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100 - CLERMONT AND BROWN COUNTIES by a converted Mohican Chief, Joshua the Elder, founded Gnadenhutten, or the "Tents of Grace," where his grave stone dated, "1st Aug. 1775," is still to be seen, the most ancient mark of Christian sepulture in Ohio. On May 22, 1780, as a better arrangement for increasing numbers, Heckewelder founded the Mission of Salem six miles down the river, where,. in the chapel, on July 4, 1780, he was married to Miss Sarah Ohneberg, who had come as a teacher from the churches in Pennsylvania. This was the first white wedding in Ohio. An excellent and perfectly preserved oil painting from her younger days presents her for admiration as one of the loveliest of all brides as well as the first of all in Ohio. At Salem Mission, on April 6, 1781, was born their daughter, Maria, the first white baby girl in Ohio. These three mission towns, the earliest by years of all attempts for civilization in Ohio, prospered hopefully ; but it was their misfortune to be half way on the Big Trail between the Whites, about Fort Pitt and the hostile Wyandots about Sandusky. The British Indians scorned the non-resisting converts who would not join the war bands, and they freely exacted food or anything needed in their raids. They were also prone to charge any lack of success to the missionaries, whom they accused of giving information of impending danger to the settlers. The British authorities decided to destroy the towns and yet cast the odium of the affair upon the Colonies. The border men maddened by awful atrocities to doubt all good and to believe all evil, regarded the "Halfway Indians" as spies who harbored and guided their foe. Suspicion and slander never lessen. All Indians looked alike to the harassed people who vindictively resolved to "wipe out the Halfway towns." But no official sanction for such action could be obtained. Some events of the time are better understood now than then. General Daniel Broadhead marched against the Delawares about Goshocking, now Coshocton, as the worst and nearest to the eastern settlements. The attack was stopped by a flood and only some forty prisoners were taken, of whom sixteen were officially tomahawked. The rest met the same fate from their guards. The unruly militia were. with much difficulty, restrained from breaking away from the command in order to destroy the Mission Towns. CLERMONT AND BROWN COUNTIES - 101 The General could not tell the full reason for his earnest protection of the missionaries ; for every friendly act was carefully guarded from the public, as is proved by the recent publication of official papers. British distrust increased by Broadhead's protection of the Moravians was manifested by a force that, on September 11, 1781, cruelly drove the converts from the plenty of their pleasant homes to the famine of Captive's Town and the roofless desolation of a bleak Sandusky plain. Their pious teachers were charged with treason and tried at Detroit. where the secrets at Fort Pitt would have cost their lives. While remembering that Broadhead's firmness postponed the evil day for some, the horrors of his expedition can not be denied and must not be excused. Yet, the ghastly facts may be partially explained, if not palliated, by the rage aroused by the infamous example of Lord Cornwallis in the South, who, in accordance with the orders of the Royal Ministry, executed those who refused to bear arms for the King. No trial was given. The fact that a patriot was found with his family was a warrant for hanging him in their presence. In September, 1780, thirty men were thus hanged by the commander at Augusta, all for the glory of the King. Made desperate by the hunger at Captive's Town, more than a hundred of the converts escaped and returned to get some food for their starving ones from their unharvested corn by the Beautiful Spring, the Tents of Grace and the Vale of Peace. Their coming and resting in their homes, while getting and taking their food to the helpless, was reported to the avengers. About three hundred, some say less, mostly nameless, under David Williamson, came with canting hypocrisy to round up the herd of victims. Then, Friday, March 8, 1782, was spent "deliberately" in killing brown, unresisting Christian men, women and children, largely with a cooper's mallet, until ninety-six scalps were counted. All the plunder that could be loaded on a hundred captured horses was taken to the settlements about Cross Creek, Pa., which I are clouded with the memory of the foulest massacre that stains the authentic annals of the Anglo Saxon race. The effect of that deed was beyond all immediate expectation and beyond all modern appreciation. Instead of being intimidated, the savage spirit was roused to a fury never felt 102 - CLERMONT AND BROWN COUNTIES before. Revenge, heretofore deemed a duty and practiced for pleasure, became a solemn function not to be omitted without incurring the wrath of the spirit world, where those slain in their innocence were waiting for the price of their peace. The red race saw its doom could not be averted by submission. Those who might have turned Christian or might have lived craven resolved to abide in superstition and die according to their ideals of heroism, fighting always and yielding never. A mutual pledge was given and taken from East to West that no white man should settle north of the Ohio. The place of the crime was set aside for death and abhorred for life. No warrior would ever revel in its gloom and no paleface should make it glad. With such foes roused to the highest pitch of vindictive passion, the campaigns of 1782, the last year of the Revolution, were fought in the West and mainly in Ohio, with a grim purpose on both sides that exceeded all of the kind before. For, after that awful crime on the Tuscarawas, both sides felt it was to be a fight to the finish. Just twelve weeks from their gathering for the massacre, Williamson and many of his fellow murderers came again to Mingo Plain. They were now mustered in a legal force four hundred and eighty strong with Colonel William Crawford for commander. Their avowed purpose was against the Indians about Sandusky, but many boasted that they would finish wiping out the Moravians. They went by the Big Trail and camped at Schoenbrunn where tradition states that Crawford was much disturbed by a panic among his men caused by some firing on the guard line. It is easy to believe that he must have felt some misgivings about the men who had such ample reason for fearing supernatural displeasure. In the defeat that came June 8, the men that stood by Williamson were the first to break and leave the wounded. It is told that he directed the retreat with skill ; but the reflection comes unbidden that those who murdered the meekest and best of the Indians were the first to fly from the bravest and fierce. The victors ran here and there among the captives asking for the "Butcher Chief," Williamson, or any of his men, and when none were found, they put Crawford in his place to pay the fearful penalty of being slowly burnt to death. For the loftiest ideal of pagan superstition, more potent than CLERMONT AND BROWN COUNTIES - 103 all that the Delawares knew of wealth, demanded Crawford for a burnt offering. The hearts of all Christendom were chilled with awe, when it was known that the gallant Crawford, the personal friend of Washington, had thus been slowly tortured to death. Yet the Indians were yielding to a gaining change. Thirty years of war had made them the finest body of light infantry in the King's sery ce, and there is no record that they tasted the flesh of the victim that their fathers would have eaten with horrible pleasure thirty years before. Crawford's defeat was closely followed by an expedition of five hundred Indians under McKee and Girty, who with a part of the warriors had shared in the recent triumph. They went down the Miami Trail under British colors, and on August 14 besieged Bryant's Station at the crossing of the Elkhorn by the road from Maysville to Lexington, scarcely over a day's trail south of New Richmond. After losing about thirty in bold but fruitless attempts they artfully retreated on the fourth day. On August 19 the choicest chivalry of Kentucky, the rough riders of many romantic rescues in an impetuous pursuit galloped rashly into the Battle of Blue Licks with one hundred and eighty rifles and one sword. From that disastrous field, the sword and eighty-nine rifles never returned. That was the last battle in Kentucky under a British flag. It was also the last hostile British banner to go by the western slopes of Clermont along the winding way of the Miami. Glutted with gore and waving the scalps of the best in Kentucky, many of the warriors joined a band of forty white rangers with two hundred and sixty Indians who went by the Big Trail to scatter the settlers on the western rim of Pennsylvania and Virginia. On the evening of September 11, the assembled band formed in lines, paraded the British flag, and again; in the name of King George III, demanded the surrender of Fort Henry. Colonel Zane with twelve men and the women defended the place through two nights and the intervening day in which the incident occurred that added the name of Elizabeth Zane to the list of famous women. "Talk not to me of Paul Revere, A man on horseback with nothing to rear; Nor of old John Burns with his bell crowned hat- 104 - CLERMONT AND BROWN COUNTIES He'd an army back of him, so what of that Here's to the heroine plump and brown Who ran the gauntlet in Wheeling town ; Here's a record without a stain,— Beautiful, buxom Elizabeth Zane." This siege has been called the Last Battle of the Revolution, which thus began at Point Pleasant and ended at Wheeling, both on the Ohio, on which a display of British power has not since been seen. That retreat passed westward over the Big Trail about the first week in October. For another clash of arms was near. Aroused by the defeat at Blue Licks, the brawn of Kentucky volunteered, a thousand and fifty mounted rifles, under Colonels Floyd and Logan commanded by General Clark. During October that invincible army, gathered in September, went up the Miami Trail with such skill that the warriors, who had conquered Crawford, won Blue Licks and ravaged the region of Fort Pitt, could not be rallied against the great chief of the Long Knives. Everywhere they fell away while Clark destroyed their towns and stores throughout the Miamis. The blow brought dismay to Detroit. But that success was deemed best for another campaign. Meanwhile the rumored peace of which the preliminary treat was signed November 30, 1782, was presumed to stop the war. It did suppress the open operations, but it did not remove the hostile influence that was to plague another generation of which many were to be untimely slain before Ohio was fully won. If all the killings and barbarities during that dreadful season of the tyrannical repression of a foolish King were gathered into one point of view, it may be said with truth that the war whoop was never still, the scalping knife was never dry, and the torture fires were never quenched. In the same view the humble homes of hope never ceased to blaze, and the captive throng ever went through gloomy ways to join the prisoners of sorrow in the satanic lot of those who formed the first unhappy and unavailing white population of fair Ohio. If this sanguinary strife that surged from Detroit in a long succession of movements and counter movements—if all this conflict for an empire richer than Rome had hap- CLERMONT AND BROWN COUNTIES - 105 pened within the sphere of Roston influence, there would have been no shelf strong enough to hold the volumes in record. Instead, the details of the heroic achievement have been dismissed by the supersensitive as too rude for artistic treatment, all unmindful— That nothing yet has 'scaped oblivion's wrong Except some dauntless deeds and scraps of song. One of the saddest conditions of that and all such periods was the loneliness of the grief for those who had paid the price of their victory. During that last woeful year of the western Revolution, of which many refuse to learn, while parental, filial and social love mourned in seclusion, the eastern people thrilled with the hope of peace. But time lagged. Thirty-eight days passed before the surrender of Cornwallis was known in London. In deepest agitation, Lord North, the amiable minister of tyranny, exclaimed again and again : "It is all over." Two days later, November 27, Parliament convened and soon manifested a desire to quit the "unnatural and unfortunate war." The large majority for the subjugation of America dwindled by degreHousetil on March 4, 1782, the Hotise of Commons without a division adopted an address in effect : that those advising a continuation of the war against the American Colonies would be regarded as enemies to the King. If this could have been cabled and wired as such things happen now, the wasted energies of 1782 might have made a fruitful growth along the Ohio. The agony of Craw-fords' awful execution might have been spared and the blood of his men saved for peaceful labor. The invasion of Kentucky might not have occurred and the costly sacrifice of Blue Licks might have been averted. The raid on West Virginia would not have been ordered and the captives would not have entered the valley and shadow of living death beyond the river about the Indian Country. The dire di stress inflicted