USA > Ohio > Hamilton County > Cincinnati > Extracts from the history of Cincinnati and the territory of Ohio, showing the trials and hardships of the pioneers in the early settlement of Cincinnati and the West > Part 3
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Humble the lot, yet their's the race When Liberty sent forth her cry, Who thronged in conflict's deadliest place, To fight, to bleed, to die ; Who cumbered Bunker's height of red, By hope through weary years were led, And witnessed Yorktown's sun Blaze on a nation's banner spread, A nation's freedom won.
The hardships endured in the war for independence by the pioneers of the west, in which nearly all of them had participated, had inured them to deprivations, and prepared them for whatever trials and sufferings might be incident to the settlement of an unbroken wilderness far away from civilized life. They had experienced the perils of a seven year's war. They had mingled in the smoke of the contest. They had endured summer's heat, and the frosts and storms of many winters, with the earth for their couches and the heavens for their covering. They had spent their fortunes in the service of their country, and had nothing left but their lives, stout hearts, willing hands, and indomitable energy. Business of every kind was pros- trate in the older States; commerce had been destroyed by the war, and at that time there were no manufactories. They had, therefore, no resource
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HISTORY OF CINCINNATI.
left by which to gain an honorable living but that of agriculture, and no- where could they find so favorable prospects for this as in the Northwest Territory, with its incomparably fertile soil and genial climate.
The ordinance of 1787 had made it absolutely free. Slavery and invol- untary servitude were forever forbidden, and could not be introduced to compete with honest free labor. It had provided for the education of their children ; it established liberty of conscience. The lands belonged to the general government they fought to establish. They needed no capital but the rifle and the axe, and their unconquerable pluck. With the rifle they could defend themselves from savages, and procure food from the wild game that abounded in the forests, until the land could be cleared and crops raised. With the axe the mighty forests could be felled to open farms, and prepare the material with which to erect their dwellings. Accustomed as they were to exposure, they needed not fine residences. Cabins would be palaces to them; their humble fare, luxuries when seasoned by the consciousness that they were independent, and that beneath the banner of civil and religious liberty every man could worship God accord- ing to the dictates of his own conscience, where "there were none to molest or make him afraid." Such were the men who landed at the cove at the foot of Sycamore Street, on that bleak and cold 28th day of Decem- ber, 1788, and founded this beautiful city.
Securing their boats to the shore, they spent their first night in them, and on the next day (the 29th) they built a kind of shelter of boards on the beach, under the bluff bank, as shown in the frontispiece, felled trees, and began the erection of a small cabin on the south side of Front Street, just east of Main, for the use of Colonel Ludlow and his assistant surveyors. This was the first house built in Cincinnati as a dwelling, and stood for a great many years afterward, having a board nailed on the stick chimney marked 1788. What year it was torn down there is no means of ascertaining, although several of the old pioneers still living, remember the house, or more properly speaking, the old cabin, very distinctly. There does not seem to have been but two others built for some time afterwards, from such testimony as can be gathered. There are, however, traditions that there had been cabins built on it before the landing of the pioneers. In the reminiscences of Mr. Abraham Thomas, he says that he was in the first expedition of General George Rogers Clark against the Indians on the
THE FIRST HOUSE BUILT IN CINCINNATI, ON FRONT EAST OF MAIN.
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HISTORY OF CINCINNATI.
Great Miami, in 1780; that in that expedition they built a stockade fort; that he was also in the second expedition of General Clark, in 1782. They crossed the Ohio at the present site of Cincinnati, where their stockade had been kept up, and a few people lived in log cabins. The stockade was built at the foot of Sycamore Street for the purpose of storing provisions and to shelter the wounded of McGary's command. As the expedition ascended the Ohio River from the great falls, McGary crossed on to the Indian side, as it was called, to hunt, contrary to the advice of General Clark, and when near North Bend was fired upon by savages, and several men were wounded, some killed and scalped. General Clark crossed to their assistance as speedily as possible, but the Indians gave the scalp halloo, and disappeared over the hills. To protect these wounded and their prisoners the stockade was built and left in charge of Thomas Vicroy, commissary of Clark's army, whilst he marched against the Indians at Pickway.
