USA > Ohio > History of Ohio, covering the periods of Indian, French and British dominion, the territory Northwest, and the hundred years of statehood > Part 8
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* The Winning of the West. Vol. I.
t As early as the Scotch-Irish in Pennsylvania. were the Protestant Ger- mans from the Palatinate, of whom James Logan wrote, in 1717, that a great number had poured in. It was feared in 1730 that Pennsylvania would become a German colony. They were, in fact, within a few decades. one- third of the total population. One of them was the pioneer of navigation to the gulf. They did not seek trouble with the red men, but after that danger was past they came west, and very largely monopolized great regions of Olio. No people have done more to build the prosperity of the State.
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assemblage of Iroquois, Delawares and Shawanee deputies in the memorable convention at Fort Stanwix, in New York .. The result was that Sir William, recognizing the old elaim of the Iroquois to sovereignty over the Ohio valley, purchased from them, for some- thing over £10,000, all the country south of the Ohio river to the Tennessee, the boundary following the Ohio and Alleghany rivers up to Kittaning, and along the west branch of the Susquehanna, and thence across to Oswego. Separate grants were made to Pennsyl- vania of all the territory elaimed by that state west of the Susque- hanna, and the old treaties of Lancaster and Logstown were revoked. The king disapproved this treaty, as contrary to the instructions given, but was induced to ratify it in December, 1769, apparently as the best solution of the problem offered by the energy of the fron- tiersmen, the importunity of the land companies and colonial sol- diers, and the claims of the despoiled traders.
About the same time the Mississippi company was formed, in which George Washington was a member, which asked for two and a half million aeres of land. Though this failed, Colonel Washing- ton individually obtained patents for over 32,000 aeres of land on the Ohio and Kanawha, and went down the Ohio river to survey and mark his domain in 1770. A traet of land embraeing about one- fourth of West Virginia was given under the Stanwix treaty to traders in compensation for their losses, which they proposed to settle as a new territory under the name of Indiana. The Walpole com- pany, which sneceeded in obtaining a grant, subject to the approval of the Six Nations, was merged in a sort of "trust company," inelnd- ing the old Ohio company of Virginia, which proposed to launch the new province of Vandalia, including all Kentucky west of the mouth of the Scioto, and much of West Virginia. But before this title could be perfected, the Revolution came on, and these land com- panies became practically extinet.
While none of these schemes directly concerned Ohio land," they immediately affected the history of Ohio, as the Delawares and Shawanees felt themselves outraged by the sale of Kentucky by the Iroquois, and every new viewer of land set their passions to a tenser pitch. "They view the settlements of the people upon this river with an uneasy and jealous eye," said Washington after his trip down
* The first scheme to settle within the bounds of Ohio was that of an ambitious association of "Yankees," who proposed to the crown and the gov- ernment of Connecticut in 1755 to establish a colony west of Pennsylvania, to extend indefinitely between the Mississippi river and the Alleghanies. The plan was to allot 300 acres to each grown person who settled, except slaves, and the same area to children when they came of age, at an annual quit rent of two shillings per hundred acres, which should be applied to the support of government, christianizing of Indians, relief of the poor, encour- agement of learning and other purposes of public good. In this proposed colony all Protestants of orthodox belief should be eligible to office, but no member of the church of Rome should be allowed to own lands or bear arms.
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the Ohio, "and do not seruple to say that they must be compensated for their right, if the people settle thereon, notwithstanding the ees- sion of the Six Nations."
A prominent figure at the Stanwix treaty was Dr. Thomas Walker, of Virginia, who had explored the Cherokee lands south of the Ohio. His pioneer efforts were followed by those of Joseph Martin, and Col. James Smith (a captive in Ohio in 1735-60), and the traders, among them John Finley, who traveled the Warrior's trail from Cumberland gap up toward the mouth of the Seioto. On his return to North Carolina Finley joined with others in forming a party to explore Kentucky. The leader was Daniel Boone, a Pennsylvanian by birth, and a famous chief of hunting parties on the border. After their visit in 1769 the "dark and bloody ground," south of the Ohio river, previously the neutral region of the warring northern and southern Indians, began to be the hunting grounds of adventurous whites who incidentally phindered the Shawanees and Cherokees and were in turn phindered by them, with inevitable killings on each side. Daniel Boone was also a surveyor, and in a few years there were others in the same profession locating lands for themselves or soldiers who had bounty grants. In 1773 Boone made his settle- ment, not without a battle with Indians, and Simon Kenton, wander- ing through Kentucky, lost one of his companions, who was burned by the red men at the stake.
