HISTORY
OF
WASHINGTON COUNTY, OHIO.
CHAPTER I.
ABORIGINAL OCCUPATION OF OHIO.
The Valley of the Ohio a Beautiful but Desolate Wild.—Cause of its Desertion the Repeated Incursions of the Iroquois.—Their Strength and Warlike Character.—Earliest Positive Knowledge of the Indians of Ohio.—Destruction of the Eries.—The Shawnees Driven Southward.—Return of Wandering Tribes.—Their Geographical Locations.- -Confusion of Boundaries.—The Delawares upon the Muskingum, Tuscarawas, and Upper Scioto.—Their History in Brief.—Tribes and Principal Chiefs.—White Eyes and Captain Pipe.—Indian Villages upon the Upper, but none upon the Lower Muskingum.—Signification of the name Muskingum.—The Shawnees.—Their Tradition of Foreign Origin.—Tribal Division.—A Poetical Legend.—Their Wanderings.—The Scioto Country Originally Tendered to them by the Delawares.—Location of the Wyandots or Hurons.—Reputation for Valor.—The Ottawas, Miamis, and Mingoes.
DURING a long period—one which, perhaps, had its beginning soon after the forced exodus of the semi-civilized, pre-historic people, and which extended down to the era of the white man's actual knowledge—the upper Ohio valley was probably devoid of any permanent population. The river teemed with fish, and the dense luxuriant wood abounded in game, but no Indian wigwams dotted the shores of the great stream, no camp-fires gleamed along its banks, and no maize-fields covered the fertile bottom lands or lent variety to the wild vernal green. An oppressive stillness hung over the land, marked and intensified rather than broken, and only made more weird by the tossing of the water upon the shores and the soft mysterious sounds echoed from the distance through the dim aisles of the forest. Nature was lovely then as now, but with all her pristine beauty the valley was awful in the vastness and solemnity of its solitude. No where was human habitation or indication of human life.
This was the condition of the country when explored by the early French navigators, and when a century later it became the field for British and American adventurers. There was a reason for this desertion of a region rich in all that was dear to the red man. The river was the war-way down which silently and swiftly floated the canoe fleets of a fierce, relentless, and invincible enemy. That the dreaded devastaters of the country when it was occupied by the ancient race had made their invasions from the northward by way of the great stream is suggested by the numerous lookout or signal mounds which crown the hills on either side of the valley, occupying the most advantageous points of observation. The Indians who dwelt in the territory included in the boundaries of Ohio had, when the white men first went among them, traditions of oft repeated and sanguinary incursions made from the same direction, and dating back to their earliest occupation of the country. History corroborates their legends, or at least those relating to less ancient times. The Iroquois or Six Nations were the foes whose frequent forays, made suddenly, swiftly, and with overwhelming strength, had carried dismay into all the Ohio country and caused the weaker tribes to abandon the valley, penetrated the interior and located themselves on the upper waters of the Muskingum, the Scioto, the Miamis, and the tributaries of the lake, where they could live with less fear of molestation. The Six Nations had the rude elements of a confederated republic, and were the only power in this part of North America who deserved the name of government.* They pretentiously claimed to be the conquerors of the whole country from sea to sea, and there is good evidence that they had by 168o gained a powerful sway in the country between the great lakes, the Ohio and the Mississippi, and were feared by all the tribes within these limits. The upper Ohio was called by the early French the river of the Iroquois, and was for a long time unexplored through fear of their hostility.
But little is definitely known of the Indian occupation of the Ohio country prior to 1750, and scarcely anything anterior to 1650. As far back in American history as the middle of the seventeenth century it is probable that the powerful but doom-destined Eries were in possession of the vast wilderness which is now the thickly settled, well improved State of Ohio, dotted with villages and cities and covered with the meshes of a vast net-work of railroads. Most of the villages of this Indian nation, it is supposed, were situated along the shore of the lake which has been given their name. The Andastes are said by the best authorities to have occupied the valleys of the Alleghany and upper Ohio, and the Hurons or Wyandots held sway in the northern peninsula between the lakes. All were genuinely Iroquois, and the western tribes were stronger than the eastern. The Iroquois proper (the Five Nations increased afterward to Six by the alliance of the Tuscarawas) formed their confederacy in the beginning of the seventeenth century, and through
*James R. Albach's Annals of the West.
10 - HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY, OHIO.
consolidation of strength overwhelmed singly and successively the Hurons, the Eries, and the Andastes. The time of the massacre of the Erie nation—for the war upon them culminated in a wholesale murder—is usually set down by antiquarians and historians as 1655, and the victory over the Andastes is, on good evidence, placed in the year 1672. About the same time a tribe, supposed to have been the Shwanees, were driven from the Ohio valley and far towards the Gulf of Mexico. And so the territory now Ohio became a land without habitation and served the victorious Iroquois as a vast hunting ground. Whether the Iroquois conquered the Miamis and their allies, the Illinois, is a question upon which leading students of Indian history have been equally divided. The Miamis had no traditions of ever having suffered defeat at the hands of the great confederacy, and their country, the eastern boundary of which was the Miami river, may have been the western limit of the Six Nations' triumph. That they were often at war with the Iroquois is not disputed, however, by any writers of whom we have knowledge.
Although the Six Nations were the nominal owners of the greater part of the territory now constituting the State of Ohio, they did not, after the war with the Canadian colonists broke out in 1663 (and probably for some years previously), exercise such domination over the country as to exclude other tribes. Such being the case, the long deserted and desolate wild was again the abode of the red man, and the wigwams of the race again appeared by the waters of the Muskingum, the Scioto, and the Miamis; by the Tuscarawas, the Cuyahoga, and the Maumee.
Concerning what, so far as our knowledge extends, may be called the second Indian occupation of Ohio, we have authentic information. In 1764 the most trust, worthy and valuable reports up to that time secured, were made by Colonel Boquet as the result of his observations while making a military expedition west of the Ohio. Previous to the time when Colonel Boquet was among the Indians, and as early as 1750, traders sought out the denizens of the forest, and some knowledge of the strength of tribes and the location of villages was afforded by them. The authentic history of the Ohio Indians may be said to have had its beginning some time during the period extending from 1750 to 1764.
About the middle of the last century the principal tribes in what is now Ohio were the Delawares, the Shawnees, the Wyandots (called the Hurons by the French), the Mingoes, an offshoot of the Iroquois, the Chippewas, and the Tawas, more commonly called the Ottawas. The Delawares occupied the valleys of the Muskingum and Tuscarawas; the Shawnees, the Scioto valley; and the Miamis, the valleys of the two rivers upon which they left their name; the Wyandots occupied the country about the Sandusky river; the Ottawas had their headquarters in the valleys of the Maumee and Sandusky; the Chippewas were confined principally to the south shore of Lake Erie; and the Mingoes were in greatest strength upon the Ohio, below the site of Steubenville. All of the tribes, however, frequented, more or less, lands outside of their ascribed divisions of territory, and at different periods from the time when the first definite knowledge concerning them was obtained down to the era of white settlement, they occupied different locations. Thus the Delawares, whom Boquet found in 1764 in greatest number in the valley of the Tuscarawas had, thirty years later, the majority of their population in the region of the county which now bears their name, and the Shawnees, who were originally strongest upon the Scioto, by the time of St. Clair and Wayne's wars had concentrated upon the Little Miami. But the Shawnees had also as early as 1748 a village, known as Logstown, on the Ohio, seventeen miles from the site of Pittsburgh.* The several tribes commingled to some extent as their animosities toward each other were supplanted by the common fear of the enemy of their race. They gradually grew stronger in sympathy and more compact in union as the settlements of the whites encroached upon their loved domain. Hence the divisions, which had in 1750 been quite plainly marked, became, by the time the Ohio was fringed with the cabins and villages of the pale face, in a large measure, obliterated. In eastern Ohio, where the Delawares had held almost undisputed sway, there were now to be found also Wyandots, Shawnees, Mingoes, and even Miamis from the western border—from the Wabash, Miami, and Mad rivers. Practically, however, the boundaries of the lands of different tribes were as here given.
The Delawares, as has been indicated, had their densest population upon the upper Muskingum and Tuscarawas, and they really were in possession of what is now the eastern half of the State from the Ohio to Lake Erie. This tribe, which claimed to be the elder branch of the Lenni-Lenape, has by tradition and in history and fiction been accorded a high rank among the savages of North America. Schoolcraft, Loskiel, Albert Gallatin, Drake, Zeisberger, Heckewelder, and many other writers have borne testimony to the superiority of the Delawares, and James Fennimore Cooper in his attractive romances has added lustre to the fame of the tribe. According to the tradition preserved by them the Delawares, many centuries before they knew the white man lived in the western part of the continent, and separating themselves from the rest of the Lenni-Lenape migrated slowly eastward. Reaching the Alleghany river they, with the Iroquois, waged war successfully against a race of giants, the Allegewi, and still continuing their migration settled on the Delaware river, and spread their population eventually to the Hudson, the Susquehannah, and the Potomac. Here they lived, menaced and often attacked by the Iroquois,
* This village and Shawneetown, at the mouth of the Scioto, were the only exceptions to the abandonment of the upper Ohio valley noted at the opening of this chapter.
(t) Gist, however, found, in 1750, the town on Whitewoman creek. called Muskingum, "inhabited by Wyandots" and containing about one hundred families. This was undoubtedly an isolated government. As late as 1791, the Indian war being in progress, the different tribes were massed in what is now the northwestern part of the State, and their old abiding places, their favorite regions, were of course deserted. Delawares, Shawnees, Miamis, Mingoes, Senecas, Chippewas, and others were upon the Maumee, and its tributaries.
HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY, OHIO - 11
and finally, as some writers claim, they were subjugated by the Iroquois through stratagem. The Atlantic coast became settled by Europeans and the Delawares also being embittered against the Iroquois, whom they accused of treachery, they turned westward and concentrated upon the Alleghany. Disturbed here again by the white settlers a portion of the tribe obtained permission from the Wyandots (whom they called their uncles, thus confessing their superiority and reputation of greater antiquity) to occupy the lands along the Muskingum. The forerunners of the nation entered this region in all probability as early as 1745, and in less than a score of years their entire population had become resident in this country. They became here a more flourishing and powerful tribe than they had ever been before. Their warriors numbered not less than six hundred in 1764. The Delawares were divided into three tribes, the Unamis, Unalachtgo, and the Minsi, also called the Monseys or Muncies. The English equivalents of these appellations are the Turtle, the Turkey, and the Wolf. The tribe bearing the latter name exhibited a spirit that was quite in keeping with it, but the Delawares as a rule were less warlike than other nations, and they more readily accepted Christianity.
The principal chiefs among the Delawares were White Eyes and Captain Pipe. The former was the leader of the peace element of the nation and the latter of the tribes who were inclined to war. There was great rivalry between them and constant intrigue. White Eyes died about the year 1780. and Captain Pipe gained the ascendancy among his people. It was principally through his influence that the Delawares were drawn into a condition of hostility towards the whites, and he encouraged the commission of enormities by every artifice in his power. He was shrewd, treacherous, and full of malignity, according to Heckewelder, Drake and other writers on the Indians of the northwest, though brave, and famous as a leader in battle. White Eyes though not less noted as a warrior seemed actuated by really humane motives to fight only when forbearance was impossibe. He encouraged the establishment of the Moravian Indian missions and was the firm friend of their founders, though he never accepted Christianity. His greatest influence was exerted over the Delawares after the death, in 1776, of Netawatmees, a celebrated chief, who, during his lifetime, had combatted the reforms which White Eyes advocated. Buckougahelas was another of the Delaware chiefs, and was celebrated principally for his action in what is now the western part of the State. Others were King Newcomer (after whom the present Newcomerstown was named) and Half King. There dwelt among the Delawares of the Upper Muskingum at one time a white woman who had great influence among them and after whom a creek was named—Whitewoman's creek.
Most of the Delaware towns were at the vicinity of the forks of the Muskingum, or the confluence of the Tuscarawas and Muskingum, and that region is rich in the old Indian names. The Delawares had no village on the lower Muskingum, and so far as is known none in what is now Washington county, this region, like almost the whole of the Ohio valley, being devoid of inhabitants and regarded as a hunting ground.
