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INDIAN HISTORY - 161 CHAPTER IX. INDIAN HISTORY AND ETHNOLOGY. " A plundering race, still eager to invade, On spoils they live, and make of murder trade." THE Indian annals of Wayne county wear but dim crimson upon their borders and are not blighted by any very bloody antiquity. We have vainly explored for treaties, intrigues, armistices, surrenders, sieges or battle fields. With a rare but fragrant exception of one handsomely conceived and exquisitely executed massacre, and that upon a small scale, we find nothing of any importance. Happily for us, it was reserved to other localities for the red fields of Pontiac, Tecumseh and the Prophet, to steam with blood and be scented with slaughter. Fortunate beyond measure was it to the early settlers that the brawn warriors were beyond their borders, and that their swoops and forays fell upon other communities. In this respect the western and south-western part of Ohio is historic, furnishing inspiration for the heroic muse, startling incidents for the historian, and an enchanting, fairy field for the delectations of romance. Instead of being the theater of blood-curdling military excitements, such as cause the heart to shudder at the recital of, its early settlement was one of peace and comparative security to the pioneer. The Delawares, Wyandots, Shawanese, etc., etc., were the chief tribes, or rather fragments of these tribes, it was that occupied this section upon the advent of the pioneers. 162 - HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY, OHIO. THE DELAWARES. According to the Moravian, Heckwelder, the Delawares, from a tradition of their tribe, possessed the western portion of the continent—the Lenni Lenape supposed to be residing there—but in the distant, receding ages, traveled eastward to the Mississippi, where they encountered the warlike Iroquois, with whom they formed a league against certain other tribes. Successful in their conflicts, they arrogated to themselves all the territories east of the Mississippi, whereupon a division of the same was made, the Delawares extending themselves to the Potomac, Susquehanna, Hudson and Delaware rivers. They subsequently became divided into different tribes, a result quite possible, of the distribution of their lands. In 1650 the Five Nations subjugated them, when they were again reduced to vassalage by their old confederates, the Iroquois. A westward movement was afterward initiated by the larger portion of them, when they crossed the Alleghenies, and finally, about 1768, made their principal settlements in Ohio. In the war of the Revolution they stood cheek by jowl with the British. They grew riotous, rampant and furious over the defeat of St. Clair. They danced, shouted, yelled, and got drunker than King Bacchus, or his savage lordship, Brute Uncas himself. In 1795 the United States got possession of their lands on the Muskingum, when they removed to the Wabash country, Indiana, where they remained until 1819, when they followed the going down of the sun west of the Mississippi. Some of the branch- tribes did not follow the main body, but for a while remained east, hovering around Pittsburg, but ultimately journeyed west. The Wolf tribe was one of the branches, of which Captain Pipe was a notable chief, and who experienced much savage, delirious joy in the roasting of poor Crawford. Of this kith and quality were the Delawares, who roamed Wayne county in the early times. INDIAN HISTORY - 163 THE WYANDOTS, Who were likewise here, were a fragmentary batch of the Tobacco nation of Hurons. * " In the dispersion of the Hurons, after halting for a time at Michilimackinac, being there attacked by the Iroquois, they removed to the islands at the mouth of Green Bay, where they fortified themselves on the main land. Here they were pursued by the Iroquois, and for safety went southward to the domains of the Illinois, from thence westward to the Mississippi and country of the Sioux, where their stay was short, as the Sioux soon drove them beyond their lines. Their next place of residence was at the southern extremity of Lake Superior, which they abandoned in 1671, and emigrated to Michilimackinac. They did not locate upon the island, but settled in the northern part of Michigan. Subsequently the great mass of them made a settlement near Detroit, Michigan, and on the Sandusky river, in Ohio, where, under the name of the Wyandots, they wielded great influence over the neighboring tribes. "Their tradition traces them no further than the first landing of the French at Quebec and Montreal in 1535. At that time their ancestors occupied the northern side of the St. Lawrence as far down as Coon Lake, and westward to the Huron. The Senecas then were settled on the southern side of the St. Lawrence. These were kindred nations, yet long and bloody wars had been waged between them, in which the Hurons were the greatest sufferers. Seeing their numbers daily decreasing, and that their extermination was sought by the Senecas, they left their ancient lands and took up their residence at Green Bay. Thither they were pursued by the Senecas, who fell upon one of their villages and killed quite a number of the inhabitants. After the French had supplied the Senecas with guns, powder and lead, they made another attack upon the Hurons at Green Bay, and at first were entirely successful, but by the strategem of the Hurons all the * Jeffries. 