USA > Ohio > Franklin County > Columbus > History of the city of Columbus, capital of Ohio, Volume I > Part 13
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By the unique journeyings thus ended much authentic information about the wild country west of the Ohio was for the first time obtained. "It was rich and level," says Washington Irving, " watered with streams and rivulets, and clad with noble forests of hickory, walnut, ash, poplar, sugar-maple, and wild-cberry trees. Occasionally there were spacious plains covered with wild rye; natural ineadows with blue grass and clover ; and buffaloes thirty and forty at a time graz- ing on them as in a cultivated pasture. Deer, elk, and wild turkeys abounded. ' Nothing is wanted but cultivation,' said Gist, ' to make this a most delightful country.' Cultivation has since proved the truth of his words. The country thus described is the present state of Ohio."9
These discoveries led to the circulation of some exaggerated and fanciful ac- counts of the regions explored by Gist, and also to some attempts to colonize them which were not successful. In 174910 a party of Pennsylvania traders started the first English-speaking settlement known to have existed in Ohio. It was located at the mouth of Laramie Creek, now in Shelby County, and was called Pickawil- lany. Its duration was brief. In 1752 the French and their Indian allies swooped down upon it, destroyed its trading house, killed fourteeen friendly Indians of its garrison, and bore off the traders to Canada, some of them, it is said, to be burned alive. Under instructions, Gist surveyed the Ohio Company's lands down to the Great Kanawha, laid ont a town at Chartier's Creek on the Ohio just below the present city of Pittsburgh, and started a settlement at Laurel Hill, near the Yough- iogheny. The Company also established a trading post at Wills's Creek, now Cumberland.
On the ninth of June, 1752, commissioners representing the Virginia colony held a conference with the Indians at Logstown. The Shawnees and Delawares were represented, but the Iroquois declined to attend. The Ohio Company was represented by Gist. The commissioners urged the Indians to confirm the Lan- caster Treaty, but they at first refused, protesting that they had not intended to convey by that treaty any lands west of the war trail at the foot of the Alle- ghanies. Some of their chiefs shrewdly remarked that since the French were claiming all the lands on one side of the Ohio and the English all on the other, the Indians seemed to have nothing to concede. Finally, by intrigue and bribery, they were prevailed upon to ratify the treaty, and grant all that was desired. The French met this by strengthening their garrisons at Presque Isle, Le Boeuf and Venango." George Washington, at that time a young man of twentytwo, was thereupon selected by Governor Dinwiddie, of Virginia, to go to Logstown, confer with the Indians there, and ascertain the force, positions and intentions of
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the French. He bore a letter from the Governor to the French commandant ask - ing for explanations. Accompanied by Gist and a few frontiersmen, Washington arrived November 23, 1753, at the present site of Pittsburgh, inspected it, and thought it would be a good place for a fort. He reached Logstown on the twenty- fourth, conferred there with the Mingo, Shawnee and Delaware chiefs, visited the famous Delaware, Bockengehelas, at his lodge, and after a few days set out for the French forts. His party was augmented at Logstown by the Seneca halfking, an old sachem called White Thunder, and a few other Indians. He visited the French forts at Venango and Le Boeuf, presented Governor Dinwiddie's letter to Chevalier de St. Pierre, the commandant, and received from that officer an evasive answer which, with much hardship and adventure, he bore back to Williamsburgh.
Perceiving, from this artful reply, the hostile purposes of the French, Gover- nor Dinwiddie dispatched Captain Trent, a brotherinlaw of Croghan's, to finish the fort already begun by the Land Company at the Forks of the Ohio. Trent took with him about forty men. On the seventeenth of April, 1754, while this de- tachment was busily engaged upon its intrenchments, it was suddenly confronted by a motley force of more than a thousand French and Indians, with eighteen cannon. This force, under Captain Contrecour, had dropped down the Alleghany in canoes and barges from Venango. Ensign Ward, commanding in lieu of Trent, who was at Wills Creek, surrendered after a brief parley, and was allowed to march away with his intrenching tools. The French took possession of the un- completed stockade, finished it, and named it, in honor of the Governor-General of Canada, Fort Du Quésne.