The Muskingum river derives its name from the Delawares, and was originally Mooskingom. The literal meaning of this term is Elk's Eye, and it was probably so called because of its clearness. The Tuscarawas undoubtedly took its name from an Indian town which was situated where Bolivar now is. The name according to Heckewelder meant "old town" and the village bearing it was the oldest in the valleys.
The Shawnees were the only Indians of the northwest who had a tradition of a foreign origin, and for some time after the whites became acquainted with them they held annual festivals to celebrate the safe arrival in this country of their remote ancestors. Concerning the history of the Shawnees there is considerable conflicting testimony, but it is generally conceded that at an early date they separated from the other Lenape tribes and established themselves in the south, roaming from Kentucky to Florida. Afterward the main body of the tribe is supposed to have pushed northward, encouraged by their friends the Miamis, and to have occupied the beautiful and rich valley of the Scioto until driven from it in 1672 by the Iroquois. Theirnation was shattered and dispersed. A few may have remained upon the upper Scioto and others taken refuge with the Miamis, but by far the most considerable portion again journeyed southward and, according to the leading historians, made a forcible settlement on the head waters of the Carolina. Driven away from that locality they found refuge among the Creeks. A fragment of the Shawnees was taken to Pennsylvania and reduced to a humiliating condition by their conquerors. They still retained their pride and considerable innate independence, and about 1740 encouraged by the Wyandots and the French, carried into effect their long cherished purpose of returning to the Scioto. Those who had settled among the Creeks joined them and the nation was again reunited. It is probable that they first occupied the southern portion of their beloved valley, and that after a few years had elapsed the Delawares peacefully surrendered to them a large tract of country further north.* It is conjectured by some students that the branch of the Shawnees who lived for a term of years in the south were once upon the Suanee. river and that the well known name was a corruption of the name of the nation of Tecumseh. This chief, whose fame added lustre to the annals of the tribe, is said to have been the son of a Creek woman whom his father took as a wife during the southern migration. The Shawnees were divided into four tribes (t) —the Piqua (tt) Kiskapocke, Mequachuke, and Chillicothe.
* Some of the Delaware chiefs who visited Philadelphia during the Revolution spoke figuratively of having "placed the Shawnees in their laps."
+ This information is derived from a communication in the Archaelogical American, written in 1859 by Colonel John Johnston, then Indian agent, and located at Piqua, Ohio.
tt It was from the fact of these that the Indian village and the present town of Piqua, Miami county, derived their names. The name Pickaway, which has been given to one of the older counties of Ohio, but which was originarly applied to the "plains" within its limits is a corruption of Piqua.
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Those who deny to the American Indians any love for the beautiful and any exercise of imagination might be influenced to concede them the possession of such faculties and in a high degree, by the abundance of their fanciful traditions, of which their account of the origin of the Piqua is a good example. According to their practical legend the tribe began in a perfect man who burst into being from fire and ashes. The Shawnees said to the first whites who mingled with them, that once upon a time when the wise men and chiefs of the nation were sitting around the smouldering embers of what had been the council fire, they were startled by a great puffing of fire and smoke, and suddenly, from the midst of the ashes and dying coals, there arose before them a man of splendid form and mien, and that he was named Piqua, to signify the manner of his coming into the world—that he was born of fire and ashes. This legend of the origin of the tribe, beautiful in its simplicity, has been made the subject of comment by several writers as showing in a marked manner the romatic susceptibility of the Indian character. The name Megoachuke signifies a fat man filled—a man made perfect, so that nothing is wanting. This tribe had the priesthood. The Kiskapocke tribe inclined to war, and had at least one great war chief—Tecumseh. Chillicothe is not known to have been interpreted as a tribal designation. It was from this tribe that the several Indian villages on the Scioto and Miami were given the names they bore, and which was perpetuated by application to one of the early white settlements. The Shawnees have been styled "the Bedouins of the American wilderness" and "the Spartans of the race." To the former title they seem justly entitled by their extensive and almost constant wanderings, and the latter is not an inappropriate appellation, considering their well known bravery and the stoicism with which they bore the consequences of defeat. From the time of their reestablishment upon the Scioto until after the treaty of Greenville, a period of from forty to fifty years, they were constantly engaged in warfare against the whites. They were among the most active allies of the French, and after the conquest of Canada continued, in concert with the Delawares, hostilities which were only terminated by the marching of Colonel Boquet's forces into the country of the latter. They made numerous incursions into Pennsylvania, the Virginia frontier, harassed the Kentucky stations, and either alone or in conjunction with the Indians of other tribes, actually attacked or threatening to do so, terrorized the first settlers in Ohio from Marietta to the Miamis. They took an active part against the Americans in the war for Independence and in the Indian war which followed, and a part of them, under the leadership of Tecumseh, joined the British in the War of 1812.
The Wyandots or Hurons had their principal seat opposite Detroit, and smaller settlements (the only ones within the limits of Ohio, probably, except the village on White woman creek,) on the Maumee and Sandusky. They claimed greater antiquity than any of the other tribes, and their assumption was even allowed by the Delawares. Their right to the country between the Ohio and Lake Erie from the Alleghany to the Great Miami, derived from ancient sovereignity or from the incorporation of the three extinct tribes (the Eries, Andastes, and Neutrals) was never disputed, save by the Six Nations. The. Jesuit missionaries who were among them as early as 1639, and who had ample advantages for obtaining accurate information concerning the tribe, placed their number at ten thousand. They were both more civilized and more warlike than the other tribes of the northwest. Their population being, comparatively speaking, large and at the same time concentrated, they naturally gave more attention than did other tribes to agriculture. Extensive fields of maize adjoined their villages. The Wyandots on the score of bravery have been given a higher rank than any of the other Ohio tribes.* With them flight from an enemy in battle, whatever might be the odds of strength or advantage of ground, was a disgrace. They fought to the death and would not be taken prisoners. Of thirteen chiefs of the tribe engaged in the battle of Fallen Timbers, Wayne's victory, only one was taken alive, and he badly wounded.
The Ottawas existed in the terriory constituting Ohio only in small numbers and have no particular claims for attention. They seem to have been inferior in almost all respects to the Delawares, Wyandots, and Shawnees, though as the tribe to which the great Pontiac belonged they have been rendered quite conspicuous in history.
The Miami Indians were, so far as actual knowledge extends, the original denizens of the valleys bearing their name, and claimed that they were created in it. The name rn the Ottawa tongue signifies mother. The ancient name of the Miamis was Twigtwees. The Min- goes or Cayugas, a fragment of the Iroquois, had only a few small villages, one at Mingo Bottom, three miles below Steubenville, and others upon the Scioto. Logan came into Ohio in r772 and dwelt for a time at the latter town, but two years later was on the Scioto.
* William Henry Harrison and other eminent authorities pay, the highest tribute to the valor of the Wyandot warriors, and give abundant proofs of their assertions.
HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY, OHIO - 13
CHAPTER II.
OWNERSHIP OF THE NORTHWEST.
The Claims of France, Founded on Discovery and Occupation.— England's Claim Based Upon Discovery and Settlement of the Atlantic Coast and Treaties of Purchase.—Treaty of Paris in 5763.— Ohio as a Part of France and Canada.—The "Quebec Bill."—Title Vested in the Confederated States by Treaty in 1783.—Conflicting Claims of States.—Virginia's Exercise of Civil Authority.—The Northwest Territory Erected as Botetourt County.—Illinois County. —New York Withdraws Claim.—Virginias’ Deed of Cession.—Massachusetts Cedes Her Claim Without Reservation.—" The Tardy and Reluctant Sacrifice of State Pretensions to the Public Good," Made by Connecticut.—A Serious Evil Averted.—The States Urged to their Action by New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland.—Extinguishment of the Indiana Title.—Difficulty of Making Satisfactory Provisions.—A Harsh and Unjust Policy.—Washington's Influence Causes More Humane Treatment of the Indians.—Treaty of Fort Stanwix.—Treaty of Fort McIntosh.—George Rogers Clark, General Butler and S. H. Parsons Confer with Several Tribes at the Mouth of the Miami.—Measures of the Treaty Ineffectual to Preserve Peace. —Great Improvement in the Attitude of the Government.—Indian Tribes Recognized as Rightful Owners.—Appropriations made to Purchase Title from Them.
FRANCE, resting her claim upon the discovery and explorations of Robert Cavalier de la Salle and Marquette, upon the occupation of the country, and later, upon the provisions of several European treaties (those of Utrecht, Ryswick, Aix-la-chapelle), was the first nation to formally lay claim to the soil of the territory now included within the boundaries of the State of Ohio as an integral portion of the valley of the Mississippi and of the northwest. Ohio was thus a part of New France. After the treaty of Utrecht, in 1713, it was a part of the French province of Louisiana, which extended from the gulf to the northern lakes. The English claims were based on the priority of their occupation of the Atlantic coast, in latitude corresponding to the territory claimed; upon an opposite construction of the same treaties above named; and last but not least, upon the alleged cession of the rights of the Indians. England's charters to all of the orrginal colonies expressly extended their grants from sea to sea. The principal ground of claim by the English was by the treaties of purchase from the Six Nations, who, claiming to be conquerors of the whole country and therefore its possessors, asserted their right to dispose of it. A portion of the land was obtained through grants from the Six Nations and by actual purchase made at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1744. France successfully resisted the claims of England, and maintained control of the territory between the Ohio and the lakes by force of arms until the Treaty of Paris was consummated in 1763. By the provisions of this treaty Great Britian came into possession of the disputed lands, and retained it until ownership was vested in the United States by the treaty of peace made just twenty years later. We have seen that Ohio was once a part of France and of the French province of Louisiana, and as a curiosity it may be of interest to refer to an act of the British Parliament, which made it an integral part of Canada. This was what has been known in history as the "Quebec Bill" passed in 1774. By the provisions of this bill the Ohio river was made the southwestern, and the Mississippi river the western boundary of Canada, thus placing the territory now constituting the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin under the local jurisdiction of the Province of Quebec.
Virginia had asserted her claims to the whole of the territory northwest of the Ohio, and New York had claimed titles to portions of the same. These claims had been for the most part held in abeyance during the period when the general ownership was vested in Great Britian, but were afterwards the cause of much embarrassment to the United States. Virginia, however, had not only claimed ownership of the soil, but attempted the exercise of civil authority in the disputed territory as early as 1769. In that year the colonial house of burgesses passed an act establishing the county of Botetourt, including a large part of what is now West Virginia and the whole territory northwest of the Ohio, and having, of course, as its western boundary the Mississippi river. This was a county of vast proportions—a fact of which the august authorities who ordered its establishment seem to have been fully aware, for they inserted the following among other provisions of the act, viz:
WHEREAS, The people situated upon the Mississippi in the said county of Botetourt will be very remote from the court house, and must necessarily become a separate county as soon as their numbers are sufficient, which will probably happen in a short time, be it therefore enacted by the authority aforesaid that the inhabitants of that part of the said county of Botetourt, which lies on the said waters, shall be exempted from the payment of any levies to be laid by the said county for the purpose of building a court house and prison for said county.
It was more in name than in fact, however, that Virginia had jurisdiction over this great county of Botetourt through the act of 1769. In 1778, after the splendid achievements of General George Rogers Clarke his subjugation of the British posts in the far west, and conquest of the whole country from the Ohio to the Mississippi—this territory was organized by the Virginia legislature as the county of Illinois. Then, and not until then, did government have more than a nominal existence in this far extending but undeveloped country, containing a few towns and scattered population. The act, which was passed in October, contained the following provisions:
All the citizens of the commonwealth of Virginia who are a!ready settled, or shall hereafter settle on the western side of the Ohio, shall be included in a distinct county which shall be called Illinois; and the governor of this commonwealth, with the advice of the council, may appoint a county lieutenant or commandant-in-chief, during pleasure, who shall appoint and commission so many deputy commandants, militia officers and commissaries, as he shall think proper, in the different districts, during pleasure, arl of whom, before they enter into office, shall take the oath of fidelity to this commonwealth, and the oath of office, according to the form of their own religion. And all officers to whom the inhabitants have been accustomed, necessary to the preservation of peace and the administration of justice, shall be chosen by a majority of citizens, in their respective districts, to be convened for that purpose by the county lieutenant or commandant, or his deputy, and shall be commissioned by the said county lieutenant, or commandant-in-chief.
John Todd was appointed as county lieutenant and civil commandant of Illinois county, and served until his death (he was killed in the battle of Blue Licks, August 18, 1782), being succeeded by Timothy de Montbrun.
