USA > Ohio > Greene County > History of Greene County : together with historic notes on the Northwest, and the state of Ohio, gleaned from early authors, old maps and manuscripts, private and official correspondence, and all other authentic sources > Part 8
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THE DELAWARES ASSUME THEIR ANCIENT INDEPENDENCE.
you. You know you are women, and can no more sell land than * women ; nor is it fit you should have the power of selling lands, since you would abuse it." The Iroquois warrior continues his chas- tisement of the Delawares, indulging in the most opprobrious lan- guage, and closed his speech by telling the Delawares to remove immediately. "We don't give you the liberty to think about it. You may return to the other side of the Delaware, where you came from ; but we don't know, considering how you had demeaned your- selves, whether you will be permitted to live there."
The Quakers who settled Pennsylvania treated the Delawares in accordance with the rules of justice and equity. The result was that during a period of sixty years, peace and the utmost harmony pre- vailed. This is the only instance in the settling of America by the English where uninterrupted friendship and good will existed between the colonists and and the aboriginal inhabitants. Gradually and by peaceable means the Quakers obtained possession of the greater por- tion of their territory, and the Delawares were in the same situation as other tribes-without lands, without means of subsistence. They were threatened with starvation. Induced by these motives, some of them, between the years 1740 and 1750, obtained from their uncles, the Wyandots, and with the assent of the Iroquois, a grant of land on the Muskingum, in Ohio. The greater part of the tribe remained in Pennsylvania, and becoming more and more dissatisfied with their lot, shook off the yoke of the Iroquois, joined the French and ravaged the frontiers of Pennsylvania. Peace was concluded at Easton in 1758, and ten years after the last remaining bands of the Delawares crossed the Alleghanies. Here, being removed from the influence of their dreaded masters, the Iroquois, the Delawares soon assumed their ancient independence. During the next four or five decades they were the most formidable of the western tribes. While the revolu- tionary war was in progress, as allies of the British, after its close, at the head of the northwestern confederacy of Indians, they fully regained their lost reputation. By their geographical position placed in the front of battle, they were, during those two wars, the most active and dangerous enemies of America.
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The territory claimed by the Delawares subsequent to their being driven westward from their former possessions, is established in a paper addressed to Congress May 10, 1779, from delegates assembled at Princeton, New Jersey. The boundaries of their country, as declared in the address, is as follows: " From the mouth of the Alle- ghany River, at Fort Pitt, to the Venango, and from thence up French
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HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.
Creek, and by Le Bœuf, along the old road to Presque Isle, on the east. The Ohio River, including all the islands in it, from Fort Pitt to the Ouabache, on the south ; thence up the River Ouabache to that branch, Ope-co-mee-cah, and up the same to the head thereof ; from thence to the headwaters and springs of the Great Miami, or Rocky River; thence across to the headwaters and springs of the most northwestern branches of the Scioto River; thence to the westernmost springs of Sandusky River; thence down said river, in- cluding the islands in it and in the little lake, to Lake Erie, on the west and northwest, and Lake Erie on the north. These boundaries contain the cessions of lands made to the Delaware nation by the Wyandots and other nations, and the country we have seated our grandchildren, the Shawnees, upon, in our laps; and we promise to give to the United States of America such a part of the above described country as would be convenient to them and us, that they may have room for their children's children to set down upon."
After Wayne's victory the Delawares saw that further contests with the American colonies would be worse than useless. They submitted to the inevitable, acknowledged the supremacy of the Caucasian race, and desired to make peace with the victors. At the treaty of Green- ville, in 1795, there were present three hundred and eighty-one Delawares-a larger representation than that of any other Indian tribe. By this treaty they ceded to the United States the greater part of the lands allotted to them by the Wyandots and Iroquois. For this cession they received an annuity of $1,000.
At the close of the treaty, Bu-kon-ge-he-las, a Delaware chief, spoke as follows :
" Father : Your children all well understand the sense of the treaty which is now concluded. We experience daily proofs of your in. creasing kindness. I hope we may all have sense enough to enjoy our dawning happiness. Many of your people are yet among us. I trust they will be immediately restored. Last winter our king came forward to you with two; and when he returned with your speech to us, we immediately prepared to come forward with the remainder, which we delivered at Fort Defiance. All who know me know me to be a man and a warrior, and I now declare that I will for the future be as steady and true a friend to the United States as I have hereto- fore been an active enemy."
