Monsieur Piqué’s Watch, 1788. (pages xvii thru xxix in Ill-Fated Frontier, the book)
(page xvii, par. 3, line 3) cryptic earthworks and pyramids loomed. Several pre-historic Indigenous American cultures whose members inhabited the Ohio and Mississippi River basins and their tributaries between 600 and 1600 AD. The cultures have left distinctive monumental earthworks, artifacts, and traces of sophisticated towns and villages. The civilizations shared several characteristics with Central American indigenous empires, including central plazas for ball games, social hierarchies, extensive trading networks, and maize based agriculture. No authentic written or symbolic histories or traditions of these peoples survive. The largest city Cahokia’s population is said to have reached 30,000 at its apex in the 14th century A.D. That size was only surpassed in what is now the United States by New York City by 1790. Cahokia was long uninhabited and abandoned by the time of European exploration. Speculations for Cahokia’s and sister civilizations’ declines include inter-tribal warfare, environmental changes inducing famine, and disease.
The Natchez Indians of the Mississippi Delta, encountered and documented by French colonists in the early 1700s, may have been the last surviving Mississippian culture.
The silent remains of Mississippian earthworks were encountered by pioneers and settlers throughout the Midwest, Southeast, and Delta South. As Indigenous residents could relate no certain explanation of their origins, European and American colonists generated a variety of theories which did not include Native Americans. Rather, some looked to allegedly lost European and imported residents – legendary Welsh Prince Modoc, Lost Tribes of Israel, and Vikings among them.
Documentation, correspondence, and inquiry fueled the development of archeology and anthropology. Among those fascinated by surviving Mound Builder sites were Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Ohio Company official Winthrop Sargent. See: Page, Jack. In the Hands of the Great Spirit – The 20,000 Year History of American Indians, pp. 65-75. For Mississippian symbols and their cosmological meanings see: Reilly, F. Kent III, and James F. Garber, eds. Ancient Objects and Sacred Realms: Interpretations of Mississippian Iconography; and Knight, Vernon James, Jr. “Symbolism of Mississippian Mounds”, in Waselkov, Gregory A., Peter H. Wood, and M. Thomas Hatley, eds. Powhattan’s Mantle: Indians in the Colonial Southeast.
See “curiosities elicited wonder and speculations” as quoted by Calloway, Colin The Victory With No Name – The Native American Defeat of the First American Army, pp. 52-53 Samuel Parsons made a map of the Indian mounds in the Ohio Valley and sent a copy and description to Yale College’s Ezra Stiles, who in turn forwarded it to Thomas Jefferson in Paris. The American Philosophical Society published the description.
Later in the Forman travels, we encounter Peter Bruin, ex pat American settler and founder of Bruinsburgh, in the vicinity of modern Vicksburg. Forman and Draper, Op. cit., p. 52. Peter Bruin had built his house and barn atop two such adjoining mounds. These earthworks, which Samuel S. Forman describes as numerous in the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys, were likely to have been abandoned Mississippian Culture earthworks. To Samuel S.’s knowledge and those of his contemporaries, “no tradition gives their origin.”
(page xviii, par. 1, line 1) Middle Ground See: White, Richard. The Middle Ground. This is a conception of the Northwest Territory borderlands circa 1765 to 1795 – encompassing the modern states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and parts of Wisconsin – from the late British colonial period into the Early American Republic. It was a meta-stable realm dominated by Native American nations, while being contested by residual English imperial and expansionist American colonial settler interests. Though Britain formally ceded the region to the United States through the Peace of Paris in 1783, the English continued to occupy strategic forts in the region. Natives of the Northwest Indian Confederation terrorized settlers and bottled up and defeated the American Army. For a time, an autonomous Indian Nation – the Middle Ground – was within grasp of resourceful allied Indian leaders – Little Turtle of the Miami, Buckongahelas of the Delaware (Lenni Lenape), and Blue Jacket of the Shawnee Nations.
(page xviii, par. 1, lines 6-7)“mad, brutal action against the first available target” Middlekauff, Robert. The Glorious Cause – The American Revolution, pp. 576-577.
