1
CHAPTER I
HISTORIOGRAPHY AND SETTLEMENT OF THE OLD NORTHWEST
During colonization and settlement of the old Northwest, settlers and Native
Americans in the Kentucky and the Ohio River Valley frontier encountered each other,
sometimes engaging in a friendly exchange of goods, services, and information and at
other times in unfriendly or hostile confrontations. The cultural, social, political, and
military encounters have provided historians with ample sources to research. In the more
than two hundred years since American independence, historians have analyzed those
sources from a variety of viewpoints. Early histories tended to focus on political and
military interactions, while historians in the latter half of the twentieth century, following
trends in the historical profession, concentrated on social history. More recently, social
and cultural historians have explored these early interactions through the lens of race,
class, and gender, while environmental historians have analyzed the effect of colonization
and settlement on the land and its original inhabitants.
As early as 1784, John Filson wrote a description of the region in The Discovery,
Settlement and Present State of Kentucke. Filson gives a flowery description of
Kentucky during early exploration to promote settlement of Kentucky. A customary
work of history, the references in his writing are from the pioneering men who settled the
region, such as Daniel Boone, that venerated colonial nation building and described the
2
tribes in the region as “savages.” Filson’s narrative salutes efforts of conquest of the
Native Americans and the land.
1
Over one hundred years later, Frederick Jackson Turner explored the effect
settlement had on the land and on the Native tribes living in the region, but more
specifically how pioneers acclimated to the elements encountered on the western frontier.
This process of expansion into the frontier heavily influenced America’s cultural climate
according to Turner. In his work, The Frontier in American History, settlers prevailed to
conquer the North American West through assimilation, and the American frontier was
“the meeting point between savagery and civilization.”
2
The “fluidity of American life”
defined “American character,” as European Americans continued to expand into the
frontier.
3
Turner adheres to the premise that settlers developed societies in the West that
resembled a new culture, rather than exclusively taking on the traits of their European
homelands. Life in Europe did not prepare colonists and settlers for the hardships they
encountered on the frontier; thus, “a steady movement away from the influence of
Europe” transpired, making expansion into the West the true definition of what it was to
be an American.
4
Almost forty years after Turner’s work, historian John Caruso concentrated on the
settlement of the southern regions of the western frontier. His book, The Appalachian
1
John Filson, The Discovery, Settlement and Present State of Kentucke (1784), ed. Paul
Royster (Wilmington, KY: James Adams, 1784), 39.
2
Frederick Jackson Turner, The Frontier in American History (New York: Henry Holt
and Company, 1920), 3.
3
Ibid., 2-3.
4
Ibid., 4.
3
Frontier: America’s First Surge Westward, focused on pioneers, such as Daniel Boone,
who settled the region and portrayed Native Americans as part of the wilderness to be
tamed. Caruso argues that expansion into Appalachia played a significant role in
establishing American identity, but he touches only lightly on the influence settlement
had on Native cultures. In his introduction, he refers to Native Americans as “stubborn
and resentful Indian tribes.”
5
Caruso celebrates the European immigrants who built the
nation on the frontier line, praising them for their frontier skills and conquests.
Responding to the growth in the field of women’s history in the 1970s, Nancy F.
Cott published The Bonds of Womanhood: “Women’s Sphere” in New England, 1780-
1835. Cott investigates the role women played in the late 1700s to early 1800s in New
England. As with other historical revisionists of the 1970s, she assesses women’s
function in early American society. Moreover, she concentrates on women’s role in
society and their delegated position in the household. Cott’s analysis of women’s place
in the social structure from 1780 to 1835 reveals a fresh point of view. To be accepted by
polite society, these women had to be pious, pure, domestic, and submissive. Although
Cott’s research focuses on women in New England instead of on the old Northwestern
frontier, the women who settled that new region of the country in the late 1700s and early
1800s came from New England and brought their cultural and social expectations with
them.
6
While women’s historians in the 1970s, like Nancy Cott, were reinterpreting
5
John Caruso, The Appalachian Frontier: America’s First Surge Westward
(Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1959), 7.
6
Nancy Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood: “Woman’s Sphere” in New England, 1780-
1835 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997).
4
historical events through women’s perspectives, Native American historians were doing
their own reinterpretations through the Native American perspective. In Dispossessing
the American Indian: Indians and Whites on the Colonial Frontier, for example, Wilbur
Jacobs related a less romantic tale of settlement. In his interpretation of colonization,
settlers and pioneers upset the balance of nature and therefore disrupted the Native
American way of life. This emphasis on the Native American experience is typical of
Americanists in the 1960s and 1970s.
7
James Axtell, Native American historian and author of The Invasion Within: The
Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America, states that the contact between European
American culture and Native American culture consisted of “an interweaving of mental
selves” with each culture presenting a “strangeness.”
8
The constant push and pull
between settlers and Native tribes resulted in acculturation between the two societies.
When Native Americans experienced “the civilization process,” they became dependent
on material goods introduced by European Americans, such as “clothing, weapons, tools
– and ending with deeply engrained habits of thought and feeling.”
9
Axtell’s work
reveals the absorption of Native culture into European American culture.
In the 1990s, historians began to analyze colonization and settlement through the
lens of cultural history. John Canup, for example, researches Puritan religion during
early colonization and relates how religious beliefs affected colonial attitudes towards the
7
Wilbur R. Jacobs, Dispossessing the American Indian: Indians and Whites of the
Colonial Frontier (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1972), xiii.
8
James Axtell, The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 7.
9
Ibid., 4.
5
Native tribes and the wild frontier. In Out of the Wilderness: The Emergence of an
American Identity in Colonial New England, the Native American population and the
land held mystery and darkness that Puritans equated with the devil, but some colonials
welcomed the Native Americans and accepted them as they were, much to the
consternation of many of the Puritan faith.
10
Those few who decided to embrace Native
American culture helped in the long process of melding and mixing of culture. Although
Canup positions his research more than a century before settlers ventured into the old
Northwest, there is much in common in the religious experience of colonization in both
eras.
John Demos reinterprets the relationship between the New England Puritan and
Native American populations in The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early
America. Both Canup and Demos explore the confrontations between Puritans and
Native Americans, but Demos takes a more individualized perspective as he tells of a
young Puritan girl, Eunice Williams, abducted from her village with her siblings and
Puritan minister father and mother by a French and Native American war party.
11
Eunice
remained with the Mohawks and French and chose to convert to Catholicism. In his
narrative, Demos conveyed the choice made by some of Puritan faith to embrace Native
tribal culture.
According to Richard White, author of The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires,
and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815, the American identity of the early
10
John Canup, Out of the Wilderness: The Emergence of an American Identity in
Colonial New England (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1990), 4-7.
11
John Demos, The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America (New
York: Alfred Knopf: Distributed by Random House, Inc., 1994), 18-19, 142.
6
1800s evolved through accommodation between Native American and European
American cultures; the result of that accommodation is a new culture which White refers
to as “the middle ground.”
12
He defines “the middle ground” as the setting in which
European Americans and Native Americans met and influenced each other, resulting in
“the shared meanings and practices of the middle ground.”
13
This “acculturation” refers
to how one culture takes on the characteristics of the more dominant culture by “correct
behavior” imposed on the “subordinate group.”
14
Essentially, European Americans did
not obliterate Native American culture, but instead integrated it into American settler
culture. The continuous exchange of goods, practices, and information led to a culture
that retained more characteristics of the dominant one. European American culture took
on some aspects of the Native American culture, such as methods of surviving on the
frontier, mode of dress, and trade interactions.
Published at about the same time that White published his work, Daniel
Friedenberg’s Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Land: The Plunder of Early America
presents an opposing colonization narrative with no evidence of a middle ground.
Instead, he uncovers an unflattering history of how settlers exploited the land and its
people to pioneer and establish the United States. As the title implies, the rise of America
and the settlers’ relentless pursuit of autonomy displaced the Native tribes, initiated
exploitation of land, and proliferated enslavement of Africans to ensure the success of
12
Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great
Lakes Region, 1650-1815 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), xxvi.
13
Ibid.
14
Ibid.
7
that autonomy.
15
Nearly twenty years after the groundbreaking cultural histories of the 1990s,
another wave of historiography seems to be developing. Historians are reevaluating the
narratives of exploration in an attempt to discover early middle ground negotiations. For
example, in Frontiersman: Daniel Boone and the Making of America, Meredith Mason
Brown narrates Boone’s place in frontier America and dispels previous legends and
myths. Brown relates a realistic picture of the explorer, including his shortcomings and
triumphs. After more than two centuries, from Filson’s first acknowledgement of Boone
in 1784 to Brown’s portrayal of the man behind the legend, the story of one man’s life
and his effect on the region has evolved to include a realistic rendering of the interactions
he had with the Native Americans he encountered.
16
This thesis explores the melding of two very different cultures separated by time
and space for millennia. It contains six primary sections that focus on what happened to
the two cultures as they encountered each other. It also demonstrates the effects of
European American culture moving persistently onto Native American lands, primarily in
the Ohio River Valley during the Revolution. Chapter I presents an overview of the era’s
historiography, giving different perspectives on cultural merging of pioneers and Native
Americans on the North American continent.
