks, preserving a nearly even front. They gave the enemy
no time to reload, and before the second luie, with the support
of Scott's Kentucky horse, could join in the contest, the Indi
ans were in headlong retreat. It took forty minutes to press
them back — with not a chance to recover themselves — for a
distance of two miles into the immediate vicinity of the British
fort. Less than a thousand of Wayne's soldiers had won the
day. There was no sign in the fort of any attempt to succor the
savages. The hinges of the gates which were expected to open
and receive the fugitives did not creak. The Indians had van
ished in the forests, and, as the commander of the fort informed
his superior, no one knew whither.

THE BATTLE WON. 459
Wayne's loss in kiUed and wounded had been little over a
hundred. There was never any report on the loss of the enemy.
It is denied by the British writers that there were any whites
in the fight. Against their general denial, there is Wayne's
own testimony that British dead were found on the field. It
has been asserted that a body of Detroit militia, seventy in
number, commanded by a Captain CaldweU, participated in the
action, and that four of them were killed. Brant, at a later
day, said that he had procured the powder which was used from
the British authorities at Quebec, and that he should have led
his Mohawks in the fight had he not been sick and at a dis
tance. So ended the battle of Fallen Timbers.
Major Campbell, in charge of the British fort, sent next day
word to Detroit that an action had been fought " almost within
reach of the guns of the fort." The same day, August 21, he
sent a flag to the American commander, asking what he meant by
such threatening action In sight of his Majesty's flag. Wayne
at once replied that his guns talked for him, but he rather need
lessly argued the point of the British encroachment in building
a post on recognized territory of the United States. He closed
with demanding its surrender. The next day Campbell replied
that he could only receive orders to give up the fort from his
own superiors, and threatened that if the insult to the British
flag was continued, and the Americans came within range of
his guns, he would open fire. There was a story started by a
traveler, Isaac Weld, a year later, that Wayne rode up to the
stockade with defiant bearing, so as to provoke a discharge, and
give him a pretext for attacking. There is no other evidence
of such an act. Wayne's last note was to ask the garrison to
retire to some post which had existed at the time of the treaty
of 1782. He wisely did not try to force such retirement, and
CampbeU bore himself -with like restraint.
Wayne contented himself with destroying the traders' huts
in the neighborhood, including those of McKee, without a
motion on the part of Campbell. Simcoe is said at a later day
to have taken upon himself the credit of preserving the peace,
since Dorchester, as he averred, had instructed him to attack
Wayne. It is known from a letter to Hammond in September
that Dorchester was confident of a conflict, to be brought on by
Wayne's attacking the fort.

460 THE NORTHWEST TRIBES AT LAST DEFEATED.
After spending three days in completing the destruction of
all property outside the fort, Wayne began a march by easy
stages up the river. He swept away cornfields for fifty miles
on each side of the stream. On reaching Fort Defiance, he
put it in better condition for defense, and on August 28 sent
off a dispatch to Knox. It was less than a month later that
the first rumors of Wayne's success reached PhUadelphIa, on
September 23, In advance of the official tidings.
From Fort Defiance, Wayne continued his march up the
Maumee. He reached the confluence of the St. Mary and St.
Joseph on September 17, and by the 22d he had completed
For.t Wayne at that strategic point where the portage to the
Wabash began. He put Major Hamtramck in command.
Simcoe, immediately upon the result of the campaign being
known, had written to Brant that he hoped the Indians would
" recover their spirits." He expected now by a conference at
Fort Miami to help produce such a reaction. There he met
McKee and Brant, and it was thought best to have a larger
body in council at the mouth of the Detroit River on October 10;
Meanwhile, Wayne, at his new stockade, was listening to the
speeches of other factions of the tribes, who had learned by
recent events not to place much confidence in British promises.
Not all these speeches were reassuring, for there was occasion
ally a chief who would warm at Wayne's renewed proposals of
confirming the treaty of Fort Harmar, and at such occurrences
Wayne grew anxious and sent messages to Philadelpliia for
reinforcements to be ready for any emergency.
The British conference at Detroit River came off as ar
ranged. Simon Girty was present as usual, and helped In the
distribution of the British gifts. Simcoe now told the Wyan
dots and the others that they must stand for the Ohio bounds
as resolutely as ever, and he promised that if the Americans
approached Fort Miami again, they should be fired upon. We
have Simcoe's speech and testimony about his advice from those
who heard it, and Brant supported his Insidious -views. He
urged the Indians to convey in trust to the British all the land
north of the Ohio which was in dispute between them and
the Americans, so as to give the British the right to interfere
in protecting it. He also treacherously counseled the patching

WAYNE AT GREENEVILLE. 461
up of a temporary truce which would give both the EngUsh
and the Indians the time for preparation which was needed,
so as to renew the war with better promise in the spring.
Such advice, however, failed of the intended effect, and it was
soon apparent that Wayne had secured by his victory a vantage-
ground that he could use to effect. The Delawares had already
approached him, and Dorchester, kept informed by SImcoe ofthe
general disaffection towards English interests which Wayne's
diplomacy was increasing, lost no time in informing the Ameri
can general that Grenville and Jay, now negotiating a treaty of
pacification in England, had reached a conclusion by which the
military conditions should remain for the present unchanged.
The fact was that the British government were more desirous
of bringing to an end their critical relations with the United
States than they were wiUing to disclose to the American envoy.
This growing policy of amity proved a sore grievance to Sim
coe, and he spent his energies during the closing months of
1794 in seeking- to prevent such a consummation. He urged
that Fort Miami should not be abandoned. He wrote to Ham
mond to stir him to a protest to the federal government against
the demeanor of Wayne, who. In gaining the Indian favor, was
thwarting some of Simcoe's cherished purjioses. He wrote to
the Lords of Trade offering them a plan for shutting out trad
ers coming from the American seaboard, by establishing British
depots along the portages to the Mississippi valley, and par
ticularly by that at Chicago. He grew suspicious of Brant, and,
to prevent his defection, sought permission to offer the Mohawk
chief a pensidn for bis family.
AU this while, Wayne, who had reached Greeneville early iu
November, was receiving messages of peace from the same Wy
andots that Simcoe had flattered at the Detroit River, and It
was soon known that the tribes who had crossed the Mississippi,
to fight under Little Turtle, had recrossed it to Spanish ter
ritory. Wayne's plans for a final settlement in the following
season were progressing with few halts. So, as Simcoe showed
himself a man grasping at straws, but doomed to disappoint
ment, the year closed with Wayne growing more and more in
stature as the arbiter of the red man's future.

CHAPTER XXI.
jay's teeaty and the teeeitoeial integeity of THE
NORTH-WEST SECUEED.
1794-1796.
Late in 1793, the British government had shown a dispo
sition to approach the unsettled questions of the treaty of
1782. On December 15, Jefferson stated to Hammond that
the American grievances, so far as they related to the western
country, were, in the first place, the retention of the posts ; next,
the extension of British jurisdiction beyond the area of British
possessions In 1782 ; and last, the obstacles placed by the au
thorities in Canada in the way of the American right of navi
gation on the lakes. The solution of these questions at Issue
was necessarily affected by the attitude which Spain and France
were assuming- towards the United States, — a discussion cov
ered in other chapters. To side with England, which was a
motive charged upon the federalists, was likely to bring on
a war with France, In which Spain might or might not be an
indifferent spectator, but it was hardly possible that England,
at least, would allow her to remain so. To side with France
would inevitably incite hostilities in England, and with Eng
land's coercion Spain was not likely to escajae an alliance with
her. This was a contingency which the federalists greatly
deprecated, and the republicans were hardly ready to force. A
war with England meant. Indeed, a chance for privateering,
and the starting of such manufactures as would, under the re
strictions growing out of war, be ultimately productive for the
North. What a British war meant to the South was a relief
from the pressing burden of the English debts, — a certain
gain that obscured remoter loss. " The Virginians," said Oliver
Wolcott, " in general hate the English because they owe them
money. They love the French from consanguinity of charac
ter." Hamilton and the federalist leaders saw in an Enghsh

JAY SENT TO ENGLAND. 463
war an almost certain loss of the country north of the Ohio and
stretching to the Mississippi, because of the ease with which the
Canadian forces could be aided from the West Indies. In
such a contingency, all the efforts which Wayne was making to
save that region to the Union would avail little against the
establishment of that barrier Indian territory, which was Sim
coe's dream. Such loss of territory must also give English
merchants the control of the Indian trade, a consideration
which had been pressed upon the Board of Trade.
In this complexity of chances there was much diversity of
aim, even among those who resented the conduct of England.
Jay grasped the situation. " Great Britain has acted unwisely
and unjustly," he said (April 10, 1794), " and there Is some
danger of our acting Intemperately." So people were easily
grouping Into three divisions. First, there were those who were
for peace with England at all risks. Then, those who were for
war, the sooner the better. Last, those who were irritated to a
very frenzy, but were restrained from forcing an outbreak, if it
could be avoided.
There was a danger that a prolonged uncertainty would end
in war, and Washington, eager to secure peace even at some
sacrifice, determined to try the effect of a special envoy to the
British court. On April 6, 1794, he sent the name of John
Jay to the Senate as such an envoy. Jay had in the past made
no hesitation in affirming that the Americans had made the
first breach of the treaty of 1782. So both the envoy and
the mission were little less than repulsive to the ardent haters
of England. With the admirers of France it was questionable
if any advance towards England under existing circumstances
was not a transgression of the treaty of 1778 with that power,
— an obligation which the federalists denied. Randolph, as
secretary of state, undertook to explain to Fauchet, the French
minister, — and there soon transpired signs of an existing
dubious intercourse between the two, — that it was necessary to
negotiate with England to avoid a war which the States were
not ready to encounter. John Adams, with a politician's eye,
was at the same time supposing that the opposition to Jay arose
from an apprehension that, if the mission was successful. Jay
would be lifted into a dangerous competition with Jefferson.
The most active objection in Congress to confirming the

464 JAY'S TREATY.
mission came from the South. This was largely for the alleged
reason that an adjustment would benefit eastern commerce
and embarrass the South still more In the matter of the British
debts. There was also a fear that immediate northern interests
might be paramount to regaining the posts, and this was the
plea of the South to the West for support. In the final vote,
seven votes from Virginia, North and South Carolina, and
Kentucky, with a single vote from New York, constituted
the opposition, while eighteen votes, mainly from the North,
secured the mission and committed Jay to a rather harassing
task. The result was to thwart a proposed plan,- which Madi
son and others had counted on, to extort redress from England.
At near the same time, on an appealed case, the Supreme Court
had decided that certain acts of the Virginia legislature, in
tended to relieve debtors to English merchants, were unconsti
tutional. Thus the southern project was doubly blocked.
Jay's instructions were signed on May 6, and at this time
the federal government knew that Dorchester had made his
threatening speech. They had not learned, however, of a
result of that speech in the advance of SImcoe upon the Miami.
If they had. Jay's instructions might have been more vigorous.
When Jay reached England, on June 8, he suspected that
the two countries had only narrowly escaped war, and that Dor
chester and Simcoe, in their recent acts, had been inspired by
ministerial Adews. With better information we may now doubt
if he had good grounds for his apprehension, and may rather
believe that the ministry were only too ready for some sort of
an accommodation. This appearance, to Jay's mind, arose In
part from the fear, which he thought was entertained, that
Wayne really intended to attack Detroit ; whUe the more con
ciliatory spirit which he found in GrenvIUe, when he first had
his Interviews with him, was to be traced to a change in conti
nental affairs, which bad suddenly become a cause of alarm to
the ministry. Three days later (June 23), Jay learned from
Dr. William Gordon, the historian of the American Revolution,
then living in England, that the United States must not expect
to secure the surrender of the posts. Jay, in reporting Gor
don's views to Washington, confessed that he did not see the
insuperable difficulties which alarmed Gordon. A week later
(June 27), Jay and Grenville were fairly at their work. By

THE TREATY SIGNED. '465
the middle of July, they had so advanced in mutual confidences
that Jay assured the English minister that Wayne had no in
structions to attack the posts, and Portland communicated the
assurance at once (July 15) to Dorchester. Whereupon the
two negotiators agreed that there should be nothing done, un
friendly in act, anywhere along the Canadian frontier. Jay
so notified Washington on July 21, and the English sent to
Dorchester a message which, we have seen, was transmitted
from Quebec to Wayne.
After this the interchange of views went slowly on, all tend
ing to establish, at last, a common ground. Jay was some
fifteen weeks or more away from his government, counting the
out and return voyages. He grew, in his isolation, confident
that whatever he did would find inimical critics, and he wrote
to the President that he trusted, whatever might happen, to
" the wisdom, firmness, and integrity of the government."
There did not grow up in the States much confidence in Jay's
accomplishing anything till some time in October, and then
the French faction grew certain that he could but sacrifice
the honor of the country. These re vll ers were convinced that
Washington had failed to do what he could to rescue Tom Paine
from the imprisonment into which Robespierre had thrown him,
and that this indifference of the President was due to his fear
that England, which hated Paine, might resent any sympathy
for him. Under such circumstances, one readily understands
why Paine, learning by rumor something of Jay's relations with
GrenvIUe, caUed it " a satire upon the Declaration of Indepen
dence," and such opinions were easily wafted across the waters.
On November 19, Portland wrote to Dorchester that the
treaty had been signed, but that Its contents would not be
divulged tiU both governments had ratified it. Jay transmitted
the same day to Oliver Ellsworth his opinion that he had ex
acted as much as could be procured. Copies of the treaty were
sent off by different vessels on November 20 and 21. The first
was thrown overboard at sea to prevent the French capturing
it. The other ultimately reached its destination.
The British government, not yet possessed of Fauchet's inter
cepted dispatch, soon to be in their hands, had already taken
their measure of Randolph, the American Secretary of State,
and, because of his hard denunciations of English action, pro-

466 JAY'S TREATY.
fessed to believe bis temper would be inimical to peace, and
at once notified Hammond to avoid intercourse with him, to
compass his downfall if possible, and to seek Hamilton Instead
as the means of concerting action for the suppression of Indian
hostilities along the frontiers.
Before any of the official communications could reach Phila
delphia, a fast vessel, leaving Ramsgate, had arrived at Cape
Ann, bringing word that the treaty had been signed; this was
known in Boston on January 29, 1795. Nearly six weeks later,
on March 7, the treaty itself was In the hands of Washington,
and remained there, a secret possession, shared^ only by those
closest to him, for three months. Jay reached New York on
May 28, to find himself chosen governor of New York two days
before. Summonses had already been sent for the assembling
of the Senate on June 8, to take the treaty into consideration.
Fauchet, ignorant of the outburst which his disclosures about
Randolph was soon to produce, interceded with the government
to prevent the presentation of the treaty to the Senate till his
successor, Adet, with the views of the French government on
the crisis, could arrive. The new French minister did not reach
Philadelphia till June 13. At that time, the treaty was before
the Senate, in the usual secret sessions, and that body was
known to have assembled In nearly full numbers. There were
rumors of the hard fate which had been planned for It, and the
reports did not misrepresent the fact. The opposition was
warm. There was no sure index to the ardent discontents in
local sympathies. Of the western members, Humphrey Mar
shall stood for it; Blount was against it. It was, however,
owing to the strenuous exertions of Hamilton and Rufus King
that the instrument was saved, and then only by accepting an
amendment that did not, moreover, particularly concern the
west, but affected the trade with the West Indies. With this
change, it took its final stages, on June 24, by a vote of twenty
to ten, and on June 26 the Senate adjourned.
The treaty was to have been given to the public on July
1, but the Aurora, a newspaper inimical to the government,
secured the substance of it, and printed It in imperfect shape
on June 29. Two days later, the genuine text was accessible.
Before considering the uncertainty In Washington's mind
whether he should allow it to become a law, it will be well to

CANADIAN FUR TRADE. 467
review at some length such of its provisions as affected the west
ern country. The agreements respecting the commerce of the
seaboard, and the establishment of commissions to adjudicate
upon the debt, did not affect the people beyond the mountains
except as they In some degree shared In the fortunes of the
east. Of the $25,000,000 to be placed as claims against the
American debtors, a small part concerned the western people,
and little was at stake with them when the whole business of
the claims was brought to a close In 1804. In respect to the
trade with Canada, the west had a principal interest, for hj
the provisions of the treaty the eastern merchants were in some
measure shut out from it. It was, on the whole, a gain to the
west, for it opened the St. Lawrence route to the sea for western
produce, with low duties, and none for furs. It also promised
that return merchandise could be brought to a large section of
the west at less cost than transportation over the mountains
would entaU. It was Hamilton's opinion, about the rights
accorded to the Indian traders to pass the boundary line in
either direction for traffic, that the United States would profit
more than Canada. He also believed that these provisions
blocked " the dangerous project of Great Britain to confine the
United States to the Ohio," and that they tended " most power
fully to establish the influence and authority of the general
government over the western country." The objection which
was pressed was that the Constitution was violated in taking
from CongTess the right to regulate trade, and vesting it in the
ti-eaty-maklng power. When, later, it was attempted to regu
late this Indian trade another way by Wayne's negotiation, tlie
paramount authority of Jay's treaty was allowed at the instance
of Great Britain.
It was, indeed, true at this time, as General Collot, who was
a little later inspecting these conditions, saw, that the tribes and
fur-bearing animals south of the lakes and east of the Missis
sippi did not constitute the chief resource for what was properly
called the fur trade. The favorable conditions were, in fact, to
he found west of the Mississippi, in Spanish territory, to which
access must be had through what the treaty of 1782 had recog
nized as American territory. It was from this country that
the Enghsh house of Tode & Co., who had bought the right
from the New Orleans government for £20,000, had, by making

468 JAY'S TREATY.
fortified stations along the St. Peter and Des Moines rivers,
almost completely driven the Spanish traders, notwithstandino-
the transporting of furs to New Orleans by the Mississippi was
much easier than to take them to Montreal.
The Spanish had kept the Missouri River in their own hands,
and, two miles from its mouth, they maintained a trading-post,
St. Charles, which, with its hundred and more houses, was the
remotest station in this direction. The river, as Collot said,
had been explored upward more than six hundred leagues
without finding any obstruction. Its current was said to be
gentle till it received the Platte, which after their junction
forced the stream rapidly along. That French traveler reached
the conclusion that the Missouri must rise in a prolongation
of the Cordilleras, which Mackenzie had called the Stony Moun
tains, while they were known to the tribes as the YeUow Moun
tains ; and these mountains were reported to run paraUel to the
coast of the South Sea, a hundred or a hundred and twenty
leagues distant. The notions then prevailing placed high up
on the Missouri the Big Bellies (eight hundred warriors) and
just below them the Mandans (three hundred warriors). Their
trade was mainly by the Red River to the Indians about Hud
son's Bay; but over the mountains, fifteen to twenty days
distant, were the Crows, on a river which communicated with
the South Sea.
Of the £19,000 in duties which were paid on American furs
in London, a large part came from Spanish Louisiana, and
nearly all from west and north of the lakes. This was partly
occasioned by the fact that the Spanish traders, so far as they
rivaled the English ones, were obliged to draw their supplies
from Montreal, which they paid for in peltries. The Enghsh
were particularly active on the St. Peter and Des Moines, where
they came In contact with the Sioux. To reach the St. Peter
the English passed from Lake Superior to the Goddard River,
thence by a portage of nine miles to the St. Croix, and so to
the Mississippi. They took the Green Bay and Wisconsin
River route to reach the " Moins " River, which was of less
importance In this trade than the St. Peter. The EngUsh had
Note, —The map on tho opposite page ia from Gnt\n-\e^ a Kew System of Geography mf^ "Map
of the United States agreeable to the Peace of 1783," London, 1785-92. It shows the supposed
islands of Lake Superior and the Grand Portage.

470 JAY'S TREATY.
made their chief depot of supplies at Mackinac, but now that the
treaty was to transfer this post, they were planning to maintain
their connection with the trans-Mississippi country from St.
Joseph's Island in the channel connecting Lakes Superior and
Huron. Thence to Montreal, their usual route had lain by the
old portage to the Ottawa from Lake Huron. Though the
portages in this course were numerous, their canoeists could
count more accurately on the time required in reaching Mon
treal by this course than by that of the lakes, since adverse
winds on these waters sometimes delayed their boats, and made
their arrival too late for sbljjment to England.
Under these circumstances, and knovring that the surrender
of the posts would strengthen the American jurisdiction over
the extreme limits of the Republic, Grenville had stubbornly
contended for a rectification of the bounds west of Lake Supe
rior, so that the Canadian traders could pass to upper Louisiana
over British territory. This question was mated with another,
namely, that of the British right to navigate the Mississippi, as
provided by the treaty of 1782, and complicated also by the
demands of Spain in the same direction.
The treaty of 1782 had drawn the northern boundary line of
the United States due west from the Lake of .the Woods along
the 49th parallel, till it struck the headwaters of the Missis
sippi. The sources of that river, it was now known, were
considerably south of that line, and therefore at no point did
British territory touch the Mississippi, upon which the treaty
gave her the right of navigation ; for while America and Spain
held the river at the north, the latter country possessed both
banks at its mouth. It was GrenviUe's claim that since the
treaty gave England a right upon the river, she was entitled to
a rectification of the boundary so as to assure that right. Jay
explained the grant of such a right on the river to have been
allowed by the United States because, at the date of the treaty,
it was supposed, as the secret article of the treaty indicated,
that England, in the general treaty, then soon to follow, would
secure, in the acquisition of west Florida, a boundary on the
river at the south. That accession of territory not taking
place, the Americans claimed that the right of navigating- the
river either lapsed, or. If it held, it must be considered as exist
ing without a boundary on the river.

THE TREATY MAPS.

471

Grenville insisted upon an opposite view, and, to get his de
sired boundary, proposed running a line from Lake Superior in
one of two ways, so that the upper waters of the river should
traverse British territory.
These alternative proposi
tions were, in the one in
stance, to run a due west
hne from West Bay, on
Lake Superior, to the east
ern branch of the Mississip
pi, as some of the British
maps had already drawn it ;
and, in the other, to run a
line from the mouth of the
St. Croix River, at the Mis
sissippi, due north till it
struck the boundary be
tween the Lake of the
Woods and Lake Superior.
Jay replied that he could
only consent to close the
gap between the source of
the Mississippi and latitude
49° by the most direct line.
The map which Grenville brought forward to Illustrate his
views was Faden's map of 1793. In this map the MissIssIiDpI
was drawn as known only to about a degree above the Falls of
St. Anthony. North of this point there were three branches, one
of which must probably be the true Mississippi. One of these
flowed from a marshy lake in 45°. A second flowed from
White Bear Lake near 46°. Each of these were marked " Mis
sissippi by conjecture." The third branch issued from Red
Lake in 47°, and was called " Lahontan's Mississippi." Jay
objected to the acceptance of any tentative geography, and pro
posed a survey to gain precise knowledge. He contended that,
as the American commissioners in 1782 had offered an alterna
tive of the 45° and 49°, and the latter had been accepted, the
decision must stand, and the Mississippi must either be shown
to cross that parallel, or must be connected -with it by the short
est hne.

POKD-S MAP.
[This map is reproduced from E. D. Neill's " In
accurate Knowledge of the Sources of the Missis
sippi at the Close of the Last Century," one of the
Manchester College Contributions, 3d series, No.
1. It is taken from Peter Pond's "Map of the
Hudson's Bay Country, 1785," in the State De
partment at Washington, and Neill calls it " the
first map after 1783 to show that the Mississippi
did not reach any point west of the Lake of the
Woods."]

472 JAY'S TREATY.
Jay persistently clung to his view, and Grenville yielded, con
senting to a survey from one degree below the FaUs of St.
Anthony northward, leaving the definite connecting line for
future consideration.
While the commissioners intending to make this survey were
preparing for their work, they learned that the belief amono-
the traders as to the upper waters of the Mississippi was of
this sort : Following the river up beyond the Falls of St. An
thony a hundred leagues, you reached Crow Wing River on the
left. Another hundred carried you to Sandy River on the
light, up which those wishing to reach Lake Superior usually
went. Still a hundred leagues more, and Leech Lake was
reached, which was held to be the true source of the Missis
sippi, and it was fifty leagues southeast of the Lake of the
Woods. These northwestern bounds, as described in the Que
bec Bill in 1774, and repeated in Carleton's commission In
1775, had been uncertain, in that a due north line from the
mouth of the Ohio was prescribed, without defining it as foUow
ing the curves of the Mississippi, till it reached the southern
bounds of the Hudson Bay Company.
How true, now, this trader's geography may have been was
soon to be decided by a survey, which the North West Company
ordered David Thompson to make, so as to determine how
many of their posts were south of 49°, and consequently in
American territory. In March, 1798, that surveyor started
west on the 49th parallel. He first found two of the company's
houses on the Red River south of that boundary. In AprU, he
reached a four-mile carry, by which he entered upon a river
which conducted him, thirty-two miles away, to Red Lake,
where the North West Company had temporary trading-posts, at
a spot found to be in 47° 58' 15". There he found a portage
of six miles, and, four days later, passing through a level coun
try spotted with ponds and luxuriant with wild rice, he entered
upon Turtle Lake, an expanse of water four miles square, but
having lateral bays, which gave its outline a resemblance to
that animal. This was then recognized as the source of the
Mississippi, and in 1782 it had been supposed to lie farther
north than the Lake of the Woods. This error has been ac
counted for by supposing that the fur traders, in ascending these
upper waters of the Mississippi, reckoned as a league (three

THE USE OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 473
miles) the time it took to smoke a pipe, while in reality only
two miles were passed over In that time. Thompson found the
north end of the lake to be in 47° 38' 20", or one hundred and
twenty-eight miles south of the point where the map-makers In
1782 had supposed it. There was another post of his company
on Red Cedar Lake near by. In May, Thompson passed down
the Mississippi, two hundred miles by the winding of the stream,
to Sand Lake River, up which he turned towards Lake Supe
rior, and in this neighborhood he found two other stations of
the North West Company.
Thompson's wanderings had shown how many posts must be
abandoned, as in American territory, and had also shown to the
satisfaction of the waiting commissioners that Turtle Lake, as
the source of the Mississippi, was something short of two de
grees south of the 49° boundary. The acceptance of Thom^J-
son's observations then, and the acquisition of Louisiana a few
years later, took from the extreme northwest line all Interna
tional importance.
Hamilton, iu May, 1794, had urged Jay to try to get England
to help in the matter of forcing Spain to open the lower Missis
sippi " by giving her a participation in that navigation ; but," he
added, " with negotiations going on with Spain it must be man
aged carefuUy." Jay did not forget Hamilton's injunctions, and
he conceded to England by the treaty her right to navigate the
Mississippi, as it had stood in that of 1782, with the additional
provision that all ports on the eastern side of the river, whether
belonging to one party or the other, should be open to British
traders in the same way that the seaboard ports were. While
some held that this concession to England was a shrewd one, to
gain her adhesion in treating with Spain for the opening of the
river, it was looked upon by others as affording the British an
opportunity of monopoUzing the trade of the river under the
cover of their gunboats.
This agreement of Jay and GrenvIUe as to the joint use of
the Mississippi gave great offense to Spain, and In her protests
she was supported by the P'rench Directory. Spain claimed
that the right of navigation which England acquired by the
treaty of Paris, in 1763, was surrendered when she gave up
west Florida to Spain in 1782, a position which both England
and the United States denied. " The Spaniards are feverish

474 JAY'S TREATY.
with respect to the Mississippi article," wrote Wolcott to Ham
ilton in July, 1795.
The treaty offered another point of attack to its opponents, iu
that there was no specific agreement on the part of Grenville
that English agents would in the future abstain from inciting
the Indians to hostilities. Jay's instructions had directed him
to require that, " in case of au Indian war, none but the usual
supplies in peace should be furnished " by the English to their
Indians and their allies. A contrary conduct had long been
the subject of complaint by the American government. " The
British government," the instructions further said, " having
denied their abetting of the Indians, we must of course acquit
them. But we have satisfactory proofs that British agents are
guilty of stirring up and assisting with arms and ammunition
the different tribes of Indians against us." To such com
plaints Grenville had given as emphatic a denial of complicity
on the part of the governinent as ever Hammond had done,
and he authorized Jay to assure the President that " no instruc
tions to stimulate or promote hostilities by the Indians have
been sent to the king's officers in Canada."
The negotiations for the giving up of the posts seem to have
gone on without impediment, except as to the date for the final
surrender. The victory of Wayne had, before the negotia
tions closed, rendered the question of a barrier territory nuga
tory. The actions of SImcoe, aimed at the accomplishment of
such a reservation, had of late increased in daring. At the
end of August, Washington had had occasion to bring a rash
deed of that British agent to the attention of Jay.
During the summer. Colonel Williamson, who, as trustee of
Sir William Pulteney, managed a large landed property in
New York, which had been bought of Robert Morris in April,
1792, on the borders of Lake Ontario, had begun a settlement
at Sodus Bay, forty miles west of Oswego. On August 16,
Lieutenant Sheaffe, sent by Simcoe's orders, had appeared in
the harbor and demanded the abandonment of the place. The
party, on retiring, is said to have carried off some flour, and
Note. — The opposite map of the Genessee country and the Niagara road is from Samuel Lewis's
'" State of New York," in Carey^s American Atlas, PhUadelphIa, 1795.

476 JAY'S TREATY.
Williamson made preparations to resist in case of further
demands. The ground assumed by Simcoe was that, while the negotia
tors In London were at work, the Americans should not have
advanced their occupancy. When Washington heard of Sim
coe's movement, he looked upon it as the first denial by the
British of American rights to their own territory beyond the
jurisdiction of the posts, and wrote to Jay that he considered it
" the most open and daring act of the British agents in Amer
ica." This served to bring Jay to this part of the negotiation
with more nerve, perhaps, than he assumed on any other point,
though his critics later blamed him for not pressing a claim of
indemnity for the twelve years of the posts' detention. Jay
doubtless saw the difficulty In this last particular, as Hamilton
did in defending him, for it would have inevitably opened the
question of the first infraction of the treaty of 1782, and in
duced a course of mutual crimination, a procedure surely to be
avoided if an amicable ending was to be reached. Jay had
stood for June 1, 1795, as the date of surrender ; but Gren
vIUe could not be brought to any nearer date than on or before
June 1, 1796. The interval was certainly not long. If the mer
chants were to be allowed time to close up their business and
withdraw their merchandise, widely scattered, and we have seen
what a number of stations the North West Company had
planted in the American territory. It was certainly not too
long a time if there was any justice in the claim, which the fac
tors at Montreal had always made, that five years were neces
sary to bring their business to an end. There were political
considerations, also, in giving the Indians an interval to get
familiar with the prospect of a change, as conducing to an easier
transfer when the time came.
The delay, however, afforded a text for other animadversions
of the opponents of the treaty. It was said that the Interval
was sufficient for England to get loose from continental compli
cations, and, these over, she would be in no better mood to give
the posts up than she was in 1783. The posts not being dis
tinctly named was another point of complaint, nor was there
any definite explanation of what territorial jurisdiction the posts
carried with them, and in case of further complications the
whole barrier question might again arise. But these were con-

WASHINGTON AND THE TREATY. ill
tingencies like any other likely to arise with treaties negotiated
in bad faith, and hardly to be guarded against. The grants
about Detroit, which the British had made. Jay had agreed to
recognize ; but he demanded and gained from Grenville the
absolute freedom for the Americans to occupy In the interim
any lands not clearly within the survey of the post, and that,
in effect, no such interference as that of Simcoe at Sodus Bay
should again happen. There was also a provision for allowing
resldents in and about the posts to transfer their allegiance
to the United States, if they desired to become. In this way,
American citizens. This did not escape cavil, and It was
pointed out that the Constitution provided for an " uniform
rule of naturalization."
The sections of the treaty, which have now been examined,
related closely to western interests and the possible application
of them in the near future. They were but part of the consid
erations now brought under the attention of Washington, while
he was determining his course of approval or disapproval. He
soon became the centre of observation. From all sides remon
strances and petitions to affect his decision came in upon him.
He told his friends that he had never before encountered so
trying a crisis, nor one in which there was " more to be appre
hended." While his decision was pending, Washington retired for an
interval of calm to Mount Vernon. Here he was followed by
the Insatiable correspondent. In a letter which he wrote at
Mount Vernon, he gives an index of his feelings, showing that
while there was that in the treaty to question, intemperate judg
ments found too much to criticise.
Meanwhile, In Boston, the merchants were fuming with pas
sion at the thought of such a treaty : but it was not long before
it became known that Gore and Cabot were making- headway
in producing a revulsion of sentiment. It was reported that
Jay had been hung in effigy i!n Philadelphia. In Virginia
there was almost a revolution, and there was talk of taking
the treaty-making power from the Senate and giving it to the
people. Leading Virginians were accountable for such incen
diarism. Monroe could speak of the pusillanimity of Jay.
Madison could assert that the " dearest interests of our com-

478 JAY'S TREATY.
merce and the most sacred dictates of national honor " had
been sacrificed to an English connection. Jefferson believed
that if the treaty became a law, it was a British triumph, and
it could be endured only by a people impressed by the personal
merits of the President. The legislature of Kentucky pro
nounced it unconstitutional. In South Carolina, Rutledge re
peated the wild clamor.
The fact was, that the way in which the treaty was regarded
had for the moment become the supreme test of party steadi
ness. The republicans gathered In opposition to it every ele
ment of dislike for England, and every faction of admirers of
the French. The debtor class, looking to relief in a war with
England, naturally swung to their side, and they gave a vio
lence, cohesion, and stubbornness to their cause in the South
which it did not have in the North.
Jefferson, in a letter to Ebeling of Gottingen, Intended to
affect that author's judgment In his intended book on the
United States, sought to show that the republicans were not
only the great mass of the people, and landholders and laborers
to a man, but that their aggregated wealth surpassed that of
the federalists. Thomas Cooper, a new sojourner in the coun
try, wrote to a friend in England: " The conduct of your court
has certainly given strength to the anti-federal party, among
whom may now be ranked the majority of the people and the
majority of the House of Representatives," and he probably
reflected the belief of ardent republicans.
Jefferson, as the leader of the opponents of the treaty, feared
more than anything else the ability and influence of Hamilton,
and urged Madison to enter the lists against him. Hamilton, as
the recognized champion of the treaty, made, perhaps, the most
effective of his appeals for the treaty under the name of " Ca
millus." Wherever his arguments found lodgment, the belief
grew and was strengthened that the rejecting- of the treaty
meant drifting into a war with England and a delay in set
tling the national account with Spain, srnce she was likely, in
that event, to seek an alliance with Great Britain. At a later
day, Hamilton spoke less temperatety, and not so publicly, when
he called the opposition " the mere ebuUition of Ignorance, of
prejudice, and of faction," and he might well have said so ofthe
aspersions of Callender, which, there was indeed much reason

