USA > Ohio > Morgan County > History of Morgan County, Ohio, with portraits and biographical sketches of some of its pioneers and prominent men > Part 3
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 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68
It was on the strength of his con- quest that Virginia in 1778 organized the whole region from her western boundaries to the Mississippi into the county of Illinois, and held courts at Vincennes in 1779. Colonel John Todd was Virginia's county lieutenant or commander-in-chief for Illinois County, and established local governments in most of the western settlements. Vir- ginia continued to exercise authority- or, at least, a show of authority-over this vast region until 1784, when she yielded all of her claims to territory in the Northwest to the general govern- ment.
Before leaving the subject of early travels and explorations in the West let us briefly tell the story of the Mora- vian missionaries and the sad fate of the settlements founded by them.
The missionaries of the Moravian Church (a Protestant denomination whose chief seat was at Bethlehem, Pa.) were most zealous and successful in their efforts to convert the Indians to Christianity. As early as 1761, one of their number, the Rev. Christian Frederick Post, visited the Delawares on the Tuscarawas, and built himself a cabin near where the town of Bolivar now is. Having established friendly re- lations with the savages, he returned to Bethlehem. In May of the following year he was again at his cabin on the banks of the Tuscarawas, accompanied by another missionary, Rev. John Heckewelder. They began making a small clearing for the purpose of plant- ing a garden. This alarmed the Indians, who feared that the missionaries con-
26
HISTORY OF MORGAN COUNTY, OHIO.
templated taking possession of their lands. A compromise was finally made, the Indians allowing Post and Ilecke- welder a garden spot fifty paces square. During the summer Post went to Lan- caster, leaving Heckewelder at the sta- tion to instruct the Indian children .- During a portion of the summer Hecke- welder lived with Thomas Calhoun, an Indian trader who had his cabin near that which Post had built. Ile was obliged to hide his books and do all his reading and writing in secret, the Indians having a superstitious fear of reading and writing, thinking when it was going on something was being done to rob them of their lands. In October IIeckewelder left the Indian country, on account of rumors of war and un- casiness among the Indian nations.
Though this first attempt to convert the Indians resulted in failure, the zeal- ous Moravians did not abandon the en- terprise. In 1771 Rev. David Zeis- berger visited the Tuscarawas, and in 1772 established a missionary settle- ment composed of twenty-eight persons and called it Schonbrunn (Beautiful Spring). Its site was near the present town of New Philadelphia, Tuscarawas County. Rev. John Roth, Rev. George Jungman and Rev. John Etwin came out from Pennsylvania in the sante year, and in the spring of 1773 the set- tlement of Gnadenhutten (Tents of Grace) was founded on the river seven miles below Schonbrunn. A town was regularly laid out and a large chapel erected. The converted Indians betook themselves to agricultural pursuits, and led a simple, quiet, peaceful existence. The missionaries' labors were abun- dantly blessed, and the number of con- verts rapidly increased. In the spring of 1776 another Moravian settlement,
consisting of eight families, was formed by Revs. Zeisberger and IIeckewelder. It was situated about two miles from the present site of Coshocton and was called Lichtenau (Meadows or Fields of Light). In 1777, through the agency of British emissaries, a portion of the converts of Schonbrunn were induced to desert the settlement, renounce Christianity and join the hostile In- dians. Soon after the town was des- troyed. In 1780 Lichtenau was aban- doned and the settlement of Salem founded, five miles below Gnadenhut- ten. Meantime, Schonbrunn had been reoccupied.
The British, having become jealous of the influence which the Moravians were gaining among the Indians, sent a party of Wyandot and Muncie warriors to the settlements. The Indians were led by the chiefs Pipe, Half-King, Wing- mund and others, and by Captain Elli- ott and three other white men, one of whom, Kuhn by name, had been adopted into an Indian tribe and chosen a chief. The missionaries were charged with having held correspondence with the agents of the American colonies then in rebellion against the British. On this slender pretext the three settle- ments were broken up and all the in- habitants forcibly removed to Sandusky in September, 1781. The missionaries, Zeisberger, Edwards, Heckewelder and Senseman, were subsequently tried at Detroit and found not guilty of the charges made against them.
