USA > Ohio > Fulton County > A standard history of Fulton County, Ohio, an authentic narrative of the past, with an extended survey of modern developments in the progress of town and county, Vol. I > Part 4
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"FOR CENTURIES ...... THE INDIAN TRIBES INHABITED THE VALLEY OF THE MAUMEE ( ME-AW-MEE), AND ITS TRIBUTARIES
"The vietorious forces then resumed their journey eastward, but with little feelings of friendship, for the Lenapes declared that the brunt of the battle fell upon them, and that the Mengwe hung in the rear."
Thus eame the first estrangement, which finally involved the two nations in war, and eventually led to the entire subjugation of the Lenni-Lenape nation, by the powerful Five Nations, or Iroquois Con- federacy, as the French named the alliance. The Five Nation tribes were supposed to have had common origin in the Mengwe, although when confederated the five tribes, or nations, were known by the names, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca. Eventually the Tuscarora tribe joined the league. This combination remained the supreme power among the Indian peoples for more than two cen-
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turies; but long before that time the whole of the territory now em- braced in the United States of America had passed, by parchment deed and declaration of discovery, if not by actual occupation, under the sovereign power and jurisdiction of nations of the white race.
According to D. W. H. Howard, "for centuries" before the Revolu- tionary war determined that a republic and not a monarchy should be the form of government of white people, and of course necessarily of red, the Indian tribes inhabited the valley of the Manmee (Me-aw-
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inee) and its tributaries, the St. Mary's on the south, the St. Joseph on the north, the Au Glaize on the south, the Tiffin River, or Bean Creek, on the north, and the Turkey Foot, both north and south, and the smaller streams, such as Beaver Creek, joining the Maumee near Grand Rapids; the Tone-tog-a-nee, near the old Indian mission; and the Portage near its mouth. The Indian occupants were the Ot-ta-was,
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of the valley proper, and the hunting grounds on the Au Glaize; the Pot-ta-wa-to-mies of the St. Joseph and the upper portions of the Tif- fin River, and the hunting grounds on the Raisin River, and along the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. The Pottawatomies were closely related with their neighbors, the Ottawas on the south, and the Ogibe- was on the north, whose lands and hunting grounds adjoined theirs. The Mi-am-ies were on the upper Wabash and the Ell rivers; smaller bands of We-aws and Pi-an-ki-shaws made their home on the lower St. Mary's River; the Wyandottes on the Sanduskies, the Tousaint and their branches: the Shaw-won-no (Shawnees) on the Hog Creek and upper Blanchard's fork of the Au Glaize. These tribes were all part
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Map showing Military Posts Forts Battlepads and Indian Trails in this
of the Five Nations Confederacy, one of the main purposes of which league of nations was the necessity of preserving a united front to combat the encroachments of white men into their hunting grounds.
It is believed that the first attempt by white people to settle within the territory now within the jurisdiction and borders of the State of Ohio was in the seventeenth century; of greater interest however to the people of Fulton county is the fact that the attempted settlement was in the Maumee Valley. It was in, about, the year 1680 that some adventurous Frenchmen established themselves along that river, con- structing a small stockade not far from its mouth. By right of dis- covery, and by virtue of a. "concession in perpetuity" made by Pope Alexander VI, however, Spain claimed a priority to all of northwest Ohio; indeed the same concession, or another by the same papal author- ity, deeded in blank to the Kings of Castile and Leon practically the
