History of the Ohio falls cities and their counties : with illustrations and bibliographical sketches, Vol. I, Part 6

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 6

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HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.

remainder of the story, which lies directly within the field of this history.

After resting a short time, he determined to float down the river to the station at the Falls, which he estimated was be- tween twenty and thirty miles distant. Accordingly, he made a small raft, by tying two trees together with bark, on which he placed himself, with a pole for an oar. When a little above Eighteen-mile Island, he heard the sharp report of a rifle, when, thinking that his pursuers had overtaken him, he crouched down on his little raft, and concealed himself as best he could. Hearing no other noise, however, he conclud- ed that his alarm was without foundation. But shortly after, a dreadful storm broke upon the river; night had already closed in, and he sank exhausted and almost lifeless on his treacherous raft, drenched with the rain, benumbed with cold, and with the terrible apprehension on his mind that he might he precipitated over the Falls during the night.

At break of day he was aroused from his death-like lethar- gy, by one of the most cheering sounds that ever fell on the ears of a forlorn and lost wanderer-the crowing of a cock- which announced the immediate vicinity of a white settle- ment. The sound revived him; he collected all his energies for one last effort, and sat upright on his little raft. Soon, in the gray light of the morning, he discovered the cabins of his countrymen, and was enabled to effect a landing at the mouth of Beargrass-the site of the present city of Louis- ville. He immediately rejoined his friends, and their warm welcome soon made him forget all his past sufferings. He lived for many years lo recount his adventures, and died about 1838, surrounded by his children and his children's children.

TWO BOYS SURPRISED AND TAKEN.

From Mr. Casseday's History of Louisville we have the following. The incident occurred in 1784:

Another incident will show the education, even in boy- hood, which the nature of the times demanded. Four young lads, two of them named Linn, accompanied by Wells and Brashears, went on a hunting party to a pond about six miles southwest of Louisville. They succeeded well in their sport, having killed, among other game, a small cub bear. While they were assisting the elder Linn to strap the bear on his shoulders, and had laid down their guns, they were surprised by a party of Indians, and hurried over to the White river towns, where they remained in captivity sev- eral months. One of the party had in the meantime been carried to another town ; and late in the fall the remaining three determined to effect their escape. When night had come they rose quietly, and having stunned the old squaw, in whose hut they were living, by repeated blows with a small axe, they stole out of the lodge and started for Louis- ville. After daybreak they concealed themselves in a hollow log, where they were frequently passed by the Indians, who were near them everywhere ; and at night they resumed their march, guided only by the stars and their knowledge of woodcraft. After several days, during which they subsisted on the game they could procure, they reached the river at Jeffersonville. Arrived here they hallooed for their friends, but did not succeed in making themselves heard. They had, however, no time to lose ; the Iodians were behind them, and if they were taken they knew their doom. Accordingly, as two of them could not swim, they constructed a raft of the drift-logs about the shore and tied it together with grape-

vines, and the two launched upon it, while Brashears plunged into the water, pushing the raft with one hand and swimming with the other. Before they had arrived at the other shore, and when their raft was in a sinking condition from having taken up so much water, they were descried from this side, and boats went out and returned them safely to their friends.

THE BATTLE OF THE PUMPKINS.

The following account of the battle of the pumpkins, which occurred in Jefferson county, was communicated to the American Pioneer March 25, 1843, by Mr. John McCaddon, then and for many years of Newark, Ohio, but an old Indian fighter of Kentucky. The following is his narrative:

After I returned from the expedition of General George Rogers Clark (1780), as related in the first volume of the Pioneer, we had peace with the Indians for about four weeks, when two athletic young men, Jacob and Adam Wickerham, went out to a small lot they had cleared and planted. They filled a bag with pumpkins, and Jacob put it on his shoulder and got over the fence. Adam, on looking around, saw an Indian start up from a place of concealment and run up behind Jacob with his tomahawk in hand. The Indian, finding he was discovered, dropped his weapon and grasped Jacob round the body, who threw the bag of pumpkins back on the Indian, jerked loose and made off at the top of his speed. The Indian picked up his gun and fired, but without effect. During this time another Indian, from outside the fence, ran up toward Adam, who was inside. They coursed along the fence, the Indian being between Adam and the fort. Adam outstripped him, leaped the fence before him, and crossed the Indian's path and ran down a ravine, across which a large tree had fallen, which he leaped. Such is the agility which an Indian chase gave to the pioneers, scarcely believed possible now in this time of peace, wherein there is no such cogent reason for exertion almost above belief. The tree stopped the Indian, who threw his tomahawk, but which, not being well distanced, hit Adam pole foremost on the back, and left a ring as red as blood. In the meantime we in the fort, hearing the shot, were all out in two or three minutes, and the Wickerhams were safe among us. We, with our small force, not more than ten or twelve, visited tbe battle-field of the pumpkin-bag, but saw nothing more of the Indians that time.

