The new soldiers learned that being driven by George Rogers Clark was even more grueling than legend had it. In the five days required for the winding two-hundred-mile approach to Chillicothe, virtually every man of the thousand found his endurance stretched miles beyond its supposed limit. Some of the men, their feet and ankles chafed constantly by the wet leather of their moccasins, developed the excruciating condition known as scald feet, which made every step an agony. Young men who had entered manhood inspired by tales about Boone and Kenton and Clark were almost in a state of joy as they plodded along through the sun-dappled greenery looking at the very backs of their heroes. In hundreds of fatigue-numbed minds there were stories forming, destined to be heard by thousands of children and grandchildren, nephews and nieces, cronies and constituents as yet unborn.
The approach of such a force could not go unnoticed, particularly by the vigilant Shawnees. And so when the mounted troops thundered down from the woodlands and through the cornfields to the great Indian town of Chillicothe, seat of the Chalahgawtha sept of the Shawnees, they found the town already deserted and partially burned. The tribe had departed so abruptly that corn and green beans were still warm in English iron kettles over the cooking fires. It was a ghost town of hemispherical wigwams of bark and hide, some reduced by fire to their charred skeletons of bowed saplings; of long, well-built council houses, one of which caved in with a roar of flame and lay crackling even as the vanguard of Kentucky officers rode by it; and a small fort of sharp-tipped palisade stakes. Just west of the village the river made a double bend under a spectacular wooded bluff, and to the north was an extensive marsh with a single gigantic oak standing on a knoll in its center.
Kenton’s scouts had already crossed the river, and returned in late afternoon to report that the Chalahgawthas were withdrawing to Piqua town on the Mad River fork of the Great Miami, thirteen miles to the northwest, where they probably would join with Delawares, Mingoes, Wyandots, and Piqua’s Shawnees to make a stand. George ordered a strong defense set up in the ruins of Chillicothe against counterattack, and bivouacked his army in the town, where they had a supper of fresh corn and beans to enhance monotonous trail rations. Legend had it that the Chalahgawtha Shawnees in this town owned a ton of silver, which they had been mining for generations from river gorges nearby, and a number of the Kentuckians who knew of this made feverish, secretive searches through every corner of the town until they were satisfied that either it was untrue or that the treasure had been carried away by the fleeing tribe. At last the army gave in to bone-weariness and settled to rest for the next day’s march.
George ordered the Shawnees’ crops cut down and burned or thrown in the river before dawn, leaving only a few acres standing to provide ears of sweet corn for their return trip, and then, the heavy smoke still in their nostrils, the Kentuckians set off at a canter in the delicate light of sunrise, heading for Piqua, rested, lusting for vengeance, and confident that with Clark leading them they should surely have it.
JOSEPH ROGERS LAY ON HIS PALLET IN THE HUT OF HIS ADOPTED Shawnee family at Piqua, too excited to sleep; so excited was he that he went into fits of trembling every few minutes.
Outside, all night long, he had heard the footsteps and low voices of the Shawnee warriors who were preparing for the defense of Piqua town. From snatches of conversation he had heard that Shemanese, or Big Knives, were at Chillicothe, that they numbered many hundred, maybe a thousand, that they had at least one cannon, that they probably would attack Piqua at midday or early afternoon unless they stayed longer at Chillicothe. He had heard that among the Kentuckians were such great fighters as He-Whose-Gun-Is-Always-Loaded, whose American name was Simon Butler; and Sheltowee, or Big Turtle, who was Daniel Boone.
But the most electrifying rumor he had heard was that the Shemanese were led by Long Knife, their nenothtu oukima, or great warrior chief, the man named Clark who had a charmed life.
Clark! With hair the color of outhowoququah, which was copper. Joseph Rogers had been hearing about Long Knife since the summer of 1778, and by now was certain that it could be no one but his first cousin, George Rogers Clark, with whom he had been bringing gunpowder to Kentucky when he was captured by the Shawnees near Limestone on Christmas Day of 1776. It was three and a half years that he had been living among the Shawnees, and had not talked to a white man, except the Girty brothers, since; but now, by this wonderful turn of fate, his own cousin, one of the last Virginians he had seen, was coming to defeat the Shawnees and, if the day went well, would free him and return him to his own people.
