USA > Minnesota > Goodhue County > History of Goodhue county, including a sketch of the territory and state of Minnesota > Part 5
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cussed and altered, and finally passed unanimously, with the exception of South Carolina. By this proposition, the territory was to have been divided into States by parallels and meridian lines. This, it was thought, would make ten States, which were to have been named as follows-beginning at the northwest corner and going southwardly : Sylvania, Michigania, Chersonesus, Assenisipia, Metropotamia, Illenoia, Saratoga, Washington, Polypotamia and Pelisipia.
There was a more serious objection to this plan than its category of names-the boundaries. The root of the difficulty was in the resolu- tion of Congress, passed in October, 1780, which fixed the boundaries of the ceded lands to be from one hundred to one hundred and fifty miles square. These resolutions being presented to the legislatures of Virginia and Massachusetts, they desired a change, and in July, 1786, the subject was taken up in Congress, and changed to favor a division into not more than five States, and not less than three. This was ap- proved by the State Legislature of Virginia. The subject of the government was again taken up by Congress in 1786, and discussed throughout that year and until July, 1787, when the famous "Compact of 1787" was passed, and the foundation of the government of the Northwest laid. This compact is fully discussed and explained in the history of Illinois, in this book, and to it the reader is referred.
The passage of this act and the grant to the New England Company was soon followed by an application to the government by John Cleves Symmes, of New Jersey, for a grant of the land between the Miamis. This gentleman had visited these lands soon after the treaty of 1786, and, being greatly pleased with them, offered similar terms to those given to the New England Company. The petition was referred to the Treasury Board, with power to act, and a contract was concluded the following year. During the autumn the directors of the New England Company were preparing to occupy their grant the following spring, and, upon the 23d of November, made arrangements for a party of forty-seven men, under the superintendency of Gen. Rufus Putnam, to set forward. Six boat-builders were to leave at once, and on the first of January the surveyors and their assistants, twenty-six in number, were to meet at Hartford and proceed on their journey westward; the remainder to follow as soon as possible. Congress, in the meantime, upon the 3d of October, had ordered seven hundred troops for defense of the western settlers, and to prevent unauthorized intrusions ; and two days later appointed Arthur St. Clair Governor of the Territory of the Northwest.
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AMERICAN SETTLEMENTS.
The civil organization of the Northwest Territory was now complete, and notwithstanding the uncertainty of Indian affairs, settlers from the East began to come into the country rapidly. The New England Com- pany sent their men during the winter of 1787-8, pressing on over the Alleghenies by the old Indian path which had been opened into Brad- dock's road, and which has since been made a national turnpike from Cumberland westward. Through the weary winter days they toiled on, and by April were all gathered on the Yohiogany, where boats had been built, and at once started for the Muskingum. Here they arrived on the 7th of that month, and unless the Moravian missionaries be regarded as the pioneers of Ohio, this little band can justly claim that honor.
General St. Clair, the appointed Governor of the Northwest, not hav- ing yet arrived, a set of laws were passed, written out, and published by being nailed to a tree in the embryo, town, and Jonathan Meigs appointed to administer them.
Washington, in writing of this, the first American settlement in the Northwest, said : " No colony in America was ever settled under such favorable auspices as that which has just commenced at Muskingum. Information, property and strength will be its characteristics. I know many of its settlers personally, and there never were men better cal- culated to promote the welfare of such a community."
On the 2d of July a meeting of the directors and agents was held on the banks of the Muskingum, " for the purpose of naming the new-born city and its squares." As yet the settlement was known as the " Mus- kingum," but that was now changed to the name Marietta, in honor of Marie Antoinette. The square upon which the block-houses stood was called " Campus Martius; " square number 19, " Capitolium; " square number 61, " Cecilia; " and the great road through the covert way, " Sacra Via." Two days after, an oration was delivered by James M. Varnum, who, with S. H. Parsons and John Armstrong, had been ap- pointed to the judicial bench of the territory on the 16th of October, 1787. On July 9, Governor St. Clair arrived, and the colony began to assume form. The act of 1787 provided two district grades of govern- ment for the Northwest, under the first of which the whole power was invested in the hands of a governor and three district judges. This was immediately formed upon the governor's arrival, and the first laws of the colony passed on the 25th of July. These provided for the organi- zation of the militia, and on the next day appeared the governor's
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proclamation, erecting all that country that had been ceded by the Indians east of the Scioto River into the county of Washington. From that time forward, notwithstanding the doubts yet existing as to the Indians, all Marietta prospered, and on the 2d of September the first court of the territory was held with imposing ceremonies.