(page xviii, par. 2, line 1)winter breezes whipped Dr. Antoine Saugrain’s face Bliss, Eugene F. Dr. Saugrain‘s Relation of his Voyage Down the Ohio River from Pittsburgh to the Falls in 1788; Bliss, Eugene F. “Dr. Saugrain’s Note Books, 1788.” Journal of the American Antiquarian Society, Oct 1908; pp. 222-238; Dr. Saugrain’s manuscript letters describing the March 1788 Indian raid are among the Saugrain-Michau Family Papers 1776-1876, St. Louis: Missouri Historical Society; Dandridge, N.P. “Antoine François Saugrain, the First Scientist of the Mississippi Valley” Ohio History, 1906, Vol. 15, pp. 192-206. Dr. Saugrain’s account of his travels on the upper Ohio River contains a rare contemporary first-person account of a pioneer party’s experience of an Indian raid on the Ohio River during the Northwest Indian War. He wrote within weeks of the events in the form of a letter intended for friends back in France. He probably never expected it to be published, judging by raw details and candid descriptions of himself and compatriots. The direct quotes are Dr. Saugrain’s as translated by Bliss from the French. I have inserted other details based on a newspaper account of the incident, asides in letters citatis infra between Benjamin Franklin and Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, and general conditions along the Ohio River during the late winter and early Spring of 1788. See “Journey of Two Frenchmen” in Brissot de Warville, Jacques-Pierre. New Travels in the United States of America. pp. 258-264. The author met Dr. Saugrain on his return east following the ambush of the Ohio River, and wrote this account based on their conversation.
Other firsthand accounts of borderland mayhem from the period concern land-based raids in Kentucky and the Northwest Territory. Collected decades after the events described by John D. Shane, a number of these interviews have been published by the Filson Society in their journal over the years. Others remain in manuscript at the Wisconsin Historical Society, where founder Lyman D. Draper acquired and archived Shane’s voluminous manuscripts.
(page xix, par. 3, line 1) commissioned the building of a small flatboat While in Pittsburgh awaiting the building of his flatboat and break-up of the seasonal river ice, Saugrain “tried his hydrostatic scales in testing the capacity of different woods in the production of potash, finding corn-stalks the most fruitful.”
The boat they had commissioned and intended to use, however, snagged in the suddenly breaking ice, and was carried away down the Ohio as an unmanned ghost craft. The men witnessed the mishap helplessly “with regret” as the swift flowing current and fracturing ice sheets gripped the craft and carried it away. Fortunately, they had not yet loaded the wayward craft with their belongings and instruments.
Saugrain commissioned another. Though smaller than most, it still offered a manger for Saugrain’s and Raguet’s horses, their saddles, and several bales of hay for feed. The Pittsburgh boat builders, with abundant pine and hardwood forests at town’s edge, were happy to oblige. For further detail on Dr. Saugrain’s sojourns in Pittsburgh and Louisville, in his own words, see Saugrain de Vigny, Antoine François. L’odyssée américaine d’une famille française. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1936.
(page xviii, par. 2, lines 6-7) “two young men of uncommon knowledge” Benjamin Franklin to [Dr. Joseph-Ignace] Guillotin, May 4, 1788. In: Benjamin Franklin Papers II, 1726-Dec 15, 1789, LOC, Vol. 24 (1786-Dec 15, 1789), pp. 1876-1877. Transcribed by the author from photostatic images 156-157 of 238 in the LOC microfilmed images of the manuscript originals. In a pamphlet published in both English and French, Franklin earlier encouraged enterprising Europeans with useful skills to emigrate to North America. See: Franklin, Benjamin. Information to Those Who Would Remove to America.
Saugrain’s brother-in-law Dr. Guillotin had earlier recommended the young scientist-physician and M. Pique as capable young men possessing noteworthy “qualities of mind and heart” [Dr. Joseph-Ignace] Guillotin to Benjamin Franklin, July 1, 1788. In: Benjamin Franklin Papers, APS. Guillotin’s letter is in French. Franklin’s letters are in English. The APS ongoing definitive multi-volume publication of all the known papers of Benjamin Franklin has not yet addressed these documents from the late 1780s and the last few years of Franklin’s long life.
(page xviii, par. 3, line 8) John Bartram and William Bartram Catalogue of American Trees, Shrubs and Herbacious Plants; Bartram, William. Travels Through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida, the Cherokee Country, the Extensive Territories of the Muscogulges or Creek Confederacy, and the Country of the Chactaws; Michaux, André, and C.S. Sargent. “Portions of the Journal of André Michaux, Botanist, written during his Travels in the United States and Canada, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 1889, Vol. 26 (129): pp. 1-145; and Savage, Henry Jr. , and Elizabeth J. Savage. André and François André Michaux.