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whole of the American continent, north and south, known or unknown. Francis I, King of France, however. disputed the claims of Spain and Portugal, refusing to recognize papal authority to so convey lands; and the French probably were in Ohio territory many decades before the British came. The original claim of France was based on the dis- covery of the St. Lawrence River by Cartier, in 1534, and confirmed by the subsequent explorations of Champlain, La Salle, Joliet, and others. France reasoned that the discovery of a river established a right to all the territory drained by that waterway and its tributaries. Hence the claim of France to the valleys of the Maumee and Sandusky, these waters being tributary to the St. Lawrence. Champlain visited the Wyandottes, or the Hurons, at their villages on Lake Huron, in 1615, when he remained with them several months. And he is supposed to have travelled along the southern shores of Lake Erie. Louis Joliet also is believed to have sailed on that lake; and it is surmised that Chevalier de La Salle journeyed up the Maumee River, and then down the Wabash to the Ohio and the Mississippi in the year 1669. La Salle is generally credited as the first white man to discover the Ohio, and he built the first Fort Miami, near the site of Fort Wayne, on his return overland. In 1668 St. Lusson at Sault Ste Marie, formally, in the name of God and France, and in the presence of representatives of many In- dian tribes, proclaimed possession of "Lake Huron and Superior and all countries, rivers, lakes, and streams contiguons and adjacent thereunto, both those that have been discovered and those which may be dis- covered hereafter, in all the length and breadth, bounded on one side by the seas of the north and west, and on the other by the South Sea "
Jesuit fathers, and coureurs des bois, two classes so opposite in character and purpose penetrated almost the entire Northwest Terri- tory, not at the same time of course; and of the two classes, the Jesuit fathers made a lesser impression upon the Indian. The degenerate French adventurers, les coureurs des bois, with their stocks of brandy, trinkets and baubles and their carefree, roving, happy-go-lucky ways, were welcomed by the Indians, and reeeived into their life, and were it not for the fact that the British treated the powerful Iroquois Confed- eraey with greater respeet and cireumspection than they showed other Indian tribes, and also the fact that the French devoted their efforts more to the Huron tribe, thus inculcating in the Iroquois mind a vindi- cative antipathy to the French people in general, the result of the strug- gle for supremacy in America between the French and the British would have been much different. The French laid claim to all of the North- western Territory, while the British elaimed the whole of 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 Atlantie Coast. Thus Northwest Ohio beeame part of the disputed territory.
In 1700, the British governor of New York made the following report to the home government: "The French have mightily imposed on the world in 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 prejudiee. It were as good a work as your Lordships could do, to send over a very skillful surveyor, to make correct mapps
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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."
Thereafter, the British paid more heed to vartagraphy, and as the decades passed added to the extent of their surveys. In Evans' map (1755) the Maumee and Sandusky rivers, and some of their tributaries, are pretty well outlined. Over the greater part of Northwest Ohio is printed the following: "These parts were by the Confederates (Iro- quois) allotted for the Wyandottes when they were lately admitted into their league." The British also endeavored to cultivate trading with the Indians, the purpose being of course chiefly political. As early as 1740 traders from Virginia and Pennsylvania journeyed among the Indians of the Ohio and tributary streams to deal for peltries. They threaded their way through the forests or along streams as far north
"BROAD PLAINS, BLACKENED WITH BUFFALO, BROKE THE SAMENESS OF THE WOODLAND SCENERY."
as Michilimackinack, and sought to curry favor by out bidding the French for the peltries, at the same time selling merchandise to the Indians at lower prices. England based her claims on the discoveries by John Cabot, who left Bristol, England, in 1498, reaching American shores the same year, many decades, therefore, before the buccaneer Cartier first entered the St. Lawrence River. For nearly a century the two European powers contended actively for supremacy, the British surely colonizing the eastern states, and the French seeming to be making vast strides in the interior. Northwest Ohio at that time was stated to have been a region where "one vast continuous forest shadowed the fertile soil, covering the land, as the grass covers a garden lawn, sweeping over hill and hollow in endless undulation. Green intervals, dotted with browsing deer, and broad plains blackened with buffalo.
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broke the sameness of the woodland scenery. Many rivers seamed the forest with their devious windings. A vast lake washed its boundaries, where the Indian voyager, in his birch canoe, could descry no land beyond the world of waters."
