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Late in 1680, Father Hennepin returned from his explo- rations of the valley of the Mississippi and the upper lakes, and passed the winter of 1681 at Michillimacinac, in com- pany with Father Pierson, a Jesuit, whom he found with the Indians. We quote again :
"During the winter, we broke holes in the ice of Lake Huron, and by means of several large stones, sunk our nets sometimes twenty, sometimes twenty-five fathom under water, to catch fish, which we did in great abundance. We took salmon trouts which often weighed from forty to fifty pounds. These made our Indian wheat go down the better, which was our ordinary diet. Our beverage was nothing but broth made of whiteings, which we drank hot, because as it cools it turns to jelly, as if it had been made of veal.
49
LAKE ERIE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
" During our stay here, Father Pierson and I would often divert ourselves on the ice, where we skated on the lake, as they do in Holland. I had learned this slight when I was at Ghent." Hennepin here admitted forty-two Canadians to the order of Saint Francis.
In Easter week, 1681, the Franciscan and his companions left Michillimacinac, and after drawing their canoes for twelve or thirteen leagues over the ice, embarked on Lake Huron, " the sides of which still continued froze five or six leagues broad." After rowing a hundred leagues, they passed the straits, and arrived at "the Lake Erie, or of the Cat," where they spent some time " to kill sturgeon, which come here in great numbers to cast their spawn on the side of the Lake." They took nothing but " the belly of the fish, which is the most delicious part, and threw away the rest." Their further adventures in Lake Erie are narrated as follows :
" This place afforded also plenty of venison and fowl. As we were standing in the lake, upon a large point of land which runs itself very far into the water, we perceived a bear in it as far as we could sec. We could not imagine how this creature got there ; 'twas very improbable that he should swim from one side to t'other, that was thirty or forty leagues
over. It happened to be very calm ; and so two of our men, leaving us on the point, put off to attack the bear, that was near a quarter of a league out in the lake. They made two shots at him, one after another, otherwise the beast would certainly have sunk them. As soon as they had fired, they were forced to sheer off as fast as they could to charge again ; which when they had done, they returned to the attack. The bear was forced to stand it, and it cost them no less than seven shot before they could compass him.
" As they endeavored to get him aboard, they were like 3
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HISTORY OF OHIO.
to have been overset; which, if they had, they must have been infallibly lost : All they could do was to fasten him to the bar that is in the middle of the canoe, and so drag him on shore ; which they did at last with much ado and great hazard of their lives. We had all the leisure that was re- quisite for the dressing and ordering him, so as to make him keep ; and in the meantime took out his entrails, and having cleansed and boiled them, cat heartily of them. These are as good a dish as those of our sucking pigs in Europe. His flesh served us the rest of our voyage, which we usually eat with lean goats' flesh, because it is too fat to eat by itself ; so that we lived for an hundred leagues upon the game that we killed in this place.
" There was a certain captain of the Outtaonacts, (Otta- was,) to whom the Intendant Talon gave his own name, whilst he was at Quebec. He used to come often to that city with those of his nation who brought furs thither. We were strangely surprised at the sight of this man, whom we found almost famished, and more like a skeleton than a living man. He told us the name of Talon would be soon extinct in this country, since he resolved not to survive the loss of six of his family who had been starved to death. He added, that the Fishery and the Chase had both failed this year, which was the occasion of this sad disaster.
" He told us, moreover, that though the Iroquois were not in war with his nation, yet had they taken and carried into slavery an entire family of twelve souls. He begged very carnestly of me, that I would use my utmost endeavors to have them released, if they were yet alive, and gave me two necklaces of black and white porcelain that I might be sure not to neglect a business which he had so much to heart. 'I can rely upon thee, Barefoot, (for so they always called
51 .
HENNEPIN'S DISCOVERIES.
us,) and am confident that the Iroquese will hearken to thy reasons sooner than any one's. Thou didst often advise them at their Councils, which were held then at the Fort of Kata- rockoni,4 where thou hast caused a great cabin to be built. Had I been at my village when thou cam'st through it, I would have done all that I could to have kept thee instead of the Black Coat, (so they call the Jesuits,) which was there.' When the poor Captain had done speaking, I sol- emnly promised him to use my utmost interest with the Iro- quese for the releasement of his friends.
