History of Marietta and Washington County, Ohio, and representative citizens, Part 4

Author: Andrews, Martin Register, 1842-; Hathaway, Seymour J
Publication date: 1902
Publisher: Chicago : Biographical Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 1490

USA > Ohio > Washington County > Marietta > History of Marietta and Washington County, Ohio, and representative citizens > Part 4

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plexity over its outlet, ran it into the Susque- hanna and down into Chesapeake Bay. And | late as in the map of Celeron, in 1750, is writ- ten along the southern shore of Lake Erie --- "This shore is almost unknown."

ARMS OF THE KING OF FRANCE.

It is a custom peculiar to the French to. declare possession of a land by burying leaden plates, upon which their professions of sov- ereignty are incised. at the mouths of its riv- ers. This has been an immemorial custom, and has been done in recent times in the Pa- cific Ocean. La Salle buried a leaden plate at the month of the Mississippi in 1682, claim- ing possession of that river and all streams emptying into it and all lands drained by them. But, now, more plates were needed. And so Celeron de Bienville, a gallant chevalier of St. Louis, departed from Quebec in the fall of the same year with a detachment of eight sub- altern officers, six cadets, an armorer, 20 sol- (liers, 180 Canadians, 30 friendly Iroquois and 25 Abenakis with a load of leaden plates to be buried at the months of all the rivers in the Central West. Two plates were buried in what we now call the Alleghany River and one at the mouth of Wheeling Creek, the Muskin- gum ( Washington County), Great Kanawha and Miami rivers. ( See Note. ) At the burial { of each plate a given formality was observed. The detachment was drawn up in battle array. The leader cried in a loud voice "Tive le Roi," and proclaimed that possession was ta- ken in the name of the King. In each in- stance, the Arms of the King, stamped upon a sheet of tin, were affixed to the nearest tree. and a process verbal was drawn up and signed by the officers. Each plate bore the follow- ing inscription :

It was a strange Providence which led the Algonquins to induce Cartier to set the tide of French trade and exploration over the Otta- wa rather than up the St. Lawrence. By this France lost, we are told, the Hudson Valley -the key to the Eastern half of the conti- nent-but gained the Great Lakes. This tide of trappers, merchants, Jesuits, and adven- turers went up the Western river, across into Georgian Bay, through the lakes, down the Wisconsin, Illinois and Mississippi. Some few braved the dangers of traveling in the domains of the Iroquois and went up the St. Lawrence to Lake Ontario, then across to Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay. The impor- tant result was that Lake Erie was the last of all the Great Lakes to be discovered and the country south of it was the last to be explored and claimed by the French. Lakes Ontario and Huron were discovered in 1015. Lake Su- perier in 1620. Lake Michigan in 1634. Lake Erie was not discovered until 1669-half a century after the two lakes which it joins. "In the year 1749, of the reign of Louis the XV. King of France. We, Celeron, com- mander of a detachment sent by Monsieur the Marquis de la Galissoniere, Governor General And then for a hundred years it was a mystery. Champlain drew it on his map as a widened river, and other maps of the day make it a brook, river, strait or lake, as their authors of New France, to re-establish tranquility in fancied. One drew it as a river, and, in per- , some Indian villages of these cantons, have

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buried (here a space was left for the date of and place of burial) this plate of lead near the river Ohio otherwise Belle Riviere as a monument of the renewal of possession we have taken of the said river Ohio, and of all those which empty into it, and of all lands on both sides as far as the sources of said rivers, as enjoyed by the King's of France preced- ing, and as they have there maintained them- selves by arms and treaties, especially those of Ryswick, Utrecht and Aix-la-chapelle."

Ah! but leaden bullets were more needed in the West than leaden plates! This Celeron found out before he had gone a dozen leagues. Hostile Senecas dug up his first plate and hur- ried with it to the English at Albany. At Logstown. near the present city of Pittsburg, he found some detested English traders, and a strong anti-French influence. He drove off the intruders with a sharp letter to their gov- ernor, but here his Iroquois and Abenakis In- dians deserted him, and, on their way north, tore from the trees the Arms of the King. Celeron hurried homeward by the shortest route-up the Miami River and down the Maumee and through the lakes-and ren- dered his alarming report. It was decided im- mediately to fortify Celeron's route. The en- terprising successor of Galissoniere-Govern- or Duquesne-sent a detachment from Que- bec with orders to proceed to Lake Erie and begin the building of a line of forts down the Ohio frontier, from Lake Erie to the Ohio River. This party, under the command of M. Marin, landed near the present site of Erie. Pennsylvania, and raised a fort.

