History of the Ohio falls cities and their counties : with illustrations and bibliographical sketches, Vol. I, Part 3

Author: Williams, L.A., & Co., Cleveland
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Cleveland, Ohio : L. A. Williams & Co.
Number of Pages: 814

USA > Ohio > History of the Ohio falls cities and their counties : with illustrations and bibliographical sketches, Vol. I > Part 3

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Some of them were found to contain but a single skeleton, and were evidently the tombs of chiefs or other dignitaries of the Mound Build- ers; while from others of no greater size as many as twenty skeletons were taken.

Hatchets of stone, pestles or grain-beaters of the same ma- terial, arrow-heads of flint, together with the remains of hearths, indicated by flat stones surrounded by and partly covered with broken shells, fragments of bones, charcoal, calcined earth, etc., are everywhere to be seen, and some of them in situations affording an ample fund for speculation to the geognost. Two of the first-mentioned instruments were discovered a few miles below the town, at the depth of forty feet, near an Indian hearth, on which, among other vestiges of a fire, were found two charred brands, evidently the ex- tremities of a stick that had been consumed in the middle of this identical spot. The whole of this plain, as we before ob- served, is alluvial, and this fact shows to what depth that for- mation extends. But at the time the owners of these hatchets were seated by this fire, where, I would ask, was the Ohio? Certainly not in its present bed, for these remains are below its level; and where else it may have been I am at a loss even to conjecture, as there are no marks of any obsolete water- course whatever, between the river and Silver Creek hills on the other side, and between it and the knobs on the other.

The doctor brings in here the mention of some other very interesting antiquities, perhaps of be- longing to the period of the Mound Builders :

Not many years past an iron hatchet was found in a situa-

*The Americans of Antiquity, pp. 95-100.

HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.

tion equally singular. A tree of immense size, whose roots extended thirty or forty feet each way, was obliged to be felled and the earth on which it grew to be removed, in order to afford room for a wall connected with the foundations of the great mill at Shippingport. A few feet below the sur- face, and directly under the center of the tree, which was at least six feet in diameter, was found the article in question, which, as was evident upon examination, had been formed out of a flat bar of wrought iron, heated in the fire to red- ness and bent double, leaving a round hole at the joint for the reception of a handle, the two ends being nicely welded together, terminated by a cutting edge. The tree must necessarily have grown over the axe previously de- posited there, and no human power could have placed it in the particular position in which it was found, after that event had taken place. The tree was upwards of two hundred years old.

Since the learned Scotch doctor's time, during the excavations made for the Louisville & Port- land canal between 1826 and 1830, other fire- places of rude construction were found in the alluvial deposit twenty feet below the surface, upon which were brands of partly burnt wood, bones of small animals, and some human skele- tons. Many rude implements of bone and flint were also thrown out by the pick and shovel, and a number of well-wrought specimens of hematite of iron, in the shape of plummets or sinkers. In the southern part of Louisville, at a depth just twice as great, still another ancient hearth was found, across which was still a stick of wood burnt in the middle, with a stone hatchet and pestle lying close by. Some of these remains, it is quite possible, should be referred to the age of the Mound Builder.

On the other side of the river were also found some objects of antique interest. Says Dr. Mc- Murtrie:

A little below Clarksville, immediately on the bank of the river, is the site of a wigwam [village], covered with an allu- vial deposition of earth, six feet in depth. Interspersed among the hearths, and scattered in the soil beyond them, are large quantities of human bones in a very advanced stage of decomposition. Facts most generally speak for themselves, and this one tells a very simple and probable tale. The vil- lage must have been surprised by an enemy, many of whose bodies, mixed with those of the inhabitants, were left upon the spot. Had it been a common burial-place, something like regularity would have been exercised in the disposition of the skeletons, neither should we have found them in the same plane with the fireplaces of an extensive settlement, or near it, but below it.

The Indiana Gazetteer, or Topographical Dic- tionary, of 1833, mentions that in the digging of a well at Clarksville was found a walnut plank several feet long, more than a foot broad, and about two inches in thickness, at the depth of

forty feet below the surface. It was in a state of perfect preservation, and even retained marks of the saw as plainly as if it had not been more than a week from the mill.

Further notice of the works of the Mound Builders in the Ohio Falls counties we must leave to the several local histories in this work.

CHAPTER II.

THE RED MAN.

