CHAPTER XVIII

Fine situations and well inhabited banks--A gay party--Slate and coal strata--Point Pleasant--River Kenhawa--Battle of Point Pleasant-- Lord Dunmore’s campaign against the Indians--Indians justified-- Reasons why there are but few writers in their favour--Short account of the causes of the last Indian war, and the settlement of Kentucky.

Two miles and a half below Jones’s is Leading creek, a beautiful little river with high sloping banks on the right, and just below it a Mr. Kerr has a good log house, and a garden with a handsome stoccado {122} fence, behind which is a small cleared farm. A vein of coal is said to be on the Virginia side opposite, not much approved of by the blacksmiths, probably because not wrought deep enough. Three miles further on the right is a very good, new, two story house, clapboarded, and painted white, and a large horse mill; and half a mile lower on the opposite shore is a large unfinished house, lately purchased by a Mr. Long from Col. Clendinning, who began to build it nine years ago.[97] It resembles a church, and is not only a good feature in the prospect, but impresses the traveller with lively ideas of the advanced state of population of the neighbouring country.--Close to it is a small hamlet, or quarter, of a few cabins, the whole in a beautiful situation on a high bank commanding a view of Eight Mile island, just below, and both banks of the river, which are here well inhabited and very pleasant.

Two miles lower is Six Mile island, very small, and half a mile beyond it on the left is a house most delightfully situated, commanding the whole vista of the river seven miles up to Leading creek, with the two intermediate islands. The house is sheltered from the northern blasts of winter by a fine grove purposely left standing, when the surrounding farm was cleared.

I observed that in general, from Le Tart’s falls, trees were left standing very tastily in places where they can have a good or pleasing effect, particularly the gigantick beeches along the margin of the river.

About a mile lower down, we met a large canoe, paddled against the stream by five well drest young men, while a respectable looking elderly man steered. They had five very smart looking girls with them, and, from their gaiety, were apparently returning from some _frolick_--the epithet used in this country for all neighbourly meetings for the purpose of assisting each other in finishing some domestick or farming {123} business, which generally conclude with feasting and dancing, which sometimes lasts two or three days, and is not seldom the fruitful source of many a tender and lasting connexion.

Near this we perceived a stratum of slate over one of coal, but the latter too much under the level of the river to be wrought. The slate stratum extends several rods, and is topped and squared as if done by art.

It may not be amiss to remark that all strata throughout the whole of this western country, have been hitherto found to be horizontal.

The banks from hence four miles to Point Pleasant are apparently rich with good bottoms on both sides, yet but thinly inhabited.

Point Pleasant, where we arrived at seven o’clock in the evening, is beautifully situated on a bank, at least forty feet above the common level of the Ohio, at the conflux of the Great Kenhawa with that river. It contains twenty-one indifferent houses, including a court-house of square logs, this being the seat of justice of Mason county. The town does not thrive on account of the adjacent country not settling so fast as the opposite side in the state of Ohio, where lands can be bought in small tracts for farms, by real settlers, at a reasonable rate, whereas the Virginia lands belonging mostly to wealthy and great landholders, are held at four or five times the Ohio price.

The river Ohio is here six hundred yards wide, and the Kenhawa is two hundred and twenty-five, the latter navigable about eighty miles to the falls.

On the 10th of October, 1774, a battle was fought here by the Virginia and Pennsylvania militia under general Lewis, against the Indians, who had attacked them in great force, but were defeated and compelled to retreat across the Ohio, carrying their dead and wounded with them according to their invariable custom; as, like the ancient Greeks, they deem it an {124} irreparable disgrace, to leave the unburied bodies of their slain fellow warriours to the disposal of the victorious enemy. The Americans bought their victory at the expense of a number of their most active men, amongst whom was Col. Lewis, brother to the general, a brave and enterprizing officer. They were buried near the edge of the river bank, which has since mouldered away, occasionally discovering their remains to the present inhabitants, who have always re-interred them.

This was a military station above thirty years ago. It is twenty years since it was laid out for a town, but it had no houses erected in consequence until after Wayne’s Indian treaty, it being unsafe before to live outside the stoccado.

