The Wild Frontier (27 page)

John Slover was captured by the Miami Indians before 1773 when he was 8, after his father and 2 little sisters had been killed. He was a captive of the Miamis for 6 years. Then Slover was sold to a Delaware and finally to a Shawnee, with whom he lived another 6 years.
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During this time, another prisoner was taken and stripped and blackened with coal and water, the Indian sign that he was marked for death. He was made to run the gauntlet, and while he was doing this he was beaten and cut with tomahawks, and guns fired loads of powder into his body. Blood gushed from a wound in his shoulder. He got to the council house, where he thought he was safe. When he realized he was not safe there, he tried to grab a tomahawk, but was too weak. For a long time after that he was beaten, then finally killed.
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That evening a third prisoner was cut into pieces and his limbs and head put on poles. Slover also saw 3 other bodies in the same condition. He was told they had been killed the same way. These 3 bodies were dragged out of town, given to the dogs, and their limbs and heads stuck on poles.
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Alexander McKee,
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an agent of the British Indian Department who had led Indians in many attacks against Americans, was present at most of the council meetings known to Slover. The animosity of tribes toward the settlers was shown at these council meetings, which were attended
by several tribes—the Mingo, Ottawa, Chippewa, Wyandot, Delaware, Shawnee, Munsee, and some Cherokee—and which lasted 15 days. All warriors could attend, but only chiefs could speak. On the next to the last day of the council, a speech sent from the British commander at Detroit was read. The commander said in part, “When any of our people fall into the hands of the Rebels, they show no mercy—why then should you take any prisoners? My children, take no more prisoners of any sort—man, woman, or child.” Two days later, Indians from every nation in the area determined to take no more captives of any kind. It was decided that if an American child only 3 inches long should be found, it would be shown no mercy. At the end of the council, all tribes present agreed that if any nation not present did take prisoners, the nations present would rise against them and put the prisoners to death.
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About the time of the meetings, 12 men were brought in from Kentucky. Three were burned that day. The remainder were distributed to other Indian towns. Slover was told they were also burned. At the final council meeting he was to attend, the Indian woman with whom he was living hid him, apparently because she didn’t want him to know it would then be decided he too was to be burned.
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The next morning, about 40 warriors and Girty surrounded the house where he was living, put a rope around his neck, tied his arms behind his back, and “blackened me in the usual manner.” He was tied to a post; the flame was kindled. It was a clear day, but just as the fire began to blaze, there was a hurricane, extinguishing the fire. He was told he would be burned the next morning. He was tied with buffalo hide, but he got loose and stole a horse. He rode it until it tired, abandoned the horse, and then ran. He was lashed by nettles and bitten by mosquitoes because he was naked except for a piece of rug he had stolen as he escaped. He eventually reached Wheeling and was saved.
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When the Revolution started, although the Indians believed they had been mistreated by the British, they thought their best hope of keeping their land was with them. In addition, the British had more resources than Americans to bribe tribal leaders. Both sides courted the Indians at the beginning of the war, and the Indians became divided. Carl Waldman summed up the eventual effects the Revolution had on the Indians:

Winning wars is often a grim business, and losing them is even worse.

O
N SEPTEMBER
3, 1783, the Treaty of Paris was signed, ending the Revolutionary War and affirming the independence of the 13 American colonies. Unfortunately, the treasury of the Continental Congress was empty. During the last full year of the war, it had assessed the states to keep the government running. Twelve of the 13 had paid nothing. New Jersey had paid only $5,500 of its $485,679 assessment. A delegate wrote that “our Army is extremely clamorous, we cannot pay them—we can hardly feed them.” Washington recommended that Congress not break up the Continental army, but Congress ignored that recommendation as a practical matter.

In 1784, only a year after the Treaty of Paris, the United States Army consisted entirely of a West Point artillery company of 58 men and 29 others at Fort Pitt, a total of 87 soldiers.
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Trouble on the frontier could be expected, and it occurred.

