50 - STORY OF THE MAUMEE VALLEY here and there and openings sparsely clad with oak. The territory, comparatively level, contained impenetrable swamps and marshlands. There were forest covered, low undulating hills and ridges running here and there with the watercourses; all of which with the densely wooded slopes and higher levels, produced a wondrous beauty and loveliness. Whoever he was, the first white man to ascend the Maumee or the Sandusky from the lake with his savage companions, found the waters of a much higher mean depth than now. The river banks were bordered with brushwood, the great forests reaching back with interminable depth. The silence, broken only by the denizens of the wilds and now and then by the whoop of an Indian, must have been awe inspiring. While the smoke curled aloft from the Indian camp-fires along the banks, there were at this earliest period no evidences of village permanency or possibly cultivated fields. As the canoe glided on its way, upon its approach, deer and elk slaking their thirst were observed vanishing into the wilds from the river's edge, while buffalo standing in the mire of the shallow water, slowly took their way around a point of ridge. Bear might have been seen walking along the paths of the ridgelands, with wolves skulking here and there to cover. Buzzards overhead were circling to locate the carcass of some wild life whose end had been a tragedy. Eagles were high in the blue and many song birds known today, minus those which follow only civilization, were pouring forth their carols to an unappreciative audience. And who was the first white man upon either of these watercourses? No one knows. It may have been La Salle. Upon his mission when he discovered the Ohio in 1669 or 1670, from Canada he probably crossed around the foot of Lake Erie to Chautauqua Lake, and to the headwaters of the Ohio, and thence down this "River Beautiful." He may have returned up the Great Miami, crossed from its headwaters to the Maumee and down to the lake. Again it is possible that he came up the Scioto and down the Sandusky and followed the south shore of Lake Erie to intersect his downward route. Two years of his exploits on this journey were lost, the most important to Ohio. The remarkable Champlain may have been the first white man to have visited the south shore of Lake Erie, but it was probably Etienne Brule. An authority says, "Champlain, possessed of religious zeal as well as adventurous ambition, a few years after his settlement of the St. Lawrence, had invited the TOLEDO AND THE SANDUSKY REGION - 51 French Recollects, a reformed branch of the Franciscan Monks, to join his explorations and establish missions among the savages who were 'living like brute beasts, without law, without religion and without God.' The Gray Friars, as the Recollects were called, landed in 1615. They soon found the field too vast for their order and the Jesuits were brought to their aid. This latter society, the most marvelous auxiliary of the Roman Church for the propagation of Christianity in all the heathen portions of the world, established its order at Quebec in 1625, and sent its teachers and preachers wherever it was possible for them to penetrate among the copper-colored nations of the New World.' " Champlain founded Quebec in 1608. He went among the Hurons at their villages on Lake Huron and was with them some months in the year 1615. His map of this lake region shows that he had at least some knowledge of the contour of the south shore of Lake Erie and in winter may have traveled its course.. More likely he gained his knowledge from Brule and the savages. For as Champlain relates, the Eries were visited by Brule in the summer of 1615, as noted heretofore in the story of the Erie Indians. His purpose was to have the Eries join the French against the Iroquois. In this journey, it is believed Brule landed on the south shore of Lake Erie. The fur traders and missionaries were rivals in their persistent efforts to penetrate all the new and undiscovered regions. The Canadian fur trade had been made a monopoly, being controlled by the companies organized and chartered in France; only those holding stock or being properly authorized, could legitimately buy and sell peltries. This attempted monopoly produced outlaw traders Called coureurs de bois. They were adventurous rovers, wilderness rangers, penetrating deep into the forests over a wide territory, engaging in illegal traffic with the Indians. The first and most notorious of this class was Brule. He was bold and ingenious and adopted the mode of life and dress of the savage, the better to gain their confidence and favor. With his mercantile exploits, he became also a noted interpreter and ambassador among the tribes for Champlain and others of his French kindred. Scores, perhaps hundreds, followed Brule's initiative and struck into the forests. They were merged into the habits of the savage, selected mates from among the Indians, introducing Celtic blood among the red race. Some of these outlaw French traders became even more degenerate than the aborigine 52 - STORY OF THE MAUMEE VALLEY in their habits and cruelty. It was long before they were brought under control, in the time of Frontenac. Concerning them Parkman wrote as follows: "Out of the beaver trade rose a huge evil, baneful to the growth and morals of Canada. All that was most active and vigorous in the colony took to the woods, and escaped from the control of intendants, councils and priests, to the savage freedom of the wilderness. Not only were the possible profits great; but in the pursuit of them there was a fascinating element of adventure and danger. The bushrangers or coureurs de bois were to the King an object of horror. They defeated his plans for the increase of population, and shocked his native instinct of discipline and order. Edict after edict was directed against them; and more than once the colony presented the extraordinary spectacle of the greater part of its young men turned into forest outlaws. But severity was dangerous. The offenders might be driven over to the English, or converted into a lawless banditti—renegades of civilization and the faith. Therefore, clemency alternated with rigor, and declarations of amnesty with edicts of proscription." These coureurs de bois were probably among the first whites upon the Maumee and Sandusky, along with French missionaries and explorers. Jesuit priests, from France by way of Canada, were along the Maumee about 1670, according to the journal of Captain William Trent. The thread of this narrative concerning the progress of exploration and advancement toward civilized occupancy of the Maumee and Sandusky valleys will be taken up again after an outline story leading up to the appearance in the Lake Erie region of Champlain and Brule. It is almost impossible to realize how little was known about this globe by its occupants, mankind, only four centuries ago. It seems that in the great plan of creation and development, the time had arrived when the New World heretofore uncharted and unknown, was ready to receive civilization. At least in the later years of the fifteenth century and in the early part of the sixteenth, came the great era of discoveries by the Europeans. The world was believed to be a flat disc by ancient men of thought, encircled by the visible horizon. This is known as the "pancake theory." A later theory advanced was the "floor theory" by which the earth was described as a level parallelogram the longer distance being east and west as related to the narrower distance north and south. Lengthwise this floor was TOLEDO AND THE SANDUSKY REGION - 53 measured off by the geographers and called "longitude" and the crosswise, narrower measurement termed "latitude." It was when the globe theory was put forth, that the earth was a sphere, that the wave of discovery swept over Western Europe. Navigators believed that by sailing west over the heretofore unknown waters, they could reach Cathay and Cipango—China and Japan. The story, a long one, briefly referred to following, tells of the feverish desire of adventurers to cross this unbridged span, and born of the same quality possessed by the navigators of the air at the time this narrative is written. The result was that Columbus sailed away and after some seventy days "stumbled upon the islands of the new world, the West Indies." And how far from the facts were the beliefs of these early adventurers and discoverers as to what they had found. Columbus when he first landed believed he had reached the India of the East. After his other voyages and the voyages of the Cabots, both Columbus and Sebastian Cabot died without knowing that they had discovered a new continent. They believed they had reached Cathay on the opposite side of the globe. When Champlain about a hundred years later reached Lake Huron, he thought he gazed upon the waters of the Pacific. And when La Salle started on his voyage to the Ohio he believed that it flowed into the Gulf of California. Such were the absurdities of the early explorers. With the founding of Jamestown in 1607 by the English, the establishment of the French Gibraltar, Quebec, a year later by Champlain, coupled with the first of them all, the Spanish discoveries, the contest for American soil, which finally involved withal the Maumee and the Sandusky valleys, began in earnest. Spain soon dropped out of the running, but the struggle for supremacy between the French and English was a long one resulting in favor of the latter and finally in the birth of a new republic of which Northwestern Ohio is a part. But the British held to this coveted, rich region with a tenacious grip until she was compelled to surrender by force of arms; not settled until the War of 1812, the time from which real American independence dates. With Spain gradually relinquishing her rights, with the English approaching surely westward from the Atlantic, with the French coming in from the St. Lawrence region and the north, naturally the meeting of such two great forces with opposite interests, meant a collision. The Spaniard being first on the ground, her story starts first. 54 - STORY OF THE MAUMEE VALLEY Spain claimed by right of discovery all of the North American continent and most of South America. Under this claim naturally all of now Ohio including the Maumee and Sandusky valleys would belong to Spain. But as she based her rights upon this discovery and wholly upon a "concession in perpetuity," made by Pope Alexander VI (himself a Spaniard, by the way), and never having settled in the northern regions, France and England never considered her rights as a serious menace to their ambitions. However, it involved one of the most noted documents ever issued, and had the geography and extent of the two Americas then been known, Spain probably would have put forth her claims at least in a modified form. When Columbus returned and gave an account of his marvelous discoveries and of the dire hardships of his voyage to Ferdinand and Isabella, these "sagacious and pious sovereigns, alike zealous for their country and loyal to the Holy Father," sent an ambassador to Rome to secure a concession that would confirm to them the exclusive and undisputed rights to all western discoveries. The Pope in sympathy with the request, issued a pronunciamento establishing the "Line of Demarkation" to determine any rights that might arise between Spain and Portugal; this from the fact that the latter country which had been busy and whose sailors had crossed the equator, doubled the Cape of Good Hope and landed at Calcutta, caused the Portuguese to claim recognition for their enterprise. In the demarkation decree Pope Alexander VI "by virtue of Almighty God, granted him in St. Peter and by the office which he bore on earth in the stead of Jesus Christ, did give, grant and assign to the Spanish rulers and to their heirs and assigns all firm lands and islands found or to be found toward the west and south from a line drawn from the Pole Arctic to the Pole Antarctic through the Cape Verde Islands." Portugal, dissatisfied with the act of the papal umpire, which gave Spain nearly all of the western hemisphere, asked for a readjustment, and by mutual agreement of all parties, the dividing meridian line was moved west of the Cape Verde Islands three hundred and seventy leagues. This readjustment did not affect Spain's title to North America, but it gave practically Brazil to Portugal and also Africa and the lands beyond to the far East. This papal decree applied merely to lands and islands uninhabited or occupied by the heathen pagan, infidel or unbaptized, which were not within the pale of the church. These had no TOLEDO AND THE SANDUSKY REGION - 55 rights the Christian discoverer recognized. The negroes of Africa and the aborigines of America were property running with the land, like the natural products upon or under it. The decree left the rights in the countries already owned by the Christian powers undisturbed. However, England never conceded the claims of Spain and Portugal, based as they were upon this grant of Pope Alexander VI. The English rulers recognized the discoveries of other nations only when their claims were backed by the actual occupancy of the lands discovered. Neither did France concede Spain's claims. Francis I, king of France, wrote to Charles V, inquiring by what right the kings of Spain and Portugal assumed to "own the earth." Had Father Adam made them his sole heirs, and could he produce a' copy of the will? Until such a document be shown, this French monarch declared and affirmed that he would feel at liberty to cruise about and take all the lands he could get, and with this plan in mind, he proceeded to enlarge upon the business of discovery. The beginning of England's interest in the new world came with the explorations of the Cabots, who made landfalls from as far south as probably the Carolinas