558 LITTLE TURTLE MISHIKINAKWA Annual Report of Board of Education of Newport, Kentucky. Newport: Newport Printing, 1873. “Colored Club,” KJ, May 25, 1894, 6. “The Colored League,” KJ, March 4, 1892, 4. “First in the State,” KJ, August 13, 1891, 5. “Newport Briefs,” CE, August 2, 1909, 3.
Theodore H. H. Harris
LITTLE TURTLE (MISHIKINAKWA) (b. 1747, Miami Nation; d. July 14, 1812, Fort Wayne, Ind.). Mishikinakwa, or Little Turtle, as the early Europeans knew him, was the son of Chief Mishikinakwa, who signed the 1748 Treaty of Lancaster in Pennsylvania (see American Indians). That treaty led to the relocation of various Algonquian tribes into the Ohio Territory. Little Turtle, a Miami Indian war chief and political leader himself, became a leader in the Miami tribe during the Revolutionary War. He led the resistance of the Algonquian tribes against American settlement within the Old Northwest Territory in the period from 1780 until 1795, conducting offensive and defensive operations north of the Ohio River and dispatching raids south of the river. In 1780 Little Turtle won his battle of note when he led a war party that defeated a French force, operating in support of the American colonists, under the command of Augustin Mottin de La Balme near present-day Fort Wayne. After the Revolutionary War, Great Britain transferred the Old Northwest Territory to U.S. jurisdiction via the 1783 Treaty of Paris. The U.S. government, as a result, viewed the Old Northwest Territory as ceded land open for settlement. The Algonquian tribes, however, rejected this interpretation of the Treaty of Paris. The result was a lowintensity guerrilla war of the Miamis and their allies against the European settlers. It soon escalated into full warfare. In response to complaints from settlers within Kentucky, Virginia, and the Old Northwest Territory, the U.S. Congress authorized President George Washington in 1789 to orga nize an army, consisting of many Kentuckians, including Northern Kentuckians, to pacify the Algonquian tribes. In 1790 Gen. Josiah Harmar led an American army, much of which had been assembled in Covington, north from Fort Washington (Cincinnati) to crush the Miami and other tribes of the Great Miami River basin. After an initial successful attack on the village of Kekionga, Harmar and his troops were led into an ambush orchestrated by the masterful Little Turtle. Harmar lost 183 men in the ambush and was forced to retreat to Fort Washington, abandoning the field to Little Turtle. The next year, 1791, leading a rebuilt American army, Gen. Arthur St. Clair marched north from Fort Washington to destroy the Indians in presentday central Ohio and Indiana. Little Turtle once again drew the American troops into an ambush and inflicted upon St. Clair’s army the worst defeat American soldiers ever sustained in a battle with American Indians. More than 700 officers, men, and camp followers were killed, including many Kentucky soldiers.
In 1794 a newly raised and trained American army, under the direction of Gen. “Mad” Anthony Wayne, set out from Fort Washington to vanquish the Algonquians. Little Turtle, realizing that this time he was up against a competent foe with superior arms, urged the tribes to sue for peace. But Little Turtle’s proposal for peace was defeated in council, and Chief Blue Jacket of the Shawnees was appointed war chief of the tribes. Little Turtle’s observation of the capability of General Wayne’s troops was proved correct, as Blue Jacket lost to Wayne at the Battle of Fallen Timbers on August 20, 1794. Little Turtle was now called forth to be the Algonquians’ principal negotiator with Wayne at a peace conference held near present-day Greenville, Ohio. During the negotiations Little Turtle had entered into the treaty’s documentation various claims by the Miamis for land in the Old Northwest Territory. The U.S. government later recognized these claims as valid statements of Miami ownership and provided land-transfer compensation. However, the result of the Treaty of Greenville, signed on August 3, 1795, was that the Algonquians surrendered their claim to land in much of present-day Ohio and Indiana. After the signing of the Treaty of Greenville, Little Turtle settled with his family near Fort Wayne. He soon lost credit with his tribe, but he was still recognized by the United States as the chief of the Miami tribe. In 1803, 1804, 1805, and 1809, Little Turtle signed treaties with the United States, giving up most of the land claimed by the Miami Indians in the Old Northwest Territory. He placed his name on these treaties as carry ing out the will of the Miami