USA > Ohio > Greene County > History of Greene County, Ohio: its people, industries and institutions, Volume I > Part 7
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Within the borders of Ohio there are numerous material remains left by this departed race. Approximately, there are in all some ten thousand mounds. This wealth of archaeological and historical material should not be left untouched, nor should the contents of these mounds be left to the unpracticed and unskilled hand of the amateur. The people of the state have taken wise cognizance of this fact and the General Assembly liberally sustains the Ohio Archaeological and Historical Society in its investigation of these messages of the past. One of the pioneers of this movement to preserve the last remnants of this departed race from total obliteration and destruction is one of the best known sons of Greene county, Prof. Warren K. Moorhead. No doubt it was during his ramblings around in the rural districts of the home county that he conceived the idea of giving these material remains of the Mound Builders the scrutiny of an expert archaol- ogist. He began the preparation for his work, which he has so ably carried out, when he was actively connected with the Ohio Archaeological and Historical Society.
The following is a sketch of the Mound Builders of Greene county,
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written by Professor Moorhead for the little volume, "Greene County, 1803- 1908." The editor of this little book, wherein the history of the county is so well and interestingly epitomized, has kindly given permission to use his article in this connection. It follows:
PREHISTORIC MEN OF GREENE COUNTY.
Prehistoric man in Greene county left probably sixty or seventy monuments, of which forty-one are seen at the present day. The historic period-that of the Shawanoes or Shawnees at Oldtown, then Old Chillicothe-did not embrace any of these remains. The Shawnees buried in ordinary graves and confined their village to the little plateau south of the gravel hills flanking Oldtown run. The prehistoric people lived on Caesars creek, Massies creek, Oldtown run, and the Little Miami river.
Whether glacial or preglacial man lived in Greene county is a debatable question. In fact, scientists are divided into two schools on the whole question of glacial man in America. There are those who believe that the discoveries in the gravels at Trenton, New Jersey, Wilmington, Delaware, Madisonville and Newcomerstown, Ohio, and in Nebraska and elsewhere are indicative of a human culture extending back thirty or forty thousand years. Against this proposition are most of the Smithsonian scientists and several leading geol- ogists, who do not believe that the evidence warrants any such conclusion. Although many rough implements were found by me in Oldtown run many years ago and, at the time, thought by Dr. Thomas Wilson of the Smithsonian to be paleolithic in character, yet it is not established that glacial man lived in Greene county.
Coming down to the more recent times and accepting observations and explorations as trustworthy, we observe that the earliest man in Greene county probably buried his dead in natural formations which appeared moundlike in character. It is quite likely that he selected glacial kames and knolls, rounded by the action of the elements during thousands of years; and because digging in this way was easy, he placed his dead in shallow graves upon these graceful summits. When gravel pits were opened in Greene, Fayette, Warren and Clinton counties, it was no uncommon thing to find human remains therein, and along- side such human remains lay types of crude implements somewhat different from those found in mounds and upon village sites. Therefore, I have believed that in Ohio we had not only tribes which built mounds, but also an earlier people, although not necessarily a people of great antiquity-that is, great compared with the age of the glacial epoch.
These early people found game very plentiful, the winters not severe and life on the whole not a desperate struggle for existence, such as characterized tribes in Canada and upon the headwaters of the Columbia and Missouri.
The buffalo roamed throughout central and southern Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana, and as late as 1760 buffalo were killed by Capt. James Smith, long a captive among the Indians. Buffalo bones have not been found in village sites in Greene county, but they were exhumed from ashpits at Ft. Ancient and at Madisonville.
Accustomed as we are to innumerable luxuries, regarding the high development of the twentieth century as a matter of course, and forgetting the millenniums through which man was slowly toiling upwards, we canj not understand how the American aborigine achieved what he did. He had no metal, save a limited supply of copper in a few isolated centers. All his art, manufacturing, building, etc., must be accomplished by the use of stone, bone and shell tools. The Indian was more ingenious and saving than we. He made use of such material as he could find. His textile fabrics-whether baskets or blankets-his elaborate pipes and his skilfully made bows were all worked out of raw material by hand. It seems incredible to us that he accomplished his work with such tools as the flint drills, the bone awls, the flint saws and the hammerstones that we find in every collection in Greene county. But one must not forget that the Indian had great capabil- ities. The Indian brain is finer than that of the negro and his skeletal structure is also of a higher order.
