USA > Ohio > History of Ohio; the rise and progress of an American state, Volume One > Part 13
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In 1838, William Henry Harrison, a close student of western history and, as already noted, particularly that pertaining to the Ohio Indians, delivered a discourse, in Cincinnati, before the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio, in which he repudiated the alleged Iroquois conquests and especially controverted the statements of DeWitt Clinton concerning the western invasions and subjugations by the Five Nations. Mr. Harrison's address is a carefully prepared lecture, adorned with many classical allusions, characteristic of the literary productions of its author. He refused to accept the authority of Colden's History of the Iroquois, a book which he admits he never saw, de- riving his knowledge thereof, from excerpts found in other works. In alluding to the discussion entered into "with much ardor by the late DeWitt Clinton," he flatly denies the declarations of the latter, saying "the proposition against which I contend, asserts the right of, at the period (previous to white occupation of Ohio) of which I am speaking, of all the country watered by the Ohio, to the Iroquois or Six Nations, in consideration of their having conquered the tribes which originally possessed it." Mr. Harrison then continues, "I have nothing to do, at this time, with the conquests in other directions, but I shall endeavor to prove that their alleged subjugation of the north- western tribes rests upon no competent authority and that the favorite region which we now call our own (Ohio) as well as that possessed by our immediate contiguous western sisters, has been for many cen- turies as it now is,
' The land of the free and the home of the brave.'"
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We cannot, of course, follow the original but readable argument of Mr. Harrison, who protests that the accounts of the Iroquois conquests rest solely on the statements of the conquerors themselves, unsupported by other credible testimony, remarking, "The tribes resident within the bounds of this state, when the first white settlement commenced, were the Wyandots, Miamis, Shawnees, Delawares, a remnant of the Mohicans (who had united themselves with the Dela- wares), and a band of the Ottawas. There may also have been, at this time, some bands from the Seneca and Tuscarawas tribes of the Iroquois or Six Nations, remaining in the northern part of the state. But whether resident or not, the country for some distance west of the Pennsylvania line certainly belonged to them. From this, their western boundary (wherever it might be, but certainly east of the Scioto), the claims of the Miamis and Wyandots commenced. The claims of the latter were very limited, and can not well be admitted to extend further south than the dividing ridge between the waters of the Scioto and Sandusky Rivers, nor further west than the Auglaise; whilst the Miamis and their kindred tribes are conceived to be the just proprietors of all the remaining part of the country northwest of the Ohio, and south of the south- erly bend of Lake Michigan and the Illinois River."
In the opinion of Mr. Harrison, the Miamis possessed "an indomitable valor" with which the Iroquois could not have successfully coped, for the Miami nation, or rather confederacy, possessed "a larger number of warriors, at that period (date of alleged Iroquois conquests), than could be furnished by any
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of the aboriginal nations of North America, before or since." Mr. Harrison even casts doubt on the account of the subjugation of the Delawares by the Iroquois, but admits the latter penetrated a portion of Ohio. He says, "The departure of the Wyandots gave the long-wished-for opportunity to the Iroquois to advance into Ohio. And that they did advance as far as the Sandusky, either at that period or some time after, is admitted. But there is no evidence whatever, to show that they made a conquest of the Miamis, other than their own assertions, and that of the British agents, residing among them, who obtained their in- formation from the Indians themselves. Whilst the want of such acknowledgments on the part of the Miamis, a number of facts susceptible of proof, and with all the inconsistencies and, indeed, palpable absurdities, with which the Iroquois accounts abound, form such a mass of testimony, positive, negative, and circumstantial, as should, I think leave no reasonable doubt that the pretensions of the latter, to the conquest of the country from the Scioto to the Mississippi, are entirely groundless." Mr. Harrison seems to regard his contention as clinched by his assertion that "At the treaty of Greenville, and at all the subsequent treaties, made for the extinguishment of their title to the extensive tract which I have assigned to them above, no suggestion was made of any claim of the Iroquois to any part; and there were, upon most o: these occasions, those present, who would have eagerly embraced the opportunity to disparage the characte: of the Miamis, by exhibiting these as a conquerer and degraded people. The Iroquois were not repre
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sented at the treaty of Greenville, but previously to its being held, they took care to inform General Wayne, that the Delawares were their subjects-that thay had conquered them and put petticoats upon them. But neither claimed to have conquered the Miamis, nor to have any title to any part of the country in the occupancy of the latter." We have purposely made a rather lengthy presentation of the Clinton-Harrison controversy as it involves a question of unusual im- portance in Ohio Indian history, and as Mr. Harrison has been given great credence as high and first hand authority on Ohio Indians because of his intimate personal relations with them. But in this controversy Mr. Harrison is unquestionably in gross error. He was doubtless unduly biased by his admiration for the Ohio Indians and he was unpossessed of the evidence which easily could have dislodged him from his assumed position. That the Iroquois swept over and subdued the Ohio tribes and those west, as far as the Mississippi, is now a scarcely less firmly established fact than Wayne's victory at Fallen Timber in which Harrison so gallantly participated.
