202. Lord Dunmore’s War.—Lord Dunmore, the last royal governor of Virginia, sent out in 1773 an injudicious order which led to an outbreak of hostilities all along the line. The immediate cause of the war was the fiendish act of a wretch by the name of Greathouse, who decoyed the family of the friendly Indian chief, Logan, consisting of nine men, women, and children, into his rum shop, and after getting them intoxicated, butchered them all in cold blood. The justly outraged Indians rushed to arms from all quarters. The war which followed was characterized by the murdering of women and children and the burning of cabins and wigwams, until it was ended by the decisive battle of Point Pleasant on the Great Kanawha, on October 10, 1774. The Indians, commanded by the Shawnee chief, Cornstalk, were utterly defeated by the settlers under Andrew Lewis, and were glad to secure peace by surrendering all their claims to lands south of the Ohio.
203. Warfare in Tennessee.—The westward movement from North Carolina through the Great Smoky Mountains into the country now known as Tennessee was also the occasion of numerous conflicts. In 1770 the settlers had reached the Watauga. Forts were erected, and the settlement soon assumed a thriving condition. But conflicts were not long postponed. The most warlike and powerful of the Southern tribes of Indians were the Cherokees, and on the outbreak of the Revolution they took sides with the British. The Indians even advanced into South Carolina and Georgia; but they were unable to hold their ground, and when in 1776 they attacked the Watauga settlement, they were so completely defeated by the troops of Robertson and Sevier that they soon afterward were willing to make peace. In 1777 they renounced the larger part of their claims to lands between the Tennessee and the Cumberland. Thus Tennessee, as well as Kentucky, was secure for the future Union.
204. Organization of Tories and Indians in the Northwest.—Meanwhile matters of no less importance were occurring on the northwest frontier. Washington fully understood the necessity of taking from the British as much as possible of that vast territory which extends from the Catskills to the Mississippi River, and which had been made a part of Canada by the Quebec Act (§ [136]). This was by no means an easy task. The Six Nations (§ [3]), constituting the most powerful Indian confederation ever known, were under the immediate leadership of the greatest of all Indian chiefs, Joseph Brant, and under the influence of Sir John Johnson, the most formidable of the Tories. Brant had been liberally educated in Mr. Wheelock’s School, afterward Dartmouth College, and had even visited England and had dined with Burke and Sheridan; but his education seemed only to sharpen his wits and make him the better able to use the characteristics of other Indians. Though he exerted his influence to prevent the killing of women and children, as a strategist he was unequaled among savages, and on the battlefield he could out-yell any other chief. Throughout the West the Indians had generally combined with the Tories and the British. Two forces were now organized, one at Niagara and one at Detroit, for carrying out their designs.
205. The Wyoming and Cherry Valley Massacres.—In the summer of 1778 twelve hundred Tories and Iroquois, led by John Butler, advanced stealthily from Niagara toward the southeast and fell upon the peaceful inhabitants of the Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania. Hundreds of innocent inhabitants were tortured and scalped, and the horrors of the massacre sent a pang into all parts of the civilized world. Similar outrages occurred at Cherry Valley and elsewhere, and every settlement was in danger. Prisoners who refused to give information were put to torture with ingenious cruelty.
206. Sullivan’s Expedition.—In order to destroy the power of the Six Nations and put an end to this savage method of warfare, Washington decided to send out a strong force in the summer of 1779. The command of the expedition, having been declined by Gates, devolved upon Sullivan,[[93]] who had orders to lay waste the entire country of the Iroquois. The right wing of his army, under General James Clinton, advanced up the valley of the Mohawk, while Sullivan himself, with a force of about five thousand men, pushed into the valley of the Susquehanna. Both forces destroyed the Indian villages and the growing crops wherever they went. Finally, meeting the united forces of Johnson, Butler, and Brant near Newtown (now Elmira), Sullivan achieved a complete victory, August 29.[[94]]
General John Sullivan.
207. Destruction of the Six Nations.—Sullivan’s forces then advanced northward in two divisions, burning villages, cutting down fruit trees, and destroying the growing corn in all directions. After a successful march of more than seven hundred miles, during which he not only temporarily, but permanently, through his destruction of their harvests, broke the power of the Six Nations, Sullivan reached New Jersey in October. The suffering which resulted to the Indians from this expedition was greatly increased by the intense cold of the following winter.[[95]] The horrors of the period, however, cannot be understood without a study of painful and revolting details. In no part of the country was the suffering greater than in central and eastern New York during this contest of Indians, Tories, and patriots. In Tryon County the population was reduced to one-third of its former number, and among those who remained there are said to have been three hundred widows and two thousand orphans.
THE CONQUEST OF THE NORTHWEST.