Joseph lay awake now in the wee hours, trying to remember their faces: His cousin George he could remember quite well, as his intensity and fine appearance were quite unforgettable; his own father George Rogers, the Long Knife’s namesake, he could never forget; and his father’s sister, Ann Rogers Clark, he could remember too, with her wheat-colored hair and freckles, commanding blue Rogers eyes, and her fine, strong features; and as Joseph Rogers lay awake now in the ominous night, his adopted Shawnee parents sleeping a few feet away, his life as a Shawnee son fell away little by little until, by the time the gray of morning outlined the door of the hut and the moccasined feet of the defenders of Piqua passed the door and weapons rattled and war drums began to thump, Joseph Rogers was a Virginian again, fully a Virginian, a Rogers. He began to contemplate how he might in the confusion of battle effect his escape.
The warriors had taken his hunting rifle from him yesterday, not trusting him to use it against his fellow white men even though he had been a model Shawnee son and had never in his years at Piqua tried to escape. So he would have to face the holocaust of the coming day unarmed except for his skinning knife, and probably would be kept in or near the stockade and watched from the corners of the warriors’ eyes during the battle.
But there would be much confusion in the battle, he imagined, and surely there would be a time when he might slip from his captors’ sight and hide until the white men were near enough to hear his cries and sweep him into their protection. “I am a Virginian!” he would cry. “I am a Virginian!” In his imagination he rehearsed it and saw them recognizing him and embracing him with joy, and tears came to his eyes as he trembled and daydreamed to the solemn drums.
AT MIDMORNING ON AUGUST EIGHTH, A COLUMN OF FIVE HUNDRED armed Kentuckians crossed the Mad River about a mile below Piqua town, at a fording place where scouts had found the water only knee-deep. The horses splashed through the clear water; flags fluttered, harness jingled, and the iron-rimmed wheels of the six-pounder ground over the stony shore. Directly behind George Rogers Clark rode two men bearing the banners of Virginia and the United States, then more cavalry, then files of woodsmen afoot. The sky was clear and blue.
George stood in his stirrups and turned to watch Colonel Ben Logan’s regiment marching up the other side of the river. Logan was to go up around the horseshoe bend and ford the river on the far edge of the town, attack from that side, and prevent the Indians from escaping in that direction.
George stopped and deployed Colonel Harrod’s regiment in ranks off to the left after the crossing, in preparation for the advance over the intervening ground, and to give Logan time. He surveyed the rolling plain ahead, noting a few wooded hillocks and a zigzagging pole fence off to the left. To the right lay a large cornfield, along whose margin ran another pole fence, generally parallel with the river. Beyond it was a wooded elevation marking the outskirts of the town. George could see the motions of large numbers of Indians along that fence and all about the town itself Partly visible through the trees at one end of the town was a new, triangular log fort, which he knew would be the Shawnees’ final stronghold in the event that Logan could bottle them in on the far side.
The morning grew still; horses blew, birds twittered and darted over the sunny meadow. After a seemly wait, with the ranks formed for an advance across the plain, George drew his sword and pointed to the drummers. One of them was Dickie Lovell, the lad who had gone with him to Vincennes, and that boy hel
d the same drum upon which he had floated through the icy Wabash floodwaters.
George dug his heels into the flanks of his horse and swung his blade around toward Piqua. Two long ranks of men, in gray linen or buckskin hunting shirts and breechclouts, began moving forward in a crouch, their long rifles cocked and sweeping the field ahead of them. Drums rattled; leggings whispered in the grass. Within a minute after the start of the advance, far to George’s left, and scarcely fifty yards in front of Colonel Harrod’s regiment, the zigzag fence and nearby wood suddenly emitted a cloud of white smoke and crackling of musket fire, it was immediately answered by a chorus of cheers and a withering volley from the front rank. As that rank knelt to reload, the following line poured another volley through the fence, and George saw a sudden flurry of Indians, perhaps a hundred tiny figures, break from the shelter, scatter through the grass at a fast run for about two hundred yards, then rally on a timbered hillock. Almost at that moment, a greater hail of fire roared out of the cornfield and from the pole fence on the right flank of the advancing Kentuckians.