FORT SANDOSKI (745-1749 1750-1751 1701-1788
THE FIRST FORT BUILT BY WHITE MEN IN OHIO ERECTED BY BRITISH TRADERS FROM PENNA, AND VAN IN. 1746 UNDER THE PROTECTION OF THE HURON CHIEF NICOLAS AND DESTROYED BY HIM AFTER HIS DEFEAT BY THE FRENCH IN 1748 PRIOR TO HIS REMOVAL TO THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY
REBUILT BY BRITISH IN 17,50 AND USURPED BY THE FRENCH IN 1761" AGAIN REBUILT BY BRITISH SOLDIERS IN 1781 AFTER THE SURRENDER OF QUEBEC AND FRENCH SOVEREIGNTY IN AMERICA
AND FINALLY DESTROYED AT THE OUTBREAK OF PONTIAC'S CONSPI- RACY 18TH MAY 1788
WHEN THE FORT WAS BURNED THE ENTIRE GARRISON MASSACRED WITH THE EXCEPTION OF THE COMMANDANT ENSIGN PAULI WHO WAS CARRIED OFF A PRISONER TO PONTIAC THEN BESIEGING DETROIT ERECTED BY THE OHIO SOCIETY COLONIAL DAMES OF AMERICA
At the opening the eighteenth century, efforts of both the French and British seem to have been focused on the Maumee River. Its easy route to the south and southwest, caused both people to diligently seek the favor of the Indians dwelling along its banks. The French Post Miami, near the head of the Maumee, had been built about
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1680-86. It was rebuilt and strengthened, in 1697, by Captain de Vincennes; and it is 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. Fort Pontchartrain, at Detroit, was built in 1701, and many French expeditions, military and commercial, passed up and down the Maumee River. From Post Miami they would portage across to the Wabash, and from there descend to Vincennes, an impor- tant French post. At the beginning of King George II's war, M de Longueville, French commandant at Detroit, used the Maumee River route, in passing with soldiers and Indians into Indiana; while in 1727, Governor Spotswood, of Virginia requested the British authorities to negotiate a treaty with the Miamis, on the Miami of the Lakes, so that a small fort might be built, which plan however was not carried out.
"THEY PORTAGED ACROSS FROM POST MIAMI TO THE WABASH."
Twenty years later, Orontony, or Nicholas, a Wyandot chief, whose stronghold and villages were near the mouth of the Sandusky River, where he permitted the British to ercet Fort Sandoski, which was the first real fort crected by white men in Ohio, conceived a plan whereby he hoped to capture Detroit and all other French outposts and annihilate the French power in the West. He enlisted in the adventure many neighboring tribes, the Ottawas, Chippewas, Pottawatomies, from Ful- ton county, and the Shawnees, as well as more distant tribes. The Miamis and Wyandots were to sweep the French from the Maumce country ; the Pottawatomies were to operate in the Bois Blanc islands, and other tribes werc to attack the settlement at Green Bay. The plot was discovered before serious happenings could occur to the French; and in the following year Nicholas and his followers went further west, into Illinois.
In the spring of 1749 Celeron journeyed down the Ohio, taking
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possession of the country in the name of his sovereign, and burying leaden plates asserting the sovereignty of France. The last plate was buried at the mouth of the Great Miami River. From Pickawillany (Pkiwileni) they portaged to Fort Miami (Fort Wayne) and although Celeron went overland to Detroit, his followers descended the Maumee. In the following year, Christopher Gist, emissary for the British, ac- complished very much more, entering into treaty relations with the Miamis, or Twightwees, as they were called by the British.
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The many decades of strife between the French and British were fought elsewhere than in Northwest Ohio; or rather, no major battles were fought in that region. In 1752, French Canadians and Indian allies ascended the Maumee and Auglaise, capturing and destroying Pickawillany, where eight English traders were, the chief of the Pienkeshaws, known as "Old Britain" being slain, that being perhaps the most serious casualty the British suffered in that raid. "Old Britain," it has been stated, was boiled and eaten by the victors. The Turtle succeeded him as chief.
