History of the Fire lands, comprising Huron and Erie Counties, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of the prominent men and pioneers, Part 8

Author: Williams, W. W. (William W.)
Publication date: 1879
Publisher: Cleveland, Ohio : Press of Leader Printing Company
Number of Pages: 726

USA > Ohio > Erie County > History of the Fire lands, comprising Huron and Erie Counties, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of the prominent men and pioneers > Part 8
USA > Ohio > Huron County > History of the Fire lands, comprising Huron and Erie Counties, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of the prominent men and pioneers > Part 8

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SALINA GROUP.

The water lime is immediately underlain by a series of calcareons shales and beds of gypsum, which apparently represent the Onondaga salt group of New York. The gypsum quarries worked by Mr. George A. Marsh, on Sandusky bay, lie within the limits of Ottawa county, and the same formation extends under Sandusky, where it has been reached in boring wells for oil-at too great a depth, how- ever, to be profitably worked. These beds of gyp- sum also form the bottom of the lake off the point of Put-in-Bay island, so that they apparently underlie a large area in this vicinity. They deserve to be care- fully sought for, as they may be found in localities where they will be readily accessible. From the con- tinuity of the surface clays, this exploration, how- ever, can only be effected by boring. The gypsnni of

HISTORY OF HURON AND ERIE COUNTIES, OHIO.

Sandusky is of excellent quality, and the quantity is apparently inexhaustible. About ten thousand tons per annum are produced at the quarries of Mr. Marsh.

BUILDING STONE.

No portion of the State is more abundantly sup- plied with excellent building materials than that immediately about Sandusky. The Amherst sand- stone, which is known, and I can almost say used, all over the United States, reaches into Erie county, and, though not yet quarried there to any consid- erable extent may, perhaps, become hereafter an im- portant contributor to the wealth of the inhabitants.

The Sandusky limestone is also highly prized as a building material, and its capability of supplying suitable stone for large and handsome structures is illustrated in the splendid high-school building and various other edifices at Sandusky, as well as churches, stores and residences at Toledo, Cleve- land, etc.

The quarries of the corniferous at Marblehead and Kelly's Island, are in Ottawa county, but the strata worked there underlie all of Erie county, and may be reached at various points with little trouble. The same beds of the corniferous furnish quick lime not inferior to any manufactured in the State, so that lime may be specified as one of the important mineral staples of the county.

OIL SHALES.

The carbonaceous matter contained in the Huron shale is equivalent in heating power to that of a thick seam of coal, but up to the present time we have not discovered any mode of making that source of power available, except by distilling oil or gas from it. Both these useful substances are constantly being evolved - from this great carbonaceous mass by spontaneous distillation, and it is possible that they may be here- after, when the supply of petroleum from wells has failed, artificially generated from this source so cheaply as to pay a profit to the manufacturers. It is also worth remembering that further east along the lake shore, as at Erie, Pennsylvania, and Fredonia, New York, the spontaneous flow of carbureted hydrogen gas from the Huron shale has been exten- sively utilized. Fredonia was for many years exclu- sively, and still is partially lighted by natural gas, and at Erie, wells sunk for the purpose, are supplying combustible gas, which is being successfully applied to the heating and lighting of residences and manu- facturing establishments.

The gypsum and hydraulic lime of the water lime and Salina groups should, perhaps, be enumerated among the material mineral resources of Erie county, as, though not found upon the surface, they lie not far below. The quantity and accessibility of these materials are, however, yet so much in doubt that no one would be justified in anticipating a great increase in the wealth of the county from this source.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE PREHISTORIC FIRE-LANDS.

NO PERIOD of history is more fascinating to the student than the period in which history has not begun. In the study of ascertained and chronicled facts there is not much scope for the workings of fancy; but the imagination may run riot amid the wildest conjectures as to times of which no records tell. There may be poetry and romance based upon the sober realities of historic eras, but the myths and traditions of every land, belonging to ages before its history began, are not based upon, but are themselves, poetry and romance.

This chapter is to treat of the Fire-lands before the days of the pioneers. It is not to chronicle events, but, rather, to grope in the darkness of forgotten times, and attempt to gather up such broken threads of knowledge as have not been utterly lost, that they may be woven into some semblance of reality. It is to search and inquire, rather than to teach.