The emigration westward at this time was very great. The com- mander at Fort Harmer, at the mouth of the Muskingum, reported four thousand five hundred persons as having passed that post between February and June, 1788-many of whom would have purchased of the " Associates," as the New England company was called, had they been ready to receive them.
On the 26th of November, 1787, Symmes issued a pamphlet stating the terms of his contract and the plan of sale he intended to adopt. In January, 1788, Matthias Denman, of New Jersey, took an active interest in Symmes' purchase, and located among other tracts the sec- tions upon which Cincinnati has been built. Retaining one-third of this locality, he sold the other two-thirds to Robert Patterson and John Filson, and the three, about August, commenced to lay out a town on the spot, which was designated as being opposite Licking River, to the mouth of which they proposed to have a road cut from Lexington. The naming of the town is thus narrated in the " Western Annals :" " Mr. Filson, who had been a schoolmaster, was appointed to name the town, and, in respect to its situation, and as if with a prophetic perception of the mixed race that were to inhabit it in after days, he named it Losantiville, which, being interpreted, means: ville, the town; anti, against or opposite to ; os, the mouth ; L. of Licking."
Meanwhile, in July, Symmes got thirty persons and eight four-horse teams' under way for the West. These reached Limestone (now Mays- ville) in September, where were several persons from Redstone. Here Mr. Symmes tried to found a settlement, but the great freshet of 1789 caused the " Point," as it was and is yet called, to be fifteen feet under water, and the settlement to be abandoned. The little band of settlers removed to the mouth of the Miami. Before Symmes and his colony left the " Point," two settlements had been made on his purchase. The first was by Mr. Stiltes, the original projector of the whole plan, who, with a colony of Redstone people, had located at the mouth of the Miami, whither Symmes went with his Maysville colony. Here a clear- ing had been made by the Indians owing to the great fertility of the soil. Mr. Stiltes with his colony came to this place on the 18th of November, 1788, with twenty-six persons, and, building a block-house, prepared to remain through the winter. They named the settlement
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Columbia. Here they were kindly treated by the Indians, but suffered greatly from the flood of 1789.
On the 4th of March, 1789, the Constitution of the United States went into operation, and on April 30, George Washington was inaugurated President of the American people, and during the next summer an Indian war was commenced by the tribes north of the Ohio. The Presi- dent at first used pacific means; but these failing, he sent General Harmer against the hostile tribes. He destroyed several villages, but was defeated in two battles, near the present city of Fort Wayne, Indiana. From this time till the close of 1795, the principal events were the wars with the various Indian tribes. In 1796, General St. Clair was appointed in command, and marched against the Indians ; but while he was encamped on a stream, the St. Mary, a branch of the Maumee, he was attacked and defeated with a loss of six hundred men.
General Wayne was now sent against the savages. In August, 1794, he met them near the rapids of the Maumee, and gained a complete victory. This success, followed by vigorous measures, compelled the , Indians to sue for peace, and on the 30th of July, the following year, the treaty of Greenville was signed by the principal chiefs, by which a large tract of country was ceded to the United States.
Before proceeding in our narrative, we will pause to notice Fort Washington, erected in the early part of this war on the site of Cincin- nati. Nearly all of the great cities of the Northwest, and indeed of the whole country, have had their nuclei in those rude pioneer structures, known as forts or stockades. Thus Forts Dearborn, Washington, Pon- chartrain, mark the original sites of the now proud cities of Chicago, Cincinnati and Detroit. So of most of the flourishing cities east and west of the Mississippi. Fort Washington, erected by Doughty in 1790, was a rude but highly interesting structure. It was composed of a number of strongly built, hewed log cabins. Those designed for soldiers' barracks were a story and a half high, while those composing the officers quarters were more imposing and more conveniently arranged and furnished. The whole were so placed as to form a hollow square, enclosing about an acre of ground, with a block house at each of the four angles.
