USA > Ohio > Coshocton County > Centennial history of Coshocton County, Ohio, Vol. I > Part 4
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44
42
HISTORY OF COSHOCTON COUNTY
ambuscade along the river, and marched past what is now Ragers- ville in Tuscarawas County, down the valley past Fiat in Bucks Township, and down White Eyes Creek to south of Chili, in Coshoc- ton County. Bouquet's journal, from this point, runs as follows:
"Thursday, Oct. 25, 1764-Marched six and a half miles to camp in the forks of the Muskingum, as the most central place to receive the prisoners, the principal Indian towns lying around there from seven to twenty miles distant. Four redoubts were built here opposite the four angles of the camp. Ground in front cleared, pro- vision storehouse erected, council house built."
The colonel's journal does not go into particulars regarding highland location of his camp, but his specific record that it was "in" the forks of the Muskingum has directed observation to the nearby Johnson hill, rising above the Basin in the forks to a height which commands today a magnificent view of the three valleys, a scenic panorama that is among the most beautiful pictures in all Ohio. To the south extends for miles the broad valley of the Muskingum. Eastward the eye looks upon the vast distance of the Tuscarawas, and westward is the far-reaching vista of the Walhonding. Thick timber growth in early days would have obstructed the view from this hilltop, but its military value as a strategic point is easily recog- nized. It is stated that traces of earthwork fortification could still be seen here by pioneer settlers, and that a spring at the foot of the hill on the eastern side supplied water enough for a camp.
Camp Bouquet rising like a tented city in the wilderness, with a population of nearly two thousand, well protected and well supplied, struck dismay to the hearts of the red men. They counciled anxiously among themselves around their campfire on the banks of the Muskingum.
One went as messenger from Chief Custaloga to inform Bouquet that the chief would soon deliver prisoners. The colonel fixed the time, and stared stonily at the red hand held out to him.
"The English," he said coolly, "never take the enemy by the hand before peace."
The eyes blazed in the copper skin as the savage stalked away. Then he remembered Bushy Run and this fighter. Subdued and awed he went back dully enough to his people.
43
HISTORY OF COSHOCTON COUNTY
So steadily did Bouquet adhere to his purpose of having every prisoner delivered without ransom before entering upon a truce that he even refused to talk with the Delaware chiefs, Custaloga and Beaver, while a single captive remained among them. Within a fort- night they had brought in all theirs except a dozen, as indicated by twelve small sticks. These they promised to bring within a few days.
The man whose decision and courage compelled the delivery of two hundred and six prisoners was also absolute in his demand for all captives, young or old, whom the Indians avowed had been adopted or married among the tribes. The delivery of these captives was a most dramatic scene, a startling manifestation of white people strug- gling against a return to civilization. They clung to their Indian friends, repelling the relatives who had come with Bouquet to rescue them. Young women would not give up their Indian husbands. Little ones, remembering nothing of parents and home, drew back from anguished mothers and fathers, and held to their red friends who wept over them. It was necessary to bind some captives hand and foot.
There were still a hundred prisoners that the sullen and haughty Shawanees had not delivered. The excuse was that they were with chiefs absent on distant hunts. Forty Shawanese warriors counciled with Bouquet in the presence of Delaware, Seneca and Caughnawaga chiefs and sixty warriors. Red Hawk spoke for the Shawanees. A translation follows :
"Brother, listen to us, your younger brother. We see something in your eyes that looks like dissatisfaction with us. We now wipe away everything bad between us that you may clearly see."
Bouquet's steady gaze fixed itself upon the speaker who went on with the same mixture of fierce pride and humble submission, while the hundred warriors squatting on the floor regarded them both intently.
"You have heard many bad stories of us," Red Hawk continued. "We clean your ears that you may hear. We remove everything bad from your heart that it may be like the heart of your ancestors when they thought of nothing but good."
As he spoke Red Hawk held out to Bouquet a string of wampum. Near him from the peace pipe the smoke of the calumet floated away in a gauze-like film. The speaker was still talking:
44
HISTORY OF COSHOCTON COUNTY
"Brother, when we saw you coming this road you advanced to- ward us with tomahawk in hand; but we, your younger brothers, take it out of your hands and throw it up to the Great Spirit to dis- pose of as he pleases, by which we hope never to see it more."
As the buried hatchet of previous peace compacts had been dug up again it is likely Red Hawk's variation of the figure on this occa- sion was to signify a lasting treaty.