north to Newfoundland and Labrador. Young Sebastian Cabot, born in England, by the discoveries of Columbus became imbued with an ardent desire to emulate his achievements. In connection with a map drawn by Sebastian, a notice runs that "In the year of our Lord 1497, John Cabot, a Venetian, and his son Sebastian, discovered that country which no one before his time has ventured to approach, on the 24th of June, about five o'clock in the morning." It was the east coast of America. The discoveries of John and Sebastian Cabot furnished the pretext for England to her territorial claims in America, but it was not until 1605 that she took any active part to substantiate her claims by actual possession. In 1584, Sir Walter Raleigh backed by Queen Elizabeth undertook the task of exploration and colonization. Two vessels were sent out and sailing along the-central and southern part of the new continent, on their return gave a favorable report of the country. Raleigh named the new land Virginia, in honor of the virgin queen. A second expedition sent out, attempted a settlement on the island of Roanoake (North Carolina), under Sir Richard Grenville. They were attacked by the Indians and several were killed. The next year, what remained of the colony were taken back to England by Drake. In 56 - STORY OF THE MAUMEE VALLEY 1587 John White landed at the island with his fleet bearing over one hundred people and founded the settlement of Raleigh. The first native white child within now the United States was born there—Virginia Dare. White, in landing there again in 1590, found all traces of the colony gone. Their fate was never known. Other activities followed along the coast, but it was not until 1606 that a serious attempt was made by the English to colonize America. King James I issued patents to two companies, one to colonize Southern Virginia and the other Northern Virginia. The London Company had charge of the southern enterprise and sent over a fleet of three ships and 105 colonists, "merchants, adventurers and gentlemen," under Newport, Gosonold and Capt. James Smith. They entered Chesapeake Bay, sailed up the river they named James and landing, founded Jamestown—the river and the settlement being named for the king. Thus, in 1607 was established the Anglo-Saxon on American soil. As one historian observes, it was "just one year before Champlain sowed the seeds of the Fleur de Lis on the rocky and barren cliff of Quebec." Before turning to the earlier advent of the French, it is well to quote Fiske at this point who says : "Between the beginning and the end of this well-rounded tale a mighty drama is wrought out in all its themes. The struggle between France and England for the soil of North America was one of the critical movements in the career of mankind—no less important than the struggle between Greece and Persia, or between Rome and Carthage." CHAPTER VIII FRENCH ARRIVAL IN AMERICA CARTIER AND OTHERS ON THE ST. LAWRENCE-SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN -EXPLOITS OF LA SALLE-BUILDS FORTS-FRENCH CLAIMS. France based her claims in America, including the Maumee and Sandusky valleys, upon the discoveries of the intrepid French navigator Jacques Cartier. Before that, however, and only a half dozen years after the last voyage of Columbus, a bold French navigator, Denis of Honfleur, explored the fishing fields of Newfoundland and was followed some eighteen years later by Verrazzano, an Italian (but fitted out by Francis I) , who explored and named the St. Lawrence. Cartier was probably already acquainted with the coast of Newfoundland when he was appointed by Francis I to the command of two ships with which in April, 1534, he set sail from St. Malo. Crossing the Atlantic, he first touched at Cape Buena Vista on the east coast of Newfoundland, then passed northward along the coast, and sailing southwest through the Straits of Belle Isle, discovered the main land which he claimed for France by erecting a wooden cross with the inscription, "Vive le Roy de France." Next year, 1535, a second expedition was placed under his control to explore the estuary of the St. Lawrence. He penetrated as far as Hochelaga, a large fortified Indian village at the foot of a hill to which he gave the name of Mount Royal, and which is the site of Montreal. He spent the winter at the site of Quebec, or Stadacona as the Indians called the headquarters of the Iroquois chief Donnacona. Cartier named the country "Canada," the name, as claimed, applied by the Iroquois to a village and the region surrounding. The policy of colonizing Canada was temporarily halted by the French until Seigneur de Roberval in 1540, obtained permission to form a settlement. Cartier was sent out in 1541 in command of five ships and that autumn arrived at the mouth of the St. Lawrence. Near the present situation of Quebec he built a fort named Charlesbourg. Roberval arrived off Newfoundland in 1542 with three ships. The name of the new possessions had now been changed from Canada to New France with Sieur de 4-VOL. 1 - 57 - 58 - STORY OF THE MAUMEE VALLEY Roberval created viceroy and Jacques Cartier its Captain General. But the outlook was not to the liking of Cartier. The idea of colonization was for then abandoned and the expedition returned across the sea. The remarkable adventures of De Soto do not come within the limits of this narrative. It was not until the arrival of Samuel de Champlain up the St. Lawrence and his founding of Quebec in 1608 that France obtained a permanent foothold in the new world. The story of this prince of explorers has already been told and his relations with Brule the outlaw trader, the first white man to view present Ohio, provided that he visited the south shore of Lake Erie. One of Champlain's first moves after settling at Quebec was to establish friendly relations with the Montagnais, his nearest Indian neighbors on the St. Lawrence, with the Hurons farther west and the Algonquins on the east. Following up his explorations, in 1609 with some half dozen of his own men and about fifty Indians manning a flotilla of twenty-four canoes, he ascended the Richelieu River to the lake which took his name, lying between the present states of New York and Vermont, the lower end in Canada. Here he came in contact with some 350 Iroquois warriors of the Mohawk tribe. These warriors were noted for the character of their armor. They bore shields of hide-covered wood and encased their bodies in corslets of tough, interwoven twigs which the arrows of the savage scarce could penetrate. In their attack upon Champlain, they were met with fire from the Arquebuses with which the French and party were armed, and two of their chiefs were killed outright and a third fell wounded. The flash and report of the firing of the crude musketry spread panic among the Iroquois and thinking the Great Spirit had overtaken them, they fled in terror. It was the first blood of the savage thus shed in contact with the advancing Frenchmen. The tragedy was never forgotten by the Iroquois, who from that day became the unalterable foe of the French. The incident became a large factor in determining the finale in the story of New France. The three factors, "conquest, commerce and religion," were the motivate forces of progress in their new possessions. It has been noted how Champlain invited the Recollects to join him in his explorations and who were aided in their work by the Jesuits. In his operations Champlain reached west as far as Georgian Bay and Lake Huron. 60 - STORY OF THE MAUMEE VALLEY It is not necessary in the purpose of this story to follow the paths of the early French explorers in detail. Coming, after Champlain was Jean Nicolet who passed many years around the Great Lakes. In 1634-1640, he penetrated the unknown northwest, crossed Lake Huron in a canoe, entered the St. Marys River and was the first explorer to see the strait of Sault Ste. Marie. He canoed upon Lake Michigan and Green Bay and had the aid of the Jesuits in his work. Next in point of interest comes the operations of Rene Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, born in Rouen in 1643, who at an early age joined the Jesuits under whom he received his education. Abbe Jean Cavelier, an older brother, was a priest of the St. Sulpice order, who had already gone to Canada, and Robert joined him there in 1666 and was granted a tract of land a few miles above Montreal at the entrance of the great rapids. The site and rapids were named La Chine by reason of La Salle's early idea that by sailing up the St. Lawrence and on and still on he would reach China. Stories came to him from the Indians about the wonderful country to the south and about a great river, the "Oyo"—Ohio. With the nature of an explorer he longed to know more of this famed country and river, received permission from the French governor Courcelle to form an expeditionary force and sold his lands. Joining with a party of Sulpicians on a mission to establish missions in the northwest under the leadership of Dollier de Casson and Brehan de Galinee, La Salle eventually arrived at an Indian town called Otinawatawa where they unexpectedly met two men, one of whom was the great Louis Joliet returning from the Lake Superior region where he had been in search of the copper mines known to exist thereabouts. Joliet, instead of returning from Superior by the Ottawa River route from Montreal as he went, had "paddled his way back over the waters of Lakes Huron, St. Clair and then Erie, the discovery of which latter waterway alone would have given his name a place in history." This gave him the honor of being the first European to navigate the waters of Erie, at least so far as written records show. As a farewell ceremony before this renowned company parted, Dollier said mass, while his companions and La Salle and his followers received the sacrament. The Sulpicians continued west where they found that the Jesuits had preceded them. It is after the parting described that nothing is known of La Salle's course for two years as noted in the previous account 62 - STORY OF THE MAUMEE VALLEY of his probable route in reaching the Ohio River. This previous mention of La Salle is made in speculating as to who was the first white man to appear on the Maumee and Sandusky rivers and reference thereto is made without a detailed repetition. However, as the Indian town of Otinawatawa was near the headwaters of the Grand River, Ontario, La Salle probably canoed down that river to Lake Erie, skirted around the foot of Erie back to opposite Lake Chautauqua, portaged across to that lake, from where he reached the headwaters of the Ohio. La Salle evidently gained some knowledge of the Maumee in his expedition. If he came down the Maumee on his return from discovering the Ohio it of course was from personal observation. According to Pierre Margry, Paris, curator of the archives of the Ministry of Marine, La Salle wrote in 1680: "There is at the end of Lake Erie, ten leagues below the straits, (Detroit) a river (the Maumee) by which we could shorten the route to the Illinois very much. It is navigable to canoes to within two leagues of the route now in use." La Salle again wrote in 1682: "I could no longer go by the Illinois but by the lakes Huron and Illinois, as the other routes I have discovered by the head of Lake Erie and by the southern coast of the same, have become too dangerous by frequent encounters with the Iroquois who are always on that shore." In 1672, the Count de Frontenac succeeded Courcelle as governor-general of Canada. Frontenac was an enthusiastic territorial expansionist. New France had not developed as much as hoped for, while the English colonies had assumed comparatively gigantic proportions. To further his policy, Frontenac selected the experienced Joliet and the dependable Jesuit missionary Jacques Marquette. In two canoes and with five Indians to ply the oars, they followed the northern shores of Lake Michigan, arrived at the headwaters of Green Bay, negotiated the Fox River, crossed Lake Winnebago, followed up the river, portaged to the Wisconsin and reached the Mississippi. Down this great waterway they floated past the mouth of the Missouri, the Ohio and the Arkansas until they feared to proceed farther on account of the savages and Spaniards. One important question decided was, that the Mississippi evidently ran to the Gulf of Mexico and not to the Vermillion Sea (Pacific) nor to the Atlantic. Says the late Ohio historian, E. O. Randall : "In dauntless perseverance, in religious devotion, in self-abnegation and sacrifice for the advancement of the Cross, no name in French-American an- TOLEDO AND THE SANDUSKY REGION - 63 nals shines with greater luster than that of Pere Marquette, the pious Jesuit, who breathed his last, gazing upon a crucifix and murmuring a prayer" on the shore of Lake Michigan, in a crude bark hut. Count Frontenac, in order that France might hold her grip on her new possessions, favored the building of posts and forts about this territory, and in the fall of 1674 sent La Salle to France to gain consent to the project. The king received La Salle with favor and a title and granted him the site for Fort Frontenac and upon his return he built the stronghold of that name. The location was on the site of present Kingston at the mouth of Cataroqui River. A second trip to Paris was made to gain permission to build other forts and this request was also granted. He brought with him on his return Henri de Tonty, an adventurous Italian with Military experience, and Louis Hennepin, a Friar of the Franciscan order, ready to aid his country in her new possessions. One of La Salle's first acts was to build a blockhouse at the mouth of the Niagara River, the site of the later Fort Niagara. He also added fame to himself by ordering built on the Niagara River about six miles above the falls under the supervision of Tonty and Hennepin, a wooden vessel of about fifty tons burden. Blessed by Father Hennepin in the spring of 1679, the craft, christened the Griffin, was successfully launched. She had an armament of five guns and as the first ship on the Great Lakes had a short career. La Salle accompanied by Hennepin and Tonty sailed with her around to Lake Michigan. At an island at the entrance of Green Bay she was loaded with furs and under La Salle's orders started on the return voyage to Niagara. La Salle, Hennepin and Tonty did not sail with her. The Griffin was never heard of again. Her crew must have gone down with her. La Salle, Hennepin and Tonty with a party of Indians, in a flotilla of canoes, skirted the west shore of Lake Michigan to the mouth of the (state of Wisconsin) St. Joseph River, also called the Miami. Here, in November, 1679, they built a fort La Salle called Fort Miami where were left a few Frenchmen. The main expedition ascended the St. Joseph (Miami), portaged to the Kankakee and reached the Illinois down which they floated to near present Peoria. Just here it is pertinent to state that it is claimed by many historians that in 1680, under the orders of Governor-General             . 