The ruins of this fort in the West are still perceptible within the limits of the city of Erie. It was a strong work built of chestnut logs, 15 feet high and 120 feet square, with a block house on each side. It had a gate to the southward and one to the northward, but no port holes. It was first called Fort Du- que-ne, but later was named Fort Presque Isle from the promontory which juts out into the lake. From Fort Presque Isle M. Marin hewed a road southward, a distance of 13 2

miles, 21 feet in width, to the Riviere aux Boeufs - river of Buffaloes - later named French Creek by Washington. This was the first white man's road-military or otherwise -ever made in the Central West. It was built in 1753 and though it has not been used over its entire length since that day it marks, in a general way, the important route from the important route from the lakes to the Alleghia- ny and Ohio rivers, which became early in the 19th century the great thoroughfare for freight to and from the Ohio Valley and the East. For a distance of seven miles out of the city of Erie, the old French road of a century and a half ago is the main road south. At that dis- tance from the city the newi highway leaves the old French route. but the latter can be followed without difficulty until it meets the Erie-Waterford plank road.

.At the end of this road was erected Fort La Boeuf on the north bank of the West Fork of Riviere aux Boeufs, at the intersection of High and Water streets in what is now the town of Waterford, Pennsylvania. Being an inland fort it was not ranked or fortified as a first-class one; yet as a trading fort, it was of much importance in the chain from Quebec to the Ohio.

Late in the summer of 1753. M. Marin sent 50 men to erect a third fort in the chain from Lake Erie just below the junction of French Creek and the Alleghany River. on the present site of Franklin, Pennsylvania. Possession was taken of the site by Capt. Chabert de Joncaire who spent

the winter in a trader's hut. having been opposed by Indians' who said that the land was theirs, and that they would not have them build upon it. In the spring, however, machinery for a sawmill was brought from C'anada and oak and chestnut trees were cut down and sawn into timbers for a new fort which was completed in April. It was not an elaborate work but answered its purpose as an entrepot for goods going down to Fort Du- quesne. It was named Fort Machault from Jean Baptiste Machault, a celebrated French

HISTORY OF MARIETTA AND WASHINGTON COUNTY,

financier and politician and favorite of La Pompadour. The fort was a parallelogram about 75 by 105 feet with bastions in the form of polygons at the four angles. The gate fronted the river. It contained a magazine protected by three feet of earth and five bar- racks two stories high furnished with stone chimneys. The soldiers' barracks consisted of 44 buildings built around the fort on the north and east sides.

Thus, strong in her resources of military and civil centralization, France moved swift- ly into the West at last. In this, her superior- ity over the English colonies was as marked as her success in winning her way into the good graces of the Indians.

FRENCH AND ENGLISHI CHARACTER CON-

TRASTED.

French and English character nowhere show more plainly than in the nature of their contact with the Indian as each met him along the St. Lawrence, the Alleghany and the Great Lakes. The French came to conciliate the Indians, with no scruples as to how they might accomplish their task. The coureur-de-bois threw himself into the spirit of Indian life and very nearly adopted the Indian's ideals. The stolid English trader, keen for a bargain, just- ly suspicious of his white rival. invariably distant, seklom tried to ingratiate himself into the friendship of the redman. The voyageur flattered, cajoled, entertained in his wild way. regailed at tables, mingled without stint in Indian customs. Sir Gny Carleton writes : "France did not depend on the number of her troops, but on the discretion of her officers who learned the language of the natives. * * distributed the King's presents, ex- cited no jealousy and gained the affections of an ignorant. credulous but brave people. whose ruling passions are independence, grat- itude and revenge." The Englishman little affected the conceits of the red man, seldom opened his heart and was less commonly fa- miliar. He ignored as much as possible In-

dian habits; the Frenchman feigned all rev- erence for them, with a care never to rupture their stolid complacency. The English trader dressed like a ranger or trapper, making as lit- tle use of Indian dress as practicable. The voyageur adopted Indian dress commonly, or- namented himself with vermilion and ochre and danced with the aborigines before the fires ; he wore his hair long-crowned with a coronet of feathers; his hunting frock was trimmed with horsehair fringe and he carried a charmed rattlesnake's tail. "They were the most ro- mantic and poetic characters ever known in American frontier life. Their every move- ment attracts the rosiest coloring of imagina- tion. We see them gliding along the streams in their long canoes, shapely and serviceable as any water craft that man has ever designed. and yet buoyant and fragile as the wind- whirled autumn leaf. We catch afar off the thrilling cadences of their choruses floating over the prairie and marsh, echoing from for- est and hill, startling the buffalo from his haunt in the reeds, telling the drowsy deni- zens of the approach of revelry and whisper- ing to the Indian village of gaudy fabrics, of trinkets and of fire-water." This was not true alone of the French voyageur, it was more for less true of the French soldier and officer. Such conduct was not unknown among Eng- lish traders but it must have been compara- tively rare. Few men of his race had such a lasting and honorable hold upon the Indian as Sir William Johnson and we cannot be wrong in attributing much of his power (of such mo- mentous value to England through so many years ) to the spirit of comradeship and famil- iarity which underlay his studied deportment. "Are you ignorant," said the French Gov- ernor, Marquis Duquesne, to a deputation of Indians, "of the difference between the King of France and the English? Look at the forts which the King had built: you will find that under their very walls the beasts of the for- ests are hunted and slain; that they are, in fact, fixed in places most frequented by you merely to gratify more conveniently your ne-

