form tendency in the public mind to render government more and more the instrument of the popular will. From the adoption of the state government until the year 1840, the advance of population, agriculture, arts, and manufactures was unprecedented in the West. Tennessee, abounding in fertile lands and rich mineral resources, and possessing a genial climate and an enterprising population, has been surpassed by no state in the rapid development of her natural resources, and in the patriotic chivalry of her citizens. The increase of her population continued to extend her settlements westward into the Valley of the Cumberland and upon the tributaries of the Tennessee River. Four years after the establishment of state government, the population had increased to 105,602 souls, including 13,584 slaves and colored persons. Ten years afterward the census of 1810 gave the whole population at 261,727 souls, including 44,535 slaves and colored persons. [A.D. 1820.] In ten years more this number had almost doubled, and the census of 1820 gave an entire population of 420,813 souls, including 80,107 slaves and colored persons. The ratio of increase for the next ten years was almost as great. The census of 1830 gave the inhabitants at 681,903 souls, including 141,603 slaves and 4555 colored persons.* Yet the whole of the present western district of Tennessee, as late as 1816, was an Indian wilderness, in the undisputed occupancy of the native savages. Until that year, the Chickasâ nation occupied the whole western portion of Tennessee, as far eastward as the Tennessee River, and northward to the southern boundary of Kentucky. The rapid advance of the civilized population made it requisite that the Indian tribes should occupy more circumscribed limits; and they retired within the present State of Mississippi, and subsequently to the Indian territory provided for them west of the present State of Arkansas. It was on the 20th of September, 1816, that General Andrew Jackson, with David Meriwether and Jesse Franklin, concluded a treaty with the Chickasâs, after a protracted negotiation in a general council of the nation. By this treaty, the Chickasâ nation, for a valuable consideration, ceded to the United States large bodies of land lying on both sides of the * Mitchell's World, p. 216. Tennessee River, west of the Muscle Shoals, partly in Alabama, and partly within the present State of Mississippi. This treaty extinguished the Indian title to a large portion of country, and opened the way for the egress of the redundant population. The treaty was ratified by the Senate on the 30th day of December following, and soon after, the lands were 'surveyed for market. This was the first advance of the whites into the Chickasâ country after the Creek war. The second relinquishment of lands by the Chickasâs in Tennessee was two years afterward. In this case, negotiations were conducted by General Andrew Jackson and Colonel Isaac Shelby, of Kentucky; and the treaty was finally concluded and signed on the 19th day of October, 1818, and ratified by the Senate on the 7th of January following. By this treaty the Chickasâ nation cede and relinquish to the United States all their lands in the western part of Tennessee north of latitude 35° and east of the Mississippi. The Chickasâs soon afterward commenced their gradual removal from the ceded territory. Some retired across the Mississippi to the Indian territory west of the present State of Arkansas; others retired into the heart of the nation in North Mississippi, where they remained until the treaty of Pontatoc, sixteen years afterward. The first white immigrants advanced into the country early in the year 1820, and extended down the tributaries of the Obian, Forked Deer, Hatchy, and Wolf River, to the Mississippi. Among the first settlements upon the Chickasâ Bluffs was one by John Overton, for himself and company, near the old Fort Pickering, below the mouth of Wolf River. The site of a town was laid off in the month of May, and called Memphis, which received its first inhabitants the following year. * [A.D. 1822.] Emigration from East and Middle Tennessee began to advance into all the late Chickasâ cession, and the jurisdiction of the state was annually extended over new counties successively erected and organized by the Legislature. Settlements continued to multiply in all the fine cotton lands upon the tributaries of the Hatchy and Wolf Rivers, until the year 1830, when the entire population of the Western District, according to the census of that year, was 94,792 souls, including 26,224 slaves, distributed over fourteen counties. Such had * See Mississippi State Gazette, June 20th, 1820. been the tide of emigration in ten years into the western district of Tennessee. [A.D. 1840.] The population, wealth, and resources of Tennessee continued to increase almost in an equal ratio for the next ten years. The Indian claim having been extinguished to the entire territory within the state, and the whole Indian population removed from its eastern as well as its western frontier, the energies of the people of Tennessee were untrammeled, and their wealth, resources, and agricultural enterprise even outstripped their prolific population. The census of 1840 gave the aggregate inhabitants at 829,210 souls, including 183,059 slaves and colored people The Western District alone contained a population of 193,241 persons, comprised in eighteen organized counties. The admirable agricultural resources of this portion of the state had been greatly developed, and it had become an important portion of the great cotton region of the Mississippi Valley. Memphis, the emporium of Western Tennessee, had received the impress of Tennessee enterprise, and was already the third commercial city on the Mississippi River, and the great cotton mart for West Tennessee and North Mississippi. Its population in 1840 was nearly four thousand inhabitants; but such was the enterprise awakened in 1842, that the commerce and population of the city had more than doubled before the year 1846, when it had also been selected as the location of a naval dépôt for the United States. [A.D. 1846.] Tennessee, not inaptly, has been called the mother of states. From the bosom of this state have issued more colonies for the peopling of the great Valley of the Mississippi than from any one state in the American Union.