History of the city of Columbus, capital of Ohio, Volume I, Part 2

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 2

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

In another part of Boone's narrative occurs this passage :

One day I undertook a tour through the country, and the diversity and beauties of nature I met with in this charming season expelled every gloomy and vexatious thought. Just at the close of the day the gales retired, and left the place to the disposal of a profound calm. Not a breeze shook the most tremulous leaf. I had gained the summit of a command- ing ridge, and looking around with astonishing delight, beheld the ample plains, the beau- teous tracts below. On the other hand I surveyed the famous river Ohio that rolled in silent dignity marking the western boundary of Kentucky with inconceivable grandeur. At a vast distance I beheld the mountains lift their venerable brows, and penetrate the clouds. I kin- dled a fire near a fountain of sweet water, and feasted on the loin of a buck which a few hours before I had killed.

The unstudied rhetoric of this narrative, and its artless grouping of events, rather deepeu than impair tho impressions it conveys.

The scenes along the Ohio River at this period possessed a unique fascination which excited the enthusiasm of every voyager. Colonel John May, who visited

HISTORY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBUS.

" the Ohio country " in 1788-89, floated down the river in a flatboat crowded, as he informs us, with men, cows, calves, hogs, dogs, and baggage. His journal contains this striking passage referring to his experience while he took his turn at the helm one dark night during a thunderstorm :

We moved on still as night. In the thick forest on either hand was to be heard the howl- ing of savage beasts, the whooping of one kind of owl, the screaming of another, while every now and then would come a burst of thunder.

In another part of his journal May makes this record : " Could not help re- marking again the beauties of the river. On each side mountains with valleys be- tween, rising progressively to view, and filling the mind with admiration and wonder. . .. While bathing I saw a flock of yellow-legged birds flying over and called them, when they lit down quite near me." 12

More suggestive still, and much fuller in details, is the journal of " A tour in the unsettled parts of North America," in 1796 and 1797, by Francis Baily, a Fel- low of the Royal Society of England, and a scientist of considerable repute. Mr. Baily set out from New York in September, 1796, and while descending the Ohio from Fort Duquesne disembarked to visit the ancient mounds at Grave Creek, in Virginia, below the present site of Wheeling. Describing this adventure he says :

We at first traversed over a flat bottom on the banks of the river, and then ascending a very steep and high hill we were carried along the ridge of it till we came within about a mile of the place. As this hill carried us above the level of the surrounding country, every break through the trees presented to us a sea of woods, wbose tops just tinged by the setting sun displayed one of the most beautiful sylvan scenes I ever remember seeing ; at the same time every now and then the Ohio opened to our view, whose gentle stream, covered with drifting ice, formed a fine contrast to its umbrageous shores. We had scarcely proceeded half our journey before a bear with three cubs crossed the road at some distance before us.

Another incident which conveys a vivid idea of the scenes along the Ohio at this period occurred while the rude craft bearing the voyager was descending with the current at midnight, in the midst of a violent thunderstorm. It is thus de- scribed :

We were surprised at seeing a light ahead of us, apparently on the banks of the river. On our nearer approach to it we observed this fire to move in different strange directions, and for some time puzzled our imaginations in conceiving what it could be. . . . On our com- ing opposite to it we saw distinctly the appearances of human beings nearly naked, and of a colour almost approaching to black ; and each of these beings furnished with a couple of firebrands which they held in each hand. There might be about a dozen of them, and they had got a large fire blazing in the middle of them, and were dancing around it in the wild- est confusion imaginable, at the same time singing, or rather muttering some strange incohe- rent sounds. Their peculiar appearance, whose effect was heightened by the contrast of the tempestuousness of the night, and the rolling of the thunder and lightning around us, put me in mind so much of the descriptions which are given of the infernal regions that for the moment I could not help considering them as so many imps let loose upon the earth to perform their midnight orgies ; though it proved to be nothing more than a few Indians who, disturbed by the inclemency of the weather, could not sleep, and were innocently diverting themselves with singing and dancing round their fire.

