shake up" the red rascals volunteer
militiamen and Rangers for miles back in southwestern Pennsylvania and
northwestern West Virginia and adjacent Kentucky were summoned to
gather, secretly, May 20, 1782, at Mingo Bottom (present Mingo
Junction, Ohio) on the west side of the Ohio River about forty miles up
from Fort Pitt.

Three hundred had been called for; four hundred and eighty
arrived--mainly Pennsylvanians, and the bulk of them crack-shot
bordermen in moccasins, leggins, fringed buckskin hunting shirts, armed
with the long patch-and-ball rifle, tomahawk and scalping-knife, and
mounted upon the best of their horses. It was to be an earnest
expedition--a stroke at the heart of the Indian country. Before
leaving home, many of the men had made their wills.

The popular William Crawford was elected commander. He had been an
ensign with Washington in the General Braddock campaign of the fatal
1755; had been colonel under General Washington in the Buff-and-Blue
Continental Army, and was General Washington's intimate friend: but
Lord Cornwallis, the British general, had surrendered at Yorktown last
fall, the War of the Revolution appeared to be almost over, and he had
returned home as a veteran.

The guides were Jonathan Zane of Wheeling (one of the fighting Zanes)
and John Slover, another Virginian.

Much dependence was placed upon John Slover. When eight years old, or
about in 1760, he had been captured by the Miami Indians and taken to
Upper Sandusky town. He had lived there among the Miamis and Wyandots,
had mingled with the Shawnees, Delawares and Mingo Iroquois, for twelve
years, and they had treated him well. He rather liked being an Indian.
Then during a peace council at Fort Pitt in 1773 he had met his real
kindred again. They had persuaded him to be a white man; therefore he
had bade his Indian brothers goodby, and had walked away with his
new-found relatives.

He, also, had served in the Revolution, as a sharpshooter. Now he felt
badly at having been asked to guide the Long Knife column against his
old-time Indian friends, and the town that had sheltered him; it seemed
to him not an honorable thing to do. Still, he was an American soldier
and citizen; there was war between the white and the red, and dreadful
deeds had been done by hatchet and knife, upon his very neighbors. His
duty was plain. He could not stay behind or refuse to aid. Therefore
he consented to guide and fight, in the cause of