These huntings, killings, surveys and settlements south and east of the Ohio meant rankling hostility among the Shawanees and Dela- wares, and a condition of border warfare was initiated, which con- tinned for twenty years. Into the heart of the tumult the peace- loving Moravians were led by their fate, one might say, though they would have aseribed their continual association with misfortune to the decree of an inserutable providence. After their disasters in eastern Pennsylvania, the Rev. David Zeisberger, in 1768, sought security in the wilderness and planted a mission on the AAlleghany. gaining the friendship of Glickhegan, orator of the Wolf elan of Delawares, who euded in renouncing war and joining with Zeisher- ger in establishing a mission on the Big Beaver, which was called Friedenstadt. But this "eity of peace" the well-meaning mission- aries established in a region notorious, from the early days of Logs- town, as the headquarters of the most unserupulons traders and law- less characters, even worse than those the missionaries had suffered from in the more eastern regions. This elass spread the rumor that Zeisberger intended to sell his converts to the Cherokees as slaves, and in every possible way increased the irritation caused by the defee- tion of Gliekhegan and others from their customary places in tribal life .*
* King's History of Ohio.
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Seeking a home yet further west, Zeisberger, in 1771, was hos- pitably entertained and heard with favor by old Netawatwees, chief of the Turtle tribe of the Delawares, on the Tnscarawas, where Post had attempted a settlement ten years before. In the following year, with the approval of the Wyandots, the United Brethren were invited to come with all their converted Indians in Pennsylvania, and make their home where they might choose in the Muskingum valley. A general conneil of the church accepted this call, and Zeisberger and some assistants, looking for a location in 1772, decided upon the beautiful and fertile country on the eastern bank of the Tusearawas, northward from the confluence at the head of Muskingum river, and the Delawares gladly accorded them some miles along the river, between their town and Stillwater creek. Zeisberger and five Indian families entered this haven of rest May 3, 1772, and falling at once to work, soon had fields and gardens cleared and planted, and a town begun, which they called Schonbrun, abont two miles south of the present site of New Philadelphia. In all, more than a hundred Moravian Indians came from Beaver, and they were soon reinforced by a colony from Wyalusing, about two hundred and fifty, led by the Revs. John Etwein and John Heckewelder. The Delawares in these parties congregated at Schonbrun and the Mohicans founded a new town called Gnadenhütten, seven miles down, reviving the title of the ruined village on the Lehigh. At a later date they built, five miles further down, the town of Salem. But while all were yet assem- bled together at Schonbrun, in 1772, the rules of the congregation, which Taylor" ealls "the first act of Ohio legislation-the eonstitu- tion of 1772," was read and accepted by the people. These rules were a simple, brief statement of faith and admonition as to conduet. No more was necessary. The Bible was the constitution, in fact. The missionaries looked after the government, and the helpers (or national assistants), chosen from among the Indian converts, saw that good order was maintained. Certain sorts of people were for- bidden to enter or remain, such as murderers, thieves or drunkards, and those who attended dances, sacrifices or heathenish festivals, or used Tshappich (witeheraft) in hunting. All pledged themselves to observe Sunday for rest and worship, renounce "all juggles, lies and deceits of Satan," obey the teachers and helpers, be industrions and peaceful, requite any damage to the property of another, keep out of debt to traders and buy nothing of them on commission without the consent of the national assistants, go not on long journeys or hunts without informing the minister or steward, and cheerfully contribute labor to publie work. No intoxicating liquor was to be brought to the towns. Young people were not to marry without the consent of their parents ; a man should have but one wife, and a woman but one
* History of Ohio, p. 233.
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husband, to whom she should be obedient, taking care of the children and being cleanly in all things. At a later date new rules were made necessary by the war of the Revolution, viz .: "No man inelining to go to war, which is the shedding of blood, ean remain with us," and banishing those who should buy things known to be stolen or plun- dered. These regulations, with other rules regarding church gov- ernment, regulations for the banishment of individuals (which was the only punishment ), control of schools, relief of the needy and burial of the dead, made up the Moravian code of laws.
