USA > Ohio > History of Ohio; the rise and progress of an American state, Volume One > Part 12
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delightful maze of legend, semi-history and romance. We deal only with so much of the historic phase of these people as is pertinent to our narrative. Wherever the white man penetrated into the American interior from the Pacific to the Atlantic he found the isolated wigwam or village settlement of the Aborigine who adapted himself to his environment of climate, and conditions of sustenance as offered by soil, forest, plain, mountain, valley, lake or river. The Indian was the partner of nature and the two lived in har- monious and close amity wheresoever fortune made them companions. The variety of the Indian was almost infinite. It has been estimated that at the period of the discovery of America, the native popu- lation north of Mexico and south of the region of the Eskimo, whom we omit from our consideration, was probably not less than four hundred thousand. Ethnologists have been able to classify them into some sixty stock races or chief linguistic and geographical divisions, comprising three hundred and fifty or more distinct nations, each having its own peculiar dialect. These separate nations or tribes were sub-divided again into clans and bands. While all retained certair characteristics in common, the separate nations differec in tribal customs, moral and mental status, socia habits, political and religious ideas, language, legendar! lore, and in sedentary or nomadic proclivities. Thei shifting nature, crude systems of centralization, con tinual wars, temporary confederacies, alliances an( dispersions, merging of bands and mingling of clans defy the historian and confound the scientist. Th subject is rendered more difficult and confusing becaus
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of the fact that these people prior to the invasion of the European had no written language. The only native Indian alphabet is the Cherokee, a syllabary invented early in the nineteenth century by a half- blood member of that tribe and so well adapted to its purpose that it attained a general use among the Chero- kees. Within more recent years, tribesmen with the aid of American scholars have reduced to written form the languages of the Shawnees, Senecas, Dakotahs, Chippewas, Creeks, Choctaws and other nations and periodicals are now issued in several of the Indian tongues. The early missionaries-notably John Eliot, "the Apostle to the Indians"-contrived a printed and written literature in the form of the Roman al- phabet for some of the New England tribes, and Zeis- berger, the first missionary to the Ohio Indians, com- posed a spelling book in the Delaware language. A few tribes, in early times, made attempts at recording something of their history and native traditions by means of pictographs, rude primitive art drawings on the rocks, bark of trees and skins of animals. Thus wrought Hiawatha:
" From his pouch he took his colors, Took his paints of different colors,
On the smooth bark of a birch tree Painted many shapes and figures, Wonderful and mystic figures,
And each figure had a meaning,
Each some word or thought suggested."
The leading stock-races and their divisions are va- riously classed and stated by different students of American ethnology, but it is adequate for our purpose
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if we briefly examine a few of the chief groups, as deter- mined by the United States Bureau of Ethnology. The Indians east of the Mississippi may be divided into three great families, the principal or largest of which is the Algonkin, also spelled Algonquin. And here it might be stated for the benefit of some of our readers, that by a "family" or group we mean the parent stem of a race, the separate branches or tribes of which have kindred but more or less dissimilar languages, all derived however from the original family stock; such for example, among modern European nations are the Romance peoples, French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, each having a distinct language but all evolved from the parent Latin or Roman. The vast Algonquin family group embraced tribes extending from Hudson Bay on the north to the Carolinas on the south, from the Atlantic on the east to the Mississippi and Lake Winnipeg on the west. It must be borne in mind, however, that by no means did all the tribes in this territory named, belong to the Algonquins-but rather is it meant that the Algonquin tribes chiefly occupied the territory designated. The Algonquins, numbering a fourth and possibly a third of the entire Indian population, in- cluded practically all the New England tribes; the Mohegans-or Mohicans-on Lower Hudson; the tribes about the Gulf of St. Lawrence and north of the Ottawa and Lakes Huron and Superior and mainly those in the Northwest Territory; also Kentucky and the Virginias. The Iroquois family lay in the eastern center of this Algonquin domain "like a large island in a vast sea." The Hurons, or Wyandots, Neuters, Eries and Andastes, belonged to the Iroquois stock as
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did the southern tribe of Cherokees, one of the most powerful and prominent nations of the Indian race. The motley confederacy of the Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Seminoles and lesser tribes within the same limits, south of the Algonquins and in the states, touching the Mexican gulf, constituted the group known as the Kuskhogean. Immediately west of the Mississippi, from the Arkansas to the headwaters of the Missouri and west, part way to the Rocky Moun- tains, was the Siouan group. Beyond the latter, from southern Texas to Montana and reaching to the Pacific, lay the Shoshonean and other lesser families. It is readily seen that it is quite impossible to fix the tribal boundaries with any degree of exactness. Within the territories outlined, scattered here and there, were located the fifty or more families which we have not mentioned.
