Soon after the rush of spring immigration was at its height, the old settlers and the new-comers alike were thrown into the utmost alarm by a formidable inroad of Indians, accompanied by French partisans, and led by a British officer. De Peyster, a New York tory of old Knickerbocker family, had taken command at Detroit. He gathered the Indians around him from far and near, until the expense of subsidizing these savages became so enormous as to call forth serious complaints from head-quarters. [Footnote: Haldimand MSS. Haldimand to Guy Johnson, June 30, 1780.] He constantly endeavored to equip and send out different bands, not only to retake the Illinois and Vincennes, but to dislodge Clark from the Falls [Footnote: Do. Haldimand to De Peyster, Feb. 12 and July 6, 1780.]; he was continually receiving scalps and prisoners, and by May he had fitted out two thousand warriors to act along the Ohio and the Wabash. [Footnote: Do. De Peyster to Haldimand, June 1, 1780.] The rapid growth of Kentucky especially excited his apprehension, [Footnote: Do. March 8, 1780.] and his main stroke was directed against the clusters of wooden forts that were springing up south of the Ohio. [Footnote: Do. May 17 to July 19, 1780.]
Bird's Inroad.
Late in May, some six hundred Indians and a few Canadians, with a couple of pieces of light field artillery, were gathered and put under the command of Captain Henry Bird. Following the rivers where practicable, that he might the easier carry his guns, he went down the Miami, and on the 22d of June, surprised and captured without resistance Ruddle's and Martin's stations, two small stockades on the South Fork of the Licking. [Footnote: He marched overland from the forks of the Licking. Marshall says the season was dry and the waters low; but the Bradford MSS. particularly declare that Bird only went up the Licking at all because the watercourses were so full, and that he had originally intended to attack the settlements at the Falls.] But Bird was not one of the few men fitted to command such a force as that which followed him; and contenting himself with the slight success he had won, he rapidly retreated to Detroit, over the same path by which he had advanced. The Indians carried off many horses, and loaded their prisoners with the plunder, tomahawking those, chiefly women and children, who could not keep up with the rest; and Bird could not control them nor force them to show mercy to their captives. [Footnote: Collins, Butler, etc. Marshall thinks that if the force could have been held together it would have depopulated Kentucky; but this is nonsense, for within a week Clark had gathered a very much larger and more efficient body of troops.] He did not even get his cannon back to Detroit, leaving them at the British store in one of the upper Miami towns, in charge of a bombardier. The bombardier did not prove a very valorous personage, and on the alarm of Clark's advance, soon afterwards, he permitted the Indians to steal his horses, and was forced to bury his ordnance in the woods. [Footnote: Haldimand MSS. Letter of Bombardier Wm. Homan, Aug. 18, 1780. He speaks of "the gun" and "the smaller ordnance," presumably swivels. It is impossible to give Bird's numbers correctly, for various bands of Indians kept joining and leaving him.]
Clark Hears the News
Before this inroad took place Clark had been planning a foray into the Indian country, and the news only made him hasten his preparations. In May this adventurous leader had performed one of the feats which made him the darling of the backwoodsmen. Painted and dressed like an Indian so as to deceive the lurking bands of savages, he and two companions left the fort he had built on the bank of the Mississippi, and came through the wilderness to Harrodsburg. They lived on the buffaloes they shot, and when they came to the Tennessee River, which was then in flood, they crossed the swift torrent on a raft of logs bound together with grapevines. At Harrodsburg they found the land court open, and thronged with an eager, jostling crowd of settlers and speculators, who were waiting to enter lands in the surveyor's office. Even the dread of the Indians could not overcome in these men's hearts the keen and selfish greed for gain. Clark instantly grasped the situation. Seeing that while the court remained open he could get no volunteers, he on his own responsibility closed it off-hand, and proclaimed that it would not be opened until after he came back from his expedition. The speculators grumbled and clamored, but this troubled Clark not at all, for he was able to get as many volunteers as he wished. The discontent, and still more the panic over Bird's inroad, made many of the settlers determine to flee from the country, but Clark sent a small force to Crab Orchard, at the mouth of the Wilderness road, the only outlet from Kentucky, with instructions to stop all men from leaving the country, and to take away their arms if they persisted; while four fifths of all the grown men were drafted, and were bidden to gather instantly for a campaign. [Footnote: Bradford MSS.]
His Campaign against Piqua.
He appointed the mouth of the Licking as the place of meeting. Thither he brought the troops from the Falls in light skiffs he had built for the purpose, leaving behind scarce a handful of men to garrison the stockade. Logan went with him as second in command. He carried with him a light three-pounder gun; and those of the men who had horses marched along the bank beside the flotilla. The only mishap that befell the troops happened to McGarry, who had a subordinate command. He showed his usual foolhardy obstinacy by persisting in landing with a small squad of men on the north bank of the river, where he was in consequence surprised and roughly handled by a few Indians. Nothing was done to him because of his disobedience, for the chief of such a backwoods levy was the leader, rather than the commander, of his men.
At the mouth of the Licking Clark met the riflemen from the interior stations, among them being Kenton, Harrod, and Floyd, and others of equal note. They had turned out almost to a man, leaving the women and boys to guard the wooden forts until they came back, and had come to the appointed place, some on foot or on horseback, others floating and paddling down the Licking in canoes. They left scanty provisions with their families, who had to subsist during their absence on what game the boys shot, on nettle tops, and a few early vegetables; and they took with them still less. Dividing up their stock, each man had a couple of pounds of meal and some jerked venison or buffalo meat. [Footnote: McAfee MSS.; the Bradford MS. says six quarts of parched corn.]
All his troops having gathered, to the number of nine hundred and seventy, Clark started up the Ohio on the second of August. [Footnote: This date and number are those given in the Bradford MS. The McAfee MSS. say July 1st; but it is impossible that the expedition should have started so soon after Bird's inroad. On July 1st, Bird himself was probably at the mouth of the Licking.] The skiffs, laden with men, were poled against the current, while bodies of footmen and horsemen marched along the bank. After going a short distance up stream the horses and men were ferried to the farther bank, the boats were drawn up on the shore and left, with a guard of forty men, and the rest of the troops started overland against the town of Old Chillicothe, fifty or sixty miles distant. The three-pounder was carried along on a pack-horse. The march was hard, for it rained so incessantly that it was difficult to keep the rifles dry. Every night they encamped in a hollow square, with the baggage and horses in the middle.
Chillicothe, when reached, was found to be deserted. It was burned, and the army pushed on to Piqua, a town a few miles distant, on the banks of the Little Miami, [Footnote: The Indians so frequently shifted their abode that it is hardly possible to identify the exact location of the successive towns called Piqua or Pickaway.] reaching it about ten in the morning of the 8th of August. [Footnote: "Papers relating to G. R. Clark." In the Durrett MSS. at Louisville. The account of the death of Joseph Rogers. This settles, by the way, that the march was made in August, and not in July.] Piqua was substantially built, and was laid out in the manner of the French villages. The stoutly built log-houses stood far apart, surrounded by strips of corn-land, and fronting the stream; while a strong block-house with loop-holed walls stood in the middle. Thick woods, broken by small prairies, covered the rolling country that lay around the town.