Centennial History of Butler County, Ohio, Part 6

Author: Bert S. Bartlow, W. H. Todhunter, Stephen D. Cone, Joseph J. Pater, Frederick Schneider, and others
Publication date: 1905
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 1149

USA > Ohio > Butler County > Centennial History of Butler County, Ohio > Part 6

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BUTLER COUNTY, OHIO.

Indian power was finally overthrown in the battle of Tippecanoe.

If one asks what this has to do with the transition period between the records which the mound builders have left and the times when our fathers found the Indians here, the answer is not far to seek. The Indians of 1620 showed no civilization beyond that found the world over in common where the savage state exists. They recognized mar- riage in a rude sort of shape. The old com- manded respect, and their counsel was heeded. But with regard to art of any sort, they exhibited a far less development than the race of. mound builders of which we have treated in the above. They had flint arrow heads, and iron points to their spears. They cultivated maize, and were familiar with woodcraft in the pursuit of game and the dressing of their prey for food and clothing. These are matters which man, in such conditions as they were placed, learns of necessity, for without such knowledge he must die. But in the works of the mound builders, coupled with the evidence of their numbers, we have proof of nations possessing no mean attain- ments in military engineering, with energy and force enough to complete their plans. Now in the Indian, as he was found in the settlement of this continent, there is no evi- dence of any such intelligence. He was brave. and even his bravery was that of cowardice. He fought from behind trees and stumps, but never ventured battle in the open field if the risk could be avoided. He had no system of fortifications or defensive lines, the one covering the other, that in case of defeat he might fall back to a refuge, as we find was the case with the race which preceded him. In many such points does

he show that while he might have retained the courage of his ancestors-if the mound builders were the fathers of his race-he had degenerated in industry and the arts which tend to make a people great. He had be- come lazy. and could no more build the mounds of his fathers than the indolent Egyptians of today could rear the pyramids of four thousands years ago, the mausoleum of a single king. The mound builders may not have been illustrious sires, but certainly their sons had no reason to complain of the loins whence they sprung. Such was the character of the tribes, or the bands which occupied this valley when the white man sought here a home.

A great deal of sympathy has been wasted on the fate of the Indian race which our fathers found in their settlement of this country, and a great deal is wasted on his treatment in our own time. He was never as brave, chivalrous nor blessed in intellect as writers have portrayed him. Fenimore Cooper's savage was a pleasant person to read about, but he was not the savage who massacred women and dashed out the brains of children in the Wyoming and Ohio val- leys. It was with this latter kind of Indian that the early settlers hereabouts had to deal, and not the honorable sort, which had exist- ence solely in the imagination of romancers. Time upsets many a pretty tradition. It is now nearly certain that Logan never made that eloquent speech which as schoolboys we declaimed, and it is likewise matter of grave suspicion whether Pocahontas had not lib- eral views regarding chastity. That in many respects the Indian was wronged is no doubt true ; but his revenge was not of that sort .which seeks out for retaliation the wrong doer. but rather of the kind which slays in-

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discriminately from utter depravity of heart. His pride and dignity was that of impudence rather than intrinsic merit.

"You do not know who I am," Red Cloud said on the stage of Cooper Institute, New York, on the occasion of a visit under the auspices of the Quaker Commission. "I am the representative of the original owners of America."

That sounded grand, but a moment's re- flection will show that the utterance was There was no reason why they and the whites could not have dwelt in peace, except that in their natures they were unpacific, as the untamed Indian is everywhere. Colonel E. C. Boudinot. a half-breed Cherokee, liv- ing in 1878, expressed once the opinion that there were two futures for his race-the one extermination, and the other amalgamation. He has for years contended that the pure Indian blood could not be made to flow in quiet course, and that only by an infusion of the white strain can it be tempered to the sheer bombast. The original owners of America would have been ashamed to own kinship with a race which wreaked ven- geance where no wrong had been done. So far as we have record of the actions of the whites in Kentucky and Ohio in the early days, they sought no quarrel, but were rather pacificators. Men like Boone or Kenton were not the ones to take life save in de- fense of their own lives. In their natures there was a chivalrous element. and in all their warfare they opposed only the able- conditions of civilized life. His view is bodied who could meet their attacks. When borne out by the experience of the early times. Treaties were made only to be broken whenever the savage thirst for human life obtained the mastery, or the opportunity for plunder presented itself. No marvel, then. that the settlers who watched by night and felled the forests by day, with arms at their sides in fear of professing friends as well as open foes, should have come to wage a warfare as relentless as that pursued by their enemies. they offered terms of treaty, those terms were presented in good faith, while on the part of the Indians every proposition was made by them or accepted as coming from the other side. with a reservation in which lurked treachery. It is no wonder, then, that the strife became one for existence. The white man learned the cunning of the Indian, and as he was his superior in intel- lect and in physical strength, those advan- tages offset the superiority of the savages as to numbers.