164 - HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY, OHIO. Senecas were cut off, not one of the war party remaining alive to tell the sad tale of blood. "The Wyandots, thereafter, also being furnished with arms and munitions of war, resolved to return to their own country in the vicinity of Detroit. On the way thither they encountered the Senecas on the lake, in the vicinity of Long Point, where a desperate battle was fought upon the water, in which the Wyandots were the victors. Not a single Seneca escaped, and the Wyandot loss was very heavy. This was the last battle between the Wyandots and Senecas. The former took an active part on behalf of the French in the war which resulted in the reduction of Canada by the English, and were a potent power against the English in Pontiac's war. " By the treaty of September 29, 1817, between the Wyandots and the Federal Government, there was granted to the former a body of land twelve miles square, the center of which was the fort, now the site of Upper Sandusky, the county seat of Wyandot county, Ohio. Also, at the same time, was granted them a tract of a mile square on Broken Sword creek. They occupied these lands until July, 1843, when they emigrated to their present place of residence west of the Mississippi, having disposed of their lands by treaty in 1842. At the time of their emigration they numbered about seven hundred." THE SHAWANESE. The Shawanese were denominated " the Bedouins " of the American wilderness, and were a savage, blood-thirsty, and warlike tribe. Their veins leaped with the hot blood of the South, whence they came. From Georgia they were driven to Kentucky by other and more powerful tribes, and from Kentucky they came North, some of them settling near Chillicothe, on the Scioto river, and others centering near Pittsburg, Pa. Their territory extended to Sandusky and westwardly toward the great Miami. They were incessantly at war. The great warrior chief, Tecumseh, belonged to this tribe, as did his brother, the Prophet, INDIAN HISTORY - 165 who fought the battle of Tippecanoe, November 7, 1811, against General Harrison. " For forty years," says Taylor, in his History of Ohio, " the Shawanese were in an almost perpetual state of war with America, either as British colonies or as independent States. They were among the most active allies of the French during the seven years' war; and after the conquest of Canada, continued, in concert with the Delawares, hostilities which were only terminated after the successful campaign of General Boquet. "The first permanent settlements of the Americans, beyond the Allegheny mountains, in the vicinity of the Ohio, were commenced in the year 1769, and were soon followed by a war with the Shawanese, which ended in 1774, after they had been repulsed in a severe engagement at the mouth of the Kanhawa, and the Virginians had penetrated into their country. They took a most active part against America, both during the war of Independence and the Indian war which followed and which was terminated in 1795, at Greenville. They lost by that treaty nearly the whole territory which they held from the Wyandots ; and a part of them, under the guidance of Tecumseh, again joined the British standard during the war of 1812." It will thus be readily perceived that these three nations of Indians, to wit, the Delawares, Wyandots and Shawanese—the first occupying the valley of the Muskingum and thence to Lake Erie and the Ohio river, asserting possession over nearly one-half of the State ; the second and third, the territory already described-were distinguished for bloodthirstiness, stubborn antagonism to the Americans and the cause of national independence, and were, moreover, particeps criminis to many of the atrocities that blacken the pages of our border history. Their fiendish cavorts, warring and plundering raids included vast areas, and to this hour fading, but unfaded, drops of human blood mark the line of their accursed mara uds. INDIANS OF WAYNE COUNTY. The Indians that inhabited Wayne county when the first settle- 166 - HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY, OHIO. ments were made, seemed to exist by