Indeed in support of the fact of the Iroquois con- quests in the Ohio country and the far West we have the accumulative testimony of General Lewis Cass, a most authentic student of western Indian history, in his address delivered (1829) before the Historical Society of Michigan; also the testimony of Henry R. Schoolcraft the distinguished American ethnologist, who for some twenty years, beginning in 1820, was the uperintendent of Indian affairs in the West for the Jnited States government. There is no higher author-
t st gen act® ue. rep
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ity on the history and customs of the American Indians than Mr. Schoolcraft, and his publications, issued by the National Bureau of Ethnology, on those subjects exceed in extent the writings of any other author. In his discourse before the Historical Society of Michigan (1830) Mr. Schoolcraft summarizes the conquests of the Iroquois "from Lake Champlain to the Illinois; to the mouth of the Hudson; to the mouth of the Ohio;" and "they pushed their war parties north to Lake Huron, by the route of Lake Simcoe and Nadowasa- king, where they found and subdued the mixed tribe of the Mississagies; they passed deeper into the north- ern regions, and exhibited themselves, in a strong body, on the borders of Lake Superior, at a prominent point, which perpetuates their name and their defeat-Point Iroquois, at least nine hundred miles from the general seat of the Iroquois council fire at Onondaga."
The Iroquois especially valued this Ohio country as it was easy of access and prolific in game, while their own New York territory was rapidly ceasing to be good hunting ground. The northeastern part of Ohio, later the Western Reserve, was the favorite game preserve of the Long House hunters. Charlevoix, a French-Canadian historian, writing early in the eighteenth century reported that the Iroquois ob- tained from the country of the ancient Eries-Ohio- "apple trees with fruit of the shape of a goose's egg, and a seed that is a kind of bean. This fruit is fragrant and very delicate. It is a dwarf tree, requiring a moist, rich soil." "This," observes an Ohio writer, "can be no other than the paw-paw, abundant ir southern Ohio, particularly on the river and commor
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in the center of the state." So the Iroquois came to Ohio for his meat and his fruit; it was his garden spot and he zealously guarded it. As already intimated, the Iroquois balance of power was the bone of con- tention between the English and the French.
Soon after the Dutch planted their settlement at the mouth of the Hudson, they entered into an alliance with the Five Nations, which continued without a serious break by either party until the Dutch were overcome by the English. The latter followed the Knickerbockers in the policy of amicable relationship with the Long House, nor was this friendly status broken till the days of the American Revolution. But the English-Iroquois unison intensified the French hostility towards both allies and as a counterplay the Canadians maintained a permanent working friendship with the Algonquin tribes. But in their alliance with the English, the Iroquois demanded and obtained recognition as an independent people, though occupy- ing territory within the confines of the New York colony.
