In the summer of 1780, Captain Henry Bird crossed the Ohio River with some 800 Native Americans from various British-allied tribes and two companies of soldiers from Detroit (roughly 50 Canadians and Tories and a mixed group of regulars from the 8th and 47th regiments) to invade Kentucky. More importantly, he brought two pieces of artillery, a three pounder and a six pounder. It was one of the largest and most substantial attacks into Kentucky during the American Revolution.
Bird’s goal was the Falls of the Ohio (today’s Louisville), which was critical to the American war effort on the frontier due to its critical position on the Ohio River. Bird rendezvoused with the great bulk of the Native Americans at the confluence of the Great Miami and Ohio Rivers, (west of today’s Cincinnati) to discover that they had other plans. Attacking fortified areas was less appealing than raiding small settlements and isolated farms, where the Indians might secure booty and terrorize the locals into abandoning Kentucky. Constituting the vast majority of the army, the Native Americans won out.
Following rivers and inland trails, Bird’s army reached Ruddell’s Fort on June 24 (near Cynthiana, KY, northeast of Lexington). The fort wasn’t really a fort, but a collection of buildings arranged in a parallelogram, their entrances opening toward the middle and their rear walls connected by a palisaded wall. Families would gather there in times of trouble. So, when Bird’s force arrived, he largely faced a fortified village populated by some 250 women and children and 50 armed men. While such a “fort” might provide a place of refuge against a typical raid, it could not withstand an artillery siege. Bird’s guns made all the difference and Ruddell’s Fort surrendered that day. The terms were simple enough; settlers would surrender to, and be protected by, the British while the Native Americans would plunder and loot their property, including slaves. Unfortunately, the Indians had apparently not be included in the negotiations. When the gates opened, they rushed in to claim prizes, which included those people surrendering. Several were killed; families were torn apart; and, settlers were claimed as property before the British could act. A few miles away, Martin’s Station, where roughly 150 people lived, surrendered for the same reasons on June 26. Bird, however, took extra precautions to prevent the same kind of pell-mell Indian killings and seizures of settlers and largely succeeded in taking the residents under his control.
Burdened by roughly 400 prisoners, Bird and his Native American allies decided to retreat. He would control those taken at Martin’s Station; his allies those from Ruddell’s Fort. Detroit was a long way away. The march back was a nightmare of privation, terror, and death, whether from illness or murder. By the time Martin’s Station fell, the British were already on short rations and had little to spare. Native Americans likely had less and were often inclined to kill those prisoners who became burdens. Those who straggled into Detroit at the beginning of August were in sad shape. While Bird delivered the bulk of his charge, several dozen held by the Indians died or disappeared along the way.
Russell Mahan has tracked down likely every scrap of paper in existence to tell this story. His book, The Kentucky Kidnappings and Death March: The Revolutionary War at Ruddell’s Fort and Martin’s Station, is an excellent microhistory of the entire episode. He follows the story through the eyes of the Mahan family, building on the genealogical work of other family members. He does not offer a family history, however. Rather, the family’s story provides a rough framework around which to explore the frontier war in greater detail.
One of the challenges in writing frontier history is the scarcity of source material. The number of people involved in events was modest and a fair number were likely illiterate. Contemporaneous records are usually limited to correspondence and reports. In this case, Mahan benefits from accounts by Bird and some of those British officials accompanying him as well as occasional letters and reports written by the prisoners years later. Other first-hand accounts come from pension applications, but they were not often made until decades after the war. Oral traditions and family stories, which may have been written down at some point, exist, but often “evolve” over time and retelling, becoming less reliable with each generation. Third person histories were written in the first half of the 19th century, often by people who had first- or second-hand access to participants, but suffer from a variety of biases. Mahan sorts through all of it, identifying shortfalls, contradictions, and uncertainties before offering a reasoned judgment about the most likely course of events based on the varying degrees of his source material’s reliability. Kentucky Kidnappings aptly incorporates both British and American perspectives. What’s missing is a Native American viewpoint. That’s no failure on Mahan’s part. Many Native American perspectives were completely lost; those that survive were often recorded by whites and suffer from the recorder’s biases, which could be religious, political, cultural, racial, economic, and/or all of the above.
The war in the trans-Appalachian frontier could not decide the matter of independence for the thirteen colonies. But, it heavily influenced the future of the new United States by defining the new nation’s borders after the war. The Kentucky Kidnappings and Death March makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of how those American settlers experienced the American Revolution.
