USA > Ohio > History of Ohio; the rise and progress of an American state, Volume One > Part 11
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LOUIS JOLIET.
A Canadian by birth, 1645. Educated in the Jesuit College at Quebec. One of the most heroic voyageurs of his time. He was one of the first to reach the western point of Sault Sainte Marie. He accompanied Marquette in his discovery of the Mississippi. He died in 1700 on his possessions near Quebec.
THE RISE AND PROGRE
Hrumed. ured on the Upper Mi
Du Lirat
NFS YET cious account of intercixin buc
espritnoch, a volume That had great circulation ar Was casaland To many languages. One author se Fireupin, Fixed au (hat class of writers who spe- the Truth by sasheet and lie by melination, and I Samollet kim & stekt ctaggerator who wrote mor in omtonaity with his wishes than his knowled Lewis Fort Creve-Coeur in charge of Tonty a Wir. Det La Salle now started out with six col pormim, to traverse the liroad intervening wilderne
in He desperate effort to procure another outfit Taromay Canada. Through dense forests, snow 00 ered und ice hound, across Irozen creeks and swoll Atom, in melting torrents and blinding storn
alarmed by howling wolves and whooping savag the litde band undaunted picked its way to F Miami, theytoe across the country to the headwatr of Lake Ene, the remixining voyage made by cand brought tom Anally in the last of April, 1680, to F Frontenac, During stry-five days La Salle had tou alainit incessantir, Hod untold perile and obstac in a kimey of avar - thousand miles, He leder now for a certainty what she Griffin was lost, his en itory Lad seized he oparty at Frontenac, and D soon reached him by mrers de beis that the garri Telt with Tears Bed suainied and destroyed the I Did man cher Det Punti + cou mulation of misfortau
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But spite of calamities that would have crushed any but an iron soul like his, again he sprang forth for fresh efforts in pursuit of his ambitions. Tonty must be rescued; the Mississippi must be explored. In August La Salle again embarked for the Illinois. With him went carpenters, masons, soldiers and voyagers, in all twenty-five men. He took the short cut, ascend- ing the Humber River, crossing to Lake Simcoe and thence by the river Severn reaching Georgian Bay; following the eastern shore of Lake Huron he at length was at Michilimackinac. The St. Joseph and portage to Kankakee again brought them to the Illinois which they rapidly descended. The forests and meadows and river were there as before but the camps and vil- lages of the Illinois tribes had disappeared; "no hunters were seen; no saluting whoop greeted their ears." The great Indian town of the Illinois-the chief city of the allying tribes-located on the Illinois near the mouth of the Vermillion, was a scene of horror and desolation, in the place of the huts were heaps of ashes and scattered charred bones and grinning skulls; heads with the skins dried like leather were mounted on sticks thrust upright in the ground; half burned bodies of Indian women and children still clung to the stakes to which they had been bound and upon which they had been tortured; the unwrapped remains of their dead resting on platforms in the trees, a burial peculiar to the Illinois, had been torn down and desecrated; cornfields were laid waste; the ravages of a conquering and pitiless enemy had been complete. Wolves prowled in the nearby woods, and "clouds of crows and buzzards, swirled above the horrid scene." It was
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the bloody handiwork of the Iroquois, "tigers of the human race" now in the height of their power and activity. Since La Salle's last visit, some six hundred warriors of the Five Nations, led by the Seneca chief Tagancourte, had crossed into the Illinois country, on the way placating and securing a hundred or more recruits from the Miamis who lay in their path. Like a wolf, in the night, they pounced upon the Illinois capital and with their accustomed barbarian fury over- came the tribes of the weaker confederacy. Those of the vanquished, located in the territory invaded, that were not slaughtered or taken captive, fled to the south, west and north. It was one of the most fright- ful raids of the fierce and speedy assailants. The Relations state the Iroquois slayed or took captive over a thousand Illinois. The warriors of the Long House defied distance no less than the foe and their conquering bands penetrated to the remote lake regions of the northwest.
