Real Pioneers: The Un-Hollywood Version
Created | Updated Jun 2, 2019
Real Pioneers: The Un-Hollywood Version
There are no end of inauthentic, Disneyfied, Hollywooded-up versions of US history. After all, sloppy sells, and who's going to bother to look it up and contradict them?
h2g2, that's who.
Feminists, stand your ground: women in 18th-century America did not sit around and wait to be rescued like some two-bit movie heroine. Here is a real oral history account of an incident in the life of Louisa St Clair of western Pennsylvania, taken from the really interesting 1878 book An Authentic History (never before published) of the Fight Between the Poes and Big Foot. Big Foot, to my intense disappointment, turned out to be the name of a local Iroquois chieftain. (It's still a great read.)
Louisa St Clair (1773-1840)
Two hundred Indians, under the command of Brandt, son of the Six Nation's chief of that name1,' camped at Duncan's falls, nine miles below Zanesville, and informed Gen. St. Clair2 at Mariatta, by runner, that they desired the treaty of preliminaries to be fixed there. This was in 1788.
The Governor suspecting a plot, Hamilton Kerr was dispatched to Duncan's falls to reconnoiter and deliver St. Clair's letter to the chief.
A short distance above Waterford, Kerr saw tracks, and keeping the river in sight, crept on a bluff, and raised to his feet, when hearing the laugh of a woman, he came down to the trail, and saw Louisa St. Clair on a pony, dressed Indian style, with a short rifle slung to her body. Stupified with amazement, the ranger lost his speech, well knowing Louisa, who was the bravest and boldest girl of all at the fort. She had left without the knowledge of anyone, and calling 'Ham' – as he was known by that name – to his senses, told him she was going to Duncan's falls to see Brandt. In vain he remonstrated and pointed out the peril of such an undertaking; but she was firm and only laughed at his fears. Taking her pony by the head, he led
it up the trail, and at night they suppered on dried deer meat from Ham's pouch; the pony was tied, and Louisa set against a tree and slept, rifle in hand, while Ham watched her. When they came in sight of the Indians, she took her father's letters, telling the ranger to hide and await her return, and dashed off on her pony, and was soon a prisoner. Being conducted into the presence of Brandt, she handed him the letters, remarking as she did so, that they had met before, he as a
student on a visit from college, to Philadelphia, and she as the daughter of General St. Clair, at school. Louisa perceiving as he read the letter that he became excited, said that she had risked her life to see him, and asked for a guard back to Marietta. Brandt told her that
he guarded the brave, and would accompany her home. Brandt returned to his warriors without a treaty, but crazed in love with Louisa St. Clair.
Editor's Note: In love Brant may have been, but it seems Louisa wasn't. She married a Pennsylvania man named James Robb. His grandfather had come from Ireland. She also ran her parents' household for many years, as her mother suffered from severe clinical depression. The St Clairs were remarkable in their day: they never owned slaves, and they hired free people regardless of race. The Detroit chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (a civic organisation) is named after Louisa, and one in Pennsylvania is named after her sister.