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The mound building to which he was given extended throughout the entire Mississippi valley. While there are some mounds in China and a few elsewhere in the world, yet mound building was not practiced largely save among American tribes.
References to archaeological maps of Greene county will show the distribution of mounds, village sites and the earthworks. From the character of the earthworks it is to be supposed that they are defensive. The mounds were for burials exclusively. The method of mound construction was simple. Natives selected a level spot of ground, well situated, preferably near a stream and commanding the surrounding country. They burned off the grass and slirubs and beat the surface until it was level. On these hard burned floors they placed the bodies of their dead with various implements, ornaments, etc., and over the interned heaped a large mass of earth. The earth was carried in baskets and skin bags, as is clearly shown by the different lens-shaped masses averaging about half a bushel in quantity. Shortly after the mound was constructed, grass began to grow and then the monument became more indestructible than imposing structures of stone-or brick. A simple mound of earth outlasts any other work erected by man.
Nearest to Xenia of all the works in the county is the circle on Oldtown run, two miles northeast. Unfortunately, I do not recall the name of the gentleman on whose land it lies, but it may easily be found. Within the enclosure is a small mound. It is quite evident that circles were erected as sun symbols, and sometimes as symbols of the universe. The square represented the earth, or the four winds, or the four cardinal points.
West of Xenia is a large mound on the land of John B. Lucas, which was opened about fifteen years ago by George Day and Clifford Anderson. The burials in this mound pre- sented two types, the ordinary interment and the cremated skeletons. Curious tubular pipes, - flat tablet-shaped ornaments of slate, the war hatchets, large flint knives, copper bracelets, and problematical forms were found with the skeletons.
The largest ancient fortification of Greene county is at Cedarville cliffs. Squier and Davis, the pioneers of American archaeology, in their famous publication, "Ancient Monu- ments of the Mississippi Valley" (1848), being the first work issued by the Smithsonian Institution, give a description of this work which is herewith reproduced. I quote from their original description :
"It is situated at Massies creek, a tributary of the Little Miami river, seven miles east from the town of Xenia, Greene county, Ohio, and consists of a high promontory, bounded on all sides, excepting an interval at the west, by a precipitous limestone cliff. Across the isthmus, from which the ground gradually subsides toward the plain almost as regularly as an artificial glacis, is carried a wall of earth and stones. This wall is now about ten feet high by thirty feet base, and is continued for some distance along the edge of the cliff where it is least precipitous on the north. It is interrupted by three narrow gateways, exterior to each of which was formerly a mound of stones, now mostly carried away. Still exterior to these are four short crescent walls, extending across the isthmus. These cres- cents are very slight, not much exceeding at the present time three feet in height. The cliff has an average height of upward of twenty-five feet, and is steep and almost inacces- sible. The valley is three hundred feet broad. Massies creek, a considerable stream, washes the base of the promontory on the north. The area bounded by the cliff and embankment is not far from twelve acres. The whole is covered with the primitive forest.
"The natural strength of this position is great, and no inconsiderable degree of skill has been expended in perfecting its defenses. A palisade, if carried around the brow of the cliff and along the summit of the wall, would render it impregnable to savage assault. About one hundred rods above this work, on the opposite side of the creek, is a small circle, two hundred feet in diameter, enclosing a mound. About the same distance below, upon the same bank, is a large conical mound, thirty feet in height and one hundred and forty feet in diameter at the base."
Squier and Davis also illustrated the semi-circular embankment and mound lying half a mile south of the work previously deseribed. They present a diagram of the polygon, seven miles north of Xenia on the east bank of the Little Miami river, some distance below
4
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Yellow Springs. These gentlemen refer to the mound enclosure by a circle on Oldtown run, two miles north of Xenia. At the time their book was published, the high, conical-shaped mound below the cliffs (near the Hon. Whitelaw Reid's house) was something over thirty feet in altitude and one hundred and forty feet diameter at the base. In subsequent years people from Cedarville have attempted its exploration and the height is somewhat reduced and the diameter extended.
The other mounds are scattered about the county, following more or less regularly the water courses. None of them were house sites or "lookout stations," but all may be safely classed as mortuary tumuli. No stone mounds are to be found in the region and artificial terraces common to Caesars creek in Warren county, do not, I think, extend into Greene. If they appear in the southwest edge of Greene, I stand corrected. Save at Cedarville, no large mound exists in the county.
There have been, from time to time, persons living in Xenia who were interested in archaeology. When I was a boy a picnic party was organized to visit Ft. Ancient, twenty- two miles south. I remember following Judge E. H. Munger and two or three other gentlemen who were familiar with Professor Short's "North Americans of Antiquity," about the wonderful enclosure and listening to their comments.
Although the monuments, sixty or seventy years ago, were much more distinct than at present, yet very few persons in Ohio took any interest in them. The pioneer was Caleb Atwater of Circleville, who visited Greene county before 1818. His book, "Arch- aeologia Americana," was published in Massachusetts in 1820 at Worcester.
Old citizens in Xenia will remember W. B. Fairchild. Of the Xenians of seventy-five years ago, Fairchild was one of the most intelligent. His interest in science was marked and he is mentioned in the first report of the Smithsonian Institution several times. S. T. Owens, surveyor of Greene county in the early forties, is credited with having made the first accurate survey of these interesting monuments. In recent years a number of gentle- men residing in or near Xenia have made archaeological collections. These have a special value to science and should be preserved in the Xenia public library, or where they will be available to future generations. Perhaps the best exhibit of stone art of prehistoric tribes is the collection owned by George Charters. His exhibit comes from Caesars creek, Massies creek, Oldtown run and other favorite sites.
Particular attention is called to the skill of the Greene county natives in the chipping of flint, now a lost art. Some of the large spear heads found in Greene county are made of pink and white flint brought from the flint ridge pits in Licking county, nearly a hundred miles distant, and are marvels of skill and beauty. On some of the larger ones I have seen depressions from which flakes as small as the thirty-second of an inch were detached. Any prehistoric man was able to make his ordinary arrow heads, but it required a master hand to make a certain kind of spear-head, which I have named the "sunfish" pattern because of its resemblance in form and color to the large blue and red sunfish of Greene county streams.
The late Jacob Ankeney had a large collection of Greene county specimens. As a boy I used to go to his house and spend hours with him in the examination of his treas- ures. But unfortunately this collection has become scattered, so it is said. Next to Mr. Charter's exhibit in size is that of George Day. Doctor Spahr, of Clifton, has some hun- dreds of interesting implements relating to primitive art of northern and eastern Greene county, and there are a score of smaller exhibits scattered throughout the county. These, taken as a whole, give one a comprehensive knowledge of the stone age in this region. The tribes do not appear to have been sedentary in their habits, although they appear to have lived long enough in one place to raise crops of corn, tobacco, pumpkins and beans. Numerous stone pestles attest this.
So far as we are able to judge, Greene county natives were not given to travel or exchange. Aside from the Flint ridge flint, all materials were local. They received a little copper from the north and a few plates of mica from the south-both dear to aboriginal hearts. But they did not import ocean shells, and pearl beads, and galena, obsidian and Tennessee flint, as did the tribes of the Scioto valley.
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Prehistoric man in Greene county was of what is called "Ft. Ancient culture," that is, the Ft. Ancient culture is totally different from the higher culture of the Scioto valley. The tribes of the surrounding counties from beyond the Great Miami on west to the head- waters of Paint creek on the east belong to this same general Ft. Ancient stock. It is quite likely that in case of attack by enemies from the north or from the Scioto, they retreated to Ft. Ancient. Traveling light, as aborigines do when in danger, they could reach Ft. Ancient from almost any part of Greene county in from four to five hours. With the exception of the site at Oldtown, made historic by Kenton, and Boone, and Blackfish, and Captain Bowman, all the other places on which Indian implements are found in the county are pre-Columbian. Their exact age can not be determined, although it is probable that some of them may have been inhabited two or three thousand years ago.
Nothing remains of prehistoric man in Greene county save his mounds and stone arti- facts. Civilization has obliterated pretty much all else. Yet, it seems to me, that we owe it to science-if not to the memory of those red men of the simple life-to preserve such of their works as time has vouchsafed to us. The notable ones are the enclosure and mound near Cedarville cliffs.
