The Winning of the West, Volume 1: From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776Roosevelt, Theodore
History
The Winning of the West, Volume 1: From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776
Roosevelt, Theodore
Northwest, Old -- History; United States -- Territorial expansion; West (U.S.) -- History
40. These are the numbers given by Stewart, but the accounts vary
greatly. Monette ("Valley of the Mississippi,") says 87 killed and 141
wounded. The letters written at the time evidently take no account of
any but the badly wounded. Shelby thus makes the killed 55, and the
wounded (including the mortally hurt) 68. Another account ("Am.
Archives," p. 1017) says 40 men killed and 96 wounded, 20 odd of whom
were since dead, whilst a foot-note to this letter enumerates 53 dead
outright, and 87 wounded, "some of whom have since died." It is
evidently impossible that the slightly wounded are included in these
lists; and in all probability Stewart's account is correct, as he was an
eye-witness and participant.
41. Twenty-one were scalped on the field; the bodies of 12 more were
afterwards found behind logs or in holes where they had been lain, and 8
eventually died of their wounds. (See "American Archives," Smith, Hale,
De Haas, etc.) Smith, who wrote from the Indian side, makes their loss
only 28; but this apparently does not include the loss of the western
Indians, the allies of the Shawnees, Mingos, and Delawares.
42. _Smyth_, the Englishman, accuses Lewis of cowardice, an
accusation which deserves no more attention than do the similar
accusations of treachery brought against Dunmore. Brantz Mayer speaks in
very hyperbolic terms of the "relentless Lewis," and the "great
slaughter" of the Indians.
43. Wayne won an equally decisive victory, but he outnumbered his foes
three to one. Bouquet, who was almost beaten, and was saved by the
provincial rangers, was greatly the superior in force, and suffered four
times the loss he inflicted. In both cases, especially that of Bouquet,
the account of the victor must be received with caution where it deals
with the force and loss of the vanquished. In the same way Shelby and
the other reporters of the Kanawha fight stated that the Indians lost
more heavily than the whites.
44. The stories of how Lewis suspected the earl of treachery, and of how
the backwoodsmen were so exasperated that they wished to kill the
latter, may have some foundation; but are quite as likely to be pure
inventions, made up after the Revolutionary war. In De Haas, "The
American Pioneer," etc., can be found all kinds of stories, some even
told by members of the Clark and Lewis families, which are meant to
criminate Dunmore, but which make such mistakes in chronology--placing
the battle of Lexington in the year of the Kanawha fight, asserting that
peace was not made till the following spring, etc.--that they must be
dismissed offhand as entirely untrustworthy.
45. Stewart's Narrative.
46. "Am. Archives," IV. St. Clair's letter, Dec. 4, 1774. Also Jefferson
MSS. Dep. of Wm. Robinson, etc.
47. See De Haas, 162.
48. "Am. Archives," IV., Vol. I., pp. 1013, 1226.
49. John Gibson, afterwards a general in the army of the United States.
See Appendix.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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