WHAT THE VIRGINIANS GAVE US
--_A topographical description of the country north of the Ohio at the
close of the Revolutionary War._
In the early councils of the Republic the stalwart sons of Virginia
exercised a preponderating influence. As men of broad national
conceptions, who were unafraid to strike a decisive blow in the
interests of freedom, they were unexcelled. Saratoga had already been
won, but at the back door of the newborn states was a line of British
posts in the valleys of the Wabash and Mississippi and at Detroit, that
stood ready to pour forth a horde of naked savages on the frontier
settlements of the west and bring murder and destruction to the aid of
England's cause. In December, 1777, George Rogers Clark came from
Kentucky. He laid before Patrick Henry, the governor of Virginia, a bold
plan for the reduction of these posts and the removal of the red menace.
Into his councils the governor called George Wythe, George Mason and
Thomas Jefferson. An expedition was then and there set on foot that gave
the nation its first federal domain for the erection of new republican
states. With a lot of worthless paper money in his pocket, and about one
hundred and seventy-five hunting shirt men from Virginia and Kentucky,
Clark marched across the prairies of southern Illinois, and captured
Kaskaskia. Later he took Vincennes. Thus by the cool enterprise and
daring of this brave man, he laid the foundation for the subsequent
negotiations of 1783, that gave the northwest territory to the United
States of America.
The country thus conquered covered more than two hundred and forty-four
thousand square miles of the earth's surface, and comprised what are now
the states of Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin. Within
its confines were boundless plains and prairies filled with grass;
immense forests of oak, hickory, walnut, pine, beech and fir; enormous
hidden treasures of coal, iron and copper. Add to all these natural
resources, a fertile soil, a temperate climate, and unlimited facilities
for commerce and trade, and no field was ever presented to the hand and
genius of man, better adapted to form the homes and habitations of a
free and enterprising people. This was known and appreciated by the
noble minds of Washington and Jefferson, even at that day, and they
above all other men of their times, saw most clearly the great vision of
the future.
At the close of the revolution, however, only a few scattered posts,
separated by hundreds of miles, were to be found. Detroit,
Michillimacinac, Vincennes, Kaskaskia and a few minor trading points,
told the whole tale. Kentucky could boast of a few thousands,
maintaining themselves by dauntless courage and nerves of steel against
British and Indians, but all north of the Ohio was practically an
unbroken wilderness, inhabited by the fiercest bands of savages then in
existence, with the possible exception of the Iroquois.
Over this territory, and to gain control of these tribes, England and
France had waged a long and bitter conflict, and the gage of battle had
been the monopoly of the fur trade. The welfare of the savages was
regarded but little; they were the pawns in the game. The great end to
be acquired was the disposal of their rich peltries. No country was more
easily accessible to the early voyageurs and French fur traders. It was
bounded on the north and northeast by the chain of the Great Lakes, on
the south by the Ohio, and on the west by the Mississippi. The heads of
the rivers and streams that flowed into these great watercourses and
lakes were connected by short portages, so that the Indian trapper or
hunter could carry his canoe for a few miles and pass from the waters
that led to Lake Michigan or Lake Erie, into the streams that fed the
Mississippi or the Ohio. The headwaters of the Muskingum and its
tributaries interlocked with those of the Cuyahoga; the headwaters of
the Scioto with those of the Sandusky; the headwaters of the Great Miami
with those of the Wabash and the St. Marys. In northern Indiana another
remarkable system of portages appeared. The canoes of the traders were
carried some eight or ten miles from the little Wabash to the Maumee,
placing the command of the whole Wabash country in the hands of the
Detroit merchants. The sources of the Tippecanoe were connected by
portages with the waters of the St. Joseph of Lake Michigan, and a like
connection existed between the waters of the Tippecanoe and the waters
of the Kankakee. These portages were, as General Harrison observes,
"much used by the Indians and sometimes by traders." LaSalle passed from
Lake Michigan to the waters of the St. Joseph, thence up that river to a
portage of three miles in what is now St. Joseph county, Indiana, thence
by said portage to the headwaters of the Kankakee, and down that river
to the Illinois. At the post of Chicago the traders crossed from Lake
Michigan by a very short portage into the headwaters of the Illinois,
and General Harrison says that in the spring, the boats with their
loading "passed freely from one to the other." In Michigan the heads of
the streams that flowed into Lake Huron interlocked with the heads of
those that went down to Lake Michigan. In Wisconsin, the voyageurs
passed from Green bay up the Fox river to Lake Winnebago, thence by the
Fox again to the portage between the Fox and Wisconsin, thence down the
Wisconsin river to the Mississippi. Through this important channel of
trade passed nine-tenths of the goods that supplied the Indians above
the Illinois river and those in upper Louisiana.
