USA > Ohio > Allen County > A standard history of Allen county, Ohio : an authentic narrative of the past, with particular attention to the modern era in the commercial, industrial, educational, civic and social development > Part 4
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It is quite likely that the coureurs de bois, who traversed the lakes and the forests in every direction laden with brandy and small stocks of trinkets to barter with the aborigines for their more valuable furs, were among the earliest visitors to the Maumee basin. These men became very popular with the savages, by reason of their free and easy manners, and because they introduced to them the brandy which became one of their greatest vices. As they left no annals and no trace, unless it be the axe-marks upon the trees, or the rusty relics of guns and skillets, which occasionally puzzle the antiquarians upon the shores of Lake Erie, it is impossible to trace their footsteps. The probabilities are that wherever there were Indian settlements, these nondescripts made periodical visits. The records which have been left are exceedingly scanty and unflattering. We do know that posts of French traders grad- ually arose in Northern and Western Ohio, wherever Indians were congregated.
Les coureurs des bois made themselves popular by terrorism. They were the forerunners of the cowboys of the western plains. Their occu- pation was lawless, for they refused to purchase trading licenses. They themselves were half traders, half explorers and almost wholly bent on divertissement. Neither misery nor danger discouraged or thwarted them. They lived in utter disregard of all religious teaching, but the priesthood, residing among the savages, were often fain to wink at their immorali- ties because of their strong arms and efficient use of weapons of defense. Charlevoix says that "while the Indian did not become French, the Frenchman became savage." The first of these forest rovers was Etienne Brule, who set the example of adopting the Indian mode of life in order to ingratiate himself into the confidence of the savages. He became a celebrated interpreter and ambassador among the various tribes. Hun- dreds, following the precedent established by him, betook themselves to the forest, never to return. These outflowings of the French civilization were quickly merged into the prevalent barbarism, as a river is lost in the sands of one of our western deserts. The wandering Frenchman selected a mate from among the Indian tribes, and in this way an infusion of Celtic blood was introduced among the aborigines. Many of them imbibed all the habits and prejudices of their adopted people. As result, they vied with the red savages in making their faces hideous with colors and in decorating their long hair with characteristic eagle feathers. Even in the taking of a scalp they rivaled the genuine Indian in eagerness and dexterity.
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HISTORY OF ALLEN COUNTY
The coureur de bois was a child of the woods, and he was in a measure the advance agent of civilization. He knew little of astronomy beyond the course of the sun and the polar star. That fact was no impediment, for constellations can rarely be seen there. It was the secrets of terrestrial nature that guided him on his way. His trained eye could detect the deflection of tender twigs toward the south. He had learned
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COUREUR DE BOIS
that the gray moss of the tree trunks is always on the side toward the north; that the bark is more supple and smoother on the east than on the west ; that southward the mildew never is seen. Out on the prairie, he was aware that the tips of the grass incline toward the south, and are less green on the north side. This knowledge to an unlettered savant was his compass in the midst of the wilderness. Release a child of civili- zation amidst such environments and he is as helpless as an infant ; utterly amazed and bewildered, he wanders around in a circle helplessly and aimlessly. To despair and famine he quickly becomes an unresisting victim. There are no birds to feed him like the ravens ministered to the temporal wants of the prophet Elijah. Not so with the coureur de bois.
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To him the forest was a kindly home. He could penetrate its trackless depths with an undeviating course. To him it readily yielded clothing, food, and shelter. Most of its secrets he learned from the red man of the forest, but in some respects he outstripped his instructor. He learned to peruse the signs of the forest as readily as the scholar reads the printed page.
