History of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, Ohio; their past and present, Part 3

Author: Nelson, S.B., Cincinnati
Publication date: 1894
Publisher: Cincinnati : S. B. Nelson
Number of Pages: 1592

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The Newtown Group .- Upon the same extensive terrace, two miles farther down the valley, also in Anderson township, at the foot of the eastern range of hills, in a position well-chosen for an agricultural village, the Martin mound, one of the largest in this part of the State, rises to the majestic height of forty feet above the plain. Within easy view from its tall and solitary summit is an humbler tumulus, standing in the center of the principal cemetery of Newtown. Several other mounds, com- panions to this, were formerly scattered over the lowland, now covered by the streets of the village. A mile south of Newtown, in the deep and wooded valley of Jennie's run, is a lonely temple mound; from this point to the Ohio, a distance of several miles, the eastern hills of the Little Miami are crowned with scattered mounds of inferior size, but show none of the unmistakable geometrical earthworks of the Mound-Builders.

The Madisonville Remains. - One of their most populous communities, however, was located just across the valley from Newtown, on a branch of the Western terrace, within sight of the smoke of every village on the eastern side. The location is a mile south of Madisonville, on the Stites and Ferris estates. The earthworks, which consisted of two or three circular embankments, and several large mounds, were guarded on the river side by a precipitous bluff, a hundred feet in descent. During the course of investigation which the Scientific and Literary Society of Madisonville began here in 1879, and which the Peabody Museum completed, hundreds of skel- etons and several long rows of ash pits, like the few found on the Turner place, were discovered in the cemetery of the village, which lay along the bluff west of the earthworks. From the great number of burials in the cemetery, it has been estimated that the village contained not less than five thousand inhabitants.

Mound-Builders at Red Bank .- Two miles farther down the Little Miami, upon a high ridge of gravel, which directly overhangs the river, stands a considerable tumulus. Dr. Metz. in his widely-known article, " The Prehistoric Monuments of the Little Miami Valley," refers to a great earthen circle, long since obliterated, and to a burial ground, several acres in area, which occupied the lower plain west of the ridge. Two miles below this point, the Little Miami empties into the Ohio, whose steep and rugged hills, for five or six miles westward, allow only a very narrow margin to the great stream.

The Cincinnati Works .- At that distance, however, they suddenly open to the northward, bending their way around a plain some two or three miles square, elevated safely above the tremendous freshets of the river, and which in its natural state offered every inducement, as a home, that a thrifty but simple-mannered people seek and demand from their mother nature.

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI AND HAMILTON COUNTY.

The local reader hardly needs to be reminded of the oft-quoted descriptions, by pioneer writers, of the earthworks which once stood upon the soil now completely covered by the great city of Cincinnati, and which suggest, if they do not prove, that here was one of the greatest Mound-Builders' towns which ever flourished in the valley of the Ohio. Upon the hill-enclosed plain, only a few hundred feet back from the high bluff which descended to the bottom-land, near the present line of Third street, lay an earthen wall in the form of a great ellipse, covering more space than two squares of the modern city. The gateway of this inclosure, like that of the Turner causeway, opened to the rising sun, and was guarded by two broad parapets. From one of these, a low embankment, about the height and breadth of an ordinary sidewalk, led, first south, then east, to a large mound near the edge of the bluff, at a point now marked by the northeast corner of Third and Main. Another low embankment extended clear from the river, between Broadway and Sycamore, curving from Third to Sixth, and another ran from the river in the same manner, " in the western part of the town." As these descriptions were written when Cin- cinnati was a small town, the quarter referred to was probably between Plum and Central avenue. On the western verge of the plain, half a mile from the ellipse, stood a lofty mound, which gave a view of Mill creek valley, the course of the Ohio and all the surrounding hillsides. North of the sentinel mound stood a small tumulus, and another yet beyond it. In the middle of Fifth street, near Broadway, was a small circular earthwork, and toward the northern part of the plain was a. peculiar double-walled structure, extending seven hundred and sixty feet east and west.

Fort Miami. - Some eighteen miles below Cincinnati, the Great Miami empties into the Ohio, and at the junction of the two valleys, upon a very lofty hill, is a work which so far surpasses all others in the county as a fortification as to tell at. once that its occupants, whether they were contemporary with the other communi- ties of the Miami Country, or of a later race and date, held a post of extreme danger.

