George Washington's Western Adventure

"Thomas Lapsley . . . Samuel McBride . . . Brice McGeechin . . . Thomas Biggar . . . David Reed . . . William Hillas . . . James McBride . . . Duncan McGeechin . . . Matthew Johnson . . . John Reed . . . John Glen."

One by one, they all stood. Thirteen backwoods settlers were defying the great George Washington.

WASHINGTON'S TESTY ENCOUNTER with the squatters destroyed his western momentum. He wanted to go home. The Grand Tour of America had already been downsized into a mere business trip to his western properties, and now even that was turning into a bust.

He'd been thinking of turning back even before he'd run into the Seceders. He had been told that the Indians were in arms, and had recently killed a number of white settlers who had encroached on Indian lands north of the Ohio. Washington didn't want to push his luck. Discretion is different from cowardice. Later he wrote in a letter that it was "better to return, than to make a bad matter worse by hazardous abuse from the Savages of the Country." Thomas Freeman, his land agent, subsequently informed him that the Indians knew Washington was headed to his western lands, and they were preparing to greet him with an ambush. "The Indians by what means I can't say had Intelligence of your Journey and Laid wait for you," Freeman informed the general.

Washington in his reluctance to go farther west surely had in mind the fate of Crawford, the surveyor who'd obtained these Pennsylvania lands for him. In a gentler world, Crawford would have been on hand at Washington's Bottom to greet the arriving general and would have been a handy witness for Washington in his ejectment suit. But Crawford was a warrior as well as a surveyor, and, in 1782, he discovered directly the price of the settlement of the West.

Earlier that year, an expedition of Pennsylvanians had launched a campaign against Indians in the Ohio country. They soon encountered a group of Christianized Indians known as Moravians (from the Protestant missionaries who had converted them). They were considered friendly Indians. They had adopted many of the ways of white farmers. But to the fierce settlers of western Pennsylvania, they were still a suspect class. The Moravians had traded with the hostile Indians for pewter dishes that had been stolen from the whites. They also traded for branded horses stolen from the whites. Worst of all, they had a bloody dress -- purchased from Indians who had massacred a Pennsylvania family named Wallace.

The militiamen rounded up the Moravians -- women and children included -- and led them, with ropes around their necks, to two huts that the whites called their "slaughter houses." A debate broke out among the whites: How, exactly, should they kill these Indians? They chose scalping. The Indians asked for a moment to prepare their souls for death.

Then the militiamen scalped them -- 42 men, 20 women and 34 children.

The campaign against the Indians continued months later with another expedition, this time led by Crawford. Crawford and his men camped initially in the ruins of the Moravian village, where orphaned corn still stood in the fields. They were being watched. Wyandot, Delaware and Shawnee Indians, accompanied by a white compatriot, Simon Girty, quickly routed the militiamen, and during Crawford's retreat, he was captured by Delawares.

Because another captured man, a surgeon, witnessed the ensuing events, there is an elaborate narrative of what took place. According to the surgeon, the Indians found the most flamboyant means of putting an end to Crawford's earthly existence. They stripped him naked, beat him, cut off his ears, prodded him with burning sticks, made him walk on coals, tied him to a stake, scalped him, fired gunpowder into his body and poured hot coals on his head. He begged Girty to shoot him, but Girty just laughed. Instead the Indians built a hot fire in a circle about 15 feet from the stake. That was far enough to ensure that he wouldn't burn to death quickly. They slowly roasted him.

And so, George Washington did not want to go to the West if the Indians were in arms. He rode south again, back toward Gilbert Simpson's, and along the way received assurances from some of the local gentry that they would hunt up proof of his ownership of the Millers Run land. The next day, he rode south to Beeson's Town (now Uniontown, Pa.), where he found himself a good lawyer. In fact, he found a great one: Thomas Smith, a Scotsman who had emigrated to America and had become one of the leading land lawyers in the state, a kind of traveling salesman of legal services. In a single year, by Smith's calculation, he'd ridden 4,000 miles on horseback, all over the craggy Pennsylvania terrain. He had seen a lot of different characters in his day, and when George Washington came calling, Smith had to use all his legal and psychological skill to guide the case toward a positive outcome.

Washington was almost too eager to sue. Had it not violated his maxims on personal deportment, he would have been literally hopping mad. But Smith quickly detected the lack of documentation behind Washington's claim. This would not be an easy case.

The general told Smith he would return to western Pennsylvania to testify against the squatters. But he knew it would be no minor matter to make yet another trip over the mountains. Events might easily detain him elsewhere. This was only the second time since 1758 that he had managed to venture to the West. He might never see this part of the world again.

In a couple of weeks, after a detour through a remote section of the backcountry, Washington reached Mount Vernon and resumed his life as a plantation owner and generator of grand ideas. He vigorously pursued his Potomac project and became president of the Patowmack Company, a venture designed to improve navigation in the river and turn it into a commercial artery. His Potomac scheme absorbed him, but he took time out to prosecute his case against the Seceders. They were still rooted on his land at Millers Run, still growing crops and raising livestock and acting as though they weren't the lowlife squatters that Washington knew them to be.

The lawsuit dragged on for two years. After Washington's western trek in 1784, he regularly corresponded with Smith. The general might have been a master of delegation in certain arenas of combat, but in this lawsuit he intended to lead the charge personally. Not even Cornwallis had faced such rage.

Washington vigorously compiled a packet of information for Smith's scrutiny. The general made it clear that the only acceptable outcome of the case would be the total surrender of the enemy. He was rankled by all the paperwork he needed to obtain to support his case, which he believed was self-evident. "I think nothing more is necessary but to state facts," he wrote.

In a later letter, he told Smith that he had heard a rumor that the squatters might voluntarily leave before the suit went to trial. He requested of Smith that, even if the Seceders did abandon their homes and relinquish their claims, "you will sue them respectively for Trespasses, rents or otherwise as you shall judge best & most proper to obtain justice for me." The general wanted his lawyer to chase these people through the American backcountry and punish them. He was not about to forgive and forget. (He'd been winning freedom! And to be treated like this . . .)

Smith wrote back with gentle words to cool the litigious ardor of his client. Any move that seemed designed to punish the squatters might backfire, Smith informed Washington. Juries in similar cases had sided with the defendants. To bring trespassing suits against the squatters "may produce a bad effect, in the minds of the Jury who are to try the Ejectments -- their modes of thinking may lead them to believe the Defendants rather unfortunate, then blamable, and that as these double actions will well nigh ruin most of them; will not the jury be willing to lay hold of every point however trifling which may make against your title or in favour of the Defendants."

Washington replied in the tone of a man recognizing that he had momentarily lost control of his passion (a maxim violation). He didn't intend, he said, for Smith to file additional suits for trespassing, but rather believed they might be pursued after the main ejectment cases had been settled. But now that he had heard about other cases that had not gone well, he wrote, he would leave such suits entirely to Smith's discretion.

"I never should have thought of this mode of punishment, had I not viewed the Defendants as willful and obstinate sinners -- persevering after timely & repeated admonition, in a design to injure me," Washington wrote, and then added, incredibly, "but I am not at all tenacious of this matter."