A Singular Fact-No Kentucky Indians Proper-A Tradi- tion of Extermination-The Indians Visiting and Roaming Kentucky-The Shawnees-The Miamis-The Wyandots -The Delawares-the Ottawas-The Pottawatomies-The Kickapoos-The Weas-The Chickasaws-The Indian Treaties-The Jackson Purchase-Fortified Stations- Those in Jefferson County-Armstrong's Station-Tragic Incidents-Colonel Floyd's Adventure and Death-A Tale of the Salt Licks-Bland Ballard Captured and Escapes- Another Story of Ballard-The Rowan Party Attacked- Alexander Scott Bullitt's Adventure-The Famous Lancaster Story-Two Boys Surprised and Taken-The Battle of the Pumpkins-Some More Stories-The Hites and the Indians.

A SINGULAR FACT.

It is not a little remarkable that while the Kentucky wilderness was the theatre of some of the most desperate battles ever fought with the North American Indians, and is rife with legends of Indian massacre and captivity, it was at no time, within their own traditions or the knowl- edge of the whites, the residence of any one of the red-browed tribes. Most of the savages found at any time by the pioneers had crossed the Ohio from the North and West, and were here for but short periods. It was, in fact, but the hunting-ground for the Ohio and Indiana tribes, with their respective territorial jurisdic- tions wholly undefined. Between the Shawnee or Cumberland river and the Mississippi, how- ever, the ownership of the Chickasaws was dis- tinctly recognized. Elsewhere the tribes seem to have held in common, for their several purposes. Says Mr. Henry R. Schoolcraft:

They landed at secret points, as hunters and warriors, and had no permanent residence within its boundaries. . At an early day the head of the Kentucky river became a favorite and important point of embarkation for Indians mov- ing in predatory or hunting bands, from the South to the North and West. The Shawnces, after their great defeat by

HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.

the Cherokees, took that route, and this people always con- sidered themselves to have claims to these attractive hunting- grounds, where the deer, the elk, buffalo, and bear abonnded -claims, indeed, whose only foundation was blood and thunder.

The history of these events is replete with the highest degree of interest, but cannot here be entered on. The following letter, from one of the early settlers of the country, is given as show- ing the common tradition that, while the area of Kentucky was perpetually fought for, as a cher- ished part of the Indian hunting-ground, it was not, in fact, permanently occupied by any tribe. The writer's (Mr. Joseph Ficklin's) attention was but incidentally called to the subject. His let- ter, which is in answer to a copy of a pamphlet of printed inquiries, bears date at Lexington, 3Ist of August, 1847:

I have opened your circular addressed to Dr. Jarvis, agreeably to your request, and beg leave to remark that I have myself an acquaintance with the Indian history of this State from the year 1781, and that nothing is known here connected with your inquiries, save the remains of early settlements too remote to allow of any evidence of the character of the population, except that it must have been nearly similar to that of the greater portion which once oc- cupied the rest of the States of the Union.

There is one fact favorable to this State, which belongs to few, if any, of the sister States. We have not to answer to any tribunal for the crime of driving off the Indian tribes and possessing their lands. There were no Indians located within our limits on our taking possession of this country. A discontented portion of the Shawnee trihe, from Virginia, broke off from the nation, which removed to the Scioto country, in Ohio, about the year 1730, and formed a town, known by the name of Lulbegrud, in what is now Clark county, about thirty miles east of this place. This tribe left this country about 1750 and went to East Tennessee, to the Cherokee Nation. Soon after they returned to Ohio and joined the rest of the nation, after spending a few years on the Ohio river, giving name to Shawnee-town in the State of Illinois, a place of some note at this time. This information is founded on the account of the Indians at the first settle- ment of this State, and since confirmed by Blackhoof, a na- tive of Lulbegrud, who visited this country in 1816, and went on the spot, describing the water-streams and hills in a manner to satisfy everybody that he was acquainted with the place.

I claim no credit for this State in escaping the odium of driving off the savages, because I hold that no people have any claim to a whole country for a hunting or robbing resi- dence, on the score of living, for a brief period, on a small part of it. Our right to Northern Mexico, California, and Texas, is preferable to any other nation, for the simple eason that we alone subdue the savages and robbers, and place it under a position which was intended by the Creator of the world, as explained to the father of our race.

A TRADITION.