"And now, brother," he finished, extending the string of wam- pum toward Bouquet, "we beg that you who are a warrior will take hold of this chain of friendship, and receive it from us, who are also warriors, and let us think no more of war, in pity to our old men, women and children."
It was better so. Outside the chill November blast warned Bouquet against winter hardship in the wilderness. The Shawanees had promised to bring the rest of their prisoners to Fort Pitt in the Spring, the Delawares, Senecas and Caughnawagas added their ex- hortations to the Shawanees to keep faith, and Bouquet took with him Shawanese warriors to hold as hostages. November 18 he broke camp and left the forks of the Muskingum to return to Fort Pitt.
In the years that followed there was no white man disturbing the Indian life of this region until the first faint mutterings of the Revolution were borne to the red man's ears. The question rose whether the Indian would stand neutral or fight for the British. In 1775, the year of the shot fired at Lexington that was heard round the world, the Colonial Congress sent commissioners to Pittsburg to explain to Indian chiefs convened there the dispute between the British and the Americans, and to enlist the Indians on the colonists' side.
There were Delaware chiefs from this region who hearkened to the tax-burdened colonies' grievance told them in this parable:
"Suppose a father had a little son whom he loved and indulged while young, but growing up to be a youth began to think of having some help from him; and making up a small pack he bade him carry it for him. The boy cheerfully takes this pack up. As the boy grows stronger the father makes the pack larger. A hard-hearted adviser tells the father to make the pack heavier still, and the son says, 'Lighten the pack; I am unable to carry this load.' The father threat- ens to beat him. The son has no other choice than striking back to learn who is the stronger."
45
HISTORY OF COSHOCTON COUNTY
Delaware chiefs in the name of their nation declared they would remain neutral in the contest between "parent and son." One who particularly urged that the hatchet be not lifted against the colouists was the mighty and courageous White Eyes.
A haughty Seneca hinted that the Iroquois, the Six Nations, would talk for the Delawares who "had no will of their own." Stung by the sneer, White Eyes rose, while a hush fell on the assembly. The insult stirred every drop of fighting blood in him. He was facing the Seneca.
"You say that you had conquered me, that you had cut off my legs, had put a petticoat on me, giving me a hoe and corn pounder in my hands saying: 'Now, woman, plant and hoe corn and pound it for bread for us men and warriors.'" The chief's face was like a thunder cloud, his eyes blazing lightning, both arms raised. "Look at my legs! If as you say you had cut them off they have grown again! The petticoat I have thrown away. The corn hoe and pounder I have exchanged for these firearms, and I declare that I am a man!" He waved his hand to the west: "And all the country on the other side of the Allegheny is mine!"
Such defiance of the Iroquois by a Delaware was never heard be- fore in an Indian council. The speech was followed by a division in the Delaware nation. That scheming, crafty chief of the Wolf tribe, Captain Pipe, who craved power, poisoned some Delaware minds with the lie that White Eyes was plotting with the colonists to enslave young Indians and enrich himself. Captain Pipe, as cheerful a liar as a modern captain of politics, sneaked about this country with his lie, and when he quit attending councils at the forks, conducted his lying campaign from his village, the present Walhonding.
Hostile Delawares from here joined Shawanees, Wyandots and Senecas in murdering and robbing settlers along the Ohio. The rela- tions of Logan, the Mingo chief, were killed, and savages wreaked swift vengeance. The war of Lord Dunmore and the Virginians began against the Indians. William Robinson was captured by Logan. The chief formed a liking for his young prisoner. Three times murderous savages tied the captive to a stake, but no time was the fire lighted; for Logan, protesting with a power and vigor of speech that foamed the sides of his mouth, had his way, and finally placed the wampum belt on Robinson as the token of adoption.
46
HISTORY OF COSHOCTON COUNTY
Robinson was led captive through here in 1774, little dreaming then that twenty-seven years later he would return to make this his home. The Mingoes took him to their town up the Tuscarawas. In a few days Logan asked him to write a message which was tied to a war club and left to be found with the body of a murdered settler near the Ohio. The message was addressed to Captain Cresap, and voiced the feelings of Logan with the eloquence which breathed through his celebrated speech later to Dunmore that has been characterized as challenging whole orations of Demosthenes and Cicero:
"What did you kill my people on Yellow Creek for? The white people killed my kin at Conestoga a great while ago, and I thought nothing of that. But you killed my kin again on Yellow Creek, and took my cousin prisoner. Then I thought I must kill too. And I have been three times to war since. But the Indians are not angry; only myself."
