That Dark and Bloody River
PRAISE FOR A SORROW IN OUR HEART
“One of those rare books pulling the reader so effectively into another world that the realities of life in the here and now appear alien when one emerges reluctantly from the pages.”
—The Washington Post Book World
“It is hard to imagine an author better qualified to write a definitive biography of Tecumseh than Allan W. Eckert.… Eckert’s astounding breadth of knowledge is on full display.”
—The Plain Dealer, Cleveland
“Only someone with Eckert’s skill and background could have reached back through two centuries of tangled historical records to give us such an intimate account of Tecumseh’s life.… [A] rich and probing epic.”
—Detroit Free Press
“If by some magic Tecumseh could have chosen his own biographer, he surely would have named Allan Eckert.”
—Dee Brown, author of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
THE NARRATIVES OF AMERICA SERIES
“Vigorous, engrossing.”
—Chicago Tribune
“Swiftly paced with a dramatic flair.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Crackling … vibrant.”
—Detroit Free Press
ALSO BY ALLAN W. ECKERT
A Time of Terror • Bayou Backwaters
Blue Jacket: War Chief of the Shawnees
The Conquerors • The Court-Martial of Daniel Boone
The Crossbreed • The Dark Green Tunnel
The Dreaming Tree • Earth Treasures (4 volumes)
The Frontiersmen • Gateway to Empire • The Great Auk
The HAB Theory • In Search of a Whale
Incident at Hawk’s Hill • Johnny Logan: Shawnee Spy
The King Snake • The Owls of North America
Savage Journey • The Scarlet Mansion
The Silent Sky • Song of the Wild
A Sorrow in Our Heart: The Life of Tecumseh
That Dark and Bloody River: Chronicles of the Ohio River Valley
Tecumseh! (Outdoor Drama) • Twilight of Empire
The Wading Birds of North America • The Wand
Whatizzit? • Wild Season
Wilderness Empire • The Wilderness War
Chronicles of the Ohio River Valley
THAT DARK AND BLOODY RIVER
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Bantam hardcover edition / December 1995
Bantam trade paperback edition / October 1996
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1995 by Allan W. Eckert.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 95-17112.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or
by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publisher.
For information address: Bantam Books.
eISBN: 978-0-307-79046-0
Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.
v3.1_r2
To my friend and blood-brother,
fellow historian, screenwriter, and
knifemaker extraordinaire,
PHILLIP W. HOFFMAN—Walking Hawk
of Westlake Village, California,
this book is dedicated
with
appreciation and affection
Our system is to live in perpetual peace with the Indians, to cultivate an affectionate attachment for them by everything just and liberal which we can do for them within the bounds of reason and by giving them effectual protection against the wrongs from our own people. When they withdraw themselves to the culture of a small piece of land, they will perceive how useless to them are the extensive forests and will be willing to pare them off in exchange for necessaries for their farms and families. To promote this, we shall push our trading houses, and be glad to see the good and influential individuals among them in debt, because we observe when these debts go beyond what the individual can pay, they become willing to lop them off by a cession of lands. But should any tribe refuse the proffered hand and take up the hatchet, it will be driven across the Mississippi and the whole of its lands confiscated.
— PRESIDENT THOMAS JEFFERSON
Excerpt from a letter written to
Indiana Territory governor
William Henry Harrison
Maps
The Ohio River Valley
The Five Major Portages: Great Lakes to Mississippi River, 1688
The Shawnee Village of Chalahgawtha
Talgayeeta’s Village at Yellow Creek, 1774
Planned March of Dunmore and Lewis Against the Scioto Villages, Autumn 1774
The Battle of Point Pleasant
The Upper Ohio River Settlements and Notable Tributaries
The Principal Kentucky Settlements
Brady’s Ambush and Leap Over the Cuyahoga River
The Upper Sandusky Villages and Battle of Sandusky, June 1782
The Blue Licks Ambush
Partitioning of Ohio
St. Clair’s Battleground
Greenville Treaty Line
The Upper Ohio River Settlements and Notable Tributaries
Author’s Note
In writing a history of the Ohio River and the struggle for dominance in the great Ohio River Valley, it has been the author’s aim to present as much fresh material as possible: accounts of the people and events heretofore bypassed or only lightly touched upon in his other historical works in which the Ohio River played a significant role. As a result, in this work much more will be found about the lives of the Wetzel family, the Zanes and the Bradys, among others, than was possible in earlier works. The same holds true of much of the anecdotal material that has been tapped from early documentation—the letters, diaries, journals, reports and similar data.