The twilight of Ohio history reveals to us the Red Men of Long Ago. Like tawdry attired phantoms, we dimly see them stealthily flitting along the warpath, beneath the shadows of the primeval forest; or like the "songless Gondolier" silently and sullenly driving their canoes, under the over-arching branches, upon the noiseless stream; and then suddenly the war- whoops break the solitude and the crackling flames flash athwart the darkness and envelop the agonizing form of a burning victim; while the brutal torturers rend the air with hideous shouts and with fiendish grimaces and satyric contortions exult over the grew- some scene. Such are the first glimpses granted us of the "guileless children of the forest," in the pages of the Relations. The Ohio Indian was no better and
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no worse than his brother of far-away forest, river and lake, but he was destined to enact a most important and conspicuous role in the subsequent history of his race. In Ohio, as no where else, he was to desperately contend for his hunting ground and his wigwam; in Ohio he was to shed in profusion but in vain his best blood for the preservation of his race. It was in the early years of the seventeenth century, three hundred years ago, that the Jesuits in their Relations introduced us to the Eries, who occupied the most of the territory now known as Ohio. The terrible story of their con- quest and dispersion by the Iroquois, we have already related. The Indian history of Ohio is then continued in the incidents of the later invasion by the Iroquois of the country of the Illinois, when on their way through Ohio the conquerors made alliance with the Miamis and then after overwhelming their enemy, on ' their return, made war on their recent allies.
The Miamis played a large part in Ohio history. They belonged to the Algonquin family and were usually designated by early writers as Twightwees, "the cry of the crane." When first known they were divided into six bands, Piankashaw, Wea, Pepicokia, Kilatika, Mengakonkia and Atchatchakangouen. The first two of these bands became practically independent tribes and figure largely in Ohio pioneer days; the other four bands named seem to have early disappeared. The French explorers found the Miamis in the section later known as Wisconsin, Lower Michigan, Northern Illinois and Indiana. La Salle found them on the St. Joseph, also called the Miami, and on the Wabash. whence they extended into western Ohio, giving their
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tribe name to three rivers, the "Miami of the Lakes, " better known as the Maumee, and the two Miamis distinguished as the Big Miami and the Little Miami. Little Turtle, their famous chief, said: "My fathers kindled the first fire at Detroit; thence they extended their lines to the head waters of the Scioto; thence to its mouth; thence down the Ohio to the mouth of the Wabash and thence to Chicago over Lake Michigan." This country they held until the peace of 1763, when they mainly withdrew to the Wabash. The Miamis were never a very populous tribe, but were above the average of their race in intelligence and character. According to the reports of the French explorers the Miamis were noticeable for polite manners, mild disposition, and "their respect for and perfect obedience to their chiefs, who had greater authority than those of the other Algonquin tribes." They were great land-travelers, rather than expert canoemen. Their cabins were well furnished and their women very "dressy," while the men "used scarcely any covering and were tatooed all over the body."
The Wyandots, often written Wyandotte, called by the French Wendats, were the Tionontati or To- bacco tribe which we saw dispersed by the Iroquois in their war against the Hurons, to whom the Wyandots were kindred, and hence belonged originally to the Iroquois stock. The Wyandots who survived the terrible Iroquois invasion, still pursued by the Iroquois, continued their flight to Georgian Bay and Michili- mackinac-Mackinac. Even here their relentless en- emies would not let them enjoy "the fertile lands, good hunting and abundant fishing." The Wyandots
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continued westward to Green Bay, where they came in contact with the Sioux, whose hostile treatment drove them back to their late retreats at Mackinac and Georgian Bay localities, by this time free from the Iroquois invaders. Bands of the Wyandots now drifted to the western end of Lake Erie, the vicinity of their former homes and many of them settled on the Maumee and greater numbers still upon the San- dusky.
