Ohio annals : Historic events in the Tuscarawas and Muskingum Valleys, and in other portions of the state of Ohio, Part 15

Author: Mitchener, Charles Hallowell, ed
Publication date: 1876
Publisher: Dayton, Ohio : Thomas W. Odell
Number of Pages: 380


USA > Ohio > Ohio annals : Historic events in the Tuscarawas and Muskingum Valleys, and in other portions of the state of Ohio > Part 15


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).


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The Mingo was told of her, and escorted to her cabin. His white wife was informed of the fact, by the Indian women, they believing that she would abandon him, and become a convert. In jealous rage she avowed the death of both if found together, and repairing with her tomahawk to the woman's cabin, found that they had both left for the woods. She followed their tracks to a high bluff on the edge of the river, a short distance above the Federal Spring, and over which bluff a man named Compton fell in the night time, about twenty years ago, and was killed, the precipice being nearly one hundred feet high, but higher at the time spoken of, in 1779, from the fact that it then descended perpen- dicular into the river, but since has been excavated for a railway track. On this bluff the jealous white squaw met her chief and paramour face to face. It was but a look of a moment. He sprang up with his knife to strike, but in raising she struek him, and, as he fell back over the ledge, she bounded at the creole beauty, who had thus wronged her, and she, too, went over the precipice, dragging with her the white squaw to a like speedy death. Some Indian converts, who had followed her to the bluff, descended to the river, took the three corpses from the shallow water, carried them to the mission houses at New Schoenbrunn, and related the tragedy. The missionary refused them burial in the Christian grave-yard; directed the bodies to be taken into the forest, and interred beyond the sound of the church bell, that once echoed from Old Schoenbrunn.


The main incidents of the foregoing tragedy were com- municated by Captain Killbuck to General Shane, an carly settler, who related them to the writer more than a genera- tion by, and it is a curious fact, that in the summer of 1875, a farmer named Hensel, while digging for ore, found on one of his hills, not over a mile and a half front New Schoen- brunn, the skeleton of a giant Indian, with the skull broken in, and by his side the bones of one or two females. They had been hurriedly buried, the remains not being over a couple of feet from the surface, and bore evidence of having


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been there near an hundred years. It was surmised that they were persons killed in General Wayne's war of 1793-4, but it is more probable that they were the Mingo warrior and his squats.


In 1781, two years after the mission had been relieved of the evil inthuiences of the artful Indian beauty, David Zeis- berger visited Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and, although sixty years of age, he was attracted by the charms of Susan Le- cron, a Christian lady thereat, and married her. She lies burried by his side at Goshen to-day, and there is little doubt but that the pious man took a wife as a shield against temptation in the wilderness, well knowing that notwith- standing the fact that religion is a protector of virtue, there are times, as all sacred and profane history prove, when his physical desires and passions, make of man, if not under the inthience of a virtuous wife, only a beast on two legs, after all.


LEGEND OF THE WHITE CAPTIVE AND INDIAN CHIEF AT NEW SCHOENBRUNN.


In the year 1779, a band of Wyandots, on their way home from the Ohio to the Sandusky, stopped at New Schoen- brann, on the Tuscarawas, about one and a half miles from the present New Philadelphia. They had with them a young white woman, and two scalps, together with plun- der they had stolen from some murdered settlers, over on the Monongahela.


It was night when they came in, and having whisky with them, were turbulent and noisy. They called on father Zeisberger, and demanded something to eat, telling him they intended to rest that night with him. He complied with their demand, by having food prepared by the con- verted Indian women at the mission, and taken out to the warriors.


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They had built a fire in the only street or path of the place, and which street was obliterated in constructing the Ohio Canal fifty years afterward. After feasting on the provisions, consisting of corn-bread and meat, and taking their smoke from rude corn-cob pipes, the savages prepared a spot nearly opposite the house of Zeisberger, and began their war-dance, which was kept up for some time, with the usual hootings and yellings of savages, made more savage by the white man's whisky they had brought with them from the border settlements. Presently a drunken chief re- tired from the dancing ring around the fire into the bushes, but soon returned, half pulling, half carrying the young woman into the ring, and by gestures bade her join in the war-dance. Unable to obey him, through fright and the fatigue of the previous day's march, she fell to the ground, and thus impeded their dance. Enraged with passion the In- dian who claimed her as his, first kicked her, then clubbed her, but she remained insensible to his assaults. He then seized her and attempted to force her into the fire, deter- mined to conquer the maiden's stubbornness, as he had understood it, or burn her. Her screams and groans aroused the whole mission with indignation, and about one half the number of the chief's comrades sided with the Christian In- dians in giving vent to their feelings at witnessing the scene. The war-dance was broken up, but the chief stood by his victim, with uplifted tomahawk, gesticulating to her to obey him, or he would cleave her skull. At this moment a party of white men arrived at Schoenbrunn, in pursuit of the savages, who all fled, except the chief. Ile remained stolid for a moment, brandishing his tomahawk in the air, then burying it as he thought in the head of his captive, but, by a timely movement of one of the Christian Indians of the mission with a club, the instrument of death fell from the chief's hand harmless by the side of the woman. In another moment the chief was seized, tied to a tree, and a guard of Christian Indians set to watch him until it should be determined what should be his fate. The missionary,


