USA > Ohio > Coshocton County > Historical collections of Coshocton County, Ohio : > Part 13
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At length "pickets " were set in each drinking place or as a guard before the door. Two women, often closely blanketed and with warm bricks at the feet, sat hour after hour, until relieved by others sent out by "the officer of the day," by authority of "the League." At length, after days of uneasiness and nights of anxiety and devising, the establishment having the smallest stock and doing the smallest trade surrendered, with the understanding that the liquors should be purchased by the League or its friends, and also the U. S. internal revenue license. And then fol- lowed another and another-the liquors were poured into the gutter, the brass band played, the church and court- house bells rang, the men shouted, the women sang and cried and prayed ; the strange enthusiasm was felt in every
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home to greater or less extent. Then came a lull. Prose- cutions, under the temperance ordinance, were now tried. Money was wanted, and came in slowly. Somchow a great deal of liquor was still drunk. Although a few hundred dollars' worth had been captured, it was known that there were thousands of dollars' worth still in the town. With little observable signs of trade-none when the pickets were around-the breath of many still had the odor of beer, or what even seemed more discouraging, whisky; because indicating a readiness to take the stimulant in even more concentrated and damaging form. One man coming out of a meat shop connected with a saloon, with a large basket exhibiting some fine beefsteaks only, he was closely watched, and was detected in distributing flasks to his thirsty old customers assembled in a hay-mow.
Curiously enough, as some thought, the establishments which had females connected with them were the most per- tinacious in their rejection of all terms proposed by the League. Still the women held on, evincing the depth of their feeling and the strength of their purpose. At length more surrenders, mainly of empty barrels and old fixtures, were made. These were, in two cases, sold at auction- the proceeds to go to the proprietors .* Glasses brought five dollars a piece, and other things in similar proportion.
But now the actual results of this work, as done else- where, were beginning to come out in the papers. Little difficulties began to grow up inside " the League." It was apparent that some were chiefly interested in the move- ment from its bearing upon personal notoriety, political pre- ferment or supposed party gain, or sexual advancement or denominational popularity. Soon there was talk about bad faith and broken pledges, of divers sorts. An election was approaching, and interest began to center in it. The temperance people were unfortunate in their selection of a ticket, and on the first Monday of April received an unmis- takable blow. A few weeks later the temperance ordinance, passed by the temperance council of 1870, was " modified,"
* And, it is said, ultimately were used to enlarge and refit the estab- lishment subsequently conducted by a relative of the former owner.
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and to be brief, in six months after "the movement " was inaugurated, there were more drinking houses in Coshocton than before it was begun.
What occurred at the county seat, with slight mutations, occurred at the villages all through the county. Probably the point of most interest after Coshocton was Warsaw, which, like Coshocton, has always been a little unfortunate in having some of the meanest whisky or whisky-drink- ers in the country. To their credit, be it said, that many who " signed the pledge" during this movement, are still keeping it, as some of them had done before for many months, in connection with other movements ; and several of those who then relinquished the business have not since engaged in it.
Whatever results followed-whatever extravagances marked its course-no thoughtful one can deny, that in the attention aroused to the monster evils of intemper- ance in the discussions pertaining to it, in the more thor- ough instruction of the young, the crusade accomplished much good. The estimate of female influence and essen- tial divinity may be lower. The idea that those who can not prevail with God, and over the passions and appetites of those whom they love and by whom they are loved- their fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons-to the inducing of them to give up the use of drinks, can yet without fail prevail over those, it may be, alien to them in race and religion, to resist their passion for easy living and the love of gain ("the accursed thirst for gold," as the poet says), may not be so generally accepted as it once was; but the crusade was no failure, in at least some important aspects. And though, with some, "distance may lend enchantment to the view," its work in Coshocton county was as effective as elsewhere, where it encountered the same conditions.