Who the few people were Mr. Thomas fails to tell us; but nowhere else in the history of Clark's expedition, or any history found, is there any account of cabins having been built on the site of Cincinnati before 1788. But as he says the stockade of the previous expedition had been kept up, it is probable that the cabins were built by parties whom General Clark may have left in charge of it. Whether there were cabins or not built in 1782, it is certain that when the founders of Cincinnati landed in 1788 there were no evidences of buildings other than the remains of the stockade, and that the cabin shown in the cut, and the location designated, was the first built in the city with the purpose of establishing a permanent settlement.
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HISTORY OF CINCINNATI.
CHAPTER VII.
INCIDENTS WHICH OCCURRED ON THE SITE OF CINCINNATI BEFORE THE SETTLEMENT.
S EVERAL interesting incidents occurred on the site of Cincinnati and in the vicinity previous to the settlement. The first of which we have any authentic account was the battle with the savages on the southern bank of the Ohio, where Dayton, Ky., is located, in 1779.
The Governor of Virginia sent Colonel Rogers to New Orleans for arms for that colony, and when on his way up the Ohio to Fort Pitt, in pirogues, when rounding the bar opposite Fulton, he saw Indians coming out of the Little Miami on rafts and in canoes and crossing the Ohio, landing where Dayton now is.
Colonel Rogers had seventy-nine men (soldiers) with him, and, of course, well armed. He determined to capture the Indians he had seen crossing the Ohio and going into the dense forests, not dreaming that there was any considerable number of them. He landed his boats and marched his men into the forests, where, to his astonishment, he was attacked by five hun- dred savages, and he and seventy of his men killed. Major Benham, who lived for many years after the settlement of Cincinnati over on the Taylor Bottoms, was one of the party ; he was wounded, and concealed himself by crawling under a large fallen tree, where he laid suffering from his wounds without food or water for two days before he made any effort to procure food. He was wounded through the hips and could not walk, and although almost perishing for water, was unable to reach the beautiful river so close and in sight of where he laid. After suffering thus for two days he saw a 'coon coming along the tree under which he had hidden, and fired at and killed it. The crack of his rifle had scarcely resounded through the woods before some one called out to him. Loading his gun immediately-a pre- caution always taken by the pioneers of that day-he drew back to his hiding place. Again a voice was heard saying, " Where and who are you ? Be you white man or Indian ? Tell me where you are. I am a wounded, starving, helpless white soldier." Major Benham then called to him to come
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to him, and when they met found it was one of his comrades, who had been wounded in both arms. He could walk, but could not use his hands. Both were suffering for water and food. Benham put the rim of his coon-skin cap in his comrade's mouth, who went down to the river, and kneeling down filled it with water, and carried it to him.
Benham would shoot game, the other would kick it to him, when he would dress and cook it. Thus they lived for six weeks before their wounds were sufficiently healed to enable them to move down to the mouth of the Licking, where they lived in a bark shanty they had constructed, and were finally taken on board a passing emigrant boat and carried to the Falls- Louisville.
This was the most disastrous battle to the whites ever fought with the savages, seventy out of seventy-nine men killed, and two badly wounded.
Another was when General Wm. Lytle, father of the late General Wm. Lytle, emigrated with his father from Pennsylvania in 1780. They descended the Ohio with doubtless the largest fleet of boats and greatest number of emigrants that ever left the upper country at one time. They had sixty- three boats and one thousand fighting men in the party, beside the women and children.
At Limestone (Maysville, Ky.), three boats with families landed and remained. On the morning of April 11th, at ten o'clock the next day, two boats which were ahead as pilots and scouts, signaled that an encampment of Indians had been found on the northern bank, or Indian side, opposite the mouth of the Licking, where Broadway intersects Front Street now. The bank at that time was a high bluff, rendering them clearly visible from their boats. Three boats, at a concerted signal, landed half a mile above, and half the fighting men were in readiness to spring ashore, form and march down where the Indians were. The number of the savages scarcely exceeded one hundred and fifty, and seeing such a greatly superior force marching down upon them they fled in great haste and disorder, leaving most of their movables behind them. They followed the bank to Mill Creek, then up the bottom of that creek, where they were pursued beyond the present site of Cumminsville. Many of them being mounted they fled faster than their pursuers could follow. The whites returned to the boats and floated without interference to Bear Grass Creek, Louisville.