The ages embraced in the term, "prehistoric times," have an end but no beginning.

Who, if any human beings, inhabited the Fire- lands before that mysterious people, the Mound- Builders, began to rear their strange structures along our river terraces, we have no means of knowing. All before their era is an absolute blank, in which we find no myth, nor tradition, nor moldering ruin, to aid us in our efforts to obtain some knowledge of the remotest past.

THE MOUND-BUILDERS,

Our name for the people who wrote in our soil the fact of their existence, but left us no other records. We may know some of their habits of life, we may know that they mined copper about Lake Superior and mica in the Alleghanies: that they trafficked in the markets of the southwest and brought shells from the Gulf of Mexico; but their memorable events of war and peace, the names of their statesmen and philosophers, warriors and poets, have been utterly forgotten, and no man knows to-day whether or not any remnant of the great race remains on the earth.

In all the valleys of the Mississippi and its tribu- taries, their works remain in abundance to testify of the mysterious workers. Of the origin of these works the Indians knew nothing. Their traditions did not reach back so fur.

Accustomed as we have been to the thought of primeval forests in all this region, thinly inhabited by nomadic tribes of savages, disputing the title to the soil with the fierce panther and the howling wolf, we can hardly realize that, ages ago, a deuse agricul- tural population filled all our borders, cultivating their farms, building substantial dwellings and lofty temples, establishing governments and enacting laws, holding commercial relations with different parts of the continent.

HISTORY OF HURON AND ERIE COUNTIES, OHIO.

The erection of the thousands of artificial mounds, terraces and earthwork enclosures which still remain, with all the other vast works which must have been obliterated by "the waves and weathers of time," could only have been possible in a land like Mesopo- tamia or Egypt, of great agricultural resources. Where there were so many toiling hands, there were many months to be fed, and to supply the enormous demand there must have been other workers, pro- ducers, tillers of the soil.

Maples and beeches, tough hickories and giant oaks, " the green-robed senators of mighty woods," did not always darken the face of Ohio as in the days of the Indian hunters; but long, long before the red men had found their way to the fertile Fire-lands, grain, golden as the sunlight which ripened it, was waving over myriads of these our fields. Where there was grain, there were granaries, and where the builders of the terraced mounds toiled day by day, there were buying and selling, and there were a hundred trades and employments which men have ever found the inevitable concomitants of civilized society.

The character of the earthworks in this region evi- dences the fact that the Fire-lands are on the northern frontiers of the ancient empire. Nearly all the works along our river banks in northern Ohio are manifestly defensive fortifications, with external faciæ, as in modern works of like character; and north of the lakes there are no such pyramidal foundations, for now lost structures, as abound in the central part of the United States. Traveling southward from the lakes, one finds mysterious ruins growing in number and magnitude, until they are merged in the wealth of monumental remains, shadowed by the tropical forests of Central America.

Fascinating as is the study of these relics of an ancient empire, this chapter has space but to deal with those which belonged to this one of its outlying prov- inces. We shall not find on the Fire-lands such great pyramidal mounds as those of southern Ohio, West Virginia, and Illinois; nor shall we marvel at such monolithic images and carven tablets as abound in Yucatan and Guatamala. We shall, however, find unmistakable evidences that the same race which left these records of an extinct civilization, had out-posts along the river banks which are most familiar to us.

The works upon the Fire-lands were, for the most part, circular fortifications on the highlands over- looking the river banks, some of them enclosing small mounds supposed to have been burial places. These works have been almost obliterated by continual culti- vation during the past half century; but we are fortu- nate in the fact that some of the observing pioneers who came and saw them before the leveling plowshare had crossed and recrossed them year after year, have put upon paper their remenibrances of them.

By such means we are informed that the Mound- Builders are believed to have left their traces in at least the townships of Margaretta, Vermillion, Berlin, Huron, Milan, Ridgefield, Norwalk, New Haven and

Norwich. The works which, in the early part of the century, remained in the localities which have become the townships above named, are briefly described as follows:

The township of Margarettta had, when first set- tled, a number of fortifications and mounds, some of the latter quite large and constructed of stone.

In Vermillion there were two extensive fortifica- tions on the banks of the river of the same name, and another in the southern part of the township. There were, in the same township, a number of mounds in in which human skeletons and scattered bones were found.

