A Virginia Scout Part 1

A Virginia Scout.

by Hugh Pendexter.

CHAPTER I

THREE TRAVELERS

It was good to rest in the seclusion of my hollow sycamore. It was pleasant to know that in the early morning my horse would soon cover the four miles separating me from the soil of Virginia. As a surveyor, and now as a messenger between Fort Pitt and His Lords.h.i.+p, the Earl of Dunmore, our royal governor, I had utilized this unique shelter more than once when breaking my journey at the junction of the Monongahela and the Cheat.

I had come to look upon it with something of affection. It was one of my wilderness homes. It was roughly circular and a good eight feet in diameter, and never yet had I been disturbed while occupying it.

During the night I heard the diabolic screech of a loon somewhere down the river, while closer by rose the pathetic song of the whippoorwill. Strange contrasts and each very welcome in my ears. I was awake with the first rays of the sun mottling the bark and mold before the low entrance to my retreat. The rippling melody of a mocking-bird deluged the thicket.

Honey-bees hovered and buzzed about my tree, perhaps investigating it with the idea of moving in and using it for a storehouse. The Indians called them the "white man's flies," and believed they heralded the coming of permanent settlements. I hoped the augury was a true one, but there were times when I doubted.

Making sure that the priming of my long Deckhard rifle was dry, I crawled out into the thicket and stood erect. As far as the eye could roam stretched the rich bottom-lands and the low ridges, covered with the primeval growths of giant walnuts, maples, oaks and hickory. Small wonder that the heart of the homeseeker should covet such a country.

Groves of beeches, less desired by settlers, were noisy with satisfied squirrels. From river to ridge the air was alive with orioles and cardinals and red-starts. And could I have stood at the western rim of my vision I would have beheld the panorama repeated, only even richer and more delectable; for there was nothing but the ancient forest between me and the lonely Mississippi.

Birds and song and the soft June air and the mystery of the Kentucky country tugging at my heartstrings. I felt the call very strong as I stood there in the thicket, and gladly would I have traveled West to the richest game-region ever visited by white men. From some who had made the trip I had heard wonderful stories of Nature's prodigality. There were roads made through tangled thickets by immense herds of buffaloes smas.h.i.+ng their way five abreast. Deer were too innumerable to estimate. To perch a turkey merely required that one step a rod or two from the cabin door. Only the serious nature of my business, resulting from the very serious nature of the times, held me back.

On this particular morning when the summer was in full tide of song and scents and pleasing vistas, I was bringing important despatches to Governor Dunmore. The long-looked-for Indian war was upon us. From the back-country to the seaboard Virginians knew this year of 1774 was to figure prominently in our destiny.

In the preceding spring we realized it was only a question of time when we must "fort" ourselves, or abandon the back-country, thereby losing crops and cabins. When young James Boone and Henry Russell were killed by Indians in Powell's Valley in the fall of 1773, all hope of a friendly penetration of the western country died. Ever since Colonel Bouquet's treaty with the Ohio tribes on the collapse of Pontiac's War the frontier had suffered from many small raids, but there had been no organized warfare.

During those ten years much blood had been spilled and many cabins burned, but the red opposition had not been sufficient to stop the backwoodsmen from crowding into the Alleghanies. And only a general war could prevent them from overflowing down into the bottoms of the Ohio. The killing of friendly Shawnees at Pipe Creek below the mouth of the Little Kanawha in April, followed three days later by the cruel slaughter of John Logan's relatives and friends at Baker's groggery opposite Yellow Creek, had touched off the powder.

But the notion that the ma.s.sacre of Logan's people at Joshua Baker's house was the cause of the war is erroneous. For any one living in the country at the time to have believed it would be too ridiculous. That brutal affair was only one more brand added to a fire which had smoldered for ten years.

It happened to be the last piece of violence before both red and white threw aside make-believe and settled down to the ghastly struggle for supremacy. Hunters bound for Kentucky had suffered none from the Indians except as they had a brush with small raiding-parties. But when Daniel Boone undertook to convey his wife and children and the families of his friends into the wonderland the natives would have none of it. In killing his son and young Russell, along with several of their companions, the Indians were merely serving notice of no thoroughfare for home-builders.

So let us remember that Dunmore's War was the inevitable outcome of two alien races determined on the same prize, with each primed for a death-struggle by the memories of fearful wrongs. It is useless to argue which race gave the first cause for retaliation; it had been give and take between them for many years. Nor should our children's children, because of any tendency toward ancestor-wors.h.i.+p, be allowed to believe that the whites were invincible and slaughtered more natives than they lost of their own people.

