Century history of Springfield, and Clark County, Ohio, and representative citizens 20th, Part 7

Author: Rockel, William M. (William Mahlon), 1855-1930, ed
Publication date: 1908
Publisher: Chicago, Biographical publishing co.
Number of Pages: 1086

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Among others who were present at this council were Jonah Baldwin, John Hum- phreys, Simon Kenton, Walter Small- wood, John Daugherty and Griffith Foos.

We give here an incident which will illustrate their dislike to manual labor. A company of Indians were fishing near the residence of Gen. Benjamin White- man near Clifton, when one of them be- came engaged in a wrestling match with a mulatto in the General's employ. The

AND REPRESENTATIVE CITIZENS.

Indian proved to be the better man, giv- ing the mulatto a heavy fall, after which he was unable to get up. The Indian be- came anxious as to the effect of the acci- dent, and asked of the General, “What you do with me if me kill Ned?" The General replied, "You must work in his place." The Indian looking at Ned, and thinking the matter over, replied, "Me would rather you would kill me, General."

NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS.

As descriptive of the life of this race, which is now fast passing away, the fol- lowing beautiful passage from the writ- ings of Charles Sprague will not be with- out interest.

"Not many generations ago, where you now sit, encircled with all that exalts and embellishes civilized life, the rank thistle nodded in the wind, and the wild fox dug his hole unscared. Here lived and loved another race of beings. Beneath the same sun that rolls over your head, the Indian hunter pursued the panting deer; gazing on the same moon that smiles for you, the Indian lover wooed his dusky mate. Here the wigwam beamed on the tender and helpless; the council-fire glared on the wise and the daring.

"Now they dipped their noble limbs in your sedgy lakes and now they paddled their light canoe along your rock shores. Here they warred; the echoing whoop, the bloody grapple, the defying death song, all were here; and when the tiger-strife was over, here curled the smoke of peace. Here, too, they worshipped; and from many a dark bosom went up a pure prayer to the Great Spirit. He had not written his laws for them on tables of stone, but

he had traced them on the table of their hearts.

"The poor child of Nature knew not the God of revelation, but the God of the universe he acknowledged in everything around. He beheld him in the star that sank in beauty behind his lonely dwell- ing; in the sacred orb that flamed on him from his mid-day throne; in the flower that snapped in the morning breeze; in the lofty pine that had defied a thousand whirlwinds; in the timid warbler that never left his native grove; in the fear- less eagle whose untired pinion was wet in clouds; in the worm that crawled at his feet; and in his own matchless form, glowing with a spark of that light to whose mysterious source he bent in hum- ble though blind adoration.

" And all this has passed away. Across the ocean came a pilgrim bark, bearing the seeds of life and death. The former were sown for you; the latter sprang up in the path of the simple native. Two hundred years have changed the character of a great continent, and blotted forever from its face a whole peculiar people. Art has usurped the bowers of Nature, and the anointed children of education have been too powerful for the tribes of the ignorant. Here and there a stricken few remain; but how unlike their bold, untamed, untamable progenitors. The Indian of falcon-glance, and lion-bearing, the theme of the touching ballad, the hero of the pathetic tale, is gone; and his de- graded offspring crawl upon the soil where he walked in majesty, to remind us how miserable is man when the foot of the conqueror is on his neck.

"As a race they have withered from the land. Their arrows are broken. Their

HISTORY OF CLARK COUNTY

springs are dried up, their cabins are in ever. Ages hence, the inquisitive white the dust. Their council-fire has long since man, as he stands by some growing city, will ponder on the structure of their dis- turbed remains, and wonder to what man- ner of persons they belonged. They will live only in songs and chronicles of their exterminators. Let these be faithful to their rude virtues as men, and pay due tribute to their unhappy fate as a people." gone out on the shore, and their war-cry is fast dying away to the untrodden West. Slowly and sadly they climb the distant mountains and read their doom in the set- ting sun. They are shrinking before the mighty tide that is pressing them away; they must soon hear the roar of the last wave which will settle over them for-

CHAPTER IV.

THE OLD NORTHWEST.

The Old Northwest-Settlement by the French-French Settlement in Ohio- French Dominion-English Dominion-Important Part in the Revolution- United States' Control-Ordinance of 1787-Arthur St. Clair.

THE OLD NORTHWEST.