In the winter following, the Moravian Indians at Sandusky, suffering from the want of sufficient provisions, sought and obtained permission to return to their former homes on the Tuscarawas for the purpose of gathering some of the corn which they had left standing
27
THE EARLY NORTHWEST.
in the fields at the time of their hurried departure. They reached the Tuscara- was and began their work early in March. Meantime, the winter having been unusually fine, war parties had set out from the Sandusky country earlier than usual, and on one of their incur- sions had murdered a family named Wallace near the Ohio River, and then fled westward toward the Moravian towns. The murderers arrived at the Tuscarawas, found the Moravians there and told them of the crime they had conmitted. The Christian Indians, fearing for their own safety, knowing that the whites of the border settle- ments would likely pursue the hostile warriors, warned the latter to leave their towns. Before they departed, however, they bartered a dress and some other articles which they had taken from the murdered Mrs. Wallace to some young and thoughtless Mora- vian girls. This circumstance may have led to the massacre which followed, though it is doubtful if the Moraviaus would have been spared in any event. A force of eighty or ninety men, led by Colonel David Williamson, arrived at Gnadenhutten on the 7th of March, in pursuit of the Sandusky warriors whose outrages had aroused the resentment of the inhabitants of the border. They found the peaceful Indians at work in the fields, picking corn to carry to their starving kindred on the Sandusky hav- ing their arms, according to their usual custom, near at hand. The whites greeted the Indians in a friendly man- ner, told them they had come on a peaceful errand, to lead them to Fort Pitt and place them under the protec- tion of the American ;. The Indians received this announcement with pleas- ure, delivered over their arms to the
whites and at once began preparing for the journey. A part of Williamson's men went to Salem and brought the Indians from the fields at that place to Guadenhutten. All were then placed under guard and confined in some of the deserted buildings of the town. The whites now showed their true col- ors, and instead of using friendly words began taunting the Moravians and call- ing them thieves and murderers. The Indians protested their innocence and sued for mercy in vain. The question was put whether the captives should be led to Fort Pitt or dispatched then and there. Only eighteen men out of the eighty or ninety in the party favored the former course. Then, while the Moravians, with childlike faith and touching devotion, were uttering their simple prayers to their Maker and sing- ing the hymns which the noble mission- aries had taught them, the dreadful carnage began. Neither age nor sex moved the heartless whites to feelings of mercy or pity. Like sheep iu a pen the helpless Indians were slaughtered by their ruthless captors. The fiendish work ceased only when there were no more victims. Of all that were gath- ered in the slaughter-pens at Gnaden- hutten on that bloody day-March 7. 1782-only two escaped. Ninety-six lives were taken. Sixty-two of the victims were grown persons, about one- third of them women. The remainder were children and youth of both sexes. The Moravians who were at work in the fields at Schoenbrunn fled at the approach of Williamson's men and escaped.
The history of the white man's treat- ment of the red race nowhere exhibits a darker record of heartless cruelty, of preconcerted treachery and wanton, un-
28
HISTORY OF MORGAN COUNTY, OIIIO.
provoked murder than is furnished in this story of the massacre of Gnaden- hutten. When we read that for scores of years afterward white settlers in various parts of the country lived in constant danger of attacks from the Indians, can we wonder at the fact! Rather we should wonder, knowing what the nature of the savage was, that there ever again should be peace between the white man and the red.
The close of the Revolutionary War left the western country, from the great lakes on the north to Florida on the south and the Mississippi on the west, in the possession of the United States. Prior to that time the question of the ownership of that vast region was a vexed and much disputed topic, which had given rise to much interna- tional controversy. France, making the discoveries of Marquette and La Salle the basis of her title, claimed the whole Mississippi Valley as a part of New France. Later, by the treaty of Utrecht in 1713, the entire region from the lakes to the gulf became a part of the French province of Louisiana. Not until the treaty of Paris, at the close of the French and Indian war in 1763, did France relinquish her claims to the ter- ritory east of the Mississippi and west of the Alleghany mountains.
England, from the earliest period of discovery and settlement of the Atlantic coast by British subjects, laid claim to all the land from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and all the royal charters granted to the several original colonies defined their boundaries as extending from sea to sea. In later years one ground of England's claim to the West was a treaty made at Lancaster, Pa., in 1744, between British agents and the Six Nations, by which the latter, who
claimed to own all the Ohio Valley, ceded their title to the king. By act of the British Parliament in 1774 the whole of what was afterward the Northwest Territory of the United States was made a part of the Canadian province of Quebec.
On the strength of their charters several of the thirteen original colonies claimed dominion west of the Allegha- nies. We have seen that Virginia or- ganized the county of Illinois, including the whole Northwest, in 1778-79. But she began to assert her claims even ear- lier, organizing the county of Botetourt in, 1769 with the Mississippi as its west- ern limit. But her government of the region from 1769 to 1779 existed rather in name than in fact.