Lord Dunmore, who was then governour of Virginia, and commander-in-chief on the expedition against the Indians, at the time of the battle of Point Pleasant, had penetrated by the way of Wheeling across the Ohio, to within a short march of their principal settlement, near where Chilicothe now is; when, instead of following up Lewis’s success, while they were yet under the influence of the panick occasioned by it, and by his lordship’s approach with the main body of the militia, and of exterminating them, or of driving them out of the country, he received their submission and patched up a treaty with them, which they observed no longer than during the short time that he continued with a military force in their country, for which he was much blamed by the back settlers and hunters. Humanity, however, must plead his excuse with every thinking or philosophick mind; and volumes might be written to prove the justice of the Indian cause; but in all national concerns, it has never been controverted by the history of mankind from the earliest ages of which we have any record, but that interest and power always went hand in hand to serve the mighty against the {125} weak, and writers are never wanting to aid the cause of injustice, barbarity and oppression, with the sophistry of a distorted and unnatural philosophy; while the few who would be willing to espouse the rights of the feeble, have not enough of the spirit of chivalry, to expose themselves to an irreparable loss of time, and the general obloquy attending an unpopular theme: even in this so much boasted land of liberty and equality, where nothing is to be dreaded from the arbitrary acts of a king and council during a suspension of a habeas corpus law, or the mandate of an arbitrary hero in the full tide of victory.

Is not popular opinion frequently as tyrannical as star chambers, or lettres de cachets?

The Indians north of the Ohio, under the name of the Five Nations, and their dependants, had been gradually, but rapidly, forced back more and more remote from the country of their ancestors, by the irresistible and overswelling tide of population of Europeans and their descendants. They at last abandoned all the continent of America east of the great chain of the Allegheny mountains, to the enlightened intruders, and besides that natural barrier, they added an immense wilderness of nearly five hundred miles in breadth, west of those mountains, to the space which divided them; settling themselves in that country which has since become the state of Ohio, having Lake Erie for its northern boundary, and the river Ohio for its southern. The woods and savannahs to the southward of that river abounded in game, such as buffaloes, deer, elk, bears, and innumerable smaller animals, valuable for their flesh, skins, and furs. They were tempted to make hunting excursions into this country, during which they frequently met with parties of hunters of other Indian nations, called Chocktaws, Chickasaws, and Cherokees, who resided far south of it, but who had been accustomed to consider it as their exclusive property {126} for hunting in, from time immemorial. Battles with various success were generally the consequence of those meetings. The southern Indians were the most numerous--the northern the most warlike.

Finding that they exhausted each other to no purpose, by such constant hostility, necessity at last obliged them to make a peace, the basis of which was, that the hunting country should be common to both as such, to the exclusion of all other people, and that neither would ever settle on it themselves, nor permit others to do so.

They enjoyed in quiet the uninterrupted use of this immense common forest, for many years after; but the Virginians having extended their settlements to the westward of the mountains, the frontier inhabitants, who, like the aborigines, supported themselves principally by hunting, were led in quest of game, as far west as the banks of Kentucky river, in the very centre of the Indian hunting country.

On their return to their settlements, the report spread from them to the colonial government, that they had discovered a country most abundant in game, and far exceeding in natural fertility any of the settled parts of Virginia.

Small armed parties were sent out to establish blockhouses for the protection of hunters or settlers, while the lands were divided into tracts and granted or sold to proprietors, as suited the convenience of the government.

The Indians, indignant at being followed to so remote a part of the continent, after the great sacrifice to peace before made by them in the abandonment of their native country, did their utmost to repel the invaders. The northern tribes were the most ferocious and the most exasperated, and sometimes alone, and sometimes aided by their southern auxiliaries, carried on a most bloody and exterminating war against all the whites who had the temerity to brave {127} their decided and fixed determination to adhere to their mutual guarantee of their hunting grounds.

Much blood was shed on both sides, and many parties of the whites were cut off, but their perseverance at last prevailed, and Kentucky became one of the United States of America.

The negro who carried our baggage from the boat to the tavern, regretted much that we had not arrived a little earlier in the day, to get some of the people’s money who had been assembled at a gathering. On our inquiring “how”--he replied by asking if we were not _play-actors_, and if we had not got our _puppetshew things_ in some of the trunks and boxes we had with us. He had probably conceived this idea from our having in the skiff a large box of medicines, which we had taken in at Marietta for a doctor Merrit at French Grant, and besides we had more baggage than it was usual for him to see carried by travellers, who had occasion to stop at Point Pleasant.

