Historic Highways of America/Volume 5/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI
THE MILITARY ROAD TO THE WEST
THERE is another hero of Forbes's Road. The rough days of that summer of 1758 were only suggestions of what was to come. Other armies than that of Forbes were to pass this way, for, be it understood at once, Forbes's Road became the great military highway into the West. No single road in America witnessed so many campaigns; no road in America was fortified by such a chain of forts. For a generation this route from Lancaster by Carlisle, Bedford, Ligonier to Pittsburg was the most important thoroughfare to the West.
The French retired from Fort Duquesne, down the Ohio and up the Allegheny. The remainder of the war was fought far away on the St. Lawrence. Hardly a shot was fired in the West after the skirmishes at Fort Ligonier succeeding Grant's defeat. The French at Venango and Detroit made light of Forbes's occupation of Fort Duquesne. They had retired voluntarily and swore to return in the spring. In a dozen western posts the French bragged still of their possession of the West and of their future conquests. The Indians believed each boast.
In the next year's campaign Quebec fell. New France passed away, and all French territory east of the Mississippi, save only a fishing station on the island of Newfoundland came into the hands of the English. But this campaign was fought in the far northeast. Of it the West and its redskinned inhabitants knew nothing. Fort Niagara was the most westerly fort which had succumbed; Fort Duquesne, technically, was evacuated. The real story of the successive French defeats was, perhaps, little heard of in the West; or, if communicated to the Indian allies there, the logical conclusion was not plain to them. How could a land be conquered where not a single battle had been fought? So far as the Indians were concerned, France was never more in possession of their western lakes and forests than then. Was not the blundering Braddock killed and his fine army utterly put to rout? Were not the French forts in the West—Presque Isle, Venango, Le Bœuf, Miami, and Detroit, secure? Fort Duquesne could be reoccupied whenever the French would give the signal. The leaden plates of France still reposed at the mouths of the rivers of the West and the Arms of the King of France still rattled in the wind which swept the land.
Fancy the surprise of the Indians, then, when little parties of redcoat soldiers came into the West, and, with quiet insolence, took possession of the French forts and of the Indian's land! And the French moved neither hand nor foot to oppose them, though through so many years they had boasted their prowess, and though ten Wyandots could have done so successfully. Detroit was surrendered to a mere corporal's guard, and the lesser forts to a sentry's watch each. It remained for the newcomers to inform the Indians of the events which led to the changing of the flags on these inland fortresses—to tell them that the French armies had been utterly overwhelmed, and the French capital captured, and French rule in America at an end.
But these explanations, given glibly, no doubt, by arrogant English officers, were repeated over and over by the Indians, and slowly, before a hundred, yea, a thousand dim fires in the forests. We can believe it was not all plain to them, this sudden conquest of a country where hardly a battle had been fought for eight years, and that battle the greatest victory ever achieved by the red man. Perhaps messengers were sent back to the forts to gain, casually, additional information concerning this marvelous conquest by proxy. French traders, as ignorant, or feigning to be, as the Indians, were implored to explain the sudden forgetfulness of the French "Father" of the Indians.
It was inexplicable. The news spread rapidly: "The French have surrendered our land to the English." Fierce Shawanese around their fires at Chillicothe on the Scioto heard the news, and sullenly passed it on westward to the Miamis, and eastward to the angered Delawares on the Muskingum, who had now forgotten Frederick Post. The Senecas on the upper Allegheny heard the news. The Ottawas and Wyandots on both sides of the Detroit River heard it—and before the fires of each of these fierce French-loving Indian nations there was much silence while chieftains pondered, and the few words uttered were stern and cruel.
Cruel words grew to angry threats. By what right, the chieftains asked, could the French surrender the Black Forest to the English? When did the French come to own the land, after all? They were the guests, the friends of the Indian—not his conquerors. The French built forts, it is true, but they were for the Indian as well as for the French, and were forts in name only, and the more of them the merrier! But now a conqueror had come, telling the Indian the land was no longer his, but belonged to the British king.