Chapter II examines the differences in the social and religious structures of the
Native Americans and the settlers. Innate qualities possessed by those who chose to
15
Daniel M. Friedenberg, Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Land: The Plunder of Early
America (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1992), 13-14.
16
Meredith Mason Brown, Frontiersman: Daniel Boone and the Making of America
(Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2008), xiv.
8
forge into the interior were as responsible for frontier success as the skills they learned in
the process. The perils of the land led to the evolution of a new breed of settler. The
pioneering culture diverged from the more civilized British colonials on the east coast,
and it did so to survive a hostile environment. Since the frontier was a wild land fraught
with numerous dangers, the roles women had to assume diverged from those acquired by
their eastern counterparts, and women shouldered many of the same responsibilities as
the men they accompanied. Women in the West had to be willing to put themselves at
risk to help establish a home and achieve prosperity for themselves, their husbands, and
their families. Living within a system of coverture, they could not legally own the land,
but they still played a significant role in pioneering the Old Northwest and the Ohio River
Valley.
As settlement continued into the West, Native American societies in general also
evolved in order to protect their lands. Christian beliefs provided a basis for
ethnocentrism among the settlers. Native American belief systems varied from tribe to
tribe, although most included some sort of understanding of a higher power. Because
unconverted tribes did not subscribe to a belief in the Christian God, their spirituality
held little or no validity with Christians. Chapter III demonstrates how the two societies
responded to each other when their belief systems collided.
During the American Revolution, the British provoked increasing hostilities
between the Native population and the settlers, but the conflicts did not halt westward
expansion. Chapter IV explores the significance of warfare on the frontier region during
this conflict. Americans used the Native American alliance with the British as a
justification for retaliation and land acquisition. This chapter explains how many Native
9
tribes joined the British side, believing this could preserve their ancestral right to the
land. Throughout the western region, the constant skirmishing consumed Continental
resources and lives at unsupportable rates, resulting in more reason for retribution upon
the Native tribes.
Chapter V relates the perils settlers faced when captured by Native Americans.
Many captivity narratives include information about both adults’ and children’s
experiences. Some stories tell of benevolent abductors, while others reveal a much
darker experience and primal despair, such as when mothers observed their children
being brutalized and murdered. Individual tribes sometimes adopted captives but other
times treated them as little more than slaves. Occasionally, the Native Americans
adopted men, but in general, tribes found women and children to be more suitable as
adoptees.
The conclusion describes this constant interaction's result: a uniquely hybrid
American culture that integrated Old World European Americans and New World Native
Americans. Neither society remained unaffected by westward expansion or entirely
absorbed its opponent. The predominant American culture that emerged was a melding
of the two.
Regardless of the historiographical arguments about accommodation and the
middle ground, there remains little doubt that interactions on the frontier heavily
influenced attitudes and culture in North America during settlement. Both Native
Americans and European Americans used assimilation and accommodation during the era
of western expansion. Whether arising from conflict or through mutual association, a
distinctive culture emerged in the wake of westward expansion. Through this constant
10
interaction, both cultures borrowed from one another to survive as a people in North
America, thus establishing a new American culture.
11
CHAPTER II
THE RISK OF PURSUING AUTONOMY
IN THE SOUTHEASTERN WOODLANDS
Colonization in the Ohio River Valley became an early embodiment of American
autonomy. From the beginning of English colonization, the New World offered unique
economic and religious opportunities. Concepts of economic and political liberties, the
freedoms initially offered in the English North American colonies, helped to further the
unique American attitude and cultural expectation of economic and political sovereignty.
Initially, British colonization of North America sought to offset the imbalance of
economic power in Europe created by the Spanish Empire. Spanish dominion in the
western hemisphere began with Columbus’ discovery of the West Indies and expanded as
the Spanish accumulated gold and silver through conquests. British colonization and
acquisition of resources in the New World focused in early days on finding precious
metals to acquire wealth, but as British settlement progressed, the exploitation of land
and its resources for wealth became paramount.
17
Expansion into the interior of North
America’s frontier, exploitation of the land, and opportunistic land acquisition by the
settlers caused increasing conflict between settlers and Native Americans.
17
T. H. Breen, “An Empire of Goods: The Anglicization of Colonial America, 1690-
1776,” Journal of British Studies 25, no. 4 (Oct. 1986): 474.
12
Even before the arrival of settlers, the “bluegrass region” was known as “a dark
and bloody ground,” because the northwestern tribes, such as the Iroquois, often warred
with their southern enemies in the region.
18
As settlers moved into the region, they
inserted themselves into the conflict and complicated those Native American aggressions.
Native tribes attacked settlers from three sides, traveling from the north, the south, and
the west. Virtually none of the settlements in the bluegrass region remained untouched
by frontier Native American assault.
In the 1700s, the Ohio River Valley and surrounding southeastern woodlands
were abundant with wildlife, streams, rivers, and fertile soil. The region possessed a
temperate climate and bountiful wildlife, such as, “buffalo, elk, and deer,” along with
many game animals that supported the fur trade, such as “beavers, otters, minks, and
musk-rats.”
19
These features would prove to be inviting to settlers. The predator
population included “panthers, wild-cats, and wolves.”
20
The resources in Kentucky west
of the Appalachian Mountains impressed early American settlers, who initially thought it
did not contain permanent Native settlements.
21
In 1784, historian John Filson claimed
the tribes only used the Kentucky region for hunting and warring purposes. In his book,
The Discovery, Settlement and Present State of Kentucke (1784), he asserted the lands lay
empty of permanent Native American habitation.
22
However, Cherokee and Shawnee
18
Danske Dandridge, George Michael Bedinger: A Kentucky Pioneer (Charlottesville,
VA: Michie Co., 1909), 37.
19
Filson, The Discovery, Settlement and Present State of Kentucke, 21-22.
20
Ibid., 22.
21
Ibid., 13-14.
22
Ibid., 9.
13
homelands covered Kentucky and much of the lower Ohio River Valley. Kentucky
possesses numerous caves and underground dwellings that provide evidence of Cherokee
habitation before European colonization and settlement, as Kentucky represented the
northern portion of the Cherokee homelands, but after the American Revolution,
Cherokee boundaries moved to include the area south of the Cumberland River.
23
The Shawnee also lived in the area as a semi-nomadic people “at least part of the
year.”
24
A famous Shawnee settlement in Clark County, Kentucky abandoned in 1754
provides strong evidence of early and longstanding Shawnee habitation. It makes little
sense that the Shawnee would choose to harass settlements in a region they did not
occupy at least part of the time. Even though early literature neglected to mention the
presence of the Shawnee, explorers in the region soon found out how opposed the Native
tribe was to settlers claiming their rich hunting grounds.
25
Most of the interactions between the Cherokee and Shawnee that happened before
the American Revolution were hostile, especially during the French and Indian War.
26
Contact involving the Cherokee and the Shawnee often resulted in warfare for regional
resources, and captivity of opposing tribal members occurred on a regular basis.
27
As
23
Kenneth B. Tankersley, Kentucky Cherokee: People of the Cave, Ancestry.com
RootsWeb, accessed March 15, 2015,
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~brockfamily/KYs-Native-Past-
byKTankersley.html.
24
Jerry E. Clark, The Shawnee (Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky,
1993), 2.
25
Ibid., 1-3.
26
Ibid., 65.
27
Ibid., 66.
14
settlers became more numerous and if the opportunity presented itself, Native tribes
captured them as well.
European exploration of what is now Kentucky began in the mid-1700s when the
rich landscape of the Ohio River Valley called to settlers. In 1750, Dr. Thomas Walker
discovered a pass through the Alleghenies in the southern region of the Appalachian
Mountain Chain, the Cumberland Gap, through which settlers would flood into the Ohio
River Valley.
28
He and his fellow explorers “established the Loyal Company with the
purpose of petitioning for a large grant of land west of the Allegheny Mountains.”
29
Many English colonists thought they were entitled to land on the North American
continent, as they believed Native tribes neglected to cultivate most of it and so
consequently, the tribes must have had no claims to the neglected land. Squatters’ rights,
leading to legal ownership, perpetuated the spread of people into the interior. The
Virginia Colony established the Ohio Company, which began to sell tracts of land west of
the Appalachian Mountains, lending to the settler attitude regarding land. After the
French and Indian War, the British attempted to protect Native American lands from
settlement by issuing the Proclamation of 1763, which prohibited expansion west of the
Appalachians. However, settlers continued to encroach on Native tribal lands as they
continued west regardless of the proclamation.
James McBride, an Irish explorer, came down the Ohio River with his party in
28
Thomas Walker, Journal of Doctor Thomas Walker (1749-1750) (Charlottesville, VA:
University of Virginia, 2003).
29
Carole Hammett, “The Land of Our Ancestors: A TNGenWeb Project History
Presentation,” A Free TNGenWeb.org Genealogy Website, August 2000, accessed February 7,
2015, tngenweb.org/tnland/squabble/walker.html.