Our landlord’s name was John Allen, a young man, who had lived here since his infancy twenty years.--On a late journey to Richmond he had married a young woman there, who sat at supper with us, but who seemed to wish to appear rather above the doing the honours of a tavern table. He had lately been chosen one of the members of the legislature for Mason county, and seemed fond of discussing politicks, but apparently more for the sake of information, than for insisting _dogmatically_, according to the prevailing mode, on any opinion of his own. In short, he seemed to regret the blind illiberality of the improperly self-termed federalists, and of their equally prejudiced democratick antagonists, and seemed desirous of meriting the character of a disinterested patriot, and a federal republican in its real and literal sense, without perhaps understanding either term.

FOOTNOTES:

[97] Colonel George Clendennin, a prominent pioneer of Western Virginia, was born in Scotland in 1746. His first services in the West were in Colonel Lewis’s army at the battle of Point Pleasant (1774). Later he bought the site of Charleston, West Virginia, and laid out the town (1788). The house on the Ohio which Cuming saw had been built by Clendennin in 1796; the following year, however, he died at Marietta.--ED.

{128} CHAPTER XIX

Galliopolis--A Canadian boat’s crew--Menager’s store and tavern--Mons. and Madame Marion--A family migrating from Baltimore--Red Birds--Meridian creek--Mercer’s and Green’s bottoms--Hanging rock--Federal creek--Bowden’s.

On Sunday 26th July, we left Point Pleasant, and passing Great Kenhawa river on our left, and Galliopolis island, half a mile long on the right, at 7 we landed on the Ohio side, at Galliopolis four miles below Point Pleasant.

We found at the landing a keel loaded with lead from Kaskaskias on the Mississippi;[98] It was worked by eight stout Canadians, all naked, except a breech clout. They are the descendants of the original French settlers, and they resemble the Indians both in their manners and customs, and complexion; which last is occasioned by their being exposed naked to all weathers from their infancy; which also renders them very hardy, and capable of enduring much fatigue. They are temperate in the use of spiritous liquors, while engaged in any laborious employment, but they must be fed with double the quantity of food which would suffice American or English labourers. The meat which they prefer is bacon or salt pork, of which they use daily about four pounds each man, besides bread and potatoes.

They are preferred to any other description of people for navigating the craft on the rivers in this country, being patient, steady, and trusty, and never deserting their boats until their engagement is fulfilled, which the American boatmen frequently do.

We got an excellent breakfast at Mr. Menager’s, a French emigrant, who keeps a tavern and a store of very well assorted goods, which he goes yearly to Baltimore to purchase. He is a native of Franche {129} Comté, and his wife is from Burgundy. They are very civil and obliging, and have a fine family. It is fifteen years since they arrived in this country, together with nearly 800 emigrants from France, of whom only about twenty families now remain at Galliopolis; the rest having either returned to France, descended the Ohio to French Grant, proceeded to the banks of the Mississippi, or fallen victims to the insalubrity of the climate, which however no longer, or only partially exists, as it has gradually ameliorated in proportion to the progress of settlement.[99]

Menager has a curious machine for drawing water from his well forty or fifty feet deep, and which will answer equally well for any depth. He got the model from Mr. Blennerhasset. As I am not mechanick enough to give an adequate description of it, I shall only remark, that it is equally simple and ingenuous, and saves much labour; the full bucket flying up and emptying itself into a small wooden cistern, while the empty bucket sinks at the same time into the well, and that without being obliged to work a winch as in the common mode, where wells are too deep for pumps.

In Galliopolis there are about fifty houses all of wood, in three long streets parallel to the river, crossed at right angles by six shorter ones, each one hundred feet wide. A spacious square is laid out in the centre, on which they are now making brick to build a court-house for Gallia county.

