Centennial history of Cincinnati and representative citizens, Vol. I, Pt. 1, Part 10

Author: Greve, Charles Theodore, b. 1863. cn
Publication date: 1904
Publisher: Chicago : Biographical Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 1020

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Canada, to reprove the Indians there for their friendship to the English and for suffering the English to trade with them."

On the following day they reached another Indian village, this time of the Iroquois, under a female chief, who was friendly to the English. Six more Englishmen were found here and were likewise warned to leave the country, but as did their predecessors they pretended to obey. When they reached Logs Town they found both French and English flags over the town and were greeted with a salute of musketry by the inhabitants who lined the shore. They climbed up the steep bank and encamped on the plateau above, near the village. This consisted of about fifty wigwams and cabins of the Delawares and Shawanees and Mingoes and many fugitives from the deserted towns above. Celoron here delivered a message from the Governor, warning the Indians against the English, whose plans he said tended to their complete ruin. The English intended, he said, to rob them of their country and, to succeed, be- gan by corrupting their minds. The answer of the Indians was practical and to the point.

They asked that the English traders might stay a little longer, since their goods, which were very cheap, were much desired by them. Celoron insisted, however, that the traders, of whom there were ten, should go, to which they agreed, as the chaplain states, "while resolved no doubt to do the contrary as soon as our backs were turned."

At the mouth of the Wheeling creek they buried another plate and another was buried at the mouth of the Muskingum. Thiswas discovered half a century later, after the freshet of 1798, projecting from the river bank, in front of the spot where the fort school afterwards stood, by a party of boys bathing in the river. The plate was seen protruding from the bank and knocked down by a stick, and before its value was known, a large part of it was cut up and molded into bullets. A neighbor from Marietta rescued it and it was presented to the Governor of New York, who sent it to the American Antiquarian Society of Massachusetts.

On the 18th of August, another plate was buried near the mouth of the Great Kanawha. This too was found by a boy at play at the edge of the water, in. 1846. As the party approached Scioto, on the 22nd of August, they were greeted with shots and threatening yells. Joncaire, who had been sent alead to propitiate the inhabitants, was threatened with immediate killing, which was prevented by another party who desired to

burn him alive. He was however released and allowed to return to his people. Celoron was very much alarmed, realizing the weakness of his party, "two-thirds of which were young men who had never left home before, and would have run at the sight of ten Indians." Ile insisted that powder was furnished to the Indians by the English for nothing.

A conference was held at which an apology was given for the ill treatement of Joncaire, and Celoron delivered his message. He prudent- ly omitted, however, from the message any refer- ence to the claim by the King of France of sov- ereignty over their lands. The party of English traders who were living in the place, he ordered to withdraw, but in view of the fact that they seemed well established, he made no attempt to enforce his order.

On August 30, 1749, he reached the Great Mi- ami, called by the French Riviere-a-la-Roche, and here he buried his last leaden plate. They bade farewell to the Ohio-"that river so little known to the French and unfortunately too well known to the English."

He speaks of the great number of Indian vil- lages along the shores who kept aloof from him and also of the number of traders in the vicinity : "Each, great or small, has one or more English traders and each of these has hired men to carry his furs. Behold then the English well advanced upon our lands and what is worse under the pro- tection of a crowd of savages whom they have drawn over to them and whose number increases daily."

Up the Miami for thirteen days they toiled against the shallow current, until they reached the Indian village, built just before, at what was af- terwards called Loramie Creek. This was ruled over by a chief called by the French, La Demoi- selle, and by the English Old Britain. Celoron's object was to induce this chief and his band to return to their old home, near the French fort on the Maumee and for that purpose, he ad- dressed them in council and gave them many gifts. The Chief received the gifts and advice with thanks and agreed to follow it some other time. Celoron's demands that they should move the towns were in vain, and in fact within two years the town known as Pickawillany became one of the greatest Indian towns and the center of English trade and influence.