15
canoes.
30
He surveyed the Kentucky region in 1754 and assessed the land west of the
Appalachians as “the best tract of land in North-America, and probably in the world.”
31
He stated, “this fertile spot became an object of contention, a theatre of war, from which
it was properly denominated ‘the Dark and Bloody Ground.’”
32
McBride became a
pioneer of the “Blue Grass State” before the famous Daniel Boone, although Boone often
receives credit for paving the way into Kentucky. As exploration into the Old West
continued, Boone’s exploits shadowed most explorers that came before him.
33
Expeditions in Kentucky continued as Boone helped establish the fort of
Boonsborough, resulting in his and his daughter’s captivity at the onset of the American
Revolution. On July 14, 1776, some male members of the Shawnee and Cherokee tribes
seized Boone’s daughter, Jemima, and two daughters of Colonel Calaway, another
founder of the fort. After only two days in captivity, a small party of Kentucky settlers
including Boone retrieved the young girls. Shortly after this incident, Boone himself
became a captive of the Shawnee in 1778 while out hunting. He lived with the Shawnee
for four months before escaping to return to Boonsborough.
34
Along with the dangers of enemy attacks upon the settlements, the settlers dealt
with the indigenous wildlife of the western lands, and Kentucky presented perils for the
pioneers because of its large population of predators. The land abounded in bears,
30
Michael J. O'Brien, Irish Pioneers in Kentucky: A Series of Articles Published in
Gaelic American (Louisville, KY: James Thompson, 1916), 2.
31
Filson, The Discovery, Settlement and Present State of Kentucke, 7–9.
32
Ibid., 7.
33
Ibid., 1.
34
Ibid., 46-7, 49.
16
cougars, and wolves that hunted the livestock brought to the settlements, especially
during the winter months. Predators attacked mainly the settlers’ animals, but on rare
occasions would seek out a man, woman, or child if the opportunity presented itself. For
example, the Carter family immigrated to a remote Kentucky region from Virginia. They
found out how troublesome the panthers and wolves of the area were to their colts and
lambs. Because of the constant incursions of predators, the Carter boy and his sisters
started to lay traps and shoot the beasts, “for they were all good shots with the rifle, - the
girls as well as their brother.”
35
While living on the frontier, the Carters experienced an extremely frightening
confrontation with a pack of wolves. The Carter siblings attended a party 10 miles from
their home. Their African-American house servant, Hannibal, drove the girls to a party
in a wagon while their brother rode on horseback alongside. After the party, the Carters
made their way back to the homestead. On their way through the dense forest, a
relentless pack of wolves began harrying their wagon, and the young women resorted to
hitting a wolf if it got close enough to snap at them. Eventually they came upon an
abandoned cabin, and the girls made for the cabin’s loft while the eldest sister wielded a
“stout stick” to keep the wolves at bay.
36
Reportedly, more than 20 wolves attacked the
Carter sisters and Hannibal that night. When morning came, the father, two of their
servants, and their brother, who had ridden ahead of the wagon the night before, made
35
William Worthington Fowler, Woman on the American Frontier: A Valuable and
Authentic History of the Heroism, Adventures, Privations, Captivities, Trials, and Noble Lives
and Deaths of the “Pioneer Mothers of the Republic” (Hartford, CT: S. S. Scranton & Company,
1877), 316 - 17.
36
Ibid., 318, 320.
17
short work in dispatching the pack with gunfire.
37
The Carters developed survival skills
from their experiences on the frontier lending to Turner’s assessment of American
pioneering culture.
With the settlers also came disease, to which Native Americans had little or no
resistance. Disease introduced by Europeans to the Native American population
facilitated the conquest of North America. Estimates of Native American deaths due to
disease alone range as high as ninety five percent of the entire Native American
population. Those diseases included “smallpox, measles, tuberculosis, diphtheria,
whooping cough, and influenza.”
38
European domestication of livestock led to
microorganisms mutating, causing sickness in humans. Because of their close and
extended proximity to the domesticated animals, Europeans developed some resistance to
these new diseases, but the introduction of the microorganisms to the Native American
population decimated the indigenous peoples.
39
Even without confrontational settlement, the devastation from disease continued
to be a motive for tribal retribution and became a significant reason why Native tribes
took captives into their communities. On occasion, Native Americans chose to replace
lost tribal members with settler captives, thus revealing less ethnocentrism in their
societies than existed in European American society. Eligibility for integration into tribes
mostly depended on sex and age. Women and children captives were typically less likely
to resist and more likely to become productive members of the tribe, so they were more
37
Ibid., 321.
38
David Walbert, “Disease and Catastrophe,” North Carolina Digital History: Learn NC,
accessed March 21, 2016, http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/nchist-twoworlds/1689 .
39
Ibid.
18
desirable for integration.
40
Nonetheless, as the expansion into Native tribal lands
continued, Native tribes tortured and killed many settlers to try to prevent further
settlement into the interior woodlands.
After a Native American attack on a settlement, capture and subjugation usually
took place and yielded one or more prisoners. The captives then marched under the
duress of force back to the Native American town or village. If the prisoner survived the
long harrowing journey, then induction into the tribe could occur. However, at times, the
survivors suffered torture and then the Native tribal members often decided to kill them
regardless. This killing embodied revenge for European American transgressions against
the tribe.
On the Pennsylvania frontier, a group of Shawnee and their French companions
captured teenage Mary Jemison along with her mother, father, and three of her siblings,
scalping and murdering all but Mary. A rescue party pursued the abductors to no avail.
The Shawnee then sold Jemison to two Seneca sisters, who adopted her in a ceremony as
a replacement for their deceased brother. Her induction in the tribe allowed her all the
privileges of tribal membership, without prejudice. Despite her violent abduction,
Jemison underwent a peaceful conversion and chose to stay with the tribe for the
remainder of her life.
41
After an abduction, the captors set a furious pace and required the captives to
keep up or die, regardless of the prisoner’s sex or age; this rapid march was often
40
James Axtell, “The White Indians of Colonial America,” The William and Mary
Quarterly 32, no. 1 (January 1975): 58-60.
41
James Seaver, A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison (Canadigua, NY: J.D.
Bemis, 1824), 48, 60, 64-5.
19
necessary to escape pursuit. Once the captors and captives arrived at their destination,
the captors often determined whom to keep as members of the tribe through the ritual
running of the gauntlet. Returned captives described the ritual. The gauntlet required
that the captive run between two lines of tribal members that included men, women, and
oftentimes children, while being beat mercilessly by those on either side and having dirt
or sand thrown into their eyes.
[T]he whole village turned out to form a gauntlet from the entrance to the center
of the village and their captors ordered them to run through it. With ax handles,
tomahawks, hoop poles, clubs, and switches the Indians flogged the racing
captives as if to beat the whiteness out of them. . . ‘the young prisoners of Both
Sexes Escaped without’ or were rescued from any serious harm by one or more
villagers.
42
This running of the gauntlet happened in both the Iroquois Nation and the Shawnee tribe
to determine the worthiness of the initiate.
Children had to run in between two lines of the tribe’s children, who beat them
with switches, rather than a club or large stick used on the adult males. Women and
children captives traditionally did not receive as harsh of a beating in this ritual as the
men. John Bricknell related his experience as a 10-year-old captive stating, “a very big
Indian came up, and threw the company off me, and took me by the arm, and led me
through the lines…and was not once struck after he took me.”
43
After a captive made it successfully through the gauntlet, more rituals followed.
The individual then undressed and bathed as a symbol of cleansing their old life away,
and was given fresh Native American garments to signify their acceptance into the tribe
42
Axtell, The Invasion Within, 312.
43
Ibid., 312.
20
and as a symbol of rebirth. The running of the gauntlet and the ceremony afterward
applied to captives taken from enemy tribes, as well. These acts represented Native
American guardianship of their way of life and the desire to preserve their culture,
identity, and society.
44
The Native American treatment of captives varied widely, and at times, tribes
treated captives as little more than slaves revealing feelings of ethnic superiority among
the tribes. For example, when Mrs. Jennie Wiley became a captive in eastern Kentucky,
servitude was her only option during the months of captivity. Her story is a harrowing
account of her abduction and murder of her children. Wiley performed duties normally
given to the women in Native American villages, such as building fires, scavenging for
wood, preparing the food, and cooking it, while the male tribal members lounged,
occasionally hunted, and scouted. While in captivity, she also witnessed a European
American man being beaten and strongly suspected that the man had been burned alive,
but she did not witness it. Wiley wondered if she would suffer the same fate.
45
By the mid-1700s, the Native American way of life had changed markedly since
their first interaction with settlers.
46
Some tribes assimilated captives into all aspects of
tribal life and allowed them to contribute fully.
47
This constant contact between the
Native tribes and the European American settlers and captives, overall, eventually created
44
Ibid., 19.
45
William Elsey Connelley, The Founding of Harman’s Station: The Indian Captivity of
Mrs. Jennie Wiley (New York: The Torch Press, 1910), 5-12, 57, 60.