La Salle hurried from the sickening spectacle to learn the fate of Tonty. On their way down the river they passed the ruins of many of the minor villages of the Illinois; these lay on one side of the river bank while on the opposite side were the corresponding locations of the lately occupied camps of the Iroquois. The stream for miles had marked the course of the devastating warfare. When the site of Creve-Coeur was reached, it was seen, as had been reported, that its demolition by its deserters had been accomplished. There was no trace of Tonty or his men. La Salle with one canoe kept on down the current till arriving at its mouth, he gazed out upon the wide swift surface
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of the Mississippi-"the object of his ambition and his hopes." He longed to cast his fate upon the bosom of the majestic eddy now clogged with cakes of floating ice and seek its termination, but the time for that was not yet. Reversing his course, he turned his canoe up stream and slowly pushed his journey back by the Illinois, whence he had come. He spent the winter in the protection of the palisades of Fort Miami.
The Illinois country was still torn with the Illinois- Iroquois war. The conquerors returning with their western captives made war upon their late allies the Miamis, and even inflicted their merciless victories upon the Shawnees on the Ohio. Representatives of the Illinois, the Miamis and the Shawnees appealed to La Salle for aid from the French. The motley assembly at Fort Miami was increased by a band of refugees from the New England tribes including the Abenakis, Mo- hicans and others, driven from their native seats on the Atlantic by the fortunes of the War, in which King Phillip, the famous chief of the Wampanoags, had organized a confederacy of the eastern tribes for the purpose of exterminating the English settlements.
La Salle improved the opportunity to address the Indian "council" of the gathered tribesmen. With all the gifts of forest eloquence and French diplomacy he claimed the country for France and eulogized the power of Onontio, as the Indians called the Governor of Canada, and assured the savages of Frontenac's friendship and protection if they would requite him with their allegiance. Onontio, he argued, would help them chastise the irrepressible Iroquois. His auditors gave assent to his persuasive words. The Spring-
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of 1681-with its thaws on lake and river permitted La Salle to resume his journeys. Proceeding to Mich- ilimackinac he there found Tonty who had been a witness to the chief incidents of the Iroquois invasion and who after passing through many hairbreadth escapes had reached in safety the mission where La Salle met him. Together the voyagers paddled their canoes a thousand miles to Fort Frontenac whence after a few weeks of preparation La Salle made his third start for the Mississippi. In December the party, comprising besides La Salle and Tonty eighteen New England Indians and twenty-three Frenchmen, were at Fort Miami. By the following February, the canoes of the expedition glided from the Illinois into the southbound sweep of the Mississippi. Upon the de- tails of this trip it is not necessary to dwell. At one of the Chickasaw bluffs, where De Soto had formerly stood and claimed the river and valley for Spain, La Salle encamped and on the bluff built a little stockade which he named Fort Prudhomme, after the French officer left there with a few others as a garrison force. It was the first French fortress on the mighty river which La Salle called the "Colbert," in honor of Jean Baptiste Colbert, Minister of Marine and Finance in the cabinet of King Louis. They stopped at many villages, as they passed through the territory of the different tribes the Tamaroas, Arkansas, Taensas, Natchez, Oumas Koroas, and others gave them tribal hospitality. A1 the junctures of two or three rivers emptying into the "Colbert," La Salle set up the arms of the king and made claim of the country for France, a showy cere mony upon which the uncomprehending natives gazer
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with amazement and applause. In the early days of April the mouth of the river was reached. La Salle had attained the goal of his aims and ambition. The party assembled on an elevated knob of ground, where the river spreads out into three channels that flowed diversely into the Gulf of Mexico; and there La Salle erected a wooden column upon which was attached the arms of France and the inscription "Louis Le Grand, Roy de France, et de Navarre, Regne; le Neu- vieme Avril 1682." The Frenchmen chanted the Te Deum, then followed a volley from the muskets and shouts of "Vive le Roi," after which La Salle read with loud voice in formal word the proces verbal in the name of his Majesty Louis the Great, of the taking of "possession of this country of Louisiana, the seas, harbors, ports, bays, adjacent straits, and all nations, peoples, provinces, cities, towns, villages, streams, and rivers, comprised in the extent of said Louisiana, from the mouth of the great river St. Louis, on the eastern side, otherwise called Ohio, Alighin-Sipore, or Chukagona, and this with the consent of the Chaouan- ons, Chickachas, and other people dwelling therein, with whom we have made alliance; as also along the River Colbert, or Mississippi, and rivers which dis- charge themselves therein, from its source beyond the country of the Kious or Nadouessious, and this with their consent, and with the consent of the Motantees, Illinois, Mesigameas, Natchez, Koroas, which are the most considerable nations dwelling therein, with whom also we have made alliance either by ourselves, or by others in our behalf; as far as its mouth at the sea, or the Gulf of Mexico, upon the assurance, which
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we have received from all these nations, that we are the first Europeans who have descended the said River Colbert."
