History of the city of Columbus, capital of Ohio, Volume I, Part 12

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 12

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Although the charge made against Leatherlips was that of witchcraft, his · friendship for the whites is believed to have been the real cause of his murder. The great Wyandot sachem, Tahre, The Crane, was accused of leading the assas- sins, but Harrison exculpates him. The real leader seems to have been another chief named Roundhead.

HISTORY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBUS.

For a long time the place of execution and burial of the old chief was marked by a rude heap of stones which has now been replaced by a handsome monument erected by the Wyandot Club, a social organization of Columbus. The movement which resulted in this memorial was begun at the annual reunion of the club held September 18, 1887, in the stately forest known as Wyandot Grove, eight miles northwest of the city. On that occasion Colonel Samuel Thompson, a member of the club, delivered an oration in which he paid a glowing tribute to the general character of the Wyandots, and among other things said: " I learned from our venerable friend, the late Abraham Sells, former proprietor of this beautiful grove, rightly named by him Wyandot Grove, [that] near yon crystal spring once stood the cabin of this noted chief. It was here that the Wyandots halted to rest and refresh themselves when on their way to the white settlements at Chillicothe, and subsequently at Franklinton, this county."

In 1829 a small band of Wyandots still dwelt on the Huron River, in Michi- gan, but the principal portion of the tribe, numbering about six hundred souls, was collected on the headwaters of the Sandusky. By treaty of 1832 they sold their lands to the United States, and were removed, 687 in number, to the junction of the Kaw and Missouri Rivers in the present State of Kansas. Colonel S. P. McElvain, a prominent citizen of Columbus, assisted as Government Agent in their transportation to their new home. A further removal of members of the tribe is thus referred to in the Xenia Torchlight of July 26, 1843 :

We are informed by a returning wagoner, who had been assisting in the transportation of the Wyandot Indians to Cincinnati that four deaths occurred among them before their departure from that city. The deceased persons were a woman and a child, Warpole, a chief aged 113 years, and John Hicks. The Indian last named was on board a boat from which he fell into the river, in a state of intoxication, and was drowned

" The one drowned," says a writer of the period, " was probably the only intemperate man of the tribe."43

NOTES.

1. Charles Maclaren, fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburg.

2. The Italian geographer Adriano Balbi estimated the number of Indian languages at 423, of which 211 belonged to North, 44 to Central and 158 to South America. Other anthor- ities estimate the total number of aboriginal tongues at 760, of which 430 were attributed to the north and 330 to the south.

3. Language and the Study of Language ; by Professor Whitney of Yale College.

4. Johann Friedrich Blumenthal, born at Gotha, May 11, 1752; celebrated for his craniological researches, and first to apply the science of comparative anatomy to ethnological study.

5. Dr. Samuel G. Morton, of Philadelphia, a physician and celebrated ethnological in- vestigator.

6. The Toltecan family embraced the civilized nations of Mexico, Peru and Bogota, extending from the Rio Gila along the western shore of the continent to the frontiers of Chili, and on the eastern coast along the Gulf of Mexico, in North America. But even before the Spanish conquest, the Toltecan family were not exclusive possessors of these regions; they were only the predominant race, or caste. .

7. On the authority of a paper entitled : "Wyandot Government; a Short Study in Tribal Society"; by J. W. Powell, Director of the Bureau of Ethnology. First annual report to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1881.

umenbach

THE IROQUOIS AND ALGONQUINS.

8. A paper entitled : "To What Race did the Mound Builders Belong ?" By General Manning F. Force.

9. Discourse on the aborigines of the Ohio Valley.

10. Their territorial grouping was supposed to take that shape. "Of this cabin," says Mr. Shea, " the fire was in the centre, at Onondaga, and the Mohawk was the door."

11. The Tuscaroras were a cognate nation which migrated southward at an early period. They attempted to massacre the North Carolina colonists in 1711, but troops were called from South Carolina, and they were routed in the battle of the Neuse, January 28, 1712, losing four hundred killed and wounded. On March 20. 1713, they suffered another disaster by the loss of their fort at Snow Hill, and eight hundred of their number captured. The residue of the tribe fled northward, and became the sixth nation of the Iroquois league. At a later period some of them settled in Ohio.

12. " League of the Iroquois," by Lewis Henry Morgan ; Rochester, 1851.