an implied precarious tenure. A dread of the whites, akin to fear, apparently possessed them. Something like a haunting memory of the crimes of their race was ever upon them. No mutual, not even tribal relations appear to have existed among them, and their pacific dispositions to the early settlers presented but another distinctive characteristic of the Indian-the cunning caution and self-interest begotten of fear. They roamed in pairs, or squads of half a dozen, though in some of their villages and settlements they would collect together to the number of two, three and four hundred. In Clinton, East Union, Franklin and Chippewa townships they congregated in largest numbers. Their sudden disappearance from the county was most remarkable, occurring, as it were, in a single night, and that, too, soon after the war of 1812 had been announced. They scented the bad breath of the coming carnival, we suppose, and hastened westward to deepen the blood-stain of their hands. INDIAN TRAILS. The pioneers throughout the county locate these with more assurance than certainty. Nearly every old, trodden woods-path is characterized as a trail, and the farm or section through which it passes or passed is presumed to have some sort of peculiar historic signifrcance. These brigands and vagrants, no doubt, like other birds of passage, had their chosen and well understood courses of travel, but to assume to trace or define them would be playing spendthrift with time, and a culpable distortion of the legitimate bent of investigation. Nor is it important to indulge, what must be bald fancy and gratuitous speculation, on a matter so sterile of historical uses and so profitless to the public. In an appendix to Hutchins' History, of Boquet's expedition against the western tribes, made in 1764, in which this English officer marched an army of 1,500 men into and through what is Tuscarawas county to the forks of Muskingum, now Coshocton, he refers to five different routes from Fort Pitt through the Ohio INDIAN HISTORY - 167 wilderness. The one that most interests us, and comes nearest to our purpose, is the following : "Second route, west north-west, was 25 miles to the mouth of Big Beaver, 91 miles to Tuscaroras (the junction of Sandy and Tuscaroras creeks, at the south line of Stark county), 50 to Mohican John's Town (Mohican township, near Jeromeville, or Mohicanville, on the east line of Ashland county), 46 to Junandat, or Wyandot Town (Castalia, or the source of Cold creek, in Erie county), 4 to Fort Sandusky (at mouth of Cold creek, near Venice, on Sandusky bay), 24 to Junqueindundeh (now Fremont, on Sandusky river, and in Sandusky county). The distance from Fort Pitt to Fort Sandusky was 216 miles ; to Sandusky river 240 miles." This trail penetrated the county in section 12, Paint township ; thence in a north-westerly direction, crossing over sections 32, 31 and 30 in Sugarcreek township ; thence entering East Union township on section 25, bearing northerly to section 24; thence more directly west, passing about a mile north of Edinburgh; thence to Wooster township, entering it from the east, in section 13, and thence to the Indian settlement * south of Wooster and on the site of the old Baptist burial-ground ; thence in a north-west direction, cutting zigzag through the south and western part of what is now the city of Wooster, crossing the Henry Myers farm, passing the old "Salt lick;" thence traversing the old Dullehan farm, now owned by Joseph Eicher, and crossing Killbuck a few rods north of the bridge on the Ashland road ; thence west across the Hugh Culbertson farm—the old David Lilley farm, now owned by Mr. Culbertson ; thence for some considerable distance along the line of the Ashland road, through the lands of John and Daniel Silver, Mrs. George Hinish, Peter Spangler, William Miller ; thence bearing in a nearly western direction to Reedsburgh, in Plain township; thence to Mohican John's Town, and thence on to Fort Sandusky. * It was named Beaver Hat, from an Indian chief of that name who resided there, with a few others. His Indian name was Paupelenan, and his camp or residence was called by him Apple chauquecake, i. e., Apple Orchard. 