The French made Detroit the great gathering place for the Indians of the West. The expected happy result did not follow, while dissensions constantly arose which frequently caused murders. A general shifting of the Indian population gradually developed. The Wyandots entered Ohio from Michigan. There was an exodus of the Delawares and Shaw- nees from Western Pennsylvania, many of them coming into North- western Ohio. Some of the Senecas also found their way hither. Most of them were at first bitterly hostile to the British, partly because they had been persecuted by the Iroquois, the only Indian tribe with which the British had established friendly relations. At last the English became convinced of the value of the trans-Allegheny territory. But the British were less politic in dealing with the untutored children of the wilderness than the French. The haughty bearing of the British officials disgusted the Indian chiefs. In short, all the British Indian affairs at this time were grossly mismanaged. It was only with the fierce fighters of the Five Nations that the English made much headway. These warriors, who carried shields of wood covered with hide, had acquired an implaca- ble hatred of the French. Their hatred had much to do with the final course of events. It compelled French expansion toward the west and southwest. In their practical system of government, their diplomatic sagacity, their craftiness and cruelness in warfare, the Iroquois were probably unequaled among the aborigines. If they did nothing else they compelled the French to make their advance to the west rather than to the south. The French laid claim to all of the vast empire of the North- western Territory, confirmed by the treaty of Utrecht. They had estab- lished a series of strategic stockades extending from Fort Frontenac, at the exit of Lake Ontario, to the Mississippi River. Nevertheless the English continued their pretensions to all the continent as far west as the Mississippi River, and as far north as a line drawn directly west from their most northerly settlement on the Atlantic coast. Thus we find that Fulton and Allen, as well as the adjacent counties, were a part of the disputed territory.
We read in the report of a governor of New York, in the year 1700, as follows :
"The French have mightily impos'd on the world on the mapps they have made of this continent, and our Geographers have been led into gross mistakes by the French mapps, to our very great prejudice. It were as good a work as your Lordships could do, to send over a very skillful surveyor to make correct mapps of all these plantations and that out of hand, that we may not be cozen's on to the end of the chapter by the French."
As a result of this recommendation official maps began to appear in a few years. In Evans' map (1755) the Maumee River and some of its tributaries are pretty well outlined. Over Northwestern Ohio is printed the following: "These Parts were by the Confederates (Iroquois) allotted for the Wyandots when they were lately admitted into their league." In Mitchell's map, drawn in the same year and published a score of years later, very little improvement is shown, although the out- lines vary considerably from that of Evans. The extreme northwestern section of the state is marked as occupied by the "Miammees" and the
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HISTORY OF ALLEN COUNTY
Maumee is called the "Miamis." The best map of the period that we have preserved is the one drawn by Thomas Hutchins in 1776. In this map the Maumee is designated the "Miami," and for long afterwards it was called the Miami-of-the-Lake, to distinguish it from the Miami in Southern Ohio. No settlement is indicated except "Maumi Fort," where Fort Wayne now stands. The originals of all these maps are preserved in the Congressional Library at Washington.
In the latter part of the seventeenth century a man by the name of John Nelson, who had spent many years among the French in America, made a report to the Lords of Trade concerning the difference in the English and French method of dealing with the natives, of which the following is a part: "The Great and only advantage which the enemy (French) hath in those parts doth consist chiefly in the nature of their settlement, which contrary to our Plantations who depend upon the improvement of lands, &c, theirs of Canada has its dependence from the Trade of Furrs and Peltry with the Aborigines, soe that consequently their whole study, and contrivances have been to maintaine their interest and reputation with them;
The French are so sensible, that they leave nothing unimproved * as first by seasonable presents ; secondly by choosing some of the more notable amongst them, to whom is given a constant pay as a Lieutenant or Ensigne, &c, thirdly by rewards upon all executions, either upon us or our Aborigines, giving a certaine sume pr head, for as many Scalps as shall be brought them; forthly by encouraging the youth of the Contrey in accompanying the Aborigines in all their expeditions, whereby they not only became acquainted with the Woods, Rivers, Passages, but of themselves may equall the Natives in supporting all the incident fatigues of such enter- prises, which they performe."
After the English once became aroused to the opportunity it was not long until their explorers, cartographers, and traders began to infiltrate into the Ohio country from across the Blue Ridge Mountains. Clashes soon afterwards occurred between the French and the British, or between the dusky allies of the one and the allies of the other. As early as 1740 traders from Virginia and Pennsylvania went among the Indians of the Ohio and tributary streams to deal for peltries. The English "bush- lopers," or wood-rangers, as they were called by the Eastern colonists, had climbed the mountain heights and had threaded their way through the forests or along streams as far as Michilimackinack. They sought favor with the dusky inhabitants by selling their goods at a lower price than the French traders asked, and frequently offered a better price for the peltries. It was a contest for supremacy between the British Lion and the Lilies of France. These two emblems were to contend for the greater part of a century over the incomparable prize of the North American continent.