The following year at a Pennsylvania Comicil was read the message from the Twighit- wee race : "That last July about two hundred French and thirty-five French In-

CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF CINCINNATI

dians came to their towns in order to persuade them to return back to the French Settlements from whence. they came, or if fair means would not prevail with them they were to take them away by force; but the French finding they were resolved to adhere to the English and perceiving their numbers to be great were discouraged from using any Hostile Measures, and began to be afraid less they should them- selves be cut off. The French brought them a present consisting of Four Half Barrels of Powder, Four Bags of Bullets and Four Bags of Paint with a few Needles and a little Thread, which they refused to accept of, whereupon the French and their Indians made the best of their Way off, for Fear of the worst, leaving their Goods scattered about. But at the Time of their Conference the French upbraided the Indians for joining the English and the more so for con- tinuing in their Interest, who had never sent them any Presents, nor even any token of their Regards to them. The Indians further desired to assure the Governors of their steady Friend- ship to the English, which they hoped would last while the Sun and Moon ran round the World." (Penn. Pro. Council, Vol. V, p. 437.)

Celoron burned his canoes and crossed over to the French post of the Maumee, thence to Lake Erie, and finally reached Montreal. He

closed his journal as follows :

"Father Bonnecamp, who was a Jesuit, and a great mathematician, reckons that we have journeyed twelve hundred leagues ; I and my offi- cers think we have journeyed more. All I can say is that the Nations of these countries are very ill disposed towards the French and devoted en- tirely to the English."

He supposed the secret of this devotion to be the inducements of trade offered by the English, which he had seen among the Delawares on the Muskingum, the Shawanees on the Scioto, and the Wyandots on the Sandusky, and among the Twightwees at Pickawillany.

Rufus King, in his "Ohio," says "the fact that Celoron's report was the first authentic relation yet known of Ohio, excites a lively in- terest in it until it is read ; but (it) is so dry and restricted to the details of an official report, that except as to topography it is of little merit. The old soldier would not deign to notice a single scene in all the landscape through which he passed. To Father Bonnecamp, the chaplain and mathematician of this expedition, Ohio owes the first map of her boundaries or outlines yet dis-

covered." Mr. King prints a very good copy of this map.

The Ohio Company had been formed in the State of Virginia, as opposed to those of Pennsyl- vania. This company included in its body a number of tide-water Virginians, among them Lawrence and Augustine Washington, brothers of George Washington, Thomas Lee, the presi- dent of his Majesty's Virginia Council, and Thomas Hanbury, a London merchant of wealth and influence. The company's application for a grant of one-half million acres of land south of the Ohio and between the Monongahela and the Kanawha was acceded to in part, on the ground that such a grant would consolidate trade for the English and give them advantages over the French, and on May 19, 1749, a royal order awarded two hundred thousand acres of those asked for with a ten years' freedom from rent, on condition that one hundred families were settled upon them in seven years and . a fort built and maintained.

Some years previous, Col. Thomas Cresap had built a hunting and trading cabin near the uppermost fork of the Potomac, and near an old Shawanee town. This man, familiar with the frontier life, was employed by the company to open a way to their new lands and a rough trail was run over the divide in the same gen- eral direction as that taken subsequently by Braddock. The company had expected to enlist in its interest some of the Pennsylvania Ger- mans, but the fact that the Episcopalian titlies were fastened upon the land, repelled the provi- dent Germans; for a tinie at least the plan rested.

CHRISTOPHIER GIST.

The news of Celoron's expedition, however, aroused the company, and they concluded to send out a new explorer, Christopher Gist, often called the pioneer explorer of the Miami coun- try and the lands to the north and south of the Ohio as far as the falls, and afterwards the companion and guide of Washington. Speaking of him in connection with the management of Indian affairs, Washington said: "I know of no person so well qualified for an undertaking of this sort as Captain Gist. He has had extensive dealings with them, is in great esteem among them, well acquainted with their manners and customs, indefatigable but patient-most excel- ient where Indians are concerned. As to his capacity, energy and zeal, I dare venture to engage,"

AND REPRESENTATIVE CITIZENS

Gist, the son of a Maryland surveyor, who had laid out the city of Baltimore, lived with his family on a farm near the home of Daniel Boone on the Yadkin River, in the northern part of North Carolina, then on the extreme frontier. He had retired to the quiet life of a farmer, when in 1750 he was employed for one hundred and fifty pounds sterling certain "and such fur- ther handsome allowance as his service should deserve, to explore and report upon the lands upon the Ohio and its several branches as low as the Falls of the Ohio." The instructions given to him by the Ohio Company, September 11, 1750, read in part as follows :

