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 7
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" Danced all night, till broad daylight,
And went home with the girls in the morning."
As the settlements were composed principally of old revolutionary
A LOG CABIN DANCE IN THE EARLY SETTLEMENT OF THE WEST.
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8
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HISTORY OF CINCINNATI.
soldiers, they never forgot to celebrate the Fourth of July, but regularly met, with their families, at some chosen spot on that day, and heard from some one of their number the Declaration of Independence read, and the story of the seven years' struggle recounted. On such occasions the feast was free-a time of jubilee for all-and, while the young men enjoyed themselves at games, wrestling, shooting at marks, or foot racing, the old heroes would talk their battles over again, while they sipped their whisky punches. The celebration closed frequently with a frolic or dance at night. At a later date they had "Independence Balls," as the following invitation shows :
INDEPENDENCE BALL.
The honor of Mrs. S-'s company is solicited at a Ball to be held at the Columbian Inn, on Friday evening next, at 7 o'clock, in commemoration of the Birthday of American Independence.
MANAGERS.
FRANCIS CARR, P. A. SPRIGMAN,
I. C. SCOTT,
T. C. BAKER,
N. LONGWORTH,
W. IRWIN, JR.
June, 30, 1812.
Moccasins were substituted for shoes. The men usually dressed in linsey-woolsey hunting shirts, buckskin breeches, moccasins, and 'coon or bear skin caps; the women in linsey-woolsey, home-made stockings, and coarse shoes; sun bonnets answered the purpose of head dresses. Shoe- makers traveled from one settlement to another, with their kits on their backs, and schoolmasters boarded round from one family to another during the school session, which was usually in the winter only, as the children- both girls and boys-were needed in the fields to work during the summer.
Their supply of provisions soon gave out after landing, and as they began the settlement in the autumn, they could not raise crops until the next summer. Flour could only be obtained from a chance boat from the Upper Ohio or Monongahela, and the price was so exhorbitant that few could afford to purchase it. They were, therefore, compelled to live on the wild game, which fortunately abounded in the forests around them ; deer, wild turkey, and bears ; and in Kentucky buffalo were plenty. Meal could be had from Lexington, and other settlements in Kentucky, but the only means of transportation was on pack-horses, and they were very scarce
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HISTORY OF CINCINNATI.
in the settlement ; or in canoe by the Licking River, and this was navi- gable only in high water during the spring and summer, and at all times dangerous. Three of the pioneers went in a canoe up the Licking to procure breadstuff. The Licking was high, and in passing a bend in the river, the canoe struck a tree, and the men were precipitated into the stream ; one swam ashore, another caught on and climbed a tree, but Noah Badgely, one of the first settlers, attempted to make shore, and was drowned. The one on the tree remained two days before taken off. Such were the deprivations of the pioneers for two years after they landed. The women and children would go to Turkey Bottom, above Columbia, and dig up bear grass roots, boil and dry, and pound them into a substitute for flour for various baking purposes.
The money the pioneers brought with them was soon gone, and they
MOR FOR
substituted the skins of animals. A rabbit skin was a five-penny bit (614 cents); a 'coon skin, an eleven-penny bit (12 1/2 cents); a fox skin, twenty-five cents ; a deer skin, fifty cents; and these peltries passed as currency, with which they bartered for dry goods, etc.
It was not an unusual thing to see the mothers and daughters of the west coming to town on horseback, with a bundle of peltries tied to their saddles, and a basket of eggs, or bucket of butter, to trade with John Bartel, the first merchant in. the city, for store goods. His store was where the old Spencer House stands, at the corner of Front and Broad- way. Pins and needles were used for smaller change by the merchants.
What would the young ladies, aye, even the older ones, of our country think of coming to Shillito's or Pogue's at the present day in the manner illustrated to do their shopping? And yet it was through such depriva- tions and hardships the sturdy pioneers built up our great west, and our beautiful city. All honor to their memories. The next currency intro-
STILLMAN-CU.
A PIONEER MOTHER GOING TO JOHN BARTEL'S STORE IN CINCINNATI TO DO HER SHOPPING.
