Kentucke's Frontiers

6. From Kentucke to Kentucky

6. From Kentucke to Kentucky In 1789, George Nicholas complained to James Madison about “the management of Indian affairs” in the West. Ken­ tucki­ ans had lost a voice in dealing with Indians, replaced by “persons, living on, and interested in the welfare of, the other side of the Ohio . . . men who have a contrary one [interest] to pursue and who have already given sufficient proofs that they will follow their own interests when they clash with our’s.” Nicholas was particularly angry over rumors that “their policy is to hold out to the Indians that we were a separate and distinct people from them and that they might be at peace with them and at war with us.” Federal troops had been deployed to the Northwest Territory less to protect Kentucke’s settlers than to act as “a check upon us. I can only say if we are treated as fellow citizens any check will be unnecessary , but that if it is intended to withhold from us all the benefits of good government, a little time will shew that as heretofore we have found the troops useless and faithless as friends, hereafter , we shall despise them as enemies.” But as the federal government attempted to assert its military authority, Nicholas and other Ken­ tucki­ ans continued to watch their agency in Indian affairs slipping away. During both the 1791 Harmar campaign and the 1792 St. Clair campaign, Kentucke’s militias imposed themselves on the federal officers, insisting on a military role despite • From Kentucke to Kentucky • 173 the reluctance and occasional antagonism of the federal army. Consequently, in both defeats, the Ken­ tucki­ ans received significant blame in reports back to President Washington. Despite the federal government’s seemingly halfhearted efforts , Kentucke was no more secure in the early 1790s than it had been throughout the 1780s. “Must we suffer our Inhabitants to be murdered daily or taken Prisoners when about their necessary business, and perhaps massacred or tortured in the most excruciating manner, and tamely submit to it?” pleaded one pioneer. For years, westerners had looked to first the Confederation and then the Washington administration to provide simple defense. “Is the united States unable to do themselves Justice; or are they afraid?” the settler continued. “Does Congress consider the lives of their People of more value than money?” The federal government must “assert its own power,” insisted the editors of the Kentucky Gazette, “convince the feeble enemy of his impotence, and we lay him at our feet.” Indeed, the only success against the Western Confederacy had been when Charles Scott led Kentucke mounted volunteers against the Shawnee towns in the summer of 1791. The expedition was joined by federal troops under James Wilkinson’s command . Nicho­ las celebrated “the taking of so many prisoners, the undeniable proof that the Indians have received that they may be attacked at any time without their having any previous notice of the design, the appearance of such a body of men on horseback, the return of the army without the loss of a single man, and the knowledge that the whole army came from a country which ten years before was their hunting ground, must all tend to strike a great terror into the Indians.” Unlike the chorus of condemnations that followed the Harmar and St. Clair defeats, Ken­ tucki­ ans praised President Washington for supporting the Scott expedition to avenge the Indian threat. Determined to sustain the momentum, Nicholas encouraged giving the Cherokees “a blow immediately: Seven hundred men had prepared to pay them a visit at the time the other expedition was on hand, but were prevented by an account that they were then treating.” Only a few months later, however, following St. Clair’s ­ defeat—­ an excursion in which many of Scott’s men participated but Scott himself refused to assist—the military prowess of the Ken­ tucki­ Kentucke’s Frontiers 174 • ans was forgotten, and the responsibility for addressing the Indian problem was again on the federal government. George Rogers Clark complained that federal agents in the Northwest Territory were indifferent to Kentucke’s situation. “The Indians are spread­ ing Fire and Tomahawk through the frontiers, without much resistance,” he argued; “I am as well as many others led to believe that those at the Helm of affairs on your side of the Mountains either know nothing about the business or wish to prolong the war...