This proclamation, which we have not quoted entire, was subscribed to by a French notary and signed by La Salle and the French members of the expedition. The complete translation is given by Jared Sparks in his life of La Salle. Parkman remarks that the as- sertion by La Salle that he had the "consent" of the Indian nations named to his assuming possession of the vast country, he called Louisiana after his king, Louis, "is a mere farce." For that matter did not the whole proceedings partake of the nature of a theatrical comedy?
Now reluctantly we hasten to the tragic end of La Salle, the master mind and greatest agent for the advancement of Canadian-France. He returned up the river he had taken, not by conquest or purchase ! or treaty, but by "word of mouth" merely. On the Illinois above the site of Creve-Coeur, on a cliff called "Starved Rock," La Salle and Tonty tarried at length and built Fort St. Louis. It was an attractive and advantageous location. Here he remained more than a year, granting parcels of land to his followers and gathering a colony about him of Indians of various tribes; Shawnees from the Ohio, Abenakis from Maine, Miamis from the sources of the Kankakee, and others from far and near. The Illinois, who had fled the country in the Iroquois invasion, returned by the hun- dreds, until Fort St. Louis became the citadel of the territorial center of four thousand warriors and twenty thousand Indians, counting men, women, and children.
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The Iroquois were held at bay, though they made bold to attack this stronghold and besieged it for six days, but withdrew discomfited. They had met their barrier in the West. All this was the magic work of La Salle, who was at once the Seignor by right and the Ruler by common consent. La Salle was at the height of his unparalleled career. But now the scenes in the background of the explorer's stage of action are shifted. Once more the clouds gather and the shadows fall athwart his path. Le Febyre de la Barre, by royal decree, superseded Frontenac as Governor of Canada; De Moules replaced Duchesneau as Intendant; the Marquis de Seignelay succeeded Colbert as Minister of Marine and of the Colonies. The new regime was not favorable to La Salle. He was ordered to Quebec, charged with being a "crack-brained schemer," a relentless tyrant and shrewd double-dealer. The missionaries, the merchants and the officials, united to down this most successful of forest soldiers and New World statesmen, "who stands in history like a statue cast in iron, but a sad figure, an object of human interest and pity." He sailed for Paris; plead his cause before the court and petitioned for an outfit to establish a colony at the mouth of the Mississippi, in order to hold it for France and repel the claims of Spain. His address and arguments won the day. With four ships and a hundred soldiers, besides mechanics, la- borers, adventurers and "volunteer gentlemen," he sailed for the Gulf of Mexico. The intrepid champion of the extension of France had literally taken "arms against a sea of troubles." The little fleet lost its bearings and once in the wide expanse of the chartless
er
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gulf, was unable amid the confusion of lagoons and inlets to find the mouth of the Colbert. The officers of the ships quarrelled with La Salle, many of the men deserted, and in one of the convoys sailed back to France; two of the ships were wrecked. In a sheltered harbor of the bay of St. Louis, now Matagorda Bay, La Salle found a barren retreat for such of the company as remained faithful to his leadership. The hapless colony amid misery, poverty, disease and untold dangers, for three years, groped about for the site of their search. Twice they set out to trace their way across the country to Quebec, each time to return more perplexed than ever, to their desolate haven on the beach of the bay. Treachery and murder were rife and on a dreary March day of 1687, La Salle was foully shot by one of the desperate miscreants of his party. Thus perished "one of the most remarkable explorers whose names live in history." He had added the best part of a continent to the French crown. Could the empire of France retain it? La Salle had followed the waterline from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico and made secure that line by the chain of French forts. But what of the previous sovereignty of Spain?
