USA > Ohio > Franklin County > Columbus > History of the city of Columbus, capital of Ohio, Volume I > Part 15
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This chastisement relieved the settlements from Indian forays only tempora- rily. Active hostilities were resumed after a brief interval, and conducted in a miscellaneous way, as before, on both sides. Many of the expeditions by the whites were gotten up at private expense, without authority of law, badly con- ducted, and productive of no good results. Thus was precipitated the crowning atrocity in the annals of the border. Although the Moravian settlements had preserved strict neutrality between the combatants, they had not escaped molesta- tion. White and Indian banditti alike threatened them. The neighboring tribes had generally enlisted in the cause of the British, and endeavored to press them into that service. On the other hand, they were subjected to considerable annoyance, and some violence, by the colonial border ruffians of that period. In 1777 the Wyandot chief Pomoacan, of Upper Sandusky, appeared before their settlements at the head of two hundred warriors, but treated them kindly, and retired without doing them mischief. In 1778 Gnadenhütten was abandoned, for a time, on ac- count of its annoyances from white marauders. Lichtenau was then settled, and vacated, in turn, the year following. In 1781 a Delaware chief, of the English party, approached with eighty warriors, but attempted no violence. On the con- trary he assured the Moravians of his good will, admonished them of their danger- ous situtation between two fires, and strongly advised their withdrawal from the frontier. He assured them that the Long Knives, meaning the Virginians, would one day murder them. Finally, in the summer of 1781, a band of Wyandots, insti- gated by the British commandant at Detroit, compelled them to abandon their
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settlements, and remove to Sandusky. Here they were soon reduced to a condi- tion of great destitution. Necessity compelled them to send part of their number back to their deserted homes and fields to procure food. Some of these messengers were borne off as captives to Fort Pitt.
About this time, it is said, some depredations were committed by hostile Indians on the Pennsylvania border. This was made a pretext for a raid upon the Moravian villages. The raiding party comprised one hundred and sixty men from the Monongahela settlements, led by Colonel David Williamson. It arrived before Gnadenhütten on the sixth of March and found the Christian Indians at work in their cornfields. After these unoffending people had been corralled and persuaded to surrender their weapons, Williamson put the question to his fellow miscreants whether their captives should be taken to Pittsburgh, or put to death. There were but sixteen votes for the more merciful alternative. Of those who voted for death, some were for burning the prisoners alive, but the majority were for scalping them. Let one of the chronicles of this sad history narrate what fol- lowed :
When the day of their execution arrived, namely, the eighth of March, two houses were fixed upon, one for the brethren and another for the sisters and children, to which the wanton murderers gave the name of slaughter houses. Some of them went to the brethren and showed great impatience that the execution had not yet begun, to which the brethren replied that they were ready to die, having commended their immortal souls to God, who had given them that divine assurance in their hearts that they should come unto Him and be with Him forever.
Immediately after this declaration the carnage commenced. The poor, innocent people, men, women and children, were led, bound two and two together with ropes, into the above- mentioned slaughter-houses, and there scalped and murdered. . .. Thus ninetysix persons magnified the name of the Lord by patiently meeting a cruel death. Sixtytwo were grown persons, among whom were five of the most valuable assistants, and thirtyfour children. Only two youths, each between sixteen and seventeen years old, escaped almost miraculously from the hands of the murderers.32
The Delawares, whose tribe was represented in the victims of this atrocious outrage, were soon given an opportunity to avenge it, and most horribly did they do so. In May, 1782, a mounted force four hundred and fifty strong was organized for an expedition against the Moravian, Delaware and Wyandot settlements along the headwaters of the Scioto and Sandusky. Its place of rendezvous was the Mingo village on the Ohio, a few miles below the present city of Steubenville. The expedition set forth on the twentyfifth of May, under Colonel William Craw- ford, one of whose lieutenants was Colonel David Williamson, of the Moravian massaere. On the fourth day out, the column halted over night at the solitary scenes of that massacre, and on the sixth day arrived at the Moravian village, likewise abandoned, on one of the upper branches of the Sandusky. Here some of Crawford's men mutinously insisted on turning back, but it was finally decided to continne the march for another day. After the column had proceeded for a few hours, its advance guard was attacked and driven in by Indians concealed in the tall grass. The fighting continued until dark. It was not renewed the next day, but the Indians were largely reinforced. At nightfall retreat was resolved upon and begun. It soon became a panic, and the whole command fled precipitately, abandoning its wounded. Only about one-half of the fugitives ever reached their
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homes. The rest were hunted down by the Indians, and butchered. Crawford abandoned his men, in whom he had lost all confidence, and after wandering thirtysix hours in the wilderness was captured by a party of Delawares, who took him to their camp on the Tymochtee, and there put him to death amid unspeakable tortures. This horrible scene was witnessed by Doetor Knight, who was taken with Crawford, but afterwards escaped. Another witness, complacent and merci- less, was Simon Girty, the notorious white Indian of the border.