THE TREATY APPROVED. 479
to beUeve, were prompted. If not by the soUcItation, at least by
the countenance of Jefferson and Madison. Indeed, the country
was in a bellicose mood, and there was little prospect of calmer
councUs. " The exasperation against England is great," said
Eochefoucault-LIancourt, who was looking on ; " it spreads
through all ranks in society. In my opinion. Jay's negotiation
wiU hardly be able to smother the glowing spark." William
Priest, another traveler, said, " A war with England at this
time would be very popular."
These were the burning feelings that prevailed when Wash
ington, on August 11, returned to Philadelphia, and three days
later discussed with his advisers the course to be taken. It
had, perhaps, become more difficult now to reach a prudent
determination than it had been at an earlier stage. There were
two developments that urged action in different directions.
One was an order of the British government to capture all neu
tral vessels carrying provisions to France. The other was the
British interception of a dispatch from Fauchet, which had been
transmitted to the American government. By this, which was
for a while kept from Randolph's knowledge, it looked as if
that secretary, who was the only one of the cabinet attached
to the French interests, had been making applications of at
least a questionable character to the French envoy for loans
to certain debtors to England, so as to affect their conduct.
It was the discovery of this seemingly treacherous conduct of
one of his advisers that largely influenced the President to
a prompt adhesion to the treaty. On August 14, the cabinet
advised him to approve the treaty, and on the 18th, Washing
ton signed it, and secured the counter-signature of Randolph,
as secretary of state, before the latter was confronted with the
evidence of his dealings with the French envoy. The signing
of the treaty and the exposure of Randolph were charged by
Jefferson, and have been assigned by later vindicators of Ran
dolph to an impulse of servility in the President's mind, as well
as to the strengthening of his prejudices by the intrigues of
Pickering and Wolcott, who were making the most of palpa
ble mdiscretions of Randolph. On August 26, instructions
"ffere sent to John Quincy Adams, then at the Hague, to pro
ceed to London and exchange ratifications, if the British would
accept — as they did — the Senate's amendment. He was to

\ \

480 JAY'S TREATY.
insist, also, on the withdrawal of the offensive provision order
but was not to push his objections to a degree that would en
danger the treaty. Everything went well, and on October 28
the ratifications were exchanged, and on February 29, 1796,
proclamation was made of the treaty's binding force.
Two days later, Washington notified Congress, and It was
left to the House of Representatives to make the necessary
appropriations of money to carry the treaty Into effect. The
President was congratulating himself that there had been a
great change in public sentiment in favor of the treaty during
the last two months, when suddenly an opposition on the part of
a faction in the House, threatening to become a majority, devel
oped itself, not altogether unexpectedly, however. It assumed
the ground that, as coordinate with the President and Senate in
making treaties, through its constitutional power to withhold
appropriations at its pleasure, the House had a right to block a
treaty by inaction when it disapproved its provisions. There
was clearly an occasion in this seeming conflict in the constitu
tion for a precedent, and the House seemed for a while likely to
establish one, to have the force of a judicial decision, if that were
possible. Jefferson had before this given his support to this
recalcitrant party. To bring the matter to an issue, the House
voted to request the President to transmit to it all the papers
relating to the treaty. The President, ad-dsing with his cabi
net, resolved to sustain his prerogative and refused the request.
While Washington had the vote of the House under considera
tion, Pickering, on March 25, as secretary of w^ar, and through
the military committee of the House, submitted a plan for pro
viding a force to occupy the posts equal to that of the British
garrisons then holding them, in order that the Indians might
not take any advantage of the transfer. The temper of the
House seemed likely to render any such provision unnecessary,
and before long it was known that Dorchester had ceased his
preparations for evacuating, pending the uncertain fate of the
treaty. The House accordingly became the centre of interest, and
here, at last, the question of peace or war was to be decided.
The friends of the treaty set seriously to work, and felt the bur
den which was upon them. They had a good deal to help them
in the obvious and close connection between Jay's treaty and that

FISHER AMES. 481
which had been made with Spain for the opening of the Mis
sissippi, later to be considered. The two treaties must stand
or fall together. This feeling began to show itself beyond
the mountains. Gallatin, whose connection with the whiskey
rebeUIon in western Pennsylvania had been equivocal, to say
the least, now, as representing the regenerated western spirit,
showed a moderation which did much to restore confidence and
place him in the forefront of his party. The great triumph,
however, was won by Fisher Ames, a Massachusetts federalist,
in a speech before the House on April 28, whose effect Is kept
alive even to-day among the grandchildren and great-grand
children of those who heard it, and witnessed its effect through
out the land. Rochefoucault-LIancourt, who saw the contem
porary influence of the speech, said : " It is, by men of his party
from one end of the continent to the other, extolled as a piece
of eloquence, which Demosthenes or Cicero would have found
it difficult to equal," in taking a " dexterous advantage " of the
attending circumstances.
When Ames took the floor, he felt with others that the oppo
nents of the treaty were sure to carry their measure by a major
ity of two or three certainly, and perhaps by one of four or five.
How he turned defeat into a victory, some extracts from his
speech will show, but they will of course lack his impassioned
voice, his finished elocution, and the tenderness which came of
his palpable feebleness, nerving itself to a duty, at the risk of
his life. It wUl be remembered that as an eastern man he had
been thought to share that indifference towards the west which
was often charged upon New England.
" Will it be whispered that the treaty has made me a new
champion for the protection of the frontiers ? It is known that
my voice, as well as my vote, has been uniformly given for the
ideas I have expressed. Protection Is the right of the frontiers ;
it is our duty to give it. . . . The western inhabitants are not
a silent and uncomplaining sacrifice. The voice of humanity
issues from the shades of the wilderness. It exclaims that while
one hand is held up to reject the treaty, the other grasps a
tomahawk. ... I retort especiaUy to the convictions of the
western gentlemen, whether, supposing no posts and no treaty,
the settlers will remain in security. . . . No, sir, it will not be
peace, but a sword ; it will be no better than a lure to draw

482 JAY'S TREATY.
victims within the reach of the tomahawk. ... If I could find
words for m}^ emotions, I would swell my voice to such a note
of remonstrance, it should reach every log house beyond the
mountains. . . . Wake from your false security. You are a
father, — the blood of your sons shall fatten your cornfields.
You are a mother, — the warwhoop shall waken the sleep of
the cradle."
" The refusal of the posts, inevitable if you reject the treaty,
is a measure too decisive In its nature to be neutral in its con
sequences. From great causes we are to look for great effects.
The price of western lands will fall. Settlers will not choose
their habitations on a field of battle. . . . Vast tracts of wild
lands will almost cease to be jyroperty. This loss will fall upon
a fund expressly devoted to sink the national debt."
" The treaty alarm is purely one addressed to the imagina
tion and prejudices. Objections that proceed upon error in
fact or calculation may be traced and exposed. But such as
are drawn from the imagination, or addressed to it, elude defini
tion and return to domineer over the mind. . . . On a question
of shame and honor, reason is sometimes useless and worse. I
feel the decision in my pulse ; if It throws no light upon the
brain, It kindles a fire at the heart."
Ames spoke in a committee of the whole, and the body at
once adjourned to avoid the immediate effect of the speech,
which seemed to be overwhelming, though the cool rehearsal of
some of its warmer passages fails of much effect now. Later,
after the feelings were quieted, the committee were a tie, but
the vote of the chairman sent it to the House, where, on April
30, the House gave the majority that Ames had despaired of
acquiring- In a vote of 51 to 49. The contest was over, and
early in May the appropriation bill became a law.
On May 10, 1796, McHenry, the secretary of war, sent
Captain Lewis to make arrangements with Dorchester for the
transfer of the posts, and on May 27 Wilkinson, now com
manding at Fort Greeneville, asked of the commander at De
troit the day when the American forces could enter that town.
At the end of May, orders were issued to the British com
mandants to evacuate the posts ; but Lewis, now in Quebec,
representing that the American troops were not yet ready for

THE POSTS EVACUATED. 483
the occupation, Dorchester agreed to wait their coming, and on
June 1 and 2 Issued orders accordingly. A few weeks later
(July 9), that governor, who had been so long an actor in
American history, embarked for England, and was succeeded
three days later by Lieutenant-General Robert Prescott.
The British had already reduced their garrisons to a guard.
On July 11, 1796, Fort Miami was handed over to Colonel
Hamtramck. On the same day. Captain Moses Porter entered
Detroit, and found it already evacuated. Some one had filled
the well at the fort with stones, and had done other damao-e.
Simon Girty is known to have stayed behind, after the British
had crossed the river, and just in time to avoid the Americans
he rushed his 'horse Into the stream, and swam to the other
side. Porter was so poorly supplied that, to maintain himself
till succored, he was obliged to borrow provisions from the
British beyond the river.
Oswego was left on the 15th. The American troops under
Captain James Bruff, bound for Niagara, were delayed on the
way, and when that fort was turned over, on August 11, nearly
all the British garrison had left. It was not till October that
Major Burbeck -with a party, sent from Detroit, reached Macki
nac, where a British officer and twenty men pulled down the
last English flag on American territory. Wayne, in June,
had been ordered to supervise the several surrenders. In No
vember, when all was done, and he could congratulate himself
on the natural sequel of the Fallen Timbers, he left Detroit for
Presqu'Isle. When he reached there, he was prostrate with an
agonizing attack of gout, and on December 15 he died at that
post ; and James Wilkinson — of all men — succeeded to his
commanding station.
The determination of the British government to surrender the
posts had struck deeply into the heart of Simcoe. We learn of
his " displeasure," of his vindictive plotting with the Indians,
and of his unbridled passion, "which overleaped all bounds
of prudence and decency," In the talks which Rochefoucault-
LIancourt reports having had with the governor, not long after,
when that traveler visited Canada. He disclosed to that visitor
his hopes of regaining some of the prestige which Jay's treaty
had taken from Canada by developing a profitable corn trade,
and by opening a route for the fur traders from Ontario to

484 JAY'S TREATY.
Lake Huron, avoiding that by Lake Erie, and diverting trade
from the United States. He was confident that the Genesee
County must pour out its produce to the sea by way of the St.
Lawrence. He looked forward to an inevitable war with the
Americans, and dreamed of a naval station at Chatham on the
Thames. Fortunately, his heated temper was cooled by a dash
of Dorchester's soberer sense.

CHAPTER XXII.
¦watne's treaty and the new north-west.
1794-1797.
We need now to look back. It seemed for a while in the
autumn of 1794 as if Wayne and his army might have to take
part in the unwelcome task of quelUng civil commotion in west
ern Pennsylvania. Had he been called to it, his work of paci
fication beyond the Ohio might have been seriously retarded.
The funding policy of Hamilton had necessitated legislation
to support it, and, in 1791, a tax had been imposed on whiskey.
Certain concessions quieted the opposition to such a tax, which
appeared in Virginia and North Carolina, but the population
of Pennsylvania beyond the mountains, centring about Pitts
burg, which had now begun rapidly to grow, were not to be
satisfied by anything short of an absolute exemption. Their
surplus grain, as GaUatin set forth for them in a manifesto, in
view of their remote situation, only became transportable at a
profit when it had passed the still ; and a tax which was laid on
them, and did not burden equally the seaboard, was an unjust
one. These views, as Fisher Ames said, " had tainted a vast
extent of country beside Pennsylvania."
An organized revolt began at Redstone on the Monongahela,
in July, 1791, when, at a conference of distillers, the populace
was excited, and officers sent to collect the tax were hustled
and seized. When this was known, the government found a
strong feeling developed elsewhere in support of law. "The
wild men of the back country," wrote Wolcott, " wUl not have
perseverance to oppose the steady, uniform pressure of law, and
must finaUy submit."
. This over-mountain population was a ragged one, and had
some passionate blood in it. Wolcott, referring to a prepon
derance of Irish and Scotch-Irish among them, said : " It is a
specimen of what we are to expect from European emigrants."

486 WAYNE'S TREATY AND THE NEW NORTHWEST.
We have not yet got over such feelings. The leaders, insti
gated by the rancorous language which they heard, and perhaps
somewhat alarmed at the determined support which the gov
ernment was receiving on the seaboard, sent agents to Ken
tucky to secure support. It was said that their emissaries were
dispatched to Canada for like purposes, and spies among them
reported that there were Englishmen among their leaders. They
were known to rob the mails in order to secure information.
They might reasonably expect that dispatches would be sent to
Wayne touching their actions, and warning him of possibilities.
In his cabinet Washington first experienced the disquietude of
Randolph and his lack of trust, when that member of it urged
him to inactivity. Hamilton, on the contrary, counseled prompt
and uncompromising force. During it all. Governor MifBin
was timid. In the summer of 1794, while the government was
anxiously waiting news from Wayne and Jay, disturbing reports
were continually coming from over the mountains. At inter
vals of seven weeks (August 7 and September 25), Washington
issued two proclamations, warning the rioters of the conse
quences of their folly. Meanwhile he was coUectIng militia
from Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. In
October, the President himself joined the camp at Carlisle,
and arrangements were made for entering the insurgent coun
try through the mountain passes. General CoUot, who a little
later went over the ground, with his French feelings in sym
pathy with any disturbance that could make America turn to
F'rance, criticised the indecision of the insurgent chiefs, in that
they neglected the opportunity of blocking the progress of the
federal army by preoccupation of the defiles. But time had
given a chance for passions to cool, and Washington, at the
head of the approaching troops, disturbed the equanimity of
the defiant hordes, and they sent a deputation to make terms.
The President was struck with their subdued bearing, and the
end came. Morgan was left for the winter with a body of two
thousand five hundred men to be ready for any revival of the
rebellious spirit, and Washington returned to his official duties
to be prepared for other trials in the spring, when Jay's treaty
darkened the atmosphere once more.
It is a curious commentary on the heated politics of the time,
when we find Fauchet believing, with how much of Randolph's

A TRUCE. 487
countenance we may never know, that the government had
Instigated the revolt to divert the attacks which were making
on it, and when Washington himself saw in the rebellion " the
first formidable fruit of the democratic societies, brousht forth
too prematurely for their own views, which may contribute to
the overthrow of them." Whatever the case, the timely sup
pression of the trouble left Wayne at Greeneville at liberty to
devote himself to the pacification which it was his mission to
accomplish. The opening of 1795 showed a disposition on the part of an
Increasing number of the northwest Indians to sue for peace ;
but in Philadelphia the hppe of a permanent settlement was
not so sanguine. Pickering felt, with many others, that the
disturbance in western Pennsylvania was rather quieted than
quelled, and that there was no certainty as yet in the outcome
of Jay's mission. Its failure meant war at no distant day. So
he urged the maintenance of strong advanced posts in the In
dian country, to be ready for any disastrous turn of affairs.
Later news from Wayne was more assuring. By February 11,
he had come to a preliminary agreement with the Shawnees,
Delawares, and Miamis, and on the 22d he issued a proclama
tion announcing a cessation of hostilities. Wayne, buoyed by
his satisfaction, neglected a duty in not communicating the fact
of such a proclamation to St. Clair, who was stiU the civil gov
ernor of the northwest. That official only heard of it near
the end of April, in a letter from Pickering, and he properly
made complaint to the President.
Although there was a truce, there was still uncertainty, and
further pacification was jeopardized by the incursions which
some Kentuckians made across the river, throwing the Indians
into a suspicious frame of mind. The less sanguine doubted if
more than half the great body of the Indians were weaned
from war, especially if they could be made to feel by the Eng
lish agents that they would be helped in further resistance.
The English, however, were themselves uneasy, and the French
in Detroit were exciting the apprehensions of Simcoe, and were
known to be urging the Indians to peace. Already their trad
ers were sending supplies to Wayne, and rumors of the comple
tion of a treaty in London, with the surrender of the posts

488 WAYNE'S TREATY AND THE NEW NORTHWEST.
assured, were raising in French circles an expectation of large
accessions to their numbers from France itself. In March
Simcoe had written to Portland that Wayne threatened to place
a garrison in Sandusky. This again added to Simcoe's alarm
as hazarding British supremacy on the lakes. Brant and
McKee were actively at work to counteract French influence
with the Indians ; and Brant was later to feel that nothing
could prevent Wayne concluding a peace. By June, Wayne
felt that the only impediment to a treaty was the continued in
cursions of the lawless Kentuckians, and appealed to St. Clair
to prevent them. Parties of red men had now begun to assem
ble round his camp, and he gave them his first talk on the 16th.
By the middle of July, the concourse was large enough for
formal proceedings. On the 20tb, he read to them the treaty
of Fort Harmar, and found that some of the remoter tribes had
never heard of it. Little Turtle made a declaration for the
Miamis about the territory which they claimed. He said that,
beginning at Detroit, their boundary line stretched to the head
of the Scioto, followed down that river and the Ohio to the
Wabash, and pursuing- this last stream, extended to the Chi
cago portage, — an area embracing the westerly half of Ohio,
nearly all of Indiana, and the lower Michigan peninsula.
Wayne, in reply, thought that other tribes than the Miamis
had rights in this territory, and said that the United States
were prepared to pay for such part of it as should be surren
dered by the treaty. We may now follow the daily progress
of the negotiation : —
July 23. At the end of the day Wayne gave them some
liquor, but warned them " to keep their heads clear to attend to
what I shaU say to-morrow."
July 24. Wayne told them that the " fifteen fires," as they
called the Union of States, had paid twice for land, once at
Fort Mcintosh ten years ago, and again at Fort Harmar six years
since. He also told them that he asked for certain reservations
for posts farther west than the main cession. He read Jay s
treaty to them, showing how the Americans were soon to take
possession of the lake posts. He told them they might rest to
morrow and have a double allowance of Hquor because the
hatchet was buried, and on the following day he would let them
know what he demanded for bounds.

THE TREATY MADE.

489

July 11. Wayne read his proposed treaty and enumerated
the remote reservations which he wanted, merely " to connect
the settlements and the people of the United States " by roads
which the Americans coidd travel. He described these distant
posts as not intended to annoy the Indians, but simply to fur
nish convenient trading places; and be explained that they

L 0 V

[Colonel Whittlesey's plan of the divisionary grants in Ohio, from the Westem Reserve His-
lorical Society's Tract, JS'o. 61 (1884).]
were aU in the main such areas as the Indians bad conveyed to
the French, who in turn, in 1763, had surrendered them to the
EngHsh, and by the English they were. In 1782, confirmed to
the United States.
My 28. There were numerous Indian comments upon
Wayne's propositions.
July 29. The Sandusky Indians presented a written memo-

490 WAYNE'S TREATY AND THE NEW NORTHWEST.
rial, asking that what was conceded to the Indians might be
granted in severalty to the different tribes. This was followed
by some uneasy harangues on the part of the Indians in discon
tent at Wayne's demand for the remote reservations.
July 30. Wayne declined the proposition of the Sandusky
tribe, and then addressed himself particularly to the Miamis,
who alone had objected to his main line, as interfering with
their hunting-grounds. Wayne firmly stood by his expressed
demand, and told them they could hunt where they pleased,
" as long as they demeaned themselves peaceably." After some
further explanations, he read the treaty again, and put the
question : " Do you approve these articles ? " AU answered
one by one, " Yes," — Ottawas, Pottawattamies, Wyandots,
Delawares, Shawnees, Miamis, Chippewas, Kickapoos, Weas,
and the Eel River tribe.
The conference now broke up " to eat, drink, and rejoice,"
and to reassemble when the necessary copies of the treaty were
engrossed. On August 3, the tribes again assembled. Wayne once more
read his commission, giving him power to treat with them, and
went over the treaty for the last time. He then handed a parch
ment copy to the Wyandots, to be kept for the whole, and a
paper copy to each tribe. The next day the presents were dis
tributed, — $20,000 worth of goods, with a promise of an annu
ity of 19,500. As a last word be told them they were children,
and no longer brothers.
The line which had been agreed upon, and which Ludlow
later marked, gave the whites some 25,000 square miles of ter
ritory east and south of it, and between it and the Ohio. It
began at a point on the latter river opposite the mouth of the
Kentucky, and ran northerly, so as to include a long gore at
the southeast corner of Indiana, to Fort Recovery. Here it
turned east and was extended to the upper Muskingum, whence
it followed the portage and the Cayahoga to Lake Erie. The
reservations west of this line were sixteen in number, and meas
ured each a few miles square. Those which were wrung from
the Indians with most difficulty were that at Fort Wayne and
that at the portage of the Maumee and Wabash near by. These
parcels of land were the beginning of cessions which half a
century later drove the Miamis beyond the Mississippi. A

THE INDIAN WAR AT AN END. 491
reservation at the mouth of the Chicago River was six miles
square, " where a fort formerly stood," probably a trading-post
of the French, and where now stands the city of Chicago, which
was begun the next year by a St. Domingo negro, Jean Bap
tiste Pont au Sable, who built a hut on the spot. The grant
which Virginia had made to George Rogers Clark, opposite
LouisviUe, was also reserved. Some of these detached cessions
were at later dates included in larger grants, made by other
treaties. The recognition by the United States of the Indian
property in the soil, even though practicaUy salable to the
States under something like compulsion, was perhaps some re
compense to the tribes for the English transfer to the Americans
of the right of preemption, by the treaty of 1783, without the
concurrence of the original owners ; but the Indians on their
part were now required to recognize this right as lodged in the
Americans only.
A distribution of commemorative medals was made on Au
gust 8, and on August 10, when the last conference was held,
it was found there were 1,130 Indians present. A band of
Cherokees settled on the upper waters of the Scioto had kept
aloof. When, however, Wayne sent them a summons, they
obeyed it, and promised to move back to their own country,
south of the Ohio.
Tidings of these events were dispatched to St. Clair, and at
Cincinnati, on August 25, 1795, he made proclamation that the
Indian war was over.
The only drawback to Wayne's content was the fear that the
turmoil in the House of Representatives over the treaty of Jay
might end in its practical rejection, and on September 15 he
wrote to Pickering that if the posts were not repossessed, as the
London treaty provided, it " would have a powerful effect upon
the Indian mind." Of the treaty which Wayne had effected,
Washington said that " the adjustment of the terms and the
satisfaction of the Indians were deemed an object no less of the
pohcy than of the liberality of the United States," — a proposi
tion, it must be observed, that McKee severely questioned, when
he insisted that Wayne had made provisions In articles that
were not commumcated to the Indians. The source of this
Note. —The map on the following pages is " A Map of the Northwestern Territory," in Jed
ediah Moore's The American Universal Geography, p. 573, Boston, June, 1796. "The dotted
squares are the reservations made by the Indians in 1795, and ceded to the United States."

VIPP S R

C^ IT j1

Oenivitet.

._J» 4o3s aaio ?
^ 11 BC

too  fSO

EMofit^

TiavAfadrut

494 WAYNE'S TREATY AND THE NEW NORTHWEST.

allegation diminishes its chances of truth.
There was one outcome of the treaty, in
which some reckless Americans joined, not
less discreditable than the action charged
by McKee, could this charge have been
proved. Certain Michigan tribes, known
to be aggrieved at the result, were cajoled
by some Canadian merchants to make for
a supposable half a million dollars the
transfer of some twenty million acres In the
lower Michigan peninsula. It was the part
of the American sharers in the plot, led
by one Robert Randall of Philadelphia, to
obtain Congressional sanction by bribing
members with the promise of a due propor
tion in the plunder. Randall's effrontery
and the testimony of William Smith of
South Carolina, who had been approached
late in 1795, led to his arrest, and for his
attempted bribery the speaker reprimanded
him, and the project dropped.
In December, 1795, Washington, on meet
ing Congress, advised them of the treaty as
securing " a durable tranquillity." It had
indeed put an end to forty years of warfare
in the valley of the Ohio, in which It had
been reckoned that 5,000 whites had been
either killed or captured. For three years
past, if Hamilton's figures can be taken,
these wars had cost a miUion a year.
What had been charged specifically to the
Indian department for five years had va
ried annually from $13,000 to $27,000. At
the conclusion of Wayne's treaty, the United
States had bound itself to pay to the Six
Nations, Chickasaws, Cherokees, Creeks,
and the northwestern tribes, an aggregate
yearly sum of $23,520, which attending charges would raise to
$30,000. These expenses were irritating to those who had not
experienced the evils of the frontier life ; but they bore a small

NORTHWEST TERRITORY.

495

[BiiB map is from Joseph Scott's United States Gazetteer, Philadelphia, 1795.]

proportion to the $7,000,000, which was now the annual expense
of maintaining the federal government. It was said that each
llOTE, — The map on the following pages is from Rufus Putnam's map of Ohio, and shows the
Weatern Eeserve and the reservations under Wayne's treaty.

498 WAYNE'S TREATY AND THE NEW NORTHWEST.
citizen paid towards this greater sum, per capita, but one fifth
of the burden imposed on every European subject.
It was not long before it became apparent that the tranquil
lity which Washington looked for was having its effect. The
reign of civil content may have been irksome to a few, who, as
one of them told Collot, sought the more distant West in order
to escape " the plague of justice and law ; " but it gave allure
ment to others, and the immigration Into the vaUey so increased
that, during 1795-96, the population of the northwest was
thought to have risen to about 15,000.
The first settlement of any extent which the voyager down
the Ohio found on the north bank was stUl that at Marietta.
Jedediah Morse, the preacher at Charlesto-wn, Massachusetts,
who at this time was finding sales for repeated editions of his
Gazetteer, speaks of the town's spacious streets, running at
right angles, and its thousand house-lots, each 100 by 90 feet.
Collot speaks of the surrounding landscape as " the most agree
able imaginable," with its stately trees, the tulip-tree and the
magnolia and the climbing honeysuckle. He says the popula
tion consists of five or six hundred New England families and
a few French who had straggled from GaUipoUs.
The same observer, going thence to this last-named " wretched
abode " of his countrymen, found 140 people there, the " wreck
of the Scioto Company." Congress, in some atonement of
others' wrong-doing, had made them a grant of seven acres to
each family ; but the land was so bad and unhealthy that Collot
says it did not support them. To make further amends, in
1796 Congress added 250 acres more to each famUy, and located
the grants near the Little Scioto.
In the country bordering on the Miami River, Cincinnati had
grown to have 300 families, and, beside its log cabins, there were
some fifteen frame houses. Collot thought the future of New
port, the hamlet across the river, was 'better assured than that
of Cincinnati. Symmes had collected some families at the
North Bend, and parties had gone up the Great Miami fifty
miles, and settled Dayton. In all his disquietudes, St. Clair
bad found nothing- so perplexing as the issuing by the land
companies of divers warrants covering the same territory, and
he charged the doings principally upon the irregularities of
Symmes and Putnam, as managers of their speculative associa-

[A sectiou of a

THE GENESEE COUNTRY.

Map of the '''''"'^^':;^;f^:'^^'J^^^^Jl'e Genesee Country. It gives the road to that country ; a proposed road farther south from Catskill
to J.ake Brie , Moms s Purchase ; the mterlacmg of the waters of the Susquehanna and Lake Ontario.]

500 WAYNE'S TREATY AND THE NEW NORTHWEST.
tion. It was a further disturbance of his sense of justice that
having been the occasion of these disputes, " these gentlemen
are allowed to sit in judgment upon them " in their courts.
Upon the quieting of the country by the treaty of Greene
ville, the Scotch-Irish from the Pennsyl'v'ania counties along the
New York line and from the west ranges had come into the
valley in large numbers. A colony of Swiss settled at the mouth
of the Great Scioto. Associates from Kentucky and Virginia
had gone farther up that river. One Farley, a Presbyterian
minister from Bourbon County in Kentucky, had gone in 1795
up the stream with a party, and had a brush with some wander
ing Shawnees and Senecas, whom Wayne had not succeeded
in drawing to Greeneville. Farley, finding the country to his
liking, returned in 1796, and on April 1 built the first cabin
at Chillicothe.
Wayne's treaty line had thrown all east of the Cayahoga into
the hands of the whites for settlement. This opened the east
erly part of that northern section of the State of Ohio claimed
by Connecticut, and known as the Western Reserve. West of
the Cayahoga line, Connecticut, as early as November, 1792,
had set aside a large tract, known as the Firelands, to be devoted
in due time to recompense the 1,870 claimants who had suf
fered from the British raids in Connecticut during the Revolu
tion. Wayne's treaty, by throwing this tract into the Indian
reservation, had put off the occupation of it.
A year later, Connecticut tried to sell the remaining parts of
this property, but purchasers were not found tiU after Wayne's
treaty had been made, when, in September, 1795, a number of
Connecticut people, associating themselves, but without legal
incorporation, as the Connecticut Land Company, bought the
entire area, paying for It by a return mortgage for $1,200,000,
— a sum the basis of the school fund in that State to-day.
The principal agent In the enterprise was Oliver Phelps, who
eight years before had been engaged with Gorham in a similar
speculation In Genesee lands, — selling them to Robert Morris
in 1790, and Morris represented $168,000 of this new invest
ment. Six townships five miles square were at once sold to pay
the cost of surveying, which was begun the same year. This
plotting of townships was a departure from the plan of sis miles
square, which had already been established in the contiguous

THE MOHAWK AND WOOD CREEK ROUTE.

[Section of a " Carte des Troubles del'Am<;rique," based on Sauthier and Ratzer, published at Paris by Le Rouge, 1778, showing the Mohawk, Wood Creek and Lake
Oneida i-oute to Oswego and Lake Ontario. It shows the position of Fort Stanwix on the Portage. The streams running south from near Springfield'are the souses of the
eastern branch of the Susquehanna. The residence of Sir William Johnson near Johnstown is also shown.] e s m" tue sources ol the

502 WAYNE'S TREATY AND THE NEW NORTHWEST.
Seven Ranges, and which became the rule. The proprietors are
stated in some accounts to have been 35, and in others 48 in
number, representing in the aggregate 400 shares at $3,000 each.
Each member of the company drew his proportion by lot and
held in severalty. The survey, when completed, showed less
than 3,000,000 acres, when earlier, depending on an imperfect
knowledge of the shore line of the lake, they had supposed they
were bargaining for a third more, so that what they reckoned
as costing 30 cents an acre was really purchased at 40 cents.
The question of jurisdiction was stUl In abeyance. It was
for a while uncertain if the company could not in due time make
their territory a State of the Union. Congress took the matter
under consideration in January, 1796, but suspended action to
1798, the region In the mean while being included by St. Clair
in the counties laid out to the south of it. Movements now
proceeded which were ended in 1800 by the United States
giving a title of the territory to Connecticut, reserving the juris
diction, and that State transferred the title to the company.
A party of fifty pioneers, representing the company, left
Connecticut in May, 1796. Their leader was Moses Cleave-
land, a militia general of good repute, who was black enough
in visage and sturdy enough in figure to seem of a different
stock from his Yankee followers. He led them by way of
Fort Stanwix and Wood Creek to Lake Ontario, and avoided
the fort at Oswego, still held by the British. Reaching Buffalo,
the party bargained with Brant and Red Jacket for the Indian
title to the land beyond for $2,500 In merchandise. On July
4, they were at Conneaut Creek, which, in recognition of the
day, they named Port Independence, and made merry " with
se-feral pails of grog." From this point they sent out surveyors
to determine the 41° of latitude, their southern line, and to
establish the meridian which was the western bound of Penn
sylvania, from which their township ranges were to count.
Next, passing on by the lake, the party kept on the lookout for
the mouth of the Cayahoga, on the eastern side of which, and
within Wayne's treaty limits, they were Intending to found a
town. One day they discovered a sharp opening into the land,
with a sand-bar and spreading- water beyond. They passed the
obstruction and, rowing along some marshes, found a spot where
the Indians had evidently been accustomed to beach their canoes,

THE OHIO ROUTE.

503

[This is a section of a " New and Correct Map of the Provinces of New York, New England
and Canada," in The American Gazetteer, vol. ii., London, 1762. It shows the route from the Ohio
tlirough Cayahoga [Canahogue] to Sandusky, thence by water to Detroit [Fort Pontchartrain].
The curved dotted line, crossing Lake Erie, is the western boundary of Pennsylvania, as claimed
and nmning parallel to the course of the Delaware, its eastern boundary.]
beneath a sandbank eight feet high. Ascending this declivity,
they found a plain, more or less wooded, stretching away inland
for two or three miles, to what had been, in geologic times, the

504 WAYNE'S TREATY AND THE NEW NORTHWEST.
shelving edge of the lake. There had been in the neighbor
hood at some earlier day a few temporary huts, erected by white
travelers, for the spot had formed one of the stations In the
route between Pittsburg and Detroit. It was now, as was reck
oned, the twelfth township, counting from the Pennsylvania
line, and in the seventh range above the 41°, — the site of the
future Cleveland. Here, about the 1st of October, 1796, the
new settlement took shape under the surveyor's stakes, with
homestead lots on the lake, ten-acre lots farther back, and farms
of a hundred acres still more distant, — the latter on the line
in part of what is now the world-famous Euclid Avenue. The
town grew slowly, for the sand-blocked river had proved mala
rious, and we may mark the stages of future development in the
abandonment, in 1805, of the other bank of the river by the
Indians, and the opening of the Ohio Canal in 1827.
There is little doubt that the delay in determining the ques
tion of jurisdiction had much to do with discouraging settle
ment. While the matter was still pending, Winthrop Sar
gent, who supposed that St. Clair was absent, and that he was
acting-governor, had, in August, 1796, set uj) Wayne County,
to include that portion of the Reserve west of the Cayahoga,
together with the Michigan peninsula, but the right to federal
supervision was denied. Again, In July, 1797, St. Clair him
self included the eastern section in Jefferson County, with
similar protests from the occupants to such an assumption of
territorial jurisdiction. The title of the United States was
assured, as we have seen, in 1800.
The report which Hamilton had made on July 20, 1790, on
a plan for disposing of the western lands, was little considered
at the time, but now that the treaty of Greeneville had quieted
the west, it was again brought up In Congress. There was at
first some contention upon the provisions of the new bill, and, as
one of the members of Congress wrote, its fate depended on the
reconciling " crude schemes and local views." By the exertions
of Gallatin and others, an act was finally passed, on May 18,
1796, providing for the surveying of townships six miles square,
and the selling of lands in sections. It was largely based on
the act of 1785. Plamllton had ad-vised putting the price at
a dollar an acre ; but the act put the price at two doUars, and

SALES OF PUBLIC LANDS.

