Centennial history of Cincinnati and representative citizens, Vol. I, Pt. 1, Part 9

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

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CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF CINCINNATI

Iberville realized the importance of the Ohio region because of the easy means of communica- tion between it and the St. Lawrence region and on the other hand between it and the Louisiana region and complained of the Canadian system in favoring the hunter and trapper in preference to the settler and home seeker which he thought a fatal blunder if France expected to hold the country against the English.

His plan was to establish posts near the mouths of the Missouri, Ohio and Arkansas as permanent centers of French influence and. also at a later day to induce the tribes of the Illinois, who were friendly to the French, to settle along the banks of the lower Ohio. As a result of the alarm of the Eastern Indians, caused by the fortification at Detroit, came an action which was the basis of the subsequent claim of the English to the title of the Western country. Governor Penn had expressed the view of the colonial governors, when he stated that the just and reasonable boundary was the south side of the St. Lawrence and the lakes, but the basis of this claim was not a very substantial one. The purpose of the French to encompass the English by taking pos- session of the Mississippi basin was recognized in England as well as in the Colonies, and the Iroquois were represented as a "constant barrier of defence between Virginia and Maryland and the French, and by their constant vigilence they had prevented the French making any descent that way."

Nanfan, the Lieutenant-Governor, and Robert Livingston, the Secretary of New York, after a week's conference with the sachem at Albany, obtained a deed of cession, July 9, 1701, by the Five Nations to the King, ceding to him the re- gion north of the Ohio and stretching to the Mississippi and Illinois rivers as well as the ter- ritory north of Lake Erie stretching east of the Ottawa. This included all the beaver hunting lands of the West and was described as having been conquered by them many years before, at the time when the Hurons were driven out of the Northern portion in 1650, and the Eries and others at a later period were defeated in the Southern portion. The territory ceded com- menced north of Lake Ontario, and extended to the Twightwees, about eight hundred by four hundred miles in extent; this cession was con- firmed by a later deed in 1726. As a matter of fact, however, the French influence in the terri- tory, which now comprises the State of Ohio, was still predominant and it was not as a result of any permission from the Five Nations that

the various Western tribes occupied the territory but by force of arms backed by French assist- ance.

In 1702 a French fort was established near the site of Cairo by Juchereau in accordance with the plan of Iberville but it was abandoned some three years later. Cahokia had been founded prob- ably as early as 1690 and Kaskaskia about the same time. In 1712 the latter place had become a village and land titles were acquired and prepa- rations for a permanent settlement made as it was chosen as the capitol place of the Illinois. The date of the settlement of Vincennes is variously given, but 1727 seems to be the most likely date.

It was in 1747 that the Indian chief Nicholas stirred up the Miamis against the French with whom they had hitherto been friendly and in- duced them to burn Fort Miamis of the Maumee. Galissonière the Governor of Canada sent aid, but before the arrival of the troops the Miamis were in full flight; the principal body under La Demoiselle settled on the Big Miami.

As early as 1671, Governor Berkeley of Vir- ginia sent a party of English and Indians under Capt. Thomas Batts "to explore and find out the ebbing and flowing of the water behind the mountains, in order to the discovery of the South Sca." They traveled thirteen days over the mountains and through the woods until they came to a river "like the Thames at Chelsea" in which a few days later they reached "a Fall that made a great noise" where the journey was stopped by the refusal of the Indians to go any further. Their excuse was the difficulty of cap- turing game, but in reality the moving cause was fear of the Indians who lived down the river, which in all probability was the Kanawha. Those that went down that river never returned so it was said; these fears Captain Batts was un- able to overcome and he was obliged to turn back.

KNIGHTS OF THE GOLDEN HORSESIIOE.

In the early part of the eighteenth century a most venturesome and active soldier, Sir Alex- ander Spotswood, was Governor of Virginia. At the age of twenty-eight he had attained the rank of colonel, and had received a wound at Blenheim. He was a man of great force of char- acter and very direct speech and he had the in- terests of his government and his colony much at heart. He was a strong believer in the theory of the English, that their rights ran front sea to sea. The grant to Penn, he claimed, ex- tended to the border of Ontario, and the Virginia

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charter included all other rights to the West, north of Carolina. This was the claim afterward inaintained by Virginia and it included the great lakes from Lake Erie to the West and the up- per Mississippi country. The English seem at times to have been strangely ignorant of what the French had done.

