USA > Ohio > History of Ohio; the rise and progress of an American state, Volume One > Part 30
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nation oppose our taking possession of it, all which they confirmed by four large pipes."
After two weeks of negotiations with the tribes named and many others, Croghan, still suffering from his wounds, now no longer a prisoner, but rather a liberated and honored embassador, accompanied by Francois Masonville, a French Indian interpreter, set out for Fort Chartres, an old French trading post, built in 1720, on the Ohio River below Kaskaskia. They had advanced only a few miles into the forest when the English embassy met with Pontiac, together with the deputies of the Six Nations, Delawares, and Shawnees, and a singular conference ensued in the wild forest. After some friendly parleyings, both parties retired to Ouiatanon, where a more lengthy exchange of views ensued. Pontiac was in a yielding disposition, blamed his continued enmity to the English upon the instigation of the French, who had grossly deceived him. He now knew the French were con- quered but persisted that the French had no right to the land, occupied by the Indians, and therefore could not transfer it to the English. The great Ottawa chief, however, would not resist the English in their occupa- tion of the French forts, but would receive their new Father, the English, with open arms. This peaceful acquiescence of Pontiac and his retinue of Illinois chiefs, made it unnecessary for Croghan to further pursue his mission into the Illinois interior.
Followed by Pontiac and many of the principal chiefs, Croghan turned his course eastward, crossed over to Fort Miami, at the headwaters of the Maumee, down which he descended, stopping at Indian villages
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to hold conferences and propitiate the natives, for this was the home country of Pontiac, and here the conspirator had formerly rallied many adherents. By the middle of August, Croghan reached Detroit. Here a great gathering of Indians assembled, at his summons, to treat with him. It was a motley assembly of many tribes. Numerous conferences were held, speeches in- numerable were delivered, wampum belts were presented to accentuate the points of the orations; the council hall was hazy with the curling smoke from the peace calumets. Pontiac made a characteristic plea for his people, reciting the wrongs done his race and especial- ly emphasizing the damage done the tribesmen by the liquor furnished them by the whites, expressing his hope that hereafter it be kept from them; he closes this speech, so tempered with temperance, however, by saying, addressing the English, "Father, you stopped up the rum barrel when we came here, 'till the business of this meeting was over, as it is now finished, we request you may open the barrel that your children may drink and be merry."
Many weeks these interminable conferences con- tinued. Chief after chief had his say, and tribe after tribe acknowledged its submission. Croghan's mis- sion had been crowned with signal success, and obtain- ing from Pontiac a promise that in the spring he would repair to Oswego and as representative of the western allied tribes, conclude a treaty of peace and friendship with the Indian superintendent Sir William Johnson, Croghan returned to Niagara, which, after a birch canoe voyage of three hundred miles from Detroit,
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he reached on October 8th. He had been gone nearly five months, had travelled about two thousand miles, penetrating the far western interior.
That the efforts of Croghan's peaceful mission might not be ephemeral and soon forgotten, General Gage followed up the return of the intrepid embassador by sending down the Ohio to Fort Chartres, Captain Sterling with a company of one hundred Highlanders of the 42d Regiment. The French commander, St. Ange, yielded his post, the citadel of the French in the Illinois country. That act was the sealing sign of the English supremacy of the lower Ohio Valley. Pon- tiac's cause was irretrievably lost, and the spring of 1766 found the haughty but defeated chief at Oswego, according to his previous pledge to Croghan. Accom- panied by his accustomed escort of chiefs and tribesmen to give dignity to his appearance and emphasis to his errand, Pontiac and party pushed their birchen flotilla across lakes Erie and Ontario. "Soon their goal was reached, and the cannon boomed hollow salutation from the batteries of Oswego." The conquered chief had arrived to acknowledge once and for all his submission and obedience to the pale face conquerors. He was received by Sir William Johnson, attended by the chief sachems of the Iroquois. It was a scene of savage splendor, the Indian chiefs were attired in all the gorgeousness of their ceremonial garments, while their scores of followers were in robes as variegated as the rainbow. The council chamber could not hold the assembly; it convened under an improvised canopy of green boughs on a bright July day. The scene is described by Stone in his Life of Johnson: “Indeed
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the appearance of that council upon that summer's morning was exceedingly picturesque. At one end of the leafy canopy the manly form of the superin- tendent, wrapped in his scarlet blanket bordered with gold lace, and surrounded by the glittering uniforms of the British officers, was seen with hand extended in welcome to the great Ottawa, who, standing erect in conscious power, his rich plumes waving over the circle of his warriors, accepted the proffered hand, with an air in which defiance and respect were singularly blended. Around, stretched at length upon the grass lay the proud chiefs of the Six Nations, gazing with curious eye upon the man who had come hundreds of miles to smoke the calumet with their beloved superin- tendent."
The usual tedious program was enacted, of speeches, smoke, presents, palaver and potations. Pontiac spoke long and pathetically; "Father, when our great father of France was in the country I held him fast by the hand. Now that he is gone, I take you, my English father, by the hand, in the name of all the nations, and promise to keep this covenant as long as I live." Sir William Johnson spoke for the English father. The memorable meeting came to an end; like a dissolving view upon the screen, the picturesque pageant passed into history, the chiefs scattered to their distant homes, and Pontiac shorn of all power, save the hollow leader- ship of his people, his canoe laden with the gifts from his enemy, steered homeward for the Maumee and his warrior oarsman "keeping time with their paddles to a wild and strange melody, were soon lost to sight on the waste of waters."
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Upon the banks of the river that witnessed his birth Pontiac spent the winter of 1766-7, pitching his lodge in the forest with his wives and children and pursuing the chase like an ordinary member of his tribe. From now until the tragic end, the Ottawa chieftain is well nigh lost to view; long he toiled and ranged the woods in vain, a potentate despoiled of power. Through the years 1767-8, Pontiac was a virtual outcast in the wilderness of the west. More and more he gave way to his fondness for liquor until the demon of rum, let loose among his people by the pale face, became his master. In the spring of 1769, the hopeless chief appeared at the Post of St. Louis, on the Mississippi, then in command of St. Ange de Bellerive, a friend of Pontiac, who had offered his services to the Spaniards after the cession of Louisiana by the French to the English. At the Post of St. Louis, Pontiac remained a welcome visitor, when hearing one day that a number of Indians had gathered across the river on the Illinois side for the purpose of a drinking bout, he hastened to join in the festivity. The account is that the savage chief before entering his canoe, that was to carry him across to Cahokia, arrayed himself in the full uniform of a French officer, an apparel presented to him towards the close of the French and Indian war, by none other than the Marquis de Montcalm, who greatly admired the savage chief. In this costume Pontiac was too generously entertained by Creoles and Indians of the French village, then an English post. Having imbibed without restraint, when the carousal was over, Pontiac started with unsteady steps into the adjacent forest. He was stealthily followed by a Kaskaskia tribesman,
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who had been bribed to commit the crime by the promise of a barrel of liquor, by an English trader named Williamson. The hired assassin tracked the footsteps of the Ottawa chief, and in an opportune moment glided behind him and buried a tomahawk in his brain. Thus ignominiously fell in the wooded wilds, he had so often trod, to arouse his faithful fol- lowers, "a chieftain by far the most powerful that ever trod the forest glades, and one, also, whose beck could at pleasure summon legions of painted warriors upon the war path or send them cowering to their wigwams." On the discovery of the dead body, at the instigation of St. Ange, it was borne to St. Louis, near the fort of which it was buried with military honors. But neither mound nor tablet marked the site of his burial, but his blood mounted aloft and cried for vengeance. Nor did it cry in vain. Whole tribes, friendly to the fallen leader, sprang forth to redress the foul assassina- tion. The Sacs and Foxes assembled in great numbers and made relentless war upon the Kaskaskias, the Peorias and the Cahokias, all of whom were charged with complicity in the "damnable taking off" of the murdered warrior. The three guilty tribes were prac- tically exterminated. Their villages were burned, their people killed or scattered to distant places of refuge, "those who survived the carnage remaining forever after sunk in utter insignificance; for over the grave of Pontiac more blood was poured in atonement, than flowed from the veins of the slaughtered heroes on the corpse of Patroclus."
Many theories have been advanced as to the motive leading to the killing of Pontiac, the more plausible
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of which is that the jealousy of the Indians was aroused by the belief that Pontiac was to receive or did receive a pension of ten shilling a day from the British authori- ties. This theory is sustained by a letter from Norman McLeod to William Johnson, written in August, 1766, in which Mr. McLeod states the Indians believed Pontiac has thus been bribed to cease hostile efforts against the English. The part of Williamson in this affair seems more or less inexplicable. Did he repre- sent the English enmity to and fear of Pontiac? Or was it merely the trader's greed to secure unrestricted access to the tribesmen?
The character of Pontiac has been the theme of much curious mixture of commendation and condemna- tion. A sample is the comment of Bancroft who alludes to him as "the king and lord of all the North- west,-a Catawba prisoner, as is said, adopted into the clan of the Ottawas and elected their chief; respected and in a manner adored, by all the nations around him; a man of integrity and humanity according to the morals of the wilderness, dauntless and fertile in resources."
Pontiac was never a Catawba prisoner. He was dauntless and resourceful and had streaks of integrity, displayed however from mere motives of policy, such as redeeming his promissory notes, but these streaks only emphasized his standard duplicity and treachery. As for honesty, even according to his racial in- stincts, he had none. The vices and brutalities of his people were unusually pronounced in his nature and habits. He was sensual and cruel in the ex- treme. He had unsurpassed talents for dominating leadership, diplomacy, oratory, organization and un-
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yielding perserverance. If we except Tecumseh, whom we shall deal with later on, Pontiac was the greatest hero of his race. He left several children, some of whom continued to live for many years on the banks of the Maumee. One son, Shegenaba, later figured prominently in the Ohio events during the American Revolution.
CHAPTER XIX. OHIO SETTLEMENT SCHEMES
T HE quiescence of Pontiac and the submission of the Ohio Indians in the years 1764 and 1765 gave opportunity to the English to se- cure possession of the Ohio country, as we have seen, as far as the Mississippi. This stretch of country was an unbroken wilderness, almost exclu- sively the abode of the redmen. In spite of the Quebec Act the traders and settlers, from the eastern colonies, were crossing the Ohio, seeking traffic and prospecting for future homes. The Indians no less than the British authorities were anxious to restrict the colonists to their prescribed limitations. It was for good reason therefore that the promise made by the Ohio Indians to Bouquet that they would meet Sir William Johnson at the German Flats, was faithfully fulfilled.
It was in the early spring of 1766, some weeks before Pontiac and his party visited Oswego, that representatives of the western tribes presented them- selves at the German Flats, on the Mohawk. At this time a treaty was entered into by which a tract of land within the Indian territory east of the Ohio, was ceded to the English for the benefit of traders who had been damaged during the recent war. George Croghan was one of the beneficiaries of this treaty, receiving a grant of some thirteen hundred acres of land on the Allegheny River. At this same council the Indians proposed that a definite boundary be fixed along the Allegheny River, west of which the white men should not be permitted to settle. But Sir William John- son, after learning the views of the Indians, pleaded that he had no authority to make such a treaty as to bound- aries and the matter was left for a later agreement.
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In the following May (1767) in response to runners sent out by Sir Johnson, delegates from the different castles of the Six Nations appeared at the German Flats. The Indians present numbered nearly eight hundred. The alleged purpose of this conference was to secure the acquiescence of the Iroquois tribes to the adjustment between Maryland and Pennsylvania of the dispute concerning the boundary claims of those pro- vinces. In this the consent of the Indians was obtained by the argument of ample presents from the governors of the respective provinces interested.
