BOOK ONE Indian, Frenchman and Englishman CHAPTER I THE LAND Northeastern Ohio is a glaciated plateau rising in places to an elevation of 1,300 feet from the sea. The Ohio River bounds the territory on the south, Lake Erie on the north. The distance from the river to the lake on the Ohio-Pennsylvania boundary line is about ninety-five miles. The Erie shore in Lake and Ashtabula counties is bordered by a line of high and often precipitous bluffs, through which little rivers have cut deep gorges to the lake. These rivers drain a territory varying from fifteen miles in width on the eastern boundary of Ashtabula County, just north of Andover, to about thirty miles in Portage County, between Kent and Ravenna. South of this ridge line the streams flow south to the Ohio River. The Grand, Chagrin and Ashtabula rivers drain the northern portion; the Mahoning River, in a wide crescent sweep, drains the central valley; and the Little Beaver Creek and the Tuscarawas River drain the southern portion. Deep precipitous gorges are characteristic of most of the smaller streams in this region, and the result is many scenes of wild and rare beauty; while the valleys of the larger streams open wide vistas of quiet charm. - 33 - 34 - HISTORY OF NORTHEASTERN OHIO The glacier which swept down across this country seems to have been halted by the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains just north of the Ohio River. The glacial line runs nearly east and west through the middle of Columbiana County, and along the southern boundary of Stark County. When the glacier melted it left a variety of soil, mostly sand and shale, dotted here and there with granite boulders. Although native limestone underlies the soil in places, there is very little lime in the glacial deposits on the surface. The soil seems to have been favorable to a forest growth, for before the coming of the white settlers the whole territory was covered with unbroken forest. The only coniferous evergreens in the forest were the hemlocks on the hillsides along the streams. Most of the trees were deciduous hardwoods: oaks, maples, ash, beech, elm, tulip, locust, hickory, dogwood, gum, and endless others. Mountain laurel, service berry and witch hazel bloomed on the hillsides; blackberries, raspberries, thimbleberries, and strawberries grew everywhere. As a result of the Erie War, to be related in the next chapter, for a hundred years there was little human life in the forest. But it was full of animal life : bison, deer and elk, black and brown bear, mountain lion and wildcat, beaver, squirrel, cottontail rabbit, mink, weasel, skunk, red and gray fox, rattlesnake, copperhead, blacksnake, gartersnake ; and myriads of singing birds. Fish abounded in the streams. It was a woodland paradise. CHAPTER II INDIAN DAYS There is only a vague and uncertain trace of pre-glacial man in Ohio. The earliest certain evidences of human existence in this territory are the remarkable structures of those mysterious aborigines commonly known as the "Mound Builders." Nearly all of their remaining work lies in South Central Ohio. There is a serpent and crescent mound formation on Indian Run in Mercer County, Pennsylvania, about ten miles from the Ohio boundary, and some few relics in Northeastern Ohio may be their work. But Indian history for us begins with the Huron-Iroquois family. This great race in historic times occupied the territory surrounding Lakes Erie and Ontario. When Jacques Cartier in 1535 sailed up the St. Lawrence River to the present site of Quebec, he seems to have found the Iroquois there. But by the coming of Champlain in 1609, the three great branches of the Huron-Iroquois were settled more or less as follows: the Five Nations of the Iroquois south of Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence, from Lake Champlain to the foot of Lake Erie; the Hurons, north of Erie and Ontario in the peninsula enclosed by those lakes and Lake Huron; the Eries on the southern shore of Lake Erie, all the way west to the Maumee. All around them, on every side, from the Tennessee River to Hudson Bay, from the Atlantic to the Mississippi roved the many tribes of the great Algonquin family. In order to understand the triangular struggle for the Ohio country between Indians, Frenchmen and Englishmen, it is necessary first of all to establish the status and move- - 35 - 36 - HISTORY OF NORTHEASTERN OHIO ments of the Iroquois. When Samuel de Champlain sailed up the St. Lawrence and Richelieu rivers to Lake Champlain in 1609—the same summer in which Henry Hudson ascended the Hudson to the head of the tide-water, the Five Nations were ranged in this order : the Mohawks on the river which bears this name—"the keepers of the eastern door," ranging west among the finger lakes of New York, Oneidas, Onondagas and Cayugas, and on the extreme west, reaching to the Niagara River, the Senecas—"keepers of the western door," (Note.