There were white men as merciless and murderous as any Indians, and some of these had a rare score of killings to their discredit. Yet in a man-for-man account the Indians had all the best of it. Veterans of Braddock's War insisted that the frontier lost fifty whites for each red man killed. Bouquet and other leaders estimated the ratio in Pontiac's War to have been ten to one in favor of the Indians.

This reduction proved that the settlers had learned something from the lessons taught in the old French War. Our people on the border knew all this and they were confident that in the struggle now upon them they would bring the count down to one for one.[1] So let the youngsters of the new day learn the truth; that is, that the backwoodsmen clung to their homes although suffering most hideously.

Virginia understood she must sustain the full brunt of the war, inasmuch as she comprised the disputed frontier. It was upon Virginia that the red hatred centered. I never blamed the Indians for this hate for white cabins and cleared forests and permanent settlements. Nor should our dislike of the Indians incite sentimental people, ignorant of the red man's ways and lacking sympathy with our ambitions, to denounce us as being solely responsible for the brutal aspects such a struggle will always display.

It should also be remembered that the men of Pennsylvania were chiefly concerned with trade. Their profits depended upon the natives remaining undisturbed in their ancient homes. Like the French they would keep the red man and his forests unchanged.

Naturally they disapproved of any migrations over the mountains; and they were very disagreeable in expressing their dissatisfaction. We retorted, overwarmly doubtless, by accusing our northern sister of trading guns and powder to the Indians for horses stolen from Virginia. There was bad blood between the two colonies; for history to gloss over the fact is to perpetrate a lie. Fort Pitt, recently renamed Fort Dunmore by the commandant, Doctor John Connolly, controlled the approach to the Ohio country. It was a strong conditional cause of the war, peculiar as the statement may sound to those born long after the troublesome times of 1774.

Pennsylvania accused our royal governor of being a land-grabber and the catspaw or partner of land-speculators. His Lords.h.i.+p was interested in land-speculation and so were many prominent Virginians. It is also true that claims under Virginia patents would be worthless if Pennsylvania controlled the junction of the Monongahela and the Alleghany Rivers and sustained her claims to the surrounding country.

It is another fact that it was the rifles of Virginia which protected that outlying region, and that many of the settlers in the disputed territory preferred Virginia control. Every one realized that should our militia push the Indians back and win a decisive victory our claims would be immensely strengthened. And through Doctor Connolly we were already handling affairs at Fort Pitt.

Because of these and other facts there was an excellent chance for an intercolonial war. I am of the strong opinion that an armed clash between the hotheads of the two provinces would have resulted if not for the intervention of the Indian war.

At the beginning of hostilities the Indians proclaimed they would whip Pennsylvania and would roast Virginians. However, when Benjamin Speare, his wife and six children were ma.s.sacred on Dunkard Creek early in June, with similar b.l.o.o.d.y murders being perpetrated at Muddy Creek, all on Pennsylvania soil, by John Logan, the Mingo chief, there was less foolish talk north of the line.

All these thoughts of raids and reprisals, of white striving to outdo red in cruelty, may seem to harmonize but ill with that soft June morning, the flight of the red-start, the song of the oriole and the impish chatter of the squirrels. Beech and oak urged one to rest in the shade; the limpid waters of the river called for one to strip and bathe.

To heed either invitation incautiously invited the war-ax to be buried in the head. However, we of the border always had had the Indian trouble, and each generation had taken its pleasure with a wary eye and ready weapons.

Although the times were very dangerous and I was serving as scout for thirty-three cents a day I could still enjoy the sweet aromas and sympathize with the song of birds and yet keep an eye and ear open for that which concerned my life.

In ascending the Monongahela I had seen many settlers crossing the river to make the eastern settlements. I was told that a thousand men, women and children had crossed during the s.p.a.ce of twenty-four hours. Down on the Clinch and Holston the settlers were either "forting" or fleeing.

Much of this retirement was compelled by the sad lack of powder and lead, even of guns. More than one settler depended entirely upon ax or scythe for protection. Such were prevented from using the advantage of their stout walls and could do the foe no mischief until after the door had been battered down, when of course all the advantage s.h.i.+fted to the side of the invader.

By this I do not mean to disparage such tools as implements of war. A st.u.r.dy fellow with both hands gripping a scythe can do an amazing amount of damage at close quarters, as more than one Shawnee war-party has learned.