This promise of the orator was faithfully kept by his people. They evaded all the efforts of the Shawnee prophet, Tecumseh, and the
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BECOME CITIZENS,
British who endeavored to induce them, by threats or bribes, to vio- late it.
The Delawares remained faithful to the United States during the war of 1812, and, with the Shawnees, furnished some very able war- riors and scouts, who rendered valuable service to the United States during this war.
After the treaty of Greenville, the great body of Delawares re- moved to their lands on White River, Indiana, whither some of their people had already preceded them.
Their manner of obtaining possession of their lands on White River is thus related in Dawson's Life of Harrison : "The land in question had been granted to the Delawares about the year 1770, by the Pianke- shaws, on condition of their settling upon it and assisting them in a war with the Kickapoos." These terms were complied with, and the Delawares remained in possession of the land.
The title to the tract of land lying between the Ohio and White Rivers soon became a subject of dispute between the Piankeshaws and Delawares. A chief of the latter tribe, in 1803, at Vincennes, stated to Gen. Harrison that the land belonged to his tribe, " and that he had with him a chief who had been present at the transfer made by the Piankeshaws to the Delawares, of all the country between the Ohio and White Rivers more than thirty years previous." This claim was disputed by the Piankeshaws. They admitted that while they had granted the Delawares the right of occupancy, yet they had never conveyed the right of sovereignty to the tract in question.
Gov. Harrison, on the 19th and 27th of August, 1804, concluded treaties with the Delawares and Piankeshaws by which the United States acquired all that fine country between the Ohio and Wabash Rivers. Both of "these tribes laying claim to the land, it became necessary that both should be satisfied, in order to prevent disputes in the future. In this, however, the governor succeeded, on terms, per- haps, more favorable than if the title had been vested in only one of these tribes; for, as both claimed the land, the value of each claim was considerably lowered in the estimation of both; and, therefore, by judicious management, the governor effected the purchase upon prob- ably as low, if not lower, terms than if he had been obliged to treat with only one of them. For this tract the Piankeshaws received $700 in goods and $200 per annum for ten years ; the compensation of the Delawares was an annuity of $300 for ten years.
The Delawares continued to reside upon White River and its branches until 1819, when most of them joined the band who had
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HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.
emigrated to Missouri upon the tract of land granted jointly to them and the Shawness, in 1793, by the Spanish authorities. Others of their number who remained scattered themselves among the Miamis, Pottawatomies and Kickapoos; while still others, including the Moravian converts, went to Canada. At that time, 1819, the total number of those residing in Indiana was computed to be eiglit hun- dred souls.
In 1829 the majority of the nation were settled on the Kansas and Missouri rivers. They numbered about 1,000, were brave, enterpris- ing hunters, cultivated lands and were friendly to the whites. In 1853 they sold to the goverment all the lands granted them, excepting a reservation in Kansas. During the late Rebellion they sent to the United States army one hundred and seventy out of their two-hundred able-bodied men. Like their ancestors they proved valiant and trust- worthy soldiers. Of late years they have almost entirely lost their aboriginal customs and manners. They live in houses, have schools and churches, cultivate farms, and, in fact, bid fair to become useful and prominent citizens of the great Republic.
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CHAPTER VIII.
THE INDIANS : THEIR IMPLEMENTS, UTENSILS, FORTIFICATIONS, MOUNDS, AND THEIR MANNERS AND CUSTOMS.
BEFORE the arrival of the Europeans the use of iron was but little known to the North American Indians. Marquette, in speaking of the Illinois, states that they were entirely ignorant of the use of iron tools, their weapons being made of stone. This was true of all the Indians who made their homes north of the Ohio, but south of that stream metal tools were occasionally met with. When Hernando De Soto, in 1539-43; was traversing the southern part of that territory, now known as the United States, in his vain search for gold, some of his followers found the natives on the Savanna River using hatchets made of copper. It is evident that these hatchets were of a native manufacture, for they were " said to have a mixture of gold."
The southern Indians " had long bows, and their arrows were made of certain canes like reeds, very heavy, and so strong that a sharp cane passeth through a target. Some they arm in the point with the sharp bone of a fish, like a chisel, and in others they fasten certain stones like points of diamonds." These bones or " scale of the armed fish " were neatly fastened to the head of the arrows with splits of cane and fish glue. The northern Indians used arrows with stone points. Father Rasles thus describes them : " Arrows are the principal arms which they use in war and in the chase. They are pointed at the end with a stone, cut and sharpened in the shape of a serpent's tongue ; and, if no knife is at hand, they use them also to skin the animals they have killed." "The bow-strings were prepared from the entrails of a stag, or of a stag's skin, which they know how to dress as well as any man in France, and with as many different colors. They head their arrows with the teeth of fishes and stone, which they work very finely and handsomely."
Most of the hatchets and knives of the northern Indians were like- wise made of sharpened stones, " which they fastened in a cleft piece of wood with leathern thongs." Their tomahawks were constructed from stone, the horn of a stag, or "from wood in the shape of a cut-
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HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.
lass, and terminated by a large ball." The tomahawk was held in one hand and a knife in the other. As soon as they dealt a blow on the head of an enemy, they immediately cut it round with the knife, and took off the scalp with extraordinary rapidity.
Du Pratz thus describes their method of felling trees with stone implements and with fire : " Cutting instruments are almost continu- ually wanted ; but as they had no iron, which of all metals is the most useful in human society, they were obliged, with infinite pains, to form hatchets out of large flints, by sharpening their thin edge, and making a hole through them for receiving the handle. To cut down trees with these axes would have been almost an impracticable work ; they were, therefore, obliged to light fires round the roots of them, and to cut away the charcoal as the fire eat into the tree. "
Charlevoix makes a similar statement : " These people, before we provided them with hatchets and other instruments, were very much at a loss in felling their trees, and making them fit for such uses as they intended them for. They burned them near the root, and in order to split and cut them into proper lengths they made use of hatchets made of flint, which never broke, but which required a pro- digious time to sharpen. In order to fix them in a shaft, they cut off the top of a young tree, making a slit in it, as if they were going to draft it, into which slit they inserted the head of the axe. The tree, growing together again in length of time, held the head of the hatchet so firm that it was impossible for it to get loose; they then cut the tree at the length they deemed sufficient for the handle."
When they were about to make wooden dishes, porringers or spoons, they cut the blocks of wood to the required shape with stone hatchets, hollowed them out with coals of fire, and polished them with beaver teeth.
Early settlers in the neighborhood of Thorntown, Indiana, noticed that the Indians made their hominy-blocks in a similar manner. Round stones were heated and placed upon the blocks which were to be excavated. The charred wood was dug out with knives, and then the surface was polished with stone implements. These round stones were the common property of the tribe, and were used by indi- vidual families as occasion required.
" They dug their ground with an instrument of wood, which was fashioned like a broad mattock, wherewith they dig their vines as in France ; they put two grains of maize together."
For boiling their victuals they made use of earthen kettles. The kettle was held up by two crotches and a stick of wood laid across.
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THEIR IMPLEMENTS AND POTTERY.
The pot ladle, called by them mikoine, laid at the side. "In the north they often made use of wooden kettles, and made the water boil by throwing into it red hot pebbles. Our iron pots are esteemed by them as much more commodious than their own."
That the North American Indians not only used, but actually man- ufactured, pottery for various culinary and religious purposes admits of no argument. Hennepin remarks ; "Before the arrival of the Europeans in North America both the northern and southern savages made use of, and do to this day use, earthen pots, especially such as have no commerce with the Europeans, from whom they may procure kettles and other movables." M. Pouchot, who was acquainted with the manners and customs of the Canadian Indians, states "that they formerly had usages and utensils to which they are now scarcely accustomed. They made pottery and drew fire from wood."
