USA > Ohio > Ohio annals : Historic events in the Tuscarawas and Muskingum Valleys, and in other portions of the state of Ohio > Part 19
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In 1792, there arrived Israel Putnam, Jr., and Ephraim Cutler, later.
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The above list does not contain the names of all who came out during that period, as they can not now be ascer- tained.
ORGANIZATION OF THE STATE OF OHIO.
The six first counties erected in Ohio were Washington, 1788; Hamilton, 1790; Wayne, 1796; Adams and Jeffer- son, 1797; Ross, 1798; Trumbull, 1800. These counties embraced all the territory of Ohio except so much in the north-west part as was reserved for Indian territory, by previous treaties with the Indians, and military posts.
The population of the North-west Territory having, in 1798, increased to five thousand male adult persons, they became, under the ordinance of 1787, entitled to a territo- rial legislature. Representatives were accordingly elected- their term being two years. The members of the house of representatives (there being no provision for a senate) were empowered to nominate ten freeholders, each owning five hundred acres, from whom the president appointed five, who constituted the legislative council, instead of a senate, and they to serve five years.
The State of Connecticut, having obtained in the reign of Charles II of England, a grant of land running from Providence Plantations to the Pacific Ocean, it was found that nearly four million acres were embraced in the Ohio territory, and which was called New Connecticut. Of this, Connectient donated half a million acres in the west por- tion to certain sufferers by fire, and these became known as "fire lands." Over the balance the State ceded to the United States the jurisdiction, and in 1800 this territory was erected into the county of Trumbull-Connecticut still retaining the right to the soil, which was afterward divided into tracts and sold as part of the "Connecticut Western Reserve."
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In 1798, the North-west Territory contained a population of five thousand adult male inhabitants, being the requisite number to entitle the people to elect their legislators, under a property qualification of five hundred acres-as to the legislative council-the representatives to serve two, and the council five years. In 1799, the territorial legislature was elected, organized, and addressed by the governor, after which the necessary laws were enacted-the whole number being thirty-seven. William Henry Harrison, secretary of the territory, was elected delegate to Congress.
In 1802, a convention to form a State constitution was called at Chillicothe, and completed its labors in less than thirty days, and this constitution became the fundamental law, without ratification by the people. It was not abro- gated for forty-nine years. The State of Ohio having been formally admitted into the Union, two sessions of the legislature were held in the year 1803, under the State con- stitution, and the State government regularly organized.
The general assembly continued to meet at Chillicothe, except a year or two that it met at Zanesville, until 1816, when it was removed to Columbus, and that city was made the permanent seat of government.
ORGANIZATION OF THE SIX VALLEY COUNTIES.
The counties through which the Tuscarawas and Mus- kingum rivers now flow, originally comprised part of Wash- ington county, which was organized July 27, 1788, and embraced about one-half the territory in the present State of Ohio; its boundaries being the Pennsylvania line and Ohio River on the cast, and south and south-west the Ohio to the Sciota; thence up that stream to its source; thence to the portage on the Big Miami ; thence east to old Fort Laurens, on the Tuscarawas (then called Muskingum) ; thence north to the Cuyahoga ; thence following that stream to Lake Erie; thence east to the Pennsylvania line. Hence
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the inhabitants of what is now Muskingum County, Mor- gan County, Coshocton County. Tuscarawas County, and Stark County paid taxes, settled estates, attended courts, &c., at Marietta, until 1804, in which year Muskingum was organized; and thenceforward, until 1808, Stark, Tusca- rawas, and Coshocton were part of Muskingum, but in that year Stark and Tuscarawas being organized, Muskingum was shorn of the territory of those two counties. In 1811 Coshocton was organized, and in 1818 the County of Mor- gan was erected, and the six valley counties, watered by the main streams of the two rivers above named, have remained to the present as originally taken from the one county of Washington ; with occasional townships detached from one and added to the other, or attached to a new county formed east or west of the original boundaries.
A RECAPITULATION OF EVENTS IN THE LIVES OF RUFUS PUTNAM AND JOHN HECKEWELDER, FOUND- ERS OF THE STATE OF OHIO.
Rufus Putnam was born in Massachusetts in 1738. He received a New England education, after which he went south with a motive to found a settlement. After explor- ing the lower Mississippi, and finding the natives at that early day averse to English settlements in their country, he returned to New England.