In another place Mr. Baily speaks of " the delightful scenery " along the river and says : " If we put ashore ... we saw the works of nature profusely lavished through an uninhabited country ; if we possessed the water, our attention was continually attracted by the flight of immense flocks of wild fowl and other birds,

THE OHIO WILDERNESS.

who, undisturbed, preserved their course regardless of our uear approach ; or we might behold the nimble deer browzing on the banks, or the fierce bear darting through the thicket."

This passage is suggestive : " After we had retired to rest sometime . . . we heard ( as we had often done before ) the howling of wolves, bears and other wild animals around us ; and several times the noise of their feet among the dry leaves on the ground, prowling about in search of prey."

Further interesting chronicles of the scenes along the Ohio are found in the journal of "A tour into the territory northwest of the Alleghany mountains," in the spring of 1803, by Rev. Thaddeus Mason Harris, a member of the Massachu- setts Historical Society, of Boston. Journeying by way of Philadelphia, Lancaster, Carlisle, Shippensburg and Sharpsburg, Mr. Harris arrived at Pittsburgh and there embarked for the parts below in one of the primitive boats of the period. Of the appearance of the country from the river he says :

Sometimes we were in the vicinity of dark forests which threw a solemn shade over us as we glided by : sometimes we passed along over hanging banks decorated with blooming shrubs which timidly bent their light boughs to sweep the passing stream ; and sometimes around the shore of an island which tinged the water with a reflected landscape. The lively carols of the birds, which "sung among the branches" entertained us exceedingly, and gave life and pleasure to the woodland scene. The flocks of wild geese and ducks which swam upon the stream, the vast number of turkies, partridges and quails we saw upon the shore, and the herds of deer or some animals of the forest darting through the thickets, afforded us constant amusement.

The verdurous islands set like gems upon the bright surface of the water must have contributed much to the beauty of the river then, as they still do. Harris notes their loveliness and mentions the eurious circumstance that "they are increasing in extent at the upper end and losing ground at the lower, which has led to the remark that the 'islands are moving up the river.'"

In the recollections of H. M. Brackenridge, who journeyed down the Ohio to the Mississippi in 1792, we are told that " not far from the Wabash they [Bracken- ridge and bis companions] saw a small herd of buffaloes and sceured a large calf for their supper. Once having encamped near a beautiful grove of sugar trees, the party found that a flock of turkeys had taken up their night's lodging over their heads. Twelve or fourteen of these served them for supper and breakfast. At another time the travellers had a 'naval battle with a bear' which they attacked as he was swimming across the Ohio River. After an exciting fight they dragged their valorous but vanquished foe into their boat, and he proved to be of enormous size. . Flocks of screaming paroquets presently alighted over their heads, and humming birds attracted by blossoming honeysuckle flitted around them and flashed away again."

Thus far we have seen the Ohio wilderness only as it was observed by early voyagers descending the river from Fort Duquesne (Pitt), now Pittsburgh. From the mouths of the Muskingum, the Scioto and the Miami, some of these men turned aside to explore the country north of the river and there found themselves im- mersed in

Majestic woods, of every vigorous green, Stage above stage, high waving o'er the hills,

Or to the far horizon wide diffused,

A boundless, deep immensity of shade.

HISTORY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBUS.

To one of these explorers13 who ascended the Miami Valley, we are indebted for this bit of description :

About one or two o'clock, having come to a delightful spot surrounded by lofty trees, (all of which were in full bloom) and furnished with a carpet which nature had decked with her most luxuriant colours, through which ran a rivulet as clear as the purest crystal, we agreed to halt. . The sun shone beautifully bright and the atmosphere was without a cloud; and as our horses required a little rest, we tied them to a tree and wandered out into the woods, in order to enjoy the sweet present of nature, wherein every step we took afforded new beanties.

Speaking of the same region this writer tells us that he had "seen oak trees, and those not uncommon, which measured near four feet in diameter at the bot- tom, and which had a straight trunk without a single branch for seventy feet; and from that part to the termination of the upper branch it has measured seventy more."

Such was the sylvan majesty which, at a later period, inspired the pen of William D. Gallagher when he wrote, one says, "from the very bosom of the Miami woods," these stately lines :

Around me here rise up majestic trees That centuries have nurtured ; graceful elms, Which interlock their limbs among the clouds ; Dark-columned walnuts, from whose liberal store The nut-brown Indian maids their baskets filled

Ere the first Pilgrims knelt on Plymouth Rock ; Gigantic sycamores, whose mighty arms Sheltered the red man in his wigwam prone, What time the Norseman roamed our chartless seas ; And towering oaks, that from the subject plain Sprang when the builders of the tumuli First disappeared.