In Berlin, in the western part of the township, there was a mound covering a quarter of an acre, with large trees growing upon it. Near the center of the township, on the farm formerly owned by the late Lewis Osborn, was another mound, and in the north- ern part of the township, a fortification.

In Huron township, mounds were found on the highlands on both sides of the river. Two of these mounds on the west side of the river and about two miles from its mouth, were quite large and nearly round. Human bones and "beads of different colors", were found in them.

In Milan, the pioneers describe "three forts," one in the first section, one in the second and one in the fourth. Their embankments, when first seen by the whites, were from two to four feet high. At differ- ent places in the township other earthworks were found, and in some of them human bones and imple- ments of stone and clay.

In Ridgefield township, Huron county, circular for- tifications were found in lot two and lot three of the first section, and a small mound containing human bones, in lot eighteen of the second section. The fortifications are on high banks of branches of the Huron river.

In Norwalk there were three fortifications near the Ridgefield line, and crossing it, on the farm now owned by Isaac Underhill. That gentleman has pre- served reminiscences of his plowing, when a boy, through the dry and brittle bones of the men of whom these works are the monuments.

In the western part of New Haven township was a circular fortification with large trees growing on its embankments when first discovered.

Except a few "conical mounds" said to have been found in Norwich, in the southeast part of the town- ship, no record, so far as we know, has been preserved of any other traces left by the Mound-Builders on the soil of the Fire-lands.

It may be. indeed, that not all the remains which have been mentioned, belong properly to the age of the Mound-Builders, for the pioneers were not always careful to discriminate between the works of that ancient race and those of the later inhabitants of these lands, the Indians. But at least this may be said with confidence, that some, if not all, these works were wronght by the hands of that mysterious

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HISTORY OF HURON AND ERIE COUNTIES, OHIO.

people, whose origin, character and history have been a pregnant theme for many a delver in the world's antiquities.

It is not the province of this local history to enter into extended inquiries of this kind. The evidences are many of the' great antiquity of the remains, and the fact is no less clearly proven that the men who erected them were much higher than the red men in the scale of civilization. Whether they came of the Mongolian stock, were a remnant of the "lost tribes of Israel," or belonged to an original family unknown to the old world, we shall not stop here to investigate. It is enough to say that long ago, perhaps many ages before the coming of the Indians, the Mound- Builders vanished from the Fire-lands, leaving behind them neither tradition nor history.

INDIANS.

When and whence came the red men to the Fire- lands, no research will now inform us. It seems most probable that they were of Asiatic origin and drifted across the country from the northwest, but the matter is one of conjecture, and it is not the pro- vince of this work to discuss the arguments in favor of any particular hypothesis.

Whenever they came and whatever their origin, they found here, on the southern shore of Lake Erie, green and fertile lands, dramed by the waters of the Sandusky, the Huron and the Vermillion.

These were prairie and wood land, well watered and aboundmg in game. It would have been strange if no wandering tribes of red men, whose highest idea of happiness was embodied in a paradise of well- stocked hunting grounds, should not have lingered along the river banks, where, even in the days of the pioneers the feathered arrow of the Indian seldom searched vainly for a victim.

It is interesting to note that here, in one group of counties, by that process of language-petrifaction, which has left upon our lakes and rivers, States and territories, the names which were familiar and ex- pressive words to the tribes of people whose graves are all over the Fire-lands, we have six Indian titles: Erie, Sandusky and Ottawa, Huron, Seneca and Wyandot.

All these but one were tribal designations; but not all the tribes whose names have been so perpetuated had any habitation on the Fire-lands at the coming of the pioneers. Ottawas, Hurons or Wyandots, and Senecas, there were in the first years of this century; but long before that, naught but a memory remained of the Eries, that proud, fierce tribe, whose war with the Five Nations of New York forms one of the most interesting traditions of prehistoric America.

The Eries, it is said, dreaded the combination of five such tribes as, united, made up the Iroquois Fire Nations. They endeavored to crush the confederacy in its inception, but were themselves defeated with terrible slaughter, between Canandaigua lake and the Genesce river. They retired to the far west, but

tradition says that many years later a war party of their descendants returned from beyond the Missis- sippi and attacked the Senecus, who had settled upon the fatherland of the Eries; but the result was a second crushing defeat, and the annihilation of the Erie race, unless a remnant was left to mingle with other tribes in the west.