By the same token, however, there are important events that could not be overlooked in this book simply because the author discussed them in a previous work. Thus, events that were critical in the shaping of the history of the Ohio River have been touched upon again here, such as the Battle of Point Pleasant, the expeditions of Henry Bouquet, Edward Hand, George Rogers Clark, Josiah Harmar, Arthur St. Clair, Anthony Wayne and others. Where this occurs, an effort has been made to depict the event from another viewpoint than previously done, incorporating new, expanded, or corrective material where possible. If not possible, then the event, in some cases, is portrayed with less detail than before and reference is made in the Amplification Notes to a more detailed account that appears in one of the author’s previous works. The goal in all cases has been to present the events, if at all possible, from the perspective of characters who were previously less fully developed.
Quite often there are several—or even many—accounts of the same event in the historical record, and with dismaying frequency those accounts differ considerably one from another. Deciding which to select, of such accounts, as the most accurate portrayal of the event involved is often very difficult; the actual participants who wrote about it then or later not infrequently had their own personal biases that may have led them to incorrectly or unfairly state what occurred. Where discrepancies do occur in the historical record, greater reliance has been placed upon those written by observers or participants who have established a reputation for accuracy, though sometimes a divergent account will be interesting or intriguing enough that it is discussed in the
Amplification Notes section.
This book is written in the form that the author chooses to call narrative history, in which the reader may, as with a good novel, feel himself drawn into the current of events and identify closely with the characters. It is designed to utilize all the better elements of the novel form, for excitement, pace and continuity, yet at the same time strives to remain a reliable, accurate depiction of the history it embraces. In this respect the author uses considerably more dialogue than one normally associates with strictly historical works. Such dialogue is a form of painstakingly reconstituted dialogue that lies hidden in abundance in historical material. It is normally written as straight historical commentary, without direct quotes, but in it are couched the keywords that legitimately allow such information, if the effort is made, to be returned to vibrant and meaningful dialogue that remains accurate to the intent and direction of what is occurring at any given time.
That the reader may better understand what is meant by keywords that point to hidden dialogue, it is necessary to show here only a brief paragraph as it actually appears in an original account. The following paragraph appears in the great body of work (close to five hundred volumes of material) called the Draper Papers, housed in the Archives of the Wisconsin Historical Society Library at Madison. The paragraph, dealing with the frontiersman Capt. Samuel Brady, appears on pages 298–99 of volume 2 of the thirty-three-volume series designated S, under the general title of Draper’s Notes. By paying close attention to those phrases the author has specifically italicized, the reader can easily see how the keywords show a hidden conversation that virtually cries out to be brought back from straight text to lively and accurate dialogue.
Brady, Francis McQuire, & their party went to the block house. Thomas Wells & another went ahead a short distance, to see. They discovered two young Indians, nearly grown, climbing trees. — these discovered the whites & made their escape. The Indian camp altogether numbered 10 Indians, the two young fellows, & two squaws. At the first alarm both of the squaws ran off, but one soon came back & surrendered herself. Joseph Edgington shot her — for which Brady blamed him; thought it unkind & discreditable to make war upon women. Someone volunteered the remark that Edgington, when he shot, supposed he was shooting a warrior. The thing was dropped, that being deemed a good excuse. This was after the affair or attack was over; but Edgington privately declared he would kill any & every thing in the shape of an Indian whenever he could get the chance, from the size of his fist to any old gray-headed Indian, be they he or she.
Obviously there is not only hidden dialogue in such a passage, but hidden emotions, thoughts and physical actions as well. These, of course, are the bits and pieces that, when properly and accurately reconstituted, form the flesh and blood that bring to life the bare bones of history.
The many Amplification Notes keyed to the text become quite important to the reader in helping to better understand motivations, geographical locations pinpointed to modern sites, character expansion and enlarged explanation of data touched upon. It is for this reason that the author recommends the reading of the notes where they are numerically indicated in the text; they are not vital to understanding, but they are a definite help.
—Allan W. Eckert
Bellefontaine, Ohio
May 1995
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Maps
Author’s Note
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Epilogue
Amplification Notes
Principal Sources
Source Codes
Bibliography
About the Author
Prologue
[Setting the Stage: 700 B.C.–June 1768]
Among the major eastern rivers of the United States, from the great Mississippi eastward, none resisted discovery and exploration longer than the Ohio; nor did any other become the scene of such prolonged violence and bloodshed in its conquest as that which occurred along the Ohio’s thousand-mile course before emptying into the midsection of the Mississippi.