England based her claims on the discoveries of the Cabots in 1498, which antedated those of Cartier. She did not follow up her discoveries in this northwest territory by actual settlement, however, for a century and a half. She also made further claims to this region by reason of treaties with the Iroquois Indians, who claimed dominion over this ter- ritory because of their conquest of the Eries, who had inhabited it. Sir William Johnson reported as follows: "They (the Six Nations) claim by right of conquest all the country, including the Ohio, along the Blue Mountains at the back of Virginia, and thence to the Kentucky River and down the same to the Ohio above the rifts; thence northerly to the south end of Lake Michigan ; thence along the east shore of Michilimack-
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HISTORY OF ALLEN COUNTY
inack; thence easterly along the north end of Lake Huron to Ottawa River and Island of Montreal."
Peace had scarcely been concluded with the hostile tribes than the English traders hastened over the mountains. Each one was anxious to be first in the new and promising market thus afforded. The merchandise was sometimes transported as far as Fort Pitt (Pittsburg) in wagons. From thence it was carried on the backs of horses through the forests of Ohio. The traders laboriously climbed over the rugged hills of Eastern Ohio, threaded their way through almost impenetrable thickets and waded over swollen streams. They were generally a rough, bold, and fierce class, some of them as intractable and truculent as the savages themselves when placed in the midst of primeval surroundings. A coat of smoked deerskin formed the ordinary dress of the trader, and he wore a fur cap ornamented with the tail of an animal. He carried a knife and a tomahawk in his belt, and a rifle was thrown over his shoulder. The principal trader would establish his headquarters at some large Indian town, while his subordinates were sent to the surrounding villages with a suitable supply of red cloth blankets, guns, and hatchets, tobacco and beads, and lastly, but not least, the "firewater." It is not at all surpris- ing that in a region where law was practically unknown, the jealousies of rival traders should become a prolific source of robberies and broils, as well as of actual murders. These rugged men possessed striking con- trasts of good and evil in their natures. Many of them were coarse and unscrupulous; but in all there were those warlike virtues of unde- spairing courage and fertility of resource. A bed of earth was frequently the trader's bed. A morsel of dried meat and a cup of water were not unfrequently his food and drink. Danger and death were his constant companions.
While the newly transplanted English colonies were germinating along the narrow fringe of coast between the Alleghenies and the sea, France had been silently stretching authority over the vast interior of the North American continent. The principal occupation of the Englishman was agriculture, which kept him closely at home. Every man owned his own cabin and his own plat of ground. The red man probably chose wisely when he placed his allegiance with the Frenchman, for his hunting grounds were more secure. The Frenchman did not covet the soil for itself. He only desired the profit from trade. With his articles of traffic the Frenchman traversed the rivers and forests of a large part of the continent. A few nobles owned the entire soil. It was, in a sense, the contest between feudalism and democracy. The English clergymen preached the Gospel only to the savages within easy reach of their set- tlements, but the unquenchable zeal of the Catholic Jesuit carried him to the remotest forest. In fact, had it not been for the hope of spreading the Christian faith like a mantle over the New World, the work of colonization would doubtless have been abandoned. "The saving of a soul," said Champlain, "is worth more than the conquest of an empire." The establishment of a mission was invariably the precursor of military occupancy. While the English were still generally acquainted only with the aborigines of their immediate neighborhood, the French had already insinuated themselves into the wigwams of every tribe from the Great Lakes to the Gulf. In actual military occupation of the territory the French far greatly antedated their more lethargic competitors. They had dotted the wilderness with stockades before the English turned their attention toward the alluring empire beyond the mountains.