This great network of lakes, rivers and portages was in turn connected
by the waterways of the Ottawa and the St. Lawrence, with the great head
and center of all the fur trade of the western world, the city of
Montreal.
The only practicable means of communication was by the canoe. Most of
the territory of the northwest, being, as General Harrison observes,
"remarkably flat, the roads were necessarily bad in winter, and in the
summer the immense prairies to the west and north of this, produced
such a multitude of flies as to render it impossible to make use of pack
horses." Bogs, marshes and sloughs in endless number added to the
difficulties of travel. Hence it was, that the power that commanded the
lakes and water courses of the northwest, commanded at the same time all
the fur trade and the Indian tribes in the interior. France forever lost
this control to Great Britain at the peace of 1763, closing the French
and Indian war, and at the close of the revolution it passed to us by
the definitive treaty of 1783.
The importance of the posts of Detroit and Michillimacinac, forming the
chief connecting links between the northwest and the city of Montreal,
now fully appears. First in importance was Detroit. It commanded all the
valuable beaver country of northern Ohio and Indiana, southern Michigan,
and of the rivers entering Lakes Erie and Huron. The trade coming from
the Cuyahoga, the Sandusky, the tributaries of the Miami and Scioto, the
Wabash and the Maumee, all centered here. The French traders, and after
them the British, did a vast and flourishing business with the savages,
trading them brandy, guns, ammunition, blankets, vermilion and worthless
trinkets for furs of the highest value. The significance of the old
trading posts at Miamitown (Fort Wayne), Petit Piconne (Tippecanoe),
Ouiatenon, and Vincennes, as feeders for this Detroit market by way of
the Wabash and Maumee valleys, is also made plain. A glimpse of the
activities at Miamitown (Fort Wayne), in the winter of 1789-1790, while
it was still under the domination of the British, shows the Miamis,
Shawnees and Potawatomi coming in with otter, beaver, bear skins and
other peltry, the presence of a lot of unscrupulous, cheating French
traders, who were generally drunk when assembled together, and who took
every advantage of each other, and of the destitute savages with whom
they were trading. At that time the French half-breeds (and traders) of
the names of Jean Cannehous, Jacque Dumay, Jean Coustan and others were
trading with the Indians at Petit Piconne, or Tippecanoe, and all this
trade was routed through by way of the Wabash, the portage at Miamitown,
and the Maumee, to Detroit. The traders at Ouiatenon, who undoubtedly
enjoyed the advantage of the Beaver lake trade in northwestern Indiana,
by way of the Potawatomi trail from the Wabash to Lake Michigan, were
also in direct communication with the merchants of Detroit, and depended
upon them. It is interesting to observe in passing, that the rendezvous
of the French traders at the Petit Piconne (termed by General Charles
Scott, as Keth-tip-e-ca-nunk), was broken up by a detachment of Kentucky
mounted volunteers under General James Wilkinson, in the summer of 1791,
and utterly destroyed. One who accompanied the expedition stated that
there were then one hundred and twenty houses at this place, eighty of
which were shingled; that the best houses belonged to French traders;
and that the gardens and improvements around the place were delightful;
that there was a tavern located there, with cellars, a bar, and public
and private rooms. Thus far had the fur trade advanced in the old days.