—About the middle of the eighteenth century, the sixth nation—the Tuscaroras—moved north from the Carolinas, and established a position just south of the other five. From this time on, the Iroquois were called the "Six Nations.") Champlain found the Hurons at war with the Iroquois. He began his administration of Canadian affairs by aiding the Hurons in a battle with the Mohawks on the shores of Lake Champlain. The mysterious and thunderous death dealt by the French muskets frightened the Mohawks so that they ran. From that time on, the Iroquois held an enmity against the French and established alliances first with the Dutch and afterwards with the English which lasted till after the Revolution. During the seventeenth century, the Iroquois accomplished the destruction of their Huron and Erie kinfolk. The struggle with the Huron was long and uncertain. However, by the end of the century, they were driven from the Ontario peninsula, and the remnant, known as Wyandots, re-established themselves west of the Detroit River, along the shores of the Maumee and as far east as Sandusky Bay. In contrast, the struggle with the Eries was short and decisive. As we have noted above, the Eries were located on the southern shore of the lake which now bears their name. What we know of them is little. That they were closely related to the Iroquois in blood is certain, and they seem to have pos- HISTORY OF NORTHEASTERN OHIO - 37 sessed all the virile, warlike characteristics of the race. They were called "The Cat Nation," perhaps because their land was overrun by wildcats and panthers, perhaps because of their stealthy, feline methods of warfare. Their principal village seems to have been near the mouth of Conneaut Creek, where the present city and harbor of Conneaut is located. For the story of their destruction, we are indebted to the relations of the French Jesuits. The time of the final catastrophe which eliminated the Eries from western history is about 1655 or 1656. For several years before animosity was growing between the Eries and their nearest Iroquois neighbors, the Senecas. Athletic contests which usually resulted in bloodshed, and sporadic minor campaigns of actual war fanned the flame. The Eries seem to have conceived the idea of the conquest of the Five Nations one by one, beginning with the Senecas. The event which brought matters to a head was the capture of a Seneca Sachem by the Eries. The Seneca was offered to an Erie woman for marriage and adoption. To the surprise of her people she refused the match. By the law of the tribe the only alternative was death. As they bound the Seneca to the stake, he warned his enemies that they were burning not only him but also the Erie nation. A general war followed, which culminated in a great battle. The scene was a stream flowing into the lake. Various historians have identified nearly every river from the Genesee to the Sandusky as the site of the battle, but the logic of the situation seems to indicate Conneaut Creek. As the Senecas advanced into the Erie country, the Eries eagerly mobilized to meet them, in the hope of eliminating one nation of their enemies. But as the battle joined, they found that they were fighting not a Seneca army alone, but a force recruited from all the Five Nations. What was to be an easy conquest turned out to be a struggle for their very existence. Tradi- 38 - HISTORY OF NORTHEASTERN OHIO tion tells how the Iroquois seven times drove across the stream, and seven times the Eries drove them back. But the eighth drive was fatal to the Eries. Their scattered remnant broke and fled. The Iroquois pursued, and when the slaughter ended, the Erie Nation was no more. A few women and a child or two were taken into slavery. The Iroquois were masters of the southern shore. For a century after this battle, the Iroquois claimed and maintained domination of the U shaped portion of the present states of New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio, bounded by the Allegheny, Ohio, Muskingum and Cuyahoga rivers. They used this country as a hunting ground, making few if any permanent settlements until well into the eighteenth century. They were locally known as "Mengwes," a name which the white backwoodsmen corrupted into "Mingos." In 1701, by deed to Governor Burnet, the Five Nations acknowledged the extension of the sovereignty of the Colony of New York to extend to this territory, an act which complicated the territorial dispute after the Revolution, as we shall see later. In the early years of the eighteenth century, the Delawares entered the eastern side of the Ohio country. This was an Algonquin Nation who seem to have come east from the Mississippi about 1500. They took up their residence on the Susquehanna, Potomac and Delaware rivers. They were inhabiting this country when William Penn established his Colony of Pennsylvania, and lived in harmony with the Pennsylvania