As long ago as the middle of the seventeenth cen- tury the Eries probably occupied northern Ohio, along the shores of Lake Erie, and the famous pic- tured rocks on Kelley's Island, have been supposed by Shingwauk, the Little Pine, an Indian archeolo- gist, to refer to the wars of this lost nation.

After the destruction of the Eries the greater part of northern Ohio seems to have been never so much the peculiar territory of any one nation as the com- mon hunting ground of many.

As white settlements increased along the Atlantic coast, and the natives were crowded toward the set- ting sun, tribes and remnants of tribes whose homes had been in the east, wandered into Ohio and lingered there, until the advancing army of civilization pressed them still further toward their ultimate destiny.

It is for this reason that in the chronicles of the pioneers we find mention of so many diverse tribes. They were sojourners, most of them, rather than permanent dwellers on the Fire-lands. The land may have seemed almost as strange to them as to the white settlers.

On the pages of the Pioneer, the magazine of the Fire-lands Historical Society, the earliest of these white settlers have recorded these names of tribes represented here during the first years of the nine- teenth century. Of the. Algonquin family, the Miamis or Maumees, the Tawas or Ottawas, the . Chippewas or Ojibways, the Delawares, Shawnees and Potawatomies; and of the Huron-Iroquois fan- ily, the Wyandots, or Hurons proper, and the Senecus.

Of these tribes, that of the Wyandots is perhaps oftenest mentioned by the pioneers. The people of this tribe lived for the most part along the Sandusky river for many years after the town and villages of the pale faces had sprung up all over the Fire-lands. The Wyandots and . Hurons were the same people, the latter name being the one bestowed upon them by the French.

In the years when the Iroquois were waging their relentless wars against the Eries, the Wyundots lived on the Canada side of the lakes, although their hunt- ing excursions seem, sometimes, to have reached the regions about the mouth of the Miami and that of the Sandusky.

They also became involved in war with the power- ful Iroquois, and, as in the case of the Eries, the Wyandots were, as a nation, almost exterminated by the seemingly invincible "confederacy of New York. But in later days, after the Eries had ceased to be known in Ohio, and the strife with the Fire Nations had ended, remnants of the Wyandots hunted and planted corn along the valley of the Sandusky.

HISTORY OF HURON AND ERIE COUNTIES, OHIO.

There was preserved among them a tradition of their migration across the lakes, impelled by a great fam- ine to search for new hunting grounds. They built their "big fire " or chief town at Upper Sandusky, and a map, published in 1755, shows the location of others of their villages along the river. These settle- ments flourished, and the Wyandots became, after the lapse of years, the most powerful tribe in this region. There is frequent mention in the chronicles of the pioneers on the Fire-lands, of parties of these Sandusky river Wyandots who crossed the Fire-lands in search of game.

In smaller numbers on the Fire-lands were the Sen- ecas, a remnant of the once powerful nation, which, with the other tribes of the Iroquois confederacy, a century and a half before, had ernshed the Wyan- dots and the Eries. The white settlements had be- come numerous through the territory where the Five Nations had held dominion. The star of the Senecas was waning. They had no longer the leadership of such chieftains as Red Jacket, the warrior-orator, and, driven by the dominant Caucasian race, they were drifting slowly across the country towards the great plains of the west.

Besides these two representatives of the Huron- Iroquois family, there were no others on the Fire- lands in the days of the pioneers.

The Algonquins, however, were here, not in such numbers of individuals probably, but more numer- ously represented in names of tribes. Among these we note the Delawares, the Renappi or Lenni-Lenape, as they called themselves, who dwelt along the banks of the Huron river, the most of them in Milan town- ship. With them were mingled the Ottawas or " Tawy's," as many of the white settlers called them. The one people had come from the east, where, for years, they had lived among the other Algonquin tribes of the Atlantic coast; the other had come from the northwest, and, in perfect peace, they had united their fortunes in the pleasant valley of the Huron. Upon the picturesque site of the town of Milan they built their village, Pequotting, and there and in that vicinity, even after the coming of the pale faces, they hunted and fished, and raised corn on the fertile river flats.