AND REPRESENTATIL'E CITIZENS.

cessities. The English, on the contrary, no sooner occupy a post, than the woods fall be- fore their hand-the earth is subjected to cul- tivation-the game disappears-and your peo- ple are speedily reduced to combat with starva- tion." M. Garneau, the French-Canadian historian, frankly acknowledges that the Mar- ·quis here accurately described the chief dif- ference between the two civilizations. In 1757 M. Chauvignevie, Jr., a 17-year-old French prisoner among the English, said that at Fort La Boeuf the French plant corn around the fort for the Indians. "whose wives and chil- dren come to the fort for it, and get furnished also with clothes at the King's expense."

Horace Walpole, speaking of the French and English ways of seating themselves in America said: "They enslaved, or assisted the wretched nations to butcher one another, instructed them in the use of fire-arms, brandy and the New Testament, and at last, by scat- tered extension of forts and colonies, they have met to quarrel for the boundaries of em- pires, of which they can neither use nor occu- py a twentieth part of the included territory." "But." he sneers elsewhere, "ave do not mas- sacre: we are such good Christians as only to cheat."

But, while the French moved down the lakes and the Alleghany, and the English came across the mountains, what of the "poor" Indian for whose rich lands both were so anx- ious ?

An old Delaware sachem did not miss the mark widely when he asked the pathetic ques- tion: "The French claim all the lands on one side of the Ohio, and the English on the other ; now where does the Indian's land lie?" Truly, "between their fathers, the French, and their brothers, the English, they were in a fair way of being lovingly shared out of the whole country."

FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR.

cede to them the land between the Alleghany Mountains. But, as we have seen, the Six Nations had practically given up their Alle- ghany hunting grounds to the other nations who had swarmed in,-the Delawares (known to the French as the Loups, "wolves") and the Shawanese. So, in a loose way, the con- federacy of the Six Nations was friendly to the English, while the actual inhabitants of the land the Six Nations had "sold" were hostile to the English and usually friendly to the French. Besides these (the Delaware and Shawanese nations ) many fugitives from the Six Nations, especially Senecas, were found aiding the French, as the momentous struggle was precipitated and as Washington, Brad- dock. Shirley and Montgomery fought in vain at Fort Necessity, Braddock's Fiehl. Niagara and Quebec.

Almost nothing of this war occurred west of the Ohio River and it was won by England in the capture of Quebec in 1759.

PONTIAC'S REBELLION.

With the fall of Quebec, New France passed away and all French territory west of the Mississippi, save only a fishing station on the island of Newfoundland, came into the possession of the English crown. But the war which brought all this about was fought entirely in the northeast. Of it the West and its red-skinned inhabitants knew nothing. Fort Niagara was the most westerly fort which had succumbed to an English army, though Fort Duquesne had been evacuated. The story of successive defeats of the French were, perhaps, hardly heard of in the West. or, if communicated to the faith- ful Indian allies there, the logical con- clusion was not forced upon their at- tention. So far as they were con- cerned, France was never more in the pos- session of their lakes and forests than then. Was not the blundering Braddock killed and his fine army utterly put to rout? Were not

In 1744 the English paid £400 to the repre- sentatives of the Six Nations for assuming to , the French forts in the West-Presque Isle,

HISTORY OF MARIETTA AND WASHINGTON COUNTY.

Venango, La Boeuf, Miami and Detroit, se- cure? Fort Duquesne could be re-occupied whenever the French would give the signal. The leaden plates of France still reposed at the mouths of the rivers of the West and the Arms of the King of France still rattled in the wind which swept the land.