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Zeisberger, took the released captive to his cabin, and soon succeeded in restoring her to consciousness, when she be- held among the men who had pursued the Indians, her own brother. Hem his rage at the inhuman barbarities inflicted upon his sister, asked that he might be allowed the privi- lege, single handed, of becoming her avenger. This was accorded him by his comrades, but the missionary here interposed against the shedding of the blood of the chief, as none had been shed, and claiming that all the inhuman conduct of this Indian was the consequence of liquor he had obtained among white men, and that as a Christian convert had saved the captive woman's life, it was his duty as a Christian to prevent the taking of the chief's life, if possible. . He then directed all to kneel, and he offered up a prayer of thanks for the resene of one human being from death, and implored the divine interference to save even this self-deter- mined murderer at the tree. His hearers acquiesced, and the brother, after setting his Indian victim free, returned with his comrades and his sister to their homes in Virginia. In after years, when the mission was broken up and the missionaries became prisoners, and were sent to Detroit, Zeisberger met the chief whose life he had saved, and dur- ing the time of his capture and exile from Schoenbrunn, the chief was by him converted to Christianity, and died in the Moravian faith at one of the missions of that sect.


LEGEND OF THE CONNER FAMILY, AND STORY OF TEDPACHXIT.


Richard Conner came from Maryland into the valley of the Muskingum, and was captured by the Shawanese and kept for several years at one of their towns on the Scioto. As a matter of choice between being burned, or becoming a Sbawanese, he put on their paint, and married a white woman who had been a prisoner some time, and by whom


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he had one or more children-all becoming white Indians for the time being.


In the delivery of prisoners, at the close of Dunmore's war, in 1774, Conner and wife were delivered up by the Shawanese, who failed to bring in Conner's son. He and wife were taken to Fort Pitt, where they settled for a time.


In 1775 they came to Schoenbrunn, where she remained, and became a favorite, while Conner went back among the Shawanese to find his boy. During his absence she saw the good being done at Schoenbrunn mission, and on Con- ner's return without his son, she induced him to join the mission with her. They built a house at Schoenbrunn, and when Colonel John Gibson visited Schoenbrunn, with the committee of congress, and having with them the great congress peace belt, over six feet long, as an emblem of friendship between the colonies and Indian tribes of the Muskingum, they were present at the baptism of one of Con- ner's children born at Schoenbrunn. Mr. Conner accom- panied them down the valley, and succeeded in ransoming his son from the Shawanese, with whisky, it is said, and whom he brought back to Schoenbrunn, to be educated by Zeisberger. 1


In 1781, when the missions were broken up, the Conner's followed the captives to Sandusky. There they remained after the captives left that country, except the son John, who, it is said, followed Zeisberger in all his wanderings. The elder Conner settled a large tract of land, known after- ward as the "Conner farms," and died wealthy, in Michi- gan, leaving descendants who became prominent citizens in Indiana.


In 1802, when Heckewelder brought the twelve chiefs to Goshen, on their way to the seat of government, John Con- ner was with them as interpreter. Tedpachxit and the chiefs were introduced by him to President Jefferson, and he returned with them to the Indian country.


Of Tedpachxit, this story is told : He was small, but had been a great warrior, and was as conceited as he was brave.


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Stepping up to one of the generals who had been at St. Clair's defeat, he strutted around very pompously, and asked the general these questions: "You not know me? I am Tedpachxit !" The general answered, by asking, "Who the devil is Tedpachxit?" The chief became indignant, and taking from his belt a string with twenty-seven dried human tongues appended, he shook them in the general's face, and walked off saying to himself, "He know me now!"


Tedpachxit was afterward indneed to embrace Christi- anity, and was burnt as a witch by the Prophet Teesumch's orders on White River, Indiana, about 1806.


A grandson of Richard Conner, now resides at Indian- apolis, and is the head of a large business firm in that city.