(page xxi, par. 3, lines 14-15)“thought as safe as on any river in France” Op. cit, Benjamin Franklin to [Dr. Joseph-Ignace] Guillotin, May 4, 1788. In: Benjamin Franklin Papers II, 1726-Dec 15, 1789, LOC, Vol. 24 (1786-Dec 15, 1789), pp. 1876-1877. Benjamin Franklin first heard of the Indian ambush on Dr. Saugrain and Piqué, apparently via a newspaper account not naming them, but from whose circumstances, Franklin concluded, must surely have been them.
Franklin expressed surprise that such a deadly incident could occur on the Ohio River on the trans-Allegheny frontier. It is unclear to me whether Franklin really believed that, or that his Western land speculations had colored his own thoughts and expressions toward characterizing conditions as tranquil and conducive to settlement. He supplied more details concerning the same incident in a letter to Guillotin dated June 8, 1788.
(page xxi, par. 5, line 4) settlements at Wheeling, Fort Harmar, Limestone, and Maysville At the time Dr. Saugrain’s flatboat floated down the upper Ohio River, there were few American pioneer settlements. Those in place were mere hamlets under constant threat of Native American raids and depredations. Saugrain preceded by a month the initial group of 48 settlers of the Ohio Land Company of Associates, who established Marietta, Ohio along Muskingum Creek on April 17, 1788 near the site of Fort Harmar. It would be two more years, on February 19, 1791 that French settlers of the Scioto Land Company arrived at Gallipolis on their legally shaky land grant along the mouth of the eponymous river. The Scioto River emerged from the north into the Ohio River, down river from the Muskingum and site of Marietta. Antoine Saugrain could not have suspected that fate had in store for him a return to this area as an original settler of Gallipolis, that he would find love, marriage, a family, and a portion of his career there, before he moved on further west.
Lands at the mouth of the Great Miami River were purchased from the Continental government for settlement by New Jersey’s Judge Symmes. At the time of the Indian attack on Dr. Saugrain, tiny initial settlements in the area included Losantiville and Columbia. Later, high ground in the area with a commanding view down the Ohio, was named Shawnee Lookout. It is possible that Native war parties camped on this summit to observe river traffic passing Losantiville and the Great Miami, and identify vulnerable pioneer boats as targets for attack. Saugrain’s solitary little flatboat would have been an inviting target identified by such Indian observers. In 1789 Northwest Territory governor General Arthur St. Clair decided to establish Fort Washington, several miles east of the Great Miami River, as a principal military installation of the Northwest Territory. The town of Cincinnati rapidly grew up around Fort Washington.
(page xxvi, par. 2, lines 3-4)in Louisville a most relieved Saugrain tarried for almost seven weeks Saugrain found Louisville “quite small.” “Nothing wonderful is found in it.” He was there long enough to observe the ruins of Fort Nelson, which was already derelict a decade following its erection. He was appalled by numerous “low grounds, filled with water, from which exhales the most dreadful stench.” His recent experience doubtless coloring his impression, he noted the prehistoric Indian mounds within the town precincts as “some heaps of dirt made for earthworks which would overawe only savages.”
The next day Saugrain crossed the Ohio River to seek aid at the American Army’s Fort Finney, where a military surgeon was in residence. There he was welcomed by Colonel Blaine, whom he had met back in Pittsburgh, and who had preceded Saugrain down the Ohio without incident. He assigned Major Willis to make his grateful guest comfortable, and for the surgeon to minister to his wounds.
The patient was practically immobile for three weeks. Every day Saugrain endured the doctor debriding portions of his foot “which began to putrefy,” particularly where he it had been impaled. Fortunately for him his foot’s circulation and vitality gradually improved and there was no necessity for amputation. His injured finger similarly rallied. “With the care of the fort’s surgeon and with patience all has been well and my foot is quite cured except the place where the piece of stick went in when I was running away in the woods. Thus far I have been unable to cure it.” Saugrain tarried at the fort almost seven weeks until May 11th. See Saugrain de Vigny, Antoine François. L’odyssée américaine d’une famille française. Op. cit.; Bliss, Eugene F. Dr. Saugrain’s Relation of His Voyage Down the Ohio River from Pittsburgh to the Falls in 1788. Worcester: Charles Hamilton, 1897; Bliss, Eugene F. Dr. Saugrain’s Note-Books, 1788: Stay Opposite Louisville, Observations upon Post Vincennes, Diary of a Journal from Louisville to Philadelphia. Worcester: Davis Press, 1909; and Byars, William Vincent. The First Scientist of the Mississippi Valley: A Memoir of the Life and Work of Doctor Antoine François Saugrain. St. Louis: B. Von Phul, 1905.