New York was the first of the several States claiming right and title in western lands to withdraw the same in
14 - HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY, OHIO.
favor of the United States. Her charter, obtained March 2, 1664, from Charles II, embraced territory which had formerly been granted to Massachusetts and Connecticut. The cession of claim was made by James Duane, William Floyd, and Alexander McDougall, on behalf of the State, March 1, 1781.
Virginia, with a far more valid claim than New York, was the next State to follow New York's example. Her claim was founded upon certain charters granted to the colony by James I, and bearing date respectively, April 10, 1606; May 23, 1609; and March 12, 1611 ; upon the conquest of the country by General George Rogers Clarke; and upon the fact that she had also exercised civil authority over the territory. The general assembly of Virginia, at its session beginning October 20, 1783, passed an act authorizing its delegates in Congress to convey to the United States in Congress assembled all the right of that commonwealth to the territory northwest of the Ohio river. The act was consummated on March 17, 1784. By one of the provisory clauses of this act was reserved the Virginia Military district, lying between the waters of the Scioto and Little Miami rivers.
Massachusetts ceded her claims, without reservation, the same year that Virginia did hers (1784), though the action was not formally consummated until the eighteenth of April, 1785. The right of her title had been rested upon her charter, granted less than a quarter of a century from the arrival of the Mayflower, and embracing territory extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
Connecticut made what has been characterized as "the last tardy and reluctant sacrifice of State pretensions to the common good"* on the fourteenth of September, 1786. She ceded to Congress all her "right, title, interest, jurisdiction, and claim to the lands northwest of the Ohio, excepting the Connecticut Western Reserve," and of this tract jurisdictional claim was not ceded to the United States until May 30, 1801.
The happy, and, considering all complications, speedy adjustment of the conflicting claims of States and consolidation of all rights of title in the United States was productive of the best results both at home and abroad. The young nation, born in the terrible throes of the Revolution, went through a trying ordeal, and one of which the full peril was not realized until it had been safely passed. Serious troubles threatened to arise from the disputed ownership of the western lands, and there were many who had grave fears that the well-being of the country would be impaired or at least its progress impeded. The infant Republic was at that time closely and jealously watched by all of the governments of Europe, and nearly all of them would have rejoiced to have witnessed the failure of the American experiment, and they were not destined to be gratified at the expense of the United States. As it was, the most palpable harm, caused by delay, was the retarding of settlement. The movement towards the complete cession of State claims was accelerated as much as possible by Congress. The national legislature strenuously urged the several States in
* Statutes of Ohio; Chief Justice Chase.
1784 to cede their lands to the confederacy to aid the payment of the debts incurred during the Revolution and to promote the harmony of the Union.*
The States of New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland had taken the initiative action and been largely instrumental in bringing about the cession of State claims. The fact that they had no foundation for pretensions of ownership save that they had equally in proportion to their ability with the other States assisted in wresting these lands from Great Britain, led them to protest against an unfair division of the territory—New Jersey had memorialized Congress in 1778, and Delaware followed in the same spirit in January, 1779. Later in the same year Maryland virtually reiterated the principles advanced by New Jersey and Maryland, though more positively. Her representatives in Congress emphatically and eloquently expressed their views and those of their constituents in the form of instructions upon the matter of confirming the articles of confederation.
The extinguishment of the Indian claims to the soil of the northwest was another delicate and difficult duty which devolved upon the Government. In the treaty of peace, ratified by Congress in 1784, no provision was made by Great Britain in behalf of the Indians—even their most faithful allies, the Six Nations. Their lands were included in the boundaries secured to the United States. They had suffered greatly during the war and the Mohawks had been dispossessed of the whole of their beautiful valley. The only remuneration they received was a tract of country in Canada, and all of the sovereignty which Great Britain had exercised over them was transferred to the United States. The relation of the new government to these Indians was peculiar. In 1782 the British principle, in brief, that "might makes right" —that discovery was equivalent to conquest, and that therefore the nations retained only a possessory claim to their lands, and could only abdicate it to the government claiming sovereignty—was introduced into the general policy of the United States. The legislature of New York was determined to expel the Six Nations entirely, in retaliation for their hostility during the war. Through the just and humane counsels of Washington and Schuyler, however, a change was wrought in the Indian policy, and the Continental Congress sought henceforward in its action to condone the hostilities of the past and gradually to dispossess the Indians of their lands by purchase, it's the growth of the settlements might render it necessary to do so. It was in pursuance of this policy that the treaty of Fort Stanwix was made, October 22, 1784. By this treaty were extinguished the vague claims which the confederated tribes, the Mohawks, Onondagas, Senecas, Cayugas, Tuscarawas, and Oneidas, had for more than a century maintained to the Ohio valley. The commissioners of Congress in this transaction were Oliver Wolcott; Richard Butler, and Arthur Lee. The Six Nations were represented by two of their ablest chiefs, Cornplanter and Red Jacket, the former for peace and the latter for war. La Fayette was present at this treaty and impor-
*Albach's Annals of the West.
HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY, OHIO - 15
tuned the Indians to preserve peace with the Americans.
By the treaty of Fort McIntosh, negotiated on the twenty-first of January, 1785, by George Rogers Clark, Richard Butler, and Arthur Lee, was secured the relinquishment of all claims to the Ohio valley held by the Delawares, Ottawas, Wyandots, and Chippewas. The provisions of this treaty were as follows :
ARTICLE 1st—Three chiefs, one from the Wyandot and two from the Delaware nations, shall be delivered up to the commissioners of the United States, to be by them retained till all the prisoners taken by the said nations or any of them shall be restored.
ARTICLE 2nd—The said Indian nations and all of their tribes do acknowledge themselves to be under the protection of the United States and of no other sovereign whatever.
ARTICLE 3rd—The boundary line between the United States and the Wyandot and Delaware nations shall begin at the mouth of the river Cuyahoga, and run thence up the said river to the portage between that and the Tuscarawas branch of the Muskingum; then down the said branch to the forks at the crossing-place above Fort Laurens; then westwardly to the portage of the Big Miami, which runs into the Ohio, at the mouth of which branch the fort stood which was taken by the French in the year one thousand seven hundred and fifty-two; then along the said portage to the Great Miami or Owl river, and down the southeast side of the same to its mouth; thence down the south shore of Lake Erie to the mouth of the Cuyahoga where it began.
ARTICLE 4th—The United States allot all the lands contained within the said lines to the Wyandot and Delaware nations, to live and to hunt on, and to such of the Ottawa nation as now live thereon; saving and reserving for the establishment of trading posts six miles square at the mouth of the Miami or Owl river and the same at the portage of that branch of the Miami which runs into the Ohio, and the same on the cape of Sandusky, where the fort formerly stood, and also two miles square on the lower rapids of Sandusky river; which posts and the land annexed to them, shall be for the use and under the government of the United States.
ARTICLE 5th—If any citizen of the United States, or other person not being an Indian, shall attempt to settle on any of the lands allotted to the Wyandot and Delaware nations in this treaty, except on the lands reserved to the United States in the preceding article, such person shall forfeit the protection of the United States, and the Indians may punish him as they please.
ARTICLE 6th—The Indians who sign this treaty, as well in behalf of all their tribes as of themselves, do acknowledge the lands east, south, and west of the lands described in the third article, so far as the said Indians claimed the same, to belong to the United States, and none of their tribes shall presume to settle upon the same or any part of it.
ARTICLE 7th—The post of Detroit, with a district beginning at the mouth of the river Rosine on the west side of Lake Erie and running west six miles up the southern bank of the said river; thence northerly, and always six miles west of the strait, till it strikes Lake St. Clair, shall also be reserved to the sole use of the United States.
ARTICLE 8th—In the same manner the post of Michilimackinack with its dependencies, and twelve miles square about the same, shall be reserved to the use of the United States.
ARTICLE 9th—If any Indian or Indians shall commit a robbery or murder on any citizen of the United States, the tribe to which such offenders may belong shall be bound to deliver them up at the nearest post, to be punished according to the ordinance of the United States.
ARTICLE 10th—The Commissioners of the United States, in pursuance of the humane and liberal views of Congress, upon the treaty's being signed, will direct goods to be distributed among the different tribes for their use and comfort.
The treaty of Fort Finney, at the mouth of the Great Miami, January 31, 1786, secured the cession of whatever claim to the Ohio valley was held by the Shawnees. George Rogers Clark, Richard Butler, and Samuel H. Parsons* were the Commissioners of the United States. James Monroe, then a member of Congress from Virginia and afterwards President of the United States, accompanied General Butler, in the month of October preceding the treaty, as far as Limestonet (now Maysville, Kentucky). The party, it is related, stopped at the mouth of the Muskingum and (in the words of General Butler's journal) "left fixed in a locust tree" a letter recommending the building of a fort on the Ohio side. By the terms of this treaty the Shawnees were confined to the lands west of the Great Miami. Hostages were demanded from the Indians, to remain in the possession of the United States until all prisoners should be returned, and the Shawnees were compelled to acknowledge the United States as the sole and absolute sovereign of all the territory ceded to them, in the treaty of peace, by Great Britain. The clause embodying the latter condition excited the jealousy of the Shawnees. They went away dissatisfied with the treaty, though assenting to it. This fact, and the difficulty that was experienced even while the treaty was making of preventing depredations by white borderers, argued unfavorably for the future. The treaty was productive of no good results whatever. Hostilities were resumed in the spring of 1786, and serious and widespread war was threatened. Congress had been acting upon the policy that the treaty of peace with Great Britain had invested the United States with the fee simple of all the Indian lands, but urged now by the stress of circumstance the Government radically changed its policy, fully recognizing the Indians as the rightful proprietors of the soil, and on the second of July, 1787, appropriated the sum of twenty-six thousand dollars for
* General Samuel H. Parsons, an eminent Revolutionary character, was one of the first band of Marietta pioneers, and was appointed first as associate and then as chief judge of the Northwest Territory. He was drowned in the Big Beaver river, November 17, 1789, while returning to his home in Marietta from the north, where he had been making the treaty which secured the aboriginal title to the soil of the Connecticut Western Reserve.
By General Butler's Journal in Craig's "Olden Time," October, 1847
16 - HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY, OHIO.
the purpose of extinguishing Indian claims to lands already ceded to the United States and for extending a purchase beyond the limits heretofore fixed by treaty.
Under this policy other relinquishments of Ohio territory were effected through the treaties of Fort Harmar, held by General St. Clair, January 9,1789, the treaty of Greenville, negotiated by Anthony Wayne, August 3, 1795, and various other treaties made at divers times from 1796 to 1818.* But of these it is beyond our province to speak in this chapter.
CHAPTER III.
ADVENT OF THE WHITE MAN.
La Salle Upon the Ohio Two Hundred Years Ago—Possibility of his Having Explored the Muskingum.—The "Griffin" on Lake Erie.— French Trading Stations.—Routes Through the Wilderness.--The English Supersede the French.—Interest in the West Exhibited by Governor Spotswood, of Virginia, in 1710.—The Transmontane Order Founded.—Licenses Issued for Trading with the Indians, by the Governor of Pennsylvania, in 1740.—Systematic Exploration of the Ohio Valley by Celeron de Bienville.—At the Mouth of the Muskingum in 1749.—Leaden Plate Buried.—Discovered 1798.—Pickawillamy, the First Building Erected by the English in Ohio.—Organization of the Colonial Ohio Land Company, in Virginia, in 1748.— Preparation Made to Establish a Colony.—French Resistance—War of Britain Against the French and Indians. —Its Results.—Franklin's Plans for Western Settlements.—George Washington upon the Ohio. His Favorable Impressions of the Country.—Immense Schemes for Western Colonization.—Indian Hostility and Imperfection of Land Title the Probable Cause of their Failure—The First English Military Expedition upon Ohio Soil.—Colonel Boquet Wins a Bloodless Victory on the Upper Muskingum.—Thomas Hutchins.—Hostility of the Shawnees.—Logan.—Lord Dunmore's War.—The Battle of Point Pleasant.—The Breaking Out of the Revolutionary War.—An Event of Immeasurable Importance in the West.—General George Rogers Clarkls Conquest of the Northwest.—Value of His Foresight and Decisive Action.—His Services Unappreciated.—Miscellaneous Military Invasions.—The Establishment of the Moravian Missions on the Muskingum—The Massacre.