But permission from the Six Nations to let the provincial surveyors run their boundary lines as might be agreed, was not the only matter contemplated in this meeting. To this time a hostile feeling had pre- vailed between the Six Nations and their hereditary enemies the Cherokee tribes of the south. It had long been the desire of Governor Fauquier of Virginia, which province lay between the warring tribes, that a re- conciliation be effected, and the Governor had for a long time been in conference with John Stuart, the English superintendent of Indian Affairs for the south- ern district, concerning an amicable adjustment with the Cherokees. The subject of this proposed peace was laid before the Iroquois chiefs at this council. They finally promised, in the name of the Iroquois Confederacy, that they would meet, at a later date, a deputation of the Cherokees at Johnson Hall and come to some agreement. Accordingly in December of this year (1767) three Cherokee chieftains-Little Carpenter, Great Warrior, and Raven King-ac- companied by six warriors and an interpreter, arrived
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at Johnson Hall, to remain as guests of Sir Johnson until the council could be convened. In the following February (1768) the representatives of the Six Nations arrived and according to Stone, the "meeting termin- ated in a joint treaty between the Six Nations, their allies, and the Cherokee deputies."
This Cherokee-Iroquois reconciliation was the im- mediate forerunner of the famous Treaty of Stanwix. This Congress was convened at Fort Stanwix, present site of the city of Rome (N. Y.), in September (1768). It was directed by Sir Johnson, aided by his three assistant deputies, Guy Johnson, Daniel Claus and George Croghan, accompanied by Governor William Franklin of New Jersey, Governor John Penn of Pennsylvania, the Virginia Commissioners, including Thomas Walker, and Messrs. Wharton and Trent, who appeared in behalf of the traders who had suffered in Pontiac's war and who sought redress. Andrew Montour was one of the interpreters. The Indians summoned to this council tardily straggled in from the various nations until finally thirty-two hundred of the tribesmen swarmed about the fort. For nearly two months Sir William Johnson fed and hospitably entertained this immense concourse of savages, con- ducting their deliberations, making speeches in their own languages, humoring and repressing their wayward dispositions, and bringing them reluctantly to accept his terms. Chiefs of each of the Six Nations were present with their official retinues and also chiefs of the Mingoes, Shawnees and Delawares from Ohio; one of the latter was the famous Killbuck, from the Mus- kingum.
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The Congress was opened with very imposing cere- monies. The proceedings are reported in great length and detail in the New York Colonial Documents. Sir William Johnson explained the purpose of the gathering. It was the establishment of a boundary line between the territories of the tribes and the colonists. After days of debate, speeches, gift presentations and tedious sessions, the deliberations were ended and Sir Johnson, the royal governors and the commissioners having as- sembled in full council, the Indians, through their speaker, reported on the line which they had fixed upon as the boundary. It was essentially the same as they had proposed in the previous council at the German Flats. Beginning at the mouth of the Ten- nessee River, then known as the Cherokee River, it followed the Ohio and Allegheny Rivers to Kittaning; thence in a direct line to the nearest fork of the west branch of the Susquehanna; and thence following that stream through the Alleghanies, it passed, by way of Burnett's Hills, and east branch of the Susquehanna and Delaware, into New York, to the confluence of Canada and Wood Creeks; all territory south of that line was ceded to the British.
The Lords of Trade wanted the line extended no further west than the mouth of the Great Kanawha, where it would meet the line recently established with the Cherokees as the western boundary of Virginia. The Six Nations, however, claimed the country south of the Ohio as theirs by right of conquest, as far as the Tennessee River, and positively refused to agree upon any boundary, whatever, unless this claim of theirs was recognized.
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A deed in accordance with the transfer agreed upon was made to the King of England and signed by the representatives of the Six Nations. The deputies of the Delawares, Shawnees and Mingoes, from the Ohio country, who were present at the council, did not sign the deed nor the treaty, but the chiefs of the Six Nations claimed to represent them in the transaction. Sir William Johnson, having finally accepted the boundary as proposed, the sum of ten thousand dollars in goods and money was paid to the Six Nations, as considera- tion for the territory of Kentucky, western Virginia, and portions of Pennsylvania, thus ceded to the English. North and west of this line-into the Ohio country- the colonists were not to intrude.
Shortly after the council, Fort Stanwix was dis- mantled, by order of the commander-in-chief, and adds Stone, "Its desolation stood as fitting emblem of that people, who within its walls had so recently bartered away its birthright." The Fort Stanwix Treaty gave a great impetus to land speculation especially of various land companies for taking up and settling the territory covered by the treaty. Many new land companies sprang into existance and old ones took on revived activity.