13. So called from their extensive tobacco product and traffic.

14. The following note is attached to General Harrison's " Discourse " :

When General Wayne assumed the position at Greenville in 1793, he sent for Captain Wells, who commanded a company of scouts, and told him that he wished him to go to San- dusky and take a prisoner for the purpose of obtaining information. Wells .. . answered that he could take a prisoner, but not from Sandusky. " And why not from Sandusky ?" said the General. '"Because," answered the Captain, "there are only Wyandots there." " Well, why will not Wyandots do ?" "For the best of reasons," said Wells, " because Wyandots will not be taken alive."

15. Origin and Traditional History ot the Wyandots, by Peter D. Clarke ; Toronto, 1870.

16. History of Ohio; J. W. Taylor.

17. Shea.

18. Taylor.

19. History of Ohio.

20. Jesuit Relation of 1648.

21. Ibid.

22. Histoire du Canada. 1636.

23. Harrison's Discourse.

24. During his exploration of the Ohio country in 1750 Christopher Gist found severai Delaware villages along the east bank of the Scioto, and was favorably received. He esti- mated the fighting strength of the tribe at that time at five hundred warriors. Commenting on this fact in a note to his text Taylor says :

"Gist by no means found the bulk of the Delawares upon the 'east bank of the Scioto,' although 'several villages' might have been scattered along its course. His route was doubt- less by the 'Standing Stone,' now Lancaster, and thence to the fertile Pickaway Plains, where the Shawnees were afterwards assembled in considerable force. When the Delaware chiefs. who were in the American interest, visited Philadelphia during the Revolution, they spoke of 'placing the Shawnees in their laps'-a figurative expression for the surrender of the Scioto Valley to them, as they ascended from the mouth of the river But the Delawares continued their occupation of the region now bearing their name in Ohio, and George San- derson, Esq., in his History of the Early Settlement of Fairfield County, mentions them as joint occupants of that vicinity with the Wyandots. . .. While the Wyandots occupied the present site of Lancaster, a Delaware chief, called Tobey, ruled over a village called Tohey- town, near Royalton."

The Wyandot village at Lancaster, according to Sanderson, contained a hundred wig- wams, and was called Tahre, or Cranetown, from the name of its chief.

25. Taylor says they claimed to be such. History of Ohio, page 39.

26. Some Early Notices of the Indian Tribes of Ohio ; a paper read before the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio, by General Manning F. Force, 1879.

27. Indian Migration in Obio; Hon. C. C. Baldwin, 1878.

28. The Jesuit Relation of 1656 abounds in descriptions of the burning and torture of the captured Eries by the Iroquois. In its account of the storming of one of the Erie pali- sades occurs this extravagant passage :

HISTORY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBUS.

"The besiegers try to carry the place by storm, but in vain ; they are killed as fast as they show themselves. They resolved to use their canoes as shields. They carry these in front, and thus sheltered they reach the foot of the intrenchment. But it was necessary to clear the great beams or trees of which it was built. They slant their canoes, and use them as ladders to mount the great palisade. This boldness so astonished the besieged, that, their armament being already exhausted, for their supply was small, especially powder, they thought to retreat and this was their ruin. For the first fugitives being mostly killed, the rest were surrounded by the Onnontaguehronnons, who entered the fort, and made such a carnage of women and children that the blood was in places knee deep."

29. The Iroquois in Ohio ; a paper by Hon. C. C. Baldwin.

30. History of the Five Indian Nations of Canada Depending on New York ; by Cad- wallader Colden, member of the King's Council and Surveyor-General of the Province ; 1727-55.

31. General Harrison says in bis " Discourse " :

"Singular as it may seem it is nevertheless true that the Lenapes, upon the dictation of the Iroquois, agreed to lay aside the character of warriors, and to assume that of women. This fact is undisputed, but nothing can be more different than the account which is given of the manner in which it was brought about and the motives for adopting it on the part of the Lenapes. The latter assert that they were cajoled into it by the artifices of the Iroquois, who descanted largely upon the honor which was to be acquired by their assuming the part of peacemakers between belligerent tribes, and which could never be so effectual as when done in the character of the sex which never make war. The Lenapes consented, and agreed that their chiefs and warriors from thenceforth should be considered as women. The version of this transaction as given by the Iroquois is, that they demanded and the Lenapes were made to yield this humiliating concession as the only means of averting impending de- struction."

