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HISTORY OF JEFFERSON COUNTY, OHIO - 17 CHAPTER I. BY J. H. S, TRAINER AND W. M. TRAINER. THE INDIAN OCCUPATION - THE RESIDENT TRIBES AND THEIR CHARACTERISTICS - NOTED CHIEFS - EARLY TREATIES, ETC. NY reliable data that can be obtained as to the race of people inhabiting what now constitutes the state of Ohio, does not go back earlier than the middle of the seventeenth century. Then the territory between Lake Erie on the north, and the Ohio river on the south, was a great wilderness covered with deep and trackless forests. So far as can be learned no Indian villages dotted this region. Tradition tells us of a powerful Indian nation now spoken of in history as the Eries. Their permanent location was along the northern and southern shores of Lake Erie. They enjoyed absolute possession of the territory as far south as the Ohio river. In 1655, the arrogant Five Nations of northern New York, after successively driving the Hurons or Wyandots and the Neutral Nation, as far west as Lake Superior, fell upon the Eries on the shores of Lake Erie, and the Andantes in the Allegheny and upper Ohio valley, completely routed and defeated each, and thus by conquest became the rulers of what is now eastern Ohio. And so by the year 1700, we find bands of the Iroquois or Five Nations roaming over its territory, hunting and fishing, and ever ready to engage in fierce dispute and warfare with any invading bands in the possession they had so hardly won. What finally became of the once powerful Eries is unknown, but their unity as a great Indian nation was destroyed by the Iroquois invasion of 1655, and doubtless those who escaped united with the Catawbas, to the south and the Kickapoos and Shawnees to the west. However, the land lying along the western banks of the Ohio was never occupied permanently by any one tribe to the exclusion of all others. Taylor says: " In Ohio, the Indian was a temporary sojourner — not linked to the soil as the Six Nations to the Long House, between Niagara and the Hudson." Thus the upper Ohio valley was the scene of many Indian battles between bands from different tribes. And these contests, unrecorded, have left no trace behind them except the story of fierce combat 18 - HISTORY OF THE UPPER OHIO VALLEY. which is told by the finding at many places throughout this region of many flint arrow and spear heads. Many years ago the writer of this found on a farm directly west of Steubenville, over 200 flint arrow and spear heads. Bands of fierce Iroquois would descend the Ohio, and without a moment's warning, destroy any bands that had dared to locate on its pleasant shores. Sometimes to these shores would come the Catawbas, from the river of that name in North Carolina. The Catawbas were known as being very adventurous and courageous. Withers, in his Border Warfare, speaks of tradition that existed among the Delawares, which shows with what cunning and stratagem some of these conflicts were carried on. A party of Catawbas had traversed the valleys of Virginia, and proceeded north of the Ohio river. Coming near a Delaware village without their presence being known, they skillfully arranged an ambush. During the night they had sent some of their warriors around the Delaware camp with Buffalo hoofs fixed to their feet. In the morning, the Delawares seeing the tracks started in pursuit of the supposed game. The Catawbas, from their hiding place, rushed upon them, killing some and putting the rest to flight. The Delawares collected a large number and started in pursuit of the Catawbas. But they had brought with them rattle snake poison corked up in a piece of cane stalk. Into this they had dipped small reed splinters and set them up along their path of retreat. Many Delawares became poisoned by treading and they turned in retreat to their camp again. The Catawbas then turned upon their former pursuers and killed and scalped many of them. No one tribe has left its impress or acted its history for any length of time upon this region. To its forests would come in the summer months bands of Indian hunters, for the most part from the Five Nations, who would return to their substantial and permanent habitation as winter came on, along the Allegheny river and in New York. Nor would they return empty-handed, for the forests were full of game of all kinds and the river and creeks were teeming with fish. And so along the banks of the Ohio the early white explorers failed to find traces of rude attempts at Indian agriculture. No sites of old Indian towns are found along its shores with the exception of Logs- town and the Indian villages at Mingo. This region was once a great hunting ground, the next a battle field. Here were fought battles more sanguinary than any told in the old world's history. For the sun of victory went down upon one side utterly annihilated those escaping death in the fierce conflict meeting it at the torture stake or in running the