The "Cliffs" have been a favorite picnic resort for a century. Nothing more pictur- esque exists in the state. Greene county could easily make of the place a park, for the natural beauty and the park conditions are perfect. The expense would be trifling and the benefit to the community at large beyond price. Such a place as the "Cliffs" near any city would have become a public "nature field" a generation ago.
The park scheme would probably include the imposing mound near Mr. Reid's home and the fortification on the bluffs overlooking Massies creek. The future generations might exclaim with pride :
"Greene and Licking counties are the only two of the eighty-eight that preserve their natural scenery and their antiquities."
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CHAPTER IV.
THE INDIANS AND OLD CHILLICOTHE.
Through the long and tortuous windings of progress some races of men have risen from their primitive existence to a high state of civilization, but during these devious twistings of destiny some races, off shoots of the orig- inal stem, have wandered so far that their position became little bettered with the passing years. Savages they were and savages they remained. Among these savage races of the world's history, no one of them is more unique, fascinating or extraordinary in character and in custom, in action and achievement, than the Indian who roamed the forest fastnesses of North America before the European discoverers and settlers first made their ap- pearance here.
The Indians were a singular and picturesque people. In them were mingled the elements of the human and the brute, the crudity and barbarity of the prehistoric man, and withal the majesty, nobility and lofty sentiment of the civilized being. They approached in many things the political and domestic organization of the modern man. They had their leaders, their chosen chiefs, their sagacious sachems, their mighty men of politics, war and religion ; their patriots and martyrs. Even they had heroes and mighty men of valor whose exploits would excite the envy of an Achilles, a Leon- idas, a Horatius or a Launcelot.
From what place and when came these children of the forest to the valleys, plains and uplands of North America no one knows and it is hardly worth while to speculate or guess. Unlike the ancient Egyptians, Assyrians, Greeks, Romans and Phoenicians who left their obelisks, cuneiform bricks, magnificent temples, matchless dissertations, codes of law and delicate works of art in bronze, gold and silver, the Indians have left their successors only conflicting and vague traditions which become more confusing and worth- less historically as the vista lengthens into the past. Hence, definite knowl- edge concerning the red man dates back little earlier than his discovery by that famous Genoese sailor, who mistook him for an inhabitant of the dis- tant Indies and therefore called him "Indian."
We have been prone to call him "bloodthirsty red skin," but the Indian on second thought seems no more deserving of that appellation than the paleface who seized his hunting grounds by trickery, fraud and treachery
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oftentimes, and then shot the unfortunate savage in cold blood. No wonder it is that the Indian turned upon his betrayer and practiced cruelty which did not bear the refinement of that perpetrated by the latter. Again, we have preserved in our annals the massacres of the whites by the redskins, but the latter did not record the many deeds of butchery of which they were the victims, save in their own hearts where they nursed the fires of their vengeance.
THE SHAWNEES
Since the beginning of the known history of the Indian, Greene county and western Ohio have been under the suzerainty of many different tribes, and it was here at Oldtown and on the Scioto that some of the most ter- rible struggles between the whites and redskins took place. It must be re- membered that the Indian in his settlements did not become a permanent res- ident, but continued to shift his habitat. Above all he was migratory, and if he did descend from the lost tribes of Israel, as many ethnologists claim, he surely had the characteristics of the "Wandering Jew." This was espe- cially true of the Shawnees who made the last stand of the red race for their hunting grounds in Greene county before the ever-increasing tide of white immigration. Restless and fearless, wary, warlike and nomadic, they were the vagrants of the trackless wilderness, the aboriginal Arabs, ever seeking new fields for conquest and opportunity. At the time when western Vir- ginia began to feel the approach of civilization, the Shawnees were in pos- session of the Scioto valley, occupying territory as far west as the Little Miami, since they had been invited there by the Wyandottes at the instiga- tion of the French. This tribe excelled all others in restlessness and in hatred for the white man. From the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, from the Susquehanna to the Mississippi, in the forests, over the prairie, by the mountain streams, the Shawnee hunted the bear, bison and turkey ; and almost from the landing of the English at Jamestown in 1607 his fav- orite activity was the scalping of the cunning and avaricious paleface.
The Shawnee was proud to a fault and considered himself superior to all other tribes of the Indians. He boasted of the tradition that the Creator, Himself, was an Indian, and He made the Shawnees, who sprang from His brain, before He created any other human race. After the Creator had made the Shawnees, He made the English and French out of His breast, the Dutch from His feet and the "Long Knives," the Americans, from His hands. All these inferior races He placed beyond the "Stinking Lake," the Atlantic.