A Delaware chief named Wingenund told Crawford that he must suffer in expiation of the Moravian massacre. The victim, with his hands tied behind his baek, was then bound to the stake in such a way that he could walk around it once or twice. This being done, Captain Pipe, a Delaware chief, made a speech to an assembly of thirty or forty Indian men and sixty or seventy squaws and boys. Doctor Knight thus narrates what then followed :
When the speech was finished, they all yelled a hideous and hearty assent to what had been said. The Indian men then took up their guns and shot powder into the Colonel's body, from his feet as far up as his neck. I think not less than seventy loads were discharged upon his naked body. They then crowded about him, and, to the best of my observation, cut off his ears. When the throng had dispersed a little, I saw the blood running from both sides of his head in consequence thereof.
The details of the torture which slowly and finally extinguished life from Crawford's body are too horrible for recital. In respect to their fiendish atrocity there is but one material distinction to be drawn between them and the cold- blooded butcheries of Gnadenhütten and Salem. In the one case the perpetrators were savage, in the other civilized.
With the surrender of Cornwallis on the nineteenth of September, 1781, the independence of the American colonies was substantially achieved. A preliminary treaty of peace was signed at Paris «on the thirtieth of November, 1782, and on September 3, 1783, a treaty was concluded at Versailles by which the colonies were finally acknowledged to be free, sovereign, and independent.
In October, 1784, the Six Nations, by treaty at Fort Stanwix, released to Con- gress, with certain reservations, all their territorial claims. In this negotiation Oliver Wolcott, Richard Butler and Arthur Lee represented the colonial govern- ment, and the chiefs Cornplanter and Red Jacket the Indians.
On the twentyfirst of January, 1785, a similar treaty was concluded with the Wyandots, Delawares, Chippewas and Ottawas, by which they released all their Ohio claims exeept eertain reservations the boundaries of which were defined. Fort McIntosh was the scene of these negotiations, which were condneted in behalf of Congress by Arthur Lee, Richard Butler and George Rogers Clark. Among the chiefs signing in behalf of the Indians were Hobocan, or Captain Pipe, Wing- enund and Packelant, who is supposed to have been identical with the famous Delaware, Bockengehelas.
By a conference held with the Shawnees at the mouth of the Big Miami in January, 1786, they were induced to "acknowledge the United States to be the sole and absolute sovereign of all the territories eeded by Great Britain."
Thus the Indian title to the Ohio country was virtually blotted out, and the wilderness was prepared for the oceupaney of a new raee. The white man had come, and come to stay.
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NOTES.
1. A short distance above Moutreal.
2. In Texas, March 17, 1687.
3. Bancroft's United States.
4. History of Ohio.
5. Pioneer History ; S. P. Hildreth.
6. Gist's Journal.
7. Ibid.
8. Washington Irving.
9. Irving's Life of Washington.
10. Taylor says, " early in 1752." See History of Ohio.
11. Both Virginia and Pennsylvania at that time claimed the territory within which these garrisons were located.
12. To the Indian tribes this change, says Parkman, " was nothing but disaster. They had held in a certain sense the balance of power between the rival colonies of France and England. Both had bid for their friendship, and both competed for the trade with them. The French had been the more successful. Their influence was predominant among all the interior tribes, while many of the border Indians, old allies of the English, had of late abandoned them in favor of their rivals. While the French had usually gained the good will, often the ardent attachment, of the tribes with whom they came in contact, the English, for the most part, had inspired only jealousy and dislike. This dislike was soon changed to the most intense hatred. Lawless traders and equally lawless speculators preyed on the Indians; swarms of squatters invaded the lands of the border tribes, and crowded them from their homes."- Francis Parkman.