gauntlet. Throughout the valley the only sounds of human habitation were the weird chant and savage war-whoop, the din and tumult of battle and the song of victory. Though the Iroquois were possessors of this region by conquest, they never took actual permanent possession of it, nor did the tribes west of the Ohio concede their claim to the land west of the Ohio. By their invasion in 1655 they had conquered and subjugated the tribes along Lake Erie's shores and the Allegheny valley, but west of the Ohio and the Miami rivers they were acknowledged as conquerors. JEFFERSON COUNTY, OHIO - 19 The Five Nations in 1712 became the Six Nations by taking, in the Tuscarawas tribes. The warring tribes, occupying all of the eastern half of Ohio at least, finally concluded a mutual peace in 1755 by the burying of the hatchet by the Senecas and Wyandots at the Seneca capital in the Tuscarawas river. The story of this event is as follows: From each tribe twenty braves were selected to contend in single combat. The fierce struggle took place with all the members of each tribe as spectators. It lasted from morning until evening when but one warrior out of the forty was living. He was a Seneca. His father, the grand sachem of the tribe, stepped up to his side and buried his tomahawk in his brain. The forty warriors were buried in one grave, and peace was declared between all the warring tribes. Doubtless the knowledge of the approach of one to whom all were hostile, was influential in bringing this about. Settlers from Virginia and eastern Pennsylvania were encroaching upon their hunting grounds. The different tribes had fought side by side with the French when Braddock had been repulsed on his march to Fort Du Quesne. The French had doubtless been influential in bringing the different tribes together. They were friendly always to them. De Clown had descended in 1749 on an exploring expedition down the Ohio river burying at different points leaden plates with inscriptions on them taking and claiming possession of the Ohio and its tributaries in the name of his sovereign Louis XV. of France. They based their claims on their being the discoverers of the Mississippi river and their assumption of possession over all the land whose waters emptied into that river. Thus they claimed that vast region lying between the St. Lawrence river and the lakes on the north and the Mississippi and Louisiana on the south. When the treaty of peace, 1748, was signed, at Aix La Chapelle, between France, England and Spain, it was strangely silent on the matter of dispute in the colonies, namely, the claim of France to this region between Lake Erie and the Ohio river. Virginia's claim to the northwest territory was based on charters granted it by James I. of England, bearing date of April t, 1606, May 23, 1609, and March 12, 1611 . In 1748 a number of gentlemen of Virginia and Maryland formed the Ohio Company which petitioned the king of England to grant them 500,000 acres of land principally on the south side of the Ohio river. This petition was approved and the governor of Virginia was ordered-to grant the same to the new company. The grant, however, seemed to have contained permission for the company to take territory north of the Ohio river if expedient. Christopher Gist, a surveyor, and one familiar with the woods, in behalf of the company, made a journey, 1750, which extended over much of eastern Ohio lying between the Muskingum and the Ohio river. In 1753, Gist and George Washington, then a colonel in the Virginia militia, made a trip down the Ohio river to Logstown and from there to Venango and other French forts. These remonstrances 20 - HISTORY OF THE UPPER OHIO VALLEY. of Washington against the French erecting a chain of forts from the Canadian lakes to the Ohio river were in the main unsatisfactory as to results. This trip of Washington doubtless included a survey by him of some of the territory gone over by Gist in 1750 as well as for the purpose of inquiring into the occupancy of land by the French which Virginia claimed. From this time until the treaty made by Col. Bouquet with the Indians at the Muskingum capital, 1764, no settlements were made along the Ohio. Those years were years of privation, terror, and death to the settlers west of the Allegheny mountains. But the French had abandoned Fort Du Quesne, in 1758, on the approach of the English under Col. Forbes. A new fort was erected and named Fort Pitt in honor of the great English statesman and minister. The French had also been driven or had abandoned all of the remaining forts which had been erected for the purpose of enforcing their claims over this section, and now the English were actual possessors of the Ohio valley. The Indians did not cease hostilities until Col. Bouquet made his brilliant campaign against them, punishing them with great slaughter at the battle of Bushy Run, and forcing them to sue for peace by his aggressive march into their own land and stronghold