The war of the British government against the American colonies having been precipitated at Boston, he joined the colonies in their struggle against the mother government, and so distinguished himself that he was made a general. After the close of the war, he headed nearly three hundred officers, who had been dropped from the rolls of the army by reason of the peace, and petitioned Congress to grant them a tract of land commensurate with their service, to
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be located in the western country. Congress deferred action on the petition for the time being.
General Putnam, in 1785, drafted a plan and submitted it to the government, looking to the establishment of a chain of military posts from the Mississippi to the lakes. Presi- dent Washington, penetrating the sagacious movement of Putnam, favorably recommended it to Congress, and that body directed the work to begin. Fort Harmar, at the mouth of the Muskingum River, was accordingly begun in 1785, but was not finished until 1791.
It was one of the systems recommended by General Pnt- nam in 1785, and in which year he was appointed one of the surveying commissioners to lay off into farm lots, seven ranges of lands in the Ohio territory, immediately west of the Pennsylvania line. This land was designed to be given in part to the officers and soldiers of the army of the revo- Intion for military services, and in part to be sold. The Indians, by treaty, had relinquished their title to the land, but observing the surveying movements, became dissatisfied, declared they had been cheated in the treaty, and commen- cing hostilities the surveys had for the time to be suspended.
The officers who, with Putnam, had petitioned Congress in 1783, for a large body of land, not getting all they desired from the government, met in Boston in 1786, and with Gen- eral Putnam as their practical business man, organized the "Ohio Company," determined to emigrate to the Ohio, and make a large and compact settlement at the mouth of the Muskingum. General Putnam engineered the movement, and in April, 1788, forty-eight emigrants reached the Mus- kingum, laid off Marietta, and a large number of farm lots. The same year eighty-four additional emigrants, mostly from New England, arrived at Marietta, and for self-pro- tection they commenced a stockade fort, to which was given the name of " Campus Martins." In 1789, one hundred and fifty-two additional English emigrants arrived, and in 1790, four hundred French emigrants came. New settlements at Belpre, and Waterford, and other points, had been begun
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in 1789, but the territorial government having been formed in 1788, with General Arthur St. Clair as governor, Mari- etta took the lead, and became the seat of territorial power for a time. General Putnam was appointed one of the judges of the United States Court in the territory, and set about with the other judges the business of the organiza- tion of courts and the administration of justice. Here we leave him on the bench while the early career of another is traced up, he having from this point to be connected with Putnam in the future history of the valleys.
John Heckewelder was born in Bedford, England, in 1743, of German parents. He received an education for the ministry, and sailed for the new world. On his arrival in the colonies he manifested a desire to mingle in frontier life, and educate the Indian natives. With this motive he left Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in 1762, with Christian Fred- erick Post, and in the usual time they reached the head waters of the Muskingum of that day, but Tuscarawas of this day. Post had been to the Tuscarawas in 1761, and erected a small house on the bank of the river, above the present village of Bolivar, which was the first house (except traders' cabins) built in the valleys by a subject of the Eng- lish government.
A short residence satisfied Heckewelder that he was too early, and being admonished by a friendly Indian chief that if he remained he might lose his scalp, he retired to Pennsylvania, as Putnam afterward did to Massachusetts, to await events.