We have already made note of the inception of the Ohio Company in 1748, mainly formed in the interests of Virginia, whose traders hoped by the facilities of water-carriage between the Potomac and eastern branches of the Ohio to attain an advantage over the Pennsylvanians, as observed by Justin Winsor. This Ohio Company, at the head of which was Thomas Lee and the Washington brothers, Lawrence and Augustine,
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received, as we have seen, a conditional royal grant of half a million acres, within the bounds of the Virginia colony, on both sides of the Ohio, between the Monon- gahela and the Kanawha. Two hundred thousand acres of this great area were to be located at once, to be held for ten years free of quit rent, provided the company would put there one hundred families, within seven years, and build a fort sufficient to protect the settlement.
The initial contest between France and England, the cause of which was the formation of this Ohio Company and the prospecting tour of its agent through Ohio, and the subsequent French and Indian war, prevented the carrying out of the Ohio Company plans and excepting futile efforts following the late war, just mentioned, the company awaited a favorable time for action. That time seemed to have arrived after the Stanwix Treaty, but other projects intervened.
Before we follow the Ohio Company to its end, one other company which bears upon our history, must be briefly considered. In 1763, only a few months before the promulgation of the Quebec Act, prohibiting settlements in the Ohio country, a company was formed for settlements therein. This organization was known as The Mississippi Company, and the original articles setting forth its purpose, are preserved in the Congres- sional Library at the National Capital, and are in the handwriting of George Washington, who was the lead- ing spirit in the formation of this company. To the articles in question, Washington's name is signed with those of his associates, including Augustine Washington and four members of the Lee family, Francis Lightfoot
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Lee, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas L. Lee and William Lee, in all nineteen names. This company was to "explore and settle some tracts of land upon the Miss- issippi and its waters." The company was to "consist of fifty members and no more, who are to contribute equally towards the expense of sending an agent to England to obtain from the Crown a grant of lands" to the amount of fifty thousand acres a share or two million, five hundred thousand acres in all. The articles set forth with much detail and particularity the rights of the share-holders and the methods to be pursued in the operation of the company.
An agent was sent to London to secure a grant of western lands, as proposed, but the Quebec procla- mation blocked further proceedings, and the Miss- issippi scheme proved to be a "bubble." Washington however clung tenaciously to the plan. With his farsighted sagacity, he realized that the time would come sooner or later when the Ohio country would be the promised land of new settlers. In 1767 he wrote William Crawford, his old time friend and land agent, "I can never look upon that (1763 proclamation) in any other light (but I say this between ourselves) than as a temporary expedient to quiet the minds of the Indians. * Any person, therefore, who neglects the present opportunity of hunting out good lands, and in some measure working and distinguishing them for his own, in order to keep others from settling them, will never regain it." This was written, be it remem- bered, the year before the Stanwix Treaty.
In the autumn of 1764 Benjamin Franklin who for fourteen successive years, had been chosen a member
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of the Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly, was defeated for re-election because of his position in favor of a change in the proprietary form of government for the province. But the members of the new Assembly appointed him a special agent to proceed to the court of Great Britain and there take charge of the interests and general affairs of the colony. Although this was the second trans-Atlantic errand of Franklin in behalf of the colonies, the first having been some ten years earlier, the later mission was the commencement of his remarkable diplomatic career. Within a few years after his arrival in London, he was made similar foreign agent for the colonies respectively of Georgia, New Jersey and Massachusetts.
Among the various schemes formed for land ex- ploitation and western settlement in the period between the French and Indian War and the American Revolu- tion the one known as the Walpole Company or Walpole Grant was the most conspicuous and historic. It was projected in 1766, one of its chief protagonists being Sir William Johnson, with whom were associated William Franklin, Governor of New Jersey and son of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Pownall, formerly Gov- ernor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, Samuel Wharton, John Sargent, George Croghan, and others prominent in colonial affairs and influential in England. Among the latter was Thomas Walpole, a leading London banker who was placed at the head of the company thus giving it the title Walpole Company. Dr. Ben- jamin Franklin, then in England, was interested in the company and acted as its representative before the Lords of Trade, and the King's Privy Council. The
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