USA > Ohio > Montgomery County > Dayton > History of the city of Dayton and Montgomery County, Ohio, Volume I > Part 5
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Israel Ludlow, who had been intrusted with the duty of making external sur- vey of the Symmes' purchase, was a number of times baffled in his efforts to secure a military escort. In 1792 he made a venture on his own responsibility. The fol- lowing extract from his report to Alexander Hamilton, secretary of the treasury, gives us our best idea of the difficulties with which a surveyor had to contend, and the discouragements that prospective settlers had to meet :
"My reputation, as well as the public good, being in some measure affected by the delay of the business, I was constrained to have recourse to an effort which my instruction did not advise, viz : to attempt making the survey by the aid of three active woodsmen-to assist as spies and give notice of any approaching danger.
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My attempts proved unsuccessful. After extending the western boundary more than one hundred miles up the Miami river, the deep snows and cold weather rendered our situation too distressing, by reason of my men having their feet frozen and unfit to furnish game for supplies. In consequence, we returned to Fort Washington. The cold weather abating, I made another attempt, extending the east boundary as far as the line intersected the Little Miami river, where we discovered signs of the near approach of Indians, and having but three armed men in the company, induced me to return again to Fort Washington, which I found commanded by General Wilkinson, to whom I applied for an escort, which was denied me."
The attempts referred to were only partly successful. Later the task of sur- veying the Symmes tract, as modified by Symmes' second contract, was committed to Mr. Ludlow.
Some surveyors and others were killed by the Indians, many horses were stolen by them and yet there was confidence that soon settlements could be made without special danger. The molestations from the Indians had not yet taken the character of definite and concerted hostility. The great moderation and fairness of Judge Symmes toward the Indians certainly had for a time a good effect, and justified the title given him by Cist, the "William Penn of the West."
THE RIVER SETTLEMENTS.
In noticing the efforts to open the way for interior settlements it is well to have somewhat clearly before us the nature and strength of the river settlements, as these were the source or the concentrating points for the newer and remoter settlements. Benjamin Stites brought his nucleus for his settlement at Columbia from New Jersey. The people were of a very substantial class. They soon es- tablished schools and churches. The Indians who disturbed them were mainly prowlers and these were hunted down, a bounty being placed on each scalp. Judge Symmes, with his Jersey settlers at North Bend, was doomed to constant disap- pointments. His city of Miami, while never destroyed, was of slow and uncertain growth. His unheeded call for adequate military protection indicates his exposed position. The stationing of the soldiers at Cincinnati and the building of Fort Washington there in the summer of 1789 made sure the ascendency of Cincinnati. The settlement here while greatly hindered at times gradually developed all of the elements of an organized community. As indicating the presence of strong relig- ious characteristics in the founders of Ohio, the following statement by Rev. Ezra Ferris may be given: "After making fast the boat, they ascended the steep bank and cleared the underbrush in the midst of a pawpaw thicket where the women and children sat down. They next placed sentries at a small distance from the thicket and having first united in a song of praise to Almighty God, upon their knees they offered thanksgiving for past and prayer for future protection." Judge Symmes, writing under date of April 30, 1790, spoke of these new outstations, one twelve miles up the Great Miami, Dunlap Station ; the second five miles up Mill creek, Ludlow's Station, and the third nine miles back in the country from Columbia, probably Covalt's Station. Yet other settlements were projected, one of them even earlier than the planting of the out-stations just named.
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PLAN FOR TOWN ON SITE OF DAYTON.