Months afterward Robinson reached his Virginia home.
Meanwhile Netawatwes, as the head of the Turtle tribe of Dela- wares, abandoned his capital on the Stillwater and with such of his people as remained faithful to him he established the new Delaware capital at Coshocton, or Cush-og-wenk as the Indians called it, Gos- hochking as the missionary Heckewelder spelled it, and Goschachgunk according to De Schweinetz.
Netawatwes and his grandson, Killbuck, hater of whisky, were like White Eyes in their friendship for the colonists and their efforts to keep the Indians off the war path. Apparently years of carnage had wearied these three. They were drawn to the religion of the missionaries.
Back in the days on the Allegheny Netawatwes had heard David Zeisberger, the Moravian missionary. The chief liked the pious Ger- man's preaching so well that he granted him the land on the Mus- kingum for a mission. Hither Zeisberger came in 1776 with eight families, thirty-five souls in all, including the Rev. John Heckewelder. Two miles south of Coshocton they laid out a town along the river, in the form of a cross with a chapel in the center, and called it Lichte- nau, "The Pasture of Light."
Here Netawatwes and Killbuck and a few more Indians came to listen to the gospel of Peace, while off in the forest the smouldering fire of hate burned yet in savage breasts. The missionaries had need
47
HISTORY OF COSHOCTON COUNTY
for caution in all things. Heckewelder hid his papers to prevent In- dians seeing him write; for there was the ever-present suspicion that the white man's writing meant the taking of the land.
The British were whispering in the ears of such willing listeners as Captain Pipe that the colonists were land thieves who would steal all the Indian had. Against this insidious attack the missionary Zeis- berger labored hard and desperately for peace.
The day came that a Wyandot warrior arrived in Coshocton bear- ing a message from the British governor of Detroit. The message was a hatchet wrapped in a belt of red and white beads. Any tribe refusing to accept it would suffer as an enemy. This was the ulti- matum of the British governor conveyed by the Wyandot.
The reds that were squatted in the Coshocton council house smoked in silence. Then Cornstalk rose, noble and commanding. The celebrated Shawanese chief had not long since come from Chillicothe. He said in brief that, while all the Shawanese nation had accepted the hatchet, his tribe had settled at Coshocton in peace, and he advised the Delawares to hold fast to the colonists' chain of friendship.
Three times the Wyandot offered the war belt to the Delawares, and thrice they refused it. Again it was proffered; and to rid them- selves of the insistent Wyandot they accepted it at last. He had hardly disappeared in the forest, however, when a Delaware messen- ger left Coshocton on the Sandusky trail to take back the belt. The messenger was White Eyes.
The British governor at Detroit scowled when the war belt was handed back to him. Then White Eyes took from his pouch a peace belt which he offered to the governor. The Briton in a rage slashed the belt with his sword. The pieces fell at White Eyes' feet. Sorrow- fully the Indian came back to Coshocton.
Squads of hostile warriors began coming down the Mohican and the Walhonding in canoes, and hurrying over the eastern trails to scourge the settlements. Word came that Wyandots were on their way to destroy the Moravian mission at Coshocton, and carry to De- troit the scalps of White Eyes, Killbuck and Zeisberger. The Mun- sey chief, Newalike, had hastened from Sandusky to this region, stealthily keeping out of sight of hostile warriors and brought the warning.
48
HISTORY OF COSHOCTON COUNTY
Worse still the deviltry of renegades was afoot. The disap- pointed Simon Girty, unable to get a captain's commission in the col- onial service, with Elliott and McKee, deserters of the American cause, had come from Fort Pitt to Coshocton, followed by a score of other deserters, and these spread terror here with an infamous lie. Washington, they said, had been killed, his army routed, and the col- onists, thirsting for revenge, were on their way to massacre the In- dians.
It was the bloodthirsty Captain Pipe's opportunity. There was demoralization among the Delawares. Even converts at Lichtenau were wavering.
He called the Delawares to the council house. Addressing them with all the fiery eloquence of his impassioned oratory the fighting chief swayed them to his will. Some were even moved to tears.
In this imminent crisis White Eyes rose to reply, to make one last supreme effort to stay his people from the madness of war. What a battle of orators that was in the wilderness, a mighty plea of peace against the blood lust of war! White Eyes denounced the stories of the renegades as lies and the renegades as liars. Time was all he asked, time to expose the lie. Only a few days, ten at the most, and if word did not come showing those renegades were liars he would hin- self go to war with his nation.