Mutiny was in the air as well. Some impatient officers, in a group of propositions called the Newburgh Addresses, advocated either refusing to disband when peace was declared or, if the war continued, to “retire to some unsettled country,” leaving Congress with no army. Washington appeared unannounced at a meeting of these officers and gave a critical speech inquiring about the author of the Addresses:

When he left, the officers resolved to reject the Newburgh Addresses. There was no further serious talk of insubordination or desertion.
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T
HE SCOTT
family lived on the frontier in Virginia in 1785. One night, several Indians stormed into the house. Mrs. Scott believed they were from the Delaware, Mingo, and 2 other tribes. Mr. Scott jumped out of bed and was shot and killed. An Indian stabbed and cut the throats of the 3 youngest children in their beds, then dashed their bodies on the
floor near their mother. The eldest child, a girl of 8, was awakened, ran to her mother, asking her mother to save her. Mrs. Scott pleaded with the Indians to spare the child, but they tomahawked and stabbed the girl while she was in her mother’s arms. Mrs. Scott was taken away by the Indians. On the eleventh day of her captivity, she escaped.
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In 1786, Captain McGary was with a group of soldiers attacking Shawnee villages. When they came to his village, an old chief named Moluntha stepped out with a peace pipe, a cocked hat, and an American flag. McGary asked the chief if he had participated in a battle earlier that year in Kentucky where 70 soldiers led by McGary had been killed. Moluntha had little English, was old, confused, and knew only that the American was asking him something. He nodded his head, saying, “Yes, yes.” McGary took his hatchet, brained the chief, and took his scalp.
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That same year, while working his farm in Kentucky, the grandfather of President Abraham Lincoln—also named Abraham Lincoln—was murdered by an Indian. Tom Lincoln, father of the president, was there at the time. Tom’s older brother, Mordecai Lincoln, saw the attack and shot the Indian, saving their lives. President Lincoln commented years later about his grandfather’s death: “He was killed by Indians, not in battle but by stealth, when he was laboring to open a farm in the forest.”
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In 1788, Tecumseh’s brother, Cheesekau, lost his life trying to break into a settler’s log cabin in the Cumberland River Basin after a settler had been killed there.
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Tecumseh
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took revenge by raiding a small settlement on Drake Creek. He and his group of Shawnee murdered and scalped 3 men and took several women and children prisoner.
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George Ironside, a Scotch trader, was in Miami and Shawnee country in 1789. One of their warriors showed him a heart he had personally taken from a white prisoner. He kept it fastened behind him with the scalp.
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Charles Builderback, “who had stood literally in Delaware blood and brains while bashing in the heads of the praying Indians at Gnadenhutten,” was rounding up cattle on the Ohio River with his wife the same year. A party of Shawnee captured them, and when they recognized him, they emasculated and dismembered him over a long period of time. Then his skull was smashed with hatchets.
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Charles Johnston was captured by Indians in 1790 while going down
the Ohio River just above the Scioto. A white man and a woman were killed during the capture. The dead were scalped and their bodies thrown in the river.
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Johnston was then forced to help the Indians decoy a canoe of 6 settlers. He and 2 other white settlers, Divine and Thomas, were put on the bank of a river. When the canoe was in sight, Divine called out for an ax to repair a boat. As the canoe came close to shore, the Indians opened fire, killing 4 immediately and wounding the other 2, who were dragged to shore and tomahawked. All 6 were scalped and their bodies thrown in the river. Johnston had been captured by a similar ruse performed by Divine and Thomas. Although both had claimed the Indians had forced them to do so, another captive told Johnston that Divine had planned both schemes when the Indians promised they would release him if he got settler prisoners for them. Johnston thought Divine was “perfectly happy” in executing the ax ruse.
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After Johnston had been ransomed, a Shawnee warrior told him his friend and fellow prisoner, William Flinn, had been burnt at the stake and eaten at one of the Miami towns. The Shawnee added that he had shared in the meal and that Flinn’s flesh was even sweeter than bear’s meat, a food in high repute with Indians.
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General Josiah Harmar had been a lieutenant colonel under Washington. It was he who in 1783 brought the ratified Treaty of Paris to France, thereby ending the war. On his return to the United States, he was named commander of the army and assigned to the Old Northwest Territory, where he was the government’s Indian agent to the Ohio Valley tribes. Carl Waldman said of him, “He commanded U.S. forces in the region, clearing Indians from ceded lands and evicting white settlers who trespassed on remaining Indian Territory in violation of treaty agreements.”
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This analysis succinctly states federal government policy toward the Indians throughout almost all of the American-Indian War: Obtain cessation of Indian lands, clear Indians from those lands who have sold but refuse to leave, and evict settlers who trespass on Indian lands in violation of treaties. This was the policy, but frequently it was not followed.

