USA > Ohio > Ohio annals : Historic events in the Tuscarawas and Muskingum Valleys, and in other portions of the state of Ohio > Part 20
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Occasionally, at Marietta, the besieged New Englanders could see from the blockhouse port-holes, smoke on a far- off hill, which they hoped for a moment might be the fore- running signal of assistance looming up from the camp-fires of coming friends, but as it died away, and the mist cleared off, they only saw the savages gathered together, dancing around a fire, in the midst of which was a poor, naked pris- oner, caught in some border settler's cabin; and, being tied to a stake, was suffering the slow torture, and whose screams for pity, mercy, and life, could be heard in Campus Mar- tius and Fort Harmar, but without the power of any- one there to assist or save him from the fiery death.
Such were the scenes enacted around the city first plant- ed on the Muskingum. Its off-shoots at Belpre, Waterford, and Big Bottom, witnessed similar tragedies throughout these terrible years of misfortune and calamity to the American arms, and border families.
ADVENTURES OF HAMILTON (KERR) CARR, THE INDIAN FIGHTER.
He was born in Pennsylvania, of Irish parents, came to Wheeling when a young man, learned Indian fighting with the Wetzells, removed to Washington County in 1787, and during the Indian wars killed many Indians.
On one occasion, he and Lewis Wetzell, on Wheeling Creek, trailed a party of Indians to their camp, found them sitting around their fire at daylight, and one fellow sitting on a log eating, fell over dead from Kerr's bullet, while Wetzell mortally wounded another. The balance fled, and the fighters went home with one scalp.
. In 1784, he was out trapping with Lewis and George Wet- zell and John Greene, at the month of the Muskingum, and in a day or two missed some of their traps. Suspecting Indians abont, they pushed up the Ohio a short distance in
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a canoe, when George Wetzell was shot dead, and Kerr wounded by Indians on the bank. Greene, who was in the woods, hearing firing, came to the river bank, and when near it, saw an Indian behind a tree loading. He raised his piece, fired, and the Indian dropped down the bank dead. The other Indians hearing the report rushed to where Greene was. Seeing ten or twelve, he jumped into the river, and buried his body under the water among the branches of a dead tree. The Indians came upon the trunk of the tree, peering for him. He saw them but kept his face hid among the leaves, when the Indians failing to find him moved off. He remained in the water until night, then made his escape up the river, and after three days overtook Kerr's party in the canoe, twenty-five miles above the site of Marietta. Kerr's wound kept him at home several months.
In 1785, Kerr and two others went up the Ohio spearing fish. A dozen Indians fired at them, when one man in the boat, named Mills, fell as dead into the bottom of the boat. Kerr and his companion also dropped down, when the In- dians rushed into the water to catch the canoe and scalp them. Kerr kept them off with his fish-spear until the canoe got into deep water, when they escaped to Wheeling, and Mills recovered, although he had a dozen wounds on his body. The party had no rifles along, and their escape from the tomahawk was attributed to Kerr's coolness in the moment of danger.
In 1786 he was out with Isaac Williams and a German, at Grave Creek, and espied three Indians in a canoe, and a fourth swimming a horse across the Ohio. Kerr shot the Indian in the stern of the canoe, Williams shot the one in front, when the German, handing Kerr his rifle, the third Indian in the boat was shot and fell into the water, but hung on to the side of the canoe. Kerr reloaded, and was about to fire at a man lying in the bottom of the boat, but discovering him to be a white prisoner, shouted to him to knock off the Indian clinging to the boat. Meanwhile, Kerr shot at the Indian on the horse, who jumped off and swan
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for the canoe. The white man escaped out of the boat, the Indian got in, crossed to the other shore, and, with a shout of defiance at Kerr, fled into the woods on the back of the captive horse he had been riding, and which had gained the other shore just as he did.
From 1787 to 1791, Kerr was employed as a hunter to furnish the garrison at Fort Harmar with buffalo meat and venison, and to the close of the war he was engaged in every hazardous enterprise, killing several Indians in his combats. After the war closed, he married and settled down as a farmer in Washington County, where he died an old man, much esteemed, leaving numerous descendants, who reside in southeastern Ohio.
