them, acted with firmness. They collected their strength, took possession of proper ground, and fortified it with judgment. General Sullivan on the 29th of August, attacked them in their works. They stood a cannonade for more than two hours; but then gave way. This engagement proved decisive. After the trenches were forced, the Indians fled without making any attempt to rally. The consternation occasioned among them by this defeat was so great, that they gave up all ideas of further resistance. As the Americans advanced into their settlements, the Indians retreated before them, without throwing any obstructions in their way. General Sullivan penetrated into the heart of the country inhabited by the Mohawks, and spread desolation every where. Many settlements in the form of towns were destroyed. All their fields of corn, and whatever was in a state of cultivation underwent the same fate. Scarcely any thing in the form of a house was left standing, nor was an Indian to be seen. To the surprise of the Americans, they found the lands about. the Indian towns well cultivated, and their houses both large and commodious. The quantity of corn destroyed was immense. Orchards, in which were several hundred fruit trees, were cut down; and of them many appeared to have been planted for a long series of years. Their gardens, replenished with a variety of useful vegetables, were laid waste. The Americans were so full of resentment against the Indians, for the many outrages they had suffered from them, and so bent on making the expedition decisive, that the officers and soldiers cheerfully agreed to remain, till they had fully completed the destruction of the settlement. The supplies obtained in the country lessened the inconvenience of short rations. The ears of corn were so remarkably large, that many of them measured twenty-two inches in length. Necessity suggested a novel expedient for pulverising the grains thereof. The soldiers perforated a few of their camp. kettles with bayonets. The protrusions occasioned thereby formed a rough surface, and, by rubbing the ears of corn thereon, a coarse meal was produced, which was easily convertible into agreeable nourishment. Having thus completed the work of devastation, Sullivan and his army returned. The work accomplished was fully justified on the ground of retaliation. There was no other way of making the foe feel the consequences of their bloody and desolating deeds. The Indians were greatly cowed in spirit by the expedition, and the frontiers were relieved from their attacks for a long time afterwards. In the latter part of the war, in 1782, a party of civilized Indians who had settled near the Muskingum, at the Moravian towns, were barbarously murdered by a party of one hundred and sixty white men, who crossed the Ohio and attacked them without the slightest provocation. Ninety of them were put to death without resistance on their part. These Kentuckians earned a name by this horrible deed worthy to be rankel with those of Butler and Brandt. Retribution soon overtook them. A party set out to destroy the Indian towns near San lusky; but the Delawares opposed, and a battle ensued. The Indians conquered, and several Americans were killed and others taken prisoners. Among the latter was Colonel Crawford, who was sacrificed to the manes of those who were murdered at the Moravian towns; the rest were unmercifully tomahawked. On the 24th of June, 1782, General Wayne was furiously attacked at a plantation about five miles from Savannah, by a large body of Creeks, who at first drove his troops and took two pieces of artillery; but Wayne soon rallied his force, and charged the Indians with such spirit, that they were completely routed. The action was contested hand to hand with tomahawk, sword, and bayonet. Fourteen Indians, including Emistessigo, a famous chief, were slain. Wayne lost but two men. The royalists who came from Savannah to assist the Indians, were driven back by the victorious Americans, who took a British standard and one hundred and twenty-seven horses with packs. Of the continentals, five were killed and eight wounded. This was the last Indian battle during the war. The whole course of the contest maintained between the Indians and the Americans had been marked by an excess of cruelty almost unparalleled in the annals of war. Women and children were put to death as mercilessly as those in arms. In the political dissensions, families were divided among themselves, and, as at Wyoming, all ties wore forgotten in a fiendish desire for blood and revenge. Such a straggle is scarcely to be found elsewhere in history. AFTER the termination of the revolutionary war, the hardy settlers of the west had still a contest to maintain, which often threatened their extermination. The Indian tribes of the west refused to bury the hatchet when Great Britain withdrew her armies, and they continued their terrible devastations. The vicinity of the Ohio river, especially, was the scene of their operations. Boats were plundered and their crews murdered. Farms were destroyed and settlements burned. A great number of people were carried into hopeless captivity. All efforts to obtain peace by negotiation proved fruitless. For the Indians were stimulated to these hostilities by the British agents, and supplied with arms and sheltered under the guns of the British forts, which, in defiance of the treaty, were still held in American territory. |