Threats soon grew into visible form. Where it started is not surely known—some say from the Senecas on the upper Allegheny—but soon a fearful Bloody Belt went on a journey with its terrible summons to war. It passed to the Delawares and to the Shawanese and Miamis and Wyandots, and where it went the death halloo sounded through the forests. The call was to the Indians of the Black Forest to rise and cast out the English from the land. If the French could not have it, certainly no one else should. The dogs of war were loosened. The young warriors of the Allegheny and Muskingum and Scioto and Miami and Detroit danced wildly before the fires, and the old men sang their half-forgotten war chants.
The terrible war which in 1763 burst over the West has never been paralleled by savages the world over in point of swift success. This may be attributed to the fact that a leader was found in Pontiac, a chieftain in the Ottawa nation, who for daring and intelligence was never matched by a man of his race. He had the courage of sweeping and patriotic convictions. He saw in the English occupation of the land the doom of the red man. Indeed he must have seen it before, but if so he had not had an opportunity to put his convictions to a public test. The Indian was becoming a changed man. The implements and utensils of the white man were adopted by the red. The independent forest arts of their fathers were beginning to be forgotten. Kettles and blankets and powder and lead were taking the place of the wooden bowls and fur robes and swift flint heads. In another generation the art of making a living for himself in the forest would be forgotten by the Indian, and he would henceforth be absolutely dependent upon the foreigner. All this Pontiac saw. He felt commissioned to lead a return to nature. The arts of the white man must be discarded and the Indians must come back to their primitive mode of living in dependence upon their own skill and ingenuity.
And so Pontiac waged a religious war. At a great convention of the savages he told them that a Delaware Indian had, while lost in the forests, been guided into a path which led to the home of the Great Spirit, and, on coming there, had been upbraided by the Master of Life himself for the degenerate state to which his race was falling. The forest arts of their fathers must be encouraged and relied upon. The utensils of the white man must be banished from the wigwams. Bows and arrows and tomahawks and stone hatchets should not be discarded. Otherwise the Great Spirit would take away their land from them and give it to others. And so, much of the fury which accompanied the war was a sort of religious frenzy. "The Master of Life himself has stirred us up," said the warriors.
Pontiac's plot—undoubtedly the most comprehensive military campaign ever conceived in redman's brain—was discovered by the British at Fort Miami, on the Maumee River, in March 1763, four years after the fall of Quebec. There the Bloody Belt was found and secured before it could be forwarded to the Wabash with its murderous message. By threats and warnings the untutored English officers thought to quell the disturbance. Amherst, his Majesty's commanding general in America, haughtily condemned the signs of revolution as "unwarranted." Moreover he gave his officers in the West authority to declare to the Indian chieftains that if they should conspire they would in his eyes, make "a contemptible figure!" Time passed and the garrisons breathed easily as quiet reigned.
It was but the lull before the storm. On the seventh of May, Pontiac, who led his Ottawas at Braddock's defeat, appeared before Detroit, the metropolis of the northwest, with three hundred warriors. The watchfulness of the brave Major Gladwin, a well-trained pupil in that school on Braddock's Road, and the failure of Pontiac to capture the fort by strategy, though his warriors were admitted within its walls and had shortened guns concealed beneath their blankets, was the dramatic beginning of a reign of terror and a war of devastation all the way from Sault St. Marie to even beyond the crest of the Alleghenies. Pontiac immediately invested Detroit and throughout the Black Forest his faithful allies did their Ottawa chieftain's will. On the sixteenth of May, Fort Sandusky was surrounded by Indians seemingly friendly. The British commander permitted seven to enter. As they sat smoking, by the turn of a head the signal was given and the commander was a prisoner. As he was hurried out of the fort he saw, here one dead soldier, there another—victims of the massacre. Nine days later a band of Indians appeared before the fort at the mouth of the St. Joseph. "We are come to see our relatives," they said, "and wish the garrison good morning." Within two minutes after their entrance the commanding officer and three men were prisoners and eleven others were murdered. Two days later the commander of Fort Miami, on the Maumee River, came, at an Indian girl's pitiful plea, to the Indian village to bleed a sick child. He was shot in his tracks. Four days later the commander of Fort Ouatianon, on the Wabash, was inveigled into an Indian cabin and captured, the fort surrendering forthwith. Two days later Indians gathered at Fort Michilimackinac to engage in a game of lacrosse. At the height of the contest the ball was thrown near a gate of the fort. In the twinkling of an eye the commanding officer who stood watching the game was seized, and the Indians, snatching tomahawks from under the blankets of squaws who were standing in proper position, entered the fort and killed fifteen soldiers outright and took the remainder of the garrison prisoners.