They were doubtless among the tribes which welcomed John Smith at Jamestown. Old chronicles make mention of them at different places. In 1632 they were on the Delaware river; in 1685 they were inhabitants of the
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Illinois country. Marquette and Joliet spoke of them as residents, if they could be so called, of the Northwest. They were chiefly located in the val- leys of the Cumberland and the Tennessee, from whence they migrated in all directions. This tribe was a party to the great Penn treaty of 1682, and was thereafter the keeper of a parchment copy of that agreement. It is probable that the Ohio Shawnees were emigrants from the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida, having been driven out by the Seminoles and other southern tribes. This migration is said to have been taken under the leadership of the chief, Black Hoof.
Christopher Gist reported from his journey through this country in 1750, in behalf of the Ohio Company, that the Shawnees were a very strong tribe located on the Scioto. Bouquet says in 1764 that the same tribe num- bered about five hundred warriors. It is certain that the Shawnees were a well-established tribe in Greene county when the white settlers began moving up from Kentucky. Their arrogant and autocratic disposition, and their un- tempered ferocity made them the most formidable and most feared of all the tribes with which the western settler had to contend. Fortunately, how- ever, when the first settlers of what is now Greene county began to estab- lish their homes here, they were little bothered by this turbulent tribe of red- skins.
OLD CHILLICOTHE.
Old Chillicothe, the site of which is now occupied by the peaceful vil- lage of Oldtown, was one of the chief villages of the Shawnee Indians. This town, before the entrance of the paleface into the country which later became the beautiful county of Greene, was one of the largest "cities" in the Ohio country, numbering about eleven hundred souls. Beautifully situated in the broad valley of the Little Miami, it occupied a site of rare beauty. A lovely prairie stretched away to the west, bounded by a range of wooded hills. On the north meandered the Little Miami.
Old Chillicothe was one of the terminal points of the many Indian "thor- oughfares" which penetrated the forest fastnesses of the land north of the Ohio. Here at the council house, which occupied the site of the present school house of Oldtown, Black Fish, Tecumseh and the hated renegades, Simon Girty, McKee and the Scotchman Dixon, met in council with the war- riors of the Shawnee nation and planned marauding expeditions against the white settlements of Kentucky. To this historic old place the grand old pio- neers, Simon Kenton and Daniel Boone, and many other less famous back- woodsmen were brought to languish in captivity, to be adopted into the tribe or to suffer the torments which only the Indian mind was an adept at manufacturing.
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Depredations perpetrated by the Shawnees against the peaceful settle- ments of Kentucky made it necessary for the "Long Knives," or Americans, to send several military expeditions against old Chillicothe, the headquarters of the redskins. In 1774 the Earl of Dunmore, the last royal governor of Virginia, made the first expedition against the Shawnees, and although the line of march did not pass near Oldtown, it is quite likely that many of the braves from old Chillicothe took part in the unsuccessful attack of Cornstalk against Colonel Lewis, who commanded a detachment of Dunmore's troops at Point Pleasant on the Ohio river. In 1780 and again in 1782 Gen. George Rogers Clark led expeditions of Kentuckians against old Chillicothe and laid the village in ruins and destroyed the Indians' crops. In 1779 Colonel Bow- man made an unsuccessful attack on this Indian village. The aid that the Indians received from the British caused them to become arrogant again, and in 1790 General Josiah Harmar sought to chastise them again by destroying old Chillicothe, but he was forced to turn back from any further operations against the savages because of their superior numbers and excellent leader- ship. Major Hardin's attack on old Chillicothe in the same year netted little more than the destruction of the place and he, too, was forced to turn back. Then in 1791 came the ill-fated attempt of General St. Clair, the territorial governor of the Northwest Territory, and the success of the Indians so elated them that it seemed the white settlement of this vast territory was completely frustrated. In 1794 "Mad Anthony" Wayne, the hero of Stony Point, ad- ministered such a severe defeat to the Indians at Fallen Timbers that they never recovered from the disaster. The treaty of Greenville, which General Wayne made with the several chiefs of the Indian confederacy in August, 1795, left the whites in control of this vast country and Ohio was thus opened up to peaceful settlement.
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