The English settlements crept slowly inland beyond tide-water and a strip of forest more than fifty miles in breadth was to be traversed before the peaks of the mountains could be reached. In 1710 somc adventurers had gone about one hundred miles beyond the settlements and had descended the mountains from which they looked down into the valleys of Virginia, and shortly afterwards Sugar-loaf Mountain was de- scribed by Graffenreid, who said that he saw from its summit three distinct ranges and beau- tiful valleys lying between. The traders, how- ever, must have passed through from time to time as evidences of their traffic were to be found in the possession of the Indians.

In 1716, Spotswood conceived the idea of his celebrated expedition, composed of a party of fifty gentlemen with slaves and Indian guides and pack horses who undertook a picnic jaunt to the mountains. No party of exploration has ever presented such attractive features as this expedition of the Knights of the Golden Horse- shoe. The days were spent in shooting and the nights in enjoying the trophies of the chase, washed down with native wine,-champagne and cognac. At the top of the Appalachian Mountains they drank the health of the king and all of his family. On the banks of the river, to which he gave the name Euphrates, and which is now known by its Indian namc Shenandoah, they buried a bottle with a paper enclosed, on which was recorded the claim of title to this place and all the soil it drained. "We had a good dinner and drank the King's health in Cham- pagne and fired a volley." . The Governor had taken with him some graving irons but found the stones so hard that he could not make any impression upon them. It is reported however, that he cut the name of George the First upon a rock at the summit of the highest peak they reached and named it Mount George, whereupon the rest of the party called the next one Mount Alexander, in honor of the Governor. "For this expedition they were obliged to provide a great quantity of horseshoes, things seldom used in the lower part of the country where there are few stones. Upon which account the Governor upon their return presented each of his companions

with a golden horseshoe, some of which I have seen studded with valuable stoncs resembling the heads of nails, with this inscription: Sic juvat transcendere montes. This he instituted to cn- courage gentlemen to venture backwards to make discoveries and new settlements, any gen- tleman being entitled to wear this golden shoe that can prove his having drank his Majesty's health upon Mount George."

This particular expedition, the first junketing tour of which we have any record, has been made the subject of much romantic writing. In his report the Governor relates that he reached with- in three days' march of a great nation of Indians who lived on the river emptying into Lake Erie and from the western side of one of the moun- tains, which he saw, that lake was visible and not above five days' march away. It would be a very easy matter he thought to obtain possession of the lake, as the road thither was very prac- ticable. This he thought important because the British plantations were surrounded by the French fortresses in such a manner that they would not only soon engross the whole trade but send out such bodies of Indians as would threaten the Virginia plantations. Should they be able to join their settlements along the lakes with those in Louisiana, they could possess themselves of the English plantations. The

long chain of mountains formed a nat- ural barrier, but to make this effective he thought the English should make some settle- ments along the lakes and in the passes of the mountains to preserve communications with the settlements. It is conjectured that the river route of which he spoke, was down the Youghiogheny to the forks then up the Allegheny and across to the site of Eric, about three hundred miles distant in a straight line from the point where he turned back. With some self-complacency, Spotswood concludes his report : "I flatter my- self I have attained a more exact knowledge than any other Englishman yet has of the . situation of the lakes and the way through which they are most accessible over land."

It is probable that from the time of Spots- wood's expedition, numerous stragglers crossed the mountains to the Indians. Not only did the traders undertake these expeditions but survey- ing parties began to explore the new country. Mitchell, a geographer of a later date, tells of thie journeys of Virginia surveyors, who had crossed the gaps and passed down the Ohio River to New Orleans.