Sixteen days later Fort Le Bœuf, on French Creek, where Washington delivered his message to the haughty St. Pierre a decade before, was attacked by an overwhelming army of savages. Keeping the enemy off until midnight, the garrison made good its escape, unknown to the exultant besiegers who had already fired one corner bastion, and fled down the river to Fort Pitt. On their way they passed the smouldering ruins of Fort Venango. Two days later Fort Presque Isle was attacked. In two days the commander, senseless with terror, struck his flag. The same day Fort Ligonier on Forbes's Road was invested by a besieging army.
Thus the campaign of Pontiac, prosecuted with such swiftness and such success, bade fair to end in triumph. "We hate the English," the Indians sent word to the French on the Mississippi, "and wish to kill them. We are all united: the war is our war, and we will continue it for seven years. The English shall never come into the West!"
But Fort Detroit and Fort Pitt stood firm. For months Pontiac beleaguered the northern fortress, gaining advantages whenever the garrison attacked him, but unable to reduce the fort. All summer long the eyes of the world were upon Detroit; and the gallant defense of Fort Pitt, was, comparatively, forgotten. But the maintenance of this strategic point was of incalculable importance to the West. The garrison felt this. And here, if anywhere, was courage shown in battle. Here, if ever, brave men faced fearful odds with unshaken courage worthy of their Saxon blood.
In planning his campaign Pontiac delegated the Shawanese and Delawares to carry Fort Pitt. If they could not do it he might be assured that the position was impregnable. They were his most reliable warriors, and, once given the task of carrying out the second most important coup of their great leader's plan, could be trusted to use any alternative savage lust could suggest, or trick savage cunning could invent in order to accomplish their portion of the terrible conquest of the West. The defense of Detroit was brave; but Detroit was on the great water highway east and west. Succor was possible, in fact probable, in time; if not, there was a way of escape. At Fort Pitt could either be expected? The only approach to it was this indifferent roadway hewn westward from Bedford in 1758. Moreover the fort had never been completed. On three sides the flood tides of the rivers had injured it. Ecuyer, its valiant defender, threw up a rough rampart of logs and palisaded the interior. And in this fragile fortress, hardly worthy of the name, behind which lay the darkling Alleghenies and about which loomed the Black Forest, were gathered some six hundred souls, a larger community, probably, than the total population of Detroit. And around on every side were gathered the lines of ochred warriors preparing for another charge even to the very blood-bespattered walls. The garrison might well have believed itself beyond the reach of succor, if indeed succor could avail before need of it had vanished. The bones of Braddock's seven hundred slain lay scattered about the forests only seven miles away. Could another army come again? Little wonder that the Shawanese and Delawares were already flushed with victory as they renewed their unavailing attacks.
The task of relieving Fort Pitt was placed upon the tried shoulders of Colonel Henry Bouquet, whose brilliant services in Forbes's campaign have been fully described. Amherst, then commanding in America, sent him the remains of the Forty-second and Seventy-seventh regiments, which amounted to the pitiful total of three hundred and forty-seven men and officers; concerning additional troops Amherst was painfully plain: "Should the whole race of Indians take arms against us I can do no more." Recruits joined the army as it moved along through Lancaster and Carlisle, which augmented the force slightly.