LEGEND OF LOUISA ST. CLAIR, THE GOVERNOR'S DAUGHTER.
When General St. Clair came to Marietta, in 1788, as governor of the North-west Territory, he left his family at home in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania. Louisa, a daughter of eighteen years, educated at Philadelphia, and his son Arthur, came out soon after on a visit, and in 1790 the family moved out, except Mrs. St. Clair, who remained at home some time longer.
The proposed Indian treaty at Duncan's falls, in 1788, being postponed and adjourned to Fort Harmar, the In- dians prepared for peace or war, and were hostile to hold- ing a convention to adjust peace measures under the guns of Harmar, and Campus Martius.
Brandt, son of the Six Nation's chief of that name, came down the Tuscarawas and Muskingum trail, with two hun- dred warriors, camped at Duncan's falls, nine miles below Zanesville, and informed Governor St. Clair, by runner, that they desired the treaty preliminaries to be fixed there.
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The governor suspected a plot to get him to the falls, and abduct him, yet nothing had transpired of that import. Hle sent Brandt's runner back with word that he would soon answer by a ranger. Hamilton Kerr was dispatched to Duncan's falls to reconnoiter, and deliver St. Clair's letter.
A short distance above Waterford, Kerr saw tracks, and keeping the river in sight, crept on a bluff, and raised to his feet, when hearing the laugh of a woman, he came down to the trail, and saw Louisa St. Clair on a pony, dressed In - dian style, with a short rifle slung to her body. Stupefied with amazement, the ranger lost his speech, well knowing Louisa, who was the bravest and boldest girl of all at the fort. She had left without knowledge of any one, and call- ing " Ham"-as he was known by that name-to his senses, told him she was going to Duncan's falls to see Brandt. Expostulation on his part only made her laugh the louder, and she twitted him on his comical dress, head turbaned with red handkerchief, hunting shirt, but no trowsers, the breech-clout taking their place. Taking her pony by the head, he led it up the trail, and at night they suppered on dried deer meat from Ham's pouch ; the pony was tied, and Louisa sat against a tree and slept, rifle in hand, while Ham watched her. Next morning they pursued their way, and finally came in sight of the Indian camp. She then took her father's letter from the ranger, and telling him to hide and await her return, dashed off on her pony, and was soon a prisoner. She asked for Brandt, who appeared in war panoply, but was abashed at her gaze. She handed him the letter, remarking that they had met before, he as a student on a visit from college, to Philadelphia, and she as the daughter of General St. Clair, at school. Ile bowed ; being educated, read the letter and became excited. Louisa perceiving this, said she had risked her life to see him, and asked for a guard back to Marietta. Brandt told her he guarded the brave, and would accompany her home. In the evening of the third day they arrived with Ham Kerr at the fort, where she introduced Brandt to her father, rela-
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ting the incidents. After some hours, he was escorted ont of the lines, returned to the falls, and went up the valley with his warriors without a treaty, but crazed in love with Louisa St. Clair.
In Jannary, 1789, he returned, took no part in the Fort Harmar treaty, was at the feast, and asked St. Clair in vain for his daughter's hand.
In the fall of 1791, Brandt led the Chippewas for a time during the battle at St. Clair's defeat, and told his warriors to shoot the general's horse, but not him. St. Clair had four horses shot under him, and as many bullet-holes in his clothes, but escaped unhurt. Louisa's beauty saved her father's life, but sacrificed his fame; and after his downfall she left Marietta with him and the family, loaded down with sorrow for life.
Professor Hildreth thus describes Louisa at Marietta in 1791:
" Louisa was a healthy, vigorous girl, full of life and ac- tivity, fond of a frolic, and ready to draw amusement from all and everything around her. She was a fine equestrienne, and would mount the most wild and spirited horse without fear, managing him with ease and gracefulness, dashing through the open woodlands around Campus Martius at full gallop, leaping over logs or any obstruction that fell in her way. She was one of the most expert skaters in the garrison. She was also an expert huntress. Of the rifle she was a perfect mistress, loading and firing with the ac- enracy of a backwoodsman, killing a squirrel from the highest tree, or cutting off the head of a partridge with wonderful precision. She was fond of roaming in the woods, and often went out alone into the forest near Mari- etta, fearless of the savages that occasionally lurked in the vicinity. She was as active on foot as on horseback, and could walk with the rapidity of a ranger for miles. Her manners were refined, her person beautiful, with highly cul- tivated intellectual powers, having been educated with much care at Philadelphia. After the war she returned to her
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early home amidst the romantic glens of the Legonier valley."
Hlad St. Clair given his daughter to young Brandt, the alliance would have averted war. His father, Joseph Brandt, highly educated and the most powerful chief of the time, was the originator of the western confederation of Indians in 1786. It is reasonable, therefore, to suppose that had a family connection existed in 1789 with the governor of the North-west territory, neither Harmar or St. Clair would have suffered defeat in 1791, nor would Anthony Wayne have had to whip the confederated nations in 1794.
JOE ROGERS, THE RANGER-A DREAM FORETELLS HIS DEATH.
Joseph Rogers, a Pennsylvanian, who had served in Mor- gan's rifle corps in the revolution, came to Marietta soon after its settlement to seek a home. In 1791, as the Indian war commenced, he and Edward Henderson were detailed to scout up the Muskingum. On the 13th of March, at night, they were returning to the fort, when two Indians rose and fired, hitting Rogers in the breast, and killing him, within a mile of the fort. They then pursued Henderson down a hill, and at the bottom he met two more Indians who fired, one ball passing through his collar, and the other through a handkerchief bound on his head, ranger fashion. Making a short turn, he eluded his pursuers, reached the garrison, and gave the alarm, when every man's duty was to repair to his post, and the women to the blockhouse. Great consternation prevailed. Every one rushed to the blockhouse, one man carrying his papers, another his arms, a woman her bed and child, and an old gunsmith with his leather apron filled with tools and some smoking tobacco, another woman had a tea-pot, another the Bible, and so on; when all were in, an old mother was missing. They sent
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for her, and found her fixing up things and sweeping the floor, she telling them she could not think of leaving her house, " even if the Injuns were coming to scalp her," until all was rid up and things in their place. It turned out in the morning that the Indians had retreated. The night before Rogers was shot, he dreamed that he would next day take a scalp or lose one, and on going out in the morning was so dejected that they offered to send a ranger in his place, but he said a dream could not scare him from his duty. For not heeding the dream, Joe Rogers lost his life on the Muskingum.
LEGEND OF A CREDIT MOBILIER AND LOUIS PHILIPPE ON THE MUSKINGUM.
In the year 1790, four hundred French emigrants landed at Marietta from France-principally laborers, artisans, broken gentlemen, and several of royal blood-a marquis, count, &c .; mostly poor, but a few wealthy. They had came to America just as the French revolution was com- mencing. They were fraudulently induced to come by rep- resentations made in Paris, on the part of the Scioto Land Company's agent, who was a brother of Joel Barlow, United States Minister at Paris. The agent had taken their money for land, when in fact the company had no title to land. Finally they settled, and built up Gallipolis, where descendants yet reside. Congress donated them twenty thousand acres of public lands.
Lonis Philippe joined the French revolution in that same year of 1790, as a Jacobin (red republican), but having assisted two of his sisters, who had become odious to the government, to escape, he was denounced, fled to the con- tinent, wandered for some time as an exile, came to Phila- delphia in 1796, and with two brothers-the Duke de Mont- pensier and Count Beaujolais-traveled over the United
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States, returned to Europe in 1800, became king in 1830, was deposed in 1848, and died an exile in England, in 1850.
While in the United States he visited the west, stopped, as is said, at Coshocton, Zanesville, Marietta, and Gallipo- lis. No one ever knew exactly his business in traversing the valleys of the Muskingum, but General Cass says that when he was United States Minister at Paris, the king alluded once in conversation to Jolin McIntyre's hotel at Zanesville, and told Cass how well he had been treated there.