The Indians of this valley fought not so much against wrongs perpetrated upon them- selves as for the grievances which others of their race had elsewhere suffered, and in the hope of exterminating the white strangers.

The Miamis of these valleys were a part of the Indian confederation which con- trolled the region embraced by Ohio, Indi- ana, Michigan and Illinois. They were neither better nor worse than the average Indian wherever found on the continent. But from the trouble in the east between their race and the whites, they seemed to have formed a resolve to make in this region their stand for their inheritance.

In addition to his treachery and lack of all qualities which give anything like honorable character to war, the domestic side of the American Indian was quite as unlovely as the one he presented in arms. We have been told in ambling verse of the romantic wooings of dusky but fair maidens

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BUTLER COUNTY, OHIO.

by young braves, and poetry has been thrown around their nuptials. All this appears to be a figment of the imagination pretty to read but of no value as a historical statement. Marriage with them was a mercenary tran- saction, in which the bride was bought from her father, by ponies, furs, weapons or wam- pum, according as the bridegroom was rich in such possessions. The bargain and sale completed, nothing remained but for the goods to be delivered, and that was done in an exceedingly simple manner, which the ad- mirers of the race probably regard as evi- dence of purity of character. The purchaser went to the tent of the bride's father, and led her thence to his own. Thenceforth she was his property, in precisely the sense and by the tenure that he owned his bows and arrows, or his pony and dog. She was his laborer, to raise corn and perform all domes- tic duties, while he rested in all that peculiar dignity which belongs to the nobility of man in his uncultivated state. He practiced what Petruchio, in a feigned humor, affirmed of Catharine.

She is my goods, my chattels; she is my house, My household stuff, my field, my barn, My horse, my ox, my ass, my anything. And here she stands, touch her whoever dare.

But while Petruchio feigned his anger and capricious moods that he might tame his shrewish bride. the conduct of the Indian toward his spouse was all in sober earnest. His contributions to the household consisted of little more than the meat and fish game. She performed the drudgery of the fields. for manual labor was unworthy his dignity. On the march, whether retreating from an enemy or seeking a new location, the war- rior rode while the women were on foot, and if there were not enough pack ponies to

carry the camp equipage. the wives and daughters of the braves acted as beasts of burden to bear what the four-footed ones could not carry. If on the journey one of them were seized with the pangs of mater- nity. that trifle was not sufficiently impor- tant to be worth the notice of the lords of nature. Such an incident was beneath their stoicism. The mother dropped from the line. brought into the world another noble red man, or another female slave in minia- ture of herself, bound her offspring in its cradle, and trudged on to overtake the line. For the great ills she suffered, and the un- ceasing toil of her life, she had only com- pensation in the fact that in childbirth she was comparatively painless, and her recov- ery almost instantaneous. Lack of fashions saved her from the agonies which fashion has entailed upon civilized mothers.

Perhaps some will think this estimate of the Indian character is an ungenerous one, and that much of the barbarity of his na- ture arose from the provocation of the whites and from the certainty with which he saw his inheritance slipping from him. While this may have force so far as his treatment of the invaders is concerned. it has no appli- cation whatever to his domestic customs nor to the usages which prevailed between tribes in time of war. It was in their nature to scalp their fallen foes. and to slaughter women and babes of their own race but of different tribe. The dwellers under the trop- ical suns of Africa, where nature provides food in all seasons and where clothing is a burden, were not so lazy and thriftless as these dwellers in a climate where some exer- tion is necessary to the continuance of life. Their predecessors, the mound builders, had left them vast monuments of energy-

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an energy directed to self-preservation in war and to the illustration of religious belief. But such an example was lost upon the indo- lent race which followed, or descended from them. Permanent fortifications the Indian whom we know has never builded, because he was always too lazy for the work, and had it been imposed upon the women he would have been compelled to cultivate the crops-effeminate task unsuited to his no- tions of dignity, and still more repugnant to his love of ease. There were among them some exceptions, and men of ambition and pride, but not enough to leaven the mass of worthlessness. Stories of Indian gratitude and nobility of character are so rare that they may be set down as wonderful excep- tions to the rule of the aboriginal nature, and therefore they have been preserved.