505

sought to make some recompense to poorer people by allowino-
a system of credit. The sales, however, were small, and within
a year less than $5,000 was received Into the public treasury,

.ACff.lMRRJTOJt Y

#1

Z»». Wfiom TKOtuK ,

[The annexed map is from Joseph Scott's United States Gazetteer, Philadelphia, 1795, — the
earliest of such books.]
and for forty years the expenses of maintaining the system
exceeded the returns. The same act of 1796 created the office
of Surveyor-General, and the appointment fell. In October, to
Rufus Putnam. There had been a tract set aside for paying
the bounties for military service in the Revolution. This lay
between the Scioto and the Seven Ranges, south of Wayne's

506 WAYNE'S TREATY AND THE NEW NORTHWEST.
treaty line and north of a line running in about the latitude
of the city of Columbus. This was one of the regions now
surveyed. The preparing of these western lands for sale and settle
ment had kept alive the project of connecting the coast with the
Ohio valley, which, under Washington's influence, had taken
their earlier shape in the years following the close of the Revo
lutionary War. Rufus King wrote to Gouverneur Morris, in
September, 1792 : " You hear of companies formed and forming
in all the States for the improvement of our Inland navigation,
and thus the most distant lands wiU become almost as valuable
as those nearest to our markets." Hamilton said. In 1795, that
" to maintain connection between the Atlantic and the western
country is the knotty point in our affairs, as weU as a primary
object of our policy."
For some years, a project of connecting the Hudson and the
lakes had been the subject of discussion, and had elicited sundry
pamphlets. In March, 1792, a canal company had been Incor
porated with this in view. The retention of the posts had kept
the project In abeyance, and when Cleaveland, in 1795, had
taken the route by Fort Stanwix to reach Ontario, he had fol
lowed what promised, it was then thought, to be the course of
such a connection. The route this way was from New York by
boat to Albany, by road to Schenectady, by boat to Utica and
Oswego (except the portage at Fort Stanwix) ; then three days
on Lake Ontario, a portage at Niagara, two days on Lake Erie
to Presqu'Isle, portage to Le Boeuf, and the boat to Pittsburg.
The distance thus computed was eight hundred and ninety-one
miles, and more than twenty-two days were taken ; while land
carriage from Philadelphia, three hundred miles, took eighteen
or twenty days ; but a hundredweight of merchandise could be
carried a little cheaper from New York. The Hudson route,
however, had the disadvantage of being somewhat obstructed
from July to October, when the streams were low.
Nearly all the travel so far, however, had been by the over-
mountain route from Philadelphia and Baltimore. It took
forty days, sometimes increased to sixty days, for a wagon to
go from either of these places to Pittsburg and return. Pitts
burg was now a town of about one hundred and fifty houses,
brick and wood, and after Wayne's treaty had opened the way

HECKEWELDER'S MAP.

507

[The above map is from a MS. map by Heckewelder (1796), reproduced in the We.^lern Eeserve
Bislorical Society's Tract, Xo. U4 (1884). It shows the region north of Pittsburg and the paths.]
to an increased population down the Ohio valley, it began to
lose the characteristics of a frontier town, as the edge of the
wilderness was pushed forward.
The only turnpike In the country was a macadam road that
left Philadelphia and extended to Lancaster, a distance of sixty-
six miles, and once a week a stage passed over this and on to
Harrisburg on the Susquehanna, as the main route in Pennsyl-

508 WAYNE'S TREATY AND THE NEW NORTHWEST.
vania to the mountain passes. While the distance from Phila
delphia to Pittsburg in an air line was two hundred and seventy
miles, the road extended it to three hundred and fourteen.
For some years the route west by the Potomac had been
Improved by progressive canalizing of that river. The land
carriage from Fort Cumberland, which had been for some time
about fifty miles, on to Redstone, was likely soon to be reduced
to twenty miles. Further up the Potomac, from the mouth of
Savage River, there was a trail to Cheat River, which people
talked of reducing to seventeen miles. "Produce from the
Ohio," said Wansey, an English traveler at this time, " can be
sent cheaper to Alexandria than English goods can be delivered
in London from Northampton." The fur dealers said that
Alexandria was four hundred miles nearer the Indian wilds
than any other shipping port on the Atlantic. The route from
Baltimore to the Ohio was increased from two hundred and
twenty-four miles as the bird flies to two hundred and seventy-
five by the course followed. In 1796, Collot made some com
putations of the cost of carrying European products up the
Mississippi as compared with the Potomac and other over-
mountain routes. He found that it cost 36 per cent, more in
charges and thirty-five days more in time by the land route to
the middle west ; and if St. Louis was the objective port,
the excess was 43 per cent. In cost. From New Orleans to the
mouth of the Ohio was one thousand two hundred miles, and
boats carrying- twenty-five tons and managed by twenty men
consumed ninety days in the round trip. It required ten days
more, if St. Louis was the goal. Putting it another way, Collot
says that goods can be conveyed from Philadelphia to Kentucky
at a cost of 33 per cent, on the value of the goods, and from
New Orleans to Illinois at a charge of only 4 to 4|^ per cent.
On the Ohio there was an almost incessant procession of flat-
boats passing down with merchandise. In 1796, a thousand
such craft passed Marietta. Every month a passenger boat
left Pittsburg for Cincinnati. Its cabins were bullet proof, and
six single-pounder guns were trailed over its gunwales.
In 1794, while Pickering was acting as Postmaster-General,
Rufus Putnam arranged with him for a regular mail service on
the Ohio. The post-bags were carried by horsemen every
Note. — Tlie opposite map of routes west from Alexandria and Lancaster (Philadelphia) is from
a map in La Rochefoucault-Liancourt's Travels, London, 1799.

510 WAYNE'S TREATY AND THE NEW NORTHWEST
fortnight, from Pittsburg to Wheeling, which was now a town
of twelve or fifteen frame and log houses, protected by a smaU
stockaded fort. Here the mail was transferred to a boat, and,
after stopping at Marietta and GaUipoUs, the craft passed on
to Limestone. This river port, which had long been used, was
a hamlet built on a high and uneven bank at the foot of a con
siderable hill. Its harbor was the mouth of a smaU creek,
where a few Kentucky boats were usuaUy lying, and were occa
sionally broken wp to furnish the plank for more houses. From
Limestone the pouches were carried inland to the Kentucky
settlements. In 1797, an overland route to Limestone was
opened from Wheeling by Ebenezer Zane, In payment for six
hundred and forty acres of land which Congress had granted
him north of the Ohio.
The mail boat, which was a vessel twenty-four feet long,
manned by a steersman and four oarsmen, next passed on to
Cincinnati. These boats, like the passenger ones, were armed
against Indian attacks, but there was little or no interruption
by savage marauders after 1794. It took six days to run from
Wheeling to Cincinnati, being an average of sixty miles a day ;
twice as much time was consumed In returning.
The western country was at this time entered at three dif
ferent points, for the Niagara route had hardly become a
commercial one, and since Pickering pacified the Six Nations
at Canandaigua, In November, 1794, there had been obstacles
to its occupancy. These three portals were the sources respec
tively of the Ohio (Alleghany and Monongahela), Kanawha,
and Tennessee. The routes converging upon these springs
were seven in number. Two of them united at Pittsburg.
One of these, starting from Philadelphia, struck by different
portages the Alleghany River, which was a stream clearer and
a little more rapid than the Monongahela, and Its current In
creased from two and a -half miles an hour to four or five,
according to the state of the water. The other route, which
ended at Pittsburg, left Baltimore or Alexandria and passed
from the Potomac to the Monongahela. It was an attractive
route. The river had firm banks, and was topped with a variety
of trees, — buttonwood, hickory, oak, walnut, sugar-maple, and
beech, — all growing to large sizes for their kind. Wherever

THE WESTERN ROUTES.

511

the hiUs fell back from the stream, it was fringed by fertile
bottoms. From Fort Cumberland by wagon to Brownsville
was eighty miles, and the carrying distance was much less by

PITTSBURG AND WHEELING.
[From a "General Map of the Course of the Ohio from its Source to its Junction with the Mis
sissippi," in CoUot's Atlas.'i
portages to the branches of the Monongahela. Rochefoucault-
LIancourt says : " Being situated nearer the rivers Youghio-
geny and Mocongahel [Monongahela], Baltimore possesses^ a
part of the trade of the back country, if Pennsylvania suppUes
most of the stores."
The other routes from Virginia were to the head of Green-

512 WAYNE'S TREATY AND THE NEW NORTHWEST.
brier River and so down the Kanawha to the Ohio ; and
through Cumberland Gap, by the Wilderness Road,.as Boone
tracked It in 1775, using so much skill in avoiding the water
courses that the modern engineers have put the railroad over
much the same course. In 1795, the Virginia Assembly passed
" an act opening a wagon road to Cumberland Gap," appropri
ating ,£2,000 to construct a way suitable for wagons carrying
loads of one ton ; and in the summer of 1795, large trains of
emigrants were passing this way.
The Virginia road to Knoxville passed the same way, without
turning to the right at the Holston settlements as the Kentucky
way did, and so went on to Nashville. This road was joined
by another from North Carolina ; and at the French Broad
River, It was united with still another road from South Caro
lina. The Georgia road left Augusta and fell into this route
from South Carolina.
The application of artificial power to the propulsion of boats
was still a constant dream. Morse, in his Gazetteer, thought it
probable that " steamboats would be found of infinite service
In all our extensive river navigation." In 1792, Earl Stanhope,
in England, had contrived a duck's foot paddle, shutting with
the forward motion and opening with the return, and he had
driven it by steam. In the autumn of the same year, Ormsbee
at Providence, in Rhode Island, moved a boat three or four
miles an hour on the same principle, caUing the motors goose
feet. Robert Fulton sought to substitute the simpler dipping
paddle. Two years later (1794), Samuel Morey, a New Hamp
shire man, who had been experimenting since 1790, moved a
boat with a stern wheel five miles an hour, from Hartford to
New York, and in June, 1797, he propelled a side-wheel boat
on the Delaware. Fitch, the earlier mover in this problem, who
had gone, as we have seen, to England, had now returned to
America, a believer in the screw propeller. Its principle had
first been proposed by the mathematician Daniel Bernoulli in
1752, and it Is described by David Bushnell in a letter to Jeffer
son in 1787, showing how a submarine boat worked by a screw
had been earlier used by him In an attempt to blow up a Brit-
NoTE. — The opposite map from Morse's Universal Geography, Boston, 1793, shows the concep
tion then prevailing of the interlocking waters of the Chesapeake, Lake Ontario, and the Ohio.

514 WAYNE'S TREATY AND THE NEW NORTHWEST.
Ish fifty-gun ship in New York harbor. This side of the steam
navigation problem bad already engaged the attention of Watt,
Franklin, Pancton, and others. In 1796, Fitch tried a screw
propeller in a yawl, on a fresh-water pond in New York city,
near where Canal Street now is. Moving to Kentucky, we
find him still experimenting with a model boat, three feet long,
on a creek near Bardstown. Here he died in 1799, and he is
buried by the scene of his last efforts, near the banks of the
Ohio. In 1798, Stevens was engaged, with the sympathy of
Chancellor Livingston, Nicholas T. Roosevelt, and Isambard
Brunei (the last an exiled French royalist and later famous
in engineering work). In experimenting on steam propulsion on
the Passaic River. He used a boat of thirty tons, and drew
water from the bottom of the boat and expeUed it astern. In
this, and in the use of elliptical paddles, his efforts failed of
success. So the century went out, with the dream of Cutler
and Morse still unfulfilled.

CHAPTER XXIII.
THE UNREST OF THE SOUTHWEST.
1791-1794.
The year 1791 was one of hesitancy in the southwest. Con
gress, in February, had admitted Kentucky to the Union, but
her actual entrance was set for June of the next year. Ver
mont was almost immediately received, to adjust the balance of
North and South.
Zachary Cox had, in 1785, begun a settlement at the Muscle
Shoals of the Tennessee River (in northern Alabama), and early
in 1791, Sevier and others of the ejected Frankllnltes, under
the authority of the Tennessee Company, made ready to occupy
the country just south of the shoals, where Georgia, December
21, 1789, had made that body a grant of 3,500,000 acres. Ru
mors of their purpose stirred the Cherokees, and there was
danger of a general Indian outbreak. Knox early protested
against the daring independence of the Tennesseeans, and the
President warned them of the risks they ran. He told them
that the federal government could not and would not protect
them against the angry Indians. Nevertheless, the company
advertised for settlers. The President now appealed to the
Attorney-General to devise some remedy against such flagrant
acts, for every new irritation of the southwestern tribes was
sure to extend to their Spanish neighbors, with whom the gov
ernment was still trying to settle the momentous question of the
Mississippi. The convention of Nootka had reUeved Spain of immediate
apprehension of a war with England, and Miro was getting
tired of the unproductive Kentucky intrigue. The federal gov
ernment was loath to stir the slumbering embers. While it
had no purpose to press the vexed question to a rupture, it was
hut too conscious how any moment might awake the Spanish
passions. In March, 1791, Jefferson wrote to Carmichael at

616 THE UNREST OF THE SOUTHWEST.
Madrid that at any time such an " accident," as the seizure of
American boats on the Mississippi, might " put further parley
beyond our power." He at the same time thought to calm the
Kentucky discontent by writing to Innes that the government
only awaited an opportunity to bring the Spanish negotiations
to a point. " I can assure you of the most determined zeal of
our chief magistrate," he said. " The nail will be driven as
far as it will go peaceably, and further, the moment that circum
stances become favorable." On May 30, 1791, Innes wrote
back to Jefferson that such assurances " have in a great meas
ure silenced our complaints."
It was at the same time a question how far France could be
depended upon to exert her influence on the Spanish ministers.
Lafayette had assured Washington (June 6) that " France
will do everything in her power to bring Spain to reason, but
will have a difficult and probably unsuccessful task." Events
in France, however, were moving too rapidly.
On July 2, 1791, Governor Blount, who had already been
authorized (August 11, 1790) to act, met the Cherokee chiefs
on the Holston at White's Fort. Over five hundred families
had of late years settled on lands guaranteed to the Cherokees
by the treaty of Hopewell, and the purpose of the new treaty,
which Blount hoped to make, was to bring these families within
the jurisdiction of the whites. There was the usual dilatory
diplomacy before the Indians finally consented to place them
selves under the protection of the United States. They agreed
to allow the whites free use of the road across their territory to
the more distant settlements, and promised that travelers upon
it should not be molested, and that no harm should come to
any one navigating the Tennessee. By the bounds that were
determined along a winding and disjointed line, which was the
source of later trouble, and which EUicott was ordered to trace,
the Cherokees abandoned much of the land which the whites
had usurped. The treaty, in fact, confirmed the whites in the
possession of all the Tennessee country, except a tract lying
between the Holston and the Cumberland, and other regions
lying either In the southeast or towards the Mississippi. In
Note. — The opposite " Map of the Tennassee government by Genl. D. Smith and others," ia
in Carey's American Atlas, Philadelphia, 1795. It shows the road connecting Knoxville going
west with Nashville and going east with the Holston settlements. The Kentucky road ia tlie
dotted line which crosses the Clinch River going north.

518 THE UNREST OF THE SOUTHWEST.
the autumn Congress ratified the treaty. Spanish intrigues
aimed to unite the southwestern tribes as a barrier against the
Americans, prevented a like acceptance on the part of all the
sections of the Cherokee tribes, and the more westem settle
ments soon, as we shall see, suffered from savage marauders.
On the spot where Blount had made the treaty he very soon
laid out a town for his capital, and bearing in remembrance the
secretary of war, it was named KnoxvIUe. It was surveyed
in sixty-four lots, priced at $800 each. In the autumn, the
Knoxville Gazette was started (November 6), which did good
service, at a little later day, in cherishing loyalty and keeping
the Tennessee settlers proof against the Jacobin fever.
Of the conditions at this time along the Mississippi and In
Florida, we fortunately have the impressions of an intelligent
traveler, John Pope, who, in 1791, recorded his observations,
as he descended the river in a boat whose crew — to show the
diversity of life on the river — was made up of " one Irishman, ,
one Anspacher, one Kentuckian, one person born at sea, one
Virginian, and one Welchman."
At New Madrid the Spanish commander complained that the
governor at New Orleans did not sufficiently support him ; and
to Pope his " excellent train of artillery " appeared to be the
chief defense which he had. It was doubtful if, at this time, the
entire Spanish force between the Gulf and St. Louis, and at a
post on the Missouri, numbered more than two or three thou
sand men. As he drew near Natchez, Pope found the country
" pretty thickly Inhabited hj Virginians, Carolinians, Geor
gians, and some few stragglers from the Eastern States." On
the Bayou Pierre, an inlet from the river, thirty miles In length
and twenty wide, he found a population " composed generally
of people who have moved and still continue to move in elevated
stations." He describes Natchez as having about a hundred
houses. The fort commands the river a mile up and two miles
down, but on its " back part It is pregnable to a dozen men.
Going on board the barge of Gayoso, the governor of the town,
he was regaled " with delicious wines." He speaks of Gayoso's
" majestic deportment, softened by manners the most engaging
and polite." Below Natchez he saw the " seat " of Mr. Ellis, a
Virginian, near which lay three large tobacco-boats unlaunched.
After this, " sUght, airy, whitewashed buildings become more

MCGILLIVRAY. 619
common on the eastern side, and are In general occupied by
people from the United States." Then came " country seats,"
"beauteous farms, and elegant buildings."
At New Orleans, now a town of less than six thousand in
habitants. Pope found that private adventurers from New York,
Philadelphia, and Baltimore were carrying on a tolerable trade,
and could underseU the natives, while making a hundred per
cent, profit. Passing on to Pensacola, he says : " The upper
and lower Creek nation trade at this place, where they are uni
formly imposed upon by a Mr. Panton,. who has monopolized
their trade. The poor Indians barter their deer skins at four
teen pence sterling- per pound for salt at nine shillings sterling
per bushel. Panton is jDart owner of the salt works on the
island of Providence, and has brought the salt to Pensacola In
his own bottoms at the average expense of about three pence
per bushel. I think his goods at Mobile, Pensacola, and St.
'Marks are usually vended at about five hundred per cent, on
their prime cost."
From Pensacola, Pope, in the early summer of 1791, went
inland to visit McGIUivray, at his house on the Cousee Rlver^
five miles above its junction with the Tallapoosa, where together
they form the Alabama. This half-breed chieftain had an upper
plantation, six miles higher up the stream. Here the traveler
found him superintending- the erection of a log house with dor
mer windows, on the spot where McGIUIvray's father, a Scotch
trader, had lived amid his apple-trees, which were still stand
ing. Pope describes this tall, spare, erect man, with his large
dark eyes, sunk beneath overhanging brows, as showing signs
of " a dissipation which marked his juvenile days and sapped
a constitution originally delicate and feeble. He possesses an
atticism of diction, aided by a liberal education, a great fund
of wit and humor, meliorated by a perfect good nature and polite
ness." Pope describes his host's table as affording a generous
diet, with wines and other ardent spirits. He possessed, as
other visitors showed, some fifty or sixty negro slaves, three
hundred cattle, and a large stock of horses and lesser animals.
McGillivray always protested that he did all he could to
make his tribesmen carry out the treaty which he had made in
New York, but that he failed by the intrigues of the Spaniards
among his countrymen. " This perpetual dictator," as Pope

620 THE UNREST OF THE SOUTHWEST.
caUs him, " who in time of war sub-delegates a number of chief
tains for the direction of all military operations," soon passes
out of our story, for, to anticipate a little, he contracted a fever
at Mobile, where he was consulting with these same intriguing
Spanish, and died at Pensacola, on February 17, 1793, and
was buried in the garden of that William Panton who, with
McGIUIvray's own connivance, had unmercifully bled his fel
low-tribesmen. The year (1791) closed with a change In the control at New
Orleans. Miro had left, and on December 30 he was succeeded
by Carondelet, who had been transferred from the governorship
of San Salvador, in Guatemala. It was not long before the inev
itable and irrepressible intrigue of the Spanish nature began to
show itself in the influence which Carondelet exerted on those
of the Cherokees who were discontented with the recent treaty.
Reports were coming to Blount of intended inroads upon the
Cumberland settlements, and he cautioned Robertson to be on
his guard, and to prevent any provocations on the part of the
whites. The federal government, meanwhile, tried, by increas
ing their subsidy from $1,000 to $1,500, to appease the recal
citrant Cherokees by a supplementary treaty at Philadelphia
in February, whither an Indian delegation had gone. The sav
ages were well received by Knox, and the President wrote to the
governor of South Carolina, where there had been some dis
content manifested at the enforced moderation of the federal
government, that he looked for good results among the other
southern Indians from this conciliatory reception of the Chero
kees. It was deemed in Philadelphia a fortunate occurrence
that these southern tribesmen were so acceptably engaged In
that city when news of St. Clair's defeat was received there, for
otherwise the ill tilings might have aroused the Indians along
the southern border. Although the Cherokees had returned in
a friendly mood, and Blount had been led to hope for peace,
there was still small confidence in the Cumberland region that
the amicable humor of the Indians would last long, after the
discouraging tidings from the Ohio country were given time to
produce an effect. Accordingly, Robertson was urged by the
settlers to prepare for the worst. In May, 1792, though Blount
had confidence " in the black paint sprinkled with flour " which
the Cherokees wore in token of good intention, the governor

BOWLES AND MCGILLIVRAY. 521
yielded to Robertson's apprehensions, and ordered out two
companies of militia to protect the frontiers, but with injunctions
not to cross the Indian frontiers. In the same month, Robert
son himself was wounded by prowling savages while at work
on his farm, and the danger seemed serious. Some of these
marauders were Delawares from beyond the Mississippi, and
when Robertson complained of them to the commander at New
Madrid, he was told that the Spanish authorities could not be
responsible for vagrant savages of the Spanish jurisdiction, if
they went beyond their reach.
Matters, to those who were In the secret, were, at the same
time, far from satisfactory for the Spanish governor. The influ
ence of Bowles, as a rival among- the tribes of McGillivray, was,
to the mind of Carondelet, dangerous enough for him to arrest
his sway by treachery. That renegade was accordingly invited
to New Orleans, only to be apprehended and sent a prisoner
to Spain. If McGIUivray, in whose loyalty Carondelet had
confidence, had thus got rid of an enemy, he was too conscious
of his own waning ascendency among- his people not to seize
eagerly an opportunity, which the Spanish governor offered
him, of leadership in a new confederation of the Indians. With
characteristic duplicity, he was, at the same moment, flattering
Blount with a promise of leading two thousand Creeks to a
conference with American agents.
As the summer went on, James Seagrove, the Indian agent
of the government, made clear to the authorities at Philadel
phia what he called the " simplicity and treachery " of McGilli
vray, and was in turn instructed to countermine that chieftain's
Influence with the Creeks. The complicity of the Spanish in
all this was everywhere believed among the whites, and it was
a question if the Spanish governor should not be told that this
intriguing with the Creek leader could not be longer borne.
At Mobile, whose defense Carondelet thought of more impor
tance than that of Pensacola, the Spaniards held Fort Charlotte,
and there was another armed station at Pensacola. Their mili
tary occupation extended up the Tombigbee, and near their
Fort Stephen, on that river, a body of English-speaking settlers
were engaged In raising indigo. These constituted the outpost
of Spanish influence, and not a white man was permanently
settled between them and the Cumberland region. Here roamed

522 THE UNREST OF THE SOUTHWEST.
the Creeks, and in the early summer of 1792, it was known
that Spanish emissaries were passing among these Indians and
inciting them against the Americans, rendering it difficult for
EUicott to make any progress In running the treaty line of the
previous year. There were also reports of Spanish traders

THE CHICKASAW COUNTRY.

[From a Chart ofthe Sources ofthe Mobile and the Hirer Yazoo. The Boar River is a branch
of the Tennessee. The letter D stands for *' carrying-place three miles only in length to join the
Tennessee and Mobile Rivers."]
trafficking on American soil. These stories reaching Philadel
phia, Jefferson, in September, 1792, urged Washington to
authorize counter movements on Spanish soil.
The Spanish posts at Natchez and at Chickasaw Bluff had
no such protection from barrier tribes, for the Chickasaws were
more or less friendly with the Cumberland people, who were
likely, as the Spaniards felt, to attack those posts. Feuds
were arising between the Chickasaws and the Creeks, and, in
case of a Spanish war, it seemed likely those tribes would be on
different sides. With this in view, the Spanish governor had,
on May, 14, 1792, brought together representatives of the

THE KENTUCKY CONVENTION. 523
southern Indians, to bring about. If possible, an alliance with
them, so as to make them breast the American advances. When
these inimical steps were brought to the attention of the Span
ish agent in Philadelphia, he told Jefferson that the conditions
natui-ally arose from the disputes of jurisdiction, and from the
umbrage which the Indians generally felt because some had put
themselves under American protection.
Almost simultaneous with this Spanish treaty, Blount had
once more met the Cherokees. Little Turtle, their spokesman,
expressed dissatisfaction because the line which EUicott was
running was going to cut off their hunting-grounds. In the
conference, no farther immunity was made certain than that
Blount and Pickens and their party, descending the river to
Nashville to hold a conference with the Chickasaws and Choc
taws, would not be molested. By September, 1792, it was
feared that war had not been prevented, and Blount was ready
to let Robertson forestall an attack from the Cherokee to-wns
by marching against them, when it was learned the hostile pur
pose was dropped. This professed forbearance was apparently
a ruse to disarm the settlers, for, on September 30, six hundred
Chickamaugas and Creeks dashed upon Buchanan's Station,
and brought war to the settlers' doors. For all this, Blount
required Robertson to maintain the defensive, and to wait for
Congress to declare a war. The brigadier-general of the east
ern posts, Sevier, had little faith in defensive war, and when
Blount ordered out the Watauga militia to protect EUicott, —
who was so far favoring the Indians as to leave some of their
vlUages on the Indian side which the treaty line placed with
the whites, — there was likelihood of a general war, if Sevier's
dash prevailed.
While the Tennessee region was suffering this uncertainty,
the movement in Kentucky for Statehood had resulted, in April,
1792, In a convention at Danville, to frame a constitution.
This was the tenth coming together of the people in their long
striving after autonomy, in which they had shown a marked
steadiness in the face of excitement. Though so near the end,
the soberer members found stIU some ground for alarm, and
Innes expressed their doubts when he declared some uneasi
ness at the disposition shown to put the work of constructing

^n^avfji, fbr Itti^'s^ j_

RtbUshed Feb.-^x.il9^.hy J.I>

l/ncsiv Thpe^rapf^,

Brmth Saautt 2GUt.

-E R

^li^itary

n

ao.

ntt,I'iccadUly,I.cndon'

T.Cander Sciilp

526 THE UNREST OF THE SOUTHWEST.
their fundamental law too exclusively into the hands of " plain,
honest farmers." The draft presented to the convention was
the work of George Nicholas, the representative of the newer
comers, rather than of the older leaders of the territory. The
instrument followed on broad lines the Federal Constitution,
but made the principle of government a little more democratic.
It gave manhood suffrage, but gave no recognition of public
education. Though allowing the possibility of emancipation, it
saved slavery by declaring " all men, when they form a social
compact, equal." This constitution was ratified In May, and
Isaac Shelby was made the first governor..
Kentucky, " more extravagantly described than any other
part of the United States," as one observer said, was commonly
thought at this time to contain perhaps seventy thousand whites,
and, when the blacks were included, the over-confident carried
the population much higher. In the boastful talk about forcing
the Mississippi, It was not infrequently held that there were
thirty thousand men in the new State capable of bearing arms.
There is no doubt that the Spanish stood in dread of some
ebullition of passion which would hurl a large force against
their settlements on the Mississippi, and the Kentuckians were
spoken of, in connection with the Cumberland settlers, as "rest
less, poor, ambitious, and capable of the most daring enter
prises," and Carondelet was fearful of their ultimate attempts
to cross the Mississippi. In Kentucky, more than in Tennessee,
the population was being tempered by the arrival of some gentle
Virginian stock among them, and was passing out of the in
choate roughness of a pioneer condition, though, up to a very
recent time. Cooper, the traveler, was probably right in saying
that no part of Kentucky, except a few miles round Lexington,
was perfectly safe from Indian raids. The victory of Wayne
was rapidly having its effect, in rendering the Wilderness Road
safe without a mounted guard, and little was beginning to be
heard of assaults on the armed packet-boats of the Ohio.
It was estimated that the emigration from the settled por
tions of the States east of the mountains to the west was be
come from forty to fifty thousand a year ; but Kentucky was
not getting now the share of It which she formerly did. The
Note. — The opposite map, following Elihu Barker's large map of Kentucky, ia from Carey's
American Atlas, Philadelphia, 179.5, and shows the road connections of Frankfort, Danville, and
Lexington with the Ohio and Cumberland rivers.

|PortW?asEln

'^ o'd'jsr

628 THE UNREST OF THE SOUTHWEST.
confusion of land titles through overlapping grants and shiftless
recording was doing much to repel the thrifty farmer. Larger
bodies of emigrants went by the northern routes and stopped
In the Genesee country, where perhajis the climate was not so
Inviting, but the soil was nearly as rich, and there were better
means of taking produce to market. The ojjposltion of New
York laws to aliens holding- lands was working, however, some
detriment to settlement within its borders. The enterprise of
Pennsylvania in opening roads and canals, and bringing new
regions in the valley of the Susquehanna into occupancy, was
another impediment to Kentucky's increase. The treaty of
Greeneville in quieting the northwest was, moreover, bringing
the region north of the Ohio into direct rivalry.
Kentucky, nevertheless, still had great advantages in rich and
enduring soil. Everywhere the winter rotted the autumn's
leaves, and in the spring- there was clean- turf beneath the
trees. A Kentucky farmer, with perhaps pardonable warmth,
told William Priest that he was obliged to plant his land six
or seven years with hemp or tobacco before it was sufficiently
poor to bear wheat. Grass grew with a surprising rankness.
Clover grazed the horses' knees as they galloped through a sea
of blossoms. Oaks, locusts, and beeches spread to enormous
sizes. Where the trees would shade his crops, the farmer
cleared his ground, which meant that he cut the trunks two
feet above the soil, and grubbed out what was between the
mutilated boles. If a seaboard farmer traversed the country,
they pointed out land that would yield one hundred bushels of
corn to the acre, and everywhere the crop was from fifty to
eighty, or three times what the New Englander bad been used
to. Crevecoeur said that " a hundred families barely existing
in some parts of Scotland will here In six years cause an an
nual exportation of ten thousand bushels of wheat." Again,
scrutinizing the component parts of the population, he says :
" Out of twelve families of emigrants of each country, gener
ally seven Scotch will succeed, nine German, and four Irish.
The Scotch are frugal and laborious, but their wives cannot
work so hard as German women. The Irish love to drink
and to quarrel, and soon take to the gun, which is the ruin of
everything." The lawless profligacy of the border, which the Irish had

BORDER LIFE.

629

done so much to maintain, and that assimilation of traits which
entangles the evils of the savage with the vices of the white,
was now beginning In Kentucky to disappear. The rogue who
stole horses and altered ear-clips of the cattle and sheep was
less often seen in the town. The bankrupt from the seaboard
was sooner suspected, and was the less likely to gather the idlers
at the trading-stores. The hunter, with his torn moccasins and
dingy leggings, his shirt blood-stained, and his coon-skin cap

[This map, from Henry Toulmin's Description of Kentuclcy, 1792, shows the counties of Ken
tucky at that time, namely; Fa ^ Fayette ; Bo =; Bourbon; Ma ^Madison; Me ^Mercer;
Je = Jefferson; Ne^ Nelson; Li ^Lincoln. The towns are : 1, Lexington; 2, Boonesborough ;
3, St. As'eph ; 4, Louisville ; 5, Harrodsburg. The Cherokee River, the modern Tennessee, is
described as "navigable 900 miles," and the upper part of it (Te) is called *' Tenasee river, a
branch of the Cherokee."]
ragged and greasy, still came to the settlement for his powder
and salt, and enticed Michael and Pat to the frontiers ; but his
visits were less frequent, and he did not linger to make part of
a life which had grown away from him. The storekeeper, ham
pered by barter, gave the tone to the community, while he
devised the cutting of Spanish dollars Into triangular eighths
to supply the need of small change. The Rev. John Hurt, of
Lexington, told Wansey that Kentucky was the place to make
fortunes in trade. He instanced two men who started there
with less than £200 apiece, and by keeping store, they were
now (1794) worth £30,000. They were Scotch-Irish, one might
assume, and that race had just planted some new seed in the
founding of Blount College close by Knoxville, now the Unl-

630 THE UNREST OF THE SOUTHWEST.
versify of Tennessee, in the country lying to the south of Ken
tucky and sharing most of its characteristics. Both regions
were animated by one controlling impulse in their claims upon
the free navigation of the Mississippi.
On December 6, 1791, the Spanish minister intimated to
Jefferson that the authorities at Madrid were ready to treat
for the settlement of their disputes. Short, at the Hague, was
directed to join Carmichael in Madrid. On January 25, 1792,
Jefferson informed the Spanish minister that the commissioners
had been appointed, and on March 18 their instructions were
ready for transmission. The trend of Jefferson's argument in
these directions was that Spain, in the treaty of January 20,
1783, had agreed to restore without compensation all north of
31° of latitude, — the line of earlier charters, proclamations, and
treaties, — and that the United States, by the Treaty of Inde
pendence, received the rights of England north of that parallel,
and that the bounds of the secret clause of the latter treaty
were not applicable because England had not obtained Florida,
as might have been the case, in the treaty with Spain. As to
the navigation of the Mississippi, that had been conceded by
Spain to England in the treaty of 1763, and the United States
had succeeded to the rights of Great Britain. Further, the right
to use the mouth of a river belonged by the law of nature and
of nations to the country holding the upper waters, and this
right was not complete without a port of deposit. A right,
Jefferson contended, was not to be confounded with a grant
made to the most favored nation, and stood independent of any
agreement. If Spain asked any compensation for the conces
sion, the commissioners were instructed to offset such a demand
by a claim of damages for nine years of exclusion from the
river. There was in the councils of the President not a little disa
greement as to what concessions it might be well in the end to
make, as was to be expected where Jefferson and Hamilton"
were in the circle of advisers. Hamilton was more urgent than
his rival for delaying a war with Spain, though he saw, as all
did, that a conflict was inevitable in the end, unless the point
could be carried by negotiation. He urged an alliance with
England as likely to ward off an outbreak, and thought it could

OPPOSING PARTIES. 531
be made for England's advantage by rectifying the northwest
boundary line in a way to throw some portions of the upper
Mississippi within British territory. This accorded with de
mands which England had often hinted at, and made later in the
negotiation with Jay, as serving to make the provisions of the
treaty of 1782 intelligible, inasmuch as a right to navigate the
Mississippi, as that treaty gave, -with no access to it, was unintel-
hglble. Jefferson firmly objected to the alienation of any part
of the territory of the United States on any conditions. Ham
ilton claimed that exigencies might easily sanction it. The ques
tion naturally aroused the antipathies of the two antagonistic
factions into which the American people were rapidly dividing,
and Randolph, as a sympathizer with the French, fell readily in
with the -views of Jefferson, while Knox sided with Hamilton.
In New England, at this time. It would doubtless have been found
on a poU that a withdrawal from the Union was more in favor
than an aUiance with France against England ; and Timothy
Dwight, the president of Yale College, was so confident in this
sentiment that he supposed that ninety-nine New Englanders
out of a hundred held It. Washington carried a steady hand,
and, though much inclined to take part with Hamilton against
Jefferson, he told his cabinet that an English alliance for this
end, giving the British a foothold on the Mississippi, was a
remedy worse than the disease.
The year 1793 brought new 'disturbing elements into play.
On January 21, news of the execution of Louis XVI. had
reached New Orleans only to arouse in the French Creoles their
latent republican sympathies. This alarmed Carondelet, and he
began strengthening the outworks of the city, and laying out
schemes for an extended defense of the province. The French
sympathizers were closely In touch with the agitation already
manifest among the Kentucky discontents, and there were
rumors of a projected descent of an armed flotilla directed to
unseat the Spanish authorities. It was known on the seaboard
that letters were passing to Tom Paine, now a member of the
National Assembly in Paris ; and two persons whom we have
already encountered were supposed to be movers in these mis
chievous schemes against Spain. One was Dr. O'Fallon, not
suppressed by the failure of his Natchez projects. The other

532 THE UNREST OF THE SOUTHWEST.
was George Rogers Clark, seeking with his shattered energy to
emerge from what a contemporary observer called " a profound
slumber for upwards of four years." Jefferson some time
before had written to Innes that "no man alive rated Clark
higher than I did, and would again were he to become once
more what I knew him."
In view of these reports, already circulating, the President's
cabinet, on March 10, determined on issuing a proclamation
against any such warlike demonstration towards Spain, and
Wayne was instructed to throw troops into Fort Massac, so as
to intercept any armed invaders of Spanish territory. While
the President's advisers were considering if the French Revo
lution had annulled the obligations of the United States to
France under the treaty of 1778, Genet, the new minister
of the French Republic, armed with three hundred blank com
missions, as was reported, arrived on April 8, 1793, at Charles
ton, on board a French frigate. Before he left Carolina, he
began issuing his commissions to cruisers against the enemies
of France. Philadelphia newspapers of April contained both
the President's proclamation and notices of Genet's arriving In
that city. During May, 1793, that arrogant visitor was issuing
other commissions and enjoying the excitement and jubilation
with which his coming had been hailed. Jefferson grew warm
in speaking of " the old spirit of 1776, rekindling. The news
papers from Boston to Charleston," he said, " prove this, and
even the monocrat papers are obliged to publish the most furi
ous philippics against England." Jefferson, again in a letter to
Monroe, June 4, assorts the people : " The old Tories joined by
our merchants, who trade on British capital, and the idle rich,
are with the kings. All other descriptions with the French."
Madison, writing to Jefferson of the President's proclamation,
"unconstitutional " and " pusillanimous," as the latter believed
it, said : " It is mortifying that the President should have any
thing to apprehend from the success of liberty in another coun
try, since he owes his preeminence to the success of it in his
own." The President disregarded the aspersions and found
comfort in Hamilton's counsels.
Genet was soon planning to give coherency to the passions,
already seething beyond the mountains, under the influence of
the inflammatory discussions of the Jacobin clubs, which French

MICHIGAN AND THE PACIFIC. 533
adherents had been forming. A Frenchman, sojourning in
Philadelphia, became his wllUng tool. Andre Michaux, a man
of scientific attainments, bad before this been selected by the
American Philosophical Society to explore the vaUey of the
Missouri in order to find a short and convenient passage to
the Pacific. "It would seem by the maps," as his proposed
Instructions read, "as if the river called Oregon interlocked
with the jNIIssourl for a considerable distance ; " and In popular
conception, as evinced by Morse's Geography of 1794, the two
rivers were not kept asunder by any mountain ridge. Michaux
was directed after reaching the Pacific to return by the same or
some other route, and to avoid, both in going and returning,
the Spanish settlements. The Spanish had always jealously
guarded their trade in the Missouri valley, but had so far only
partially succeeded in keeping the British out, and the next
year, Carondelet was complaining that the London fur com
panies operating in this region were making a hundred per
cent, profit. It was, nevertheless, a subject of complaint by
Dorchester that English traders were Interfered with even when
a hundred miles and more away from Spanish posts.
This unfruitful project of the Philosophical Society fell in
opportunely with the interest in westward search, which was
now engaging the attention of geographers. Vancouver had
gone to the Pacific, In 1791, with Instructions looking- to his
sailing east, perhaps as far as the Lake of the Woods, by a
supposable passage, which might in some way be found to con
nect with the Atlantic. In April, 1792, he had reached the
northwest coast. On May 11, ensuing. Captain Gray In the
Boston ship " Columbia," foUowing Vancouver's track, had
found what the latter missed, and had entered and ascended,
for some twenty miles, a great river which he named after his
ship. It was in part, by virtue of this exploration, that the
United States ultimately assumed jurisdiction over this river's
course for seven hundred and fifty-two miles, till by the treaty
of 1846, the upper three hundred miles was given over to Brit-
NoTE. — The map on the following two pages is from the Spanish Archives, procured by Mr.
Clarence W. Bowen, and given to Harvard College Library. It is a section of an Idea Topografca
de los Altos del Missisipi y del Missouri, ASo de 1785, with corrections to 1794. Tlie British and
Spanish flags show stations of those peoples, and the dotted lines are the English trading routes.
The araall squares are trading stations. The triangular ones are nomadic tribes ; t'he round spots
are fixed tribes. It shows the Spanish notions regarding the connection of Lake Superior, Lake
of the Woods, Lake Winnipeg, and Hudson's Bay.