Chief Little Turtle
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(part Miami and part Mahican) and his allies had
killed around 1,500 settlers in the Old Northwest between 1783 and 1790.
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Washington ordered Harmar’s army into the field.

At the close of the 1700s, it was said that the Miami Indians were savages who massacred women and children, drank the blood of their victims, and made merry as they burned their captives at the stake. It was reported that more settlers were tortured at Kekionga, their principal village at present Fort Wayne, Indiana, than any other place in the state.
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Harmar and his men advanced into Miami territory
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in 1790. Secretary of War Henry Knox, concerned about what the British would think of Harmar’s strike, told General St. Clair to tell the British commander at Detroit, Major Patrick Murray, that Knox merely intended to chastise the Indians, but to keep all this secret. Of course Murray told the Indians at once. On the basis of this information, the Indians asked for and got help from other Indian allies. There were bloody skirmishes, and Harmar lost 75 soldiers and 108 militia, while the Indians lost 100 warriors.

Three American prisoners were interrogated, then, after learning what more they could from them, the Indians killed them. Harmar had to retreat.
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British general Simon Fraser warned one group of American prisoners, who were lightly guarded, that if they should attempt to escape “no quarter would be shown … and those who might elude the guard, the Indians would be sent in pursuit of, and scalp them.”
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Near Cincinnati, Ohio, several tribes surrounded Dunlap’s Station, a fortified community. To weaken the resolve of the defenders, they took a prisoner, Abner Hunt, a surveyor, into a clearing in front of the stockade, tied him to a log on the frozen ground, stretched him out, built a hot fire around him, made knife slits in his body, and put hot coals in the slits. He screamed and cried until nearly dawn.
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Shortly after the ice broke on the Ohio River in the spring of the next year, Indians captured 2 riverboats, killing 24 settlers. Some Shawnee and Mingos recognized 2 of the passengers, brothers Michael and Daniel Greathouse. Daniel was supposedly the leader of the settlers who had murdered part of the family of Mingo chief Logan in 1774. Daniel Greathouse and his wife were stripped. Cuts were made in their abdomens and their intestines tied to a tree. Then they were forced to walk around the tree, pulling out their intestines.
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Americans responded to the murder of the Greathouses in a variety of
ways. Houses and barns were booby-trapped. Scalp bounties were offered for any Indian scalp (not just Shawnee and Mingo scalps). Shortly after the Greathouse incident, a ranger party led by Simon Kenton killed 5 Shawnee on the Ohio. All were scalped. The head of a young boy was mounted on a pole along the river.
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Jackson Johonnet was assigned to General Harmar’s army in 1791 with the rank of sergeant. He had come from his native England to Boston when 17. He was unable to find employment until he met an army officer. “After treating me with a bowl or two of punch, I enlisted.” Before he saw any action, he and 10 other soldiers were captured by the Kickapoos
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on the Wabash River. After 2 days, one of the soldiers, George Aikins, could go no farther because of hunger and fatigue. Archibald Loudon reported his fate: