USA > Ohio > Brown County > History of Clermont and Brown Counties, Ohio, from the earliest historical times down to the present, V. 1 > Part 6
USA > Ohio > Clermont County > History of Clermont and Brown Counties, Ohio, from the earliest historical times down to the present, V. 1 > Part 6
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39
Compensation for the bitter disappointment of the searchers for fine metals and precious stones was found in the fashion that demanded the pretty coats of the furry denizens of the wilderness, which the Indians were soon taught to gather and barter for beads and baubles, for firearms and firewater, with a profit to the French so far beyond the dreams of avarice that they cared for no other forms of wealth in America. To aid the fur traffic, trading stations were fixed along the trails extending to and from the main forts. These stations or guarded block houses constituted as many small forts. The white traders in charge, amounting to many hundreds of men,
----
-----
--
63
CLERMONT AND BROWN COUNTIES
were among the most alert. daring or reckless, who made light where the cowardly would have quailed. As yet, few or none went by the Ohio.
For this no man's land, two of the most civilized nations stumbled on into a conflict shocking even to remember, yet replete with noble results. In geographic ignorance the royal charters of the English were made to extend from sea to sea. Finding no better pretext, the English sought to strengthen their claims to the unknown land beyond by pretending to be- lieve the arrogant claims of the Iroquois to a mythical con- quest. Upon those claims, treaties flattering to savage pride were easily made ; and each treaty became the base of another more special, which are all, in length and breadth, an excuse for force. When the French and English kings wanted a rest in the long war, their gorgeous ceremonials included no atten- tion to American questions that could be postponed. By the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, Louis XIV conceded to the English his claims to the country of the Iroquois, the south side of the upper St. Lawrence, but how far west was not stated. Yet, he maintained authority over the St. Lawrence and Mississippi. After another generation of furious strife, the Treaty of Aix La Chapelle in 1748, still strongly reasserted these indefinite claims. Knowing that one must yield, both nations began preparations for a struggle to a finish.
We are prone to say that we are making history faster than happened to the forefathers. However, elated with present scenes, one must often stand abashed as he explores the ma- jestic ruins of bygone ambitions. Providence, not satisfied with casting the Indian aside, also decreed that the awful strife girdling the globe with havoc should force France from the leading part on the theatre of human action. But the grand old monarchy blindly staggering from the stage pushed down the main props of England's swelling glory, tore away the ragged robes of Spanish pride, gave impetus to the rights of man, and, falling crushed the rule of the Latin, for two thousand years the alternate guardian and spoiler of mankind. While England gained the sea and thereby ruled the shores from Labrador to India's Coral Strand, her exiled, ignored and estranged sons were founding a firmer and grander con- tinental empire for her speech and liberties. As the grandeur
1
64
CLERMONT AND BROWN COUNTIES
of their achievement becomes more imposing, the character of their individual efforts becomes more heroic. The heroism of the Ohio Border is more conspicuous because it was main- tained in spite of many humiliations stretching from Brad- dock's fearful defeat to Hull's shameful surrender. Those who began and continued and won the great fight for Ohio, from Lieutenant Colonel Washington's first battle in the Alle- ghenies to the men from Old Clermont who shared in the vic- . tories about Lake Erie were a part of one of the most prodi- gious and impetuous scenes in the drama of man, which thwarted the schemes of the old world and created a new world of opportunity in America-so great a task it was to plant civilization on the Ohio.
As the world smiles on him who finds sermons in stones and good in everything, so evil chances to him who evil thinks. While the optimist rejoices to believe that the peopling of the wilderness had the approval of Providence, the pessimist scoffs at a generous motive and contends that the origin was greed with a mania for grabbing land. Alarmed by the rumors and then tidings that the French forts were coming nearer and growing stronger, the English began to ask what they should do to be safe. Having prospered exceedingly, the planters in Virginia began to cast longing looks over the western moun- tains beyond which were plains fabled to be more fertile than their own teeming valleys. Their charter from the crown promised protection over the land across the continent until the sun should sink from sight into the ocean that was far be- yond the knowledge of man. They knew little and cared Iess for the overlapping or underlying claims of Louis the Grand for the trade in furs. The Americans, as they were beginning to call themselves, were not unmindful of such profits, but they chiefly purposed farms and flocks and homes for a count- less posterity. In 1748 this longing for larger estates found ex- pression in an enterprise that was named the Ohio Company. The plan was endorsed by the Duke of Bedford, backed by wealthy merchants in London, overseeu by Governor Din- widdie, and farther composed of prominent Virginians among whom were three of the Lee family, George Mason, with Law- rence and Augustine Washington, older brothers of George Washington, a large sedate boy of sixteen who was studying
65
CLERMONT AND BROWN COUNTIES
surveying as the most suitable accomplishment for one who was to inherit much land. Few have noted and none suffi- ciently how the growth of George Washington was promoted by the Ohio idea. By the death of Lawrence Washington, in 1752, the youthful George became his executor in the Ohio Company and the possessor of the estate forever famous as Mount Vernon.