'>:/¦•

636 THE UNREST OF THE SOUTHWEST.
ish control. The tributaries of the Columbia add six hundred
additional miles to its navigable waters. Some three hundred
and fifty thousand square miles of its valley sends its drainage
ultimately to the sea, beyond where Vancouver saw the forbid
ding surf which kept him from entering- the river, and enough
of this vast area lies south of the 49° of latitude to make a fif
teenth part of the total area of the present United States.
This territory was a factor in American civilization hardly com
prehended, when Michaux was coutemjUatlng an effort to reach
that region overland.
The Spaniards, under Galiano and Valdez, had already, in
1792, abandoned the search for a passage from the Pacific
through North America ; and it was left for an English adven
turer, Alexander Mackenzie, to be the first to traverse this
great valley from the inland side. In June, 1793, Mackenzie
was at the crown of the Rockies, known as Peace River pass.
He here hit upon the first easily ' traversable route over the
mountains, north of that at the headwaters of the Gila, and he
had been the first white man to stand where the waters parted
for the Atlantic and for the Pacific. On July 22, 1793, he cut
his name on a rock overhanging the sea, in latitude 53° 21' in
British Columbia. Thus within ten years from the time when
England, by the treaty of Paris (1782-83), confined herself to
the north of the Great Lakes, her flag had been carried to the
Pacific. While this English pioneer was thus approaching- the sea,
Michaux, his would-be rival, had abandoned the role of an ex
plorer for that of a political intriguer. Falling under the influ
ence of Genet, be had lent himself to the Jacobin schemes, and
to further their western plans. Genet had asked Jefferson to
recognize Michaux as a consul of France to reside In Kentucky.
This project falling, the French minister de-vised for his new
ally, still preserving the appearance of a scientific wanderer, a
direct mission to the western people. On July 5, he showed
to the secretary of state the instructions under which It was
proposed that Michaux should act. There was no concealment
In this document, and It was miblushlngly declared that Michaux
was to raise from the Kentuckians a force to attack New Or
leans, and was also to send an address to the French in Canada
to rise and throw off the British yoke. There was some reserve

THE INTRIGUES OF MICHAUX.

637

in the fact that the proposed invading force was to rendezvous
beyond the Mississippi, and outside of American jurisdiction,
and in this Jefferson recognized a prudent provision. He was
incautious enough, however, to give Michaux credentials to
Governor Shelby, and others were obtained for presentation to
Clark and Wilkinson.

RIVER OF THE WEST.
[A section of " An exact map of North America," in William Russell's History of America, vol.
ii. p. 106, London, 177S. It connects Lake Winnipeg and the Lake of the Woods with Lrike
Superior.] MIchaux's journal of his western progress, giving for the
most part his scientific observations, has been edited by Charles
S. Sargent In the Proceedings of the American Philosophical
Society (1889). It gives something that the botanist finds of
use, but the historian gets in the record only stray glimpses
of this agent's real business.
The movement had all the effrontery which went with Genet's
acts. This emissary told Wansey, the traveler, at a later day,

638 THE UNREST OF THE SOUTHWEST.
that all he did was not beyond what those who commissioned
him, Roland and Brissot, expected him to do, and this was to
the end of embroiling, if possible, the United States in a war
with England and Spain. Genet further openly proposed to
Jefferson that he could depend on two leaders in Kentucky to
march an army of liberators to New Orleans, and one of these
was George Rogers Clark, who in the previous February had
written to Genet, offering his services. It is said that the
agents of Genet, who carried west the commissions under which
Clark was to act, were accredited by letters from John Brown,
who had been involved in Wilkinson's earlier schemes. These
leaders had asked Genet for an advance of £3,000, but that
minister did not find it convenient to furnish such a sum. The
grand aim of all was to set up Louisiana as an independent ally
of both the United States and France.
There is no need to follow MIchaux's itinerary very closely.
On August 14, he left Pittsburg, and on the 24th he moaned
over the misery of a small remnant of his countrymen remain
ing at GaUipoUs ; and at Limestone he left the river for the
interior settlements.
Just at this time, the Spanish agent in Philadelphia gave the
President information of the proposed expedition of Clark, and
Jefferson was instructed to warn Shelby to be on his guard ;
but the Kentucky governor was either timorous or a, sympa
thizer, and he replied that he knew nothing of any such ex
pedition. In September, Michaux was at Lexington and at
Danville, and had various conferences with those to whom he
had taken letters. On the 17tb, be saw Clark at Louisville,
who professed to believe that the scheme had been abandoned,
it was so long- since be bad heard anything. The failure to for
ward the money which had been asked may have had something
to do with Clark's ignorance, and with his picturing the difficul
ties In the path. There were better prospects when, in October,
some money was received, and the blank commissions came to
hand. On October 6, Michaux had returned to Danville. His
journal is now provoklngly meagre ; but Colonel George Nicho
las advanced a plan of having a French fleet first seize the
mouth of the Mississippi, and this force having declared the
country French, the Americans were to be invited to descend
the river, fighting their way If it became necessary.

CLARK'S PROJECT. 539
The federal government was now (October) so far alarmed
that Jefferson wrote to the backward Shelby, directing- him to
use military force if the courts were powerless to stop the pro
ceedings, and St. Clair was at the same time ordered to hold
some militia in readiness. On November 6, Jefferson repeated
bis injunctions to Shelby, and asked him to remember that the
government could best settle the Mississippi question by ne
gotiations then going on. On the next day, St. Clair wrote to
Shelby a letter, which was probably to reach him in advance
of the other, telling him of the gathering of French officers at
the falls of the Ohio, and urging- bim to act promptly.
Meanwhile rumors of the Jacobins' intentions were reaching
Carondelet in an exaggerated form. His alarm Increasing, on
January 2, 1794, the Spanish governor dispatched a letter to
Simcoe, giving that British commander at Detroit the extrava
gant stories which had reached New Orleans. Carondelet in
formed him that a million dollars had been raised for the expe
dition under Clark, who had undertaken to raise five thousand
men for the enterprise. He pointed out how it would be for
the interest of England that Spain should secure a foothold in
the lUinois country. Simcoe later (April 11) replied that,
while he agreed with the views of Carondelet, there was no
chance for his cooperation, since, indeed, with Wayne prepar
ing for an advance, the Canadian governor had enough to
occupy him.
Three weeks before Carondelet had written this anxious let
ter, Michaux, returning from the west through the Holston
country, had reached Philadelphia (December 1^ 1793), and
in a month's time he was conferring with Brown and Orr, Ken
tucky members of the House, " on the disposition of the federal
government and the execution of General Clark's plan." This
was on January 12, 1794. On the 24th, Michaux sent $400
to Clark, — so pitiful the contrast with Carondelet's supposed
sums, — and wrote letters to his Kentucky friends. Before
these missives reached Clark and his friends, this American
" general of the legion of the French RepubUc " had vaUantly
pubUshed in The Centinel of the North West, a paper printed
at Cincinnati, on January 25, his proposals for raising troops,
— two thousand were talked of, — promising each one thou
sand acres of land, two thousand if they served a year, and

640 THE UNREST OF THE SOUTHWEST.
three thousand If for two years. They were also assured of a
due share of all lawful plunder. It was understood that the
general was gathering flatboats at the falls for a jubilant voy
age down the Mississippi.
Jefferson, who more and more had found himself outside the
President's confidence, had at the opening of the year with
drawn from his advisers to give place to another republican,
Randolph. The government, after all its efforts to check this
western movement, had felt sensibly the weakness of Shelby,
whose elevation had not induced to render him conservative.
The letters of the Kentucky governor to Randolph continued
to be couched in the language of evasion. Instead of giving
adhesion to the requests of the government, he preferred to
discuss the unquestionable rights of the west to the navigation
of the Mississippi. He went on repeating the tales of Spanish
instigation of the Indians, which went without saying ; but he
showed no patience with the government's efforts to accomplish
by peaceful diplomacy the results which he wished for.
The animosity in Kentucky against the government was
indeed undisguised, and Shelby's course, with the support of
popular sentiment, was In contrast with the assiduity of Blount
In Tennessee, who supported Robertson In checking all symp
toms of reaction. In Kentucky, every action of the adminis
tration was scrutinized for a .symptom of inimical predisposition,
and there was good ground, it was thought, for apprehension,
when, in April, 1794, it was announced that Jay, an enemy of
western Interests, had been selected for the mission to Eng
land. As the spring progressed, there was an increasing anxiety In
government circles. Wolcott believed that an expedition had
already started. Letters from St. Clair confirmed the stories
of the excited condition In Kentucky. He repeated to the sec
retary of state the rumors which he had heard of a French fleet
to cooperate, — doubtless the spreading of Nicholas's views.
He wrote of letters to Clark from the eastern Jacobins passing
through the hands of a certain "Monsieur Micbeau" at Lexing
ton, and that $2,000 had been sent to Clark.
St. Clair, during these days, was often writing to Washington
of the precarious condition of the western country. He thought
that the Bj-Itlsh were intriguing with certain Kentuckians to

GENET AND FAUCHET. 641
force that region into a Spanish war ; but he was at the same time
confident that if the United States and Spain drifted into a con
flict, England would be found on the side of Spain, as Caron
delet and Simcoe had proposed. Spain, he contended, had good
reason to tremble for the Mexican mines, and Carondelet was
urging the better fortifying- of the line of the Mississippi. It was
certain, in St. Clair's view, that Carondelet and some leaders
of opinion in Kentucky were in accord. Morgan, In St. Clair's
judgment, " possessed a very great degree both of activity and
insinuation, and is not much restrained by principle," and was
depended upon by Carondelet to lure emigrants over the Mis
sissippi. In another of his letters, St. Clair represents that
Morgan's " exertions are turned to Kentucky, where there are
a very great number of people who have been disappointed In
obtaining land, and are ready to go to any place where it can
be easily obtained. Many will make the experiment. If it
continues to be one of their maxims to prevent the free naviga
tion of the Mississippi, the situation [New Madrid] directly
opposite the mouth of the Ohio seems not to be IU chosen with
a -view to it. The Spanish commanders on the Mississippi are
also assiduously endeavoring to induce the ancient French in
habitants to abandon their country, and they have succeeded with
great numbers." St. Clair recommends, as a corrective of this,
that the government should sell its lands on the Mississippi and
the Illinois at low prices.
During the preceding shimmer. Genet's doings had become so
high-handed in every way, both in his aims at the west and in
similar but abortive efforts to attack Florida from the side of
Georgia and South Carolina, — where probably there was some
popular enthusiasm for the venture, — that even Jefferson, then
In the cabinet, had seen the necessity of getting rid of his pesti
lent influence. So, on August 15, 1793, he had written to Morris
in Paris, to demand that the French Republic should recall
its minister. On the arrival of Fauchet, as Genet's successor,
the western expedition was countermanded, and on March 29,
1794, Randolph wrote to the Kentucky authorities, saying, " The
present minister of the French Republic has publicly disavowed
and recalled the commissions which have been granted." In
the fear that the Jacobin threats in the west would involve the
country in a war with Spain, a bill had before this been intro-

542 THE UNREST OF THE SOUTHWEST.
duced Into Congress, calling for the raising of 25,000 men for
the defense of the southwest, but on Fauchet's disavowal of
further incitements, the bill had been withdrawn. It was soon
however, clear that the passionate appeals at the west would
take some time to lose their effect, and the government heard
with some alarm that subscriptions were still pledged in Lex
ington for money, and that the President's proclamation was in
many places suppressed. On May 24, when a convention gath
ered at Lexington, the Jacobin fever still ran high, and it was
helped by the tone of the Kentucky Gazette. In June, Con
gress made it punishable by fine and imprisonment for a citizen
to engage in any hostile enterprise against a foreign state, a
provision soon to be further enforced in Jay's treaty. When
the Jacobins spoke of it now as aimed at the French sympa
thizers, they were not pleased to be told that It had been also
a provision of the treaty with France in 1778.
A comparison of the views of Hamilton and Randolph at
this time shows how the two antagonistic parties of the cabinet
were brought into pretty close conjunction In their apprehen
sions. Hamilton wrote to Jay, in May, 1794, that the navi
gation of the Mississippi, if secured, will be "an Infinitely
strong link of union between the western country and the At
lantic States. As Its preservation will depend on the naval
resources of the Atlantic States, the western country cannot but
feel that this essential interest depends on its remaining firmly
united with them." Randolph's letter was addressed to Jeffer
son, In August : " The people of Kentucky, either contemning
or ignorant of the consequences, are restrained from hostility
by a paek-thread. They demand a conclusion of the negotia
tion, or a categorical answer from Spain. . . . What If the gov
ernment of Kentucky should force us either to support them in
their hostilities against Spain, or to disavow and renounce them.
War at this moment with Spain would not be war with Siialn
alone. The lopping- off of Kentucky from the Union Is dread
ful to contemplate, even If it should not attach Itself to some
other power." There was indeed a strong apprehension that
England might succeed in entangling the Kentuckians. Sim
coe was soon to write to the Lords of Trade (September 1) :
" It is generally understood that above half the inhabitants of
Kentucky and the western waters are already Inclined to a con-

THE CREEKS. 543
nection with Great Britain." Thurston, a Kentucky obsever,
had just before written to Washington that a powerful faction
was scheming to place that country under British protection.
With these suppressed murmurlngs threatening to become
open shouts in the autumn of 1794, we need, before passing on
to the fulfiUments of 1795, to turn back to the spring of 1793,
and watch other ominous signs, which made these two years in
the southwest exceptionally trying in their precarious condi
tions, since there was no question, in which the relations of
Spain and the United States were involved, that did not inti
mately concern the danger of an Indian war. The federal gov
ernment could never be safely unprepared. When it was de
termined in May, 1793, to reinforce the federal troops in this
endangered region, the government possessed abundant evidence
of the complicity of Carondelet In the unrest of the Creeks, and
it is now known that he was strenuously urging his government
to let him band all the Indians In the Interests of Spain. Jef
ferson sent the proofs of Carondelet's intrigues with the tribes
to Carmichael at Madrid. The better to learn exactly what
was going on in New Orleans, where branches of American
commercial houses were become not uncommon, Jefferson was,
in May, 1793, looking " for an intelligent and prudent native "
to reside in that city, whUe, under cover of business, be could
get opportunities to spy upon the intentions of Carondelet. In
June, the governinent had learned that 1,500 men had been sent
from Spain to Louisiana, and that Spanish posts ou the upper
Mississippi had been strengthened. A few days later (June 23),
he wrote to Madison of the " inevitableness of a war with the
Creeks, and the probability — I might say certainty — of a war
with Spain." Some Ohio traders, who had gone down the
Mississippi in their flatboats, and had returned to Philadelphia
by water, were at the same time interrogated by Knox for in
formation, and at the close of the month, Jefferson was In pos
session of new evidence of Spanish instigation of the Creeks,
which he transmitted to Carmichael. Later on, the administra
tion was urged by Georgians and Carolinians to authorize the
mobilizing of four or five thousand ,militia under General
Pickens to attack the Creeks In the autumn. The government
hesitated for fear of provoking a Spanish and perhaps an Eng-

544 THE UNREST OF THE SOUTHWEST.
lish war ; and upon the project of sending a secret agent to the
Choctaws to induce them to join the Chickasaws against the
Creeks, and so distract the latter, the cabinet was divided.
Meanwhile Robertson was furnishing arms to the Chickasaws,
and when. Carondelet remonstrated with the government at
Philadelphia, the tie in the cabinet vote enabled them to deny
rendering- any aid, and to assert that their influence was for
peace. In eastern Tennessee there was less restraint. Every issue
of the Knoxville Gazette clamored for a war of extermination
against the Creeks. Some of that tribe crossing the river in
Sejatember, Sevier mustered his militia, and drove them back
by a midnight attack, and, following them to their viUages,
burned them, and laid waste their fields. This was Sevier's
last Indian campaign, and it brought peace to the borders of
east Tennessee. The invasion of the Indian territory had been
in defiance of the orders from Philadelphia ; but Andrew Jack
son, three years later, then a new representative from Tennes
see, succeeded in getting the general government to reimburse
the local authorities for the cost of It.
Washington, in addressing Congress at the end of the year
1793, told them that the Chickamaugas were stiU uneasy, and
doubted if anything like a steady peace could be maintained
with the southwestern tribes till there was some system of
organized trade with them arranged, to prevent the provoca
tions to which they were at present subjected. He added, in
another speech, that if the Creeks were to be sustained by the
Spanish in their claims to bound on the Cumberland, and if
the authorities at New Orleans persisted in a right to arbi
trate between the United States and the Indians inhabiting
American territory. It was clear that an issue must come with
Spain. He informed Congress that he had sent a messenger to
Madrid to learn how far the government at Madrid sustained
Carondelet In these pretensions.
A review of the next year, 1794, shows us pretty much the
same troublesome conditions on this southwestern border. The
chief perplexity was In the fact that the irresponsible frontiers-
NoTE. — The opposite " Map of the Tennassee government, by Genl, B. Smith and others," is
from Carey's American Atlas, Philadelphia, 1795. It shows tlie Indian towns on the Tennessee,
and their relation to Nashville and the Cumberland settlements. Cf. the map in Reid's Amer
ican Atlas, New York, 1796. *

"^ 1%,

C^Jicroke6'^° A

"\ iJicvoke

546 THE UNREST OF THE SOUTHWEST.
men caused much of the mischief. La Rochefoucault-LIan
court, who, a little later, went through this country, found it
" allowed on all sides that the whites are In the wrong four
times out of five." Unfairness In traffic had driven the Indian
trade largely from the Georgian border to Pensacola, and the
lawlessness of the borderers In inciting the enmity of some
thirty-five thousand Indians, now supposed to be the combined
numbers of the Creeks, Cherokees, and Choctaws, threw a serious
responsibility upon the Americans, whatever may have been the
complicity of the Spaniards. These thirty-five thousand In
dians were said to be able to show twelve thousand warriors,
old and young, and the mastery of the Creeks was indicated by
their furnishing- nearly half of this fighting- force.
The conditions which generally prevailed were that the Cher
okees were the general rovers now plundering on the borders of
Carolina and Georgia, now on the north against the Cumberland
settlers, under the lead usually of the local Chickamaugas, or
joining In combined onsets on the Chickasaws. The Creeks by
their numbers strengthened almost every assault. The Choc
taws, nearer the Spanish, at New Orleans, did not so often
appear, except by their strolling bucks. Back of It all was, as
the Americans believed, and doubtless with right, the influence
of Carondelet and his agents. It was said, perhaps In exaggera
tion, that the Spanish largesses paid to these tribes were some
thing like #55,000 a year, a sum nearly the equal of the revenue
of Louisiana. The Indian confederation was broken by the
friendliness of the Chickasaws for the whites, and it was Caron
delet's constant aim to rend this somewhat fitful alliance.
While this was the obstacle in the way of the Spanish gov
ernor, the nearest representative of the American government,
Blount, at Knoxville, was quite as much tried to carry out the
instructions of the secretary of war to prevent unauthorized
attacks and retaliative inroads by the American settlers. In
the spring of 1794, It appeared to the territorial assembly at
Knoxville that such restraint was no longer judicious, and they
petitioned the general government for open war with the Creeks.
On June 6, Rufus King reported In Congress a bill for an offen
sive campaign against the Creeks and Cherokees. Instead of
action upon it, Knox very soon entertained a deputation of
Cherokees at Philadelphia, and reopened the question of the

ORR'S EXPEDITION. 547
boundaries which had been established by the treaty of July
2, 1791. They complained that the line, as marked, was as
crooked as Blount's heart, and insisted upon a straight one
which would have sacrificed sundry white settlements. The old
line was left, however, to be amended a few years later, and, as
a peace offering, Knox agreed to add $5,000 worth of goods
annually to the largess the Cherokees had already received.
In September, 1794, the federal government not acting
promptly in giving permission for an active campaign, Robert
son ordered Major Orr to inarch with five hundred mounted
Kentucky and Tennessee militia against the lower Cherokee
towns. A small body of federal troops, who were rangino- in
the mountains, joined the expedition. Orr left Nashville on
September 7, and, guided by a young man who had been a
prisoner among the Chickamaugas, he took a circuitous moun
tain path, and on the 13th, swooped down upon two Indian
viUages In succession, and killed seventy of their defenders,
having only two of his own men wounded. Blount and the
federal government complain of the disobedience of orders, but
the Nickajack expedition — as it was called — was too necessary
to be made a subject of serious complaint. The Indians soon
sued for peace, and as in the case of Sevier's exiDedltlon, Rob
ertson's prompt action brought peace to the frontiers in that
part of the. territory, and In a similar way, as In Sevier's case,
the insubordination was later vindicated by Congressional ap
proval. On December 8, Washington Informed Congress that
both Creeks and Cherokees had confirmed existing treaties, and
had restored prisoners and property. He added that the con
tinuance of peace was hazarded by the constant and wanton mur
ders of tribesmen committed along the Georgian frontiers. Ed
mund Pendleton shortly afterwards (December 30, 1794) drew
the President's attention to the impolicy of the largess system,
and no doubt spoke the truth when he said : " The old counsel
ors among the Indians will profess to be at peace, and continue
to receive their annuity, while their young men continue their
depredations, and the others will say they cannot restrain
them." The gift system, undoubtedly, as Washington saw, had
this objection ; but the President could not bring himself to
beUeve that the tribes did not in justice demand some recom
pense for the Injury which had been done them.

CHAPTER XXIV.
pinckney's TEEATY AND THE KENTUCKY INTRIGUE.
1795-1796.
Although when Jefferson left the circle of the President's
advisers at the opening of 1794, the movement of the federal
government for a treaty with Spain on the basis of a free navi
gation of the Mississippi had taken shape looking to the ap
pointment of a special commissioner to Madrid, It was not till
the following autumn that the choice of such an agent was seri
ously considered, and then it was Patrick Henry who was the
selection of the President. Henry refused the trust on account
of his precarious health, and it was not till November 24 that
this preliminary motion was effected by the transference of
Thomas Pinckney, then in London, to the court of Madrid.
This done, Washington hastened in December, 1794, to aUay
the continued irritation of Kentucky by writing to Innes that
the initiatory steps for a treaty with Spain had been made.
On February 15, 1795, Randolph instructed Monroe, then in
Paris, " to seize any favorable moment " to bring the Missis
sippi question to an issue. Before Monroe could have received
these Injunctions, Tom Paine, in the convention, tried to secure
the help of France by proposing that the freedom of that river
should be made a condition of peace between France and Spain.
The treaty made by Jay, however, was too offensive to France
to make her representatives anxious to abet any interests of the
American Republic. They were, moreover, aggrieved at being,
as they thought, rather cavalierly treated iu not being early in
formed of the provisions of the Jay treaty. It was nine or ten
months after the rumors of its conditions reached them before.
In the autumn of 1796, the American papers brought them the
full text of the treaty.
While thus, in the appointment of Pinckney, the negotia
tions were fairly inaugurated in Europe, the old question of the

THE YAZOO GRANTS. 549
Yazoo grants was revived in a way threatening new complications
with Spain by forestalling the decisions of the negotiators. All
efforts of holders under earlier grants to effect some compromise
by consolidation had failed, and the whole matter, in the autumn
of 1794, had seemed doomed to oblivion. But as matters now
stood, there were four claimants somehow to be reconciled before
these Yazoo projects could be put on a satisfactory basis. Spain
stiU claimed to latitude 32° 30', and her claim, it was supposed,
would be pressed with Pinckney. The federal government con
tended that the treaty of 1782 had given It the right to this
contested region, and this right had been in part strengthened
through the cession by South Carolina, in 1787, of that long,
narrow strip lying between the extension of the northern bound
ary of Georgia and the south line of Tennessee, unless indeed
that strip had been included already in the " territory south of
the Ohio." Against this claim of the United States Georgia
had rested her case on the royal commission to Governor
Wright, and the federal rejection of her cession of the country
in 1788. Counting upon her rights as Georgia understood
them, her legislature had, in December, 1794, regranted some
thirty million acres .for $500,000, at a price of about 1^ cents
an acre, to the four companies which had been the earlier recip
ients of the region, and this biU, amended in some respects to
suit the governor's views, became by his signature a law on
January 7, 1795. Thus passed to the control of these com
panies a large part of the j)resent States of Alabama and
Mississippi. These companies under their new names were the
Upper Mississippi Company, which received a region in the
northwest extending twenty-five miles south of the Tennessee
boundary ; the Tennessee Company, which obtained much the
same area as was given to it in 1789 ; the Georgia Mississippi
Company, which covered the southwestern region extending from
31° 18' to 32° 40' north latitude ; and the Georgia Company,
the largest of all, which received seventeen million acres lying
between 32° 40' and 34°, but east of the Tombigbee River, its
southern line running upon the 31st parallel. Its extension east
and west was from the Alabama River to the Mississippi. It
was soon discovered that every vote but one in the legislature
which had made these imperial grants came from members in
one or another of the companies, and cries of corruption were

550 PINCKNEY'S TREATY.
raised in all quarters of the State. It turned out also that
many federal and state officials were complicated In the busi
ness. The terms of the grant made the lands free from taxa
tion, and when settled they were to be entitled to representa
tion in the legislature. That the governor had not vetoed the
act was thought to have been due rather to his complacency
than to any pecuniary connection of his own with the measure.
There was a hope that a constitutional convention which was
summoned for the following May would be able to right the
wrong ; but the same Interest which had swerved the legisla
ture from rectitude prevailed there, and the question was rele
gated to the next legislature, where there was not the same
chance that the grantees could be protected. General James
Jackson, who was in the federal senate, resigned bis station to
be elected to the coming legislature, and he carried a rescind
ing act through that body ; but ultimately all innocent purchas
ers from the companies were duly protected.
Such a scandal further invalidating- titles of lands still in dis
pute with Spain was an unfortunate conjunction at this stage
of the negotiation at Madrid, and it Is not perhaps surprising
that Carondelet, on the Spanish side, sought further to arrest
an amicable settlement. He had already made some show, by
ceasing to incite the Indians, In acquiescing in the diplomatic
movement ; but in the uncertainty attending the negotiations, he
had determined to secure the long-sought vantage-ground in Ken
tucky which Sj)ain had always desired. He was not unmind
ful of the chance that the Kentuckians in their restlessness
might yield either to France or England, and was not quite sure
which event Sj)ain should most distrust. The Jacobins in the
United States had already begun to play upon the patriotic
impulses of their compatriots In Louisiana, and be had found
handbills urging them to rise against their Spanish oppressors
circulating in New Orleans. These same incendiary appeals
contrasted the servile condition of the French Creoles -with the
freedom in Kentucky, and warned the French Louisianians to
expect an armed flotilla to aid them in their revolt.
New Orleans at this time was not well prepared to withstand
a vigorous assault. Collot, a P'rench military observer, whom
we have already encountered, and who was arrested later by
Carondelet, described its forts as diminutive and badly placed

LOUISIANA. 551
to ward off an attack from without, though they might prove to
be sufficient to quell a revolt. This last had probably been the
governor's purpose in placing them. Five hundred men, sword
In hand, could carry any one of them, as Collot claimed, and
the guns of each could be turned, when captured, upon the
others. None of them could hold more than a hundred and
fifty defenders. The seaward defenses of the town were better.
Fort Plaquemines, eighteen miles from the mouth of the Missis
sippi, was indeed settling on the piles on which it was built ;
but Its parapet was eighteen feet thick and lined with brick.
It had twenty-four guns, and could house three hundred men,
though only a hundred were now in it. The land within range
of its guns was not practicable for any protection to the be
siegers, and the river at this point was twelve to fourteen hun
dred yards wide.
The province of Louisiana was just beginning to show signs
of a commercial future, and if the money which was spent on
largesses to the Indians could be turned to Internal improve
ments, this business progress could be easily developed. The
culture of indigo had, owing to a blight, been largely aban
doned, but a more important industry was just developing
In the reintroduction of the sugar-cane. An Illinois Creole,
Etienne de Bore, on his plantation six miles above New Orleans,
had shown such a success in Its growth that in a few years the
products increased to five million pounds of sugar, two hundred
thousand gaUons of rum, and two hundred and fifty thousand
gaUons of molasses. Almost coincident with this new agricul
tural development, Eli Whitney, by the invention of the cotton-
gin, which under the law of April 10, 1790, he had patented
on March 4, 1794, had caused the exportation of cotton to ad
vance enormously, from two hundred thousand pounds in 1791
to eighteen miUion pounds in 1800. Collot, who had not found
the Whitney invention in operation in 1795, said that the seeds
were still separated by a coarse mill, which breaks the fibre and
diminishes its value a quarter, but he adds, " A better machine
bas been introduced Into the United States, which is no doubt
susceptible of greater perfection, and the cotton has already re
sumed its old price."
The west, to be prosperous, shared with Louisiana the neces
sity of putting an end both to the endless marauding of the

552 PINCKNEY'S TREATY.
Indians and to the uncertainty of the civil government. The
Indian question had practically now come to a composition of
the feud existing between the Chickasaws and the Creeks.
Both Robertson and the Spanish commander at Natchez ex
erted themselves as mediators, and in the early summer of 1795,
these two tribes came to an agreement which, barring- the out
bursts of some irrepressible bucks on each side, quieted the
Indian country. News of Wayne's victory In the north served
to increase the disinclination to war, and after some months
there was, for the first time In a long period, substantial peace
in the southwest, and in October, 1795, Washington congratu
lated Hamilton on the prevalence of " peace from one end of
our frontiers to the other."
This condition relieved the people of Tennessee from the
necessity of the military escort to which they had been accus
tomed in attending their conventions, and a disposition to pre
pare for entering- the Union becoming manifest, Blount ordered
a special cession of the territorial assembly for June 29, 1795,
to consider the question of Statehood. A census was ordered
to see if the sixty thousand persons, counting free people and
" three fifths of all others," — the United States Constitution
had given them the phrase, — • necessary, under the precedence
of the ordinance of 1787, to pass from a territorial condition,
could be made out. If not. It was a question whether a lesser
number would warrant their taking initiatory steps in the same
direction. The count showed a population of seventy-seven
thousand two hundred and sixty-three, while the vote for State
hood had been six thousand five hundred and four with two
thousand five hundred and sixty-two in the negative, the latter
mostly in middle Tennessee. So Blount issued a call for a
constitutional convention to meet on January 11, 1796, though
it was problematical if by that time the Spanish negotiations
would have decided the question of the Mississippi. The pros
pect had induced new currents of emigration from the east ;
a new road had been cut over the Cumberland Mountains, and
in the autumn of the previous year thirty or forty wagons went
over it to establish new homes. A traveler that way in 1796
reports that between Nashville and Knoxville he met one
hundred and seventy-five wagons, and seventeen or eighteen
hundred bathorses, carrying emigrants and their property to
the Cumberland settlements.