along the Muskingum. Thus comparative peace reigned along the Ohio until the breaking out of Lord Dunmore's war in 1774. It might be well to trace the various treaties relating directly and indirectly to eastern Ohio's occupancy from that at Lancaster in 1744 to the final purchasing treaty by the United States in 1795 at Greenville, Ohio. At Lancaster, Penn., in 1744, a treaty was made with the Iroquois and Delaware Indians by which they ceded all their lands in Virginia to the king of England. This was the first treaty relating to the cession of land in Ohio, as Virginia, as mentioned before, claimed said territory to be within its boundaries according to royal grants. At Logstown, Christopher Gist, as agent of the Ohio Company, Col. Frye and two other commissioners, in behalf of Virginia, entered into a treaty with the Delaware Indians there in which the Indians agreed not to molest any English settlements on the southeast bank of the. Ohio. At this conference, however, one of the old chiefs present claimed that the Lancaster treaty did -not cede any land west of the first range of hills east of the Allegheny mountains for the reason that the Indians at the Lancaster treaty did not know that Virginia's claims extended west of the mountains. This treaty bore no fruit. Braddock's war soon followed, as spoken of before, then came the abandonment of the French forts, and by the year 1760. the French had given up all claims to the Ohio valley. In this year Gen. Monckton made a treaty at Fort Pitt in which the Indians again agreed to allow the English to build posts in the land west of the Ohio. The English though in possession of the northwest region, failed to treat the Indians with the tact and diplomacy shown by the French in their intercourses with them. Indian discontent culminated in the Pontiac conspiracy in 1763, the history of which is well known. The JEFFERSON COUNTY, OHIO - 21 Indians of the Ohio valley who took part in the ravages extending along from 1754 to 1764, were finally subdued and awed into peace by the decisive actions of Col. Bouquet. By the Bouquet treaty of 1764, eighty-one men and 125 women and children who had been held as prisoners by the Indians, were returned to their homes, and the first armed invasion of Ohio territory was so ably conducted as to produce peace and quietude along the Ohio border for ten years. The wanton massacres at Captina creek in Belmont county, and that at Baker's house, opposite Yellow creek, in Jefferson county, if not the main causes, had much to do undoubtedly in inciting the Indians to engage in what was called Dunmore's war. This war was terminated by the treaty of Camp Charlotte, in what is now Pickaway county, in November, 1774. All that the colonists obtained by it was a cessation of hostilities and the return of prisoners. And it has been urged by historians that the agreement relating to the return of prisoners was not faithfully performed. Justly has Lord Dunmore been accused of treachery in this war and in this treaty, for by his action as seen now, his course seems to have been shaped looking to an alliance with the Indians against the colonists in the war, the mutterings of which were already heard through the colonies even to the borders. During the first years of the Revolutionary war, the Indians along the western border were for the most part neutral, although the British agents were using every effort to stir up the tribes against the colonists. Fortunate, indeed, was this for the infant government, for all the troops were needed in the east to give battle with the legions sent over by England. The Oneida and Tuscarawas Indians in New York, were induced to remain passive through the influence of the missionaries Samuel Kirkland and James Dean. Zeisberger, by his timely colonizations on the Muskingum river, in Ohio, in 1772, was very influential three years after in removing the keystone of a hostile league of all the tribes from the Cherokees to the Chippewas against the struggling colonies. Through his efforts the Delawares were friendly to the colonies until a later period when the colonies were more able to withstand them. The espousal of the American cause by France, was also a potent factor in restraining for a time general hostilities on the part of the western tribes. In April, 1776, Col. George Morgan was appointed an Indian agent by the new government, with headquarters at Fort Pitt. To his judicious and conciliatory course towards the Indians, much of the credit is due that a general outbreak did not occur along the border sooner than it did. But the atrocious murder of Cornstalk, who was friendly to the colonists, while on a friendly visit to the fort at Point Pleasant, in 1777, so enraged the Shawnees that the western border once more became the scene of blood and carnage. Many of the scenes of the Border war of the Revolution will be found in another chapter. Throughout all that dark period, the British were the