upon the Shawnees by Clark's stern retribution might have been stayed. For the cruel Clinton as commander in chief was followed by the humane Sir Guy Carlton, whose policy was a virtual truce till the conditions of peace could be determined. With modern facilities for exchanging opinions, all 106 - CLERMONT AND BROWN COUNTIES this and more would have been possible during that last year of the Revolution. But there was one exception that would have still marred all. No persuasion of human origin would have stopped the fiendish purpose of the swaggering mob that wrought the woe of Gnadenhutten ; for they had gathered at and were on the way from Mingo Plain on the same day that Parliament took the action that turned England toward the future paths of justice. There is melancholy satisfaction in the reflection that the rude travel of those days hindered a knowledge of the deed that would have changed the sympathy for America into horror for its miscreants. America had many friends in England from the beginning, and gained many more as her cause came to be better understood. When no more armies could be had for oppression and the stubborn King was forced to quit, still more were brought to favor the colonies by a belief that the separation would not last long. A new adjustment was certain, but the extent of the independence was to be as little as possible. The King's friends proposed from the Penobscot to Spanish Florida and back to the Ohio. Among things most abhorred by the King of Spain was the independence of the Thirteen English Colonies because pf the effect upon his own possessions in America. Among things most desired by the King of Spain, the first was Gibraltar. Every art of his court was used to hinder one and gain the other, and both in vain. The motive of France had a double trend. The pope lar mind was turning to greater liberty and saw an ex-amp e to be aided. The court party were waiting for a chance to humiliate English pride. Urged by both, the not willing young King took the course beneficial to mankind but fatal to himself. Before undertaking their cause, the Americans were reminded of their old claims as far as to the South Sea, and were sounded as to their intentions. The agents for he United Colonies answered that the claims made in geographic ignorance would not be used against their friend and that they would accept the Mississippi as a mutual boundary and convenience for Spain and for themselves. The treaty was begun and practically finished by the Earl of Shelburne and Dr. Benjamin Franklin. Shelburne was represented in Paris by Richard Oswald, a Scotchman, who CLERMONT AND BROWN COUNTIES - 107 had lived much in America and knew the people. Franklin acted alone until he and Shelburne had reached a fine understanding. Then an intrigue of Spanish origin and French culture was sprung upon Jay, by which England was to hold the Mississippi Valley eastward to the mountain crest and the Colonies to lose their highly prized part in the eastern fisheries. In return Spain was to have Gibraltar, and France would, be at peace with all, as was greatly desired by all. Shelburne answered that no Englishman could face Parliament with the proposal. Jay was angry that his mission had such an impotent conclusion. Adams imprudently admitted that he would rather pay the "Merchant claims," and the words could not be recalled. Franklin wisely kept the secrets of all, of which he had the key. And so a treaty was signed that the Colonies as United States should have their Independence; that the salt sea fisheries should be free to their sailors ; that refugees should have amnesty ; and that British merchants might collect their ancient claims. The maps filed therewith showed the boundaries in a dark line wandering from the St. Croix westward up the midwater line of the St. Lawrence and the great lakes to the Lake of the Woods and thence down the Mississippi to a point crossed by the thirty-first parallel and thence east with the southern line of Georgia. Thus, almost to a day, thirty-two years after Christopher Gist and his company of explorers crossed into Ohio "with English Colors before Us," the British flag, that had been carried up and down the river sides, and around and by and probably through the Land of Old Clermont, gave place to the Stars and Stripes. CHAPTER VI. THE INDIAN COUNTRY. British Hope for the Failure of Independence—Indians Not Consulted in the Treaty for Peace—The Malign Influence of the British Fur Traders—Old Clermont a Midway Hiding Place for Plundering Bands—War Debts and Public Lands—State Claims—Indian Titles—Treaty Councils at Fort Stanwix, Fort McIntosh and Fort Finney—Brant and Red Jacket. Form an Indian Confederacy at Detroit—Moluntha Pleads for Peace—Congress Forbids Invasion of Indian Border—Clark's Expedition in 1786 Logan's Expedition against Mac-o-chee—The Murder of Moluntha—Civil Government. Instituted—The Fertility—Spanish Hostility—Squatter Claims Rejected—The First Government Survey in Ohio, August, 1786—Surveying in the Virginia Military District begun in 1787—The Ordinance of 1787—The Second Ohio Land Company—Marietta--John Cleves Symmes —The Danger in 1787—Enter Arthur St. Clair, President of Congress—The Territory Northwest—Columbia—Losantiville—North Bend—Colonel Rober: Todd's Expedition Against Paint Creek—Grant's Defeat near Vevay—"The Banditti Must be Intercepted"—Spanish Intrigue to Dissolve the Union—Cincinnati—Governor St. Clair Reports a Series of Disasters—Colonel Charles Scott's Expedition—War Resumed—Harmar's Expedition Against Omee—The Massacre at Big Bottom—Scott and Wilkinson's Expedition —Wilkinson's Second Expedition—St. Clair Planned a Chain of Forts—St. Clair's Defeat—Anthony Wayne—Two Years of Preparation and Two Hours of Victory—The Indian Country Passed into History After Forty Years of Conflict for the Ohio—Gallipolis, Massie's Station, or Manchester. Many Englishmen honestly believed that the federation of States would not endure ; and, upon occasion, they hoped to regain the land that was only held by a rope of sand. Some of the less resolute in America feared what such English- 110 - CLERMONT AND BROWN COUNTIES men hoped. The Congress with neither power nor chance to levy a revenue was not table to pay the just claims of needy friends and still less able to meet the admitted claims of the British, who determined to hold certain forts as a pledge for the payment of certain debts. Among those thus retained was Detroit, the key to the Northwest, of hateful memory to the western settlers, and destined quickly to be still more odious. With candid dealing, this need not have been ; but. with the bitter past and a cruel chance, the way was short to malicious actions. As in the French surrender of Canada twenty years before. peace was concluded without the least consultation with the savage allies. Next to a war dance the ceremony of making peace is dear to Indian pride. Notwithstanding all their bravery in the war, they had not been consulted about the results more than their dogs ; and, in the end, they had been left to the decision of their enemies. Their trade, however, was valuable to the British, whose traders with no morals and every vice, became the teachers from whom the Indians learned, if possible, to think still greater evil of the approaching settlers. With such advisers to justify every outrage, the depredations continued to be a peril scarcely less than in the open war. The great besieging expeditions under British commanders ceased to come and parade around the stations ; but no isolated house, no lonely traveler, no drifting boat, was free from the suddenly deadly attack of a foe that haunted :he forest or lurked by the river to kill and plunder, and the I rush away with the captives or booty to Detroit, where there was ready market, and ransom agents. Such raids all along the border were made by bands that scattered or gathered, as if by magic, while they combined the pleasure of hunting with the zest of war, for Indians the most fascinating of all modes of life. From such conditions that most largely prevailed between the Scioto and the Miami unto the refinement of today affords a theme with material to illustrate every phase of civilization. The land of Clermont was between the larger settlements about Lexington in Kentucky anc the Indian Chillicothes on the Miami and the Scioto. Or. to be more definite, Chilo was half way on a direct line from Boonesborough to the Old Town by Xenia. In the CLERMONT AND BROWN COUNTIES - 111 headlong flight for safety from pursuit beyond the Ohio, many captive, like Boone, must have been hurried to the shore of Clermont and through its ancient wilderness. When some escaped or were ransomed they told an ever recurring story of such flights. When the weak, the tender or the despairing stumbled beneath more than they could bear, as happened to Him who went to Calvary, a tomahawk bruised their brains, and their burdens were tied on the backs of stronger friends who went bitterly on to swell the sport of the gauntlet lines or to act the central part in the revels round the fire encircled torture stake. While some may curiously ask if the scenes of such misfortunes are known, we should be grateful that a merciful oblivion has covered such tragedies beyond a search that could never faintly guess the anguish of the blood besprinkled border land, only a little more than a hundred years ago. But there is much circumstantial proof that such tragedies were a probable and even frequent occurrence in the then nameless midway region of Old Clermont—nameless, except that it was the bourne of the dreaded "Indian Country." On July 7, 1790, United States Judge Innes, for Kentucky, reported to General Knox, Secretary of War, that from November, 1783, to the time of writing, fifteen hundred people had been killed or captured in Kentucky by the Indians, who had also stolen twenty thousand horses, and destroyed an immense amount of other property. This was but the covert continuance of the long war about to rage again, of which the pages to come will localize such parts as in special degree tested the fiber of the founders of Old Clermont, both before and after their occupation of the "and. Incensed beyond measure by the dire molestation reported by Judge Innes, the Kentuckians imputed the ceaseless and implacable ferocity of the tribes to the machinations of the traders and officials still occupying the forts that should have been vacated when the British army sailed away from the eastern coast. The proclamation made April 19, 1783, just eight years from the Battle of Lexington and Concord, brought peace and rest to England, but it did not stop the Conflict for Ohio, which, thereafter, was mainly made in and from Kentucky, and soon became involved with other questions. 112 - CLERMONT AND BROWN COUNTIES The American Revolution had succeeded beyond the hope of despairing humanity, and beyond the expectation of dreading tyranny. While consenting to the Independence of the States as the price of peace, George III made Louis XVI of France and Charles III of Spain feel that their colonies might soon be a field for the ambitious schemes of equally successful rebels. Then, the three monarchs agreed more readily, than upon any other question, that the young States should. not grow so fast as to become an enticing example to the discontented. France approved, while Spain barred the ways to the South and imposed excluding penalties upon the boats that floated toward the Gulf. Both saw no guile in a British plan to repossess the Ohio and spurn American ships from the ocean. The provocation thus begun led with increasing purpose to the Second War for Independence. The chief causes assigned for that war were the wrongs at sea and the instigation of Indian outbreaks. Before these questions could be approached, the problems of a general government had to be solved. All progress was hindered by the war debts of the Revolution. These debts were heavy in all the States, amounting in some to nearly two hundred dollars to each person of all ages. To meet this debt he readiest and almost the only resource was the sale of the public lands. Those lands were the territory north and west of the Ohio, which the British hoped to regain through Indian complicity. In addition, all those living on westward flowing waters were profoundly agitated about the Spanish restrictions upon the navigation of the Mississippi. A more involved and perplexing condition has rarely disturbed the meditations of statesmen. The perplexity was increased by a e conflicting claims of the States. Because of her charter priority and because of Clark's conquest of the Northwest in her name, much the largest of those claims was that of Virginia. Her proposal in 1781 for a settlement of those claims was made a conclusive example for other States by the eventual cession on March 1, 1784, of all her rights in the wide domain for the general good, except so much as should be needed to redeem her promises of an ample bounty of land to each of her sons who had borne arms in Freedom's cause. This example becoming the rule, effort was CLERMONT AND BROWN COUNTIES - 113 begun for a clearer definition of the Indian title, in order that the lands could be surveyed and charted for distribution among the patriot soldiers, and for sale. To this end, perhaps, because there was no other way, and because they could be more easily managed so, it was planned to deal with the tribes separately. This method gave