KENTUCKY INTRIGUES. 563
Carondelet's hopes for some new distractions, which might
tend to the Spanish interest, rested not on these stabler com
munities of the Cumberland, but on the more restless settle
ments on the Kentucky. In June, 1795, that Spanish governor
addressed a letter to Judge Sebastian, at Frankfort, offering
to send Colonel Gayoso to New Madrid, to meet those whom
Sebastian might send there to discuss the question of the Mis
sissippi, — an effort necessarily subversive of the poUcy which
the two governments had now entered upon at Madrid of com
ing to a conclusion by agreement on this vexed question. Later,
and before he had received the letter of June, Sebastian was
again apprised of the intention of Gayoso to be in New Madrid
iu October. That the meeting was held of course compromises
Sebastian and his friends, as representatives of the United
States, to an equal degree with Carondelet. Even if, as the
Americans professed, they entered upon these private negotia-
tions'for business interests only, the matter was none the less
one for the federal government to manage.
Gayoso went north from Natchez with other ostensible ob
jects than to deal with the renegades whom he sought. He
stopped at the Chickasaw Bluffs and bargained with the Indian
owners for a tract of land along the river, six miles long and
from a half mile to a mile broad, and on this he built and gar
risoned a fort. When General Wayne heard of this occupa
tion of American soil^ he demanded an explanation, and Gayoso
answered from " On board the Vigilant before New Madrid,
2nd October, 1796," that he had a right to treat with an Inde
pendent tribe, and cited an agreement of the United States
with the Chickasaws as to their bounds. He accompanied this
with protestations of friendship. A few days before, he had
written to St. Clair, then at Kaskaskia, asking for a conference
to further the reciprocal interests of the two countries. From
New Madrid, after thus trying to blind St. Clair, he sent
Thomas Power — an Irishman, speaking French, Spanish, and
English, naturalized in Spain, who professed to be a wander
ing naturalist — to open intercourse with Sebastian and his
friends. This done. Power passed on to Cincinnati, and saw
Wilkinson, then at Fort Washington, and wearing the Ameri
can uniform. This renegade American general now wrote to
Carondelet, recommending that the Spanish governor should

554 PINCKNEY'S TREATY.
resume his shipments up the river in order to restore confi
dence ; that he should fortify the mouth of the Ohio against
any possible English inroad ; that he should establish a bank
In Kentucky with American directors ; and that he should em
ploy George Rogers Clark and his followers in the Spanish
service. It will be recollected that the French Republic had
no further use of Clark and bis soldiers of fortune. Sebastian
went to New Madrid, but was not able to come to any agree
ment on the commercial ventures, which were to be a part of
their plot, and he invited Judge Innes and William Murray
to take part In the discussion. Being unable to agree with
Gayoso, this official and Sebastian, in October, left New Madrid
and proceeded to New Orleans, to lay the problems before
Carondelet, reaching there in January, 1796. Before their
conferences were over, news reached New Orleans of the con
clusion of a treaty with Spain ; and the intriguers were forced
to resort to other schemes. As these were in contravention
of the treaty which had alarmed them, it is necessary now to
follow the events which led to that pacification, and the conclu
sions which were reached, perfidious though they were on the
part of Spain.
On December 8, 1795, the President had said to Congress
that they might hope for a speedy conclusion of a satisfactory
treaty with Spain, and before the terms of it were known, they
were accurately prefigured to the public.
Pinckney had reached Madrid on June 28, 1796, but it was
not till August 10 — such were the obstacles and prevarica
tions usually inherent in Spanish diplomacy — that the Amer
ican commissioner was allowed to lay his propositions before
the Prince of Peace, who had been appointed to deal with him.
This grandee then submitted the Impossibility of going for
ward, as he bad not yet received any answer to the proposition
which be had sent to the United States, to sell the right to
navigate the Mississippi for a consideration, if the American
Republic would guarantee the Spanish territorial possessions on
its banks. Pinckney replied that his countrymen would never
purchase a right, and that It was out of the question for them to
make such a guarantee. He then rehearsed the old arguments.
Spain had never questioned the provisions of the treaty of 1782
at the time she made with England the general treaty of Janu-

THE TREATY SIGNED. 655
ary 20, 1783, and nothing but the bounds of 1782 could ever
satisfy the United States, as the same bounds had satisfied
England in 1763, with the provision of a free navigation of the
Mississippi from source to mouth, as inherent now as then.
The summer dragged on with little or no progress, and in
October, disgusted and chagrined, Pinckney demanded his pass
ports. The work upon which no progress had been made in four
months was now suddenly done In three days, and the treaty
was signed on October 27, 1795. The next day Pinckney wrote
to his own government that the threatening relations of Eng
land and the United States had obstructed the negotiations as
well as the peaceful attitude of Great Britain towards Spain.
The text of the treaty arrived in Philadelphia on February
22, 1796, and the Senate promptly ratified it.
The bounds by the Mississippi and on Florida were exactly
what the Americans had claimed under the treaty of independ
ence. Spain made no provision for rendering valid the grants
she had made north of 31°, and they were left to the decision
of the United States. It was provided that a joint commission
should meet at Natchez, six months after ratification, to run the
lines. The navigation of the Mississippi, from source to mouth,
was fuUy assured for both parties. Pinckney sought" to save a
confilct with Jay's treaty by inserting that, beside the two con
tracting powers, " others, by special convention," could enjoy
the same right. Spain Insisted that the grant to England in
the Jay treaty of right to navigate the Mississippi was of no
avail, as the United States only derived such a right by the
present treaty.
The port of New Orleans was established for three years as
a place of deposit, with no duties chargeable, and after that
interval the same or other place of deposit should be allowed.
Both parties agreed to restrain the Indians on either side of
the dividing line, and to use force If necessary. It was on the
pretense that Spain did not Impede an invasion of Georgia by
the Seminoles, in 1815, that Monroe ordered Andrew Jackson
at that time to pursue them over the Spanish line.
Spain agreed to evacuate all ports held by her on American
territory within six months, and the United States were put
under similar obligations, if conditions required it.

666 PINCKNEY'S TREATY.
Ratifications of this treaty of San Lorenzo el real were
exchanged on April 26, 1796, and on August 2 it was duly
proclaimed. So decisive an abandonment of her old policy by Spain, as
this treaty evinced, naturally raised the question of the sincerity
of the Spanish government. Pinckney and Hamilton thought
that the sudden change in the Spanish temper came from an
apprehension that the United States and England, as a result
of Jay's treaty, were preparing for a joint declaration of war
against France and Spain. Such a fear may have prevailed in
the French council, and Spain and the French Directory were
now in close contact. It was said that the Spanish king yielded
reluctantly, and had no real intention of carrying the treaty out,
if circumstances and delays could help him to retain the Spanish
posts on the Mississippi. It was known that Gayoso later
boasted that the treaty would never be put in force, and Caron
delet acted, both In bis subsequent conduct and in ,the proposi
tions be forwarded by Sebastian to Kentucky, — as we shall
see, — as if he was of like belief. It was also believed that
Spain hoped to pacify the United States while she dallied with
the provisions of the treaty long enough to profit from a neu
tral territory being interposed between Louisiana and a British
attack. Talleyrand saw nothing but misfortune in Spain's
abandonment of the east bank of the Mississippi, and looked
in the end for a countervail to France In the cession of Florida _
and Louisiana.
Washington, when the treaty had been carried through the
Senate, expressed tlie hope that it would prove " soothing to
the inhabitants of the western waters, who were beginning to
grow restive and clamorous." He little knew that Judge Innes,
in whom he had confided all along to quiet the discontent, was
deep in the nefarious plot of Sebastian, — the former being a
circuit judge of the United States, and the other the chief justice
of Kentucky. The infamous Sebastian engaged to give bis ser
vices to Spain, to subserve her interests and subvert those of his
own country, for a yearly pension of $2,000, and he received
the stipend regularly.
After thus debasing himself, Sebastian, accompanied by
Power, in the spring- of 1796, sailed from New Orleans for

WILKINSON AND SEBASTIAN. 657
Philadelphia, and thence passed westward with the following
propositions from Carondelet: To prepare Kentucky for a
revolution, and to give them money to organize the project,
$100,000 will be sent to Kentucky. When independence Is
declared. Fort Massac shall be occupied by Spanish troops, and
1100,000 shall be appUed in supporting the garrison. The
northern bounds of Spanish territory are to be a line running
west from the mouth of the Yazoo River to the Tombigbee,
while all north of such a line shall, except the reservation
recently fortified at the Chickasaw Bluff, belong to the revolted
State, which shaU enter into a defensive alliance with Spain.
The new treaty of San Lorenzo shall not be observed ; but the
new State shall enjoy the na-vigation of the Mississippi. Ten
thousand doUars were to be sent in sugar barrels up the river
to Wilkinson, now the general-In-cbief of the American army I
Power was obliged to return to New Orleans with the report
that the Spanish treaty had indisposed the Kentucky intriguers
to further machinations. Wilkinson, however, was not forgot
ten, and if we are to believe a vindicator of that faithless per
sonage, this money In sugar barrels was only his return from a
tobacco venture. The specie was sent by two messengers. One
got safely through. The other was murdered by his own boat
men, but neither Wilkinson nor Judge Innes thought it prudent
to bring the felons to justice, and they were hurried off beyond
the Mississippi.
The late John Mason Brown of Louisville, in an elaborate
attempt to -vindicate his grandfather, John Brown, the Ken
tucky senator, from complicity in these Spanish conspiracies, sat
isfied himself that he successfully defended Innes and all
except Wilkinson and Sebastian from the charges of baseness.
" Lifted," he says, " to its last analysis, the story shows that
certainly there were not more than two conspirators, Wilkinson
and Sebastian. It does not seem that they communicated.
They were base money-takers, both of them, but they made no
proselytes, nor tried to." It is to be hoped that this explana
tion Is true, but evidence is against it.

CHAPTER XXV.
the united states completed.
1796-1798.
Spain had, indeed, during the course of 1796, entered upon
a system of delay very characteristic of her national hmnor,
in carrying out the j)ro visions of the treaty of San Lorenzo;
but its ratification (April, 1796) had postponed, if it had not
averted, danger from that quarter. But in the place of one
disquietude bad come another. French arrogance, which had
received a temporary check by the suppression of Clark's expe
dition and by the futility of Carondelet's ulterior plans, made
evident early In the year, was again asserting Itself. With the
uncertain drift of diplomacy and through the wafting of pas
sions, the federal government was never quite sure that the pro
visions of Jay's treaty might not at any time become an obstacle
to the continuance of the enforced and somewhat disheartening
truce with England which, in April, was finally to be made
operative. The public grew calmer because It was not informed ;
and such events as the new treaty with Algiers, entered into
just before the treaty with Spain, seemed to the casual observer
Indicative of a new success in European relations. In Febru
ary, 1796, Congress congratulated Washington on his birthday,
with more warmth because it was generally felt that he was
entering very shortly upon his last year In office. The Presi
dent himself was taking a more roseate view of public affairs
than seemed warranted, and in March, 1 796, be was writing to
a friend : " If the people have not abundant cause to rejoice at
the happiness they enjoy, I know of no country that has. We
have settled all our disputes, and are at peace AvIth all nations."
This was true, but the prospect of a continuance of peace was
not flattering. Pickering, at about the same moment, was pre
maturely planning for the garrisoning- of Natchez, and prepar
ing to meet a new outbreak of the Creeks, between the enmity

TENNESSEE. 569
of whom and the retention of the Spanish posts he had not far
to reach for reasons.
Early in the year, the nearest white neighbors of that tribe
had made a notable movement in their convention at Knoxville
on January 11, 1796. Completing its business on February 6, it
had announced to the world a constitution, based on that of
North Carolina, but more republican, as Jefferson said, than any
before framed, though In some particulars respecting the taxa
tion of lands it has been held to be too favorable to the rich.
It had been made without any enabling act of Congress, and
in defiance of the right of Congress to order the census which
preceded it, and to determine whether the territory should be
made an autonomy within the Union or without it. It had cre
ated a new State, ready for union, if Congress wanted it, but a
new State in any event. The convention had had some remark
able men in it. Blount, who had sat In the federal convention of
1787, presided over it, and he was destined to be its senator in
Congress. James Robertson had been called to the chair when
ever the convention resolved Itself into a committee of the whole.
Andrew Jackson was there, soon to ride eight hundred miles
on horseback io Philadelphia, and to claim a seat in the State's
behalf In the national House of Representatives. Pie was better
known now than when be looked on and saw the escape of
Sevier from his enemies at the backwoods court-house. TIj)ton,
one of those enemies, was now here, his associate In the conven
tion ; but Sevier was not there, though destined in a few weeks
to be their chosen governor, and, later still, to be turned to by
Washington's successor as a brigadier in the quasi war with
France. The constitution gave and legalized the name of
Tennessee to the incipient commonwealth. By Blount's agency
the vexed and perennial question of the Mississippi, which was
so near its settlement, was formulated as a fundamental law :
"An equal participation of the free navigation of the Missis
sippi is one of the Inherent rights of the citizens of this State ;
it cannot, therefore, be conceded to any prince, potentate, power,
person or persons whatever."
By the end of March, 1796, the State had assembled Its first
legislature, and by it the new constitution was forwarded to
the President, who ou April 8 laid it before Congress. A
month of hesitancy passed. The federalists, led by Rufus King,

660 THE UNITED STATES COMPLETED.
rallied against its acceptance. They saw in it a trick to secure
another electoral vote for Jefferson in the coming count. One
of this party wrote : " The people of that country have cashiered
the temporary government, and self-created themselves into a
State. One of their spurious senators has arrived, and has
claimed his seat. No doubt this is one twig of the electioneer
ing cabal for Mr. Jefferson." Aaron Burr, who had been in
the Senate since 1791, led the party of advocates, and led them
successfully. The bill for the admission of the new State came
to a vote on May 6, but Burr's margin of victory was narrow.
The President kept the question in doubt for some weeks, but
finally approved the act on June 1.
Another fateful question came, in the same early months of
1796, to an issue. The legislature of Georgia, which was to
wipe out the Yazoo scandal, convened in January, and a strong
party in favor of canceling the vicious grants developed itself.
Meanwhile, the corporate speculators had in many cases sold
their rights under the threatened grants, and those of the Upper
Mississippi Company were transferred to a company in South
Carolina. The other companies sent agents to New England,
and many prominent men invested in their shares, and Boston
alone is said to have placed $2,000,000 in this way. With the
prospect of trouble from innocent purchasers, or from others not
so guileless, the legislature, on February 13, passed a rescind
ing act, accompanying their decision with proofs of the corrup
tion and evidences of the unconstitutionality of the slaughtered
grants. To give the end something of melodramatic effect, the
old act was publicly burned, the fire being Ignited by a burning-
glass, in the effort to link the deprecation of heaven with that
of the vindicators of justice. It is not necessary now to trace
out the sequel. Jackson, the champion of the vindicators, says
that he was " fired at In the papers, abused In the coffee-houses,
and furnished a target for all the Yazoo scrip-holders, — but
[he added] I have the people yet with me." Plis leadership
led him Into duels, and in one of them he was finaUy killed in
1806. Meanwhile, the new purchasers organized for prosecut
ing their claims, and when Georgia finally ceded the territory
to the United States, in 1802, the justice of their demands was
left to the determination of Congress.

ADET AND THE WEST. 561
It was in the spring of 1796 that Adet, now the French
minister in Philadelphia, entered actively upon his scheme of
wresting the western country from the Union. He selected for
his agents to traverse that region two Frenchmen : one. Gen
eral Victor Collot, who is described, in the Instructions for his
apprehension, as being six feet tall, forty years of age, and speak
ing English very well. The other — Warin, or Wai-ren, as
the same instructions name him — is described as over six feet
high, thirty years old, lately a sub-engineer in the American
service, and speaking English tolerably. The expenses of the
mission of these spies were to be borne by the French govern
ment. They were to observe the military posts and make gen
eral observations on the country, which CoUot's journal has
preserved for us. They were to select a spot for a military
depot, and to make a list of influential persons whom they
encountered. They were to sound the people on an alliance
with France, and to point out how natural it would be for those
beyond the mountains to seek a French connection. They were
also told to express a preference for the election of Jefferson to
the presidency, and this was natural. It was the belief that
Gallatin, whose career in the whiskey insurrection had not been
forgotten, had taken a map by Hutchins and marked out a
route for these emissaries, even if he had not suggested the
movement to Adet. The whole project was a part of the
resentment of France at the Jay treaty, which was held to have
annuUed the treaty of 1778. It was supposed to be in the
interest of annexing Louisiana to France, and to give her this
larger domination in the Mississippi valley, — a scheme that
Talleyrand, equal to any depth of infamy, had, as we have seen,
formulated. In May, McHenry, now In the ca,binet, informed St. Clair
of the departure of these spies, and hoped he would discover
ground for seizing their papers. About the same time, the
republican faction were credited with an attempt, ostensibly for
economy's sake, to abolish the major-generalship of the army,
but really with the purpose of getting rid of Wayne and put
ting Wilkinson as the senior brigadier at the head of the army,
as a more manageable person than Wayne. The death of the
latter before the end of the year brought Wilkinson to the top
more naturally, and the French faction doubtless knew him to
be as purchasable by France as by Spain.

562 THE UNITED STATES COMPLETED.
The French government, in March, 1796, had lodged with
Monroe, in Paris, their complaints of the Jay treaty ; and when
the tidings of the House's action, on April 30, in sustaining the
treaty, reached France, the authorities of the seaports began a
series of aggressions and condemnations of American vessels.
By October, the exasperated Directory were determined on
more offensive measures. Monroe advised the leaders that a
war with the United States would throw the Americans into
the arms of England, and set back the cause of liberty. This
minister heard in August that France was planning a treaty
with Spain, by which Louisiana and Florida would be surren
dered to French Influence, and Canada was to be attacked, so
as to surround the United States with alien interests. Monroe
questioned the government, which promptly denied it.
Meanwhile, Adet's spies were working in the west. Collot,
in Kentucky, had fallen in with Judge Breckenridge, and was
endeavoring to convince hira how a French alliance could with
stand the authority of the United States. Passing on by the
route which had been marked out for him, Collot made obser
vation of the portage between the Wabash and Maumee, where
wagons were regularly conveying passengers, and saw how it
" ought to be fortified, If the northwestern States ever make a
schism." Descending the Ohio, he stoj)ped at Fort Massac,
and found it occupied by a hundred men, and eight twelve-
pounders mounted in its four bastions. The channel, being on
the opposite side of the river, showed him how it could be
passed in the night. Caught making sketches, the commander.
Captain Pike, arrested him, and he was only allowed to proceed
by having an officer in company as long as he kept on American
soil. Passing up to the Illinois settlements, where he had
hoped to discover the French eager for his counsels, he was cha
grined to find that the people had no qualities of the French
but courage. Collot, Michaux, and Volney give a poor account
of these degenerate French. " They live and look like sav
ages," says one. " Their thrifty American neighbors had got
the upper hand of them," says a second. CoUot even says
they had forgotten the succession of the calendar ; that they
stubbornly adhered to old customs ; that they did not recog
nize their privations ; that they were buried in superstitious
ignorance, and lived the lives of indolent drunkards.

WASHINGTON'S ADVICE. 563
At St. Louis, Collot learned that both Carondelet and Pick
ering had ordered his arrest, so that he was safe on neither
side of the river. An American judge at Kaskaskia, he said,
had " spread the most idle and injurious tales respecting the
French nation, and particularly respecting myself."
St. Louis struck him as commanding in position the Missis
sippi and the route to the Pacific by the Missouri, " with more
facUity, more safety, and with more economy for trade and
navigation than any other given point In North America." Of
Its six hundred population, two hundred were able to bear arms,
and all were French. They were, in the main, happy laborers,
less degenerate than those he had seen In the Illinois region,
and among them were prosperous merchants. The fort had
been strengthened at the time of Genet's proposed raid, and the
garrison of seventeen men now In It was ordered to retreat, if
necessary, to New Madrid.
Looking- to a French irruption on the mines of Santa Fe, he
found that it was practicable for two converging forces to fall
upon them. One would ascend the Great Osage branch of the
Missouri, and the other the Arkansas. The valley where Santa
Fe was situated would bring the two armies near together, the
one sixty miles and the other a hundred miles and more from
the coveted goal.
While Collot was thus marking out the lines of a French
invasion of the Mississippi valley, Washington, in his farewell
address (September 17, 1796), was uttering a sober warning- to
the western intriguers. The east finds, he says, and will still
more find, in the west, " a valuable vent for the commodities
which it brings from abroad, or manufactures at home," while
the west will obtain from the east " the supj)lles requisite to its
growth and comfort. ... It owes the secure enjoyment of In
dispensable outlets for its own productions to the Atlantic side
of the Union. . . . Any other tenure by which the west can
hold this advantage, either by its own strength or by connections
with a foreign power, must be precarious. . . . The inhabitants
of our western country have seen In the treaty with Spain, and
in the miiversal satisfaction at that event, a decisive proof how
unfounded were the suspicions propagated among them of a
policy in the general government and in the Atlantic States
unfriendly to their interests In regard to the Mississippi." He

664 THE UNITED STATES COMPLETED. '
urges them to be deaf to advisers who would connect them with
aliens. As the autumn advanced, the relations between Spain and
England, which had long been strained, and which had so much
induced the treaty of San Lorenzo, grew more and more irrita
ble. A year or so before, Jefferson had written to Morris in
London to Intimate to the British government that a balance of
power was as necessary in America as in Europe, and any dis
turbance of it by England's seizing Louisiana in case of a rup
ture with Spain would cause extreme uneasiness In America.
It was a common rumor at this time that an expedition from
Montreal would be started against Louisiana, if the Spanish
should venture on a war. Collot heard of it on the Mississippi
as to consist of two thousand British regulars, fifteen hundred
mlUtIa, and a body of Indians, and he had given Gayoso warn
ing of it at Natchez. During the summer, an English spy
had been examining the Ohio River, and it was a question if
England would respect American territory in case of a determi
nation to attack Louisiana. St. Clair wrote from Pittsburg,
on September 6, about this emissary : " ConnoUy has left the
country, after making, it is said, an accurate survey of the
Ohio, and sounding its depths in a number of places. He was
stopped at Massac and his papers examined by the command
ing officer," and at the same time there were reports of English
agents in Tennessee and Kentucky organizing military forces.
War was declared by Spain against England on October 7,
and not long after the declaration was received in London, Port
land wrote to Simcoe (October 24) to Inquire what could be
depended upon in Kentucky and the west. The current ques
tions now became complicated. Would England, with or with
out the sympathy of the United States, make a descent of the
Mississippi upon New Orleans ? Would the Spanish, with or
without the aid of the French, ascend the Mississippi, make
another attempt to wrest the west from the LTnion, and dash
upon Canada ? The last country was full of rumors of French
intentions, and Governor Prescott, In October, 1796, issued a
warning proclamation. The possession by this time of the lake
posts surrendered under the Jay treaty, which was the cause
of this French animosity, put the United States in a position
to resist either expedition, northward or southward, if it should
seem best.

ELLICOTT AND CARONDELET. 566
The immediate effect upon the United States of this Anglo-
Spanish war was the excuse which Carondelet found in it to
delay the surrender of Natchez and the other Mississippi posts,
and to block the purpose of Andrew EUicott, who had been
designated by the President as the American commissioner for
running the lines determined by the treaty of San Lorenzo.
EUicott had left Philadelphia on September 16, 1796, and near
the end of October, he embarked all his stores and wagons on
the Ohio. It was a low state of the river, and when he turned
into the Mississippi, on December 18, he found himself sur
rounded by floating ice. He did not begin his further descent
till January 21, 1797, when a detachment of American troops
accompanied his flotilla. At New Madrid, before its crumbling
fort, he was stopped and shown a letter from Carondelet direct
ing the commandant to detain him till the forts were evacuated,
which coidd not be done, as his excuse was, till the river had
risen. He went on. At Chickasaw Bluff there was the same
politeness and the same wide-eyed wonder when the treaty of
San Lorenzo was mentioned. There were armed galleys hover
ing about in a rather inquisitive way. At Walnut Hills a can
non-shot stopped them, and he found the same 23olIteness and
ignorance. On February 22, 1797, he met a messenger from
Gayoso, who commanded at Natchez, saying that the evacuation
had been delayed by the want of suitable vessels. The Span
ish govemor advised him to leave bis armament behind. If be
proposed to come on to Natchez. EUicott went on without his
troops and reached Natchez on the 24th. Entering- upon a con
ference, he finally secured a promise to begin the survey on
March 19 ; and he sent forward a notice of his arrival to Ca
rondelet. Gayoso asked him to pull down the American flag
flying over his camp, but he refused.
On March 1, 1797, Carondelet arrived. He presented a new
excuse for not evacuating the posts. It was not clear in his
mind whether he should surrender the forts as they were, or
should dismantle them first, and he must submit the question
to the authorities In Madrid.
There was in Natchez, with Its hundred variegated wooden
houses, a mixed population of about four thousand, divided in
sympathies, — a Spanish party, an English party, and an Amer
ican one. The Spanish party was really Insignificant. The

566 THE UNITED STATES COMPLETED.
English party was made up of original British settlers, who had
been joined by Tories from the States during- the Revolution.
The American party was mainly people whom the States for
one reason or another had ejected from their communities. In
the district about the town there may have been ten thousand
souls, capable with the town of furnishing two thousand militia
foot, and two hundred dragoons.
It appearing that Gayoso was strengthening the fort and re
mounting guns, EUicott had offers of volunteers, coming from
, among- the nine tenths of the peojjle who were rejoicing in the
prospect of relief from Spanish rule. While EUicott hesitated
about assuming any military control, he was determined to
send up the river for his troops. It was not best to let the
Spanish commander get too strong a hold upon the post. There
was no neighboring height from which a cannonade could dis
possess him of the post, and New Orleans, a hundred leagues
away, was within reach for succor. Gayoso objected to ba-vlng
the American trooj)s at hand, but EUicott was firm, only that
be was wiUing they should bivouac a few miles up from the
town. Lieutenant Pope, who was in command of the escort,
had been strengthening it by enlistments up the river, as he
could find willing Americans in the neighborhood of Fort Mas
sac, where he had stopped. Pie had had orders from Wayne
not to move forward till he had tidings of the evacuation ; but
EUIcott's demand was pressing, and he descended the river,
reaching the neighborhood of Natchez on April 24, 1797.
It was now apparent that Sj)anlsh agents were working upon
the Chickasaws and Choctaws to secure their aid in what looked
like a struggle for possession ; but EUicott was as wary as his
opponent, and courted the Choctaws till be felt sure of their
neutrality. At this point there was a new reason given by the
Spaniards — not offered before — for delay, which was that
news had been received of a contemplated British descent of
the river, and they must be met before they reached New Or
leans. Gayoso in fact had first heard of this intended British
attack from Collot, when he passed down the river the pre
vious year. At that time, Collot had a marvelous tal« to re
hearse. One Chlsholm — an Englishman, whom one shall soon
know something about — was raising a force In Tennessee,
which, with the aid of the Creeks and Cherokees and fifteen

WILKINSON AND POWER. 567
hundred Tories at Natchez, was to attack the Spanish, while
the British from Canada, in company with Brant and his Indi
ans, were to descend the Mississippi. It was now just about the
time when, as Collot then said, the American invaders would
be gathering at Knoxville, where they had the countenance of
the Governor of Tennessee.
The Spanish surveyor arriving at this juncture, and the sur
veying party having no necessity of witnessing the Anglo-
Spanish conflict, EUicott thought there was a chance to begin
his work. Gayoso, who was now strengthening his works at
AValnut HiUs, thought otherwise, and notified EUicott, on May
11, that the survey must be put off ; and this decision was con
firmed by a proclamation which Carondelet himself issued on
May 24. EUicott protested, and enroUnients of the townspeople
began as If serious business was intended. A fortnight later,
on June 7, 1797, a committee of the citizens assumed control of
the town, all parties agreeing- to be peaceable. Gayoso acqui
esced, since he could not do otherwise, and exhorted the popu
lace to keep quiet till the differences could be settled. This
revolutionary tribunal was displaced In a few days by another
appointed by Gayoso at EUIcott's dictation, and Carondelet
confirmed the choice. This was one of the last acts of Caron
delet, for he was soon on his way to Quito to assume another
charge, and Gayoso ^ruled In his place, receiving his commission
on July 26, 1797.
This departing, short, fat, choleric, but good-humored gov
ernor was not to know the failure of another of his wily plans.
He had, in May, 1797, once more sent his old emissary, Thomas
Power, to Wilkinson, to ask him to keep back any additional
American force, because he intended to hold Natchez till the
British danger was jDassed, and he could hear from Madrid.
Power was also to let the old Kentucky discontents understand
that Spain had no intention of observing the San Lorenzo
treaty, and that if they would swing that State away from the
Union, Spain was ready to make the most favorable terms with
them. It was the old story. Kentucky constancy to Spanish
interest was to be tested very shortly in an attack on Fort Mas
sac. The time, however, had passed for even a show of assent,
and when Power reached Detroit, where Wilkinson was, that
general made an appearance of arresting him, and hurried him

668 THE UNITED STATES COMPLETED.
out of danger. This was in Sejotember, 1797 ; in the follow
ing January, Power was back in New Orleans reporting his
failure to Gayoso. '
While Power and Wilkinson, conscious that the end of Span
ish machinations in the west had come, were talking over at
Detroit the failure of their hojaes, EUicott, at Natchez, was
receiving (September, 1797) from his government the disclos
ure of another plan, to link the turbulent west with British
aid in an attempt to wrest New Orleans and the adjacent re
gions from the hands of Spain. This Intelligence was accom
panied by the announcement that Blount, now a senator from
Tennessee, and shown to be a prime mover in this treasonable
scheme, had been expeUed the previous July by his associates
in Congress, with but a single dissentient voice, and had hur
ried away from Philadelphia to escape further condemnation.
EUicott, on the receipt of this news, threw a new responsibility
upon his committee of safety at Natchez, when he left it to its
vigilance to detect and thwart any lingering treason in connec
tion with the same plot, which might exist in that neighbor
hood, of which, as we have seen, Collot had heard a vague
rumor the previous year.
This dying spasm of western discontent needs to be eluci
dated. Blount had probably numerous accomplices. They have
been reckoned at about thirty, upon whom more or less suspi
cion rested. They included a certain schemer, one Dr. -Ro-
mayne. Colonel Orr of Tennessee, Colonel Whitely of Ken
tucky, and a dubious personage, named Chlsholm. On AprU
21, 1797, Blount had written to Carey, the official interpreter
of the Cherokees, in a way which showed that the southern In
dians were to be used in an attack on New Orleans, while a
British fleet ascended the Mississippi, and a force of four thou
sand frontiersmen, directed by Blount and aided by Colonel
Anthony Hutchins, a hot-headed officer of the English ser-vice,
who was somewhat popular In the Natchez country, -were to
descend that river.
After the plan was known, there was a diversity of opinion
as to the end the plot was intended to subserve. Some, as one
said, supposed the real object was to alarm the Spaniards, and
when the intriguers had created serious apprehension in the
Spanish mind, the movers were to offer their services to arrest

FRENCH INTRIGUES. 669
or oppose the progress of the plan, and place the Spanish
authorities under such obligations as to reap immense advan
tages to themselves. The truth was probably more apparent,
for the project was most likely intended to forestall a plot of
France to secure possession of Florida and Louisiana, which
TaUeyrand had urged as an offset to the effects of Jay's treaty.
A transfer of the trans-Mississippi region to France was held
to be inimical to the interests of the land speculators of the
west, who thought, by placing that region under the trustee
ship of England, to enhance the reciprocal advantages of an
independent state, holding both banks of the Mississippi. It
had for a long time been suspected that France was negotiating
with Spain to renew her old hold on the Mississippi. As early
as November, 1796, Oliver Wolcott felt convinced that the
transfer had been secretly effected " with the object of having
an influence over the western country." Rufus King, in Lon
don, was growing to think that the persistent grasp of Spain on
the river posts was an indication that this had taken place.
Listen, the British minister in Philadelphia, writing to Gov
ernor Prescott of Canada, warned him that France was not to
be content -with Louisiana, but was longing also for her old
dominion over the country north of the Great Lakes. He be
lieved that Adet had sent thither a skulking emissary, who was
passing under the name of Burns, and was seeking to excite
the Canadians to revolt. The dread of this in Canada grew so
before the year closed that it was feared that Lower and Upper
Canada would be assailed, on the one hand from Vermont and
on the other from the west, where Collot was numbering the
westem Indians and thought to instigate them to the attack.
Rumor laid out a broad plan of attack. A French fleet was to
ascend the St. Lawrence in July, 1797, while the Jacobins were
to muster the invading force along the American frontier. In
March, Liston found everything dark. " The damned French
rogues," he -wrote, " are playing the devil with this country, as
they have done with all the world ; but when things are at the
worst, they must mend."
Just before this, Pickering had written (February, 1797) to
Rufus King that the change in sovereignty over Louisiana
would be fraught with danger to the United States. The elec
tion of John Adams to the presidency the previous November

670 THE UNITED STATES COMPLETED.
(1796) and the defeat of Jefferson, the friend of France, in
spite of Adet's warning that a republican defeat would estrange
bis country, had moved the French Directory to action meant,
as Barlow reported, " to be little short of a declaration of war."
In the spring of 1797, it was known that the Directory had
ordered Pinckney away from Paris. Hamilton wrote back to
King, on April 8, that " it portends too much a final rupture
as the only alternative to an ignominious submission." Adet
at this time, leaving for France, said there would be no war,
but the federalists believed he only Intended to prevent the
Americans preparing for a conflict. Fisher Ames was urging
a bold front. Robert Goodloe Harper, In a pamphlet, was
going over the story of the past insincerity of France, and feli
citously divining her treachery in the days of the American Re
volution, In the way that abundant evidence, divulged in later
days, has established it. As the summer began, Pickering was
impressed .with the French intentions, and on June 27, 1797,
he wrote to King : " We are not without apprehension that
France means to regain Louisiana and to renew the ancient
plan of her monarch, of circumscribing and encircling what now
constitute the Atlantic States," — thus reinforcing the "view of
Harper. The French view was exactly exjiressed by Rochefou
cault-LIancourt, when he said that " the possession of Louisi
ana by the French would set bounds to the childish avarice of
the Americans, who wish to grasp at everything."
It was this prevailing belief, going back to the previous
autumn (1796), that had aroused Blount to the opportunity
which he desired to make of advantage to the west. His move
ments and those of his associates, even before he wrote his
letter In April to Carey, had been brought to the notice of
Yrnjo, the Spanish minister, and he had directed to it the atten
tion of Pickering. He added evidences, not only of a purpose
to attack New Orleans, but of a plan to Invade Florida from
Georgia, while another force from Canada feU upon St. Louis
and New Madrid.
The situation all around was perplexing for the administra
tion. Spain was pursuing a dubious course on the Mississippi.
There were Franco-western designs on Canada. There were
Anglo-western aims at New Orleans.
Liston, the British minister, when appealed to, acknowledged