We believe that it was these Delawares and Ottowas of Pequotting who were accustomed to make maple sugar on the river bottom west of Norwalk, and whose trail lay along the sand ridge where now is Main street, the pleasant, maple-shaded avenue which is the pride of the town.

The other Algonquin tribes, so far as is known, had no fixed residence on or near the Fire-lands, but, pursuant to their nomadic habits, they made occa- sional visits to this section of the country. This was particularly the case with the Chippewas, Miamis and Potawattomies. They were all inhabitants of the country to the west and northwest. The Shaw- nees were of southern origin. They had a tradition

that their ancestors came from some foreign land, across the sea.

According to French accounts, the tribe of Chip- pewas or Ojibways is worthy of more than a passing notice. They are said to have been a powerful and brave race, and their war with the Sioux, which was waged for one hundred and eighty years after the whites first knew them, and we know not for how long before, is one of the memorable events of Indian history, and is the surest proof of the indomitable courage and haughty pride of both tribes.

The territory of the Chippewas was on both sides of Lake Superior, at the head of which was their chief town, Chegoimegon, where, it is said, they kept a perpetual fire burning.

They were a tall, well formed race, and their lan- guage was praised by the French as the court-language of the aborigines.

Bands of Indians of all these tribes, hunted and fished over most, and probably all, the townships of the Fire-lands; but except Pequotting, they had no village in either Erie county or Huron at the time of the first white settlements.

Technically, the lives and characters, the manners and customs of the Indians inhabiting the Fire-lands after the first white settlements, can scarcely be said to belong to the period of "prehistory." But one can hardly write of the red men without letting his pen cross the line on which history begins. We can form no estimate of the lives of the inhabitants of these woods before a white man's ax began to hew the way for the march of civilization, without a study of the characteristics described by the first white chron- iclers, as belonging to the red men who remained after those times.

Thus, even in naming and describing tribes, we have trespassed upon the nineteenth century. We shall find no instance of individual character recorded at any earlier period.

So many years have now elapsed since the last red man vanished from the Fire-lands, like a departing ghost of a dead and buried past, that we can now but dimly trace even the tribal distinctions and names of these strange children of the woods. Few, indeed, are the names, and faint the memories, of the individ- ual warriors and chieftains which have come down to us. But before they are all forever lost in the shad- ows of the past, it should be the duty of the historian to rescne and keep bright the names and fame of Sen- eca John and Ogontz, the Ottawa, two noble repre- tatives of the better class of Algonquin and Iroquois.

In those days the red men were in a transition state. They had been savages, with all the cruelty, the bad passions, and the ignorance belonging to sav- agery; but now, from their intercourse with the whites, they were learning many of the mean vices with a few of the virtues, of civilization. The mis- sionary and the trader were working side by side, but not in harmony, and too often the good work of the

HISTORY OF HURON AND ERIE COUNTIES, OHIO.

one was destroyed by the bad work wrought by the other.

In such a period, the characters of John, the Sen- eca, and Ogontz, the Ottawa, stand out in bold and pleasing relief. In the frequent mention of these two chiefs by the early chroniclers of the Fire-lands, there has been found no word of disparagement concerning either of them.

The Seneca was accustomed to hunt in the southern and western part of Huron county. The early set- tlers of that region always gave him a cordial welcome, and some of them have placed on record their appre- ciation of his character. He could speak but little English, but was always friendly to the settlers, and was brave, honest, and trustworthy.

Ogontz was better known in the region of San- dusky, which was one of his favorite resorts at certain seasons of the year, for the purpose of fishing and hunting, and that locality was for years known, by reason of this fact, as " Ogontz place."

This chief is described as a man of stately form and noble bearing, and, like Seneca John, he seems to have been in character a nature's nobleman, while, unlike John, he had received, at the hands of the French, a high degree of culture.

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History of the Fire lands, comprising Huron and Erie Counties, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of the prominent men and pioneers, Part 8

Author: Williams, W. W. (William W.) Publication date: 1879 Publisher: Cleveland, Ohio : Press of Leader Printing Company Number of Pages: 726

Author: Williams, W. W. (William W.)
Publication date: 1879
Publisher: Cleveland, Ohio : Press of Leader Printing Company
Number of Pages: 726