The Winning of the West Read online

  First Published in 1888

  First Skyhorse Publishing Edition 2015

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  Cover design by Owen Corrigan

  Print ISBN: 978-1-62914-384-2

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-63220-193-5

  Printed in the United States of America.

  THIS BOOK

  IS DEDICATED, WITH HIS PERMISSION

  TO

  FRANCIS PARKMAN

  TO WHOM AMERICANS WHO FEEL A PRIDE IN THE

  PIONEER HISTORY OF THEIR COUNTRY

  ARE SO GREATLY INDEBTED

  “O strange New World that yit wast never young,

  Whose youth from thee by gripin’ need was wrung,

  Brown foundlin’ o’ the woods, whose baby-bed

  Was prowled roun’ by the Injun’s cracklin’ tread,

  And who grew’st strong thru shifts an’ wants an’ pains,

  Nursed by stern men with empires in their brains,

  Who saw in vision their young Ishmel strain

  With each hard hand a vassal ocean’s mane;

  Thou skilled by Freedom and by gret events

  To pitch new states ez Old World men pitch tents,

  Thou taught by fate to know Jehovah’s plan,

  Thet man’s devices can’t unmake a man.

  … … … … …

  Oh, my friends, thank your God, if you have one, that he

  ’Twixt the Old World and you set the gulf of a sea,

  Be strong-backed, brown-handed, upright as your pines,

  By the scale of a hemisphere shape your designs.”

  —LOWELL

  THE WINNING OF THE WEST

  CONTENTS

  BOOK ONE

  THE SPREAD OF ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES

  Preface

  Introduction

  I. The Spread of the English-Speaking Peoples

  II. The French of the Ohio Valley, 1763–1775

  III. The Appalachian Confederacies, 1765–1775

  IV. The Algonquins of the Northwest, 1769–1774

  V. The Backwoodsmen of the Alleghanies, 1769–1774

  VI. Boone and the Long Hunters; and their Hunting in No-Man’s-Land, 1769–1774

  VII. Sevier, Robertson, and the Watauga Commonwealth, 1769–1774

  VIII. Lord Dunmore’s War, 1774

  APPENDICES

  Appendix A—To Chapter IV

  Appendix B—To Chapter V

  Appendix C—To Chapter VI

  Appendix D—To Chapter VI

  Appendix E—To Chapter VII

  IN THE CURRENT OF THE REVOLUTION

  I. The Battle of the Great Kanawha; and Logan’s Speech, 1774

  II. Boone and the Settlement of Kentucky, 1775

  III. In the Current of the Revolution—The Southern Backwoodsmen Overwhelm the Cherokees, 1776

  APPENDIX

  Appendix A—To Chapter I

  BOOK TWO

  IN THE CURRENT OF THE REVOLUTION (CONTINUED)

  IV. Growth and Civil Organization of Kentucky, 1776

  V. The War in the Northwest, 1777–1778

  VI. Clark’s Conquest of the Illinois, 1778

  VII. Clark’s Campaign Against Vincennes, 1779

  VIII. Continuance of the Struggle in Kentucky and the Northwest, 1779–1781

  APPENDICES

  Appendix B—To Chapter V

  Appendix C—To Chapter VII

  Appendix D—To Chapter VIII

  Appendix E—To Chapter VIII

  THE WAR IN THE NORTHWEST

  I. The Moravian Massacre, 1779-1782

  II. The Administration of the Conquered French Settlements, 1779–1783

  III. Kentucky Until the End of the Revolution, 1782–1783

  IV. The Holston Settlements, 1777–1779

  V. King’s Mountain, 1780

  VI. The Holston Settlements to the End of the Revolution, 1781–1783

  APPENDICES

  Appendix A—To Chapter III

  Appendix B—To Chapter III

  Appendix C—To Chapter VI

  BOOK 3

  THE WAR IN THE NORTHWEST (CONTINUED)

