Note 21 — CHRONICLES OF BORDER WARFARE (continued 4)

In order to get a clearer view of the situation, a few more details are essential here. For several days after the battle of Point Pleasant, Lewis was busy in burying the dead, caring for the wounded, collecting the scattered cattle, and building a store-house and small stockade fort. Early on the morning of October 13th, messengers who had been sent on to Dunmore, advising him of the battle, returned with orders to Lewis to march at once with all his available force, against the Shawnee towns, and when within twenty-five miles of Chillicothe to write to his lordship. The next day, the last rear guard, with the remaining beeves, arrived from the mouth of the Elk, and while work on the defenses at the Point was hurried, preparations were made for the march. By evening of the 17th, Lewis, with 1,150 men in good condition, had crossed the Ohio and gone into camp on the north side. Each man had ten days’ supply of flour, a half pound of powder, and a pound and a half of bullets; while to each company was assigned a pack-horse for the tents. Point Pleasant was left in command of Col. Fleming,––who had been severely wounded in the battle,––Captains Dickinson, Lockridge, Herbert, and Slaughter, and 278 men, few of whom were fit for service. On the 18th, Lewis, with Captain Arbuckle as guide, advanced towards the Shawnee towns, eighty miles distant in a straight line, and probably a hundred and twenty-five by the circuitous Indian trails. The army marched about eleven miles a day, frequently seeing hostile parties but engaging none. Reaching the salt licks near the head of the south branch of Salt Creek (in the present Lick township, Jackson county, O.), they descended that valley to the Scioto, and thence to a prairie on Kinnikinnick (not Kilkenny) Creek, where was the freshly-deserted Indian village referred to above, by Withers. This was thirteen miles south of Chillicothe (now Westfall). Here they were met, early on the 24th, by a messenger from his lordship, ordering them to halt, as a treaty was nearly concluded at Camp Charlotte. But Lewis’s army had been fired on that morning, and the place was untenable for a camp in a hostile country, so he concluded to seek better ground. A few hours later another messenger came, again peremptorily ordering a halt, as the Shawnees had practically come to terms. Lewis now concluded to join the northern division in force, at Camp Charlotte, not liking to have the two armies separated in the face of a treacherous enemy; but his guide mistook the trail, and took one leading directly to the Grenadier Squaw’s Town. Lewis camped that night on the west bank of Congo Creek, two miles above its mouth, and five and a quarter miles from Chillicothe, with the Indian town half-way between. The Shawnees were now greatly alarmed and angered, and Dunmore himself, accompanied by the Delaware chief White Eyes, a trader, John Gibson, and fifty volunteers, rode over in hot haste that evening to stop Lewis, and reprimand him. His lordship was mollified by Lewis’s explanations, but the latter’s men, and indeed Dunmore’s, were furious over being stopped when within sight of their hated quarry, and tradition has it that it was necessary to treble the guards during the night to prevent Dunmore and White Eyes from being killed. The following morning (the 25th), his lordship met and courteously thanked Lewis’s officers for their valiant service; but said that now the Shawnees had acceded to his wishes, the further presence of the southern division might engender bad blood. Thus dismissed, Lewis led his army back to Point Pleasant, which was reached on the 28th. He left there a garrison of fifty men under Captain Russell, and then by companies the volunteers marched through the wilderness to their respective homes, where they disbanded early in November.––R. G. T.