His eloquence stayed them-but only for the ten days, while the warriors of Coshocton and the whole country round sharpened their tomahawks and overhauled their guns.
Fort Pitt heard of the threatened uprising. There was no time to be lost. Heckewelder, who had been away from Lichtenau and gone east a short time, was on his way back. At Fort Pitt they told him of the crisis in Coshocton. General Hand gave him peace mes- sages and letters to take at once to the Delawares. Though jaded and worn, Heckewelder flung himself on his horse and was off, followed by an attendant.
It was midnight of the second day when their foam-flecked horses galloped into Gnadenhutten. There they learned the ten days had all but expired. Only a night remained. Again they mounted and dashed through the night in the race against time.
The morning sun reddened the eastern hills as Heckewelder neared the end of his wild ride. When he galloped into Coshocton
49
HISTORY OF COSHOCTON COUNTY
and reined in his steaming horse, the warriors who faced him were painted and ready for the warpath.
None touched the hand that he held out-none of his old friends of Lichtenau, not even White Eyes, standing grimly by with folded arms.
Heckewelder, bareheaded, the wind blowing his hair, stood in the stirrups, holding the peace letters on high.
"Washington lives!" His voice swept over the town. "The Americans have taken Burgoyne and his British army! The Amer- icans are your friends."
With a flash of the old friendly spirit White Eyes took the hand he had refused a moment before. There was an immediate paw-waw to accept the peace message. The war paint came off. There was no sign of Captain Pipe or the renegades. They had vanished the moment the truth arrived to confront their lies. Pipe and his Mun- sey band took the Sandusky trail, later to war against colonists for British pay.
The renegade Girty prowled about Coshocton. He had heard of a British price put on the capture of Zeisberger. Girty plotted with eight murderous Mingoes. The plot was overheard by a friend of the missionary. Zeisberger with two guards started from Lichtenau for the Schoenbrunn mission up the Tuscarawas.
They had gone about seven miles when Girty and his Mingoes leaped at them in the forest.
"That's the man! Get him!" yelled Girty, then stopped with a smothered oath.
Two Delaware hunters had suddenly sprung into view, their guns leveled at Girty and his band. The Mingoes, startled and cowed, fled panic-stricken, followed by Girty.
The missionary reached Schoenbrunn. Later his associate, Heck- ewelder, and other workers with Indian converts left Lichtenau to the hostile Wyandots and Mingoes, and went up the Tuscarawas. So ended the three years' life of the only Moravian mission in Coshocton County. Netawatwes, its first red friend, lived to see the "Pasture of Light" abandoned to heathenism.
White Eyes at Fort Pitt enlisted in the colonial army. The cham- pion of peace had resolved at last to go on the warpath as the only
50
HISTORY OF COSHOCTON COUNTY
effective means of compelling peace. On General Lachlan McIntosh's march from Fort Pitt to this region White Eyes died from smallpox. He had guided the white men here to crush those warriors who still gave willing ear to Captain Pipe's bloody intrigues.
Pipe, at Sandusky, heard of White Eyes' death.
"White Eyes," moralized Pipe, "was a great man. But his ways meant the country's ruin, so the Great Spirit took him, in order that the Indian nations might be saved."
While Pipe in Coshocton history figures mostly as a bad Indian, there was another side of him seen in-Detroit when Zeisberger, Heck- ewelder and other missionaries were taken there to be tried on the charge of befriending colonists and opposing the British. Their ac- cusers were Pipe and other Indians. Some of these had once known the Christian kindness and good will of the missionaries, and the mem- ory of those days came back as the red men gazed into their old friends' faces. Mute and dejected, the Indians hung their heads.
The British governor became impatient. Again he demanded, were the stories against these men true? There was no answer. At last Pipe spoke. He exonerated the missionaries, and took the blame on himself. The men were acquitted. They owed it to their Indian friends; for it was true that the missionaries sympathized with the Americans. Colonel Brodhead had written to General Washington and General Gates that news of British movements at Detroit reached him through Indian friends of the missionaries, including Joshua the Mohican spy.
Colonel Daniel Brodhead conducted the colonial military expedi- tion to Coshocton from Fort Pitt, arriving here April 19, 1781. His force of three hundred took the Delaware capital by surprise. Only two score Indians were found here, and these were captured without a shot. Fifteen of the prisoners were taken out of sight of terrified squaws and children, and tomahawked and scalped.
