tween eleven and twelve hundred men. General Lewis's force consisted of only three regiments as Colonel Christian with the remnant of his regiment did not reach the Point until the night of the 10th, after the battle. He had sent three companies forward to join General Lewis at Camp Union and they were assigned to Colonel John Field.

The first regiment was commanded by Colonel Charles Lewis, a brother of the General's, and the companies composing it were the first, Captains George Mathews, Alexander McClanahan, John Dickerson, John Lewis (son of Colonel William Lewis, of the Sweet Springs), Benjamin Harrison, William Paul, Joseph Haynes, and Samuel Wilson; the second, Colonel William Fleming, and his companies were Captains Mathew Arbuckle, John Murray, John Lewis (son of the General), James Robertson, Robert McClanahan, James Ward, John Stuart; the third, Colonel John Fields, with his independent company from Culpeper, Captain Buford, from Bedford, Evan Shelby and Herbert, the two last named were of Colonel Christian's regiment of Holston Valley.

These details have been dwelt upon because this little army was composed chiefly of those West Augusta men, descendants of the pioneer settlers spoken of and because of the importance of the impending battle.

General Lewis was surprised to find, on reaching the Point, that Lord Dunmore had not arrived before he had, and after waiting four or five days sent runners to Pittsburg to ascertain where he was. On the evening of the 9th two messengers from Lord Dunmore arrived at General Lewis's camp bearing the information that his lordship had crossed the Ohio and was marching to the Indian towns to negotiate a treaty of peace; and with orders to join him (Lord Dunmore) as promptly as possible. This General Lewis immediately began to prepare for. Orders had been given that no one should leave camp or fire a gun. But before day, the next morning, the 10th, two men, one from Shelby's company and one from Herbert's, went up the Ohio on a hunting expedition. The Indians discovered and fired upon them; one was killed and the other fled back to camp and reported that he had seen five acres of Indians standing close together. The truth was, they were forming to

begin the attack and take Lewis by surprise whilst his men were at breakfast. The report of the hunter and that of the guns roused the camp, and General Lewis ordered out the main part of his army under Colonels Charles Lewis and Fleming with instructions to move up the Ohio. They had only advanced some four hundred yards when the Indians opened fire upon them. Soon Colonel Lewis was killed and Fleming mortally wounded and carried to the rear. The loss of their officers checked the advance of the troops and the Indians yelled as if for victory and began a more resolute advance.

Colonei Field, however, had been ordered to take his command up Crooked Creek, screened by brush and trees from the sight of the Indians, and attack them on the flank and rear. This he did, and the telling fire opened upon them filled them with consternation, for they thought Colonel Christian's regiment had arrived and they were in danger of being surrounded and their retreat cut off. They, therefore, began to retreat, but slowly, and kept up a desultory firing until near sun down. That night they recrossed the Ohio.

After caring for the wounded and burying the dead General Lewis crossed the river and marched to join Lord Dunmore. Neither he nor his officers and the men under their command were in an amiable mood. A pervading suspicion rested like a cloud upon their minds that they had barely escaped from a diabolical plot planned for their destruction. This suspicion was founded, in part, upon the fact that the Indians had assembled on the north of the Ohio as early, if not earlier, than the 5th or 6th, not far from Lord Dunmore's line of march, and crossed on the night of the 9th without a word of warning to General Lewis from his lordship, and that the order to Lewis, received in the afternoon of the 9th, was intended to throw him off his guard. At the plains a courier from Lord Dunmore reached General Lewis with orders to halt, as he (Lord Dunmore) was negotiating a treaty with the Indians. This order General Lewis refused to obey and continued his march. When within two miles of Lord Dunmore's camp he came in person to meet General Lewis. The result of the conference was that General Lewis returned with his command to Point Pleasant, and thence to Greenbrier, where the troops were disbanded.

Lord Dunmore concluded a treaty with the Indians, known as the treaty of Camp Charlotte," eight miles from Chillicothe, which proved as binding as a rope of sand, and then returned to Williamsburg.

It was pending the negotiations of this treaty that Logan made his celebrated speech. He refused to attend the council, and Lord Dunmore, appreciating the importance of his presence, sent Colonel Gibson to seek and try to persuade him to join in the treaty. Colonel Gibson found him in his tent brooding over his wrongs and misfortunes. He listened patiently to the Colonel's appeal, and in answer made the speech which has been pronounced one of the most eloquent and pathetic to be found in any language.