During a walk through the town after breakfast, we were civilly accosted by an old man at the door of the most western house, who invited us to enter and rest ourselves. He was named Marion, and with his old wife, reminded me of Baucis and Philemon, or of Darby and Joan. They came here with the first emigrants from Burgundy--bought some town lots, on which they planted fruit trees, and converted into corn fields, as they could not procure tenants {130} nor purchasers to build on them. They have no children--they seem much attached to each other, and are healthy, and content with their situation.--They insisted with much hospitality on our tasting the old lady’s manufacture of cherry bounce, before they knew that we could converse with them in their native tongue; but, when they found that we could not only do so, but that I could make a subject of conversation of their own country, and even of their own province, from having visited it long since they had bid it a final adieu--it was with difficulty they would permit us to leave them, before we had spent at least one day with them. Indeed I never saw the amor patriæ more strongly manifested, than in the fixed and glistening eyes, which they rivetted on my face, whilst I described the present state of their provincial capital Dijon.

Galliopolis abounds with fruit, to the planting of which, French settlers always pay great attention; but the town does not thrive, although very pleasantly situated on an extensive flat.

Pursuing our voyage at ten o’clock, half a league below Galliopolis, we passed a skiff containing a family, the head of which was a carpenter and farmer from Baltimore, going to Green river about five hundred miles lower down.

At two o’clock we had rowed fourteen miles, having passed Racoon island and creek on the right, during which the bottom was so extensive on each side, that we could not see the tops of the river hills over the banks. We were here charmed with the melody of the red birds responding to each other from the opposite banks, particularly on passing Racoon island. Our exercise having given us an appetite, we landed and dined under a shady bank on the right, opposite to a creek, which from that circumstance, and its not being noticed in our chart or Navigator, we named Meridian creek.

{131} Here we began to see again the tops of the low river hills on the right, but on the left the extensive bottom still continued, notwithstanding which the settlements are very thinly scattered, especially for the last eight miles.

At half past two we were abreast of Eighteen mile creek on the right, so called from its being that distance from Point Pleasant.

Five miles from where we dined is Swan creek, a handsome rivulet on the right, and Mercer’s bottom, a fine settlement on the left, and a mile further, it is separated from Green’s bottom by the Little Guiandot, a beautiful small river.

Green’s bottom settlements, which are very fine and populous, extend along the left bank three miles, and a mile beyond them the river hills approaching within a quarter of a mile of the bank, a remarkable cliff called the Hanging rock, impends from about half their height, and they again recede. On the right opposite to Hanging rock, is a bank of clay under which is a substratum of fine potter’s clay.

It is two miles from Green’s bottom to the next settlement. A gust threatening, we stopped to shelter at it--but the house was locked up, and no one at home. Every thing here testified to its being an honest neighbourhood, as the smoke-house was left open, with a quantity of fine bacon in it--a crib was full of corn, and shirts and jackets were left drying on the garden fence.

After the shower, we went on three miles to Miller’s farm house at the mouth of Federal creek on the right, where we landed and bought some salt pork for stores, and some milk for supper. Miller seems to be active and industrious, and keeps a keel boat for freighting on the river, but he says he gets very little encouragement.[100]

It was now half past six, and in an hour and three quarters we rowed eight miles further, when it coming {132} on dark, and I not being willing to lose the view of any part of the river, we stopped at Joel Bowden’s tavern and farm on the right, contrary to A----’s wish of letting the boat float down the current all night. Though we had provided our supper, yet we preferred ordering one at Bowden’s, for the sake of whiling away a little time, and gaining information about the country.

He had removed his family here from Marietta in April 1806, and had to begin to clear away the forest to make room for a cabin, and he now has twelve acres completely cut, grubbed and smooth, and eight acres cut, but not grubbed, all planted and under fence, besides a natural orchard of sugar maple of seven acres, out of which he has cleared every thing else except about four hundred sugar trees, which will be enough to supply his family with sugar.[101]

{133} He has also planted an apple and peach orchard and a nursery, and will cut six tons of hay this year. Such instances of industry and perseverance are frequently seen in this country amongst the New England settlers, of which Bowden is one, who are generally remarkably enterprising, and judiciously economical. His house not promising superior accommodation for sleep to our skiff, we re-embarked after supper, and on our platform enjoyed undisturbed repose, until five o’clock next morning, when we loosed from the bank, and proceeded at our usual rate of from three to four miles an hour.

FOOTNOTES:

[98] For the history of the French settlement of Kaskaskia, see Michaux’s _Travels_, vol. iii of this series, p. 69, note 132.--ED.

[99] For a history of the settlement of Gallipolis and the French Grant, see Michaux’s _Travels_, vol. iii of this series, pp. 182-185.

