Century history of Youngstown and Mahoning County, Ohio, and representative citizens, 20th, Part 5

Author: Sanderson, Thomas W., comp
Publication date: 1907
Publisher: Chicago : Biographical Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 1074

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Iroquois, had numerous myths, which in the case of the Lenapés had been partially pre- served, and present the outlines common to the stock.

INDIAN WARFARE.

The Algonquin and Huron-Iroquois na- tions had many customs in common. Though a general war could only be engaged in on the approval of the council, yet any number of warriors might go on the war path at any time against the enemies of the tribe. Their favor- ite method of fighting was by a surprise or sudden onslaught. A siege soon exhausted their patience and resources. "To steal stealth- ily at night through the maze of the woods, tamahawk their sleeping foes, and take many scalps, was the height of an Indian's bliss. Curious to say, the Indians took little precau- tion to guard against such surprises, but thought they were protected by their manitous or guardian spirits." It was a general Indian belief that after death all men passed to the land of Shades-a land where trees, flowers, animals, and men were spirits.

"By midnigth moons, o'er moistening dews In vestments for the chase arrayed,

The hunter still the deer pursues, The hunter and the deer a shade."

IROQUOIS CONQUESTS.

The league formed by the Iroquois ( using the name in its limited application to the five tribes of New York), excited the jealousy and fear of all the surrounding nations, and their apprehensions were subsequently justified in the career of conquests and aggression pursued by the Iroquois. The Adirondacks, Hurons, Eries, Andastes, Shawnees, Illinois, Miamis, Delawares, Susquehannocks. Uamis, Nanti- cokes, and Minsi, in turn fell victims to their prowess, some of them, like the Adirondacks and Eries, being practically annihiliated. At last they claimed by right of conquest, the whole of the country from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, and from the Lakes to the Caro- linas.

HISTORY OF MAHONING COUNTY

EXTERMINATION OF THE ERIES.

Their battle with the Eries, which has been often told, was perhaps the most desperately contested of any in their war-like and blood- stained history. It is said by some writers to have taken place in 1656, at a point about half way between Canandaigua Lake and the Gene- see river. The Eries, who were known also as Erries, Erigas, or Errieonons, and who, as we have seen, were of the same blood, and spoke a dialect of the same language as the Iroquois, occupied the region lying immediately south of Lake Erie, and their claims doubt- less extended over all of northeastern Ohio and a part of western New York. Their tribal seat was on the Sandusky plains. They are described as being a most powerful and war- like tribe. Their jealousy of the Iroquois it is said was brought to a culmination by a gym- nastic contest in which they had invited the latter to participate with them. The invita- tion, after being given and declined several times was finally accepted, a place of meeting appointed, and one hundred young Iroquois braves were selected to maintain the honor of their respected tribes. Each side deposited a valuable stake. The game of ball, which had been proposed, was won by the Iroquois, who thereupon took possession of their prizes and prepared to take their leave. But the Eries, dissatisfied with the result of the game, pro- posed a running match, to be contested by ten men on a side. This was agreed to, and the Iroquois were again victorious. The chief of the Eries now proposed a wrestling match, also between ten contestants on a side, to which he attached the bloody condition that each vic- tor should dispatch his adversary on the spot, by braining him with a tomahawk, and bearing off his scalp as a trophy. This challenge was reluctantly agreed to by the Iroquois, who pri- vately resolved, perhaps from motives of pru- dence, not to execute the sanguinary part of the proposition. Victory again inclined to the champions of the Five Nations. As the first victorious Iroquois stepped back, declining to execute his defeated adversary, the chief of