(page xxvii, par. 4, line 8) Chief Little Turtle’s son-in-law William Wells Wells (1770-1812) was born in Western Pennsylvania and moved with his family as pioneer settlers to the Beargrass Creek area near Louisville by 1780. His father was killed by the Miami in an ambush in 1782. Two years later he was captured as a teenage captive by Miami raiders and taken to Indiana. He adapted to his captors’ manners and language. They named him Apekonit, on account of his red hair suggesting a carrot top, and adopted him into the tribe. He took part in Miami war parties as an Indian warrior.
During the 1790s he married Chief Little Turtle’s daughter. See Hutton, Paul A. “William Wells: Frontier Scout and Indian Agent.” Indiana Magazine of History, 1978, Vol. 74 (3):185-220; and a recent biography by Heath, William. William Wells and the Struggle for the Old Northwest: University of Oklahoma Press.
(page xxvii, par. 4, line 10) decoy on behalf of the Indians. Instances of Caucasians decoying river traffic in favor of the hostile Indians ran counter to simplistic racist stereotyping, and garnered disproportionate newspaper coverage in the East as it emerged as an effective and terrifying Indian tactic in the late 1780s. For recent scholarship on the reality and cultural significance of Ohio River human decoys see: Shriver, Cameron, “Wily Decoys, Native Power, and Anglo-American Memory in the Post-Revolutionary Ohio River Valley” Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2018, Vol. 16(3): pp. 431-459. The allegation that he decoyed Americans to their deaths, during the late 1780s. on behalf of hostile Indians terrorizing settlers journeying on Ohio River, is based on an allegation made by a political rival years later. While Wells had become a Miami warrior during this timeframe, the allegation that he actually acted as a river decoy is doubted by many, including Shriver, and in the recent biography by Heath, Ibid. In contrast, Calloway in Victory with No Name, p. 103, believes the teenaged William Wells “helped lure travelers on the Ohio River into ambush…”
(page xxviii, par. 3, line 2) relayed the melancholy news. Benjamin Franklin to [Dr. Joseph-Ignace] Guillotin, June 8, 1788. In: Benjamin Franklin Papers II, 1726-Dec 15, 1789, LOC, Vol. 24 (1786-Dec 15, 1789), pp. 1898-1899. Transcribed by the author from photostatic images 181-182 of 238 in the LOC microfilmed images of the hard copy originals. Dr. Guillotin was more emotive about Pique’s demise and the failure of the venture. See Benjamin Franklin Papers, APS. Op. cit., [Joseph-Ignace] Guillotin to Benjamin Franklin, July 1, 1788.
(page xxvii, par. 4, lines 2-3) covered widely in newspapers from Vermont to South Carolina Independent Gazetteer, April 29, 1788, Philadelphia, PA, reprinted the original article from the Kentucke[sic] Gazette of April 5, 1788. The Kentucky newspaper was within a year of its first issue. Lexington was then the most populous frontier town in all the Western districts of Virginia. John Bradford’s tiny press was, in its first years, the only newspaper published within 500 miles. The news article’s author was likely to have been publisher John Bradford (1749-1830) himself, basing his account on information coming 75 miles to him from Louisville on the Ohio River to inland Lexington. The American Mr. Pierce, who was one of the two survivors of the Indian raid on the Ohio, may have been a source of information, or more likely an unnamed person who interacted with Pierce and Dr. Saugrain when the two survivors had reached Louisville on March 29, 1788.