The Ottawas, relatives, and generally warm friends of the Wyandots, were also of the Algonquin family and inhabited the banks of the Canadian Ottawa River, the great highway of travel for the French. The Iroquois wars caused migrations of the Ottawas similar to those of the Wyandots. The Ottawas, like the Hurons, sought the protection of the Potta- wattomies, Winnebagoes and Menominees. Both these exiled tribes, the Hurons and the Ottawas, were driven as the Wyandots had been, by the Sioux back upon their migratory route. Scattering bands of them found lodgment on the Maumee and its southern branch which they named from their tribe, the Ottawa, since known as the Auglaize. It was the frequent custom of the Indians to give the name of their tribe to the river upon whose banks they might dwell. As the tribes were migratory the river names might change, and different rivers if tenanted by members of the same tribe might receive the same name; thus there were two Ottawa rivers and two Miamis.
The Delaware confederacy, formerly the most im- portant of the Algonquin stock, occupied the cente: basin of the Delaware River. They called themselve!
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Lenape, or Leni-Lenape, meaning "real men" or "native, genuine men," in modern parlance, "the real thing." The French called them Loups, "wolves." They claimed to be the progenitors of the Algonquins and by virtue of their admitted priority in rank, and because occupying the central home territory, from which the other nations of the group had diverged, the Delawares sat at the head of the council circle and were accorded by all the Algonquin tribes the respectful title of "Grandfather." They in turn called the other kindred tribes "grandchildren." The Delaware confederacy was composed of several nations, each having its own dialect and territory. The Leni- Lenape were a remarkable people, having a rich and romantic legendary lore of their own with an eventful history in connection with the white race. They produced many noted chiefs, among whom was the famous Tammany, the patron saint of that political society, which adopted his name.
The Delawares were a peaceable and well-disposed people and from the outset affiliated on friendly terms with the Swedes, the Dutch and the Quakers. Some- where in the later period of the Iroquois supremacy, probably about 1700, these conquerors brought the Delawares into subjugation and assumed complete dominion over them, making them "women" or as they expressed it "put petticoats on their men," and compelled them to do menial service like the squaws. The Long House exacted tribute from the Delawares and deprived them of all right to make war, change their habitation, or dispose of their land, without the consent of the haughty sovereignty of the Five Nations,
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who also about this time (1712) greatly augmented their power by the accession to their confederacy of the Tuscarawas or Tuscarora tribe, which fled north from their home on the headwaters of the Roanoke where they had been woefully defeated and whence they had been driven in a sanguinary war with the English settlers. The Tuscarawas were of the Iroquois stock and hence returned to their own and were assigned a district in the south part of the Oneida territory though they were not received into complete equality by the Long House, hereafter to be known as the Six Nations.
Bands of the Tuscarawas drifted into Ohio, settling in the eastern part and giving their name to the Tus- carawas river. Sometime after the beginning of their vassalage, bands of the Delawares, and especially the members of the Munsee, or Wolf, tribe, drifted across the Alleghanies into the Ohio country, settling in several villages on the Muskingum and the Tuscara- was. At a still later date, a detached band of the Senecas, leaving the quarters of the Long House, moved to the upper Ohio. They were known as the Mingoes, and settled Mingo Town, and also set up villages on the headwaters of the Scioto and the Sandusky. They were few in number, but active and dominant in spirit for the blood of the Iroquois coursed in their veins. They were often spoken of as the "Senecas of the Sandusky." The Mingoes were regarded by some authorities as belonging to the Cayuga nation rather than the Seneca. But, as a matter of fact, the Mingoes- the term means "stealthy or treacherous"-were strag- glers or outlaws, chiefly from the Cayugas and Senecas.
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Between the Miami settlements on the rivers of that name and the Delawares on the rivers in eastern Ohio, lay the Scioto Valley. This from time imme- morial was the favorite ground of the heroic and his- toric Shawnees.