Thus began a nine-years war between the French and English, in which the various Indian tribes took sides according to their caprices or predilections. We need not follow its details. It ended with the Paris treaty of 1763, by which France surrendered her North American possessions to Spain and Great Brit- ain.1º The revolt of Pontiac followed. To the triumphant English this great Ottawa chieftain spoke defiance. " Although you have conquered the French you have not conquered us," he exclaimed. " We are not your slaves. These lakes, these woods, these mountains were left to us by our ancestors. They are our in- heritance, and we will part with them to none." Immediately, from the Allegha- nies to the Lakes, the tribes with which Pontiac had conspired rose to exterminate the English. On the sixteenth of May, Fort Sandusky, on Sandusky Bay, fell, by treachery, into the hands of the Wyandots, who massacred its garrison, and carried off Ensign Paully, its commandant.13 On the twentyfifth the stockade at the mouth of St. Joseph's, on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, was surprised by Pottawattomies from Detroit, and its garrison massacred. Fort Miami, where the city of Fort Wayne now stands, was attacked on the twentyseventh. Fort Ouachtanon, on the Wabash, just below Lafayette, surrendered on the first of June. On the second, the fort at Michillimackinac was surprised and captured Presque Isle succumbed on the twentysecond. Le Boeuf and Venango were taken and burned on the eighteenth of July. Detroit was besieged by Pontiac in person, and a de- tachment sent to its relief was destroyed. Fort Du Quésne - named Pitt by the British - was surrounded by an Indian horde, and cut off from all intercourse with the East.
Colonel Henry Bouquet, commanding at Philadelphia, was dispatched with a force of five hundred men to the relief of the beleaguered post at the Forks of the
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Ohio. Bouquet was an experienced and able soldier who had served in Holland under the Prince of Orange. A Swiss by birth, he had been prevailed upon to accept a commission in the British colonial service. His expeditionary force, the old chronicles say, comprised " the shattered remainder of the Fortysecond and Seventyseventh [Highlander] regiments, lately returned in a dismal condition from the West Indies." Bouquet took his course by way of Carlisle, and on the twenty. fifth of July arrived at Fort Bedford. All along the frontier he found plantations ravaged, mills burned, and the settlers fleeing from their homes. The march was resumed from Bedford on the twentyeighth, and continued without interruption until Fort Ligonier was passed, and Bushy Run approached. Here, at a point four days' march from Fort Pitt, the advance guard was suddenly assailed by Indians, who delivered a galling fire, and though driven from point to point by the Highlanders, stubbornly returned to the onset, with increasing numbers, until Bouquet's entire force was surrounded. The fighting ceased only at nightfall, and was resumed at early dawn next morning, the savages coming on again with horrid yells. For a time it seemed that the fate of Braddock, eight years be- fore,14 would be repeated, but Bouquet was a more skillful leader than Braddock, and entirely equal to the emergency. Feigning retreat, he drew the savages into an ambuscade, attacked them simultaneously in front and flank, and routed them completely. They disappeared in precipitate flight, leaving the column to con- tinue its march to Fort Pitt without further molestation. The Indian force which took part in this battle was composed of Delawares, Shawnese, Mingoes, Wyandots, Mohicans, Miamis and Ottawas. The defeat of these tribes had a discouraging effect upon Pontiac, who raised the siege of Detroit, after having maintained it for eleven months.
In the spring of 1864 two expeditions were organized to carry the war into the Indian country west of the Ohio. One of these, eleven hundred strong, made for the lake region, and in July arrived at Niagara. It was led by Colonel John Bradstreet, who, as he approached Presque Isle, was met by ten Indians who pre- tended to be authorized to treat with him in behalf of the Delawares, the Shaw- nees and the Sandusky Wyandots. Deceived by these emissaries, who were only spies, Bradstreet closed an agreement with them, they stipulating that all captives possessed by the Indians should be given up, and all claims to English posts and forts abandoned. After this treaty, Bradstreet was disposed to turn southward, but was required by the commander-in-chief, General Gage, to push on to Detroit. He arrived there on the twentysixth of August, and in the following September, led his force back to Sandusky.