In 1742, it is reported that John Howard

CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF CINCINNATI

passed from the upper waters of the James over the mountains to New River by which he reached the Ohio, which he descended to the Mississippi, where he was captured by some French and In- dians and conveyed to New Orleans. In 1744, Col. Abraham Wood led an expedition through the Blue Ridge, by what came to be known as Wood's Gap, and he too reached the upper waters of the Ohio by way of New River.

In 1748, Conrad Weiser, one of the most prominent of the carly traders, who had in early life acquired the Mohawk tongue by residence among them, was sent on an embassy to the Shawanees on the Ohio. He proceeded as far as Logs Town, where he met the chiefs of the tribe and delivered presents and received assur- ances of their support against the French. The treaty of Lancaster, in Pennsylvania, was made in 1744. . Weiser acted as interpreter for the English who entertained the Indians to the num- ber of over two hundred and fifty, with food and drink for several days. The interpreter for the Indians was Madame Montour, whose husband and son were so prominent in the history of the Indian negotiations. Her son Andrew was at this time absent on the war-path against the Cataw- bas, by whom his father had been killed a few years before. At this time the commissioners from Virginia urged that the Western lands along the mountains were without occupants when they first knew them, and that the English King held Virginia by right of conquest and that the bounds of that conquest to the westward was the Great Sca. The answer of the Iroquois was as fol- lows: "Though great things are well remem- bered among us, we do not remember that we were ever conquered by the Great King of Eng- land, or that we have ever been employed by that Great King to conquer others; if so it was at a time beyond the memory of man."

The claims of the other commissioners in Penn- sylvania and Maryland were ridiculed as well. The conference ended with the payment of a considerable sum by the English and the re- lease of an indefinite extent of territory to the west of the Alleghanics by the Indians. Each side realized that the title so obtained was of doubtful validity, but it was upon this title that a very large part of the contention of Great Britain subsequently rested.

The Ohio Company of which more will be heard of subsequently, was formed in 1748, which was the year in which the Pennsylvania and Vir- ginia traders established their most advanced post at the newly settled Miami town, Picka-

willany, on the Big Miami. As a result of the Walker expedition across the Alleghanies and through Cumberland Gap, the first English- man's house in Kentucky was built April 25, 1750.

It is impossible of course to state when the first white man invaded the Ohio Valley, or even to state who was the first Englishman that ap- peared in this neighborhood. Undoubtedly trad- ers from Pennsylvania and other Western States had trafficked among the Indians for many years, but at a time of which we have no record. These traders were called by Franklin "the most vicious and abandoned wretches of our nation," which however is in many respects an unjust character- ization. It was true, however, that many of them were of a very low class and of very per- nicious habits, which influenced the Indians to distrust the white man and his religion.

While the French were making inroads upon this country from the North, the English were working their way gradually westward, and the struggle for the friendship of the Indian tribes became a kcen onc. In December, 1747, a deputation of chiefs from the Ohio tribes was at Philadelphia. They told the commis- sioners that if they were expected to oppose the French on the Ohio, they must be supported by the English. It seemed to be a common com- plaint that the English gave no assistance to those they desired as allies.

"The several governments of the English Colo- nies," wrote Colonel Johnston to Governor Shir- ley, had for three years been persuading the Iro- quois, "into a war wherein they had not any con- cern but to serve their friends and they have left their hunting and other means of living and ex- posed themselves and families for our sakes" to be left without assistance at a critical time. .

In July, 1748, the Twightwees or Miamis, pledged themselves to an English alliance at Lancaster. English traders are said to have been employed along the Wabash as early as 1723, and this treaty gave them additional se- curity. As a result the pack men of Pennsyl- vania and Virginia pushed forward into the val- ley of the Ohio, the first coming along the wagon roads through Lancaster to Harris' Ferry, 110w Harrisburg, thence by bridle patlı to Will's Creek on to the Potomac, from which an Indian trail led to the forks of the Ohio; from this point they took another trail to the towns of the Miamis.