13. Paully's life was saved, it is said, by the fancy taken for him by a hideous old squaw, whom he was obliged to marry.
14. While leading an expedition against Fort Du Quesne, General Edward Braddock fell into an ambuscade of French and Indians near that fort, and was defeated and mortally wounded, July 9, 1755.
15. Historical Account of the Expedition Against the Ohio Indians in 1764; by Doctor William Smith, Provost of the College of Philadelphia, 1766.
16. Irving's Life of Washington.
17. Taylor's Ohio.
18. "In 1770 Wheeling was settled by a number of men from the South Branch of the Potomac, among whom was [were] Ebenezer, Silas and Jonathan Zane, with Colonel Shep- herd, all prominent men in the colonization and establishment of that place. Soon after which, locations were made on Buffalo and Short Creek, above Wheeling, where the town of Wellsburg now stands, then called Buffalo, and afterwards Charleston."-Hildreth's Pioneer History.
19. Hon. Henry Jolly, for many years a judge of the courts of Washington County, Ohio, is quoted to this effect. See Taylor's Ohio.
20. Cresap may have connived at the expedition under Greathouse, but he was not present at the massacre.
21. This message, Hildreth says, was borne by Dunmore's guide, Simon Girty, and a man named Parchment. Girty was one of three brothers, Simon, George and James, who were taken prisoners in Pennsylvania about 1755, and adopted into different tribes. "Simon," says Taylor, "became a Seneca, and although a white savage, was not incapable of humane conduct, and was scrupulously exact in the redemption of his word. James was adopted by the Shawanese, and seems to have been an unmitigated monster. George was adopted by the Delawares, and belonged to that small fragment of the tribes who were constantly engaged in the campaigns against the settlements. The trio were desperate drunkards.
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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBUS.
" Early in the Revolutionary struggle the Girtys, like their Indian brethren, were unde- cided how to act. Even in the summer of 1777 James Girty was the medium of speeches and presents from the Americans to atone for the murder of Cornstalk ; while Simon Girty acted as interpreter for the United States on many occasions. About 1777 both brothers had been seduced by the British emissaries, and are known to border tradition as renegades. This is hardly just. They should not be regarded otherwise than as Indians of their respect- ive tribes. Such had been their training, their education. They were white savages, noth- ing else, and the active partisans of Great Britain for the rest of the century."-Taylor's History of Ohio.
22. Mr. Sullivant gave a synopsis of his conversation with Kenton on this subject in an address delivered before the Franklin County Pioneer Association, in 1871.
23. Atwater's Ohio.
24. Sullivant's address.
25. Called, according to some authorities, Seekonk, or Seekunk, which is the corrup- tion of an Indian word meaning "a place of salt."
26. Taylor's History of Ohio.
27. The battle of Lexington was fought June 20, 1775.
28. Called Fort Randolph ; built by troops from Virginia in the spring of 1775.
29. See Taylor's History of Ohio; Dodge's Red Men of the Ohio Valley ; etc.
30. "The Shawnee town, 'Old Chillicothe,' was on the Little Miami, in this county [Clark], about three and a half miles north of the site of Xenia: it was a place of note, and is frequently mentioned in the annals of the early explorations and settlements of the West. It was sometimes called the Old Town."-Howe's Historical Collections.
31. From the skillful and energetic leader of this expedition Clark County, Ohio, takes its name.
32. Loskiel's History of North American Missions.
James Rougeh
CHAPTER VI.
FOUNDING OF OHIO.
Of the events incident to the birth of Ohio, as the seventeenth State in the Union, some interesting volumes might be written. Only an outline sketch will be here attempted. So far as the subject relates to the grants, surveys, sales and titles of lands, it will be left mainly to the pen of an expert.