In the earlier pages of our narrative we alluded to the theory and principles of title by discovery, gov- erning the nations. First, as to the papal decree of demarcation. As the lawyers would say, it seems to have proven a "vain and futile" decision against public sentiment, public sentiment in this case being the general opinion of the nations, other than Spain and Portugal, though these same other nations were in
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ecclesiastical affairs faithful devotees of the Roman pontiff. The Christian people yielded to the Holy Father in questions touching the safety of their souls, but concerning the acquisition of real estate person- al selfishness was paramount to spiritual supremacy. The Pope's decree was ignored. Concerning the right of discovery, we found that it prevailed against all "unchristian" occupants of the lands found. But to what extent was it absolute as to all other, earlier or later discoveries? One of the ablest and clearest dis- cussions of this subject is the opinion of Chief Justice Marshall in the case of Johnson against McIntosh, wherein the learned Judge says:
"On the discovery of this immense continent, the great nations of Europe were eager to appropriate to themselves so much of it as they could respectively acquire. Its vast extent offered an ample field to the ambition and enterprise of all; and the character and religion of its inhabitants afforded an apology for considering them as a people over whom the superior genius of Europe might claim an ascendency. The potentates of the old world found no difficulty in convincing themselves that they made ample com- pensation to the inhabitants of the new, by bestowing on them civilization and Christianity, in exchange for unlimited indepen- dence. But, as they were all in pursuit of nearly the same object, it was necessary, in order to avoid conflicting settlements, and consequent war with each other, to establish a principle, which all should acknowledge as the law by which the right of acquisi- tion, which they all asserted, should be regulated as between them- selves. This principle was, that discovery gave title to the government by whose subjects, or by whose authority, it was made, against all other European governments, which title might be consummated by possession.
"Those relations which were to exist between the discoverer and the natives, were to be regulated by themselves. The rights thus acquired being exclusive, no other power could interpose between them."
All authorities agree that discovery must be con- summated, that is, followed up, by possession and use.
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Chancellor Kent in his Commentaries on Law calls discovery alone "An imperfect title," and says: "Mere transient discovery amounted to nothing, un- less followed in a reasonable time by occupancy and settlement, more or less permanent under the sanction of the state." Sir Robert Phillimore, in his Commen- taries upon International Law, says: "Discovery, use and settlement are all ingredients of that occupation which constitutes a valid title to national acquisitions. Discovery, according to the acknowledged practice of nations * furnishes an inchoate title to possession in the discoverer. But the discoverer must either, in the first instance, be fortified by authority and by a commission from the state of which he is a member, or his discovery must be subsequently adopted by that state. Continuous use is an indispensable element of occupation properly so called. The mere erection of crosses, land marks, and inscriptions is ineffectual for acquiring or maintaining an exclusive title to a country of which no real use is made."
Two perplexing questions arise concerning the rights of discovery; first, what length of time must the dis- covering nation remain in occupancy in order to obtain secure title to the land discovered; and, second, what means are to be employed in settling the claims, through discovery, of rival nations to the same country or in adjusting the disputed boundaries between con- tiguous territories, respectively discovered by different nations? Or, in the latter case, how determine the extent of the territory claimed by discovery? These questions gave the national diplomats and the international law- yers much field for discussion and dispute. We meet
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them later on. Meantime, it suffices to note that Spain, though the first to discover and explore the Mississippi basin, took quick ticket of leave. She went and saw, but did not stay, much less settle. Her title by dis- covery was short-lived. She left settlements in Florida and maintained her title as to that territory, yet to be defined, and she still retained a title, more or less vague, to the vast territory west of the Mississippi and east of the Pacific, the shores of which she was the first to navigate. La Salle then had cemented the seizure of the land he had traversed by the establishment of trading and military posts, which was notice to all the world that France had come not only to take but to keep. Ohio, which had been Spanish soil, by virtue of earlier discoveries, now certainly passed to France, and the banner of the Bourbons floated over the land between the Beautiful River and the Great Lakes.