Ten years later, in 1772,- Heckewelder returned to the Tuscarawas with David Zeisberger, and began a settlement for their converted Indians about three miles south-east of the present New Philadelphia, called Schoenbrunn. Heck- ewelder returned to the east, and in 1773, came back with upward of two hundred emigrants, who were mostly taken in canoes down the Ohio to the mouth of the Mus- kingum (where Putnam and others, fifteen years later, located Marietta), thence up the Muskingum to Schoen-
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brunn. They brought clothing, grain, axes, hoes, spades, iron and nails, and farm implements with them, and set about clearing land and building up a town ; so that by 1774, they had nearly fifty houses and a church up, and many acres of corn growing, and horses, cattle, and hogs in abundance, for over three hundred people. He after- ward assisted in establishing settlements at Gnadenhut- ten, Litehtenau, and Salem, on the Tuscarawas, where they raised corn and cattle, and converted the heathen. When the war between the colonies and Great Britain con- meneed, British emmisaries visited these settlements, and, through the influence of Simon Girty, and other renegades, succeeded in arraying a portion of the Delawares, Monseys, and. Shawnese, who had not become Christians, to join the British, but those who had been converted, and wore clothes as white men, were for a time the steadfast friends of the colonies, through the untiring efforts of Heckewelder, Zeis- berger, and other missionaries, although they were forbidden to take part in war. Seeing this, the British governor at Detroit induced the British Indians to retire from the Tus- carawas to Sandusky, under Captain Pipe, from whence they returned in squads with their friends, the Wyandots, and annoyed the Tuscarawas settlements; as well as the whole Ohio River country. In the fall of 1789, they came down under the British flag, captured and drove to the Sandusky the missionaries and their converts, and had Heckewelder, Zeisberger, and Senseman sent to Detroit to be tried as American spies. . They were acquitted twice, but in the meantime about one hundred of the captured Christians returned to their cornfields on the Tuscarawas (at which they had three hundred acres on the stalk) to gather the crop, and while there, in March, 1782, were mas- sacred. This outrage drove the residue of the converts, except a few, into the British hostile ranks; and with these few Zeisberger and the other missionaries attempted settle- ments in the north-west and Canada, from whence Heck- ewelder returned to Pennsylvania, and soon took service
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under the government-in assisting at Indian treaties, and the surveying of the public lands in the valleys of the Tuscarawas and Muskingum. He visited Philadelphia, and was instrumental in procuring the grant from Congress of twelve thousand acres for the missions, to be located in what is now Tuscarawas County.
In December, 1786, Congress instructed Colonel Harmar, who was in command at Fort Harmar, at the mouth of the Muskingum, to invite the exiled missionaries and their Christian converts back to the Tuscarawas, but the Indian chiefs, Half King, Welendawacken, and Pipe, forbade them not to return under pain of death. Heckewelder visited Fort Harmar in 1789, where an Indian treaty was made, and through the influence of General Putnam and himself, Governor St. Clair notified the chief's he should invite the Christian Indians back to their Tuscarawas settlements at once. The chiefs assented, except Welendawacken, whose capital was at the present Fort Wayne, and who still threatened death to Zeisberger and his converts, in case he returned with them. His hostile attitude dissuaded Zeis- berger from making the attempt, and thus the head of the valley was for the time closed against the return of the settlers.
THE INDIAN WAR OF 1791-DEFEAT OF HARMAR AND ST. CLAIR.
When the New England pioneers landed at the mouth of the Muskingum, they were met with apparently open hands by the Indians, and Captain Pipe, with one hundred Wyandots and Delawares, then at the spot, reconnoitering the Yankees, welcomed them to their new homes. Con- sidering his antecedents farther up on the Tuscarawas, where he opposed the missionaries, and harrangued the warriors during the revolution, to drive every white man over the Ohio, this apparent friendship was ominous of future hos-
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tility, as he had practiced the same duplicity on former occasions in the upper valley.
The settlers, while they shook hands with the warriors, shook their own heads, as soon as Pipe departed up the trail, and instead of trusting to his words, they went first to work to building defenses, stockades, &c.
Fort Harmar was on the opposite side of the Muskingum from Marietta, and with "Campus Martius " soon erected, together with the stockades, they were shortly in condition to fight or shake hands.
Up in the north-west, Brant had, in 1786, organized the tribes into a western confederation. He was the wiliest chief of his time, and headed the Six Nations, forming as he did the design of erecting the Ohio territory and the other North-west Territory into an Indian barrier between the American and British possessions. In this programme he was promised aid by the British. It was a pleasing idea to the chief's and warriors of all the tribes, and afforded consola- tion to the British cabinet for the loss of their colonies.
And, right here, it may be observed that had not Marietta been settled when it was, in the manner it was, and by men from the New England States, this British plan of hemming in the Americans east of the Ohio River would undoubtedly have succeeded, and thus postponed for a gen- cration, at least, the creation of new States in the West.
Even by all their stern and energetic work along the Ohio and Muskingum, these New Englanders were often in despair, and some abandoned all they had brought with them, to get back beyond the mountains, and wait events; if those who remained came out successful, those who had retired could come back-if unsuccessful they need not.