At the close of the Revolutionary War the northwestern territories, embracing those of the present State of Ohio, were claimed, simultaneously, by the Indians, whose titles were but vaguely extinguished : by the individual colonies, and by Great Britain. The treaty arrangements by which the Indian rights were tempo- rarily disposed of have already been referred to. The pretensions of the embryo States were less easily adjusted, and for a time postponed the consummation of their confederation. Over the entire region which now constitutes the States of Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin, both New York and Virginia maintained the right of exclusive domain. ' On the other side it was vigorously argued that whatever territories were wrested by the joint efforts of all from the common enemy, should be placed at the disposition of Congress for the common benefit. Maryland conspicuously held out for this proposition, and made its acceptance a condition of her assent to the articles of confederation. The articles were dated November 15, 1777, and were ratified by ten colonies July 9, 1778. New Jersey signed November 25, 1778, and Delaware February 22, 1779, but Maryland, for the reasons stated, still withheld her concurrence. Other col- onies threatened to join her, and the incipient union was placed in jeopardy of dis- ruption. Persisting in her claims, Virginia opened an office for the sale of lands west of the Ohio. Congress intervened by driving out the settlers, and the crisis became acute. At this juncture General Philip Schuyler announced in Congress that New York had executed to the general government a deed of cession of all the dispnted territory west of her present boundaries. This patriotic act was con- summated March 1, 1781, in pursuance of an act of the legislature passed the year before. The cession was made withont reservation. Thereupon Maryland joined the Confederation, thus completing, for the first time, the American Union.
Constrained by the example of New York and the persuasion of Congress, Connecticut and Virginia made conditional concessions, the first reserving her jurisdiction, and the second excepting the whole State of Kentucky from her grant. These proposed acts of conveyance were carefully considered and exhaustively reported upon by a committee of Congress, which declared that New York had the
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only valid title. The deed of New York was therefore accepted, that of Virginia rejected. The acceptance dates from March 29, 1782.
Virginia thereupon authorized a new deed of cession, still excepting Ken- tucky, but omitting some of the objectionable features of the former conveyance. She also reserved a body of land bounded east by the Scioto, west by the Miami and south by the Ohio, to be distributed as a bounty to her soldiers in the War of Independence. By this act, perfected March 1, 1784, Virginia relinquished to the United States all her claims on the territories north of the Ohio River, excepting the reservation named. By deed of April 19, 1785, Massachusetts conveyed to Congress, without qualification, all rights under her charter to lands west of the western boundary of New York. Connecticut executed a like deed of cession September 14, 1786, but excepted from its provisions a belt of country one hundred and fifty miles long and abont fifty wide, called in early times New Connecticut, and since known as the Western Reserve. By the distribution and sale of this tract she indemnified her citizens for their losses by the British armies, and raised a fund for the support of her common schools. Washington and many other prominent men protested against her action, but Virginia's reservations furnished her a precedent which, with the general desire for peace and union, enabled her to enforce her conditions. Her civil jurisdiction over the Reserve was finally sur- rendered to the national authority May 30, 1800.
The claims of Great Britain upon the territories of the Northwest were main- tained with great tenacity. Even after the treaty of peace they were relinquished tardily and ungraciously. The ministry which negotiated the treaty was censured and overthrown, one of the accusations brought against it being that it had " given np the banks of the Ohio, the Paradise of America." Lord North, leading the opposition, insisted that the ministers " should have retained for Canada all the country north and west of the Ohio." The united colonies being too weak to assert immediately their authority over so large a territory, the British resorted to every pretext to hold it, and in defiance of the treaty continued to maintain their western garrisons. They even built a new fort where the town of Perrysburg now stands and practically continued the war through their allies, the Indians. Only the casting vote of Vice President Adams defeated a resolution in Congress to suspend intercourse with Great Britain until her armed forces in the West should be withdrawn. History fairly justifies the declaration attributed to General William H. Harrison, that the War of Independence was not finally concluded until General Wayne's victory of August 20, 1794, blasted the hopes of the British by crushing the power of the Indians.