32. Morgan.

33. Baldwin.

34. Walling and Gray's Atlas.

35. Notably General W. H. Harrison.

36. See note 24. In his address before the Franklin County Pioneer Association in 1871. Mr. Joseph Sullivant, of this city, said he had reasons for the belief that Gist, in his journey " passed over or very near the present site of Columbus."

37. American Cyclopedia, Vol. XII.

38. Gist's Journal.

39. Royce, in the Antiquarian for July, 1881.

40. Howe's Historical Collections.

41. Drake's Life of Tecumseh.

42. Martin's History of Franklin County, published in 1858, mentions William Sells, Esq., of Dublin, as " perhaps the only survivor of the white men referred to that were pres- ent at the execution."

43. Ohio State Journal, July 27, 1843.

A.S. Townshend

CHAPTER V.

ADVENT OF THE WHITE MAN.

First of Europeans, or of the Caucasian race, to tread the soil of Ohio, was the brilliant Norman, a native of Rouen, Robert Cavelier de la Salle. Eager and daring, this tireless explorer arrived in Canada from France in 1666, bis mind teeming with glowing fancies concerning the unknown West. Learning vaguely from the Indians of the great Mississippi and its beautiful tributary the Oyo, as the Iroquois called it, he conceived the idea that, launching upon these waters, he would be borne to the Pacific, and far round the globe toward India and China. Therefore, in token of the expected destination of his proposed enterprise, he gave to the settlement which he founded on the St. Lawrence the name of La Chine.1 Disposing of his possessions in that colony, he set out in 1669 to explore the country between the lakes and the Ohio. At the head of Lake Ontario his two white com- panions quitted him, but he persisted in his purpose, reached the Ohio River, and descended it to the present site of Louisville. La Salle's record of this expedi- tion, if he ever wrote one, has not been preserved. After his assassination some years later, his papers seem to have been lost. He spent the winter of 1669-70 within the present limits of Ohio, and probably passed through the State down the Muskingum, the Scioto, or the Big Miami. It is quite possible that he was the first white man who ever visited the spot whereon, nearly one hundred and fifty years later, was founded Ohio's capital.

Having ascertained from this and subsequent expeditions the real course of the Mississippi, La Salle conceived some new and far-reaching schemes. Engaging in the fur trade, for which he obtained special favors from the King of France, he launched his canoes on the Ohio, the Wabash and the Maumee, and established posts for traffic along the banks of these rivers and the shores of the Great Lakes. He was also first to conceive plans for exploring the country from Lake Frontenac, as Ontario was then called, to the Gulf of Mexico, in order to extend the dominion of France over the entire Mississippi basin, and bring its inhabitants to the knowl- edge of the Christian religion. In 1678 he began to build the Griffon, a bark of sixty tons, which he launched the following summer near the present site of Buf- falo. On August 7th, 1669, with a crew of thirtyfour hunters, soldiers and sailors, he set forth in this ship, which was the first craft of civilized construction to ride the waters of Lake Erie. He was accompanied by an Italian soldier named Tonti, and Lewis Hennepin, a Franciscan friar of the order of Recollects. From Green Bay, which was reached in September, the Griffon, laden with furs, set out, and was lost, on her return to Niagara, while La Salle, with seventeen men and a

[81]

HISTORY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBUS.

Recollect monk sailed in canoes to the mouth of St. Joseph's River, then called the River of the Miamis. After building there a trading fort he led his party over- land, carrying its canoes and equipage, until he reached the Kankakee, which he descended to the Lake of Peoria, and there first came in contact with the Illinois Indians. Here he built another trading fort, and fitted out an expedition under Hen- nepin to explore the Upper Mississippi, reserving for himself the voyage of dis- covery down that river to its mouth. He then returned to Fort Frontenac, and after various journeys back and forth rejoined Tonti, in November, 1681, for the . crowning expedition. Quitting the shores of Lake Michigan in January, 1682, La Salle led that expedition across the country by way of the Chicago River to the Illinois, and on the sixth of February arrived on the banks of the Mississippi. On the thirteenth of February, all being ready, the voyage was renewed, the party comprising twentytwo arms-bearing Frenchmen, Father Membre - one of the Rec- ollect missionaries - and a band of Indians, including several women. After many interesting adventures La Salle arrived at the mouth of the Mississippi, named it the River Colbert, and explored the three channels by which its waters were discharged into the sea. He then reascended to a point beyond the reach of inundation, erected a cross and formally proclaimed the dominion of the French king, by right of discovery, over all the territories of the Mississippi Valley. Louisiana was the name with which, in honor of his sovereign, he christened this vast wilderness realm, including the present State of Ohio. Over these immense, indefinitely-bounded territories France held jurisdiction for eightyone years. By treaties of 1762 and 1763 she ceded her claims west of the Mississippi to Spain, and those east of it to Great Britain. La Salle undertook to colonize the Louisiana province, and for that purpose brought over a party of settlers from France, but their ship missed her longitudes, passed the mouth of the Mississippi, and landed in Texas. From thence the hardy explorer undertook to make his way overland to Canada, but had not proceeded far before he was treacherously murdered by his companions.º La Salle was a man of genius, and deserves greater credit for bis achievements than he has usually received.

