purchase lands upon the Muskingum, rather than upon the Scioto, or
elsewhere in the territory? To this question there are various answers.
In the first place the greater part of the Federal territory was
unfitted for settlement by the fact that it was occupied by the Indian
tribes. None of these, however, had their residence in the lower
Muskingum region, and it was only occasionally resorted to by them, when
upon their hunting expeditions. Then, too, the people who proposed
making a settlement beyond the Ohio were very naturally influenced by
the proximity of well established stations upon the east and south of
the river; they doubtless preferred the Virginians rather than the
Kentuckians, as neighbors. The lower Scioto offered no more alluring an
aspect than the lower Muskingum. The best bodies of lands on each river
are fifty miles from their mouth. To penetrate so far into the interior,
however, as the site of either Chillicothe or Zanesville would have
been, at the time the Marietta settlement was made, was unsafe. The
location of Fort Harmar, which we have seen was built in 1785–86,
doubtless had its influence upon the Ohio Company. Thomas Hutchins, the
United States geographer, who had formerly been geographer to the king
of Great Britain, and had traveled extensively in the west, had said and
written much in favor of the Muskingum country, and strongly advised Dr.
Cutler to locate his purchase in this region. Other explorers and
travelers had substantiated what Hutchins had said. General Butler and
General Parsons, who had descended the Ohio to the Miamis, were deeply
impressed with the desirableness of the tract of country now designated
as southeastern Ohio, and the latter, writing on the twentieth of
December, 1785, from Fort Finney (mouth of the Little Miami) to Captain
Jonathan Hart, at Fort Harmar, said: “I have seen no place since I left
you that pleases me so well for settlement as Muskingum.” General
Benjamin Tupper doubtless added important testimony supporting that of
Hutchins, Parsons, Butler and others. General Parsons, it has been
asserted, became most strongly possessed of the belief that the
Muskingum region was the best part of the territory, because one of the
Zanes, who had been many years in the west, told him that the Scioto or
Miami regions offered superior attractions, and he suspected that the
old frontiersman artfully designed to divert attention from the
Muskingum that he might have the first choice of purchase himself when
the lands were put on sale. It is probable, too, that the prospect of
establishing a system of communication and commerce between the Ohio and
Lake Erie, by way of the Muskingum and Tuscarawas and Cuyahoga, and
between the Ohio and the seaboard, by way of the Great Kanawha and the
Potomac (a plan which Washington had thought feasible before the
Revolutionary war), had its weight.
ALFRED MATHEWS.
INDIAN OCCUPATION OF OHIO.
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 beauty the
valley was awful in the vastness and solemnity of its solitude. Nowhere
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 warway down
which silently and swiftly floated the canoe fleets of a fierce,
relentless, and invincible enemy. That the dreaded devastators 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.[5] They pretentiously claimed to be the
conquerors of the whole country from sea to sea, and there is good
evidence that they had by 1680 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 Allegheny 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 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 trustworthy 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.[6] 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,[7] 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, separated themselves from the rest of the Lenni-Lenape
and migrated slowly eastward. Reaching the Allegheny 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
Susquehanna, and the Potomac. Here they lived, menaced and often
attacked by the Iroquois, 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, turned westward and
concentrated upon the Allegheny. 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 impossible. 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 most 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. Their nation 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.[8] 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[9] the Piqua,[10] Kiskapocke, Mequachuke, and
Chillicothe.
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 romantic 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 re-establishment upon the Scioto until
after the treaty with 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 Whitewoman 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 Allegheny to the Great Miami,
derived from ancient sovereignty 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.[11] 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 territory 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 in the Ottawa tongue signifies mother. The
ancient name of the Miamis was Twigtwees. The Mingoes 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 1772 and dwelt for a time at the latter town,
but two years later was on the Scioto.
ALFRED MATHEWS.
ARTHUR ST. CLAIR AND THE ORDINANCE OF 1787.
St. Clair is an honored name in history. First in Normandy, and after
the eleventh century for many generations in Scotland, its possessors
were men of wealth and a high order of intelligence, and were among the
most prominent characters of the realm. They remained loyal to the crown
through its varying fortunes, and when Scotland passed under the
dominion of England, continued their allegiance to royalty. They showed
a rare genius for military life. This bent of mind was characteristic of
the St. Clair whose career in part is here briefly outlined.