USA > Ohio > Coshocton County > Centennial history of Coshocton County, Ohio, Vol. I > Part 3
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They were polite in their way, not offering to speak until another had finished. They gave few compliments and fewer titles of honor. Some war exploit or some eminent wisdom raised a brave to the place of chief, with his own town, his hunting and fishing grounds.
Great respect was shown to age. Children were disciplined by ducking. Of sickness and its treatment among the Indians in this region little has been recorded. When death came to a chief's wife the moans and cries of the women filled the village. The dead was painted with vermillion. In the head of the coffin was a hole for her soul to pass out to the kingdom of Ponemah. At the grave they en- treated her to rise and stay with the living. A red pole was erected as a monument. For three weeks a kettle of food was carried every evening to the grave.
The painting practice was always in evidence. Wives painted themselves with vermillion, the scarlet women deeply scarlet. Men, after plucking whiskers with tweezers of shells, put in hours painting the face, breast and legs for a night frolic.
In courtship the girl usually made the advances, although the man was not always lacking in that particular. This was seen in their courtship dance. It started with some one shaking a gourd or dry shell of a squash in which pebbles rattled a sort of measured beat, and the dancing line of painted braves and the dancing line of painted belles smilingly advanced to amorous meeting, singing,
"Ya ne no hoo wa ne" -
much like our fa sol la, with a deal of Indian coquetry, while the dancers stooped until their heads touched, then straightened with a wild "Lulliloo!" and retreated to do it all over again and again, for hours of passionate abandonment. Through the singing, as their heads touched, they exchanged what confidences they pleased, and the stooping maid who smiled "yes" over her coaxing suitor's two fingers, suggestively placed together to look like one, completed all there was to the marriage ceremony.
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Nor had they any feeling of something horribly illegal some- where. No doubt they considered it vastly fine, a ceremony that held just as thoroughly as the "long as ye both shall live" from the altar rails centuries later, with the bridesmaids giggling behind, and "The Voice that breathed o'er Eden" lifting the roof off, as Kipling says.
And about as fatally easy as Indian marriage was Indian separa- tion. The trial marriage was their cult. If dissatisfied they simply looked around for a new mate and let the other go.
This is told in the journal of Christopher Gist, the friend whom George Washington sent to look into Coshocton lands. As the In- dians danced into matrimony, so they danced out of it-then into it again. It was made the occasion of a regular feast. For three days, from early breakfast they danced till evening, feasted, then danced into the night. The men danced while the women watchfully judged; then the women in their turn danced around the fires, as many as three score of them, moving in the figure 8, singing defiance to their former husbands and chanting their intention to choose what man they pleased. And the prospective benedicts critically observed the graces in the dancing line that passed before them in this Indian world of beauty and fashion.
In the evening of the third day the men, a hundred in all, danced in a long string, sometimes in the figure 8, around the whole place, and in and out of the council house. The squaws stood in line for a final scrutiny of the matrimonial eligibles dancing by. When some favored one came along, she who preferred him glided in and joined in the step, talking hold of the man's blanket, and continuing in the dance until the rest of the waiting charmers made their choice, and the dance ended. Thus a new assortment of marriages was made, if not in heaven, at least in Indian style.
Into this primitive life in the cycle of time came the first paleface, a trader from the Allegheny frontier to which the white settlements of the East had already extended. His packhorse was loaded with metal kettles, knives, hatchets, blankets, firearms, ribbons, beads, spangles, and "fire water." These were welcomed by the natives, while the trader returned East with a precious load of fur.
He came again. Other traders came. Some were English; others were French, who by friendly temperament and tolerant pol- icy, fraternized the more easily with the natives. The rivalry between
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HISTORY OF COSHOCTON COUNTY
Frenchmen and Englishmen for the Indian fur trade was an incident in the chronic hostility between France and England. The tempting and fluctuating offers for pelts made by the traders started dissen- sions which were the first mutterings of the stormy years to come when the English were to fight the French and Indians for the land.
