History of the city of Columbus, capital of Ohio, Volume I, Part 10

Author: Lee, Alfred Emory, 1838-; W. W. Munsell & Co
Publication date: 1892
Publisher: New York and Chicago : Munsell & Co.
Number of Pages: 1202

USA > Ohio > Franklin County > Columbus > History of the city of Columbus, capital of Ohio, Volume I > Part 10

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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBUS.

wore a long robe of undressed hide, fastened around the waist. The Indian habi- tations consisted of huts or cabins, usually round and small, but sometimes thirty or forty feet in diameter, formed with stakes set in the ground and covered with bark. An opening in the top served for the escape of smoke, and the skins of wild beasts for carpet and bedding. The practice of painting and tattooing the body was almost universal. The warriors also adorned themselves fancifully, and often tastefully, with plumes and other ornaments.

Each tribe was governed by a chief and council, who were elective, but when matters of importance had to be decided all the warriors were consulted, and the concurrence of all was necessary to any final conclusion. The young might be present at the council but could take no part in the debate. Among the North American Indians there were several hundred distinct governments, which differed from one another chiefly in degrees of organization. The government of the Wyan- dots, who were the immediate predecessors of the white men in this part of the Scioto Valley, may be considered typical of them all. Its principal features may be thus stated :3

The Wyandots recognized, in their social organization, the family, the gens, the phratry and the tribe. The family comprised the persons who occupied one lodge, or one section of a communal dwelling. Such dwellings, when permanent, were oblong in form, and constructed with poles covered with bark. The fire was placed in the center, and served for two families, one occupying the space on each side. The head of the family was a woman.

The gens was an organized body of blood kindred in the female line. It took the name of some animal, which also served it as a tutelar deity. At the time the tribe left Ohio it comprised the following gentes: Deer, Bear, Highland Turtle (striped), Highland Turtle (black), Mud Turtle, Smooth Large Turtle, Hawk, Beaver, Wolf, Sea Snake, and Porcupine. By these names and their compounds the persons belonging to each gens were distinguished, as for example :

Man of Deer gens, De-wa-ti-re, or Lean Deer.

Woman of Deer gens, A-ya-jin-ta, or Spotted Fawn.

Man of Wolf gens, Ha-ro-nn-yu, or One who goes about in the dark.

Woman of Wolf gens, Yan-di-no, or Always Hungry.

The tribe comprised four phratries, each containing three gentes. The phra- try had a legendary basis, and chiefly a religious use. The tribe, by reason of the inter-relationships of the gentes, comprised a body of kindred.

Civil and military government were entirely separate. Civil powers were vested in a system of councils and chiefs. The council of each gens comprised four women who selected a chief of the gens from its male members. This chief was head of the council of his gens, and the aggregated councils of the gentes composed the council of the tribes. The grand tribal chief or sachem was chosen by the chiefs of the gentes. The women councilors of the gens were chosen, in- formally, by the heads of the households. At the installation of a woman as coun- cilor, a tribal feast was spread, and the woman, adorned with savage braveries, was crowned with a chaplet of feathers. Feasting and dancing followed, and con- tinued, civilized fashion, late into the night.

At the installation of a gens chief, the women adorned him with a chaplet of feathers and an ornamental tunic, and painted the tribal totem on his face.

THE IROQUOIS AND ALGONQUINS.

The sachem was chosen from the Bears until death carried off all the wise men of that gens. Wisdom and chieftainship were after that sought among the Deers.

The chief of the Wolves was the herald and sheriff of the tribe. It was his business to superintend the erection of the council house, to take care of it, to give notice of meetings of the council, and to announce its decisions. Councils of the gentes were called as often as necessary. The tribal council met on the night of the full moon. When the councilors were assembled they were called to order by the herald, who lit his pipe and discharged a puff of smoke to the heavens and then one to the earth. He then passed the pipe to the sachem, who filled his month with smoke, and turning from left to right with the sun, slowly puffed it over the heads of the councilors who were sitting in a circle. The man on his left next took the pipe, which was smoked in turn by each person until it had passed around the circle, whereupon the sachem explained the object of the assembly and each member expressed his opinion as to what should be done. It was considered dishonorable for any councilor to change his opinion after he had once committed himself.