the Eries, now furious with rage and shame, himself seized the tomahawk and at a single blow scattered the brains of his vanquished warrior on the ground. A second and third Erie warrior after a similar defeat met the same fate. The chief of the Iroquois, seeing the terrible excitement which agitated the multitude, now gave the signal to retreat, and soon every member of the party was lost to in the depths of the forest. The long slumber- ing hatred of the Eries for the Iroquois was now thoroughly aroused. Though they felt that they were no match for the Five Nations collectively, they formed a plan to accomplish the destruction of the tribes by attacking them suddenly and in detail. To this end they made quick and secret preparations, selecting the Senecas as the objects of their first onslaught. But the Senecas had received timely warning from a woman of their tribe, who was the widow of an Erie warrior, and it was with the united Five Nations that the Eries, soon after beginning the assault, found that they had to cope. Nerved to desperation by the knowledge that the loss of the battle meant their utter destruction, they performed terrific feats of valor, and the result was long in doubt. But after one side and then the other had been several times successively driven back, and both parties were beginning to tire, the Iro- quois brought up a reserve of one thousand young men, who had never been in battle, and who had been lying in ambush. These rushed upon the now almost exhausted Eries with such fury that the latter, unable any longer to sustain the contest, gave way and fled, to bear the news of their terrible defeat to the old men, women and children of the tribe. The Iro- quois long kept up the pursuit, and five months elapsed before their last scalp-laden warriors returned to join in celebrating their victory over their last and most powerful enemies, the Eries. It is said that many years after, a pow- erful war party of the descendants of the Eries came from beyond the Mississippi and attacked the Senecas, who were then in possession of the Erie's former territory, but were utterly defeated and slain to a man.

AND REPRESENTATIVE CITIZENS

THE CHAHTA-MUSKOKI STOCK.

With the other Indian tribes inhabiting the extensive region referred to at the beginning of this chapter, this history has little to do. They included the Seminoles, in Florida; the Apalaches, on Apalache bay; the Chickasaws on the head waters of Mobile river; the Choc- taws, between the Mobile and Mississippi rivers, and the Yemassees, around Port Royal Bay, South Carolina. They all belonged to the Chahta-Muskoki stock, some branches of which were found west of the Mississippi river. De Soto and other early European explorers, describe some of these tribes as being exten- sively engaged in agriculture, dwelling in per-

manent towns and well-constructed wooden ed- ifices, many of which were situated on high mounds of artificial construction, and using for weapons and utensils stone implements of great beauty of workmanship. They manufactured tasteful ornaments of gold, which metal they obtained from the auriferous sands of the Ma- cooche and other streams by which they re- sided. Says Dr. Brinton, "Their artistic de- velopment was strikingly similar to that of the Mound Builders, who have left such interesting remains in the Ohio valley, and there is, to say the least, a strong probability that they are the descendants of the constructors of those ancient works, driven to the South by the irruptions of the wild tribes of the north.

CHAPTER V

COLONIAL CHARTERS AND LAND TITLES

Erroneous Ideas of Early Navigators and Geographers-Attempts to Reach the South Sea Overland-Virginia's Charters-Massachusetts' Charters-The Grant to Penn-Over- lapping Boundaries-Dispute with Virginia-Connecticut's Claims-Conflict with Penn- sylvania-Council of Trenton-Western Reserve.

While the French were pushing their way into the interior of North America by means of the river St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes, the English were no less busy in making settle- ments along the North Atlantic coast. Some few of these, notably the early settlements of Sir Walter Raleigh in Virginia-were failures, owing chiefly to the character of the colonists themselves, who were for the most part gentle- men adventurers, disinclined to labor, and hop- ing to acquire sudden wealth by the discovery of precious metals rather than by the slower and more laborious methods of cultivating the soil or establishing profitable industries. Later efforts, undertaken under more favorable aus- pices, and by men of a different stamp, proved successful. Into the history of these early col- onies, as defined in their respective charters. so far as is has to do with the region northwest of the Ohio river, long known after its dis- covery by the French as the Northwest terri- tory.

The ignorance which long prevailed as to the extent of the continent westward, was the source of great confusion and error among early geographers. and led to a general over- lapping of the boundaries of neighboring col- onies, as defined in their respective charters.

Says Winsor, in his history of "The Missis- sippi Basin," "The charters which the English king had given while parceling out the At- lantic seaboard of the present United States, carried the bounds of the several grants west- ward to the great ocean supposed to lie some- where beyond the Alleghenies. Though Drake and others had followed the Pacific northward to upper California, the determination of longi- tude was still so uncertain that different esti- mates prevailed as to the width of the conti- nent. When the charter of Virginia was con- firmed, in 1609, there was dying out a concep- tion which had prevailed among geographers, but which the institutions of Mercator had done much to dispel, that a great western sea approached the Atlantic somewhere midway along its seaboard. This theory had come down from the voyage of Varrazano."