Another explorer14 makes this record of what he saw in these woods:

There is something which impresses the mind with awe in the shade and silence of these vast forests. Our course through the woods was directed by marked trees. As yet there is no road cut. There is but little underwood, but on the sides of the creeks and near the river the pawpaw (Annona glabra,) the spice bush, or wild pimento (Laurus benzoin,) and the dogberry (cornus Florida,) grow in the greatest abundance. We often stop to admire the grapevines in these forests, which twine among and spread a canopy over the highest trees. Some are nine inches in diameter. They stretch from the root, which is often thirty and forty feet from the trunk of the tree, and ascend in a straight line to the first high limb thirty and even sixty feet from the ground. How they have reached such an height without the help of intermediate branches is unaccountable.

The Muskingum Valley, as it appeared to the Moravian missionary Zeisberger when he explored it in 1772, is thus described in his biography :

It extended a distance of nearly eighty miles, enclosed on both sides by hills, at the foot of which lay wide plains terminating abruptly in bluffs, or sloping gently to the lower bot- toms through which the river flowed. These plains that now form the fruitful fields of the " second bottoms," as they are called, were then wooded with the oak and hickory, the ash, the chestnut, and the maple, which interlocked their branches, but stood comparatively free from the undergrowth of other forests. The river bottoms were far wilder. Here grew wal- nut trees and gigantic sycamores, whose colossal trunks even now astonish the traveler; bushy cedars, luxuriant horse-chestnuts, and honey locusts, cased in their armor of thorns.

THE Onio WILDERNESS.

Between these, clustered laurel-bushes, with their rich tribute of flowers, or were coiled the thick mazes of the vine, from which more fragrant tendrils twined themselves into the nearest boughs, while here and there a lofty spruce tree lifted its evergreen crown above the groves.

Daniel Boone refers to the Scioto Valley, through which he was conducted during his captivity, as " exceedingly fertile" and "remarkable for fine springs and streams of water." Others speak of it as marshy and malarions. Smith's narrative contains the following allusions to the upper Scioto country lying within the present boundaries of Franklin and the neighboring counties west and north :

About the time the bucks quit running, Tontileaugo, his wife aud children, Tecaughre- tanego, his son Nungany and myself left the Wiandot camps at the carrying place, and crossed the Sciota River at the south end of the glades, and proceeded on about a southwest course to a large creek called Ollentangy,15 which I believe interlocks with the waters of the Miami, and empties into Sciota on the west side thereof. From the south end of the prairie to Ollentangy, there is a large quantity of beech land, intermixed with first-rate land. Here we made our winter hut, and had considerable success in hunting. ... A few days after Tecaughretanego [an Indian soothsayer] had gone through his ceremonies and finished bis prayers, the rain came and raised the creek a sufficient height so that we passed in safety down to Sciota, and proceeded up to the carrying place. About our winter cabbin is chiefly first and second rate land. A considerable way up Ollentangy on the south west side thereof or betwixt it and the Miami, there is a very large prairie, and from this prairie down Ollen- tangy to Sciota, is generally first-rate land. The timber is walnut, sugar-tree, ash, buckeye, locust, wild cherry and spicewood, intermixed with some oak and beech. From the mouth of Ollentangy on the east side of Sciota, up to the carrying place, there is a large body of first and second rate land, and tolerably well watered. The timber is ash, sugar-tree, walnut, locust, oak and beech. We proceeded from this place down Sandusky, and in our passage we killed four bears, and a number of turkeys.