46
James H. O’Donnell, III, Southern Indians in the American Revolution (Knoxville, TN:
The University of Tennessee Press, 1973), viii.
47
Axtell, “The White Indians of Colonial America,” 60.
21
a unique frontier American cultural identity, which became evident in agricultural
practices, ways of dress, and gender roles.
Whether through friendship, conflict, or exploitation between the settlers and
Native tribes, settlement of the interior determined how American cultural and economic
integration transpired. The fur trade changed the economy, introducing imported
European goods that supplanted Native weapons, tools, and cloth. These goods
permanently changed hunting practices, modes of dress, and agricultural customs, and
Native American tribes became dependent on the colonizers.
Life on the frontier came easy to no one. Those men and women who made their
way westward did so at a price. Because of the open Native American hostility to settler
encroachment, the pioneers constantly lived in fear of captivity or death. Their drive for
autonomy overshadowed that fear, resulting in the constant surge west. The results of
pioneering into the interior and engaging with the Native tribes determined the nature and
characteristic of Americans throughout the West.
22
CHAPTER III
THE FRONTIER SETTLERS AND THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLE
The personal qualities European American settlers needed to endure and prosper
in a land full of dangers must have been decidedly different from those who chose to stay
in civilized areas. Meeting the challenge of settling into the hostile interior took resolve.
Pioneers learned of the risks that the frontier represented from reports of previous
explorations, settlement, and colonization. Effectively, this process of self-selection
forged a collective American identity on the frontier associated with hard-won existence
in an untamed land; Frederick Jackson Turner termed the process “Americanization.”
48
Turner argued that Americanization occurred on a line of expansion into the
interior of the North American continent. As settlers moved to that frontier, they
developed a new culture, as their civilization experienced a “continuous touch with the
simplicity of primitive society, furnish[ing] the forces dominating American character.”
49
If the pioneers living on this line of expansion neglected to adjust to their harsh new
environment, they would perish.
50
Ultimately, although Turner argued that settlers
48
Turner, The Frontier in American History, 3.
49
Ibid., 3.
50
Ibid., 4-5.
23
overcame Native American culture during westward expansion, he also demonstrated that
settlers adjusted to their new environment by adopting some Native American ways,
which would enable them to thrive in the West.
As pioneers adjusted to their new surroundings and worked to develop self-
sufficiency, the methods Native tribes employed to prevent further advancement into the
American frontier proved mostly ineffectual because of the sheer number of settlers. The
practice of increasing tribal numbers through assimilating captives into the tribe produced
insufficient results in compensating for death rates among the tribes. Instead, some
Native American practices began to contribute to the creation of a new cultural identity
among the growing number of settlers in the Ohio River Valley.
51
Settlers accepted these
contributions selectively.
Settlement into the Ohio River Valley began in earnest after the mid-eighteenth
century with settlers primarily of Scotch-Irish and German descent. The Atlantic coastal
region retained much of its English identity because the majority of settlers descended
from the initial English colonists. As more immigrants from Scotland, Ireland, and
Germany made their way to the North American colonies, their desire for cheap land
drove them toward the frontier. These non-English immigrants retained much of their
homeland’s culture while at the same time adapting to the established society of the
colonies. For example, Scotch-Irish immigrants brought their Celtic culture when they
settled the frontier regions. Considered moderately backwards by the British, the Scotch-
Irish became stalwart supporters of the American Revolution, as they were often
historically at odds with the Crown and moving to a new land did not change the Scotch-
51
Turner, The Frontier in American History, 4; White, The Middle Ground, xxvi.
24
Irish perspective. As settlement gained momentum, the migrants built forts as protection
from the Native American tribes and the British.
Pioneers cleared the land to establish farms, and vast forests allowed for the
construction of log cabins throughout the Eastern Woodlands.
52
The first home
construction was rudimentary because the settlers needed to plant and cultivate crops
before the first winter. Once the settler families cleared enough land for farming, they
expended efforts on building cabins that would better endure the onslaught of harsh
weather. Because of their relative distance from established communities, pioneers
depended on their ability to gather supplies and resources from their surroundings. As on
the east coast, women made many of the essentials used in the household, from candles to
textiles, and the sparseness of population on the frontier encouraged settlers to keep in
touch with neighbors whenever possible for support, community, and protection.
Forts in early Kentucky incorporated timbers taken from the surrounding area that
settlers used to form a “hollow square” that structured the outside walls of the fort.
53
The
crude dwellings built inside the square, “consisted of cabins, block-houses, and stockades
at a height of nine to twelve feet.”
54
Cabins lined one side of the inside of the fort, while
builders constructed block-houses at the corners above the top of the fort’s wall to serve
as a look-out point and to deter enemy attacks. Iron was always in short supply on the
52
“Encountering the First American West,” The First American West: The Ohio River
Valley, 1750-1820, accessed February 18, 2015,
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award99/icuhtml/fawsp/sp4.html .
53
Timothy Shay Arthur and William Henry Carpenter, The History of Kentucky: From
Its Earliest Settlement to the Present Time (Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott, Grambo, 1852), 28.
54
Ibid., 28.
25
frontier, and in general, construction of forts and the structures within did not include the
aid of “a single nail or spike of iron.”
55
The forts’ thick walls could potentially withstand
an onslaught of arrows and gunfire. However, they often proved vulnerable to British
cannons, especially 6-pounders.
56
This vulnerability to British cannons and the British
alliance with Native tribes prompted the surrender of a number of forts in the Kentucky
region during the American Revolution. Consequently, forts and stations did not
guarantee their inhabitants’ safety from Native American attacks.
The success and survival of communal forts depended on the fort’s construction,
the tenacity of the people within, and the persistence of the attackers. Basic survival
necessitated settlers regularly leaving the safety of the fort to hunt and fish, invariably
risking capture or murder. Conversely, many Native American habitations provided little
defense against the settlers’ weaponry. Because of their semi-nomadic lifestyle, local
tribes did not build fort structures similar to what the settlers had built. This made attacks
upon indigenous settlements less challenging for the settlers, especially when the Native
tribal defenders were not in residence.
The tribal region contributed to the construction of the dwelling. The Iroquois, a
tribe in the Old Northwest region, built palisades that surrounded their villages and
required the warriors to serve as lookouts for invaders.
57
The average Iroquois village
lasted about 10 years, after which soil depletion of the farmland surrounding the
55
Ibid., 29.
56
Edward Butts, Simon Girty: Wilderness Warrior (Toronto: Dundurn, 2011), 116.
57
Barbara A. McCall, The Iroquois (Vero Beach, FL: Rourke Publications, Inc., 1989),
11.
26
settlement rendered it unusable. At that point, the inhabitants sought out a new fertile
area to farm. Both the Iroquois and Huron, another Old Northwestern tribe, typically
built longhouses that housed several families and served as places for ceremonial
gatherings.
58
The wigwam constructed by Algonquian tribes in the woodland regions of
the Old Northwest, possessed a round top covered with “woven mats or birch bark rather
than skins,” and served as a structure many settlers encountered in Native American
villages in the northeast, such as the Seneca in Pennsylvania.
59
The Shawnee in the
southeast built their wigwams with wooden frames covered either with animal hides or
mats from sheets of bark from a birch or elm tree.
60
The Cherokee of the southeastern
woodlands built their wattle and daub homes by “weaving rivercane, wood, and vines
into a frame, then coating the frame with plaster.”
61
The thatched roof consisted of either
grass or bark shingles, and was intended for living in one area for an extended length of
time, although not permanently, similar to the semi-nomadic lifestyles of the Iroquois.
62
This allowed the Cherokee to move on when the game or soil had been depleted.
With support from friendly Native American tribes and already established
settlements, pioneers learned skills needed to thrive and survive on the frontier.
Depending on their regional European origins, some of the fundamental adeptness came
58
Candy Moulton, Everyday Life Among the American Indians: 1800 to 1900
(Cincinnati, OH: Writer's Digest Books, 2001), 167.
59
Moulton, Everyday Life Among the American Indians, 167; Seaver, A Narrative of the
Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison, 60.
60
Clark, The Shawnee, 43.
61
“Native American Houses,” accessed March 15, 2015, http://www.native-
languages.org/houses.htm.
62
Ibid.
27
from actual knowledge when fighting against enemies in their homeland, but much of the
expertise needed for life on the frontier originated from the teachings of Native
Americans, such as frontiersmen learning the ways of Native American tribes. This
contributed to a successful settlement in America. Although not necessarily peaceful
peoples, with their constant warfare between enemy Native tribes and European
Americans, Native Americans often taught settlers to live off the land by showing them
methods of hunting, farming, fishing, and building appropriate to the American
landscape. Native Americans used the bow and arrow, the tomahawk, the spear, and
eventually the musket or rifle when hunting or warring. The tomahawk, similar to the
axe and consisting of a wooden handle and a stone or metal blade, was adopted by
settlers as a tool for warfare.