The French would threaten the Indians with the loss of their favor if they continued trading with the English. When Christopher Gist was sent to check the French scheme, he complained strongly that some traders and their British convict attendants were demoral- ized and demoralizing. Of a different sort, however, was the English officer, George Croghan, acting as messenger and interpreter in con- stant travels through the wilderness to win the savages to the English side.
Croghan was early on the scene in this region. He was espe- cially qualified for the dangerous diplomacy of the day. He exerted personal influence over the Indian mind, won their confidence by fair and generous treatment, by hospitality, by assimilating with their habits even in dress, and by mastering Indian oratory. In this Eng- lishman the red men saw none of the customary contemptuous hauteur.
Croghan had the English colors flying from the house of the In- dian chief as well as from his own when on that December day, 1750, Christopher Gist arrived here. The surveyor represented the newly- formed Ohio Company organized by a dozen Virginians, including George Washington. They had a grant from the King of England for half a million acres along the Ohio. The King had acquired pos- session under a deed obtained by Pennsylvania, Virginia and Mary- land from some Iroquois chiefs for all the land beyond the mountains -one of those characteristic deeds which for terms that were dark and tricks that were vain showed the heathen mind as somewhat peculiar. The Indian idea of a deed was not a surrender of territory, but an agreement to occupy jointly with the white man.
But to go on with Gist and Croghan: The Friday of the sur- veyor's arrival in Coshocton he found that, notwithstanding the Eng- lish flag hoisted on the chief's house, the several hundred Indians of the village were divided in their preference, some siding with the English, some with the French.
Several English traders had been seized by Frenchmen as tres-
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passers and taken to Canada as prisoners. Croghan dispatched run- ners to warn English traders in towns farther down the Mus- kingum, and to summon them to a meeting in Coshocton. The Indians talked of holding a general council.
Two English traders appeared and reported that ten others had been captured by forty Frenchmen and half as many Indians; that the English captives along with their horses and loads of fur were taken to a French fort near Lake Erie.
The week passed in Coshocton with Gist "talking much of a regulation of trade" and his business with the Indians. On Christ- mas day he intended to read prayers. A few whites, disinclined and of various persuasions, refused to attend, though urged to do so by Thomas Burney, a blacksmith. Several Indians came, invited by Andrew Montour, a noted guide whose mother was the attractive wife of an Indian chief in the East. The red men of Coshocton, hearkening to Gist, seemed impressed with the white man's religious belief, his explanation of the Christian marriage, and baptism of children. And, the chronicle quaintly continues, they said they would never desire to return to the French, or suffer them to come near; for they loved the English, but had seen little religion among them.
This Christmas there was an incident vividly calculated to em- phasize the need for missionary work. A squaw, long held as a prisoner, had escaped, been retaken, and submitted to the typically refined cruelty of these red savages. They turned her loose and when she started running for her life she was pursued and struck down with a blow on the head and an arrow that pierced her to the heart. Her scalp was thrown into the river, and then her head cut off. As that seemed about as far as heathen hatred could go, Barney Curran, a trader who later was with George Washington, obtained from the sullen savages their permission to give the dead a decent burial, which he, his men, and-be it recorded-some Indians, did as dark- ness mercifully blotted out a day of horror.
Nothing was recorded for a while in Gist's journal. Then ap- peared this significant entry :
"Saturday, Jan. 12 .- Proposed a council; postponed; Indians drunk."
The noble red men apparently survived the effects of French brandy and British rum; for a couple days later a meeting is finally
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recorded. Little remains to us descriptive of the picturesque assem- bly in the council house of Coshocton, and that little is in Gist's note- book. He says Croghan and Montour as interpreters presented four strings of wampum to the chief and council, and informed them that their father had sent under the care of their brother, the governor of Virginia, a large present of goods now landed safe in Virginia, and that the governor had sent Gist to invite them to come and see him and partake of their father's charity to all his children.