This most worthy enterprise has been compared to the settlement of the Puritans. "These missions were the primordial establishment of Ohio, as true as that Plymouth was the beginning of Massachus- etts," says one of the historians of the State. But the essential dif- ference must be noted, that Schonbrun and Gnaddenhiitten were not settlements of white people but communities of Indian families attended by white teachers. If they had been unmolested, and had continued to be successful as at the start, there would have been founded an Ohio entirely different from that of today. It is there- fore only with very sweeping reservations, that one ean accept the declaration that. "The Moravians may justly be remembered and hon- ored as the pilgrims of Ohio."" Yet they are to be remembered and honored for their patient and loving work, and influence for peace during the Revolution. Their Indians, when they were killed, died Christians. It is hard to say that they wronged the Indians ;; it was the white desperado of the border who wronged both Moravian mis- sionary and converted red men; but the doctrine of peace seemed as mneh out of place wherever the Moravian went, and they tried many places, as it was in the days of the original Apostles.
As has been intimated, there was more in the hostility of the white people to the Moravian missionaries than the rnde jealousy of traders who feared a eurtailing of the trade in "fire-water." The experience of Christopher Gist when he wished to eclebrate Christmas at Cosh- octon is an example of the religions prejudice on the border, where one would hardly expect it. An interesting glimpse of the situation from the sectarian point of view may be found in the journal of Rev. David Jones, of New Jersey, who visited Schonbrun soon after its foundation, afterward took trips on the Ohio with George Rogers Clark, and was a chaplain with Anthony Wayne in the Revolution
* King's History of Ohio.
+ "No greater wrong can ever be done than to put a good man at the mercy of a bad, while telling him not to defend himself or his fellows; in no way can the success of evil be made surer and quicker: but the wrong was par- ticularly great when at such a time and in such a place the defenseless Indians were thrust between the anvil of their savage red brethren and the hammer of the lawless and brutal white borderers. The awful harvest which the poor converts reaped had in reality been sown for them by their own friends and would-be benefactors."-Roosevelt, "Winning of the West."
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and on the Manmee. He went up the Seioto in 1772, to "Kuskin- kis ;" heard of the "Pickaweeke," near Deer Creek, a Shawanee town, "remarkable for robbers and villainies:" visited "Chillicaathee," also a Shawanee town, and "Conner's" town toward the Muskingum. Noting that the wives of Conner and the Indian chief were in their actions entirely Indian, though white captives from childhood, the good man asked vainly, "Might we not infer from hence that if the Indians were educated as we are, they would be like us?" He stopped at the Whitewoman's town, and the town of Coquethageeliton, known as Captain White-Eyes, who was away on a hunt down past the Ohio and toward the gulf of Mexico ; and finally reached the head town of Netawatwes, whence the traveler went to the Moravian town, on a high level road, east of the Muskingum, ten miles above New- comer's town. He observed that neat loghouses had been built, and a good chapel for divine worship. Zeisberger, he noted, "seems an honest man, successful among these poor heathen." But the Rev- erend Jones saw something to make him forget the good work re- vealed in log houses, farms and meeting-house. "While I was present he used no kind of prayer, which was not pleasing to me, therefore asked him if that was their uniform practice." Zeisberger "replied that sometimes praver was used. Their worship began and ended with singing a hymn in the Indian language, which was per- formed melodiously. In the evening they met again for worship." Again, "An Indian asked the minister when Easter Sunday was." Waiting in breathless expeetaney for the answer, Jones thought that Zeisberger hesitated in his presence to discourse abont Easter. "Mv soul was filled with horror," he wrote, "that mortal man should pre- sume to teach a heathen religiously to observe what God Almighty never taught him as any part of his will."
Mr. Jones gives us some interesting facts as to the religious aspira- tions of the Delawares. Captain Killbuck (Gelelemend), a great man in the nation, did not eare for the Moravian faith. "It did not signify to be of a religion that could not protect them in war time." Neither would he have Presbyterians in his town, because they went to war against the Indian. It was his intention to go and see the king of England and obtain a minister and schoolmaster of roval choosing, and to this end he had already saved up £40. Opposed by such an ambition, Jones was not encouraged when he asked leave to preach. The head men talked irrelevantly of a Highland officer who had taken one of their women as his wife, and sold her in Maryland as a slave. "What is become of the woman ?" they asked, and the good preacher could not answer. Finally, his resources exhausted by the exorbitant prices of food, he gave up his mission and returned home by way of "Wecling."
