Show aone by ELMO SCOTT WATSON 1781 northward through maryland through pennsylvania through new jersey isea york and new england speed horsemen and sleeping village and farmhouse awaken to listen wonderingly to the cry that rings through the night Is taken 1 cornwallis ls Is taken 1 so the six year struggle for freedom Is ended and george washington and his ragged continentals Continent als have triumphed at bastl the revolution Is overt such Is the picture which the school histories have painted in our minds but the impression they have given us that the surrender at yorktown meant the dawn of and the prosperous beginning of a new nation Is only a half truth true it Is that 1781 was the last year 0 the revolution in the main theater of war the atlantic seaboard but there was one people in the new nation who were to know another year of the horrors of war such as their eastern neighbors had never known to the scattered border settlements west of the alleghenies there had not yet come a winged victory with smooth brow laurellen laurel led to teach us to forget the holocaust instead the year 1782 was to be a repetition of 1777 the year of the bloody sevens and agan virtually deserted by those governments to whom they bad a right to look for aid the pioneers in the ohio valley especially those in kentucky must crouch behind the log walls of their forts with the bavage war whoop ringing in their ears and a shower of indian arrows and bullets whistling over their heads so in its centennial year we americans should not forget what these ancestors of ours who won the west for us suffered and endured in 1782 the last year of the revolution it opened with an affair which must ever be a blot on our history the massacre of 00 of the moravian indians at ohio byi a party of lans led by col david maddened by the slaughter of their brethren the delawarek Dela wares rallied to their aid the Wyan dots and other indians allied with the british and waited for a good chance for revenge which soon came in may a body of pennsylvania and virginia gathered at mango bottom on the ohio and prepared to march against the wyandot and shawnee towns on the upper sanduska San dusk the commander of the expedition was a virginian col william crawford a personal friend of washington who had won a reputation as a brave and active officer in the continental army but who was utterly unfitted for leadership against such an enemy as the tribesmen he was ordered to crush crawford hoped to surprise the indians but enemy scouts discovered his force soon after be started and indian spies followed every movement of his army on june 4 crawford reached one of the wyandot towns but found it deserted he marched on to find another and encountered a small force of indians and canadian rangers under the command of captain caldwell which had been sent by the british in detroit to aid the indians there was a sharp skirmish with neither side gaining any advantage although crawford bad the superiority in numbers the next morning instead of forcing a battle and crushing the enemy crawfords Craw fords army lay idle caldwell also was willing to delay proceedings for he was expecting reinforcements they came in the afternoon in the person of shawnee warriors at the sight of this crawford a began to waver and crawford decided that the only course left tor him was to retire from the field that night alg force begin a hurried and als in the birkness dir kness the troops became tattered and when rooming came there f aimon airty were only about left together in one body crawford was among those missing and col david perpetrator of the gnaden huetten massacre who was second in command com mind directed the retreat if poetic justice had been at work it would have been who was missing and crawford who was to lead the disorganized remnants 0 the command back in safety to mango bottom but instead colonel crawford doctor knight the surgeon of the command and nine others were captured by the indians all except craw ford and knight were killed at once but these two were taken to a delaware town for torture crawford was burned at the stile and doctor knight was forced to witch the sufferings of his friend crawford Is said to have appealed in vain to simon white renegade among the indians to end his sufferings by shooting him but garty either could not or would not heed bis pica later doctor knight managed to escape and after wandering in the woods tor 21 days reached fort pitt in safety encouraged by their success the indians appeared in large numbers on the upper ohio and fell upon the settlement of pa which they burned and captured or killed 20 of its inhabitants then the partisan captains and caldwell assembled a force of 1100 indians the greatest single body of savages brought together during the revolution for an attack on wheeling but while they were march ing thither they became alarmed by a report that george bogers clark was leading his long knives again to attack the shawnee towns so mckee and caldwell marched to meet him but upon reaching the shawnee towns discoverer that the alarm of those indians was groundless it having originated in the appear ance of an armed galley boat at the mouth of the licking river most of the indians showing a characteristic fickleness declined to go any farther on the expedition but caldwell and mckee managed to keep together bome wy andors and lake indians and with these and their detroit rangers set out to invade ken tucky and to attack the five small settlements in payette county on august 15 they appeared before bryans station the northernmost settlement in fayette county which was defended by less than 50 men the story of the brief cloge of bryans station Is one of the classics of kentucky history included in it Is the story of its heroic women who took their lives in their hands to bring palls of refreshing water drawn from the spring which lay outside the tort and who gambling that the indians would not spoil their chance for a surprise attack on the fort by molesting them went singing down the path aa though no enemy were near although they knew that savage eyes looked out at them from every bush along the trall included in it too Is the etory of young aaron reynolds when simon garty tried to get the defenders of the fort to surrender by assuring them that reinforcements with artillery were on the way and that no quarter would be given if the stormed the fort reynolds sprang to the top of the walls and replied to the renegade telling him that the people of bryan s station feared neither their reinforcements nor artillery but that it garty and his followers gained entrance to the fort reynolds and hla friends would scorn to use their rifles but would drive them out with switches after the failure of attempts to set fire to the fort the enemy withdrew meanwhile roes had been sent to the kotlier stations ashing for help and by the evening of august 17 a force of men had assembled at bryans station from boones station came that famous kentuckian lan at the head of his men among them his youngest son israel fram lexington and mcconnell a and mcgee s stations came the men under john todd and from came those under colonel and majors mcgarry and harian more were reported coming from lincoln county under colonel logan but the Kentuck lans decided to follow the invaders at once without waiting for logan then began the pursuit which was to end in the famous battle of blue licks fought on the banks of the licking river on august 19 1782 there the rash counsel of a hotheaded officer prevailed over the wisdom of boone and precipitated an attack which ended in disaster for the flower of Kentuck ys manhood fell that daiy diy out of ISO men ga killed outright or murdered as they lly wounded and seven captured of whom four died at the torture stake for a time it seemed hat kentucky could not recover from this crushing disaster then george rogers dark who had seemed to be suffering from a strange lethargy during this critical beir was aroused to his old time energy lie sent out runners to all the settlements call ing upon all able bodied men to rally for a blow at the indians again the of his name asserted itself and in a short time he had gath ered together a force of more than a thousand mounted riflemen on november 4 he left the banks of the ohio and started north on novem her 10 he attacked and burned the towns the loss to the savages at the beginning of cold weather was very great writes roosevelt they were utterly cist down and strick en at such a proof of the gocr of the whites coming aa it did so scon after the battle of blue I 1 icks the expedition returned in triumph and the Kentuck lans completely regained their self confidence and though for ten years long er kentucky suffered from the inroads of small parties of it wis never again threat ened by a serious invasion so the disastrous list year of the revolution ended in triumph but even more important than the fact of triumph over savage foes wig the importance of the events of that year to the future history of america for when it came time for the peace commissioners to make the treaty which ended the revolution it was the conquests of george rogers clark in the old northwest ending with his expedition in 1782 which strengthened the hand of the american commissioners in demanding that the western boundaries boun diries of the new nation should be the mississippi riter and the great lakes and america was assured of her inland empire by western Nw paper union |