A chief laid aside his pipe and slowly rising drew himself erect with the dignity that was purely Indian. He said they thanked their brother, the governor of Virginia, for his care, and Gist for bringing the news, but that they could not give an answer until they had a general council of the several Indian nations next Spring. The chief and council shook hands with Gist, and the next day the surveyor went five miles to a small town on the Walhonding, which is Indian for White Woman. 1480935
There Gist met the white woman. She was the squaw of Eagle Feather, and mother of several children. She remembered her name as Mary Harris, and that she was stolen from her home in New Eng- land by Indians when she was little. So much had she become a part of Indian life that nothing of her civilized childhood remained save a recollection that man in New England seemed religious, while out here she wondered at the wickedness of white men that she saw in these woods.
Her wanderings had been those of the tribe of Custaloga, re- treating before white frontiersmen until they found new hunting grounds here. She would follow Eagle Feather to buffalo, elk and bear hunts, and when he went off with a war party she mixed his paint and laid it on and plumed him, and put up dried venison and parched corn for his journey. As one narrative relates, she was especially careful to polish with soapstone Eagle Feather's little hatchet, admonishing him not to return without some good long- haired scalps for wigwam parlor ornaments.
In after years it is told that Eagle Feather returned from afar one day, bringing with him another white woman, the "newcomer," as the jealous Mary named her. In the night the sleeping Eagle Feather was tomahawked. Mary screamed the newcomer did it, and the newcomer fled, with warriors in hot pursuit. Miles away they
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overtook her and tomahawked her, and the scene of the tragedy has been memorialized in the name of Newcomerstown to this day. Mary Harris took the trail to Sandusky and was heard from no more.
There is a legend of the Walhonding, the tradition of White Woman Rock, and the heroine of it may have been some captive maiden among the hundreds of eastern prisoners in the hands of sav- ages passing through this region on their way to the West. Held in a red beast's arms the struggling beauty suddenly broke from him and flew like an arrow through the forest, tearing through thickets,
and leaping over fallen timber, the yelping pursuer fast gaining upon her. Just before her through the trees she saw the river. An in- stant she hesitated. Better death in the water than a living death in horrible captivity. She could hear him coming nearer. If she could only find a hiding place! She did not want to die. There, looming high on the river's edge, her frantic eyes sighted a huge rock. Its great wall seemed to beckon her to safety. With all her remaining strength she drew herself from ledge to ledge to the top- most height, and lay there prone, panting, trembling, exhausted. The protecting arm of a tree spread its foliage overhead. Beneath flowed the silent river. A stillness suddenly hung over everything. The listening girl, straining to hear the least sound, fearful lest she might be tracked to her refuge, held her hand to her breast to still the wild beating of her heart. Silently the moccasined feet drew nearer, stealthily they crept toward the rock, and the painted face looking upward saw the quarry only partly concealed by the over- hanging branches. He dashed up with a yell. Hunter and hunted faced each other for a terrible instant, the prayer froze on her lips, and then before his outstretched hand could seize her she threw her- self from the brink into the waters that closed over her forever.
But we left Gist on his tour of this region to locate the best lands and pave the way toward establishing his company's claims to them by following the line of least resistance on the part of the red occupants. From the White Woman his tour extended southward to the Ohio. His effort to get lands for the Ohio Company aroused the French, and thus his trip through these Coshocton valleys was a forerunner of the war that a few years later lost France her principal possessions in America-the whole Ohio and Mississippi wilderness that she had claimed a hundred years since La Salle's explorations ;
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HISTORY OF COSHOCTON COUNTY
aye, in all the years since these forest wilds of "New France" were roamed over by the Jesuit priests, winning Indians to their faith.
The Ohio Company's claim to this region rested on a deed from the Iroquois, but Gist found other Indians here to reckon with-the Delawares, once the powerful tribe of Wa-be-nugh-ka that had dwelt on the shores of the Delaware and welcomed William Penn to the new world. For that hospitality to the white man the Delawares were to suffer at the hands of their red brothers. While Penn breathed grateful prayer at sight of the Delawares burying the hatchet, and while the peace belt was scarcely laid across the shoulders of the peacemakers, the Iroquois warriors sneered at the Delawares, contemptuously called them "women," and tomahawks became red with Delaware blood. The sight of ships bringing in more and more white men, premonitions of the coming of the Great Spirit, distracted the Delawares from wreaking vengeance on the Iroquois. The haughty Iroquois posed as the superior nation, and the Atlantic colonies believed. The Delawares were forbidden by the Iroquois to sell land. Soured and embittered against their con- querors the Delawares left their old hunting grounds and drifted westward through the wilderness until they came here.