Quakers and Germans. But they had trouble with the Iroquois and later with the Scotch-Irish. They called themselves "Lenni-Lenape"—"Original Men," but either by fraud or conquest the Iroquois compelled them to acknowledge themselves "women," a designation which lasted till the St. Clair and Wayne campaigns of 1791 to 1795. HISTORY OF NORTHEASTERN OHIO - 39 The Delawares early came under the influence of the German Moravian missionaries under the leadership of the famous David Zeisberger. A large number of them became converts to christianity; the only Algonquin Christians of Colonial days. This fact resulted several times in the massacre of their congregation at the hands of the Pennsylvania backwoodsmen, deeds to which our Scotch-Irish ancestors cannot point with pride. About 1720 or 1725, the Delawares were tiring of their neighbors in Eastern Pennsylvania. Gradually large groups crossed the mountains, establishing themselves between the Muskingum and Ohio rivers, by agreement with the Iroquois. Their settlements extended north into the present Columbiana, Tuscarawas and Stark counties. There are various recorded instances of a little band of Delawares making salt at the Salt Licks of the Mahoning. No other Indian tribes seem ever to have occupied the territory which is the subject of this history, but it will be necessary to mention the location of the other Ohio tribes. We have seen that the remnant of the Hurons, renamed the Wyandots, in the eighteenth century were living on the Detroit and Maumee rivers. The Ottawas, whose usual habitat was the southern peninsula of Michigan, seem to have had some foothold on the western shore of Lake Erie. The other tribes who lived in what is now the State of Ohio were the Miamis, or Twightwees, and the Shawanoes or Shawnees. The Miami Tribe of the Algonquin Indian family occupied Western Ohio before the beginning of their own memories. Their settlements probably extended as far west as the Illinois River at times. Three Ohio rivers bear their name : The Great Miami, whose mouth is now the southern extremity of the Ohio-Indiana line; The Little Miami, which empties into the Ohio at Cincinnati; and the Maumee, or 40 - HISTORY OF NORTHEASTERN OHIO Miami of the lakes, which drains Northwestern Ohio and Northeastern Indiana, and flows into Lake Erie at Toledo. The variation of spelling is due to the difference in pronunciation of vowel sounds between the French and English languages. The name seems to have been pronounced approximately mee-äh-mee. The Miamis appear early in Ohio history, and become very prominent in St. Clair's and Wayne's campaigns of 1791-1795. The Shawanoes or Shawnees (here again the spelling is very doubtful; the early Frenchmen spelled it Chaouanon) according to the earliest traditions came north from the region of the Tennessee River. In the eighteenth century their principal abiding places were in South-Central Ohio, in the neighborhood of the Scioto River. They were always few in number, but great in power. They must have been a tribe of fine morale and great physical and mental power. The two noblest Indians of the west, perhaps, Cornstalk and Tecumseh, were chieftains of the Shawanoes. These are the Indians of Ohio and the stage is set for the coming of the white man. In 1700, all Ohio was in the possession of the Indians; in 1800, the last Redman was sadly withdrawing himself from Ohio soil. Each treaty yielded a little more land to European civilization ; each war, however justified, encroached a little on the Indian heritage. It was long ago, and nothing can be done about it now, but the modern student of Indian history cannot help a pang of regret at the passing of the race, so brave, so true, so full of promise for a future unfulfilled. CHAPTER III FRENCHMAN VERSUS ENGLISHMAN Whether any wandering Englishman or Frenchman saw the Ohio River in the sixteenth century has been a matter of some interest to historians, but on the whole it seems unlikely. Credit for the discovery of the "Beautiful River," from the viewpoint of history belongs to the great La Salle. Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, came to Canada in 1666, at the age of twenty-three. He first settled on the St. Lawrence River, but his restless spirit soon led him into the interior on a series of explorations which extended to the mouth of the Mississippi, and finally to his tragic death in the Texas plains, at the early age of forty-three. La Salle's first journey of exploration achieved the discovery of the Ohio. Some time in the fall of 1669, he coasted along the southern shore of Lake Erie, ascended one of the streams leading south, portaged to some tributary of the Ohio and descended that river to the falls, at the present Louisville, Kentucky. Unfortunately for history, his journals and records have disappeared. All that we know of him for about two years is that he was in the Ohio country. What