As a new generation of settlers and small farmers sought to expand into the
interior region of the Ohio River Valley, civilization in the eastern seaboard colonies no
longer defined American identity. Those colonials on the east coast had grown used to an
urban way of living, which was very unlike life on the American frontier. The men and
women new to the frontier line learned tribal ways and took off “the garments of
civilization.”
63
Accommodating the rough environment, pioneer men adopted dress that
was most practical, such as moccasins of deerskin and often a coonskin cap, breechclout,
and a shirt hanging loose that reached mid-thigh. However, women most often kept the
modest mode of dress appropriate to European dictates and their cultural origins, such as
a dress and petticoat, although most of the time they adopted a more practical and shorter
63
Maude Ward Lafferty, “Destruction of Ruddle’s and Martin’s Forts in the
Revolutionary War,” The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 54, no. 189 (October 1956):
300.
28
version because of the workload. Women kept to the expected dress norms of European
styles and propriety, only altering it to the extent of regional practicality. Having recently
migrated from the more settled coastal areas, they carried with them the gendered
conventions of domesticity.
64
While they retained those expectations regarding their roles, however, their
behaviors changed. To survive on the frontier, women took on extraordinary
responsibilities. The skills they learned while still in the bounds of established urban
society formed the basis of their ability to endure on the frontier, but the essential
knowledge and skills they acquired during their time forging into the interior assisted in
the success of new settlements. These women cooked, sewed, reared their families, and
managed their households and gardens, and protected the homestead often without the aid
of their male counterparts. As frontier settlers, they also assisted in raising crops and
clearing fields, building homes, hunting for wild game, chopping wood, fishing, and
making many of the supplies necessary to live with some semblance of comfort.
65
Spiritual and religious beliefs held by settlers and Native Americans in the Ohio
River Valley region differed significantly. Most of these Native American societies were
polytheistic, although with the worship of one central Supreme Being along with lesser
deities. The main spiritual being was often known as the “Great Spirit,” but was also
referred to by other names depending on the tribe.
66
Because these beliefs did not derive
64
Ibid.
65
Fowler, Woman on the American Frontier, 18.
66
C. C. Trowbridge, Shawnese Tradition: C. C. Trowbridge’s Account (Ann Arbor, MI:
University of Michigan Press, 1938), 56.
29
from Christianity, many settlers deemed Native American religion as inconsequential,
and, at times akin to devil worship. Most settlers, in general, had come from the
Christian tradition, and for them, no other form of worship was acceptable. Conflicting
religious beliefs and understandings of morality caused the settlers to judge themselves as
spiritually and morally superior to the indigenous people. In response, many Native
American societies kept their religious practices to themselves to protect their
“communal identity” from Christian persecution. To retain their cultural and spiritual
beliefs, Native American tribes secretly practiced their faith even before tribal
displacements in the early 1800s.
67
During the mid-1700s, Native Americans developed a shared commonality that
further separated them from the European American settlers, who by this time identified
themselves as white. Indigenous peoples rejected “Laws and Customs,” particularly
Christianity, of the settlers and tried to reinstate the purity of their societies and spiritual
dominion within the Native tribes. As settlement into the Southeastern woodlands
increased, so did Native American resistance to European American ways, thus unifying
tribal identities against settlers. As a Native American movement of resistance against
the incoming tide of settlement increased, indigenous peoples continued to separate
themselves from settlers.
68
Along the frontier, settlers occasionally sought to assimilate the indigenous
67
Lee Irwin, Native American Spirituality: A Critical Reader (Lincoln, NE: University
of Nebraska Press, 2000), 1, 307.
68
Sean P. Harvey, "Ideas of Race in Early America," Oxford Research Encyclopedia of
American History, April 2016, accessed June 11, 2017,
http://americanhistory.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.001.0001/acrefore-
9780199329175-e-262.
30
peoples by introducing Christianity with the expectation of conversion. This conversion
process caused numerous Native American societies and religious practices to become
lost and virtually forgotten. In Kentucky, however, the Christian settlers had little
interest in converting the Native Americans during the latter part of the 1700s and
possessed slight regard for Native American spiritual practices. Instead, their primary
interests were survival, making a living on the frontier, and land acquisition despite
Native tribal occupation or utilization of those lands.
Christianity came to the shores of North America as soon as the first European
ship landed. Because the New World offered opportunity for religious freedoms, the
immigrants brought their belief systems with them. The diversity of the immigrants and
the vastness of the continent contributed to the numerous Christian belief systems.
Evangelicalism, which is salvation by grace, began to take hold in the colonies as
preachers spread the Protestant message. Anglican preacher George Whitefield traveled
throughout the American colonies in the 1740s and helped to change the religious
landscape of North America to a personal “heartfelt” experience and not the solemn
practices associated with more formal religions.
69
Whitefield’s rhetoric aided in the
commencement of North America’s Great Awakening in a series of revivals. Many
Scotch-Irish who settled the Southeastern Woodlands practiced Presbyterianism, a
Protestant religion founded in Scotland during the 1500s by John Knox. Methodism
gained momentum in America after the Revolution with “standards of piety, worship, and
service,” which heavily influenced religious life in America.
70
Founded in England by
69
Mark A. Noll, Protestants in America (New York, NY: Oxford University Press,
2000), 33, 50.
70
Ibid., 48.
31
John Wesley in the early eighteenth century, early Methodist missionaries spread their
message to the Native Americans and attempted to convince the indigenous people of
their immorality and sinfulness.
71
Baptists who celebrate the fact that belief in Jesus
Christ assures salvation and eternal fellowship with a loving God, also made up a large
portion of people that settled on the frontier line.
72
Religious movements in America allowed converts to believe in “self-respect,
instilling hope, purpose, meaning, and identity” to which older formal religion did not
subscribe.
73
The Americas were “extraordinary” in the diversity of religions that made
their way to their shores which “made the United States one of the world’s most dynamic
societies.”
74
Nevertheless, survival remained more important on the frontier in Kentucky
than converting Native Americans to the Christian doctrine.
In 1779 John Taylor, Joseph Reding, Lewis Lunsford, and several other ministers
visited Kentucky, but owing to the constant alarms from Indian depredations there
seemed to be but little interest manifested for religion, and but few opportunities
for preaching.
75
It was not until after the American Revolution that most Protestant religions began to
71
Robert F. Berkhofer, Salvation and the Savage: An Analysis of Protestant Missions and
American Indian Response (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 1965), 52-3; Dee E.
Andrews, The Methodists and Revolutionary America, 1760-1800 (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2004), 16.
72
“10 Facts You Should Know About American Baptists,” American Baptist Churches
USA, 2017, accessed June 17, 2017, http://www.abc-usa.org/10facts/.
73
Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity, (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 1989), 58.
74
Noll, Protestants in America, 8.
75
William B. Allen, A History of Kentucky, Embracing Gleanings (Louisville, KY:
Bradley & Gilbert Publishers, 1872), 176.
32
proliferate in the Kentucky region.
76
The foreign concept of Native American spirituality contributed to the sense of a
Native American otherness in European perceptions of the Americas. This otherness was
complicated by the fact that Native American religions were as diverse as their languages
and cultures. Ultimately, though, that diversity exerted little influence on the European
sense of superiority. When Native Americans did convert to Christianity, the settlers
expected the converts to freely abandon their old spiritual practices. In contrast, Native
Americans did not always demand the same concession from their captives.
Native American spirituality commonly consisted of a communion of the self
with the intangible. Essentially, they had an intrinsic faith in the interdependence
between the individual and others, the connection of one with a Supreme Being and with
the spirit of the land and all living things. Native Americans tended not to focus on the
self as a separate entity, but instead they saw the self as an element of the whole. The
spiritual journey was a deeply personal endeavor, requiring individuals of many
indigenous faiths to seek guidance through trials, meditation, and a communion with the
spirit realm, through which the individual would evolve into a more enlightened member
of the tribe. Thus, spirituality in Native American societies preserved an individual’s
encompassing belief that he or she made up a small part of the earthly and etheric realms.
The Shawnee and Iroquois, two tribes that traversed the Kentucky region, subscribed to
this belief system.
77
Another aspect of spirituality among Native societies, and more specifically the
76
Ibid., vi, 170-235.
77
Irwin, Native American Spirituality, 11.
33
Shawnee of southeastern woodlands, involved a belief in ghosts or restless spirits of the
dead.
78
The Shawnee felt a “deep obligation to the souls of their dead.”
79
If the deceased
family and friends did not offer proper deference to their dead loved one, such as
“making a dance,” or “a feast” in his or her honor, the survivors would suffer the anger of
the disquieted spirit until such acknowledgement was made.
80
Spirituality contains elements of religion, just as religion possesses a component
of spirituality, although they differ enough to make distinctions. The Christian faith
retains some elements of spirituality, but it focuses less on interconnectedness with the
physical world and to one another. Christianity centers on the Christian God and the
belief that His “only begotten” son “was crucified under Pontius Pilate; suffered, died,
and was buried” for the forgiveness of our sins against God and against one another.
81
This belief influenced much of Western culture, as Christianity focused more on the self
and his or her relationship with God and emphasized a strict moral code.