" After we had rowed above a hundred and forty leagues upon the Lake Erie, by reason of the many windings of the bays and creeks which we were forced to coast, we passed by the Great Fall of Niagara, and spent half a day in con- sidering the wonders of that prodigious cascade."
" I could not conceive how it came to pass that four great lakes, the least of which is 400 leagues in compass, should empty themselves one into another, and then all centre and discharge themselves at this Great Fall, and yet not drown good part of America."
Wlicreupon Hennepin, after modestly wishing that some- body had been with him "who could have described the wonders of this prodigious frightful fall so as to give the reader a just and natural idea of it," procceds to submit " the following Draught such as it is," but which we do not choose to transcribe. On his route to Fort Frontenac, he claims to have visited the Iroquois, and obtained the " re- leasement " of the twelve prisoners whom they had taken, and notices the flight of pigeons over their licads in clouds as "a thing worthy of admiration. The birds that were flying at the head of the others, keep often back to case and
4) Fort Frontenac, now Kingston, at the foot of Lake Ontario.
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HISTORY OF OHIO.
help those among them that are tired ; which may be a lesson to men to help one another in time of need."
There is a map attached to Hennepin's work which shows how little was known of the interior of this continent in 1698. "Lake Erie or of the Cat," is represented as three times as large as Lake Ontario, and equal to Superior. It is wider at the western extremity than elsewhere, extending four degrees of latitude from the straits on the northwest nearly south to the line of the 36th degree, or the latitude of Nashville. One degree below the southwest angle of the lake, the " Hohio," as it is called near the mouth, or the " Ouye," as elsewhere styled, is laid down as flowing be- tween " Apalachin Hills," which range east and west from Virginia towards the Mississippi. A lake nearly as large as Ontario is placed on the south side of these hills, apparently the supposed source of the Savannah River. The Mischa- sipi, or Mississippi, is laid down in reasonable proportion, the foreshortening of the country east of it being the most ludi- crous feature of the map. It is the same, as if the Ohio was sixty miles south of Sandusky Bay, a mountain chain intervening, and then the whole country as far south as Ala- bama ignored, sunk by a geographical earthquake. The direction of the north shore of Lake Erie is not inaccurate, for it was twice coasted by Hennepin, and the relation be- tween the Niagara and St. Clair rivers is about as we now find it ; but instead of narrowing the lake west of the mouth of Cuyahoga river, it sheers off to the south, making a broad angle with the north and south line of the western coast, which is represented as 240 miles long ; and thus full one- third of what is now the State of Ohio is swallowed up by an imaginary sea, or an imaginary extension of an actual sea.
Sandusky Bay and River, as well as the Maumee River,
53
ANCIENT MAPS OF LAKE ERIE.
are drawn at an accurate angle to the southern shore, and rightly placed as to each other, yet their channels run from east to west, as indeed might be expected when an area as large as Lake Huron is dropped so unceremoniously at the entrance of the strait of St. Clair. Between these streams is found the only reference to an Indian tribe south of Lake Erie, and that is the " Erieckronois," probably a detachment of the unfortunate Eries, availing themselves of the protec- tion of the adjoining Miami and Illinois tribes. As Henne- pin's first publication was in 1683, it is probable that this map includes the observations and traditions made and col- lected by him in 1679-'81, and this record of the Eries twenty-five years after the disastrous campaign of 1655, is an additional proof, in the first instance, that they were not exterminated by their enemies ; and secondly, that the power of the Iroquois had been previously checked on the Miami frontier.
Father Hennepin's description of the "pretty large island towards the southwest," is doubtless a modified form of his previous statement that the lake " divides itself at a certain place into two channels because of a great island enclosed betwixt them." In both cases, (the first is from his general description of Lake Erie, and the other from his narration of the Griffin's cruise,) he probably refers to Point Pelee Island, which, in connection with Kelley's Island, would naturally arrest the notice of the explorer. Cape St. Francis is now called Long Point, and the two other capes doubled in the westward and coastwise progress of La Salle's party, must have been Point aux Pines or Landguard Point, and Point Pelee. La Hontan, in his later map, while far more accurate than Hennepin in his outline of the southern coast of Lake Erie, interrupts his northern shore, about midway
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HISTORY OF OHIO.
from Niagara to St. Clair, by a projection of a cape or po- ninsula two-thirds across the lake. Hennepin places and delineates Long Point with reasonable accuracy.