THE adventurous La Salle, there is every reason to believe, was the first white man who trod the soil of the destined State of Ohio, and the first whose eyes beheld the Beautiful river. With a few followers and led by Indian guides he penetrated the vast country of the powerful Iroquois until, as Parkman says, he reached "at a point six or seven leagues from Lake Erie, a branch of the Ohio, which he descended to the main stream," and so went onward as far as the "falls," or the site of Louisville. His men abandoning him there, he retraced his way alone. This, according to the best authorities, was in the winter of 1669-70, over two hundred years ago. And it is not improbable that one hundred and eighteen years before Marietta was settled this intrepid French explorer had encamped at the mouth of the Muskingum. Indeed, there is some reason to believe that he made his way from Lake Erie to the Ohio by the Cuyahoga, the Tuscarawas, and Muskingum, though the preponderance
"It is a fact worthy of note, and one of which we may well be proud, that the title to every foot of Ohio soil was honorably acquired from the Indians. of evidence points to the Alleghany as the route followed. Ten years later La Salle unfurled the first sail ever set to the breeze upon Lake Erie, and upon the Griffin, a schooner of forty-five tons burden, made the voyage to Lake Huron. In 1682 he reached the Mississippi, descended to its mouth, and there solemnly proclaimed possession of the vast valley in the name of his king.
The French had a trading station on the Maumee near the site of Toledo, as early as 1680, and according to Bancroft they had a route through the western wilderness from Canada to the Mississippi; by the way of the Maumee, Wabash, and Ohio rivers in 1716; and another only a little later from Presque Isle (Erie) by the Alleghany and Ohio. About 1740, however, the French traders were superseded by the English.
Governor Alexander Spotswood of Virginia became interested in the western country early in the eighteenth century; engaged in exploring the Alleghanies in 1710; discovered a passage through them in 1714, and entered with great ardor upon the scheme of taking practical possession of the Ohio valley. He founded the Transmontane order, whose knights were decorated with a golden horseshoe bearing the legend "Sic jurat transcendere monies," and urged upon the British sovereign the importance of gaining a foothold in the west before the French had gained too powerful an ascendancy. His suggestions were not regarded, and many years later the British government had cause to remember with regret the wise policy they had neglected to act upon. Although no systematic plan of exploration or settlement was followed, individuals from time to time passed the great barrier and visited the the valley of the la belle riviere. There have been handed down certain vague traditions that the English had trading posts on the Ohio as early as 1730, and it is known positively that they had soon after that time. In 1744 the governor of Pennsylvania issued licenses for trading with the Indians as far west as the Father of Waters. John Howard had descended the Ohio in 1742 and been captured on the Mississippi by the French; and six years later Conrad Weiser, acting behalf of the English, visited the Shawnees at Logstown (below the site of Pittsburgh) bearing gifts with which to win their favor. About the same time George Crogan and Andrew Montour, the half breed of a Seneca chief bore liberal presents to the Miamis, in return for which the Indians allowed the whites to establish a trading post and build a stockade at the mouth of Loramies creek on the Great Miami (within the present county of Shelby). The fort, built in 1751, which was called Pickawillamy, has been cited by some writers as the first English settlement in Ohio. The building, which was undoubtedly the first erected by the British on the soil of the State, was destroyed in June, 1752, by a force of French and Indians.
Prior to the middle of the century the French strenuously reasserted their ownership of the northwest, and did actually take possession of what is now the northern part of Ohio, building a fort and establishing a trading station at Sandusky. Celeron de Bienville made a systematic exploration of the Ohio valley and formally de-
HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY, OHIO - 17
clared by process verbal the ownership of the soil. On the sixteenth of August, 1749, he was at the mouth of the Muskingum. This fact was revealed in 1798 by the discovery of a leaden plate which had been buried by him and which set forth that the explorer sent out by the Marquis de la Gallissoniere, captain general of New France, agreeably to the wishes of His Majesty, Louis XV, had deposited the plate as a monument of the renewal of possession of la riviere Oyo, otherwise la belle mitre, and all those which empty into it, and of all the lands of both sides even to the sources of the said rivers, and which had been obtained by force of arms and by treaties, especially those of Ryswick, Utrecht, and Aix-la-chappelle. The plate was found protruding from the bank after a freshet, by some boys, who, ignorant of its antiquarian value, cut away a considerable portion of it to melt into bullets, lead there being very scarce. The plate was finally secured by Paul Fearing, one of the Marietta pioneers, and the inscription was translated by William Woodbridge (afterwards governor of Michigan) but then a young man, who had been studying French at Gallipolis. Considerable difficulty was experienced in making the translation as a portion of the inscription had been cut away by the finders of the plate, but the larger part remaining enabled the student to supply the missing words. The plate was nearly twelve inches from top to bottom and about seven and a half in breadth.* A similar plate was found in 1846 at the mouth of the Kanawha. They were doubtless deposited at the mouths of all the principal tributaries of the Ohio.
The French had a very just claim to the Ohio valley, but it was destined that they should not hold it and already events were shaping which eventually led to the overthrow of their authority and the vesture of title and possession in the English crown.
The Colonial Ohio Land company was organized in Virginia in 1748 by twelve associates, among whom were Thomas Lee, and Lawrence and Augustine, brothers of George Washington. Under their auspices Christopher Gist explored the Ohio as far as the falls, travelling a portion of the time with Croghan and Montour. The company secured a royal grant of half a million acres of land in the Ohio valley. In 1753 preparations were made to establish a colony. The French exhibited an intention of resistance, and the royal governor of Virginia sent George Washington, then a young man, to the commander of the French forces to demand their reason for invasion of British territory. Washington received an answer that was both haughty and defiant. Returning to Virginia he made known the failure of his mission. The project of making a settlement was abandoned, and preparations were immediately made for the maintenance of the British claim to the western valley by force of arms. The result was the union of the colonies, the ultimate involvement of England in the war that ensued, the defeat of the French, and the vesture in the British
* This interesting relic passed into the possession of the learned and eccentric Caleb Atwater, of Circleville, Ohio, in 1821, was by him given to Governor Clinton, of New Yolk, and by him transmitted to the Massachusetts Antiquarian society.
crown of the right and title to Canada and of all the territory east of the Mississippi and south to the Spanish possessions, excepting New Orleans and a small body of land surrounding it. Benjamin Franklin had previously tried to effect a union of the colonies and had been unsuccessful He had proposed a plan of settlement in 1754, and suggested that two colonies should be located in the west—one upon the Cuyahoga and the other upon the Scioto, "on which," he said, "for forty miles each side of it and quite up to its head is a body of all rich land, the finest spot of its bigness in all North America, and has the peculiar advantage of sea coal in plenty (even above ground in two places) for fuel when the wood shall have been destroyed."
But little advantage was taken by the English of the ascendancy they had gained. About the only men who visited the country northwest of the Ohio were traders. The frontiers of Pennsylvania and Virginia were settled in due time, but as the title to the soil on the other side of the Ohio was not perfected no attempt was made for several years to occupy the country. Kentucky had even been penetrated by the pioneers, of whom Daniel Boone was a type, and many setttlements founded before attention was again seriously given to the country north of the Ohio.
George Washington made a journey down the Ohio in 177o. He was accompanied by Dr. Craik, Captain (afterwards Colonel) William Crawford (who was burned to death at the stake within the present limits of Wyandot county in 1782), and several other white men, also by a party of Indians. The little company embarked on the Ohio from Fort Pitt, October 20th, and on the night of the twenty-fifth camped out "about half way down the Long Reach" (Grand view). Washington's journal continues:
October 26th. . . . At the lower end of the Long Reach, and for some distance up it, on the east side, is a large bottom, but low and covered with bcech near the river shore, which is no indication of good land.
The Long Reach is a straight course of the river for about eighteen to twenty miles, which appears more extraordinary as the Ohio in general is remarkably crooked. There are several islands in this Reach, some containing a hundred or more acres of land, but all I apprehend liable to be overflowed.
On the night of October 26th Washington encamped "at a creek about twelve miles below the Three Islands," which was "pretty large at the mouth and just above an island." This was the Little Muskingum.
Under date of October 27th occurs the following entry :
Left our encampment a quarter before seven, and after passing the creek near which we lay and another of much the same size, and on the same side [this was Duck creek], also one island about two miles in length, but not wide, we came to the mouth of the Muskingum, distant from our encampment about four miles. This river is about a hundred and fifty yards wide at the mouth; it runs out in a gentle current and clear stream, and is navigable a great way into the country for canoes. From Muskingum to Little Kanawha is about thirteen miles. This is about as wide as the mouth of the Muskingum, but the water much deeper. It runs up towards the inhabitants of Monongahela. . . . About six or seven miles below the mouth of the Little Kanawha we came to a small creek on the west side which the Indians call Little Hockhocking, but before we did this we passed another small creek on the same side near the mouth of that river, and a cluster of islands afterward. The lands for two or three miles below
18 - HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY, OHIO.
the Littte Kanawha appear broken, and indifferent, but opposite to the Little Hockhocking there is a bottom of good land.*
Largely through Washington was the interest in the west revived. Immense schemes for settlement and land speculation were projected. A huge company was organized which included the Old Ohio company and the Walpole scheme as well as recognizing the bounties of the Virginia volunteers in the French war. Doubtless some of these plans for the development of the west would have succeeded had it not been for Indian hostilities upon the border settlements already established, and the probability of a long continuance of the perturbed condition of affairs generally. Colonel Henry Boquet had made the first English military expedition into the Ohio country in 1764, his purpose being to punish and awe the Indians and recover from them the captives they had taken during the previous years on the Pennsylvania and Virginia borders. He was successful in the accomplishment of each one of his objects. The expedition was directed against the Delawares upon the Muskingum and Tuscarawas. No blood was shed, the Indians assenting to the terms of a treaty prepared by Colonel Boquet, and delivering to him over two hundred prisoners. Upon the twenty-eighth of November the army of about fifteen hundred men returned to Fort Pitt, which point they had left on October 3d. This expedition for a time tranquilized the Indians of the Ohio country, and the next ten years passed peacefully and without the occurrence of any important event. With Colonel Boquet was Thomas Hutchins (of whom we shall have frequent occasion to speak). He served in the capacity of military engineer and was geographer to the king of Great Britain. Hutchins published a large book upon the western country with which he became very familiar from long continued services as explorer. In later years as geographer of the United States he superintended the survey of the "seven ranges," and it was largely through his influence that the Ohio company was led to locate their purchase upon the Muskingum.
But returning to the period from which we retrograded to speak of the Boquet expedition, we find in 1774 that the Shawnees have become bitterly hostile, principally on account of the prospect of losing their land and because of the murder of the kindred of Logan, the famous Mingo, who was now dwelling with them at the Old Chillicothe town on the Scioto (where is now the village of Westfall, Pickaway county). Logan had "fully glutted his vengeance" upon the white settlements of the Monongahela country, and numerous atrocities had been committed all along the border. To quell the turbulence that prevailed Lord Dunmore, the then royal governor of Virginia, organized an army of invasion of the Indian country. He had a desire for military renown and decided to assume personal command of the larger division, while he entrusted the other, consisting of about eleven hundred men raised west of the Blue Ridge, to General Andrew Lewis. The forces of the latter were attacked by the Indians on the tenth of October south of the Ohio, and the ensuing combat, known as the battle of Point Pleasant, was one of the most desperate and bloody in the annals of the west. The contending forces were very nearly equal, it is claimed by most writers, but there is strong probability that the Indians were much weaker in numbers than the army which they assailed. The whites lost half of their officers and fifty-two men killed, while the Indian loss was estimated at two hundred and thirty-three. Lord Dunmore's division passed through a bloodless campaign. They descended the Ohio to the mouth of the Hocking river, and there built Fort Gower. The governor was here at the time of the battle of Point Pleasant, and had sent messengers to Lewis ordering him to march toward the Scioto towns. Dunmore marched through the territory included in Athens county and onward to the Pickaway (originally Piqua) plains, below the site of Circleville. There he was met by Lewis' decimated division, whom he could hardly keep from falling upon the Indians to avenge the death of their comrades at Point Pleasant. A treaty was held at Camp Charlotte, which was attended and acquiesced in by all of the leading chiefs of the villages except Logan. Lord Dunmore dispatched John Gibson to confer with the haughty Mingo, and his visit elicited' the famous speech, which Jefferson pronounced equal in eloquence to any ever made by the great orators of civilized nations.