bitter offense to what may be called the National party among the Indians, who insisted that such questions must be considered by a confederation of all the tribes. In this policy they were aided and comforted by the Spanish on the South and West and by the British on the North. No figures are at hand to show the relative percentage of death and misery that was fairly due to the Indiana alliance with the British during and after the Revolution. But enough is evident in the history of that period to justify a belief that the red skinned savages dealt more fatal blows than the red coated soldiers. The result of that vain ferocity was a prevalent conclusion that the Indian, by constantly and cruelly fighting for the King, had forfeited any and all rights that the Americans were bound to respect. To sit in council with those unclean killers was as disgusting then, as it would be made ridiculous now by the liveliest cartoonist, yet might had given them such right, that Congress was fain to plead for peace. The tribes were approached consecutively, the nearest coming first. The Iroquois who in 1768 had quit their claims to much of Pennsylvania, Virginia and all of Kentucky, as heretofore stated, for an absurdly paltry six thousand dollars, were again called to a council at Fort Stanwix. Angered because not consulted in making peace with Great Britain, forever sullied with the memory of Wyoming, and at last overawed by the near strength of the 'Thirteen Fires," the larger part of the Iroquois in October, 1784, wisely concurred in ceding all their vast western pretensions north of the Ohio unto the Wabash in return for the safety of their villages in New York. The Commissioners for the United States who thus did much to limit a long contention were Oliver Wolcott, Richard Butler and Arthur Lee. General George Rogers Clark took Wolcott's place, as the Commission went quickly on to Fort McIntosh at the mouth of Beaver on the Ohio, where on January 21, 1785, a treaty was made by which the 114 - CLERMONT AND BROWN COUNTIES Wyandot, Delaware, Chippewa and Ottawa Nations relinquished all of their claims eastward from the Cuyahoga River and southward from the sources of the Tuscarawas, Scioto and Miami Rivers. The absence of the sullen Shawnees, though invited and the most vitally concerned of all, was reported to Congress, which on June 29, 1785, directed that they and other tribes farther west should be called to . another council. Meanwhile, the noted Iroquois chiefs, Sagoyewatha or Red Jacket, of the Seneca tribe, and Brant, the Mohawk, Thayandanega, who had moved to Canada after the Revolution, formed a confederacy of the Indians in the Northwest who met in December, 1786, near Detroit, for a grand council. Without dissent, that council formally declared to the American Congress that no white man should plant corn north of the Ohio River. A discreet diplomacy avoided any recognition of that confederation of British Indians. Instead of a fruitless discussion of such foreign control, peace was steadily offered to the tribes directly interested in the disputed region. But those who were to suffer most girded themselves for the steadily increasing struggle. Much rhetoric has been used in exploiting the superiority of those who were the first in settling Ohio. A few dates and several facts grouped for one view will do much to prove that the claims for such superiority depend more upon accident than merit. In a report to the Secretary of War, made in Philadelphia, on October 22, 1785, Colonel Josiah Harmar of the First American Regiment, when there was but one regiment, stated : "A full company of infantry raised with much difficulty embarked at Fort McIntosh, on September 29, under Captain Finney, with General Butler of the Peace Commission aboard, to attend the council to be held at the mouth of the Great Miami. Colonel Harmar farther stated : "I have given Captain Finney written orders to secure himself from insult by fortifying his winter quarters." Farther down in the same report, Harmar stated : "I have given Captain Doughty with his company of artillery written orders to take post at or near the mouth of the Muskingum, and to stockade or palisade himself for his own security as he should judge most proper." Then, while proceeding to Philadelphia, CLERMONT AND BROWN COUNTIES - 115 and having met Captain I3 art with his company of infantry on Laurel Hill, four days' march east of Pittsburgh, on October 7, Colonel Harmar added : "I gave Captain Hart orders to expedite his march, as he would be on time to go down the river with Captain Doughty and be under his command." If these official dates rendered by the commander of both show anything, they prove that Captain Finney charged with the personal protection of the distinguished Peace Commissioners started to possess and fortify the mouth of the Great Miami at least thirteen days earlier than Captain Doughty's expedition "to take post at or near the mouth of the Muskingum."
General Butler's Journal shows that he inspected the positions proposed at or near the Muskingum and Scioto, and then going warily by the hostile shore reached the mouth of the Great Miami, where by his direction, Captain Finney, on October 25, began a strong stockade for protection and for holding the treaty, which, in honor of the Captain's soldierly promptness, was named Fort Finney. Since Captain Doughty's expedition left Pittsburgh only twelve days before Finney's arrival at the Miami, it is difficult to find reasons for the vaunted priority of his fortification which was named Fort Harmar ; except that the New Englanders came to its protection and gratefully proclaimed it as the First Federal Fort in Ohio—that they had seen—and thus left nothing to chance that could be decided by the pen. Their histories, as far as seen, vaguely say that Fort Harmar was built in that autumn and offer no dates for comparison. Neither Finney nor Doughty probably had a thought of antiquarian rivalry between their respective spheres. The beginnings of the civilization that was to stay were made in the east and west of Ohio in a movement that for strategic purposes was intended to be simultaneous at widely separated points. The expedition to the Miamis having farther to go started first to a destination that became an American shrine of patriotism as the home of two presidents. There was duty enough for both captains and all with them. Of the two, Finney's was the more difficult. For when the fort was ready, Generals Clark and Butler were joined by General Samuel H. Parsons in a Commission that met lot- r hundred and forty-
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eight Indians of whom three hundred and eighteen were ill boding Shawnees. It was Finney's irksome duty to control and supply that contentious host that clamored for pork as the greatest of delicacies, and guzzled great gulps of whiskey without which no treaty could be made.
The Shawnees were ill humored and defiant. At a critical moment a leading chief put a war belt on the table, which, in their custom was a challenge to war. General Butler, after a few stern words, brushed the defying wumpum aside, whereupon the council broke in great commotion. The scene has been made the subject of much fanciful description, of which General Clark fills the leading part. General Butler's account in his Journal, which is sufficiently tragic, must have the preference. In the afternoon when the tumult was less, Moluntha, the chief Sachem or King of the Shawnees, asked to be heard. He was the same Moluntha whose wife was the sister of the famous Cornstalk and who because of her great height and stately carriage, was .known as the "Grenadier Squaw." As the Sachem of the tribe and assisted by Cornstalk he had made peace with Dunmore, which he steadily urged till swept away by the assassination of his greatest war chief, and relative, the pacific Cornstalk. He deplored the war that was wasting his tribe. While trying to quiet his warriors at Fort Finney, he lifted up a peace belt and asked pity for his women and children. There is much in his story as picked in fragments from those who hated him that makes us regret his fate, for the worst is to fill a future page. After much contention, the Shawnees agreed in February, 1786, to more than had been obtained from other tribes. By the Treaties thus made at Forts Stanwix, McIntosh and Finney, prisoners on both sides were restored, and both Eastern and Southern Ohio passed to white control. But it was soon evi dent that there would be no peace. The eastern tribes simply concentrated farther west, and those facing south drew farther north, so that both were nearer to the supplies and malign influences at Detroit, while the murdering, plundering bands strewed the settlements with fear and filled the Ohio River with peril.
With a hope of obtaining peace with the tribes after they should cease to be aided by the British, Congress refused to
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admit that there was war in and on Kentucky. This comforting belief in the distant tranquility was accompanied by orders against an invasion of the Indian Country. However wise this may have appeared in peaceful Philadelphia, the condition was exceedingly irritating to the settlers who raged to rout their foe. After expecting little aid or none from the hampered States for four dreadful years, exasperated but self-reliant Kentucky, with some consent from Virginia, again mustered under General Clark for a march over a thousand strong from Louisville on September 17, 1786, by way of Vincennes against the Wea towns near where now is Lafayette, Ind. The expedition was abandoned within two days' march of the projected destination, under circumstances of much humiliation for Clark, whose popularity thenceforth waned. In order to divide the enemy or to take advantage of any concentration against his own force, General Clark ordered Colonel Benjamin Logan to lead five hundred mounted riflemen as secretly and rapidly as possible against the towns on the Mac-o-chee, in what is now Logan county, Ohio. Since the destruction of Piqua, those towns had become the chief habitation of the Shawnees. Logan's force mustered at Limestone Point or Maysville, and on October I, 1786, crossed the Ohio and going through Logan's Gap into and beyond Eagle Creek took a course through the uplands of Brown county. with all possible speed and secrecy, almost due north to Mac-o-chee. For a time that course was known as Logan's Trace, but nothing is reported to mark it now, except that a resting place on Todd's Fork in Clinton county, nearly three miles northeast of Wilmington, is still marked as the "Deserted Camp," because a man or spy deserted there in order, it was thought, to warn the Indians, whose main force had gone to oppose Clark on the Wabash. Although the surprise was frustrated, eight towns were burned, many fields of corn were destroyed, seventy odd prisoners were taken, and twenty killed, among whom was their Grand Sachem, the venerable and peace preferring Moluntha. Riding, hotly foremost in the charge was a volunteer soldier named William Lytle, then sixteen years and one month old. As Lytle poised to fire on one of the pursued, an open hand went up in token of the surrender of that one and more in the thicket. The
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group was Moluntha with the "Grenadier Squaw" and some other women and children. The capture was a noble deed in the lire of the brave boy whose leveled rifle protected his prisoners as others rode up and clamored for their death. After bringing them back to the town, the same Major Mc-Gary who had caused the defeat at Blue Licks, also returned, with no success to report, and crowded up to see the chief. McGary asked : "Were you at the defeat of Blue Licks?" Not knowing a word of the question but relying upon his conduct at Fort Finney, Moluntha acted pleasantly, whereupon McGary snatched a hatchet from the Grenadier Squaw. Lytle. seeing the motion, interposed, but the heavy blow wounded his left wrist and scattered Moluntha's blood and brains over those around. In the same instant, Lytle drew his hunting knife and would have struck McGary to the heart, if the blow had not been foiled by others.
As long as the Story of the Ohio shall be read, the Defeat at Blue Licks will blot the name of McGary with braggart folly ; and the murder of Moluntha will stain his memory with cruel brutality. Any comparison with any service to his credit, like Benedict Arnold's courage with his treason, will only make the blot and the stain more conspicuous. The splendid conduct of the youthful Lytle, equally ready to dare the depths of danger or scale the heights of peril, marked him forever after as equally gentle and brave. The madness of the deed, that could not be obscured without casting a cloud on the youthful heroism admired by all, brought much shame and regret to Logan and his worthy troopers which included such truly typical Kentucky Colonels as Patterson, Kennedy, Trotter, Kenton and Boone, who loathed the presence of McGary in the 'returning march to Maysville. Every detail of the Indian village and the captives amid the victor riflemen on horse and afoot crowding or yielding about the Old Forest King and his stately Queen, while the burly major was vainly but almost fatally opposed by the hardy young volunteer, affords one of the most tragic themes for an historic artist that yet remains unused in marble or colors.