Major Stites was so pleased with the land at the mouth of Mad river that he resolved to negotiate for its purchase. June 13, 1789, he entered into a contract for the purchase of the entire seventh range of townships, including the land de- sired about the mouth of Mad river. His associates were Major John Stites Gans and Judge William Goforth. A town by the name of Venice was to occupy the present site of Dayton. Mad river was to be called the Tiber. The plat was to be as nearly one mile square as was compatible with a division into blocks or squares each containing eight half-acre lots of eight by ten rods. Two streets, each six rods wide, were to intersect each other at right angles in the center of the plat. The other streets were to be each four rods and the alleys one rod wide. In each of the four quarters thus divided off by the two main streets were reserved spaces for a market-house and public square. The public square was to be of four acres located as nearly central as possible, and improved with trees and walks, but never under any circumstances with any kind of buildings. The market- house lots and the nature of the buildings to be erected on them were definitely provided for. One whole block or square of the eight half-acre lots was to be given to the First Baptist church, organized on the principles of the New York and Philadelphia associations. The proprietors were from a community in which the Baptists preponderated. Eight other half-acre lots were reserved for religious uses, one to be given to "each denomination of pious and well and religiously dis- posed people who worship the God of Israel." Three half-acre lots were to be given for "a capitol, a courthouse and a gaol." Certain adjacent tracts of consider- able extent were to be divided into five-acre out-lots. Liberal inducements in the way of donations of ground were to be offered to actual settlers, and the regular prices to actual purchasers during the first year were to be four dollars for an in-lot and five pounds for an out-lot. The contract was signed "at the block-house near Columbia, commanded by the above named Benjamin Stites." A road was at once to be marked from Columbia at the mouth of the Little Miami to Venice. The failure of the scheme was due to prolonged Indian hostilities, and possibly, some- what to uncertainty as to titles.
It is said that before Judge Symmes made the sale for the land in question, he with an escort of soldiers visited the valleys of Mad river and the Stillwater and that some of the party pronounced on their return to the river settlements that some of the land "was worth a silver dollar an acre." That Judge Symmes had seen the Mad river country is indicated in the following description, given in a letter, written by him in May, 1789. "But what I call the beauty of the country is the many prairies which lie in the neighborhood of Mad river. These are at once, without labor, proper for plowing or mowing. Mad river itself is a natural curiosity, about six poles wide on an average and very deep, gliding along with the utmost rapidity. Its waters are beautifully clear and deep but confined for the most part within its banks. What can give its current such velocity in the midst of so level a country is a matter of astonishment to all who behold it." The price to Judge Symmes for all land purchased by him was sixty-six and two-thirds cents per acre, and made even much less than this by certain privileges accorded him, and the purchasers of this tract agreed to pay
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him eighty-three cents an acre. But it was almost universally true that neither the government nor the land companies were able to win a profit from sales of land. Expenses and delays made this impossible. In the case of the Miami purchase the Indian troubles came in at the precise time when even less dif- ficulties would have brought defeat.
Judge Symmes had sought to conciliate the Indians. He had a right to ex- pect some advantage from the treaty of Fort Finney, by which the Shawnees, at least, bound themselves in a measure. He treated the Indians fairly and afforded them the benefits of profitable trade. For a while Indian atrocities were not frequent, but before long the Indians began to make plain and em- phatic that the Ohio River should be made and continue to be the Indian boundary line. The Shawnees, who were the closest neighbors of the settlers, and the Miamis who were the least trammeled by treaty obligations, were cunning, daring, and relentless. Further they had the great talents of Chief Brant in organizing the Indian opposition and the sympathy and aid of the British, who had refused to surrender the northern posts. Settlements could not be made beyond a few miles from the Ohio river, and then only by a num- ber of families, banding together, taking turns in standing guard and pro- tecting themselves by strong block-houses. Further from the Ohio river there was a constant skirmish between the Indians and the surveyors, the latter often but slightly protected by troops.
INDIAN ATTACKS.
April 9, 1789, six surveyors, under John Mills as chief surveyor, in camp near Mad river, were fired on by the Indians and two of the number slain. May 21st, an attack was made upon a boat-load of settlers going from North Bend, a few miles up the Ohio, to South Bend, escorted by a detachment of soldiers. One soldier was killed and three others were wounded. John Mills, the surveyor who had escaped when the surveying party on Mad river was attacked, was severely wounded. In August of the same year, Mr. Matthews, a surveyor, and four assistants with a guard of seven soldiers, were fired on while eating break- fast. As they arose to their feet, they received another volley from their hidden foes and six of the soldiers fell dead. The other six of the party escaped. Fif- teen or twenty persons were killed in the various settlements in 1790. On January 8, 1791, John S. Wallace, John Sloane, Abner Hunt, and a Mr. Cun- ningham, who were exploring in the country west of the Great Miami, fell in with a large body of Indians. Cunningham was killed and Hunt was taken prisoner. In the same year, John Van Cleve was killed in Cincinnati. Already in 1789, the Kentuckians were calling the Miami country a "slaughterhouse." It was now justifying its name. The Indian highway between Kentucky and Detroit, called the "dark and bloody way," crossed the Ohio at the mouth of the Licking. At no point did the roving bands of Indians to the north press closer to the Ohio river than they did here. The most of the harm was done by small bands of Indians, shooting from places of concealment, destroying property and driving off stock. Yet, in the winter of 1790-91, a party of four hundred Indians attacked Dunlap Station, seventeen miles northwest
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of Cincinnati on the Great Miami, and for twenty-six hours besieged the garri- son of thirty-five regulars and fifteen settlers. Though the attack failed, the Indians burned to death Abner Hunt, whom they surprised and captured.