Of the early history of the Indians who occupied this continent when Columbus first saw it, little can be said. Equally ignorant with the mound builders of the art of letters, they had no written records, and tradition was the only medium through which events were handed from generation to generation. The Northmen, who came here as early as the tenth century, and left behind them mon- uments such as the stone tower at Newport, Rhode Island, preserved the results of their discoveries in no shape to throw much light on the races they encountered here. They were freebooters, and on the seas occupied a place corresponding to that filled by the knights on land, who roamed Europe with a beggarly following, bent on "beauty or booty."

Our best knowledge of the Indian tribes comes to us through sources associated with religion. The Catholic missionaries who came into the northwestern wilds were cer-

tainly remarkable men. In the East, from Plymouth Rock, flowed the Puritan strain, and from Rhode Island the Baptist influ- ence, which had been driven out of Massa- chusetts by the bigotry of the "Mayflower" adventurers. But to the West came those to whom the cross was a holy sign, and they were filled with that zeal which has charac- terized the votaries of that faith alike under the suns of China or amid the wilder- nesses of the new world. They were men of intense convictions; but with their sever- ity toward themselves, their austerity and de- nial of self, there was associated a leniency and gentleness which strangely won the sav- age heart. Abstemious in their habits, and of a bravery of that peculiar kind which only religious fervor inspires, they won admira- tion by those traits which appeal most strongly to the Indian nature. Then they were educated, and their knowledge was be- yond that of the "medicine men." In this respect they were regarded with supersti- tious veneration. Diseases which could not be successfully treated by the rude therapeu- tics known to them, readily yielded to the science of the doctor-priest. Robed in a garment whose fashion was strange, and tell- ing a story of divine incarnation, suffering. and death whose pathos has melted millions of hearts, it was no wonder that they at- tained ascendancy over a people who could be reached through the imagination easier than through any other channel. To them that Great Spirit, whom they worshiped as an indefinable something or personage, who in an inexplicable way watched over human affairs, was presented by the visible symbol of the cross-a being in shape and form tan- gible, who had once walked the earth as themselves, and who for their good had

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BUTLER COUNTY, OHIO.

made a sacrifice all propitiatory. To those men, who thus opened to them a new life, they gave greater measure of confidence than to any others, and to them we are indebted for even the scanty knowledge we have of what the life, manners and traditions of the Indian tribes were. They were enabled by their gentle mission, which sought only the spiritual good of those to whom they minis- tered, to penetrate a country where an armed invader would have met resistance at every step. The expeditions of La Salle, De Soto and others of like nature, would have been of little avail but for the lodgment which the missionaries effected. ,

To the student, or man of general read- ing, there can be no more instructive histori- cal page than that which records the self-de- nial and courage of those, priests or laymen, who brought this territory into a condition fitted for occupation. They labored for pos- terity in a sense to which we can lay no claim. How could they anticipate that their children should see what we see today in this valley, as fair a land as lies between the oceans? Honor to them, for that they worked without a prize in sight. Doubtless they saw that there was greatness here; but they could have never imagined such lovely slopes, such landscapes, dressed in the rich- ness of nature embellished by the husband- man's art, as greet our eyes now that the woodman's ax has done its work. They might have hoped, from some fairer airs than these, to look upon the scenes which they had as first of the palefaces discovered. But that any of them should live to see such a wonderful transformation would never at that day have been believed. Yet some of them remain, whose early recollections carry -

border warfare and the subduing of the land under deadly peril. Bravely they met the labors of the field, or the dangers of Indian battle, little expecting in their own lifetimes, or in their children's, that the seed they sowed would yield such abundant harvest. Their work was unselfish. It sprang from a sturdy, manly impulse. It came from that in- stinct, if you so please to call it, which impels the young husband and father to stand be- fore his wife and babe and defy all opposing odds in defense of those dearer to him than his own life. Of that sort of stock came the pioneers of the. Miami valley.