The undertaking was the talk of the time and the cause of a great stir in the courts at London and Paris. George II gladly granted five hundred thousand acres on the south side of the Ohio between the Monongahela and the Kanawha, or such part thereof as might be chosen anywhere on the farther shore, conditioned upon a settlement and a fort for its de- fense. Apparently, no king ever asserted so great a claim at so slight a cost, but his satisfaction did not equal the resentment of the Court of France, which forthwith gave orders that sent Celoron de Bienville with two hundred officers, soldiers and boatmen, in twenty-three canoes from Lake Erie by portage to Lake Chautauqua and thence into the Ohio, reading royal proclamation with blare of trumpet, display of banners and parade of arms, to witness the carving of inscriptions and the burial of leaden tablets, declaring the royal power of France over the Ohio, "alias the Beautiful River," and all the branches thereof, and the adjacent lands, to their sources. On August 22 Celoron found a Shawnee village, at the mouth of the Scioto, and with them a party of English traders who were warned to leave the country. Four days later the French, without using force against the traders, went down the river and, passing by the hills of Old Clermont probably on August 29, 1749, ar- rived at the mouth of the Great Miami, where, on August 31, the elaborate ceremonies of proclaiming possession were per- formed for the sixth time. Three of the six buried tablets have been found, but that by the eastern bank of the Miami remains a hidden mark of a long past dominion. Having declared their claims down to the Wabash, and after boating thirteen weary days up the Great Miami, the French reached the mouth of Loramie's creek where four hundred Miami Indians, under Chief "Oid Britain," had lately come from the north and start- ed the town of Pickawillany. While bartering for ponies for an overland trip to Canada and while transferring from his
-
1
66
CLERMONT AND BROWN COUNTIES
battered canoes, Celoron vainly sought to regain the favor of the Miamis and "Old Britain," so called because he sided with the English traders who gave a quart of powder where the French gave a pint. From that picturesque expedition, Celoron returned to Montreal, November 10, and reported in effect that the Ohio trade was lost unless the Ohio river was opened for freight. And so the defense of the Ohio was in- cluded in a scheme that comprised sixty forts between Quebec and New Orleans.
While the French acted by and with the authority of their king, the English proceeded with less pomp but equal de- termination. Daring and fortitude were absolute requisites ; yet much, perhaps all, was to depend upon the ability and in- tegrity of their agent. After careful forethought, Christopher Gist, a surveyor and a son of a surveyor, a careful, capable, judicious and notable man, was chosen to go westward of the Great Mountains with a company suitably supplied, and there search for a large quantity of good level land. The Ohio Com- pany made no pretense of pleasing the Indians or anybody who chose to be vagrants. The land when found was to be used for planting. On October 31, 1750, Gist and his party plunged into the wilderness from a spot on the Potomac river now marked by the city of Cumberland. He kept a journal, of which the queer phrasing and quaint spelling have been faith- fully printed. Out of the semi-official account many strange scenes can be reviewed. He found Indians nearby, of whom, some asked that the bringing of liquor should cease. He soon found it dangerous to let a compass be seen. There was a vil- lage, Logstown, some fourteen miles below the Forks of the Ohio. On December 14, he came to the mouth of Sandy creek on the Tuscarawas river, where the English colors were flying over Muskingum, a town of several hundred Indians and many white traders, whom their superintendent, George Croghan, had warned there for refuge from the French. January 14, 1751, was spent at Goshocking, now called Coshocton. Six days later he came to Maguck, a town in Pickaway county. One week later he was at the house of the great chief of the Delawares, Windaughalal, who ordered his negro man to feed the horses well. This is the earliest mention of black slavery north of the Ohio. Later on the negro people were much
67
CLERMONT AND BROWN COUNTIES
sought, and such captives were safer than the pale faced among the Indians. On January 29, Gist reached Shanoah Town, so named by him, at the mouth of the Scioto, where Celoron had been fifteen months before. Large rewards had been offered there by French traders for the scalps of English traders, but the Shawnees remained well disposed.