BLOUNT'S INTRIGUE. 571
that he had been approached by irresponsible persons In regard
to a British attack on New Orleans ; but he said he had thrown
discredit on it, and had referred the proposition, with bis disap
proval, to his government. The ministry's response not coming,
one John Chlsholm, a Scotch adventurer, who has been already
referred to, and who had conferred with Liston, had been, in
March, 1797, sent to London by that minister, who had not
only paid the fellow's passage-money, but had also, it was later
believed, given him two sets of letters. One set was to accredit
him on account of this nefarious business, and was prepared
to be thrown overboard in case of necessity ; and the other set
concerned some ostensible mercantile transactions. King, in
London, was warned to keep watch on Chlsholm, and he soon
reported that he was leading a scandalous life, and that the
British government for a while paid his petty obligations, but
that later he was thrown into jail for debt. Grenville, how
ever, protested to King- that the ministry had promptly rejected
the whole proposition.
Meanwhile, Blount's letter, and bis expulsion from the Senate
In July, had set everybody in America wondering- how wide
spread the defection was. Between the revelation of the plot
and the final act of the Senate, Wolcott, on July 4, 1797, bad
written : " Our western frontiers are threatened with a new In
dian war. French and Spanish emissaries swarm though the
country. There is reason to believe that a western or ultra
montane republic is meditated. ... It is certain that overtures
have been made to the British government for support, and
there is every reason to believe, short of positive proof, that
similar overtures have been made to Spain and France. The
British will not now support the project." The opposite par
ties, now evenly balanced, as the election of Adams by a bare
majority showed, and bitterer than ever against each other,
scanned eagerly the names which were hinted at as associated
with Blount. The federalists were rejoiced to find them all
Jacobins. Boudinot expressed their opinions : " All who have
been mentioned as concerned in the business are violent Jaco
bins, professed enemies to Great Britain, and who have been
continual advocates for the French, and always vociferating a
British faction. . . . We are not without fear that this may be
a scheme of the democrats and Frenchified Americans to ruin

572 THE UNITED STATES COMPLETED.
England in the American opinion, and give the Spaniards an
excuse to break their treaty with us."
It is always unsafe to be determinate on diplomatic myste
ries, nor is there evidence that what Hawkesworth represented
to King at a later day as the purpose of the British ministry
was closely connected with this Blount undertaking. His lord
ship said that the ministry bad indeed considered a project of
seizing Louisiana, and might perhaps have used the British
army then in Egypt for the object. Their purpose, he pro
fessed, was not so much acquisition of territory as to find In the
success of the expedition a ground for securing other advan
tages at the peace. Colonel Trumbull, who was at this time In
England, wrote to urge the United States' seizing Louisiana
and Florida, and emancipating Mexico. He at the same time
expressed the opinion that the federal government might count
on the English navy to blockade on the Gulf, while the Ameri
cans did the work by land.
After the Blount plot had been discovered, the summer
passed in Philadelphia with as much uncertainty as before.
Pickering and Yrujo kept up their correspondence, and finaUy,
in August, the Spanish minister wrote what Jay called " a fac
tious and Indecent letter," which led Pickering to say that only
a change In the Spanish humor could restore confidence and lead
the United States to forget the past. The old suspicion stIU
prevailed, and the procrastinating policy of Gayoso with EUi
cott was held to be only a putting off to allow France to assert
a sovereignty in Louisiana, which it was presumed she had
already acquired. In November, 1797, King, in London, re
ported to Pickering that the Prince of Peace had lately declared
that the Directory of France had demanded Louisiana, and
that the court- of Spain found " itself no longer in a condition
to refuse." This was what Hamilton declared " plundering at
discretion." The news was indeed premature, for the treaty of San Ilde-
fonso was three years off, and fortunately there was an interval
left in which Spain could redeem her honor with the United
States, and lead America, in Pickering's phrase, to forget the
past. In November, Colonel Grandprie, who, under orders
from Madrid, had arrived in November in Natchez, to take com
mand, was ignored by the committee, and when, in December,

THE MISSISSIPPI TERRITORY. 573
1797, fresh United States troops, under Captain Guyon, joined
EUicott at Natchez, it was a warning to Gayoso that he could
not overlook. Events now moved rapidly, as they usuaUy do
when Spanish obstinacy gives way to fear. In January, 1798,
Gayoso issued orders for the evacuation of Natchez, Walnut
HiUs, and the other posts north of 31°. EUicott was notified
on January 10. After the usual Spanish torpidity, finally, on
March 30, under the cover of the night, and leaving everything
uninjured, the Spanish troops filed out, and the next morning
the American flag was run up. The Spanish troops retired
downstream, and there was no place but Baton Rouge left for
Gayoso to make a stand against an up-river approach. This
place was but thirty miles above Iberville River, which bounded
New Orleans inland on the north.
The American Republic was now, after fifteen years' waiting,
in possession of the territory in the southwest awarded to it by
the Treaty of Independence. We have seen that it had waited
thirteen years in the north to get control of the lake posts.
Congress at once (April, 1798) set up the Mississippi Terri
tory, covering the territory so long in dispute, and Winthrop
Sargent, turning over the secretaryship of the northwest ter
ritory to William Henry Harrison, was sent to organize the
government. He arrived at Natchez on August 6. Three
weeks later (August 26), Wilkinson, as general of the Ameri
can army, and bearing In his bosom the secrets that made his
prominence a blot both on himself and his government, arrived
at Natchez with a little army of occupation. Meanwhile, EUi
cott had left, on April 9, to begin his survey, and for two years
was engaged in the work.
So ends the story of the rounding out of the territorial in
tegrity of the Republic, as Franklin, Adams, and Jay had
secured it in 1782, against the mischievous indirection of her
enemies, French, Spanish, and British.
With a country completed in its bounds, the American
character needed a corresponding rounding of its traits. Jay,
in a letter to Trumbull, October 27, 1797, had divined its
necessities : " As to politics, we are in a better state than we
were ; but we are not yet in a sound state. I think that nation
is not in a sound state whose parties are excited by objects

674 THE UNITED STATES COMPLETED.
interesting only to a foreign power. I wish to see our people
more Americanized, If I may use that expression ; until we
feel and act as an independent nation, we shall always suffer
from foreign Influence." Hamilton wrote to King In a similar
spirit : " The conduct of France " — and he might have added of
Spain and Britain — " has been a very jDowerf ul medicine for the
political diseases of the country. I think the community im
proves in soundness."
Not long before this. Tench Coxe, of Pblladeljjhla, made a
survey of the condition to wliich the United States had attained :
" The public debt is smaller in proportion to the present wealth
and population than the public debt of any other civilized
nation. The United States, including the operations of the
individual States, have sunk a much greater proj)ortion of the
public debt in the last ten years than any nation in the world.
The expenses of the government are very much less in propor
tion to wealth and numbers than those of any nation in Eu
rope." The United States, with its rightful proportions se
cured, was now fairly started on an independent career.

INDEX.

INDEX.

Abbott, at Vincennes, 112 ; at Detroit,
127.
Abingdon, presbytery, 328.
Adam, Robert, til.
Adams, John, and the Transylvania
movement, 97 ; going abroad, 163 ; in
Paris, 1S3 ; his influence on the treaty
I17S2), 2(1S; on the date of the treaty
(1TS2), 210; his predictions, 2'2(i ; in
London demands the posts, 241 ; on
the loyalists, 243 ; sees Brant, 273 ;
5 raise of the British Constitution,^ 278 ;
tavila, 408 ; elected President, 5G8.
Adams, J. Q., at The Hague, 479.
Adet, atrives, 466 ; intrigues at the West,
561 ; returns to France, 570.
Alamance, battle, 7S.
Alexandria (Va.), as a port for the West,
248 ; western routes from, map, 249 ;
Washington's estimate, 250; commis
sioners at, 256.
Alexandria Gazette, 370,
Alibamons, 31, 32, Ifil.
Alleghany Mountain routes, 410.
Alleghany River, 511.
Allen, Andrew, 66.
American, as a designation, 6.
American Anti-slavery Society, 289.
American Bottom, 25 ; map, 27.
American Gazetteer, '-M, 503.
American Military Pocket Atlas, 214.
American Philosophical Society, and
western discovery, .i33.
American Pioneer, 293.
Ames, Fisher, his speech on the Jay
treaty, 481.
Anian, Straits of, 104, 238.
Amnda, Count d', 151 ; his views of the
western limit of the United States,
210.
Armstrong, Ensign, 270.
Arnold, Benedict, his treason, 184 ; on
the James River, 190.
Assiniboils River, 104.
Aubry, Govemor, at New Orleans, 33.
Augusta (Ga. ), 9 ; Indian treaties at,
327.
Awandoe Creek, 20.
Bancroft, Dr. Edward, in Paris, 147, 153.
Bancroft, George, 161.
Banks, Sir Joseph, 239.
Barker, Elihu, map of Kentucky, 526.
Barlow, Joel, agent for the Scioto Com-
\ \ pany, 311; his map, 311-313; and the
' J Scioto Company, 402.

Bathurst, Lord, 48.
Baton Rouge, 109, 573 ; taken by Galvez,
11)2.
Bayagoulas, 109.
Bean. WiUiam, 44, 77.
Beatty, Charles, 43.
Beaulieu, in America, .34.
Beaumarchais, 140, 147, 152,
Beaver, a Delaware, 13.
Beaver Creek, 248, 295.
Beck, L. E., Gazetteer, 2.-i, 172.
Beckwith, Major, 394.
Belpre, 421 ; position of, 297.
Bernard, Francis, 4.
Bernoulli. Daniel, 512.
Bland, Colonel, his ordinance for a west
ern State, 244.
Bledsoe's Lick, 123.
Blennerhasset's Island, 296.
Bloomer, Captain, 162.
Blount, William, made govemor, 376 ;
seeks conference with the Cherokees,
516, 52;> ; in the Tennessee Convention,
559; expelled from U. S. Senate for
intrigue, 508 ; his treasonable plot,
568.
Blount College, 529.
Blue Licks, battle, 204.
Bienville, in Paris, 34.
Big Bellies (tribe), 468.
Big Bottom, 421.
Bingham, William, 227.
Bird, Captain Henry, 139 ; his raid, 175.
Board of Trade, and the western move
ment, 44.
Bonne, Carte des Treize Etats Unis, 210,
211.
Bonvouloir, 145, 146.
Boone, Daniel, character, 44 ; portrait,
45 ; life by Filson, 44 ; goes West, 77,
80 ; gives warning of Dunmore war,
81 ; captured, 123 ; escapes, 123 ; de
fends Boonesborough, 123 ; helps Fil
son, 3-31.
Boonesborough, founded, 82 ; plan, 83 ;
^ attacked. 111 ; defended, 123.
Bor^, Etienne de, 551.
Boston, sentiment on the Jay treaty, 477.
Bostonnais, 113, 142.
Botetourt, Lord, ."n.
Boudinot, Elias, 227, 2.30, 237.
Boundaries, natural versus astronomical,
260, 262.
Boundaries of the United States, out
lined by Congress, 160, 163 ; left to the
decision of France, 200 ; effect of events

578

INDEX.

upon, 203 ; influence of England upon,
205 ; as fixed, 209, 218 ; by the St.
Croix, 218 ; alternative Unes for the
northern Umits, 219 ; rectifications
hoped for by the British, 240.
Bouquet, 7, 30, 293.
Bowen, Clarence W., 533.
Bowles, William Augustus, .384 ; arrested
by Carondelet, 521.
Bowman,. Colonel John, 111, 120 ; raid
ing, 13,8.
Buchanan's Station, attacked, .523.
Buffalo (bison), 295, 328, 401.
Bull, Colonel, of Georgia, 92.
Bullitt, Captain Thomas, 59.
Bullock, Govemor, 92.
Bradford, John, 357.
Bradstreet, General John, and the Ca
nadians, 5 ; bargains for Indian lands,
60.
Brant, Joseph, raiding, 194 ; would at
tack Fort Pitt, 204; feeUngs at the
peace (1783), 237 ; his disaffection, 271 ;
iu England, 273 ; in council at Niagara,
273 ; dejected, 274 ; sends an appeal to
Congress, 276 ; on the situation, 304 ;
withdraws from the Fort Harmar
Council, 309 ; and the St. Clair cam
paign, 424 ; his activity, 430 ; on the
Presqu'Isle question, 437 ; in Phila
delphia, 442 ; with the Miamis, 447 ;
confers with the American commis
sioners, 448.
Brehm, Captain, 138.
Brodhead, Colonel, sent to the frontier,
124 ; then to Wyoming region, 124 ;
joins Mcintosh, 124 ; succeeds Mcin
tosh, 139 ; raids along the Alleghany,
140 ; hoping to attack Detroit, 140,
177 ; relations with G. R. Clark, 176 ;
at Pittsburg, 177 ; to cooperate with
Clark, 191 ; trouble with Gibson, 193 ;
retires from Fort Pitt, 195.
Brissot, J. P., on the Scioto Company,
402 ; portrait, 403 ; Commerce of Amer
ica, 40; >.
Brown, Jacob, 79.
Brown, John, 538 ; his conference with
Gardoqui, 362 ; in the Kentucky Con
vention, 369.
Brown, John Mason, iu defence of John
Brown, 557.
Brownsville, 2.54.
Bruff, Captain James, 483.
Brunei, Isambard, 514.
Bryant's Station, 204.
Burbeck, M^or, at Mackinac, 483.
Burgoyne, captured, 115, 117.
Burgoyne's Convention troops, 120, 141.
Burke, Edmund, and the westward
movement, 48 ; and New York, 65 ;
French Revolution, 409.
Burnaby, in Virginia, 11.
Burnett's HiU, 20.
Burnham, Major John, 404.
Burr, Aaron, advocates the admission of
Tennessee, 51)0.
Bury, Viscount, 6.
BushneU, David, 514.

Butler, General Richard, 66, 90, 256,
2(is ; and the militia of Pennsylvania,
418 ; under St. Clair, 428.
Butler's Rangers, 128.
Cahokia, 25, 120 ; Clark at, 174.
CaldweU, Captain, 204.
CaUender, his malice, 478.
Calv^, 172.
Camden, Gates's defeat, 181.
Cameron, Indian agent, 79 ; banding the
Southem tribes, 89 ; among the South
ern tribes, 1.36.
Campbell, Colonel Arthur, 384.
CampbeU, Colonel WiUiam, would build
a fort on the Tennessee, 178.
Campbell, General, sent to Pensacola,
160 ; captured at Pensacola, 189.
CampbeU, Major, at Fort Miami, 459.
Canada, French in, 63 ; proportion of
English and French in, 63 ; the French
population asks to have the " old
bounds of Canada" restored, 64;
threatened by Lafayette, 159; to be
admitted to the Confederation at her
own pleasure, 167 ; discontented with
the treaty (1782), 216 ; her merchants
disconcerted at the treaty (1782), 219,
2.37; her trade, 219, 237; French in
trigues in, 568.
Canajoharie, 251,
Cannon, the first used in Indian warfare,
175.
Carey, American Atlas, 382, 474. 516,
521 i, 544.
Carleton, Sir Guy, at Quebec, 23, 63 ;
goes to England, 63 ; deprived of the
charge of the upper lakes, 127 ; with
drawing troops from the Atlantic coast,
240.
Carmichael in Madrid, 183.
CaroUna traders, 9.
Carondelet succeeds Mir6, 520; his in
trigues in Kentucky, .557 ; their failure,
557 ; delays EUicott, 565 ; retires, 567.
Carroll, Charles, 75.
Carver. .Jonathan, on the American Bot
tom, 25 ; his career, 101 ; portrait, 102 ;
at the site of St. Paul, i02 ; his maps,
103-105 ; his supposed provinces, 1' 13 ;
returns East, 104 ; Travels, 105, 214 ;
map from his Travels, 215.
Cataraqui, 242.
Catawba country, 10.
Catawba River, 77.
Catawbas, 88 ; join the North CaroUnians
against the Cherokees, 93.
Cayahoga River, 255 ; its character, 293.
Celoron, 129.
Centinel of the North West, 539.
Charles III. (Spain), 159.
Charleston (S. C), to be attacked, 89 ; a
rising of the Indians to be simultane
ous, 89 ; it fails, 92 ; surrendered, 138 ;
attacked (1780), 181.
Charleston (Va.), 59.
Chastellux, ChevaUer de, 251.
Chatham, Lord, and the use of Indians
in war, 127.

INDEX.

579

Cheat River, 250.
Cheat River route, 254.
Cherokee River (Tennessee River), 10,
20.
Cherokees, 546 ; and Iroquois, 9 ; meet
Governor Tryon, 10 ; war with the
northern tribes, 14 ; invade lUinois, 26 ;
map of their country, 31 -their claims
favored, 55 ; opposed by FrankUn, 56 ;
lease land to the Watauga settlement,
79 ; treaty with Henderson, 82 ; make
land cessions, 88 ; ready for war, 89 ;
their settlements, 92 ; their numbers,
92, 382 ; attacked by the whites, 92 ;
brought to a peace, 93 ; cede lands, 95 ;
Robertson among, 14;-t ; their claim to
the Kentucky region invented, 167 ;
rising (1 1 80) are defeated, 178; active
(1781), 192 ; their forays upon the Ten
nessee and Cumberland settlements,
381, 382 ; relations with the authori
ties, 382 ; on the Scioto, 491 ; at Phila
delphia, 520-547 ; attacked by Orr,
547.
Chicago, 264, 491 ; American settlers at,
203.
Chickamaugas, 334, 382 ; recalcitrant,
93; settle lower down the Tennessee,
93 ; attacked, 136 ; attack Donelson's
flotilla, 179.
Chickasaws, 88, .382 ; invade Illinois, 26 ;
tribe, 30 ; map of their country, 31,
522 ; favor the Americans, 546 ; make
peace with the Creeks, 552.
Chillicothe, settled, 500.
ChiUicothe (Indian village), 176.
Chippewa River, 104.
Chippewas, their country, 39; on the
Ohio, 43.
Chisholm, John, rumors about, .566, 567 ;
sent to London, 571.
Chiswell mines, 10.
Choctaws, 9, 29, 30, 382 ; map of their
country, 31 ; their bucks, 546.
Choiseul, 4 ; and England, 34 ; rejoiced
at the American revolt, 36.
Christian, Colonel WiUiam, 93.
Cincinnati, Clark at its site, 176 ; founded,
315 ; seat of govemment for the coun
try, 401 ; population, 498.
Circourt, on the treaty (1782), 223.
Clare, Lord, 40.
Clark, Daniel, 181.
Clark, George Rogers, his conquest of
Illinois, 2 ; with Cresap, 66 ; builds
Fort Fincastle, 72 ; in Kentucky, 116 ;
sent to WlUiamsburg, 116 ; sends spies
to the IlUnois, 117 ; again at WlUiams
burg, 117 ; his instructions, 117 ; de
scends the Ohio, 118 ; his face, 118 ; his
land'march, 118 ; captures Kaskaskia,
119, 129; goes to Cahokia, 120; aided
by Vigo, 121 ; and by PoUock, 121 ;
attacks Vincennes, 133, 135 ; leaves
Helm in command, 135 ; at Kaskas
kia, 136 ; sends dispatches, 136 ; aban
dons plan of attacking Detroit, 137 ;
disappointed, 141 ; his men promised
lands, 141 : at the faUs of the Ohio,

141 ; his letters, 141 ; his memoirs, 141 ;
struggUng to maintain himself in the
lUinois country, 143 ; his expenditures,
143; PoUock's aid, 143; bounty lands
for his soldiers, 186 ; builds Fort Jef
ferson, 174 ; at Cahokia, watching St.
Louis, 1 74 ; ranging with a Kentucky
force, 175 ; relations with Colonel Brod
head, 176 ; at the Ohio FaUs, 177 ; com
manding iu Kentucky, 178 ; his aims
(1781), 190; aiding Steuben, 190; his
mstructions (December, 1780), 191;
moves down the Ohio, 193 ; inactive at
the falls, 194 ; hi? hold on the Illinois
country, 195 ; his conquest abandoned
by Congress, 201 ; at the falls, 203; in
vades the Miami country, 204 ; effect
of his conquest on the peace (1782),
213 ; cost to Virginia of his conquest,
247 ; Indian commissioner, 268 ; leads
Kentuckians across the Ohio, 275 ; robs
Spanish merchants, 275 ; his grant on
the Ohio, 3.32 ; attacks the Wabash
tribes, 345 ; seizes the stock of a Span
ish trader at Vincennes, 347 ; to com
mand on the Mississippi, 378 ; with the
French faction, 532, 538.
Clark, WilUam, 455.
Cleaveland, Moses, .502.
Cleveland, 204 ; settled, 502.
CUnch River, 81.
Clinton, Governor, 229.
Colden, on New England, 4.
Coles, Governor, 289.
CoUot, Victor, Journey to North Amer
ica, 50 ; map from his Atlas, 291 ;
Journal in North America, 444 ; ar
rested, 551 ; intrigues at the West,
560._
Colonies, English views of, 41.
Columbia River, 104 ; its existence sus
pected by the Spanish, 238 ; discovered
by a Boston ship, 239, 392, 533.
Columbian Magazine, 269, 324.
Committee of Secret Correspondence,
145.
Conestoga wagons, 296.
Confederation, weakness of the, 188.
Confederation, Articles of, 167 ; delays in
adopting, 169, 170.
Congress, deceived as to French and
Spanish aims, 164 ; sends Jay to Spain,
164 ; grants western lands as bounties,
168 ; firm on the Mississippi question,
183 ; weakening, 184, 188 ; and the
land cessions, 186; discredits Virginia's
claims, 200 ; supine before the Span
ish demand, 200 ; awakes to the situa
tion and votes to yield nothing, 201 ;
affirms the succession of the confeder
ated States to the territorial rights of
the several colonies, 205 ; seeks to have
the States quitclaim their western
lands, 207 ; becomes powerless after
the war, 228 ; demands the posts, 234 ;
petitioned for survey of Ohio lands for
soldiers, 244 ; prohibits occupation of
Indian lands, 245 ; accepts land ces
sions without inquiry into title, 246 ;

580

INDEX.

considers the Virginia proposal, 246 ;
opposed to settlements on unsurveyed
lands, 271 ; raises troops in New Eng
land, 274 ; its financial obligations, 282 ;
establishes value of the American dol
lar, 292 ; in collapse, 344. See Conti
nental Congress.
Connecticut, dispute with Pennsylvania,
22 ; settlers at Natchez from, 110 ;
offers a quahfied cession of western
lands, 186: her western lands, 21)4;
dispute with Pennsylvania, 264 ; cedes
her western lands, 264 ; her Westem
Reserve, 264 ; reservation in Ohio, 500 ;
Firelands, 500.
Connecticut Land Company, 500.
Connolly, Dr. (Colonel) John, 52 ; and Vir
ginia's dispute with Pennsylvania, 65 ;
at Pittsburg, arousing the Indians, -S.') ;
his varied movements, 86 ; his plans
of seizing Pittsburg, 86 ; captured,
86 ; intriguing, 308 ; an informer, 367 ;
sounding the Ohio, 564.
Connor, James, 358.
Continental Congress, action on the Que
bec Bill, 75 ; address to Canadians, 75 ;
sends commission to Canada, 75 ; ad
dress to English sympathizers, 75 ;
creates three Indian departments, 85.
Continental money, depreciation of, 163,
188.
Conway, iloncure D., 187.
Cook, Captain James, his voyage, 238 ;
his journals, 238 ; accounts of his voy
age, 390.
Cooper, Thomas, 478.
Copper ore, 323.
Corn title of lands, 40.
Cornplanter, the Seneca chief, and Wash
ington, 424, 434 ; at the council of the
31iamis, 443.
Cornstalk, a Shawnee chief, at Point
Pleasant, 73 ; wavering, 114 ; mur
dered, 114.
CornwaUis, Lord, his plans, 138 ; surren
ders, 18s, 202, 203.
Coshocton, 192.
Cowan, John, 50,
Cox, Zachary, 515.
Coxe, Tench, 574.
Crab Orchard, 09.
Craig, ^lajor, 204.
Craig, N. B., Olden Time, 197.
Cramahe, in Canada, 63.
Crawford, John, 271.
Crawford, Colonel William, sent West by
Washington, 43 ; on the Monongahela,
50; at Fort Pitt, 116; at Wheeling,
148 ; killed, 204.
Creeks, 30, 382 ; map of their country,
31, 383 ; in the Revolution, 88 ; unite
Avith Cherokees in land cessions, SS ;
their savagery, 88 • aid the Georgians,
02 ; and the_ North Carolina govern
ment, 328; in the Oconee war, 3;H);
war with, imminent, 544 ; attacked by
Snvier, 544; numbers, 546.
Cresap, Colonel Michael, buys Indian
lands, 44 ; on the Monongahela, 50 ;

a leader, 66 ; accused of cruelty, 72 ;
goes to Boston, 86.
Cr^veeceur, Lettres d'^un CuUivateur., 66 ;
maps from, m, 67, 258, 259, 293-295 ;
Voyage dans la haute JPensylvanie., map
from, 2<)9-301.
Croghan, George, sent to England, 8 ; at
Fort Pitt, 13, 44 ; at Fort Stanwix, 15 ;
on Indian trade, 23 ; mediator with
the Indians, 53 ; to warn the Lidians of
a new colony on the Ohio, 57 ; agent of
the Walpole Company, 60 ; trying to
support the Indians, 61 ; living on the
-Alleghany, 72.
Crows (the Indian tribe), 468.
Crow's Station, 99.
Cruzat, 326.
Cumberland district, 143 ; Robertson ar
rives in, 143 ; population (1780), 180 ;
found to be within the North Carolina
lines, 180 ; articles of association, 180 ;
perils from Indian raids, 180 ; Robert
son the leader of, 180 ; made a county,
180 ; population (17S;5), 328 ; its isola
tion, 334.
Cumberland Gap, 99, 328.
Cumberland Road, 252.
Cutler, Manasseh, his character, 281 ; ap
plies to Congress for land, 282 ; stands
for the prohibition of slavery, 283;
leagues with Duer, 292 ; favors St.
Clair, 292 ; and the Ohio associates,
310 ; his questionable conduct, 311 ;
his description of the Ohio country,
314 ; on the future steamboat, 317.
D'Abbadie, Govemor, 34.
Dane, Nathan, 281 ; on the passage of
the Ordinance (1787), 283 ; on the obU
gations of contracts, 290.
Danville, 09, 328 ; conventions at, 331 ;
political club, 353.
Dartmouth, Lord, 70.
Dayton (0.), 408.
De Grasse, defeated, 212.
De Kalb, sent from France, 34 ; embarks
for jimerica, 151.
De Peyster, at Mackinac, 127 ; to aid
Hamilton, 130 ; his character. 130 ;
anxious, 137 ; at Detroit, 142, 237 ; to
dislodge Americans at Chicago, 203.
Deane, Silas, in Paris, 147 ; commis
sioner, 150 ; his plan of a western
State, 150.
Debts, collection of, under the treaty
(1782), impeded, 229; interest on them,
230 ; date of prohibitory laws, 241,
Delaware, accepts Articles of Confeder
ation, 170.
Delawares, send messenger south, 00 ;
friendly, 112 ; divided interests, 124 ;
disaffected, 128; divided, 132 ; sus
pected, 139 ; peace party, 177 ; exciting
suspicion, 192.
Denman, iSIathias, 315.
D'Estaing, Count, his proclamation, 138 ;
in American waters, 158,
Detroit, 175 ; described, 87 ; its strategic
importance, 112 ; naval force at, 128 ;

INDEX.

581

anxiety at, 137 ; its garrison, 140 ; re-
inforcedv 141 ; De Peyster in com
mand, 142 ; garrison at, 17(i ; stiU
threatened, 177, 190, 198 ; its posses
sion demanded, 2.'>4.
Dickinson, John, 75 ; presents articles of
confederation, 167.
Dickson, Colonel. 162.
Dinwiddie, Governor, 8.
Donelson, Colonel, goes to Nashville,
179.
Doniol, 145, 223.
Doolittle, Amos, 363.
Dorchester, Lord, at Quebec, 276 ; told
not to assist the Indians openly, 276 ;
his westeru intrigues, .367, 373 ; and
St. Clair's campaign, 425 ; his injudi
cious speech, 454 ; returns to England,
483.
Doughty, Captain, 272.
Doughty, Major, 273.
Douglass, Ephraim, 236.
Drake, Sir Francis, 104.
Duane, James, 258.
Duck River, 343.
Duer, Col. William, relations to Manas
seh Cutler, 292, :>11 ; his failure, 435.
Dunlap Station, 421.
Dunmore, Lord, opposed to the Walpole
grant, 49 ; his creature, ConnoUy, 52 ;
goes west, 57 ; his western grants, 59 ;
takes Fort Pitt, 65 ; issues a procla
mation (April 26, 1774), 66 ; Delawares
and Shawnees aroused, 68; on the
Hockhocking, 73 ; makes treaty, 74 ;
Tory sympathies, 74 ; and Henderson's
Transylvania, 84 ; arousing slaves and
Indians, 85 ; driven ou board a frigate,
85 ; his plan to seize the northwest,
87 ; and the western Tories, 111 ; pro
poses to settle the loyalists on the
Mississippi, 242.
Dunn, Map of North America, 214.
Dnrrand, 173.
Dutchman's Point, 234.
Dwight, Timothy, 531.
Eaton's Station, 91.
EbeUng, 478.
Education, and the Ordinance (1787), 283,
289.
EUicott, Andrew, 266 ; to run the bounds
of Louisiana, 565 ; descends the Mis
sissippi, 565 ; interview with Caronde
let, 565 ; brings down his troops, 506.
Elliot, Matthew, turns traitor, 128 ; raid
ing, 175 ; breaks up the Moravians at
Gnadenhiitten, 195.
Emigration west, 5().
England, her debt from the American
war, 6 ; her misjudgment in bringing
on the war, 144 ; effect of the French
alliance upon, 154 ; acts of conciliation
in ParUament, 154 ; her navy, 158 ; and
the peace (17821, 210, 213 ; cost of the
war, 220, 225 ; its losses, 225 ; her tem
per suspected, 226, 227 ; her traders in
the Rockies, 239 ; supplying Indians
with powder, 275 ; her intrigues in

Kentucky, 373, 565 ; war with Spain,
504.
EngUsh Colonies, population, 6 ; pro
sperous, 6 ; combining, 7.
Erie Triangle, 266.
Ettwein, Bishop, 56.
Evans and PownaU's Map, 39.
Evans and Gibson's Map, 190.
EvaiK, Middle Colonies, 251.
Expediency of securing our American
Colonies, 25.
FaUen Timbers, battle, 459.
Fauchet, succeeds Genet, 541.
Federalist, The, 278.
Fenno, Gazette ofthe United States, 408.
Fergusson, defeated at King's Mountain,
181.
Filson, John, on Boone, 44 ; surveyor,
315; killed, 316; iu Kentucky, 331;
his map, 3;>1.
Finlay, John, 46.
Fish Creek, 68.
Fitch, John, map of the northwest, 321,
322 ; relations with Franklin, 324 ;
ridiculed, 325 ; his steamboat, 512.
Fitzmaurice, Lord Edmond, Life of Shel
burne, 223.
Florida, Indians of, 37 ; Luzerne urges
an attack upon, 164 ; Spain's desire
for, 184 ; restored to Spain, 222. See
West Florida,
Florida Blanca, Count, made minister,
1.51 ; offers mediation, 154.
Floyd, John, 61.
Fort Adams, 4.56.
Fort Armstrong, 139.
Fort Bute at Manchac, captured, 162.
Fort Charlotte, 89, 181, 521.
Fort Chartres, 26.
Fort Defiance, 450.
Fort Fincastle. 72.
Fort Finney, 272.
Fort Gage, 20, 113.
Fort Gower, 72.
Fort Harmar, 293 ; view of, 293 ; site,
299, 300, 30:i, councU at, 308.
Fort Henry, 72, 112, 139 ; attacked, 114,
194, 204.
Fort Jefferson, 174, 178, 428.
Fort Laurens, 125, 132, 138 ; abandoned,
139.
Fort Lawrence, 269.
Fort Ligonier, 139.
Fort Mcintosh, buUt, 125 ; repaired,
268 ; view, 269.
Fort Massac, 25, 562.
Fort Miami, 38, 455.
Fort Moultrie, attacked, 97.
Fort Nelson, 194.
Fort Niagara, view, 449.
Fort Ouiatanon, 38.
Fort Panmure (Natchez), 162, 189.
Fort Plaquemines, 551.
Fort Pitt, Indians meet Croghan at, 13 ;
Crawford in command, 116 ; critical
situation under Brodhead, 192.
Fort Randolph, 112, 115, 132 ; aban
doned, 139.

582

INDEX.

Fort Recovery, 455.
Fort RosaUe, 162.
Fort Rutledge, 94.
Fort Sackville, 134.
Fort St. Joseph, ."U).
Fort Schuyler, 251.
Fort Stanwix, 268; treaty (1768), 15, 96,
268 ; map of the property line, 15 ;
site, 19.
Fort Stephen, 521.
Fort Tombigbee, 38.
Fort Washington (Cincinnati), built, 316.
Fort Wayne, 460.
Fox, C. J., assails the treaty (1782), 209 ;
coalition with North, 224.
Foxes (the Indian tribe), 113, 120.
France, and a greater France, 1 ; hatred
of England, 107 ; alliance with the
United States, 118 ; plots to lure the
Americans to a collapse, 146 ; treaty of
alliance with, 153 ; her navy, 158 ; to
concur in any peace movements, 159 ;
treaty with Spain (1779), 160 ; not enti
tled to American gratitude, 165 ; abet
ting Spain on the Mississippi question,
183 ; intrigues on the Mississippi, 372 ;
her supposed desire for the Mississippi
valley, 560 ; threatening war, 570.
Frankfort (Ky.), site, 57, 356.
Franklin, Benjamin, warns' the English
government, 7 ; in London, 14 ; his
barrier colonies, 22 ; favors an Illinois
colony, 38 ; opposes Hillsborough, 41 ;
the Walpole Company, 47 ; on canaliz
ing rivers, 52 ; his answer to Hillsbor
ough, 55 ; disputes Virginia's western
claims, 55 ; on western lawlessness, 56 ;
urges repeal of the Quebec Bill, 76 ;
the head of the Committee of Secret
Correspondence, 145 ; sent to Europe,
150 ; influence in Paris, 151 ; hears of
Burgoyne's surrender, 152 ; sole com
missioner, 158 ; discredits the Vir
ginia Charter claims, 167 ; drafts Act
of Confederation, 167 ; deceived by
Vergennes, 184 ; his character, 208 ;
his action on the treaty (1782), 2(l8;
distrusts loyalists, 217 ; could he have
secured Canada to the United States
at the peace (1782) ? 217 ; relations
with Hartley, 222 ; fears a renewal of
the war, 227 ; thinks the evils follow
ing the war unduly magnified, 228 ;
Sending Felons to America, 230 ; on the
British debts, 230 ; and the loyalists,
242 ; offers gratuity to Fitch, 324 ; re
turns from Europe, 342.
Franklin, State of, beginnings of, 341,
342 ; Frankland, an alternative name,
343 ; unrest in, 350 ; the collapse, 354.
Franldin, William, govemor of New
Jersey, 7, 15 ; favors an Illinois col
ony, 38.
Fraser, Lieutenant, 28.
French, the, their intrigue with the In
dians, 8 ; contrasted with the English
in relations with the Indians, 8 ; rivals
of the English in trade with the In
dians, 23.