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HISTORY OF CINCINNATI.
duced after the 'coon skin was the sharp shin, and oblong. When the troops first arrived at Fort Washington they were paid in Spanish silver dollars; these the pioneers cut into four quarters, and finally into eighths for change, and they were called sharp shins. A smith cut the dollars for them, and to pay himself, he, after a while, cut them into five quarters, and kept one, and each passed for twenty-five cents for some time. But when mer- chants took them to Philadelphia to pay for goods, they were sent to the mint to be recoined, and the trick was discovered, as they were twenty per cent. short. The sharp shin was succeeded by the oblong. These were three dollar United States notes, made of that denomination to pay the soldiers, as their pay was three dollars a month.
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HISTORY OF CINCINNATI.
CHAPTER XIV.
MAJOR DOUGHTY ORDERED TO LOSANTIVILLE WITH TROOPS TO PROTECT SETTLERS AND ERECT FORTIFICATIONS-GENERAL ARTHUR ST. CLAIR, GOVERNOR NORTHWEST TERRITORY, ARRIVES JANUARY I, 1790-GREAT REJOICING ON HIS ARRIVAL-CONSTITUTES HAMILTON COUNTY-AP- POINTS CIVIL AND MILITARY OFFICERS-PROCEEDS TO VINCENNES.
IN the meantime, by the urgent representations of the settlers at Columbia,
Losantiville and North Bend, concerning the dangers by which they were surrounded, the government directed Major Doughty to proceed to Losantiville with troops and erect fortifications, where he arrived about the Ist of June, 1789, in command of Captain Strong's, Pratt's, Kingsbury's and Kearsey's infantry and Captain Ford's artillery. On his arrival he im- mediately constructed four stockades on the bank of the river, between Broadway and Ludlow Streets, and began the construction of Fort Washing- ing on Third Street, between Broadway and Ludlow Streets, on the 16th of August, on a Government reservation of fifteen acres, which he completed in the latter part of November, sending out in the meantime an increased number of troops to North Bend, Columbia and Covalt's. General Harmar arrived at Fort Washington with 320 men, composed of Captain Wyly's and Major Fountain's battalions of regular troops, on the 29th of Decem- ber, 1789.
On the Ist day of January, 1790, General St. Clair, then Governor of the Northwest Territory, arrived amidst great rejoicings of the inhabitants. He came down on a flatboat and was met at the landing and escorted to Fort Washington by the military and citizens, whilst a salute of fourteen guns was fired by the artillery.
A story is related of General St. Clair to the effect that when he arrived near Losantiville, and standing on the roof of the boat looking at the town of cabins, he asked: "What in h-l is the name of this town anyhow ?" And well might he ask, for there was no such word as Losantiville in any known language.
LIEUTENANT WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON DRILLING RECRUITS AT FORT WASHINGTON, 1792. Fort erected 1789, on Third Street, between Broadway and Ludlow, Cincinnati, Ohio. Torn down, March 17, 1808.
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HISTORY OF CINCINNATI.
On the 2d of January the citizens and military gave him a grand ban- quet, when he changed the name of the town to Cincinnati, in honor of the society of that name, composed of ex-officers of the Revolutionary Army, of which he was a conspicuous and prominent member. This society had been so called in honor of the Roman patriot Cincinnatus, who had left his plow to take up arms in defense of his country, and when that was accom- plished laid aside his sword and returned to his farm again, and many of the soldiers of the Revolutionary Army had done the same. The society was organized to keep in remembrance the scenes of their struggle for inde- pendence, and to keep alive the friendships then formed, and to care for the widows and orphans of their deceased fellow-officers.
On the 2d of January, 1790, General St. Clair issued his proclamation, erecting the " County of Hamilton," in honor of Alexander Hamilton, Sec- retary of the Treasury, the name having been suggested by Judge Symmes, describing its boundaries as follows :
" Beginning at the confluence of the Ohio and Little Miami Rivers, and down the said Ohio River to the mouth of the Big Miami, and up said Miami to the Standing Stone Forks, or branch of said river, and thence with a line to be drawn due east to the Little Miami River, and down said Little Miami River to the place of beginning."
On the same day Commissioners for the County Court of Common Pleas and General Quarter Sessions of the Peace, for said County, were granted by the Governor. William Goforth, William Wills and Wm. McMillan were appointed Judges of the Court of Common Pleas and Justices of the General Quarter Sessions of the Peace and quorum of said Court; and Ben- jamin Stites, John Stites Gano and Jacob Topping were commissioned Justices of the Peace. Israel Ludlow, Prothonatory to the Court of Com- mon Pleas and Clerk of the General Quarter Sessions of the Peace of the County. Israel Ludlow, James Flinn, John Stites Gano and Gurshom Gard were commissioned Captains, and Francis Kennedy, John Ferris, Luke Foster and Brice Virgin, Lieutenants; and Scott Traverse, Ephraim Kibby, Elijah Stites and John Dunlop were appointed Ensigns of the First Regiment of the Militia of Hamilton County. Francis Kennedy resigned, and Scott Traverse was appointed Lieutenant, and Robert Benham, Ensign in place of Scott Traverse, promoted to Lieutenant.