The Kentucky newspaper account was circulated widely, being reprinted in its entirety in 23 newspapers in eight states and Vermont: Freeman’s Journal, or the North American Intelligencer, April 30, 1788, p. 3, iss. 67, Vol. 8, Philadelphia, PA; Pennsylvania Gazette, April 30, 1788; Pennsylvania Mercury, May 1, 1788, p. 3, iss. 229, Philadelphia, PA; Pennsylvania Journal, May 3, 1788, p. 1, iss. 2255, Philadelphia, PA; New-York Journal, May 3, 1788, p. 2, Vol. 42, iss. 105, New York, NY; The Norfolk and Portsmouth Journal, May 7, 1788, p.3, iss. 99, Norfolk, VA; Maryland Journal, May 6, 1788, p. 3, Vol. 15, iss. 37, Baltimore, MD; Independent Chronicle, May 8, 1788, p. 3, iss. 1019, Vol. 20, Boston, MA; New Haven Gazette, p. 6-7, iss. 18, Vol. 3, New Haven, CT; Connecticut Gazette, May 9, 1788, p.2, Vol. 25, iss. 1278, New London, CT; Litchfield Monitor, May 12, 1788, p. 1-2, Litchfield, CT; Middlesex Gazette, May 12, 1788, p. 2, iss. 132, Vol. 3, Middleton, CT; Essex Journal, May 14, 1788, p. 2, iss. 202, Vol. 4, Newburyport, MA; Massachusetts Spy, May 15, 1788, p. 2-3, iss. 789, Vol. 17, Worcester, MA; Newport Herald, May 15, 1788, p. 3, iss. 64, Vol. 2, Newport, RI; United States Chronicle, May 15, 1788, p. 2, iss. 229, Vol. 5, Providence, RI; Norwich Packet, May 15, 1788, p. 2, iss. 707, Vol. 15, Norwich, CT; City Gazette, May 19, 1788, p. 2, iss. 950, Vol. 6, Charleston, SC; American Mercury, June 2, 1788, p. 2, iss. 204, Vol. 4, Hartford, CT; Columbia Herald, June 2, 1788, p. 2, iss. 204, Vol. 4, Charleston, SC; Spooner’s Vermont Journal, June 16, 1788, p. 2, iss. 255, Vol. 5, Windsor, VT; State Gazette of South Carolina, June 23, 1788, p. 3, Charleston, SC.
Contemporary newspapers in the eastern U.S. covered Indian depredations on the frontier in the third person. Such accounts were bereft of most detail, and generally omitted atrocities committed by frontiersman on Indians.
The newspaper accounts of the attack differ in significant ways from Dr. Saugrain’s unpublished manuscript. They amplify and seem to invent atrocious aspects of the Indian attack. The newspaper account asserts that M. Raguet put his hand out in a gesture of surrender to the approaching Indians, only to have it mangled by a tomahawk blow. Saugrain privately wrote of the beleaguered flatboat crew of four briefly considering surrendering, but he is unclear whether they actually waved a white handkerchief as a gesture of surrender. Saugrain privately admits to shooting and presumably killing the first hostile boarder — who was brandishing a knife – by a pistol shot to the Indian’s abdomen. The shooting of the first Indian boarder is not in the newspaper account. Saugrain noted in his private letter that his shooting of the Indian further enraged the attackers.
By the unwritten European rules of war, showing a white flag indicated surrender, to be followed by the conquered laying down their arms, and giving themselves up to custody of the victors. In confinement, duly surrendered combatants could expect to be jailed but otherwise treated civilly. By such European practices, if soldiers showed a white flag of surrender, but contradicted that signal by attacking their opponents during the act of taking them into custody, they committed a serious betrayal. It invited summary execution, “no quarter given.” It is unlikely that the Indians, whose tribal affiliations are not noted, knew of the European and American rules of war, or if they did from the French & Indian War or Pontiac Rebellion experience, they felt in any way bound to observe them. Numerous instances can be found of atrocious acts by all combatants inflicted on unarmed, surrendered captives during the long 18th century along the entirety of the trans-Allegheny western American frontier.
In the newspaper account, Piqué is killed by Indian gunfire. Dr. Saugrain wrote privately that Piqué did not offer resistance, jumped overboard, and swam ashore. There he was briefly taken captive by Indians, stabbed to death, and scalped. The murderer proceeded to place the human trophy into Piqué’s own pocketbook and made off with it, leaving the Frenchman’s watch, cash, and knife. The unpublished account is more atrocious with respect to Indian agency than that appearing in newspapers, though Piqué’s actual passivity and unwillingness to help defend himself and comrades may have been judged to earn him no mercy.
The newspaper article has the Indians “butchering and plundering” M. Raguet after he offers a friendly handshake. Dr Saugrain’s manuscript recalls Raguet firing several musket shots, getting his gun jammed by an improper reloading, suffering a shattered arm from an Indian gunshot, and then jumping overboard in suicidal desperation and terror. Dr. Saugrain presumed him drowned.