French Lick, 143.
Freneau, National Gazette., 408.
Frobisher, 220, 235.
Frontier settlements, 20.
Fulton, Robert, 6, 512 ; and the " Cler
mont," 325.
Fur trade, the, in Canada suffers from
the treaty (1782), 220 ; interfered with
by Americans, 235 ; in London, 237;
on the lakes, 240 ; and the lake posts,
416; in the West, 467.
Fur traders on the Mississippi, 29.
Gage, General, and the Canadians, 5,
25 ; and the western fur trade, 28 ; the
Illinois colony, 38 ; retires, 60 ; and
the French on the Wabash, 70 ¦ in
Boston, S6 ; wishing to seize New
Orleans, 108.
Galiano and Valdez, 536.
Gallatin, Albert, 451 ; his western lands,
256 ; supposed comphcity with Adet,
561.
Gallipolis, 404, 436; position of, 290; a
"wretched abode," 498, 538.
Galphinton, 343.
Galvez, Bernardo de, at Natchez, 142 ;
at New Orleans, 149 ; issues proclama
tion, 157 ; attacks the English posts,
162 ; extends Louisiana, 163 ; attacks
Mobile, 181 ; takes Pensacola, 189 ; his
portrait given to Congress, 222.
Gardoqui, Diego de, confronts Jay on
the Mississippi question, 183 ; arrives
in America, 318 -relations with Fitch,
324; arrives in Philadelphia, 337; in
triguing at the West, 353 ; and Mirtf,
356 ; seeks to implicate Sevier, 360.
Gates, General, defeated at Camden, 181.
Gautier, marauding, 130.
Gayoso, his deportment, 51S ; intriguing
in Kentucky, 553 ; governor of Louisi
ana, 567; orders evacuation of Natchez,
573.
Genesee country, 528 ; rights of Massa
chusetts in, 264 ; map, 490.
Genet, his democratic clubs, 453 ; arrives
in America, 532 ; would induce a war
with England and Spain, 538 ; deposed,
541.
George, Lieutenant, 157.
Georgia, Indian cessions in, 9 ; disputes
with the federal government, 376 ;
map, 377.
Georgia company, 377.
Gerard, at Philadelphia, 155 ; to prepare
Congress to yield to Spanish wishes,
155 ; urges on Congress the propriety
of the Spanish demands, 159.
Germain, instructs Hamilton to make
raids, 111 ; favors marauding parties,
126; his plan for a campaign on the
Mississippi, 142 ; his plan to maintain
line of communications between Can
ada and Florida, 171.
Germans, in Kentucky, 529.
Gerry, Elbridge, 269.
Gibault, 120.
Gibraltar, to be acquired by Spain, 159.

INDEX.

583

Gibson, Captain George, 147.
Gibson, Colonel John. 124 ; at Fort Lau
rens, 125, 138 ; goes West with his regi
ment, 191 ; succeeds Brodhead at Fort
Pitt, 195.
Girty, George, 194.
Girti-. Simon, 72, 85. 271 ; suspected, 114 ;
turns traitor, 128 ; leading Indians,
138 ; among the Wyandots, 192 ; his
temper at the close of the war, 2'17 ;
and Harmar's campaign, 421 ; at the
Miami Coimcil, 443. 4.50 ; after Wayne's
victory, 460; leaves Detroit, -ifsj.
Girtys, the, raiding, 175.
Gnadenhiitten, broken up, 195.
Gooch, governor of A'irginia, 166.
Gordon, Captain Harry, 25.
Gordon, Colonel George, on the Ohio
country. 13 ; at Fort Pitt, 149.
Gordon, Dr. WiUiam, 4W.
Gordon, Rev. WiUiam, 72.
Grafton, Duke of, 11.
Grand Portage, 220, 239.
Grantham, Lord, at Madrid, 160.
Gratiot, Charles, 130, 171.
Grayson, 261, 202 ; on the Mississippi
question, 319.
Gi-eenbrier River, 11,
Green River, 49.
Greene, Xathanael, in the South, 181,
1.8.8.
GreenviUe camp, 452.
GrenviUe, Lord, on the retention of Can
ada, 217 ; and Jay, 464, 476.
Grimaldi. recommends grant of money to
the Americans, 147 ; retires, 151.
Guadaloupe, 4.
Guthrie, Geography, 468.
Haceta, 2.38.
Haldimand, General, urges settlements
in the Mississippi, 28 ; in Pensacola,
31 ; views. 40 ; succeeds Gage, 60 ; dis
turbed by Dunmore's acts, 65 ; and the
French on the Wabash, 70; watching
New Orleans, 108 ; does not approve
HamUton's advance on Vincennes, 120 ;
reUeved in marauding, 128 ; his anxie
ties, 138 ; reinforces Detroit, 141 ; in
structed to attack New Orleans, 161 ;
canaUzes the St. Lawrence. 170 ; to
aid Sinclair's movements, 171 ; urging
raids, 193 ; inactive (1782), 203 ; en
deavors to make good the Quebec Bill,
216 ; refuses to surrender posts, 235 ;
rebuked by his govemment, 241 ; fears
an Indian war, 245 ; and the disaf
fected Iroquois, 271.
HaU, Colonel, sent to demand the posts,
235.
HaU, .James, Sketches, 83.
HaU, Lieutenant, 70.
Hamilton, Alexander, on westem lands
as a source of revenue, 187 ; fearful of
the dangers after the peace (1782), 228 ;
Observations on Jay's Treaty, 229 ; on
the carrying off of slaves by the Brit
ish, 231 ; on the westem Indians, 243 ;
supposed to favor monarchy, 277 ; on

a moneyed aristocracy, 290; and the
western lands, 407, 504; his opposi
tion to Jefferson, 408; advocates the
Jay treaty, 478.
Hamilton, Colonel Henry, at Detroit, 87 ;
intriguing with the Indians, 90, 111 ;
organizing raids. 111 ; his proclama
tion, 112; his plans (1777), 112; con
trols the Ohio valley, 112 ; would or
ganize chasseurs at Vincennes, 112 ;
would attack New Orleans, 113; at
tacks Vincennes, 126 ; his employment
of Indians, 127 ; in charge of the war
on the upper lakes, 127 ; at Detroit,
127 ; suspicious, 128 ; sends parties to
the Ohio, 128 ; hears of Clark's suc
cess, 129 ; sends messenger to Stuart,
129, 131 ; his large plans, 129 ; calls on
De Peyster for aid, 130 ; takes Vin
cennes. 131 ; warns the Spanish com
mander at St. Louis, 131 ; his plans,
13.S ; captured and sent to Virginia,
l.)5 ; his official report, 135 ; on parole,
Hamtramck, at Fort Harmar, 296 ; on
the ^\'abash, 419, 441 ; occupies Fort
Miami, 483.
Hand, General, at Pittsburg, 112- on
the defensive, 114, 115-; at Fort Pitt,
117; his ^'' squaw campaign," 128.
Hardlabor (S. C), 10.
Hai-mar, General, in command, 270 ; at
Vincennes, 296 ; his campaign, 418.
Harper, Robert E., 570.
Harrison, Benjamin, govemor of Vir
ginia, 251.
Harrison, Reuben, 156.
Harrison, WiUiam Henry, with Wayne,
' 457 ; secretary of the Northwest Ter
ritory, 573.
Harrod, James, 44, 331 ; lays out a town,
61 ; at Harrodsburg, 81, 82.
Harrodsburg, 328 ; attacked. 111 ; con-
_vention, 11().
Hart, Rev. John, 529.
Hartley, relations with Franklin, 222.
228.
Hay, Major, 131.
Heckewelder. 441 ; would restrain the
Indians, 128 ; his maps, 255, 507.
Helm, Leonard, sent to Vincennes, 120;
surrenders, 131 ; released by Clark,
134 ; left in command at Vincennes,
135.
Henderson, Colonel Richard, and his
colony, 81 ; at Boonesborough, 8.S ; his
character, 84 ; opens land office, 97.
Henry, Alexander, 24, 389.
Henry, Patrick, and westem lands, 61 ;
governor of Virginia, 114 ; seeks to
open trade with New Orleans, 1.55 ;
favors retaUation for the deportation
of the blacks, 232 ; urging amalgama
tion of races, 236 ; on the loyalists, 243 ;
on Virginia water-ways, 248 ; and the
western routes, 257 ; and western
land grabbers, 270 ; on the Mississippi
question, 319 ; and Fitch's steamboat,
324 ; his confidence in the confedera-

684

INDEX.

tion, 351 ; disgusted with Jay's Mis
sissippi project, 354 ; his despondency,
;>8() ; refuses mission to Madrid, 548.
Henry, WiUiam, 321.
Hillsborough, Lord, first colonial secre
tary, 41 ; opposes the Walpole grant,
47 ; resigns, 57.
Hockhocking River, vaUey, 293.
Holland Land Company, 204.
Holston settlement, 112 ; treaty, 375.
HopeweU, treaty of, 343, 344.
Homnas (La.), 109.
Houston, Samuel, and the FrankUn con
stitution, 343.
Howe, General Robei-t, 272.
Hudson River, in a route to the West,
248 ; canal to the lakes, 506.
Hudson's Bay, fur trade, 24.
Huntington, Countess of, 270.
Huntington, General Jedediah, 236, 244.
Hutchins, Colonel Anthony, seized by
Willing, 1.56, 162, 189 ; in Blount's jjlot,
568.
Hutchins, Lieutenant, 70.
Hutchins, Thomas, Description of Vir
ginia, 13 ; his map, 13 ; French trans
lation, 17 ; map of the American
Bottom, 27 ; Topographical Descrip
tion, 251 ; Geographer of the United
States, 266 ; dies, 267 ; and the Ohio
Company,_ 282, .322 ; Fitch's map dedi
cated to him, 323.
Hutchinson, Thomas, 264.
Iberville River, 32 ; route from the Mis
sissippi, 108.
Illinois Company, 200, 364.
Illinois country, and the fur trade, 25 ;
its tribes, 26 ; projected colony, 38 ;
map, ^9 ; favored by Shelburne, 40 ;
colony opposed by the Board of Trade,
41 ; Clark's spies in, 1) 7 ; conquered by
the Americans, 120 ; made a county of
Virginia, 122 ; the French inhabitants,
.562.
Illinois Land Company, 69.
Illinois River; 39.
Imlay, George, Topographical Descrip
tion, map, 248, 249.
Indiana (colony), map of, 17 ; included in
the Ohio Company grant, 47.
Indiana grant, 169 ; revived, 90 ; its char
acter, 166 ; interest of Tom Paine in,
187; sustained, 206.
Indians, trade with, 7, 23, 25, 546 ; trou
bles with whites, 7 ; adverse interests,
8 ; French and English treatment of,
8 ; armed by traders, 21 ; in the Revo
lution, employed by both sides, 87 ;
priority of use, 87, 126 ; number of
warriors east of the Mississippi, 88 ;
characterized in the Declaration of In
dependence, 91; as fighters, 175; ca
pricious, 195 ; to occupy a neutral ter
ritory between the United States and
Spain, 212; irritated by the treaty
(1782), 229, 235 ; ravaging (1783), 2:!ll ;
informed of the terms of the peace
(1782), 237 ; their wars foUowing tlie

peace (1782), 237 ; losses of Ufe and
property innicted by, 243 ; fear en
croachments, 245 ; their land title,
only extinguished by government, 268 ;
insist on the Ohio Ime, 268 ; in council
at Niagara, 274 ; cost of subduing
them, 776 ; number of warriors, 302 ;
responsibility of the English for their
hostiUty, 308 ; diverse policies of Con
gress and the States, 308 ; numbers in
the South, 382, 546.
Innes, Henry, ."62 ; in league with Sebas
tian, .550.
Innes, Judge, 243.
Irish, in the West, 84 ; in Kentucky, 529.
Iron Banks, 174.
Iron Mountain, 77.
Iroquois, and Cherokees, 9; favor the
EngUsh, 14 ; map of their country, 15;
their numbers, 16 ; their allies, 16 ;
rival pretensions to Kentucky, 16, 20,
78 ; Guy Johnson's map of their coun
try, 18, 19 ; encouraged by the French,
72 ; incensed at the treaty fl782i, 217,
229 ; lands sold (1784), 208.
Irvine, General WiUiam, 2.56 ; at Fort
Pitt, 196 ; on the western Indians, 243.
Jack, Colonel, 92.
Jackson, Andrew, his wife, 179 ; goes to
Tennessee, 360 ; in Congress, 544 ; in
the Tennessee Convention, 559.
Jackson, General James, and the Tazoo
frauds, 550 ; kiUed, .560.
Jacobin clubs, 532.
James River and Potomac Canal Com
pany, 254 ; Washington its President,
257.
James River route to the West, 252,
2.54.
Jay, John, on the Quebec BUl, 75 ; sent
to Spain, 164 ; in Madrid, 182 ; worried,
201 ; delivers his instructions, 201 ; re
bukes the supineness of Congress, 202 ;
his influence on the treaty (1782), 208 ;
estimate of Vergennes, 223 ; apprehen
sive of the future, 226 ; charges the
first infractions of the treaty (1782) on
the Americans, 229 ; on Indian affairs,
272 ; on the monarchical fever. 278 ; on
the Mississippi question, 318 ; hopeless,
320 ; treats with Gardoqui, 3.3.8 ; aided
by a committee, 347 ; cliief justice,
415 ; named as envoy to England, 463 ;
his instructions, 4(i4 ; makes treaty,
466 ; passions aroused in America by
the treatv, 477, 478 ; treaty ratified,
480.
Jefferson, Thomas, would drive the In
dians beyond the Mississippi, 93 ; and
the Transylvania Colony, 97 ; would
attack Detroit, 190 ; ceases to be gov
ernor of Virginia, 193 ; Notes on Vir
ginia, 214 ; an infraction of the treaty
(1782), 228 ; encourages Ledyard, 239 ;
planning westem States, 26 ; on the
bounds of Kentucky, 246 ; on the Po
tomac as a water-way, 248 ; on States
at the West, 257 ; his ordinance (1784),

INDEX.

585

258 ; its names of States, 258 ; plan for
a sui'vey of the western territory, 201 ;
favors smaU States, 262 ; rectangular
survey, 266 ; ou the monarchical idea,
278 ; on Shays's RebeUion, 278 ; favors
reUgious freedom, 288 ; on the Missis
sippi question, 319 ; his bounds of new
States as set forth iu the Ordinance
of 1784, 322 ; his views of the West,
351 ; his opposition to Hamilton, 408 ;
on the St. Clair campaign, 422 ; negoti
ations with Hammond, 431, 4^37, 441,
446 ; on the Presqu'Isle question, 436 ;
and Ebeling, 478 ; argues the right of
the United States to the ilississippi,
530 ; at variance with HamUton, 530 ;
resigns from the President's cabinet,
540.
Johnson, Guy, his map of the property
line, 15 ; at Fort Stanwix, 15 ; map of
Iroquois country, 18, 19 ; at Niagara,
177 ; would attack Fort Pitt, 2(l3.
Johnson, Sir John, on the treaty (1782),
217 ; his later conduct, 237 ; and the
western Indians, 245 ; in council at
Niagara, 273 ; told by Lord Dorchester
to quiet the Indians, 276.
Johnson, Sir WiUiam, and the Indians,
8 ; sends Croghan to England, 8 ; and
the property line, 14 ; at Fort Stanwix
(1768), 15 ; on the lUinois country, 28 ;
Dunmore's war, 68, 72 ; his home,
501.
Johnston, Govemor, 169 ; at Pensacola,
32.
Jones, Joseph, 185, 2.31.
Jones, Judge, Tory, 127, 242.
Joneshorough (Tenn.), 334; convention,
335.
Juan de la Fuca, Straits of, 238.
Juniata River, as a route to the West,
250.
Kalm, 4.
Kanawha River, Indian boundary, 10,
14; its mouth the site of a proposed
capital, 58 ; navigableness, 252.
Kaskaskia, 25 ; captured, 119.
KeUey, Walter, 66.
Kennedy, Patrick, 70.
Kenton, oimon, 61, 72.
Kentucky, destitute of Indians, 16 ; given
over to occupation by the Fort Stanwix
treaty, 17 ; events (1767-1774), 43 ;
country described, 58, 99, 323 ; relieved
by the victory at Point Pleasant, 81 ;
set up as a county of Virginia, 98, 116 ;
population. 111, 178, 320, 331, 399, .520 ;
raided, 111 ; disturbed condition, 116 ;
great immigration, 136, 170, 178, 270,
.304, 328, 372, 526 ; new roads opened,
136 ; Bird's raid, 175 ; salt springs, 178 ;
counties, 178, 328 ; conditions of life,
179 ; seeking Statehood, 245 ; Imlay's
map, 249 ; scrambles for land, 261 ;
sends force across the Ohio, 275 ; law
less attacks on the Indians, 305, 306 ;
Spanish intrignies, 309 ; the movement
for autonomy, 330 ; Filson's map, 332 ;

movements toward separation from
Virginia, 340 ; delays, 355, 357 ; com
mittee on making a State, 861 ; British
intrigue in, 394, 542 ; antipathy to In
dians, 421 ; volunteers under Wayne,
451 ; admitted to the Union, 515 ;
framing a constitution, .523 ; map, 524,
525 ; Barker's map, 527 ; Toulmin's
map, 528; her soil, 528; sympathy with
the French faction, 5411; Carondelet's
intrigues, 550, 553, 557; intrigues of
French agents, 502.
Kentucky Gazette, ."57, 542.
Kentucky River, 99.
Kickapoos, 26, 113 ; attacked, 422.
King, Rufus, and the ordinance (1784),
261 ; and the Phelps and Gorham pur
chase, 2(i4 ; and the rectangular sur
veys, 2()7; on the Kentuckians, 274;
on the cost of the Indian war, 276 ; on
the ordinance (1787), 284, 285 ; on the
Mississippi question, 318 ; opposes the
admission of Tennessee, 559 ; in Lon
don, 571.
Kingsford, Dr. William, the Canadian
historian, 71.
King's Mountain, fight, 178, 181.
Kirkland, missionary to the Indians, 87 ;
and Brant, 43,4.
Kitchin, T., map of Pennsylvania, 54,
iio ; maps, 106.
Kittanning, 15, 18, 139 ; abandoned,
^114.
Knox, General, demands the posts, 2.35 ;
and Harmar's campaign, 418 ; plans a
legionary system for the army, 434.
Knoxville, started, 358 ; founded, 518.
Knoxville Gazette, 518.
La Bahue, Colonel, to surprise Detroit,
177.
La Freniere, 37.
La Rochefoucault - Lianeourt, Travels,
508, 511.
Lafayette, his letter to the Canadians,
138 ; embarks for America, 151 ; would
invade Canada, 159 : goes back to
France, 159 ; and the Mississippi ques
tion, 257, 319 ; on the Spanish question,
3:;7.
Lafont, 120.
Lake Athabaska, 390.
Lake Chautauqua portage, 256.
Lake Michigan, map, 49.
Lake Nepigon, 220.
Lake Nipissing, 160, 218.
Lake of the Woods, 214-216, 221.
Lake Otsego, 251.
Lake Pontchartrain, 109.
Lake Superior, trade, 24, 235 ; filled with
islands, .j9, 106, 221 ; Carver at, 104 ;
maps, 221 ; vessels on, 240.
Lake Winnipeg, 24, 104.
Lake Winnipiseogee, 2()3.
Lancaster, treaty of, 166.
Lands, Indian titles, 268.
Lane, Isaac, 2(>9.
Langlade, at St. Joseph, 130 ; to attack
Kaskaskia, 173 ; retreats, 174.

586

INDEX.

Lansdowne, Lord, 277.
Le Rouge, Carte tie V Amirique, 501.
Ledyard, Jolm, his career, 238.
Lee, Arthur, 210, 268, 209 j in London,
145 ; commissioner in Europe, 150 ;
meets Grimaldi, 151.
Lee, (Jeneral Charles, at Charleston, 92.
Lee, Henry, of Virginia, 439 ; on the
Mississippi question, 319.
Lee, Richard Henry, 210, 227, 229, 2.32 ;
on the westem country, 182 ; on the
obligations of contract, 29(1; expects
western lands to sink the national
debt, 296.
Lee, William, 153, 237 ; in London, 75.
Leech, John, 127.
Legge, Major, 60.
Lernoult, 128 ; at Detroit, 137. _
Lexington (Ky.), named on hearing of the
fight at Lexington, Mass., 85.
Lexington (Mass.), fight, 62.
Lewis, Andrew, 53 ; in the Dunmore
war, 72 ; fight at Point Pleasant, 73.
Lewis, Samuel, map of the United
States, 380, 381 ; Map of New York
State, 474, 475.
Licking River, 99, 315.
Liebert, PhUip, 273.
Limestone (now MaysviUe) (Ky.), 99,
315, 328, 510.
Lincoln, General Benjamin, secretary of
war, 237 ; and the tendency to mon
archy, 278 ; to treat with the Indians,
447.
Linctot, Godefroy, 142.
Linn, Lieutenant, 147 ; ascends the Mis
sissippi with powder, 148.
Liston, British minister, 570.
Little Turtle, 420, 430, 4.56, 488.
Livingston, rebukes the peace commis
sioners, 210.
Lochry (Loughrey), Colonel Archibald,
194, 196.
Logan, Colonel Benjamin, 82 ; raiding
with Clark, 176 ; and his miUtia, 331 ;
raids upon the Wabash, 345.
Logan, John, the Indian, and the Dun
more war, 68 ; his famous speech, 74 ;
raiding, 175.
Logan's Fort, attacked. 111.
Long, Voyages and Travels, 416,
Long Island, battle, 147.
Long Lake, 220.
Loring, .Jonathan Austin, 152.
Losantiville, 315.
Loskiel, United Brethren, 422.
Louis XV. (France), dies, 144.
Louis XVI. (France), accedes, 144 ;
agrees to recognize American inde
pendence, 153, 531,
Louisiana, anxiety of the English to
conquer it, 33 ; change of masters un
der the secret treaty (1763), 33 ; under
Spanish rule, 106 ; population, 371 ;
its condition, 551 ; English project to
seize it, 564 ; threatened on aU sides,
570.
LouisviUe, 258, 317 ; laid out, 59 ; lands
bought up, 100.

Loyalists, England hopes to settle them
in the Ohio country, 217, 218 ; Frank
lin's distrust of them, 217 ; in the
treaty (1782), 232, 242 ; confiscations.
233 ; American disUke of them, 233
recommendation of Congress, 234 ,
their cause connected with the deten
tion of the posts, 241 ; hastening to
Ontario, 241 ; exodus from the States,
242 ; (Canadian homes planned for
them, 242 ; at Cataraqui, 242 ; their
numbers in Canada, 242 ; United Em
pire Loyalists, 243.
Ludlow, Thomas, in the Miami country,
315.
Luzerne, reaches Boston, 164 ; seeks
Washington, 164 ; delighted at Ameri
can degradation, 200; on the treaty
(1782;, 216.
Lyman, General Phineas, and settle
ments along the Mississippi, 28, 42 ; in
West Florida, 110.
Lyttleton, Lord, 70.
Mackenzie, Alexander, western explo
rations, 5^36.
Mackenzie River, 239.
Mackinac post, 130 ; its trade, 130 ; anx
ieties at, 137, 142 ; De Peyster reUeved
by Sinclair, 142 ; as centre of fur trade,
22(), 235.
Madison, James, draws up the ease of
the United States for Spain, 184 ; on
Virginia's land claims, 207; would set
up Kentucky as a State, 207 ; on west
em routes, 251 ; on the Mississippi
question, 2.56.
Madrid, Pinckney negotiating a treaty
at, 5.54.
Mahoning River, 56.
Manchac, 156, 157 ; captured, 162.
Manchester (O.), 422.
Mandans, 468.
Marietta, position of, 291, 293, 297, 300,
301, 303 ; the surrounding country, 299
founded, 299 ; its community, 302
view, 305 ; origin of name, 305 ; Cam
pus Martius, 307.
Marshall, Chief Justice, on western land
titles, 60.
Marshall, Colonel Thomas, approached
by Lord Dorchester, ;3(.)8.
Marshall, Humphrey,' opposes WUkin
son, 349.
Martin, Joseph, at Powell's VaUey, 21.
Martin'^ Station, 21, 82.
Maryland, and the sea-to-sea charters,
98 ; objects to paying Virginia for
bounty lands, 1(38 ; and would set
westem Umits to seaboard States, 168 ;
joins the confederation, 199.
Mason, George, on Virguiia's western
claims. 55 ; and the Transylvania
Company, 98 ; sympathy for Ken
tucky, 116 ; and the Indiana grant,
166 ; on the Virginia cession, 185 ; on
jeopardizing the peace (1782), 232 ; on
the Virginia charter, 245 ; on the
western States, 285 ; champion of reU-

INDEX.

587

gion and education, 289 ; on the Mis
sissippi question, 319 ; suspicious of
the North, 351.
Massachusetts, her sea-to-sea charter,
263 ; boundary dispute with New
Hampshire, 203 ; with New York,
2(34 ; her western lands, 265 ; cedes
them, 2(i5 ; Shays's Rebellion, 278.
Massie, Nathaniel, 421. _
Maumee River, 39 ; rapids of the, 455.
Maurepas, 144, 146, 1.54.
Mayflower, bai-ge, 298, 299.
MaysvUle (Ky.), 99. See Limestone.
McAfee brothers, 57 ; at Harrodsburg,
81 ; on Salt River, 82.
McDonald, Major Angus, in the Dunmore
war, 72.
McGillivray, Alexander, his plots, 329 ;
his trading profits, 346 ; and the Span
ish aims, 352 ; attacks the Cumberland
settlements, 3.59 ; relations with ]Miri5,
371, 379 ; his treaty with Knox, 380,
385 ; his home, 383 ; as a leader, .384 ;
in New York, 385 ; visited by John
Pope, 519 ; dies, 520.
McHenry, Secretary of War, 482.
Mcintosh, General Lachlan, succeeds
General Hand, 123 ; hojies to attack
Detroit, 124; buUds Fort Mcintosh,
125 ; builds Fort Laurens, 125 ; reUeved
of command, 139.
McKee, Alexander, 271 ; suspected, 114 ;
turns traitor, 128 ; leading Shawnees,
175 ; raiding, 194 ; in the Harmar cam
paign, 429.
McLean, General, 237.
McMurray, WiUiam, 322.
Meigs, R. J., 302.
Mercer, Colonel George, 47.
Miami country, 315.
Miamis, 16 ; in council, 442.
Michaux, Andr^, a tool of Genet, 533,
537 ; sent west, 533 ; his revolutionary
plans countenanced by Jefferson, 537 ;
his jouimal, 537.
Michigan, plan to tum over its peninsula
to England, 494.
Mifflin, Govemor, and the whiskey ri
ots, 486.
Milhet, a New Orleans merchant, 34, 35.
Milwaukee, founded, 240.
Mingo town, 13.
Mingoes, hostUe, 124, 138 ; on the Scioto,
302. ¦
Ministerial line, 11.
Minnesota River 104.
Miquelon, 1.
Mirales, in Philadelphia, 184.
Mir<5, at New Orleans, 329, 346 ; his plots
352 ; with Wilkinson, 361 ; jealous of
Gardoqui, 366 ; depending on McGUli-
vray, 371 : leaves New Orleans, .520.
Mississippi Company, 377 ; formed, 46.
Mississippi River, .'548 ; bounding the
English Colonies, 2 ; forks, 25 ; its fur
traders, 29 ; its commerce to be di
verted through the Iberville, .32 ;
English troops withdrawn, 33 ; Spanish
posts, 35 ; French traders on eastern

bank, 3(; ; the French from Vincennes
trade^ on it, 70 ; its source, 101, 214,
221 ; its upper valley, 102 ; suppUes for
Americans carried up, 113; the Eng
lish aiming to control it, 102 ; free
navigation of, 182 ; insisted on by Jay,
183 ; map of, 214 ; right to navigate,
215 ; as a channel of trade, 248, 316,
317 ; its opening a burning question,
256, 263 ; Crevecoeur's map, 259 ; pro
ject for surrendering it to Spain, 318 ;
beginnings of steam navigation, 321 ;
Jay's wish to yield it to Spain for
twenty-five years, 339 ; the weak side
of Louisiana, 371 ; as a boundary, 471 ;
the Spanish claim stUl a perplexity,
516.
Mississippi Territory, 573.
Missouri River, 468 ; traders, 30.
Mitchell's map (1755), used in the treaty
(1782), 221 ; used in the ordinance
(1787), 286.
Mobile, attacked (1780), 181; Indian
conferences at, 330 ; population, 346 ;
trade of, 380.
Mohawk River, 19 ; as a route to the
west, 248.
Mohawk vaUey, 264.
Monongahela River, 50, 250, 511; map, 17.
Monroe, James, urges the setting up of
a western State, 247 ; in the west, 262 ;
with the Indian commissioners, 272 ;
on a committee for an ordinance of the
northwest, 281 ; Montgomery, Lieu
tenant, 174.
Montour, 91.
Moravians in Pennsylvania, 56 ; proving
spies, 195 ; settlements, map of, 422,
423.
Morey, Samuel, 512.
Morgan, Indian agent, 90 ; commanding
at Fort Pitt, 111.
Morgan, Colonel George, seeking set
tlers, 309 ; and western colonization,
366 ; connection with New Madrid,
366.
Morris brothers, GQ.
Morris, Robert, patron of Ledyard, 238 ;
tlie Genesee purchase, 204 ; and New
York lands, 425, 474, 499 ; lands in
Ohio, 500.
Morris, Gouverneur, 158, 159 ; on what
to yield to Spain and France, 201 ; on
the western States, 285 ; and a com
mercial treaty with England, 316.
Morse, Jedediah, American Geography,
363, 393, 491, 512 ; American Gazetteer,
.377 ; on Marietta, 498.
" Mound-builders,;' 323 ; on the Muskin
gum, 299 ; remains, 3()3.
Munseys (an Indian tribe), 140.
Murray, General James, govemor at
Quebec, 5.
Murray, William, 69.
Muskingum River, map, 17 ; its vaUey,
255, 293.
NashviUe, 3.34, 359; site of, 44, 123;
town founded by Robertson, 143 ; first

588

INDEX.

named Nashborough, 179 ; its condi
tion, 411.
Natchez (Indians), 32.
Natchez (town), sought by fugitives from
the East, 89; British settlers, 110;
Tory settlers, 156 ; controlled by the
English, 157 ; captured by Galvez, 171 ;
the settlers rise on the Spanish garri
son, 189 ; population, 346 ; fortified,
366 ; described, 518 ; after the treaty
of San Lorenzo, T)^o.
Navarro, 3j2, 361.
Neville, Captain John, 90.
New England, shipbuilding, 7.
New Jersey, accepts Articles of Confed
eration, 170.
New Jersey Company, 364.
New Madrid, 309, 518 ; map, 363 ; forti
fied, 366 ; Mir<5's apprehensions, 371.
New Orleans, 346; described, 50 ; Aubry
and Ulloa, 35 ; rising against the Span
iards, 36 ; O'Reilly comes, 37 ; Pollock
in, 108 ; coveted by the Enghsh, 108 ;
map of vicinity, 100 ; Hamilton's plan
to attack, 113 ; fire in, 361 ; open to
attack, 371; trade, 51!); defenses in
creased, 531 ; defenses suited for intes
tine troubles only, 550, 551 ; made port
of deposit, 555.
New York, bounds, 4 ; and the Quebec
Bill, 65 ; cedes her western lands, 185,
199 ; her land cession accepted, 205,
207 ; unhospitable to immigrants, 528.
Newburgh (N. Y.), 244.
Niagara, importance of, 112 ; its surren
der to the Americans a trial to Hal
dimand, 216; conditions (1783), 237;
Indian councils at, 271, 273 ; the falls
in Fitch's map, 323 ; road to, 475, 499.
Nicholas, George, 362; and the Consti
tution of Kentucky, .526 ; and the
French faction, 538.
Nickajack expedition, 547.
Noailles, in London, 154.
NoUichucky River, 70.
Nootka Sound, 2;vS ; Spain and England
at, 392 ; convention of, 397.
North, Lord, 152, 154.
North Bend (0.), 40S.
North Carolina moves her bounds west
ward, 327 ; her western settlements,
328, 334 ; her cessions, 335 ; the act re
pealed, 336 ; joins the Union, 375 ; final
cession of her western lands, 375,
North West Company, 220, 239, 389;
unites with rivals, 239.
Northwest coast fur trade, 380 ; rival
claimants, 302,
Northwestern territory, created, 306 ; its
government, 306 ; map by Morse, 364 ;
its population and character, 400, 498 ;
its forts, 417. >See Ordinance of 1787.
O'Fallon, Dr. James, 378 ; of the French
faction, 531.
O'ReiUy, in New Orleans, '¦'>7.
Oconee war, 330.
Ohio, the State of, map by Rufus Put
nam, 495^97.

