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Point Pleasant, Virginia,
Sunday Night, October 9, 1774
The crescent moon had been long obscured by the time William stood up, worked the kinks from his arms and legs, and poked at the fire with a stick. Only a few feeble sparks flared up from the embers, dying quickly, almost before they were airborne. Earlier, fog had drifted in from the broad expanse of water where the Ohio and Kanawha Rivers met, and blended with the smoke from the campfires, making a pungent, damp smell that stung the eyes and nose. He sighed, sat down on the hard ground, made a little softer by the high grass and the falling leaves which drifted into the camp from the nearby forest and wrapped his blanket around his shoulders. Although the nights were getting colder, campfires were allowed to die out after dark, so as not to give the Shawnees any advantage. The colonial army, with more than eight hundred men, had been at Point Pleasant for nine days. Uncertainty over the arrival of Lord Dunmore, inactivity and the poor, scanty rations had made the men tense and edgy.
Sleep eluded William. His mind was restless. Thoughts were whirling like a spinning top. Mary was most often in his thoughts. Pretty Mary! She suited him so exactly, had given him two sons, John, not yet four, and Thomas, barely taking his first steps. He could almost feel her soft touch on his arm, and her laughter echoed in his mind. When Mary had told him about the new baby coming in September, his dark eyes had twinkled, and he’d said, confidently, “We’ll name him William, after me.” But, seeing Mary’s skeptical look, he added quickly, “If it’s a girl, we’ll name her Mary Ann. ‘Twould please my mother and yours, too.” A smile crossed his lips, as he thought of the new baby, who might be a month old by this time.
William had been reluctant to leave Mary when the baby’s birth was so near. But when they had talked about him leaving, Mary had looked at him gravely, saying, “You have no choice, William. You must go.” It was true. In April and May, Lord Dunmore, the Royal Governor of Virginia, had posted proclamations and announcements in public places in Virginia and Pennsylvania, ordering every able bodied man to Fort Pitt or Camp Union for military training. Settlers, pushing westward, were attacked by Indians with increasing frequency and Dunmore was forming an army to take care of the Indian menace. Men from all over Virginia, wishing to quell the Indians, had readily complied with Lord Dunmore’s request. William had not enlisted until the first of August and was part of the Fincastle troops, commanded by his cousin, Colonel William Christian. Before he left for Camp Union, Mary tried to reassure him, saying, “Don’t worry about me or the boys. Remember, this is my third babe, the midwife has promised she will come and neighbors are nearby. I will be fine, as will John and Thomas. I will send you word when the baby comes, if I can.”
Camp Union was the training ground for William and other patriots from the southern Virginia counties. The army assembled here was not an army of trained soldiers. Ordinary citizens, such as farmers, frontiersmen, surveyors and settlers made up the army. No one, not even the officers, had uniforms. Like William, they wore their own hunting coats, britches of linsey-woolsey, leather chaps, and coonskin or knitted caps. Each man was armed with a musket, called Brown Bess, or his own hunting rifle and most carried tomahawks or war clubs, and butcher knives, too. Many were related by blood or marriage and others were friends and neighbors. William’s brother, Captain George Moffett, was here with his own company. When the time came to march to Point Pleasant, William was assigned to Captain Evan Shelby’s company. Colonel William Christian, waiting for more men to join his Fincastle troops, was ordered to stay at Camp Union by the army commander, General Andrew Lewis. A wry smile crossed William’s lips, as he thought of his cousin. Always ready for a fight, Colonel Christian was chafing under the General’s order to wait while others marched to Point Pleasant.
William’s thoughts darkened when they turned to Lord Dunmore. When Lord Dunmore first came to Virginia, he was popular with the colonials. But as talk of independence became louder and more strident, he had dissolved the Virginia Assembly, because independence was too much under discussion. Then, determined to remove all thoughts of independence from people’s minds, he abolished the right of assembly and curbed free speech. Later, there were whispers and dark mutterings about Dunmore among his subjects: Dunmore’s agents were inciting the Indians to attack settlers; he had his eyes on the rich Ohio country, hoping for grants of large tracts of land from the Crown for himself and his three sons. William had heard these rumors before he left his home, and at Camp Union, the talk among the men had only intensified and added more disturbing details to the rumors.
The First Continental Congress was meeting in Philadelphia even as General Lewis’s army was marching to Point Pleasant. William hoped that the King would read and address their grievances, but he had his doubts. For a moment, his thoughts wandered and he dreamed of what it would be like without the heavy weight of English rule: freedom to voice one’s opinion, liberty for everyone, no unjust taxes, and a government beholden only to their citizens, not another country far away. Independence! Liberty! William turned the words over in his mind, and oddly, was comforted.
Lord Dunmore hadn’t brought his army from Fort Pitt to Point Pleasant, as he had promised, which left General Lewis’s army in an extremely precarious position. A chill crept up William’s spine as he thought about how dangerous it was for the men here at Point Pleasant. Surrounded by water on two sides of the encampment, all the Shawnees and their Indian allies need do, would be to surround the army with a half-circle and drive them into the Ohio and Kanawha Rivers. Now scouts had brought orders from Dunmore that General Lewis’s army was to cross the river tomorrow into the Ohio country to meet with Dunmore’s army. William was filled with a sense of unease and foreboding. “Nothing good will come of that,” he thought. Suddenly, he was impatient, eager for the Indian problems to be over, so he could be home with Mary and his boys, so he could protect them.
Night sounds drew William from his thoughts. A small animal scurried through the dried leaves and brush on the ground, and an owl hooted in the distance. Its mate answered. Was it owls or Indians? Raucous snores came from a few of the men sleeping nearby. He lay down on the ground, found a reasonably comfortable position, and closed his hand on Brown Bess, and, at last, fell into deep sleep.