CHAPTER VIII. INDIAN TITLES TO OHIO
T HE colonial authorities of New York, Penn- sylvania, Virginia and Maryland all early began negotiations with the tribes within or adjacent to their provinces in order to hold them steadfast to the English, one of the chief purposes of the numerous conferences being to induce the Indians to cede the lands they occupied to the English crown, receiving in exchange therefor the protection of England as against the French. At one of these councils, held in the Town Hall at Albany, 1684, before the colonial governors, Colonel Dongan of New York and Lord Howard of Virginia, "the chiefs came clothed in ragged mantles and dirty shirts, but a Roman senator could not have exhibited greater dignity or composure of manner." On this occasion the Iroquois orator declared the tribes to be "a free people uniting ourselves to what sachem we please." They wished to unite themselves to the English that they "might be protected from the French, otherwise we shall lose all the beaver and hunting." They wished the "Corlear"-the title they gave to the governor of New York-to send over the proposition to "the great sachem Charles, that lives over the great lake," viz. the Atlantic, and they gave the Corlear "two white drest deer skins" to be sent to the King that he might write his answer and put his great red seal to them. They also sent a wampum belt to the King's brother, the Duke of York.
In this conference the English acknowledged the supremacy of the Iroquois over the territory claimed by the confederacy, and over all tribes subject to the Five Nations, embracing the whole country from
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the English colonies on the east to the indefinite western limits of the Iroquois conquests. This ac- knowledgment by the British was in pursuance of the shrewd diplomacy on the part of the English to obtain advantage not only over the French but the Indian as well.
It was the year before the Albany-Iroquois conces- sion of English supremacy that William Penn made his first treaty with the Indians under the famous Old Elm Tree at Shackamaxon; the scene that artists have painted, poets have sung, historians portrayed and philosophers applauded. There was no specific purchase or transfer of land, only a working agreement of fair dealing. The Quaker governor unfolded the parchment writing and in eloquent and sympathetic words explained its terms; that it was a "league and chain of friendship, that should grow stronger and stronger and be kept bright and clean without rust or spot, while the waters ran down the creeks and rivers and while the sun and moon and stars endured." Penn said of the Indians: "they are a careless, merry people, yet in affairs of property strict in their dealings. In council they are deliber- ate, in speech short, grave and eloquent. I have never seen in Europe anything more wise, cautious and dexterous." At this council Tammany, chief of the Delawares, represented his people.
The Peace of Ryswick (1697), between France and England and other interested nations, including Spain, confirmed to the French the possession of the two great valleys she claimed by discovery, that of the St. Lawrence, with the lakes, and that of the Mississippi
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"with its affluents," which embraced the Ohio. But the first move of great moment on the chess board of America, in the long pending game between France and England with the Indian tribes as pawns, was made in Albany in the summer of 1701. At this same conference twenty "sachems, chief men, cap- tains and representatives of the Five Nations, or Cantons, after mature deliberation, out of a deep sense of the royal favors extended to us by the present great monarch of England, and out of many other motives, * freely and voluntarily surren- dered," delivered up and forever quit claimed, for themselves, heirs and successors, to their great lord and master, the King of England, "all right, title and interest," to their beaver hunting grounds, therein described; being in brief the land west and northwest from Albany, beginning on the northwest side of Cadaraqui (Ontario) Lake and including all the waste land between Ottawawa Lake (Lake Huron) and Swege (Erie) Lake, and "runs till it butts upon the Twitchwichs (Miamis) and is bounded on the right hand (west) by a place called Quadage (Chicago), containing in length about 800 miles and in breadth 400 miles, including "the country where the beavers, the deers, elks and such beasts keep and the place called Tieugsachrondio, alias Fort de Tret (Detroit) and so runs around the lake of Swege (Erie) to a place called Oniadarondaquet (Irondequoit), which is about twenty miles from the Sinnekes (Seneca's) Castle."
This area, practically all the land between the Ottawa River, the Great Lakes and a strip between the south- ern end of Lake Michigan and western end of Lake
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Erie, the Five Nations in this "deed" claimed to own by right of conquest in "fair war." The grantors reserved for themselves, heirs and descendants forever "free hunting" expecting therein "to be protected by the Crown of England." The English were accorded the "power to erect forts and castles" in the land specified. This "quit claim deed," which did not affect the territory of Ohio, created much misunderstanding, as to just what rights and powers it did confer on the English.