That part of the United States located between the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers includes that part of our great common- wealth which historians now designate as the "Old North West." It comprises 265,878 square miles and was subsequent- ly divided into Ohio with 39,964 square miles, Indiana with 33,809 square miles, Illinois with 55,414 square miles, Michigan 56,451 square miles, Wisconsin 53,924 square miles, and that part of Minnesota lying east of the Mississippi estimated to contain 26,000 square miles, making a grand total of 170.161,867 acres. It is really and truly the heart of our country.

Its admission into the Union if I may so use the term is the beginning of a new era in the life of our commonwealth. All the original states were named after per- sons or objects in the old country-the new states were strictly American, their names being commemorative of the Amer- ican race that preceded the white man in the occupation of the lands.

Within its boundaries are found the great cities of Chicago, Cleveland, Cin- cinnati, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Min- neapolis and St. Paul, and many others of considerable consequence. Through its boundaries a constant stream of com- merce is carried on between the states of the colonies and the great west, beyond the Mississippi. Without any disparage- ment to either that part of the country which lies to the east or the west, it may be said with respect to all the great events that have happened since this great Northwest became a part of this govern- ment she has furnished a large propor- tion of the means and men by which and whom they were accomplished. Especially is that true in regard to all matters occur- ring within the last half century. Six presidents have come from the states within the old Northwest, namely: Wm. H. Harrison, Ulysses S. Grant, Ruther- ford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Ben- jamin Harrison, and William McKinley.

This territory was beautiful in nature as well as important in civilization. Two

HISTORY OF CLARK COUNTY

hundred years ago, save a few Jesuit royal master. No danger was so great priests and French explorers, it was, in or task too hard to stifle or retard this then existing passion. the sole possession of the red man. The bison roamed over the prairies of Illinois, the deer fed in the valleys of Ohio, the bear climbed unmolested the hills of Mich- igan and Minnesota and the howl of the wolf re-echoed in the untrodden wood- land. Fish abounded in the many fresh waters and the beaver and other animals were plentiful. With the priest and the explorer there came the pioneer trader and hunter, a man of intrepid fearless- ness, but not as a general thing of very lofty ideals of justice or morality.

SETTLEMENT BY THE FRENCH.

In the growth of civilization it has been observed, without the ability to give any very good reason therefor, that it has always had a tendency to push to the westward. The French having settled in Quebec and around Lake Champlain, fol- lowing this rule or law, if such it may be termed, were soon pushing on further in the unknown west.

Sault St. Marie, still a point in our time as a place to behold a wonderful pas- sage for ship tonnage from our northern lakes, was established in 1765 by Mar- quette. This is the oldest village in the northwest, fourteen years older than Philadelphia, and established 120 years before a settlement was made at Marietta, Ohio.

This was an age in which the chevalier sought to show his fealty to his king and honor to his people by the countries he might discover and "by the right of dis- covery," attach them to the crown of his

In 1666 La Salle came to Canada, and going across from Lake Erie went down the Kankakee and along the river of the Mississippi to St. Louis, which he reached in 1674, and later came up the Ohio at least as far as Louisville. It is import- ant not to forget that the Mississippi Val- Jey was laid open to the knowledge of the world by a voyager who plowed from the Atlantic to the Gulf. On April 9, 1682, La Salle and his little party stood on the Mississippi not far from its mouth, be- side a column bearing the arms of France, and with appropriate ceremony took formal possession for his royal master Louis X, of the country of Louisiana, "from the mouth of the Ohio River along the Mississippi and the rivers that flowed into it from its source beyond the country of the Sioux to its mouth at the sea." This territory was particularly known as Illinois, of which Old Kaskaskia was the capital. In 1721 it was the seat of a college and a monastery. This town at its best was claimed to have had from two to three thousand inhabitants.

The French are not good colonizers, and for this reason this country did not proceed as rapidly in civilization as the English colonies along the Atlantic coast. The industries of this western settlement were furs, peltries and agriculture.

In 1705, 20,000 hides were said to have been shipped from the Wabash. In 1746 the Wabash country shipped 600 barrels of flour to New Orleans. These events occurred almost 100 years before Ohio was admitted into the Union as a state.

AND REPRESENTATIVE CITIZENS.

FRENCH SETTLEMENT IN OHIO.