The Genius of Civil Rights closely followed and at times even preceded the spirit of conquest. The Act of Quebec, hated and resented by all Americans, was anticipated in no
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uncertain terms in 1769, by the Virginia House of Burgesses, of which Washington was a member, by constituting the county of Botetourt which extended from the Blue Ridge west ward to the Mississippi and embraced the southern part of the Northwest. Seven years later Virginia claimed the same region under the name of West Augusta District. After that it was a part of Fincastle county. The county of Kentucky was constituted in October, 1776, but even in 1777 the fighting force all counted was but one hundred and two "guns" or men. After Clark's conquest of the southwestern British forts, Virginia again asserted her control by constituting the immense county of Illinois, over which Colonel John Todd was made the governing agent in the fall of 1778. For eighteen months he went among the French settlers there. To his wise work is due much of the spirit that kept the British from regaining that region, and thus eventually secured the independence of the Northwest, and so fixed our place as it is. The one sword at the Battle of Blue Licks was worn there to the death by him. He was of the family that furnished the wife for Abraham Lincoln, whose grandfather was also killed in 1784 by an Indian in Kentucky. A more vivid idea of the struggle is gained by noting such incidents. In 1780 the county of Kentucky was subdivided into the three counties of Jefferson, Fayette and Lincoln. And thus the forms of just restraint and civil protection were being brought around the land of our homes that were to come.
Every one, the Indian himself, knew that the red race must go with time and force. Time was passing and force was coming. Many went west by the Wilderness Road and Boone's Trace ; but more came floating from the Northeast in search of genial airs and fertile plains. In 1780 three hundred family boats or "arks" reached "The Falls" by Louisville, where they were broken up for the lumber to be used by the "movers" in the improvement of cabins sometimes many miles away. Often ten and fifteen wagons a day could be counted going to the interior. Rumor spread the fame of the land where a grain of corn dropped in the soil cleft by an axe, where weeds had not learned to grow, would yield five hundred fold. Swine turned loose fattened on the mast and multiplied beyond need with no care other than the
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thrilling sport of gathering the salable pelts of the wild animals that would feed on the young. Cattle needed scarcely more tha i the salt that would lure them from straying away on boundless pastures that kept their sweetness in rank growths beneath snows that were neither early nor lasted long. The fleece of flocks (that in truth had to be herded from wolfish troubles) could be well mixed with the finest flax yet grown in America, and dyed with native forest hues that fashion has since approved. Health was quaffed with every draught out of the spring flowing from the hidden fountains of the Blue Lime Stone. Delight thrilled the air. Plenty waved a beckoning hand. Safety would soon mantle every path. Homes resounded with the laughter of many children. The teachers were at work. The youthful Lytle, so ready to wield a deadly knife for his helpless captives, guided his quill with a fine, strong, rapid hand, with pure, correct, lively diction, and reverenced his parents, as is proved by letters to them new in my care. The people remembered the tales of great deeds and splendid cities and they believed the prophets of greater things yet to be. In 1783 Daniel Broadhead established a service by wagons from "The fair and opulent city of Philadelphia" across the mountains to Pittsburgh, and a line of keelboats to Louisville by which goods were brought to the first store in Kentucky, for the barter of foreign stuff previously was conducted by peddling traders. Furs were taken in that store in lieu of cash, of which there was little or none. But there was no market for the rapidly accumulating grain, multiplying stock and luxuriant tobacco.
Spain steadily prohibited the navigation of the Mississippi except under duties and penalties that amounted to confiscation and imprisonment. The policy of Spain was as hostile to the Western Americans as the opposition of the Indians, but more refined. The details would fill volumes about what brought much discontent and even threatened a rupture of the Union, which was the sinister purpose of the long Spanish intrigue. The products of the West would have been far from welcome among the Eastern people even if it had been possible to take them across the mountains. Therefore, the gathering riches of Kentucky seemed less than worth the care. No Stronger political proof is needed that the balance of justice
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should not be trusted to selfish hands, than the fact that six of the thirteen States influenced by concessions to their interests voted for a treaty that imposed submission to Spain's determination to prohibit American navigation of the Mississippi. Satisfaction reaches delight in contemplating the ultimate defeat of that tyrannical restriction.
Galled by the marauders from the Indian Country, enraged by the ;malignant coercions of Spain, and imbittered by the seeming incomprehension of Congress regarding both conditions, the Kentuckians, except for these restraints, lords of a world of hopeful prospects, began and persisted in demands for recognition as an independent State. But the purpose and forms of that independence which was to be the precedent for Ohio and many similar actions was a problem that the founders of the Nation chose to weigh with anxious wisdom.
Meanwhile, the prime object of the Indian treaties was to achieve the sale and safe settlement of the public domain, as contemplated in the Land Ordinance enacted May 20, 1785, under which surveyors were commissioned to make the maps. But, before that work could proceed, one of the rough conditions of that cruel time was the ejectment of unauthorized settlers from the lands north and west of the Ohio, where, according to statements for April, 1785, as reported by. Colonel Harmar to Congress,' people were going "by the forties and fifties." "From the best information," three hundred families were on the Muskingum, as many more on the Hock-hocking and fifteen hundred on the Rivers Miami and Scioto, to whom a notice had been published to hold elections for choosing delegates to a convention to meet on April 20, 1785, at the mouth of the Scioto. This statement that Ohio then contained twenty-one hundred white families, after much search for supporting facts, must be regarded as a hoax on Harmar's credulity. The affair was very serious to a few score people along the northwestern shore of the upper Ohio, whose cabins were burned by Captain Armstrong. Otherwise, the condition told to Colonel Harmar was created by imagination and colored by fancy. As to the utter absence of humanity from the Scioto at that time there is positive proof. In the same month, April, 1785, four families from Red Stone on the Monongahela tied their boat under the bank where
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Portsmouth is, and started a clearing. After some planting, the four went "land hunting" along the Scioto to near Piketon where one of them, Peter Patrick, cut his initials from which Pee-Pee township in Pike county took its singular name. Nearby, two of them were killed while the other two escaped over the hills to the mouth of the Little Scioto on the Ohio, where they fortunately gained a boat that took them to their little patch by the future city of Portsmouth, whence they fled to Limestone. The busiest antiquarian has found no proof of another white occupation of that date in all the Scioto region. But Harmar's observations were made from the talk about Pittsburgh. Yet, there were some whites by or with the Indians of whom a few were of the marvelous type that braved every danger, but the larger portion were mongrels or derelicts from civilization, whose place in the descending scale ranged between outcasts, fugitives and renegades, whose only link to their race was a bitter memory and a hated color only tolerated by their red neighbors because they we re equally wild and pitiful. With all allowance for such possible people, the lower Miami region of the Indian Country was a boundary of mutual fear equally deserted by the squaw and papoose or shunned by the settler's wife and babe, and only traversed by the stealthy scouts of crafty foes.
On August 5, 1786, a little army of science crossed the river at the mouth of Little Beaver and began the perilous task of mapping the wilderness beyond the Ohio. A commodious structure was built for a base and named Fort Steuben, which was the beginning of Steubenville. On September 18, fourteen surveyors and fieldmen guarded by thirty-six soldiers, having reached forty-three miles on an east and west line on the Big Trail by Sandy Creek, were stopped by a scout's report that a large band of warriors was near. On September 23, Thomas Hutchins, the "Geographer- General," retired with his surveyors to their fort. This mapping of the "Congress Land' of Ohio, under military protection was renewed in eastern Ohio with the leaves of 1787. Meanwhile, Richard Clough Anderson was appointed Surveyor-General of "Military Lands," with office at Louisville, that was opened August 1, 1787, and extended by a corps of deputy surveyors, who presently began the work of mapping the still unconquered wilds
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between the Scioto and the Little Miami, with no military aid but their own wits and rifles. The men who took the hazard of that labor were men of massive mould and toughest fiber. With their wandering ways, the partition of the land by metes and bounds for individual industry was something slowly learned and poorly acquired by the Indians. A similar restriction of air or light would have seemed scarcely more absurd. The destructive effect upon their mode of living was equally charged to the surveyors and their instruments. The immediate effect of the treaties was to permit the white people to attempt a settlement that had heretofore been forbidden them by their own laws ; but that permission did not give possession which was still fiercely opposed by those who did not approve the terms made by the chiefs.
An incident for local pride that should not be forgotten by any who love the land is found in the fact that the first attempt under legal authority for individual possession of a tract for a home in the Military District was made by a surveying party headed by John O'Bannon, who landed on the north bank of the Ohio, November 13, 1787, and, notwithstanding much recent and adjacent danger, surveyed fourteen hundred acres for Colonel Neville, which now includes the village of Neville and thus commemorates that fine officer of the Virginia line. The work thus begun continued for several months amid difficulties peculiar to a wintry season and with due regard to the hostile surroundings. What prompted the start at Neville is unknown. But the records of the surveys show that O'Bannon was connected with work for several distinguished soldiers. On November 14, 1787, a survey of one thousand acres that now includes the village of Moscow was made for General Richard C. Anderson and on December 28, 1787, a tract of eight hundred and thirty-nine acres in what is Franklin township was set apart for General George Washington. O'Bannon's service has been much considered in the Ohio Archaeological Reports, and is perpetuated by the stream that marks the northwestern limit of Clermont. It is difficult to adequately impress the people of this day with the conditions that confronted the early map makers. Except for the ancient hills with the stream embracing vales between and a few score of names, the con-
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nections between the past and present geography of the region are mainly determined by the fictitious lines traced through imagined points by the exploring surveyors, whose names musty records seem scarcely less mythical than the fabulous heroes of legendary lore. Yet, our homes and all they imply stand within the circumscription of those first elusive lines of the original surveys that charted the wilderness for civilization.
1787 was a year full of importance for our story. Even before the surveyors began the map for homes yet to come, statesmen such as had only gladdened the dreams of liberty before, were planning a noble prospect for man ; for, as if inspired with a vision not seen but sure to be, the Fathers of the Nation solemnly ordained that the great Northwest should be forever free. Under the auspicious decrees of that Ordinance of 1787, the second Declaration of America, the spirit of migration enlarged the hope of man. The occupation of Ohio undertaken by Virginia thirty-seven years before and generally maintained by her arms was become a question of national anxiety. As the realization seemed in sight, the hope of the cavalier became the object of the pilgrim's pride. While Virginia had kept the region from the Scioto to the Miami to pay the promised bounty to her patriots, the equally deserving soldiers of other less fortunate States moved to secure a similar reward. On June 16, 1783, two hundred and eighty-three officers vainly petitioned Congress to that effect. On March 3, 1786, delegates from the Revolutionary soldiers of New England met in Boston at the Bunch of Grapes Tavern and organized The Ohio Company, with General Israel Putnam President, for the purpose of making a western settlement.