Thus a map of Virginia, sold in London in 1651, lays down the Hudson river as com- municating by a "mighty great lake" with the "sea of China and the Indies," and bears the inscription, running along the shore of Cali- fornia, "whose happy shores (in ten days' march with fifty foot and thirty horsemen from the head of James river, over those hills and through the rich adjacent valleys beautifyed

AND REPRESENTATIVE CITIZENS

with as profitable rivers which necessarily must run into that peaceful Indian sea) may be dis- covered to the exceeding benefit of Great Brit- ain and joye of all true English." Smith, Hud- son, and Cartier expected to find the Indian road in the rivers that they explored. Captain Newport, in 1680, brought over from England a barge so constructed that it could be taken to pieces and then put together, with which he and his company were instructed to ascend the James river as far as the falls and descend to the South sea, being ordered "not to return without a lump of gold as a certainty of the said sea." This persistent misconception of North America was due to the mental prepos- session which prevented men seeing any insup- erable obstacle to their finding a western sea- road to the Indies, and to the fact that Balboa, Drake, and others, from the mountains of Dar- ien, had seen the two oceans that wash its shores. The English, shut out from the St. Lawrence river by the French, and from the Gulf of Mexico by the Spanish, and confronted at a distance of from one to two hundred miles from the coast by the great Appalachian moun- tain range, which long proved an almost in- superable barrier to western settlement, were much slower than their rivals in seeing in North America a vast continent.

VIRGINIA'S CHARTERS.

The first charter of Virginia, granted by James I, in 1606, to the London and Plymouth companies bestowed on them in equal propor- tions the territory in America, including ad- jacent islands, lying between the thirty-fourth and forty-fifth degrees of north latitude. It was stipulated that one-fifth of the precious metals found should belong to the king; also that all waterways near the colony were to be explored for the purpose of finding a short and easy route to the Pacific ocean.

The second Virginia charter, granted by James I, in 1609, to the London and Plymouth and others, constituting the London company, defined the limits of the company's territory as follows: "all those lands, countries, and territories, situate, lying, and being, in that

part of America called Virginia, from the Point of Land called Cape or Point Comfort, all along the Sea Coast to the Northward two hundred miles, and from the said Point of Cape Comfort all along the Sea Coast to the Southward two hundred Miles, and all that Space and Circuit of land lying from the Sea Coast of the Precinct aforesaid up into the Land, throughout from Sea to Sea, West and Northwest. and also all Islands lying within one hundred Miles, along the Coast of both Seas of the Precinct aforesaid." This is the first of the "from sea to sea" boundaries that play so important a part in history. Some vagueness in the phrase "up into the land throughout from sea to sea, west and north- west" gave rise to a long discussion as to its meaning, but as construed by Virginia, more than one-half the North American continent was embraced within the boundary lines, in- cluding the whole of the Northwest territory.

MASSACHUSETTS' CHARTERS.

The first charter upon which Massachusetts based her claim to lands in the west, was granted by James I to the Plymouth Company in 1620, and was the second of the two charters into which that of 1606 was merged. It de- fined the company's territory as "that aforesaid part of America lying and being in breadth from 40 degrees of northerly latitude from the equinoctial line to 48 degrees of the said north- erly latitude inclusively, and in length of, and within all the breadth aforesaid, throughout all the Maine lands from sea to sea and also with the said islands and seas adjoin- ing, provided always, that the said islands, or any of the premises hereinbefore mentioned, and by these presents intended and meant to be granted, be not actually possessed or inhabited by any other Christian prince or estate, nor to be within the bound's, limits and territories of that Southern Colony heretofore by us granted to be planted by diverrs of our loving subjects in the south part,", etc. The king also declared it to be his will and pleasure that the said ter- ritory, in order to be more certainly known and distinguished, should be called by the name

HISTORY OF MAHONING COUNTY

of New England in America. It embraced, ac- cording to the described boundary lines, the greater part of the present inhabited British possessions to the north of the United States all of what is now New England, New York, one-half of New Jersey, nearly all of Pennsyl- vania, more than the northern half of Ohio, and the states and territories to the west, north of the fortieth parallel.