The expedition under Bouquet set out from Fort Pitt October third, passed Logstown and the mouth of the Big Beaver, crossed into Ohio on the present east- ern boundary of Columbiana County, and, on the ninth, pitched its camps on Yellow Creek. The march was conducted with the utmost precaution against surprise, the column moving through the woods in parallel lines, open order, cov- ered by scouting parties in front, and by a strong guard in rear. The men were required to march at a distance of two yards from one another, keeping profound silence, and when attacked faced ontwards, forming a square covering the supply trains, cattle and baggage. Sometimes the forest was so thick that the brush had to be cut to make way for the column, and sometimes it was interspersed with
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beautiful openings and savannas. Here and there trees were seen symbolically painted by the Indians, denoting the number of their wars and their success in prisoners and scalps. "Two miles beyond Beaver Creek, by two small springs,"
She Indians delivering up the English Captives to Cylonel Bouquet. near his Camp at the Forks of Muskingum in North America in Nov 64.
says the chronicler of the expedition, " was seen the skull of a child that had been fixed on a pole by the Indians."
On the fifteenth, Bouquet eneamped on the Muskingum, where, the next day, he was visited by six Indians who said their chiefs were assembled eight miles distant, ready and anxious to treat with him. On the seventeenth a parley was held with these chiefs in a " bower" erected for the purpose, the Seneeas being represented by Kiyashuta, the Delawares by Custaloga and Beaver, and the Shaw-
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nees by Keissinautchtha. These warriors proffered abject submission, and deliv- ered up part of their captives. Bouquet demanded the surrender of the remainder of their prisoners within twelve days, after which requirement he further terror- ized the neighboring tribes by advancing to the Coshocton forks of the Muskin . gum. At the fortified camp which was there laid out, a further delivery of prisoners took place, increasing the whole number surrendered to 206, mostly Pennsylvanians and Virginians. The Shawnees held one hundred more which they promised to and did deliver up the following spring.
The scenes at Bouquet's headquarters when the captive whites were brought in and surrendered must have been very touching. " There were to be seen," says the chronicler of the occasion, " fathers and mothers recognizing and clasping their once lost babes, husbands hanging around the necks of their newly recovered wives, sisters and brothers unexpectedly meeting together after long separation scarce able to speak the same language, or, for some time, to be sure that they were children of the same parents. . . . The Indians, too, as if wholly forgetting their usual savageness, bore a capital part in this most affecting scene. They deliv- ered up their beloved captives with the utmost reluctance; shed torrents of tears over them, recommending them to the care and protection of the commanding officer. Their regard to them continued all the time they remained in camp. They visited them from day to day, and brought them what corn, skins, horses and other matters they had bestowed on them while in their families, accompanied with other presents, and all the marks of the most sincere and tender affection. Nay, they did not stop here, but, when the army marched, some of the Indians solicited and obtained leave to accompany their former captives all the way to Fort Pitt, and employed themselves in hunting and bringing provisions for them on the road. A young Mingo carried this still further, and gave an instance of love which would make a figure even in romance. A young woman of Virginia was among the captives, to whom he had formed so strong an attachment as to call her his wife. Against all remonstrances of the imminent danger to which he exposed himself by approaching to the frontiers, he persisted in following her, at the risk of being killed by the surviving relations of many unfortunate persons who had been captivated or scalped by those of his nation."
It is no wonder, continues this quaint narration, that the children who bad been taken captive in very tender years, had been kindly treated by the Indians, and bad learned their language, shonki have " considered their new state in the light of a captivity, and parted from the savages with tears. But it must not be denied that there were even some grown persons who showed an unwillingness to return. The Shawanese were obliged to bind several of their prisoners and force them along to the camp ; and some women, who had been delivered up, afterwards found means to escape and run back to the Indian towns. Some who could not make their escape, clung to their savage acquaintance at parting, and continued many days in bitter lamentations, even refusing sustenance."15
The episodes thus described have furnished themes for the genius of Benjamin West, and will forever engage the student of history with the same unique fascina- tion with which they have inspired the soul of the artist.
Everything having been arranged with the Indians, Bouquet began his return march on Sunday, November 18, and arrived at Fort Pitt on the twentyeighth, hav-
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ing lost during the expedition but one man, who was killed and scalped while stray- ing from camp. His troops had retained perfect health, and had at no time been short of supplies. In testimony of the skill and success with which he bad con-
Grignion faróis
The Indians giving a Talk to Colonel Bouquetina Conferenceava Counat Sieinarhi Camponthe Banks of Muskingumin Nonb America inDat yde
THE INDIANS AND BOUQUET IN COUNCIL.
ducted the expedition Colonel Bouquet received complimentary addresses from the legislative bodies of Pennsylvania and Virginia. He died three years later of yellow fever contracted at Pensacola.