On July 6, to Congress then in session in New York City, Dr. Manassah Cutler as agent for the association presented their proposition for a purchase conditioned upon an acceptable orm of government that should be prescribed. In just one week on July 13, with a satisfaction that included every member of Congress present, that "acceptable form of government," the wisest, the noblest and the most benevolent legislation ever combined in one performance, was accomplished by the famous Ordinance of '87. On July 27th, only
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two weeks later; the negotiations with the Ohio Company for one million five hundred thousand acres of land were confirmed. This purchase of land around the Muskingum valley ranged northward and eastward to the Congress lands of Eastern Ohio. At the same time a subcontract was made that preempted all land westward along the Ohio to the Scioto. The prospects of the Ohio Company of New England, like those of the Ohio Company of Virginia forty years before, were rosy with the spells of hope. Looking backward we can see how the plans of both companies brought the promoters more care than personal profit, and how both toiled for results mainly to be enjoyed by other generations.
On November 23, 1787, at Bracket's Tavern in Boston, the company in convention ordered that the move to the Ohio should begin. On December 3d, the van, as often pictured, started from Ipswich, Mass., westward to Braddock's road to landings whence the wagons and stock could be taken on a second "Mayflower" to a second New England on the Ohio. Others in other wagons followed later. On the cloudy morning of April 7, 1778, the entire company of forty-eight men armed at Fort Harmar and began the foundations of Marietta, and so began the first—no,.the second attempt for the civilization of Ohio. As the offspring of New England, it is but natural that this event should have adventitious importance to that school of historians. The pomp of oratory, the persuasion of rhetoric and the ecstacy of poetic rapture have combined to celebrate that enterprise, until those of little research are apt to forget that there were others who shared their merits and multiplied their achievements.
The longing for land was not limited to the bravest and best. Many schemes were contrived to gain fine tracts that ranged from the tomahawk claims of illegal settlers to grants from foreign courts. To detect and thwart these dubious titles was not less important than the sales to responsible purchasers. The currency was fickle and scarce. Personal safety also hindered individual ventures and required that many should band together. Therefore the government was driven to consider immense tracts at one sale.
In this way John Cleves Symmes, a native of Long Island, a resident of New Jersey, a Lieutenant Governor, a mem-
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ber of Congress, a judge of the Supreme Court of that State, and an active Colonel in the Revolution—all accomplished before his forty-fifth year—petitioned Congress on August 29, 1787, on behalf of citizens westward of Connecticut, who, encouraged by the terms secured to the New England people, prayed that they should have a million acres, on similar conditions, to be granted on the Ohio and between the Little and Great Miami Rivers. Congress directed that this petition should take order from October 2, 1787. A method was thus prescribed along the entire river front of Ohio, whereby a settler could obtain a title for a home, either in the Congress Lands of Eastern Ohio, of the Company, of Symmes, or in the Virginia Military District between the Little Miami and the Scioto, where the land warrants could be located in the order presented. How rapidly this was done, considering that it was brought about on horseback, is proved by a report to the Secretary of War, in which Colonel Harmar states from "Camp at the Rapids of Ohio, June Is, 1787." "Judge Symmes .... is here and has it in contemplation to establish a settlement on the Wabash." Out of this "contemplation" Symmes hurried to the site of future wealth between the Miamis, and then to New York to make his "Association" solid for all that was left of Ohio on the Ohio. We know that he hurried or he could not have done the work between the dates. The discovery of such incidental combinations helps a writer and his reader to feel that there is affinity between now and then.
In all this while, Major Benjamin Stites was, unconsciously perhaps, helping the fates to spin a pretty story, by loading a boat at "Old Fort Red Stone" in the early weeks of 1787, with produce of which, according to the custom of the time, some portion most likely was the then most popular brand of spirits, "Old Monongahela." Landing at Maysville and selling his load at Kenton's Station, now Washington, he would have started east, but an Indian raid for horses allured him to join the pursuit of the retreat that soon crossed the Ohio, followed many miles down the north bank and then went across the hills to the Shawnee towns about the head streams of the Little Miami. Finding the chase hopeless, the partly prudently retreated down stream to the Ohio. De-
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lighted with the scene, Stites determined to make a settlement there and hastened east to urge that arrangement. He arrived in time to help Symmes, with zealous argument, and clinched the decision by bargaining for a ten thousand acre corner by the mouth of the Little Miami. Judge Symmes and Major Stites at once began to persuade their neighbors and to prepare their migration, which because of adjustments with Congress was not undertaken till the next spring.
The conditions not far from the proposed settlements make the intention appear incredible. In April, 1787, a son of Colonel Charles Scott was killed and scalped near his father's home. On May 20, 1787, three family boats or "Arks," loaded with several families each, were decoyed ashore on almost the same sands where Major Rogers and his command were massacred eight years before ; and in the awful butchery that followed not one out of all the families was left to tell the most horrid tale of the Beautiful River. On July 7, 1787, Colonel Harmar reported from the Falls that none would venture up the river and that his letters had been returned because of danger about the Miamis. In the summer of 1786 an Indian band stole thirteen horses from Colonel William Lytle, living within sixteen miles of Lexington. In 1787 they would have taken his stockade but for the timely arrival of sixty helping men. At any time and anywhere from the Scioto to the Wabash and to the Kentucky rivers, death was imminent with no more warning than the flourish of a tomahawk and a glimpse of a swarthy face. The retaliation made in an excursion to the headwaters of the Great Miami under Colonel Edwards was disappointing and only served to in-. crease—if possible—the hatred of the races.
In that year, 1787, by the reports of the County Lieutenants, Kentucky mustered five thousand fighting men and more kept coming. From October to, 1786, to December 9, 1787, three hundred and twenty-three boats carried five thousand eight hundred and eighty-five souls, with two hundred and sixty-seven wagons, eight hundred and thirty-seven cattle, and two thousand seven hundred and fourteen horses by Fort Harmar to Limestone and the Falls. Such was the growth from "one hundred and two guns" in 1777. But on January to, 1788. Harmar, now a general, reported that he
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had ordered all officers commanding posts to put the troops perfectly on their guard to avoid surprise, as his information indicated the open hostility of the confederation under Brant.
The condition thus brought into view displays the weakness of the new Nation in its infancy. The Congress that produced the Ordinance of 1787 had chosen a strong man for its President ; and in their wisdom that President was needed to govern the new Territory they had formed, and that man was Arthur St. Clair. He did not seek the place. He wished not to go. Some have said that this was affected. The reasons for believing his sincerity are as a hundred to one. In large experience, natural endowment and favor of fortune, he was easy among the most accomplished and secure in social dignity. There was much to be missed and little that could be gained from life in the wilderness. He was persuaded by an ideal of duty to accept what his wisdom would have refused. In an evil hour for his quiet, St. Clair consented to leave the society he adorned and be the Governor of the chaos of the Territory Northwest of the Ohio. This happened October 5, 1787. On July 9, 1788, the Goy ernor first came to Marietta. On July 15, civil government was proclaimed, and on June 26, the county of Washington was established, On August 27, Judge Symmes and party reached Fort Harmar on their way to the Miamis. Events began to happen in some places and ceased to happen in others. Trouble with the Indians grew thicker. Major Stites came with his people to Limestone and went among his friends at Kenton's Station. While riving clapboards to take on the boats for the roofs to be made about the mouth of the Little Miami, a favorite nephew helping him was shot to death by an Indian who escaped. And the surveying across the river in Old Clermont ceased for awhile about the same time. Because Judge Symmes' people in the East had some trouble in fixing terms with the agents of the Congress, their people in the West were delayed at Limestone, when they should have been building cabins by the Miamis. Of course, there was suspicion and rumors of a jealousy that feared the western agents would undersell those about the Muskingum, and so put things in the way, which is all forgotten or should be, and, most likely, was not so. But whether
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so or not, Major Stites floated down to his purchase, and, on November 18, 1788, began the settlement of Columbia, with twenty-six people present.
Matthias Denman of New Jersey having acquired a title to an eight hundred acre tract opposite the mouth of the Licking, for about one hundred and twenty-five dollars in specie, and having sold an undivided two-thirds of it to Colonel Robert Patterson and John Filson of Lexington, for the purpose of laying off a town, the people interested came out from Lexington to Limestone; and from there in boats to the number of twenty-six men, to their purchase, on December 28. And that was the beginning of Losantville. Judge Symmes and his party came to North Bend, February 2, 1789, which made four settlements on the Ohio : Marietta, Columbia, Losantville and North Bend. The people by the Muskingum were protected by Fort Harman Why the others were permitted amid the strife around has not been explained. The attacks on the river were, frequent. Captured boats were used to capture others. On July 27, thirty-six soldiers under Lieutenant Peters conveying supplies were attacked near the mouth of the Wabash and suffered a loss of ten killed and eight wounded. A mounted expedition mustered under Colonel Robert Todd and, crossing near the mouth of Eagle Creek, marched through the southeastern part of Old Clermont into Adams county and went by way of Sinking Springs to wipe out the Paint Creek towns. They returned by the same trail with little success, the Indians having made a flight that could not prudently be followed far. Although Colonel Todd had married Jane, the eldest sister of William Lytle, the young hero of Logan's expedition through Brown county two years before, was not in the second campaign. Instead, he took a conspicuously brilliant part in "Grant's Defeat" near Vevay, Ind., of which we are to have an account farther on in Lytle's own words.
Whoever honors this story with a reading must expect frequent mention of St. Clair and Lyle through a number of pages to come; for they had much to do with the founding and settlement of Old Clermont. The Governor came instructed by Congress to omit no effort to treat for peace. After months of baffling tactics, in which the Indians con-
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sumed the most of eight thousand dollars' worth of stores provided for their maintenance, and, after insisting that the settlers should not plant corn in Ohio, a treaty was signed on January II, 1789, from which St. Clair went to New York City, and the Indians went to place their women and children in towns farther north and west along the Maumee and Wabash for the final fight where British help was handy.
On April 30, 1789, St. Clair witnessed the first inauguration of President Washington, to whom, on May 2, he reported the condition of the Territory and the particulars of the treaties. Twelve days later Washington wrote "with concern.' about some murders that had been committed by the Indians on April 23, by Dunkeld Creek near the Monongahela River. This brought the atrocities of the Western War, that was not admitted to be a war by the East, much nearer home. The murderers were assumed to be some remnants of the Shawnees who ought to be intercepted, for the incident was likely to have a bad effect on the late treaty. About the same time St. Clair received several cures for the gout, a bad trouble for one from whom so much activity was required. Yet the months went by in ceaseless effort for needed legislation and much more needed money to buy arms and stores for his Territory, for the President agreed with him that the "banditti must be intercepted." With no reliance but hope, the course was piled with difficulties. The French in Illinois and on the Wabash clamored to retain their slaves, while the poor whites of their own tongue were starving. General Miro, the Spanish Governor at New Orleans, on September 6, 1789, gave forth a proclamation to encourage immigration to the Province of Louisiana (which was everything west of the Mississippi) that would have depopulated the Ohio Valley, but for one stupid blunder inherent in the Spanish nature. That blunder restricted public worship to the forms of the Roman Church. Otherwise, the promise included a homestead of not less than three hundred acres for each family and a free market for every product at New Orleans. With the one testing restriction, the proclamation was made with no acceptance alike from the descendants of the Puritans, the Covenanters, the Cavaliers, the Huguenots, and even the Catholics who had learned the
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benefits of civil and religious liberty. They would accept no less, the bourbon King would not grant that much. But the proclamation disclosed the insidious design to dissolve the Union with discontent.