Just previous to the settlement of Cincinnati in 1788, five hunters from
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the station near Georgetown, Kentucky, landed at the mouth of Deer Creek in two canoes, and after hiding them in the willows and weeds that grew thick and rank upon this stream, they went up the creek along the west bank. They halted about a hundred and fifty yards from the mouth under the shade of an elm to partake of their rude repast. It was in the month of September, clear and warm, and near sunset. Having finished their humble meal, at the suggestion of one of the parties named Hall, as a matter of safety and comfort, they concluded to go to the northern hills and encamp until morning. They started along a deer path through dense iron weeds, through which they walked single file, entering one after another upon a grassy weedless knob. The deer path crossed the knob and entered the weedy thicket again. The hunters did not pause; as the last man was about to enter the deer path on the north of the knob he fell simultaneously with the sharp crack of a rifle discharged from among the weeds on the western slope.
The whole party dashed into the thicket of weeds on either side and squatted with their rifles cocked ready for an emergency, where they waited quietly until nightfall. Everything around being still and no further demonstration being made, one after another returned out into the path and started towards the opening.
Hall, who was a bold fellow and a relation of Baxter who had been shot, crawled to where he laid on his hands and knees and found him dead, a bullet having entered his skull, forward of the left temple.
Baxter laid some ten feet from the thicket's entrance, and Hall, after getting out of the thicket, rolled slowly to the side of the dead man, lest he should be observed by the skulking savage if in an upright position. As nothing could be heard indicating the presence of the enemy the party cautiously approached the dead man, and after consulting in whispers con- cluded to bury him.
Baxter was carried to the bank of the river where they dug his grave with their tomahawks beneath a beech tree, a few feet from the bluff. Having performed the last sad duties to the dead they prepared to leave when they were startled by a sound upon the water. "A canoe" whispered Hall. He crawled to the spot where they had hidden their canoes, and one was gone. Quick to decide, three of the hunters armed and determined upon revenge, were in less than five minutes darting through the water in their canoe in the
CINCINNATI IN 1802.
Nova
--
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HISTORY OF CINCINNATI.
direction of the sound. About one hundred yards below the mouth of the Licking, on the Kentucky side, they came within rifle shot of the canoe, and fired at the person who was paddling it, scarcely visible in the dim starlight. A sharp exclamation of agony evidenced the certainty of the shot, and paddling up to it they found but a single old Indian writhing in the death struggle, the blood gushing from his shorn scalp. In the bottom of the canoe they found a rifle, a pouch of parched corn and a gourd about half filled with whisky. He was scalped and his body thrown into the river. The party returned to the mouth of the creek, camped near Baxter's grave, and in the morning pursued their journey home.
Forty years afterwards some boys digging for worms.at the mouth of Deer Creek, just below the bridge, discovered a skeleton with a bullet hole in the skull and the ball inside; it was supposed to be that of Baxter.
This calls to mind a story told us by the late Joseph Coppin. He said that soon after his arrival in Cincinnati he with some other boys were looking at some men digging a drain in front of the old red tavern, which stood on Water Street below Main, near where the suspension bridge lies on this side. The old tavern had a porch along the entire front, and on it sat a very old man, the oldest looking man he had ever seen; his hair was as white as snow, literally.
He got up and leaned on the banister a few minutes, looking at the men digging in front, and then tottered to where the men were at work. Leaning upon his cane, he asked what they were digging for? They told him they were making a drain. "Well," said he, after looking over at Licking and all around him, as if getting the points of the compass, "within six feet of where you are digging there is a man buried," and pointing with his cane said, " dig right there and you will find it; if it is not rotten, you will find a bullet hole over the right eye." Rather to gratify the old man, than from any confidence in what he said, they dug where he had in- dicated, and sure enough, about three feet under ground they found the skeleton, and the bullet hole over the right eye, in the skull; and the ball rattled in the skull when they pulled it up. Astonished, he was asked how he knew the skeleton was there. He replied: "In 1764 I was a British soldier in General Boquet's army when he made his expedition on the Muskingum, and after we returned to Fort Pitt, a squad was sent down the Ohio to see if the French had established any trading posts north of
.