We see, therefore, how surely the Symmes enterprise was doomed to failure. He was a man of great perseverance and he planned and toiled through the years with no expectation of great personal gain.
OUTCOME OF JUDGE SYMMES' CONTRACT.
Symmes, as has been seen, was much disposed to take things into his own hands, meaning well himself, he thought that others ought not to object. He continued to dispose of land east of the tract for which he had contracted and April 12, 1792, Congress relieved him of his embarrassment by coming to his terms and granting him the entire breadth between the two rivers. One reason, doubtless, for making this change was the fact that the two rivers, which were nearly thirty miles apart where they entered the Ohio, so approached each other in their courses that at one point they were only eleven miles apart and at another only eight and one-half miles apart. September 30, 1794, Judge Symmes was granted patents for all the land for which he had paid, being two hundred forty-eight thousand, five hundred and forty acres or, with reservations, three hundred and eleven thousand, six hundred and eighty-two acres, extending from the Ohio to a line two miles north of Lebanon, including the land to the north line of the third range. The land within the boundaries named in the contract of 1792 was shown by the survey to be five hundred forty-three thousand, nine hundred and fifty acres, instead of one million acres. When the contract of 1787 was made it was supposed that there were within the same bounds two million acres. The third range of townships from the base line, that had been so run as to avoid the bends of the Ohio river, was called the military range, inasmuch as it was designated as the tract on which military warrants should be laid. This is what is sometimes called the second tract purchased by Symmes. Symmes' contract was not terminated by this settlement, but, as he might make further payment, new patents, corresponding with such payments, were to be granted him. He, however, made no further payments. He continued to sell land and receive payments and as late as 1796 and 1797 still kept his advertise- ments before the public. In 1797, he seemed to give up hope that further pat- ents would be granted him, and those who had lost in transactions with him were given relief by acts of congress in 1799 and 1801, and at later times, whereby they could purchase the land from the government at two dollars per acre, provided they could show a regular contract with Symmes. The town- ship for an academy had been hopelessly bargained away by Symmes. Symmes' claims were revived and brought to the attention of congress and the officials of the general government again and again. An elaborate review of the whole case was given April 16, 1803, in a report made by Levi Lincoln, the attorney- general. Symmes claimed that his contract had not been forfeited by non- payment of amounts required, because these amounts were to be paid within a certain time after he had been furnished by the government a plat of the external boundary of the lands, and that no such plat had been given him. A survey
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entrusted to Israel Ludlow, in 1788, was interrupted by Indian troubles. But November 25, 1792, the survey was anew entrusted to him. It was completed by him July 10, 1793, and filed with the treasury department, January 10, 1794. Ludlow testified before a committee of Congress in 1797 that Symmes had been made acquainted on the completion of the survey with the results found and later was given a complete plat. While there was no official record of a de- livery of the plat, Ludlow's testimony and the contemporaneous acts of Symmes were held to show the delivery of the plat. As the required payments, after said delivery of the plat, had not been made the contract was declared forfeited from and after 1794. According to the terms of the contract in force he was credited with a first payment of eighty-two thousand, one hundred and ninety-eight dol- lars. A similar payment, one-eighth of the whole amount, should have been paid when the government plat was placed in his hands in July, 1793, and the remaining amount should have been paid in six semi-annual payments there- after, which would have made the last payment due in January, 1797. At dif- ferent times, Judge Symmes desired to make payments and receive patents, but at no time was there an attempt to fulfill the terms, above named. In view of the risks taken by Judge Symmes and the part he had performed, congress hesitated long before taking its final action. At the close of his course, this "patriarch of the Miami wilderness" characterized the part of the government as "the blackest, blackest ingratitude."