Fancy the surprise of the Indians, then. when little parties of red-coat soldiers came into the West and, with quiet insolence, took possession of the French forts and of the In- dian's land! And the French moved neither hand nor foot to oppose them, though through so many years they had boasted their prowess. and though io Wyandots could have done so successfully. Detroit was surrenderd to a mere corporal's guard, and the lesser forts to a sentry's watch each. It remained for the newcomers to inform the Indians of the events which led to the changing of the flags on these inland fortresses-to tell them that the French armies had been utterly overwhelmed, and the French capital captured, and French rule in America at an end.

But these explanations, given glibly. no doubt, by arrogant English officers, were re- peated over and over by the Indians, and slow- ly. before a hundred, yea, a thousand dim fires in the forests. We can believe it was not all plain to them, this sudden conquest of a coun- try where not a battle had been fought for eight years and that battle the greatest vic- tory ever achieved by the red man. Perhaps : messengers were sent back to the forts to gain casually, additional informa- tion concerning this marvelous conquest. French traders as ignorant, or feigning to be. as the Indians, were implored to explain the sudden forgetfulness of the "French Father" of the Indians.

It was inexplicable. The news spread rapidly : "The French have surrendered our land to the English." Fierce Shawanese around their fires at Chillicothe on the Scioto heard the news, and sullenly passed it on west- ward to the Miamis, and castward to the Del- awares on the Muskingum. The Senecas on

the upper Alleghany heard the news. The Ottawas and Wyandots on both sides of the Detroit River heard it-and before the fires of each of these fierce French-loving Indian nations there was much silence while chief- tains pondered, and the few words uttered were stern and cruel.

Cruel words grew to angry threats. By what right the chieftains asked, could the French surrender the Black Forest to the Eng- lish? When did the French come to own the land anyway. They were the guests, the friends of the Indian-not his conquerors. The French built forts it was true, but they were for the Indian as well as for the French, and were forts in name only and the more of them the merrier! But now a conqueror had come, telling the Indian the land was no longer his, but belonged to the British King.

Threats soon grew into visible form. Where it started is not surely known-some say from the Senecas on the upper Alleghany -but soon a fearful "Bloody Belt" went on a journey with its terrible summons to war. It passed to the Delawares and to the Shawanese and Miamis and Wyandots, and where it went the death halloo sounded through the forests. The call was to the Indians of the Black For- est to rise and cast out the English from the land. If the French could not have it. cer- tainly no one else should. The dogs of war were loosened. The young warriors of the Alleghany, and Muskingum, and Scioto, and Miami, and Detroit danced merrily before the fires, and the old men sang their half-forgot- ten war chants.

The terrible war which now burst over the West has never been paralleled by savages the world over in point of swift success. This may be attributed to the fact that a leader was found in Pontiac, a chieftain in the Ottawa nation, who, for daring and intelligence, was never matched by a man of his race. He had the courage of sweeping and patriotic convic- tions. He saw in the English occupation of the land the doom of the red man. Indeed, he must have seen it before, but if so he had not

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an opportunity to put lus convictions to a pub- "herst, His Majesty's commanding general in lic test. The Indian was becoming a changed America, haughtily condemned the signs of revolution as "unwarranted." Moreover, he gave his officers in the West authority to de- clare to the Indian chieftains that if they should conspire they would in his eyes make "a contemptible figure!" Time passed and the garrisons breathed easily as quiet reigned. man. The implements and utensils of the white man were adopted by the red. The in- dependent forest arts of their fathers were be- ginning to be forgotten. Kettles and blank- ets and powder and lead were taking the place of the wooden bowls and fur robes and swift flint-heads. In another generation the art of making a living for himself in the forest would be forgotten by the Indian, and he would henceforth be absolutely dependent upon the foreigner. All this Pontiac saw. He felt commissioned to lead a return to nature. The arts of the white man must be discarded and the Indians must come back to their primitive mode of living in dependence upon their own skill and ingenuity.

And so Pontiac waged a religious war. At a great convention of the savages he told them that a Delaware Indian had, while lost in the forests, been guided into a path which led to the home of the Great Spirit, and, on com- ing there, had been upbraided by the Master of Life himself for the degenerate state to which his race was falling. The forest arts of their fathers must be encouraged and re- lied up. The utensils of the white man must be banished from the wigwams. Bows and arrows and tomahawks and stone hatchets should not be discarded. Otherwise the Great Spirit would take away their land from them and give it to others. And so, much of the fury which accompanied the war was a sort of religious frenzy. "The Master of Life himself has stirred us up." said the war- riors.