It was the function of Wyandot government to protect rights and enforce the performance of duties. Rules of conduct were established by usage. Rights were classified as those of marriage, names, personal adornments, precedence in encamp- ments and migrations, property, person, community and religion. Men and women were required to marry within the tribe, but marriage between members of the same gens was forbidden. Children belonged to the gens of the mother. Polygamy was permitted, the wives being of different gentes and the first wife re- maining head of the household. Polyandry was forbidden. A man seeking a wife was obliged to consult her mother, who consulted the conncilors of her gens. The marriage was usually consummated before the end of the moon in which the betrothal was arranged. For a time the newly wedded dwelt in the household of the bride's mother.

The names of children born during the year were selected and announced by the council women at the annual greencorn festival. Original names could not be changed, but additional ones might be acquired.

The methods of painting the face, and the ornaments worn, were distinctive of each clan.

The tribal camps were pitched in the form of an open circle or horseshoe, the gentes and households taking their places in regular order.

Lands were partitioned among the heads of households by the women coun- cilors once in two years. The right of a gens to cultivate a particular tract was settled in tribal conncil. All the women of the gens took part in the cultivation of each household tract. The wigwam and its furniture belonged to the woman who was at the head of its household, and were inherited at her death by her eldest daughter or nearest female relative. On the death of the husband his property was inherited by his brother or his sister's son, except the articles buried with him.

Personal freedom and exemption from personal injury except as an awarded punishment for crime, were assured to each individual.

Each gens was entitled to the services of all its women in the cultivation of the soil, and of all its men in avenging its wrongs. Each phratry had the right to

HISTORY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBUS.

conduet certain religious ceremonies, and to prepare certain medicines. Each gens was exelusively entitled to the worship of its tutelar god, and each individual to the use of his own amulet.

The crimes recognized by the Wyandots were adultery, theft, maiming, mur- der, treason, and witchcraft. A maiden guilty of fornication was punished by her mother or guardian, but if the crime was flagrant and repeated it might be taken in hand by the council women of the gens. A woman guilty of adultery had her hair cropped for the first offense, and for its repetition had her left ear cut off.

Accusations of theft were tried before the eouneil of the gens, from the decision of which there was no appeal. A defendant adjudged guilty was required to make twofold restitution. The crime of murder was tried before the offender's gens, but appeal might be had to the council of the tribe. If compensation was not made when guilt was found, the crime might be personally avenged.

Treason consisted in revealing the secrets of medicinal preparations, or giving other information or assistance to the enemies of the tribe. It was punished with death.

The charge of witchcraft was investigated by the grand council of the tribe, and when sustained incurred the penalty of death, but the accused might appeal from the adverse judgment of the council to the ordeal by fire. For this purpose a circular fire was built, and the accused was required to run through it from east to west, and from north to south. If he escaped injury he was deemed innocent ; otherwise he was adjudged guilty.

An inveterate criminal might be declared an outlaw having no claim upon the protection of his elan. An outlaw of the lowest grade might be killed by any one who chose to take his life ; outlawry of the highest grade made it a duty to kill the offender on sight.

The military management of the tribe was vested in a council composed of its ablebodied men, and a chief chosen from the Poreupines by the council. Pris- oners of war were either adopted into the tribe or killed. If adopted, it was nec- essary for the captive to become a member of some family. As a test of his cour- age the prisoner was required to run the gantlet. Should he behave manfully he would be elaimed for adoption, but if disgracefully, he was put to death.

The institution of fellowhood was common among the Wyandots. According to this custom two young men would agree to unite in a perpetual covenant of friend- ship, by the terms of which each was bound to reveal to the other the secrets of his life, to give counsel to his fellow in matters of importance, to defend him from wrong or violenee, and at death to be his chief mourner.

Indian migrations, by clans and confederacies, were frequent, and resulted in a series of wars by which entire tribes were sometimes exterminated. " After the destruction of the Eries in 1655," says General Force, " the tract now the State of Ohio was uninhabited until the next century. The nations known as Ohio Indians moved into it after 1700."8 Who were they, and whence did they come? General Harrison says, " the tribes resident within the bounds of this State when the first white settlement commenced were the Wyandots, Miamis, Shawnees, Delawares, a remnant of the Moheigans, who had united themselves with the Delawares, and a band of the Ottawas."" The migrations and conflicts in process of which the State beeame thus peopled constitute one of the most momentous episodes in Indian his- tory, and cover an immense territorial field.

THE IROQUOIS AND ALGONQUINS.