Having completed the organization of Hamilton County by the appoint-
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HISTORY OF CINCINNATI.
ment of these civil and military officers, for the protection of the citizens, and making Cincinnati the county seat, Governor St. Clair left for Fort Vincennes to conciliate the savages, if possible, who were manifesting a very hostile spirit, and to organize the territory west of Hamilton County.
Here it may be proper to refer briefly to the causes which led to the hostilities of the Indians, and to give an account of the campaign of Harmar and St. Clair, more especially as Cincinnati became the head- quarters where the military, for the protection of the northwest, ren- dezvoused, and from which they started on the several expeditions against the Indians.
The campaigns of Harmar, St. Clair, and Wayne, are so intimately connected with the history of Cincinnati, that upon their issues not only the fate of the settlements between the two Miamis, but all others in the northwest, as well as in Kentucky, depended. Moreover, the greater part of the able-bodied male inhabitants of Cincinnati, Columbia, Covalt Station, and North Bend, were engaged in these several expeditions, and half of them were killed. The difficulties, those best acquainted with the Indian charac- ter apprehended would arise out of the second treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1784, Fort McIntosh in 1785, Fort Finney (Big Miami) in January, 1786, and at Fort Harmar in 1788, began to manifest themselves as soon as it was apparent permanent settlements were being established on the northwest of the Ohio.
The Indians claimed that at neither of these treaties were all the nations interested represented, and that at best they were only treaties of peace, and not for transfers of titles to their land, and if any such pretended transfers had been made, they were not binding on the nations not repre- sented.
The Miamis, and other tribes, were particularly hostile to the conditions of these treaties, because, as they said, they had not been consulted, and were not bound to yield the lands north of the Ohio. They wanted the Ohio to be a perpetual boundary between the red and white man, and would not agree to sell a foot north of it. They declared that such was the feeling of their young men, that they could not be restrained from making war upon the "Long Knives," and again to renew the bloody attacks on the settlements and emigrants in Ohio, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky.
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HISTORY OF CINCINNATI.
On entering upon the responsible duty of Governor of the Great North- west Territory, General St. Clair was authorized and required :
" To examine carefully into the real temper of the Indians ;
" To remove, if possible, all causes of controversy with them, so that peace and harmony might exist between them and the United States.
" To regulate the trade with them.
" To use his best efforts to extinguish the rights of the Indians to lands eastward to the Mississippi, and northward to the forty-first degree of latitude.
" To ascertain, as far as possible, the names of the real head men and leading warriors of each tribe, and to attach these men to the United States.
" To defeat all combinations between the tribes by conciliatory means. "To organize the territory next west of Hamilton County."
To carry out the above instructions Governor St. Clair and Secretary Winthrop Sargent descended the river to (then) Clarksville, at the falls of the Ohio, on their way from Cincinnati to Vincennes. From there he sent a messenger to Major Hamtranck, commanding at Vincennes, with speeches to be forwarded to the Indians at the Wabash, who were all beginning to manifest considerable hostility towards the whites.
Shortly after he and Winthrop Sargent, the Secretary of the Territory, proceeded on their way along the Indian trail to Vincennes, and whilst he was organizing the Territory, Major Hamtranck was engaged personally in the effort to conciliate the Wabash Indian tribe. He employed Antoine Gamilon, an intelligent French merchant of Vincennes, to carry messages of the Government to the Indians. He started on the fifth day of May, 1790, and visited all the Indian villages on the Wabash and as far east as Kekionggoy, the Miami village at the junction of the St. Joseph and St. Mary's Rivers (now Fort Wayne). The result of his expedition was not successful, and it was found that a severe chastisement was the only means of suppressing their murderous attacks upon the settlements.
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HISTORY OF CINCINNATI.
CHAPTER XV.
HARMAR'S CAMPAIGN-GENERAL HARMAR WAS ORDERED TO TAKE COM- MAND OF THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE INDIANS.