In 1629, Charles I confirmed a charter which had been granted to the Massachusetts Bay Colony by the council at Plymouth, and in which the boundaries of Massachusetts were defined as extending from three miles north of the Merrimac River to three miles south of the Charles River and the most southerly point in Massachusetts Bay, and from the Atlantic Ocean to the South Sea.

THE GRANT TO PENN.

The Pennsylvania charter, granted by Charles II to William Penn, in 1681, was the cause of more disputes than any other in our history. The limits of the grant were thus de- fined : "All that tract or part of land in Amer- ica, with all the islands therein contained, as the same is bounded on the east by Delaware River, from twelve miles distance northwards of New Castle Town unto the three and fort- ieth degree of northern latitude, if the said river doth extend so far northward; but if the said river shall not extend so far northward, then by the said river so far as it doth extend, and from the head of the said river the eastern bounds to be determined by a meridian line, to be drawn from the head of the said river, unto the said three and fortieth degree. The said lands to extend westward five degrees in longi- tude, to be computed from the said eastern bounds ; and the said lands to be bounded on the north by the beginning of the three and fortieth degree of northern latitude, and on the south by a circle drawn at twelve miles dis- tance from New Castle northward and west- ward unto the beginning of the fortieth degree of northern latitude, and then by a straight line westward to the limit of longitude above men- tioned." Penn soon after extended his province

by the purchase of Delaware from the Duke of York; he also obtained from him the relin- quishment of his claim to the western shore of the river above the twelve-mile circle, which had been drawn to leave the town of New Castle in the Duke's hands. The question arose as to the meaning of the descriptions, "the be- ginning of the fortieth," and "the beginning of the three and fortieth degree of north lati- tude." Penn took the ground that they meant the belts lying between 39, 40, 42 and 43 de- grees, and that his southern and northern boundaries were consequently 39 and 42 de- grees north. This construction, which made Pennsylvania overlap the boundaries of Mary- land and Virginia on the south, and of Con- necticut on the north, involved him and his suc- cessors in the most bitter disputes with those colonies. That with Maryland, which continued for more than eighty years, and greatly re- tarded the settlement and development of a beautiful and fertile country, after much liti- gation, was settled by a compromise on the part of proprietors in 1760.

DISPUTE WITH VIRGINIA.

The controversy with Virginia did not be- gin formally until 1752, its immediate cause being the settlement of Pennsylvanians west of the mountains in territory that in 1738 the General Assembly of Virginia-bounding it on the east by the Blue Ridge, and on the west and northwest by "the utmost limits of Virginia" -had created Augusta County. Carried on by Governors Dinwiddie and Hamilton on a ques- tion of fortifying the forks of the Ohio, it was for a time interrupted by the French and Indian war. Braddock's defeat enabled the French commander on the Ohio to destroy the English settlements and drive off the inhabit- ants, but after Fort Duquesne fell into the hands of the English, in 1758, Virginians and Pennsylvanians again began to make their way into the disputed territory, which by that time had been given a county organization by the government of Pennsylvania also, it being thus under two different political jurisdictions. This gave rise to much strife and turbulance, and

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more acrimonious correspondence between the respective governors, now Penn and Dunmore. The latter aimed at, and finally succeeded in bringing on an Indian war, which takes its name from him. After the trouble between the two colonies had gone on for some years longer, with high-handed proceedings on both sides, for which Lord Dunmore's arbitrary western policy was mainly responsible, it was brought to a termination at the opening of the revolutionary war by a petition from the mem- bers of Congress, who, July 25, 1775, for the benefit of the patriot cause, united in the fol- lowing recommendation: "We recommend it to you that all bodies of armed men, kept up by either party, be dismissed; and that all those on either side who are in confinement, or on bail, for taking part in the contest, be dis- charged." In 1779 commissioners appointed by the two States met at Baltimore and signed an agreement "to extend Mason and Dixon's line due west five degrees of longitude, to be computed from the River Delaware, for the southern extremity of Pennsylvania, and that a meridian line drawn from the western ex- tremity thereof to the northern limit of the said State be the western boundary of Pennsylvani forever." This contract being duly ratified by the legislatures of the two States, Mason and Dixon's line was extended in 1785, and the southwestern corner of Pennsylvania estab- lished. When the State of Ohio was formed in 1802, the territory left of Virginia east of the Ohio River and north of the Mason and Dixon's line, which then showed its peculiar proportions for the first time on the may of the United States, was dubbed the "Panhandle" by the Hon. John McMillen, delegate from Brooke County.