active agents in stirring up the fires of hatred and revenge in the Indian heart. The provisional peace negotiations at Paris in 1782, was the means of withdrawing this 22 - HISTORY OF THE UPPER OHIO VALLEY. influence, and from that time Indian ravages along the Ohio valley gradually ceased. The treaty of peace of Paris was finally proclaimed in 1783, and by it the claim of the English monarchs to the northwest territory was ceded to the United States. Most of the land was still claimed by different states under old charters and grants. Jefferson county comprised part of what was claimed by Virginia. That state, in 1784, ceded to the United States all her rights and title to that district lying northwest of the Ohio river. The general government now possessed the northwest territory, both by right of conquest and by right of grant. This land was justly the property of the government, but rather than enforce the possession of it with the sword, the policy of extinguishing by treaty the Indian claims, was adopted. October 27, 1784, at Fort Stanwix, in New York, a treaty was made with the sachems and chiefs of the Six Nations by which the western boundary of the Six Nations was located so as to extend along the west boundary of Pennsylvania, from the Oyounayea to the Ohio river. At Fort McIntosh, which was at the mouth of the Beaver river, Pennsylvania, January 21, 1785, a treaty was made with the Wyandots, Delawares, Chippewas and Ottawas, by which the boundary line between the United States and the Wyandots, and Delaware nations was declared to begin " at the mouth of the river Cuyahoga, and to extend up said river to the portage between that and the Tuscarawas branch of the Muskingum, thence down that branch to the crossing place above Fort Laurens; then westerly to the portages of the Big Miami, which runs into the Ohio, at the mouth of which branch the fort stood which was taken by the French in 1752; then along said portage to the Great Miami and down the south side of the same to its mouth, then along the south shore of Lake Erie, to the mouth of the Cuyahoga river, where it began." The treaty at Fort Finney, at the mouth of the Great Miami, in 1786, was with the Shawnees, and related to their relinquishment of lands in the southwestern part of Ohio. The treaty at Greenville, Ohio, in 1795, between Gen. Anthony Wayne, and eleven of the most powerful of the northwestern tribes, confirmed the boundary line of the Fort McIntosh treaty, and extended it westward from Laramie's store to Fort Recovery, in Mercer county. By this treaty the United States gave to these tribes $20,000 in presents, and an annual allowance of $9,500. The grants of reservations in these different treaties to the Indians were extinguished by subsequent purchase by the United States. Other treaties, also, during the Revolutionary period, were made, but none of them brought about any definite result, and it is unnecessary to cite any of them in this chapter. The Indians who occupied the upper Ohio valley after the Senecas and Wyandots buried the hatchet in 1755, were Senecas, Wyandots, Delawares and Shawnees, though the Delawares and Senecas were JEFFERSON COUNTY, OHIO - 23 more numerous in this region than any others. They were all either portions or allies of the Six Nations or Iroquois. The name "Mingo" is often applied to them, and is the word by which they are generally designated now. This word as thus often applied, is to a certain extent misleading. There never was a tribe known as the " Mingoes," as in distinctions to the Senecas or some other tribe. The term Mingo was given to any of the Six Nations who had left their permanent homes and hunting grounds of their forefathers in New York, and were roaming at will over the region west of the Allegheny mountains. The English word corresponding to it is emigrant. The Mingoes were, therefore, members of the Iroquois nation who had left home. Logan, the Mingo chief, was a Cayuga, according to tribal name. Around the name of this striking and illustrious chief, most of the Indian history of this valley centers. In another part of this work will be found a full history of his life and death. Traditions and story have served to tell us much of the habits and nature of the Indian of the earlier days. Their chief aim was to become great warriors, and to that fulfillment the early training of the youth was the practice of those arts that would make them strong and skillful his stolid indifference to torture. While meeting his death at the stake or when suffering torture previous to it, no amount of physical What excites our greatest admiration in the Indian character was in the use of weapons. pain could force a groan from his lips, but his last breath would carry a sneering taunt to his persecutors. Early history is full of examples of their eloquence and oratory, persuasive and effective. Before going on the war-path, they would hold their war feast and after singing the war