64 - STORY OF THE MAUMEE VALLEY Frontenac, a fort or small stockade was built by the French on the west bank of the lower Maumee (Miami of the lake) within the limits of now Maumee City above Toledo. This claim, however, is believed untenable, and that these writers who have claimed the erection of the lower Maumee Fort Miami, confuse it with the one built by La Salle on the St. Joseph or Miami River of Lake Michigan, or the Fort Miami at the head of the Maumee, built by the French by order of the governor of Canada in the year 1686, on the right bank of the River St. Marys within the limits of the present city of Fort Wayne, Indiana. The first fort at Detroit, Fort Pontchartrain, was built by Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac in 1701. Cadillac is called the founder of Detroit. Other forts in the lake region besides those already noted were, Ste. Marie at the Sault Rapids, and Mackinac on the straits between lakes Huron and Michigan. The story of La Salle is now curtailed to pass on to later matters, all a background to the story of the Maumee and the Sandusky. He continued his wide range of explorations and finally reached the mouth of the Mississippi where he erected a wooden column, April 1682, upon which was placed the arms of France. A proclamation was read in the name of Louis the Great, taking formal possession of the country of Louisiana, the seas, harbors and all natives and peoples and in fact almost everything which could be named, comprised within said Louisiana as far north as the mouth of the Ohio and the great river St. Louis. It is unnecessary to closely define the territory named in the proclamation, for it was only a spectacular claim of high sounding words. He returned up the Mississippi and on the Illinois built Fort St. Louis where he remained a year. The fort became the central gathering point of a surrounding territory with four thousand warriors and twenty thousand Indians. La Salle's troubles began with a change in the head of the government of New France, antagonistic to him. He went to Paris again and this time asked for an outfit to establish a colony at the mouth of the Mississippi to hold that territory for France as against the claims of Spain. He was successful as usual and sailed for the Gulf of Mexico with four ships and a hundred soldiers, together with mechanics, laborers and adventurers. Reaching the gulf, the fleet lost its bearings and confused by the inlets and lagoons, could not find their way in. Two ships were wrecked and one with mutinous men sailed back. to France. In a little harbor of Matagorda Bay o the shore o TOLEDO AND THE SANDUSKY REGION - 65 now Texas, La Salle found shelter for such of his followers as remained faithful. Amidst dangers, misery, poverty, and disease, for three years the dwindling band groped about without finding the place of their search. Twice, in desperation, they set out with the object of finding their way across the. vast country to Quebec, only to return to their desolate quarters on the beach, more confounded and bewildered. Crazed by the situation, treachery and murder began and finally the climax. On a day in March, 1687, some seventeen years after his discovery of the Ohio, La Salle became one of the victims. He was shot by one of the desperate men among his once faithful followers. As so often the history of a great explorer, the end was a tragedy. Coming down well into the eighteenth century, although they had not begun colonization of the Ohio region, the French considered their title clear to the vast Great Lakes territory by virtue of exploration, practical possession and occupancy. They counted the Allegheny and Appalachian ranges as the barrier to the English. With other territory, Ohio, which had been claimed by the Spaniard by virtue of the earliest American discoveries, had passed to France. But the latter's great weakness was their sparse population. About the year 1700, the French population of Canada did not exceed sixteen, thousand, while the total number of English colonists reached about four hundred thousand. This fact will have a bearing on the story as it unfolds. The English did not grant the French claims of western title, for the charter grants of the British Crown included their territorial rights from "sea to sea," and when the time was ripe, they planned to assert these rights to the lands west of the Alleghenies, including the Maumee and Sandusky country. While the Maumee and the Sandusky and Scioto had long been used for travel, especially by the Indian, the interior had not been explored by either the French or English. The time, however, was not far distant when the contest would be on in earnest in this matter. The background to the part played by France in this story leading toward the Maumee and Sandusky valleys has been given. Now what of the English? The voyages of the Cabots, the expedition of Sir Walter Raleigh, and others, and the founding of Jamestown have been told about. The years since then have been working wondrous changes in this newly discovered country from the Carolinas to the northern borders of 'New England and from the Atlantic shore back to the Alleghenies and the Appalachians. CHAPTER IX PERMANENT FOOTHOLD OF THE ENGLISH JAMESTOWN SETTLEMENT-HENDRIK HUDSON-THE "PILGRIM FATHERS" -COLONIZATION OF NEW ENGLAND-EARLY NEW ENGLAND AND SEABOARD SETTLEMENTS-CONFLICTS BETWEEN ENGLAND AND FRANCE-TREATIES OF RYSWICK AND AIX LA CHAPELLE-DETROIT FOUNDED-THE CONTEST NARROWS. The Jamestown settlement (1607) was "the nucleus from which the mighty Republic, our common country as it now exists, germinated." The first representative assembly met at Jamestown, July 30, 1619. It was also the first representative government in America. In 1623 the Virginia colony numbered 2,500 and began the offensive against the Indians with various results. In 1624, the charter of the London Company under which the region was colonized, was revoked and the colony became a Royal Province. Despite varying fortunes, the settlement prospered and in 1648 numbered 20,000 people. It was in 1609 that the Dutch East India Company sent out Hendrik Hudson. On August 28 that year he discovered the Delaware Bay, and on September 3rd entered the lower New York Bay, and passing up the Hudson River, named the country New Netherlands. Strange to say, in 1540, French fur traders had founded a settlement on Manhattan Island and in 1554 an expedition explored the Sound and Hudson River. But in 1555 they abandoned the field. In 1610 the site of New York City was occupied by the Dutch who built rude huts for the shelter of their sailors. In 1614 the Dutch States General granted a four years monopoly to traders with America and they built a fort on Manhattan Island and named the settlement New Amsterdam. In 1615, they established a settlement at Albany and at one or two other points. The French also appeared farther north and by permission of the Indians established a French colony on Mt. Desert Island, Maine, but Governor Argall captured the settlers and also destroyed the abandoned French foothold at Port Royal, now North Carolina. Thus the French activity along the Atlantic coast within the present boundaries of the United States was frustrated. - 66 - TOLEDO AND THE SANDUSKY REGION - 67 The story of the "Pilgrim Fathers" so well known at every fireside, may be referred to. They selected this country as a refuge from persecution in Holland, from where they set sail and touching New England stopped to receive recruits. They sighted land in November 1620, moored in Cape Cod harbor and adopted a constitution while yet on board. They landed at Plymouth Rock December 21 and John Carver was chosen governor, with Miles Standish, military commandant. In the following April the Mayflower returned to England. A patent was granted to colonize New England between 40 and 48 degrees north latitude, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. This grant of course included lands claimed by the French. Until the war between England and France the Dutch and English were the main factors in colonization in the present United States territory. The progress of the Plymouth colony even after they became freeholders and took a wider range, was very slow. Ten years after their landing they numbered only three hundred. The governor was chosen by popular suffrage and for eighteen years the entire male population constituted the legislature. In 1692 the colony was annexed to Massachusetts. It was in 1620 that King James had incorporated a company for the colonization of New England. Under the direction of Sir Fernando Gorges, the company obtained a grant between latitude 40 to the 48th parallel. In 1622 the company made a sub-grant to two of their number, Mason and Gorges, between the St. Lawrence, Kennebec, Merrimac and the ocean. In 1831, Mason named his grant New Hampshire and Gorges named his possession Maine. It was in 1628 important developments began in the territory of Massachusetts. Twenty-five emigrants under John Endicott came to Salem and joined Roger Conant, its founder. The following year the settlement received its celebrated charter as the Massachusetts Bay Company. Matthew Craddock was chosen the first governor. In June 1629, the colony was joined by 200 emigrants, who finding the accommodations not to their liking founded Charlestown, where Puritanism was proclaimed the fundamental faith. Separatists, receiving their name from the fact that they had withdrawn from the Church of England, had founded the Plymouth colony, while the Puritans who established Salem remained with the church endeavoring to rid it of what they considered objectionable practices. The distinction was the cause of the long list of religious persecutions in the colonies following. A short time after John 68 - STORY OF THE MAUMEE VALLEY Winthrop was chosen governor, over four hundred new arrivals from England joined the colony. He founded Boston in 1630 and Roger Williams founded Providence in 1638. Maryland was granted to Lord Baltimore in 1632, and in 1638 Delaware was settled near Wilmington by Swedes and Finns—New Sweden. The constitution for the colony of Connecticut adopted January 14, 1639, was the first American written constitution formed "by the people and for the people." Windsor, Hartford and Wethersfield were within its jurisdiction. In May, 1643, the General Court of Massachusetts appointed a commission to treat with New Haven concerning drafting a basis for the federation of the New England colonies. The work was soon completed and a federation was established under the title of the United Colonies of New England—an offensive and defensive league. John Winthrop was the first president. One article of the constitution was defending slavery. Passing through the process of development and turmoil, when James II became the English king, he had a change of heart and policy, and nullified much of what he had done in the colonies while Duke of York, and the burden of taxation, the great cause of strife between the colonies and the ruling country, was heavily applied. Sir Edmund Andros was made governor of the New England colonies, was instructed to seize their charter and consolidate all the provinces under a single jurisdiction. Boston was made the capital. When the attempt was made to seize the charter of Connecticut the document was hidden in a tree—the celebrated Charter Oak, to be brought to light again after Andros was deposed. The first settlement in now North Carolina was made under George Caithmaid on the Chowan River, a portion then of the domain of Virginia, but Governor Berkeley made it into a separate government with William Drummond as governor. A patent granted in 1663 to Carolina had been declared void and was granted to eight proprietaries. Spain comes into the picture here as France did in the Maine section, and claimed the territory granted. The adjustment came later. The Clarenden colony permanently settled near now Wilmington, N. C., in 1665. The Carteret colony settled on Ashly River, near now Charleston, South Carolina, in 1670. The Carolinas were divided in 1729. Thus is given a brief review of some of the more promi- TOLEDO AND THE SANDUSKY REGION - 69 nent early settlements of the new colonies and now as to Pennsylvania. The grant of the territory later named Pennsylvania was made by Charles II in 1681 to William Penn. It carried with it complete proprietorship and dominion except as to the king's sovereignty. Penn immediately placed the lands on the market. He made it a "free colony for all mankind." At the time Penn took possession, there were on the western banks of the Delaware some 6,000 English, Dutch and Swedes, where a settlement was opened in 1638. Penn opened his lands to the