One or two instances, well authenticated, will not be uninteresting to show the dangers incurred by those who settled the region em- braced by the Ohio and Miami valleys. The Ohio was the highway traveled by nearly all to the West, Pittsburg being the starting point, and Marietta, Fort Washington, Lou- isville, and other places the destination from which emigrants looked about them for new homes. To pass down the Ohio at that day must have been an experience similar to a trip overland by stage a score of years ago, only that it was attended with greater dan- ger, for the emigrants of our time were bet- ter provided with arms to repel attack, while the savages on the plains were not so numer- ous as hereabouts a century ago.

Of course the Indians quickly saw the importance of the Ohio as a thoroughfare, and it was closely watched. So long as the voyagers "down the Ohio's ever-ebbing tide" kept their boats in the center of the stream their journey was comparatively safe, for though they might be fired upon from shore they could find shelter behind the bul- warks or by lying flat in the bottom of their

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crafts. Their great danger lay in surprises when necessity compelled them to land, for no one could say that the wooded shore at any point did not conceal an ambushed foe. Then, again, they were sometimes lured to destruction by renegade whites, who served for the Indians the same purpose as the de- coys of the hunter in quest of game. Death or captivity was on every side, both from their dusky foes and from men with white faces but black hearts.

An Indian chief named Chikatommo, as we learn from Drake's "North American Indians" and other authorities, was success- ful in 1790 in destroying many lives of those descending the river, beside carrying others into captivity and despoiling much property. He must have had bands sta- tioned at many points upon the Ohio, for in no other way could he have accomplished so great destruction. This chief had taken two white men prisoners, and he craftily made them the decoys with which to entice others of their race within his power Charles Johnston, of Botetourt county, Vir- ginia, tells how he and his companions were deceived by the strategem of the wily chief. They were descending the Ohio in a flat boat. which contained several horses and considerable merchandise. Suddenly the two white men spoken of above appeared upon the bank, hailed them, represented their great distress, and begged to be taken on board. Just before a settlement called Kennedy's Bottom, in Kentucky. had been destroyed, and they represented that they had been taken prisoners there but had es- caped, and unless some one would have pity upon them they must surely be retaken, or perish of want. Some of the flatboat party

believed the story, but others were for turn- ing to it a deaf ear. Finally the sentiment of humanity prevailed. The boat had been drifting rapidly down the river while the parley was in progress, and those on board argued that if there were Indians in am- bush the boat must have left them so far behind that there would be no great danger of surprise. Accordingly the clumsy craft was headed inward, but so slowly did it move across the current that the Indians were able to skulk through the woods and bushes, and intercept its arrival. As soon as it touched the bank a band of warriors sprang from the thicket and poured in a vol- ley which killed one man and wounded an- other and a woman. The crew endeavored to shove the boat from shore, but it became entangled in the branches of a large tree. and all efforts to loosen it were fruitless. All were compelled to lie down to escape the fire of the savages, and when one of their number arose with a white cap as a token of surrender, he fell dead with a bullet through his brain. With this the Indians desisted. all the plunder was taken on shore, the dead were scalped and thrown into the river, and the captives were stripped of most of their clothing. A council was then held, and the prisoners were alloted among the chiefs of the band.

In the morning another descending boat was seen. All the captives were compelled to take a position on the bank where they could, under penalty of a horrible death. The two renegades who had the day before so successfully entrapped the Johnston com- pany again played their part, representing this time that their boat had become disabled, and asking for an ax with which to repair

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it. The plea was listened to, and the men, could then learn, or which has since come six in number, turned their canoe to the shore. Four were killed on the first fire, and the remaining two, who had been only wounded, were despatched with the toma- hawk. All were scalped and their bodies

to my knowledge, has enabled me to under- stand who these unfortunate sufferers were." Anxious mothers or wives, or sisters or children waited long with sinking hearts for those forms which, mutilated, were tossed rolled into the tide. Mr. Johnston adds. . on the waters of the Ohio, victims of savage with an unconscious pathos, "Nothing I treachery.

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CHAPTER II

SETTLEMENT AND FORMATION OF COUNTY.

THE SYMMES PURCHASE.