But the country was by no means all timbered. Smith speaks of " the great meadows or prairies that lie between Sandusky and Sciota,"" which must have been in their primitive, as they are now in their cultivated state, of great natural beauty. Samnel Williams, a member of Captain Henry Brush's company of Chilli- cothe volunteers who marched to the relief of Hull at Detroit in the summer of 1812, writes on the third of August, that year, from camp at Maumee Rapids. " The country we yesterday passed through [yet in its original wildness] is the most delightful I have ever seen. Our route most of the day was over natural plains of many miles in extent, apparently as level as the ocean, seemingly bounded only by the distant horizon, and interspersed with a few islets or groves of oak and hickory timber and hazel bushes, and here and there a solitary oak tree or two standing out in the open expanse. These isolated trees and groves contributed much to the beauty of the seenery. But this is not all. These plains are covered with a most Inxnriant growth of grass and herbs, and an endless variety of beauti- ful native flowers, representing all the hues of the rainbow, and loading the atmos- phere with their perfume."

Other prairie districts, since known somewhat indefinitely as the Darby and Pickaway plains, are referred to by Williams as the " barrens," through which, he tells us, the Brush company marched for two days exposed to the hot sun, before reaching Urbana. Speaking of this district Atwater says, " the prairie north of Circleville appears to have been the bed of some considerable stream, the Scioto

HISTORY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBUS.

River, perhaps. In some places it is four feet from the present surface to the ancient one. On the latter once stood a thick forest of white cedar trees; these trees now lie on the ancient surface, in different stages of decay. .. . The whole prairie was once a cedar swamp."17

The animal life of the wilderness was exceedingly interesting, and naturally drew more of the attention of the early chroniclers than its vegetable life. Smith's narrative contains frequent reference to the wild game of the woods. In his earlier pages, after having narrated his wanderings and adventures with the Indian party to which he was captive until they arrived at the creek now known as Rocky River, in Northern Ohio, and there halted for the winter, he says :

As it was still cold weather and a crust upon the snow, which made a noise as we walked and alarmed the deer, we could kill nothing, and consequently went to sleep without supper. The only chance we had under these circumstances, was to hunt bear holes; as the bears about Christmas search out a winter lodging place, where they lie about three or four months without eating or drinking. The next morning early we proceeded on, and when we found a tree scratched by the bears climbing up, and the hole in the tree sufficiently large for the reception of the bear, we then fell a sapling or small tree against or near the hole and it was my business to climb up and drive out the bear, while Tontileaugo stood ready with his gun and bow. We went on in this manner until evening, without suc- cess ; at length we found a large elm scratched, and a hole in it about forty feet up, but no tree nigh suitable to lodge against the hole. Tontileaugo got a long pole and some dry rotten wood which he tied in bunches, with bark, and as there was a tree that grew near the elm, and extended up near the bole, but leaned the wrong way, so that we could not lodge it to advantage ; but to remedy this inconvenience he climbed up this tree and carried with him his rotten wood, fire and pole. The rotten wood he tied to his belt, and to one end of the pole he tied a hook, and a piece of rotten wood which he set fire to, as it would retain fire almost like spunk ; and reached this hook from limb to limb as he went up; when he got up with this pole he put dry wood on fire into the hole, after he put in the fire he heard the bear snuff and he came speedily down, took his gun in his hand and waited until the bear would come out; but it was some time before it appeared, and when it did appear he attempted taking sight with his rifle, but it being then too dark to see the sights. he set it down by a tree, and instantly bent his bow, took hold of an arrow, and shot the bear a little behind the shoulder; 1 was preparing also to shoot an arrow, but he called to me to stop, there was no occasion ; and with that the bear fell to the ground. We remained here about two weeks, and in this time killed four bears, three deer, several turkeys, and a number of raccoons.

This simple narrative, rude and spontaneous like the forest itself, conveys a more vivid impression than we obtain from many a more polished and pretentious attempt at descriptive writing.

Bears were common in the Ohio woods down to the beginning of the present century, after which they were rapidly exterminated. Major John Rogers's journal of a voyage along Lake Erie in 1761 contains this passage: " We traveled eleven miles and encamped, having killed in our march this day three Bears and two Elks." The following adventure in the valley of the Little Miami is narrated in Baily's journal, already quoted :

We had not proceeded far in the woods ere we discovered a hole in the top of a lofty oak, whose diameter was upwards of three feet at the bottom, and its height near 150 feet. We saw evident traces of his [a bear's] claws impressed on the bark of the tree, and it was soon resolved that the tree was to come down. Accordingly our two men set at it, and when they had nearly got through it we took our appointed stations to watch the egress of this tyrant of the woods. In a short time the immense trunk began to give way, and carry-

. THE OHIO WILDERNESS.

ing all before it, fell with a tremendous crash upon the ground. Bruin, finding his habita- tion in motion, began to look out before it reached the ground, and with a sudden spring arrived there first. Immediately Dr. Bean levelled his piece and shot him through the body, but only so as to wound him, and the bear began to turn upon him ; when at the lucky moment a limb of the tree fell upon the stump of his tail, and left him struggling to get free. This afforded me time to come to Dr. Bean's assistance, when I shot the poor animal through the head. ... In this expedition we killed two or three deer, and saw great quantities of wild turkeys.