And what is true of this is also true of the many move- ments preceding it. People who talk of " no progress" in this great subject, must surely look out only to the narrow circle of their own personal grievances, or have queer ideas of progress. They certainly can not stand with the writer of these sketches, and see the river of fire in its tortuous
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flow along the years covered by this work. They would at least see indications that the springs of the river were very certainly, if gradually, losing their volume and depth of color. Even in the face of the saddening and disgrace- ful fact that there are in Coshocton county to-day so many drinking places and so much intemperance, no one who has studied the whole movement will say there has been no progress, unless determined to argue in advance "that the former days were better than these days." From the days that church authorities in Coshocton county must spend hour after hour in cases of discipline arising out of intem- perance-from the days that a popular politician could haul a barrel of whisky to the public square, in front of the polls, and, tying a couple of tin-cups to the barrel, after knocking out the head, sing out: "Come on, boys!" there would seem to have been at least some change. From the days when every store kept liquors to the days of back rooms and screens-from the time when the use of liquors was universal to even those in which it is even very general, some progress has been made.
SECRET ORDERS.
Of the Masonic Fraternity, there are four Lodges and one R. A. Chapter in the county, viz :
Coshocton Lodge, No. 96, organized in 1846.
Samaritan R. A. Chapter, No. 50, organized 1852.
Wakatomica Lodge, No. - , West Bedford.
Plainfield Lodge, No. 224, East Plainfield, Oct. 20, 1852. Warsaw Lodge, No. 255, Warsaw.
Clinton Lodge, No. 42, of Coshocton, suspended 1836.
The Thornhill and the Roscoe Lodges also suspended.
Of the I. O. O. F., there are three Lodges and one En- campment, viz :
Coshocton Lodge, No. 44, instituted August 2, 1845 ;
Coshocton Encampment, No. 191, instituted July 7, 1875;
Sarah Lodge (Daughters of Rebecca), No. 25; all of Cosh- .octon.
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Bedford Lodge, No. 446, of New Bedford, instituted June 29, 1870.
There are several other Secret Associations, among which may be named :
OUARGA TRIBE, I. O. Red Men ;
CRESCENT CAMP, I. O. of Knights ;
COSHOCTON LODGE, Knights of Pythias ; all of Coshocton.
In early days there was a famous society called the " Hoo! Hoo ! Society," composed of a rollicking set of fel- lows. Unfortunately for the historian, all their proceedings were conducted by " a dark lantern," but it is said that get- ting "on the gridiron " or "riding the goat " were tame things compared with their rites and ceremonies.
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CHAPTER XIX.
MISCELLANEOUS MATTERS.
1. The Pre-Historic Race. 2. Ancient Burial Grounds. 3. Meaning of the names Muskingum, Tuscarawas, and Walhonding. 4. Prose Legend of the Walhonding. 5. Heckwelder's Famous Ride. 6. Temperance Cru- sade among the Indians. 7. Gnadenhutten Massacre. 8. Curious Stories Touching Captives Reclaimed by Colonel Boquet. 9. Description of Hunt- ing-Shirt. 10. The House and Furniture of the Pioneers in Coshocton County. 11. Louis Philippe at Coshocton. 12. How to Raise a Large Family. 12. Indian Stories. 13. Backwoods Sports.
THE PRE-HISTORIC RACE.
DODDRIDGE, in his "Notes on the Settlement of Western Pennsylvania and Virginia," etc., says, touching the earth forts, mounds, grave-yards, stone-hatchets, and other evi- dences of a race preceding the Indians :
"Most writers represent these as peculiar to America ; but the fact is, they are also in Europe and Asia. Large groups of mounds are met with in many places between Moscow and St. Petersburgh, in Russia. When the people of that country are asked if they have any tradition con- cerning them, they answer in the negative. They suppose they are the graves of men slain in battle, but when or by whom constructed they have no knowledge. Nearly all the mounds which have been opened in Asia and America have been found to contain more or less charcoal and cal- cined bones. Some have thought that these mounds were used for altars for sacrifice, the offerings being the prisoners taken in battle. The great antiquity of these relics can not be questioned. A curious fact is that they are not found in any great numbers along the shores of the main oceans. This circumstance goes to show that those by whom they were made were not in the practice of navi- gating the great seas. That they contain nothing with even hieroglyphics is evidence of a high antiquity. An-
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other evidence of the great age of these rude remains of antiquity is that there is not even a regular traditionary account of their origin."