168 - HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY, 01110. A SURPRISE AND MASSACRE-CAPTAIN FULKES DISPOSES OF SIX- TEEN RED BUTCHERS. As we have said, our early settlements were made pretty generally in peace, and that, therefore, we are barren of any thrilling and startling incidents of border strife. One hostile demonstration, however, occurred, which we propose to narrate, within the present corporate limits of the city of Wooster, with the circumstances and details of which but very few of the surviving pioneers of Wayne county have any knowledge or recollection. The incident itself so little resembles a fierce Indian struggle, the heroes of which sensational and resolute narrators too frequently seek to invest with apotheosis, that only, in its more liberal interpretation, can it be embraced in the catalogue of great border exploits. It is the only violent collision that we have to chronicle transpiring within the present limits of the county, between the Pale and the Copper Face. A gang of Indians, intent upon a foraging expedition, started from the region of Sandusky, in an easterly direction, and in the course of their hunting and predatory peregrinations succeeded in reaching the white settlements on the banks of the Ohio and near Raccoon creek, some distance from Pittsburg, Pa. Their sole object being plunder and theft, without regard to the sacrifice of human life, they crossed the river in bark canoes, and for a while mingled with the whites, in apparent friendship, who had established quite a colony there. When opportunity, " foul abettor," furnished a safe occasion for it, these remorseless devils and incarnate fiends, with their ineradicable antipathy and ancient hatred of the pale face, pounced upon them, murdering five of their number, and burning to the ground seven dwellings, together with the families they sheltered. This act of diabolism, and most malign and hellish slaughter very naturally aroused the community. Blood called for blood. The insulted silence of the air broke into echoes of revenge. Nemesis needed no invocation. A company of thirty men, fearless of flints and fate, was INDIAN HISTORY - 169 immediately organized for the purpose of pursuit and punishment. The command was taken by Capt. George Fulkes, the peer of Brady in courage and adroitness with the Indians. Better indeed than Brady did he know their character, for at the age of three years he had been stolen by the Indians from his father, then living upon Raccoon creek, they retaining charge of him until he was a man, when his father bought him from them, and restored him to his family. Hence the selection of Captain Fulkes to command the company was a wise one, as after his release from captivity he became a successful Indian fighter, and reduced the scalping business to a basis whereby his trophies in this respect became painfully numerous to his foes. After crossing the river with their plunder, and apprehensive that they might be followed, they observed the crafty precaution of cutting the bottoms out of their canoes, and made great haste to retrace their steps in the direction whence they came. Could they reach Sandusky with their stolen goods they were safe enough. Keenly alive to the necessity of immediate pursuit, and determined to run down and exterminate the murderers, no time was lost in the outset. The river was dashed over. The track of the fleeing assassins was soon scented. Indications eventually pointed to the fact that they were in proximity to the fugitives, but whether the Indians knew this or not, we are not apprised. Late one evening Captain Fulkes and his men, from what is now known as Robison's Hill, a short distance south of Wooster, discovered the camp-fires of the enemy on what is now the point, or flat-iron, at the intersection of South Beaver street and Madison avenue, in the presents limits of the city of Wooster. Avoiding all rashness, and adopting the policy of caution, he concluded to make no attack that evening. So, to elude detection, they crossed over to Rice's hollow, remaining there for the night, or until the moon arose, when preparations were made for the assault. The arrangements completed, an advance was made, and the Indian camp surrounded. At a given signal they fired upon them, killing fifteen, or all of the party, with the exception of one who had gone to the 170 - HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY, OHIO bottoms to look after the traps. Hearing the noise of the musketry he rushed in the direction of the camp, and calling to Captain Fulkes, who understood some dialect, asked, ' What's the matter ? " " Come on," shouted Fulkes, " nothing's the matter ! " The Indian advanced towards Fulkes, but when within a few paces of him, an unruly lad in the company perforated his carcass with a bullet. A shallow grave was scooped upon the point before described, and here the sixteen Indians were rolled together and earthed over, their spirits having been unceremoniously delivered to the keeper of the happy hunting grounds, where the visionary Marra- ton beheld his departed Yaratilda and two children, and where all seems as it is not, and which is shadow and apparition. Of Captain Fulkes * we know but little, aside from his reputation as a bold borderer and Indian fighter. He was a native of Pennsylvania, removing to Columbiana county, Ohio, and thence to Richland county, Ohio, where, we believe, he