  VII. Robertson Founds the Cumberland Settlement, 1779–1780

  VIII. The Cumberland Settlements to the Close of the Revolution, 1781–1783

  IX. What the Westerners had Done During the Revolution, 1783

  APPENDICES

  Appendix D—To Chapter VIII

  Appendix E—To Chapter IX

  Appendix F—To Chapter X

  THE INDIAN WARS, 1784–1787

  Preface

  I. The Inrush of Settlers, 1784–1787

  II. The Indian Wars, 1784–1787

  III. The Navigation of the Mississippi; Separatist Movements and Spanish Intrigues, 1784–1788

  IV. The State of Franklin, 1784–1788

  V. Kentucky’s Struggle for Statehood, 1784–1790

  ST. CLAIR AND WAYNE

  I. The Northwest Territory; Ohio, 1787–1790

  II. The War in the Northwest, 1787–1790

  BOOK FOUR

  ST. CLAIR AND WAYNE (CONTINUED)

  III. The Southwest Territory; Tennessee, 1788–1790

  IV. St. Clair’s Defeat, 1791

  V. Mad Anthony Wayne; and the Fight of the Fallen Timbers, 1792–1795

  LOUISIANA AND AARON BURR

  Preface

  I. Tennessee Becomes a State, 1791–1796

  II. Intrigues and Land Speculations—The Treaties of Jay and Pinckney, 1793–1797

  III. The Men of the Western Waters, 1798–1802

  IV. The Purchase of Louisiana; and Burr’s Conspiracy, 1803–1807

  V. The Explorers of the Far West, 1804–1807

  APPENDIX

  THE WINNING OF THE WEST

  PREFACE

  MUCH OF the material on which this work is based is to be found in the archives of the American Government, which date back to 1774, when the first Continental Congress assembled. The earliest sets have been published complete up to 1777, under the title of “American Archives,” and will be hereafter designated by this name. These early volumes contain an immense amount of material, because in them are to be found memoranda of private individuals and many of the public papers of the various Colonial and State governments, as well as those of the Confederation. The documents from 1789 on—no longer containing any papers of the separate States—have also been gathered and printed under the heading of “American State Papers;” by which term they will be hereafter referred to.

  The mass of public papers coming in between these two series, and covering the period extending from 1776 to 1789, have never been published, and in great part have either never been examined or else have been examined in the most cursory manner. The original documents are all in the Department of State at Washington, and for convenience will be referred to as “State Department MSS.” They are bound in two or three hundred large volumes; exactly how many I can not say, because, though they are number
ed, yet several of the numbers themselves contain from two or three to ten or fifteen volumes apiece. The volumes to which reference will most often be made are the following:

  No. 15. Letters of Huntington.

  No. 16. Letters of the Presidents of Congress.

  No. 18. Letter-Book B.

  No. 20. Vol. 1. Reports of Committees on State Papers.

  No. 27. Reports of Committees on the War Office. 1776 to 1778.

  No. 30. Reports of Committees.

  No. 32. Reports of Committees of the States and of the Week.

  No. 41. Vol. 3. Memorials E. F. G. 1776-1788.

  No. 41. Vol. 5. Memorials K. L. 1777-1789.

  No. 50. Letters and papers of Oliver Pollock. 1777-1792.

  No. 51. Vol. 2. Intercepted Letters. 1779-1782.

  No. 56. Indian affairs.

  No. 71. Vol. 1. Virginia State Papers.

  No. 73. Georgia State Papers.

  No. 81. Vol. 2. Reports of Secretary John Jay.

  No. 120. Vol. 2. American Letters.

  No. 124. Vol. 3. Reports of Jay.

  No. 125. Negotiation Book.

  No. 136. Vol. 1. Reports of Board of Treasury.

  No. 136. Vol. 2. Reports of Board of Treasury.

  No. 147. Vol. 2. Reports of Board of War.

  No. 147. Vol. 5. Reports of Board of War.

  No. 147. Vol. 6. Reports of Board of War.

  No. 148. Vol. 1. Letters from Board of War.

  No. 149. Vol. 1. Letters and Reports from B. Lincoln, Secretary at War.

  No. 149. Vol. 2. Letters and Reports from B. Lincoln, Secretary at War.