Even then, deep down in some of those savage hearts, there was likely a growing bitterness toward the English whose colonies were overrunning hunting grounds from the coast to the Alleghenies, a bitterness masked by stolid, impassive countenance in the council at Coshocton as they listened to Gist talk of presents from the white brother in Virginia-presents of the white man who wanted their land.
Something like suspicion in their mind is indicated in the play for time when they told Gist there would be no answer until a gen- eral council in the Spring. They held this as their land. The chiefs had in their possession documents and vouchers in writing, and strings and belts of wampum, of all transactions that had taken place between their ancestors and the government of Pennsylvania from the time of William Penn. Once a year had they met in the forest to refresh their memories and to instruct the most promising of their young men in memorizing those records. There would be no sur- render of this land without a struggle. And the struggle came with the outbreak of the smouldering fire of hatred toward the English
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colonists that claimed this land by virtue of cession from the Iroquois who on their part had gained it by conquest. The Delawares and the neighboring Shawanees, having at last recuperated their courage and vigor, denied that the hated Iroquois had any right by conquest or otherwise to deed the land to the English.
So in the end the Delawares joined the tribes that allied with the French in the fight against the English. The prize at stake was the continent, but little the savages at first knew how hopeless to them was the war of the white men whose conflicting schemes, jeal- ousies, intrigues, passions and religious hatreds of the old world burned in the wilderness warfare of the new. For the red men it was to be but a question of under which king.
Through the Indian world in this forest wild the music of the war dance beat like a muffled drum, the weird "he-uh, he-uh" of chanting savages timed to the tatto of the drum-stick. The warriors crouched a few paces, straightened with a hideous yell, stretched their tomahawks towards Virginia, shrieked their hate again, the lust of blood in their painted faces, then wheeled and danced back.
One at a time, with brandishing tomahawk, howled and writhed through his war song to the weird chant of the others-"He-uh, he-uh." As the warrior ended his song he crashed his tomahawk into a post, shouted his war exploits and what he would now do, while the rest howled approval. When they filed away, trailing be- hind the leader, his traveling song came faintly to the listening squaws, maids and old men long after the breech-clouted figures had disappeared in the forest-
"Hoo kaw tainte heegana! Hoo kaw tainte heegana!"
SIX MILE DAM WITH HEAD GATES AT LEFT TO TURN THE WATER OF THE WALHONDING INTO THE CANAL
CHAPTER IV.
IMPORTANT INCIDENTS IN COSHOCTON INDIAN LIFE WHICH HAVE MADE THIS REGION FAMOUS IN THE COUNTRY'S INDIAN HISTORY.
From the raids and midnight attacks on settlers' log cabins along the Virginia, Pennsylvania and Kentucky border the murderous sav- ages brought back to these valleys the scalps of English colonists by scores. The crude sign of fagots or the hatchet pictured on each reeking scalp grimly told the victim's death at the stake or by the tomahawk.
Sometimes the Indians lost, and the home-coming of the baffled, flying remnant brought only howls and lamentations from the squaws and old men. Then again a successful war party, heralded in advance by runners, would be greeted with yelping joy for its rich plunder. scalps and prisoners.
In the orgies that followed it is curious to note how the squaws were the most hideous in their demonstrations, their taunts, and their tormentings of the prisoners. The victims one by one were forced to run the gauntlet between lines of yelping fiends who stoned them, tripped them, clubbed them, and tomahawked them.
Sometimes a mere caprice decided that a prisoner be spared for adoption. There was a young man eighteen years old captured in Braddock's defeat in 1755 near Pittsburg. He was brought to the Indian village of Tulhillas, where today stands the town of Walhond- ing, this county, and here the Delawares and the Mohicans adopted him. Colonel James Smith was the prisoner, and his account is de- scribed as most graphic and picturesque by Dr. George E. Ellis, president of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
The day after his arrival in the Indian town on the Walhonding, young Smith's thoughts as to what his captors meant to do with him were soon answered. From the group of savages that gathered round the prisoner who was bound hand and foot, one came forward and began to pull the hair out of the captive's head.