A GENERAL INDIAN WAR.
We may now notice conflicts with the Indians of the northwest with which the general government was more directly connected. Many of the Indians claimed that they were not bound by any of the treaties that had been concluded. On the other hand, the claim was put forth that, outside of all treaties, the United States, by virtue of the Indians having sided so generally with the Brit- ish, in the Revolution, and by the surrender of British rights to the United States, right to the soil no longer belonged to the Indians. The French and Spanish had never recognized any right of the Indians to the soil.
Beginning with 1785, a confederacy of the Lake Indians, under the lead of Joseph Brant, the educated and able Mohawk chief, came into being. The general idea of the Indians was to have the Ohio river as the Indian boundary. Early in 1786, Brant was in London, seeking the aid of the British. In the same year there was almost formed against the whites a great combination of In- dian tribes, including the Six Nations, the northwestern tribes and the southern Indians. In 1788, the northern federation forbade treaty action by individual tribes. The point of great danger was the attitude of the Miamis, with their headquarters on the Maumee. From this point they directed the action of their relatives and confederates, the Weas, Piankeshaws and Kickapoos on the Wa- bash.
They were also able to inspire with their own desperate spirit and purposes the larger and wilder tribes that lay beyond them-the Chippewas, Pottawato- mies, Ottawas, and others. Moreover they could hope for help from the Six Nations. The British at the lake posts were ready to support them with arms,
.
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ammunition, and through white men, more cunning and merciless than the Indians, with the council and direction necessary. But before following the events of the Indian war-the last Indian war carried on in the United States in which there were any uncertainties-let us bring together a few considerations belonging to all the Indian wars.
Could these wars have been obviated? If we mean taking the Indian as he was and taking the white man in some ideal character, the answer might be yes. Bitt taking the white man as he was and yet giving him the privilege of occupancy of lands, beyond the old borders, the answer would probably be that the conflict was inevitable. The British at the north have succeeded better with the Indian problem, but conditions with them have not been the same. Besides, they caused much of the troubles that the Americans had to meet. With the French there was no Indian problem, because the Indians were where and what the French wanted them to be. We should make no excuses for outrages per- petuated by the white ruffians that gathered upon every frontier or for the breaking of treaties, whether by the whites or the Indians. Roosevelt in his "Winning of the West," states the case in his customary, emphatic way: "Nor was there any alternative to these Indian wars. It is folly to speak of them as being the fault of the United States government, and it is even more idle to say that they could have been averted by treaty. * * * All men of sane and wholesome thought must dismiss with impatient contempt the plea that these continents should be reserved for the use of scattered, savage tribes, whose life was but a few degrees less meaningless, squalid and ferocious than that of the wild beasts with which they held joint ownership."
Again it is asked why, if the whites were so superior, was the contest so long drawn out, and at such great cost. It is said that for every Indian warrior slain at least three white men were slain. In regard to women and children the slain among the Indians would bear a small proportion to those among the whites. The Indians lived in scattered villages for the most part remote from the white frontier. They skulked singly or moved in small bands and attacked the unsuspect- ing and the helpless. They could plunder and destroy and escape punishment. In their remote fastnesses they could refuse battle except on their own terms. If defeated they could disperse and avoid complete overthrow. The long marches of the whites through the gloomy forest, and the difficulty of carrying supplies through forest and swamp furnished the Indians with the opportunities suited to their cunning and barbarity. Nor must the Indians be underrated as fighters. Colonel James Smith, who spent many years as a captive among them says: "I have often heard the British officers call the Indians the undisciplined savages, which is a capital mistake as they have all the essentials of discipline. They are under good command and punctual in obeying orders; they can act in concert and when the officers lay a plan and give orders, they will cheerfully unite in putting all their orders into immediate execution, and by each man observing the motion or movement of his right-hand companion they can communicate the mo- tion from right to left and march abreast in concert, and in scattered order, though the line may be more than a mile long." He then refers to the effective fighting of the Indians at the battle of Point Pleasant, without the aid of white officers. their artful retreat and their successful crossing of the Ohio in the face of the
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victorious whites. On the other side, the United States regulars were largely re- cruited from the lowest classes in the eastern cities, many being drunken and utterly unreliable. The militia, in large part, were impatient of discipline and insubordinate, and between them and the regulars there was not the bond of sym- pathy and confidence. The whites won because they had more lives to lay down for the homes that they would build and for civilization than had the red man to lay down for his wigwam and hunting grounds.