Colonel R. T. Durrett, of Louisville, in his Centennial Address, pronounced May 1, 1880, after relating several of the stories already given, tells the following in addition :

In March, 1781, a party of Indians came near to Louisville and killed Colonel Linn and several other persons. Captain Aguila Whitkaker raised a company of fifteen men and went in pursuit of them. They were trailed to the Falls, and it be- ing supposed that they had crossed the river, Captain Whit- kaker and his men took a boat to cross and pursue. They were scarcely out from shore when the Indians, until then concealed on this side of the river, fired upon the boat and killed and wounded nine of the party. The boat put back to the shore, and the Indians were attacked and dispersed.

In the following year [that is, 1785, the year after the Linn, Wells, and Brashears incident | a man named Squires

HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.

went out for a hunt in the suburbs of the town. A slight snow was upon the ground, and an Indian tracked him to a sycamore tree near the mouth of Beargrass creek, where Squires had treed a raccoon, and was preparing to secure it. The Indian came suddenly upon Squires at the base of the tree, and then a race began around the tree-the Indian some- times after Squires and Squires sometimes after the Indian. Finally both became weary of the chase, and each taking at the same time the idea of escape by leaving the tree, the In- dian shot off in one direction and Squires in another, much to the satisfaction of both. Neither seeming disposed to re- new the treadmill chase around the tree, each pursued the course taken unmolested by the other. The Indian lost his prisoner and Squires lost his raccoon, but both, no doubt, were satisfied with the loss.

In 1793 a party of Indians captured a boy at Eastin's mill, and, by some strange fancy, gave him a scalping-knife, a tomahawk, and a pipe, and turned him loose with this equip- ment. What use the boy made of his instruments of war and peace in after years is not known.

THE HITES AND THE INDIANS.

Eight miles south of Louisville, on what subse- quently became the Bardstown road, Captain Abraham Hite, of Berkeley county, Virginia, a brave soldier of the Revolution, settled in 1782, his brother, Joseph Hite, following the next year, and settling two miles south of him, and their father, Abraham Hite, Sr., joining their colony in 1784. Here they had somewhat numerous encounters with the marauding and murdering savages. The younger Abraham was waylaid by them one day, while going from his house to a neighbor's, and shot through the body, but got away without capture, and, stranger to say, eventually recovered of his wounds. His brother Joseph, while mounting guard over a party of toilers in the field, was fired at by the red men, and severely but not dangerously hurt. Both the brothers, however, bore marks of their inju- ries to their graves, and both survived for nearly fifty years afterwards.

CHAPTER III.

THE WHITE MAN.

The Discovery of the Ohio-La Salle at the Falls-Biographi- cal Sketch of the Great French Explorer-The Spaniard -The Frenchman Again-The Welshman at the Falls in the Twelfth Century (?)-The Mound Builders White Men (?)-The Later Explorers and Voyagers to the Falls -- John Howard, the Englishman-Christopher Gist, Pros- pector for the Ohio Company-Colonel Croghan, the In- dian Agent-Captain Harry Gordon, the Surveyor-Then Come the Surveyors.

The first man of European stock, whose face the placid waters of La Belle Riviere gave back, was undoubtedly the daring explorer, the chival- rous Frenchman, Rene Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle. A tradition exists that one Colonel Wood, an Englishman, penetrated from Virginia into the Kentucky wilds in 1654, reaching the Mississippi and discovering several branches of that and the Ohio rivers, with an ultimate view to trade with the Indians. The story is at least a doubtful one, as is also the tale which avers that about 1670 one Captain Bolton (called Bolt or Batt in Collins's History of Kentucky) also journeyed from Virginia through this country to the Mississippi. "Neither statement," says Parkman, the best authority on such subjects, " is improbable ; but neither is sustained by suf- ficent evidence." However these may be, there can now be but little debate over the claim made by La Salle himself, and of late by the historians of his enterprises, that he was the discoverer of the Ohio in the winter of 1669-70 or in the fol- lowing spring. To this we may add that he was probably the first man to look upon the dense forests of primeval Kentucky, and that his voy- ages down the river, with equally strong proba- bility, ended at or near the present site of the cities about the Falls of the Ohio.