songs and dancing their war dance they would depart from the villages in single or Indian file as it was called, the chief leading the way. They would generally step in one another's tracks, so that an enemy crossing their trail could not tell how many were in the war party. Their conflicts were carried on not in open combat, but from behind trees and logs, exposing as little of their body as possible. The ambush and sudden attack from cover was their favorite method of attacking the enemy. They showed a high degree of cunning and strategy in misleading the enemy. In their movements through the trackless forests, they moved with a silence equalling that of the stealthy panther, avoiding the breaking of a twig or the turning of a leaf. Equally skillful were they in tracking the foe by means of these marks. Imitating with wonderful skill the cries and calls of the beasts and birds of the forest, they signalled to one another at great distances. As a nation the American Indian is perhaps the truest example of open-handed hospitality that can be found in the pages of history. They would deprive themselves of food and clothing to feed and clothe the hungry and naked. To them this was a duty of humanity, not to be shown to friends and relatives alone, but to whoever stood in need of succor and aid. But let them look upon one as an enemy, and they looked upon them without mercy. They never forgot an 24 - HISTORY OF THE UPPER OHIO VALLEY. injury and the desire for revenge once aroused in their breast, never from lapse of time lost any of its fierceness or malignity. Though all the drudgery of the domestic life fell to the lot of the squaw, since it was unbecoming in a warrior to engage in such labor, yet they respected the marriage relations; and many incidents could be cited showing the deep-seated affections of the warrior to his wife. Unusual respect and deferences were shown to the opinions and desires of the aged, and in all their social and political relations the Indian warrior gave precedence to his elder. In this direction the present age might cull a valuable lesson from the untutored savage. Their religious belief consisted for the most part of a heaven which was called "The Happy Hunting Grounds," where they would go after death. At the burial of a warrior his arms and weapons were placed beside his form. The God of their creation was the Great Spirit, who ruled their destiny in this life, punishing the wicked and rewarding the deserving. That there was a strong religious bent in their mind, is fully proven by the success of the early missionaries among them. Their governing power that decided any question of moment was the council of the sachems and chiefs, and the inflexible rule was the will of the majority. One peculiar feature of their civil polity, was the adoption of captives. Many a white prisoner's life was saved by this means; and after being formally adopted, and faith in the adopted being established in the Indian mind, he enjoyed all the rights and privileges of a member of the tribe. The Indian character was full of superstition and great faith was placed in omens and dreams. Such, to a great extent, were the marked characteristics of the Indians before the influence of the white man on him began to assert itself. Would we not be harsh in our judgment if we criticised too severely his warfare on the pale face. Were there not strong motives in his breast to actuate him to deeds of cruelty, revenge and treachery, when too often under the influence of "the strong drink of the stranger" he bartered away his ancestral possessions for a mere bauble, a string of beads or a copper ring? Did the pale face universally show him that kindness and honest dealing, that the Indian would expect naturally from the followers of religion, such as was preached to him by the Jesuit and Moravian missionary? In all that constitutes that dark and bloody picture called " Border Warfare," there was too much of treachery and deceit on each side. We think both Indian and settler were too much to blame in one respect especially. The revenge for the murder of an Indian by a white man was visited on all whites alike irrespective of responsibility, and the same was true of the murder of a white by an Indian. Let us take a rapid survey of the tribes identified with eastern Ohio and the part some of them took in the Indian and Revolutionary war. The Senecas were the most numerous, warlike and powerful of the Iroquois nation. They were looked upon by the Other Iroquois tribes as the defenders against hostile tribes coming into the domains of the Great Confederacy from the east. They were proud and arrogant, claiming superiority over all other tribes; especially the Delawares, JEFFERSON COUNTY, OHIO - 25 whom they claimed to have subdued to the state of " women " by conquering them by force of arms. In the upper Ohio valley the Delawares were the most numerous. Their principal settlements were along the Muskingum