But the brave Bouquet, with an army not exceeding five hundred men, set out westward from Bedford on the rough road he himself had made with the vanguard of the "Head of Iron" five years before. The appalling condition in which he found the country along the border would have daunted a less bold man. Every fort from Lake Erie to the Ohio had been razed to the ground. The whole country was panic-stricken. Houses were left vacant or burned, together with crops, and the mountain roads were blocked with fugitives, half famished, who threw themselves upon the intrepid Bouquet at his camps. It was indeed a trying time, a time for such a man as Bouquet to show himself.
Never did the success of a campaign in the history of war depend more on the sagacity, bravery, and personal knowledge of a single commanding officer. This daring Swiss was everywhere and everything. He knew that the enemy, though they retired before him even as he approached Fort Ligonier, were watching every movement of the coming army. He knew they were cognizant of his weakness, the debility of his men, the lack of provision, the paucity of scouts and spies. He knew, and so did the silent, lurking spies of the enemy, that Braddock's slain outnumbered his whole force.
But Ligonier—named by Bouquet himself from a warrior whose bravery was now his inspiration—was not a place to pause, though just beyond lay the death-trap where Aubrey had defeated the ill-fated Grant five years before. On he went. As the inevitable battle-ground was neared Bouquet redoubled his watchfulness. When a darker defile than usual was reached, with a rifle across his lap, the commander went forward and himself led the army's van into it.
On the morning of the fifth of August tents were struck early and another day's march commenced. Over broken country enveloped in forests the army went its way. By one o'clock they had made seventeen miles and were not less than half a mile from Bushy Run, their proposed camping place. Suddenly was heard the report of rifle fire in front. As the main army listened the noise quickened to a sharp rattle—and the decisive battle of Bushy Run was commenced.
The two foremost companies were ordered forward to support the vanguard now hotly engaged. This causing no abatement, the convoy was halted and a general charge formed. By an onward rush, with fixed bayonets, Bouquet and his eager men cleared the field. But firing on the right and left and in the rear announced that both flanks and the convoy were simultaneously attacked. An order was given to fall back. This having been executed, an unbroken circle was formed about the terrified horses.
Though in number the combatants were nearly equal, the savages had all the advantage of a superior force fighting under cover. Bouquet's army, like Braddock's, was in the open. With furious cries accompanied by a heavy fire, the Indians attempted to break the iron circle. And they fought with sly cunning. Not waiting to receive the answering attacks, they leaped behind the nearest trees, only to come back to the attack with increased ferocity from another quarter. The English suffered severely while the active Indians, under cover, were almost untouched. Nothing but implicit confidence in Bouquet could have inspired this little army with the steadiness it displayed. No one lost composure. Each man knew they could not retreat or advance—fight they must and fight they surely did.
Night came, and under cover of the darkness the wearied soldiers cared for the wounded. Placed in the cleared center of the circle, a rude wall of sacks of flour was built around them. Here, enduring agonies of thirst, for not a drop of water could be obtained, they lay listening to the fiendish yells of the enemy—a poor cure for wounds and burning thirst.
When the necessary arrangements for the night had been completed and provision made against a night attack, Bouquet, doubtful of surviving the morrow's battle, wrote to Sir Jeffrey Amherst a brief and concise account of the day's fight. His report ends with these words:
" . . As, in case of another engagement, I fear insurmountable difficulties in protecting and transporting our provisions, being already so much weakened by the losses of this day, in men and horses, besides the additional necessity of carrying the wounded, whose situation is truly deplorable."
Even before morning light, the beastly, impatient cries of the Indians began to be heard on every side, soon accompanied by a deadly fire. As on the preceding day the return fire had little effect, for the savages silently vanished at the gleam of leveled bayonets. But at ten o'clock the ring remained unbroken though the troops were already fatigued and were now crazed by torments of thirst, "more intolerable than the enemy's fire." The horses, often struck and completely terrified, now broke away by scores and madly galloped up and down the neighboring hills. The ranks were constantly thinning. It was plain to all that a decisive and immediate bold stroke must be made.