THE FIRST SETTLERS IN EASTERN OHIO AND THEIR TROUBLES.


At the old Salt Springs, in the present Trumbull County, the white hunters of the Ohio rendezvoused as early as 1754, to shoot deer, elk and other game, and remained there off and on, living the hunter's life, until between 1770 and 1780, when some enterprising Englishmen from Fort Pitt put up cabins, made salt in the primitive way, and took upon them- selves the name of settlers.


'In the territory now composing the counties of Mahoning, Columbiana, Jefferson, Stark, Carroll, Harrison, Belmont, Guernsey, and Monroe, were scattered cabins as early as the revolutionary war.


The names of the first settlers in these counties, and along the Ohio River, were in 1785, as follows:


Thomas Tilton, John Nixon, Henry Cassill, John Nowles, John Tilton, John Fitzpatrick, Daniel Menser, Zephenia Dunu, John McDonald, Henry Froggs, Wiland Hoagland, Michael Rawlings, Thomas Dawson, William Shiff, Solo- mon Delong, Charles Ward, Frederick Lamb, John Rigdon, George Atchinson, Hanes Piley, Walter Cain, Jacob Light,


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James Weleams, Jesse Edgerton, Nathaniel Parremore, Jesse Parremore, Jacob Clark, John Custer, James Noyes, Thomas McDonald, John Casstleman, James Clark, Adam House (his x mark), Thomas Johnson, Hanamet Davis, William Wallace, Joseph Reburn, Jonathan Mapins, Wil- liam Mann, William Kerr, Daniel Duff, Joseph Ross, James Watson, Abertions Bailey, Charles Chambers, Robert Ilill, James Paul, William McNees, Archibald Harbson, William Bailey, Jonas Amspoker, Nicholas Decker, John Platt, Benjamin Reed, Joseph Godard, Henry Conrod, William Carpenter, Jolin Godard, George Reno, John Buchanan, Daniel Mathews.


A number had come out with General McIntosh as far as Fort Laurens, in 1778, as axemen, hunters, teamsters, spies, and rangers. After its evacuation in 1779, they re- mained and took up homes on the different streams empty- ing into the Ohio and Muskingum.


Colonel Brodhead, then in command at Fort Pitt, con- ceiving that they were trespassers on the Indian lands, sent out troops to drive them back across the Ohio, and demolish their cabins. Subjoined is one of his letters to General Washington, given as a curious item of the history of those early days of the forefathers in Ohio, who had came from Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York, New Jersey, and other old States. Virginia then owned, but had not yet ceded this property to the United States, claiming it as part of that State by her own right of conquest and by In- dian treaties :


"PITTSBURGH, October 26, 1779.


"DEAR GENERAL: Immediately after I had closed my last (of the 9th of this instant), I received a letter from Colonel Shepherd, lieutenant of Ohio County, informing me that a certain Decker, Fox & Co., with others, had crossed the Ohio River and committed trespasses on Indian lands, wherefore I ordered sixty rank and file to be equipped, and Captain Clarke, of the Eighth Pennsylvania Regiment, proceeded with this party to Wheeling, with orders to cross the river


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at that part, and to apprehend some of the principal tres- passers and destroy their huts. He returned without find- ing any of the trespassers, but destroyed some huts. He writes me the inhabitants have made small improvements all the way from the Muskingum River to Fort MeIntosh, and thirty miles up some of the branches. I sent a runner to the Delaware Council at Coohocking to inform them of the trespass, and assure them it was committed by some foolish people, and requested them to rely on my doing them justice and punishing the offenders, but as yet have not re- ceived an answer.


"I have the honor to be, with perfect regard and esteem, your Excelleney's most obedient. humble servant,


" D. BRODHEAD. " His Excelleney General WASHINGTON."


In 1785, Colonel Harmar, commandant at Fort McIntosh, also sent out troops to dispossess white settlers from the eastern border counties of Ohio. They banded together to resist the United States troops, and were actually organ- ized with guns and munitions of war. A compromise was effected, whereby they were given time before leaving Ohio to prepare temporary habitations on the Virginia side. They then abandoned their Ohio settlements for a time.


The settlers in eastern Ohio, who were driven back across the Ohio by the government, were principally men whose descendants now fill the valleys of the Tuscarawas and Mus- kingum, and the eastern Ohio counties.


CONGRESS GIVES THE ABANDONED VALLEY TO THE SOLDIERS OF THE REVOLUTION.