On October 6, 1789, St. Clair received his instructions from President Washington and also a personal, explanatory letter, in which it was "forcibly observed" that war with the Indians ought to be avoided by all consistent means. Washington had the peculiar art of stating his purpose so that a reason required the desired action. The execution of that order to refrain from force, for it was an order, was much resented in Kentucky. In coming west by Fort Harmar, St. Clair on January 2d reached the settlement of Losantiville, which he renamed Cincinnati, and on January 4th issued the proclamation of the county of Hamilton that then embraced all between the Great and Little Miamis from the Ohio to the new treaty line. From there he hurried to the French towns in Illinois that had been ruined by the disorder following Clark's conquest. While doing all in his power to provide for their want, he "put them in some order on April 27," by proclaiming the county of St. Clair, including about the western half of the present State southward from the Illinois River. On May 1, while at Cahokia, he reported to the Secretary of War from dispatches just received, a series of disasters that broke the eastern illusions of peace. On March 22, Major Doughty, having gone about two hundred and thirty miles up the Tennessee with fifteen men to talk peace, was attacked in great force. Six of his men were killed and five wounded. On the same day, two boats were taken near the mouth of the Scioto. In the midst of the capture, three more boats were seen coming down. These were so closely chased with one of the captured boats for fifteen miles that the crews of two took to the third boat and escaped. One of the four boats lost held twenty-six horses and over six thousand dollars' worth of goods for one firm, besides much other property. On March 12, a boat loaded with salt for Louisville was taken and the crew Oiled, and, on the next day, a man was killed only two and one-half miles from Fort Steuben. With a touch of poetic pathos, St. Clair commented : "We seem to he here in another world that has no
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connection with the one we lately left." The loneliness lie was toiling to cheer found another expression at the close of the long report. "Of what is passing in your quarter, or of the European world, we know as little as the man in the moon. For pity sake, send some newspapers. I never before thought them of any consequence—they will now be a great treat." The western trip included the proclamation of the county of Knox, on June 20, 1790, bounded on the east by the Great Miami, on the west by the new county of St. Clair and on the south by the Ohio. Ref using longer to endure the attacks charged to the Shawnees on the Scioto, who were said to hide along its banks and watch from the hills by its mouth for the coming boats, two hundred and thirty Kentuckians under Colonel Charles Scott crossed the Ohio, on April 30, and rode rapidly along the eastern side of Brown county with the design of striking the Scioto so as to intercept the retreat of the plundering band. Some accounts claim that General Harmar joined in the chase with a hundred soldiers, but it is not probable that he acted against Washington's restraining order. The expedition found only four Indians, who were promptly killed. The rest had gone beyond pursuit.
On August 16, 1790, the Governor officially informed General Butler at Pittsburgh that there was no prospect of peace, and :ailed upon him for sixty men properly equipped. The same notice went to other officers along the border. On August 23 the President approved the plans for the campaign. The war begun at Pickawillany on June 21, 1752, without notice and continued somewhere without ceasing, was thus undertaken by the United States, without declaration and without enthusiasm. On September 3o, General Harmar with three hundred and twenty regulars and with eleven hundred and thirty-three militia under Colonels Hardin and Trotter started from Cincinnati and marched to the Old Chillicothe by Xenia and thence by Piqua and a hundred miles farther to the junction of the St. Mary and St. Joseph Rivers, now represented by the city of Fort Wayne, where the town of Omee was then the chief town of the Miami tribe, and a sort of capital for the various bands of Shawnees and others whc had retired from farther south and east. The Indians
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burned Omee and retreated without offering battle. A large detachment in pursuit burned five other towns and over twenty thousand bushels of corn. With orders to destroy, the militia scattered to plunder and chase those that lured them on. When their time came, the Indians under Little Turtle fell upon and annihilated the unsupported company of regulars. Three days later. October 21. the militia of a second detachment fled from their place and another defeat was suffered. The main purpose of destroying food and shelter was accomplished, but the revenge obtained by the Indians through the disobedience of one party of militia and the panic, not to say cowardice, of another, was extremely distressing. In self-defense, the delinquents threw the blame on General Harmar. A searching inquiry disclosed the truth. But the vindicated General refused to trust his reputation again with those whose love of plunder was stronger than their sense of duty.
The campaigns of 1791 were made more determined from the East by the massacre of twelve people on Sunday, January 2, in their homes at Big Bottom on the Muskingum, thirty miles above Marietta, by a band of some twenty-five or thirty Delawares and Wyandots. A suggestion that the appalling sacrifice was needed to rouse men to action savors of cruel mocking. But there was a fatuous, secure indifference in the East toward western perils. What had happened was far away—too far to be exciting. People foolish enough to go to the Indian Country must expect trouble. The Indians should not be provoked. Besides, the treaties were in force with them, except the very bad, who could not be so many as some thought. Even President Washington wrote that the deprecating banditti was probably no more than two hundred—mostly Shawnees. General Putnam, whose son was among the slain, reported the ,massacre to Congress and to the President. This was awful and much nearer home. The murderers should be apprehended and punished. Governor St. Clair, who was at Philadelphia to confer with Congress and Washington, should have three thousand troops and be vigilant.
Major General St. Clair returned to Cincinnati. The Kentucky Board of War was authorized to do their utmost.
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A force of eight hundred mounted men under General Charles Scott and Colonel James Wilkinson marched from the mouth of the Kentucky on May 23, directly to the Wea village of Ouiatenon on the Wabash, now eight miles below the city of Lafayette. The towns around were burned and a few Indians were killed or captured. A second mounted force of five hundred rifles under Wilkinson, now a General, started on July 20 from Fort Washington and struggled through the swamps and swollen streams of a wet season to Ke-ne-pa-corn-a-qua on the Eel River about six miles up from the Wabash and in the present neighborhood of the city of Logansport, where the usual scenes of burning and wasting with some capturing were enacted. The war was waged for submission or extirpation.
To accomplish this St. Clair's plan was a chain of forts to be maintained over a road to be opened from the mouth of the Licking to the Fork of the Maumee ; that is, from Fort Washington to Fort Wayne. The plan flanked the malign influence at Detroit. With the help promised promptly ready for a summer campaign, the tremendous undertaking would have succeeded. But the Eastern officers did not come till September 7th, and some of their men still later. They came without money And ahead of their stores. The men recruited for the service had yet to be drilled. The militia were equally deficient. It was the first expedition in force under the new government. All that has been told of subsequent frauds in the commissary and quartermaster departments was fully represented in that equipment. The harness was of rotten leather. The chains broke like pewter. The spades and mattocks bent" with the first use. The edge of the axes crumbled with the first stroke on hard wood. The powder was weak and the pork v1/4 as strong. Apparently nothing had been inspected, and anything had been thought good enough for the government by swindlers in the East who deserved hanging as much as the Indians needed shooting. The energy, the ingenuity, the real genius of St. Clair was established by the subsequent investigation beyond all dispute. Scarcely more than two-thirds of the promised force appeared. In September the army built and occupied Fort Hamilton on the site of that city. Fort Jefferson, five miles south of Greenville, in Darke county, was
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made defensible by October 24th. If tie militia had been dismissed till spring and the regulars put in winter quarters all might have gone well. But the orders from the Secretary of War contained this sentence : "The President enjoins you, by every principle that is sacred, to stimulate your operations in the highest degree, and to move as rapidly as the lateness of the season and the nature of the case will possibly admit." With such orders St. Clair moved on. After leaving garrisons for the forts and guards for the trains, only fourteen hundred men were left when the sick general was lifted from his horse, where the army camped, November 3d, on a stream in the southwestern part of Mercer county. The customary orders to prevent a surprise were given. The fatal omission in the performance of the orders was covered by the death of those responsible. The battle that came with the morning is known in mournful memory as St. Clair's Defeat. Stricter attention to orders might have lessened the loss ; but we know now that the movement was ill fated before it left the East. Details of the disaster may be found on a thousand pages ; but no account is just that fails to place much of the responsibility on those who ignored or belittled the power of the Indian country and then urged precipitate action with inadequate means. For every man on the firing line with such a foe, two more were required to maintain the road by which they could be fed and kept in the hostile wilderness and the winter at hand.
St. Clair's army had attempted the impossible. The fact is plainly admitted between the lines of the Congressional investigation that thoroughly vindicated the commanding general. But even more in his favor is found in the fact that "he still retained the undiminished esteem and good opinion of Washington." Additional proof of the sad mistake of all is found in the action of Congress that more than doubled the preparation for the war. Aside from the question of failure, the physical condition of St. Clair made his resignation imperative. A curious but not unusual instance of Washington's thorough method of reaching accurate judgments is found in a paper written by his own hand concerning a new commander. The name of every one possible or proposed for the place was written with "Remarks" keenly but justly stating the character, habits, achievements and probable per-
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formance of each. The result of this searching analysis, that left nothing for personal sentiment or forgetful chance, was the selection of Anthony Wayne, who had been with him in Forbes' expedition to capture the Forks of the Ohio, as a boy of thirteen, thirty-four years before. Four regiments o: infantry and a regiment of cavalry with ample supplies were authorized. In April, 1792, Wayne was appointed "Commander in Chief of the Army of the United States." In May he was "enjoined that another defeat would be inexpressibly ruinous to the reputation of the Government." The only request from Washington was that the campaign should not begin until the "Legion" was filled up and properly disciplined. In June he was at Pittsburgh to organize his army. When the recruits began to arrive they were placed in a camp twenty-seven miles down the river, beyond the reach of whisky : "Which baneful poison is prohibited from entering this camp." The winter passed with constant drill. In January, 1793, the Secretary of War warned Wayne that public sentiment was extremely adverse to a continuance of the Indian War, a peace commission was named and Wayne was again warned against offensive operations. On St. Patrick's Day, when twenty-five hundred men were in the camp, the Indians purposely permitted to be present were astonished by the accuracy of both drill and target practice. In May the force was moved to Camp "Hobson's Choice," by Cincinnati.
With their victory over St. Clair the Indians became more insolent and the white frontier more. deplorable than ever. Amos Wood and. his son were killed across the river from Dover and Major William Riggs lost his life close by the present town hall in Milford. Such was the danger of crossing the border of Old Clermont in 1792-93. Several peace messengers were shot under their white flags. Meanwhile Wayne recruited and drilled without ceasing. Forts Washingtor , Hamilton, St. Clair, and Jefferson were stocked with supplies that had been inspected with a vigor which brought contractors to their knees before a man without mercy for dishonesty. In September, 1793, the Secretary of War ordered Wayne to proceed with all caution as another defeat "would be pernicious in the highest degree." On October 17th, the
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army was advanced. On the same day Lieutenant Lowry with ninety men in charge of twenty wagons loaded with grain and one with stores was attacked about seven miles south of Fort St. Clair, which was about a mile west of Eaton, in Preble county. Lowry and thirteen others were killed, and about seventy horses taken from the wagons so hastily that the grain was left unharmed. The army went into winter quarters at Fort Greenville in Dark( county with much annoyance to the supply trains that came from Cincinnati, eighty miles to the south. In December, 1793, a detachment went forward and on Christmas Day occupied the scene of the great defeat. After gathering the bones of the slain from the ground a fort was built and called Fort Recovery, because the field had been recovered. When word of this came to General Wilkinson, commanding at Fort Washington, he gathered a force of volunteers to finish the gathering and burial of the dead. On June 3oth following, Fort Recovery was the object of a determined attack of a mixed force of Indians and Canadians, that cost the defenders twenty-two killed and thirty wounded.