Pontiac's plot-undoubtedly the most com- prehensive military campaign ever conceived in a red man's brain-was discovered by the British at Fort Miami, on the Maumee River. in March, 1763, four years after the fall of Quebec. There the "Bloody Belt" was found and secured before it could be forwarded to the Wabash with its murderous message. By threats and warnings the untutored English officers thought to quell the disturbance. Am-

It was but the lull before the storm. On the 7th of May, Pontiac, who led his Otta- was at Braddock's depot. appeared before, Detroit-the metropolis of the northwest- with 300 warriors. The watchful- ness of the brave Major Gladwin, a well- trained pupil in that school on Braddock's Road, and the failure of Pontiac to capture the fort by strategy, though his warriors were admitted within its walls and had shortened guns concealed beneath their blankets, was the dramatic beginning of a reign of terror and a war of devastation all the way from Sault St. Marie to even beyond the crest of the \l- leghanies. Pontiac immediately invested Detroit and throughout the Black Forest his faithful allies did their Ottawa chieftain's will. On the 16th of May, Fort Sandusky was surrounded by Indians seemingly friend- ly. The British commander permitted seven to enter. As they sat smoking, by the turn of a head the signal was given and the command- er was a prisoner. As he was hurried out of the fort he saw, here one dead soldier, there another-victims of the massacre. Nine days later a band of Indians appeared before the fort at the mouth of the St. Joseph. "We are come to see our relatives." they said, "and wished the garrison good morning." Within two minutes after their entrance, the com- manding officer and three men were prisoners and If others were murdered. Two days later the commander of Fort Miami, on the Maumee River, came, at an Indian mother's pitiful plea, to the Indian village to bleed a sick child. He was shot in his tracks. Four days later the commander of Fort Ouatianon, on the Wabash, was inveigled into an Indian cabin and captured, the fort surrendering

HISTORY OF MARIETTA AND WASHINGTON COUNTY.

forthwith. Two days later Indians gathered at Fort Michilimackinac to engage in a game of lacrosse. At the height of the contest, the ball was thrown near a gate of the fort. In the twinkling of an eye the commanding of- ficer who stood watching the game was seized, and the Indians, snatching tomahawks from under the blankets of the squaws who were standing in proper position, entered the fort and killed 15 soldiers outright and took the remainder of the garrison prisoners. Sixteen days later Fort La Boeuf, on French Creek, where Washington delivered his message to the haughty St. Pierre a decade before, was attacked by an overwhelming army, of sav- ages. Keeping the enemy off until midnight, the garrison made safe its escape, unknown to the exultant besiegers who had already fired one corner bastion, and fled down the river to Fort Pitt. On their way they passed the smoldering ruins of Fort Venango. Two days later Fort Presque Isle was attacked. In two days the commander senseless with terror struck his flag. The same day Fort Ligonier. in the foothills of the Alleghanies, was in- vested by a besieging army.

Thus the campaign of Pontiac, prosecuted with such swiftness and such success, bade fair to end in triumph. "We hate the English," the Indians sent word to the French on the Mississippi, "and wish to kill them. We are all united: the war is our war, and we will continue it for seven years. The English shall never come into the West!"

with unshaken courage worthy of their Saxon blood.

In planning his campaign, Pontiac dele- gated the Shawanese and Delawares to carry Fort Pitt. If they could not do it, he might be assured that the position was impregnable. They were his most reliable warriors, and, once given the task of carrying out the second most important coup of their great leader's plan, could be trusted to use any alternative savage lust could suggest, or trick savage cunning could invent in order to accomplish their por- tion of the terrible conquest of the West. The defense of Detroit was brave; but Detroit was on the great water highway east and west. Succor was possible, in fact probable, in time ; if not, there was a way of escape. At Fort Pitt neither could be expected. Moreover the fort had never been completed. On three sides the flood tides of the rivers had injured it. Ecuyer, its valiant defender, threw up a rough rampart of logs and palisaded the in- terior. And in this fragile fortress, hardly worthy of the name, behind which lay the darkling Alleghanies and about which loomed the Black Forest, were gathered some 600 souls, a larger community, probably, than the total population of Detroit. And around on every side were gathered the lines of ochred warriors preparing for another charge even to the very blood-bespatered walls. The garrison might well have believed itself be- vond the reach of succor, if. indeed, succor could avail before need of it had vanished. The bones of Braddock's 700 slain lay scat- tered about the forests only seven miles away. How could another army come even that far? Little wonder that the Shawanese and Dela- wares were already flushed with victory as they renewed their unavailing attacks.

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History of Marietta and Washington County, Ohio, and representative citizens, Part 4

Author: Andrews, Martin Register, 1842-; Hathaway, Seymour J Publication date: 1902 Publisher: Chicago : Biographical Pub. Co. Number of Pages: 1490

Author: Andrews, Martin Register, 1842-; Hathaway, Seymour J
Publication date: 1902
Publisher: Chicago : Biographical Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 1490