After mentioning a tradition of the Delawares, in regard to the extermination of the Kentucky

tribes, Mr. Collins says, in his History of Ken- tucky :

But this tradition of the Delawares does not stand alone. That the prehistoric inhabitants of Kentucky were at some intermediate period overwhelmed by a tide of savage invasion from the North, is a point upon which Indian tradition, as far as it goes, is positive and explicit. It is related, in a posthumous fragment on Western antiquities, by Rev. John P. Campbell, M. D., which was published in the early part of the present century, that Colonel James Moore, of Ken- tucky, was told by an old Indian that the primitive inhabit- ants of this State had perished in a war of extermination waged against them by the Indians; that the last great battle was fought at the Falls of the Ohio; and that the Indians succeeded in driving the aborigines into a small island below the rapids, "where the whole of them were cut to pieces." The Indian further said this was an undoubted fact handed down by tradition, and that the Colonel would have proofs of it under his eyes as soon as the waters of the Ohio became low. When the waters of the river had fallen, an examina- tion of Sandy island was made, and "a multitude of human bones were discovered."

There is similar confirmation of this tradition in the state- ment of General George Rogers Clark, that there was a great burying-ground on the northern side of the river, but a short distance below the Falls. According to a tradition imparted to the same gentleman by the Indian chief Tobacco, the battle of Sandy island decided finally the fall of Ken- tucky, with its ancient inhabitants. When Colonel McKee commanded on the Kanawha (says Dr. Campbell), he was told by the Indian chief Cornstalk, with whom he had fre- quent conversations, that Ohio and Kentucky (and Tennessee is also associated with Kentucky in the pre-historic ethnogra- phy of Rafinesque) had once been settled by a white people who were familiar with arts of which the Indians knew noth- ing; that these whites, after a series of bloody contests with the Indians, had been exterminated; that the old burial- places were the graves of an unknown people; and that the old forts had not been built by Indians, but had come down from "a very long ago" people, who were of a white com- plexion, and skilled in the arts.

The statement of General Clark, above re- ferred to, is doubtless what is mentioned in greater detail by Dr. McMurtrie, in his Sketches of Louisville, in these terms:

About the time when General Clark first visited this conn- try, an old Indian is said to have assured him that there was a tradition to this effect: that there had formerly existeda race of Indians whose complexion was much lighter than that of the other natives, which caused them to be known by the name of the white Indians; that bloody wars had always been waged between the two, but that at last the black Indians got the better of the others in a great battle fought at Clarks- ville, wherein all the latter were assembled; that the remnant of their army took refuge in Sandy island, whither their suc- cessful and implacable enemies followed and put every indi- vidual to death.

How true this may be I know not, but appearances are strongly in its favor. A large field a little below Clarksville contains immense quantities of human bones, whose decom- posed state and the regular manner in which they are scat- tered, as well as the circumstance of their being covered with an alluvial deposition of earth six or seven feet deep, evidently

HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.

prove that it was not a regular burial-place, but a field of bat- tle, in some former century. Relics of a similar description are said to have been seen in great plenty on Sandy island in 1778, none of which, however, are visible at this day (upon the surface), which may be owing to the constant deposition of sand upon the island and the action of the water in high floods, whose attrition may have finally removed every vestige of such substances.

THE KENTUCKY INDIANS,

then, were really the Indians of Ohio and Indi- ana, and probably, to a less degree, of the South and Southwest. This fact enlarges greatly the field of our inquiry, and compels us to consider, at least briefly, a greater number of tribes than usually dwelt within the limits of any tract now formed into a State.

The chief of these tribes was undoubtedly

THE SHAWNEES.

The name of this once-powerful tribe is de- rived from Shawano or Oshawano, the name, in one of the most ancient traditions of the Algon- quins, of one of the brothers of Manabozho, who had assigned to him the government of the southern part of the earth. The name, with a final ng for the plural, is said to convey to the Indian mind the idea of Southerners. In the English mouth and writing it has been corrupted into Shawanese or Shawnees, although Mr. Schoolcraft and other writers upon the aborigines often use the older form Shawanoes. By the Iroquois and English, about 1747, they were called Satanas (devils), and are also mentioned . in the French writings as Chouanons. From these the names Suwanee and Sawnee, as applied to Southern rivers, where they formerly resided, are derived. About the year 1640 the Shawnees came into the Ohio valley from the Appalachian range by way of the Kentucky river (also said to have a Shawnee name, Cuttawa or Kentucke), while other bands of the tribe, driven from the South by the Catawbas and Cherokees, settled among their kinsfolk, the Delawares of Pennsyl- vania.