On July 26th General Scott reached Fort Greenville with sixteen hundred mounted Kentuckians, and two days later the re-enforced army started the march to the junction of the Auglaize and Maumee, where Wayne located a permanent base to which he gave the significant name of Fort Defiance. In pursuance of the policy ordered from the East, Wayne again offered peace. The victorious Little Turtle counseled peace with the "chief that never sleeps." The advice was rejected. An evasive answer was given the messengers. With his chain of eight forts completely supplied and well garrisoned, Wayne marched in perfect order down the Maumee towards the "Fort Miami" that the Governor of Canada had built in that spring and summer on the Maumee, sixty miles south of Detroit, in flagrant violation of the Treaty of Paris. As seen by Americans, the purpose of that fort was to encourage the Indians.
The foremost for battle were the proud Shawnees untamed by the misfortune of seventy years, and the descendants of the peaceful Delawares made malignant by much experience. Every tribe of the North and West was represented because
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of hate or fear or both. But worst of all were the whites who painted themselves a savage hue because they loved wickedness. On August 20, 1794, this implacable force of two thousand Indians and Canadians confronted Wayne's army, where its march was across the path of a tornado, from which the place was called the Fallen Timbers. Through this natural barricade, the quickly formed and thoroughly disciplined lines of battle charged like a "Whirlwind," as the Indians called the commander. The Red men gave way everywhere and could not be rallied. The fugitives fled by the fort and were amazed that the guns were not fired on their foe, and that the gates were not opened for their protection. The woeful conflict of more than forty years for the Beautiful River was finished in one fierce hour. The Battle of the Fallen Timbers, better known as Wayne's Victory, was and remains one of the decisive days in American History. Thenceforth the Ohio flowed unawed by barbarism and unafraid of savagery. The defeated asked for peace and protection. On August 3, 1795, the Treaty of Greenville was dictated by General Wayne to eleven hundred and thirty sachems and warriors. When it was signed, the Indian country on the Ohio passed away forever.
The local results of that victory are the material for the next level to be attained in the progress of this history. Those results should have larger importance for worthy curiosity through even brief allusion to other events of that time. The significance of the chain of forts from the Ohio towards Detroit and the victory won by American arms reached the perception of the British again at war with France. The peace of 1783 had lasted but ten ,years. Before justice should become a necessity, a conclusion was reached to evacuate the forts retained at the close of the Revolution. In the summer of 1796, Wayne had the proud satisfaction of raising the Stars and Stripes over Fort Miami and at Detroit. With that change the defeated but not subdued Indians ceased to hold the Ohio in their minds. They knew that their hunting ground would soon be a land of homes, and they wondered when and where they would wander next. Some even then sought safety beyond the Mississippi and* handed their treasured hatred from sire to son to vex greatly a troubled future, until the
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Plains could be compassed with steam and steel. Kentucky reached the dignity of statehood in 1792, with scant power to restrain the restless spirit, bent on finding or making a way with Spain to the Gulf, until Washington ordered Wayne to post a hindering guard at Fort Massac by the mouth of the Cumberland. But men studied problems then, that found a partial solution fifty years or more later in Mexico, and still farther explanation at Manila and Santiago. The time elsewhere was full of the lurid excitement of the French Revolution. The Reign of Terror reached the infamy of twelve hundred and eighty-five executions by the guillotine in Paris alone in the forty-six days that ended with the beheadal of Robespierre, July 28, 1794, the same day on which Wayne started his final march from Fort Greenville for the victory twenty-three days later that won the Indian country.
The French Revolution may seem far from the land of Brown and Clermont, but we shall find close connections not far ahead. On October 19, 1790, the advance party made the first settlement of the emigrants from France at Gallipolis. In March, 1791, a band from Kentucky, directed by Nathaniel Massie, began a stockade at Manchester, that was occupied by the middle of the month and held through the war without a break, but not without danger. Massie, then twenty-eight years old, had a fair education, much talent and a noble reputation. He was an expert surveyor and had a commission as deputy from Surveyor General Anderson. With no explicit statement, but judging from what happened, the main purpose of Massie's Station, on his part at least, was a secure base and convenient help for locating the land warrants that were confided to his care and skill. The settlements at Marietta, about Cincinnati, at Gallipolis, at Massie's Station and a few people who hunted or raised vegetables under the guns of the protecting garrisons, and a few dispossessed but persistent tomahawk claimants on the Eastern Ohio, constituted the population of Ohio in 1795. Columbia, Cincinnati, and North Bend had a common purpose and a common danger ; and also a common jealousy that was only allayed by the selection of the central one for the site of Fort Washington, which established the supremacy of the Queen City of the Great Valley. Any other attempts, individ-
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ually or by companies, to possess the land were hindered by the fthy ttat followed the reverses at Harmar and St. Clair's Defeat. The settlements then were little more than armed camps to guard the labor that planted and gathered or that fished and hunted. Fort Washington was, for the time, an extensive scientific structure surrounded by at least fifteen block houses from four to twelve miles distant. The total force outside the main garrison in 1791 was four hundred and eighty-five militia. The word militia as used there meant every male of sixteen years and upward, who was obliged under severe penalties to possess a rifle and six flints, a powder horn and half pound of powder, a priming wire and brush, a pouch and one pound of bullets and one pound of buckshot, which were to be carried with ceaseless caution on all occasions, whether to the clearing, at court or in church. The condition.., at Fort Harmar were on a smaller scale, but under the same law. This utmost vigilance was the heavy price of a safety full of recent peril and future danger not to be forgotten or ignored. One-fourth of the militia of Hamilton county perished in St. Clair's Defeat, after which, the bravest cowered before the awful chances of massacre or capture and torture that threatened every venture into the gloomy forest until Wayne's stern retaliation swept the savage fright away. As soon as strength could be renewed men went out to measure and divide the conquest.
CHAPTER VII.
WILLIAM LYTLE.
Homes as a Reward for Dangerous Duty—The Noble Idea_ and the Difficult Practice—The Difficulty Undertaken by Authorized Surveyors—General Massie and His Pupils—General Lytle—Lytle's Personal Narrative—Moving West —Life in a Palisade—The Boy of Fourteen Kills a Buffalo and a Bear—Watching for Indians—A Volunteer When Sixteen—Fighting at Mac-o-chee--The Capture and Murder of Moluntha—Chasing Indians—Grant's Defeat.
Traditions of settlements before 1796 between the Little Miami and Eagle Creek or eastward short of the immediate protection of Massie's Station have curious interest ; but such claims do not stand the test of a patient comparison with established facts. Everything known conforms to the conclusion that there was no exception to the law that based the possession of the land upon military service for Virginia. "Tomahawk claims" based upon regulations to induce settlement were a source of much litigation in Kentucky, but not in Ohio, where there was no legislation for securing titles except by acts of Congress. Under those acts all possession was pre ceded by a survey to fix the limits and secure a record that would perpetuate the reserved rights of the government and those acquired by the purchaser. The warrant for possession of a military tract did not depend upon a residence on the land. That would have been a prohibitory hardship to most of the far away soldiers of the Revolution.
The abstract idea of a broad farm in the land he had won and dedicated to liberty, where the ageing patriot should pass his days amid plenty was as fine and noble as the fruition proved difficult and disappointing. For a dozen years or more after the Revolution, the Indian refused to accept the plan that made him pay the price of patriotism. If the soldier had a home in Virginia, he was reluctant to risk his scalp for another in Ohio ; if he was needy, as was the rule, he could
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ill afford the expense of the long journey and doubtful chances. Therefore many threw their claims upon a broken market, where the fine old parchments were often sold for less than curio seekers are now willing to pay for those rare and faded tokens of long ago heroism, that are more significant of true glory than the grants of William the Conqueror ; although, by the lapse of time and the force of law, their intrinsic value is no more than the yellow leather that bears their honorable inscriptions.
Whoever held such a claim, whether by service or purchase naturally desired to make the best choice possible. The difficulties of a personal inspection were so great that few cared or dared to make the effort. How much Massie knew of this condition must be inferred from what was done. If a shining angel had pointed the way, he could not have acted more directly. Others saw and resolved to share the chance when possible. He was the first and chief who fortified a base within the border of the land that had to be conquered before their chance could expand. The story of that first little fort in the Virginia military lands belongs to Adams county, from which there is no intention of taking, but rather of rendering, tribute. For, the animating influence of that brave beginning circled out and included much good for Old Clermont. The sheer audacity of Massie's move into the Indian country attracted other courageous men whose descendants still maintain the ancient honor of their names. Besides those who came to stay, the cabins of Manchester held two transient youths who were there to study surveying under the expert Massie. One was Duncan McArthur, whose biography is a part of the story of the brilliant governors of Ohio. The other was William Lytle, quite well recovered from the wounds brought from Grant's Defeat. In 1828 amid the luxury of his famous home built near the scene of the boyish adventure of his first landing in Cincinnati, before a tree had been cut, he began a Personal Narrative, which, to the regret of every reader, was not finished. In all the notes and journals that have come from that day, there is no more graphic view of border life and nothing more replete with the spirit of that time. Portions of it fitting the special needs of various writers have been frequently quoted. The purpose of this
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story is best served by presenting all from the first word to the last interrupted sentence.
A foreword about the herdity of his stock will apply in some degree to the Scotch-Irish people who were the frequent companions of his enterprising career. In the struggle of more than a hundred years for the possession and unity of the Ohio Valley, commencing with the massacres in the Alleghanies and culminating in the tragic death of the "The Soldier Poet" at Chickamauga, few names or none have had such continuous or honorable service as is found in the line of Lytle.
