The American Revolution Comes to the Northwest

The Quebec Act of 1774, which marked the beginning of civil government in the Old Northwest, saw Henry Hamilton presiding as Lieutenant Governor in the new capitol of Detroit.  Detroit, at that time was  a town of 1500 English-speaking white settlers.

The beginning of the America Revolution produced no immediate effect in the Northwest territory.  There was really nothing these frontier folk could do to help the colonies fighting on the East coast, until the English changed their minds.  The British decided to ravage the trans-Allegheny country, which made the new western territory an important theater in the war.

The British used the Indians, without regard for humanity, as their one great resource in the west.  The Redcoats put a price on every white scalp - men, women or child all paid the same.  The wilderness became a scene of bloody ambushes paid for by the British.  Wives who went out to milk the cow never were seen again, men who went to gather wood for winter were scalped and left to rot in the forest.  The frontier settlers were not the least responsible for the revolt of the colonies, in fact, they were non-combative.  They were killed because they lived on America soil. 

The responsibility goes to King George and his government.  The Earl of Suffolk wrote, "God and nature has put into our hands the knife to scalp and the tomahawk to torture them into unconditional submission".  In Detroit, Lt. Governor Hamilton, after opening a meeting with prayer, told the assembled Chippewa, Hurons, Mohawks and Potawatomi that it was their "duty" to decimate the white rebels.  Even if the settlers had "submitted" what good would it have done to the Revolution on the East Coast?

It was at this time that the news arrived in Detroit from Illinois, that a band of rebels led by one George Rogers Clark, had overtaken the settlement of Kaskaskia, thrown the commander into irons and required the population to take an oath of allegiance to the Continental Congress.  The settlement of Cahokia near St. Louis, was next, and rumor ran that a French priest was riding to Vincennes to take that settlement for the rebels as well.  The Revolution had come to the Old Northwest.

Next time...George Rogers Clark
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Today in Pioneer History:  "On February 7, 1964,  Pam Am Yankee Clipper flight 101 from London Heathrow lands at New York's Kennedy Airport–and "Beatlemania" arrives. It was the first visit to the United States by the Beatles, a British rock-and-roll quartet that had just scored its first No. 1 U.S. hit six days before.  You know the rest!

George Rogers Clark

Red-headed George Rogers Clark, son of a Virginia planter, explored part of the Ohio River in a canoe at the age of 19.  He moved to Kentucky in 1776 at the age of 24.  At the outbreak of the American Revolution, he was sent to the Virginia legislature.  With the help of Governor Patrick Henry he got 500 pounds of gunpowder for the defense of Kentucky settlements.  Clark and seven men ran 400 miles  of ambushes to get the gunpowder into the settler's hands.

Clark returned to Virginia and persuaded officials to mount a counter attack against the British in Illinois country.  In 1778, he and 175 Virginia volunteers boated down the Ohio River and defeated the British at the key fort of Vincennes, strengthening the American claims to the region from the Ohio River to the Canadian border and west to the Mississippi River.

After the Revolution, Clark was impoverished as Virginia failed for years to repay money he had previously spent on his troops (his own money). Without that money, his troops would have starved to death.  He died in 1818 with little to show for a life of service and bravery.

Next time...A settlement hewn from the forest
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Today in Pioneer History:  On October 12, 1492, Italian explorer Christopher Columbus sights a Bahamian island, believing he has reached East Asia. His expedition went ashore the same day and claimed the land for Isabella and Ferdinand of Spain, who sponsored his attempt to find a western ocean route to China, India, and the fabled gold and spice islands of Asia.

Washington Answers the Pioneer's Plea

In 1779 George Washington answered the frontier farmer's desperate plea for aid, resolving to accomplish, "the total destruction and devastation of the Iroquois camps."

Washington called on General John Sullivan and an army of 2500 from eastern Pennsylvania.  They made camp at Tioga Point on the New York- Pennsylvania border.  He was to await a second force of 1500 under General James Clinton.  Clinton would move from the Mohawk Valley southwest along the Susquehanna River.  When the two joined, they would drive deep into Iroquois country.

After many delays, the combined American force began moving west.  After only 12 miles,  the entrenched Tory-Indian force near Newton, New York challenged them.  After defeating them, the rest of the American campaign was more pillage than combat.  Forty Iroquois towns were destroyed, along with 160,000 bushels of corn, crops of vegetables and acres of apple, peach and pear orchards.

Although the Iroquois country was a smoking ruin, Sullivan made a serious error.  Assuming he had beat the Iroquois, he failed to push on and destroy the British supply base at Niagara on Lake Ontario.  Stripped on their possessions and homes (but not their will to fight), the Indians provisioned and armed themselves.  For the next two years, they joined the Tories.

Meanwhile another large chunk of western wilderness fell to the patriots. In  1778-1779 a small force of Kentucky sharpshooters led by George Rogers Clark fought the British in the Ohio Valley region.

Next time.. we'll look at Mr. Clark
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On this Day in Pioneer History: On October 8, 1871, flames spark in the Chicago barn of Patrick and Catherine O’Leary, igniting a two-day blaze that kills between 200 and 300 people, destroys 17,450 buildings, leaves 100,000 homeless and causes an estimated $200 million. ($4 billion in today's dollars)

The "Western" American Revolution

While the American Revolution was largely along the eastern seaboard, lesser known but often savage encounters happened in the newly settled regions of the Ohio Valley.  Of the 2.4 million colonists in 1775, only a small percentage of those lived in the Allegheny Valley, and even fewer had gone through the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky and Tennessee.

To the Continental Congress, the west  (at this time the west was no farther than Kentucky) was of small importance at first.  They doubted the loyalties of the frontiersmen.  On the other hand, settlers had ample reason to distrust both patriots and loyalists. The "no taxation without representation" had little to do with the pioneers, who complained that their interests were ignored in favor of eastern merchant-planter elites.

John Stuart, British superintendent of Indian affair in the south, was warned in 1776 of impending raids on settlers in Tennessee.  The settlers repelled the Indians who attacked isolated farms and settlements in western Virginia, the Carolinas, and eastern Tennessee.  Finally met by a force of militia, their power was temporarily broken.  The situation was repeated in Kentucky.

In the northern Mohawk Valley in New York and Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania, Indians attacked farming settlements.  By 1778 many of the fields that fed the Continental Army were ablaze.  Farmers lived in fear of being murdered by the Iroquois and the Loyalists like bloodthirsty John Butler and his Butler's Rangers.  Joseph Brant, Mohawk chief and his Iroquois teamed up with Butler's Rangers to threaten every settlement from New York to Pennsylvania.

Next time...Washington's Plans for the Iroquois
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Today in Pioneer History:  On October 5, 1892, the famous Dalton Gang attempts the daring daylight robbery of two Coffeyville, Kansas, banks at the same time. But if the gang members believed the sheer audacity of their plan would bring them success, they were sadly mistaken. Instead, they were nearly all killed by quick-acting townspeople.