* Her emigrant citizens have formed a very important portion of the population of Alabama, of the northern half of Mississippi, and of Florida. They have also formed the principal portion of the early population of the states of Missouri, Arkansas, and Texas. * The following have been the governors of Tennessee, with their terms of service annexed, viz.: I. Southwestern Territory. 1. William Blount, from 1790 to 1796. 1. John Sevier, from 1796 to 1801. 5. Joseph M'Minn, from 1815 to 1821. 6. William Carroll, from 1821 to 1827. 7. Samuel Houston, from 1827 to 1830. 8. William Carroll, from 1830 to 1835. 9. Newton Cannon, from 1835 to 1838. 10. James K. Polk, from 1838 to 1841. 11. James C. Jones, from 1841 to 1844. CHAPTER XI. INDIAN WARS AND MILITARY OPERATIONS BY THE UNITED STATES NORTH OF THE OHIO RIVER.-A.D. 1787 To 1795. Argument.-Unsettled State of the Indian Tribes from 1784 to 1790.-Extent of Indian Depredation and Murders up to 1790.-General Harmar prepares to invade the Indian Country.-Advances to the Maumee.-Is defeated in two Engagements.-Retreats to Fort Washington.-Indian Hostilities renewed.-General Scott marches an Expedition against the Wabash Towns.-Colonel Wilkinson leads another against the Towns on Eel River and Tippecanoe.-General St. Clair prepares to invade the Maumee Country.-Marches toward the St. Mary's.-Meets with a disastrous Defeat. --Terrible Onset of the Savages.-Their Number and Allies.-The Remnant of the Army arrives at Fort Washington.-Colonel Wilkinson commands at Fort Washington. He proceeds from Fort Jefferson to the Scene of the Defeat.-Overtures of Peace tendered to the Indians in 1792.—The Federal Government authorize a strong Force for the Humiliation of the Savages.-General Wayne Commander-in-chief.— Indians continue their hostile Demonstrations.-Excited by British Emissaries.General Wayne concentrates his Forces at Fort Greenville.-The advanced Posts harassed by Indians.-Plan of Encampment at Greenville.-Lord Dorchester.-President Washington's Views of Indian Tactics.-Fort Recovery built.—Is attacked by Indians in 1793.-General Scott arrives with the mounted Riflemen.-General Wayne takes up the Line of March for the Maumee.-"Fort Defiance" commenced.-" Fort Deposit" at the Head of the Rapids.-Force concentrated at this Point.-Battle of the Miami, August 20th, 1794.-Utter Defeat of the Savages.-The Army returns to Fort Defiance, which is strongly fortified.-Army advances to Miami Villages.-Fort Wayne erected.-Army retires to Winter-quarters at Greenville.-Indians sue for Peace. [A.D. 1787.] ALTHOUGH the northwestern Indians had resumed hostilities against the frontier settlements of Kentucky, and those in the western part of Virginia and Pennsylvania, as early as 1789, the Federal government had taken no active measures to enforce peace and the observance of their recent treaties entered into at the Great Miami and at Fort Harmar. The Federal executive studiously abstained from any military operations against the hostile savages, vainly relying upon the success of negotiation and treaty, from which they disdainfully retired. Partisan expeditions from Kentucky and other portions of the exposed settlements, for the defense of the Ohio frontier, were the only defensive measures adopted, and they were undertaken at individual expense, and sustained by individual enterprise, and without the sanction of the Federal government. The extent and nature of the hostile operations of the savages against the frontier people, and the emigrants upon the Ohio River, have been enumerated in another place, to which the reader is referred.* [A.D. 1790.] To such an extent had these hostilities and depredations been carried in the spring of 1790, that in a communication from Judge Harry Innis to the Secretary of War, dated July 7th, he states that, to his knowledge, about fifteen hundred persons had been killed or captured by the Indians on and near the Ohio since the peace of 1783. The number of horses seized or stolen from the new settlements and from emigrants during that time was estimated at not less than twenty thousand, besides household furniture and other property taken or destroyed to the value of fifteen thousand pounds, or about fifty thousand dollars. At length, all overtures and efforts at negotiation on the part of the Federal government having been rejected by the savages, the president determined to organize a strong military force for the invasion of the Indian country, and the destruction of the towns upon the head waters of the Miami and Maumee Rivers. Orders were accordingly issued by the Secretary of War to General Harmar on the 7th of June, 1790, to plan, in conjunction with Governor St. Clair, a vigorous expedition against the Indians of the Maumee. The governor was authorized to call out the militia and volunteers of Western Pennsylvania and Kentucky to co-operate with the Federal troops. Agreeably to this authority, a requisition was made by Governor St. Clair upon the western counties of these states, as follows: From the counties of Washington, Fayette, Westmoreland, and Alleghany, in Pennsylvania, five hundred men, to rendezvous at M'Mahon's Creek, four miles below Wheeling, on the 3d of September; from the District of Kentucky, embracing the counties of Nelson, Lincoln, and Jefferson, three hundred men, to rendezvous at Fort Steuben, near" the Falls," on the 12th of September; and from the counties of Madison, Mercer, Fayette, Bourbon, Woodford, and Mason, seven hundred men, to rendezvous at Fort Washington on the 15th of September.† On the 27th of September the advanced detachments were in motion, and on the 30th the line of march was taken up for the towns on the St. Mary's River. The route pursued was the "Old War-path" of the Indians across the head waters of the * See chapters v. and x. of this book. + See American State Papers, Indian Affairs, vol. i., p. 105, 106, General Order. |