Ohio Company of Virginia, 8 ; claims the
Indiana lands, 18.
Ohio Company (Walpole's), 47, 60 ; en
gulfs the old Ohio Company, 50 ;
bounds extended and territory called
Vandalia, 57.
Ohio Company of Massachusetts, formed,
280 ; reticent on the slavery question,
289; buys land, 290; extent of pur
chase, 290, 202 ; map of it, 291 ; deter
mines to settle on the Muskingum,
298 ; habits of settlement, 302 ; its
reputation compromised, 310 ; Bar
low's map, 311 ; and the GaUipolis
scheme, 406 ; and Duer's failure, 436.
Ohio country, Moravians in, 56; popu
lation increasing, 60 ; as a part of
Canada, 69 ; wanted for the loyalists,
217; the Seven Ranges, 267, 311, 313;
unauthorized settlements, 270.
Ohio River, current, 13 ; maps, 17, 119,
296, 297, 332 ; cost of transportation
from it to the coast, 48 ; settlements at
the faUs, 118; emigrants' boats, 175;
bustle at the falls, 204 ; flatboats on,
298 ; its course, 317 ; FUson's map, 332 ;
navigation of, 413 ; Indian forays, 417 ;
traffic on, 508 ; mail service, 510.
Ohio vaUey, richness of, 12.
Ordinance of 1784, 258 ; amended to pre
serve slavery, 260 ; embodies a com
pact with the old States, 260 ; King's
motion, 261.
Ordinance of 1785, 261.
Ordinance of 1787, reported, 281 ; amend
ed, 283 ; passed, 283 ; credit of it,
where due ? 284 ; its influence, 284 ; its
character, 285 ; sources of its pro
visions, 285 ; extent of territory cov
ered, 286 ; as a compact, 286 ; its
boundaries based on MitcheU's map,
286 ; the compact futUe, 286 ; creation
of States under, 2S7 ; denies manhood
suffrage, 2S7 ; its treatment of slavery,
2S7 ; of religion and education, 289 ; in
effect, 290.
Oregon River, 104.
Oriskany, 112.
Orr, Colonel, 568,
Orr, Major, attacks the Cherokees, 547.
Oswald, the English agent, 213 ; on the
bounds of the treaty (1782), 218.
Oswego, 216.
Otis, James, 4.
Ottawa River route, 137.
Ottawas, 113 ; their confederacy, HI ; to
avenge Pontiac's death, 26 ; hostile,
124.
Owegy, 20.
Pacific Ocean, route to, 238.
Page, governor of ^'^irginia, 93.
Pagds, French traveler. 22. 29,
Paine, Thomas, >>'); Public Good, 186,
246 ; his biographer, Conway, 187 ; on
the British debts, 230 ; and the aboli
tion of slavery, 289 ; Eights of Man^
400 ; in Paris, 4(\") ; in the French Con
vention, 548.

INDEX.

589

Palatines, 61.
Panhandle region, 185.
Panton, WUliam, 519.
Parsons, Samuel H., Indian commis
sioner, 269, 272 ; his character. 281 ;
appUes for land on behalf of the Ohio
Company, 282 ; approached by British
agents, 3()4 ; at 5larietta, 307 ; opens
communication with the British, 367.
Peace River, 238.
Pearl River, 181.
Pendleton, Edmund, 547.
Penn, Lady JuUaiia, 233.
Pennsylvania, a proprietary government,
6 ; German popvdation, 12 ; Quakers,
12 ; active people, 12 ; dispute with
Connecticut, 22, 264 ; route through to
the West, 52 ; becoming prominent,
52 ; boundary disputes with Virginia,
52, 66 ; impracticable westem bounds
in her charter, 53 ; ScuU's map, 53 ;
map by T. Kitchin, 54 ; the Quebec
BiU, 65 ; her line revolt, 188 ; commei'-
cial spirit, 250 ; canalization in, 254 ;
westem line run, 266 ; price of land,
298 ; her enterprise in opening her
unsettled country, 528.
Pennsylvania Gazette, 91.
Pensacola, 30 ; Bouquet in command,
30 ; Johnston there, 32 ; Haldimand
arrives, 32 ; Congress ready to assist
Spain in its capture, 151 ; wanted by
Spain, 155 ; coveted by PoUock, 158 ;
reinforced, 160 ; Indian conference at,
a30 ; trade, 346, 519.
Perdido River, 181.
Phelps and Gorham purchase, 264.
Phelps, OUver, 500.
Philadelphia, commerce, 7 ; taken, 115 ;
routes from to the West, 250 ; post
from to the West, 410.
PhUlipeaux Island, 221.
Pickering, Timothy, on the force neces
sary to garrison the frontier after the
war, 236; planning a western State,
244 ; on astronomical boundaries, 260 ;
on the western inovement, 261 ; and
the rectangular surveys, 267 ; opposed
to opening the lands to " lawless emi
grants," 270 ; and the St. Clair cam
paign, 422 ; confers with Red Jacket,
438 ; to treat with the Indians, 447. ¦
Pickett, Alabama, 189.
Pierro. See Pourr^, Captain.
Pinckney, Thomas, goes to England,
431 ; sent to Madrid, .548 ; negotia
tions at Madrid, 554 ; treaty signed,
555.
Piqua, 176.
Pittman, PhiUp, on the" Illinois Indians,
27,30.
Pittsburg, laid out, 12, 328 ; view, 51 ;
condition (1770), 52 ; Indians infest it,
clamoring for support, 61 ; longitude
of, 05 ; meeting at, to sustain the Rev
olution, 83 ; to be taken by Connolly,
86 ; federal in sympathy, 296 ; boats
passing, 298 ; condition, 304 ; trade at,
444 ; map, 444, 445 ; its condition

(1796), 506 ; roads to and from, 507-511 ;
map of vicinity, 570.
Pittsburg Gazette, 270, 350.
Pittsylvania, proposed colony, 49.
Platt, Richard, 436.
Point Pleasant, 112 ; battle, 73 ; position
of, 291.
Pollock, Oliver, his career, 108 ; to aid
G. R. Clark, 117 ; sends money to
Clark, 121, 143 ; becomes poor, 121 ;
at New Orleans, 148 ; planning an
attack on Pensacola, 149 ; appointed
commercial agent, 150 ; complains of
British depredations, 156 ; fitting out
armed vessels, 157 ; warning Ameri
cans, 157 ; urging active measures,
157 ; aims to capture Pensacola, 158 ;
extent of his claim on the United
¦ States, 158 ; joins Galvez m an attack
on the English posts, 162 ; his ill luck,
1()3 ; sending supplies to Todd and
Clark, 181 ; large indebtedness of
Congress and Virginia to, 198 ; insists
on the Americans securing a port of
deposit in Spanish territory, 202 ;
gives Congress a portrait of Galvez,
222 ; leaves New Orleans, 336 ; impris
oned at Havana, 336.
Pond, Peter, and the Grand Portage,
221 ; claims to have discovered an over
land passage to the Pacific, 389, 390 ;
his map, 390, 391, 471; at Philadel
phia, 437.
Pontiac, kiUed, 26.
Pope, John, 518, 519.
Portages, between the Ohio and Lake
Erie, 248, 316 ; made highways, 256,
286.
Porter, Captain, moves, 483.
Postal service, in the West, 296.
Posts on the Great Lakes, detention of
by England, 229 ; pecuniary loss to
the Americans by the detention, 234 ;
demanded by Congress, 2.34; their
names, 234 ; new demand, 2.35 ; British
gain by the detention, 23,6, 241 ; their
plans of detention, 237 ; garrisons,
240 ; New York demands the sur
render, 241 ; in a ruinous condition,
276 ; insufficiently garrisoned, 27(i ; to
be retaken if the Americans captured
them, 277 ; the English policy one of
delay, 279 ; Washington reopens the
question, .316.
Potier, P^re, 1.30.
Potomac River, its importance, 11 ;
portage to the Ohio, 50, 53 ; route to
the West, 251, 252, 257.
Pottawattamies, 26.
Pourri? (Pierro), Captain, 188.
PoweU's VaUey, 21, 81 ; raided, 91.
Power, Thomas, spy, 553, 567.
Pownall, Governor, and the Ohio Com
pany, 47.
Prairie du Chien, 220.
Prescott, General Robert, 483.
Presqu'Isle, to be occupied by Pennsyl
vania troops, 456.
Priest, WiUiam, 479, 528.

590

INDEX.

Printing-press, in Kentucky, 340.
Privateers, 151.
Proclamation of 1763, and the treaty
(1782), 221, 222.
Property line, 4, 14, 17 ; as run, 20 ; not
approved, 20.
Pulteney, Sir WilUam, 474.
Putnam, Rufus, exploring the lower
Mississippi, 110 ; plans western homes
for disbanded soldiers, 244 ; calls a
meeting of veterans, 280 ; forms the
Ohio Company, 280 ; his record, 280 ;
on the Muskingum valley, 296 ; leader
of the Ohio Company enterprise, 298,
304 ; abets Cutler's schemes, 311 ;
and the Mississippi question, 321 ; and
the Gallipolis project, 404 ; proposes
a line of posts in Ohio, 437 ; to serve
under Wayne, 441 ; treats with the
western Indians, 441 ; map of Ohio,
496, 497 ; his laud warrants, 498 ; Sur
veyor-General, 506.
Quebec Bill, 2, 5 ; earlier purpose of
extending to the Mississippi, 41 ; ac
count of, 63 ; its purpose to hem in the
Americans, 70 ; passed, 71 ; views of
it, 75, 107 ; obscurely noticed in the
Declaration of Independence, 75 ;
Franklin urges its repeal, 76 ; Ver
gennes favors its bounds as permanent
ones for the United States, 212.
Rainy Lake, 215.
RandaU, Robert, 494.
Randolph, Beverly, to treat with the
Indians, 447.
Randolph, Edmund, 227 ; on the Vir
ginia land cessions, 246 ; on the Mis
sissippi question, 319 ; relations with
Fauchet, 463 ; opinions of the British
government, 465 ; the Fauchet dis
patch, 479.
Rayneval, Gerard de, 146 ; and the
boundary question, 210 ; sent to
London, 212 ; his object, 212 ; on the
bounds of the United States, 218.
Read, D. B., Life of Simcoe, 448.
Red Jacket in Philadelphia, 438 ; at the
council of the Miami confederates, 442,
443.
Red Lake, 215.
Red Stone, 14, 117.
Red Stone Old Fort, 50, 254.
Regulators, move West, 78.
ReUgion, in the ordinance (1787), 289.
Rhode Island, her financial vagaries,
278 ; joins the Union, 375.
Richmond, Duke of, 219.
Rittenhouse, Dr., 65.
Rivers, navigation of, in international
law, 184.
Robertson, Colonel, 30.
Robertson, James, with Boone, 46 ; at
Watauga, 78 ; conducts its defense,
91 ; moves to the Cumberland valley,
143; settles NashviUe, 179; leader of
the Cumberland community, 180 ; re-
piUses the Cherokees, 194 ; relations

with Mir6, .334 ; attacks the Creeks,
358; ready to join the Spanish plot,
370 ; made brigadier-general, 376 ; ex
pects Cherokee raids, 520 ; wounded,
521 ; in the Tennessee Convention, 559.
Rocheblave, 156, 203 ; at Fort Gage, 113 ;
at Kaskaskia, 118 ; sent to Virginia,
120.
Rodney, defeats De Grasse, 217.
Rogers, David, killed, 140 ; on the Mis
sissippi, 155.
Rogers, John, commands a gaUey, 133.
Rogers, Major, at Mackinac, 24.
Romans, Bernard, 106.
Romayne, Dr., 568.
Roosevelt, Nicholas T., 514.
Royal proclamation (1763), 6, 7, 22 ;
Washington's view of it, 11 ; annuUed,
16 ; not enforced, 21, 42, 60 ; must not
be annulled, 41 ; its purpose, 44, 48.
Rumsey, James, his discovery, 252, 321 ;
controversy with Fitch, 325.
Russell, William, America, 536.
Rutherford, General, 93.
Rutledge, Edward, on the Mississippi
question, 318.
Sacs and Foxes, 172 ; pronounce for the
Americans, 177.
St. Anthony, FaUs of, 323.
St. Clair, Arthur, president of Congress,
282 ; interprets the slavery clause of
the ordinance (1787), 288 ; and the
Northwest Territory, 292 ; his career,
305 ; govemor of the Northwest, 305 ;
seeks to extinguish the Indian 'title,
306 ; prepares for an Indian war, 307 ;
makes treaty "with the Six Nations,
309; on WiUiamson, 369; on the Ohio,
402 ; and the Harmar campaign, 418 ;
his own campaign, 422 ; his instruc
tions, 427 ; his defeat, 429 ; resigns,
434 ; declares the Indian war at an
end, 491 ; trying to thwart the French
faction, 5.39 ; his fears, 541.
St. Francis River, 29.
St. Joseph, attacked by Spanish, 189.
St. Lawrence River, its ultimate source
unknown, 101 ; navigation of it denied
to the Americans, 218.
St. Leger, 112 ; in Quebec, 241. ^
St. Louis, settled, 23 ; population, 23 ;
Spanish plots, ll.'> ; threatened by Sin
clair, 171 ; described, 171 ; plan, 172,
173 ; CoUot's opinion of, 563.
St. Paul, city. Carver's deed, 103.
St. Peter River, 104.
St. Pierre Island, 1.
Ste. Genevieve, 23.
San Ildefonso, treaty, 572.
San Lorenzo, treaty, o^:id.
Sandusky, outpost of Detroit, 112.
Siinta F^, mines accessible to attack, 563.
Sargent, Charles S., 537.
Sargent, Winthrop, 292 ; adjutant of St.
Clair, 428 ; in the Mississippi Territory,
573.
Saugrain, 299.
Savannah, evacuated, 203.

INDEX.

591

Scioto Company, 402 ; its agent Joel
Barlow, 311 ; and Duer's failure,
435.
Scioto River, map, 67 ; Indians on, 302.
Scotch, in Kentucky, 529.
Scotch-Irish, character, 12 ; arriving on
the Delaware, 52 ; in Ohio, 304 ; in the
Northwest, 500.
Scott, General Charles, map of his raid
across the Ohio, 249 ; his attack on the
Wabash tribes, 422.
Scott, Joseph, United States Gazetteer,
495, 505.
Scraggins, Henry, 44.
ScuU's map of Pennsylvania, 53.
Seagrave, James, 521.
Sebastian, Judge, traitor, .363 ; jiensioned
by Spain, 388 ; and Carondelet, 552 ;
goes with Gayoso to New Orleans, 554 ;
his infamy rewarded, 5.56.
Seeley, Expansion of England, 5.
Senecas, 139.
Sequoyah, 78.
Seven Ranges, the, 267, 311, 313.
Sevier, John, in the Watauga settlement,
80 ; holding the Cherokees in check,
96 ; at King's Mountain, 181 ; at con
vention of Jonesboro', 335 ; governor
of the FrankUn region, 341 ; his down
fall, 3()0 ; arrest and escape, 360 ; made
brigadier-general, 376 ; goes to Georgia,
515 ; attacks the Creeks, 544.
Sharp, GrenviUe, 154.
Shawnees, claim the Ohio country against
the Iroquois, 14 ; aroused, 58 ; their
warpath, 67 ; hostile, 124 ; on Bird's
raid, 175 ; in treaty, 272 ; attacked by
Kentuckians, 276 ; marauding, 310 ;
their uncertain friendship, 345.
Shays's rebeUion, 274, 278, 344.
Sheaffe, Lieutenant, 474.
Sheffield Lord, 277.
Shelby, Evan, in the Watauga settle
ment, 80 ; attacks the Indians, 136,
139 ; at King's Mountain, 181 ; and the
State of Franklin, .354.
Shelby, Isaac, govemor of Kentucky,
526 ; faiU to thwart the French fac
tion, 540.
Shelburne, Lord, orders the property
line to be mn, 14 ; and the peace (1782),
212, 213, 216, 222, 227.
Shepherd Colonel David, 114, 192.
Simcoe, John Graves, 426, 446, 447 ; his
distrust of the Americans, 448 ; his
hostUe purpose, 451 ; builds fort at the
Maumee rapids, 455 ; apprehensive of
Wayne's success, 457 ; disturbed at it,
460, 461, 488 ; sends expedition to So
dus Bay, 474 ; his passionate chagrin,
483.
Sinclair, at Mackinac, 142 ; to descend
the Mississippi, 142, 171.
Sioux Indians, 30, 104 ; sought by Sin
clair, 171.
Sioux country, 215.
Six Nations. See Iroquois.
Slaughter at the falls of the Ohio, 191.
Slavery, Jefferson's purpose for the West,

258 ; and the ordinance (1787), 283,
287; and the phrase "all men are
bom free and equal," 287 ; among the
French in Illinois, 288 ; early move
ments for aboUshing it, 288 ; Cutler's
futile attempt to abolish it, 289.
Slaves, trouble arising from their depor
tation from New York at the evacua
tion, 231.
Smith, Charles, 83.
Smith, General Robert, 370.
Smith, James, on the Cumberland River,
44.
Smith, Provost, 05.
Smith, WiUiam, 484.
Smyth, Travels, 86 ; movements with
ConnoUy, 87.
Smythe, Colonel, 174.
Sodus Bay, 474.
Soldiers' certificates, depreciated, 282.
South Carolina, bounds, 10 ; cession of
westeru lands, 358.
South Carolina Company, 377.
Southern tribes, the question of bounds,
10 ; distrust the English, 38 ; played
upon by both English and Americans,
89.
Spain, holds Louisiana, 106 ; plots at St.
Louis, 113 ; joins France in planning
disaster to the Americans, 147 ; hesi
tating, 152 ; offers to mediate, 154 ; her
position on the Mississippi, 157 ; her
navy, 158 ; to have Florida, 159 ; urges
Congress to accept a long truce, 159 ;
threatens aUiance with England, 160 ;
ambitious, 160 ; must have Gibraltar,
KiO ; treaty (1779) with France 160 ; de
clares war with England, 161, 564 ; in
sists with Jay upon the control of the
Mississippi, 182 ; using France to this
end, 182 ; sends expedition to place the
Spanish flag east of the Mississippi,
188, 212 ; aims to secure the eastern
bank of the Mississippi, 212 ; denies
English right to navigate the Missis
sippi, 216 ; gains Florida (1782), 222 ;
contends it carried her territory to the
Yazoo, 222 ; explores on the Pacific
coast, 238 ; her intrigues in Kentucky,
309 ; her claims ¦ for the Mississippi,
318 ; her covert action, 327 ; views on
American independence, 327 ; enmity
towards the United States, 330 ; invites
settlers west of the Mississippi, .366 ;
her diplomacy, 388 ; her perfidious
policy, 556 ; delays execution of the
San Lorenzo treaty, 565.
Sparks, Jared, on Vergennes, 223.
Springfield (O.), 176.
Stamp Act, 2.
Standford (Ky.), 111.
Stanhope, Earl, 512.
Starved Rock, 26.
State debts, assumption of, 408.
Steamboats, 512 ; on the western rivers,
317, 318, :ai), 323, 414.
Steuben, Baron, confronting Arnold, 190;
' sent to demand posts, 234.
Stevens, B. F., Facsimiles, 145, 223.

592

INDEX.

Stobo, Captain, 60.
Stockbridge Indians, 87, 126.
Stormont, Lord, in Paris, 151, 153, 154.
Stover, Michael, 44.
Strachey, in Paris, 218, 219.
Straits of Juan de la Fuca, 238.
Stuart, John, agent among the southem
Indians, 9, 88.
Suffolk, Lord, and the use of Indians in
war, 127.
Sugar cane, in Louisiana, 551.
Sullivan, General, 9 ; campaign against
the Iroquois, 138.
SuUivan, John, 347.
Swiss, on the (Jreat Scioto, 500.
Sydney, instructs Haldimand to hold
the posts, 241 ; and the Indian war,
276.
Symmes, J. C, at Marietta, 306 ; in the
Miami country, 314 ; his land warrants,
498.
TaUeyrand, 223.
Taylor, Hancock, 59.
Tennessee, first white chUd born in, 77 ;
population (1776), 91 ; invaded by In
dian allies of the British, 91 ; its set
tlements, %i ; constitutional beginnings
of the State, 335, 336 ; maps of, 516,
517, 544, 545 ; the question of otate-
hood, 552 ; population (1795), 552 ; con
vention to make a State, 559.
Tennessee Company, 377 ; seeks to settle
in Georgia, 515.
Tennessee River, settlement at the great
bend of, 335. See Cherokee River.
Thomas, Isaac, 93.
Thomas, Lieutenant John, 30.
Thompson, Captain Andrew, 194.
Thompson, Captain WiUiam, 58.
Thompson, David, his survey of the Mis
sissippi, 472.
Thomson, Charles, 250.
Thurlow, 71.
Tilghman, James, ^.
Toby's Creek, 250.
Todd, Captain John, g^ernor of lUinois,
122 ; in Kentucky, 177.
Todd, David, 331.
Todd & Co., 416.
Toledo (O.), 264.
Tomahawk claims, 49.
Tonicas, 29.
Tories from New England, on the Mis
sissippi, 110 ; at Natchez, 156.
Toulmin, Henry, Description of Ken
tucky, 529.
Transylvania set up, .82 ; movement to
wards its settlement, 97 ; its proprie
tors recompensed, 98.
Augusta (Ga.), (1773), 88.
Augusta (Ga.), (1783), 327.
Fontainebleau (1785), 184.
Fort Finney (1785), 272.
Fort Harmar (178<l), 293, 310.
Fort Mcintosh (1785), 208.
Foit Stanwix (1768), 16, 43, 268.
Fort Stanwix (1784), 267, 310.

France and Spain (1779), 160.
Hardlabor (1768), 55.
Holston, 375.
HopeweU, 343, 344, 375.
Jay's (1794), 3, 465^67.
Lancaster, 166.
Lochaber (S. C.) (1768), 55, 78.
Paris (176.3), 1, 2, 22, 63, 107.
Paris, secret (1763), 29.
Paris (1782), 2, 205 ; history of, 208 ;
made definitive, 223 ; infractions of,
228, 240 ; ratification of the defini
tive treaty, 235 ; should acts date
from the provisional or the defini
tive treaty ? 236.
Ryswick (1697), 1.
San Ildefonso, 572.
San Lorenzo (1795), 3, 555.
Sycamore Shoals (1775), 82.
WestphaUa (1648), 184.
White's Fort, 516.
Trent, WUUam, 19.
Trevett v. Weedon, :J44.
Trial by jury, 290.
Truman, Captain Alexander, 441.
Trumbull, Colonel John, 572.
TrumbuU, Jonathan, govemor of Con
necticut, 264.
Tryon, governor of North Carolina, 10,
77 ; and the Cherokees, 10 ; and Tran
sylvania, 84.
Tugaloo River, 92, 327.
Turgot, 146.
Tuscarawas River, 125.
Tuscarawas vaUey, 56.
Tupper, General Benjamin, surveying in
the Ohio country, 267, 280; confers vrith
Rufus Putnam, 280.
Twightwees, 16.
UUoa, Antonio de, in New Orleans, 33.
United States, population (1780), 182 ; ter
ritory secured (1782), 209 ; no cause of
gratitude to France or Spain, 223 ; cost
of the Revolutionary War, 225 ; dan
gers after the peace, 227 ; army neces
sary, 230 ; the office of Geographer of,
266 ; first recognized by the westem
Indians, 207, 273 ; expenditures on the
Indian problem, 2()8 ; Indian Bureau,
274 ; departments, 274 ; stories of dis
integration, 277 ; Hamilton supposed
to be the leader of a monarchical
party, 277 ; federal convention, 282,
284 ; the Constitution and the Missis
sippi question, 320 ; population (1787),
351 ; population (1790), 398 ; valuation
(1790), 398 ; British views of western
bounds, 432. 470 ; her bound completed,
573 ; character of her people, 574.
Unzaga, at New Orleans, 148.
Upper Canada, created, 426.
Van Braam's claim, 60.
Vancouver, in the Pacific, 533.
Vandalia, 248 : colony, 57 ; grant, 169,
200, 206.
Varnum, General J. M., at Marietta, 305,
306.

INDEX.

593

Vaughan, Benjamin, sent to England
by Jay, 216; on the treaty (1782),
227.
Verendrye, 104.
Vergennes, his poUcy, 2, 4 : his charac
ter, 144 ; plans to intervene in the
Aanerican war, 145 ; his insincerity,
145 ; urges grant of money to Amer
ica, 146 ; refuses guns, 151 ; influen
cing the king, 152 ; ready for an Amer
ican alUance, 153 ; seeks to join Spain
in it, 155, 1.58 ; his purpose, 158 ;
schemes to disunite the States, 164 ;
offended by John Adams, 184 ; his
measures produce a revulsion, 208 ;
defied by the peace commissioners.
209 ; hoped to play into the hands of
England, 213 ; on the bounds fixed by
the treaty (17.S2), 218 ; desired only
the independence of the United States,
not their prosperity, 223.
Vermont, claims for admission to the
Union, 205 ; British intrigue with,
238 ; as a possible new State, 362 ; ad
mitted to the Union, 515.
Vigo, Francois, joins Clark, 120 ; impov
erished by aiding Clark, 121 ; cap
tured by HamUton's scouts, 133 ; in
forms Clark of Hamilton's condition,
133 ; his claim on Virginia, 247 ; a fur
trader, 416.
Vincennes, French in the neighborhood,
28, 38 ; change to English law, 40 ;
lands of the t rench threatened by the
Quebec BiU, 69 ; the French warned
to remove from, 69 ; stockaded, 113 ;
occupied by Helm, 120 ; captured by
Hanulton, 131 ; captured by Clark,
133, 135 ; Helm in command, 135 ; dis
content at, 275 ; population, 275 ; Har
mar at, 296.
Vii^nia, tide-water people and over-hill
?eople, 11 ; vaUey of, 12 ; Scotch-
rish, 12 ; claims the " Indiana "
country, 19 ; her territory curtailed by
the Fort Stanwix treaty, 20 ; her west
ern claims ignored by the Walpole
grant, 50 ; espouses the Cherokee
claims against the Iroquois, 50 ; dis
pute with Pennsylvania over bounds,
52, 177, 196 ; curved westem bounds
of Pennsylvania shown in map, 54 ;
Franklin disputes her westem claims,
55; George Mason defends them, 55;
her charter claims, 63 ; the Quebec
Bin, 65 ; Dunmore, govemor, 65 ; hold
ing the Ohio, 84 ; frontier to be at
tacked from the south, 88 ; defines her
territorial rights, 98 ; rejects private
purchases of land, 98 ; sets up Ken
tucky as a county, 98 ; sends G. R.
Clark west, 117 ; encourages him, 1.32 ;
fives him thanks, 132 ; opposes the
panish demands, 164 ; her territorial
claims, 166 ; adopts Constitution, 167 ;
sets up civil govemment in Illinois,
169 ; sets up land office, 169 ; extends
her southem boundary to the Missis
sippi, 174; warning New England,

185 ; her proposed cession of land north
of the Ohio, 185 ; her territorial claims
attacked by Tom Paine, 186 ; map of
bounds, 197 ; offers a cession, 198 ; im
pedes action, 199 ; weakening on the
Mississippi question, 200 ; jealous of
the Vermont claims for Statehood,
205 ; validity of her territorial claim,
206 ; language of her charter as to
bounds, 206 ; the principal ofi'ender in
infractions of the treaty (1782), 231,
232 ; treatment of the British debts,
232 ; George Mason on her charter,
245 ; incensed at Tom Paine, 246 ; ces
sion of her western lands proposed,
246 ; makes a cession, 247 ; cost of
her conquest of the Northwest, 247 ;
bounty-lands, 247 ; her election, 247 ;
use of her rivers as routes to the west,
248 ; routes to Kentucky, map, 249 ;
eager for an Indian war, 274 ; and the
Mississippi question, 320 ; and the
new Constitution, 361.
Virginia Company, 277.
Voight, 324.
Wabash Company, 200, 365.
Wabash River, 39 ; described, 40.
Wabash tribes, 345.
Wabasha^ 171.
Walker, Dr. (Colonel) Thomas, 15, 16,
174 ; his grant in Kentucky, 21.
Walpole, Thomas, and western lands,
47. See Ohio Company (Walpole's).
Washington, interest in western lands,
43, 54 ; sends Crawford west, 43, 50 ;
of the Mississippi Company, 46 ; the
Dinwiddie grants, 47, 50, 53 ; goes
west (1770), 50; at Fort Pitt, 52; on
the Kanawha, 62 ; buying soldiers'
claims, 53 ; his western lands occupied
by others, 57 ; Dunmore's alleged
grants, 68 ; his land surveyed and ad
vertised, 58, 59 ; his caution, 59 ; land
surveyed for him by Bullitt, 59 ; buys
other claims, 60 ; planning to people
his lands with emigrants, 01 ; at Val
ley Forge, 124 ; to sanction use of In
dians, 127 ; restrains Brodhead, 140 ;
defeated on Long Island, 147 ; at
Brandywine, 152 ; disapproves Lafay
ette's plan for invading Canada, 159 ;
interview with Luzerne, 164 ; distrusts
the Confederation, 188 ; appealed to by
Clark and Brodhead, 192 ; at York-
town, 195 ; sends Irvine to Fort Pitt,
196 ; favors western homes for the
disbanded army, 244, 245 ; would lay
out two States, 245 ; on the Virginia
water-ways, 248 ; on western routes,
2.50, 25(1 ; their necessity in holding the
west, 250 ; on the Mohawk route, 251 ;
his westem lands, 251 ; on the Poto
mac route, 251 ; on Rumsey's mechani-
• cal boat, 252 ; his map of the Potomac
divide, 2.52, 253 ; entertains commis
sioners at Mount Vernon, 256 ; on Lake
Erie portage, 2.56 ; on the Mississippi
question, 256 ; President of the James

594

INDEX.

River and Potomac Canal Company,
257 ; objects to the ordinance (1784),
260; favors "progressive seating" in
the we^t, 260 ; relations with Rumsey,
325 ; favors the independence of Ken
tucky, 331 ; receives'dedioation of FU
son's map, 332 ; views on the Spanish
question, 338. 370 ; and the St. Clair
campaign, 422 ; criticises Rufus Put
nam's plan for a line of posts, 437 ; his
anxiety to maintain peace with Eng
land, 463 ; considering the Jay treaty,
477 ; treatment of the whiskey rioters,
486 ; sympathizes with Hamilton in the
French question, 5.32 ; congratulated
on his birthday, 558 ; warns westem
intriguers, 563.
Washington, city of, how its site was
determined, 409.
Watauga Association, 334 ; formed, 79 ;
buys its land, 82.
Watauga River, 77 ; early settlers, 44,
46.
Watauga settlement, 78 ; becomes Wash
ington County, 80 ; warned by Stuart,
91 ; attacked, 91 ; to be annexed to
North Carolina, 95 ; loyahsts expeUed,
97 ; sending out raiding parties, 122 ;
sends out Shelby, 136 ; population,
341.
Waterford (0.), 421.
Wayne, Anthony, suggested as com
mander at the West, 439 ; gathering his
forces, 451 ; his cavalry, 452 ; his ad
vance, 457; his victory, 458 ; treating
with the tribes, 461 ; dies, 483 ; his
final pacification of the tribes, 487 ;
formaUties of his treaty, 488 ; the line
established, 490 ; cost of the war, 494 ;
smaU reservations, 496.
Wedderburn, 70.
West, rival routes to, 248, 316, 317;
movements to set up States, 257 ; im
migration to, 270, 296, 298, 302 ; at
tractions advertised, 280 ; demands
slavery, 288; postal service, 29() ;
character of its people, 387 ; routes
thither, 508, 511.
West Florida, limits, 110 ; population,
110. See Florida.
West Sylvania, 9(),
Western lands, diverse views of Vir
ginia and Maryland respecting them,
168 ; treasury warrants, 178 ; occupants
seek to make a State, 179 ; New York's
claim, 185 ; cessions of, 186 ; public do
main in, 186, 208 ; the Eastern States
show their rights, 199 ; expected to
pay the expenses of the war, 206 ;
France would give them to Spain, 209 ;
Congress establishes its sovereignty
over them, 246 ; reserved for soldiers'
bounties, 247, 261 ; surveys advocated
by Jefferson, 2()1 ; eagerness for new
States, 202 ; laud office, 2li2 ; rectangu
lar survey, 2(i6 ; becoming productive,
296.
Western ports, arrangements for evacu
ating, 482.

Western Reserve, 264, 500 ; its extent,
265.
Westem Reserve Historical Society,
Tracts, 255.
Westward emigration and the Indians,
329.
Weymouth, Lord, 1.54.
Wharton, Francis, International Law
Digest, 217.
Wharton, Samuel, 19 ; on the Kana
wha, 252 ; in the Muskingum country,
299.
WheeUng, 56, 68, 510 ; attacked, 194.
Wheeling Creek, attack, 114.
Whipple, Commodore, 280.
Whiskey rebellion, 485.
White, Dr. James, Indian agent, 345.
White, James, .358.
¦RTiite Bear Lake, 214, 215.
White Eyes (Indian), 177, 293.
Whiteley, Colonel, 568.
White's Fort, treaty, 516.
Whitney, Eli, cotton-gin, 551.
Whitworth, Richard, 106.
Wilderness Road, 99, 328 ; opened by
Boone, 82.
Wilkinson, James, map of his raid across
the Ohio, 249 ; his character, 339 ; his
plots, 349, ;:m3 ; confers with Gayoso,
355 ; seeks to reach Mird, 355 ; at
Frankfort, 3.56 ; commercial plans
with Mir6, 3.56 ; again in Kentucky,
358 ; traitorous conduct, 363, 369 ;
interview with ConnoUy, 368 ; in the
Kentucky Convention, 369 ; seeks land
in the Yazoo, 369 ; representations to
Mir(5, 370 ; despondent under defeat,
374, 388; joins O'FaUon, 378; his
fiendish advice, 379 ; attacks the
Wabash tribes, 427 ; aroused at St.
Clair's defeat, 430; brigadier under
Wayne, 440 ; estimated by Washing
ton, 444 ; succeeds Wayne, 483 ; his
intercourse with Carondelet, 553 ; re
ceives money from Carondelet, 557 ;
and the French faction, 561 ; saves
Power, 567 ; at Natchez, 573.
WiUet, Colonel, sent to McGillivray,
.385 ; decUnes to serve under Wayne,
440.
WiUiamson, Colonel Andrew, 474 ; his
campaign against the Cherokees, with
map, 94, 95.
WiUiamson, David, 204.
WiUing, Captain James, on the Slissis-
sippi, 129, 15IS 157.
¦\ViU's Creek, 254.
AVinnebagoes, 26, 39.
Wisconsin River, .39 ; portage, 39.
Witt, Simeon de, 264.
AVolcott, Oliver, 2()8 ; on the GaUipoUs
scheme, 405; and the whiskey riots,
485.
Wood Creek, 251.
Wood Creek portage, 15, 19.
Wood Creek route, 501.
Wood, Colonel, 112.
Wood, James, 85.
Writ of habeas corpus, 290.

INDEX.

595

Writs of assistance, 4.
¦Wyandots, unsteady, 124, 132 ; prowl
ing, 1^38 ; alarmed, 192.
Wynne, General History of the British
Empire in America, 42, 101.
Wythe, George, sympathy for Kentucky,
110.
Yadkin River, 77.
Yazoo grants, 549 ; corruption in the
Georgia legislature respecting them,
549 ; act rescinded, 560.

Yoder, Jacob, 204, 323 ; his voyage on
tile Mississippi, 326.
Youghiogheny River, 250, 254.
Yorktown, capitulation at, 188, 190.
Yrujo, 570.
Zane family, 56, 68 204, 611.
Zeisberger, and the Moravians in Pennsyl
vania, 56 ; restrains western Indians,
87, 112 ; warns Gibson, 138 ; warns
Fort Henry, 194; and the St. Clair
campaign, 424.

it-ii^'^.'^,^^"