Issachar Bates: A Shaker’s Journey

7. “What trials yet before us lay”: Tribulation on the Wabash

130 } chapter 7 “What trials yet before us lay” tribulation on the wabash Each furnished with his staff and knapsack, And some provisions for the way We ventured on without conceiving, What trials yet before us lay. —Issachar Bates, “A Winter Journey to Busroe” The summer of 1808 found Issachar Bates and his “fellow travelers” venturing even further west to the very edge of white settlement in Indiana Territory, over two hundred miles from Turtle Creek. A lively cluster of local families along Busseron Creek, a small but navigable tributary of the Wabash River just north of the territorial capital of Vincennes in Knox County, would form the nucleus of the westernmost Shaker outpost. Here the Shakers got a rocky start. Strong resistance from local preachers necessitated several difficult journeys by Issachar and others to keep the converts’ zeal from flagging. And in 1811, Issachar was sent to temporarily assist four select individuals from Turtle Creek who had taken charge of the “Busro” society as its first presiding elders. Once there, he faced conditions as challenging as any he had ever experienced. In addition to the disease-ridden climate, the believers ’ land lay at the margin of the settled area, with the Shawnee and other tribes dominating the adjacent regions. While the Shakers at Busro labored to establish a productive community, they were literally thrown off-balance by the New Madrid earthquakes and soon even more terrified to find themselves in the crosshairs of the coming war between the Americans and the British. DIssachar and his company went still further . . . About 70 opened their minds at one place among which number are three able preachers. This is on the Wabash River in the Indiani territory . . . about 160 miles in a west direction from where we live but we know of no road to this place only round about through Kentucky. Issachar went first to Mercer County in Kentucky 144 miles in a south direction from here, thence 130 miles southwest to Gasper in Logan County, thence 100 miles bearing a little west of north to the Red Banks . . . then crossed the Ohio and traveled 85 miles due north to the Wabash in Knox County in the Indiani Territory.1 tribulation on the wabash { 131 For two and a half years, Issachar Bates and his preacher companions had moved almost constantly through the region. As people “opened their minds” in one place, they commonly told the Shakers of receptive kin and friends elsewhere. Thus had Issachar Bates been led to Red Banks, Kentucky, first in February 1808 and then—along with Mathew Houston, John Dunlavy, Malcolm Worley, and James Hodge—again in May. During the latter visit, the group decided to press north to seek a New Light preacher named Robert Houston, who was probably Mathew’s elder brother.2 Like Mathew, Robert Houston was born in Virginia in the late 1760s, had migrated to Kentucky, and had broken away from the Presbyterian Church in 1803 at the same time as had so many associates of Barton Stone and Richard McNemar, including Mathew Houston. By 1806 Robert Houston had moved to frontier Indiana Territory near Vincennes, the territorial capital.3 Red Banks, Kentucky, lay on a looping meander of the Ohio River directly adjacent to Indiana Territory. It was also very close to areas of Indian activity just to the west in southern Illinois Territory, where the Shawnee traveled seasonally for hunting and salt supply. Sixty miles due north lay Vincennes, a thriving frontier town on the Wabash River founded by the French in 1732, which had been a key western military outpost since the Revolutionary War. Since Vincennes had been named capital of Indiana Territory in 1800, military authorities in the region had worked to establish overland trails, or “traces,” linking it with other population centers. Some of these integrated older Indian or animal trails, such as the Buffalo Trace, surveyed in 1805 between the falls of the Ohio at Louisville and Vincennes to the west. About the same time, Vincennes residents had also petitioned the U.S. government to support the development of a trace between Vincennes and Red Banks, and this led to the establishment of forts, taverns, and ferry crossings along the route. In 1807, soldiers from Vincennes were ordered to patrol the Red Banks Trail to discourage Indians from interfering with white travelers.4 The decision of the Shakers to push north from Red Banks to seek Robert Houston may well have been influenced by the...