Other Indians had gone across the river and could not be fol- lowed because of high water. In the morning an Indian on the oppo- site shore hallooed to join his people in peace. They told him to come, and as the anxious brave drew himself up the bank he saw too late that relentless foe of his race, Lewis Wetzel. In an instant Wetzel crashed his tomahawk through the Indian's skull.
51
HISTORY OF COSHOCTON COUNTY
When Brodhead turned back to Pittsburg naught but dreary waste was left of Coshocton, a few desolate huts, the ruins of the Del- aware seat of empire, deserted forever by the red man.
There was desolation throughout this region. Wolves, bears and panthers roamed the lone wilderness. The fruit trees, blooming in the spring, told of the missionary planters who had passed this way. The wild beasts and hissing snakes were the only life save an occa- sional raiding warrior hurrying along the river trail with reeking scalp.
Although Cornwallis had surrendered at Yorktown the British were yet bent upon gaining the upper hand by inciting the Indians to further ravages of Ohio settlers. The march of colonization had crossed the Alleghanies ; settlers' cabins began dotting the Tuscarawas Valley; and soon civilization flung its outpost at Coshocton. The prized hunting grounds of the red men were fast slipping away.
Captain Pipe, Black Hoof, Red Hawk, Little Turtle, Blue Jacket and other chiefs rushed through on fleet horses, blood-stained hatch- ets in hand, to hold tomahawk title to the land.
Virginia ceded the Ohio territory to the United States in 1784, and the next year there was a treaty with the Delawares and Wyan- dots moving the Indian boundary from the Ohio River farther back into the wilderness to Coshocton along the Tuscarawas and the Cuyahoga. This surrender of the Ohio River boundary brought a warwhoop from the Shawanees who protested they were cheated and defrauded out of the Muskingum Valley. The Muskingum, which means Moose-Eye, was the favorite elk hunting ground. Oft through the snows of winter had the Shawanees tracked the swift-footed moose, and followed his roaring rush through the forest.
The upshot was that all the Indians renewed their border war- fare. Settlers built block houses and surrounded their cabins with the picket stockade, tree trunks set close together and rising fourteen feet high.
After the rout of General St. Clair in Darke County, 1791, the Delawares rushed down from the black forest, yelling the warwhoop along the Mohican and Walhonding and past Coshocton, breech- clouted and with buffalo heads drawn over their own, giving them the appearance of horned devils, with the scalps of slaughtered soldiers dangling at their heels. As the red demons urged their horses on-
52
HISTORY OF COSHOCTON COUNTY
ward to the South, they shook their stained hatchets at arm's length, screaming, "No white man plant corn in Ohio!"
But "Mad Anthony" Wayne was yet to be heard from. In the last desperate struggle of the red men to resist him in the Miami country the Delawares were in the forefront, Girty with them, and British aid in the background. In the end the Indians were driven still farther westward, forced to retreat more and more. They had made their last stand here. These hunting grounds were lost to them forever.
BOUQUET HILL, A MATCHLESS LANDSCAPE NEAR COSHOCTON
CHAPTER V
PIONEER COSHOCTON, FROM "KING CHARLEY'S" TAV- ERN WHERE LOUIS PHILIPPE OF FRANCE CLASHED WITH AMERICAN SOVEREIGNTY, DOWN TO THE FORTIES.
In the evening of the Indian life in this region the horseman rid- ing over the lone trail through the woods watched with gun in hand to guard against attack from wild beast or lurking savage skulking be- hind trees; for Indians were slow to go when new traders and settlers and travelers began arriving. Some natives with human heart and human emotion could not bring themselves to leave forever the graves of those they mourned. Others simply were not yet disposed to aban- don their old hunting ground.
In this contact with savagery the vanguard of civilization had need for men of forceful character, of daring and resolution, with a dash of adventure. This frontier, with all its wealth of timbered soil, still had its perils; a frontier life near hostile Indians; a hardy, well- scarred, pioneer life under stern conditions; not, however, without its fascination of forest haunt and rough cabin, and dread of savage at- tack.
Dr. Joseph Doddridge vividly pictured it. Speaking of "Indian summer," for instance, he assigned to those beautiful days in autumn a terrible significance instead of the romantic suggestion conveyed by the term. The frontier settlers, explained the doctor, had no peace from Indian alarms and attacks except in winter. During spring and summer there was constant need for watching. It was only with win- ter's approach that relief came. But after the first days of cold there came warm, smoky, hazy weather to tempt the Indians to renewed incursions on the frontier-an "Indian summer" for blood and mis- chief.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.