The leading part in that episode must be ascribed to the Iroquois, whose genius for conquest surpassed that of all the contemporary Indian races. They have been called The Romans of the New World. They called themselves Hodenosaunee, meaning " they form a cabin."" Collectively they were known as the Ongwe- honwe, or Superior Men. The name Iroquois was given them by the French. They proudly boasted of their racial antiquity, and it was undoubtedly great. The Lenapes, who bore the title of Grandfathers, and paternally styled the other Al gonquins as children or grandchildren, acknowleged the superior age of the Iro- quois by calling them uncles. In turn, the Lenapes were denominated by the more ancient race as nephews and cousins.

Tradition, supported by circumstances of location and language, indicates that the original hordes of the Iroquois emerged at some very remote period from the human hives of the Northwest. When Jacques Cartier sailed up the St. Lawrence, in 1535 he found them at the present site of Montreal. There, and along the St. Lawrence, they had dwelt since 1450 or 1500. When Champlain followed in the track of Cartier, in 1609 they had been driven sonth by the Adirondacks, and dwelt on the southern borders of Lake Ontario. Here they had formed a confed- eracy afterwards joined by the Tuscaroras" and known as the Five Nations. The tribes originally composing this confederation were the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onon- dagas, Cayugas and Senecas. This league, said to have been of very early origin, was joined by the Tuscaroras in 1713. It then numbered about twelve thousand souls, and was unquestionably the most powerful confederation of Indians on the continent. Its geographical situation, its unity and its warlike qualities, alike con- spired to make it the predominant race. "Other tribes," says Douglas Campbell, " were hemmed in by mountains or by boundless barren wastes." Not so with the Iroquois, " their ' Long House,' as it was called, lay on the crest of the most won- derfui watershed in the world. On the north they had water communication with the St. Lawrence and the Lakes, while on the south and west, the Hudson, Dela- ware, Susquehanna, Alleghany and Ohio afforded them highways to a large portion of the continent. Launching their light canoes on the streams which flowed from their hunting ground as from a mighty fountain, they could in time of need hurl an overwhelming force upon almost any foe."

To this leagne, says Morgan, " France must chiefly ascribe the final overthrow of her magnificent schemes of colonization in the northern part of America.""? Had the French been able to obtain its alliance, as they did that of nearly all the other Indian tribes, the English would have been expelled from the continent, and we would have had here a Gallic instead of an Anglo-Saxon civilization. But nothing could move these Iroquois warriors from their constancy to the Dutch and Eng- lish. For a century and a half they held the balance of power between the Gaul and the Saxon, and it was decided by the cast of their influence that the Gaul must go.

Kindred in language with the tribes of this league were the Andastes of Penn- sylvania, the Eries of Ohio, the Attiwandaronk or Neutrals, so called, on the north- ern shores of Lake Erie, and the nations occupying the peninsula between the Georgian Bay and Lake Huron. These together with the Six Nations composed the Huron-Iroquois family, which has been described as an island in the vast sea of Algonquin population extending south from Hudson Bay to the Carolinas, and

HISTORY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBUS.

west from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. The Indians of this family who dwelt along the eastern shores of Lake Hnrou were known to the Iroquois as Quatoghies, and to the French as Hurons. They called themselves Ontwaonwes, meaning real men, but adopted the tribal designation of Wendats, or Ouendats, as it was Frenchified by the Jesuit missionaries. Champlain and the Franciscan missionary Joseph le Caron visited them in 1615, and Father Sagard in 1624. According to the Jesnit Relations their settlements at that time extended southwardly about one hundred miles from the mouth of the French River and comprised twentyfive or thirty towns, of which that of Ossosane was chief. The total population of these settlements was about thirty thousand. The frontier towns were fortified with a triple palisade and interior gallery ; the others were unguarded. The dwellings were made long so that each might contain several families, and were built of poles covered with bark.

The tribes comprising the Huron confederation are differently named by different writers. The most authentic nomenclature seems to be that of Attigna- wantaws, Attigneennonquabac, Arendahronon, Tohonteerat and Tionontates or Tobacco Indians,13 whom the French called the Nation de Petun. The first two of these clans were original Hurons, the others adoptive. From the conglomera- tion of these tribes, or rather of their fragments after the Iroquois dispersion, eame the Wyandots known to history.

The Wendats who formed the basis of that stock were much more intelligent and inclined to agriculture than their neighbors, the Northern Algonquins. None surpassed them in courage. To die for the interest and honor of his tribe, says Harrison, and to consider submission to an enemy as the lowest degradation, were precepts instilled into the Wendat mind from earliest youth.14 In Wayne's battle at the Rapids of the Miami thirteen chiefs of this tribe perished and but one survived.