The French were disappointed at the treaty of 1748, as they had been making great efforts

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to control the trade of the Miami country and had expected to build forts or stockades to aid them in this endeavor. One of the points sug- gested was on the Ohio, opposite the Cherokee, now Tennessee River, and another was at the falls of the Ohio. A special effort was made to alienate the Shawanees from the English. These people who had been dispersed between the Sen- ecas and Miamis, with their main villages north of the Ohio, above the mouth of the Kanawha, were pushing westward into the Scioto country, some of them going as far as the mouth of the Wabash. Here they naturally became more un- der the control of the French, who were anxious to offset them against the Miamis, whose affilia- tions seemed to be with the English.

In 1745, English traders erected at Sandusky Bay, what Mr. Winsor suggests were "perhaps the first English structures in the present State of Ohio," and made friends among the neigh- boring Hurons and their chief Nicholas. This chieftain was very active in plotting against the French, and this fact together with the encroach- ments of the traders alarmed the commandant at Detroit, and determined him to prevent if pos- sible the English from getting a lodgment in the Ohio country. The English traders had al- ready founded their most advanced post at the Great Miami or Twightwee town, Pickawillany, in 1748; this was on the Big Miami, one hundred and fifty miles up the stream from the Ohio. It is said that at this time, during a single season, three hundred English traders led their pack horses and dragged their boats from the moun- tains across the portages into the Ohio Valley. The most conspicuous of these traders was George Croghan, for many years official repre- sentative of the State of Pennsylvania in various negotiations with the Indians.

Croghan was an Irishman, who had been trad- ing for some years along the shores of Lake Erie. As early as June, 1747, the Pennsylvania Council received a letter from Croghan, calling their attention to the Indians along the borders of Lake Erie, who had formerly been in the French interest, but who had now come over and joined the Six Nations against the French, and stating that he had received from them a letter with a string of wampum and a French scalp, which he delivered to the Governor of Pennsyl- vania. He suggested that as this was a nation of great consequence, on account of their alli- ances, the Governor should immediately send them a present for their encouragement. Again in September, one of Croghan's men brought a

letter to the Council, advising them that the In- dians on Lake Erie were making war on the French,, but were very impatient to hear from their brethren, the English, expecting a present of powder and lead, "which if they do not get, he is of opinion they will return to the French, who will be very willing to make it up with them."

Croghan insisted that "in case the present was not sent, neither he nor his men would dare to go into the Indian Country that year. The Council concluded to send a present to the value of two hundred pounds, to the Indians of Ohio and Lake Erie, and the Secretary was ordered to prepare a letter and a string of wampum to accompany the present."

CELORON DE BIENVILLE.

Galissonière, the Governor of Canada, was alarmed at the progress made by the English, and realized that the French occupancy of Can- ada was imperiled. He was a naval officer and is perhaps best known from the fact that a few years afterwards, he won a victory at Minorca, over the famous English admiral, Byng, now remembered as the one commanding officer, who was shot on his own quarter deck for cowardice. Galissonière, although hump-backed, was a man of spirit and ability, and he felt strongly in need of uniting Canada and Louisiana, by a chain of forts which should hold back the British pioneers and encourage the development of French trade throughout the interior. His rea- soning as. set out in a memorial concerning the French Colonies in North America, was to the effect that Canada was necessary to the French as a barrier against the English, not because of its value to the French but because if it became the property of the English, it would so increase their trade and hence their naval power as to make them preponderant in Europe. The knowl- edge that such men as Croghan and other Eng- lish traders were crossing the mountains from Pennsylvania and Virginia, trafficking among the Indians, who had been . formerly French al- lies, and driving off the French traders stimulated him to take some decisive action, and in the sum- mer of 1749, hie set on foot the expedition of Celoron de Bienville, to the valley of the Ohio. Celoron was a Chevalier of St. Louis, and a captain in the colony troops. He took with him fourteen officers and cadets, twenty soldiers, one hundred and eighty Canadians, and about thirty Indians, Iroquois and Abenakis, in twenty-three

CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF CINCINNATI

birch-bark canoes. He pushed up to St. Law- rence, losing a man and several canoes on the way, crossed Lake Ontario, and passed round Niagara. It took the party seven days, carrying the canoes and baggage up the steep hills through the dense forests of beech, oak and elm that in- tervencd between the shores of Lake Eric and the waters of Chautauqua Lake, eight miles away and one thousand feet higher. They glided over this lake to the outlet so well known to sum- mer tourists. The stream was quite low.

