“All our young brothers are pleased with what you said. We desire that you will be strong in fulfilling your promises towards us, as we are determined to be very straight in advising our young men to be kind and peaceable to you.
“This spring we saw something wrong on the part of our young men. They took some horses from the white people. But we have advised them not to do so again, and have cleared their hearts of all bad intentions. We expect they will observe our advice as they like what you said.”
“This speech, delivered by Girty, was interpreted by Richard Butler, who, during the stay of Captain Bullitt, had made him his guest and otherwise treated him in the most friendly manner. But having executed his mission very much to his own satisfaction, Bullitt took his leave and rejoined his party, who were much rejoiced to see him return.
“He made report of his progress and success, and his comrades with light hearts and high expectations launched their keels on the stream which conveyed them to the shore of Kentucky and the landing before spoken of.”
Capt. Bullitt had high testimonials of his eminent fitness for the position he had assumed. General Washington himself, than whom no one was at once a better judge and a more valuable authority in such matters, spoke in the highest terms of his capacity in the exercise of the multifarious duties of surveyor, navigator and trader. Had not a premature death taken him away in the midst of his labors, it is certainly to him that we should have owed the earliest prosperity of the city.
Even previous to the arrival of Capt. Bullitt, however, these lands at the falls had been patented and were owned, most probably as bounty lands, by John Campbell and Dr. John Conally. Of Campbell we know little, if anything; but Conally played a somewhat important part in the early history of the West. He was the nephew of Colonel Croghan and the friend of Lord Dunmore, and was by him dispatched in 1774 to assert the claims of Virginia upon Fort Pitt, where he was arrested, before he had taken more than the initiatory step in his proceeding, by Arthur St. Clair, the representative of the proprietors of Pennsylvania in the West, and only released on his own recognizance. He did not, however, choose to return into the custody of the law, but, collecting a band of followers, he came again in March of the same year and took possession, in Lord Dunmore’s name, of Fort Pitt; rebuilt it and called it Fort Dunmore. It was he who occasioned the bloody fights known in the history of border warfare as Logan’s or Cresap’s war. He afterwards, in 1775, formed a plot against the government, which was discovered, and this notoriously tyrannical and wicked man was thrown into prison and remained an unpitied captive till 1781. After the revolution he became a Tory and thus his lands, at the falls and elsewhere, became forfeit to the State of Virginia. It was, however, for him and Campbell that Bullitt surveyed the lands adjacent to the falls. The extent of their tract was about 4000 acres.
After Bullitt’s expedition had received this final check, the falls were visited only by a few hunters and traders; and it was not until 1778 that any new attempt was made toward a permanent settlement on this site. The enterprising and gallant Col. George Rogers Clark, whose name is so well known to all readers of the early history of Kentucky or of the West, comes now to be associated with this history. This city is so deeply indebted to him, not only for its earlier prosperity, but for its very existence, that it becomes alike agreeable and useful to inquire something as to the circumstances of his settlement here. He was born in Albemarle county, Virginia, and, like our great Washington, was in early life a land surveyor, and, like him too, a man of unusual talent, discrimination and forethought. He came first to Kentucky in 1772. But his history becomes first associated with that of the State in 1774 when he served in Dunmore’s war. In the latter part of 1775, having gained the rank of Major, he returned to his native State in order to prepare for his permanent removal to Kentucky, which took place in the Spring following. Up to this time Kentucky had been held to be a part of Fincastle county, in Virginia; but its inhabitants had no rights or protection as citizens of that State. Upon Clark’s removal to Kentucky he readily saw the advantages of the new settlement, but his sagacity at the same time taught him that a State whose very title was in dispute, and which was so far beyond the old lines of civilization, and so removed from the protection of the elder commonwealths would not attract settlers with that rapidity to which its immensely superior natural advantages entitled it. He perceived that the future prosperity of his adopted home depended upon its being under the aid and protection of Virginia, or upon its being made a separate State. The result of this deliberation and of his promulgation of these views was that he was chosen a member of the Virginia assembly and carried to them a petition for admission into their commonwealth. He had the misfortune, however, after having walked the whole distance, to find this body adjourned. This did not, however, deter him from prosecuting his plan for the good of Kentucky. He visited the Governor, Patrick Henry, and laid his case before that wise and patriotic man. The Governor acknowledged the justness of his claim, and gave him a letter to the Executive Council. This body, fearful of exceeding its powers, could or would do little for him. He demanded powder which they promptly offered to lend him on his individual security; an offer which Clark peremptorily refused, and so intimidated them by his dauntless manner and his threats of consequences that finally the order was issued for the powder to be supplied to Clark at Fort Pitt. And, on the re-assembling of the delegates, after much warm discussion, Kentucky was erected into a county of Virginia. Both these objects accomplished, Clark returned to Pittsburg, procured the powder and with great difficulty and danger succeeded in bringing it down to the present site of Maysville, where he carefully concealed it and then went to the fort at Harrodsburg and sent a convoy for the buried treasure, where it finally arrived in safety. This slight outline sketch shows the first of a series of events which led Col. Clark to the falls of Ohio. The second event which bears upon this point is alike creditable to him. And here we must be indebted to Mr. Perkins’ Annals of the West for a condensed narration of this affair.
“Clark understood,” says this excellent compilation, “the whole game of the British. He saw that it was through their possession of Detroit, Vincennes, Kaskaskia and the other western posts—which gave them easy and constant access to the Indian tribes of the north-east—that the British hoped to effect such a union of the wild men as would annihilate the frontier fortresses. He knew that the Delawares were divided in feeling, and the Shawnees but imperfectly united in favor of England, ever since the murder of Comstalk. He was convinced that could the British in the north-west be defeated and expelled, the natives might be easily awed or bribed into neutrality; and by spies sent for the purpose, and who were absent from April 20th to June 22d, he had satisfied himself that an enterprise against the Illinois settlements might easily succeed. Having made up his mind, on the 1st of October he left Harrodsburg for the East, and reached the capital of Virginia November the 5th. Opening his mind to no one he watched with care the state of feeling among those in power, waiting the proper moment to present his scheme. Fortunately, while he was upon his road, on the 17th of October, Burgoyne had surrendered, and hope was again predominant in the American councils. When, therefore, the western soldier, upon the 10th of December, broke the subject of his proposed expedition against the forts on the far distant Mississippi to Patrick Henry, who was still governor, he met with a favorable hearing, and though doubts and fears arose by degrees, yet so well digested were his plans, that he was able to meet each objection and remove every seeming impossibility.”
Having thus satisfied the Virginia leaders of the feasibility of his plan, he received on the 22d of January two sets of instructions—the one open, authorizing him to enlist seven companies to go to Kentucky, subject to his orders, and to serve for three months from their arrival in the West; the other set secret, and drawn as follows:
“Virginia: Sct. In Council, Williamsburg, Jan. 22d, 1778.