died. POWDER EXPLOSION CAUSED BY INDIANS. A singular incident is recorded by Howe, in his " Collections," as having occurred in a small building, an appurtenance of the mill of Joseph Stibbs, built in 1809, and then owned by him. It had been erected and fitted up for a store, in which was kept a variety of goods, such as would be in requisition by the Indians and first settlers, and was managed by Michael Switzer, who was sent hither by Mr. Stibbs. Describing the incident, Mr. Howe says : " In the store was William Smith, Hugh Moore, Jesse Richards, J. H. Larwill, and five or six Indians. Switzer was in the act of weighing out some powder from an eighteen- pound keg, while the Indians were quietly smoking their pipes, filled with a mixture of tobacco, sumach leaves and kinnikinnick, * James Crawford, father of Hon. Michael Totten's first wife, was with Capt. Fulkes on this raid, and from Mr. Totten we have principally gathered our facts concerning it, INDIAN HISTORY - 171 or yellow willow bark, when a puff of wind coming in at the window, blew a spark from one of their pipes into the powder. A terrific explosion ensued. The roof of the building was blown into four parts and carried some distance, the sides fell out, the joists came to the floor, and the floor and chimney alone were left of the structure. Switzer died in a few minutes ; Smith was blown through the partition into the mill and badly injured ; Richards and the Indians were also hurt and all somewhat burned. Larwill, who happened to be standing against the chimney, escaped with very little harm, except having, like the rest, his face well blackened, and being knocked down by the shock. " The Indians, fearful that they might be accused of doing it intentionally, some days after called a council of citizens for an investigation, which was held on the bottom, on Christmas run, west of the town." A predatory, languid, wandering, lazy race, they have bequeathed no evidences of inventive genius, productive energy, enterprise or thrift. A houseless, habitationless, self-barbarizing people, the Bedouins and vagabonds of the waste wilderness, careering from the Kennebec to the sand-pillars of the Great Deserts and beyond the bald scalps of the Sierras, they made us devisees of bloody lands, uncultivated and unimproved. Vestiges of their presence or former existence in the county are well nigh obliterated. Their axes, hatchets, mauls and wampum belts are seldom seen, unless in the public cabinet or on the secluded shelf of the antiquary. Even the old flint, or " Indian dart," as it is called, that was annually thrown to the surface by the plow of the farmer, has become a sort of novelty in discovery. The fortifications, earthworks and mounds that we find distributed throughout the country, some of which are found in Wayne county, are no longer regarded as products of the Indian, constructed for purposes of war, or intended as cenotaphs of departed valor. The proof that the Indian tribes of North America, which we have been used to consider the aboriginal race, were the successors 172 - HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY, OHIO. of a pre-historic people far in advance of them in civilization is unquestioned, unmistakable and plenary. This more civilized race has left a system of earthworks, designed for defense, worship and sepulture, intricate, extended and manifold.* What has been the destiny of this people, who have vanished from "The smoke and stir of this dim spot Which men call earth," is submitted to conjecture. History, "mournful traveler in the track of man," is silent concerning them, and in the remotest caverns of hoariest tradition there burn no lights by which to read their story. " This much we know, that they long since separated into two great classes-that of the ' elect angels,' and of angels that kept not their first estate." ORIGIN OF THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN. Of the origin of the Indian, which, by our hypothesis, is the successor of this pre-historic, forgotten and unannaled race, scientists and ethnologists may predicate and theorize ; but the subject is hard and rebellious, and refuses to succumb to investigation, be it ever so acute, incisive and philosophical. The knot of the mighty secret remains untied, and, like the one in the harness of the Phrygian King, who opens it shall be greater than a master in Asia. " The question, like that satellite ever attendant upon our planet, which presents both its sides to the sun, but invariably the same side to the earth, hides one of its faces from man, and turns it but to the eye from which all light emanates." Hon. John P. Jeffries, of Wooster, Ohio, who has thoughtfully and ably explored this subject, and who has written, collected and condensed much valuable history concerning