Emerging Revolutionary War Era 
The Natives did NOT want to attack Fort Nelson at the Falls of the Ohio because the Native Americans feared that George Rogers Clark commanded there….otherwise, there would be no need for the cannon.
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It’s a fair point, but I don’t think the issue was specific to Clark’s presence or absence at the Falls. Mahan argues that British strategy was set in March at a council with Native American leaders. The plan was to strike Louisville and then proceed to the interior and reduce the smaller settler forts. He cites correspondence between Major Arendt Schuyler De Peyster in Detroit and the Governor of Quebec, Frederick Haldimand in which De Peyster indicates Indian agreement. That was De Peyster’s reason for sending artillery, which was necessary to knock down strong walls but counterproductive when it came to a large scale raid against targets of opportunity–the more weakly defended settler forts and stations. (Artillery was slow and Bird had to clear a trail to move it from the Ohio). Councils with Native Americans rarely produced such clarity or precision, so De Peyster may have glossed over some unresolved issues in his letter to Haldimand. But, he did send the cannon, suggesting he had confidence that the the invasion was meant to be more than a raid against civilians. Mahan doesn’t tackle that issue, which is outside the scope of his story.
When they finally rendezvoused at the mouth of the Great Miami, Bird and his officers had reliable, and accurate, intelligence that Clark was not at the Falls. Indeed, the day Bird departed Detroit, Clark was at St. Louis. Word of Bird’s invasion reached Clark at Fort Jefferson and he was indeed hurrying back to Louisville, but Bird argued there was ample time for a descent on Louisville. Better yet, the British and Native Americans could ambush Clark as he came up. (He was probably right.)
Mahan rightly argues that the Indians with whom Bird rendezvoused had their own interests in mind when they forced Bird to change his strategy and align it more with their own goals, which he does not examine in detail. From my study, Native American strategy was built on securing wealth and creating a zone of fear that led settlers to abandon contested territory. That meant avoiding organized, well-armed, and determined opponents, although there are multiple instances of such battles. Clark’s presence was immaterial to that strategy, although he had a reputation of being exactly the kind of opponent Native Americans usually sought to avoid. Mahan does not get into Indian strategy and seems to accept the British interpretation, simply citing De Peyster telling another officer, “you see that my little expedition will have missed doing great things, from want of resolution in the Indians, who are not fond of going in search of Rebel troops.” Mahan places the disagreement over strategy and purpose at the mouth of the Great Miami River, which is where Bird experienced it in June. But, I suspect there was not a meeting of minds between the British and Native Americans at Detroit in the spring, well before Bird’s invasion was launched. Again, that’s outside the scope of his narrative. He is focused on telling the story from the perspective of the civilians at Ruddell’s Fort and Martin’s Station.
Thanks for the point. It’s a fascinating topic. The more discussion we can gin up the better.
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The forces gathered at the rendezvous point near the forks of the Great and Little Miami Rivers. The cannons had been brought by boats and hauled over the carrying place between the Maumee and Great Miami Rivers by pack horses. After gathering the rest of the Native American forces at the rendezvous point for several days, Bird wrote enthusiastically to DePeyster on June 3, 1780 that he expected to reach the Falls no later than June 14 and after taking it believed “the country on our return will be submissive and, in a manner, subdued.” However, bad news soon soured his mood. Huron warriors who had earlier left Bird negligently let some prisoners escape who had made it to the Falls on May 19 to give warning of the attack. Bird then found out that a message had been sent to Clark to immediately come to the Falls and that in the meantime, the Americans in the area were gathering as many men as possible to meet Bird at the Falls. It was this news at this point which caused anxiety with the Native American warriors who balked at proceeding further toward the Falls despite all the argument and cajoling of Bird and British Indian Department Captain Alexander McKee. The Native American leaders proposed attacks against Martin’s Station and Ruddle’s Station which promised more plunder, less risk and were closer to their villages. After two days of arguing, Bird and McKee reluctantly agreed for fear of their allies deserting, with the hope of heading back to the Falls after the easier targets were subdued. More to the story, but this is long enough already. Anyone interested in more detail and the cites can see my chapter “The Other Northern Attacks of the 1780 British Grand Plan” in The American Revolutionary War in the West book.
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