In a short time after General Lewis began his retrogade movement he reached Fort Gowen at the mouth of Hockhocking. There on the 5th of November, 1774, his officers (among whom was William Campbell) and the troops under them held a meeting at which they declared:

"As the love of liberty and attachment to the real interests and just rights of America outweigh every other consideration, we resolve, that we will exert every power within us for the defence of American liberty, and for the support of our just rights and privileges."

These were advanced ideas of frontier soldiers who had just been ordered to their homes by a representative of the British throne, and yet they were not held exclusively by this body of troops, for a little more than two months later, on the 20th of January, 1775, Colonels William Preston, William Christian, William Campbell, William Edmondson, and the Rev. Charles Cummings, representing Fincastle County and the Holston Settlement, met and sent the following address to the Continental Congress then in session in Philadelphia:

"If no specific measures shall be proposed or adopted by Great Britain, and our enemies attempt to dragoon us out of those inestimable privileges which we are entitled to as subjects, and reduce us to slavery, we declare that we are deliberately and resolutely determined never to surrender them to any power on earth but at the expense of our lives. These

are our real, though unpublished, sentiments of liberty and loyalty, and in them we are resolved to live and die."

Observe that this address to Congress was three months before the first gun was fired at Lexington, Massachusetts; four months before the Mecklenburg (North Carolina) declaration of May 20th; five before the battle of Bunker Hill, and two before the celebrated speech of Patrick Henry in the Virginia Convention.

General Washington was at that time a member of Congress and he knew personally the four first named of these colonels, and hence the foundation of his faith in their ability, courage, and devotion to the cause of liberty and independence. And observe further that all of these colonels, except the first, and he was detained at home on account of the critical condition of his wife, were at Fort Gowen with General Lewis.

These details about the battle of Point Pleasant are given because they establish the fact that no other troops, unaided by artillery, could have won that victory over the host of savages estimated at between fifteen hundred and two thousand, except the courageous and skillful riflemen of the frontiers. The inefficiency of regulars was sadly exemplified by Braddock's defeat. And secondly, because of the important issues dependent upon it. If Cornstalk had been the victor General Lewis's army would have been annihilated. No quarter would have been given and every captured soldier would have been tomahawked and scalped. The trans-mountain settlements from the Ohio and the waters of the Tennessee rivers to the Blue Ridge left defenseless would have been razed, and their locations only recognized by the ashes of their cabins and the bleaching bones of women and children. The tide of destruction would have threatened Eastern Virginia, and Lord Dunmore, aided by tories, liberated slaves, and savages might have mocked the leaders of the Revolution, and, reversing the device on the flag of Virginia, kept the tyrant's foot on the neck of liberty for another generation.

Let us then cherish the memory of these heroic men and not forget the debt of gratitude we owe to the descendants of the pioneer settlers of West Augusta.

University of Virginia, April, 1896.

THO. S. PRESTON.

THE FORTS OF OSWEGO.

[Read at meeting of the Irondequoit Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, Thursday afternoon, October 22, 1896, by Martha Burt Stone, Rochester, New York.]

OSWEGO is a place of great interest in our American history, for in 1615 Samuel Champlain, with a little band of ten white men, came down the Trent River in Canada, through the Bay of Quinte, sailed across Lake Ontario, and landed twenty miles east of Oswego. They were the first white men who saw Lake Ontario or set foot in the Empire State west of the Hudson River. This little band was accompanied by many Huron Indians, and they came to attack the Iroquois, who were then in possession of this part of the country. Champlain's expedition was entirely unsuccessful. This was nine years after Hendrick Hudson discovered the noble river that bears his name, and five years before the Pilgrim Fathers landed on Plymouth Rock. For forty years after the visit of Champlain little of interest is known of this region. In 1655 the Jesuit, Father Le Moine, passed through Oswego County on his perilous undertaking to convert the Onondaga Indians. He was received with favor, and followed by many Jesuit fathers, who hoped to establish the dominion of France here, but after a time they had cause to fear the treachery of the Indians, and disappeared entirely.

There is a legend in Clark's "Onondaga " that once when the Iroquois Indians were in great distress over the blighting of their corn and other misfortunes, that there appeared a white canoe, coming over the lake, having a personage who announced himself as the "Spirit Man." He sailed up the river, bringing with him good fortune to all, and finally, laying aside his spiritual attributes, lived as a mere man under the wellknown name of Hiawatha! By the peace of Utrecht, in 1713, the control of the Iroquois tribes was given to the English, The French being the first traders here were jealous of the newcomers, so in 1722 Colonial Governor Burnet erected, on the west side of the Oswego River, a fort called “ Fort Oswego," which was intended to protect the trading post, where the Indians congregated to market their furs. The English now had the advantage.