As yet no choice had been noted. The land on the Mus- kingum was fine, but not broad enough. From Shanoah, Gist rode about one hundred and seventy-five miles through the present counties of Scioto, Adams, Highland, Fayette, Madi- son, Clarke, Champaign and Logan, noting, "except the first 20 M," a fine, rich, level land, well watered and timbered, full of beautiful natural meadows covered with wild rye, blue grass and clover, abounding with turkeys, deer, elks and most sorts of game, particularly buffaloes. "In short," to quote ex- actly, "it wants nothing but cultivation to make it a most de- lightful country." On February 17, he rode into Pickawillany, "with English colors before us." The town consisted of about four hundred families protected by a palisade, within which fifty to sixty white traders had built cabins and gained mutual protection. On March 3, he went southeastward down the Little Miami, of which he wrote: "I had fine traveling through rich land and beautiful meadows in which I could sometimes see forty or fifty buffaloes feeding at once. The river continued to run through the middle of a fine meadow, about a mile wide, very clear like an old field, and not a bush in it; I could see the buffaloes above two miles off." But fear- ing to meet French Indians, he rode away through a land still rich, level and well timbered with oak, walnut, ash, locust and sugar trees, passing through Greene, Warren, and Clinton counties in a circuitous course to Shanoah Town, whence he returned through Kentucky and West Virginia on May 17, 1751, to his home. From six and a half months' exploration he reported that nothing could be more desirable to the com- pany than the Miami country. But for the shadow of coming events, this concise report of primeval promise and beauty might have been followed by a quick settlement. Instead the great longing created by this first, and for many years only description, had to wait the turn of many battles, before Vir- ginia was finally permitted to give the land chosen from all by
..
.
68
CLERMONT AND BROWN COUNTIES
Gist to her valiant sons as a reward for matchless service in Freedom's cause.
The French plan for holding trade included a stockade at the Forks of the Maumee, where now is the city of Fort Wayne, which they called Fort Miami. This fort was plundered late in 1547 by some of the Miami Indians. If the traders did not provoke the affray, they were soon involved in the angry con- sequence. The Miamis about Pickawillany grew so prosperous through English favor, that they were chosen to illustrate French vengeance. Accordingly, Charles Langdale, a resi- dent of Michilimackinac, gathered two hundred and fifty Chip- pewas and Ottawas for the purpose, and conducted them in canoes to Detroit. Thence they paddled to and up the Mau- mee, and, made the portage, down the Miami to Pickawillany, where they came so suddenly and unexpectedly, early on June . 21, 1752, that little resistance could be made. For the war- riors were absent on their summer hunt and only the chief and twenty men and boys with eight white traders could be counted for the defense. Of these, three traders were caught outside. When one white and fourteen Indians had been killed, the rest, including many women and children, sur- rendered with a promise of life or a threat of death. Fifteen thousand dollars worth of goods were captured and the fort ยท and every cabin were burnt. To make their gloating complete the heart of the trader was broiled and eaten, and the body of the chief, "Old Britain," was boiled and eaten-not because of hunger, but to make them more courageous. Not to be outdone, the Miami braves recalled from their hunt retaliated by eating ten Frenchmen and two of their negroes. Such were some who hindered Ohio. Their peculiar pursuit of happiness has been magnified by theoretical peace people into a perpetual right to stop progress. Our forefathers thought and fought otherwise. The results of the expedition were hightly ap- proved by Duquesne, the French Governor General, who named Langdale for a pension of $50 a year, a fortune then. That the expedition covering more than a thousand miles was made in canoes through two lakes and three rivers seems fabulous. Yet, the proof is official, and the incident shows what was possible against the Mound Builders, and what was often done against the pioneers. While those canoes were
69
CLERMONT AND BROWN COUNTIES
paddled south, Captain William Trent was even more pain- fully trailing west from Virginia with a pack train bringing presents to the Indians, as promised by Gist, to confirm the peace desired by all. Instead he found Pickawillany in ashes, and the warriors mourning for their captured women and chil- dren. That ended all peaceful exploration, for, in the words of Bancroft: "Thus in Western Ohio began the contest that was to scatter death broadcast through the world."
CHAPTER IV.
UNDER TWO FLAGS.