"You are to go out as soon as possible to the Westward of the great Mountains, and carry with you such a Number of Men as You think necessary, in Order to Search' out and discover the Lands upon the river, Ohio, & other ad- joining Branches of the Mississippi down as low as the great Falls thereof: You are par- ticularly to observe the Ways & Passes thro all the Mountains you cross, & take an exact Account of the Soil, Quality & Product of the Land, and the Wideness and Deepness of the Rivers, & the several Falls belonging to them, together with the Courses & Bearings of the Rivers & Mountains as near as you conveniently can: You are also to observe what Nations of Indians inhabit there, their Strength & Num- bers, who they trade with, & in what Com- modities they deal.

"When you find a large quantity of good, level Land, such as you think will suit the Com- pany, You are to measure the Breadth of it, in three or four different Places, & take the Courses of the River & Mountains on which it binds in Order to judge the Quantity: You are to fix the Beginning & Bounds in such a Man- ner that they may be easily found again by your Description ; the nearer in the Land lies the bet- ter, provided it be good & Level, but we had rather go quite down the Mississippi than take mean broken Land. After finding a large Body of good level Land, you are not to stop but pro- ceed further, as low as the Falls of the Ohio, that we may be informed of that Navigation ; And You are to take an exact Account of all the large Bodies of good level Land, in the same Manner as above directed that the Company may the better judge when it will be most conven- ient for them to take their Land.

"You are to note all the Bodies of good Land as you go along, tho there is not a sufficient Quantity for the Company's Grant, but You need

not be so particular in the Mensuration of that as in the larger Bodies of Land."

Following these instructions, Gist set out Oc- tober 31, 1750, from Col. Thomas Cresap's at the old town on the Potomac River in Mary- land, afterwards called Will's Creek, which is just opposite the Green Spring station on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad; at this time it was the westernmost settlement and the rendezvous of all prospectors, traders and hunters. Wash- ington stopped there in 1748, when surveying the lands of Lord Fairfax. After twenty days of painful travel and suffering from fever and no bear nieat and turkey for food, Gist arrived at Shannopin, now a part of the city of Pitts- burg, where he spent four days for the purpose of regaining his health.

"While I was here I took an Opportunity to set my Compass privately, & took the distance across the River, for I understood it was danger- ous to let a Compass be seen among these In- dians."

Col. Stoddard Johnston, in his edition of Gist's "Journal," explains this on the ground that the principal argument of the French in en- deavoring to alienate the Indians from the En- glish was that the English intended to take their lands. Gist throughout his journal pretends that his mission was to cement the friendship of the Indians with the English by means of treaties of alliance against France, but in fact he was the accredited surveyor of the Ohio Company, making the trip for the purpose of reporting up- on lands suitable for them to appropriate. Col- onel Johnston also notes the fact that Washing- ton upon His trip to the Ohio, three years later, came in the interest of the same company and that the Indians, who were most friendly to him and Gist, subsequently became the allies of France and the enemies of England on account of the evident purpose of the English 'to ap- propriate their lands.

On the 25th he arrived at Logs Town, a vil- lage eighteen miles below Pittsburg, just below the present site of the town of Economy. This had been established by the Shawanees about twenty years before. "In the Loggs Town, 1 found scarce any Body but a Parcel of reprobate Traders, the Chiefs of the Indians being out a hunting." Here he heard that George Croghan. the Pennsylvania agent, "who is a meer Idol among his Countrymen the Irish Traders" and Montour, the interpreter, were a week ahead of him. The Indians were suspicious of him say-

CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF CINCINNATI

ing, "I was come to settle the Indian's Lands and they knew I should never go Home again Safe" and the next day "tho I was unwell, I preferred the Woods to such Company" and he . set out down the river to Great Beaver creek, which empties into the Ohio a few miles below Loggs Town, near the present town of Roch- ester. Here he met Barney Curran, a trader for his own company ; he continued with him as far as Muskingum. They left the river to the southeast and cut across the country, killing many deer and turkeys and finally reached Mus- kingum on December 14th. This was a town of the Wyandots or little Mingoes, who he said were divided between the French and English consisting of about one hundred families and was near the present site of Coshocton. "When We came within Sight of the Town, We per- ceived English Colours hoisted on the King's House, and at George Croghans; upon enquir- ing the Reason I was informed that the French had lately taken several English Trader's, and that Mr. Croghan had ordered all the White Men to come into this town, and had sent Ex- presses to the Traders of the lower Towns, and among the Pickweylinees; and the Indians had sent to their People to come to Council about it." Three days later, "came into town two Traders belonging to Mr. Croghan, and informed Us that two of his People were taken by 40 French Men, & twenty French Indians who had carried them with seven Horse Loads of Skins to a new Fort that the French were building on one of the Branches of Lake Erie."

On the next day he met Croghan and Andrew Montour, two of the most remarkable characters in the carly settlements of the West. Croghan has already been described.

Montour was the son of a prominent chief of the Six Nations and the half-breed, long known as Madame Montour. Both his. father and mother acted as interpreter at the treaty of Lancaster in 1744, when the Indians ceded to the English all their lands in Virginia. At the meeting at Logs Town, which took place the next year, and also at the treaty in the same place in 1752, and at the conference of Carlisle, in 1753, he acted in the same capacity. In 1754, he was Washington's interpreter and confidential agent in the advance to the Ohio, and remained with him through the Braddock campaign. He was faithful to the English for many years, acting as their interpreter as late as 1758, at the treaty of Fort Stanwix. He had a European face, de- rived from his half-breed mother, but was

greased and painted like a savage and decked out with tinkling spangles.

On Christmas Day, Gist read prayers, prob- ably the first religious service held by a P'rot- estant in the Northwest. The Indians were so much impressed that they returned thanks to him and invited him to live among them. They gave him a name, which was the name of a good man who had formerly lived among them. He excused himself on the ground that if he should remain, that the French would carry him away as they had the English traders, to which they answered "I might bring great Guns and make a Fort, that they had now left the French, and were very desirous of being in- structed in the Principles of Christianity; that they liked Me very well and wanted Me to marry Them after the Christian Manner, and. baptize their Children; and then they said they would never desire to return to the French, or suffer Them or their Priests to come near them more, for they loved the English, but had seen little Religion among Them; and some of their great Men came and wanted Me to baptize their Children."

One of them brought him a book which was a kind of an almanac contrived for them by the French, in which the days of the week were so marked that by moving a Bin every morning they kept a pretty exact account of the time. Gist staid some days at this village with Croghan and Montour, and from time to time messages were brought in with relation to the doings and claims of the French, who were still taking English traders prisoners.

On Sunday, the 13th, George Croghan ac- quainted the Indians, by presenting them with four strings of wampum, of the friendly desires of Gist. The chiefs promised an answer at a general council in the spring, upon which the party took its leave, traveling westward. At White Woman's creek he met the white woman, who had been taken from New England some' forty years before, at the age of ten, by the Indians. She had an English husband and sev- cral children-"Her name is Mary Harris, she still remembers they used to be very religious in New England, and wonders how the White Men can be so wicked as she has seen them in these Woods." The trip continued in the southi- westerly direction ,to Hockhockin, the present town of Lancaster, then a small town of the Delawares, thence to the Scioto and across the country. .

On one occasion they lodged at the house of an

AND REPRESENTATIVE CITIZENS

Indian, who entertained them very kindly "and ordered a Negro Man that belonged to him to feed our Horses well." At Shannoah Town, at the mouth of the Scioto, he crossed the path of Celoron. This was the point where Celoron omitted in his speech any reference to the claim of French sovereignty. This town, afterwards known as Shawance Town, was situated on both sides of the river Ohio, just below the mouth of Scioto creek, and contained about three hun- dred men; there were about forty houses on the south side of the river and one hundred on the north side, "with a kind of State-House of about 90 Feet long with a light Cover of Bark in which they hold their Councils." Here an- other council was held and Croghan and Mon- tour delivered messages from the Governor of Pennsylvania, informing them of the threats of the French and of their building a fort on the south side of Lake Erie, as well as of the sending by the King of Great Britain of a large present of goods which they were invited to partake of the next summer. The Indians promised to at- tend the conference at Logs Town in the spring and offered to send a guard with them to the town of the Twightwees, about two hundred miles off, and Pickawillany. Here they also wit- nessed an extraordinary festival, described as follows :

"In the Evening a proper Officer made a pub- lic Proclamation that all the Indians marriages were dissolved, and a Public Feast was to be held for three succeeding days after, in which the women as their Custom was were again to choose Husbands.