New York was the first of the States to surrender her claims to a part of the West. Under her charter, granted by Charles II in 1664, New York claimed western territory which prior charters had given to Massachusetts and Connec- ticut. On the 1st of March, 1781, she ceded to the United States all her right, title and jurisdiction in lands beyond her present western boundaries.
Virginia had better grounds for her claims than any other State, resting her title upon charters issued by King James I in 1606, 1609 and 1612, upon the conquest of the western country by General Clark, and her subsequent ex- ercise of civil authority therein. Never- theless she speedily followed the ex- ample set by New York, and on the 1st of March, 1784, conveyed to the United States all her lands northwest of the Ohio, reserving a small tract, known as the Virginia Military District, in Southern Ohio.
In the same year Massachusetts ceded her claims without reservation, and the
29
THE EARLY NORTHWEST.
action was formally ratified April 18, 1785.
Connecticut made, as Chief Justice Chase expressed it, "the last tardy and reluctant sacrifice of State pretensions to the general good," on the 14th of September, 1786, ceding to Congress all her "right, title, interest, jurisdiction and claim" to lands northwest of the Ohio, with the exception of the Con- necticut Western Reserve ; that tract she was allowed to hold and dispose of, and she did not yield her claims of jurisdiction over it until May 30, 1800.
Thus, in a brief time after the terri- tory passed from British to American control, all the various conflicting and embarrassing State claims were amica- bly adjusted and the way prepared for stable and effective government in the Northwest.
The close of the Revolution and the treaty of peace left the United States to deal with the Indian question alone, Great Britain even neglecting to make any provision for the Six Nations, who had steadfastly adhered to her side, and manfully fought for her interests throughout the war. It has sometimes been said that republics are ungrateful. Be that as it may, what ought to be said of the ingratitude of a great kingdom which treats a powerful confederation of people as friends and allies for years, uses them to fight its own battles, then basely deserts them ? This savage con- federacy, consisting of the Mohawks, Onondagas, Senecas, Tuscaroras, Cayu- gas and Oneidas, for more than a century had claimed the ownership of the Ohio Valley.
One of the first acts of the infant Republic was the making of a treaty with the Six Nations. Congress ap- pointed Oliver Wolcott, Richard But-
ler and Arthur Lee as commissioners, and the treaty was concluded at Fort Stanwix, October 22, 1784. Corn- planter and Red Jacket, two of the ablest of the chiefs of the Six Nations, were present at the treaty, the former counseling peace and the latter war. Lafayette, the noble French ally of the Americans, was also present, and warmly urged upon the Indians the im- portance of making peace with the United States. The most important provision of the treaty, so far as the West was concerned, was the surrender by the allied tribes of all claim to lands in the Ohio Valley.
The treaty of Fort McIntosh was concluded January 21, 1785, between George Rogers Clark, Richard Butler and Arthur Lee, commissioners of the United States, and representatives of the Indian tribes of the Delawares, Wyandots, Ottawas and Chippewas. The treaty provided for the surrender to the United States of all prisoners then held by the several tribes, and the Indians declared themselves under the protection of the United States Gov ernment, and of no other power what- ever. The third article of the treaty declared :
" The boundary line between the United States and the Wyandot and Delaware nations shall begin at the mouth of the river Cuyahoga, and run thence up the said river to the portage between that and the Tuscara was branch of the Muskingum ; thence down the said branch to the forks at the crossing-place above Fort Laurens ; then westwardly to the portage of the Big Miami, which runs into the Ohio, at the mouth of which branch the fort stood which was taken by the French in 1752; then along the said portage
30
HISTORY OF MORGAN COUNTY, Ollo.
to the Great Miami or Ome River, # and down the southeast side of the same to its mouth ; thence along the south shore of Lake Erie to the mouth of Cuyahoga, where it began."
" ARTICLE 4TH .- The United States allot all the lands within the said lines to the Wyandot and Delaware nations to live and to hunt on, and to such of the Ottawa nation as now live thereon, saving and reserving for the establish- ment of trading posts six miles square at the mouth of the Miami or Ome River, and the same at the portage of that branch of the Miami which runs into the Ohio, and the same on the Lake of Sandusky, where the fort for- merly stood, and also two miles square on each side of the lower rapids of Sandusky River ; which posts and the lands annexed to them shall be to the use and under the government of the United States."
