The Conquest: The True Story of Lewis and Clark

  I

  _A CHILD IS BORN_

  The old brick palace at Williamsburg was in a tumult. The Governortore off his wig and stamped it under foot in rage.

  "I'll teach them, the ingrates, the rebels!" Snatching at a wornbell-cord, but carefully replacing his wig, he stood with clinchedfists and compressed lips, waiting.

  "They are going to meet in Williamsburg, eh? I'll circumvent them.These Virginia delegates! These rebellious colonists! I'll nip theirlittle game! The land is ripe for insurrection. Negroes, Indians,rebels! There are enough rumblings now. Let me but play them offagainst each other, and then these colonists will know their friends.Let but the Indians rise--like naked chicks they'll fly to motherwings for shelter. I'll show them! I'll thwart their hostile plans!"

  Again Lord Dunmore violently rang the bell. A servant of the palaceentered.

  "Here, sirrah! take this compass and dispatch a messenger to DanielBoone. Bade him be gone at once to summon in the surveyors at theFalls of the Ohio. An Indian war is imminent. Tell him to lose notime."

  The messenger bowed himself out, and a few minutes later a horse'shoofs rang down the cobblestone path before the Governor's Mansion ofHis Majesty's colony of Virginia in the year of our Lord 1774.

  Lord Dunmore soliloquised. "Lewis is an arrant rebel, but he ispowerful as old Warwick. I'll give him a journey to travel." Again herang the bell and again a servant swept in with low obeisance.

  "You, sirrah, dispatch a man as fast as horse or boat can speed toBottetourt. Tell Andrew Lewis to raise at once a thousand men andmarch from Lewisburg across Mt. Laurel to the mouth of the GreatKanawha. Here are his sealed orders." The messenger took the packetand went out.

  "An Indian war will bring them back. I, myself, will lead the rightwing, the pick and flower of the army. I'll make of the best men myown scouts. To myself will I bind this Boone, this Kenton, Morgan, andthat young surveyor, George Rogers Clark, before these agitators tainttheir loyalty. I, myself, will lead my troops to the Shawnee towns.Let Lewis rough it down the Great Kanawha."

  It was the sixth of June when the messenger drew rein at Boone's doorin Powell's Valley. The great frontiersman sat smoking in his porch,meditating on the death of that beloved son killed on the way toKentucky. The frightened emigrants, the first that ever tried theperilous route, had fallen back to Powell's Valley.

  Boone heard the message and looked at his faithful wife, Rebecca, busywithin the door. She nodded assent. The messenger handed him thecompass, as large as a saucer. For a moment Boone balanced it on hishand, then slipped it into his bosom. Out of a huge wooden bowl on across-legged table near he filled his wallet with parched corn, tookhis long rifle from its peg over the door, and strode forth.

  Other messengers were speeding at the hest of Lord Dunmore, hither andyon and over the Blue Ridge.

  Andrew Lewis was an old Indian fighter from Dinwiddie'sday,--Dinwiddie, the blustering, scolding, letter-writing Dinwiddie,who undertook to instruct Andrew Lewis and George Washington how tofight Indians! Had not the Shawnees harried his border for years? Hadhe not led rangers from Fairfax's lodge to the farthest edge ofBottetourt? Side by side with Washington he fought at Long Meadows andspilled blood with the rest on Braddock's field. More than forty yearsbefore, his father, John Lewis, had led the first settlers up theShenandoah. They had sown it to clover, red clover, red, the Indianssaid, from the blood of red men slain by the whites.

  But what were they to do when peaceful settlers, fugitives from theold world, staked their farms on vacant land only to be routed by thescalp halloo? Which was preferable, the tyranny of kings or the Indianfirestake? Hunted humanity must choose.

  The Shawnees, too, were a hunted people. Driven from south and fromnorth, scouted by the Cherokees, scalped by the Iroquois, night andday they looked for a place of rest and found it not. Beside theshining Shenandoah, daughter of the stars, they pitched their wigwams,only to find a new and stronger foe, the dreaded white man. Do theirbest, interests would conflict. Civilisation and savagery could notoccupy the same territory.

  And now a party of emigrants were pressing into the Mingo country onthe upper Ohio. Early in April the family of Logan, the noted Mingochief, was slaughtered by the whites. It was a dastardly deed, butwhat arm had yet compassed the lawless frontier? All Indiansimmediately held accountable all whites, and burnings and massacresbegan in reprisal. Here was an Indian war at the hand of Lord Dunmore.

  Few white men had gone down the Kanawha in those days. Washingtonsurveyed there in 1770, and two years later George Rogers Clarkcarried chain and compass in the same region. That meantsettlers,--now, war. But Lewis, blunt, irascible, shrank not. Of oldCromwellian stock, sternly aggressive and fiercely right, he felt theland was his, and like the men of Bible times went out to smite theheathen hip and thigh. Buckling on his huge broadsword, and slippinginto his tall boots and heavy spurs, he was off.

  At his call they gathered, defenders of the land beyond the BlueRidge, Scotch-Irish, Protestants of Protestants, long recognised bythe Cavaliers of tidewater Virginia as a mighty bulwark against theraiding red men. Charles Lewis brought in his troop from Augusta,kinsfolk of the Covenanters, fundamentally democratic, PresbyterianIrish interpreting their own Bibles, believing in schools, bornleaders, dominating their communities and impressing their characteron the nation yet unborn.