Had France fully appreciated the possibilities of the New World, the map of North America would be different than it is. She sent more men
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HISTORY OF ALLEN COUNTY
to conquer paltry townships in Germany than she did to take possession of empires in America larger than France itself. The Frenchman of that day was shortsighted-he did not peer into the future. The glory of conquest today seemed greater than a great New France of a century or two hence. Most nations are blind to the possibilities of the future. If they do vision the opportunity they are unwilling to make the sacrifice of the present for the good of their grandchildren and their children's children. England visioned the possibilities here better than the other nations ; and yet much of her success was doubtless due to fortunate blundering rather than deliberate planning.
Northwestern Ohio at this time was a region where "one vast, con- tinuous forest shadowed the fertile soil, covering the land as the grass covers a garden lawn, sweeping over hill and hollow in endless undula- tion. Green intervals dotted with browsing deer, and broad plains black- ened with buffalo, broke the sameness of the woodland scenery. A vast lake washed its boundaries, where the Indian voyager, in his birch canoe, could descry no land beyond the world of waters. Yet this prolific wilderness, teeming with waste fertility, was but a hunting ground and a battlefield to a few fierce hordes of savages. Here and there, in some rich meadow opened to the sun the Indian squaws turned the black mould with their rude implements of bone or iron and sowed their scanty stores of maize and beans. Human labour drew no other trubute from the inexhaustible soil." It is no wonder than the savage perished rather than yield such a delectable country, and that the white man was so eager to enjoy a land so richly endowed. Today the richest farms in Ohio are found in this same region and an air of prosperity marks the entire scene. In those days, however, so thin and scattered were the native population that a traveler might journey for days through the twilight forest with- out encountering a human form.
At the opening of the eighteenth century the Maumee River had already assumed considerable importance. Its broad basin became the first objective in the sanguinary struggle of the French and British to secure a firm foothold in Ohio, because of its easy route to the South and Southwest. The favor of the Indians dwelling along its hospitable banks was diligently sought by both the French and English. The French Post Miami, near the head of the Maumee, had been built about 1680-86. It was rebuilt and strengthened in the year 1697 by Captain de Vincennes. It is also claimed that the French constructed a fort a few years earlier, in 1680, on the site of Fort Miami, a few miles above the mouth of the Maumee.
In 1701 the first fort at Detroit, Fort Pontchartrain, was erected. Many indeed were the expeditions of Frenchmen, either military or trad- ing, that passed up and down this river. They portaged across from Post Miami to the Wabash and from there descended to Vincennes, which was an important French post. At the beginning of King George II's war, M. de Longueville, French commandant at Detroit, passed up this river with soldiers and savages on their way to capture British traders in what is now Indiana. As early as 1727 Governor Spotswood of Vir- ginia requested the British authorities to negotiate a treaty with the Miamis, on the Miami of the Lakes, permitting the erection of a small fort, but this plan was not carried out.
The feeble forts erected by both French and English as outposts of empire were indeed dreary places. The men thus exiled from civili- zation lived almost after the manner of hermits. Time ever hung heavy on their hands whether in winter or summer, because of the absence of diversion. With its long barrack rooms, its monotonous walls of logs,
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HISTORY OF ALLEN COUNTY
and its rough floor of puncheon, the frontier fort did not provide luxury for the occupants. There was no ceiling but a smoky thatch, and there were no windows except openings closed with heavy shutters. The cracks between the logs were stuffed with mud and straw to expel the chilly blasts. An immense fireplace at one end from which the heat was absorbed long before it reached the frosty region at the opposite end, supplied the only warmth. The principal fare was salt pork, soup, and black bread, except when game was obtainable. This was eaten at greasy log tables upon which was placed a gloomy array of battered iron plates and cups. When a hunter happened to bring in some venison or bear meat, there was great rejoicing. Regardless of these drawbacks, it is said that these men, exiles from every refinement, were fairly well contented and generally fairly thankful for the few amenities that came their way.