Instead of stopping in the face of the fire, the companies screamed wildly, and broke into a swift run toward the enemy, gaining many yards before the Indians could reload. Routed by his headlong rush, several hundred braves scattered from behind the fence and swarmed like bees into the high corn, and the Kentuckians, carrying down the fence with their onrush, vanished into the cornfield after them. Keep going, George thought as he galloped toward that point, if you stop and let ‘em reload and rally, it could be deadly in there! But the swaying corn tassels and moving heads, visible from his mounted height, showed that the Indians were not stopping, but curving left toward the elevated wood where the smaller party had fled.
Galloping into the cornfield behind his troops, he urged them on toward the woods. It was an unnecessary encouragement, as they were whisking forward through the stalks like a swift wind, screaming a bloodthirsty war cry as they went. In minutes the cornfield was behind them and they were into the edge of the woods, where they were met by a shower of ineffective musketry from the shade. George and the mounted officers rode back and forth behind them, re-forming the double ranks, which had become disarranged in the blind charge through the corn. “Press on ‘em!” he roared at the top of his voice. “Don’t let ‘em shoot twice from behind the same tree!” Riding past a captain named Haskins, George saw the captain’s dusty tricorn hat leap from his head with a puff of dust and spin to the ground; Haskins reached up with a perplexed look, touched a bullet furrow that had taken off some hair and a layer of skin, then rushed with a happy shriek deeper into the woods.
Darting from tree to tree and firing at puffs of musket smoke, the frontiersmen within an hour had the Indians driven to the far side of the woods. So far George had not seen a single white man fall. He kept listening for sounds of battle above the town, where Logan should have been attacking by now, but heard none. Logan was either meeting no resistance or had not attacked yet.
Now some of the Indians, in parties of twenty or thirty, detached themselves from the main defense line and sped toward the ends of the American line, trying to get around and attack the flanks or rear. But the woodsmen, who had learned their lessons well under the intensive drilling at the camp on the Licking, simply wheeled, delivered two or three volleys, and dispersed those sorties.
The battle for the woods consumed nearly two hours. Smoke filled the green shade; bullets whacked through the foliage, making a continuous shower of twigs and leaves. Balls thrummed past George’s ears every few seconds, as the mounted officers like himself offered the best targets, but he felt invulnerable, as if the Indians’ own Great Spirit had thrown a protective aura around him.
As the enemy retreated through the woods, they picked up and carried off their wounded, but the frontiersmen were now passing among Indian dead, stopping to bend and lift scalps as they went. George now began to ride among brown-skinned war-painted corpses lying amid blood-speckled ferns and undergrowth in contorted positions, the hair and skin gone from the crowns of their heads. One body appeared to have been slashed to ribbons by some frenzied knife-wielder; dozens of deep cuts had been made across the flesh of the chest and arms and the abdominal cavity had been ripped open violently. Another lay sprawled supine over a log, his breechclout cut away, a jagged red wound where his genitals had been. As George was bracing himself against the grimness of that sight, a runner came and told him that Bill McAfee, one of the best of the Indian fighters, had been shot through the body and was down but still conscious and talking.
At last driven from this wood, the Indians darted across open ground to the next, where another battle of the same nature raged for another two hours. The casualties on both sides seemed to be light despite the constant uproar of gunfire, both the Indians and the attackers being masters at concealment.
It was late afternoon when the Indians were at last driven to the edges of their town, and they retreated gradually through the gardens and the huts and cabins, at last darting a few at a time into their fort, and the gunfire diminished.
Their triangular stockade seemed to cover half an acre, sitting near the end of the horseshoe bend of the river that looped around the town. A rear guard of the retreating warriors kept up a prolific fire and then withdrew into the enclosure through its one gate, which was on the side facing the town.
Now George recalled his tiring troops and formed them in a hollow square on an elevation some two hundred yards from the stockade. The brass six-pounder cannon was brought forward, pulled by a four-horse team and followed by packhorses laden with powder and cannonballs. The piece was unlimbered in the middle of the hollow square, and wheeled to bear on the stockade. The Kentuckians watched with undisguised glee as the wheels were chocked, the powder and ball rammed home, and the smoking match brought up. George sat his horse a few feet from the cannon, looked in vain for any sign of Logan’s regiment, decided not to wait for it, and then raised his hat to the gunner.