With Braddock's defeat, the British prestige was shaken, and some of the Indian tribes, formerly sympathetic to the British, veered
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to the French side. It also brought serious unrest among the Indian tribes, but was responsible for the uniting of Ohio tribes to more determinedly oppose the British. It brought prominently into history an Indian leader classed as "one of the greatest chiefs" of which there is record in American history. Pontiac who was born near the Maumee River, and whose home and stronghold was the Maumee Valley, was of the Ottawa tribe, in paternal descent, and eventually "was greatly honored and revered by his subjects." With the passing of the French from Ohio territory, the British policy underwent radical change. Whereas formerly, when in competition with the French, they distri- buted blankets, rifles, and brandy with lavish hand among the Indians, their attitude, with the political change, was, to say the least, parsi- monious. The expedition of Rogers' Rangers, in the fall of 1760, was the first act of British authority over Northwestern Ohio, and although he contrived to prevent friction with the Indians under Pontiac in that year, he could not shake Pontiac's conviction that unless France was aided to retain her foothold in the region, the eventual destruction of the Indian race was inevitable. He rallied the remotest tribes to his side by his message, which in substance was: "Why do you suffer these dogs in red clothing to enter your country and take the land the Great Spirit has given you? Drive them from it. Drive them." Pontiac's conspiracy was carried on in great secrecy and he planned to have the attacks on the various forts made simultaneously. The Maumee post, Presque Isle, Niagara, Pitt, Ligonier, and every British fort was hemmed in by Indian tribes, "who felt that the great battle drew nigh which was to determine their fate and the possession of their noble lands." The first intimation the British had of the con- spiracy was in March, 1763, when Ensign Holmes, commandant of Fort Miami, at the head of the Maumee, "was informed by a friendly Miami that the Indians in the vicinity had lately received a war belt, with the urgent request that they destroy him and his garrison, and that they were even then preparing to do so." Ensign Holmes con- fronted the chiefs, demanded the belt, and it was delivered to him. He forwarded it to his superior officer, Major Gladwyn, at Detroit, with the comment: "This Affair is very timely Stopt, and I hope the News of a Peace will put a stop to any further Troubles with these Indians." One morning however, Ensign Holmes was decoyed to "a number of Indian lodges not far removed from the fort," and there treacherously slain. The Indians then overran the fort. On the 16th of May, Fort Sandusky was stormed, and the garrison massacred, entrance having been gained by typical Indian treachery. All the outposts of the British, with the exception of Detroit which success- fully withstood a protracted siege, were destroyed, and settlers, through- out Ohio were murdered. The effort availed the Indians nothing, however. The receipt by Pontiac of a belt of wampum from "their great father, the King of France," while the conspiracy was still in embryo, had encouraged Pontiac to believe that the French king "had heard the voices of his red children," and would again take up arms with them; but when after much blood had been spilled, and the British were still in possession of Detroit, Pontiac received a letter from the French commander, informing him "that the French an' English were now at peace," his rage was terrifying, his disappoi
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ment extreme. "He saw himself and his people thrown back upon their own slender resources." It has been stated that "for hours no man or woman dared approach him, so terrible was his rage. His fierce spirit was wrought into unspeakable fury." In rage and morti- fication, he soon afterwards removed his camp from Detroit, and returned to the Maumee River. Some time later, he went into Illinois territory, where the French still were, but they were no longer his allies for warlike operations, he found. His final submission was given to Sir William Johnson. at Oswego. That official "wrapped in his scarlet blanket, bordered with gold lace, and surrounded by the glittering uniforms of the British officers, was seen, with hand extended in welcome to the great Ottawa, who, standing erect in conscious power, his rich plumes waving over the circle of his warriors, accepted the proffered hand, with an air in which defiance and respect were singularly blended."
Pontiac returned to the Maumee, and "yielded more and more to the seduction of the firewater." In 1789 he appeared at the post of St. Louis, and a few days later, visited an assemblage of Indians at Cahokia, on the opposite side of the river. He had donned the full uniform of a French officer, one which had been presented to him by the Marquis of Montcalm. Undoubtedly he still harboured resent- ment against the British, but whether he had planned further resistance is not known. At all events, his career ended there, for a Kaskaskia Indian buried a tomahawk in his brain. His tribesmen exacted a bloody revenge; the Sacs and the Foxes practically exterminating the Kaskaskias.