But the last conflict must be waged. Washington had sought by negotiations to avoid the necessity of an attack on the remote Indian villages. A prominent Kentuckian, writing to the secretary of war, reported that in the seven years since the Revolution the Indians had slain in Kentucky alone, or on the immigrant routes leading thither fifteen hundred people, had stolen thirty thousand horses, and destroyed a nameless amount of property. The borders of Pennsylvania had suffered in like manner. The Shawnees maintained a plundering camp at the mouth of the Scioto for the luckless flotillas that came down the Ohio. Murder and robbery held back the infant settlements in Ohio. The Wabash In- dians preyed on the weak settlers on the Wabash.
GENERAL HARMAR'S CAMPAIGN.
To stop these depredations a large force of regulars and militia under General Harmar was to invade the Indian country in 1790. Fort Washington at Cin- cinnati was the base of operations. From here two Indian trails could be made use of. One beginning in the valley of the Licking in Kentucky, and continuing north by Cincinntai, led over to the east side of the Little Miami, past old Chilli- cothe, the site of Piqua on Mad river and the site of Loramie, on to Detroit. It was called the "Old war path." The other had the same beginning and ending, but from Cincinnati it led over to the site of Hamilton on the Great Miami, and then by the present towns of Eaton and Greenville to the site of Loramie. For certain purposes, and at certain times the Great Miami river was used as a channel as far as to the site of upper Piqua or to that of Loramie, being used thus by Indians and whites alike. A trail occasionally mentioned, was the trail, followed by Gen- eral Clark, from the site of Cincinnati to the mouth of Mad river. The leading trails diverged or were intersected at various points. The trails, which were nar- row paths, had to be widened for military or ordinary transportation purposes.
All things being in readiness, perhaps more truly all things being in unreadi- ness, General Harmar, on the last day of September, 1790, set out from Fort Washington on his march against the Indians. He had for the core of his army three hundred and twenty federal troops, and for the main body of his force one thousand, one hundred and thirty-three militia recruited in Pennsylvania, Vir- ginia and Kentucky, many of whom were mounted. Three light brass field pieces were taken along. The militia were poor material in the first place and lacked discipline. General Harmar was a valiant veteran commander, but unsuited for the present undertaking. The militia threatened mutiny unless allowed to choose the second in command and then chose Colonel Trotter, who was entirely unfit for the place. The army took the old Indian warpath leading north from Fort Washington, then across to the east side of the Little Miami, then past the sites
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of old Chillicothe and the burned towns on Mad river, the Great Miami and Loramie creek. From this point on the old trail, the army marched to the Miami towns where the St. Mary's and St. Joseph rivers unite to form the Maumee, which were found deserted. Colonel Trotter showing his incompetency, Colonel Hardin was placed second in command. While he was a valiant Indian fighter, he was not fitted for a large command. With two hundred men, including thirty regulars, he fell into an ambuscade, the militia behaved badly and the whole force was cut to pieces. The disheartened army, having destroyed six villages and laid waste the fields, began the march back to Fort Washington. Thinking to re- trieve his credit and to protect his retreat, General Harmar detached four hundred picked men under Major Wyllys of the regulars to administer a decisive defeat to the Indians, who were gathering in force. The detachment became divided and one of the divisions was overwhelmed with complete disaster. The expedition . was a humiliating failure. It united the Indians against the whites and brought on the unprotected settlements the intensified atrocities of the savages. The army re- turned as it came. In the winter of 1790-91, the Miami valley was full of war parties. Some of these parties came down the Great Miami in canoes as far as Mad river, or Twin creek and there pitching their camp and sending out hunting parties for supplies, the warriors would seek out the settlements for slaughter and pillage.
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