W HEN the Indians saw the whites intrenching themselves in forts and block houses, cabins being erected, the forests falling beneath the stroke of the woodman's axe, and the game, their principal means of sup- port, fleeing as civilization advanced, their range circumscribed, and that they were cut off from their cherished and most favorite hunting grounds, such shrewd and far seeing minds as Cornstalk, Logan, Cornplanter, Little Turtle, Brant, and other great chiefs, could not fail to understand that every fort and block house, indeed, every cabin erected and occupied by the white man, and every patch that was cleared and cultivated, but too plainly pointed to the fact that if permitted to exist and multiply, would inevitably and speedily result in the ejectment of the red man from his native land and hunting grounds, and that ere long he would be com- pelled to leave the scenes of his childhood and the graves of his fathers, a wanderer in a strange land, far toward the setting sun, or ex- terminated.
To the most casual observer it was evident that the two races could not live in harmony together whilst it was the policy of the one to clear and cultivate the land and introduce civilization; and the determination of the other to keep the country a wilderness, in its pristine state, and to maintain the customs and habits of savage life.
Man, civilized or untutored, instinctively loves the land in which he was born as the child loves the mother; and no race of men were ever more attached to their native lands and homes than the North American Indians, who left them only when overpowered.
It was this love of country-in civilized life called patriotism-so strong in the Indian heart, that made him dread the encroachments of the white man, and was the underlying cause of that determined and persistent hostility, which all the exertions and tact of the American Government
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HISTORY OF CINCINNATI.
could not allay. To the red man it was a contest for life, home, country, and his own wild, unrestrained liberty.
"To them the deep recess of shady groves, Or forest where the deer securely roves, The fall of waters, and song of birds, And hills that echo to the distant herds, Are luxuries excelling all the glare
The world can boast and her chief favorites share."
A grand conference of all the western tribes had been held at Chilli- cothe in 1782, to determine what measures should be adopted to secure them in the possession of their lands. It was alleged at the time that the design was to unite all the warriors of the several tribes into one grand army, and thus united, to march upon the settlements west of the Alleghe- nies and utterly destroy all the white inhabitants, sparing neither age nor sex, leaving nothing to indicate that settlements had been made, save the ashes of pioneer cabins and the mutilated remains of their inhabitants.
That the important question to be considered at this conference was the annihilation of the whites in the West is a well established fact, but the plan adopted to accomplish the cruel purpose was different from what was then supposed, and it is extremely doubtful whether it ever was contemplated to unite their forces into one army. In the very nature of things it would have been impossible. Their precarious mode of living, depending principally upon hunting for subsistence, would have rendered it impossible to accumu- late a sufficient amount of provisions to subsist such an organization through a protracted campaign, even if their improvident habits would have per- mitted it. Of these facts their chiefs were fully aware, and instead of uniting their tribes they divided into two great marauding parties; the one to strike Kentucky, the other the settlements in Western Pennsylvania and Western Virginia, with the tomahawk and scalping knife. It has already been shown how fearfully they carried out their designs, keeping the borders in a distressingly disturbed state up to the time settlements were made on the northwest side of the Ohio in 1788.
The government was just going into operation. Weak financially, but patriotically strong and hopeful, it found it necessary to protect its western territories. The appeals of the pioneers were irresistable, and for this pur- pose a detachment of 320 regular troops were enlisted in New Jersey, Penn- sylvania and Virginia and placed under the command of General Josiah
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Harmar, to proceed to the western frontiers to erect necessary forti- fications.
General Harmar had been a Colonel in the Revolutionary Army, where he served with credit to himself and benefit to the cause of independence.
Overtures of peace had been exhausted, treaties were disregarded and the settlers were daily victims of the ruthless barbarities of the savages. It became evident that nothing but a severe chastisement would give peace to the frontiers.
A force of 1,133 drafted militia and volunteers from Pennsylvania, Vir- ginia and Kentucky was also placed under his command in 1790.