The logs for the construction of this fort were cut from the ground upon which it was erected. It stood between Third and Fourth streets of the present city (Cincinnati) extending east of Eastern Row, now Broadway, which was then a narrow alley, and the eastern boundary of the town as it was originally laid out. On the bank of the river, immediately in front of the fort, was an appendage of the fort, called
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the Artificer's Yard. It contained about two acres of ground, enclosed by small contiguous buildings, occupied by workshops and quarters of laborers. Within this enclosure there was a large two-story frame house, familiarly called the " Yellow House," built for the accommoda- tion of the Quartermaster General. For many years this was the best finished and most commodious edifice in the Queen City. Fort Wash- ington was for some time the headquarters of both the civil and military governments of the North western Territory.
Following the consummation of the treaty, various gigantic land speculations were entered into by different persons, who hoped to obtain from the Indians in Michigan and Northern Indiana, large tracts of lands. These were generally discovered in time to prevent the outrage- ous schemes from being carried out, and from involving the settlers in war. On October 27, 1795, the treaty between the United States and Spain was signed, whereby the free navigation of the Mississippi was secured.
No sooner had the treaty of 1795 been ratified, than settlements began to pour rapidly into the West. The great event of the year 1796 was the occupation of that part of the Northwest, including Michigan, which was this year, under the provisions of the treaty, evacuated by the British forces. The United States, owing to certain conditions, did not feel justified in addressing the authorities in Canada in relation to Detroit and other frontier posts. When at last the British authorities were called to give them up, they at once complied, and General Wayne, who had done so much to preserve the frontier settlements, and who, before the year's close, sickened and died near Erie, transferred his headquarters to the neighborhood of the lakes, where a county named after him was formed, which included the northwest of Ohio, all of Michigan, and the northeast of Indiana. During this same year settle- ments were formed at the present city of Chillicothe, along the Miami from Middletown to Piqua, while in the more distant West, settlers and speculators began to appear in great numbers. In September, the city of Cleveland was laid out, and during the summer and autumn, Samuel Jackson and Jonathan Sharpless erected the first manufactory of paper-the " Redstone Paper Mill"-in the West. St. Louis contained some seventy houses, and Detroit over three hundred, and along the river, contiguous to it, were more than three thousand inhabitants, mostly French Canadians, Indians and half-breeds, scarcely any Ameri- cans venturing yet into that part of the Northwest.
The election of representatives for the territory had taken place, and on the 4th of February, 1799, they convened at Losantiville-now
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known as Cincinnati, having been named so by Gov. St. Clair, and con- sidered the capital of the Territory,-to nominate persons from whom the members of the Legislature were to be chosen, in accordance with a previous ordinance. This nomination being made, the Assembly adjourned until the 16th of the following September. From those named the President selected as members of the council, Henry Vandenburg, of Vincennes, Robert Oliver, of Marietta, James Findlay and Jacob Burnett, of Cincinnati, and David Vance, of Vanceville. On the 16th of September the Territorial Legislature met, and on the 24th the two houses were duly organized, Henry Vandenburg being elected Presi- dent of the Council.
The message of Governor St. Clair was addressed to the Legislature September 20th, and on October 13th that body elected as a delegate to Congress Gen. William Henry Harrison, who received eleven of the votes cast, being a majority of one over his opponent, Arthur St. Clair, son of Gen. St. Clair.
The whole number of acts passed at this session, and approved by the governor, were thirty-seven. Eleven others were passed, but received his veto. The most important of those passed related to the militia, to the administration, and to taxation. On the 19th of Decem- ber this protracted session of the first Legislature in the West was closed, and on the 30th of December the President nominated Charles Willing Bryd to the office of Secretary of the Territory vice Wm. Henry Harrison, elected to Congress. The Senate confirmed his nomination the next day.