Both elk and buffalo roamed the Ohio woods prior to the year 1800. Smith mentions the slaying of a " buck-elk " which, he remarks, " was the fattest creature I ever saw of the tallow kind." His account indicates that the animal was taken somewhere in the neighborhood of the Muskingum. Atwater affirms that " when Circleville was first settled the carcasses, or rather skeletons, of fifty individuals of the elk family lay scattered about on the surface."18 In his paper on the Mam- mals of Ohio, embodied in the State Geological Survey Report, Prof. A. M. Bray- ton says : " There is ample evidence of the former existence and abundance of the buffalo in Northern Ohio ; it occurred in other parts of the State. Colonel John May met with it on the Muskingum in 1788, and Atwater says 'we had once the bison and the elk in vast numbers all over Ohio.' Hutchins says that in the natural meadows, or savannahs, 'from twenty to fifty miles in circuit,' from the mouth of the Kanawha far down the Ohio the herds of buffalo and deer were innumerable, as also in the region drained by the Scioto." In his description of Lake Erie, about 1687, La Hanton (quoted by Professor Brayton) says : " I cannot express what quantities of deer and turkeys are to be found in these woods and in the vast woods that lie on the south side of the lake." In 1718 Vaudreuil said of Lake Erie : " There is no need of fasting on either side of this lake, deer are to be found there in such abundance. Buffaloes are to be found on the south but not on the north shore. ... Thirty leagues up the river [Maumee] is a place called La Glaise [now Defiance] where buffaloes are always to be found; they eat the clay, and wallow in it." Harris speaks in his journal of " open cleared spots on the summits of hills called ' buffaloe beats' because supposed to be occasioned by the resort of those animals thither in fly-time."19

Smith's narrative contains this passage :

We then moved to Buffaloe lick, where we killed several buffaloe, and in their small brass kettles they made about half a bushel of salt. I suppose this lick was about thirty or forty miles from the aforesaid town,20 and somewhere between the Muskingum, Ohio and Sciota. About the lick was clear. open woods, and thin white-oak land, and at that time there were large roads leading to the lick, like waggon roads. We moved from this lick about six or seven miles and encamped on a creek.21

Smith also tells of ambuscading a buffalo herd, from which he succeeded in kill- ing "a very large cow." This seems to have occurred between the Olentangy ( Darby Creek ) and the Scioto.

Of the panther species both the mountain tiger and the mountain cat were in- habitants of the Ohio wilderness. The commissioners of Athens County offered bounties for both panther and wolf scalps down to the year 1818." Within a mile of Newark, Licking County, a marauding panther was shot as late us 1805.23

Wolves intested the wilderness in great numbers, and their ululations at night, particularly in winter, must have been extremely dismal.

HISTORY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBUS.

The gray fox, a beautiful animal, was very abundant, but, strange to say, with the approach of civilization the red fox supplanted it.

Another frequent inhabitant was the deer, whose timidity, grace and innocence enlist our sympathy although they never evoked the hunter's mercy.

Squirrels were numberless, and their grand migrations were among the curi- ous phenomena of the forest.24

Serpents of various kinds frequented the marshes, the tall grass of the prairies and the tangled copses. Atwater says: " At an early period of our settlement the large rattlesnake was found along the Scioto, in considerable unmbers, but the newly settled inhabitants, ascertaining that these serpents burrowed in a large stone mound a few miles northeastwardly from Circleville, after the serpents had gone into their winter quarters fenced in the mound, and, as the serpents came out of it in the spring of the next year, they killed them, so that it is a rare thing now to find one on this region." 25

Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.

History of the city of Columbus, capital of Ohio, Volume I, Part 2

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