Already the premonitory signs of that discontent which developed into the Revolution of American independence were exhibiting themselves, and soon the conflict was begun which rivited the attention of the world upon the colonies. The Revolutionary period was almost barren of event in the west. There was one event, however, of immeasurable importance. The time had come when the destiny of the Great West—of the Northwestern Territory—was to be decided. The man who was to shape its destiny was, in 1774, an officer in Lord Dunmore's army, and in 1776 a pioneer settler in Kentucky—George Rogers Clark. He was a realization of the ideal soldier—cool, courageous, and sagacious, and at once the most powerful man and the most picturesque character in the whole west. It was his foresight and prompt, efficient action which at the close of the war made the Northwest Territory a portion of the United States instead of leaving it in the possession of the British.* He foresaw that even if the colonies should be victorious in their war for independence they would be confined to the eastern side of the Alleghanies, unless the west was a special field of conquest. After failing to interest the house of Burgesses he made an appeal to Patrick Henry, the governor of Virginia, and from him he succeeded in obtaining the authority which he needed, viz.: commissions that empowered him to raise seven companies of soldiers, and to seize the British posts in the northwest.
* The journey extended to the Big Kanawha. On his way back Washington, accompanied by Crawford, walked across the big bend, now in Meigs county, and again taking his boat proceeded up the river,. arriving at Fort Pitt November 21.
“The cession of that great territory, under the treaty of 1873, was due mainly to the foresight, the courage and endurance of one man, who never received from his country an adequate recognition of his great service."—Hon. James A. Garfield: Address, 1873.
HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY, OHIO - 29
In January, 1778, he was at Pittsburgh securing provisions and ammunition; in June he was marching through the unbroken forest at the head of a small but valiant army, principally composed of his fellow pioneers from Kentucky. His march was directed towards the Illinois country. His able generalship and courage soon placed the garrisons of Cahokia, Kaskaskia, and St. Vincent in his possession, and his equally great tact enabled him to win over the French inhabitants to the American cause and make of them warm allies.
Two other expeditions were made by General Clark —both against the Indians upon the Miamis—one in 1780 and the other in 1782. Other expeditions into or through Ohio territory were made as follows: by Colonel Bradstreet (simultaneously with Boquet's expedition— 1764) along Lake Erie to Detroit, accompanied by Major Israel Putnam (the major general of the Revolution); by Colonel Angus McDonald (just prior to Dunmore's invasion); by General Lachlin McIntosh in 1778 (to the Tuscarawas, where he built the first English fort, with a parapet and stockade, intended as a permanent work, in Ohio); by Colonel John Bowman in 1779 ; by General Daniel Broadhead in 1781; by Colonel Archibald Lochry in the same year; by Colonel Williamson in 1782; by the fated William Crawford in the summer of the year last mentioned; by Colonel Benjamin Logan in 1786; and still others of less importance by Daniel Boone, Simon Kenton, Colonel Edwards, and Colonel Todd, at various times during the decade preceding the settlement of the territory. In drawing a rapid outline of the history of this western land it is sufficient merely to mention these various military incursions of the Indians' domain, and we have spoken more at length of General Clark's expedition because its results have a wide, general interest, and of Dunmore's invasion, because nearer the legitimate field of our work. Enough has been said to bring to mind the fact that prior to the arrival of the New England pioneers the Ohio country was the scene of many actions and events, and though a wilderness inhabited only by the roving savage had already a history.
One other topic remains to be touched upon briefly in the conclusion of this chapter, and it is one of painful and peculiar interest. We have in mind the Moravian missions on the Muskingum, and use the word painful, as the horrible massacre perpetrated there—the blackest stain on Ohio history—comes to mind. We say also a peculiar interest, and that phrase is suggested by the fact that the Moravians had better claims to be considered as settlers than any other dwellers north of the Ohio, prior to the arrival of the New England colony, and however inadequate such claims may appear it must at least be admitted that these "monks of Protestantism" presented to the western world a phase of civilization and religion which was both picturesque and inspiring, and, also, that one of them at least, the Rev. John Heckewelder, was in after years prominently identified with affairs of State and in close association with the Marietta settlers.
*Madame de Steel.
As early as 1761 the Delaware Indians on the Tuscarawas branch of the Muskingum were visited by a Moravian missionary, the Rev. Christian Frederick Post. In March of the following year John Heckewelder became his companion and assistant. Only a few months, however, were spent in missionary labor, for in the fall the Indians who had first welcomed them, became suspicious that their sojourn there was only a ruse through which a foothold was to be gained leading to settlement, and Post and Heckewelder were obliged to leave the country to save their lives. Not until ten years 'had passed by was another attempt made by the zealous religionists to plant a mission among the savages. In 1772 Rev. David Zeisberger founded Schoenbrunn (Beautiful Spring) on the west side of the river and near the site of New Philadelphia, Tuscarawas county, and twenty-eight persons located there. Gnadenhutten (Tents of Grace) was established the same year seven miles below Schoenbrunn. The Rev. George Jungman, Rev. John Roth and Rev. John Etwin came out as missionaries from Pennsylvania the same year; and with the last named, immigrated to Zeisberger's station a large company of converted Indians, bringing with them the implements of industry. Good log huts were built in the regularly laid out village, a large chapel reared in which to hold religious services, the ground tilled, and every measure taken that was considered needful in the formation of a permanent settlement. The simple, quiet life went on very pleasantly, and all was peace and prosperity. Much did the Delaware chiefs and the few traders who visited Schoenbrunn marvel to see so many Indians living together after the manner of the whites, and devoting themselves to agriculture rather than the chase. They had abjured war and all savage customs. New converts were made almost daily, and the pious missionaries felt well rewarded for their patient toil and gave praise to Him whom they regarded as the prime author of their success. So many accessions were made by the Moravians that in 1776 Zeisberger formed another colony, village or station, near the present town of Coshocton, and gave it the name Lichtenan. In 1780 Salem was founded five miles below Gnadenhutten, and the Rev. John Heckewelder became its regular preacher. All went well with the people at the mission stations until the British, fearing or pretending to fear, that they were performing various services for the Americans, forcibly removed them in September, 1781, to Sandusky. There they were sorely distressed by lack of provisions, and in the latter part of the following winter obtained permission to return to their old stations and gather the corn which they had planted the summer before, and to secure if possible any of the valuables they had been obliged to leave behind them when they were hurried away. They came down from Sandusky in February, and the first of March found them busily engaged in plucking the corn which had been left standing during the winter, and packing it for transportation to their famishing brethren. "The weather during the greater part of February," says Doddridge, "had been uncommonly fine, so that the war parties from Sandusky visited the settlements and began depredations earlier
20 - HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY, OHIO.
than usual. One of the parties fell upon a family named Wallace and murdered all of its members, exhibiting even greater brutality than usually characterized their atrocities. The early period at which the fatal visitation was made led to the conclusion that the murderers were either Moravians or that the warriors had their winter quarters at their towns on the Muskingum. In either case the Moravians being at fault, the safety of the pioneer settlements required the destruction of their establishments at that place." A force of eighty or ninety men was immediately organized, and led by Colonel David Williamson set out for the Muskingum. On their arrival at Gnadehutten they found the Indians in the fields gathering their corn and with their arms by them as was the common custom, for the purpose of shooting game, and also to guard against attack. The unsuspecting Indians hearing the whites' protestations of peace and good will, and being informed that they had come to remove them to Fort Pitt and place them under the protection of the Americans, gave up their arms and began with all speed to prepare food for the white men and themselves for the proposed journey. A party of men sent out for the purpose soon brought in the Indians from Salem, and with the Gnadenhutten Indians they were placed in block-houses and confined under an armed guard. Colonel Williamson then cooly put the question to his men, should the prisoners be taken to Pittsburgh or dispatched. Sixteen or eighteen men only out of the eighty or ninety men leaned towards the side of mercy. The majority were for murdering them and were impatient to begin their hellish work. The Moravians had foreseen their fate as soon as they had been placed in confinement, and in the hour of extremity exhibited the steadfastness of their simple faith by singing the hymns and breathing the prayers that Heckewelder and Zeisberger had taught them. Some of them appealed for mercy when the murderers came among them to begin their work, but the greater number, sustained by their acquired religious faith or natural stoicism, met death with majestic composure. The executioners, with tomahawks, war-clubs, and knives, entering the crowded slaughter-pens struck down the defenseless and innocent captives until their arms grew tired, and then their places were taken by others of those white savages who thirsted for blood; and the dreadful carnage went on until ninety-six lives had been taken. Of these sixty-two were grown persons, of whom one-third were women, and the remaining thirty-four were children of various ages, from those just entering manhood or womanhood down to babes on their mothers' breasts. Neither the grey hairs of old age nor the mute, appealing innocence of childhood were protection from the fury and the brutality of these fiends in the form of men. Of all the Indians gathered in the block-houses only two escaped. Those at Schoenbrunn fled before the approach of Williamson's men and none of them were taken. This massacre occurred on the seventh of March, 1782, just six years and one month
*Notes on the Early Settlement and Indian Wars in Western Virginia and Pennsylvania by Joseph Doddridge.
before the landing of the pioneers at the mouth of the Muskingum.
The wanton butchery of these inoffensive Moravians, more than any other event in western history, had the effect of making the Indians hostile to the Americans, and therefore, naturally, inclining them to amity with the British. This was an end which the latter people constantly sought to effect by every method of intrigue. There is some reason, too, for the belief that Williamson's men were led to the Moravian towns and incited to the commission of the stupendous massacre through the shrewd wiles of the British. It seems to be authoritatively established that the murderers of the Wallace family retreated by way of Gnadenhutten, and that one of them bartered with an unsuspecting young woman there for food, and in payment gave her a garment which he had stripped from Mrs. Wallace or one of the other victims, and that this garment was seen and recognized by some of the pursuing party as one which had been familiar to them at their homes. This fact may partly explain, but cannot in the slightest measure justify, the murder of ninety-six persons. It is sufficient, at any rate, to suggest the suspicion that to a dark stratagem of the English emissaries in the west, was attributed the foulest deed in the history of the border. The Indians, wrought into frenzied passion, began that malignant, remorseless, and unceasing raiding of the borders which terrorized the frontiers from Fort Pitt to the falls of the Ohio. Their evil deeds were more numerous than ever before and their treatment of prisoners more inhuman. One of the first acts of retaliation upon the Americans, strangely enough, was visited upon Colonel William Crawford, an intimate friend and companion at arms of Colonel Williamson. But the diabolical cruelty that was practiced upon him was only one of the many horrible deeds which were the outgrowth of the white man's crime.
CHAPTER IV.
AFFAIRS IN THE WEST FROM 1785 TO 1788
First Ordinance for the Government of the Northwest Territory—It Proves Practically Inoperative—Ordinance of May no, 1785, for Survey ot Western Lands—The Plan Prescribed—Surveyors Appointed by Congress—One from Each State—"Squatter" Settlers on Ohio Soil—Illegality of Their Position—A Proclamation of Warning Addressed to Them—General Richard Butler Disperses Them in 1785, While on His Way to the Miami—Extracts from His Journal—Butler Chooses Location for a Fort at the Mouth of the Muskingam— Hon. James Monroe, of Virginia, descends the Ohio with Baxter— Major Doughty Builds Fort Harmar—Description of the Work—The Gardens—Memento for Doughty in the Name of a Peach—Joseph Buellsis Experience in the West—Daily Life at Fort Harmar—Depredations by Roving Bands of Indians—Scarcity of Provisions—Company Ordered out to Protect the Surveyors—The "Seven Ranges"— General Benjamin Tupper—Journal of John Mathews—Indians Harass the Men Engaged at Surveying—Narrow Escape from Destruction—Seeking Safety at Wheeling—Mathews Meets General Putnam at Sumrilt's Ferry.