Robert Cavelier, commonly called La Salle, was born at Rouen, France, in 1643. At an early age he became a Jesuit, and taught one of the schools of that order, but soon abandoned it and went in 1666 to Canada, whither an elder brother, a priest of St. Sulpice, had preceded him. A corporation of these priests, styled the Seminary of St. Sulpice, had become the founders and proprietors of Montreal, and were freely making grants of lands to immigrants, in order to form as soon as possible a bulwark of settle- ment against the inroads of the Iroquois. A generous offer was made to La Salle by the Su-

HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.

perior of the seminary, in the gift of a large tract on the St. Lawrence, at the head of the Lachine rapids, eight or nine miles above Mon- treal. He accepted the grant, and straightway began its improvement, with such small means as he could command. Soon afterwards, while at Montreal trading in furs, La Salle heard from the Seneca Indians that a great river arose in their country and flowed thence to the sea, which it reached so far away that eight or nine months were required to reach its mouth. It was called the "Ohio," but was evidently confused with the Mississippi and identified in La Salle's mind with the "Great River," which the geographies of that day believed to flow westward to the "Vermilion Sea," or Gulf of California. De- termined to discover and explore it, in the hope of finding the much-sought west passage to China, or at least of opening profitable trade with the natives, La Salle went to Quebec to se- cure for his expedition the approval of Courcelles, Governor of New France. This was soon ob- tained, and official letters patent were granted in authorization of the scheme, but without the ad dition of official aid. La Salle had spent all his scanty means in improving the land given him by the Superior of the seminary, and this he was obliged to sell to procure an outfit for his expedition. The priest who had granted it, tak- ing a lively interest in his adventurous plans, bought back the greater part of the tract with its improvements, and the explorer, with two thousand eight hundred livres realized from his sales, procured four canoes and the necessary equipments and supplies, and hired fourteen men for his crew.

The St. Sulpice brethren at the seminary were meanwhile fitting out an expedition for similar purposes; and at Quebec, where some of them had gone to purchase the needful articles for it, they heard of the meditated Ohio exploration from the Governor, who urged upon them the advantage of a union of the two expeditions. La Salle was not wholly pleased with the pro- posal, which would deprive him of his rightful place as leader, and make him simply an equal associate and co-laborer. Furthermore, he feared trouble between the Sulpitians and the members of the Order of Loyola, or the Jesuits, to which he had formerly belonged, and who already oc- cupied the missionary field in the Northwest. 5

He could not,however, easily neglect the official suggestion, with its manifest advantages; and the two ventures were presently merged into one. On the 6th of July, 1669, in seven canoes, with twenty-five persons in the party, the expedition started up the St. Lawrence. It was accom- panied and guided by a number of Seneca In- dians, in two other canoes, who had been visit- ing La Salle. To their village upon the Genesee, in what is now Western New York, they piloted the white voyagers up the mightier stream and across the broad bosom of Ontario. Here the explorers expected cordial co-operation and aid, but were disappointed, the savages even burning at the stake, in their presence, a captive who was known to be in possession of desired informa- tion as to the great river to the southwest.

It was unfortunate that here they were com- pelled, from ignorance of the native language, to communicate with the Indians through a Jesuit missionary residing at the village. He was thus practically master of the situation, and could color statements from either side at will. The new-comers, not unnaturally, suspected him of being the author of the obstructions here met, since he, in common with his fellows of the or- der, would be glad to prevent the Sulpitians from establishing themselves in the West. They were obliged to remain at the Indian village an entire month, when, an Iroquois happening to visit them, they learned from him that near the bend of the lake where they lived they could obtain guides into the unknown country which they sought. Accepting his offer of attendance to his lodge, they passed along the south shore of Lake Ontario, and were the first of white men to hear, at the mouth of the Niagara, the thun- der of the mighty cataract. At the Iroquois village they were cordially welcomed, and there found a Shawnee prisoner from the Ohio coun- try, who told them that in a six-weeks' journey they could reach the desired river, and that he would guide them to it if set at liberty. The party then prepared to commence the journey, but the Sulpitians, hearing stimulating news of the success of the Jesuit missions at the North- west, decided to go in that direction, find the Beautiful river, if possible, by that route, and establish their own mission stations in that quar- ter. The traveler Joliet, returning from the Lake Superior region, under the orders of M.

HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.

Talon, Intendant of Canada, called upon them at the Iroquois town, and further excited them by his accounts, the map of the country which he presented them, and his assurance that the natives thereabout were in great need of more missionaries. La Salle warned them of difficul- ties with the Jesuits, whom he knew only too well; but they nevertheless separated from him and went on their bootless way, as it proved, to the Northwest.

La Salle was just recovering from a severe attack of fever, and felt the abandonment the more keenly in consequence. He was soon able, however, to reorganize his expedition, which he took to Onondaga, and thence was guided to an upper tributary of the Ohio, on whose current he was exultantly borne to the noble expanse of the coveted La Belle Reviere. Down this, too, he went, on and on, through many perils, even to the Falls of the Ohio, where now rise the domes and towers of the Falls cities. There is a tra- dition that he went further, so far as to the mouth of the great stream; but this statement is not held to be well supported. Some doubt has also been thrown upon the daring explorer's ad- vent at all in the Ohio valley; but this doubt is likewise ill-founded. He himself certainly claims, in a memorial of 1677 to Count Frontenac, that he was the discoverer of the Ohio, and that he passed down it to the Falls. His identical words, in a close translation-but writing of himself in the third person-are as follows:

In the year 1667, and the following, he made sundry jour- neys at much expense, in which he was the first to discover much of the country to the south of the great lakes, and among others the great river Ohio. He pursued that as far as a very high [tres haut | fall in a vast marsh, at the latitude of thirty-seven degrees, after having been swelled by another very large river which flows from the north, and all these waters discharge themselves, fo all appearance, into the Gulf of Mexico.

M. Louis Joliet, another of the explorers of New France, and who, as in some sense a rival of La Salle in the race for fame and fortune in the Western wilds, can hardly be accused of too much friendliness for him, yet names the other upon both of his maps of the Mississippi and Lake region as the explorer of the Ohio .*

Another map, probably of 1673, represents the course of the Ohio to a point somewhat below the present site of Louisville, as if it were not then known further, and above it is the inscrip- tion: "River Ohio, so called by the Iroquois on account of its beauty, by which the Sieur de la Salle descended. " In view of all the evidence, Mr. Parkman says: "That he discovered the Ohio may then be regarded as established; that he descended it to the Mississippi he himself does not pretend, nor is there any reason to be- lieve that he did so. "

From the Falls La Salle returned at leisure and alone-his men having refused to go further and abandoning him for the English and Dutch on the Atlantic coast-to the settlements on the St. Lawrence, there to prepare for other and more renowned explorations in the Northwest and South, which were finally and in a very few years, while he was yet in the prime of his powers, to cost him his life. He perished, as is well known, by the hands of assassins upon the plains of Texas, March 19, 1687, at the age of forty-three, but already one of the most famous men of his time. He was but twenty-six years old when he stood here, the first of Europeans to behold the Falls of the Ohio.

THE SPANIARD.

In 1669, according to a work by Governor Dewitt Clinton, quoted in a note to Colonel Stone's Life of Joseph Brant, which is copied without objection into the second volume of The Olden Time, a party of twenty-three Span- iards, guided by some Iroquois returning from captivity among the Southern tribes, came up the Mississippi from New Orleans, passed the Falls of the Ohio, and proceeded up this and the Al- leghany rivers to Olean Point. Thence they trav- eled by land to a French colony founded in Western New York three years before, at the re- quest of the Onondagas, where they, together with the villagers, were attacked by the Indians before daybreak on All-Saints day, 1669, and not one left to tell the tale. The Spaniards had been attracted to this region by Indian stories that here was a lake whose bottom was covered with a substance shining and white. The Eu- ropeans guessed this to be silver; it was very likely an incrustation of salt in the vicinity of water.

