Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians by Benjamin Drake
page 33 of 274 (12%)
page 33 of 274 (12%)
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Eagle," and the wounding of "Silver Heels," a popular chief of the
Shawanoe tribe. Bald Eagle was an aged, harmless man, who was in the habit of visiting the whites on the most friendly terms. At the period of his death, he was returning alone, in his canoe, from a visit to the fort at the mouth of the Kanawha. The individual who committed the murder, having scalped him, placed the body in a sitting posture in the canoe and suffered it to float down the stream, in which condition it was found by the Indians. Silver Heels was returning from Albany to the Ohio, having been to that city as the voluntary escort of some white traders, who were fleeing from the frontiers. He was fired upon and dangerously wounded while crossing Big Beaver in a canoe. Such were some of the causes which called into action the vindictive feelings of the Indians. The distinguished Mingo chief, Logan, was roused to action by the murder of his relatives at Yellow creek; and in the course of the summer, led some war parties against the whites, and destroyed several families. The Earl of Dunmore, then governor of the colony of Virginia, made arrangements for a campaign against the Indians, but it was not until September, that his forces were brought into the field. He ordered three regiments to be raised west of the Blue Ridge, the command of which was given to general Andrew Lewis. A similar army was assembled from the interior, the command of which the Earl assumed in person. The mouth of the Great Kanawha was the point at which two divisions of the army were to meet; from whence, under the command of governor Dunmore, they were to march against the Indian towns on the north side of the Ohio. General Lewis' division amounted to eleven hundred men, most of whom were accustomed to danger, and with their officers, familiar with the modes of Indian warfare. On the eleventh of September, general Lewis moved from his camp, in the vicinity of |
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