Prof. Warren K. Moorehead, whose brilliant archaeological discoveries have so greatly increased our knowledge of the Mound-Builders of Ohio, thus compares Fort Miami with Fort Ancient, the greatest prehistoric fortification in the United States: " The embankment is about the same average size as that of Fort Ancient. It is carried around the brow of the hill, probably the distance of over a mile. The gateways are similar to those of Fort Ancient. The area inclosed is about forty acres. The ditch in all places is on the interior of the wall; in some places it reaches a depth of three feet. Like Fort Ancient, this structure was obviously built for defense."

Other Works in the County .- From the Ohio the Mound-Builders spread up the valley of the Great Miami, far beyond the limits of this county, and at New Balti- more, on the western side of the river, about sixteen miles above Fort Miami, another of their stopping places is marked by an irregular earthen wall along the stream. A few miles farther north, on the eastern bank, in Colerain township, is a walled inclosure which embraces nearly a hundred acres, the largest area, by far, comprised by any single work in the county. On the heights near Norwood is a mound rivalling in size the Martin mound of Anderson township. A great number of small mounds, and several cemeteries, scattered through the county, bear witness to the existence of other prehistoric communities, probably of later races than the Mound-Builders.

THE MOUND . BUILDERS AND THE ANCIENT NATIONS OF MEXICO.

Distinct as the works of the Mound-Builders are in type, their characteristics do not seem sufficient, as yet, to settle beyond all dispute to what family of the North American aborigines the people belonged. The earliest theory which occurred to

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI AND HAMILTON COUNTY.

antiquarians, and the one which remains most popular, because of the heroic history which it suggests, is that the true Mound-Builders of the north were the early ancestors of the Nahuas, or Mexicans; that during long ages of forgotten conflict with the advancing red men, they retreated slowly down the valley of the Missis- sippi, and finally to Mexico. As they went, their civilization grew more and more elaborate; they developed more magnificent institutions of government, a more luxurious state of society, and their arts multiplied to a degree suited to their advanced condition; a new people grew from the old; the rude northern villages were forgot- ten in the sumptuous cities of the south; instead of patriarchal chieftains, monarchs ruled the commonwealth; and meeting finally the greatest civilized race of America, the Mayas, in the valleys of Mexico, the progressive children of the North added the finishing touches to a culture which even in Montezuma's day, the last of its splendor, still retained some of the elements of its Mound-Builder origin.

It would be difficult to find in all the histories of the old world, even in those parts which are rendered most fascinating by poetic myth and fable, a grander theme for human interest than this imaginary career of the Mound-Builders; even the rise of the Grecian nations, from pastoral times to the glorious Athenian era, is a mere incident of the past in comparison with such a vast romance. Yet the theory, splen- did as it may appear to some, is by no means without foundation. There are posi- tive proofs that a race, which spoke the same language and had the same arts and civilization as the Mexicans, once dwelt in the southeastern portion of the United States, whether they came to that region from the North, or from Mexico itself; and the early traditions of the Mexicans affirm that their forefathers entered Mexico from the direction of those very Gulf States.

A connection between these Nahua people of the Southern States and the Mound- Builders of the Ohio Valley is next shown in the design of their religious structures and their sepulchres, the northern circular mounds being sometimes found in the south, and the southern types of pyramids and platform-mounds occasionally appearing in the north. To fill out the story of the migration and progress from north to south, estimates, based upon facts more or less definite, are made to show that the earthworks of the Ohio, and those of the Upper Mississippi, are older by centuries than those along the Gulf of Mexico. As the Nahuas can be traced from the Gulf States to the Ohio Valley by means of the platform-mounds, so they can be followed from Ohio by the circular inclosures and a few "Animal mounds" to the northwest, where the great mastodon mound of Wisconsin tells of a period, com- pared with which the hoariest traditions of Mexico grow young.