The pious Germans, who had come from beyond the mountains, with the Bible in their hands, to teach the In- dian his true salvation, were wandering in the wild north- west, decimated, ragged, and sometimes starving, living a


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precarious life on wild game, roots, and berries, having at times no roof to shelter them, nor home to call their own, but still trusting to God, in their wretchedness, and pray- ing daily, hourly, nightly, that he would not in his anger abandon them, because of their want of success down on the Tuscarawas, but succor and give them strength to continue their efforts in the wilderness, to convert the heathen, and spread the gospel of the King of Kings.


On the other hand, Pipe, Half King, Welendewacken, Wingemund, Black Iloof, Red Hawk, Little Turtle, Blue Jacket, and a host of other Jackets, Hawks, and Turtles, some of whom had taken the missionaries, and guarded them to Detroit, as prisoners, not as apostles, were scamper- ing on fleet horses over Ohio and along the border, utterly regardless of the words they often had heard Zeisberger preach : " All having blood-stained hatchets in their hands, all seeking more sealps, all clamoring for more war, and a partition wall along the Ohio, so high and so strong that no Christian missionary, or other white man, should ever get over it, or under it, or through it into their hunting grounds, to build churches upon the graves of their ances- tors, or scare the game away by the ringing of bells, and singing of hymns of praise to the 'Unkown."


And yet, by reason of the deaths of their wisest coun- selors and chieftains, such as Netawatwees, White Eyes, Cornstalk, King Beaver, Little Eagle, Big Foot, and other chiefs, these red rovers were unable to hold permanent pos- session, even by tomahawk title, and although they had been successful in driving godly men out of the valleys, they were wholly unable to remain therein themselves.


In the year 1784, Virginia ceded to the United States all her rights in the territory north-west of the Ohio. Con- gress, in the following year, 1785, ordered a survey of so much territory, as had been ceded by former Indian treaties, for the location of soldier warrants, and by the treaty con- cluded at Fort McIntosh the same year, the Indian boun- dary, instead of being the Ohio River, began on the Tusca-


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rawas, near Fort Lanrens, thence up said river to the port- age, thence down the Cuyahoga to Lake Erie, thence west along the lake shore to the mouth of the Miami or Ome River, thence up that river to the portage between the Ome and that branch of the Big Miami which runs into the Ohio, thence over the portage to the Big Miami, thence castwardly to the Tnscarawas at the crossing place above Fort Laurens. All the land in Ohio outside of those lines was thus ceded to the United States, and all within those lines was to be In- dian territory, excepting ground for forts, &c. This treaty was signed by the Wyandots and Delawares, and some strag- gling Indians of other tribes. As soon as it became known to the Shawanese and others that the Ohio River boundary had been surrendered to the whites, they sounded the war- whoop again, declaring that they had been cheated and defrauded.


Congress, standing upon the literal interpretation of the Fort MeIntosh treaty, ordered it to be respected, and the surveys to go on. In 1786 the surveys began in ranges, townships, and sections; the first range to run from the Ohio, near the present Steubenville to the lake, and the other ranges to be numbered progressively westwardly, the town- ships to be numbered from south to north. On the 15th of . September, 1786, John Mathews, a nephew of General Put- namn, surveyor, and his associates, reached Sandy Creek, and on the 18th were at " Nine Shilling Creek-the present Nimishillen. Here an express rider came in from Beaver, announcing that the Shawanese had taken up arms, were re-assembling at their old towns, and dancing the war-dance, preparatory to moving on the surveyors, and lifting as well their scalps as those of all white men found west of the Ohio.


Mathews' party consisted of fifty men, thirty-six of whom were soldiers. Surveying was suspended, and all retreated to Fort MeIntosh. In a short time they moved down to Mingo bottom, and struck west on Crawford's trail toward the Tuscarawas to renew their work. On the 13th of Octo- ber they left. Crawford's trail and moved more north-west,