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the Falls. We landed right here one evening, and pitched our tent there," pointing to a certain spot with his cane. "We built our fire here to cook our supper, and while sitting around the fire, eating, a shot was fired from the direction of the corner of Main and Front Streets, and one of our men was killed. As it was dark we were afraid to move far away to bury him ; we put out our fire, and dug his grave and buried him where you found his skeleton." This was a burial "away back," and is probably the first white man buried within the limits of our city ; Baxter, at Deer Creek, was the second, and Major McGrath, of Clark's expedition, in 1782, the third, who died while coming over Key's Hill, at the head of Main Street, and was buried near the stockade fort, at the foot of Sycamore Street, and logs put on his grave to prevent the Indians from mutilating his body.
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HISTORY OF CINCINNATI.
CHAPTER VIII.
PIONEERS EXAMINE THE SITE OF THE PROPOSED TOWN-DR. DRAKE'S ACCOUNT OF MOUNDS-JUDGE BURNETT'S DESCRIPTION OF THEM.
H AVING provided a shelter by the erection of the small log cabin for the use of Colonel Ludlow and his assistant surveyors, and occupying their boats and a temporary camp built on the beach, the pioneers began an examination and survey of the site of the proposed town of Losantiville, destined to become the great city of Cincinnati of the present day. They found it to be on a high and bluff bank on the northwest side of the Ohio River, in the extreme northern part of an extensive and beautiful valley, twelve miles in circumference, surrounded by picturesque hills from three to four hundred feet above low water mark, and bisected by the Ohio River, leaving nearly an equal portion of this valley on either side in Kentucky and the Northwest Territory.
815698
The place in which the town was to be laid out consisted of two plains, as at present. The first, or that from the river bank back to Third Street, an average distance of eight hundred feet, then rising abruptly about fifty feet, as high as the present Fourth Street; the second table (comparatively level) extended back nearly a mile to " Hamilton Road" (now McMicken Avenue), to the foot of the hill, thence up the hill to Liberty Street, the eastern part draining into Deer Creek, the western into Mill Creek, the middle or central directly into the Ohio River through numerous ravines. The first level or plain was covered with a dense forest of beech, walnut and sycamore trees, with a thick undergrowth of spice wood. A large swamp occupied the land from Ludlow to Main Street, where the first settlers amused themselves by shooting snipe and wild duck. The second or upper plain was also thickly wooded with large trees of sugar, oak, walnut, hickory and in some places poplar trees, but was comparatively clear of underbrush. On different parts of the upper tableland ancient earth-works were discovered constructed by that mysterious and unknown race, designated as "Mound Builders," who have left throughout the west, and especially in Ohio, so many evidences of their work of defense, and higher state of civilization than
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HISTORY OF CINCINNATI.
existed among the Indians. Here were different remains of their works, consisting of embankments or walls, mounds and excavations of various forms and dimensions composed entirely of earth; no stone appeared to have been used in their construction, and if wood had formed any part of the materials the lapse of time, perhaps many centuries, had obliterated all traces of it.
Dr. Daniel Drake in his "Picture of Cincinnati," published in 1815, thus describes them and their contents found by excavation: " Among these there is not a single edifice nor any ruins which prove the existence in former ages of a building composed of imperishable materials. No fragments of a column, no bricks, nor a single hewn stone large enough to have been incorporated into a wall has been discovered.
" The fabrics of wood must have long since mouldered away; and the only relics which remain to inflame the curiosity and excite speculation, are composed of earth, with which rude and undressed masses of stone have been sometimes combined. These vestiges consist of mounds, excavations, and embankments, or walls of various forms and dimensions. Cincinnati affords specimens of each. They are extensive, and complicated, but not conspicuous, and have, therefore, attracted less attention than relics at some other places. The principal wall or embankment encloses an entire block of lots and some fractions. It is a very broad ellipses; one diameter extending 800 feet east from Fifth Street; but this figure is not mathemat- ically exact. On the east side it had an opening nearly ninety feet in width.