In July, 1772. the Ohio Indians formed a strong confederacy on the Pickaway Plains, the Shawnees, Wyandots, Miamis, Ottawas, Delawares, and some western tribes uniting for mutual protection. They disputed the right of the Iroquois Confederaey to convey a title to the British for all the hunting grounds south of the Ohio. During the next two years "many inhuman and revolting incidents occured," but then peace again reigned, and the decision of the Indians to remain loyal to the British was destined to greatly increase the difficulties of the American colonists when they revolted from British authority. During the first two years of the Revolutionary War, the Ohio Indians were inactive, not understanding the quarrel between the British colonists and the British nation. But eventually they were drawn into the struggle, on the side of the British. Henry Hamilton, who arrived at Detroit, in December, 1775, to take up administrative control of British affairs in that territory, by virtue of his appointment to the newly created office of lieutenant governor and superintendent of aborigine affairs, was in supreme control of the British and Indian operations in the territory, although the Indian operations being what might be classed as guerilla warfare were undertaken upon their own initiative, assisted undoubtedly by an ignoble group of renegade colon- ists, Simon Girty, Alexander McKee, and Matthew Elliott. In 1778, the British organized a large expedition, "consisting of fifteen large bateaux and several smaller boats, which were laden with food, clothing, tents, ammunition, and the inevitable rum, together with other presents or the savages." There were 177 white soldiers, and a considerable some mber of Indians. It required sixteen days for the forces to ascend
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the Maumee, to its head, and it was destined to suffer defeat in an attack by American troops, under Colonel Clark, who captured the governor, Henry Hamilton. The latter was sent, with all of his officers, to Virginia. Two years later, the British organized a larger expedition of Indians, Capt. Henry Bird being in command, with the three Girtys, as guides and scouts. The expedition, one thousand strong eventually, ascended the Maumee, to the mouth of the Auglaize, which river they traversed as far as navigable. Many settlers were massacred, Captain Bird being unable to control the Indians. He took many prisoners in Kentucky, and eventually returned to Detroit, by way of the Maumee.
In 1778 the Legislature of Virginia organized the Northwestern Ter- ritory into the country of Illinois, and eastern states claimed territory also west of the Alleganies. Finally, it was recommended that the states ceded their claims to the newly organized Union, and Congress, in 1780 provided that the territory so ceded should be disposed of for the benefit of the United States in general. New York State was the first to respond, assigning her western claim in 1781. Virginia, in 1784, ceded to the United States her claim to the country northwest of the Ohio River; in 1785 Massachusetts gave up her claims to all Ohio territory, excepting Detroit and vicinity; and in 1786 Connecticut waived her rights, excepting the section designated as the Western Reserve.
Simon Girty was one of the bitterest enemies of the new republic. He, a renegade, depraved, cruel, pitiless, exercised much influence over the Indian, and will ever be remembered, in execration, for his part in the torture and death of Colonel William Crawford, in 1782. His last expedition against the Americans was in 1783, when he led a band of red men to Nine Mile River, within five miles of Pittsburg. But during the next decade, he was one of the most active influences present among the Indians to foment further trouble. In 1788, he attended an Indian council at the foot of the Maumee Rapids, and was received into the conference by the Indians as one of them. He was present at the grand council held in October, 1793, at the Glaize (Defiance), and also at the Battle of Fallen Timbers. He made good his escape, and the remainder of his life was lived in Canada, although during the War of 1812 he came back to American soil with the British troops, but fled precipitately to Canadian soil, when American troops approached Detroit. He deserved to be drawn and quartered, and per- haps dreaded some such punishment in case of capture by Americans. It is said that, when he incontinently fled, "he could not wait for the boat, but plunged his horse into the river and swam to the opposite shore."
The Treaty of Paris, concluded at Versailles in 1783, by which all the territory south of the middle of the Great Lakes and their con- necting rivers, and east of the Upper Mississippi River, was granted to the United States, did not materially alter the opposition of Ohio Indian tribes to the American republic. But the infant republic was forced to protect the settlers, who were ever advancing westward. A treaty, between the United States Government and the Chippewa, Delaware, Ottawa, and Wyandot tribes, entered into at Fort McIntosh, sought to restrict the settlers, and yet curb the Indians. The limits of Indian territory, as agreed upon, were the Maumee and the Cuyahoga
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Rivers, on the west and east respectively. Within that territory, which included Northwest Ohio, and practically three-fourths of the entire state, the Delawares, Wyandots, and Ottawas, were to live and hunt at their pleasure; and a settler could enter only at his peril, the treaty authorizing the Indians "to shoot any person other than an Indian, whether a citizen of the United States or otherwise, who attempted to settle upon these exempt lands." Reservations provided for military posts at the mouth of the Maumee, and at Lower Sandusky. Never- theless, the United States Government on July 27, 1787, granted the Ohio Company 1,500,000 acres of Ohio land, for settlement, and granted tracts also to other companies. The lands granted were on the Ohio and Muskingum Rivers. Arthur St. Clair was appointed first governor,
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