No sooner had Pipe and his warriors made their recon- noissance at the mouth of the Muskingum, in 1788, than they retired from the valley, as they had done years before from the Tuscarawas, to plan and foment raids, and war upon the settlers. Under pretence of negotiating a treaty of peace, they assembled at Duncan's falls on the Muskin-
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gum, to meet Governor St. Clair, but instead of making a treaty, their " bad Indians," purposely brought along, fell upon the white sentries, killing two and wounding others. This postponed the treaty-as was intended by those in the secret-several months, meanwhile the Indians prowled around Marietta, and by way of " welcoming the settlers," killed off and destroyed the game on which the pioneers depended for animal food.
In January, 1789, another attempt was made by treaty to quiet the savages, and dissipate their ideas of expelling the whites from Ohio. As soon as signed, the pioneers gave the chiefs a great feast (but had nothing for the rank and file), and all went home up their trails, while the set- tlers went to surveying and clearing land, under the act of Congress.
This treaty was made at Fort Harmar, opposite Marietta, between the settlers and the Wyandots, Delawares, Chippe- was, Ottowas, Miamis, Pottowatamies, Senecas, &c., January 12, 1789. Early that same summer John Matthews, sur- veyor of the Ohio company, and his party, were attacked on the Virginia side of the Ohio, and seven of his men shot and scalped. The same summer not less than twenty men were killed and scalped on both sides of the Ohio. In 1790, the Indians attacked a number of boats owned by emigrants, and killed or carried off those on board. The raiding par- ties always had a white man as decoy, who hailed the boats in a friendly manner, thus enticing them near shore, when the killing took place. These white decoys were renegades, like Simon Girty and McKee, who had fled the colonies and were under the British flag.
At length Governor St. Clair unwisely sent a message to the British governor, Hamilton, at Detroit, informing him that Colonel Harmar would go out from the Muskin- gum to chastise the murdering Indians on the Sandusky and Maumee, and hoped Hamilton would not be offended, as there was no intention to annoy the British posts at De- troit, and elsewhere. Hamilton, although governor of De-
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troit, was a low, dirty dog, and accordingly showed St. Clair's letter to the chiefs, who applied for and received from him, powder, ball, arms, and whiskey, with which to carry on their murders, down on the Ohio and Muskingum, as well as fight Colonel Harmar.
Colonel Harmar marched an army of over one thousand men into the Indian strongholds of the north-west-the Indians retiring before him. After destroying some towns, he was intercepted by the enraged savages, on his return, and doubled up, driven back, and so utterly routed that there was but little left of his army when he got back to the Ohio. Harmar was disgraced, hundreds of good men cut to pieces, and the border laid open more than ever to Indian depredations.
By September, of 1791, General St. Clair had reorganized another army of twenty-three hundred troops, and started from Cincinnati on Harmar's trail, to inflict punishment on the savages. The war department was inefficient, and its commissariat corrupt-the one failing to send St. Clair sup- plies, and the other stealing or changing what was sent, so that this courageous old general had not only the savages around him, but want of good ammunition and provisions in his midst. In this dilemma he ordered a retreat, when the Indians, to the number of two thousand warriors, beset him, in what is now Darke County, on the 23d of October, 1791. Three hundred of his militia deserted, adding panic to his cup of calamities. Still he stood his ground until the 4th of November, when a large body of Delawares, Shaw- anese, and Wyandots drove in his outposts pell-mell on to the main army. He rallied, but the savages being rein- forced, pushed his troops into the center of the camp. In vain were efforts made to restore order and rally again. The Indians rushed upon his left line, killed or wounded one-half his artillery officers, captured the guns, slashed and ent hundreds to pieces, and so stampeded the militia that they could not be checked until they ran to Fort Jef- ferson-twenty-seven miles from the battle-field. The gen-
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eral displayed the most heroic bravery, having four horses shot under him, and as many bullet-holes in his clothes. The fight lasted three hours, and thirteen hundred men were put hors de combat.
In 1793, Wayne, in his campaign, camped on St. Clair's battle-field, but his soldiers could not lay down to sleep on account of bones strewing the ground. It is stated that they picked up six hundred skulls, and buried them on the battle ground, which is now marked by a small village, twenty-three miles north of Greenville, the county seat of Darke County.