settlement of the people of all nations and of all creeds—"English Quakers, Scotch and Irish Presbyterians, German Mennonites, French Huguenots, men of all religions" were alike welcome. The population increased a thousand a year and then two thousand and by about 1750 there was a population of some 200,000. The matter of public defense was curtailed by the Quaker sentiment until the Indians became the allies of the French, when this sentiment changed and about 1744, provision was made against the French and Indian aggression, and later, defense in the war with Great Britain. It was in the beginning of 1683 that Penn formulated plans for a town which is now Philadelphia. In March that year the colonial Legislature met in the newly founded town to draft and put into effect a charter of liberty for the province. Beset by sore internal problems, came mutterings of serious outside dangers heretofore referred to, in the gradual narrowing of the wilderness gap between the English and French. In the events which followed, the colonies were involved and were the sufferers for a long period. King William's war with France started in 1689 and lasted eight years. Port Royal was captured by Massachusetts troops but on peace being declared was restored. The treaty of Ryswick, between England and France and Spain and other interested nations, confirmed to the French the two great valleys she claimed by discovery, the St. Lawrence with the Great Lakes and the Mississippi which embraced Ohio, including the valleys of the Maumee and Sandusky. Queen Anne's war begun by Great Britain against France involving Spain, in 1702, continued for eleven years, during which Port Royal was again captured and held. During these conflicts the northern colonies were sorely beset by the Indians, allies of the French, and subject to the horrors of savage warfare. By the treaty of Utrecht, ending the Queen Anne's war, one stipulation was, that "the subjects of France inhabiting Canada, and others, 70 - STORY OF THE MAUMEE VALLEY shall hereafter give no hindrance or molestation to the Five Nations (Indians) subject to the dominion of Great Britain." As observed "As between France and England the confederated Indians were, therefore, to be considered as subjects of England and of course the British dominion was co-extensive with the rightful territory of the Five Nations; consequently, it became the policy of France to diminish and England to enlarge this territory." In the Utrecht treaty, the great region of the Mississippi Valley was confirmed to France as against Spain and England. King George's war against France and other nations also involved the French and English in America. There was some conflict at sea and many border engagements. The colonists took Louisburg, but the fortress was returned when the treaty of Aix la Chapelle was made (1748) ending the conflict. By this treaty the boundary controversy concerning the English and French possessions in America was left without settlement and to be taken up in the future by a commission. There was much dissatisfaction in the American colonies over this phase of the treaty. Whenever the opportunity offered, when the psychological moment arrived, the English all this time, were telling plausible stories to the Indians, suggesting or making treaties and "insiduously casting their lines to entrap the proprietary rights of the Indians, whatever those rights might be, and were shrewdly laying their plans to circumvent the encroachment of the French." Illustrating this policy England made a treaty with the representatives of the Five Nations at Albany in 1701, the very year the French founded Detroit and built a fort there, whereby this Indian confederacy purported to surrender lands 800 miles in length and 400 miles in width which included most of the territory "between the Ottawa River, Canada, the Great Lakes and a strip between the southern end of Lake Michigan and the western end of Lake Erie." The Indians reserved in these lands their hunting rights. Another council was held at Albany with the Indians concerning the foregoing treaty in 1726. However, the confederacy evidently considered this agreement a mere scrap of paper. In 1721, Governor Spotswood of Virginia proposed to the Board of Trade, London, that the British negotiate a treaty with the Miamis on the Maumee, permitting the English to build a fort on Lake Erie and trade with the Ohio Indians. While the arrangement was not carried out officially, it is said that in 1723, TOLEDO AND THE SANDUSKY REGION - 71 a company of Miami Indians, from the Maumee section, passed down and up that river to New York, to invite British traders to continue coming to the Maumee with goods and supplies. This is in line with a visit made by the Miamis of the Maumee over the same route when they called on the New York governor at Albany to arrange trading connections and peace terms. At another council at Lancaster, Pa., in 1744 between representatives of the provinces of Pennsylvania, Virginia and Maryland and chiefs from the Six Nations, the latter were informed that if they held any legitimate rights to lands on the Virginia borders the colonists would recompense them for it. The Indians admitted the colonists had a right to some parts of Virginia but as to the lands lying' beyond the mountains, if the Virginians "ever got a good right to it, it must be from us." From the report of the proceedings the Iroquois gave up title to "all lands that are or shall be by his Majesty's appointment in the colony of Virginia"—the lands from the Virginia frontier to the Ohio. The Virginia Charter, however, through the interpretation of its terms, claimed nearly all of Ohio and most of the country west of the Mississippi. The French, fully informed of the policy of England and their progress, were not dilatory to their own interests. While the English were making treaties the French were building forts. They had made explorations over the St. Lawrence basin, the Great Lakes and the valley of the Mississippi and had fortified their discoveries and frontiers "from Quebec to New Orleans." With the Alleghenies and Appalachian ranges as the English barrier to western encroachment, the French with the Indians as allies, appeared to have the better of the argument, concerning the possession of the Ohio country and the Maumee and Sandusky regions. The time had arrived, however, when this barrier was being surmounted by the English. Hardy adventurers from Pennsylvania, New York and Maryland had visited the rivers of Ohio and even reached the Mississippi and the northwest and Lake Superior. This is claimed by Gordon's History of Pennsylvania which says that around 1740, traders from the Virginia colonies "went among the Indians on the Ohio and tributary streams to deal for peltries." CHAPTER X CONTEST FOR POSSESSION OF OHIO COUNTRY CHARACTER OF FRENCH AND ENGLISH-FIRST CLASH AT MOUTH OF SANDUSKY-THE NICHOLAS CONSPIRACY-FORTS SANDOSKI AND JUNUNDAT- FRENCH ESTABLISH FORT AT PRESQUE ISLE (ERIE, PA.) AND DUQUESNE AND JUNUNDAT-ENGLISH ADVANCE UPON NOW OHIO-ORGANIZE OHIO LAND COMPANY. The thread of this story has been followed through until the Ohio country and the Maumee and Sandusky is now reached. What follows will be better understood by the background that has been given, and by an outline of general conditions from 1680 up to about 1745 here presented. At this latter date New France (Canada) had a population of about 70,000 while the population of the continental colonies made up of English, Scotch, Irish, Swedes, and Germans; the English, greatly predominating, had reached in the neighborhood of 1,000,000 besides 200,000 blacks. The white population was a million and a half in 1760, fairly well divided between New England, the Middle colonies and the southern plantations. Prosperity had kept pace with the increase in population. The Frenchman in the new world was a trader, a fur dealer and a fisherman, and did not possess the element of permanency as did the English colonist. He did not vision the future, or if he did was unwilling to sacrifice the present for its fruits. His attraction was exploration and in this he surpassed the English by extending his authority over the vast interior and northwest. In the conditions of progress there was the element of geographic situation and climate. The English colonial possessions were more adapted to soil tillage, and also to commerce and the industries. It was more attractive to immigration. Between 1680 and 1700 there were great strides. Clearings were made in the forest, homes built and agriculture became an important factor. Industries rapidly sprang up, followed by foreign trade. As early as 1679, Boston had men of wealth and "homes as handsomely furnished as most in London." In 1680 more than one hundred ships were in trade at the bay carrying cargoes of lum- - 72 - TOLEDO AND THE SANDUSKY REGION - 73 ber, fish and provisions to southern Europe and the Madeiras and the West Indies. New York, Philadelphia and Boston merchants exported the products of the farmers of the middle and northern colonies to the West Indies. There was extensive ship building at Boston and Newport. Rum was an important product of manufacture and export. Planters and merchants of the South had their London agents, and themselves visited the foreign markets. They built fine residences modeled after English architecture. Returning ships brought back products of English manufacture and merchants kept in touch with the world markets. The country abounded in ore and men were becoming adepts at the furnace and forge. Religious tolerance was broadening, the local seats of higher education, Harvard and Yale, were taking the place of old Oxford and Cambridge. People of affairs watched the political situation and the social affairs of their ancestral abode. Free schools and the periodical press had come into existence and there was progress and development along many lines. All this at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The progress up to 1745 was even greater. In 1740 there were eleven newspapers in the Colonies. New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and other places were taking the form of important cities and rural expansion kept pace. The population was around the two million mark and the colonies began to make comparisons with England herself. "As to the characteristics of the Frenchman and Englishman in America," Parkman observed that the Frenchman was an apt scholar in the ways of forest and river adaptation, and that "one great fact stands out in Canadian history—the Church of Rome. More even than the royal power, she shaped the character and the destinies of the colony. She was its nurse and almost its mother; and, wayward and headstrong as it was, it never broke the ties of faith that held it to her. * * * The royal government was transient; the Church was permanent. The English conquest shattered the whole apparatus of administration at a single blow, but it left her untouched. Governors, intendants, councils and commandants, all were gone; the principal seigniors fled the colony; and a people who had never learned to control themselves or help themselves were suddenly left to their own devices. Confusion if not anarchy would have followed but for the parish priests, who, in a character of double paternity, half spiritual and half temporal', became more than ever the guardians of order throughout Canada. The English conquest was the 74 - STORY OF THE MAUMEE VALLEY grand crisis of Canadian history. It was the beginning of a new life. With England came Protestantism, and the Canadian Church grew purer and better in the presence of an adverse faith. Material growth; an increased mental activity; an education, real though fenced and guarded ; a warm and genuine patriotism—all date from the peace of 1763." Up to the middle of the eighteenth century, there had been no serious attempts at settlements this side of the mountainous barriers, except a few scattered cabins in western Virginia. But on the borders of now Ohio the hardy frontiersmen were knocking for admission and risking the tomahawk of the savage in their adventures and hunting expeditions with views of permanency. Yet this frontier situation was not created alone by the movement of colonial population westward. It was the goal of foreign prospectors as well, who came to America by the thousands. The first clash between the French and English in the contest to gain possession of now Ohio territory took place at the mouth of Sandusky Bay. At this place a Huron chief Orontony, baptismal name Nicholas, had settled with his Wyandot followers. The band had come from the Detroit region, on account of troubles with the French. In consequence, Nicholas made threats of the latter's destruction. He courted the aid of the English, who had, as heretofore indicated, desired a foothold south of Lake Erie. In 1745, Nicholas permitted the Pennsylvania colonists to build at his town a blockhouse and trading post called Fort Sandoski. It was located at the head of Sandusky Bay on the west bank and west of the mouth of Sandusky River, where the portage trail crossed the peninsula from the bay to the mouth of the Portage River, Lake Erie. The site is near Port Clinton, Ottawa County. This was the first post or fort built by the white man in present Ohio. A previous statement has disposed of the alleged Fort Miami on the lower Maumee River, confused with another Fort Miami built by La Salle on Lake Michigan. This concession of Chief Nicholas and his permission to the English to carry on trade with the Indian tribes, on reaching the ear of De Longueuil, the Detroit commandant, who relayed the information to the Canadian governor-general, caused much concern. To further vent his bitterness toward the French, Nicholas planned a great conspiracy. He called to his aid th "Iroquois of the West," the Hurons, Miamis, Ottawas, Shawnee