Doddridge gives reasons at length for rejecting the idea that there was any considerable degree of civilization among the people making then. He is inclined to think they were of Asiatie origin, though not holding the idea that they were " the lost tribes of Israel." He is not so wild as some in his estimates of their numbers, wanting something more than one swallow to make a summer, and not familiar with or disposed to accept the processes of the modern anti-biblical " scientists," who made so much out of that tremendous " sell," the Cardiff giant, to disparage the scriptural account of man.
ANCIENT BURIAL GROUNDS.
"In the county of Coshocton, as we pass west on the Pan-Handle railroad, three miles or thereabouts from the county-seat, is seen to the right a large plain in the river bend of several hundred acres, and on the east bank of the river, a few hundred yards distant, a large mound, forty feet high, with trees thereon. In its vicinity, Zeisberger settled Lichtenau, in 1776, and he was attracted to the spot from the numerous evidences of an ancient race having been buried there, more civilized than the Indians of his day. The mis- sionaries have left but meager details of what they there found, but enough to clearly prove that its inhabitants un- derstood the use of the ax, the making of pottery, and division of areas of land in squares, etc. In a large grave- yard, which covered many acres, human bones or skeletons were found, less in stature than the average Indian by a foot and a half. They were regularly buried in rows, heads west and feet east, as indicated by the enameled teeth in preservation, so that the disembodied spirits, on coming out of the graves, would first see the rising sun, and make their proper devotional gestures to their great Spirit or God. From approximate measurement this grave-yard contained ten acres, and has long since been plowed up and turned
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into corn-fields. The race of beings buried there averaged four feet in height, judging from the size of the graves and layers of ashes. Estimating that twenty bodies could be buried in a square rod, this human sepulcher, if full, would have contained over thirty thousand bodies, and the ordi- nary time required to fill such a grave-yard would not be less than five hundred years in a city the size of Coshocton of the present day, assuming that the generations averaged thirty-three years of life. One skeleton dug up from this grave-yard is said to have measured five and one-half feet, and the skull to have been perforated by a bullet. The body had been dismembered, and iron nails and a decayed piece of oak were found in the grave.
" On the farm of a Mr. Long, about fifteen miles south- west of St. Louis, was found, many years ago, an ancient burying-ground, containing a vast number of small graves, indicating that the country around had once been the seat of a great population of human beings of less than ordinary size, similar in every respect to those found near Coshocton. But, on opening the graves, they found the skeletons depos- ited in stone coffins, while those at Coshocton bore evidence of having been buried in wooden coffins. After opening many of the graves, all having in them skeletons of a pigmy race, they at length found one, as at Coshocton, denoting a full-developed, large-sized man, except in length, the legs having been cut off at the knees and placed alongside the thigh bones. From this fact many scientific men conjec- tured that there must have been a custom among the inhab- itants of separating the bones of the body before burial, and that accounted for the small size of the graves. The skeletons, however, were reduced to white chalky ashes, and therefore it was impossible to determine whether such a custom existed or not.
" A custom is said to have existed among certain tribes of the western Indians to keep their dead unburied until the flesh separated from the bones; and when the bones be- came clean and white, they were buried in small coffins. The Nanticoke Indians of Maryland had a custom of ex- huming their dead after some months of burial, cutting off
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from the bones all the flesh and burning it, then drying and wrapping the bones in clean cloths, and reburying them ; and, whenever the tribe removed to new hunting-grounds, the bones of their dead were taken along. It is known that this tribe removed to Western Pennsylvania, and por- tions of them came to the Muskingum valley with the Shawanese. Zeisberger had two Nanticoke converts at Schoenbrunn, and one of whom (named Samuel Nanticoke) affirmed-as tradition goes-that this pigmy grave-yard at Lichtenau was their burying-ground, and contained the bones of their ancestors, carried from one place to another for many generations, and found a final resting place in these valleys, when their posterity became too weak, from the wastage of war, to remove them elsewhere."-Mitchen- er's Ohio Annals.
When the Walhonding canal was being built, a number of skeletons in the sitting posture were unearthed. On the Powelson place, just east of the town of Coshocton, a skeleton was dug up, having upon the head a curious shaped metallic cap or earthen-ware vase. It was forwarded to the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, by Rev. Wm. E. Hunt, in 1869.