Claudius R. Menager, one of the original emigrants, had been a baker, and made use of his skill both as a merchant and tavern-keeper. He became the richest man in the colony, and died much respected.--ED.

[100] Miller removed from Washington County, Pennsylvania, and was one of the first Methodists of this part of West Virginia. Upon his petition a preacher was sent to the backwoods settlements in 1803. Bishop Morris, an eminent divine of the same denomination, was born here in 1798, and passed his early years in this vicinity.--ED.

[101] Would it not be a wise and prudent foresight in the present generation, in order that posterity might continue to enjoy the product of this invaluable tree, to plant orchards of them on the sides of untillable hills and other vacant grounds of little or no use? They might become a source of considerable wealth, in the course of twenty or thirty years, when the country gets thickly populated, and the trees made scarce from the present plan of destroying them in clearing of the lands. The expense of setting out an orchard of 500 or 1000 trees on each plantation, might cost, say, twenty-five cents each tree, together with the interest of the money for thirty years, at which period they would be worth about one dollar per year for about fifty or a hundred years thereafter. The following observations on the Maple tree, we copy from Dr. _Mease’s_ “_Geological account of the United States_:”

“The genus _acer_, or maple, is useful for various purposes. The _a. negundo_, or white or ash leaved maple, is much used in cabinet work, being firm and smooth, takes a fine polish, and stain. The _a. rubrum_, or scarlet maple, when sawed into boards, exhibits the most beautiful waving appearance, and makes articles of furniture equal to satin wood. A species of maple abounds in Nova Scotia, and no doubt, farther south, called bird-eye maple, which also is very beautiful. But the _a. saccharinum_, or sugar maple, ranks in the first importance among our forest trees. This valuable native is peculiarly dear to the citizens of this country, as it furnishes an article of the first necessity, by the labour of free men, and of equal quality, to that produced by the sugar cane; and the timber is highly useful for various mechanical purposes, particularly for saddle trees. From the maple may also be made a pleasant molasses, an agreeable beer, a strong sound wine, and an excellent vinegar.

“The following facts upon the flowing of maple-juice, are curious, and deserve investigation.

“The flowing of maple-juice is as completely _locked up_ by continued warmth as by frost, and only flows by the alternate operation of these agents. Yet the same degrees of heat, even after frost, have not always the same effect. Thus, a warm south wind stops the flowing more than a cool north-west wind. To judge from sensations, generally a bracing wind facilitates the discharge, and a relaxing wind acts to the contrary. Whether, or how far, electricity may operate in this case, must be left for future inquirers to determine. The juice flows for about twenty-four hours after a frost; but, when a tapped tree has ceased, tap a new tree, and it will flow considerably, as if a certain quantity was discharged by the frost. The juice flows from all sides of the incision.

“Cut a sugar maple early in the morning, if the night has been cold, and it will appear comparatively dry and devoid of juice, in every part of the tree. Cut it a few hours after, if the day is moderately warm, and the juice will issue almost in streams.”--CRAMER.

{134} CHAPTER XX

Big Guiandot river--Crumps’s farm--Inhospitable reception--General remark--Two hunters--Cotton plantation, and gin for cleaning the cotton--Snakes--Remedy for their bite--Great Sandy river--State boundary--Hanging rock.

Six miles below Bowden’s, we passed Big Guiandot river which joins the Ohio from the left, and is about eighty yards wide, having one Buffington’s finely situated house and farm on the bank just below it. From Bowden’s to Big Guiandot, the banks of the Ohio are well settled on both sides. In the next eleven miles, we passed three creeks on the right, and one on the left hand, the second one called Indian Guiandot, only worth remarking. It coming on to rain very heavy, we stopped here at the end of eleven miles, just above the mouth of a fine little river on the left called Twelve Pole creek, about thirty yards wide, with a ferry and a large scow or flat for carrying over horses or cattle. The house we stopped at was very well situated on the top of a high sloping bank, and was the residence of one Crumps, who had removed here from Kentucky, and possessed the rich and well cultivated surrounding farm. The family were at breakfast, but no place was offered at the table to the wet travellers, though it was well loaded with viands, which Mr. Crumps apparently knew how to make the best use of for fattening, as his corpulency and general appearance strongly indicated a propensity to boorish gluttony. Indeed we were not permitted to enter the eating room, but with a sort of sullen civility, were desired to sit down in an open space which divides two enclosed ends from each other, but all covered with the same roof, and which is the usual style of the cottages in this part of the country. The space in the middle is probably {135} left unenclosed, for the more agreeable occupancy of the family during the violent heats of summer.