The Destruction of Pickawillany an Example of Extensive Indian Strategy-The Strategy of the Indian Defense of Ohio-The Loneliness of the Land-A Blundering War with Dazzling Results-The Showy French-The Miserly King George II-The Iroquois Consent to a Fort at the Fork of the Ohio-The French Begin to Fortify the Ohio- Major George Washington Sent to Protest-Jumonville's Party Killed or Captured-The Seven Years' War Begun- The French Seize the Ohio-The Big Trail-Braddock's Defeat-Washington Commander-in-Chief for Virginia- New England Resolves to Capture Canada-Virginia Re- solves to Hold All to the Lakes and Mississippi-Forbes' Expedition-Major Grant's Defeat-The Fork of the Ohio Retaken-The French Flag Goes West, by and Beyond Old Clermont-The Naming of Pittsburgh-Rogers' Mounted Rangers-A Continental Empire Changes Masters-The Indian Is Promised Protection Against Greed for Game Land-Washington's Leadership in Gaining Ohio.
The French had surveyed the Ohio, located the tributary waters and declared the magnificent extent of their flow. The English were about to publish the surpassing excellence and glorious promise of the land. Because of the fur mar- ket made by more than fifty white traders resorting there with alluring art, Pickawillany had quickly grown to be the largest Indian town in the Ohio Valley. As the first and most prominent object of French hatred, the destruction of the town was a most significant and dramatic start for the war that more than any other changed the maps of the world. But the campaign against Pickawillany has a special inter- est as the first example-often repeated in Ohio-of an ex- tensive Indian strategy. In a probable explanation of the cordon of prehistoric forts across the lower Miami and Scioto section, I have mentioned that the lines of attack from the
72
CLERMONT AND BROWN COUNTIES
north beyond the Lakes were centered by the chasm and at the strait we call Niagara and Detroit. These points are now to be considered with more particular attention to their re- lation with modern affairs.
No writer as yet has ventured a treatise on the strategy .of the Indian Defense of Ohio, probably because it has not been the fashion to admit that there was any method in that long chase of death and fierce struggle for life between the aggressive settlers and the defensive tribes. But there was a persistence of action and a recurrence of incident that re- veals a continuity of cause and purpose, just as certain and controlling as the necessities of the generalship that swayed the eastern armies of the Civil War back and forth between Washington and Richmond, until the flanking force of the Northwest could be marched to the sea. To enhance the con- trast between present felicity and former destitution, essayists and orators of all degrees have combined to teach that the ancient wilderness was trackless and planless : and so it was to those who were unmindful of its mysteries. But for those who knew the secret lore of the wild there were paths that joined into trails for hunting and trading that became ways of war as surely as the railroad systems of our day control the movement of armies ; or, as surely as sea-power decides the fate of nations. The movements from the northeast either followed the Ohio or went by the Muskingum toward Chat- tanooga, or Crow's Nest, the council place of the south, to which the way was called the Southern Trail. The bands from the northwest came by Detroit over the Miami Trail through the portage from the Maumee, or from the Sandusky to the Scioto Trail. Those going southwest went by the Wa- bash Trail, and those going directly south extended the Miami Trail up and beyond the Licking toward the Gap of the Cum- berland or to Chattanooga. All of these met or intersected the Big Trail which gathered from the paths along the Chesa- peake Basin and went with the Potomac and Monongahela by the Fork of the Ohio, across the Tuscarawas and the San- duscan Plains to Detroit, where the fierce and unknown forces of the Northwest held council that the White Man should never plant corn in Ohio.
The reader who has not considered these trails will soon
1
+ 4
73
CLERMONT AND BROWN COUNTIES
perceive their woeful consequence to those who rocked the cradles of our civilization. From the unbroken security of Detroit, the ferocious fury could be equally hurled over the familiar yet obscure trails, with secrecy and safety, into a blazing line of wrath from the Blue Grass of Kentucky to the Yadkin and the Shenandoah and on to the Catskills near the Hudson. Through this seven hundred miles of border curving about Detroit, the Indians were screened by a con- stant dread of their untimely coming. Yet, while replete with thrilling action, no feature of their story is more surpris- ing to most readers than the loneliness of the land before the adventuring vanguards of progress a hundred and fifty years ago. From Logstown to Shanoah Town or, as now known, from Pittsburgh to Portsmouth, and as far beyond, no wigwams stood within many miles on the Ohio side. Be- tween middle Ohio and middle Tennessee as now known. prob- ably not a thousand people stopped long enough to raise corn. And even these few were soon to leave a vaster va- cancy; for, because a flood in 1765 overswept the bark and skin covered log huts they had learned to build, the Shawnee and Delaware families about the mouth of the Scioto with- drew to the then far seclusion of the plains above Chillicothe, and left the Ohio to rage with none to hear.