the North American Indians, says in his recent work : *See chapter on Archaeology. + Hugh Miller. INDIAN ETHNOLOGY - 173 "The Indians + themselves have only a vague idea of their origin or from whence they came. Some of the tribes say they are descendants of ancestors who came from the north; others say from the north-west ; others again say their ancestors came from the east ; and others again claim theirs came from the regions of the air. They have no annals except among the Mexicans, and no reliable traditions. All they seem to know is of the present generation, except that some nations have preserved some important event in characters recorded upon skins, but they are altogether unreliable as records, and give no light as regards the origin of the race, or its advent upon the American continent. "They are considered by some ethnologists to be the descendants of the Magogites, the ancestors of the Scythians ; and the Scythians the ancestors of the Tartars, Mongols and Siberians. It is worthy of note that nearly all the northern regions of Asia were colonized by the Scythians, from which a basis, at least, was laid, Upon which to predicate a conjecture that they or their descendants, the Mongols, passed the straits of Behring to America. Strong evidence exists in favor of this theory by the nations of this type of people being found inhabiting regions along the route they would naturally travel, and on either side of the Straits. "Some authors have gone to a vast amount of trouble to prove that the American Indians are the descendants of the Hebrews, and directly from the lost tribes of Israel. The proof for such theory is so meagre as to make it wholly improbable. No one as yet has been able to discover any relationship between the Jews and American Indians. But to the proof of the theory. The ten lost tribes, it is claimed, emigrated to Scythia, and there, by amalalgamation, became part of that great family. There was, in point of fact, but little difference between the Jews and Scythians; their complexion being about the same, as also their general features. "The Israelites, who were carried away by Salmanasar to the + The term Indian was first applied to the aborigines of America by Americus Vespucius under the mistaken idea that he had landed on the southern coast of India. 174 - HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY, OHIO. land of Assyria, went in a northerly direction to the land of Arsarath, as is evident from the book of Esdras. The author of that record was not apprised of the existence of the western continent, and hence would not undertake its description. The Arsarath of Esdras, it may safely be affirmed, was not America. The Israelites left Syria about one hundred years after they were carried thither, and were a year and a half in their journey to Arsarath. The route they must have taken, had the point of destination been this continent, would have been over high mountains, deep rivers, through a cold, dreary wilderness region, the distance of over six thousand miles to the straits of Behring, and in addition, their way must have been blocked by impenetrable snows. " The Arsarath of Esdras was, in all probability, Norway. It is described as a 'land where no man can dwell.' Norway was as little known to the ancients as America. "The ten tribes were not lost as has been generally supposed ; their descendants are found at the present day in Persia, Media, Iran, Touran, Hindoostan and China. "Had they come to America, the arts and sciences would have been preserved, as they were advanced in refined civilization when they left Assyria, and in all the above countries where they have been scattered, as supposed, the arts and sciences have been preserved. Not so with the aborigines of America. They were, with few exceptions, savages when it was first visited by Europeans." Notwithstanding the manifold and irreconcilable theories and views of the most distinguished ethnologists, Mr. Jeffries is of opinion that " the customs of some of the eastern peoples of Asia and the adjacent islands, are so similar to those of some of the tribes of the American Indians as to induce the belief that they are of the same family of mankind." His deductions demand gravity of belief, as they are the result of years of diligent inquiry, and are corroborated by McIntosh, Pickering, Volney, Pouchet, Drake, Schoolcraft, Carl Newman, etc. It must be admitted that, however subtle and erudite the spec- INDIAN ETHNOLOGY - 175 ulations are, and the conclusions attained, the origin of the North American Indians is still clouded with extreme uncertainty. Nor is our indefinite and unsatisfactory knowledge relative to them any more astonishing or extraordinary than the almost absolute absence of knowledge concerning them in the Old World. |