river, and they were the first Ohio Indians to embrace Christianity. In their own tongue they were called Lenni-Lenape and were looked upon as the original tribe whence sprung all others. The Monsey branch of this tribe was the one that occupied Ohio along the latter half of the eighteenth century. During Dunmore's war they remained neutral and used all their influence to avert it. For the greater part of the Revolutionary war they were neutral and rendered the colonies valuable service by checking for some time a general outbreak on the western border. Netawatues, at the time of the Revolutionary war, was an aged Delaware sachem, was always friendly to the colonists, and on his death in 1776, he urged his tribe to remain neutral. Gelelemena or Killbuck became temporary chief of the Delawares after the death of Netawatues, and he and White- Eyes, one of his principal advisers, were friendly to the Americans and were very influential in their opposition to the designs of Captain Pipe, another Delaware chief, who was at the head of the war party. So the Delawares remained friendly and neutral until 1780. Gelelemena, during his career, received the rank of colonel from the Americans. The Wyandots that inhabited eastern Ohio in the eighteenth century were doubtless descended from the powerful tribes which had been driven off by the Iroquois invasion, 1655. They claimed the sovereignty over the territory from Lake Erie to the Ohio river. They were at war nearly all the early half of the eighteenth century with the Senecas until these two tribes buried the hatchet in 1755. They were on the war path most of the time, and were very active in stirring up the other tribes against the colonies in the Revolutionary war. They were the bravest of the Indian tribes. To them flight in battle, no matter how large was the opposing force, was a disgrace. It is related that Gen. Wayne at one time asked Capt. Wells who had lived a long time among the Wyandots, if he could bring him a Wyandot prisoner, as he wished to obtain some information. Wells answered that he could not take a prisoner from Sandusky, because Wyandots would not be taken alive. The Shawnees, according to Gen. Harrison, were originally natives of Alabama, but were driven north by a powerful enemy. This tribe has been styled the Bedouins of the American Wilderness. They were brave and warlike, showing these marked characteristics in a degree similar to the Wyandots. They were the Spartans of the western tribes. Some of their tribe occupied the Muskingum valley, but they were more numerous along the Scioto. They were among the earliest to ally themselves with the British against the Americans. Four of their villages were destroyed in the attack on Waketameki, in Muskingum county, in Lord Dunmore's war. They took part with the Wyandots and Mingoes in the attack on Fort Laurens, in Tuscarawas county, in 1777. But to their credit be it said that during the famine 26 - HISTORY OF THE UPPER OHIO VALLEY. in the winter of 1781-2, the Shawnees of the Scioto rendered valuable aid and assistance to the Moravians on the banks of the Sandusky in remembrance of similar kindness done them thirty years .before in the Wyoming valley. The Shawnees, Wyandots and Mingoes, fought side by side in many battles. They formed the greater part of those at the battle of Sandusky plains, when Crawford was so disastrously beaten. One of the most noted of the Shawnees, whose history is connected with border warfare along the Ohio, is Cornstalk. He was then sachem and chief. It was mainly due to his fertile mind that the plan of the battle of Point Pleasant was adopted. By the method of alternately advancing and retreating the great loss of life to the whites was mainly occasioned. At that battle Cornstalk was always at the head of his warriors animating and encouraging them by voice and action. Logan was equal with Cornstalk in command at this battle and was his fitting equal in daring and bravery. Cornstalk was endowed with more than ordinary intellectual sagacity and talents. At first he opposed the battle at Point Pleasant, but as a majority of the council favored war, he lent all his energy and talents toward victory. He, with his son Ellinipsico, and Red Hawk, one who had battled by his side at Point Pleasant, and some other Indians were wantonly murdered at the fort in the summer of 1777. He had voluntarily gone there to announce his opposition to the alliance then forming between the western tribes and the British. When the murderers came to the door where the Indians were, Cornstalk's son showed signs of fear. Observing this, Cornstalk said, " Don't be afraid my son, the Great Spirit sent you here to die with me, and we must submit to His will it is all for the best." Thus perished Cornstalk, a man of noble and commanding presence, of true nobility of soul, a chief among chiefs, dignified and royal in his bearing, an eloquent orator, one who may truly be called " great." |