IN 1784 a committee, of which Thomas Jefferson was chairman, reported to Congress an ordinance providing
HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY, OHIO - 21
for the establishment and maintenance of government in the Northwest Territory. It contained an article prohibiting slavery after the year 1800. This clause, was stricken out, however, before the ordinance came to its passage upon the twenty-third of April. This measure of 1784, although it remained nominally in force until repealed by the Ordinance of 1787, was really inoperative—a dead letter. Repeated though unsuccessful efforts were made to so improve the bill as to render possible the development of the west under it. Something, however, was accomplished by the Ordinance of 1784. It paved the way, however imperfectly, for a subsequent act of national legislation. This, the first step tending directly toward the sale and settlement of the lands northwest of the Ohio was taken by Congress in 1785. On the twentieth of May the ordinance for ascertaining the mode of disposal of these lands was passed and as soon as possible thereafter put into practical action. By this ordinance it was provided that a surveyor should be appointed from each State, who should take an oath before the geographer of the United States for the faithful discharge of his duty. The surveyors were to be under the general direction of the geographer, and as soon as qualified were to proceed with their work of dividing the territory "into townships of six miles square by lines running due north and south and others crossing these at right angles as near as may be, unless where the boundaries of the late Indian purchases may render the same impracticable." Each surveyor was to be allowed pay for his services at the rate of two dollars for every mile in length he should run, including wages of chain carriers, markers, and all expenses. It was prescribed that the first line running north and south as aforesaid should begin on the river Ohio at a point due north from the western termination of a line which had been run at the southern boundary of Pennsylvania, and that the first line running east should begin at the same point and extend throughout the whole territory. The ordinance instructed the geographer to designate the townships or fractional parts of townships by numbers, progressively from south to north; beginning each range with number 2; and to designate the ranges by progressive numbers to the westward, the first lungs extending from the Ohio to Lake Erie being marked number 2. The geographer was personally to attend to the running of the first east and west line and the latitudes of the extremes of the first north and south line and of the mouths of the principal rivers. The surveyors were also charged with the duty of carefully noting on the plats to be made of the lands, all mines, salt licks or springs, mill seats, mountains, water courses, and the nature of the soil. The plats of townships were to be marked in subdivisions of a mile square by lines running in the same direction as the external lines. It was further provided that as soon as several of the townships had been surveyed the geographer should transmit plats of the same to the board of treasury, who should record the same with the report in well bound books, to which the Secretary of War should have access. This official was to take by lot a number of townships and
fractional parts of townships, both of those to be sold entire and those to be sold in lots, such as would be equal to one-seventh part of the whole seven ranges, for the use of the Continental army. The board of treasury, it was provided, should from time to time cause the remaining number to be drawn for in the name of the thirteen States. The board of treasury was to sell (for not less than one dollar per acre) at public vendue, after proper notification, the lands not distributed to the several States, the plan prescribed being that township should be sold entire, and township number 2 in the same range in lots; and thus in alternate order through the whole of the first range, and in the second range the same alternation should be observed, though beginning the reverse of the first range. The United States reserved out of every township the four lots 8, 22, 26, and 29, for future sale. Lot number 26 in every township was to be reserved for the maintenance of public schools in the township, and one-third of all gold, silver, lead, or copper mines to be sold as Congress should in the future direct. Further than the provisions stated the ordinance reserved the towns of Gnadenhutten, Schoenbrunn, and Salem, on the Muskingum, and lands surrounding them, for the use of the Christian Indians formerly settled there.
Congress elected six days after the passage of the ordinance the surveyors whose duty it should be to run the first line with glass and chain, northwest of the Ohio. Nathaniel Adams was chosen for New Hampshire; Rufus Putnam for Massachusetts; Caleb Harris for Rhode Island; William Morris for New York; Adam Hoops for Pennsylvania ; James Sampson for Maryland; Alexander Parker for Virginia; Absalom Tatum for North Carolina; William Tate for South Carolina; and, nearly two months later, Isaac Sherman for Connecticut. At the time these appointments were made General Putnam was engaged in surveying for Massachusetts certain lands which she possessed in Maine, and therefore General Benjamin Tupper was appointed to serve in his place. Caleb Harris and Nathaniel Harris resigned and Colonel Ebenezer Sproat and Winthrop Sargent were respectively chosen to fill their places.*
Even as early as the Revolution a few hunters, trappers, and traders had located along the west bank of the Ohio, and it was apprehended that after the treaty of Fort McIntosh squatter settlers and speculators would throng those portions of the territory adjacent to Pennsylvania and Virginia and that evil results would follow this intrusion and exercise of "squatter sovereignty." A few irresponsible men had already made temporary homes along the river, and there was every reason to believe that the number who would do so, unless prevented by immediate and strong measures, would be sufficiently large to be productive of serious evil. Congress foreseeing this movement and its possible results, on the fifteenth of June, 1785, authorized the Indian commissioners to publish the following proclamation and circulate it in the territory:
*General Benjamin Tupper, Colonel Ebenezer Sproat, and Winthrop Sargent, as will appear in subsequent chapters, were among the early settlers at Marietta and prominent citizens of the State of Ohio.
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Whereas, it has been represented to the United States, in Congress assembled, that several disorderly persons have crossed the Ohio and settled upon their unappropriated lands; and whereas it is their intention, as soon as it shall be surveyed, to open offices for the sale of a considerable part thereof, in such proportions and under such other regulations as may suit the convenience of atl the citizens of the United States, and others who may wish to become purchasers of the same— and as such conduct tends to defeat the object they have in view, is in direct opposition to the ordinances and resolutions of Congress, and highly disrespectful to the Federal authority, they have, therefore, thought fit, and do hereby issue this their proclamation, forbidding all such unwarrantable intrusions, and enjoining all those who have settled thereon to depart with their families and effects without loss of time, as they shall answer the same at their peril.
In the autumn of 1785 General Richard Butler passed down the Ohio on his way to attend the treaty with the Indians at the mouth of the Little Miami. He has left, in the form of a diary or journal, an account of his journey which throws much light on the then condition of the country. He makes several entries relating to the squatter inhabitants on the Ohio shore:
* Friday October 5, 1785. Passed Yellow Creek, and found improvements on both sides of the river. Put in at one Jesse Pennimans on the north side five miles below Yellow creek. Warned him off; called on one Pry who I warned off also; this appears to be a shrewd, sensible man.. . I told him as well as the others, that Congress was determined to put all of the people off of the rands, and that none would be allowed to settle but the purchasers, and that these and these only would be protected; that troops would be down next week, who have orders to destroy every house and improvement on the north side of the river, and that garrisons wilt be placed at Muskingum and elsewhere, and that if any person or persons attempted to oppose Government, they may depend on being treated with the greatest rigor. He seems not well pleased, though he promised submission Passed on to the Mingoe towns, where we found a number of people, among whom one Ross seemed to be the principal man of the settlers on the north side of that place. I conyersed with him, and warned him and the others away. . . . . .
Sunday, October 2nd. . . . Called at the settlement of Charles Mortis, whose house has been pulled down and he has rebuilt it. At this place found one Walter Kean, who seemed but a middling character and rather of the dissentious cast; warned alt of these off, and requested they woutd inform their neighbors, which they promised to do. Colonel Monroe spoke to them also, which had weight, as I informed them of his character* Called at the settlement of Captain Hoglan, who we also warned off, his house had also been thrown down and rebuilt. We informed him of the impropriety of his conduct, which he acknowledged, and seemed very submissive, and promised to remove and to warn his neighbors off also. . . . .
Tuesday, October 4th. I directed one corporal and three soldiers to stay at lanes till Captain O'Hara would send a good boat from Fort McIntosh. . . . I wrote to Colonel Harmar for three
Wednesday, October 5th. . . . Met . . some of the inhabitants from Fishing creek, one of whom had made a settlement on the north side of the Ohio, warned him off and gave him two of the proclamations of Congress. . . . .
Three days later General Butler notes in his journal that "there is good improvement on the north side" nearly opposite the Little Kanawha. He also found settlements on the head of the first island below the Little Hockhocking, and also on the Ohio shore further down the river. To the people on the island who "seemed to be very reasonable people," and where the writer of the journal saw several women who appeared clean and decently dressed," he sent some proclamations, but sterner
* General Butler's Journal in Craig's "Olden Time "—October and November, 1847.
t This was Colonel James Monroe, member of Congress from Virginia.
measures were resorted to in the case of the settlers below, as appears from the entry under date of Monday, October l0th.
General Butler's journal also gives information in regard to many other matters of interest, among them the location of Fort Harmar. In Virginia and Kentucky measures had been taken for what would have been really, an irresponsible invasion of the Indian country. This action, which threatened to precipitate a disastrous war hastened in all probability the action of the confederation in taking measures for the effectual strengthening of the frontier. It was determined to establish several posts northwest of the Ohio. Fort Laurens had been built in 1778 upon the Tuscarawas, near the old Indian town of Tuscarawas and one mile south of the site of the present village of Bolivar. It was injudiciously located, and was abandoned one year after its erection. General Butler while on his journey in 1785 chose the site for Fort Harmar. Before leaving Fort McIntosh he had prepared and left with Colonel Harmar, the commandant of the post, a paper in which he expressed the opinion that "the mouth of the Muskingum would be a proper place for a post to cover the frontier inhabitants, prevent intruding settlers on the land of the United States, and secure the surveyors." In his journal under date of Saturday, October 8th, he writes:
"Sent Lieutenant Doyle and some men to burn the houses of the settlers on the north side and put up proclamations.
Went on very well to the mouth of the Muskingum and found it tow. I went on shore to examine the ground most proper to establish a post on, find it too low, but the most eligible is in the point on the Ohio side. Wrote to Major Doughty and recommended this place with my opinion of the kind of work most proper. Left the letter, which contained other remarks on the fort, fixed to a locust tree.
A few days later the general instructed a man whom he met ascending the Ohio to take the letter from the mouth of the Muskingum to Major Doughty.
A short time later Major Doughty, with a detachment of United States troops under his command, arrived at the mouth of the Muskingum, and began the erection of a post which was not fully completed until the spring of 1786.
The fort stood very near the point on the western side of the Muskingum, and upon the second terrace above ordinary flood water. It was a regular pentagon in shape, with bastions on each side, and its walls enclosed but little more than three quarters of an acre. The main walls of defence, technically called "curtains," were each one hundred and twenty feet long and about twelve or fourteen feet high. They were constructed of logs laid horizontally. The bastions were of the same height as the other walls, but unlike them were formed of palings or timbers set upright in the ground. Large two-story log buildings were built in the bastions for the accommodation of the officers and their families, and the barracks for the troops were erected along the curtains, the roofs sloping toward the centre of the enclosure. They were divided into four rooms of thirty feet each, supplied with fireplaces, and were sufficient for the accommodation of a regiment of men,* a larger number, by the way, than
other men to join these as an escort to the Miami, and to give Major Dougherty (Doughty) orders to pull down every house on his way to Muskingum, that is on the north side of the Ohio. . . .
*American Pioneer, volume one, 1842, contribution by Dr. S. P. Hildreth.
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was ever quartered in the fort. From the roof of the barracks building towards the Ohio river there arose a watch tower, surmounted by the flag of the United States. This tower was also used as a guard-house. There were other buildings within the enclosure—an arsenal, a storehouse, and several smaller structures. The main gate was toward the river with a sally-port on the side fronting on the hills. A well was dug near the centre of the enclosure to supply the garrison with water in case of siege, but, happily, it was never needed, and we are told that ordinary water was brought from the river. The timber used in the construction of the fort was that of the heavy forest which covered its site and several acres of land round about. The area cleared was nearly all utilized for gardening purposes under the direction of Major Doughty, who seems to have had a remarkable fondness for tilling the soil and considerable taste and knowledge as a horticulturist.* Fort Harmar was named after General (then Colonel) Harmar, who was the commander of the regiment to which Major Doughty was attached, and for some time commandant of the fort at the mouth of the Muskingum.
Joseph Buell (afterward one of the prominent early settlers at Marietta) was on the frontier for nearly a period of three years, dating from the latter part of December, 1785, and he spent a considerable portion of his time at Fort Harmar. His journal affords some interesting glimpses of life in, the garrison and affairs in the western country during the years immediately preceding its settlement. Much is said in the beginning of the hardships of army life, the depravity of the troops, and the severity of the punishments inflicted for various offences. Drunkenness and desertion were prevalent evils. The punishment for the former and other venal misdemeanors was not infrequently flogging to the extent of one hundred or even two hundred lashes, and the death penalty, without the process of court-martial, was inflicted upon deserter& Buell relates that three men, the finest soldiers in the company, deserted at Fort McIntosh, and being captured were shot by order of Major Wyllis, who commanded the fort—an act which the chronicler characterizes as the most inhuman that he ever saw. The pay of the soldiers at that time guarding the frontier was only three dollars per month.