Whether this dim track of likenesses is to be trusted, or not, in threading the wilderness of the American past, it is certain that the ancient Mound-Builders of Ohio-not least remarkably those of Hamilton county-were just such a people as the Mexicans might have been derived from. In their religious and burial customs, especially, are the rudiments of the same magnificent ceremonies with which the Mexicans worshiped their deities, and bade farewell to their dead. The great chiefs and heroes of the Mound-Builders were covered by the loftiest sepulchres; the sepulchres, rendered holy by the deep reverence of generations, became fit shrines for the worship of posterity, and many a temple rose upon the sacred tombs; often the bones of human beings, no doubt the relics of captives taken in war and sacrificed, are found lying around the skeleton to which the ghastly honors were paid; often the dead were cremated, and their ashes deposited, with solemn rites, in the thickly-planted cemetery of the village; and again, the body which was given back to nature by the tardier process of decay, was so placed in the mausoleum, or the lowlier grave, that the spirit might begin at once its journey to the sunny land of morning or the darker North. All these practices, and others, were as common to the Mexicans as to the Mound-Builders, and were merely enlarged by the grander civilization of the South. In the light of such facts the average observer may easily imagine that the

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI AND HAMILTON COUNTY.

Aztecs and other Nahua families descended from the Mound-Builders, or that both peoples descended alike from one original stock.

It is tantalizing to the eager inquirer into this remote mystery to be treated to the startling, yet elusive glimpses which open to his bewildered eye, as new discov- eries flash athwart its depths. One of the most striking, but most baffling of these discoveries, was made by Prof. Moorehead and Dr. Cresson two years ago in the Scioto Valley, near Chillicothe. In exploring the monuments of that region, which seems to have been a central province of the Mound-Builders of Ohio, the two scien- tists unearthed a thick group of altars, piled with rich ornaments of the Mound- Builder fashion, just as they were given to the flames of sacrifice in far-off days. But among the mass of rude and simple trinkets, among the skeletons of beings that had held the highest rank of their little day and place, the astonished archeolo- gists found a large number of copper articles, of a make and finish never before seen among relics of Mound-Builders' skill. Most of these curiosities were designed for personal ornaments; some were made apparently to represent figures of mystic meaning; several were cut in a style strangely like certain work of the artisans of Mexico and Central America, but the most remarkable of all were forms of the supreme religious symbol of the ancient Mexicans and Mayas-the cross.

There is nothing to prove that these royal decorations, deeply corroded with the green rust of centuries, were manufactured in this country by native Mound- Builders, and if not made by northern hands, the copper images of the cross must have been carried from the distant lands of the South, where the benign Quetza- coatl, the Divine Teacher of the New World, was worshiped under that emblem for unknown centuries before the Aztecs, the last immigrants of their race, wandered into the valley of Anahuac from some mysterious northern land. Here speculation grows bewildered. Copper crosses like these might have found their way to the Ohio Valley more than two thousand years ago, when the great Maya city of Nachan was in the prime of its glory; or when the empire of the Olmecs, the first Nahuas in Mexico, had succeeded the sway of the Mayas; or as late as the tenth century of our era, when the dominions of the Mexicans, then called Toltecs, extended far north- ward into lands that have no name in Mexican history.

And if the ornaments are specimens of one of these vague southern periods, in what manner were they transported hither ? Some extraordinary expedition seems to have been the cause of their presence here, for no such articles were ever before found among the hundreds of Mound-Builder sepulchres which have been opened throughout the country. Were they brought in the coffer of some adventurous merchant from one of the opulent cities of the Xicolan or Chiapan coast, and bar- tered to the rude kings and priests of the Scioto? Did they come with the embassy of some ambitious ruler, who wished to learn if the distant barbarians who bowed before the symbol of his deity, and perhaps spoke his language, were worthy of con- quest? Or were they despoiled from some band that came from afar upon a mission of discovery and never returned to tell what they had seen ? Conjecture only adds to conjecture.

It may be, then, that the dark past of the Mound-Builders was blended with the shadowy ages of some of the grandest nations of the ancient American world. Per- haps some account of them was recorded in the national books of the Toltecs, or of the Mayas, as the people of the mysterious island of Atlantis were mentioned in the annals of Egypt; but since those records perished more than three centuries ago, despised and unread, in the ruthless fires of the Spanish conquerors, it may well be doubted whether anything of their actual history will ever be rescued from the depths of oblivion. American archaeologists and antiquarians, whose zeal and skill are con- stantly increasing, may at last succeed in tracing their progress from country to country, and from period to period, but the most sanguine investigator can hardly hope that Time will answer more than the two questions: Of what race were the Mound-Builders ? In what era did they flourish ?

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI AND HAMILTON COUNTY.

CHAPTER III.

FIRST PIONEER SETTLEMENTS-THE FRONTIER PERIOD.

[BY JOHN B. JEWETT.]