Chippewas, Sioux, Pottawattomies and other tribal bands. Th TOLEDO AND THE SANDUSKY REGION - 75 purpose of this formidable force was the extermination of the French at Detroit and the lake posts. Detailed plans were laid with precision. The great scheme, however, was frustrated by the premature murder of French traders in the Detroit and Sandusky region, arousing suspicion. When the decisive blow was about to be struck, a Huron squaw betrayed the conspirators by unfolding the scheme to a Jesuit missionary. Detroit was reinforced by the timely arrival of 150 soldiers from Montreal and the situation was saved. Some other forts were attacked, a few captives killed and property destroyed. Proceeding to Detroit, upon the promise of severing his alliance with the English and keeping the peace thereafter, Nicholas secured immunity for himself and the Wyandots of the Sandusky. In the winter of 1747-48, Nicholas, however, permitted two separate delegations of English traders from Philadelphia to visit his town and allowed them to trade with the Wyandots, receiving as a favor therefor wampum belts and goods. These acts settled the matter with the French and La Jonquiere, then governor of New France ordered Nicholas suppressed. De Longueuil through a Detroit officer notified Nicholas of the ultimatum and all the English traders were ordered to leave. The old chief then destroyed the stockade and his villages, and with 119 warriors and their families, removed to the White River, now in Indiana. Soon after Nicholas withdrew to the Ohio River in Illinois where he died in the autumn of 1748. In this conspiracy which the Miamis joined, they captured and practically destroyed Fort Miami at the head of the Maumee River—Fort Wayne, which was immediately reconstructed and again later rebuilt after plans furnished by Father Bonnecamps, when the latter arrived there with the Celoron expedition, the year after Chief Nicholas died, and referred to later. The English, however, knowing the importance of this entering wedge into the Ohio and Sandusky region, their traders again returned to the scene and rebuilt Fort Sandoski about 1750. La Jonquiere, the governor of Canada, was naturally aroused by this alleged indignity and took definite steps to suppress the encroachment of their rivals. His predecessor had before him advised the immigration of ten thousand peasants 'from France to settle in the Ohio section in order to preempt the land and counteract the English invasion. Events happened so rapidly that this project could not be carried out. But upon the arrival of the Celoron expedition, which had encircled most of Ohio at Detroit, 76 - STORY OF THE MAUMEE VALLEY Celoron was made the commandant of that post and formal claim was made to the territory he had encircled. The English traders evidently fled from Fort Sandoski, for it was "usurped by the French" in 1751. Following this, in 1753, a force of twelve hundred French from Montreal built among other military posts a fort at Presque Isle (Erie, Pa.), in 1754, Fort Du Quesne (Pittsburgh), and in 1754, Fort Junundat on the right bank of the Sandusky River, across the head of Sandusky Bay and east of old Fort Sandoski. Christopher Gist, the land surveyor for the Ohio Company, which project will soon be taken up, in 1750 refers to Fort Sandoski when he says that "Two traders belonging to Mr. Croghan came into town and informed us that two of his people had been taken by forty Frenchmen and twenty Indians, who carried them with seven horse loads of skins to a new fort the French were building on one of the branches of Lake Erie." This George Croghan, an English trader, had a trading post on the Cuyahoga River and figures largely in events later on. When Fort Junundat was built by the French they abandoned Fort Sandoski, but the latter was rebuilt by British soldiers in 1781, after the surrender of Quebec to the English and the end of French sovereignty in America. It was finally destroyed at the outbreak of Pontiac's conspiracy, May 18, 1783, when the fort was burned and the entire English garrison was murdered except the commandant, Ensign Pauli. In their indefatigable research work concerning early Ohio history, Col. Webb C. Hayes of Fremont and Mr. Charles W. Burrows, in 1906, on a visit to Quebec, discovered in the archives of Laval University, the original journals of Chevalier Chaussegros de Lery, an engineer of the French army, which give definite information as to the location of old Fort Sandoski. De Lery was ordered to accompany a French expedition from Presque Isle (Erie, Pa.) to Detroit and Mackinac in the summer of 1754. There were twenty-seven canoes, carrying 270 men with their provisions. His journal shows that the expedition on Sunday, August 4, 1754, reached the Sandusky River which he calls "Lac Otsandoske" and found the ruins of the old fort at the site that has been mentioned. Before passing to the next phase of this story, a little speculation is indulged in. First, what would this narrative be, had the French landed at Jamestown and Plymouth Rock and in New York harbor instead of in the St. Lawrence region, and pursued their explorations from these points into the interior as per- TOLEDO AND THE SANDUSKY REGION - 77 sistently and zealously as they did up the St. Lawrence, about the Great Lakes and to the interior from that direction? Secondly, as suggested by the historian Galbreath, what if the plan recommended by Gallissonniere, governor of Canada, had been carried out and ten thousand French peasants, set down in the midst of the country northwest of the Ohio, say in the lower Maumee Valley and along the Sandusky? The proposition was not a particularly wild one and was not impossible of fulfillment. If, as Galbreath says, "it had not prevented the English from becoming the dominant power in America, it certainly lies within the sphere of probability that it would have materially changed the character of the population northwest of the Ohio River. It might have made the French element there numerically as dominant as it is today in Montreal and Quebec." This statement might have gone further and said that in all probability the border line between Canada and the United States would now be the Ohio. But the Canadian governor's idea was not carried out, the nearest thing to it being the Celoron expedition. England claimed the territory north to the Great Lakes, while France laid claim to the lands as far south as the Ohio and also that drained by its southern tributaries. Both sides cultivated the good will of the Indians. The earliest ambassadors for the colonies to the Indians in the Ohio country, were Conrad Weiser, a native of Germany, Andrew Montour and George Croghan the trader. Weiser left his home at Womelsdorf, Pa., crossed the Alleghenies on horseback in the summer of 1748 and boldly entered the Indian country. He reached the Allegheny River at Chartier's Old Town above now Pittsburgh, where he left his horse and took a canoe. He went down the river to Logstown on the Ohio about eighteen miles below the junction of the Allegheny and Monongehela. Logstown was one of the most important Indian trading centers in all that section. Here he met Montour, the son of an Oneida chief and "a half-breed beauty," Catharine Montour. Madam Montour was said to be the daughter of none other than Count de Frontenac of Canada and a Huron squaw. The Madam, so the story runs, was "brilliant and tactful," a prominent social figure at Philadelphia and influential in the councils between the French, the colonists, and the tribes. She spoke French and English and several Indian dialects. French Margaret for whom the Indian town on the Big Hocking was named, site of now Lan- 78 - STORY OF THE MAUMEE VALLEY caster, Ohio, was supposed to be the daughter of Catharine Montour. Weiser's journey was most successful. Together with Croghan and Montour, councils were held with various tribes, the distribution of presents aiding the good feeling. At the same time Weiser, Croghan and Montour were sowing friendly seed among the tribes in the councils at Logstown (1748) where Croghan had established a trading post, there was being organized a most important project with the same end in view. It was no less than what was known as the "Ohio Company" or "Ohio Land Company" of Virginia. Among the charter members were John Hanby of London, a Quaker merchant; Thomas Lee, a member of the Virginia Colonial Council and a judge of the Supreme Court of Judicature; Col. Thomas Cressap ; Lawrence Washington, half brother of George; and George Fairfax. The company petitioned the English crown for a grant of 500,000 acres of land lying in the Ohio River Valley between the Monongahela and the Great Kanawha. It could be selected from either side of the Ohio and a part proposed to be taken was within now Jefferson and Columbiana counties in Ohio and in Brooke County, West Virginia. Two thousand acres were to be appropriated immediately, one hundred families were to be located within seven years and a fort built by the company to protect the settlers against the Indians. It was represented to the King that the project by its location would enable the colonists to easier gain the good will and friendliness of the Indians and establish with the tribes a wider and more profitable trade ; also that it would aid in cutting of the communication of the French on the Great Lakes with the Mississippi. The King of England was immediately favorable to the project and the Royal government issued the Ohio Company its charter in 1749 and the governor of Virginia made a grant of 200,000 acres. Like many of such early enterprises which came into the minds of both the English and French, the lands were never located or settled as projected. However, a post was established at Wills Creek, now Cumberland, Maryland, to open communication with the Monongahela, and the confluence of that river with the Allegheny (Pittsburgh), was chosen as the site for a fort. A large shipment of goods from England was ordered and Christopher Gist selected as the company's explorer. CHAPTER XI THE CELORON EXPEDITION ENCIRCLES. MOST OF NOW OHIO TO CLINCH FRENCH CLAIMS-PLANTS LEADEN PLATES-DESCRIPTION OF THEIR JOURNEY DOWN THE MAUMEE RIVER-THE RESULT. Watching closely and with a jealous attitude the operations of the English, it was up to the French to make some move to protect their alleged rights to the lands south of the Great Lakes. France, it will be repeated, claimed this territory south to the Ohio and also the land drained by the southern tributaries of this stream by possession and by virtue of the treaties of Ryswick, Utrecht and Aix la Chapelle. To reassert their rights by formal possession and to warn the English traders and encroaching interests to withdraw from the Ohio Valley, and again to influence the Indians to trade only with the French, there was exploited what is known as the Celoron expedition. It was in the spring of 1749, that the then governor of Canada, Gallissonniere, ordered Capt. Bienville de Celoron with a sufficient force, to proceed to the Ohio River and following its course carry out by appropriate formalities the expedition's purpose. The total number in the party was 271. There were eight subaltern officers, six cadets, an armorer, twenty soldiers, one hundred and eighty Canadians, thirty Iroquois and twenty-five Abenak Indians. De Villiers and De Contrecoeur were Celoron's chief assistants. Phillip Thomas Joncaire was the diplomat and Father Pierre Jean de Bonne-camps, Chaplain, who was also the sailing master of the company and had knowledge in civil engineering. The original manuscripts of the expedition are among the Archives Marine, Paris, and while the Jesuit Relations reports the matter, the facts here come from the translation of the complete published journals of Celoron and Father Bonnecamps. The expedition embarked in twenty birch bark canoes from La Chine, just above Montreal, paddled up the St. Lawrence, crossed Ontario to Niagara, portaged around the falls with their canoes on their backs, reembarking on Lake Erie. On the way up the rapids of the St. Lawrence, M. Joncaire's canoe was broken and one man drowned, the only casualty on the whole - 79 - 80 - STORY OF THE MAUMEE VALLEY journey. Other, canoes were badly damaged: Before crossing to Lake Erie, Celoron had a conversation with M. de Sabrinois "who was going as commander at Detroit." Celoron sent a letter to M. Longueuil at Detroit by Sabrinois to have scouts meet Celoron "from the 9th to the 12th of August" at the mouth of the Scioto River, to inform him as to whether any Indians of Detroit were coming on to join him. Later statements about these scouts meeting Celoron at the appointed place will show the remarkable timing of Celoron in reaching the various stations of his journey, and how well the various sections so wide apart in a new and wild country kept informed as to the movements of the various detachments or parties circulating here and there through hundreds of miles of unbroken forests. Canoeing around the edge of Lake Erie the flotilla landed at the mouth of Chautauqua Creek which they negotiated partly by portage to Chautauqua Lake, after tarrying for a time for rest and to repair the canoes. It was July 22, that the expedition reached Conewango Creek, which connects Lake Chautauqua with the Allegheny River at now Warren, Pennsylvania. As the expedition progressed, they came upon the Indians who fled from their villages, evidently believing that the French were coming to make war upon them and dispossess them of their homes and lands. Celoron was greatly disturbed, for one of his objects was to gain the friendliness of the tribes and secure their favor towards the French. To rid the minds of the Indians of their fears, Joncaire the diplomat, who was a half-breed Iroquois, with a party of five Indians was sent forward among the natives to assure them that