  No. 149. Vol. 3. Letters and Reports from B. Lincoln, Secretary at War.

  No. 150. Vol. 1. Letters of H. Knox, Secretary at War.

  No. 150. Vol. 2. Letters of H. Knox, Secretary at War.

  No. 150. Vol. 3. Letters of H. Knox, Secretary at War.

  No. 152. Vol. 11. Letters of General Washington.

  No. 163. Letters of Generals Clinton, Nixon, Nicola, Morgan, Harmar, Muhlenberg.

  No. 169. Vol. 9. Washington’s Letters.

  No. 180. Reports of Secretary of Congress.

  Besides these numbered volumes, the State Department contains others, such as Washington’s letter-book, marked War Department 1792, ’3, ’4, ’5. There are also a series of numbered volumes of “Letters to Washington,” Nos. 33 and 49, containing reports from Geo. Rogers Clark. The Jefferson papers, which are likewise preserved here, are bound in several series, each containing a number of volumes. The Madison and Monroe papers, also kept here, are not yet bound; I quote them as the Madison MSS. and the Monroe MSS.

  My thanks are due to Mr. W. C. Hamilton, Asst. Librarian, for giving me every facility to examine the material.

  At Nashville, Tennessee, I had access to a mass of original matter in the shape of files of old newspapers, of unpublished letters, diaries, reports, and other manuscripts. I was given every opportunity to examine these at my leisure, and indeed to take such as were most valuable to my own home. For this my thanks are especially due to Judge John M. Lea, to whom, as well as to my many other friends in Nashville, I shall always feel under a debt on account of the unfailing courtesy with which I was treated. I must express my particular acknowledgments to Mr. Lemuel R. Campbell. The Nashville manuscripts, etc., of which I have made most use are the following:

  The Robertson MSS., comprising two large volumes, entitled the “Correspondence, etc., of Gen’l James Robertson,” from 1784 to 1814. They belong to the library of Nashville University; I had some difficulty in finding the second volume, but finally succeeded.

  The Campbell MSS., consisting of letters and memoranda to and from different members of the Campbell family who were prominent in the Revolution; dealing for the most part with Lord Dunmore’s war, the Cherokee wars, the battle of King’s Mountain, land speculations, etc. They are in the possession of Mr. Lemuel R. Campbell, who most kindly had copies of all the important ones sent me, at great personal trouble.

  Some of the Sevier and Jackson papers, the original MS. diaries of Donelson on the famous voyage down the Tennessee and up the Cumberland, and of Benj. Hawkins while surveying the Tennessee boundary, memoranda of Thos. Washington, Overton, and Dunham, the earliest files of the Knoxville Gazette, from 1791 to 1795, etc. These are all in the library of the Tennessee Historical Society.

  For original matter connected with Kentucky, I am greatly indebted to Col. Reuben T. Durrett, of Louisville, the founder of the “Filson Club,” which has done such admirable historical work of late years. He allowed me to work at my leisure in his library, the most complete in the world on all subjects connected with Kentucky history. Among other matter, he possesses the Shelby MSS., containing a number of letters to and from, and a dictated autobiography of, Isaac Shelby; MS. journals of Rev. James Smith, during two tours in the western country in 1785 and ’95; early files of the “Kentucke Gazette”; books owned by the early settlers; papers of Boone, and George Rogers Clark; MS. notes on Kentucky by George Bradford, who settled there in 1779; MS. copy of the record book of Col. John Todd, the first governor of the Illinois

  country after Clark’s conquest; the McAfee MSS., consisting of an Account of the First Settlement of Salt River, the Autobiography of Robert McAfee, and a Brief Memorandum of the Civil and Natural History of Kentucky; MS. autobiography of Rev. William Hickman, who visited Kentucky in 1776, etc.

  I am also under great obligations to Col. John Mason Brown of Louisville, another member of the Filson Club, for assistance rendered me; particularly for having sent me six bound volumes of MSS., containing the correspondence of the Spanish Minister Gardoqui, copied from the Spanish archives.