“Fire!” he bellowed, slapping the hat down against his knee. The cannon spat orange flame and blue-gray smoke, kicked, and settled, its roar echoing from the bluffs opposite, and the Kentuckians cheered as chunks and white splinters of the palisade flew into the air.
“Fire when ready, boys,” he cried. “Work on that gate!”
The cannon roared fourteen more times, as fast as it could be swabbed and reloaded, accompanied each time by the cheers of the Kentuckians, and segment after segment of the palisade was shivered. One of the big log double doors of the gate burst, sagged, then fell to the ground in a cloud of dust. The Indians fired for a while toward the cannon with their muskets, but at this distance the fire was ineffectual and they soon gave it up.
Unobserved from the cannon position, however, several hundred warriors had shimmied over the wall of the fort on the river side, crouched in the cornfield which grew almost to the wall, and crept through the stalks, gaining the woods behind the regiment.
Then, between rounds from the cannon, the Indians within the fort performed a singular maneuver. They marched out of the broken gate and began forming a single long rank on the flatland before the front of the fort.
“By Jove,” George muttered to Colonel Harrod. “I do believe they’re coming out to treat for peace. Hold your fire!” he told the cannoneers. He rode out of the square of troops and guided his horse a few yards down the slope toward the fort, trying to pick out someone among the Indians who would be coming forward as spokesman. The whole area was quiet in the hot afternoon sunlight, long calls of the locusts drawing out.
No Indian came forward with the white wampum belt or flag of truce. Instead, the whole long line suddenly drew their muskets up at the ready, gave vent to a chilling war cry, and began charging up the slope at a dead run, firing as they came. At the same moment a storm of gunfire began pouring into the regiment from the woods behind the squared regiment, and George, wheeling his steed and galloping back in among his troops, understood the Indians’ tactic. It
infuriated him to have been so fooled, but he was not alarmed. The troops on the rear side of the square flattened themselves against the ground and began a brisk return fire which soon had the Indians in the rear all but immobilized behind the trees. In the meantime the line of Indians from the fort came running up the slope in a desperate frontal charge, their shrieks pulsating back and forth along the line. George felt his scalp prickle at such desperate bravery on the part of the Indians. “Damn, damn,” exclaimed Harrod, apparently thinking likewise, “I never seen them charge exposed like that!”
“Aye,” said George as they came closer. “Because you never saw ‘em fighting for their own place. Hey, boys!” he roared, “hold fire till they’re too close to miss!”
“Heyo, laddies!” cried an officer nearby, “don’t shoot till you can singe their eyebrows!”
The horde came on, their feet patting the earth, cries piercing, painted faces looking demoniacal. They came now like an on-rushing wall of pent-up murder. George’s heart was in his throat; the savages were almost upon the square now.
“First rank,” he yelled, “Fire!”
“Fire!” the command was relayed up and down the line, and nearly a hundred rifles barked at once. Indians pitched forward, spun and pirouetted to the ground.
“Reload! Reload!” yelled the officers to the first rank. “Fire!” they commanded the second rank, which had stepped forward. The rifles sputtered again. The few Indians still coming flung up their arms and reeled; others, who had stopped in confusion or were trying to reload, now turned tail and sprinted or limped, crawled, and squirmed back down the hill, many of them leaving trails of blood.
The company on the rear side of the square, meanwhile, had repulsed that charge entirely and was cheering itself roundly, and at that moment George faintly heard drums and fifes in the distance at the upper ford of the river. He stared toward a line of cottonwood and willow, and saw the flags and ranks of Logan’s regiment at last coming up the riverbank. But George didn’t want him now; the Indians were already in retreat, through another cornfield, invisible to Logan’s regiment, and obviously were making their escape straight toward the ravine and ford that Logan had just vacated. “Go back, damn you, Ben!” George bellowed, but the distance was far too great, and Logan’s half thousand marched blithely on toward the fort which was by now nothing but a shattered empty shell.