Father Bonnecamp, the chaplain, in his jour- nal, which is the chief record of the expedition, says: "In some places-and they were but too frequent-the water was only two or three inches deep; and we were reduced to the sad necessity of dragging our canoes over the sharp pebbles, which with all our care and precaution stripped off large slivers of the bark. At last tired and worn and almost in despair of ever seeing La Belle Riviere, we entered it at noon of the 29th.' This part of the Ohio is now known as the Alle- gheny or Alleghany.

This was the beginning of the territory which was already in dispute and which was regarded as so valuable to the French, lying as it did be- tween their possessions in wintry Canada and tropical Louisiana. Not only was it valuable because of its peculiar geographical situation, but because of its inhabitants and the opportunities of trade afforded by them. To the east were the Delawares, Shawances, Wyandots and Iro- quois, called Mingoes by the English traders, and to the west, along the Miamis and the Wabash, was the Miami confederacy, and still farther west, near the Mississippi, werc the Illinois. The French had forts on the Maumee, on the St. Joseph and two on the Wabash, all of but little strength. Fort Chartres, in the Illinois country, was much stronger with its stone bastions and citadel. There were seventy or eighty French houses at Kaskaskia, half as many at Cahokia, opposite the present site of St. Louis, and a few others along the line of the Mississippi. The English on the other hand were represented by a large number of traders who had been received by the Indians with open arms.

Such men as George Croghan, William Trent and Christopher Gist, were of the better class of traders, who had many men in their employ crossing the mountains with their goods, which were carried into the valley of the Ohio, from village to village. It was these traders that were the special object of Celoron's antipathy and the occasion of his expedition.

Upon reaching the Allegheny; he formally took possession of the country. His men were drawn up in order and in their presence, Louis the Fif- teenth was proclaimed sovereign of all the ter- ritory. A sheet of tin, on which was stamped the arms of France, was nailed to a tree, and a plate of lead was buried at its foot, and the notary, who always accompanied the French ex- peditions, drew a formal record of the whole proceeding. The leaden plate was inscribed as follows :

"Year 1749, in the reign of Louis Fifteenth, King of France. We Celoron, commanding the detachment sent by the Marquis de la Galisson- ière, commander-general of New France, to re- store tranquility in certain villages of these can- tons, have buried this plate at the confluence of the Ohio and the Kanaouagon ( Conewango) this 29th July, as a token of renewal of possession heretofore taken of the aforesaid river Ohio, of all streams that fall into it and all lands on both sides to the source of the aforesaid streams, as the preceding Kings of France have enjoyed it or ought to have enjoyed it, and which they have upheld by force of arms and by treaties, notably by those of Ryswick, Utrecht, and Aix- la-Chapelle."

After this work was completed the party pro- ceeded down the river, passing various Indian settlements, but finding it very difficult to com- municate with their inhabitants who were not at all friendly. In fact the hostile Senecas are said to have dug up his first plate and sent it to the English at Albany. Another platc was buried four leagues below French creek by a- rock covered with Indian hieroglyphics. Three days later they came to a Delaware village at the site of Kittanning, whose owners fled at their approach. A little later at an abandoned village of the Shawanees they found six English traders, whom they warned to leave the country. He entrusted to their care a letter to the Governor of Pennsylvania and expressed surprise at find- ing the English trespassing on the domain of France. This letter was properly delivered, for at a meeting of the Pennsylvania Council, held January, 1749:

"The Governor informed the Council that three several letters of extraordinary character in 'French, signed Celoron, were delivered to him by the Indian traders who came from Allegheny, informing him that this Captain Celoron was a French officer and had already in command of three hundred French and some Indians been sent this Summer to Ohio and the Owabachi from

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Centennial history of Cincinnati and representative citizens, Vol. I, Pt. 1, Part 9

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