There is a tradition that the French marquis who came to Marietta with the four hundred, and who returned to France in 1791, was a blood relation of Philippe, and held valuable papers pertaining to the family interests, which he lost at Marietta, and that Louis's visit to the Muskingum was to find some clue thereto. In the search he was fasci- nated by one of his countrywomen, among the Gallipolis emigrants-where, is not known-and contracted with her a "left-handed " marriage; the issue of which, under the mother's name, grew to manhood on the Ohio and Mus- kingum, went to Paris, and in the revolution of 1830 took part in elevating his father to the throne; and after whose fall he returned to the United States, and died at New Orleans, where he disclosed these facts.
The statement that Louis Philippe was once in Coshoc- ton rests upon the fact that when George W. Silliman, attorney at law, Coshocton, and grandson of Major Cass, was. bearer of dispatches to the French government, the king told him that he once went to a point in the North- west Territory, where two rivers came together, and gave such a description of the place, and the landlord of the tavern (Colonel Williams), as to make it pretty certain that this was the place. Colonel Williams, being afterward spoken to on the subject, said that Louis Philippe "had been at his house, and had been rather roughly treated."
Tradition says that the rough treatment was this: He had an altercation with the tavern-keeper, ending in his
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telling Williams that he was heir to the French throne, and would not, as the coming sovereign, condescend to bandy words with a backwoods plebeian. Williams said in reply, that here in this backwoods of America there were no ple- beians : " We are all sovereigns here," said he, "and I'll show you our power," and suiting the action to the word, he kicked Louis Philippe out of the house; at which the " sovereigns," loitering around the tavern, gave three cheers.
It is a historical fact that Louis Philippe and two brothers landed in Philadelphia, October 21, 1796, made a tour of the United States, and sailed from New York for England, where they arrived in January, 1800. Hence, if Colonel Williams did not keep tavern in Coshocton before the year 1800, he kicked some other " sovereign" out of his house.
THE LAST STRUGGLE TO DRIVE THE WHITES FROM OHIO-WAYNE'S VICTORY.
In the spring and summer of 1792, every effort was made by the government that could be conceived, to get the Indian tribes together and conclude a peace. At the insti- gation of British emissaries they refused to meet, unless assured in advance that the Ohio should be the boundary in future treaties. This would have struck Marietta, the Muskingum, Tuscarawas, and all the Ohio valleys from the map of civilization, and lost to the Ohio Company a million acres bought from Congress at five shillings per acre.
Putnam and the pioneers were therefore deeply interested in the colony. Heckewelder could not survive, if his mis- sion ruins on the Tuscarawas were to be so soon turned over to the wild successors of the mound builders. Yet, strange as the fact was, there were distinguished men in the cast willing to make the Ohio the boundary line. They feared the depopulation of the old, and the building up of
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new States in the west, to take from them the balance of political power.
At length, in September, 1792, General Putnam and John Heckewelder appeared on the Wabash ; met the Potawat- omies, Wachtenaws, Kiekapoos and smaller tribes, and con- eluded a treaty. This was the first giving way of the Indian barrier. That winter the Shawanese, Six Nations, Wyan- dots, and Delawares agreed to hold a grand council on the Maumce, which took place in early summer of 1793. The government sent its agents to the mouth of Detroit River to be ready to treat. The Indian council, finding that they could not obtain the Ohio as a boundary line, refused to treat on any other line, broke up, and all the nations pre- pared for war again. At this council the treaties of Fort McIntosh and Harmar were repudiated as fraudulent, and the gifts proffered by the government were spurned by the Indians with contempt. Their fiat had gone forth : "No white man shall plant corn in Ohio."
After contemplating the probable loss, not only of their lives, but of their million acres, the prayers for help of the pioneer women, and the groans of their anguished husbands, were heard over the Blue Ridge, and above the Alleghanies, and far up into the New England mountains, then a burst of indignation arose, and "Mad Anthony" was ordered from the east to the rescue of the pioneers. He came crushing through the forests like a behemoth.