The commander was equal to the emergency! The confidence of the foe had grown so overbearing that Bouquet determined to stake everything upon the very recklessness of his enemies. The portion of the circle which immediately fronted the Indians, and which was composed of light infantry, was ordered to feign retreat. As this movement was accomplished, a thin line of men was thrown across the deserted position from the sides, drawing in close to the convoy. Thinking this to be a retreat, which the new line had been summoned to cover, the Indians, with cutting screams, jumped out from every side and rushed headlong toward the centre of the circle. Then, suddenly upon their rear poured the light infantry, which had made a marvelous detour through the woods. With a frightful bayonet charge and with highland yells as piercing as those of the Indians, the grenadiers, flushed with victory, drove the terrified savages through the forests. In the twinkling of an eye the outcries of the savages ceased altogether and not a living foe remained. Sixty Indian corpses lay scattered about the camp. Only one captive was taken and he was riddled with English bullets. The loss of the English amounted to eight officers and one hundred and fifteen men. This was the first English victory over the Indians of the central West. Fort Necessity, Braddock's Field, and Grant's Hill were now avenged. It was a late victory but was far better late than never. Fort Pitt was relieved.
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The Remains of Bouquet's Redoubt at Fort Pitt
At the opening of the Revolutionary War, the continental war office being at Philadelphia, Forbes's Road became more strategic than ever in its history. It was now known as the "Pennsylvania Road," and was the direct route to the military center of the West, Fort Pitt. Braddock's Road—now known as the "Virginia Road"—was the main route from Virginia and Maryland. In the dispute between Virginia and Pennsylvania for the region of which Fort Pitt was the center, the two routes thither were the avenues of the two contending factions. With the drowning of this quarrel in the momentous struggle precipitated in 1775, Forbes's Road at once became preëminently important. Cattle and goods were frequently sent over Braddock's Road as far as Brownsville and forwarded by water to Fort Pitt and the American forts on the Ohio. But far greater was the activity on Forbes's Road. Forts Bedford and Ligonier, and a score of fortified cabins at such points as Turtle Creek, Sewickly, Bullock Pens, Widow Myers, Proctors, Brush Run, Reyburn's, and Hannastown served to guard the main thoroughfare to the Ohio. Between these points scouts were continually hurrying, and over the narrow roadway passed the wagons and pack-horses laden with ammunition and stores. Hannastown and Ligonier became the important entrepôts between Carlisle and Fort Pitt in the Revolution. Carlisle was the important eastern depot of troops and ammunition from which both eastern and western commanders received supplies.[1] Garrisons along the Pennsylvania Road were ordered at the close of the war to report at Carlisle for their pay.[2] Hannastown, thirty miles east of Fort Pitt and three miles northeast of the present Greensburg, was the first collection of huts on the Pennsylvania Road between Bedford and Pittsburg dignified by the name of a town. At the breaking out of the Revolution it was the most important settlement in all Westmoreland County save only those about Forts Pitt and Ligonier. "These huts scattered along the narrow pack-horse track among the monster trees of the ancient forest, was that Hannastown, which occupied such a prominent place in the early history of Western Pennsylvania where was held the first court west of the Alleghany where the resolves of May 16, 1775, were passed."[3] From this rude little cluster of huts on Forbes's Road, deep in the Allegheny mountains, came one of the first and most spirited protests against British tyranny. From such sparks the flames of revolution were soon fanned. Hannastown "was burned last Saturday afternoon," wrote General Irvine to Secretary of War Lincoln, July 16, 1782; " . . that place is about thirty-five miles in the rear of Fort Pitt, on the main road leading to Philadelphia, generally called the Pennsylvania [Forbes's] road. The Virginia [Braddock's] road is yet open, but how long it will continue so is uncertain, as this stroke has alarmed the whole country beyond conception."
In winter the road was almost impassable; Brodhead wrote Richard Peters: "The great Depth of Snow upon the Alleghany and Laurel Hills have prevented our Getting every kind of Stores, nor do I expect to get any now until the latter End of April."[4] General Irvine wrote his wife January 8, 1782: "If the road was fit for sleighing I could now go down (to Carlisle) snugly, but it is quite impracticable; it is barely passable on horseback." Fort Pitt was invariably supplied with regular troops from Lancaster or Carlisle, which marched over the Pennsylvania Road.[5]