MEANING OF THE NAMES MUSKINGUM, TUSCARAWAS, AND WAL- HONDING.
The Tuscarawas river was long embraced with the Mus- kingum river, as we now call it, under the one designation -the Muskingum extending from Marietta to the head- waters in Summit county. Afterward the Tuscarawas was called the " Little Muskingum." The best accredited meaning of the name Muskingum is " Elk's Eye "-the em- blem of placid, quiet beauty.
Tuscarawas, according to Heckewelder (as good authority as any in these things), means " Old Town," the oldest In- dian town in South-eastern Ohio being on it near the pres- ent Bolivar.
The Walhonding is, with unvarying testimony, said to mean " The White Woman."
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PROSE LEGEND OF THE WALHONDING.
Christopher Gist, when looking up lands for George Wash- ington's Virginia Land Company, was at " White Woman's Town," January 14, 1751. He says the town (it stood near the junction of Killbuck and White Woman creeks) was so called from the fact that the ruling spirit in it was a white woman, who had been taken captive in New Eng- land, when she was not above ten years of age, by the French Indians, and had subsequently become the wife of " Eagle Feather." She is reported as having been one of the " strong-minded " of her day, and " wore the leggins." She had several children, and was even outstripping the Indian in Indian qualities. Her name was Mary Harris. According to this story, the river was named from the town. Those who prefer this account to the more poetic, and perhaps equally truthful, one given in the chapter of this work entitled " Indian Occupancy," can do so without hurting the feelings of the writer of the book, who has not talent nor time to settle conflicting Indian legends.
HECKEWELDER'S GREAT RIDE.
" There came to Goschachgünk, in the spring of 1778, some disaffected persons from Pittsburg, with Alexander McKee, Matthew Elliot, and Simon Girty-an ignoble trio of go-betweens and desperadoes.
" Soon after the arrival of this party, a second appeared, consisting of a sergeant and twenty privates, deserters from the fort, who joined the British Indians. These men all vied one with another in spreading falsehoods among the Delawares. The Americans, they said, had been totally defeated in the Atlantic States ; driven westward, they were now about to wage an indiscriminate war against the In- dians. Such reports produced a general excitement in the nation. Captain Pipe, who had been eagerly watching for an opportunity to supplant White Eyes, and overthrow the policy of the council, hastened to the capital, called upon his countrymen to seize the hatchet, and defend their homes. Who would venture to prate of treaties now ?
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White Eyes barely succeeded in having the declaration of war postponed for ten days, that time might be given to as- certain whether the reports were true or false. But this did not hinder preparations for the conflict. Goschachgünk rang with the war-song ; rifles were cleaned and tomahawks sharpened. In order to prevent the rising of this nation and its numerous grandchildren, peace-messages must at once be sent to Goschachgünk. Such messages were pre- pared, but not a runner could be induced to take them. General Hand's offers of the most liberal rewards were all in vain ; the risk was too great.
" In this emergency, Heckewelder and Schebosh volun- teered their services. Riding three days and two nights without stopping, except to feed their horses, in constant danger from the war-parties that lurked in the forests, they reached Gnaddenhütten an hour before midnight of the fifth of April. The next day was the ninth of the stipu- lated term. No contradiction of the reports spread by Girty and his confederates had been received. War was accepted as a necessity even by White Eyes. Of that crisis John Heckewelder was the illustrious hero. Although scarcely able any longer to sit upon his horse, and although it was at the risk of his life, he pressed on after but a brief rest, accompanied by John Martin, a native assistant, and got to Goschachgünk at ten o'clock in the morning. The whole population turned out to meet him, but their faces were dark and sinister. There was no welcome given. Not a single Delaware reciprocated his greetings. He ex- tended his hand to White Eyes, but even White Eyes stepped back.
" Holding aloft the written speeches of which he was the bearer, Heckewelder addressed the Indians from his horse. He told them that they had been deceived ; that the Amer- icans, instead of being defeated in the Atlantic States, had gained a great victory, and forced Burgoyne and his whole army to surrender; and that, so far from making war upon the Delawares, they were their friends, and had sent him to establish a new alliance. Such news brought about a .sudden change in the aspect of affairs. A council was
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called ; the missives of General Hand were delivered and accepted in due form; the warlike preparations ceased ; and, while Captain Pipe and his adherents left the town in great chagrin, the instigators of this whole plot fled to more congenial tribes."-From De Schweinitz's Life and Times of Zeisberger.