Indians, without consulting with the tribal council or receiving its authorization to sign. In 1809 the Miamis publicly rejected Little Turtle as their leader and directed that all further negotiations with the United States concerning Miami lands be through their new chiefs, Owl, Pacanne, and Peshewa. Little Turtle died in 1812, having never lost to an American army. At the end of his life, he was the recipient of a pension from the United States. The Miamis and the other Algonquian tribes were caught up in the struggle between the Canadians and the Americans for supremacy over the Great Lakes, and Little Turtle’s village was burned during the conflict and his family scattered. The power of the Algonquian tribes was forever destroyed at the Battle of Thames in Ontario, Canada, in 1813. The remaining Algonquin tribes were pushed west of the Mississippi River and north into Canada, and the threat of Indian attack was lifted from the Northern Kentucky region. Today, a statue of Little Turtle stands on Riverside Drive in Covington. Anson, Bert. The Miami Indians. Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1970. Carter, Harvey L. The Life and Times of Little Turtle. Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1987. Dowd, Gregory A. A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745–1812. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1992.
Charles H. Bogart
LIVERS, WILLIAM “BILL” (b. August 3, 1911, near Owenton, Ky.; d. February 7, 1988, Owen Co., Ky.). Musician Bill Livers, the son of Dave and Lula Thurston Livers, was born about three miles south of Owenton on the Monterey Rd. His father was a tenant farmer, and Bill followed in his father’s footsteps. Bill grew up in and around the county’s Long Ridge community and was well known for his stories as well as for his fiddling. Living as an African American in a mostly white community did not seem to affect Livers in any way. He was always welcomed into a group regardless of its ethnic mix, fitting in perfectly. Livers’s greatest joy was to have friends gather to play “the old songs,” have plenty of “good eatin’s,” and enjoy fellowship. When the word got out that Bill was having a fish fry, people would come from miles around, fi lling the yard and overflowing into the field nearby. They would bring food, chairs, and blankets, prepared to have an enjoyable time into the early hours of the morning. The major entertainment for farmers was music; Livers had family and assorted friends who played the fiddle, the guitar, the French harp, the mandolin, the banjo, and the harmonica. During the late 1920s, Livers first taught himself to play the French horn, an instrument for which he had paid a mere 50 cents, one tune at a time. The first horn pieces he learned to play were “Down Yonder” and “Yes Sir, That’s My Baby.” In 1937 he purchased a 200-yearold fiddle and on it learned to play “My Old Kentucky Home.” The ability to play a fiddle allowed him to find employment in the evenings playing for square dances. He had an uncanny ability to pick up melodies easily. He told the story that the first fiddle he played came from a man who played left-handed. Livers was right-handed, but he had to learn to play left-handed because the fiddle was strung that way. Later he got a fiddle strung for a right-handed player, and it took him almost a year to relearn how to play it. But learn he did, and he could play both ways. Livers would ride a horse for miles and play all night, returning home to work in the field at his farm all day. He played at homecomings and square dances and for anyone or any group who asked him. As early as 1928, he was performing a song titled “The Carroll County Blues,” but it was in 1942 that he began playing the blues seriously with his rendition of the “St. Louis Blues.” He was later featured playing the blues at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., and at the World Fair in Knoxville, Tenn. Numerous articles have been written about Livers and published in Newsweek, Time, Living Blues, and other such publications. His work is captured on several record albums; included on them are two of Bill’s favorite tunes: “Up and Down Old Eagle Creek,” reflecting his Owen Co. heritage, and a popular fiddle tune, “Old Virge.” During Livers’s memorial ser vice at Owenton’s Second Baptist Church, his importance in the community was described by the person who said, “God bless you Bill for being our friend and making the hard times seem like good times and helping us realize that we have so much [more] to be thankful for than sorry for.” Bill Livers was buried at the Maple Cemetery in Owen Co.