Monday Morning, October 10, 1774
Soft footsteps and a low murmur of voices roused William from his slumber. His body tensed, and his hand tightened on his musket. Then he relaxed. It was only two men who were going out in the early morning to look for small game such as wild turkey, rabbits, and squirrels to supplement their meager rations. He didn’t envy the men their hunt, for the heavy fog still clung to the ground like a thick white blanket. He drifted back into half-sleep, content to snatch a few moments before the day began.
At first, William heard the shouts as from afar, intruding on his sleep. Then the shouts, getting closer, and closer, grew louder and more frenzied. It was one of the men who had passed by him earlier, out on the hunt. “Indians” the man shouted, “Indians, they’re attacking, Indians!” On General Lewis’s order, the drummers beat to arms and Lewis deployed his army into three wings. Captain Shelby marshaled his troops quickly, and his company was among the first to face the Shawnees. The men loaded their muskets, and took a line position among the trees and bushes. The Shawnees, in full war paint, armed with muskets, rifles, bows and arrows, tomahawks, and knives charged the colonial army, and so began a day-long battle.
The heavy fog hindered both sides equally. But a Shawnee warrior noticed a tall, black-haired man who fought so valiantly. Just as William turned to help a fellow soldier, the fog cleared for a few seconds. In that short space of time, the warrior, with a swift, fluid motion, lifted his rifle and fired. William felt the bullet enter his back and make its way slowly towards his heart. With lightning speed, scenes from his life chased each other across his vision: playing with his giggling sisters; learning how to ride and hunt with his big brother George, always his protector and guardian; his mother, a strong determined woman; Mary, on their wedding day, beautiful in her dove gray dress; and then, standing in the doorway of their cabin, with John and Thomas. If only he could reach her! He stretched out his hand to her and cried “Mary!” in a voice so loud that surely it rolled over the treetops, over the mountains, and down into the valley where they lived.
Mary woke with a start. Had the baby cried? She looked around. Early morning light, bright enough to promise a fine day, crept in through the cracks of the shuttered window. From the cradle, the baby fussed. Mary sat on the side of the bed and leaned to pick up the infant. But the light in the cabin dimmed to a dismal grey, and she felt a crushing heaviness that held her immobile. She sat there, barely breathing, unable to move. The baby fussed again, more insistently this time. Mary took a deep breath, pushed through bleakness that surrounded her and reached for the cradle.
William lay all day where he fell, while the fierce battle raged around him. Screams and shouts from the Americans and the Indians alike made a horrific din. Smoke from the muskets mixed with the fog to lower visibility, and for a time the fighting was hand to hand. Tomahawks were swung with bone-crushing viciousness, and knives slashed through the air and sometimes connected with fragile flesh. At last, in the late afternoon, the Shawnees began retreating towards the river, picking up their dead and wounded, still fighting as they made their way. They walked backwards as they fought, so it could be said that they never turned their backs and fled from a fight with the whites. By dusk, the Indians were gone, leaving the colonial army to tend their wounded.
Colonel Christian and the rest of the Fincastle troops arrived at Point Pleasant about midnight. The fighting was long over.
Tuesday Morning, October 11, 1774
Tending the wounded and burying the dead were the orders of the day. The officers who lost their lives were placed in one mass grave; the enlisted men were placed in others. George Moffett and William Christian were standing silently by, each lost in his own thoughts, waiting for William’s burial. George was thinking of William’s young family. He shook his head sadly. How devastated Mary would be! And William’s children would grow up without knowing their father. For the briefest of moments, tears stung his eyes, only to be blinked away rapidly, so that none would see. Colonel Christian was cursing inwardly at the circumstances that had kept him from the battle. He clenched his teeth as he pondered how the battle might have been different and how many men would have been saved, if only he had reached Point Pleasant sooner. Evan Shelby joined them and with his hand on George’s shoulder, said, “William was a brave man. Tell his family that he fought well, and was a good soldier.” Then, as the men prepared to lower William into the grave, Colonel Christian stepped forward, and stopped them with a motion of his hand. He knelt by William’s body, gently pulled the blanket from his face, and said softly, “She named the baby Mary Ann.”
Copyright 2006
By
Anne Watt
Bibliography
1.Eckert, Allan W. That Dark and Bloody River. Bantam Books, 1996.
2.Moffett Family Papers. Courtesy of Diana Powell, Atherton, California.
3.Morgan, John G. A Point in History: The Battle of Point Pleasant. Huntington, West Virginia, 2001.
4. Point Pleasant Battle Monument Commission. Battle of Point Pleasant, First Battle of the American Revolution, October 10. 1774. Eighth Edition, 1998.
5. Simpson-Poffenbarger, Livia Nye. Battle of Point Pleasant, October 10, 1774, First Battle of the Revolution. Charles William Barnet, Ed. McClain Printing Company, 1998.
6.Smyth, Cecil B., Jr. Dunmore’s War 1774: A Concise Narrative of the 1774 Campaign of the Virginia Frontiersmen against the Indian Tribes of the Ohio Valley.
7.Thwaites, Reuben Gold and Louise Phelps Kellogg, Eds. Documentary History of Dunmore’s War, 1774. Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society, 1905.
8. United States Naval Observatory. Astronomical Applications Department. Sun And Moon Data for One Day. October 9, 1774.
9. Wilson, Howard McKnight. Great Valley Patriots: Western Virginia in the Struggle for Liberty. Verona, VA: McClure Press, 1976.