The Shawnees, as we proceed, will command much of our attention. They too were of Algonquin stock and were called Satanas by the Iroquois, Chaouanons by the French, and Shawanees, Shawanos, Shawnees and similarly spelled names by the English. We shall employ the simplest form, Shawnee. The Relations make frequent mention of this tribe, showing its mem- bers were in widely separated parts of the country previous to 1700. We already noted that the Iroquois, who hated and not a little feared them, warned (1669) La Salle of the ferocity of the Shawnees, then located on the upper Ohio. Ten years later (1680) on their return from the Illinois to their homes, it is recorded that the warriors of the Five Nations played havoc with the Shawnees in the settlements of the latter in southern Ohio. The Shawnees were doubtless among the tribes met by Captain John Smith and his colony on the banks of the James. One of the first definite mentions of them is by De Laet in 1632, who places them at that date on the Delaware. Marquette speaks of meeting them during his missionary travels in the far northwest. They were a party to the famous Penn Treaty held under the great elm in 1682, and for many years thereafter were the custodian of a parchment copy of that treaty, thus evidencing their prominence in that event; "The only treaty," says Voltaire, "never ratified by an oath and never broken;"
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for "not a drop of Quaker blood was ever shed by an Indian," is the testimony of Bancroft. Restless and fearless, wary, warlike and nomadic, they were the vagrants of the trackless forest, the aboriginal American Arabs, ever seeking new fields for conquest and op- portunity. "At the period when western Virginia began to see the light of dawning civilization, they (Shawnees) were the possessors of that wilderness garden, the Scioto Valley, occupying the territory as far west as the Little Miami and head-rivers, having been invited thither by the Wyandots, at the instigation of the French. Wanderers as are all savages, this tribe, of all their family or race, bears off the palm for restlessness as well as undying hostility to the whites. From the waters of the northern lakes to the sandy beach washed by the temperate tides of the Mexican Gulf-from the Valley of the Susquehanna to the gloomy cottonwood forests of the Mississippi-in forests grand and gloomy with the stately growth of ages-in the prairie, blossoming with beauty, and fragrant with the breath of a thousand sweets-by mountain torrents, or shaded springs, or widespread plains-the Shawnee sought the turkey, the deer, and the bison; and, almost from the landing of the whites at Jamestown, his favorite game was the cunning and avaricious pale-face."
The Shawnee realized and reveled in his prowess; proud to a superlative degree, haughty and sagacious, he regarded himself as superior to his fellow-stock in all the natural and acquired qualities of the Indian. The Shawnees boasted in a tradition "that the Master of Life, the Creator Himself, the originator of all peoples,
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was an Indian. He made the Shawnees before any other human race. They, the Shawnees, sprang, from his brain. He gave them all the knowledge he himself possessed and placed them upon the great island (America) and all the other red people descended from the Shawnees. After the Creator had made the Shaw- nees, he made the French and English out of his breast, the Dutch out of his feet, and the 'Long Knives' (Americans) out of his hands." All these inferior races of men he made and placed beyond the "Stinking Lake;" that is the Atlantic Ocean. A sifting of the varied statements, more or less reliable, leads to the conclusion that, at the beginning of historic times in America, the Shawnees, a populous and aggressive tribe, were chiefly located in the valleys of the Tennessee and the Cumberland, whence bands of them wandered in all directions. They took permanent residence in Ohio, first settling along the Scioto, and later in the Miami Valley, in the early part of the eighteenth century. These Ohio Shawnees, it is generally claimed, were emigrants from the Carolinas, Georgia and Flor- ida, having been expelled from the sunny South by the Seminoles, Cherokees and other southern tribes to whom the querulous and imperious disposition of the Shawnees had become unbearable. Certain it is that the Shawnees for a hundred and fifty years main- tained a settlement, known as Shawnee-town, at the mouth of the Scioto.
Many are the poetic myths and symbolic traditions associated with the Shawnees. One of the historians of Pickaway County, Mr. Alfred Williams, cites the Shawnee account of the origin of the Piqua tribe, a
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small subdivision of the nation living on the Upper Scioto. Once upon a time the whole Shawnee tribe were assembled at a solemn religious feast. They were all seated around a large fire, which having nearly burnt down a great puffing and blowing was suddenly observed among the ashes, when behold! a man of majestic form and god-like mien issued forth from the ashes. Hence the name Piqua, "a man risen from the ashes." This was the progenitor of the Piqua tribe. Mr. Williams fittingly observes: "This Indian tradi- tion certainly equals in interest and dignity any of those related of the gods and heroes of ancient Greece, and indicates that the race possessed a poetic fancy, joined to such religious conceptions as would in course of time have produced a sublime and beautiful my- thology."
