"Father Clark," or The Pioneer Preacher

by John Mason Peck

There they held a season of feasting and frolicing with their friends for their successful enterprize. And here we will leave Mrs. Gilham and her children, distributed as they were among different Indian families, and suffering all the hardships of Indian captives, until the war was over in 1795.

We now return to the father and son in Kentucky. They continued their labor in the cornfield until dinner time, when the horse was ungeared, and they returned to the house. There every thing was in confusion. The feathers from the beds were scattered over the yard, the mother and children were gone! The “signs” were too plain to leave any doubt on the mind of the husband and father of their fate! They were Indian captives, unless some were killed. The first natural impression was that in attempting to flee they were butchered by these monsters of the woods. Isaac began to cry and call loudly for his mother, until he was peremptorily told by his father to hold his tongue and make no noise, as some of the Indians might lie concealed, watching for him and his son. He knew the character and habits of these cunning sons of the forest, and stealthily examined in every direction for further signs. He soon fell on their trail, as they left the clearing and entered the woods, and saw in one or two places the tracks of his wife and little ones. He now felt encouraged, for he knew that Indians more generally kill persons on their first attack, and that when they take possession of women and children they take them to their towns that they may adopt them in the place of those they have lost, and train them up in Indian ways, and thus increase the number and strength of the tribe. White children who are trained by Indians make the smartest and often the most ferocious savages.

The country where Mr. Gilham resided was very thinly settled, and it was not until the next day he could raise a party strong enough to pursue them with any prospect of success. He and his neighbors followed the trail for some distance, but Indians when they expect pursuit are very cunning and skillful in concealing their tracks, and turning their pursuers in the wrong direction. When a large number are together, they divide into small parties, and make as many separate trails as they can. They will step with singular caution, so as to leave no marks, and they will wander in opposite directions and make their trails cross each other. When they come to a stream of water they will wade a long distance in the water, and frequently in a contrary direction to that of their journey, and unless their pursuers understand all their tricks, they will not fail in deceiving them. Mr. Gilham and his friends understood their strategy, but could not find their trail after they once lost it. It is probable they struck the Ohio river some distance from the crossing place of the Indians.

No one who has never experienced the same affliction, can fully realize the distress of poor Mr. Gilham, when, after a long search, he was obliged to yield to the advice of his neighbors, turn back, and leave his wife and children in savage hands. But hope did not desert him. He knew they must be alive, and he hoped the time was not far distant when he might hear of them. He sold his farm in Kentucky, put Isaac in the family and charge of a friend, fully determined to reclaim his lost family, or perish in the effort. He visited post Vincent (now Vincennes) and Kaskaskia, and enlisted the French traders, who held personal intercourse with the Indian tribes of the north-west, to make inquiries and redeem them if they could be found. He visited General St. Clair at Fort Washington, now Cincinnati, who was governor of the north-western territory, and who had just returned from the Illinois country. He learned that the Indians, stimulated by British agents and traders in the north, were meditating hostilities. Anthony Gamelin, an intelligent French trader, had been sent out by Major Hamtramck, with instructions from Gov. St. Clair, on an exploring mission to the Indians along the Wabash and Maumee, to learn their designs, and he had just returned with abundant evidence of their hostile intentions. General Harmar had commenced his unfortunate campaign, and the prospect was dark and discouraging. It was the intention of Mr. Gilham to penetrate the Indian country, and go from tribe to tribe until he found his lost family, but Governor St. Clair and all others acquainted with the state of things in the north-west dissuaded him from such a hopeless attempt. After a lapse of five years of doubt, trial, and disappointment, he learned from some French traders they were alive, and among the Kickapoos of Illinois. At the treaty of Greenville, the chiefs of the Indian tribes promised to give up all American captives, but a French trader had made arrangements for ransoming them; the goods having been furnished by an Irish trader at Cahokia, by the name of Atcheson. With two Frenchmen for interpreter and guides, Mr. Gilham visited the Indian towns on Salt Creek, and found his wife and children all alive, but the youngest, Clement, could not speak a word of English, and it was some time before he knew and would own his father, or could be persuaded to leave the Indian country, and he was left for a time among the savages.

Mr. Gilham had become enamored of the Illinois country, and after he had gathered his family together in Kentucky, resolved to remove them to the delightful prairies he had visited. As an honorable testimonial of the hardships and sufferings of her captivity, Mrs. Ann Gilham, in 1815, received from the national government, one hundred and sixty acres of choice land in the county of Madison, where they lived. Mr. Gilham died about 1812, like a Christian. His widow and most of the children professed religion, and some joined the Methodists and others the Baptists. A large number of the Gilham connection followed this pioneer to Illinois, where their descendants are yet living.

Mr. Clark and the Gilham family met with no difficulty on their voyage. They floated down the Ohio with the current, aided by the oars and setting poles, but to stem the strong current of the Mississippi, they used the cordelle and setting-poles, and occasionally crept along the shore by “bush-whacking.”[40]

Mr. Clark made a capital hand on the boat, and cheerfully engaged in the labor and toil of the voyage. His experience in sea-faring business made him an acquisition to the company, and laid the foundation for friendship in this family and with all of the name until death parted them. Many of the Gilham connection became Methodists in Illinois, but Father Clark was the most welcome guest who entered their houses.

When night came on, they tied their boat to a tree at the shore, made a fire, and camped in the woods, where they provided their two meals for the day. They moved up the strong and turbid current of the Mississippi at the rate of twelve miles each day. Indians occasionally hailed them from the shore, but they were friendly, and only desired to barter venison for whiskey, tobacco, corn-meal, knives and trinkets.

When the company reached Kaskaskia, Mr. Gilham disposed of his boat to some French voyageurs, and made his first location in the American bottom, about twenty-five or thirty miles above the town. Both him and his family were hospitably received by the settlers, for they knew their trials and the history of their captivity. Mr. Clark soon found religious friends, and was ready to preach the gospel on these remote frontiers.

The Indians of the north-west had been so severely chastised by “Mad Anthony,” (as the soldiers call General Wayne,) that they were glad to make peace; and now, after many years of distress, and the massacre of many families in the Illinois country, the people had opportunity to cultivate their little farms, and provide the necessaries to enable them to live comfortably. The people then travelled from the older settlements to this frontier country, and even caravans of moving families went down the Ohio in flat boats, with their horses, cattle, provisions, and clothing, to a place called Massac by the French, from whence they followed a trail through the wilderness, with their wagons or pack horses, to Kaskaskia, and to the settlement of New Design, and the American bottom, thirty miles further. Massac was a contracted form of speech for Massacre, in the French mode of abbreviating proper names. It is on the Ohio river, near where the town of Metropolis is now situated, which is the seat of justice for Massac County. Its name is a memento of a fearful calamity in the early part of the last century. The French established a trading post and a missionary station on the right bank of the Ohio, then called Ouabache. The southern Indians, then hostile to these Europeans, laid a stratagem to obtain possession of the fort. A number of them appeared in the day-time on the sand-bar of the opposite side of the river, each covered with the skin of a bear, and walking on all fours. They had disguised themselves so completely, and played pantomime so successfully with each other, that the French people did not doubt they were really wild bears from the forest who came there to drink. A party crossed the river in pursuit of them, while the rest left the fort and stood on the bank to see the sport. They did not discover the deception until they found themselves cut off from returning within the fort. They were soon massacred by the tomahawk and scalping knife of the savages. The French built another fort on the same spot, afterwards, and called it Massacre, or, as they taught the American pioneers to call it, Massac.