course he followed no one knows. His journeys, however, were the foundation of the French claim to the Ohio country, which they maintained until the close of the French and Indian Wars, in 1763. While the French, by way of the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes, were exploring the interior of North America, for a century after the settlement of Jamestown, the - 41 - 42 - HISTORY OF NORTHEASTERN OHIO Allegheny Mountains confined the English colonists to the costal plain. But it was inevitable that the increasing flood of British settlers should eventually swarm across the mountains. In 1716, Governor Alexander Spotswood of Virginia, led an exploring party over the Blue Ridge into the Shenandoah Valley. Soon there poured into this beautiful and fertile valley a stream of Virginians and another stream of Pennsylvania Scotch-Irish. By the middle of the century, a few of the more adventurous had found their way into the mountains west of the valley, and by way of the Greenbrier, New and Great Kanawha rivers, or the Youghiogheny and Monongahela were embarking westward on the Ohio. This migration not only brought about constant conflict with the western Indians, but also a territorial argument with the French. An added cause of trouble was the conflicting claims of the English Colonies themselves. A brief explanation of these claims is necessary in order to understand the situation. The Stuart kings had a propensity for giving away territory in America, irrespective of any other grants which might exist. The original charters by which James I established the colony of Virginia constitute a masterpiece of incoherence. As was natural, the Virginians interpreted them in the broadest sense, and claimed everything west to the Mississippi and north to the lakes. The grant of Charles I to the Calverts, establishing Maryland, while bounded on the south by the Potomac, had no definite northern boundary, and when his son Charles II rid himself of that troublesome personalty, William Penn, the second, by giving him a colony site west of the Delaware River, another dispute ensued, which was only settled by the running of the Mason and Dixon Line in 1763-1767. But Charles II had a positive genius for confusion. His charter to Connecticut gave that colony a strip of land as HISTORY OF NORTHEASTERN OHIO - 43 wide as the colony and as far west as land went. This strip ran through northern Pennsylvania and Ohio, was the reason for the Wyoming Massacre, and later the basis for the creation of the Western Reserve. Massachusetts received from Charles a similar strip just north of Connecticut. To finish his work he gave his brother James the Colony of New York, which covered the Dutch Colony of New Amsterdam and the western claim of Massachusetts. The resulting squabbles among the colonies prevented any harmonious organization against the French and Indians, and were only settled by the general western cessions following the Revolution. While the English were crossing the mountains, the French were laying plans to occupy the Ohio country. Joliet, Marquette and La Salle had extended the French explorations from Lake Erie to Lake Huron, from Lake Huron to Lake Michigan, and from Lake Michigan to the mouth of the Mississippi, leaving the Ohio country untouched after La Salle's first exploration. The first attempt of the French at occupation of the Ohio was the expedition of Celoron in 1749. The Marquis de Galissonniere, Governor-General of Canada, ordered this expedition for the purpose of exploring the Ohio Valley and establishing the Sovereignty of his most Christian Majesty, Louis XV, thereto. The leader of the party was the Chevalier Celoron de Blainville. (Note.—The spelling of both of Celoron's names is a matter of controversy. I have accepted the decision on this point by the Rev. Fr. A. A. Lambing of Pittsburg, who made the translation of the journals of the expedition. The spelling "Bienville" seems to be the result of the confusion of Celoron with that Bienville who founded the City of New Orleans and the Colony of Louisiana. ) There were about 250 persons in the party. Both Celoron and chaplain, Father 44 - HISTORY OF NORTHEASTERN OHIO Bonnecamps, kept journals of the expeditions, so that we have a quite complete record. The party disembarked from Lake Erie at the mouth of Chautauqua Creek, and laboriously achieved the six mile portage to Chautauqua Lake. Here they re-embarked, and paddled down the lake to its outlet, Conewango Creek. They reached the Allegheny River where the City of Warren, Pennsylvania now stands. They followed the Allegheny to its junction with the Ohio, and journeyed down the Ohio to the mouth of the Great Miami. From this point they turned north following the Miami to the head of canoe navigation; thence by portage to the Maumee, down the Maumee to Lake Erie, and back to Montreal by lake and river. On the way down the Allegheny