Briefly summed up, there were dissensions between some of the colonies over the land-disputes; sparks were flying between the colonies and the mother-country; every day brought gruesome news from the back-country; there was a scarcity of guns and ammunition; militia captains were eagerly stealing one another's men to fill their quotas.

Yet regardless of all these troubles let it be understood that for once the borders welcomed war and insisted upon it. As early as March, a month before the Pipe and Yellow Creek outrages, the Williamsburg _Gazette_ printed an address to Lord Dunmore, stating that "an immediate declaration of war was necessary, nay inevitable." Not only did the whites want the war, but the natives also were eager for it.

But enough of whys and wherefores, as they make poor story-telling, and leave me, Basdel Morris, overlong in quitting the thicket about my tree.

And yet the wise man always looks backward as well as forward when entering on a trail, and children yet unborn may blaze a better trace if they understand what lies behind them.

I ate my breakfast there in the thick growth, packing my hungry mouth with parched corn and topping off with a promise of turkey, once I drew beyond the danger-belt. Trying to make myself believe my appet.i.te was satisfied, I began the delicate task of leaving cover without leaving any signs. My horse was a fourth of a mile from my tree, so that in finding him the Indians would not find me.

The river sang a drowsy song a short distance from my tree and down a gentle slope. I knew of a spring beneath its bank, and I was impatient to taste its cold waters. I moved toward it slowly, determined that if an Indian ever secured my long black hair it would not be because he caught me off my guard. With ears and eyes I scouted the river-bank.

The flights and songs of birds and the boisterous chatter of the squirrels now became so many helps. There were no intruders in the grove of beech.

There was no one between me and the river. At last I pa.s.sed under some overhanging boughs and slipped down the bank to the water's edge.

Once more I searched both banks of the river, the Cheat, and then ventured to drink. Like an animal I drank a swallow, then threw up my head and glanced about. It took me some time to drink my fill, but I was not tomahawked while at the spring. At last I was convinced I had the bank to myself; and satisfied that the screen of overhanging boughs screened me from any canoe turning a bend up- or down-stream I removed my clothes and very softly slipped into the water.

There could be no hilarious splas.h.i.+ng nor swimming, but the silent immersion was most refres.h.i.+ng. It was while supine on my back with only my nose and toes above water that I received my first alarm for that morning.

My position being rec.u.mbent I was staring up at the sky and in the direction of up-stream, and I saw a speck.

It was circling and from the west a smaller speck was hastening eastward.

A third tiny speck showed on the southern skyline. Turkey-buzzards. The one circling had sighted dead beast or man. The others had seen the discoverer's maneuvers advertising his good luck; and now each scavenger in hastening to the feast drew other scavengers after him.

I crawled ash.o.r.e and hurriedly began slipping into my few garments. I drew on my breeches and paused for a moment to part the shrubbery and stare into the sky. I was startled to observe the buzzards--there were three of them now--were much nearer, as if following something. I pulled on my leggings and finished fitting my moccasins carefully about the ankles to keep out all dust and dirt and took my second look.

The buzzards were five, and in making their wide circles they had again cut down the distance. Then it dawned upon me that they were following something in the river. I watched the bend, the buzzards ever circling nearer, their numbers continually being augmented by fresh arrivals. At last it came in sight--a canoe containing one man.

Hastily drying my hands on my hunting-s.h.i.+rt, I picked up my rifle and drew a bead on the distant figure. The man was an Indian and was allowing the canoe to drift. But why should the turkey-buzzards follow him? As I pondered over this problem and waited to learn whether he be friendly or hostile, there came the _spang_ of a rifle from my side of the river and above me.

A second shot quickly followed and I thought the figure in the canoe lurched to one side a bit. Still there was no attempt made to use the paddle. The shrill ear-splitting scream of a panther rang out, and this like the two shots was on my side of the river. That the Indian made no move to escape was inexplicable unless the first shot had killed him outright.

The canoe was deflected toward my hiding-place, and I expected to hear another brace of shots from above me. But there was no more shooting, and the canoe swung in close enough for me to observe the Indian was holding something between his teeth. I now recognized him as a friendly native, a Delaware; and anxious to protect him from those lurking on the bank I showed myself and softly called:

"Bald Eagle is in danger! Paddle in here."

He paid no attention to my greeting, although the canoe continued its approach until it grounded against the bank. I slipped down to the water to urge him to come ash.o.r.e and take cover. He was a well-known chief, and for years very friendly to the whites. The thing he held in his mouth was a piece of journey-cake, only he was not eating it as I had first supposed. As I gained the canoe I noticed a paddle placed across it so as to support his back, and another so braced as to prop up his head.