Wheeling was then a small and recently established settlement
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( 1772) of a few Virginians, among them Ebenezer Zane, a sturdy pioneer destined to a notable part in the conquest and settlement of Ohio. It was the advance post of the land claimants who were com- ing over the mountains to possess West Virginia. The Pennsylva- nians were more concerned with trade, and between Pennsylvania and Virginia the old quarrel abont boundaries had been intensified almost to a state of war. The Canadian authorities also were asking to have the old bounds of Canada established in the upper Ohio valley. In the winter of 1773-74 Dr. John Conolly, a nephew of George Cro- ghan, acting as agent for Lord Dunmore, governor of Virginia, issued a proclamation calling on the inhabitants of the upper Ohio region to meet and organize as Virginia militia. Col. Arthur St. Clair, rep- resenting the Pennsylvania proprietors at Pittsburg, put Conolly under arrest and prevented the proposed assemblage, but after his release Conolly returned to Pittsburg in March, 1774, at the head of an armed force; proclaimed the jurisdiction of Virginia, and rebuilt and occupied the old fortification, calling it Fort Dunmore. Here he was visited by Dunmore, and appointed lieutenant and commander in that region.
Conolly was a rash and inconsiderate man, likely to provoke war rather than peace. It was afterward charged that Lord Dunmore desired Indian hostilities in order to distraet the attention of his people on the James river from the eneroachments of the crown. On the other hand there was also talk that the Pennsylvania traders in- cited the red men to keep back the settlers, in the interest of border trade, and bought the horses stolen on the Virginia frontier. It was evidently a period of mutual suspicion and raneor, with Pennsylvania near to war with Virginia ; the young and reckless in both colonies talking of rebellion against England; the lines between Tory and Patriot coming into being, and anarchy practically prevailing in the region that was the key to the West.
Conolly began sending out word in the spring of 1774 that the Shawanees were not to be trusted. The Mingoes about Logstown stole some horses from the "landjobbers," as Zane called them, and a eanoe party from Butler's trading house at Pittsburg was attacked by a few stray Cherokees on the river. The doings of the Mingoes, Iroquois stragglers, and Cherokees, who had no settlement in Ohio, and were the hereditary enemies of the Ohio tribes, should not have incited a general war. But it was easy for Conolly to excite the spirit of hostility along the border. There was a gathering of frontiersmen at Wheeling, in which leading spirits were Michael Cresap, son of the old pioneer of the upper Potomac, and George Rogers Clark, a young Virginian twenty-one years of age, already a famous hunter and rover of the woods, who was following the business of baekwoods sur-
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veyor .* While they were deliberating about the proper course to pursue, an express from Conolly arrived, stating that war was inev- itable and the country should be protected by scouts until it could be fortified. In the words of Clark, "AAction was had and war declared in the most solemn manner; and the same evening two scalps were brought into the camp." Zane, down the river making improvements on land he had located, hurried back to Wheeling upon news of trou- ble, as did others in the same business. He endeavored to dis- snade Cresap from his proposition to indiscriminately kill the Indians along the Ohio. Nevertheless, a party of Indians and traders being reported a little way up the river, Cresap led out a party against them, and soon returned with the traders, and blood and bullet holes in the canoe that convinced Zane that the two Indians, friendly people attached to Butler's trading interests, had been mur- dered and thrown in the river. Next day some Indians, attempting to pass Wheeling unobserved, in their canoes, were chased fifteen miles down the river, driven to land, and attacked, the action resulting in the wounding of several on each side. After this it was proposed to march against the Mingo town, up the river, then the residence of a chief who has ever since been famous in American history. This was Logan, so named by his father Shikellimus, former chief of the Iroquois on the Susquehanna, in honor of James Logan, secretary of the province of Pennsylvania. He had been reared in Pennsylvania, coming into the Ohio region after the advent of the Moravians, had always been a friend of the whites and was regarded by them as a man of superior ability. Judge William Brown, a worthy man of that day in the Juniata region, declared that Logan was the best speci- men of humanity he ever inet, either white or red.