The Albany Treaty of 1701 has aroused among historical writers much discussion, it being claimed by many that at the conference then held no treaty was written and signed, but that there was simply "much talk" on the part of the English with no con- tract understanding as a conclusion. Justin Winsor in his "Narrative and Critical History of America," says: "No treaty exists by which the Iroquois trans- ferred this conquered country [Ohio Valley and the Illinois country] to the English, but the transaction was claimed to have some sort of a registry, as expressed for instance, in a legend on Evans' map (1755), which reads; 'the Confederates (Five Nations) July 19, 1701, at Albany surrendered their beaver hunting country to the English, to be defended by them for the said Confederates, their heirs and successors forever, and the same was confirmed, September 14, 1728 [1726], when the Senecas, Cayugas and Onondagas surrendered their habitations from Cayahoga to Oswego and six miles inland to the same for the same use.'" The same claim is made on Mitchell's map of the same year (1755) referring to the treaty with the Iroquois at
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Albany, September, 1726, by which the region west of Lake Erie and north of Erie and Ontario, as well as the belt of land from Oswego westward, was confirmed to the English.
Speaking of this same treaty, George Bancroft in his "History of the United States, " says: "That in 1701, at the opening of the war of the Spanish succes- sion, the chiefs of the Mohawks and the Oneidas had appeared in Albany; and the English commissioners, who could produce no treaty yet made a minute in their books of entry that the Mohawks and Oneidas had placed their hunting grounds under the protection of the English." He also speaks of this same treaty, "But as a treaty of which no record existed could hardly be cited as a surrender of lands, it was the object of Burnett to obtain a confirmation of this grant. Accordingly, in the treaty concluded at Albany, in September, 1726, the cession of the Iroquois country west of Lake Erie, and north of Erie and Ontario, was confirmed," etc.
Mr. Winsor and Mr. Bancroft, it will thus be seen, evidently were of the opinion that no documentary treaty of 1701 existed. They seemed to have over- looked the fact that in the series of official publications known as "Documents Relating to the Colonial History of the State of New York," published in 1854, will be found the treaty in question, as it was written in full at the time of its execution, with the fac-similes of the signatures of the chiefs of the Five Nations and the signatures of ten or more of the representatives of the New York colony. The French of course utterly ignored this document. But with the English
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it was a strong blow upon the entering wedge for Indian dispossession.
As a sort of an intermission divertisement between the treaty acts, Colonel Peter Schuyler (in 1709) took four Mohawk chieftains to England, as an exhibit, "to play upon the imagination of Queen Anne," to whom they were presented with elaborate and im- posing ceremonies. The interest they aroused helped the colonists to gain men and ships with which they could carry on the contest against the Canadian-French.
This picturesque incident of the visit to London of the Mohawk chiefs, afforded material to Addison for one of the raciest essays in his Spectator. He pre- tends to quote at some length, observations made by one of the savage kings, upon the people and scenes of London. These reflections are not only unique but replete with humor and sarcasm and witty comments on the English foibles of the times. This essay smacks of Addison's keen intellect rather than a barbarian intelligence. The joke was given away by Dean Swift, who, in a letter to a friend, written the day after the publication of Addison's essay, says, the article "was made of a noble hint I gave him long ago for his Tatler, about an Indian, supposed to write his travels in England. I repent he ever had it. I intended to have written a book on that subject. I believe he has spent it all in one paper and all the under hints there are mine too." What a pity that Addison's borrowed jest spoiled a proposed monograph on the adventures of an Indian king in "merrie Englande," written by the inimitable author of Gulliver's Travels.
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As a companion scenic event to the journey of the Mohawk chiefs to London and the ceremonial presenta- tion of the plumed and painted warriors to the Queen's Court, Sir Alexander Spotswood, Governor of Virginia, (in 1716) led his rollicking cavalcade of sixty persons, "gentlemen, rangers, Indians and servants," from Williamsburg, across the Blue Ridge to the banks of the Shenandoah River, which they styled the "Eu- phrates." There they took possession of the "Valley of Virginia" in the name of their king, burying in a bottle the written record of their claim and the pro- ceedings attending it. The occasion was hilariously celebrated by the imbibing of copious draughts of "Virginia wine, both red and white, Irish usquebaugh, brandy, shrub, two kinds of rum, champagne, canary, cherry, punch and cider." Certainly their exploration was well drunk! ! The gentry of the party perpetuated the memory and results of their transmontane trip by the creation of the famous order of the "Knights of the Golden Horseshoe."