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"He frequently dipped his fingers in ashes on a piece of bark, in order to take a firmer hold," said the colonel. Only a tuft was left on his crown, and a lock which they wrapped with a narrow beaded garter, and another that they plaited. They bored his nose and ears to insert jewels. He was ordered to strip and put on a breechclout. They painted his head, face and body, hung a wampum belt on his neck, circled his arm and wrists with silver bands, and an old chief led him toward the village center, hallooing:
"Coo wee, coo wee, coo wee."
The populace poured out of wigwams and crowded around the chief, who, holding the captive by the hand, delivered a long speech.
Three Indian maids led the young man into the river, waist deep.
"They made signs for me to plunge myself," he related, "but thinking these young ladies wanted to drown me I did not. All three grasped me, and I opposed them, while the multitude on the bank roared." One of the struggling, almost breathless creatures holding him protested with earnest eyes, "No hurt you," and the captive gracefully surrendered to their washing and rubbing "to remove the white blood from his veins." They led him dripping to the council house, where ruffled shirt, ribboned and beaded leggings, moccasins and beaded garters awaited him. Again his head and face were painted. A bunch of red feathers fastened to his crown with a lock that was spared completed his Indian make-up. They seated him on a bear rug, gave him a tomahawk, a pipe and pouch of tobacco with punk, flint and steel.
"The Indians came in," continues the narrative, "all dressed and painted grandly, and sat in long, profound silence, smoking. The chief finally welcomed me in a speech as one of them. At the even- ing feast they gave me a bowl and wooden spoon which I carried with me to large brass kettles full of boiled venison and green corn. The chief made a short speech, and all ate. One chief was Tecanya- terighto or Pluggy, another Asallecoa or Mohawk Solomon."
The young man shared the life of the tribe for five years be- fore he reached his home in Pennsylvania, and when we hear of him again it is as guide to Colonel Bouquet's expedition to Coshocton. Afterward Smith was colonel in the Revolution, and subsequently a member of the Kentucky legislature.
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The treaty which closed the French and Indian war was a paper agreement on the other side of the ocean. France surrendered to Britain the territory here, but in this wilderness the French, still holding their posts, inflamed the Indians more than ever against the English. The French always were the more liberal with whisky and powder.
So war parties of Delawares and Shawanees from this region continued ravaging the Virginia and Pennsylvania border settle- ments. These tribes were active agents in the Pontiac conspiracy to annihilate the whites. Colonel Henry Bouquet drove back the tribes in a fight of two days and nights at Bushy Run in western Pennsyl- vania, and the next year pushed on to Coshocton with the first Eng- lish military expedition to this region. It was a resolute stroke to overawe the Indians at this central point, a campaign which has made this region famous in the Indian history of the United States.
The sight which met the startled eyes of natives crouching in forest shadows was well calculated to strike consternation. White men fairly swarmed into the heart of this wilderness-so many that they did not move singly over the narrow trail in "Indian file," but marched two and four abreast, the path widened for the cavalcade by companies of axemen that hacked away the bordering thickets and undergrowth and overhanging branches of trees.
As far as the eye could reach it was an unbroken column of English fighters with death-dealing firearms aslant their shoulders. First came the scouting parties and a corps of Virginia volunteers, followed by the axe companies, guarded by companies of light infan- try. Following a column of Highlanders came the corps of reserve and the second battalion of Pennsylvania militia; then the officers, several women, and the long train of pack-horses and the longer droves of bawling cattle and bleating sheep, with a company of light horse following. Altogether Bouquet's force was fifteen hundred strong.
Indians began coming to Bouquet, offering excuses for recent border massacres, as usual blaming their young men as the hot- tempered, impetuous ones, and abjectly suing for peace, promising to deliver white prisoners. Bouquet insisted upon deliveries, not promises, and pushed on. Nearing Coshocton the caravan detoured from the Tuscarawas valley in order, apparently, to avoid an Indian
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