it was the purpose of the French leader to "treat with them of good things and to explain to them the sentiment of their father Onontio." On July 29, the expedition entered the Allegheny River and here buried a leaden plate at the mouth of Conewango Creek, Celoron called the Kanaaiagon, the first of several plates buried. The burial of these plates, with attendant impressive ceremonies was the method Celoron used in taking formal possession of the country in the name of the King of France. These leaden deposits were eleven inches long, seven and one-half inches broad and one-eighth of an inch thick. The inscription on all of them was practically the same, only as to the wording of the location of their burial. The inscription on the first plate translated from the French read as follows: "In the year 1749, in the reign of Louis the XV, King of TOLEDO AND THE SANDUSKY REGION - 81 France, we, Celoron, commander of the detachment sent by M. the Marquis de la Galissoniere, Governor General of New France, to reestablish peace in some villages of these Cantons, have buried this plate at the confluence of the Ohio and the Kanaaiagon, the 29th of July, for a monument of the renewal of possession which we have taken of the said river Ohio, and of all those which fall into it, and of all the territories on both sides as far as the source of said rivers, as the preceding Kings of France have possessed or should possess them, and as they are maintained therein by arms and by treaties, and especially by those of Riswick, Utrecht and of Aix la Chapelle; have moreover affixed to a tree the arms of the King. In testimony whereof, we have drawn up and signed the present record. Made at the entrance of the Beautiful River, the 29th day of July, 1749. All the officers signed." And what a spectacular ceremony and method ! It could have been conceived only by a Frenchman. Celoron, by the way, considered the Allegheny as the headwaters of the "Oyo"—the Beautiful River. The mission of Joncaire was evidently successful, for after the ceremony attendant upon the burial of the plate, a delegation of Indians arrived who had been visited by the diplomat and invited Celoron to visit their village. They were given a draught of brandy from "Onontio," the name applied to the Canadian governor-general, and presented with tobacco. As the detachment reached the village, the Indians fired a salute in Celoron's honor which was returned. Presents of corn and squashes were made by the Indian women and speeches of good will and friendliness were exchanged, Celoron among other things saying : "I am surprised, my children, to see raised in your village a cabin destined to receive English traders. If you look upon yourselves as my children you will not continue this work; far from it you will destroy it, and will no longer receive the English in your homes." Later, Celoron received from two other villages an answer to his speech thanking him for having "opened their eyes and ears." With the oily tongued Englishman telling an opposite story, no wonder the savage was at a loss to know with which side to throw his influence. But he must have sensed something of what the coming of the white man would mean to him. As Celoron proceeded down the river the Indians in most of the small villages fled to the back forests. An occasional English trader or blacksmith who had appeared among the villages also 82 - STORY OF THE MAUMEE VALLEY left. Five miles below the mouth of French Creek, Celoron buried a second leaden plate. At Charterstown, the detachment came in contact with six English soldiers bound for Philadelphia with some fifty horses and one hundred and fifty bales of furs. Celoron notified them in writing to leave the territory and warned them that if they came again his government would confiscate their stock. At Written Rock the Indians again fled to the woods and more English traders encountered were notified to quit the locality. At the important village of Logstown, where the English trader Croghan had previously established a trading post and where Montour and Weiser the English ambassadors had been, two French flags and a British flag were found floating over the town. By Celoron's order the British flag was cut down. There was evidence of a French unfriendliness, but realizing that they were not strong enough to combat Celoron's forces, they indicated their desire to obey his wishes. When the party left, the Indians expressed their good will, but asked that the English might remain until the French could send artisans and traders to replace them; indicating an English friendliness and that they had made themselves helpful. The expedition depended largely for their supply of food from game of the forest and there was disappointment at the scarcity of buffalo, although deer were quite plentiful. Sickness somewhat dampened the spirits of the party. On August 13, the present Pennsylvania-Ohio line was crossed and a halt was made at probably Wheeling Creek entering the Ohio from the south and the third leaden plate was deposited. The fourth plate was deposited at the mouth of the Muskingum, which was reached August 15. This plate was discovered in 1798, after the settlement at Marietta, by boys swimming in the river, where the water had washed away the river bank. A considerable portion of the plate was melted into bullets before its historical importance was realized. It now rests in the rooms of the Antiquarian Society of Massachusetts. The fifth plate was buried at the mouth of the Kanawha. It was found by a boy in March, 1848, while playing about the site. On approaching the mouth of the Scioto River, as that place was the stronghold of the warlike Shawnees, Celoron prepared for any eventuality. He learned from a lone Indian he hailed on the river bank that the Scioto town contained from eighty to one hundred cabins. As usual, Joncaire and three or four chiefs TOLEDO AND THE SANDUSKY REGION - 83 were sent down to prepare the way. As a result, as the expedition was approaching carefully, they were met by a canoe bearing a white flag containing Joncaire, and seven Indians who had been induced to return with him. There was much parleying between the French and the Indians before the detachment finally came up to the village. The Shawnees had been told there was an enemy approaching to destroy them, and the natural suspicion and belligerency of the Shawnees was hard to overcome. The Indians had built a strong defense works of stone, and at one point in the proceedings they came near to the point of rising to an attack. A report came into the village by a runner that "all the nations of the narrows" (Detroit) were coming to fall upon them and that Celoron's visit was simply a ruse to detract the Shawnees' attention while the great enemy was approaching. The alarm was caused by the approach of the three Ontario couriers sent from Detroit by M. Sabrinois, as requested by Celoron before he left Canada, to meet the latter at the mouth of the Scioto "from the 9th to the 12th of August," to inform him as to whether any Indians of Detroit were coming on to join him. Local Scioto runners had arrived at the Shawnee town to inform Celoron that the three Ontario messengers "would not arrive for two days." This is the incident specially called attention to earlier in this story of Celoron's tour. When the Detroit messengers arrived (about August 25), they brought Celoron two letters in which M. Sabrinois informed him that there was nothing serious to the "disposition of the Indians at Detroit," for the latter, although requested by M. Longueuil to march to the mouth of the Scioto, constantly refused to do so. Celoron gave the couriers some provisions and sent back to Detroit by them a letter to M. Sabrinois and "besought him to keep twenty canoes in reserve for me at the foot of the narrows [entrance to Detroit River—Editor] with provisions for my detachment, against the beginning of October." It is well to say here that the couriers returned safely to Detroit, delivered the letter of request, and as will be seen later, Celoron and his party were promptly met by the canoes and provisions at the foot of the Detroit River at the time indicated. Returning to the parley between Celoron and the Shawnees at the mouth of the Scioto, the situation was most precarious, but finally after a long parley, the Indians became somewhat reconciled and agreed. to "listen to no more bad talk" and wished 84 - STORY OF THE MAUMEE VALLEY the detachment well on their further journey. Before he left, Celoron summoned the English traders to appear and informed them that they had no right to trade "or aught else on the Beautiful River." He also wrote a letter to the governor of Carolina whom he "fully apprised of the danger his traders would expose themselves to, if they returned there." Celoron was ordered by the Canadian authorities to even "plunder the English" in this territory, but he did not consider his forces strong enough to do so, as the traders were well established in the villages and were well sustained by the Indians. The expedition left the mouth of the Scioto on the morning of August 26, and the next day arrived at the mouth of the Little Miami River. Here some friendly Indians in a near-by village were communicated with by De Villiers and Celoron's son, and a party of these Indians were induced to accompany the detachment to the village of the Great Chief, the Demoiselle at the headwaters of the Great Miami. On the 29th Celoron sent a letter to M. Raimond, commander at the post at the head of the Maumee (Fort Wayne) "among the Miamis" requesting that as many horses as possible, be sent to the headwaters of the Great Miami to assist in "transporting the baggage across the portage of fifty leagues" to the Maumee. He also asked for an interpreter. At the mouth of the Great Miami on the left bank, the sixth and last leaden plate was buried with the usual ceremony. Owing to the shallow water of the river it took thirteen days to reach the head of the Great Miami, half of the party proceeding by land. Learning of Celoron's approach, the Demoiselle sent his chiefs to meet him. The village was reached September 13. This noted chieftain, head of the Piankashaw band of the Miamis and ruler of the famous village, was called by the French "La Demoiselle" because of his gaudy dress. He was called by the English "Old Britain" by reason of his friendliness to the British. The place of this chief which was called Pickawillany, and located at the mouth of Loramie Creek, besides being a trading post was an important western Ohio country trail center. Celoron was desirous that the Miamis here remove to their early location about the head of the Maumee. The French wanted their removal there in order that they might be in handier communication with Detroit and better under French control. They seemed willing to make the change, but the idea was not carried out. After the exchange of long talks and a week's stay, on Sep- TOLEDO AND THE SANDUSKY REGION - 85 tember 20th, the French prepared to resume their journey. They burned their canoes and securing some ponies, set out across the portage to the head of the Maumee about seventy-five miles away. They arrived at the French post Miami under the command of M. Raimond on the 29th. They found the fort in very bad condition, most of the palisades decayed and fallen in ruins. Within were eight dilapidated huts, occupied by twenty-two French, all stricken with the fever. The commandant was not satisfied with the location and desired to build a new fort on the bank of the St. Joseph River about two and a half miles up. Father Bonne-camps did not have the time, as he says in his journal, to view the new site but drew plans for the new structure which M. Raimond later built and abandoned the old site. At this point Father Bonnecamps observes that "It was while with the Miamis that I learned that we had, a little before entering the River a la Roche (Great Miami) passed within two or three leagues of a famous salt springs where are skeletons of immense animals." He regrets not hearing of the place at the time he was near, that he might have visited it. This was the famous salt springs (lick) in Boone County, Kentucky, at which place bones of mastodons have been found in quantities. The water was also very low in the Maumee. The detachment left present Fort Wayne site September 27th and reached Lake Erie October 5, 1749. On account of not having sufficient canoes and pirogues, a part of the force went by land with Indian guides. At the Maumee Rapids it was necessary to drag by main force the pirogues they had secured in place of birch-bark canoes they started with. Father Bonnecamps, however, says that "at intervals were found beautiful reaches of smooth water, and in the last six leagues the river is broad and deep, and seems to herald the grandeur of the lake into which it discharges its waters. We entered the lake on the 5th of October. On entering it there is to the left the bay of Onanguisse, which is said to be very deep. Soon after, one encounters to the right the Isles aux Serpents (islands where there are snakes). On the 6th, we arrived at the mouth of the Detroit River where we found canoes and provisions for our return." The expedition is left at Detroit, although they finally reached Montreal. What a spectacle to have seen this flotilla pass down the Maumee, the French colors flying and the redoubtable Celoron leading the way. At the mouth of the river they must have hugged the east shore at Cedar Point, as Father 86 - STORY OF THE MAUMEE VALLEY Bonnecamps speaks of the "Onanguisse Bay on the left"—Maumee Bay. Another point : It will be remembered as already emphasized, that when the expedition was at the Shawnee town, mouth of the Scioto, three couriers arrived there from Detroit with letters for Celoron. The captain sent by these couriers a letter in return to