The Iroquois worshipped a central deity, the “Great Spirit,” along with other
deities. They also believed in the presence of evil spirits, who delivered malevolent
tragedy upon people. Like the Iroquois Nation, the Shawnee’s Supreme Being “the Great
Spirit or Grandmother” also acknowledged other lesser divine beings present in their
78
Ibid., 53-54.
79
Stephen Warren, The Worlds the Shawnees Made: Migration and Violence in Early
America (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2014), 72.
80
Irwin, Native American Spirituality, 54.
81
“The Nicene Creed,” accessed March 15, 2015,
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/credo.htm .
34
lives.
82
These tribal beliefs are significant in the Kentucky region, as both the Iroquois
and Shawnee traversed much of the southern land west of the Appalachians nomadically
and warred upon each other there.
Both Native Americans and European Americans used rituals to induct people
into their faith. In some tribes, new initiates washed in a cleansing ritual as a symbol of
renewal and acceptance into the tribe. The basic procedure for Christians came from the
act of baptism or christening, a process of immersing the supplicant in water, or the act of
pouring blessed water over the head.
83
This ceremonial tradition, in some denominations,
absolves the supplicant of original sin. In Christianity, if one is to achieve salvation,
baptism is required. For the most part, the act of baptism in Christianity represented the
individual’s acceptance of Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior and rejection of the
supremacy of the physical self. Baptism embodies a religious Christian ritual and article
of faith regarded as a sacrament or a sign of grace, in which people “are freed from sin
and reborn.”
84
The procedures of indoctrination into either culture were significantly different,
according to one’s culture and spiritual beliefs. Ultimately, Native Americans and
settlers constantly observed a divergent method of worship, with religion and spirituality
playing a large part of cultural introduction into either society. Most individuals
remained steadfast in their original faith even with the contact, but at times, some
converted to the opposing belief system, whether European American or Native
82
Clark, The Shawnee, 49.
83
“The Sacrament of Baptism,” accessed April 2, 2015,
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p2s2c1a1.htm.
84
Ibid.
35
American.
People on the frontier learned from and adapted to conditions the environment
posed. Little did the Native Americans know that their generosity would lead to constant
settler intrusion onto their lands. Both European and Native cultures borrowed from one
another to adjust to the changes that quickly engulfed the North American landscape
during settlement of the region west of the Appalachians. Each culture took on aspects of
the other culture acquiring new facets to survive in new social, political, and
topographical environments. However, most Native American tribes chose to resist the
onslaught of settlers by opposing some European American ways, and borrowing from
others in order to subsist alongside the new arrivals.
36
CHAPTER IV
MILITARY EXPEDITIONS IN THE WESTERN FRONTIER
The American West, especially the land between the Ohio and the Mississippi
Rivers, was a significant theater in the American Revolution. Many histories of the war,
however, have neglected the importance of the western lands.
85
Often allied with the
British, Native Americans played a major role in fighting along the frontier line against
the rebels. Many Native tribes occupying the western region attacked European
American settlements, attempting to discourage further settlement in the lower Ohio
River Valley. Reclaiming sole possession of the Old Northwest remained their goal.
The French and Indian War in North America, which was part of the larger Seven
Years’ War between England and France, brought these European nations and the Native
American tribes into conflict in the bid for occupation of the Ohio River Valley. The
struggles between the Native tribes and the British escalated after the French surrendered
their forts in the Old Northwest according to terms of the Treaty of Paris (1763). In
addition, dissent between the British Empire and the settlers over land increased when the
British Crown limited colonial expansion west of the Appalachians with the Proclamation
of 1763. Nevertheless, land speculators encouraged colonists to buy land to establish
85
O’Donnell, Southern Indians in the American Revolution, vii.
37
farms, forts, and stations in the Ohio River Valley, and settlers moved only when
imperial forces forced them to do so. This incursion onto Native American lands further
exacerbated relations between the British and the colonists and between colonists and
Native Americans. When the colonies declared independence, those worsening relations
exploded into war. But even though many potential settlers became reluctant to move
into the interior during the American Revolution, the constant raids and warfare only
temporarily slowed expansion.
86
Many of the tribes that had aided the French during the French and Indian War
continued to fight even after the war had ended. In the spring of 1763, Pontiac led a
Native American coalition that captured numerous British forts in the region. In an
attempt to placate the Native tribes, King George III issued the Proclamation of 1763,
angering colonists who wanted new land beyond the boundary line. As tensions among
colonists, Crown, and Native tribes deteriorated, the British lacked sufficient military
forces to enforce the proclamation, and colonists continued westward.
87
When the American Revolution erupted twelve years later, His Majesty's
government assured Native American tribes that they would retain the rights to their
lands if they sided with the British, aggravating an already tense situation. Almost
everywhere along the western frontier, fighting occurred between the rebels and the
British-Native American alliance. As the frontier fighting dragged on, it got more
86
Alan Taylor, “1763: Pontiac’s War: A Great Lakes Indian Rebellion Against the
British Changed the Balance Forever Between Indian and Colonist,” American Heritage
Publishing 59, no. 4 (Winter 2010): 30.
87
O’Donnell, Southern Indians in the American Revolution, 30; Taylor, “1763: Pontiac’s
War,” 30.
38
expensive; continual loss of life and resources only aggravated hostilities toward the
western tribes.
88
Commanding the “irregular militia” in 1775 from Kentucky’s “parent state,”
Virginia, Colonel George Rogers Clark proposed an expedition to capture major British
military posts north of the Ohio River in Illinois country.
89
This Illinois Campaign
captured the British strongholds of Kaskaskia and Vincennes and took Fort Detroit’s
British Governor Henry Hamilton as prisoner at Vincennes in 1779. Clark’s role in the
region contributed to the success of frontier communities, although this expenditure
weakened the already overextended Continental Army.
In 1780, the British planned a strategy to retake the West from the Gulf of Mexico
to the Canadian borders. British troops and their Native American allies attacked
Ruddle’s and Martin’s stations in Kentucky, seeking to solidify the Crown’s hold on the
West. The expedition that left Fort Detroit under the command of Captain Henry Bird
included hundreds of Native American allies including “Delawares, Hurons, Wyandots,
Ottawas, Chippawaa, Tawas, Miamis, and Potwatomies” who intended to retaliate against
the settlers for burning Native villages and crops in the Old Northwest during the late
1770s.
90
One western theater participant in the war was turncoat Simon Girty, who took
88
Taylor, “1763: Pontiac’s War,” 17.
89
George Rogers Clark, Col. George Rogers Clark’s Sketch of His Campaign in the
Illinois in 1778-1779 (Cincinnati, OH: Robert Clarke & Co., 1869), 10, 17.
90
Don Lee and Martha Pelfrey, “British Attacks Against Ruddle’s & Martin’s Stations in
June 1780,” The Ruddlesforter: Quarterly of the Ruddell and Martin Stations Historical
Association 1, no. 1 (Summer 1999): 2.
39
charge of these Native American forces on Captain Bird’s expedition to attack the two
Kentucky forts that were situated a few miles southeast of current day Cynthiana,
Kentucky on the South Licking River. A native of Pennsylvania, Girty grew up on the
frontier in the mid-1700s.
91
The Delaware captured him as a teenager and later traded
him to the Seneca, who released him at the end of the French and Indian War. After his
return to society, Girty endured ridicule for his inability to acclimate; he had adopted
more Delaware and Seneca ways than the community felt comfortable accepting. His
experience with the tribes, however, gave him the language skills and cultural knowledge
that made him a good interpreter for the British during the Revolution. Girty and his
brothers, James and George, joined the British forces and fought primarily in the West,
following the Bird expedition into Kentucky.
92
As Bird’s expedition journeyed south on the Great Miami River, a tributary of the
Ohio River, additional Shawnee joined their party. In all, the expedition included
approximately twelve hundred fifty men, with a Native American majority.
93
In a letter
to his superior, British Major Arent S. De Peyster, Bird illustrates the ease with which
Ruddle’s was taken by threat of the “Six Pounder.”
94
The Three Pounder was not sufficient, our people raised a battery of rails & earth
within 80 yards of the fort-taking some advantage of a very violent storm of rain
which prevented them being seen clearly-They stood two discharges of the little
gun, which only cut down a spar and stuck the shot in the side of a house-When
91
Butts, Simon Girty, 21.
92
Ibid., 11, 31, 41, 68, 127; Allan W. Eckert, The Frontiersmen: A Narrative (Ashland,
KY: Jesse Stuart Foundation, 2001), 219.
93
Eckert, The Frontiersmen, 218-19.
94
Captain Bird to Major De Peyster, July 1, 1780 in the “Haldimand Papers,” Historical
Collections: Collections and Researches Made by the Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society,
vol. XIX (Lansing, MI: Robert Smith & Co., State Printers and Binders, 1892), 538-9.
40
they saw the Six Pounder moving across the field, they immediately
surrendered.
95
Captain Isaac Ruddle, the man who established the station, surrendered under the
condition that the women and children receive British protection and not suffer
molestation by the intruders.