and the Ohio, they buried lead plates at the junction of the important streams, declaring the occupation of the territory and the sovereignty of Louis XV. Three of these plates have been recovered. As Celoron went he made speeches and attempted to form treaties with the Indian tribes, but he confesses that he met with little success. The English traders coming from Pennsylvania and Virginia had made themselves popular with the Indians by low prices on rum and powder and high prices for furs. Celoron, therefore, was not very successful at any point. The following year, Christopher Gist, working for the Colony of Virginia, explored the Ohio Valley and made a rough survey as far as the Falls of the Ohio at the site of the modern City of Louisville. In 1753, the French followed up Celoron's expedition by establishing three outposts : Fort Presqu Isle on Lake Erie, where Erie, Pennsylvania is now located; Fort Le Boeuf, on French Creek; and Fort Venango, at the mouth of French Creek. The same year Governor Dinwiddie of Virginia sent young George Washington to investigate the doings of the French in the Ohio HISTORY OF NORTHEASTERN OHIO - 45 country. Washington found the French established on the Allegheny with no intention of leaving, and his report caused the Virginians to start a counter move. In 1754 Virginia attempted to establish a fort at the junction of the Allegheny and the Monongahela, but they were driven out by the French, who built a stockade and called it Fort Duquesne. Washington succeeded, however, in building a fort near the Youghiogheny River, which he called Fort Necessity. On July 3, 1754, he was beseiged by an overwhelming force of French and Indians, and on the fourth he surrendered, marching out with the honors of war. In 1755 came the ill-fated Braddock expedition against Fort Duquesne. After Braddock's defeat nothing further was done until 1758, when General John Forbes crossed the mountains on the second expedition against Fort Duquesne. This time the French did not wait his coming. Entering the abandoned fort, Forbes took possession and re-named it Fort Pitt in honor of the great Earl of Chatham. The year 1759 saw the fall of Quebec and Montreal. In the fall of 1760, Major Robert Rogers received the surrender of the French forts from Presqu Isle to Detroit. At the mouth of the Grand River, Rogers met the Ottawa chief, Pontiac, who agreed for the western tribes to make peace with the English. In 1763 the Treaty of Paris closed the French and Indian Wars, and the Union Jack ruled from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. Spain ruled west of Mississippi. The power of France in North America was at an end. CHAPTER IV THE WEST TO THE CLOSE OF THE REVOLUTION "The fall of Quebec is the beginning of the Revolution." To the American student of history this sentence needs little explanation. In the year 1760, George III succeeded to the British throne. He was the first English born monarch of the Hanover line. Received with the wholehearted enthusiasm of the entire people, he was resolved "not only to reign but to rule." A stubbornness of will coupled with a dullness of intellect made his reign a succession of errors at home and abroad. No where did he achieve so complete a failure as in his conduct of colonial affairs. No part of this conduct was more wrong-headed than his attitude toward the western country. Immediately after the Peace of Paris in 1763 he made a crown decree that no settlements be established west of the mountains. It were as easy to halt a spring flood. Carolina, Virginia and Pennsylvania backwoodsmen, mostly Scotch-Irish, were finding their way across the Alleghenies and down the various waterways that led to the Ohio. Sir William Johnson's treaty of Fort Stanwyx with the Iroquois had fixed the line of the Allegheny and Ohio rivers as the boundary line of western settlement. With this treaty as authority the Boones, Harrod and Kenton led a group of settlers into the fertile fields of Kentucky. But George III added another item to the list of his errors in 1774, by setting aside all the ancient charters and extending the boundaries of the Province of Quebec to the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. This is the act which is - 46 - HISTORY OF NORTHEASTERN OHIO - 47 aimed at in the Declaration of Independence as "abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries, so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these colonies." In the meantime, armed forces of English Colonists for the first time entered the Ohio country. Pontiac's great conspiracy of 1763 was breaking down in the following year. Two expeditions were ordered west to compel the submission of the Indian tribes. Colonel Bradstreet started from Fort Niagara, followed the southern shore of Lake Erie and arrived in Detroit. Bradstreet's negotiations would probably have proved a failure, as the Indian