The regulars consisted of two battalions, commanded respectively by Major Wyly's and Doughty, and a company of artillery, under Captain Fur- guson, with three brass field pieces of ordnance. Colonel Hardin was in command of the militia in which Colonel Trotter, of Kentucky, and Paul, of Pennsylvania, Majors Hall and McMullen held subordinate commands. The orders to General Harmar were to march on the Indian towns adjacent to the lakes and inflict such signal punishment as would in the future protect the infant settlements from the depredations from which they had so long suffered. The whole plan had been devised by Washington, and it is not easy to conceive why he should have selected such men as Harmar and St. Clair, who were destitute of the training neccessary to become successful Indian fighters, whilst he could have found many soldiers in Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Virginia, such as Lewis, Clark, Boone and Logan, com- petent in every way, already distinguished in Indian warfare, ready and eager at any moment to enter upon such service. It is the more surprising, as by his own training and experience in Indian fighting, and knowledge of the West before the Revolutionary War, he learned much practically of the Indian character. St. Clair and Harmar, it is true, had been brave and efficient officers in the struggle for independence, but neither had that peculiar knowledge necessary to successfully conduct a campaign against the. savages, which could only be gained by experience in dealing with the wily foes, they were soon to meet .- The Western men desired to be led by men of their own selection, and were dissatisfied in being placed under the com. mand of a regular officer. They had not forgotten Braddock's defeat.
General Harmar arrived in Cincinnati on the 29th of December, 1789, and took command of Fort Washington.
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HISTORY OF CINCINNATI.
He had been stationed at Fort Harmar, at the mouth of the Muskingum, waiting for the militia force and army supplies from the upper country, and the completion of Fort Washington, which Major Doughty, with 146 men from Fort Harmar, had been detached in June to construct.
From the period of his arrival at Fort Washington to September, 1790, he had been engaged in providing for the protection of the settlement in the Miami Purchase, and in making arrangements for the grand expedition towards the lakes, against the Indians, should it become necessary. On the 26th of that month Colonel Hardin started on the campaign with the militia, and was followed on the 30th by General Harmar with the regular forces. His orders of march and encampment will be found in the journal of Lieutenant Armstrong.
On the 14th Colonel Hardin was detached with one company of regulars and 600 militia, in advance of the main body, being charged with destruc- tion of the towns in the forks of the Maumee. On the arrival of the advance troops, they found the towns abandoned by the Indians, and the principal one burned-the main body marching on the 14th ten miles, and on the 15th eight miles, in a northwest course; on the 16th the army made nine miles, and on the 17th it crossed the Maumee River to the village, and formed a junction with Hardin at the Omee (Miami) villages. The Indians had seven villages in the vicinity of the junction of the St. Mary and St. Joseph Rivers, which form the Maumee River.
The first was the Miami village, so called after the tribe of that name, sometimes called the Omee village, a contraction of Ou Miami, given by the French traders, who resided there in large numbers. It was situated in the fork of the St. Joseph and Maumee. 2d. A village of the Miamis, containing thirty houses, Kikioge, where Fort Wayne, Indiana, is now situ- ated, in the forks of the St. Mary and Maumee. 3d. Chillicothe, a name signifying "town," a village of the Shawnees, below on the north bank of the Maumee, containing fifty-eight houses. Opposite this was another con- taining eighteen houses, of the same tribe. The Delawares had two villages, about three miles from its mouth, opposite each other; they con- tained forty-five houses, and another, on the east side of the St. Joseph, two or three miles from its mouth, of thirty-six houses.
The day of Harmar's junction with Hardin, two Indians were discov- ered by a scouting party, as they were crossing the prairie; the scouts pur-
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sued them, shot one of them, the other escaping. A young man named Samuel Johnston, seeing the Indian was not dead, attempted to shoot him again, when the Indian partly raised his rifle, and shot Johnston through the body, inflicting a mortal wound.
The same night the Indians succeeded in driving through the lines be- tween fifty and one hundred horses, and bore them off, to the no small mortification of the whites. The same day, October 17, the troops were employed in searching in. the hazel thickets for hidden treasure. A large quantity of corn was found buried in the earth. On the evening of this day, Captain McClure, and a Mr. McClary, fell upon a stratagem, peculiar to backwoodsmen, to entrap the enemy. A horse was taken a short dis- tance down the river undiscovered; they fettered him, and unstrapped the bell, concealing themselves within easy rifle range. An Indian, attracted by the tinkling of the bell, came cautiously up, and began to untie the horse, when McClure shot him. The report of the gun alarmed the camp, and many soldiers rushed out to the spot to see what it meant. A young Indian, taken prisoner at Loramie, was brought to see the Indian just killed, and pronounced him to be "Captain Punk," great man, Delaware chief. The army burned all the houses in the village, and destroyed about 20,000 bushels of corn, found hidden in various places; much of it burned. Considerable property belonging to the French traders was also destroyed in the general conflagration.
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