Daily stories of Pennsylvania

by Frederic Antes Godcharles

In February, 1778, General Hand had reason to suspect that McKee had resumed his relations and correspondence with the British authorities and ordered the captain to go to York and report himself to the Continental Congress. For a time McKee avoided compliance, on plea of illness, but unable to further delay, he contrived to escape to Detroit and there openly ally himself with the British cause.

About a year before this a young trader, Matthew Elliott, who understood the Shawnee language, had been employed by the Americans to carry messages from Fort Pitt to the Shawnee and other Indian tribes to the westward, in the interest of peace. On one of his missions he was captured by hostile savages and carried to Detroit, where, after a short imprisonment, he had been released on parole.

He returned to Pittsburgh via Quebec, New York and Philadelphia, all then in British possession. He had been impressed by the show of British power in the East, in contrast to the miserable conditions of the American forces, especially along the frontier. He became convinced that the colonists would fail in the Revolution, and on his return to Pittsburgh got into communication with Captain McKee and others of the Tory party.

Elliott was suspected of having poured into McKee’s ears the wild tale that he was to be waylaid and killed on his journey to York. McKee heard such a story and believed it, which decided him to escape from Fort Pitt and go to Detroit.

The flight of the Tories took place from Alexander McKee’s house during the night of March 28, 1778. General Hand received a hint of this move early in the evening and dispatched a squad of soldiers to McKee’s house Sunday morning to remove McKee to Fort Pitt. The soldiers arrived too late. The members of the little party who had fled into Indian land in that rough season were Captain McKee, his cousin, Robert Surphlit; Simon Girty, Matthew Elliott, a man of the name of Higgins, and two Negro slaves belonging to McKee.

Simon Girty was a Pennsylvanian, who had been captured by the Indians when eleven years old, kept in captivity for three years by the Seneca, and afterward employed at Fort Pitt as an interpreter and messenger. He had served the American cause faithfully. He then became the most notorious renegade and Tory in Pennsylvania.

The Tories in their flight made their way through the woods to the Delaware town Coshocton, where they tarried several days endeavoring to incite the tribe to rise against the colonists. Their efforts were thwarted by Chief White Eyes, who declared his friendship for the “buckskins” as he called the Americans, and he proved his sincerity until his death.

Chief White Eyes and Captain Pipe, an influential chief, debated in the Coshocton council on the advocacy of war, White Eyes pleading the cause of peace. The oratory of White Eyes carried the day and the seven Tories departed to the Shawnee towns on the Scioto, where they were welcomed. Many of the Shawnee were already on the warpath, and all were eager to hear the arguments of their friend McKee. James Girty, a brother of Simon, was then with the Shawnee tribe, having been sent from Fort Pitt by General Hand on a futile peace mission. He had been raised among the Shawnee, was a natural savage and at once joined his brother and the other Tories.

When Governor Hamilton heard of the flight of Captain McKee and his companions from Fort Pitt, he dispatched Edward Hazle to the Scioto to conduct the renegades safely through the several Indian tribes to Detroit. Hamilton, as would be expected, received them cordially and gave them commissions in the British service. For sixteen years McKee, Elliott and the Girtys were the merciless scourges of the border. They were the instigators and leaders of many Indian raids, and their intimate knowledge of the frontier rendered their operations especially effective. Long after the close of the Revolution they continued their deadly enmity to the American cause and were largely responsible for the general Indian war of 1790–94.

McKee and his associate renegades left behind them at Fort Pitt a band of Tories who had planned to blow up the fortress and escape in boats at night. In some way the scheme was frustrated just in time, probably by the confession of one of the conspirators, and the disaster averted. A score of the traitors escaped in boats during the night, and fled down the Ohio River. On the following day they were pursued and overtaken near the mouth of the Muskingum. Eight of the runaways escaped to the shore and were lost in the trackless woods; some were killed in the conflict which then occurred and the others were taken back as prisoners to Fort Pitt.