Very anciently, according to one of their historians,15 the Wendats "inhab- ited a country northeastward from the mouth of the St. Lawrence, or somewhere along the gulf coast," but " during the first quarter of the sixteenth century " (1500-1525) they quarreled with their neighbors, the Senecas, while both were dwelling near the present site of Montreal. One of the traditions aseribes the origin of this quarrel to the intrigue and passion of a Seneca maiden who pledged her hand to a young Wendat warrior on condition that he would slay one of the chieftains of her own tribe. The murder was accomplished, and its recompense paid, but the Senecas were so enraged by it that they rose in arms and drove the Wendats from the country. Taking their conrse westward, the fugitives halted first on the Niagara, next at the present site of Toronto, and finally on the shores of Lake Huron. Their subsequent settlements in Ohio, says one of the State's historians, were in the nature of colonies from the main tribe, the principal seat of which was opposite Detroit.16

The curious cosmogony of the Huron Indians is thus summarized : " A woman, Ataensic, flying from heaven, fell into an abyss of waters. Then the tortoise and the beaver, after long consultation, dived and brought up earth on which she rested and bore two sons, Tawescaron and Iouskeha, the latter of whom killed his brother." Aireskoi, son of Iouskeha, was the chief divinity of the Iroquois and Hurons, 17

THE IROQUOIS AND ALGONQUINS.

Although Algonquins, the Ottawas, famous chiefly as the tribe of the great Pontiac, were early friends of the Wyandots. When first discovered they inhab- ited the islands of Lake Huron and the peninsula of Michigan, but at an earlier period they dwelt on the Canadian river which bears their name, and while there, it is said, exacted tribute from all the Indians who crossed from or to the country of the Hurons.18 They were unique among the North American tribes as wor- shipers of the heavenly bodies, the sun being the object of their supreme rever- ence. The French traders found them on the Sandusky peninsula as early as 1750. " The Ottawas, so far as they have been observed on the soil of Ohio," says Taylor, " have hardly sustained the gravity and dignity of position which we spon- taneously assign to the Wyandot and the Delaware. Compared with his forest brethren the Ottawa, or Tawah, as the early settlers called him, whose life was nearly amphibious by his joint avocations as trapper and fisher, seems to be rather a Pariah among his brethren."19

The Neutral Nation, so called by the French because they refused to take sides in the Huron-Iroquois war, were known to the Senecas as Kahkwas, and to the Hurons as Attiwandaronk. Their dwelling places were along the banks of Niagara and the neighboring coasts of Lake Erie.

The Andastes were identical with the Susquehannas and Canestogas. They inhabited the country watered by the upper branches of the Ohio and Susquehanna.

Of the Eries, so called by the Hurons, and named Eriquehronons by the Iro- quois, but little is known. They dwelt in that part of Northern Ohio which is skirted by the southeastern shores of Lake Erie. Their territories are said to have been " very populous."" The title, Nation du Chat or Cat Nation, given them by the French, is thus explained in one of the Jesuit Relations : " We call the Eries the Cat Nation because there is in their country a prodigions number of wildcats, two or three times as large as our tame cats, but having a beautiful and precious fur."" Father Sagard, who was a missionary among the Hurons in 1823, says: " There is in this vast region a country which we call the Cat Nation, by reason of their cats, a sort of small wolf or leopard found there, from the skins of which the natives make robes bordered and ornamented with the tails."22 School. craft regards it as certain that the Eries " were at the head of that singular eon- federation of tribes known as the Neutral Nation, which extended from the ex- treme west to the extreme eastern shores of Lake Erie, including the Niagara." Traditional and circumstantial grounds have been found for the belief that the Kickapoos. Shawnees and Catawbas all sprang from remnants of this tribe. That the Eries were a warlike race cannot be doubted. A missionary journal of 1658 refers to them as " the dreaded Cat Nation," the subjugation of which had then been accomplished.

Next west of the Eries were the Miamis, another warlike tribe. first discovered in Eastern Wisconsin by the French, and numbering at that time (1679) about eight thousand souls. Their belligerent spirit involved them in perpetual broils with their neighbors, the Sioux, and later with the Iroquois and French. Their course of migration was thus described by their famous chief, Little Turtle : " My fore- fatbers kindled the first fire at Detroit ; from thence they extended their lines to the headwaters of the Seioto; from thence to its month ; from thence down the Ohio to the month of the Wabash, and from thence to Chicago over Lake Michi-

HISTORY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBUS.

gan." Their territory, says General Harrison, " embraced all of Ohio west of the Scioto, all of Indiana, and that part of Illinois south of the Fox River, and Wiscon- sin, on which frontier they were intermingled with the Kiekapoos and some other small tribes. . . . Numerous villages were to be found on the Scioto and the head waters of the two Miamis of the Ohio."2" By this tribe, it is believed, the Eries were crowded inland from the northwest.