Ohio was hardly in the track of either the French priest, trader, or explorer, yet at an early date a settlement was made on Lake Erie. In 1749 Celeron De Bien- ville, a French explorer, acting under the order of the governor-in-chief of New France to drive back intruders, made an exploration into the central part of this state. He had under him a chaplain, about 30 soldiers, as many Indians, and about 100 Canadians. This expedition crossed over from Canada and embarked on the muddy waters of the Ohio, and down to the mouth of the Great Miami, thence making his way up that stream as far as Piqua. He burned his canoes, and crossed over on ponies to the other side of the water, and thence returned to Montreal. He planted several plates of lead at the mouth of various rivers, among others the Kanawa, Muskingum and Great Miami, signifying a renewal of pos- session of the country One of these plates was found at Marietta in 1798 by some boys on the west bank of the Mus- kingum and one at Kanawa in 1846, by a boy playing on the margin of the river.

The following is a translation of the inscription on the plate: "In the year 1749, reign of Louis XV, King of France, . we, Celeron, commandant of a detachment by Monseiur the Marquis of Gallisoniere, commander-in-chief of New France to establish tranquility in certain Indian vil- lages of these cantons, have buried this plate at the confluence of the Toradakoin, this twenty-ninth of July, near the river Ohio, otherwise Beautiful River, as a monument of renewal of possession which we have taken of the said river, and all

its tributaries; inasmuch as the preced- ing Kings of France have enjoyed it, and maintained it by their arms and treaties ; especially by those of Ryswick, Utrecht, and Aix La Chapelle."

This explorer visited the town which was called Pickawillany, which was sit- uated in the northern part of Miami coun- ty about nine miles southwest of Sidney. This place was considered as the first trading post of English occupation in Ohio. It was destroyed by the French and Indians in 1752. Just when the town or trading post of Pickawillany was estab- lished. is not definitely known, but it was sometime prior to the first French ex- pedition. It is said that at one time it contained 400 Indian families, and was the residence of the principal chief of the Miami confederacy.

About seventeen years after the de- struction of Pickawillany, a French trader by the name of Loramie established a store about fifteen miles north of the site of Pickawillany, and this place became a prominent spot in history, and a promi- nent point in the boundaries of the Green- ville treaty, and also in giving the boun- daries of early counties.

Whether or not there was ever a French settlement in this county rests only in tradition, but tradition has it, and has some probabilities to support its truthful- ness, that not far from the ancient Indian village of Piqua in this county there was a French trading post.

FRENCH DOMINION.

These acts of La Salle and De Bien- ville by methods acknowledged by the civilized world at that time, gave France

HISTORY OF CLARK COUNTY

a lawful dominion over this great north- west. The inhabitants of the colonies, however, were not unmindful of the fertil- ity and value of this country. The trad- ing territory offered by the fur bearing animals that inhabited southern Michigan had not escaped the notice of the Dutch trader. With characteristic determina- tion push he was constantly widening his territorial claims in the direction of this French dominion.

The Iroquois Indians, while perhaps never in actual possession of much of the territory of Ohio and the Northwest, yet claimed title to all that country. . This tribe of Indians had in 1684 at Albany placed themselves under the protection of King Charles, and in 1726 they conveyed all their lands in trust to England to be protected by that government. This gave a ground of contention between the Eng- lish and the French settler. Beginning at the trading post of Pickawillany, it was. continued with French success in the memorable defeat of General Braddock at Ft. Pitt in 1753, and was crowned with English triumph on the heights of Abraham in the battle of Quebec, Septem- ber 13, 1759, between the English general Wolfe and the French General Montcalm. By the treaty of 1763 the king of France renounced all pretension which he had to such territory and ceded all his rights thereto to the British crown.

ENGLISH DOMINION.

The English were now the undisputed masters of this great northwest. What real benefit it was to them is a serious question, for we find that in the short space of twenty years they were com- pelled to surrender it to the government

formed by the thirteen colonies. How- ever, this English domain was of very great importance regarded in the light of its development by people from the Eng- lish colonies. While considerable ill will might still be found among the French settlers, the English colonists, ingratiat- ing themselves into the good will of some of the Indians, by making accusations against the French of wronging them and with their characteristic push, were suc- cessful in many of their dealings with the savages and enabled to make rapid head- way in the settlement of various places. The fact seems to be, however, that the French as a general rule, were kindlier in their dealings with the Indians than were the English colonists.