From the marches of Bouquet and Bradstreet considerable additional informa- tion concerning the Ohio country was gained, but the ideas of it which popularly prevailed were still extremely crude. This is illustrated by a map published in
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1763, purporting to give an outline of the " British Dominions in North America, with the limits of the Governments annexed thereto by the late treaty of peace and settled by proclamation October 7th, 1763."" On this map Virginia extends to the Mississippi, and takes in the southern half of the present State of Ohio, the remainder of which is relegated, under British sovereignty, to the Indians. The mouth of the Great Miami ( Maumee) is assigned to the longitude of Fort Wayne, and the only settlement shown between Detroit and Niagara is " Sandoski," which is placed as far east as Cleveland. The only stream indicated in Northern Ohio is the Maumee, which is faintly and inaccurately traced. A town called " Gwahago" takes the place of the Cuyahoga, of which there is no vestige. The " Sciota " is drawn in its correct position, with a Delaware town on its banks about where the present city of that name stands. Such was the state of information as to Ohio only a century and a quarter ago.
The claims of the English to this territory were as shadowy as their know- ledge of it. Prior to the treaty of Paris these claims were based chiefly upon the rights supposed to have been acquired by the Iroquois conquest, and the convey- ance of those rights by the chiefs of the Six Nations. A treaty of this kind was made in 1684, another in 1701, and a third September 14, 1726. By the latter the Indians conveyed their lands in trust, to be defended by the British sovereign " to and for the use of the grantors and their heirs." By the negotiations at Laneas- ter, in 1744, already referred to. a deed was obtained recognizing the right of the British king to "all lands that are, or by his Majesty's appointment shall be, within the colony of Virginia." On this deed, obtained by intrigue and the free use of intoxicants, the grant to the Ohio Land Company of Virginia was based. Its worthlessness was recognized, and the Logstown Treaty of 1752, which eon- firmed that of Lancaster, and was obtained by similar means, was regarded as equally unsubstantial. Efforts were therefore made, as soon as peace was declared, to obtain a new and better grounded concession. These efforts were hastened by
the encroachments of the whites npon the disputed boundaries, and the resulting discontent of the Indians. After supplementary and ineffectual treaties had been made in 1764 and 1766, a conference with the chiefs of the Shawnees, Delawares and Six Nations was held on the twentyfourth of October, 1768, at Fort Stanwix, now Rome, New York. Sir William Johnson conducted the negotiations for the English, and obtained a grant of all lands not within a line, beyond which the whites were not to pass, extending from the month of the Tennessee to the Dela- ware. For this grant a sum of money amounting to about fifty thousand dollars was paid. It gave up all the territories claimed by the Six Nations south of the Ohio and Alleghany, including Kentucky, Western Virginia and Western Penn- sylvania. Much of this land was distributed as a bounty to the Virginia volun- teers, among those making claims being George Washington, who obtained patents for thirtytwo thousand acres. To inspect and locate the lands thus ceded, Wash- ington descended the Ohio from Fort Pitt to the Great Kanawha in a canoe during the autumn of 1770. He was accompanied by Colonel George Croghan, then dep- uty agent to Sir William Johnson.
During this voyage, we are told, Washington had abundant opportunity to indulge his propensities as a sportsman. " Deer were continually to be seen coming down to the water's edge to drink, or browsing along the shore ; there were innu-
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merable flocks of wild turkeys, and streaming flights of ducks and geese; so that as the voyagers floated along, they were enabled to load their canoe with game. At night they encamped on the river bank, lit their fire, and made a sumptuous bunt- er's repast."16
Landing at a Mingo town about seventyfive miles below Pittsburgh, the voyagers found the warriors busied with preparations to make a foray into the Cherokee country against the Catawbas. Stopping at the mouth of Captina Creek, now in Belmont County, this State, they investigated a report that a white trader had been recently murdered by the Indians in that neighborhood. They soon learned that the man had not been murdered at all, but had been drowned while rashly swimming the Ohio. Washington did not fail to note, however, the dis- content of the Ohio Indians with the Stanwix treaty, and their jealousy of colonial encroachments upon their territories.