But after the Wheeling people had marched five miles toward Logan's town, Cresap, according to Clark's narrative, suggested a reconsideration of their purpose. Clark told of his being entertained at Logan's town, a few weeks before. As they discussed the matter, "every person seemed to detest the resolution they had set out with," and the party turned back to Wheeling and took the road to Redstone on the Monongahela. A few days later, thirty or more frontiersmen having gathered at Baker's settlement on the Virginia side of the river, opposite the mouth of Yellow Creek, enticed a party of Min- goes, including five men, a woman or two and a little child, to come across. Greathouse, the white leader, endeavored to make them all drunk, in preparation for a massacre. Some of the red men, who got in that condition, were tomahawked, and the others were shot,
* "He possessed high daring. unflinching courage, passions which he could not control, and a frame fitted to stand any strain of fatigue or hardship. He was a square-built, thick-set man, with high, broad forehead, sandy hair. and unquailing blue eyes that looked out under heavy, shaggy brows."- Roosevelt.
CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF OHIO.
except the baby. Other Indians, who came over from the opposite shore, to the aid of their comrades, were shot in their boats. In the course of the killing all the relatives of Logan were murdered. He charged the crime to Colonel Cresap in his famous speech, at a later date, and the Moravians also heard from the Indians that ('resap was the leader in the affair, but the testimony of Cresap's associates seems to aequit him of more than intending to attack the Mingo town. Other outrages were reported to the people at Sehenbrun, such as the killing of John Gibson's Shawanee wife, and it was told that Cresap and his men threatened to kill and plunder all who went up and down the river. A few of them. doubtless, such as took part in the Yellow Creek massaere, were willing and fitted to become pirates against Indians and traders, whom they hated alike, but the majority were better men, excited to an outburst of vengeance by long-continued wrongs, and by this time regretting the action to which they had been urged by Conolly.
The Mingoes at once sent news of their misfortunes to the other tribes, and set out on the warpath, seeking scalps of white people indiscriminately, both of the Long Knives (Virginians) and of the traders who were entirely innocent. Early in June news arrived of the killing of a family of eight on the Monongahela by Logan's party, and by the end of that month Logan returned to his refuge among the Shawanees with thirteen sealps, deelaring he was now satisfied for the loss of his relatives, and would sit still till he heard what the Long Knife would say.# The people at the Moravian mission were in great distress, and feared they must push further into the wilder- ness in their vain search for a land of peace. But the Delawares set guards about their town, and some of the influential red men associ- ated with them were invited to the great conneil that Netawatwes ealled. In this eouneil the Mingoes and Shawanees were urged to keep peace and assured they would have no help from the Delawares; but the Mingoes were excited beyond hope of dissuasion and the Shawanees were ready to answer their appeal for help.
In the warfare they carried along the Pennsylvania and Virginia border, they were aided by young and reckless warriors, yearning for the distinction of winning a sealp-Wyandots, Iroquois, Maumees, and even Delawares. Part of the Shawanees, under the lead of their great chieftain, Cornstalk, for a time endeavored to preserve peace, until, it is said, a safeguard the chief had furnished some traders he
* The prisoners he took were tortured to death at the Shawanee town on the Muskingum, except one, whom Logan saved by adopting in place of a brother killed at Yellow Creek. In July this man wrote at Logan's dictation the famous letter to Captain Cresap: "What did you kill my people on Yel- low creek for? I thought I must kill too, and I have heen three times to war since; but the Indians are not angry, only myself." Then, crossing the Ohio, he slaughtered a family on Holston creek, and left the note there, tied to a war club.
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had reseued from the Mingoes was attacked by order of the treacher- ons Conolly. A great panie possessed the frontier, and those who did not take refuge in the numerous stoekhouses built, fled baek over the mountains. The people of the two provinces, at cross purposes, sus- pected each other of hostile designs, and the organizing of a company of Pennsylvania rangers almost led to hostilities against them by the Virginians. There were many horrible massacres of settlers, much taking of sealps on both sides, many little battles at the stoekades or upon the forest trails, south and east of the Ohio.
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