The Ohio is a stream that has been known by many names over the years. The Shawnees called it Spaylaywitheepi, while the Miami tribe’s designation for it was Causisseppione. The Iroquois referred to it as Oligensipen, meaning “the beautiful river,” and the Delawares called it Kitonosipi. The Spanish had two names for it, alternately—the Dono and the Albacha—and the Dutch, on their map of 1708, called it Cubach. One distant tribe, possibly the Cherokee, called it Saboqungo; others referred to it as the Alliwegisipi or the Ouabouskigou. The French, from their very first contact, designated it as the Iroquois had, as “the beautiful river”—La Belle Rivière. The present name, Ohio, most likely derives from the Wyandot name for it—Oheeza; along this same line, a map published in 1710 rather mysteriously listed it as the O-o. Finally, the following year another map came very close to today’s usage, calling it the Ochio. In whatever language, it was—by literal translation of most of the names—a river of great beauty.
It was also a river of death.
The first humans known to have existed in the Ohio River Valley were the Adena and Hopewell cultures, the Adenas preceding the Hopewells by a few centuries or more (perhaps as early as 700 B.C.) and erecting their distinctive conical burial mounds along the entire course of the river and its tributaries from the present Wheeling, West Virginia, area down into and including the Mississippi River Valley. The Hopewells followed in about 400 B.C. with mysterious effigy mounds extending throughout the same region, perhaps most pronounced in present southern Ohio and southern Wisconsin. The two cultures appear to have coexisted for about 800 years, until around A.D. 400. Some accounts claim the Adena Culture continued perhaps 100 years or more after the Hopewells mysteriously vanished, but by the end of the sixth century, both cultures had disappeared, leaving behind only tantalizing remnants of their tenure buried in the amazing mounds they had created.
Exactly when the more modern tribes began inhabiting the Ohio Valley is unknown, but the first of whom we have definite knowledge is the Cahokia Culture in the southern Illinois country, whose realm extended from the Mississippi River eastward to the Vermilion and Embarras rivers, perhaps including the lower Wabash down to the Ohio. This culture reached its peak in A.D. 1045 and then began a slow decline until by 1565 it had ended, although a few remnant branches remained and regrouped into tribes and subtribes called Illinois, Peoria, Mascouten, Vermilion and Kickapoo.
At this time, living on one of the major Ohio River tributaries, the Great Kanawha River, was a little-known and little-understood culture called the Xualae. These were apparently a relatively docile people whose culture peaked in 1526 and remained at that level for a century and a half until 1671, when they were exterminated by war parties of Cherokees from the south.
By this time the Miami tribe—along with their subtribes called Weas, Piankeshaws, Eel Rivers, Ouiatenons and Mississinewas—had risen in power and influence, filling the area from the mouth of the Chicago River southward and eastward throughout the northeastern portion of Illinois, southern Michigan and most of present Indiana and Ohio.
It was a time of flux, with various tribes almost constantly warring with one another. What were loose territorial boundaries one year might be altogether changed the next. Among the only northern tribes strong enough to establish reasonable permanency in location were the Miamis and the five principal tribes of present upper New York State: Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida and Mohawk. Strong though they were, the Miamis were essentially nonbelligerent, unlike their New York counterparts, who lusted for battle, conquest and new territory. For a long while the two fought
each other, with neither side gaining an advantage until they finally lapsed into an uneasy neutrality. At length, however, the New York tribes resumed making raids into Miami territory, this time so successfully that they established a few villages along the Iroquois and Kankakee rivers of the Illinois country and in the valley of the Great Kanawha River of present West Virginia. These villages were basically advance posts for their incursions against enemy tribes—particularly the Miamis and Cherokees, using the Ohio River as their launching site and highway. It seemed only a matter of time before a huge onslaught by these tribes from the east would engage the Miamis, if not the Cherokees as well, in a life-or-death struggle.
Enter then, at some early indeterminate date, the Shawnees—a nomadic tribe of absolutely ferocious mercenary Indians who, according to their own traditions, migrated an incalculable time before from their original Asian homeland; a tribe that purportedly crossed the Bering Strait to Alaska in skin boats (and on the backs of turtles and whales, so tradition goes) and then gradually moved southeastward across the continent. They eagerly attacked, fought and—evidently without exception—defeated every tribe they encountered that offered the least resistance. At length they arrived in the country of the Miami Indians, who were then still the most powerful stationary tribe east of the Mississippi and north of the Ohio, but who were still fighting off incursions of the Five Nations of upper New York State.
Methodically, mercilessly, the loose coalition of New York tribes had not only defeated many surrounding tribes and subjected their people to the most diabolical tortures, they also deliberately exterminated some, such as the Erie tribe in 1648 and the Neutrals during the following year. Other tribes were simply defeated and driven out, including the heretofore powerful Hurons. That tribe, longtime inhabitants of the Niagara area and greatly revered by the other tribes, under the duress imposed upon them by the Five Nations, meekly migrated to the Michigan country in 1650. Soon afterward those same Hurons divided themselves to form yet another tribe, the Wyandots. The parent Hurons remained in Michigan, but the newly formed Wyandots planted fresh roots in the soil of the Ohio country just south of Lake Erie.