March 12, 1786, Buell (still at Fort McIntosh) notes that "Generals Parsons and Butler," the latter the author of the journal from which we have made extracts in this chapter, "arrived here from the treaty at Miami."
It is shown by a later entry that the prevention of settlement northwest of the Ohio was still engaging the troops:
April 3rd. Major Wyllis and Captain Hamtramck, with his com-
* A portion of the cleared ground was planted with peaches, and the second or third year after, fine fruit was obtained from this orchard, probably the first in Ohio. One variety has been quite largely cultivated in Marietta and its vicinity, and named after its originator "the Doughty peach."
+The journal of Joseph Buell has been in part published in " Pioneer History of Ohio," by S. P. Hildreth. We make some extracts from it, both in this and subsequent chapters. Buell had the position of orderly in Captain Strong's company of Colonel Harmar's regiment.
pany, went down the river on command to disperse the frontier people settling on the Indian shore, or the right bank of the Ohio.
On the 4th of May, x786, Captain Zeiglersis and Strong's companies, embarked for Muskingum; and from this date forward the entries in the journal relate to occurrences at Fort Harmar.
May 8th. We arrived at Muskingum, where we encamped in the edge of the woods, a little distance from the fort.
10th. Captain Zeiglerls company embarked for the Miami, and our company moved into the garrison, where we were engaged several days in making ourselves comfortable.
12th. Began to make our gardens, and had a very disagreeable spell of weather, which continued for twenty-two days rarning in succession.
June 9th. Two boats arrived from Miami, and report that the Indians had murdered severat inhabitants this spring. We are getting short of meat for the troops.
10th. Five frontiersmen came here to hunt for the garrison, and brought with them a quantity of venison.
19th. News arrived here that the Indians had killed four or five women and children at Fish creek, about thirty miles northeast from this garrison.
July 4th. The great day of American independence was commemorated by the discharge of thirteen guns, after which the troops were served with extra rations of liquor, and allowed to get as drunk as they pleased.
8th. We are brought down to half-rations, and have sent out a party of men to hunt. They returned without much success, although game is plenty in the woods.
9th. We discovered some Indians crossing the Ohio in a canoe, below the garrison, and sent a party after them, but could not overtake them.
l0th. Ensign Kingsbury, with a party of nine, embarked for Wheeling in quest ot provisions.
l2th. Captain Strong arrived froFort Pike.
16th. We were visited by a part of Indians, who encamped at a little distance from the garrison, and appeared to be very friendly. They were treated kindly by the officers, who gave them some wine, and the best the garrison afforded.
17th. Our men took up a stray owe on the river. It contained a pair of shoes, two axes and some corn. We suppose the owners were killed by the Indians. Same day Lieutenant Kingsbury returned with only a supply of food for six or seven days.
18th. Captain Strong’s company began to build their range of barracks, to make ourselves comfortable for the winter.
19th. This day buried the fifer to Captain Hart's company. Our funerals are conducted in the following manner. The men are all paraded without arms, and march by files in the rear of the corpse. The guard, with arms, march in front, with their pieces reversed; and the music in the rear of the guard, just in front of the coffin, playing some mournful tune. After the dead is buried they return in the same order, playing some lively march.
21st. A boat arrived from Fort Pitt with intelligence of a drove of cattle at Wheeling for this garrison.
22nd. Lieutenant Pratt, with a party of men, went up by land to bring down the cattle. .
23d. Colonel Harmar arrived at the garrison. The troops paraded to receive him, and fired a salute of nine guns.
26th. Captain Hart went with a party of men to guard the Indians of the Muskingum.
27th. Lieutenant Pratt arrived with ten head of cattle, which revived our spirits, as we had been without provisions for several days. 29th. Three hunters came into the fort and informed us that they had seen a patty of Indians lying in the woods. We sent out some men, but discovered nothing.
August 2d. Our garrison was alarmed. Captain Hart was walking on the bank of the river, and said he saw Indians on the other side of the Ohio, and saw them shoot one of our men who was out hunting, and beheld him fall. Colonel Harmar immediately sent the captain with a party of men after them. They crossed the river and found one man asleep on the ground, and another had been shooting at a mark. They had seen no Indians.
11th. Captain Hart's company were ordered to encamp in the open ground outside of the fort, as the men are very sickly in the barracks.
23d. Captain Hart and his company embarked for Wheeling with orders to escort and protect the surveyors in the seven ranges.
September 1st. Captain Tunis, the Indian, came to the fort and reported the Indians designed to attack our garrison, and that they were bent on mischief. We were all hands employed in making preparations
24 - HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY, OHIO.
to receive them, lining the bastions, clearing away all the weeds and brush within a hundred yards of the fort. We likewise cut up all our corn and broke down the bean poles, to prevent their having any shelter within ritle shot distance.
6th. Captain Tunis left the garrison to return to his nation and bring us further information.
7th. The troops received orders to parade at the alarm post at daybreak, and continue under arms until after sunrise.
12th. Still busy making preparations for the Indians, and expect them every day.
21st. Ensign Kingsbury was ordered to take a party of men into the commandant's house, and put it in the best order for defence, and to remain there during the night.
26th. The troops are again brought to half rations. I went with a party of men after a raft of timber to construct our barracks.
27th. Lieutenant Smith embarked in quest of provisions. We are on short allowance, and expect the Indians every day to attack us. Our men are very uneasy, laying various plans to desert, but are so closely watched that it is very difficult for them to escape.
October and Lieutenant Smith returned with provisions sufficient only for a short time. We are busily occupied in erecting the barracks.
l0th. Major Doughty and Captain Strong left here for New England.
11th. The Indians made us a visit, and stole one of our horses as it was feeding in the woods.
16th. Captain Tunis called again at the fort and says the Indians had repented of their: design to attack the garrison.
November 3rd. Captain Tunis and a number of Indians with two squads, came into the garrison. At night they got very drunk and threatened the guard with their tomahawks and knives.
5th Uling, a trader on the river, arrived with provisions.
9th. The hunters brought in about thirty deer and a great number of turkeys.
25th. Captain Harts’ and McCurdy's companies came in from the survey of the seven ranges. They had a cold, wearisome time; their clothes and shoes wore out, and some of their feet badly frozen.
December 3rd. Uling arrived with twenty kegs of flour and ten kegs of whiskey and some dry goods.
Our rations now consist of a little venison, without any bread; as a substitute we have some corn and potatoes. The weather is very cold and the river full of ice.
13th. Lieutenant Pratt embarked in a boat for Flinn's Station (now Belleville) distant thirty miles below the garrison, for a load of corn and potatoes. The troops are in great distress for provisions. About twelve miles below they landed on account of the storm and their boat was carried off by the ice with a considerable amount of goods in it.
19th. Weather more moderate. Ensign Kingsbury embarked for Flinn's Station to make another trial for provisions.
22d. Ensign Kingsbury returned with about sixty bushels of corn and twenty of potatoes.
24th. We drew for our station about a peck of frozen potatoes. As Christmas is so near we are making all the preparations in our power to celebrate it.
25th. This being Christmas day, the sergeant celebrated it by a dinner to which was added a plentiful supply of wine.
January 31, 1787. Hamilton Kerr, our hunter, began to build a house on the island a tittle above the mouth of the Muskingum, and some of our men were ordered out as a fatigue party to assist him, under the command of Lieutenant Pratt.
February 11th. The weather has been very fine, and there is prospect of an early spring.
15th. Sergeant Judd went with a party of men to assist some inhabitants to move their families and settle near the garrison.
16th. Hamilton Kerr moved his family onto the island.
18th. Several families are settling on the Virginia shore opposite the fort.
24th. Isaac Williams arrived with his family to settle on the opposite shore of the river. Several others have joined him, which makes our situation in the wilderness much more agreeable.
27th. Major Hamtramck arrived from Fort Steuben in order to muster the troops. The same day some of the hunters brought in a buffalo, which was eighteen hands high and weighed one thousand pounds.
April 1st. The Indians came within twelve miles of the garrison, and killed an old man and took a boy prisoner.
5th. Lieutenant Smith went out with a party of men on a scout and discovered Indians on a hill within half a mile of the garrison.
9th. Ensign Kingsbury went on command with a party to bring in one of the hunters, fifty miles up the Muskingum, for fear of the Indians, who, we hear, are bent on mischief.
25th. One of our men discovered two Indians attempting to steal our horses a little distance from the fort
May 1st. This is St. Tammany's day, and was kept with the festivities usual to the frontiers. Alt the sergeants in the garrison crossed the Ohio to Mr. Williams and partook of an excellent dinner.
7th. Twenty-one boats passed on their way to the lower country, Kentucky. They had on board five hundred and nine souls, with many wagons, goods, etc.
14th. John Stockley, a fifer in Captain Strong's company, deserted. He was pursued and overtaken twelve miles from the garrison, brought back, and ordered to run the gauntlet eleven times, through the troops of the garrison, stripped of his Continental clothing, and drummed out of the fort, with a halter around his neck, all of which was punctually executed.
21st. This evening I sent a young man, who cooked for me on Kerr's island, about half a mile above the fort after some milk; he was seen to jump into the river near the shore, when about a third of a mile from the garrison. We supposed some of the people were playing in the water. He did not return that evening, which led me to fear he had lost his course. In the morning a party was sent after him. They discovered fresh signs of Indians, and found his hat. They followed the trail, but did not find them. We afterwards heard that they had killed and scalped him. The Indians were a party of Ottawas.
The writer of the journal on the twentieth of May started down the Ohio with Captain Strong's company, and did not return to Fort Harmar until the twenty-first of November, having spent the interim at the Miami garrison, Fort Finney, Port Vincent, and other frontier localities in the lower Ohio country. During the period after his return, and prior to .the landing of the Ohio company's colony, the journal contains no important entries, and we here leave it, to resume a survey of its pages in subsequent chapters.
While the various incidents of frontier army life above narrated or referred to were occurring at Fort Harmar, the eastern part of what is now Washington county, and the country north of it, was the theatre of a different kind of action. The surveyors mentioned in the first part of this chapter were traversing the country which was to be divided into "the seven ranges."
General Butler records the fact that he met the surveyors and the United States geographer at the west line of Pennsylvania, on the thirtieth of September, and dined with them. There was some discord among the members of the party, and Captain Hutchins was apprehensive of the safety of his company, unless the Indian chiefs should personally assure him of their good-will. A beginning had been made in the survey, but it was very soon abandoned.
General Benjamin Tupper, soon after the passage of the ordinance of May 20, 1785, providing for the survey and sale of the western lands, had gone as far as Pittsburgh with the idea of beginning the work which had been assigned to him. The Indians, however, who were dissatisfied with the terms of the treaty of Fort McIntosh, and alleged that they had been imposed upon, assumed a very hostile attitude, and threatened with death any persons who should engage in surveying the lands northwest of the Ohio. The risk was so great that common prudence dictated delay until further conference with the disaffected tribes and an amicable adjustment of their relations with the United States should be
HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY, OHIO - 25
effected. General Tupper returned to New England.* The treaty of Fort Finney was negotiated in January, 1786, and temporary peace, at least, being promised the surveyors (General Tupper among them), made their way west in the following June, and began their labors.
These men (in one sense the pioneers—the advance guard of the great army of occupation which was to cross the Ohio)—led a career of adventure and danger, and accomplished the work to which they had been appointed only by overcoming many diffrculties. Some idea of the sufferings they experienced has already been suggested by extracts from Joseph Buell's journal describing the condition of the soldiers who had been sent to guard them on their return to Fort Harman A more definite and a very interesting account of the progress of the survey is given in the journal of John Mathews.t He arrived at Pittsburgh July 29, 1786, and finding that the surveyors had gone down the Ohio to Little Beaver creek, followed and overtook them. After the troops who were to guard them had arrived from Fort Steuben, the work of the suveyors was begun, and Mathews went out with Captain Adam Hoops, the surveyor from Pennsylvania, to run the lines in the second range of townships. They remained out from the middle of August to the first of September, and then returned to the camp at Little Beaver, which they found deserted except by General Tupper, Captain Morris, and an assistant. Mr. Mathews made arrangements to go out with General Tupper on the survey of the seventh range, and started on the seventh of September. On the evening of the 9th they camped at the end of the fourth range. The next entry in the journal we quote:
Sunday, l0th. Camped near the end of the fifth range. Major Sargent, who surveys the fifth range, came to our camp and informed us that one of his hands had left him, which much embarrassed the progress of his work. General Tupper not being ready to begin work, as the geographer had not yet completed the sixth range, I went with Major Sargent to assist him for a few days, and General Tupper proposed to send his son Ansetem (tt) who had gone to the geographerls camp, also, the next day to assist us. • • • •
Monday, 11th. Anselem Tupper came to our camp about ten o'clock, and he and myself earned the chain.