In 1700, Father Gravier, in speaking of the Yazoos, says : "You see there in their cabins neither clothes, nor sacks, nor kettles, nor guns ; they carry all with them, and have no riches but earthen pots, quite well made, especially little glazed pitchers, as neat as you would see in France." The Illinois also occasionally used glazed pitchers. The manufacturing of these earthen vessels was done by the women. By the southern Indians the earthenware goods were used for religious as well as domestic purposes. Gravier noticed several in their temples, containing bones of departed warriors, ashes, etc.
The American Indians, both northern and southern, had most of their villages fortified either by wooden palisades, or earthen breast- works and palisades combined. De Soto, on the 19th of June, 1541, entered the town of Pacaha, which was very great, walled, and beset with towers, and many loopholes were in the towers and wall. Charlevoix said : "The Indians are more skillful in erecting their fortifications than in building their houses. Here you see villages surrounded with good palisades and with redoubts; and they are very careful to lay in a proper provision of water and stones. These palisades are double, and even sometimes treble, and generally have battlements on the outer circumvallation. The piles, of which they are composed, are interwoven with branches of trees, without any void space between them. This sort of fortification was sufficient to sustain a long siege whilst the Indians were ignorant of the use of fire-arms.
La Hontan thus describes these palisaded towns: "Their villages are fortified with double palisadoes of very hard wood, which are as
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HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.
thick as one's thigh, and fifteen feet high, with little squares about the middle of courtines."
These wooden fortifications were used to a comparatively late day. At the siege of Detroit, in 1712, the Foxes and Mascoutins resisted, in a wooden fort, for nineteen days, the attack of a much larger force of Frenchmen and Indians. In order to avoid the fire of the French, they dug holes four or five feet deep in the bottom of their fort.
The western Indians, in their fortifications, made use of both earth and wood. An early American author remarks: "The remains of Indian fortifications seen throughout the western country, have given rise to strange conjectures, and have been supposed to appertain to a period extremely remote; but it is a fact well known that in some of them the remains of palisadoes were found by the first settlers." When Major Long's party, in 1823, passed through Fort Wayne, they inquired of Metea, a celebrated Pottawatomie chief, well versed in the lore of his tribe, whether he had ever heard of any tradition accounting for the erection of those artificial mounds which are found scattered over the whole country. " He immediately replied that they had been constructed by the Indians as fortifications before the white man had come among them. He had always heard this origin ascribed to them, and knew three of those constructions which were supposed to have been made by his nation. One is at the fork of the Kankakee and the Des Plaines Rivers, a second on the Ohio, which, from his description, was supposed to be at the mouth of the Muskingum. He visited it, but could not describe the spot accurately, and a third, which he had also seen, he stated to be on the headwaters of the St. Joseph of Lake Michigan. This latter place is about forty miles northwest of Fort Wayne."
One of the Miami chiefs, whom the traders named Le Gros, told Barron that " he had heard that his father had fought with his tribe in one of the forts at Piqua, Ohio ; that the fort had been erected by the Indians against the French, and that his father had been killed during one of the assaults made upon it."
While at Chicago, and " with a view to collect as much information as possible on the subject of Indian antiquities, we inquired of Rob- inson whether any traditions on this subject were current among the Indians. He observed that these ancient fortifications were a fre- quent subject of conversation, and especially those in the nature of excavations made in the ground. He had heard of one made by the Kickapoos and Fox Indians on the Sangamo River, a stream running
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INDIAN MOUNDS.
into the Illinois. This fortification is distinguished by the name of Etnataek. It is known to have served as an intrenchment to the Kickapoos and Foxes, who were met there and defeated by the Potta- watomies, the Ottawas and Chippeways. No date was assigned to this transaction. We understand that the Etnataek was near the Kickapoo village on the Sangamo."
Near the dividing line between sections 4 and 5, township 31 north, of range 11 east, in Kankakee county, Illinois, on the prairie about a mile above the mouth of Rock Creek, are some ancient mounds. "One is very large, being about one hundred feet base in diameter and about twenty feet high, in a conic form, and is said to contain the remains of two hundred Indians who were killed in the celebrated battle between the Illinois and Chippeways, Delawares and Shawnees ; and about two chains to the northeast, and the same distance to the northwest, are two other small mounds, which are said to contain the remains of the chiefs of the two parties.