DIVISION OF THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY.
The increased emigration to the Northwest, the extent of the domain, and the inconvenient modes of travel, made it very difficult to conduct the ordinary operations of government, and rendered the efficient action of courts almost impossible. To remedy this, it was deemed advisable to divide the territory for civil purposes. Congress, in 1800, appointed a committee to examine the question and report some means for its solution. This committee, on the 3d of March, reported that :
"In the three western countries there has been but one court having cognizance of crimes, in five years, and the immunity which offenders experience attracts as to an asylum, the most vile and abandoned criminals, and at the same time deters useful citizens from making settlements in such society. The extreme necessity of judiciary attention and assistance is experienced in civil as well as in criminal cases. * *
* * To min- ister a remedy to these and other evils, it occurs to this committee that it is expedient
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that a division of said territory into two distinct and separate governments should be made; and that such division be made by a line beginning at the mouth of the Great Miami River, running directly north until it intersects the boundary between the United States and Canada."
The report was accepted by Congress, and, in accordance with its suggestions, that body passed an act extinguishing the Northwest Terri- tory, which act was approved May 7. Among its provisions were these :
" That from and after July 4 next, all that part of the territory of the United States northwest of the Ohio River, which lies to the westward of a line beginning at a point on the Ohio, opposite to the mouth of the Kentucky River, and running thence to Fort Recovery, and thence north until it shall intersect the territorial line between the United States and Canada, shall, for the purpose of temporary government, constitute a separate territory, and be called the Indiana Territory."
After providing for the exercise of the civil and criminal powers of the territories, and other provisions, the act further provides :
" That until it shall otherwise be ordered by the Legislatures of the said Territories, respectively, Chillicothe, on the Scioto River, shall be the seat of government of the territory of the United States northwest of the Ohio River; and that St. Vincennes, on the Wabash River, shall be the seat of government for the Indiana Territory."
Gen. Wm. Henry Harrison was appointed Governor of the Indiana Territory, and entered upon his duties about a year later. Connecticut also, about this time, released her claims to the reserve, and in March a law was passed accepting this cession. Settlements had been made upon thirty-five of the townships in the reserve, mills had been built, and seven hundred miles of road cut in various directions. On the 3d of November the General Assembly met at Chillicothe. Near the close of the year, the first missionary on the Connecticut Reserve came, who found no township containing more than eleven families. It was upon the first of October that the secret treaty had been made between Napoleon and the King of Spain, whereby the latter agreed to cede to France the province of Louisiana.
In January, 1802, the Assembly of the Northwestern Territory char- tered the college at Athens. From the earliest dawn of the western colonies, education was promptly provided for, and as early as 1787, newspapers were issued from Pittsburgh and Kentucky, and largely read throughout the frontier settlements. Before the close of this year, the Congress of the United States granted to the citizens of the North- western Territory the formation of a State government. One of the provisions of the " compact of 1787" provided that whenever the num- ber of inhabitants within prescribed limits exceeded 45,000, they should be entitied to a separate government. The prescribed limits of Ohio contained, from a census taken to ascertain the legality of the act, more than that number, and on the 30th of April, 1802, Congress passed
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the act defining its limits, and on the 29th of November the constitu- tion of the new State of Ohio, so named from the beautiful river forming its southern boundary, came into existence. The exact limits of Lake Michigan were not then known, but the territory now included within the State of Michigan was wholly within the Territory of Indiana.
Gen. Harrison, while residing at Vincennes, made several treaties with the Indians, thereby gaining large tracts of lands. The next year is memorable in the history of the West for the purchase of Louisiana from France by the United States for $15,000,000. Thus, by a peaceful mode, the domain of the United States was extended over a large tract of country west of the Mississippi, and was for a time under the juris- diction of the Northwest government, and, as has been mentioned in the early part of this narrative, was called the " New Northwest." The limits of this history will not allow a description of its territory. The same year large grants of land were obtained from the Indians, and the House of Representatives of the new State of Ohio signed a bill respecting the College Township in the district of Cincinnati.