To colonize the Ohio country and set a bulwark against the claims and en croachments of the French, the Ohio Land Company of Virginia was chartered in 1749. It included in its membership George Washington's brothers Lawrence and Augustine, and was chiefly represented in England by Jobn Hanbury, a wealthy merchant of London. . Thomas Lee, its founder and most active colonial member, was President of the Virginia Council. Robert Dinwiddie, another shareholder, was Surgeon-General for the Southern Colonies.

This company obtained from the British government a grant of five hundred thousand acres of land " between the Monongahela and the Kanawha, or on the northern margin of the Ohio,"3 with the stipulation that no quit-rent should be paid for ten years, that at least one hundred families should be settled within seven years, and that the colonists should, at their own expense, build and garri- son a fort for defense against the Indians.

There were at that time, says Sparks, " no English residents in those regions." A few traders wandered from tribe to tribe, and dwelt among the Indians, but they neither cultivated nor occupied the land. The French had established numerous trading posts in the country, including one at the mouth of the Scioto, the founda-

ADVENT OF THE WHITE MAN

tion of which dated prior to 1740. Perceiving the purposes of the English they began to assert formal possession of their discoveries on the Ohio and its tributaries, and warned the English and colonial traders to keep out of them. To emphasize their claims, the Marquis de la Gallissonnière, Governor- General of Canada, dis- patched a force of three hundred men under Captain Celeron de Bienville, who was commissioned to nail on the trees and bury in the earth, at the confluences of the Ohio with its tributaries, leaden plates engraved with the arms of France, and bearing a legend asserting by right of discovery and treaty the paramount sover- eignty of Louis XV. over all those regions. Above each buried plate was erected a wooden cross. Mr. Atwater states that he had in his possession for some time one of these medals, which he describes as a thin plate of lead, rudely lettered. " It asserted the claims of Louis XV. to all the country watered by the 'riviere Oyo' and branches, and was deposited at the mouth of the 'Venango rivière le 16 Août. 1749.'"+ This plate was washed out at the mouth of the Muskingum -the Ye- nan-gue of the Indians - in 1798, and was delivered to Governor De Witt Clinton, who deposited it with the Antiquarian Society of Massachusetts. A similar plate was found in 1846 at the month of the Kanawha, a short distance above its junction with the Ohio. 5

Immediately atter Celeron's reconnaissance, the French began to fortify their frontier with stockaded garrisons. One of these was established at an inlet known as Presque Isle (now Erie) on the southeastern shore of Lake Erie, another on Le Boeuf (now French) Creek, fifteen miles inland, and a third at the confluence of that creek with the Alleghany. From its site on that of an ancient Indian village, the fort last mentioned took the name of Venango.

At an earlier date, in 1744, a treaty had been made with the Delaware and Iroquois Indians, at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, by which, in consideration of four hundred pounds sterling, they ceded all right and title to lands west of the Alle- ghanies to the English. This pretended cession was a frand. It was brought about by the free use of spirituous liquors, and was scoffed at by the tribes in actual possession of the lands ceded. The only event which seems to have creditably re- lieved the proceedings of this Lancaster council was the delivery ofa speech, by an Onondaga warrior, in which he suggested to the whites the importance of a union of the American colonies. The Indian statesman who made this suggestion forti- fied it by citing the advantages which the tribes of the Iroquois league had derived from unity. This is believed to be the first instance in which the consolidation of the states on this continent as one nation was ever broached.