August 29, 1787, Judge John Cleves Symmes, of New Jersey, submitted to congress his proposition for the pur- chase of one million acres of land. to be located between the Miami rivers and to extend as far northward and westward as necessary to embrace a tract that large. As many readers have never seen the terms of the contract, or the prospectus issued at the time by Judge Symmes and his associates, it may not be amiss to give some of the features in the language of the orig- inals. The prospectus is addressed "To the Respectable Public," and states in the outset that "the honorable congress, by their act of the 3d of October, 1787, authorized the honorable the commissioners of the treasury board to enter into contract with the sub- scriber for the tract of land hereafter de- scribed." Then follows the description of the Miami tract. After stating the terms on which lands may be secured, the address makes provisions for schoolmasters, clergy-

men and army officers, and then in general phrases sets forth the advantages of the ter- ritory to which settlers are invited.

"The subscriber begs leave to add, for the information of those who are unac- quainted with the country, that from his own view of the land, bordering on the river Ohio, and the unanimous report of all those who have traveled over the tract in almost every direction, it is supposed to be equal to any part of the federal territory, in point of quality of soil and excellence of climate, it lying in the latitude of thirty-eight degrees north, where the winters are moderate, and no extreme heats in summer. Its situation is such as to command the navigation of sev- eral fine rivers, as may be seen by the maps of that country; boats are frequently pass- ing by this land as they ply up and down the Ohio. There are no mountains in the tract, and, excepting a few hills, the country is generally level, and free from stone on the surface of the earth : there are plenty of stone quarries for building. It is said to be well watered by springs and rivulets, and

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several fine mill streams falling from the self, and shall make it his study to encour- dividing ridge into the two Miamis, which age and superintend the settlement of this purchase, by causing the utmost attention to be paid to every application, and aiding so far as it may be in his power all those who become either purchasers or settlers." lie about thirty miles apart, and are both sup- posed to be navigable higher up in the coun- try than the northern extent of this pur- chase, so that the interior farms will have navigation in the boating seasons, within It will be judged, from the wording of the foregoing extract, that the art of adver- tising in attractive language was not. alto- gether unknown by our grandfathers. fifteen or eighteen miles at farthest. Salt, in any quantity. may be had by water within . a moderate distance, at the salt works on the banks of the Licking river, which emp- Of the original documents connected with the Symmes Purchase, in addition to what has been given the following will be found of interest : ties itself from the Kentucky side into the Ohio. between the two Miami rivers. Pro- visions for the first emigrants may be had very cheap and good, by water, from the Application of Judge Symmes to con- gress for a grant of western lands ( see Jour- nal of Congress, volume XII. page 150) : Pittsburg. Redstone and Wheeling settle- ments, or from the district of Kentucky which lies opposite to this purchase, on the southeast side of the Ohio. The distance To His Excellency, the President of Congress: from Fort Pitt is about five hundred miles The petition of John Cleves Symmes, of New Jersey, showeth that your petitioner, encouraged by the resolutions of Congress of the 23d and 27th of July last, stipulating the condition of a transfer of federal lands on the Scioto and the Muskingum rivers unto Winthrop Sargent, Manasseh Cutler. Esquires, and their associates, of New England, is induced, on behalf of the citizens of the United States westward of Connecticut, who also wish to become purchasers of federal lands, to pray that the honorable the congress will be pleased to di- rect that a contract be made by the honorable the commissioners of the treasury board, with your petitioner for himself and his associates, in all respects similar, in form and matter, to the said grant made to Messrs. Sargent and Cutler, differ- ing, only in place where, and, instead of two town- ships for the use of an university, that one only be assigned for the benefit of an academy. down a gentle river, navigable for boats of one hundred tons to the Mississippi, and down the Mississippi to the sea. In the dis- trict of Kentucky, which is separated from this purchase by the Ohio river, about a half a mile wide, the average price of land is half a dollar per acre. in specie, though a large proportion could not be bought under three hard dollars per acre; eight and ten shillings per acre are frequently given. For the quan- tity. a larger proportion of the lands on the Miamis are supposed to be of the first qual- ity, and the whole equally good, compared generally with those of Kentucky. The titles to the Miami lands will be clear and certain. and no possible doubt can arise. Whereas, on the Kentucky side (military rights ex- cepted) the titles to land are not easily as- certained, frequently very doubtful, and. too often not well founded.

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Centennial History of Butler County, Ohio, Part 6

Author: Bert S. Bartlow, W. H. Todhunter, Stephen D. Cone, Joseph J. Pater, Frederick Schneider, and others Publication date: 1905 Publisher: Number of Pages: 1149

Author: Bert S. Bartlow, W. H. Todhunter, Stephen D. Cone, Joseph J. Pater, Frederick Schneider, and others
Publication date: 1905
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 1149