The Shawnees had a tradition of foreign origin, or at least of landing from a sea-voyage. Colonel John Johnston, who was their agent for many years, in a letter dated July 7, 1819, observes :

The people of this nation have a tradition that their an- cestors crossed the sea. They are the only tribe with which I am acquainted who admit a foreign origin. Until lately they kept yearly sacrifices for their safe arrival in this conn- try. From where they came, or at what period they arrived in America, they do not know. It is a prevailing opinion

among them that Florida had been inhabited by white people, who had the use of iron tools. Blackhoof (a celebrated chief ) affirms that he has often heard it spoken of by old people, that stumps of trees, covered with earth, were fre- quently found, which had been cut down by edgea tools. . It is somewhat doubtful whether the . deliverance which they celebrate has any other reference than to the crossing of some great river or an arm of the sea.

In McKenney and Hall's splendid History of the Indian Tribes of North America, published at Philadelphia in 1844, the following account is given of this tribe:

Much obscurity rests upon the history of the Shawanese. Their manners, customs, and language indicated northern origin, and upwards of two centuries ago they held the coun- try south of Lake Erie. They were the first tribe which felt the force and yielded to the superiority of the Iroquois. Conquered by them, they migrated to the South, and, from fear or favor, they were allowed to take possession of a region upon Savannah river, but what part of that river, whether in Georgia or Florida, is not known-it is presumed the former. How long they resided there we have not the means of ascer- taining, nor have we any account of the incidents of their history in that country, or of the canses of their leaving it. One, if not more, of their bands removed from thence to Pennsylvania, but the larger portion took possession of the country upon the Miami and Scioto rivers in Ohio, a fertile region, where their habits, more industrious than those of their race generally, enabled them to live comfortably.

This is the only trihe among all our Indians who claim for themselves a foreign origin. Most of the aborigines of the continent believe their forefathers ascended from holes in the earth, and many of them assign a local habitation to these traditionary places of nativity of their race; resembling in this respect some of the traditions of antiquity, and derived perhaps from that remote period when barbarous tribes were troglodytes, subsisting upon the spontaneous productions of the earth. The Shawnees believe their ancestors inhabited a foreign land, which, from some unknown cause, they deter- mined to abandon. They collected their people together, and marched to the seashore. Here various persons were selected to lead them, but they declined the duty, until it was undertaken by one of the Turtle tribe. He placed him- self at the head of the procession, and walked into the sea. The waters immediately divided, and they passed along the bottom of the ocean until they reached this "island."

The Shawnees have one institution peculiar to themselves. Their nation was originally divided into twelve tribes or bands, bearing different names. Each of these tribes was subdivided in the usual manner, into families of the Eagle, the Turtle, etc., these animals constituting their totems. Two of these tribes have become extinct and their names are forgotten. The names of the other ten are preserved, but only four of these are now kept distinct. These are the Makostrake, the Pickaway, the Kickapoo, and the Chilli- cothe tribes. Of the six whose names are preserved, but whose separate characters are lost, no descendant of one of them, the Wanphauthawonaukee, now survive. The remains of the other five have become incorporated with the four subsisting tribes. Even to this day each of the four sides of their council-houses is assigned to one of these tribes, and is invariably occupied by it. Although, to us, they appear the same people, yet they pretend to possess the power of dis- cerning at sight to which tribe an individual belongs.

HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.

The celebrated Tecumseh and his brother, Tens-kwau-ta- waw, more generally known by the appellation of the Prophet, were Shawnees, and sprang from the Kickapoo tribe. They belonged to the family or totem of the Panther, to the males of which alone was the name Tecumthe, or "Flying Across," given. Their paternal grandfather was a Creek, and their grandmother a Shawnee. The name of their father was Pukeshinwan, who was born among the Creeks, but removed with his tribe to Chillicothe, upon the Scioto. Tecumthe, his fourth son, was born upon the jour- ney. Pukeshinwau was killed at the battle at Point Pleasant at the mouth of the Kenhawa, in 1774, and the Prophet was one of three posthumous children, born at the same birth a few months afterwards.