96
Bird agreed to the conditions proposed by Ruddle’s
surrender, but unfortunately when the gates opened to the invaders, Bird was unable to
control the situation. Having little patience for a siege the Native warriors rushed into the
fort violating the terms of surrender, claiming prisoners, and killing civilians. As Captain
Alexander McKee, who maintained a close association with the Girtys and accompanied
the expedition observed.
The Indian chiefs agreed to the proposals, as well for the preservation of the
prisoners as an equal distribution of the plunder amongst their several nations, to
prevent jealousies or dissatisfaction, but the violence of the Lake Indians in
seizing the Prisoners, contrary to agreement, threw everything into confusion.
97
In the violence following the surrender, Ruddle saw his three-year-old son being ripped
from his wife Elizabeth’s arms and then thrown in the fire to die. Native American
warriors captured Ruddle, his wife, and their surviving children. Their young sons,
Stephen and Abraham, remained captives of the Shawnee, while their parents made their
way north with the other prisoners into Canada.
98
After attacking Martin’s Station, which surrendered without opposition, British
95
Ibid.
96
Thomas D. Clark, ed., The Voice of the Frontier: John Bradford’s Notes on Kentucky
(Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 1993), 35.
97
Captain Alexander McKee to Major Arent De Peyster, July 8, 1780, in the “Haldimand
Papers,” Historical Collections: Collections and Researches Made by the Michigan Pioneer and
Historical Society, 542.
98
Lafferty, “Destruction of Ruddle’s and Martin’s Forts,” 316-17.
41
troops gathered the fifty survivors and marched them north to Detroit. Martin’s Station
inhabitants did not suffer the atrocities visited upon the settlers at Ruddle’s Station. Bird
hurried the pace of the retreat to avoid being intercepted by Clark’s forces as news spread
of the attacks upon the Kentucky forts.
99
Also in the letter to his superior, Major De
Peyster, Captain Bird related the story of the march north as having been extremely
difficult for many of the captives: “I marched the poor women & children 20 miles in one
day over very high mountains, frightening them with frequent alarms to push them
forward.”
100
As the British party drove them northward over and through hundreds of
miles of wilderness toward Detroit, those who failed to keep up with the party’s set pace
risked being scalped and killed by their Native American captors. James Morrow, one of
the captives, noted that one of the Native elders stated, “the Great Spirit would be angry
because they had scalped so many infants.”
101
Clark was unable to catch or intercept
Bird, leaving the captives to their fates and many were dispersed among Bird’s Native
American allies.
In 1782, Clark gathered another one thousand men and led an attack upon the
Indian towns of the Scioto and Miami on the banks of the Ohio River. Though there was
little loss of life among the Native Americans, their towns “were reduced to ashes, and all
99
Lee and Pelfrey, “British Attacks Against Ruddle’s & Martin’s Stations,” 3; Scott
Holland Goodnight, “The Good(k)night (Guknecht) Family in America,” Register of Kentucky
State Historical Society 33, no. 105 (1935): 336; J. Norman Heard, Handbook of the American
Frontier: Four Centuries of Indian-White Relationships, vol. I, The Southeastern Woodlands
(Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1987): 42.
100
Captain Henry Bird to Major Arent De Peyster, July 1, 1780, in the “Haldimand
Papers,” Historical Collections: Collections and Researches Made by the Michigan Pioneer and
Historical Society, 539.
101
Lafferty, “Destruction of Ruddle’s and Martin’s Forts,” 313.
42
their provisions destroyed.”
102
Clark, a “brilliant tactician in wilderness warfare,” used
Native American guerrilla tactics to gain American control of the Illinois region.
103
His
attacks on Indian villages during that 1782 campaign -- reprisals for the Ruddle’s and
Martin’s Station assaults -- contributed to the Native American refusal to participate in
attacks against the frontier settlements in Kentucky for the remainder of the American
Revolution.
Ultimately, settlers had established more than the two stations taken by the Bird
expedition, which helped expansion in the West after the Revolution. The rebels could
not have faced the Native American foe by marching on a battlefield as typical European
warfare dictated at the time. Clark and Girty represented the unique adaptation of
frontier-style fighting that existed during settlement in the interior of North America.
The military tactics the settlers had learned, either directly or indirectly from the Native
tribes, aided them in keeping their hold on the western frontier and in delivering
retribution on the Native tribes.
102
Clark, Col. George Rogers Clark's Sketch, 20.
103
Butts, Simon Girty, 88.
43
CHAPTER V
STORIES OF ABDUCTION
Captivity represented one the most intimate, yet involuntary contacts between the
Native tribes and settlers. A captive’s introduction to Native society contributed to the
cultural merging that was occurring on the frontier. Captors targeted both sexes and all
age groups, although most captives were women. Stories of captivity abound from the
era of colonization, as freed women began publishing their captivity experiences for the
reading public. These stories provide a perspective of the intricate and sometimes
unwelcome negotiations of the middle ground.
Social propriety regarding women’s purity and chastity lent to details of their
captivity being withheld because of the damage an in-depth narrative would have on their
reputations.
104
Men authored numerous biographical tales of female captivity,
contributing to a male bias in the existing literature and hiding the women’s voices. For
example, one source text, Captured by the Indians: 15 Firsthand Accounts, 1750-1870,
includes 13 accounts of male captivity and only two female. Essentially, even though
more women became captives, their voices remained much less influential and accurate
104
Sarah Hawkes, "Captivity Narratives: Exploring Motives of the Capturers and
Captives," US History Scene, last modified 2015, accessed February 8, 2015,
www.ushistoryscene.com/uncategorized/captivitynarratives/.
44
in the telling of their stories compared to their male counterparts. Regardless of the
authorship and sex of the captives, however, the stories contain a similar underlying
theme: what life was like while being held captive by a people of an alien culture.
Matthew Brayton, a settler abductee at the beginning of 1800s, related his story of
captivity among numerous tribes before returning to his family years later. In his
memoir, The Indian Captive: A Narrative of the Adventures and Sufferings of Matthew
Brayton, in his Thirty-Four Years of Captivity Among the Indians of North-Western
America, he narrates his story. Brayton became a captive at the age of seven while
accompanying his older brother, William Brayton, in the search for stray cattle. Matthew
became tired and started making his way to a neighbor’s house alone in northwestern
Ohio and was captured.
105
Brayton’s experience is an example of abduction without violence. During his
“first seven or eight years” of captivity, his captives traded him numerous times among
various tribes.
106
His recollection of these experiences remained sparse, and he readily
admits that his telling of the events relied on accounts from the tribal members involved
in his trading. His travels took him to many regions in the Northwest and up into
Canada. Brayton spent the majority of his life among different Native tribes. His
memoirs detail the differences in culture his Native American captors impressed upon
him from an early age, especially the diversity of work requirements between the sexes.
His observations of Native cultural conventions revealed differences in cultural standards
105
Matthew Brayton, The Indian Captive: A Narrative of the Adventures and Sufferings
of Matthew Brayton, in his Thirty-Four Years of Captivity Among the Indians of North-Western
America (Cleveland, OH: Fairbanks, Benedict & Co., 1860), 5-7.
106
Ibid., 11.
45
of the settlers.
107
The men do nothing but hunt and fight, leaving the women and captives to do the
drudgery. The women are very hard worked, having to collect wood for fires, cut
up the game, carry the heavy burdens and the other work which the warrior
considers beneath his dignity to perform. They are very hardy and can perform
with ease labors which many white men would shrink from.
108
Often life on the frontier required settler women to take on the same workload as the
Native American women in performing these duties. In this, the pioneer female carried
out much of the same workload as their Native American counterparts.
The Winnebago, Sioux, and Chippewa sold Brayton several times before his final
adoption into the Snake tribe in the upper Ohio River Valley region. Since he no longer
remembered, Brayton’s curiosity about his origins pushed him to inquire about it from
the chief, O-wash-kah-ke-naw. The chief told Brayton of Brayton’s background, and this
led to his eventual return to his family after thirty-four years, thus abandoning his Native
American wife and their two children.
Brayton’s desire to return to society after years with Native tribes happened
frequently among captives, but some abductees, such as Mary Jemison, chose to remain.
Abducted on the southern Pennsylvania frontier during her early teen years in 1755,
Jemison remained among the Seneca tribe even after repeated chances to return to
society. She related the events of her “almost seventy years” among the Seneca tribe to
Dr. James Seaver, who authored her story.
109
At the time of the interview, Jemison still
dressed in the Native American manner and her religious beliefs corresponded with the
107
Ibid., 11-12.
108
Ibid., 20.
109
Seaver, A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison, 4, 18.
46
Seneca making Jemison was a veritable example of the melding of cultures.
110
Jemison barely remembered her original captors, “The Indians by whom I was
taken were a party of Shawnees, if I remember right, that lived, when at home, a long
distance down the Ohio.”