For the lonely land both were to lose, the corrupt courts of the uncomprehending Georges and the voluptuous Louis stumbled into a blundering war with dazzling results. After the destruction of Pickawillany, the stronger French traders ventured more and the English less. Fearing from eastern experience that the English still purposed farms and towns, the Indians were won by the French promise of camps and hunting; and all argument was clinched by a liberal distribu- tion of gifts, which, as has happened since and before, fixed their vote. Looking from the south, the front and flanks of the disputed land were being arranged for special local advan- tages that the contrivers were not to enjoy. Troops were brought from the forts on the Mississippi to strengthen the garrisons on the Wabash. The defenses of the St. Law- rence Basin received battalions from France to seize and hold the Ohio. The nations over the lakes were incited by the prospect of booty and scalps easy to take, when the White
-
74
CLERMONT AND BROWN COUNTIES
Father-the paltry Louis-should give the token for them to join their Ohio brothers in a war that should sweep the Eng- lish planters into the sea. The miserly, narrow-minded and mean spirited German prince, who poorly played the part of British king and cared more for an acre of Hanover than for all America, reluctantly permitted his ministry to retal- iate by sending thirty small cannon and eighty barrels of powder for two forts in the Ohio country. Upon the ad- vice and with the consent of his allies, the Iroquois, one of these forts was to be at the Forks to resist French aggres- sion upon their claims to the West. In stern protest against more than a century of awful incursions from beyond the St. Lawrence, New England designed nothing short of the cap- ture of Canada. The Virginians resolved to maintain their claim westward to the Mississippi and northward to Lake Erie.
In this wise, the stage was set for the Seven Years War and for its inevitable sequel, the American Revolution, and all its consequence, which could not have been, if the Ohio Valley had been mastered by another tongue. In comparison with all other eras, this something more than a century and a half must long hold the place of highest historical interest. Whatever else may be wanting, it is good to live where was once the verge of the heroic action, and there behold the dis- tant lines, struggling for the rights of man, come near and press around and on, while they call our own and of our own growth to step from our midst to point the way and order the march to a matchless union of national strength and per- sonal liberty. The expected disappoints and the unexpected happens. Not a tyrant of them all would have believed that Washington's fame would dim their own. None who measure Grant by the fullness of his glory can guess the gentle grace of his life in the land of Old Clermont. As from peak to peak so must our story reach to one, stretch to the other and then incline to pleasant vales. Already, the unexpected by all and yet the greater than all was begin- .ning to happen and mingle with the calculated course of events. In 1752 Celoron became commandant at Detroit with orders to drive the English from the Ohio Valley. In 1753 `Duquesne came out from Montreal with some fifteen hun-
75
CLERMONT AND BROWN COUNTIES
dred Canadians and Indians and built forts at Presque Isle, La Bouef creek and Venango.
In the meantime and more important, George Washington had grown quite tall and more composed, so much so, that he had been appointed Adjutant on the Governor's staff, where he learned all the ins and outs of the imperilled Ohio Com- pany of which his chief was the largest shareholder. Impelled by deepest concern both public and private, Governor Din- widdie secretly purchased powder and gathered stores for war. But he openly beguiled the time with negotiations, in which his athletic young Adjutant, Major Washington, with seven others and the veteran Christopher Gist as guide, was started, October 31, 1753, through the winter wilderness to warn the intruding French from the chartered bounds of Virginia, and incidentally for the far more important service of spying the location and strength of their forts and forces. After this delicate and dangerous duty had passed with mutual punctilio and no satisfaction for either side, the return was made through the rigors of the Allegheny January of 1754, in which Gist saved the life of the young leader and all but lost his own. Major Washington's Journal and Report of imminent war, because of which the Fork of the Ohio should be fortified, was pub- lished by the Lords of Trade, who echoed British sentiment, thus aroused, by order to the Royal Governors of the Col- onies to meet at Albany in conference for their general safety. This conference was the first hint or suggestion of the Amer- ican Union, which thus had its origin in the necessities for the Ohio campaign.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.