Soon after this atrocious affair, another followed, equally flagitious. There was a white settlement on the east bank of the Ohio, about thirty miles above Wheeling, among the leading men of which were one named Daniel Greathouse, and another named Tomlinson. A party of Indians, assembled on the opposite bank of the river, having heard of the murders committed by Cresap, determined to avenge their death, of which resolution Greathouse was admonished by a friendly squaw, who advised him to escape, while he was reconnoitering for the purpose of ascertaining their numbers. He had crossed the river with thirty-two men under his command, and secreted them for the purpose of falling upon the Indians; but finding that they were too strong for him, he changed his plan of operations, re-crossed the river, and, with a show of friendship, invited them over to an entertainment. Without suspicion of treachery the Indians accepted the invitation, and while engaged in drinking—some of them to a state of intoxication—they were set upon and murdered in cold blood. Here again, fell two more of the family of Logan—a brother and sister, the latter being in a situation of peculiar delicacy. The Indians who had remained on the other side of the river, hearing the noise of the treacherous attack, flew to their canoes to rescue their friends. This movement had been anticipated; and sharp-shooters, stationed in ambuscade, shot numbers of them in their canoes, and compelled the others to return.
These dastardly transactions were enacted on the 24th of May. They were soon followed by another outrage, which, though of less magnitude, was not less atrocious in its spirit, while it was even more harrowing to the feelings of the Indians. The event referred to was the murder, by a white man, of an aged and inoffensive Delaware chief named the Bald Eagle. He had for years consorted more with the white people than his own, visiting those most frequently who entertained him best. At the time of his murder he had been on a visit to the fort at the North of the Kanhawa, and was killed while alone, paddling his canoe. The man who committed the murder, it was said, had been a sufferer at the hands of the Indians; but he had never been injured by the object upon whom he wreaked his vengeance. After tearing the scalp from his head, the white savage placed the body in a sitting posture in the canoe, and sent it adrift down the stream. The voyage of the dead chief was observed by many, who supposed him living, and upon one of his ordinary excursions. When, however, the deed became known, his nation were not slow in avowals of vengeance.[FN-1] Equally exasperated, at about the same time, were the Shawanese, against the whites, by the murder of one of their favourite chiefs, Silver Heels, who had in the kindest manner undertaken to escort several white traders across the woods from the Ohio to Albany, a distance of nearly two hundred miles.[FN-2]
[FN-1] McClung, as cited by Drake.
[FN-2] Heckewelder.
The consequence of these repeated outrages, perpetrated by white barbarians, was the immediate commencement of an Indian war, the first leader of which was Logan, who, with a small party of only eight warriors, made a sudden and altogether unexpected descent upon a Muskingum settlement, with complete success. In the course of the Summer great numbers of men, women, and children, fell victims to the tomahawk and scalping-knife. Logan, however, though smarting under a keen sense of his own wrongs, set his face against the practice of putting prisoners to the torture, so far as he could. In one instance, he so instructed a prisoner doomed to run the gauntlet, as to enable him to escape without receiving essential injury. In another case, with his own hand he severed the cord which bound a prisoner to the stake, and by his influence procured his adoption into an Indian family.
To punish these atrocities, provoked, as all authorities concur in admitting, by the whites, a vigorous campaign was undertaken by the Governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, with a force of between two and three thousand men. Eleven hundred of these Provincials, mostly riflemen, and comprising much of the chivalry of Virginia, constituting the left wing, were entrusted to the command of General Andrew Lewis, [FN] with instructions to march direct for Point Pleasant, at the mouth of the Great Kanhawa; while his lordship, proceeding with the right wing, was to cross the Ohio at a higher point, and fall upon the Indian towns in their rear. For reasons never satisfactorily explained, although the cause of some controversy at the time, there was a failure of the expected co-operation on the part of Lord Dunmore.
[FN] Andrew Lewis was, in fact, only a colonel; but he was in the chief command of the division, and as he had a brother, Charles Lewis, also a colonel, he has been designated as a General by courtesy, and for the purpose of distinguishing the commander from the other colonel.
General Lewis commenced his march on the 11th of September. His course was direct, through a trackless wilderness, one hundred and sixty miles; over which all the supplies of the army were necessarily to be transported on pack-horses. The march was very slow and tedious—occupying nineteen days. Arrived at or near the junction of the Kanhawa with the Ohio, Lewis waited eight or nine days to obtain tidings from Lord Dunmore, but heard not a syllable.