The neighbors of the Miamis on the west were the Illinois, whose confederaey extended along the eastern shore of the Mississippi south to within about eighty miles of the Ohio.

The Lenno Lenape, or Delawares, claimed to be the oldest of the Algonquins, and to have come from the west. After driving the Tallegwi from the Ohio they pushed eastward and settled along the Delaware River, near which they were dwelling when first known to the whites, and which gave them their English name. William Penn bought large portions of their territory, after which they moved inland. This transaction resulted in a war, in the course of which the Delawares were driven west of the Alleghanies. They reached the Ohio about the year 1700, and moved into the Muskingum and Scioto valleys.2 They afterwards asserted their dominion over most of the eastern half of Ohio.

The Shawnees were a nomadic tribe, sometimes descriptively designated as American Arabs. Their roving disposition has given rise to the fancy that they were " a lost tribe of Israel."" They were Algonquins, primarily of the Kickapoo tribe, and were first found by the whites in Wisconsin. Moving eastward, they encountered the Iroquois, by whom they were driven south into Tennessee. From thence they erossed the mountains into South Carolina, and spread southward to Florida, and northward to New York. At a later. period they drifted northward, again came in eontact with the Iroquois, and were driven into Ohio. Their arrival here, after these wanderings, took place about the year 1750. Gist found one of their settlements in that year at the mouth of the Scioto. The French called these nomads Chaouanons, the English Shawanoes, the Iroquois Satanas. Their tribal divisions, four in number, bore the names Kiskapocke, Mequachuke, Chillicothe and Piqua. According to one of their legends, while their ancient warriors and wise men once were seated around a smouldering council fire there was a sudden crepitation and puffing of smoke amid the embers, followed by the apparition of a man of splendid form emerging from the ashes. This was the first Piquan.

" We first find the Shawano in actual history about 1660," says Force, " and living along the Cumberland river, or the Cumberland and Tennessee. Among the conjectures as to their earlier history the greatest probability lies, for the present, with the earliest account given by Perrot, and apparently obtained by him from the Shawnees themselves about the year 1680 - that they formerly lived by the lower lakes, and were driven thence by the Five Nations."" " The Shaw- nees and Cherokees seem to have been the foremost in the Indian migrations which met the Mound Builders," says Judge Baldwin. According to the same authority, " while the Eries were at peace the Shawnees lived next south, probably in Southern Ohio and Kentucky."27 But the Eries did not remain at peace, nor were the Shawnees permitted to stay. A thunderbolt fell in the midst of these tribes and their neighbors which crushed the Eries, drove off the Shawnees, and scattered other clans and confederacies to the four winds,

THE IROQUOIS AND ALGONQUINS.

When the French navigator, Samuel de Champlain, began his settlement at Quebec in 1608. the Iroquois were at war with all the Canada Indians from Lake Huron to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. During the same year a messenger from the Ottawas visited Champlain, and urged him to reinforce them in this struggle. The " Father of New France" complied with this request, set out with a band of Hurons and Montagnais, and in May, 1609, defeated an Iroquois force on the shores of the lake which still bears his name. In 1615 he took part with the Hurons in a second expedition, directed against a town not far from Onondaga. Thenceforward the Five Nations were active and seldom relenting foes of the French. Shrewd in diplomacy as they were brave in the field, they effected a firm alliance with the Dutch, obtained fire-arms, and, in 1621, invaded Canada. They also made war on the Mohigans, and killed the Dutch commander at Albany, who had taken sides against them. When the French recovered possession of Canada from the English in 1632 they found the Iroquois everywhere dominant.

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History of the city of Columbus, capital of Ohio, Volume I, Part 10

Author: Lee, Alfred Emory, 1838-; W. W. Munsell & Co Publication date: 1892 Publisher: New York and Chicago : Munsell & Co. Number of Pages: 1202

Author: Lee, Alfred Emory, 1838-; W. W. Munsell & Co
Publication date: 1892
Publisher: New York and Chicago : Munsell & Co.
Number of Pages: 1202