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and run about two miles of line. On the 14th and 15th they run about the same, continuing it cach clear day up to the 30th, when they lay in eamp on account of rain. Besides the surveyors there were twenty-five sokliers as guards. On this day they lost their horses, the same having been stolen by a squad of Indians, who had laid part of the pre- vious night within eighty rods, watching for scalps. The soldiers went to building a block house, which they finished on the.31st of October. From the 1st to the 7th of Novem- ber, they were on what is now the south boundary of the seventh township of third range in the United States mili- tary district. That day they struck Wheeling Creek and fol- lowed it to the Ohio, then crossed and took dinner at Colonel Zanes' house. Then went up the east bank to the house of a Mr. McMahan, then to the house of William Greathouse, sixteen miles, which they reached November 9. November 10 they tarried and heard a sermon from a Methodist minis- ter, located at that early day (1786) on the banks of the Ohio, in Virginia. November 11, Mathews went to a Virginia corn- husking at Harman Greathouse's, where a number of set- tlers had gathered in. They had rye whisky in plenty, and, the husking being finished, they sang, danced, told stories, quarreled, and all who could walk went home about 10 o'clock in the night. Three, who were too drunk, remained over night, hugging the whisky bottle, and arguing religion. Sunday, November 12, others came in and assisted in drink- ing up the whisky. November 22, General Tupper, the acting commissioner in General Putnam's absence, left for the east. November 23, Colonel Sprout and a Mr. Simp- son left for the east, and the surveying party disbanded for the winter, Mathews remaining at Greathouse's, where the snow was two and a half feet deep on the 5th of December, 1786. On February 4, 1787, he went up to Fort Steuben, the present city of Steubenville, and remained until May as store-keeper of the different surveying parties. On the 8th of May three surveyors came in from the woods and reported three persons killed and three taken prisoners by Indians.


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In July Mathews was at Wheeling, and reported Indians in the vicinity, and says that a party of whites killed one and wounded two Indians. On August 4, the people living on the bank of the river heard a person screaming on the Ohio side and begging for life. A party of whites went over and found one man killed and scalped. On the 7th of Angust left Wheeling for Fort Ilarmar, and after some days returned to Wheeling. September 21, they started with four men into Ohio, on Williamson's old trail, reached the ridge dividing the waters of Short Creek and Muskingum (Tus- carawas), and dug ginseng four days, then returned to the Ohio, and learned that three men had been killed and one captured by Indians while digging ginseng. On October 11 an old man was killed by Indians near Fort Steuben. On the 7th of April, 1788, Mathews arrived at the mouth of Muskingum with forty-two men, surveyors and guards, where they found l'ipe's band of Delawares and Wyandot's holding out the hand of friendship, while other savages con- tinued in the work of mercilessly burying their tomahawks into the heads of men, women and children along the Ohio, from the mouth of the Muskingum to Fort McIntosh.


DEATH OF THE WYANDOT CHIEF, BIG FOOT, IN A FIGHT WITH ANDREW AND ADAM POE.


After the defcat and retreat of Crawford's ill-fated expe- dition in June, 1782, a picked party of Wyandot warriors, among whom were the celebrated war chief, Big Foot, and his four brothers, followed the trace of the retreating whites until they came to the Tuscarawas, where they diverged and took the old trail leading from Fort Laurens to Fort Pitt. When near the present eastern boundary line of Colum- biana County, on what is known as the west fork of Little Beaver Creek, they killed an old man in his cabin, and, taking what plunder they wanted, started on the trail to- ward the Ohio River. This murder at once aroused several


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of the border settlers, who, quickly congregating, proceeded after the Indians. In this party of whites were the cele- brated brothers, Adam and Andrew Poe, famous for their courage and success as Indian fighters. The whites fol- lowed the Indian trail during the night, and on coming to the river, a little after daylight, discovered a raft tied to a sprout at the water's edge. Andrew Poe crept along the bank as stealthily as a cat until he saw a large Indian (Chief Big Foot) and a young warrior, standing with their rifles ready, and listening to the noise made by the party back over the bank. Poe pulled on the chief, but his gun missed fire, and the Indians at that instant discovered him. Seeing that retreat was useless, Poe dropped his gun and sprang upon the larger Indian and threw him to the ground. At this the small Indian ran to the raft and got a tomahawk, and, while Poe and the chief were struggling on the ground, he approached and aimed a blow at Poe's head, but just as he was about to strike he received a well-directed kick in the stomach by Poe's foot, which sent him reeling off and threw the tomahawk some distance away. The young savage soon regained his feet, and getting the tomahawk again, made a stroke for Poe's head, which he parried with his left arm, receiving a severe cut. Poe now exerted himself to the utmost and succeeded in getting away from the chief, and picking up one of their guns shot the young one dead as he was making a third attack with the tomahawk. By this time Big Foot had regained his feet, and jumping upon Poe pushed him down the bank, and in the struggle both were precipitated into the water, where each now made a des- perate exertion to drown the other, Poe finally succeeding in getting the chief's head under and holding him there until he supposed him dead. Upon letting go his hold on the Indian's head, the latter raised and they again clinched for another struggle, this time getting into deep water, when both let go and swam for shore, which Big Foot reached first, and picking up a rifle aimed at Poe, who sought to save himself by diving under water. The Indian had got




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