Meanwhile a trio of devoted men had penetrated these wilderness regions, not upon any selfish or warlike errand, but upon a mission of peace and good will. These were the saintly and indefatigable Moravian missionaries, Charles Frederick Post, John Heckewelder, and David Zeisberger. Post was the pioneer. He had begun his missionary labors among the Indians at Shekoneko, near the present city of Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1743, had married a baptized Indian woman, and, at a later period, had shifted the scene of his efforts to Pennsylvania. From thence, in 1758, the colonial authorities had twice sent him to the western tribes on peace-making missions, which he had successfully fulfilled. In 1761 he went alone to the Muskingum Valley, and with the permission of the Delawares, who had lately settled there, built a cabin on the banks of the Tuscarawas. He then
returned to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and brought out Heckewelder, at that time a youth of nineteen. After a perilous journey of thirtythree days they reached their destination, and entered the Tuscarawas cabin " singing a hymn." Below them, on the river, dwelt a white trader named Calhoon; still farther below was an Indian town called Tuscarora, containing about forty wigwams. In the course of the summer the services of Post were required by the Governor of Pennsylvania, and Heckewelder was left alone. He remained until autumn, when the changed temper of the Indians obliged him to fly for his life.
Zeisberger was more fortunate. Invited by the Delawares and Wyandots, he led a band of Christian Indians to the Tuscarawas in 1772, and founded the mis- sions of Schoenbrunn, Salem, and Gnadenhutten. Among his companions were Heckewelder and the Rev. John Ettwein. The simple and pious code of civil and religious obligation adopted by the Schoenbrunn congregation has been spoken of as " the first act of Ohio legislation - the constitution of 1772.1717
While these noblehearted Moravians were engaged in their mission of peace, other influences were at work to produce war. During the winter of 1773-4 Doctor John Connolly, an adventurer of the period, undertook to assert the jurisdiction of Virginia over some of the western portions of Pennsylvania, including the country abont Fort Pitt. Connolly was a nephew to Colonel George Croghan, an in- fluential man whose worthless brotherinlaw was the absent commander of the detachment which surrendered Fort Du Quesne to the French. Supported by a band of armed followers, Connolly proclaimed the authority of Virginia, gave the name of her governor, Dunmore, to Fort Pitt, and got himself recognized as com-
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mandant of a district ealled West Augusta. At the instance of the Pennsyl- vania proprietors he was arrested, and for a time held in custody, by General St. Clair, who suggested that this pestilent borderer desired an Indian war in order to palliate his own misdoing. His correspondence with the traders, explorers and land jobbers along the river justifies this presumption. His letters abounded in artful pretexts for brutalities toward the Indians, and his suggestions were soon carried into execution. The war of 1774, like some similar troubles of later date, was essentially a land-jobbers' war.
On the sixteenth of April, 1774, a canoe belonging to a Pittsburgh trader was attacked by Cherokees near the Wheeling settlement, and one white man was killed. Although the offense was not committed by Ohio Indians, it was im- mediately seized upon as an excuse for attacking them. The Virginia surveyors and adventurers along the river assembled at Wheeling and organized under Captain Michael Cresap. This band got its cue from Connolly in two letters, de- nouncing the Indians, and declaring that war was inevitable. War was according- ly declared " in the most solemn manner," and during the same evening the scalps of two friendly Indians were brought into camp, perhaps with equal solemnity. Cirenmstances indicate that still more unoffending savages were murdered. Eben- ezer Zane, the pioneer of the Wheeling colony, opposed this butchery, but he was not listened to.18
Next day some Indians were seen in canoes on the river, and pursned. They were chased fifteen miles and driven ashore, when a battle ensued and several of them were shot. It was then decided to march against Logan's camp. thirty miles farther up the Ohio. Let us pause to learn something of Logan. It is worth while.
When Count Zinzendorf, the Moravian bishop, visited America in 1741-2, he established the first Indian congregation of his sect at Shekomeco, on Seneca Lake, in New York. While sojonrning there, he was entertained by Shikellamy, chief of the Cayugas, who ruled a large body of the Iroquois. Shikellamy was converted to Christianity, and destroyed the idol which he wore about his neck. He died in 1749, attended in his last moments by David Zeisberger. Logan was a son of this chief and derived his name from his father's attachment to James Logan, Secretary of the Pennsylvania colony. During his early manhood he was known all along the frontier for his fine presence, attractive qualities, and friendship for the whites. Judge William Brown, a contemporary Pennsylvanian, said of him : " He was the best specimen of humanity I ever met with, either white or red." Heckewelder sounded his praises in a letter to Jefferson. Zeisberger spoke of him as a man of good judgment and quick comprehension.
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