We have mentioned La Hontan, whom we have had occa- sion to cite elsewhere. His letters include the period of 1683-'93, and are racy productions. He also explored Lake Erie. Not to be outdone by his gray-coated predecessor, he describes Niagara as " seven or eight hundred foot high and half a league broad." After entering Lake Eric, his party coasted along the north coast, "being favored by the calms," for it was August, 1687. " Upon the brink of this lake (he says) wc frequently saw flocks of fifty or sixty Turkeys, which run incredibly fast upon the sands, and the savages of our company kill'd great numbers of 'em, which they gave to us in exchange for the fish that we catchcd. The 25th we arrived at a long point of land which shoots out 14 or 15 leagues into the Lake, and the heat being excessive we chose to transport our boats and baggage two hundred paces over land, rather than coast about for thirty-five leagues." On the 6th of September, La Hontan entered the Straits of St. Clair, and pursued his western route, whither we will not follow him.
CHAPTER V.
THE FRENCH ESTABLISH FORT SANDUSKY -THE ENGLISH EX. PLORE THE OHIO VALLEY.
WE have given a synopsis of French discovery in the west. These explorations were promptly followed by settlements. In 1701, soon after the peace between the Iroquois and the French in Canada, the latter effected a settlement at Detroit. The party that first took possession of that important posi- tion were De la Motte Cadillac, with a Jesuit missionary and one hundred Frenchmen. The fort, which, by its carly es- tablishment, made Michigan the oldest of the inland States, except perhaps Illinois, soon became the centre of a valuable trade with the Indians, and the Hurons returned to its vicin- ity from their fifty years' exile, while above, in Upper Canada, was a colony of Ottawas. Thence, as we have shown, these tribes, who became inseparable companions, soon extended to the Sandusky Basin, where they were firmly established long before any European exploration of the country south of Lake Eric.
At New Orleans and in Illinois were the principal seats of the French in the valley of the Mississippi. As early as 1729, the settlers in the vicinity of New Orleans amounted to nearly six thousand, although a third of that number were slaves ; while on the Mississippi, near the Illinois, there were in 1750, five French villages, containing one hundred and forty families, and three villages of colonized natives, num- bering not less than six hundred.
(55)
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HISTORY OF OHIO.
Prior to 1750, the communication between Canada and Louisiana was carried on by the distant routes of Green Bay and the Wisconsin, Lake Michigan and the Illinois, and more recently by the Maumee and the Wabash, which latter river was regarded by the French as the main stream to which the Ohio was but a tributary. At the straits of Michillimacinac and the mouth of the St. Josephs river, at the head of Green Bay, and on the site of Fort Wayne, were French settle- ments, convenient for Indian traffic and contributing to the armed occupation of the country. There is some doubt whether Fort Miamis on the Maumee, (now Fort Wayne,) was founded before 1750, but it is mentioned by Vaudrueil, then Governor of Louisiana and afterwards of Canada, as existing in 1751. Its real date is probably contemporaneous with Fort Sandusky, namely, 1750. Detroit, a post of great importance, had been occupied since 1701.
It was nearly fifty years after the settlement of Detroit by the French, that the attention of France or England was turned to the region between Lake Erie and the Ohio River. Perhaps its dense forests repelled the luxurious Gaul, while the savannahs nearer the Mississippi tempted his occupation. But at length a dispute arose, with the increasing strength of the colonies, about the respective limits of the Atlantic colonies and of Louisiana. Under the treaties of Utrecht and Aix la Chapelle, England claimed that the valley of the lakes and the country east of the Mississippi should be re- cognized as an Iroquois conquest, and by compact with those tribes, as under the protectorate or dominion (in our days the terms are yet synonyms) of Great Britain. In reply, France cited discovery and occupation-the history of a hundred years of missions, expeditions and colonization. The missions had declined, but the Indian trade continued, and
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THE ENGLISH EXPLORE OHIO.