A TEMPERANCE CRUSADE AMONG THE INDIANS.
"In the year 1773, Rev. David Jones, a Baptist minister, was sent out from Philadelphia city to the Scioto and Muskingum valleys, with the view of establishing a mission. On arriving at Schoenbrunn he found Zeisberger had planted his colonies along the Tuscarawas, and as they gave evidence of success, Jones proceeded on south and spent some time among the Shawanese, but found no en- couragement for a mission among them. He, therefore, re- turned up the Tusearawas valley to New Comerstown, in the vicinity of the present town of that name. Here the Indians were having a great feast and dance, in which whisky, procured from traders, was the principal performer. Under its influence they refused Jones permission to preach, shut him up in one of their huts, and put a guard around him, and some proposed to kill him; but one of the chiefs, called Gelelemend, or Killbuck, interfered and saved his life.
" After the Indian feast was over they listened to the preacher, and he, having spoken much against the use of whisky, made such an impression on the mind of the chief Killbuck, that he became a convert then, and was ever afterward opposed to its use. While Jones re- mained at " the New Comerstown," Killbuck destroyed all the liquor on hand, and notified the traders that if they brought any more whisky among the Indians they (the traders) would be scalped. This aroused their enmity against the preacher, and threats being again made by some of the drinking Indians against his life, the chief had him escorted up the river to Gnadenhutten settlement, and from there to Schoenbrunn, from which place the Dela- wares saw him safe to Fort Pitt, it being midwinter, and
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the snow, as Jones states in his journal, some four to five feet deep."-Mitchener's Ohio Annals.
THE GNADENHUTTEN MASSACRE.
Although this was not an event taking place in Coshoc- ton county, yet as some of the ancestors of the settlers in Coshocton county had to do with it, and the occurrence bore important relations to the Indians whose cherished seat was once in Coshocton county, and to the settlement of the county, a brief account is here given.
In 1781, the Moravian Indians were required to abandon the Tuscarawas valley mission stations and repair to De- troit. Amid the rigors of the winter they were taken to Sandusky and there held for a time. A scarcity of pro- visions was, however, soon felt in the new location, and in February, 1782, about a hundred and fifty of the Indians returned from the Sandusky region to the Tuscarawas re- gion to get supplies of corn which had been raised the season before, and left in the field unhusked. While they were husking and gathering the corn they took up their residence again in Gnadenhutten and Salem.
Meanwhile the settlers in Western Pennsylvania were experiencing some great outrages at the hands of some red- skins. A band had attacked the home of a man named Wallace, murdered his wife and five children, impaling one of the children with its face toward the settlements and its belly toward the Indian country, and had carried off John Carpenter as a prisoner. In the latter part of 1781, the militia of the frontier came to a determination to break up the Moravian villages on the Tuscarawas. For this pur- pose, a detachment of men, under the command of Col- onel Williamson, avowing only the determination to make the Indians move further away or taking them prisoners to Fort Pitt. When they reached Gnadenhutten they found but few Indians, the removal of most of them to Sandusky having already been effected. A few were captured and taken to Fort Pitt and delivered to the commandant there, who, after a short detention, sent them home again. This procedure greatly displeased the settlers, who were demand-
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ing a more vigorous policy. Colonel Williamson, hitherto a very popular man, was losing his place of honor among the frontiersmen. At length, in February, 1782, a new ex- pedition under his command set out. This was gathered under the impulse of stories that the Indians released by the commandant at Fort Pitt had, the night after they were liberated, crossed the Ohio and killed a family by the name of Monteur ; that an Indian who had been captured after the killing of a family on Buffalo creek had reported that the leader of the band was a Moravian. Williamson's ex- pedition reached the Tuscarawas valley on the 7th of March. Upon pretense of friendly council, and only with the purpose of arranging for the greater peace and pros- perity, and especially to take some steps so as to relieve them from their unpleasant situation as between "two fires," of bad Indians and vengeful whites, the corn-gather- ers were all called in and actually made prisoners.
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