THE UNITED STATES IN 1786-THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY-VISIT TO THE MIAMI COUNTRY-STITES AND SYMMES -ORGANIZATION OF THE FIRST COLONIES -SETTLE- MENT OF COLUMBIA, LOSANTIVILLE, AND NORTH BEND-COVALT STATION-BEGIN- NING OF INDIAN HOSTILITIES - FORT WASHINGTON BUILT-HAMILTON COUNTY FORMED-NEW SETTLEMENTS-INDIANS ATTACK DUNLAP'S STATION - INDIAN WAR- FARE CONTINUED -FIRST TOWNSHIPS FORMED-MERCERSBURGH-WHITE'S STATION -RUNYAN'S STATION -WHITE'S STATION ATTACKED-INCREASE OF SETTLEMENTS AND TOWNSHIPS - CLOSE OF THE FRONTIER PERIOD.

THE UNITED STATES IN 1786-THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY.

T HE United States of America, in the year 1786, was quite a different nation from the United States which to-day commands the respect of the greatest powers of the world. There were then thirteen States, instead of forty-four; the territory in their possession was not a fourth of what it now is, and their population not one-fifteenth. The States were united more in name than in fact. The Con- federate Government, organized toward the close of the Revolution, in the hope of strengthening the bonds of union between the Colonies, had demonstrated its incom- petency more clearly every year of its existence. At one time, the executive com- mittee which acted during each adjournment of Congress came to a dead-lock upon an important question, and went home, leaving the country absolutely without a general government; and when at length there began to be violent out-breaks of popular feeling, and even armed insurrection, in resistance to the collection of taxes necessary to discharge the great war debt, Congress proved so powerless that the State most violently threatened with misrule was compelled to depend upon volun- tary aid of neighboring States in restoring order.

In this year, too, the people of the United States were beset by evils which came even nearer home than bad government. The war had of course made the fortunes of many, but it had ruined the fortunes of more. The majority were poorer, in everything but liberty, than even in the frugal period which preceded the revolt of the Colonies. The scarcity of good money had driven all classes into debt, and, because of the same scarcity, the harsh laws for the collection of debts, which yet existed as memorials of Colonial aristocracy, were enforced to the last point of severity. No class suffered so heavily from the general destitution as the disbanded soldiers of the Revolutionary army. Patriotism, like virtue, is most poorly rewarded by those whom it financially benefits the most. As soon as the war appeared to be over, the country became tranquilly indifferent to the claims of its defenders, and the veterans who had risked life, and lost health, in so many weary campaigns, for some time had great difficulty in obtaining the small wages due for their services. The separate States at length paid the claims, but such slender means were hardly sufficient, alone, to insure their possessors permanent homes, or even a very long subsistence, unless invested where property and comfort were to be had more cheaply than in the exhausted districts of the East. Fortunately for the veterans, for others who suffered like them, and for the progress of the nation, their country was able to offer them such a refuge.

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI AND HAMILTON COUNTY.

The great Territory northwest of the Ohio river, a land dearly paid for with the blood of Anglo-Americans, and fairly acquired by their military prowess in more than one long war, was now open to colonization. By the treaty of 1783 with Great Britain, it had been formally transferred to the United States. Virginia, under whose government it fell in 1778, when her daring soldier, George Rogers Clark, took it from the British, had before the war closed arranged to dispose of lands within its limits, but upon the remonstrance of Congress, and of several States, abandoned her right and title, except in a certain reserved section, to the general government. Massachusetts, who had claimed an interest in the western country under her old royal charter, soon followed Virginia's generous example, and Connecticut, whose claims were similar to those of Massachusetts, withdrew upon the same terms as Virginia. For the settlement of the great region thus delivered up for the common welfare, Congress at once began to make arrangements. A treaty was made with the Iroquois at Fort Stanwix, New York, another with the Delawares, Wyandots and Chippewas, at Fort McIntosh, and another with the Shawnees at the mouth of the Great Miami, by which the savages recognized the United States as the successor of Great Britain, and agreed to admit American settlers. The vast tract was being surveyed, and divided into convenient allotments for sale, in 1786, when the general discontent of the masses in the East was break- ing forth in riots and other acts of outlawry. Gladly then did the impoverished but still dauntless veterans turn to the region which was being prepared for their recep- tion, as one in which their courage could yet win homes in place of those which that same courage had sacrificed.