Plans for the settlement of the new territories of the West were first conceived and carried into effect by the veterans of the colonial army. While yet awaiting the conclusion of peace in their camps on the Hudson, two hundred and eighty- three of these veterans memorialized Congress to grant them their arrears of pay in lands located between Lake Erie and the Ohio. Washington, by request, laid this petition before the Continental Congress, and reinforced it with his great influence, but without avail. The claims of the colonies upon the new territories being then still unadjusted, nothing could be done. The movement was obliged to bide its time, and so doing, proved to be the precursor of the most important pioneer enterprise of the West. Fortunately its most active spirit was General
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Rufus Putnam, of Massachusetts. On the twentieth of May, 1785, Congress passed an ordinance providing for the survey of its new western domain. From this ordinance as a basis has risen the present system of land division in Ohio.1 It pro- vided originally for the organization of a corps of surveyors comprising one from each State, all under the direction of Thomas Hutchins, Surveyor-General, or so called Geographer, of the Confederation. General Putnam was elected for Massa- chusetts, but was unable to serve, and requested that General Benjamin Tupper, another officer of the colonial army, should be appointed in his stead. This was done, and General Tupper repaired to his field of labor only to learn that nothing could be done on account of the Indians. But while he was not permitted to sur- vey the Ohio country, he acquired a most favorable judgment of it as a field of enter- prise. Accordingly, Putnam and himself joined in a publication dated Jannary 10, 1786, inviting their former comrades of the army to meet them in a delegate assembly at Boston to organize an association for settlement on the Ohio. The meeting convened at the Bunch of Grapes Tavern, in Boston, March 1, 1786, and organized by electing General Rufus Putnam as chairman, and Major Winthrop Sargent as clerk. It comprised eleven persons, representing eight counties. Arti- cles of association prepared by a committee of which General Putnam was chair- man were adopted, and thus the Ohio Company was organized.
It was the design of the Company to obtain from Congress, by purchase, a large body of land on which they might lay the foundations of a new State. " In one sense," says President Andrews, "it was a private enterprise, as each share- holder paid for his share from his private funds; but it was also in a measure a public enterprise, representing, on the one hand, the veterans of the army, whose private fortunes had been wasted by the long war for independence, and, on the other, the statesmen and patriots of the country who were anxious to see a new empire founded in the western region which, after the long struggle with individual states at home and Great Britain abroad, was now in the peaceable possession of the United States."2
The stock of the Company comprised one thousand shares of one thousand dollars cach. The owners of each section of twenty shares were entitled to elect an agent to represent thein, and the agents so chosen were authorized to choose five directors, a treasurer and a secretary. The first directors were General Rufus Putnam, General Samuel H. Parsons, and Rev. Manasseh Cutler. General James M. Varnum, of Rhode Island, was subsequently chosen as an additional director, and Richard Platt, of New York, as Treasurer. General Putnam was President and Major Sargent Secretary of the Board.
The second meeting of the Company was held at Brackett's Tavern, Boston, March 8, 1787, by which time two hundred and fifty shares had been taken. Among the shareholders then, or who afterwards became such, were many of the most distinguished men in the Confederation." No colonial enterprise was ever favored with abler management or better material. Negotiations with the Conti- nental Congress for the purchase of a body of land for the Company were author- ized, but were for some time unsuccessful. Finally, through the efforts of Manasseh Cutler and Winthrop Sargent, a contract was obtained for fifteen hun- dred thousand aeres of land at a cost of one million dollars in public securities then worth about twelve cents per dollar. Quehalf the consideration was to be paid at
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the signing of the contract, the remainder when the exterior boundaries of the tract should be surveyed. By the advice of Thomas Hutchins, Surveyor-General of the Confederation, the lands were located on the Ohio, at the mouth of the Muskingum.
Such was the Ohio Company's purchase. The contract was concluded verbally July 23, 1787, and was signed in writing on the twentyseventh of October follow- ing. It was the first contract of sale ever executed on the part of the Union Gov- ernment. Under it the Ohio Company finally came into possession of a tract of 964,285 acres.
In order to consummate the arrangement certain concessions had to be made which were not originally contemplated. One of these was the substitution of General Arthur St. Clair, of Pennsylvania, as the intended Governor of the new territory, in lieu of General Samuel H. Parsons. Another concession was the ex- tension of the proposed purchase so as to embrace the schemes of one William Duer and others who are described as "principal characters" of New York City. Unless those things had been done, the negotiations would probably have failed ; after they were done a favorable conclusion was soon reached. In conformity with these arrangements a second contract, of even date with that for the Ohio Company, was made, conveying over four million acres of land to " Manasseh Cutler and Winthrop Sargent for themselves and associates." Threefourths of this tract lay west and onefourth of it north of the Ohio Company's lands. Such was the socalled Scioto Purchase. It was to be paid for at the rate of twothirds of a dollar per acre in public securities delivered in four semi-annual instalments.
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