their posts, planted at the most eligible positions from Detroit to New Orleans, were regular garrisons, relieved once in six years. The boats from the Illinois country, descending annually to New Orleans, carried flour, Indian corn, bacon, both of hog and bear, beef and pork, buffalo robes, hides and tallow. The downward voyage was made in December ; in February the boat returned with European goods for con- sumption and Indian traffic.1 The Northwestern Indians were almost universally in the French interest. As respected the country on the upper lakes, the Mississippi, the Illinois, and the Wabash, the French title, according to European usage, was complete. To forestall the English pretensions to the country immediately south of Lake Erie, the Count de la Galissonniere, shortly after assuming office as Governor Gen- eral of Canada, sent Monsieur Celeron de Bienville, in 1749, with three hundred men, to traverse the country from Do- troit cast to the mountains, to bury at the most important points, leaden plates with the arms of France engraved, to take possession with a formal process verbal, and to warn the English traders out of the country.2
As will more fully appear in the sequel, the French, in the winter of 1750-'51, followed their formal claim to the territory between Lake Erie and the Ohio, which the explo- ring party of Celeron de Bienville had reasserted, by taking actual occupation of the northern frontier. This was done by founding a fort and trading station at Sandusky.
Meanwhile, the English colonies of Pennsylvania and Vir- ginia, deeply interested in the trade and pacification of the Ohio Indians, no less than in the political questions at issuc, were far from inactive. One George Croghan, an English
1) Hildreth's History United States, II, 434.
2) See Appendix, No. II.
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HISTORY OF OHIO.
trader, was also an envoy from the Government of Pennsyl- vania-distributing, on one occasion, goods to the value of a thousand pistoles among the Indians settled on the Ohio and Miami rivers. Licenses to trade with the Indian tribes even to the Mississippi, were also granted by the Governor
of Pennsylvania.3 As early as June, 1744, the colonies of Pennsylvania, Virginia and Maryland, went through another ceremonial of receiving from a deputation of Iroquois, at Lancaster, " a deed recognizing the King's right to all lands beyond the mountains." Still stimulated by a sense of dan- ger from the French and their Indian allies, Pennsylvania, at the instigation of Benjamin Franklin, organized her militia.
We have now reached, in order of time, the organization of the Ohio Land Company of 1748, the exploration of Chris- topher Gist, and our first item of circumstantial evidence as to the period when Fort Sandusky was built and occupied by the French. In 1748, Thomas Lee, with twelve other Vir- ginians, among whom were Lawrence and Augustine, brothers of George Washington, and also Mr. Hanbury, of London, formed an association which was called the " Ohio Company," and petitioned the King for a grant of lands beyond the mountains. This petition was approved by the monarch, and the government of Virginia was ordered to grant the petition- ers half a million of acres within the bounds of that colony, beyond the Alleghanies, two hundred thousand of which were to be located at once. This portion was to be held for ten years free of quit-rent, provided the company would put there one hundred families within seven years, and build a
3) In 1749, La Jonquiere, the governor of Canada, learned to his great indignation, that several English traders had reached Sandusky, and were exerting a bad influence upon the Indians of that quarter; and two years later he caused four of the intruders to be seized near the Ohio and sent prisoners to Canada."-Parkman's Pontiac, 64.
59
EXPEDITION OF CHRISTOPHER GIST.
fort sufficient to protect the settlement; all of which the company proposed, and prepared to do at once, and sent to London for a cargo suited to the Indian trade, which was to come out so as to arrive in November, 1749. This grant was to be taken principally on the south side of the Ohio river, between the Monongahela and Kanawha rivers.4
In the autumn of 1750, the agents of the Ohio Company employed Christopher Gist, a land surveyor and familiar with the woods, to explore their contemplated possessions on the Ohio River, as well as the adjacent country. He kept a jour- nal of his proceedings, which was published, and is entitled : " A journal of Christopher Gist's journey, began from Colonel Cresap's, at the old town on the Potomac River, Maryland, October 31, 1750, continued down the Ohio within fifteen miles of the falls thereof; and from thence to Roanoke River in North Carolina, where he arrived in May, 1751."5 Mr. Craig, in his notes on the carly history of Pittsburgh, thinks, from what he can ascertain, that he ascended the Juniata, after crossing over from the Potomac, and descended the Kiskeminetas to the Alleghany, which stream he crossed about four miles above Pittsburgh, and passed on to the Ohio. From the mouth of Beaver creek he passed over to the Tus- carawas, or Muskingum River, called by him and by the In- dians Elk Eye creek ; striking it on the 5th of December, or thirty-five days after leaving the Potomac, at a point about fifty miles above the present town of Coshocton, probably within the county of Stark. On the 7th, he crossed over the Elk Eye to a small village of Ottawas, who were in the French interest. He speaks of the land as broken, and the
4) Perkins' Writings, ii, 191. Sparks' Washington, ii, 478.