All the world two hundred years ago, with Europe in general and Ireland in particular, was not what a self-respecting journal of today would advertise as a desirable residence for anybody but the ruling class ; and even they were obliged to put up with rickety thrones. There was not only a constant scarcity of convenience from pins to dining cars, but also a perpetual presence of vexations, which liberal historians have grouped into a class with the name of tyranny. All improvement in human happiness since then, and, in fact, all before, has been wrought by the dissatisfied. Of this sort, no equal number of square miles of sod has been more productive than the Emerald Isle, where inborn criticism of authority is so inherent that the success of any party is a signal for the opposition to emigrate. Among many who thus lived ill at ease were the Lytles, in Ulster, where they had come in remoter days to practice Presbyterian principles which had been inconvenient even in the glens of Scotland. Finding neither peace nor profit in the rude clash between the zealous faiths of the older Irish and the newer Scotch, one of the family took ship for America. Whether staying with former evils or going to other trials required the firmer nerve is still an open question ; for this happened in 1722, when the first dull George was king for many repenting Anglo Saxons. The emigrant Lytle went to the woods back of Philadelphia, where the winning of the wilderness was one long dirge of toil with frequent appalling interludes by scalping bands:
Amid these strenuous conditions, where gunpowder obtained more care than the form of creeds, a son was born to the transplanted family in 1728, and named William, who be-
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came an Indian fighter by necessity and a captain by royal commission in his twenty-second year. Captain Lytle was not mustered with the main armies of the French and Indian War, but was assigned to the greater hazard of scouting the upper tributaries of the Ohio. A similar duty was performed in the Revolution, in which he was known as a colonel with a reputation at Fort Pitt that made him the leader in 178o, over the thousand fighting Men and their families on sixty-three barges, who met the van of Byrd's Invasion of Kentucky opposite the mouth of the Licking as told in the Narrative,. It must be noted that this is the first authentic presence of white people on the site of Cincinnati. Yet writers not knowing the fact have made much ado about a more recent event. Captain Lytle's share in that migration to the West was the proceeds of his former' home near Carlisle, Pennsylvania, from which he brought three sons, John, born August 8, 1766, William, born September 1, 1770, Joseph, of short life, four daughters and their mother, whose maiden name was Mary Steel.
To the people of Brown and Clermont, counties, of which he was the worthy founder, no fitter introduction seems needful or possible than this
PERSONAL NARRATIVE OF WILLIAM LYTLE.
My father was an emigrant from Cumberland county, Pennsylvania, near Carlisle. In the autumn of 1779 he left home with his family for Kentucky, then a part of Virginia. He did not reach the Monongahela until the winter was too far advanced to allow his descending the Ohio before spring. In company with two men who were bound with their families to the same point, he built three large arks, or, as they were afterwards called, Kentucky boats. The winter proved uncommonly severe and, by suspending the operations of the sawmills in that country, procrastinated their arrangements until the first of April following. By advertisements all the adventurers in that part of the country who were bound to Kentucky were requested to assemble on a large island in the Ohio a few miles below Pittsburgh. It was proposed to remain here until a sufficient force should have assembled to pass with safety amidst the country of savage hostility which lay between them and Kentucky.
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So numerous was the concourse of adventurers to this point that in two days after his arrival sixty-three boats were ready to sail in company. 2, part of these boats were occupied by families ; another by y oung men descending the river to explore the country, and the remaining portion by the cattle belonging to the emigrants.
The number of fighting men on hoard probably amounted to nearly a thousand. My father had been a practiced soldier in the former wars of the country and had been stationed for three years at Pittsburgh. He was, of course, versed in the modes, requisites and stratagems of Indian warfare.
A number of his associates had been trained in the same way. The descending boats were arranged in an order of defense, not, perhaps, entirely according to the technical exactness of a fleet in line of battle. Pilot boats headed the advance. The boats mar ned by the young men sustained each wing, having the family boats in the center and the stock boats immediately in the rear of them, and the rear guard boats floating still behind them. The boats moved with great circumspection, floating onwards, until they were abreast of a place favorable for furnishing range and grazing for the cattle, when they landed and turned them loose for this purpose. While their cattle were thus foraging in the joy of their short emancipation from the close prison on the boats, their owners kept a vigilant watch outside of their range to prevent the savages from assaulting them.
We arrived without molestation at Limestone, now Maysville. Captain Hinkston, of our company, with three or four other families, concluded to remain here. They immediately commenced the customary preparations for rearing cabins. We tarried with them but half a day, during which time a company from our number turned out to hunt in the wild woods. The party killed several buffaloes, and I now for the first time tasted their flesh. At To o'clock the next morning, April 12, 1780, the pilot boats gave signals that the enemy were drawn up in hostile array on the northern, or what was called the Indian shore of the Ohio. Three boats immediately landed in a concerted order half a mile above the foe. It was arranged that half the fighting men should be in readiness to spring to the shore the moment the boats should touch the
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land ; they were then to form and march down upon the Indian encampment. The Indians were encamped opposite Licking, where Front street now intersects Broadway in Cincinnati. Their number did not much exceed 15o, whereas we numbered nearly 500. Discovering a force so much superior moving rapidly upon them, they fled in so much haste and disorder as to leave part of their movables behind them. Our party pursued them four or five miles up what is now called Mill Creek. Some of the Indians were on horseback and they fled faster than their wearied pursuers could follow them on foot.
We returned to our boats and floated unmolested to Beargrass, at the Falls of Ohio. We arrived on the 15th of April. After surveying the vicinity my father selected a place five miles back from the river., It was a large body of land of extreme fertility, and in the center of it was a fine spring. Here he encamped and commenced clearing. In a short time he was joined by more than forty families. In a fortnight they had built as many cabins, in four straight lines, so as to form a hollow square. At the angles were block houses. The cabin doors all opened into the hollow square. In the center of one of the sides, leading to the spring, was a large gateway, and one of the same dimensions to match on the opposite side. The planks of the boats in which they had descended the river were wagoned out from the river to furnish floors and doors for these dwellings. Through the walls were portholes from which, in case of attack, they fired upon the foe.
Thus sheltered and defended, their next object was gardens and fields. A small reserve remained in the enclosure and were stationed on the tops of the houses to survey the scene of operations, and give notice of approaching danger. The new settlement suffered little annoyance till June, when Indian hostilities, manifested in the customary way, broke out on every side. In some instances they were successful in breaking up whole stations, and in others they were severely chastised, as in the expedition undertaken against them by George Rogers Clark.
This punishment restrained them a sufficient interval of peace to enable us to gather in our crops of corn. We witnessed with astonishment the results of a virgin soil that had never been cultivated. The extent of ground cultivated by
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each individual was necessarily small. Some of the settlers had the curiosity to measure the amount of corn gathered from an acre. It ranged from eighty to one hundred and twenty bushels. Most of the immigrants had removed from a thin and barren soii which required assiduous cultivation even for small crops which it yielded. Here the horn of plenty seemed to be emptied almost spontaneously. They had generally come also from a much severer climate. The inclemency of the former winter had led them to prepare for a winter similar to that of the country from which they had emigrated. They made careful and laborious preparations for the severe weather, such as plastering the chasms of their cabins, gathering fuel, etc. But to their agreeable surprise there were but three days that might ght be denominated freezing weather, during the winter. These days were in the middle of January. For the rest the weather exhibited every variety of aspect that all the climates of the world could show, among which were frequent showers, thunder and lightning. This, it will be recollected, was the winter of 1780 and '81. It very much resembled the present winter (1828), except that we have had more cold days and not SO many thunder showers.
In the spring of 1781, realizing the continual exposure of the family and the risk of his fine stock of cattle and horses, my father determined to move farther into the interior of Kentucky. Accordingly, he moved an hundred miles into the interior to Kincaid's Station, near IN here the town of Danville now stands.
That part of the country was filling rapidly with settlers from Virginia, who passed through what was then called the "Southern Wilderness Road." Although we felt ourselves much more secure here than in the position which we had left, the country beginning already to have an interior and frontier, we often experienced annoyance even here. The Indians frequently made inroads as far as to our present station, killing the cattle, stealing horses, and sometimes murdering the inhabitants.
I pass over the expedition of General Clark against the Indians, in which a number of their towns were destroyed, and the severe retaliation which they practiced along with their allies, the British; and also the bloody affair of the Blue Licks,
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and return to matters personal to my father's family. The gloom created by that disastrous conflict was diffused over all he country. All those who were not bound to it by ties of 'wilily made haste to escape from it, and in ten days scarcely more than three hundred effective men were left in the country. But this extreme alarm soon passed away. The settlenents were consolidated by joining the weaker to the itronger. The block houses were more strongly fortified, And the people, attached to their rural abundance and their peculiar ways of life, determined to remain where ,they were and defend themselves to extremities. In the subsequent autumn many adventurers joined us from the old settlements. The army of Lord Cornwallis had just surrendered to General Washington, and the American soldiers and their enterprising officers, disengaged from service by that event, flocked to this fertile wilderness. In the course of the next year we became more formidable than before. Although the Indian war still continued, the security inspired by numbers induced many families that had been painfully cooped up in close stations, to leave their enclosures and to disperse themselves on detached farms over the country.
In 1784 my father moved to Lexington and raised a crop on what are the out-lots of the present town. My father was entitled to a bounty of 3,000 acres of land, a little above the upper Blue Licks, in consequence of services rendered as a captain in what was called the French war. It had been surveyed, but he wished to survey it more accurately. Accordingly, he made all the minute preparations requisite in such cases. I prevailed on him to allow me to accompany him. Accordingly, our party, well mounted, proceeded through the forest for the tract. We took along with us a number of led horses, according to custom in such cases, in order to bring a sufficiency of buffalo meat to serve the family during the subsequent winter. Our travel was laborious, for we were obliged to make our way through a thick canebrake. On the evening of the second day's journey we encamped on what my father believed to be his tract of land.
Our first business was to retrace the lines of the former survey. Our next was to hunt buffaloes and the other wild game of the country for subsistence. I was then fourteen years old,
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and my training in the mode of backwoods life, as Well as inclination and practice, had given me a dexterity and closeness in the use of the rifle equal to the expertest Kentuckian of my years. We saw numerous traces of the animals of our search on every side. We performed an operation for our horses to prevent their escape, technically called in the Western country "hobbling," and with this precaution left them to pasture in the canebrake. We suspended our baggage on the trees, to place it out of the reach of the wolves. We divided into three parties of pairs. My father and myself formed one. We had not advanced more than five miles from the point of separation before we discovered a gang of buffaloes feeding. My father paused, according to the necessary precautions, to observe the direction of the wind, ordering me to get to leeward of them. My orders were to shoot the blackest of the herd behind the shoulders. The expected consequence was that at the report of my gun the herd would turn and make toward him, when he calculated to be able to bring down another as they passed. I obeyed my instructions to the letter ; but in the act of taking aim, scent of me probably reached them. My ball penetrated the body of the animal farther back than I intended, and he ran some distance before he fell. They did not take the direction which my father anticipated, and, although he eagerly pursued them for some distance, he failed in obtaining a shot. I recharged, pursued, and came up with my father, who had halted where the buffalo that I had brought down laid. The remainder of the herd escaped us. The animal was so wounded ghat it would soon die. For convenience thy father determined to remove our camp to the buffalo. I had often killed bears, deer, and turkeys, but never a buffalo before. It may be imagined how much a boy of fourteen would be elated by such an exploit. My father proposed to test my backwoods discipline by requesting me to lead the way through the forest to the camp, distant six miles. I was in the frame of mind to express confidence in my ability to do it, even were the camp distant forty miles. I preceded him at a brisk walk until we came in sight of the camp. I saw a smile on my father's countenance, which I interpreted to be one of approbation of my skill. My father here beckoned me to stand, informing me that it was necessary to take a keen |