"Their resources of employment and recreation were few and meagre. They found partners in their loneliness among the young beauties at the Indian camps. They hunted and fished, shot at targets and played at games of chance; and when, by good fortune a traveller found his way among them, he was greeted with a hearty and open-handed welcome, and plied with eager questions touching the great world from which they were banished men. Yet, tedious as it was, their secluded life was sea- soned with stirring danger. The surrounding forests were peopled with a race dark and subtle as their own sunless mazes. At any hour, those jealous tribes might raise the war-cry. No human foresight could predict the sallies of their fierce caprice, and in ceaseless watching lay the only safety."
As a rule the Indian savages usually encamped around the forts when peace prevailed. They willingly partook of the bounty of both English and French. They settled themselves down to the enjoyment of the white man's brandy and tobacco, besought his ammunition and the guns which made the chase so much easier, and in some instances they even accepted his religion.
CHAPTER II THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC
According to the best information coming down to us, there were no native Ohio Indian tribes. All of the Indians residing here at the oncom- ing of the white man were migrants from other portions of the country. We know not how many changes of tribal ownership or occupancy there may have been in prehistoric times. The numbers living here are also difficult to ascertain. If the total fighting strength of the Ohio warriors was from 2,500 to 3,000, as has been estimated, then the Indian popula- tion doubtless ranged from 12,000 to 15,000. Of this number the Miamis mustered nearly one-third of the total. The Ohio country, rich in game and threaded by water courses navigable for the light canoes, was a fight- ing ground between the Iroquois tribes and the western stock, which were generally allied to the Algonquins.
The Miamis play a large part in the early history of Ohio. They are usually designated by the early writers as the Twightwees, meaning "the cry of the crane." They were subdivided into several bands, of which the Weas and the Piankashaws figure most largely in our history. It is because of the Miami occupancy that the Maumee and the other Miamis received their names. They were rather above the other tribes in intelligence and character. The Wyandots were late comers into this territory. They were survivors of the Hurons, who had nearly been exterminated by the Iroquois. Some of them settled along the Maumee, but greater numbers sought the Sandusky region. A few Delawares had come over the Alleghenies and settled near the Wyandots, with whom they established friendly relations. The Ottawas were caught between war parties of Sioux and Iroquois in the Michigan peninsula, and driven south. A few small bands found lodgment along the Maumee and its affluents. A detached group of the Senecas also reached this region. The Shawnees, who will command considerable attention, were great rovers. It was doubtless Shawnees who met Capt. John Smith. They were a party to the famous Penn Treaty. They regarded themselves as superior to all others of the human race. The Ohio Shawnees, who finally made their homes along the Auglaize, had drifted in from the Carolinas and Georgia, having been expelled by the other tribes because of their. queru- lous and imperious dispositions.
The Maumee basin was a delightful home and a secure retreat for the red man. Upon the banks of the Maumee and its connecting streams were many Indian villages. The light canoes of these children of the forests glided over the smooth waters which were at once a convenient highway and an exhaustless reservoir of food. The lake gave them ready access to more remote regions. The forests, waters and prairies pro- duced spontaneously and in abundance, game, fish, fruits, and nuts-all the things necessary to supply their simple wants. The rich soil responded promptly to their feeble efforts at agriculture.
In this secure retreat the wise men of the savages gravely convened about the council fires, and deliberated upon the best means of rolling back the tide of white immigration that was threatening. They dimly foresaw that this tide would ultimately sweep their race from the lands of their fathers. From here their young warriors crept forth and, stealthily approaching the homes of the "palefaces," spread ruin and desolation far and wide. Returning to the villages their booty and savage
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HISTORY OF ALLEN COUNTY
trophies were exhibited with all the exultations and boasts of primitive warriors. Protected by almost impenetrable swamp and unchartered for- ests, their women, children and property were comparatively safe during the absence of the war parties. Thus it was that the dusky children of the wilderness here enjoyed perfect freedom and lived in accordance with their rude instincts, with the habits and customs of the tribes. "Amid the scenes of his childhood, in the presence of his ancestors' graves, the red warrior, with his squaw and papoose, surrounded by all the essentials to the enjoyment of his simple wants, here lived out the character which nature had given him. In war, it was his base line of attack, his source of supplies, and his secure refuge ; in peace, his home."
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