CONNECTICUT'S CLAIMS.

To understand the dispute between Penn- sylvania and Connecticut, in which we are more interested, and which was in fact by far the most important, it will be necessary to glance briefly at the early history of the latter colony.

Connecticut, as originally constituted, in-

cluded the three towns of Windsor, Hartford and Weathersfield, which were settled in 1636 and 1637 by emigration from Massachusetts, and were for a short time under the protection of that colony. New Haven, founded in 1638, was at first a separate colony, not included in Connecticut, and had no other title than one obtained by purchase from the Indians. Neither the Connecticut nor the New Haven colonists "had any title to the lands that they occupied, proceeding from the Crown, previous to the charter that constituted the Connecticut Company, granted by Charles II, April 23. 1662, which gave the colony the following limits."

"We * X- do give, grant and con- firm unto the said Governor and Company, and their successors, all that part of our dominions in New England in America bounded on the east by Narragansett River, commonly called Narragansett Bay, where the said river falleth into the sea, and on the north by the line of the Massachusetts plantation, and on the south by the sea, and in longitude as the line of the Massachusetts Colony, running from east to west, that is to say, from the said Narragansett Bay on the east, to the south sea on the west part, with the islands thereunto adjoining."

"This charter," says Hillman, "consoli- dated Connecticut and New Haven ; it cut into the grant made to Roger Williams and his as- sociates in 1643, and it did not recognize the presence of the Dutch on the Hudson even to the extent of making the familiar reservation in favor of a Christian prince holding or Chris- tian people inhabitating."

The northern boundary of the colony, identi- cal, according to the charter, with the southern boundary of Massachusetts, was not, however. settled for more than a century, owing to its having been incorrectly surveyed in 1642. This gave rise to disputes between the two colonies, which were not ended until 1714. when both parties agreed on a compromise line almost identical with the present boundary. This line conforms in general to the parallel of 42 de- grees 2 minutes : it marks the southern limit of the Massachusetts claim and the northern limit of the Connecticut claim west of the Delaware.

HISTORY OF MAHONING COUNTY

ESTABLISHMENT OF NEW YORK.

The Connecticut settlements were much an- noyed for many years by the Dutch, who early in the seventeenth century had planted them- selves firmly upon the North River, as they called the Hudson, and who claimed all the coast as far as the Connecticut. The English, basing their claims on the discoveries of the Cabots, had always denied the validity of the Dutch title. In 1664, Charles II granted to his brother, James, Duke of York, a vaguely de- fined tract of country in New England, be- ginning at St. Croix, and including "all that island or islands commonly called by the sev- eral name or names of Matowacks or Long Island scituate, lying and being toward the west of Cape Codd and ye narrow Higansetts abut- ting upon the maine land between the two Rivers there called or knowne by the severall names of Conecticutt and Hudsons River and all the land from the west side of Conecticutt to ye east side of Delaware Bay and also all those severall Islands called or knowne by the names of Martin's Vinyard and Nantukes otherwise Nantuckett together with all ye lands islands soyles rivers harbours mines minerals quarryes woods marshes waters lakes, etc."

"The next year a fleet sent out by the Royal Duke took possession of New Netherlands. A few years later the Dutch recovered the prov- ince for a single year, but that article of the treaty of Westminster, 1674, which required the surrender by both parties of all conquests made in the course of the preceding war, re- maining in the hands of the conqueror, gave the English a secure title as against the Dutch. A second charter, dated 1674, confirmed the Duke in possession of the province, the boundary descriptions remaining much as be- fore. The Duke gave the province the name by which it has since been known."

Between 1662 and 1664 Charles II issued several conflicting charters, widely overlap- ping the boundary lines of Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut, a condition of things that was then the rule rather than the exception. Indeed, much of the boundary work

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Century history of Youngstown and Mahoning County, Ohio, and representative citizens, 20th, Part 5

Author: Sanderson, Thomas W., comp Publication date: 1907 Publisher: Chicago : Biographical Pub. Co. Number of Pages: 1074

Author: Sanderson, Thomas W., comp
Publication date: 1907
Publisher: Chicago : Biographical Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 1074