Before the close of the year, Gen. Harrison obtained additional grants of lands from the various Indian nations in Indiana and the present limits of Illinois, and on the 18th of August, 1804, completed a treaty at St. Louis, whereby over 51,000,000 acres of lands were obtained from the aborigines. Measures were also taken to learn the condition of affairs in and about Detroit.
C. Jonett, the Indian agent in Michigan, still a part of Indiana Terri- tory, reported as follows upon the condition of matters at that post :
" The Town of Detroit-the charter, which is for fifteen miles square, was granted in the time of Louis XIV. of France, and is now, from the best information I have been able to get, at Quebec. Of those two hundred and twenty-five acres, only four are occupied by the town and Fort Lenault. The remainder is a common, except twenty- four acres, which were added twenty years ago to a farm belonging to Wm. Macomb. * * A stockade incloses the town, fort aud citadel. The pickets, as well as the public houses, are in a state of gradual decay. . The streets are narrow, straight and regular, and intersect each other at right angles. The houses are, for the most part, low and inelegant."
During this year, Congress granted a township of land for the support of a college, and began to offer inducements for settlers in these wilds, and the country now comprising the State of Michigan began to fill rapidly with settlers along its southern borders. This same year, also, a law was passed organizing the Southwest Territory, dividing it into two portions, the Territory of New Orleans, which city was made the seat of government, and the District of Louisiana, which was annexed to the domain of Gen. Harrison.
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On the 11th of January, 1805, the Territory of Michigan was formed ; Wm. Hull was appointed governor, with headquarters at Detroit, the change to take effect on June 30. On the 11th of that month a fire occurred at Detroit, which destroyed almost every building in the place. When the officers of the new territory reached the post, they found it in ruins, and the inhabitants scattered throughout the country. Re- building, however, soon commenced, and ere long the town contained more houses than before the fire, and many of them much better built.
While this was being done, Indiana had passed to the second grade of government, and through her General Assembly had obtained large tracts of land from the Indian tribes. To all this the celebrated Indian, Tecumthe, or Tecumseh, vigorously protested, and it was the main cause of his attempts to unite the various Indian tribes in a conflict with the settlers. To obtain a full account of these attempts, the workings of the British, and the signal failure, culminating in the death of Tecumseh at the battle of the Thames, and the close of the war of 1812 in the Northwest, we will step aside in our story, and relate the principal events of his life, and his connection with this conflict.
TECUMSEH, AND THE WAR OF 1812.
This famous Indian chief was born about the year 1768, not far from the site of the present city of Piqua, Ohio. His father, Puckeshinwa, was a member of the Kisopok tribe of the Swanoese nation, and his mother, Methontaske, was a member of the Turtle tribe of the same people. They removed from Florida about the middle of the last cen- tury to the birthplace of Tecumseh. In 1774, his father, who had risen to be chief, was slain at the battle of Point Pleasant, and not long after Tecumseh, by his bravery, became the leader of his tribe. In 1795 he was declared chief, and then lived at Deer Creek, near the site of the present city of Urbana. He remained here about one year, when he returned to Piqua, and in 1798, he went to White River, Indiana. In 1805, he and his brother, Laulewasikan (Open Door), who had announced himself as a prophet, went to a tract of land on the Wabash River, which had been given to them by the Pottawatomies and Kickapoos. From this date the chief comes into prominence. He was now about thirty-seven years of age, was five feet and ten inches in height, stoutly built, and possessed of enormous powers of endurance. His countenance was naturally pleasing, and he was, in general, devoid of those savage attributes possessed by most Indians. It is stated that
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he could read and write, and that he had a confidential secretary and adviser, named Billy Caldwell, a half-breed, who afterward became chief of the Pottawatomies. He occupied the first house built on the site of Chicago. At this time Tecumseh entered upon the great work of his life. He had long objected to the grants of land made by the Indians to the white people, and determined to unite all the Indian tribes into a league, in order that no treaties or grants of land could be made save by the consent of this confederation.
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