"It is composed of loam, and exhibits, upon being excavated, quite a homogeneous appearance. Its height is scarcely three feet, upon a base of more than thirty. There is no ditch on either side. Within the wall the surface of the ground is somewhat uneven or waving; but nothing is found that indicates manual labor. On each side of the gateway or opening, exterior and contiguous to the wall, there is a broad elevation or parapet of an undeterminate figure. From one of these may be traced a bank not more than twelve inches in height, on a foundation nine times as great. It extends southerly about one hundred and fifty feet, till it reaches within one or two rods of the border of the upper plain or hill, where it turns to the east, and terminates in a mound at the junction of Main and Third Streets, distant nearly five hundred feet from the parapet of the opposite side; no
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HISTORY OF CINCINNATI.
walls of this kind can be traced; but immediately north of it, and at a short distance, are two other shapeless and insulated elevations more than six feet in height, which it seems probable could not have been formed on an alluvial plain but by the hands of man. Upwards of four hundred yards east of this, between Broadway and Sycamore Streets, there is another bank of nearly the same dimensions with the one last described. It can be traced from Sixth to the vicinity of Third street; and is evidently the segment of a very large circle, the center of which would lie within or immedi- ately south of that already described. From near the southern end of this segment to the river, a low embankment, it is said, could formerly be traced, and was found to correspond in height, direction, and extent, in the western part of the town, but neither of these are now (1815) visible. In Fifth Street, east of all that have been described, there is a circular bank enclosing a space sixty feet in diameter. It was formed by throwing up earth from the inside. It is not more than a foot in height, but twelve or fifteen in horizontal extent. In the northern part of town, between Vine and Elm Streets, at the distance of 400 yards from the ellipses first described, there are a couple of convex earthen banks, 760 feet long, and less than two feet high connected at each end. They are exactly parallel, and forty-six feet asunder, measuring from their centers for two-thirds of their distance, after which they converge to forty. In the southern of these banks, about the point where their inclination to each other com- mences, there was an opening thirty feet wide. The direction of these elevations, as ascertained by the compass, does not vary two degrees from a true east and west line.
" The site of our town exhibits many other inequalities of surface, which are no doubt artificial, but they are too much reduced, and their configura- tion is too obscure to admit of their being described.
" It is worthy of notice that the plains on the opposite side of the river have not a single vestige of this kind. Of excavations, we have but one. It is situated more than half a mile north of the figure first described, and is not perceptibly connected with any other works. Its depth is about twelve feet; its diameter, measuring from the top of the circular bank formed by throwing out the earth, is nearly fifty. Popular specula- tion could not fail to make a half filled well, but no examination has yet been undertaken.
1
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HISTORY OF CINCINNATI.
" The mounds or pyramids found on this plain were four in number. The largest stands directly west of the central enclosure so often referred to at the distance of five hundred yards. Its present height is twenty-five feet, and about eight feet were cut off by General Wayne in 1794 to prepare it for the reception of a sentinel. It is a regular ellipse, whose diameters are to each other nearly as two to one. The longer runs seventeen degrees east of north. Its circumference at the base is four hundred and forty feet. The earth for thirty or forty yards around it is perceptibly lower than the other parts of the plain, and the stratum of loam is thinner, from which it appears to have been formed by scooping up the surface, which opinion is confirmed by its internal structure. It has been penetrated nearly to the center, and found to consist of loam gradually passing into soil with rotten wood. The fruits of this examination were only a few scattering and decayed human bones, a branch of a deer's horn and a piece of earthernware containing mussel shell.
" At the distance of five hundred feet from this pyramid, in the direction of north eight degrees east, there is another about nine feet high of a circular figure and nearly flat on the top. This has been penetrated to the center of its base without affording anything but fragments of human skeletons and a handful of copper beads which had been strung on a cord of lint.
"Northeast of the last, at the distance of a few hundred yards, is another of the same figure, but not more than three feet in height, which, upon being partially opened, has been found to contain a quantity of unfinished spear and arrow heads of flint."
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