111
The Shawnee and their French companions captured her
mother and father, and three of her siblings. A rescue party pursued the Shawnee who
murdered and scalped her parents and siblings, but the would-be rescuers were unable to
catch the Shawnee. Two Seneca sisters adopted her in a ceremony after she arrived at
Fort Pitt as a replacement for their deceased brother. Her induction in the Seneca tribe
allowed her all the privileges of tribal membership, without prejudice, and Jemison
stated, “I was ever considered and treated by them as a real sister, the same as though I
had been born of their mother.”
112
Jemison married Sheninjee, “according to Indian custom,” at the behest of one her
Seneca sisters. She shared a good marriage with Sheninjee and soon conceived her first
child.
113
Because of her marriage and the children she had while with the Seneca tribe,
she was reluctant to return to her family. She knew that her society of origin would not
accept her children as their Seneca relatives did, and so she continued in the life to which
she was accustomed. Her choice to stay still resonated with her at the time of her
interview with Dr. Seaver.
My son, Thomas, was anxious that I should go; and offered to go with me and
assist me on the journey… But the Chiefs of our tribe, suspecting from his
110
Ibid., 22, 26.
111
Ibid., 58.
112
Ibid., 48, 60, 65.
113
Ibid., 72-3.
47
appearance, actions, and a few warlike exploits, that Thomas would be a great
warrior, or a good counselor, refused to let him leave them on any account
whatever.
To go myself, and leave him, was more than I felt able to do; for he had been kind
to me, and was one on whom I placed great dependence. The Chiefs refusing to
let him go, was one reason for my resolving to stay; but another, more powerful,
if possible, was, that I had got a large family of Indian children, that I must take
with me; and that if I should be so fortunate as to find my relatives, they would
despise them, if not myself; and treat us as enemies; or, at least with a degree of
cold indifference, which I thought I could not endure.
114
Jemison retained some memory of her life among her family of origin, but most of her
adult life spent with the Seneca taught her their culture and society. She gave birth to
eight children and gave all of them Christian names. By choosing Christian names but
staying with the Seneca tribe, Jemison again embodied the notion of cultural melding on
the “middle ground.” She alone took on aspects of Native culture while keeping concepts
important to her, such as her Christian upbringing in naming her children. Thus, Jemison
is a personification of integrating European Americans and Native Americans culturally
on the middle ground.
A significantly different experience of captivity was that of Mrs. Jennie Wiley.
Her account is of an extremely traumatic abduction with little or no conscious cultural
negotiation. In 1790, Wiley became captive of a party of eleven Cherokee, Shawnee,
Wyandot, and Delaware in eastern Kentucky. Her husband had left early on the morning
of the abduction to sell ginseng and other products; remaining at home were Jennie’s
brother and the couple’s four children, the youngest of whom was about fifteen months
old. The Wileys’ neighbor offered the family a place to stay while her husband was
absent and she agreed. Always on the lookout for trouble in the area, Jennie quickly fed
114
Ibid., 152-3.
48
and watered the animals in preparation for her absence. Unfortunately, she lingered too
long, and at about four that afternoon, the attackers invaded her home.
115
She watched helplessly as they attacked her children and brother, striking them
with their tomahawks and killing them. Only the youngest of her children survived the
attack because of her diligence in protecting him. The Shawnee chief admired her
tenacity and spared her and her child’s life claiming them as his captives. Jennie then
helplessly witnessed the scalping of her slain children and brother. Her captivity by the
Shawnee chief was to replace “his daughter who had recently died, the last of his
children.”
116
The Native American party set out from the Wiley homestead at a rapid pace to
avoid rescue parties, and Wiley feared that if she could not keep up with her captures, her
child would be murdered. However, her slow pace resulted in her child’s murder; she
helplessly watched as one of the attackers bashed the child’s head against a tree and
scalped him. Wiley also hid her pregnancy from her captors for as long as possible, for
fear it would result in her death; but they allowed her to keep her newborn while
spending the winter in camp. She lived alone in a small rock house with her baby until
the onset of spring when the Shawnee decided to leave the winter camp.
117
At the age of “three moons,” the Shawnee chief put Wiley’s baby boy through a
test that supposedly all Shawnee male babies underwent. The baby failed the test when
he started crying while floating on the river strapped to a piece of bark. Wiley rescued
115
Connelley, The Founding of Harman’s Station, 36-37.
116
Ibid., 37-39.
117
Ibid., 43, 46, 49.
49
her child from the river, but the Shawnee killed and scalped him anyway.
118
During her time with her captors, Wiley witnessed the beating of a European
American male captive but did not witness his demise, though she assumed he was
burned at the stake and she wondered if she would suffer the same fate. After showing
her Native American captors little fear of death at their hands, the Cherokee chief bought
her from the Shawnee chief, although his demeanor was less accommodating than the
Shawnee chief. She remained a captive for about 11 months until the time of escape
presented itself and she made her way back to her husband to live in Virginia. Her
experiences as a captive reveal the least favorable conditions an abductee could
experience. Wiley was little more than a servant to her captors who abducted her and
never became a member of any of the tribes responsible for her captivity. In this
instance, the will to accommodate failed. These Native tribal members showed little
interest in meeting the settlers on the middle ground as shown by the violence of Wiley’s
abduction.
119
The narratives of captivity relate very different stories depending on numerous
factors, including the tribes participating and the reasons for securing a captive.
Nonetheless, each individual underwent an intimate exposure to Native American society
and culture. Not all captives experienced deplorable conditions, and some of the events
afforded the captive some measure of stability and happiness, such as Jemison’s life
among the Seneca. Brayton also achieved some measure of happiness in marrying and
having a family. In general, if the captive and Native American captors met culturally
118
Ibid., 49-50.
119
Ibid., 58-61, 76.
50
with some semblance of regard and understanding, then life became much more tolerable.
Regardless of individual experience, living along the frontier line made settlers
vulnerable to captivity, an experience that contributed to the melding of settler and
indigenous culture.
51
CHAPTER VI
CONCLUSION
The settlers accommodated the wants and needs of the Native American tribes
when that accommodation suited their purpose, but as settlement accelerated, the
interaction often became violent. The constant contact between the cultures created a
unique cultural identity. Few European American settlements remained untouched by
frontier Native American interaction in the western regions. Whether the contact was
violent or peaceful, settlers encountered Native American tribes frequently enough that a
collective culture emerged.
To state that equal parts from each divergent society endured to create a new
society would be untrue. However, these cultures and societies contributed, albeit
disproportionately, to produce a unique American culture as more settlers overtook
Native American lands. Even as they displaced the tribes, migrating settlers incorporated
aspects of Native American culture into their own, and in return, the Native tribes took on
facets of European American culture as well. Essentially, the settlers failed to obliterate
Native American societies, although they frequently drove them from their ancestral
lands.
The drive to seek autonomy in the American West facilitated settlers to
incorporate measures to overcome numerous uncertainties that the frontier held. Whether
52
their relations with the Native American tribes were friendly or hostile, the skills they
learned on the frontier enabled the migrants to persevere throughout the West.
Conversely, many Native American tribes learned settler ways that helped them to persist
as a people on the North American continent, such as language, trade customs, use of
European weaponry, and politics. Most times, this process entailed assimilation into
European American society and conversion to Christianity; however, countless Native
Americans sought to keep their traditions and succeeded in preventing the total
annihilation of their culture.
Warfare along the frontier took on aspects of both Native American and European
American cultures. People of European descent no longer only met on the battlefield
facing the enemy, but instead they used tactics learned from their Native American
counterparts, especially in wooded areas. Native Americans acquired weapons from the
settlers, such as muskets and rifles, and learned from their experiences with the British
military how to use the weapons to lay siege to frontier stations and forts.
To survive in the unsettled environment, pioneer women supported their families
and homes with responsibilities that would have been relegated to their husbands and
fathers, had they remained in the settled East. They learned skills, such as wielding guns,
sowing crops, and cutting wood. Often the men in these settler families left to perform
military service, and women remained as the main defenders of their homes and families.
Many times, however, the aptitude to survive proved overwhelming because of the
numbers of Native Americans participating in the attacks.
Native American attempts to recover tribal members lost to war and disease
unintentionally changed settler culture, as captives learned about and experienced Native
53
American culture and society. Settlers normally did not adhere to the Native American
way of life after returning to their original society, but they learned Native American
languages and at times became more sympathetic to the plight of the Native American
tribes. Some captives retained no affinity towards their captors, especially if their capture
entailed killing the majority of their family members. Another factor in assimilation into
Native American culture depended on the time spent in captivity and whether offspring
resulted from the union. The younger the captive, the more likely they were incorporated
into their captor’s culture. Ultimately, the ideal captive was a child, teen, or woman.
The process of expansion into the West forever altered Native American and
European American cultures by incorporating characteristics that aided each culture to
survive. One of the main corridors in the Southeastern Woodlands, the Cumberland Gap,
facilitated the spread of European Americans seeking personal autonomy in America’s
western region. Without the constant proximity to Native Americans, development of the
interior would have been much less perilous. However, because these divergent cultures
came together on the western American frontier, both in hostility and in friendship, they
contact created a culture unique to North America.