A hue and cry was raised against St. Clair for this defeat, over the whole country, and people demanded that he be shot by order of court-martial. President Washington refused to listen to the public clamor, and refused even a court of inquiry ; knowing well that the blame rested more on the War Department than on St. Clair. He remained governor, but was superseded by General Wilkinson as gen- eral, and after the war shut himself up on his farm at Lego- nier, Pennsylvania, where he died, in disgrace, although innocent of crime or cowardice.
SCENES AROUND MARIETTA IN THE DAYS OF HER DANGER.
After the defeat of General St. Clair, the Delawares, Shawanese, and other warriors came down from the " black forest " of the north-west, yelling the war-whoop along the Mohican, over to, and past the ruins on the Tuscarawas; down the Muskingum, Scioto, and Miami, and over into Kentucky and Virginia. They were plumed with buffalo horns fastened on the head, and costumed with bear-skin breech elouts, while scalps of the slaughtered soldiers dan- gled from their heels, as they urged their horses onward, looking like so many red demons let loose from the infernal
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regions. They were jubilant over the recent victories, and re-echoed the old epithet, "No white man shall ever plant corn in Ohio."
Campus Martius became the residence of Governor St. Clair, and son and daughter, General Rufus Putnam and family, General Benjamin Tupper and family, Colonel Oliver and family, Colonel R. J. Meigs and family, R. J. Meigs, Jr., and wife, Colonel Shephard and family, Colonel Icha- bod Nye and family, Major Ezra Putnam and family, Major Olney and family, Captain Davis and family, Major Co- burn and family, Winthrop Sargent, Thomas Lord, Charles Greene and family, Major Ziegler, Major Haffield White and son, Joshua Shipman and family, James Smith and family, John Russell, Ichibald Lake, Ebenezer Corey and family, James Wells and family, Joseph Wood and family, Robert Allison, Elijah Warren and family, Girshom Flagg and family, widow Kelly and family, and many others, who had taken refuge therein. A portion of the pioneers also resided across the Muskingum in Fort Harmar. One of the pioneers has related that as they looked out over the palisades, or through the port holes, they could see the war- riors galloping to and fro with their stained hatchets at arms length, shaking them in defiance at Campus Martius. Although shots were fired at the barbarians, they continued to invest the camp and pick off any one who ventured out to his lot, or garden, or field.
The classic names given to the squares and avenues of the new city stunned these wild red men, and their indignation became intense as they saw portions of their land platted off, and christened with foreign names, such as "Capito- line," "Quadranona," and the like. The old trail leading down from an ancient mound of the primitive Americans to the edge of the river, they found converted into a broad- way, with high embankments. Its classic name " Sacra vin," given it by some latin scholar, aroused the anger of one of Zeisberger's educated Delawares, who had returned to Indian ways. He was seen to reach down and untie a
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scalp on the neck of his horse, shake it in the direction of the governor's residence in derision, as evincing a more effective way of speaking " dead languages" than the author of " Sacra via."
He was also an artist, and riding up to the guide-board he effaced therefrom the Latin, substituting with war-paint the ominous picture of a sealp, and underneath the word "Gnadenhutten." Heckewelder tells us that the Delawares, though not possessing the white man's art of writing, had certain hieroglyphics by which they described on a piece of bark, or on a large tree, any fact, so that all the nations could understand it.
The warriors lurked in the high grass of the square "Capitolium," to get a good shot at the man who dared dese- crate their land with that word. The square "Quadranoua " furnished a covert from which " War Cloud" jumped as he fired at a Putnam pulling his flax, and " Buckshanoath," the Shawanese giant, was discovered in the corn planted by General Putnam, on mound square, and which having been put there in defiance of the injunction, " White man shall plant no corn in Ohio," was levelled to the ground with knives and tomahawks by Buckshanoath's warriors, so great was the Indian wrath.
Outside the garrison were, at the time, some twenty unill- habited log houses, whose occupants fled to the blockhouses as the enemy approached, having been warned thereof by the firing of a small cannon within the fortified camp. Around and about these the savages watched for such pio- neers as passed in and out of their camp. When darkness intervened, they made night sleepless with hideous yells, as they cavorted their stolen horses to water in "Duck Creek," which had also received the classical name of "Tiber," after that old Tiber of Rome; or as the barbarians galloped over toward "Capitoline Hill," or up the " Sacra via," in every imitation of their Scythian ancestors, as they once scudded bare-backed along the streets and ways of ancient Rome.
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