"The next Morning early the Indians break- fasted and after spent the Day in dancing till the Evening when a plentiful Feast was pre- pared, after feasting they spent the Night in dancing. The same Way they spent the next two Days till Evening, the Men dancing by themselves and then the women in turns round the Fires, and dancing in their Manner in the Form of the Figure 8 about 60 or 70 at a time. The Women the whole Time they danced sung a Song in their Language the Chorus of which was

I am not afraid of my Husband I will choose what Man 1 please

singing those Lines alternately.

"The third Day in the Evening, the Men being about 100 in Number, some Times at Length, at other Times in a Figure 8 .quite round the Fort and in and out of the long House,

where they held their Councils, the Women standing together as the Men danced by them; And as any of the Women liked a Man passing by she stepped in and joined in the Dance, tak- ing hold of the Man's Strond whom she Chose, and then continued in the Dance till the rest of the Women stepped in and made their choice in the same Manner; after which the Dance ended and they All retired to consummate."

From this point his party went across to the Twightwee Town, on the Big Miami River. "All the Way from Shannoah Town to this Place is fine, rich level Land, well timbered with large Walnut, Ash, Sugar Trees, Cherry Trees, &c., it is well watered with a great Number of little Streams or Rivulets and full of beautiful natural Meadows, covered with wild Rye, blue grass and Clover, and abounds with Turkeys, Deer, Elks and most sorts of Game particularly Buffaloes, thirty or forty of which are frequently seen feeding in one Meadow; In short it wants nothing but Cultivation to make it a most de- lightfull Country-The Ohio and all the large Branches are said to be full of fine Fish of sev- eral Kinds, particularly a Sort of Cat Fish of a prodigious Size."

They entered the town with the English colors before them and were invited to the King's house, upon the top of which they set their colors. "The Twigtwees are a very numerous People consisting of many different Tribes nin- der the same Form of Government. Each tribe has a particular Chief, or King, one of which is chosen indifferently out of any Tribe to rule the whole Nation, and is vested with greater Authorities than any of the others-They are accounted the most powerful People to the Westward of the English Settlements, & much superior to the Six Nations with whom they are now in Amity: their Strength and Numbers are not thoroughly known, as they have but lately traded with the English, and indeed have very little Trade among them: They deal in much the same Commodities with the Northern Indians. There are other Nations or Tribes still further to the Westward daily coming in to them & 'tis thought their Power and Interest reaches to the Westward of the Mississippi, if not across the Continent ; they are at present very well affected to the English, and seem fond of an Alliance with them-they formerly lived on the other side of the Obache, and were in the French Interest, who supplied them with some few Trifles at a most exorbitant Price -- they were called by the French Miamees; but

CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF CINCINNATI

they have now revolted from them, and left their former Habitations for the Sake of trading with the English ; and not withstanding all the Artifices the French have used, they have not been able to recall then1."

They were the people of La Demoiselle, who received the gifts and advice of Celoron with so many thanks and promised to follow it some other time. By reason of their change of al- legiance and friendship for the English and to the treaty, subsequently made with Croghan and Gist, the French waged a destructive war against them and took their fort and burnt their vil- lages in 1752. They finally submitted to the French and together with the Shawanees took sides with them in the war against England, and at the time of the later settlements of the Miami Valley were the principal Indians with whom the settlers came into contact.

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Centennial history of Cincinnati and representative citizens, Vol. I, Pt. 1, Part 10

Author: Greve, Charles Theodore, b. 1863. cn Publication date: 1904 Publisher: Chicago : Biographical Pub. Co. Number of Pages: 1020

Author: Greve, Charles Theodore, b. 1863. cn
Publication date: 1904
Publisher: Chicago : Biographical Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 1020