* Upon Joliet's large map the Ohio is called the "Oua boustikou." In Franquelin's great map of 1684 it is desig- nated as "Fleuve St. Louis, ou Chucagoa, ou Casquinam- pogamou," while the Alleghany is marked as the "Ohio, ou Olighin."

HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.

THE FRENCHMAN AGAIN.

In a memorial delivered by the Duc de Mire- poix to the British ministry, May 14, 1755, dur- ing a diplomatic correspondence concerning the boundaries of Canada, the noble Duke, in his "remarks concerning the course and territory of the Ohio," which he claimed as a Canadian river, "essentially necessary" to the French for com- munication with Louisiana, said :

They have frequented it at all times, and with forces. It was also by that river that the detachment of troops passed, who were sent to Louisiana about the year 1739, on account of the war with the Chickasaws.

This force, then, must have passed the Falls of the Ohio, but it may be doubted whether any other mention of it is made in history.

THE WELSHMAN.

Mr. Thomas S. Hinde, an old citizen of Ken- tucky, neighbor and companion of Daniel Boone and Simon Kenton, wrote a letter in his old age from his home in Mount Carmel, Illinois, dated May 30, 1842, to the editor of the American Pioneer, in which is comprised the following startling bit of information :

It is a fact that the Welsh, under Owen ap Zninch, in the twelfth century, found their way to the Mississippi and as far up the Ohio as the falls of that river at Louisville, where they were cut off by the Indians; others ascended the Mississippi, were either captured or settled with and sunk into Indian habits. Proof : In 1799 six soldiers' skeletons were dug up near Jeffersonville; each skeleton had a breast-plate of brass, cast, with the Welsh coat of arms, the mermaid and harp, with a Latin inscription, in substance, "virtuous deeds meet their just reward." One of these plates was left by Captain Jonathan Taylor with the late Mr. Hubbard Taylor, of Clark county, Kentucky, and when called for by me, in 1814, for the late Dr. John P. Campbell, of Chillicothe, Ohio, who was preparing notes of the antiquities of the West, by a letter from Hubbard Taylor, Jr. (a relation of mine), now living, I was informed that the breast-plate had been taken to Virginia by a gentleman of that State-I supposed as a matter of curiosity.

Mr. Hinde adduces other "proofs" in support of his theory of the advent of his countrymen here half a millennium before La Salle came; but they are of no local importance, and we do not copy them. This may be added, however:

The Mohawk Indians had a tradition among them, respect- ing the Welsh and of their having been cut off by the Indi- ans, at the Falls of the Ohio. The late Colonel Joseph Hamilton Daviess, who had for many years sought for infor- mation on this subject, mentions this fact, and of the Welsh- men's bones being found buried on Corn Island; so that Southey, the king's laureate, had some foundation for his Welsh poem.

The story of the Jeffersonville skeletons, we

hardly need add, is purely mythical. It is not probable that any pre-Columbian Welshman was ever at the Falls of the Ohio.

THE MOUND-BUILDERS WHITES.

The Rev. Benjamin F. Brown, in his little work on America Discovered by the Welsh, pub- lished at Philadelphia in 1876, making a strong argument for the proposition embodied in his title, quotes Mr. Culloh's Researches on Amer- ica as affirming of the Western earthworks:

Almost without exception the traditions of the red men as- cribe the construction of these works to white men. Some of them belonging to different tribes at the present say that they had understood from their prophets and old men that it had been a tradition among their several nations that the Eastern country and Ohio and Kentucky had once been inhabited by white people, but that they were mostly exterminated at the Falls of Ohio. The red men drove the whites to a small island (Sandy Island) below the rapids, where they were cut to pieces.

This tradition has been more fully related in the previous chapter.

LATER EXPLORERS AND VOYAGERS.

We gladly come back now to more recent times and to authentic traditions.

In 1742 an Englishman named John Howard descended the river in a skin canoe, after cross- ing the mountains from Virginia. He was un- doubtedly at the Falls of the Ohio, went on to the Mississippi, and was there captured by the French, when we lose sight of him. Upon his voyage-which De Hass, author of a History of Western Virginia, seems to think "a vague tra- dition"-the English based, in part, their claim to the Ohio valley, on the ground of priority of discovery.

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History of the Ohio falls cities and their counties : with illustrations and bibliographical sketches, Vol. I, Part 6

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