Uncorroborated Indian traditions are not entitled to any high de- gree of credibility, and these quoted are introduced to refute the often repeated assertion that the Indians had no tradition concerning the origin of the mounds scattered through the western states, or that they supposed them to have been erected by a race who occupied the con- tinent anterior to themselves.
These mounds were seldom or never used for religious purposes by the Algonquins or Iroquois, but Penicault states that when he visited the Natchez Indians, in 1704, " the houses of the Suns are built on mounds, and are distinguished from each other by their size. The mound upon which the house of the Great Chief, or Sun, is built is larger than the rest, and its sides are steeper. The temple in the vil- lage of the Great Sun is about thirty feet high and forty-eight in circumference, with the walls eight feet thick and covered with a matting of canoes, in which they keep up a perpetual fire."
De Soto found the houses of the chiefs built on mounds of different heights, according to their rank, and their villages fortified with pali- sades, or walls of earth, with gateways to go in and out.
When Gravier, in 1700, visited the Yazoos, he noticed that their temple was raised on a mound of earth. He also, in speaking of the Ohio, states that "it is called by the Illinois and Oumiamis the river of the Akansea, because the Akansea formerly dwelt on it. The Akansea or Arkansas Indians possessed many traits and customs in common with the Natchez, having temples, pottery, etc. A still more important fact is noticed by Du Pratz, who was intimately
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HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.
acquainted with the Great Sun. He says: "The temple is about thirty feet square, and stands on an artificial mound about eight feet high, by the side of a small river. The mound slopes insensibly from the main front, which is northward, but on the other side it is some- what steeper."
According to their own traditions, the Natchez " were at one time the most powerful nation in all North America, and were looked upon by the other nations as their superiors, and were, on that account, re- spected by them. Their territory extended from the River Iberville, in Louisiana, to the Wabash." They had over five hundred suns, and, consequently, nearly that many villages. Their decline and re- treat to the south was owing not to the superiority in arms of the less civilized surrounding tribes, but was due to the pride of their own chiefs, who, to lend an imposing magnificence to their funeral rites, adopted the impolitic custom of having hundreds of their followers strangled at their pyre. Many of the mounds, scattered up and down the valleys of the Wabash, Ohio and Mississippi, while being the only, may be the time-defying monuments of the departed power and grandeur of these two tribes.
The Indian manner of making a fire is thus related by Hennepin : " Their way of making a fire, which is new and unknown to us, is thus : They take a triangular piece of cedar wood of a foot and a half in length, wherein they bore some holes half through; then they take a switch, or another small piece of hard wood, and with both their hands rub the strongest upon the weakest in the hole, which is made in the cedar, and while they are thus rubbing they let fall a sort of dust or powder, which turns into fire. This white dust they roll up in a pellet of herbs, dried in autumn, and rubbing them all together, and then blowing upon the dust that is in the pellets, the fire kindles in a moment."
The food of the Indians consisted of all the varieties of game, fishes and wild fruits in the vicinity ; and they cultivated Indian corn, melons and squashes. From corn they made a preparation called sagamite. They pulverized the corn, mixed it with water, and added a small proportion of ground gourds or beans.
The clothing of the northern Indians consisted only of the skins of wild animals, roughly prepared for that purpose. Their southern brethren were far in advance of them in this respect. "Many of the women wore cloaks of the bark of the mulberry tree, or of the feathers of swans, turkeys or Indian ducks. The bark they take from young mulberry shoots that rise from the roots of trees that have
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THEIR CANOES.
been cut down. After it is dried in the sun they beat it to make all the woody parts fall off, and they give the threads that remain a second beating, after which they bleach them by exposing them to the dew. When they are well whitened they spin them about the coarseness of pack-thread, and weave them in the following manner : They plant two stakes in the ground about a yard and a half asunder, and having stretched a cord from the one to the other, they fasten their threads of bark double to this cord, and then interweave them in a curious manner into a cloak of about a yard square, with a wrought border round the edges."
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