5) S. P. Hildreth's Pioneer History, 26-a valuable publication of the Ohio Ilistorical Society.
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HISTORY OF OHIO.
bottoms rather narrow on this stream. On the 14th Decem- ber he reached an Indian town, a few miles above the mouth of Whitewoman creek, called Muskingum, inhabited by Wy- andots, who, he says, are half of them attached to the French and half to the English, containing about one hundred families. " When we came in sight of it, we perceived English colors hoisted on the King's house and at George Croghan's. Upon inquiring the reason, I was informed that the French had lately taken several English traders, and that Mr. Croghan had ordered all the white men to come into this town, and had sent expresses to the traders of the lower towns, and among the Piquatiners, and that the Indians had sent to their people to come to council about it."
From this passage, it is evident that the Pennsylvania traders had traversed the Indian villages, and obtained the good will of their inhabitants in a considerable degree. George Croghan was apparently at the head of a trading party, and he and Andrew Montour accompanied Gist in his further exploration. The latter, who acted as interpreter, and was influential among the Delawares and Shawanese, was a son of the famous Canadian half breed, Catharine Montour, whose residence was at the head of Seneca Lake, in New York.6 Catharine had two sons, Andrew and Henry,
6) Of this woman W. L. Stone (Life of Brant, i, 340) says : "She was a native of Canada, a half-breed, her father having been one of the early French governors-probably Count Frontenac, as he must have been in the government of that country at about the time of her birth. During the wars between the Six Nations and the French and Hurons, Catharine, when about ten years of age, was made a captive, taken into the Seneca country, adopted and reared as one of their own children. When arrived at a suit- able age, she was married to one of the distinguished chiefs of her tribe, who signalized himself in the wars of the Six Nations against the Catawbas, then a great nation living southwestward of Virginia. She had several children by this chieftain, who fell in battle about the ycar 1750, after which she did not marry again. She is said to have been a handsome woman when
61
FRENCH FORTS ON LAKE ERIE.
who were three-fourths of Indian blood. The late James H. Perkins supposed that the companion of Gist was Henry, who was a chief among the Six Nations, and says that Andrew had been taken by the French in 1749. But Gist gives the name of his interpreter and companion as " Andrew," and it is unreasonable to suppose him mistaken. It is more likely that Andrew Montour had escaped from his Canadian captors, and was ready to make reprisals on them. Besides Croghan and Montour, Gist was accompanied by Robert Kalender during the latter portion of his journey. We resume the diary of Gist :
" Monday, 17th December, 1750. Two traders belonging to Mr. Croghan came into town and informed us that two of his people had been taken by forty Frenchmen and twenty Indians, who had carried them with seven horse loads of skins to a new fort the French were building on one of the branches of Lake Erie."
This we claim to have been Fort Sandusky. Bancroft recognizes no doubt on the point, but quotes Gist as stating that the captives were " carried to the new fort at Sandusky."7 There was certainly no other fort or station on any branch of Lake Erie at the close of 1750. Two years afterwards, or early in 1753, twelve hundred men from Montreal built a fort at Presque Isle, now Erie, and crossing thence to the
young, genteel, and of polite address, notwithstanding her Indian associa- tions. It was frequently her lot to accompany the chiefs of the Six Nations to Philadelphia, and other places in Pennsylvania, where treaties were holden; and, from her character and manners, she was greatly caressed by the Ameri- can ladies-particularly in Philadelphia, where she was invited by the ladies of the best circles, and entertained at their houses. Her residence was at the head of Seneca Lake." This account is mostly derived from Witham Marshe's Journal of a Treaty with the Six Nations, held at Lancaster in 1744, where Madame Montour (as Marshe calls her) was.
7) History of the United States, iv, 77.
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HISTORY OF OIIIO.
waters flowing south, they established posts at La Boeuf and Venango, the one on French creek, the other on the main stream of the Alleghany. All accounts concur in fixing this date for the posts at Erie, Waterford and Venango. Du Quesne, afterwards Fort Pitt and now Pittsburgh, was occu- pied in 1754. It is true that Niagara and Detroit com- manded the extremities of Lake Erie, but in 1750-1, the only French fort on a branch of the lake was Sandusky. This will appear more distinctly as we proceed with Gist's diary.
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