M. Sabrinois, requesting that they have canoes and provisions awaiting the expedition at the mouth of the Detroit River "by the beginning of October." It will be noted that this request was fully complied with. The telling of the story of Celoron serves a double purpose. It not only shows the efforts of the French to counteract the operations of the English among the Indians of the Ohio region, but it shows that the English were busy in this territory in their attempt to gain the favor of the Indians. Celoron found English traders in the villages all along his Ohio journey; and they seemed to have a good standing. Celoron traveled altogether some three thousand miles, and "placarded the country with `Keep Off' notices." As to his success, he said himself, that "the nations (Indians) of these countries (visited) are very ill disposed toward the French and are devoted entirely to the English." CHAPTER XII EXPEDITION OF CHRISTOPHER GIST GIST WITH MONTOUR AND CROGHAN MAKE A TOUR FOR THE OHIO COMPANY-REACH PICKAWILLANY-MEET OLD BRITAIN-FRENCH DESTROY PICKAWILLANY-OLD BRITAIN MURDERED. The contest of the English and French was like a game of chess. It was the colonies' next move. When the governor of Pennsylvania heard the news of Celoron's coming he sent George Croghan to the Ohio country to counteract whatever influence the French expedition might have and to hold the interests of the English among the Indians. Croghan reached Logstown on the Ohio River below the confluence of the Allegheny and the Monongahela the latter part of August, 1749, some ten days after the French had passed that way and where Celoron had the flying British colors chopped down. The Indians told Croghan about the plate burying and what Celoron had said about the English wanting to appropriate the Indian's country. In the following summer (1750), evidently hearing of the proposed plan of M. Joncaire to follow Celoron to the Ohio country with valuable gifts for the Indians, and for the purpose of ejecting all the English traders, Conrad Weiser reported the matter to the authorities of Pennsylvania. Governor Hamilton selected Montour and Croghan to proceed to the Indians in the Miami region with presents, renew the friendly relations and give assurance of protection. They proceeded first to Logstown and went from there to the village of the Wyandots and Mingoes at the Muskingum forks of the Tuscarawas and Walhonding, where is now Coshocton. The villages contained about one hundred families, in all about five hundred Indians. They were about equally divided as to their fealty between the English and French. Croghan had a trading house here and when Montour and he arrived, sent out for all his traders from the surrounding region and raised the British flag over his trading house and over that of the head chief. While Croghan and Montour were thus engaged in strengthening the English status, there came into the town Christopher Gist, the agent of the Ohio Company. Gist - 87 - 88 - STORY OF THE MAUMEE VALLEY had been selected by the company to examine the western country as far as the "Falls of the Ohio" (Louisville) to look for a large tract of good land; to mark the passes in the mountains; to trace the courses of the rivers; to count the waterfalls; to observe the strength of the Indian nations; to draw a good plan of the country and make a report. In reaching the Muskingum Forks, Gist started October 5, 1750, from Thomas Cresap's Old Town on the Potomac (there were several places called Old Town), about fifteen miles east of Cumberland, Maryland. Through the wilderness he reached and crossed the Alleghenies and from Shannopins Town followed the river to Logstown. Here he found Croghan and Montour had preceded him. From Beaver Creek he passed into the interior through the present town of New Lisbon, then on to the junction of the Big Sandy and Tuscarawas and reached the Muskingum Wyandot town December 14. He remained at this place until January 15, 1751, and on Christmas day held religious exercises, reported as the first Protestant religious service ever held within the bounds of now Ohio. Croghan, Montour and Gist held councils with the Indians in the head chief's house over which the British flag waved and exploited the cause of the English. The noted trio traveled on horseback. They went from the Muskingum five miles west to a town on White Woman's Creek, famed for the story of Mary Harris. From here their course led in a southerly direction through now Coshocton County near present Dresden and the Licking reservoir; to French Margaret's town, site of Lancaster, Fairfield County; over the Pickaway plains between Scippo Creek and the Scioto River, south of present Circleville, where, turning westward they reached the Scioto. All along the way they stopped at Indian villages and lodges. Following the Scioto they reached the Shawnee town on the Ohio, site of Portsmouth. This town, Gist reported, was located on both sides of the Ohio with "about three hundred men on the south side and one hundred men on the north side." There was on the north side a kind of state house about ninety feet long with a light cover of bark in which they held their councils. Croghan, Gist and Montour spent nearly two weeks here and held parley with the Shawnees in the state house, speeches being made around the banquet table by the Indians and their three visitors. Here as all along the route, the prospectors urged the Indians to keep faith with the English and were invited to attend the coming conference at Logstown. TOLEDO AND THE SANDUSKY REGION - 89 On their travels from the Ohio to Pickawillany the town of Old Britain, one hundred and fifty miles away, and through a country no white man probably ever saw before, the travelers evidently passed through the present counties of Scioto, Adams, Highland, Fayette, Madison, Clarke and Logan. In this latter part of their journey, they crossed the Mad River and the Great Miami. Gist made careful observation of the geography of the country all the way. He observed the topography, the kinds of timber, the streams and the game. The great forests, together with the meadows of clover and blue grass, was the home of the elk, deer, buffalo, turkey, and other wild animals and smaller game. Herds of thirty and forty buffalo were seen feeding in a single meadow. Pickawillany, the objective of the prospectors, was located on the headwaters of the Great Miami River, at the mouth of Loramie's Creek and near the line between present Shelby and Miami counties. Here Croghan, Gist and Montour were well received by the Piankashaw chief whom the English called Old Britain and who the French referred to as the Demoiselle. Gist reported about four hundred families here. The old chief requested that the English colors be raised over his house as the traders and white men joined in the welcome. As always, speeches were made, presents delivered and feasts spread. In the midst of it all there appeared four Ottawa Indians from Detroit who had canoed up over the Maumee River route. They were representatives of the French. They came in carrying the French flag and were received at the council-house and Old Britain ran up the French colors alongside those of the English. With the preliminary of ample presents of brandy and tobacco, the Ottawas in glowing terms presented the rainbow tinted promises of France, urging the Indians to accept their extended hand. As the Ohio historian Randall put it : "A curious conclave on the banks of the Great Miami, in the Ohio capital of the western savage; a sort of miniature and mimic Field of the Cloth of Gold in which France and England contended in their respective displays of power and prodigality for the allegiance of the Indian tribes, as more than two centuries before, the courts of England and France met in the vale of Andreau and exhibited their rival splendors in order to win the favors of Spain." At the conclusion of the conference the presents of the French were refused, the French colors lowered and the four Ottawa commissioners departed for the French fort at the head of the 5-VOL. 1 90 - STORY OF THE MAUMEE VALLEY Maumee River—Fort Miami, now Fort Wayne. After the French representatives left, a great dance in all kinds of weird costumes was held for the edification of Croghan, Gist and Montour. Croghan made a treaty with the Indians in the name of the authorities of Pennsylvania, accompanying the pact with valuable gifts, and Old Britain promised Gist that his people would attend the meeting later at Logstown, to make a treaty with Virginia. Gist here parted company with Croghan and Montour, the latter making their way in as direct a line as possible to Pennsylvania, while Gist returned by way of the mouth of the Scioto. Gist's sole attendant was a boy. He gave up the plan of going to the falls of the Ohio, and crossing rivers and passing through great forests and negotiating the mountains of Kentucky and Virginia, reached the Yadkin, his starting point, May 18, 1751. What hardy woodsmen, Croghan, Gist and Montour must have been to have made such a journey; going and coming through the wilderness of now Ohio and starting in the dead of winter with all its attendant hardships. When Croghan and Montour reported the results of their tour to the governor of Pennsylvania, Hamilton sent them back to Logstown with presents to the value of $3,500 to further gain the favor of the Indians. Here Joncaire the diplomat of the Celoron expedition suddenly appeared from Canada, accompanied by a Frenchman and forty Iroquois. Joncaire appealed to the Indians to sever their association with the English and to drive the colonial traders from their lands. His proposals were indignantly refused. Goods were distributed by Croghan and the Indians agreed to remain steadfast to the English cause. This meeting at Logstown was followed in May, 1752, by a more important gathering there attended by three commissioners from Virginia, together with Gist, Croghan, Montour and William Trent. The main purpose of this council was the confirmation of the treaty made at Lancaster in 1744, at which Virginia claimed the Indians had ceded to the English all the lands in the Virginia colony. The Indians assented to this claim and to the permission of white settlements south of the Ohio River; also permission to erect a fort at the forks of Ohio—later Fort Pitt, Pittsburgh. A retaliatory measure proposed by the French that Celoron of the great expedition of 1749, now commandant at Detroit, proceed up the Maumee River he had once descended so gloriously and drive the English from the Miami country, was not TOLEDO AND THE SANDUSKY REGION - 91 carried out. In his stead to do the work, was selected Charles Langlade, a half-breed son of a French officer, with M. St. Orr his assistant. With a small force of French soldiers and Canadians, and 250 Ottawa and Chippewa warriors, they set out from Detroit, paddled up the Maumee River to Fort Miami its head, and took their way through the forest to Pickawillany, where they attacked the stockade within which were the chief Demoiselle and the English traders. It was on a morning of June, 1752, and the squaws busy in their cornfields fled to the deep woods. Fortunately or unfortunately, most of the village warriors were distant on their summer hunt. Demoiselle and those in the town, together with the eight traders at the post, put up a brave fight. Their small numbers, however, made the contest unequal. But a few hours after the attack opened Pickawillany was no more. One trader was wounded, then stabbed and partially eaten. Five were taken prisoners, while the other two traders, Thomas Burney and Andrew McBryer, escaped to tell the story. Fourteen Miamis were killed including the Demoiselle, who was boiled and eaten. The tragedy was the first act in the great drama of the British-French war. Rather strangely, it was at the same time that the Indian-English conference was in progress at Logstown. Capt. William Trent has been mentioned as in attendance at the Logstown conference. He was a brother-in-law of George Croghan and in 1750 had formed a partnership with Croghan in the Indian trade, which association lasted six years. His attendance at Logstown was as agent of Virginia by the appointment of Governor Dinwiddie, after which he set out as a messenger to the Pickawillany Miamis with presents. He followed practically the same route previously taken by Gist, leaving Logstown June 21, 1752. At the Lower Shawnee town at the mouth of the Scioto River, Trent met Burney and McBryer, the traders who had escaped from the Pickawillany disaster, who told him the news. With an attendant party, Trent started for Pickawillany to assemble and bring away the remaining Twightwees. On his arrival he took down two French flags left flying over the deserted ruins by the victors, and replaced them by the colors of the English. With about a dozen refugees from Pickawillany, women and children, including the wife of the murdered Old Britain and her son, Trent returned to the Ohio River Shawnee town. CHAPTER XIII FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR GEORGE WASHINGTON SENT TO AVERT A CRISIS-HIS SUCCESS AND DEFEAT- GREAT MEADOWS-BRADDOCK'S DEFEAT AND DEATH-CHANGE IN THE INDIAN ATTITUDE-THE ALBANY COUNCIL-ENGLAND DECLARES WAR AGAINST FRANCE-VICTORY FOR ENGLAND AND PEACE. After two centuries of conflicting claims, the rights of discovery, occupation, Indian concessions and treaties, the real crisis between France and England in America was now at hand. From the time of Cartier and the Cabots, it was inevitable that this crisis would come, to be settled by the force of arms. The success of the French at Pickawillany so raised the hopes of the French that they began the construction, from Lake Erie to the headwaters of the Ohio, of armed forts, and even planned more works on down that river. It was this action that brought war. In the spring of 