Shawanese friends, and abandoned their settlement at Sandusky. They were ordered to do so by Half King, who persisted in holding them in some degree responsible for the fate of his two sons; but in their present situations, it was doubtless a prudent resolution. Loskiel informs us, that on their dispersion, "one part went into the country of the Shawanese: the rest stayed some time in the neighborhood of Pipestown, and then resolved to proceed farther-to the Miami River." Heckewelder is more explicit, and mentions. the Scioto and Miami of the Lake, now Maumee, as their respective destinations.

We have previously considered the probability, that Cornstalk and the Shawanese tribe on the Scioto, were disposed to peace, and perhaps to accept Christianity, through the influence of the missionaries. Indeed, after the death of Cornstalk, a tribe of Shawanese removed to the Muskingum and concurred in the pacific policy of the Delaware chiefs, only retiring to the Scioto when that policy was reversed. These Indians doubtless tendered an asylum to the Moravians. Their friends on the Maumee were the band of Delawares, who were the immediate followers of the magnanimous Pachgantschihilas, whose friendly solicitude and timely warning to the missionaries had been so fully justified by recent events as to seem almost prophetic. There is ample evidence that in 1791, nine years afterwards, Delawares inhabited the banks of the Auglaize River near its junction with the Maumee; and here, while the heathen, aboriginal and European, raged around them, the simple-hearted proselytes of a religion of peace, found a refuge from the persecutions of those professing the same benignant faith.

CHAPTER XXII.

PENNSYLVANIA CAMPAIGNS AGAINST THE OHIO INDIANS.

THE border war of the Revolution upon the Ohio, consisted of two series of expeditions in retaliation for Indian outrage -those already considered, which issued from the region of Kentucky traversed by the Kenhawa, the Licking and the Kentucky Rivers, usually led by George Rogers Clark, and designed to restrain the inveterate Shawanese, and those which had Wheeling and the vicinity of Pittsburgh for their base of operations, and aimed to chastise the bands of Wyandots, Ottawas, Mingoes, and finally the Delawares, whose villages were scattered upon the sources of the Muskingum and Sandusky Rivers and along the Lake shore. The latter may be called the Pennsylvania Campaigns, from the fact that the western counties of Pennsylvania furnished the volunteer militia, which composed the main force of these expeditions.

To the Coshocton campaign of Col. Daniel Brodhead, incidental allusion has already been made. In the correspondence of that officer recently published,' he says, under date of March 27, 1781, that he had called upon the County Lieutenants for a few of the militia, and intended to surprise the Indian towns about Coochocking-written Goschocking by Heckewelder, and now familiar as Coshocton. Soon afterwards, probably before the close of April, these levies

1) Craig's Olden Time, vol. ii, p. 392.

assembled at Wheeling, and their number, including a few continental troops from Pittsburgh, are estimated by Doddridge at eight hundred men. In justice to those upon whom was imposed the responsibility of command, it should be borne in mind that the army was mostly composed of the tumultuous and intractable population of the frontiers.

When in the vicinity of the Moravian towns, it has been mentioned, that Col. Brodhead and Col. Shepherd of Wheeling could with difficulty restrain a foray of the militia upon the peaceful inhabitants. The remaining details of the expedition rest upon the authority of Doddridge.

At White Eyes Plain, a few miles from Coshocton, an Indian prisoner was taken. Soon afterwards two more Indians were discovered, one of whom was wounded, but he as well as the other made his escape.

The commander knowing that these two Indians would make the utmost despatch in going to the town, to give notice of the approach of the army, ordered a rapid march, in the midst of a heavy rain, to reach the town before them and take it by surprise. The plan succeeded. The army reached the place in three divisions. The right and left wings approached the river a little above and below the town, while the center marched directly upon it. The whole number of the Indians in the village, on the east side of the river, together with ten or twelve from a little village

2) Rev. Joseph Doddridge, M. D. Frequent allusion has already been made to this narrator of frontier manners and incidents. In the infancy of the Protestant Episcopal Church of Ohio, his services as a minister of the Gospel were cheerfully given to the settlements opposite Wheeling; but in 1820, he announces an intention of resuming the medical profession, as the means of acquiring a competency for his approaching age. See a Republication of the Journals of Episcopal Conventions in Ohio, from 1818 to 1827, edited by Rev. W. C. French, 1853. The citations of the text are from Doddridge's Notes of Western Virginia.

some distance above, were made prisoners, without firing a single shot. The river having risen to a great height, owing to the recent fall of rain, the army could not cross it, and the villages with their inhabitants on the west side of the river escaped destruction.

Among the prisoners, sixteen warriors were pointed out by Pekillon, a friendly Delaware chief, as engaged in a recent excursion upon the frontiers of Virginia, during which all the male captives had been put to death by torture in the presence of their weeping families. A council of war was held in the evening to determine the fate of the warriors in custody. They were doomed to death, and by the order of the commander, they were bound, taken a little distance. below the town, despatched with tomahawks and spears, and scalped.

Early the next morning, an Indian presented himself on the opposite bank of the river and asked for the "Big Captain." Brodhead came forward and inquired what he wanted? to which he replied, "I want peace." “Send over some of your chiefs," said the Colonel. "May be you kill," said the Indian. "They shall not be killed," was the answer. A fine looking sachem thereupon crossed the river, and entered into conversation with the commander in the street, but while thus engaged, a man of the name of Wetzel3 came up behind him, with a tomahawk concealed in the bosom of his hunting shirt, and struck him on the back of his head. He fell and instantly expired.

On the retreat from Coshocton, Col. Brodhead committed the care of the prisoners, about twenty in number, to the militia. After marching half a mile, the men commenced

3) Lewis Wetzel, a noted borderer. See Appendix No. IX, for a biographical notice of this type of a numerous class.

killing them, and soon, all except a few women and children were despatched in cold blood.

The reduction of Detroit, for which Congress had collected troops and munitions in 1778, with no other result than the useless fortifications of Laurens and McIntosh, was again proposed in 1780-1. Thomas Jefferson, then Governor of Virginia, authorized Gen. George Rogers Clark to raise a force adequate to march from the Falls of the Ohio through the valleys of the Wabash and the Maumee to Detroit. The expedition was approved by Washington, who wrote to Col. Brodhead, the commandant at Pittsburgh, to send a detachment with four field pieces and one eight inch howitzer, besides other stores. Accordingly, Captain Isaac Craig descended the Ohio with two companies of artillery to the place of rendezvous, but Gen. Clark was obliged to relinquish the expedition-his whole force, although nearly a year had passed in exertions to recruit it, not exceeding seven hundred and fifty men. Captain Craig returned to Pittsburgh on the 26th of December, 1781, having been forty days on the voyage from the falls. He was obliged to throw away his gun-carriages, but brought back the pieces themselves, and the best of the stores.

The most melancholy incident in connection with Clark's projected expedition against Detroit, was the massacre of a party of Pennsylvania volunteers. In a letter from General William Irvine, who assumed the command at Pittsburgh, in the fall of 1781, addressed to General Washington, and dated in December of that year, the affair is thus noticed: "A Col. Lochry, of Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania, with about one hundred men in all, composed of volunteers and a company raised by Pennsylvania, for the defence of that county, started to join General Clark, who, it is said,