The Kickapoos were doubtless united with the Shawanese at a period not very distant. The traditions of each tribe contain similar accounts of their union and separation ; and the identity of their language furnished irrefragable evident of their consanguinity. We are inclined to believe that when the Shawanese were overpowered by the Iroquois, and aban- doned their country upon Lake Erie, they separated into two great divisions-one of which, preserving their original repu- tation [designation], fled into Florida, and the other, now known to us as the Kickapoos, returned to the West and es- tablished themselves among the Illinois Indians, upon the extensive prairies on that river and between it and the Mis- sissippi. This region, however, they have relinquished to the United States.

Judge James Hall, of Cincinnati, one of the authors of this work, in his Essay on the History of the North American Indians, comprised in the third volume, writes eloquently of this tribe. A part of his account allies it more closely with the history of Western Kentucky, and seems to indicate the region watered by the lower Cum- berland as a former habitat of the tribe.

The Shawanoe nation, when first known to the whites, were a numerous and warlike people of Georgia and South Carolina. After the lapse of a very few years, they aban- doned or were driven from that region, and are found in the southwestern part of the Ohio valley, giving their beau- tiful name to the river which by the bad taste of the Ameri- cans has acquired the hackneyed name of Cumberland. We next hear of them in Pennsylvania, participators in the tragic scenes which have given celebrity to the valley of Wyoming. Again they recede to the Ohio valley, to a locality hundreds of miles distant from their former hunting-grounds in the West, selecting now the rich and beautiful plains of the Scioto valley and the Miamis. Here they attained the high- est point of their fame. Here was heard the eloquence of Logan ; here was spent the boyhood of Tecumseh. It was from the romantic scenes of the Little Miami, from the Pick- away plains and the beautiful shores of the Scioto-from scenes of such transcending fertility and beauty as must have won any but a nature inherently savage to the luxury of rest and contentment, that the Shawanoese went forth to battle on Braddock's field, at Point Pleasant, and along the whole line of the then Western frontier. Lastly, we find them dwelling on the Wabash, at Tippecanoe, holding councils with the Governor of Indiana at Vincennes, intriguing with the Cherokees and Creeks of the South, and fighting under the British banner in Canada. Here we find a people num-

bering but a few thousand, and who could, even as savages and hunters, occupy but a small tract of country at any one time, roaming, in the course of two centuries, over ten de- grees of latitude ; changing their hunting-grounds, not grad- nally, but by migrations of hundreds of miles at a time ; abandoning entirely a whole region, and appearing upon a new and far-distant scene. What land was the country of the Shawanoese ? To what place could that strong local at- tachment which has been claimed for the Indians, have af- fixed itself ? Where must the Shawanoe linger, to indulge that veneration for the bones of his fathers which is said to form so strong a feeling in the savage breast ? Their bones are mouldering in every valley, from the sultry confines of Georgia to the frozen shores of the Canadian frontier. Their traditions, if carefully preserved, in as many separate dis- tricts, have consecrated to the affections of a little rem- nant of people a vast expanse of territory, which now em- braces eight or nine sovereign States, and maintains five millions of people.

Mr. Dodge, in his Red Men of the Ohio Val- ley, expresses the opinion that, at the period of the settlement of Virginia, the Shawnees were doubtless the occupants of what is now the State of Kentucky, from the Ohio river up to the Cumberland basin, the country of the Cherokees, and that they were driven from this delightful land into the Pennsylvania and Ohio country, probably by the Cherokees and Chickasaws.

Upon Charlevoix's map of New France, the Kentucky country is given as the "Pays du Chouanons," or Land of the Shawnees, while the Kentucky river is noted as "La Riviere des An- ciens Chouanons," or of the Old Shawnees. It is well known that the Tennessee river was for- merly called the Shawnee-and, indeed, wher- ever this tribe dwelt in their earlier history, they seem to have left a memorial in the name of a river. When first known to the Europeans, they were dwelling among the Creeks on the Florida rivers. The "Suwanee" of the popular song takes its name from them.

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History of the Ohio falls cities and their counties : with illustrations and bibliographical sketches, Vol. I, Part 3

Author: Williams, L.A., & Co., Cleveland Publication date: 1882 Publisher: Cleveland, Ohio : L. A. Williams & Co. Number of Pages: 814

Author: Williams, L.A., & Co., Cleveland
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Cleveland, Ohio : L. A. Williams & Co.
Number of Pages: 814