14th. Mr. Anselem Tupper and myself, with a hunter, left Major Sargent's camp in order to fall in with General Tupper on the geogra-
* We pause here briefly to note, the fact elsewhere to be enlarged upon, that it was during this first visit to the west that General Tupper became favorably and even enthusiastically possessed of the idea of making a New England settlement in the Ohio country; and it was during his visit to Massachusetts in the winter of 1785-86 that the first direct movement was made toward the formation of a company for the purpose of colonization. General Tupper visited General Putnam; they spent nearly a whole night in talking over the scheme of immigration, and the result of their earnest conference was seen in the public prints of the State on the twenty-fifth of January, 1786, in the form of an advertisement headed "Information," signed by the generals, and designed to test the spirit of the people in regard to the formation of The Ohio company.
+John Mathews, of New Braintree, Massachusetts, was a nephew of General Rufus Putnam. He came to the western country before he had arrived at his majority, with the view of obtaining employment in the survey of the seven ranges, and to gain knowledge concerning the country. He was afterwards one of the Ohio company's surveyors, and settled in 1796 in Muskrngum county.
** Major Anselem Tupper was among the early settlers at Marietta, and was a surveyor in the employment of the Ohio company. He died at Marietta in 1808.
pher's line, whom we found encamped near the end of the sixth range. * * * *
15th. Decamped and moved to the westward six miles, where we joined the geographers’s camp on Sandy creek, a large branch of the Tuscarawas.
Sunday, 17th. This morning I went to a camp of Indians who were returning from Fort McIntosh to their town. It was eighty rods above us on the creek. They were about eight in number, men and women. They had rum with them, and had a drunken frolic the night before, but appeared decent and friendly.
18th. General Tupper began his range, and our camp moved to the west about three miles to a large branch of the Tuscarawas, called Nine Shilling. After running on the line about three-fourths of a mite an express arrived from Major Hamtramck's camp at Little Beaver, with word that the Indians were assembling at the Shawnees towns and intended making a general attack upon the surveyors. Captain Hutchins and General Tupper thought it unsafe to proceed any further. Notice was immediately sent to Captain Morris, who had gone about one mile and a half on the west boundary of the seventh range, and we all returned to the ground we left this morning and passed the night.
19th. At nine A.M. decamped and marched for Little Beaver. Our party consisted of about fifty men, thirty-six of whom were troops under the command of Lieutenant Percy. Encamped at night near the first mile post of the sixth range.
The party continued their march, being met on the third day by Major Hamtramck and the whole of his command, and on the twenty-third of September reached Hamtramck's station, on the Ohio, five miles below Little Beaver. By the fourth of October, the feeling of alarm having partially subsided, the surveyors determined to go on with their work; and, on the eleventh, having made the necessary preparations, they again started into the wilderness. Mr. Mathews went with Major Sargent, who was to survey the fifth range. They proceeded westward on "Crawford's old trail" until they reached the place where they were to begin work. After carrying on the survey for about two weeks their pack horses were stolen by the Indians, who they discovered had been lying near their camp (within eighty rods of it the journal says), and had probably been watching them for several days. The journal relates that
"When the commander of the escort, Captain Hart, was informed of the loss of our horses, he immediately commenced building a blockhouse on the most advantageous ground in the vicinity of our camp."
"31st. We this morning dispatched a man for Major Hamtramck's camp, on Wheeling rivulet, informing him of our situation and requesting more horses, so that we might proceed on our range. Although we were apprehensive of danger, we finished the west boundary of the seventh township this day. On our return to camp we found the blockhouses in such a state as to atford a good shelter in case of an attack from the Indians."
Soon after the company returned to Wheeling, General Tupper started for Massachusetts on the twenty-second of November, and early in the following month Colonel Ebenezer Sproat and some others of the surveyors left for their homes. Captain Hutchins, the United States geographer, departed for New York on the twenty-seventh of January, 1787. The survey was suspended for the season. Mathews who went to Fort Steuben to take charge of the commissary department for the winter, notes that the surveyors again took up their work in the woods during April. With ranging degrees of success it was carried slowly and tediously on, during the spring and early summer, without the occurrence of any important incidents. Some of the surveyors who had recommenced work early in the season, came into Wheeling on the fifth of May, considerably alarmed, as they had
26 - HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY, OHIO.
heard through one of the Zanes of the murder of a family on Fishing creek, by the Indians. Early in June the surveyors had all arrived at the mouth of Indian Wheeling creek on the Ohio, and being met there by the troops sent from Fort Harmar to act as escort, went out into the wilderness to their respective ranges. It was the policy of Congress to continue the surveys if it was possible to do so. There were indications that the summer would be a troublous time. The surveyors were several times obliged to leave their work and seek safety at Wheeling or other points along the river. One party of Indians, supposed to be Chippewas, who hovered about the locality mentioned, were followed and attacked by the whites who killed one of them, and wounded two more. Several other skirmishes took place.
The author of the journal from which we have given extracts, had but little to do with the survey after the spring of 1787, but was in the country all of the time acting in various capacities, and travelling about from Fort Steuben, Pittsburgh and Wheeling to Fort Harmar and other points. In the later entries of his journal (from November, 1787, to April 7, 1788), is found mention of several characters who were among the pioneers of the Ohio company. In November, 1787, he met Colonel Return J. Meigs at Pittsburgh, and at Washing. ton (Pennsylvania) he met Anselem Tupper (in January, 1788), with whom he remained some time, completing plats of surveys. On the second of February he came across Major Hoffield White "with twenty-two men from New England," and on the seventeenth at Sumrill's ferry, he makes the following entry in the journal:
I had the pleasure of seeing my honored uncle, General Putnam, by whom I received a number of letters from my friends.
CHAPTER V.
INCEPTION OF THE EMIGRATION IDEA AND ORGANIZATION OF THE OHIO COMPANY.
Review of the History of the West—Early Time Spirit of Emigration in New England.—" The Military Company of Adventurers" Propose Settlement in Mississippi.—Rufus Putnam goes thither with his Uncle Israel.—Feature of the Scheme of Colonization.—Effect on the New England Mind.—The Revolutionary War.—By the Camp- Fires in the Watch of the Night.—Washington Directs the Attention ot the Soldiers to the West During the Darkest Days of the Conflict.—Impoverishment of the Revolutionary Officers at the Close of the War.—Condition of the Country.—Otfrcers Petition Government for a Grant of Land.—Their Plan of Western Settlement —General Putnamsis Letter to Washington.—Its Wise Suggestions.—Some of Them Adopted with Beneficial Results.—Washington's Influence Unavailing to Secure Action of Congress.—Impatience of the Officers for the Realization of their Plans.—Something of their Character and Condition After the War.—"Financial Settlement Certificates."— Their Depreciated Value.--Speculators Purchase them to their own Advantage.—Loyalty to the Government.—Shay's Rebellion.—Virginia's Action in Regard to Lands for her Soldiers.—Destiny.—New England to Officer First Settlement in the West rather than the "Old Dominion."—Opportunity and Advantages of the Latter State. —General Putnam Again Addresses Washington.—Reply to his Letter.—"Justice and Gratitude to the Army" Demand the Granting of the Officers’ Petition.—Despair of Succeeding in the Old Scheme.— A New One Boldly Entered on.—General Tupper's Visit to the West. —His All Night Conference with General Putnam.—They Publish a Call for the Organization of the Ohio Company.— Delegates Elected.— Meet at "Bunch of Grapes" Tavern in Boston.—Certificates of Agreement Adopted.—Progress of the Company's Affairs.—A Purchase in the Ohio Company Decided upon.—Dr. Manasseh Cutler Employed as Agent of the Company.--Canvass for the Location on the Muskingum.
IN the preceding pages has been given something of the history of the west while it was still a wilderness, the ownership of which was successively vested in France, in the British crown, in Virginia, and in the Confederated Colonies of America. Something of the history of the Indian tribes of the northwest has been shown; of the advent of the white man as an adventurer among them ; of the invasion of the country by armed forces who came to conquer; and of its peaceful penetration by the zealous missionaries who came to propagate a faith. Some idea has been given of the operations of explorers and political economists; of the feeling that prevailed in Virginia in respect to the country; and the unsuccessful projects for its colonization. In the last few years of the period prior to the red letter year, 1788, we have witnessed just over the boundary, in the easternmost edge of the vast territory, unlawful settlers driven from their homes; we have seen the frontier surveyors at their work, harassed by Indians; and we have seen a fort arise in the forest at the mouth of the Muskingum. At the far western boundary, upon the Mississippi, are a few French settlers and possibly there are a score or so of transient residents upon the Maumee—mere traders. But the northwest is still practically an unknown land, explorers to the contrary notwithstanding, a desolate though beautiful wild inhabited by savage tribes, its vast latent wealth awaiting, as it had for ages, the talismanic touch of civilization.
Far away upon the Atlantic sea board forces were at work a score of years anterior to 1788 which were not only to form the first settlement but to plant New England morals, law, and institutions upon this vast inland domain of the nation. Ideas were in inception, which
HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY, OHIO - 27
as the prime impetus in a long chain of causes and effects were to swell the tremendous result and effect the destiny not alone of the west but of the Republic from sea to sea.
It is a pleasant thought that in the British war against the French, General Putnam (at the time of his enlistment in 1757, nineteen years of age) and many others assisted in wresting from the enemy and in securing to their sovereign the very territory which was to become their home, and
it is a disagreeable fact that they had finally so dearly to purchase a small portion of the domain which they had twice bought by bravery of arms. The very men who fought to win for England the territory which the French disputed, in 1755-1760, were foremost to win it from her twenty years later, and thus twice exhibited the hardihood and heroism of their natures.
Something of the spirit of emigration manifested itself in New England after the conclusion of the French and Indian war, and was in fact an outgrowth of that struggle. An organization of ex-soldiers of the colonies was formed, called "The Military Company of Adventurers," whose purpose it was to establish a colony in West Florida (now Mississippi). Although the project had been entered upon soon after the establishment of peace, it was not until the year 1772 that anything was accomplished. General Lyman, after severat years' endeavor, succeeded in procuring a grant of a tract of land. It was decided to explore the tract, and a company of surveyors, of which the celebrated Israel Putnam was the leader, went out in January, 1773, for that purpose. Rufus Putnam was a member of the party. The examination was satisfactory, and several hundred families embarked from Massachusetts and Connecticut to make a settlement. They found to their chagrin that the King's grant had been revoked, and the settlement was therefore abandoned. Those who did not fall sick and die returned to their homes. Such was the disastrous end of this project of settlement, which, had it succeeded, might possibly have changed the whole political history of the United States. It seems at least to be within the realm of probability that had a settlement been planted in Mississippi, Massachusetts would not have made the initial settlement in the Ohio country and extended her influence over the territory from which five great States have been created. The enterprise of founding a colony in the far south, thwarted as it was, undoubtedly had its effect upon the New England mind, and was one of the elements which prepared the way for the inauguration of a new scheme of emigration in later years. The dream which had been fondly indulged in for a long term of years, was not to be forgotten even when the opportunity for its realization had passed away.
Soon, however, there arose a subject for thought which overshadowed all others. What men of shrewd foresight had long expected had come to pass. The colonies were arrayed against the mother country in a battle for independence. We shall not here attempt to follow Generals Putnam, Parsons, Varnum, and Tupper, Major Winthrop Sargent, Colonel Ebenezer Sproat, and the many other brave soldiers who became Ohio company emigrants, through the perils of those seven dark years of the Revolution. But is it not natural to suppose that some of them who had been interested in the old colonization project talked of it around their camp fires? Is it not probable that the review of the past suggested the possibility of forming in the future another military colony, in which they should realize the bright hopes that had once been blasted? It seems natural that in the long lulls b