In the autumn of 1750 the Virginia Land Company employed Christopher Gist, a hardy pioneer and woodsman, experienced in Indian life, to explore its al- leged possessions on the Ohio and the tributaries of that river. Quitting his tron- tier home on the Yadkin, in North Carolina, Gist set out from the Potomac on the thirtyfirst of October, and journeyed westward by an Indian trail leading from Wills Creek, afterwards Fort Cumberland, to the Ohio. Crossing the Alleghany ranges, Gist arrived at Shannopin, a Delaware village on the Alleghany, swam his horses across that stream, and descended to Logstown, an Indian village on the Ohio, fourteen miles below the present site of Pittsburgh. Here Tanacharisson, a celebrated Seneca chief and halfking under the Iroquois confederacy, ruled the tribes which had migrated to Ohio. At the time of Gist's arrival, this eminent

HISTORY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBUS.

savage was absent in the chase. George Croghan, an envoy from Pennsylvania, with Andrew Montour, his halfbreed interpreter, had passed through Logstown a week previously on his way to the Twightwee and other tribes on the Miami. Gist was regarded with jealousy by the rough people at Logstown, who sulkily intimated that he would never " go home safe." Preferring, he says, the solitude of the wilderness to the companionship of such cutthroats, he quitted them, pushed westward from the month of Beaver Creek, and on the fourteenth of December overtook Croghan at a town of Wyandots and Mingoes on the Muskingum. This town contained about a hundred families, half of them of French sympathies and half of English. He spent some weeks among them, and invited them in the name of the Governor of Virginia to visit that provinee, promising presents. On the sixteenth of January, 1751, he resumed his journey accompanied by Croghan and Montour, crossed the Licking, and on the nineteenth arrived at a small Delaware village bearing the now familiar name of Hockhocking. Thence he passed on to Maguck, another Delaware village, situated near the Scioto. "24th, went south fifteen miles to a town ealled Hurricane Tom's Town on the southwest of Scioto Creek, consisting of five or six families. 25th, went down on southwest side of the Creek, four miles to Salt Liek Creek."" The next point noted is a Delaware town of about twenty families situated on the southeast bank of the Scioto. Here a halt was called for a few days, a council held, and some Indian speeches made. This was the last of the Delaware towns to the westward.

The next stop was made at the Shawnee town at the mouth of the Scioto. Here a eurious Indian dance was in progress, which is described. After feasting, the savages spent the night in saltatory revelry. This was kept up for several days in succession, " the men dancing by themselves, and then the women in turns, around the fires . . . in the form of the figure eight, about sixty or seventy of them at a time. The women, the whole time they danced, sung a song in their language, the chorus of which was:

" ' I am not afraid of my husband, I will choose what man I please.' ""?

The Shawnees found by Gist at the mouth of the Scioto had lately returned from their southern wanderings. After his departure they were joined by various additional fragments of the tribe, and extended their settlements up the Scioto and Miami. They were friends to the English until these were suspected of trying to dispossess them of their lands; after that they held everything English in detesta- tion. Their chiefs promised Gist to attend a conference at Logstown the follow- ing spring.

On the twelfth of February Mr. Gist parted with the Shawnees, and set out for the Twightwee town on the Big Miami. He was accompanied by Croghan, Mon- tour, and Robert Kallender. The Twightwees are described as a very numerous people, consisting of many tribes, all under the same form of government. The chief of their confederacy at that time was the king of the Piankeshas. Their town, situated at the present site of Piqua, contained about four hundred families, and was considered the most important in the Ohio country. The Miamis had been at war with the Iroquois, but were then at peace. Mr. Gist was kindly received by these Indians, and closed with them, in spite of overtures and presents by the French, a treaty of amity with the English. He then returned to and descended

ADVENT OF THE WHITE MAN.

the Ohio to a point about fifteen miles above its Falls. From thence ho bent his course inland to the Kentucky River, from a mountain in the vicinity of which " he had a view to the southwest as far as the eye eould reach, over a vast woodland country in the fresh garniture of spring, and watered by abundant streams ; but as yet only the hunting ground of savage tribes, and the scene of their sanguinary combats. In a word, Kentucky lay spread out before him in all its wild magnifi- cence; long before it was beheld by Daniel Boone."8

In May, 1751, Gist reached his home on the Yadkin, but found his cabin vacant. An Indian massacre of the whites had taken place in the neighborhood, and his family, unharmed, had fled for refuge to the settlements on the Roanoke.

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History of the city of Columbus, capital of Ohio, Volume I, Part 12

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