The United States agreed that the Indians might punish as they pleased any person attempting to settle on the resesved land of the Wyandot and Dela- ware nations. The Indians signing the treaty surrendered all claims to lands east, south and west of the limits speci- fied in the third article. Articles 7 and S reserved to the United States the posts of Detroit and Michillimackinac (Mack- inac) and small tracts about them. Article 9th declared that if any Indian should murder or rob any citizen of the United States the tribe to which he be- longed should deliver him up to the authorities at the nearest post. The concluding article was as follows :
" ARTICLE 10TH .- The commissioners of the United States, in pursuance of the humane and liberal views of Con- gress, upon the treaty's being signed,
will direct goods to be distributed among the different tribes for their use and comfort."
The Shawnees, at a treaty held at Fort Finney, at the mouth of the Great Miami, January 31, 1786, surrendered their claims to land in the Ohio Valley. George Rogers Clark, Richard Butler and Samuel H. Parsons were the com- missioners who negotiated the treaty. (General Parsons was afterward one of the pioneer settlers at Marietta and one of the territorial judges. Ile was drowned in the Big Beaver River No- vember 17, 1789.) James Monroe, from Virginia, afterward President of the United States, accompanied General Butler on his way to Fort Finney as far as Limestone, now Maysville, Ky., where they arrived in October, 1785. The party, according to General But- ler's journal, stopped at the mouth of the Muskingum and left fixed in a locust tree a letter recommending the building of a fort on the Ohio side.
The terms of the treaty confined the Shawnees to territory west of the Great Miami. They gave hostages for the return of all citizens of the United States then held by them as prisoners, and acknowledged the sovereignty of the American goverment over all ter- ritory ceded by the British. The treaty was soon disregarded by the Shawnees, who began to be dissatisfied with its provisions almost as soon as they had yielded their assent to them. Con- gress now changed its tactics, and in- stead of assuming that the treaty with Great Britain had made the American government the absolute owner of the Indian lands, began to recognize the Indians' rights to the territory. In July, 1787, $26,000 was appropriated for the purpose of extinguishing Indian
*The Maumee.
31
THE ABORIGINES OF OHIO.
titles in the West and making a pur- chase beyond the limits fixed by the previous treaties. Under this policy the treaty of Fort Harmar (1789), the
treaty of Greenville (1795) and others of later date were concluded. The Fort Harmar and Greenville treaties are described in another chapter.
CHAPTER II.
TIIE ABORIGINES OF OHIO.
SOUTHEASTERN OHIO BEFORE ITS OCCUPATION BY THE WHITE MAN-A REGION WITHOUT INHAB- ITANTS-THE PARADISE OF THE INDIAN HUNTER-EVIDENCE OF A GREAT BUT EXTINCT PEOPLE -THE MOUND-BUILDERS-THEIR WORKS, AND THEORIES AS TO THEIR ORIGIN-INDIANS OF OHIO-ORIGINAL TRIBES-CONQUEST OF THE COUNTRY BY THE IROQUOIS-INDIAN TOWNS-THE DELAWARES OF THE MUSKINGUM AND THE TUSCARAWAS-THEIR TRADITIONS-THEIR CHIEFTAINS -THE SHAWNEES-THEIR FIERCENESS AND HOSTILITY-OTHER INDIAN NATIONS-ESTIMATE OF THE NUMBER OF WARRIORS, 1778-COLONEL JAMES SMITH'S ACCOUNT OF THIS EXPERIENCE AMONG THE INDIANS OF THE MUSKINGUM VALLEY, 1755-THE HAIR PLUCKED FROM HIS HEAD, HE IS MADE AN INDIAN-INTERESTING PICTURES OF SAVAGE LIFE IN THE WILDERNESS -- WAR SONGS AND DANCES-HUNTING EPISODES-REMINISCENCES BY WILLIAM CORNER-AN INDIAN TRAIL IN MORGAN COUNTY.
B EFORE the white men came to occupy the country a considerable portion of the valley of the Upper Ohio was for many years a region without in- habitants. According to Hildreth this unpeopled tract was from forty to sixty miles in width on both sides of the Ohio, and extended from the site of Pittsburgh to the mouth of the Great Miami, and was chiefly appropriated by the Indian tribes, who laid claim to the territory as hunting-grounds. With the exception of Logstown, in Western Pennsylvania, and a Shawnee village at the mouth of the Scioto, there were few spots in the entire district that were permanently occupied. It was a veri- table paradise for the hunter. The streams abounded in fish and were the
haunts of valuable fur-bearing animals, such as the mink, the otter and the beaver. Over the hills and through the valleys roamed the elk, the deer and the buffalo. Beasts of prey, too, abounded, and the silence of the forest was fre- quently brokeu by the hoarse ery of the bear, the shriek of the panther, or the bark of the wolf.