  At Lexington I had access to the Breckenridge MSS., through the kindness of Mr. Ethelbert D. Warfield; and to the Clay MSS., through the kindness of Miss Lucretia Hart Clay. I am particularly indebted to Miss Clay for her courtesy in sending me many of the most valuable old Hart and Benton letters, depositions, accounts, and the like.

  The Blount MSS. were sent to me from California by the Hon. W. D. Stephens of Los Angeles, although I was not personally known to him; an instance of courtesy and generosity, in return for which I could do nothing save express my sincere appreciation and gratitude, which I take this opportunity of publicly repeating.

  The Gates MSS., from which I drew some important facts not hitherto known concerning the King’s Mountain campaign, are in the library of the New York Historical Society.

  The Virginia State Papers have recently been published, and are now accessible to all.

  Among the most valuable of the hitherto untouched manuscripts which I have obtained are the Haldimand papers, preserved in the Canadian archives at Ottawa. They give, for the first time, the British and Indian side of all the Northwestern fighting; including Clark’s campaigns, the siege of Boonesborough, the battle of the Blue Licks, Crawford’s defeat, etc. The Canadian archivist, Mr. Douglass Brymner, furnished me copies of all I needed with a prompt courtesy for which I am more indebted than I can well express.

  I have been obliged to rely mainly on these collections of early documents as my authorities, especially for that portion of Western history prior to 1783. Excluding the valuable, but very brief, and often very inaccurate, sketch which Filson wrote down as coming from Boone, there are no printed histories of Kentucky earlier than Marshall’s in 1812; while the first Tennessee history was Haywood’s, in 1822. Both Marshall and Haywood did excellent work; the former was an able writer, the latter was a student, and (like the Kentucky historian Mann Butler) a sound political thinker, devoted to the Union, and prompt to stand up for the right. But both of them, in dealing with the early history of the country beyond the Alleghanies, wrote about matters that had happened from thirty to fifty years before, and were obliged to base most of their statements on tradition or on what the pioneers remembered in their old age. The later historians, for the most part, merely follow these two. In consequence, the mass of original material,
in the shape of official reports and contemporary letters, contained in the Haldimand MSS., the Campbell MSS., the McAfee MSS., the Gardoqui MSS., the State Department MSS., the Virginia State Papers, etc., not only cast a flood of new light upon this early history, but necessitate its being entirely rewritten. For instance, they give an absolutely new aspect to, and in many cases completely reverse, the current accounts of all the Indian fighting, both against the Cherokees and the Northwestern tribes; they give for the first time a clear view of frontier diplomacy, of the intrigues with the Spaniards, and even of the mode of life in the backwoods, and of the workings of the civil government. It may be mentioned that the various proper names are spelt in so many different ways that it is difficult to know which to choose. Even Clark is sometimes spelt Clarke, while Boone was apparently indifferent as to whether his name should or should not contain the final silent e. As for the original Indian titles, it is often quite impossible to give them even approximately; the early writers often wrote the same Indian words in such different ways that they bear no resemblance whatever to one another.

  In conclusion I would say that it has been to me emphatically a labor of love to write of the great deeds of the border people. I am not blind to their manifold shortcomings, nor yet am I ignorant of their many strong and good qualities. For a number of years I spent most of my time on the frontier, and lived and worked like any other frontiersman. The wild country in which we dwelt and across which we wandered was in the far West; and there were of course many features in which the life of a cattleman on the Great Plains and among the Rockies differed from that led by a backwoodsman in the Alleghany forests a century before. Yet the points of resemblance were far more numerous and striking. We guarded our herds of branded cattle and shaggy horses, hunted bear, bison, elk, and deer, established civil government, and put down evil-doers, white and red, on the banks of the Little Missouri and among the wooded, precipitous foothills of the Bighorn, exactly as did the pioneers who a hundred years previously built their log-cabins beside the Kentucky or in the valleys of the Great Smokies. The men who have shared in the fast vanishing frontier life of the present feel a peculiar sympathy with the already long-vanished frontier life of the past.

  THEODORE ROOSEVELT.