Had it not been for these settlements made by persons from the English col- onies, and had it not been that this ter- ritory was under dominion of the English when the treaty was made, acknowledg- ing the United States as an independent government, this great northwest would not have been included, and it did remain for sometime afterward a question, just how far north the English Government did surrender her dominion to the United States. It was a mater of considerable controversy and was not finally settled until the war of 1812.

IMPORTANT PART IN THE REVOLUTION.

The taking or keeping of this northwest territory upon the part of revolutionary forces, has been frequently recognized as one of the most important events in Amer- ican history.

Mr. E. O. Randall gives it very great importance when he says :

"The Northwest Territory was the

GEN. GEORGE ROGERS CLARK.

GEN. ANTHONY WAYNE.

GEN. WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON.

GEN. ARTHUR ST. CLAIR.

GEN. JOSIAH HAMAR.

AND REPRESENTATIVE CITIZENS.

great background of the Revolution. The fiendish proposal of the British ministry to secure the scalping knife and the toma- hawk in aid of the mother country against her rebellious child, called forth from the elder Pitt another of his immortal bursts of eloquence. But the British power would not abandon its brutal plans. The military posts of the British, on the lakes and the rivers of the Illinois country, were rallying centers for the western savages, who were provisioned, armed and infu- riated against the Americans, and sent forth on expeditions of massacre and rapine. Deeds of bravery and patriotism were enacted in the Ohio Valley more romantic than the often rehearsed events in the Atlantic colonies. The soil of Ohio was the scene of a large share of the struggle for existence of the new-born republic. The career of the colonists from Lexington and Concord was chiefly a series of victories during the years 1775 and 1776 to the autumn of 1777, when the clouds grew heavy and the storm gathered in the South. The northern army of Gates had disbanded after the surrender of Burgoyne (October 7). Howe occupied Philadelphia and comfortably quartered his army therein. With his soldiers the winter of 1777-78 was a period of exultant gaiety. He only awaited the milder weather of spring that he might dispatch a few regiments to Valley Forge and dis- perse or destroy the remnant forces. of Washington that were well nigh ex- hausted by the hunger and cold of that terrible winter. The cause of human liberty seemed doomed to inevitable de- feat. General Howe held the Americans at bay east of the Alleghanies. The British cause was being strengthened in

the northwest. General Hamilton, in his headquarters at Detroit, proposed to an- nihilate any assurance of success the Americans might hope for beyond the Al- leghanies. But there was a Washington in the West as well as in the East. He was George Rogers Clark, a huntsman of the trackless forest interior of Kentucky, who with the soul of a patriot, the bravery of an American soldier and the mind of a statesman, hastened on foot, through six hundred miles of wilderness, to Williams- burg, the capital of Virginia. There he obtained audience with Patrick Henry, then governor of Virginia. Clark pro- posed to strike the vast power of Great Britain in the northwest and save that magnificent territory to American in- dependence. His plans were appreciated and approved, but troops could not be spared him from the Continental army; they were needed to a man in the East. Clark gathered two hundred Virginia and Pennsylvania backwoodsmen, and while the sun of spring was melting the snows of Valley Forge and hope and courage were again animating the heart of Wash- ington, Clark set out on that famous ex- pedition for the capture of the interior northwest posts of Great Britain. It was the campaign of the "rough riders" of the Revolution. It was the dash of Sheridan in the Shenandoah. It was Sherman's "march to the sea," through the interior of the enemy's country. This campaign of Clark broke the backbone of British strength in the west. The British posts of Illinois and Indiana were all taken save Detroit. The Northwest was secured and preserved to the United States."

However much or little these victories

HISTORY OF CLARK COUNTY

of General Clark and other men had in procuring an acknowledgment of inde- pendence, one thing remains sure, and that is that the great northwest became a part of the United States acknowledged by the Treaty of 1783.

UNITED STATES CONTROL.