Yet there was a time . when the mighty river and its tributaries was the seat of a great population, a semi-civil- ized race whose history is unwritten, whose achievements in war and peace are unrecorded, and whose manner of life is unknown. Their origin as well as their final destiny is veiled in ob- seurity, and yet remains the theme of unfruitful speculation. But upon the
32
HISTORY OF MORGAN COUNTY, OHIO.
shores of lakes, streams and rivers, from the western base of the Alleghanies to the eastern foothills of the Rocky Mountains, they have left countless mementoes of themselves to remind future generations of the antiquity of human life in America. The relies of this curious and mysterious raee, known to us only as the Mound-Builders, are especially numerous in Ohio, existing in almost every part of the State. The ancient mounds at Marietta and at many other places in the valleys of the Ohio and the Muskingum are but few of many monuments left by this people to mystify the arehæologists of today. Morgan County had its share of these relies, and though the plowshare has eliminated all traces of many, some are still traceable along the principal water- eonrses. The following aecount of an examination of some of these prehistorie works, made by an English traveler named Ash, in the year 1826, may serve as an example of what the mounds are :
"On the banks of a creek on the west side of the Muskingum, in Morgan County, were found numerous small mounds, the bases of which were eom- posed of hard burned brieks about five inelies square, and on the brieks were charcoal einders mixed with partieles of calcined bones of human frames. The general shape and size of the mounds showed that the bones had been first burned on the brick altars and after- ward covered with earth to proteet them and mark the spots. One of these mounds was over twenty feet square, and the bricks plainly showed the action of fire. This mound was covered with large trees, some of which were ascer- tained to be five hundred years old. Lying on the ground were found trees
in a state of decay that had fallen from old age. From a minute ealeulation of the age of the fallen trees and of those vet standing it was found that the mound was at least a thousand years old." *
The mounds deseribed were doubtless burial-mounds. Others, ereeted on hill- tops, seem to have been constructed as wateh-towers, while still others, by their peculiar construction, show that they were built as defensive fortifieations. Among late theories as to what people built the mounds of the great eentral valley of America, one supposes them to have been kindred to or identical with the Aztecs of Mexico; another, that the Zuni Indians of the Far West are the last remnant of this once great people.
The condition of the country of the Upper Ohio was found to be, as we have deseribed it, a region without inlab- itants when the early French voyageurs first explored the West, and so it eon- tinued years later when English advent- urers and American explorers visited it .. It seems probable that the savage Indian tribes of the North made warlike ineur- sions upon the ancient people of the val- ley, dispossessed them of their lands, and were in turn themselves conquered and driven out by the powerful Iroquois. The latter supposition is corroborated by various Indian legends.
The Five Nations (inereased to Six by an alliance [about 1711] with their kinsmen, the Tusearoras or Tusearawas), whose densest population was in North- ern New York, ambitiously elaimed to be the conquerors of the entire West, and actually held several weaker tribes in subjugation. They maintained the
*"Centennial History of the Muskingum and Tus- carawas Valleys," by C. H. Mitchener.
33
THE ABORIGINES OF OHIO.
strongest organized confederacy known among the aborigines of North Amer- 'ca, and their government had some of he elements of a rude republic. Their confederacy is said to have been formed early in the sixteenth century, and the result of the powerful alliance was that they soon gained a complete mastery of the tribes which had hitherto held dominion in the territory now consti- tuting the State of Ohio. Their power- ful warriors were the dreaded enemies of the western Indians, and the use of the Upper Ohio by their war parties doubtless caused it to be deserted by other tribes.
The Eries, a once powerful people, are supposed to have anciently held sway over the greater portion of what is now the State of Ohio. Their chief villages were on the borders of the great lake bearing their namc. The Andastes are said to have occupied the valleys of the Allegheny and the Upper Ohio, and the Hurons or Wyandots to have held dominion in the upper peninsula be- tween the lakes. All werc of Iroquois origin. The Upper Ohio and the Alle- gheny was called by the early French travelers the River of the Iroquois, and its exploration was long deferred on account of their hostility. The Hurons were the first nation conquered by the Iroquois confederacy. The Eries were next compelled to yield submission be- fore the prowess of the valiant warriors of the Five Nations. The warfare was long and bloody, and its close left but a feeble remnant of the once mighty Eries alive. This conquest took place about the year 1655. About 1672 the Five Nations won their victory over the Andastes.
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.