diplomacy was too much for him. But the other expedition under Colonel Bouquet was a complete success. This wise and brave transpatriated Swiss, whose history is as illustrious as any other colonial Pennsylvanian, had won the most decisive battle of the previous year at Bushy Run, east of Fort Pitt. In October, 1764, he led a force of nearly 2,000 troops, regulars and Pennsylvania and Virginia militia, into the wilderness of Ohio. They started from Fort Pitt, followed the northern bank of the Ohio to the banks of Yellow Creek in Jefferson County, and thence forced their way through the woods to the Tuscarawas branch of the Muskingum. On the Muskingum, Bouquet received the submission of all the Ohio tribes, compelled the surrender of all the white prisoners in their hands, and returned triumphant to Pennsylvania. This expedition is interesting as the first recorded instance of Englishmen in numbers entering the territory which is the subject of this history. For ten years, northern Ohio was undisturbed by white men. In 1774 occurred that interesting episode of western history called Dunmore's War. 48 - HISTORY OF NORTHEASTERN OHIO John Murray, Earl of Dunmore, Royal Governor of Virginia, descendant of the royal house of Stuart, Tory of the Tories, found himself in serious trouble in the year 1774. After his proroguing of the "rebellious" House of Burgesses he had the mortification of seeing three leading citizens of the colony, headed by George Washington, depart for the meeting of the First Continental Congress. Whether he planned his western expedition to confuse and confound his enemies or to promote the best interests of Virginia is a problem which could only have been settled by psycho-analysis of his stubborn mind. It is probably only fair to give him credit for sincerity of purpose in this particular instance. At any rate, through the work of General Andrew Lewis the campaign opened the way for the entering of Ohio by the white men, and is therefore pertinent to this history. There were two expeditions, really. General Lewis assembled his forces at the Great Meadows of the Greenbrier River, where Lewisburg, West Virginia is now located. From that point he proceeded overland to the Kanawha, following a route somewhat approximate to the magnificent course of the present Midland Trail (U. S. Route No. 60). Dunmore assembled his forces at Fort Pitt, which his agent, Dr. Connolly, had recently renamed Fort Dunmore. Dunmore proceeded down the river, crossing the southeastern corner of the present Columbiana County, and ending his march at the Scioto, near Circleville. He had with him a number of men who afterwards became leading figures in western history. Young George Rogers Clark made his first formal campaign with Dunmore; Michael Cresap led his scouts; the sinister figures of the Girtys, Elliot and McKee were among the party. Dunmore for some reason decided to recall the Lewis expedition, but Lewis refused to obey. At the mouth of the Great Kanawha, Lewis met a force of Shawanoes, Delawares HISTORY OF NORTHEASTERN OHIO - 49 and Miamis under the command of the famous chieftain, Cornstalk. A terrific battle resulted in the defeat of the Indians. Lewis pursued the retreating Indians until he met Dunmore near the Scioto. At Dunmore's order he reluctantly withdrew, and Dunmore smoked the pipe of peace with Cornstalk and the other chiefs. Only Logan, the Mingo refused to attend, his speech in refusal having come down to us as an oratorical masterpiece. This campaign has been spoken of by some authorities as the opening of the Revolution in the West. Certainly it cowed the Indians and opened the way for George Rogers Clark. As for Dunmore—it was his last act in harmony with the colony. Inside a year Virginia was in open insurrection and Dunmore was in exile fulminating his futile thunders from the shelter of one of his majesty's warships in Chesapeake Bay. Shortly, the warship departed, and with it, went the Earl of Dunmore, and I for one do not know what happened to him after. Our particular territory saw one campaign of the Revolution, known from its peculiar nature as the "Squaw Campaign." General Hand, commanding at Fort Pitt, led an expedition in the direction of the Cuyahoga River. He never reached the Cuyahoga, but at the Salt Licks of the Mahoning he surprised and killed or captured a small group of Delaware Squaws who were peacefully engaged in evaporating salt. This seems to have been the only blood shed in northeastern Ohio during the Revolution. It was also General Hand's closing western campaign, as he was soon after removed from his command by General Washington. Concerning George Rogers Clark's western campaign little need be said here. Numberless works have appeared in recent years concerning this extraordinary work of strategic art. (Note.—Clark's story, together with the report of his British opponent, Hamilton, are both to be found in a