CHAPTER VII. THE INDIAN TRIBES OF OHIO
T HUS far, we have geographically, ethnologi- cally and historically circled about the terri- tory that will constitute Ohio. We have purposely taken this circumambient course that the reader, at the outset, might obtain the proper foundation and background for a clear understanding of the events that shall follow.
Long before Ohio was entered by the white man, either as a voyager or a sojourner, it was the habitation of the Red Man, and indeed was a favorite field for his occupancy and the arena for many of his most illustrious and prolonged activities. The geography of Ohio was greatly in its favor, lying as it does midway between the Great Lakes and the Ohio River; both these waterways, as we have seen, being the avenues of travel between the east and west, the northeast and the southwest. The peculiarity of the topography of Ohio also added to the advantageousness of its situation, for a watershed, a low, flat ridge, called the "divide," traverses the state in an irregular diagonal line from the middle of the western boundary, now Mercer and Darke counties, to near the northeast section, now Trumbull County. This intervening elevation, varying, in height from one hundred to twelve hundred feet above the sea level, makes two drainage basins of the state. Both these basins were amply provided with ever-flowing streams, for it must be remembered that in the early days before the country was denuded of the forests and before artificial conditions changed their natural flow, these streams for the most part, were navigable for canoes from their sources to their outlets. In the northern basin, emptying into Lake
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Erie, are the Cuyahoga; the Huron; the Vermillion; the Sandusky, and the Maumee; the latter formed by the juncture of the rivers St. Joseph and St. Mary's. In the southern basin flowing into the Ohio are the Muskingum, formed at Coshocton by the Walhonding and the Tuscarawas; the Hocking; the Scioto; Little Miami; and the Great or Big Miami;
" And the pleasant water courses, You could trace them through the valley, By the rushing in the spring time, By the alders in the summer, By the white fog in the autumn, By the black line in the winter."
From the head sources of the corresponding northern and southern streams were, in many instances, short portages over which the traveler in the primitive pio- neer days could easily transport his birch-bark boat and his baggage packs. Many curious geologic and physical features, as well as historic incidents, grow out of this famous "divide." One is worthy of passing note. The ridge passes through Richland County; in Spring- field Township, only a half mile apart, the Palmer Springs are located, the insignificant but veritable headwaters of the Sandusky, and also a little pond or lake from which the Mohican, a branch of the Muskingum, takes its source. Midway between these sources, on a little crest of ground, is a farmer's spacious barn, so placed that when the down-pouring waters leave its peaked roof, the flow from one side runs off to the Sandusky and that from the other side finds its way to the Mohican. Literally, therefore, as the eloquent Garfield once related in an address, using
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the fact just stated, "a little bird standing on the ridge of that barn, can by the flutter of its tiny wings cast a drop of rain into the Gulf of St. Lawrence or the Gulf of Mexico."
When the European explorers landed upon the coast of this continent, they found the country inhabited by a race, black-haired and copper-colored, attired mostly in the garb of nature and living the life of a savage. The ethnologist placed him about midway between extreme barbarism and semi-civilization, in the transi- tion period from the flint to the stone age, for he chipped out flint instruments and wrought polished stone im- plements for use in his domestic life, and for weapons in war and the chase. Sir John Lubbock would place the Indian in the Neo-lithic Age for he had not learned the use of metals. These people Columbus named "Indians," because he mistook them for the natives of the Oriental India, the land he supposed he had reached. Concerning these "children of the forest," an overwhelming library of literature has been produced. The ethnologist has exhausted the methods of research to learn the origin and antiquity of these people and the causes of their diversification. For more than half a century the United States government, through the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the Department of Ethnology, has investigated and studied the American Indian. The ablest and most distinguished scholars have devoted their lives to the subject, and elaborate, voluminous and learned reports bespeak the value and success of their labor. The fascination of this theme s so alluring that to attempt an entry on the threshold of the topic is to be swept into a bewildering but
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