Historical Account of Bouquet's Expedition Against the Ohio Indians, in 1764
With Preface by , Author of “ Conspiracy of Pontiac,” &c., and a Translation of Dumas’ Biographical Sketch of General Bouquet. Cincinnati : Robert Clarke & Co.
AT the end of the old French War (it is a war that seems to have been old from the first, and to have started in history with all the advantages of antiquity), the Indian allies of the French refused to abide by the treaty of peace, and troubled all the western borders of the English colonies with raids and massacres, and plotted a general war for the destruction of the settlements. Whereupon, M. Henri Bouquet, a Swiss gentleman, who had received a military education in Holland, and had distinguished himself in the service of the King of Sardinia and the Dutch States, being now an officer of the British army, was put at the head of two regiments of regulars, newly arrived in bad condition from the West Indies, and marched from eastern Pennsylvania to the relief of Forts Pitt and Ligonier and the protection of the frontier. His men numbered only five hundred. They were not only enfeebled by sickness and the torrid climate they had left, but were utterly unused to Indian warfare; yet they were so well handled that Colonel Bouquet pushed rapidly and safely through the border till within easy distance of Fort Pitt (Pittsburg), where, midway between that fort and Fort Ligonier, which he had relieved, he met the banded tribes on a battle-ground of their own choosing, and signally defeated them. After supplying Fort Pitt with provisions and munitions, he went into winter quarters, and in the following year, 1764, he advanced into the Indian country immediately westward, while another corps, acting in concert with him, marched to attack the Indians living near the lakes. The tribes which Bouquet was appointed to punish were the Delawares and their allies the Shawnces, Mingoes, and Mohicans, whose general capital was on the Muskingum River, about half-way between the Ohio River and Lake Erie. Reinforced by a thousand Pennsylvania militia, he penetrated at once into the heart of the Muskingum country, where the savages met him with proposals for peace ; and where he treated with them upon terms very advantageous to the colonics, and received from them some hundreds of captives.
This, in brief, is the story recounted in the old pamphlet which Messrs. Robert Clarke & Co. have so handsomely reprinted from the first Philadelphia edition of the year 1766. The whole narrative is most entertaining, for the interest of the subject, and for the quaintness of that highly literary style of the last century in which it is written, and of which we shall give a notion by the following passages : —
“ And here I am to enter on a scene, reserved on purpose for this place, that the thread of the foregoing narrative might not be interrupted, — a scene which language indeed can but weakly describe ; and to which the Poet or Painter might have repaired to enrich their highest colorings of the variety of human passions ; the Philosopher to find ample subject for his most serious reflections ; and the Man to exercise all the tender and sympathetic feelings of the soul.
“ The scene I mean was the arrival of the prisoners in the camp ; where were to be seen fathers and mothers recognizing and clasping their once-lost babes; husbands hanging round the necks of their newly recovered wives ; sisters and brothers unexpectedly meeting together after long separation, scarce able to speak the same language, or, for some time, to be sure that they were children of the same parents! In all these interviews, joy and rapture inexpressible were seen, while feelings of a very different nature were painted in the looks of others ; — flying from place to place in eager inquiries after relatives not found! trembling to receive an answer to their questions ! distracted with doubts, hopes, and fears, on obtaining no account of those they Sought for! or stiffened into living monuments of horror and woe, on learning their unhappy fate ! ”
Whether the Poet has ever repaired to this scene, we do not know ; but the Painter has, in the person of Benjamin West, and has produced a formal, not to say majestical, representation of the fact, on which we enjoy looking in the lithograph of the old engraving here given. There is a curious and amusing harmony between this picture — and that other by West, of Bouquet’s Talk with the Indians, also given in this reprint — and the feeling of the text, which was originally “ Published from Authentic Documents by a Lover of his Country,” namely, Dr. William Smith of the Philadelphia College, as appears from the researches of Mr. A. R. Spofford, Congressional Librarian.
Its quaintness every one must relish, and none can help noticing the clearness and solidity of the narration. The present publishers have given it with the original maps ; the whole is fitly introduced by Mr. Parkman, and the book very worthily comes first in the contributions which Messrs. Robert Clarke & Co. propose to make to the materials of American history in their “ Ohio Valley Series.” These publications are to include reprints of such monographs as this, and such historical and biographical materials now existing in manuscript as the publishers can secure. In some cases the volumes will consist of digested histories of particular events and places, and each will be so far edited as to group the materials according to the periods and occurrences to which they refer. It is an enterprise to which we heartily wish success, both for the valuable matter it will preserve for the use of the student, and for the pleasure it will afford the general reader. The pioneer life of the West began with the settlement of the Ohio Valley, and ended with the growth of that region in population and security. It was the field of famous Indian wars, and of romantic personal adventure ; and that part of it included in the State of Ohio was especially the scene of some of the most interesting, if not the most important, events of our early national history. Ohio was, in fact, a battle-ground for a quarter of a century ; there the Indians made their last great stand against the whites, and there they were beaten ; there St. Clair met with his disastrous defeat, and there Mad Anthony Wayne subdued the savages and broke their power. Names like theirs, and like Boone’s, Kenton’s, and Girty’s, and, later, Burr’s and Blennerhassett’s, are associated with its annals, to which many picturesque episodes lend a peculiar charm.