And indeed, no fairer land ever offered itself to the embrace of industry. It was the last untouched portion of that mighty wilderness which lay to the west of the Appalachian Mountains when Daniel Boone climbed their summits one summer day before the Revolution and feasted his soul with solitude. The smoke of the cabins of Western Virginia and Pennsylvania now rose at the foot of those mountains, and, for hundreds of miles due west, the green prospect which had thrilled the heart of the great pioneer was broken by the clearings which his own followers had made. But the unspoiled forests of the northwest were as yet only parted by the winding rivers, by fields of prairie, or by the broad natural meadows which here and there were to be seen waving with wild rye and blue grass, abundantly feeding herds of deer, elk and buffalo, and promising still richer harvests and pastures to the agriculturist.

The first of the Revolutionary soldiers to take advantage of the opportunity now offered by Congress were those who, under the leadership of Rev. Dr. Cutler and Gen. Rufus Putnam, organized at Boston as the Ohio Company. It was not till the next year, however, that they selected a tract for settlement, and in the meantime another project was afoot.

VISITS TO THE MIAMI COUNTRY-STITES AND SYMMES.

The villages along the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers at this period were able to furnish many of the products of civilization to the more primitive settlers of Kentucky. In the spring of 1786, Capt. Benjamin Stites, a resident of Red Stone, one of the settlements on the Monongahela, left home upon one of the common trad- ing voyages down the Ohio. He apparently started with no loftier purpose than to barter his goods to the best advantage, but, like the true frontiersman of his day, he was ready to leave his immediate employment at any moment to turn new circum- stances to good account. He seems to have floated down to the Kentucky port, then called Limestone, and now Maysville, a distance of many miles along the Ohio wilder- ness, without important incident.

There his experience changed. While at a village not far from Limestone, en- deavoring to dispose of his wares, some horses belonging to certain settlers there

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI AND HAMILTON COUNTY.

were spirited away by a party of the Ohio Indians, whom no treaty of peace could cure of their predatory habits. Being an experienced borderer, the Captain joined the band of settlers who started in pursuit. The trail of the marauders, after cross- ing the Ohio, led some sixty miles up the valley of the Little Miami to the Shawnee town, Old Chillicothe, and finding their property beyond recovery, the cautious pur- suers crossed to the Great Miami, twenty miles farther west, and followed its course to the Ohio again.

The view which Stites thus obtained of the Miami Country ended his career as a Kentucky trader. In a short time he was traveling with all possible dispatch toward New York, where Congress then held its sessions, to negotiate for the pur- chase of part of the tract which he had explored. Probably the amount which he proposed buying was too small to procure respect for his offer, for he soon sought a business alliance with a person whose means were more extensive than his own. This person was John Cleves Symmes, a citizen of Trenton, N. J., who had served in several public offices-in one as a member of the Continental Congress-with respect- able distinction, and who was thoroughly qualified, by energy, patience, judgment and experience, to take charge of an enterprise so toilsome and hazardous as the establishment of a commonwealth in the western wilderness. While not a borderer himself, he comprehended fully the difficulties of border life, and was adapted to a work which the true frontiersman is not, that of developing all the resources of a wild country to the fullest uses of civilization. He accepted the advances of Stites, and in the summer of the next year after their meeting went in person to the country between the Miamis.

While Symmes was engaged in this inspection, Congress indirectly encouraged his scheme by passing an act for the government of the Northwest Territory, the famous Ordinance of 1787, which excluded slavery from the Territory forever, declared freedom of religious worship and necessity of schools, established an office of governor and court of judges, with combined legislative, judicial and executive func- tions, and arranged for the alteration of these simple institutions according to the future growth of society. A few days after the Ordinance was passed, Congress directed the Treasury Board to assign lands to the Ohio Company, whose directors had applied for one and a half million acres upon the two sides of the Muskingum. Symmes soon returned to New York, and contracted with the Treasury Board for a million acres of the fertile lands which he had been inspecting, at the price of 66 cents per acre. Before that year ended he had transferred 20,000 acres of his tract to Capt Stites.

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History of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, Ohio; their past and present, Part 3

Author: Nelson, S.B., Cincinnati Publication date: 1894 Publisher: Cincinnati : S. B. Nelson Number of Pages: 1592

Author: Nelson, S.B., Cincinnati
Publication date: 1894
Publisher: Cincinnati : S. B. Nelson
Number of Pages: 1592