I have observed that wherever we have stopped on the banks of the river, we have rarely experienced that hospitality, which might be expected to prevail amongst people so remote from polished society.

Two hunters sat down with us after they had finished their breakfast, and they entertained us above an hour with their feats of deer and bear killing, in which the one always related something more extraordinary than the other. At last they bantered each other to go out and kill a deer.

It still rained very heavy, but nothing deterred by it, they each took their rifle, stuck their tomahawks into the belts of their hunting shirts, and accompanied by a fine dog, led by a string to prevent his breaking (or hunting the game beyond the reach of their rifles) they set off for the woods.

Seeing some cotton regularly planted on the opposite side of the river, on inquiry, I learned that from hence down the Ohio, a good deal of cotton is raised, although on account of its not standing the winter, it must be planted every year. Though the climate farther south is more congenial to it, it is nevertheless an annual throughout the continent to the northward of Cape Florida, differing from the countries between the tropicks, where I have sometimes seen the same plants bear to the seventh year; but that only in places where it was neglected, as the common usage there is to replant every third or fourth year. A few miles from Crumps’s there is a large gin worked by two men, which can clean seven hundred pounds per day; the toll for ginning is one eighth of the quantity cleaned.

The copperhead snake[102] abounds here, but the rattlesnake is scarce. Crumps told us that the bark of the root of the poplar, particularly the yellow poplar, made into a strong decoction and taken inwardly, {136} while a part pounded and applied to the bite of any snake, is an infallible remedy: And that it is also a most powerful alterative, and purifier of the blood.

There being no prospect of the rain subsiding, at eleven o’clock we proceeded, sitting under our awning and letting the boat drop with the current, which she did about two miles an hour.

At half past twelve we passed Great Sandy river on the left, four miles below Crumps’s. It is about a hundred yards wide, and is the boundary between Virginia and Kentucky; in the latter of which, on the bank above the confluence, are two large houses, one of logs and the other framed and clapboarded, with a sign post before the door--probably the scite of some future town.[103]

Three miles from hence are two small creeks opposite each other, and a good brick house building at the mouth of that on the left. Three miles and a half further is Big Storm creek on the right, a mile and a half below which, we passed on the left, an excellent house of a Mr. Colvin, nearly opposite to which, on the right is a small insulated mountain named Hanging Rock, from its being a bare perpendicular rock, from half the elevation to the top.

This is a very picturesque and agreeable object to the eye, fatigued with the perpetual sameness of the banks below Point Pleasant.

Two miles further on the right, a little way below Ferguson’s sand bar, we observed a wharf or pier of loose paving stones, and some mill machinery on the bank above it--the remains of a floating mill carried away last winter by the floods.

Half a mile below this is a remarkable point, and fine beach of coarse gravel on the right, and a delightfully situated farm almost opposite.

Judge Boon has a good house on the left about three miles further down,[104] opposite to which on the Ohio side is the beginning of French Grant.

{137} The Ohio which had ran generally between the south and west, (except for about thirty miles near Le Tart’s falls where it takes a northerly course) had altered its direction to the north westward, from the confluence of Big Sandy river.

FOOTNOTES:

[102] The copperhead (_trigonocephalus contortrix_), a rather small venomous snake, gives no warning before it bites. The name was, therefore, applied during the War of Secession to disloyal Northerners.--ED.

[103] This was the future town of Catlettsburg. The first land was surveyed on the Big Sandy in 1770, when Washington laid out bounty lands for Captain John Savage’s company, who had served in the French and Indian War.--ED.

[104] This was Jesse Boone, son of the well-known pioneer Daniel, who had removed to Missouri with his other sons in 1798. Jesse Boone remained behind, was inspector of salt-works for West Virginia, and justice of the Kentucky county court for Greenup. This information is derived from personal relation of Nathan Boone, another son, in Wisconsin Historical Society Draper MSS., 6 S 212.--ED.