1753, Duquesne, governor of Canada, sent out a force of some fourteen hundred men, comprised of French colonials, Canadians and Indians. The advance troops landed at Presque Isle, now Erie, Pa., and established a fort. Further in the interior they built Fort La Boeuf. Other forts were projected though not built. The English, together with the Indians friendly to the colonies, were now aroused. In an attempt, however, to prevent open hostilities, Governor Dinwiddie of Virginia dispatched young George Washington to the scene of activities to ask the French to desist from encroaching upon English territory. With Christopher Gist as guide, Washington on his journey, reached Logs-town on the Ohio where he was in council for four days with the chiefs. Adding several chiefs to his party, he proceeded to Venango, sixty miles north towards Lake Erie on the upper Allegheny. Here he saw the French colors flying over the cabin of the commandant. He met Joncaire, who was the diplomat of the Celoron expedition, was entertained with French courtesy, but at the same time was told that "it was their absolute design to take possession of the Ohio and by G—d they would do it and keep it." The young American had some difficulty sobering up - 92 - TOLEDO AND THE SANDUSKY REGION - 93 his Indian escorts, who had partaken too freely of Joncaire's hospitality. From Venango, Washington went on to Fort La Boeuf. A full complement of officers and about one hundred soldiers made up the garrison. Here Washington met St. Pierre, a prominent officer and explorer, who had traveled as far west as the Rocky Mountains. He told Washington that the Ohio country belonged to the French and that no Englishman had a right to trade upon the waters that drained it. Washington all the time was noting the size and strength of the fort and its surroundings. After St. Pierre handed to Washington his sealed reply to Governor Dinwiddie's communication to the French, the young officer and his companions began their return journey. Being December, they encountered many hardships. After reaching Logstown again, Washington burdened his horse only with his packs, donned a hunting suit and traveled on foot. After going a short distance Washington put his party in charge of one of his reliable men and he and Gist went on alone. They soon came in contact with a number of French Indians, one of whom offered his services as a guide and his offer was accepted. The guide in the lead, upon coming up into an open space, turned quickly and fired at Washington point blank but missed his aim. Gist wished to immediately kill the Indian. Washington objected and the guide was simply dismissed. When they came to the Allegheny River, in an attempt to cross on a raft, Washington fell into a jam of ice cakes where the water was some ten feet deep. He saved himself from drowning by clinging to a log of the raft which brought him to an island a little down the river. After parting with Gist at the latter's home, Washington reached Williamsburg, January 16, 1754, from where he had started on his important mission. St. Pierre's reply was that he would submit Dinwiddie's claims to Governor Duquesne at Quebec. This not being satisfactory, money was provided by Virginia for an expedition, a body of three hundred troopers were ordered enlisted and provision made for equipment and supplies. Col. John Fry was selected as chief officer of the forces and young Washington made lieutenant-colonel and second in command. Capt. William Trent was dispatched ahead of the general command and under orders enlisted traders and frontier settlers on the way to the Forks of the Ohio where he was instructed to build a fort. Trent's force when he arrived at the Forks consisted of a motley collection of fifty to seventy-five men. They had made a storehouse built by 94 - STORY OF THE MAUMEE VALLEY the Ohio Company at the mouth of Redstone Creek, a tributary of the Monongahela, their base of supplies. About the middle of February, 1754, the forces of Trent were engaged in the construction of the new fort when a body of five hundred French troops suddenly appeared coming down the Allegheny. They were in sixty bateaux and three hundred canoes and carried eighteen cannon. They were under the command of Captain. Contrecoeur and arrived by way of Venango. Trent had left and the construction of the works was in the hands of a subordinate officer, Ensign Ward. Thus surprised, the fort builders being ordered to surrender, after some delay complied. Ward and his men were not made prisoners and returned to Wills Creek. The French forces enlarged the original plans, and on completion, named the works Fort Duquesne, after the Canadian governor. A strong garrison was placed, under command of able, experienced officers. Thus began the opening skirmish between the French and the English. The colonies were now aroused to the seriousness of the situation. Called upon by Governor Dinwiddie to make common cause against the French, they responded with men and money. Colonel Fry being ill, Washington, at the age of only twenty-two, was placed in command of a force to retrieve the situation at the head of the Ohio. With one hundred and sixty men he started from Wills Creek for the Ohio Forks by way of Redstone the last of April. At the Youghiogheny he received word that a party of French were advancing from the Forks, coming up the Monongahela and headed for Redstone. Washington took up his position at a place called Great Meadows, on a branch of Great Meadows run. Here Christopher Gist arrived and told him that La Force at the head of fifty men were only a few miles off. The young commander cleared the underbrush from his situation and threw up an entrenchment. A scout sent by Chief Half King from the camp of some friendly Indians, six miles away who were coming to aid Washington, also came to Great Meadows with the information that the French were near the Indian camp. Leaving his camp guarded, Washington with forty men joined the Half King after great difficulty, traveling through the night. With the Indians comprising the left wing of his forces, Washington advanced and met the French under La Force. While the skirmish lasted but fifteen minutes, it was a sharp conflict. Ten of the French were killed, one wounded and La Force and twenty of his men were made prisoners. Among TOLEDO AND THE SANDUSKY REGION - 95 the killed was Coulon de Jumonville, an ambassador under escort, on a mission to warn the English against trespassing upon the lands of the French. Returning to his Great Meadows camp, Washington strengthened his entrenchments of earth with palisades and named the place Fort Necessity. It was not unlike the works of the extinct mound builders of perhaps a thousand years before then. Washington sent his prisoners to Winchester and later received the information of the death of Colonel Fry and that he had been appointed to full command. While forces were being organized, besides Virginia, in Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York, the Carolinas, and other colonies, additional troops reached Washington at Fort Necessity, making his total strength about four hundred men. Here, July 3, 1754, an army of five hundred French and about four hundred Indians under Captain De Villiers, a brother of Jumonville, killed in the former skirmish, attacked Washington. A spirited contest lasted from noon until eight o'clock that night when the French asked for a consultation, looking towards the capitulation of the colonial forces. With the rain falling in torrents, his Men deep in the mud and water in the trenches, his ammunition water soaked, and considering the great discrepancy in numbers, Washington agreed to terms which allowed him to retire with all his troops, taking everything belonging to his camp except a small cannon. It could hardly be called a defeat and it was Washington's only surrender during his career. The French loss as reported was seventy-two killed and wounded and the colonial loss seventy. Washington with his men marched back to Wills Creek the French destroyed the palisades of Fort Necessity, such as they were, and returned to Fort Duquesne. Thus far the contest had been carried on by troops from the American colonies, against Canadians sprinkled with French troops and their Indian allies; certain tribes also being a large factor in aid of the colonies. The situation now demanded the action as well as the attention of the mother countries. Bodies of troops were rushed from England and France and the colonial interests on both sides in America were active in securing the cooperation of the Indians. England sent some three thousand men across the Atlantic and Gen. Edward Braddock was selected to lead this admirable force. The French embarked in about equal number under Baron Dieskau, in eighteen ships. Each side hailed the arrival 98 - STORY OF THE MAUMEE VALLEY Ohio, greatly concerned over the apparent intention of the French to invade their lands, appealed to the English to come to their rescue. The lower Shawnees, among the first to change their attitude in favor of the French, forwarded a warning message to the colonies and the Miamis sent a messenger to Governor Dinwiddie saying: "We must look upon ourselves as lost, if our brothers the English do not stand by us and give us arms." The Senecas and Cayugas and the Delawares on the upper Ohio were alarmed at the establishment of the French chain of forts into the interior back from Lake Erie. And all along the way, the French were using every influence they could bring to bear to secure to themselves the alignment of the Ohio tribes. La Force dispatched a French officer who met delegates of the Six Nations at Logstown in the early part of 1754, and bluntly accusing the Indians of favoring the English, warned them of the consequences. The French had shown by their annihilation of Pickawillany, the village of Old Britain, their strong arm methods. They had landed on the south shore of Erie and built their chain of forts; they had sent the young Washington back to Virginia from Fort Necessity, which they destroyed; and under their direction the Indians had crushed Braddock. With it all, as one writer put it: "No English trader dare show himself (in the Ohio section) and the Indians declared in favor of the French." In other words the latter were gaining possession of the Ohio country. In their desperation, what more did the tribes need for self protection to cause them to turn towards the French who were making them glittering promises, the situation appearing bright to the French themselves: Therefore, after the defeat of Braddock, the Indians renewed their raids deep into the colonial border settlements. One bright ray in the English situation was the Albany council, where, with the influence of Sir William Johnson, superintendent for the English government of Indian affairs in the American colonies, the friendliness of the Six Nations was for a time made more secure; but all except the Mohawks soon took up the French cause, or were in their attitude simply neutral. However, the English by the Braddock disaster had learned by dearly bought experience, the kind of warfare that must be waged in order to win. They realized too that the Indians held the balance of power in the great contest and with affairs running against them, it was going to take an army of consequence to stem defeat. TOLEDO AND THE SANDUSKY REGION - 99 War was finally declared by England against France in May, 1756, but two years of strife passed before there came a hopeful change. Three men had much to do with the turning of the tide —William Pitt, first earl of Chatham, George Washington, and Frederick Post, noted Moravian missionary, and the latter's part was not inconsequential. Pitt, in December, 1756, had become England's secretary of state, and being in sympathy with the American colonies, promised to send them British troops and supply their militia with arms, ammunition and supplies at the expense of the mother country. As a fulfillment of this promise he equipped an army of twelve thousand British and sent them across the Atlantic, to which were added nearly fifty thousand colonials. The substitution of Dinwiddie by Francis Fauquier as governor of Virginia was another favorable aspect. Important moves were now being rapidly made on the great chess board with the object of checkmating the French without delay. Pitt to accomplish this had planned three points of attack. One campaign was to be made against Louisburg, Cape Breton, with a force under Maj.-Gen. Jeffrey Amherst; a second point of attack was to be Ticonderoga with troops commanded by Maj.Gen. James Abercrombie; a third, which specially concerns this story, was to be directed towards the recapture of Fort Duquesne with forces under command of Brig.-Gen. John Forbes, and Washington a prominent factor with the Virginia colonials. At the same time the expedition of Forbes, consisting of British regulars and colonials, was being organized; William Denny, governor of Pennsylvania, dispatched Post among the Shawnees, Delawares and Mingoes in the Ohio section to at least secure their neutrality if not cooperation in the campaign against Duquesne. Post's tour among the Indians with a few companions was beset with many dangers and great hardship. Through the aid of the King of the Delawares, representatives of the Shawnees, Delawares, and Mingoes met Post opposite Fort Duquesne, near the Forks of the Ohio, in the middle of the summer of 1758 and arranged a nominal peace with the chiefs present, among whom were Captain White Eyes and Killbuck from the Delawares of the Muskingum. The Indians also promised to use their influence to persuade other tribes to follow their example. In October following, developed the fruits of the tour of Post. An important conference was held. at Easton, Pa., attended by the Iroquois and other tribes at which the Indians agreed to the