  It was August when, in hunting shirts and leggings, they marched intorendezvous at Staunton, with long knives in their leathern belts andrusty old firelocks above their shoulders. In September they camped atLewisburg. Flour and ammunition were packed on horses. Three weeks oftoil and travail through wilderness, swamp, and morass, and they wereat the mouth of the Great Kanawha.

  But where was Dunmore? With his thousand men he was to march over theBraddock Road to meet them there on the Ohio. Rumour now said he wasmarching alone on the Shawnee towns.

  "And so expose himself!" ejaculated Lewis.

  But just then a runner brought word from Lord Dunmore, "Join me at theShawnee towns."

  "What does it mean?" queried Lewis of his colonels, Charles Lewis ofAugusta, Fleming of Bottetourt, Shelby and Field of Culpepper. "Itlooks like a trap. Not in vain have I grown gray in border forays.There's some mistake. It will leave the whole western portion ofVirginia unprotected."

  Brief was the discussion. Before they could cross the Ohio, gunssounded a sharp surprise. Andrew Lewis and his men found themselvespenned at Point Pleasant without a hope of retreat. Behind them laythe Ohio and the Kanawha, in front the woods, thick with Delawares,Iroquois, Wyandots, Shawnees, flinging themselves upon the entrappedarmy.

  Daylight was just quivering in the treetops when the battle of PointPleasant began. At the first savage onset Fleming, Charles Lewis, andField lay dead. It was surprise, ambuscade, slaughter.

  Grim old Andrew Lewis lit his pipe and studied the field while hisriflemen and sharp-shooters braced themselves behind the white-armedsycamores. There was a crooked run through the brush unoccupied.While the surging foes were beating back and forth, Andrew Lewis senta party through that run to fall upon the Indians from behind. AHercules himself, he gathered up his men with a rush, cohorns roaring.From the rear there came an answering fire. Above the din, the voiceof Cornstalk rose, encouraging his warriors, "Be strong! be strong!"But panic seized the Indians; they broke and fled.

  Andrew Lewis looked and the sun was going down. Two hundred whites laystark around him, some dead, some yet to rise and fight on otherfields. The ground was slippery with gore; barked, hacked, and redwith blood, the white-armed sycamores waved their ghostly hands andsighed, where all that weary day red men and white had struggledtogether. And among the heaps of Indian slain, there lay the father ofa little Shawnee boy, Tecumseh.

  Cornstalk, chief of the Shawnees, Red Hawk, pride of the Delawares,and Logan, Logan the great Mingo, were carried along in the resistlessretreat of their people, down and over the lurid Ohio, crimson withblood and the tint of the setting sun.

  On that Oc
tober day, 1774, civilisation set a milestone westward.Lewis and his backwoodsmen had quieted the Indians in one of the mosthotly contested battles in all the annals of Indian warfare.

  "Let us go on," they said, and out of the debris of battle, Lewis andhis shattered command crossed the Ohio to join Lord Dunmore at theShawnee towns.

  "We have defeated them. Now let us dictate peace at their very doors,"said Lewis. But Dunmore, amazed at this success of rebel arms, sentthe flying word, "Go back. Retrace your steps. Go home."

  Lewis, astounded, stopped. "Go back now? What does the Governor mean?We must go on, to save him if nothing else. He is in the very heart ofthe hostile country." And he pressed on.

  Again the messenger brought the word, "Retreat."

  "Retreat?" roared Lewis, scarce believing his ears. "We've reachedthis goal with hardship. We've purchased a victory with blood!" Therewas scorn in the old man's voice. "March on!" he said.

  But when within three miles of the Governor's camp, Lord Dunmorehimself left his command and hastened with an Indian chief to the campof Lewis. Dunmore met him almost as an Indian envoy, it seemed toLewis.

  "Why have you disobeyed my orders?" thundered the Governor, drawinghis sword and reddening with rage. "I say go back. Retrace your steps.Go home. I will negotiate a peace. There need be no further movementof the southern division."

  His manner, his tone, that Indian!--the exhausted and overwroughtborderers snatched their bloody knives and leaped toward the Governor.Andrew Lewis held them back. "This is no time for a quarrel. I willreturn." And amazed, enraged, silenced, Andrew Lewis began his retreatfrom victory.

  But suspicious murmurings rolled along the line.

  "He ordered us there to betray us."

  "Why is my lord safe in the enemy's country?"

  "Why did the Indians fall upon us while the Governor sat in theShawnee towns?"

  "That sword--"

  Andrew Lewis seemed not to hear these ebullitions of his men, but hisfront was stern and awful. As one long after said, "The very earthseemed to tremble under his tread."

  All Virginia rang with their praises, as worn and torn and batteredwith battle, Lewis led his troop into the settlements. Leaving them todisperse to their homes with pledge to reassemble at a moment'snotice, he set forth for Williamsburg where news might be heard ofgreat events. On his way he stopped at Ivy Creek near Charlottesville,at the house of his kinsman, William Lewis. An infant lay in thecradle, born in that very August, while they were marching to battle.

  "And what have you named the young soldier?" asked the grim oldborderer, as he looked upon the sleeping child.

  "Meriwether Lewis, Meriwether for his mother's people," answered theproud and happy father.

  "And will you march with the minute men?"

  "I shall be there," said William Lewis.