Colonel Hamilton made Prisoner.—Detroit.—Tory Emissaries.—Dr. Connolly.—Official Tampering with the Indians.
seemed impossible for this little band to have traversed the deluged country. The people were disposed to comply with the demand, but Governor Hamilton, who commanded the garrison in person, would not allow it. A siege commenced, and for fourteen hours a furious conflict continued. The next day the town and fort were surrendered, and the garrison were made prisoners of war. * The stars and stripes took the place of the red cross of St. George; a round of thirteen guns proclaimed the victory, and that night the exhausted troops of Colonel Clarke reposed in comfort.
While Boone and his companions were beating back the Indians from the Kentucky frontier, and Colonel Clarke was prosecuting his conquests and establishing the American power over the more westerly posts, Detroit was a position toward which the Continental Congress, and the Assemblies of Pennsylvania and Virginia, looked with anxiety, for it was the focal point of British influence over the Western Indians, and the rendezvous for expeditions against the frontier settlements. Colonel Hamilton, the commandant at that post, was actively engaged, from the commencement of the war, in winning the Indians over to the British interest, and in organizing parties to go out upon the war-path for blood and spoil. Among his most active emissaries were three Tories—Girty, M'Kee, and Elliot, whom I have alluded to on page 264, of the first volume of this work. Governor Dunmore, too, was implicated, as early as the summer of 1775, in the nefarious business of exciting the Indian tribes to fall upon the white settlements on the frontiers of his province, hoping thereby to weaken the powers and resources of the people, then engaged in their struggle for independence. The capture of Connolly, his chief agent in the business, exposed the whole plot, and made the Continental Congress more vigilant, as well as more determined. ** General Gage also appears to have been concerned in the measure, and there can not be a doubt that the representatives of royalty in British America were secretly engaged, after the battle of Bunker Hill, in a grand scheme for uniting the various Indian tribes, and bringing them down upon the white people with the desolating fury of a tornado The fidelity of some of the Indian chiefs impeded the consummation of the plan until countervailing measures were taken by Congress, and the darling project of Dunmore and his associates was frustrated.
Simon Girty, who with Elliot and M'Kee had been confined by the patriots at Pittsburgh, burned with a spirit of revenge. He collected about four hundred Indian warriors at Sandusky, in the summer of 1777, and marched toward Limestone (now Maysville), on the Kentucky frontier. Fort Henry, *** a small establishment near the mouth of Wheeling Creek (now Wheeling), was garrisoned by about forty men, under the command of Colonel Sheppard. The movements of Girty were known at that post, and scouts were kept on the
* Governor Hamilton and several of his chief officers were sent to Williamsburg, in Virginia, where, on account of their having incited the Indians to their cruel deeds, they were confined in jail, and heavily ironed. Governor Jefferson used his influence in favor of relieving them of this rigorous treatment. He was successful, and Hamilton and his associates were allowed to go to New York on parole.
** John Connolly was a physician, and resided at Pittsburgh, where he and Washington became acquainted. At the commencement of the war he took sides with Dunmore, and doubtless suggested to the governor the plan of arousing and combining the Indian tribes against the colonists. He visited General Gage in the autumn of 1775, and ten days after his return to Williamsburg, in Virginia, he left Dunmore and departed for the Ohio country with two companions, Allen Cameron, and Dr. John Smythe. Near Hagerstown, in Maryland, they were stopped as suspicious characters, and taken back to Frederickton. Connolly's papers were concealed in the tree of his saddle. They revealed the whole nefarious plot. It appeared that Connolly had received from Dunmore the appointment of colonel, and was to raise a regiment in the western country and Canada. Detroit was to be his place of rendezvous, from whence, as soon as his forces could be collected, he was to enter Virginia, march to Alexandria in the spring, and there meet. Lord Dunmore with a naval armament and another body of troops. Connolly and his papers were sent to Philadelphia; the first was placed in the custody of the jailer, the latter in that of Congress. Connolly was afterward a prisoner in Baltimore, and he was left in durance until about the close of the war.
*** This fort was erected in 1774, during Dunmore's campaign, as a place of refuge. It was first, called Fort Fincastle; afterward its name was changed to Henry, in compliment to the great Virginia orator The fort stood on the south branch of the Ohio, about a quarter of a mile below the mouth of Wheeling Creek.
Girty before Fort Henry.—Massacre of a Reconnoitering Party.—Attack upon the Fort.—Elizabeth Zane and Mrs. Merrill.
alert. Girty's design seemed to be to cross the Ohio and attack the Kentucky frontier; but, with dextrous caution, he pushed up the river, and, undiscovered by Sheppard's scouts, he appeared before Fort Henry with his fierce followers, early on the morning of the twenty-sixth of September. Fortunately for the settlers of Wheeling, then a scattered village of about twenty-five log-huts, they had intimations of savages being near on the evening previous, and all had taken refuge in the fort.
The first attack was made upon a reconnoitering party under Captain Mason. The Indians were ambushed, and fell upon the little band without a moment's warning. More than one half of them perished. Captain Ogle, with twelve men, sallied out to the assistance of Mason, and only four of his company escaped. Bullet and tomahawk cut them down, and the garrison was thus reduced to only twelve men and youths, among whom Colonel Sheppard, and Ebenezer and Silas Zane, were the most prominent. * The women and children of the little settlement were within the pickets, overwhelmed with grief and fear, and all hope for the salvation of the fort and its inmates faded away. At that critical moment, Simon Girty appeared with a white flag, and demanded the unconditional surrender of the fort. Although the assailants outnumbered the garrison forty-fold, the beleaguered resolved to resist, and Colonel Sheppard promptly told the scoundrel that it should never be surrendered to him, nor to any other man, while there was an American left to defend it. Girty was enraged, and immediately ordered a siege The Indians entered the log-houses near the fort for protection, and for six hours they kept up an ineffectual fire against the pickets (for they had no artillery), while the sharp-shooters within seldom sent a bullet upon a fruitless errand of death. At meridian the Indians fell back to the base of Wheeling Hill, and the firing ceased. This season of quiet was employed by the garrison in a bold attempt to bring some powder into the fort, for their ammunition was almost exhausted. This feat was accomplished by an intrepid young woman, a sister of the Zanes. **