In the year 1742 John Howard was commissioned by Governor Sir Francis Wyatt of Virginia "to make discoveries westward." With four or five others, one being John Peter Salley, who was the journalist of the party, the Virginia voyager set out from the branches of the James River and portaged across to the New River. Here they constructed a boat of withe frames covered with buffalo hides. In this they floated down stream until checked by the impassable falls. Cutting across land they found a branch of the stream, just eft, that bore them on to the Ohio. Thence on their buffalo-hide convoy they were carried to the Missis-
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sippi, down which the current swept them "a great way till they were surprised by about ninety men, French, Indians and Negroes," who made the adven- turous party captives, conducting them to and con- fining them in prison at New Orleans. It was several years before they effected their release or escape and returned to Virginia. But it was an early English inspection of the lower Ohio and Mississippi.
The buffalo-skin canoe journey of Howard and the champagne stimulated expedition of Spotswood illus- trate the indomitable character and convivial tempera- ment of the Virginia pioneer. Such men were destined to lead in the conquest of an empire.
In the treaty of peace, concluded at Utrecht, 1713, between the warring nations of Europe, the immense region of the Mississippi Valley was confirmed to France as against Spain and England and a distinct article of the treaty specified the recognition of the dominion of the English over the Five Nations whom "France should not molest." But the Iroquois jealous of their independence were not likely to regard them- selves as too severely bound by a treaty to which they were not a party.
Another Indian-English council was held at Albany in 1726 when the colonial governor of New York told the sachems of the Five Nations that under the "deed" of 1701 the English could not protect the Long House from the French but urged the tribes to "submit and give up all their hunting country to the King of England and sign a deed for it," that England could then defenc them against the French and "secure to them a quiet enjoyment of their own lands." Shylock was no
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shrewder in his bond deal with Bassanio and Antonio. But still the wily Iroquois were not entirely deceived. The sachems of the Senecas, Cayugas and Onondagas signed for themselves a "deed of trust" to King George for the country from Salmon River, New York, west to Kayahoge (Cleveland) and sixty miles to the south of this east and west line.
This "trust deed," which the Mohawks did not sign, it will be seen, took in a part of what was later to be the Ohio Western Reserve. But the Iroquois as their subsequent transactions testified, evidently did not regard the "quit claim deed" of 1701 or the "trust deed" of 1726 as yielding up "the rights of property in the land." Their simplicity in the pro- ceedings had the ingenuousness of the "Heathen Chinee." The colonial authorities on the other hand, were well aware of the lame nature both legal and equitable of the deeds they had inveigled the sachems to sign. These yieldings of the Iroquois, it will be noticed, did not involve their claims to the Ohio lands, save as noted in the "trust" transaction. That both deeds were regarded by the tribes more or less as "Indian gifts" is evidenced by the letter in 1763 from Sir William Johnson, then English superintendent of Indian affairs in the northern department of the colo- nies, to the Lords of Trade and Plantations, in which he says, "they-[the Six Nations]-claim by right of conquest all the country, including the Ohio, along the great ridge of Blue Mountain at the back of Virginia, thence to the head of the Kentucky River and down the same to the Ohio above the rifts; thence northerly to the south end of Lake Michigan; then
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along the east shore of Michilmackinack; thence easterly along the north end of Lake Huron to Ottawa River and Island of Montreal. * * This claim to the Ohio and thence to the lakes is not in the least disputed by the Shawnees, Delawares and others, who never transacted any sales of land or other matters without their-[Iroquois]-consent."
No land holdings of the Five Nations were more surely obtained by conquest or more securely held than the country of the Ohio. Mr. Pownall in his "Adminis- tration of the Colonies," says the right of the Five Nations Confederacy to the hunting lands of Ohio by conquest they made in subduing the Shawnees, Dela- wares, Twigthwees and Illinois may be fairly proved, as they stood possessed thereof at the Peace of Rys- wick.
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