We have thus mentioned these Indian tribes, or representatives of tribes, inhabiting Ohio at the begin- ning of the eighteenth century and have designated in the main the localities they occupied at that time; these relative positions will be more or less changed as our history proceeds. There were no native Ohio Indian tribes; that is, all were migrants from other portions of the country. The extent of their numbers. at the time in question, is difficult to accurately as- certain. From statements of early authorities it is reckoned that the Indian population of Ohio must have ranged from twelve to fifteen thousand, as the total force of fighting braves numbered from twenty five hundred to three thousand, of whom the Miami mustered nearly a third. These figures probably di not vary greatly at any time until Ohio became :
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state. Many readers have been misled by the often quoted statement of Schoolcraft in his extensive work on the Indians wherein he says, "From some data that have been employed, it is doubtful whether an area of less than fifty thousand acres, left in the forest state, is more than sufficient to sustain by the chase a single hunter." According to this premise the area of Ohio would have supported scarcely more than five hundred Indians. But Schoolcraft's assertion pre- supposes the hunter to have been an abject savage, living solely on wild beasts by the chase. The Ohio Indian, at the time under consideration, was much above the lowest stage of primitive man. He was at worst only a semi-savage, for he cultivated fields of corn, called maize, and to a slight extent other products of the soil, and Professor Foster, in his "Pre- historic Races," claims that the product of a single acre, in maize, would furnish rations to sustain, in their simple life, from one hundred and twenty to two hundred and forty able bodied men. The French population of Canada at this same date was about fifteen thousand, while the combined colonists of New England and New York numbered ten times that many, and the English colonists in toto were between three and four hundred thousand.
Such was the Ohio Indian about the year 1700. But t must not be forgotten that the Iroquois claimed, with other territory, possession of Ohio by right of conquest. They had conquered all the tribes repre- ented in Ohio, regarding the Delawares and the 'hawnees therein as mere "tenants," and the other ribes as occupants by intrusion or sufferance.
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This question of the supremacy of the Iroquois confederacy over the Ohio tribes, and other nations, farther west and south, as noted by Rufus King in his concise history of Ohio, published in the American Commonwealth series, led to serious international disputes between France and England and also to interesting "political-historical controversies" among historical students. As Mr. King states, Governors Thomas Pownall, Massachusetts, Cadwallader Colden, New York and DeWitt Clinton, New York, also Sir William Johnson and Benjamin Franklin, regarded the rights of the Five Nations to all the hunting grounds of the Ohio Valley, "as fairly established by their con- quest in subduing the Shawnees, Delawares, Twight- wees (Miamis), and Illinois, as they stood possessed thereof at the peace of Ryswick in 1697." DeWitt Clinton, not only one of the foremost political and official figures, but also one of the most accomplished and scholarly students of his time, delivered a discourse before the New York Historical Society in December 18II, in which he thoroughly reviews the history of the Iroquois confederacy and briefly recites the record of their conquests. Of these "Romans of the Western World, who composed a Federal Republic," Mr. Clinton says, "It is well authenticated that since that memor- able era,"-the American invasion by the Europeans -"they, (the Iroquois) exterminated the nations of the Eries or Erigas, on the south side of Lake Erie. They nearly extirpated the Andastes and the Chaou- anons (Shawnees); they conquered the Hurons anc drove them and their allies, the Ottawas, among the Sioux, on the headwaters of the Mississippi, where
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they separated themselves in bands and proclaimed, wherever they went, the terror of the Iroquois. They also subdued the Illinois, the Miamis, the Algonkins, the Delawares, the Shawnees, and several tribes of the Abenakis. In a word, the confederates were, with few exceptions the conquerors and masters of all the Indian nations east of the Mississippi." Mr. Clinton further shows that "By the 15th article of the treaty of Utrecht, concluded in 1713, it was stipulated 'that the subjects of France inhabiting Canada, and others, shall hereafter give no hindrance or molestation to the Five Nations or cantons subject to the dominion of Great Britain." Mr. Clinton then observes: "As between France and England the confederates were, therefore, to be considered as the subjects of the latter and of course the British dominion was co-extensive with the rightful territory of the five cantons, it then became the policy of France to diminish, and that of England to enlarge this territory. But notwithstand- ing the confusion which has grown out of these clashing nterests and contradictory representations, it is not perhaps very far from the truth to pronounce, that the Five Nations were entitled by patrimony or con- quest to all the territory in the United States and in Canada, not occupied by the Creeks, the Cherokees, ind the other southern Indians, by the Sioux, the Kinisteneaux, and the Chippewas; and by the English und French, as far west as the Mississippi and Lake Winnipeg, as far northwest as the waters which unite his lake and Hudson's Bay, and as far north as Hud- on's Bay and Labrador."
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