Project Gutenberg's Chronicles of Border Warfare, by Alexander Scott Withers This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net Title: Chronicles of Border Warfare or, a History of the Settlement by the Whites, of North-Western Virginia, and of the Indian Wars and Massacres in that section of the Indian Wars and Massacres in that section of the State Author: Alexander Scott Withers Editor: Reuben Gold Thwaites Release Date: June 26, 2009 [EBook #29244] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRONICLES OF BORDER WARFARE *** Produced by Roger Frank, Mark C. Orton and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net Transcriber’s Note This is a 1971 reprint edition of the 1895 edition of “Chronicles of Border Warfare.” The modern title page and verso have been relocated to the end of the text. The 1895 edition includes and expands on the original 1831 edition. Throughout this text, the pagination of the original edition is indicated by brackets, such as [54]. Capitalization standards for the time (i.e. “fort Morgan,” “mrs. Pindall,” “Ohio river”) have been preserved. Variable hyphenation has been preserved. Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved. Author’s punctuation style has been preserved. Typographical problems have been corrected as listed in the Transcriber’s Note at the end of the text. CHRONICLES OF BORDER WARFARE Chronicles of Border Warfare OR, A History of the Settlement by the Whites, of North- Western Virginia, and of the Indian Wars and Massacres in that section of the State WITH REFLECTIONS, ANECDOTES, &c. BY ALEXANDER SCOTT WITHERS A New Edition EDITED AND ANNOTATED BY REUBEN GOLD THWAITES Secretary of the Wisconsin Historical Society, editor of “Wisconsin Historical Collections,” and author of “The Colonies, 1492-1750,” “Historic Waterways,” “Story of Wisconsin,” etc. With the addition of a Memoir of the Author, and several Illustrative Notes. BY THE LATE LYMAN COPELAND DRAPER Author of “King’s Mountain and Its Heroes,” “Autograph Collections of the Signers,” etc. CINCINNATI THE ROBERT CLARKE COMPANY 1895 Copyright, 1895 BY REUBEN GOLD THWAITES All rights reserved CONTENTS. PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR Frontispiece. PAGE Editor’s Preface v Memoir of the Author, by Lyman C. Draper viii Original Title-page (photographic fac-simile) xiii Original Copyright Notice xiv Original Advertisement xv Original Table of Contents (with pagination revised) xvii Author’s Text (with editorial notes) 1 Index, by the Editor 431 v EDITOR’S PREFACE. It is sixty-four years since the original edition of Withers’s Chronicles of Border Warfare was given to the public. The author was a faithful recorder of local tradition. Among his neighbors were sons and grandsons of the earlier border heroes, and not a few actual participants in the later wars. He had access, however, to few contemporary documents. He does not appear to have searched for them, for there existed among the pioneer historians of the West a respect for tradition as the prime source of information, which does not now obtain; to-day, we desire first to see the documents of a period, and care little for reminiscence, save when it fills a gap in or illumines the formal record. The weakness of the traditional method is well exemplified in Withers’s work. His treatment of many of the larger events on the border may now be regarded as little else than a thread on which to hang annotations; but in most of the local happenings which are here recorded he will always, doubtless, remain a leading authority––for his informants possessed full knowledge of what occurred within their own horizon, although having distorted notions regarding affairs beyond it. The Chronicles had been about seven years upon the market, when a New York youth, inspired by the pages of Doddridge, Flint, and Withers, with a fervid love for border history, entered upon the task of collecting documents and traditions with which to correct and amplify the lurid story which these authors had outlined. In the prosecution of this undertaking, Lyman C. Draper became so absorbed with the passion of collecting that he found little opportunity for literary effort, and in time his early facility in this direction became dulled. He was the most successful of collectors of materials for Western history, and as such did a work which must earn for him the lasting gratitude of American historical students; but unfortunatelyvihe did little more than collect and investigate, and the idea which to the last strongly possessed him, of writing a series of biographies of trans-Alleghany pioneers, was never realized. He died August 26, 1891, having accomplished wondrous deeds for the Wisconsin Historical Society, of which he was practically the founder, and for thirty-three years the main stay; in the broader domain of historical scholarship, however, he had failed to reach his goal. His great collection of manuscripts and notes, he willed to his Society, which has had them carefully classified and conveniently bound– –a lasting treasure for historians of the West and Southwest, for the important frontier period between about 1740 and 1816. Dr. Draper had exhibited much ability as an editor, in the first ten volumes of the Wisconsin Historical Collections. In 1890, the Robert Clarke Company engaged him, as the best living authority on the details of Western border history, to prepare and edit a new edition of Withers. He set about the task with interest, and was engaged in the active preparation of “copy” during his last months on earth; indeed, his note upon page 123 of this edition is thought to have been his final literary work. He had at that time prepared notes for about one-fourth of the book, and had written his “Memoir of the Author.” The matter here rested until the autumn of 1894, when the publishers requested the present writer to take up the work where his revered friend had left it, and see the edition through the press. He has done this with some reluctance, conscious that he approached the task with a less intimate knowledge of the subject than his predecessor; nevertheless he was unwilling that Dr. Draper’s notes on the early pages should be lost, and has deemed it a labor of love to complete the undertaking upon which the last thoughts of the latter fondly dwelt. In the preparation of his own notes, the editor has had the great advantage of free access to the Draper Manuscripts; without their help, it would have been impossible to throw further light on many of the episodes treated by the author. The text of Withers has been preserved intact, save that where errors have obviously been typographical,viiand not intended by the author, the editor has corrected them––perhaps in a dozen instances only, for the original proof-reading appears to have been rather carefully done. The pagination of the original edition has in this been indicated by brackets, as [54]. In the original, the publisher’s “Advertisement” and the “Table of Contents”were bound in at the end of the work,––see collation in Field’s Indian Bibliography,–– but evidently this was a make-shift of rustic binders in a hurry to get out the long-delayed edition, and the editor has taken the liberty to transfer them to their proper place; also, while preserving typographical peculiarities therein, to change the pagination in the “Contents” to accord with the present edition. In order clearly to indicate the authorship of notes, those by Withers himself are unsigned; those by Dr. Draper are signed “L. C. D.”; and those by the present writer,“R. G. T.” REUBEN GOLD THWAITES. Madison, Wis., February, 1895. viii MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. BY LYMAN COPELAND DRAPER. In 1831, an interesting volume appeared from the press of Joseph Israel, of Clarksburg, in North Western Virginia, prepared by Alexander Scott Withers, on the border wars of the West. It was well received at the time of its publication, when works on that subject were few, and read with avidity by the surviving remnant of the participators in the times and events so graphically described, and by their worthy descendants. Historians and antiquarians also received it cordially, universally according it high praise. Mann Butler, the faithful historian of Kentucky, declared that it was “a work to which the public was deeply indebted,” composed, as it was, with “so much care and interest.” The late Samuel G. Drake, the especial historian of the Red Man, pronounced it “a work written with candor and judgment.”The late Thomas W. Field, the discriminating writer on Indian Bibliography, says: “Of this scarce book, very few copies are complete or in good condition. Having been issued in a remote corner of North-Western Virginia, and designed principally for a local circulation, almost every copy was read by a country fireside until scarcely legible. Most of the copies lack the table of contents. The author took much pains to be authentic, and his chronicles are considered by Western antiquarians, to form the best collection of frontier life and Indian warfare, that has been printed.” Of such a work, now difficult to procure at any price, a new edition is presented to the public. In 1845, the writer of this notice visited the Virginia Valley, collecting materials on the same general subject, going over much the same field of investigation, and quite naturally, at that early period, identifying very large the sources of Mr.