Much of the old northwest remained in ignorance of the consequences of the polit- ical events that were then enacting at the time that the treaty of Paris was made, and neither the United States nor Great Britain fully understood the extent or the true location of the boundaries that were assigned in the treaty acknowledging the independence of this country. There was consequently more or less friction be- tween this and the mother country in ref- erence to some of these boundaries which were not finally overcome until the termi- nation of the War of 1812. The English were jealous of the growing power of this country, and for some time, no doubt, felt little disposed to assist us in settling questions relating to the territory of this great northwest. This feeling was man- ifested more about Detroit and the Lakes than elsewhere, and probably had its share of influence in bringing on the War of 1812, which finally setled all contro- versies. However, long before the Treaty of 1785 and continuing up until the adop- tion of the Ordinance of 1787, there was considerable contention between the col- onies as to the ownership of various parts of this northwest. Virginia claimed it by right of conquest, which had been made through means furnished by her and her patriotic Governor, Patrick Henry, to General George Rogers

Clark. New York made a claim based largely upon the treaty made with the Iroquois Indians, who claimed all this northwestern country, they ceding to her therein all their right and title to that country. Massachusetts and Connecticut made claims resting upon royal grants made to them, in which grants the terri- tory was made to run east and west be- tween certain degrees of latitude without any particular termination of their west- ern boundary. All these contentions be- tween the colonies were compromised in concessions, or reservations of lands for certain purposes when the Ordinance of 1797, organizing the great northwest into a territory, was passed by the United States Congress, or rather by Congress of the colonies, for the United States Gov- ernment in its present form had not yet come into existence.

ORDINANCE OF 1787.

The Ordinance of 1787 establishing this northwest territory has been credited as being one of the greatest state papers.

Lord Chatham, in the British Parlia- ment said that "for solidity of reason, force of sagacity and wisdom of conclu- sion under a complication of difficult cir- cumstances, no nation or body of men stand in preference to the general Con- gress of Philadelphia."

Daniel Webster said: "We are ac- customed to praise the law givers of antiq- uity, we hope to perpetuate the fame of Solon and Lycurgus, but I doubt whether one single law of any law giver, ancient or modern, has produced effects of more distinct, marked and lasting character than the Ordinance of 1787. We see its

AND REPRESENTATIVE CITIZENS.

consequences at this moment and we shall never cease to see them, perhaps, while the Ohio shall flow." This ordi- nance provided that the territory north- west of the Ohio River was to be divided into not less than three nor more than five states. While making ample provi- sion for securing to the inhabitants the right to worship according to the dictates of their conscience, and preserve to them the liberty of person guaranteed by the writ of habeas corpus, and the right of property and person determined by trial by jury, and recognizing the necessity of schools and education, the most import- ant provision was that in relation to slavery. The part that the United States played in the final eradication of that in- iquitous institution can hardly be de- termined. This provision was in Article Six of the ordinance and was as follows: "There was to be neither slavery nor in- voluntary servitude in the said territory, otherwise than for the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." It was further provid- ed-probably as a halm to soothe the in- jured feelings of some slave holder- "That any person escaping from the same from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of the original states, such fugitive shall be lawfully reclaimed and be brought back to the person claim- ing his or her labor as aforesaid."

To whom credit should be given for this provision upon the great question of slavery the following from Bancroft may be read with interest:

"Thomas Jefferson first summoned Congress to prohibit slavery in all the ter- ritory of the United States: Rufus King lifted up the measure when it lay almost

lifeless on the ground, and suggested the immediate instead of the prospective pro- hibition : a Congress composed of five Southern States to one from New Eng- land and two from the Middle States, headed by William Grayson, supported by Richard Henry Lee, and using Nathan Dane as scribe, carried the measure to the goal in the amended form in which King had caused it to be referred to a committee; and as Jefferson had pro- posed, placed it under the sanction of an irrevocable compact."

If the slave holder had realized the full consequences of this prohibition of slavery clause in the Ordinance of 1787, the op- position would have been more strenuous than it was, but he did not realize then what a great power the northwest would exercise in the future history of our coun- try. Having the guarantees of property and person secured by this great ordi- nance, the settlement of the northwest be- gan in earnest and continued with rapidity.

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Century history of Springfield, and Clark County, Ohio, and representative citizens 20th, Part 7

Author: Rockel, William M. (William Mahlon), 1855-1930, ed Publication date: 1908 Publisher: Chicago, Biographical publishing co. Number of Pages: 1086

Author: Rockel, William M. (William Mahlon), 1855-1930, ed
Publication date: 1908
Publisher: Chicago, Biographical publishing co.
Number of Pages: 1086