He left Fort Washington-now Cincinnati-with his legion in October, 1793. He, too, went north-west on Har- mar's and St. Clair's trails, building defenses as he moved on. At Greenville, Darke County, he wintered and drilled his men. In June, 1794, he camped on St. Clair's battle- field, and buried the bones of six hundred soldiers, bleach- ing there since 1791. Here the confederated tribes disputed Wayne's further progress. Being reinforced by eleven hun- dred Kentuckians, he soon routed the savages, and pushed on to the headquarters of the tribes at the junction of the Auglaize and Maumee rivers. They retreated along the
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Manmee forty miles to the rapids, where there was a British fort. Here they prepared for battle. Wayne offered peace without a fight, in case they gave up the Ohio River as a boundary. A portion of the chief's desired to do so, but the remainder under British influence refused. On the 20th of August he moved on the enemy, who again retreated a short distance and fought him. His whole force being brought into action soon routed them in every direction, leaving the battle-ground strewn with dead Indians, and British soldiers in disguise. General Wayne's loss was thirty-three killed, and one hundred wounded. The Indians in the battle numbered fourteen hundred, while the main body were not in action, being some two miles off, but hear- ing of the defeat they all scattered to their homes, and Wayne laid waste their towns and corn-fields for fifty miles, thus ending the war.
In this battle were Simon Girty, Elliott, and McKee, who had, ever since their success in breaking up the mis- sions on the Tuscarawas, been the main counsellors and leaders among the Shawanese, Wyandots, and Delawares, and all the time assisted by the British garrisons in the region of the Sandusky and Detroit.
The net result of the Wayne campaign was a treaty of peace, which was made at the present Greenville, Darke County, Ohio, in the following August (1795), between the goverment, represented by General Wayne, and the Shaw- anese, Delawares, Wyandots, Ottawas, Pottawatomies, Mi- amis, and other smaller tribes, at which about two-thirds of the present State of Ohio was ceded to the United States.
The old residenters of the Tuscarawas and Muskingum valleys-the Delawares and Shawanese-bore a conspicuous part in the fore-front of Wayne's war-as they had in all pre- vious wars-to prevent the whites from making homes in these two valleys, so full of romance, so full of tragedies, and so full of the ruins of God's works.
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THE WANDERING EXILE RETURNS TO THE VALLEY, FOUNDS GOSHEN, AND DIES IN HIS TRACKS-THE LAST OF THE MISSIONS AND RED MEN.
Zeisberger had been driven away from the valleys in Sep- tember, 1781, and until October, 1798, a period of seventeen years, he had no real resting place on the earth. What the motive was, of an All-wise and Omnipotent God, in subjecting this holy man to seventeen years of persecution and privation, it is not for man to premise; but on this pious man's return, his frail canoes coasted down the lakes in safety to the Cuyahoga; thence they paddled up that river and down the Tuscarawas to their old home, con- suming fifty-one days in the journey, amid perils of the elements above, perils of the waters below, and perils of the land around; all the way some dangerous red light ahead-yet without a serious accident they landed in sight of the old ruins ; they laid out Goshen, they proceeded anew to erect a chapel-which they dedicated on Christ- mas day, 1798, to that same God who had smote Job of old and Zeisberger alike.
One of the first persons baptised at Goshen was the widow of Captain White Eyes; next came a chief of the Delawares, who had succeeded Captain Pipe, and who bore a message from the Delawares on White River, in Indiana, asking that missionaries be sent from Goshen to settle there. Two missionaries and several Christian Indians were sent from Goshen in 1801, and in a short time thereafter Joshua and Ann Charity, aged Indians from Goshen, were denouned by an Indian prophet as witches, and senteneed to be burned, which was done by placing the victims upon a large pile of wood, binding them and tomahawking them; after which, setting fire to the pile, the Indians
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danced around it until all were consumed-believing that each victim thus sacrificed relieved the tribe of a witch.
This Indian, Joshua, who was sacrificed as a witch, had lost two daughters at the Gnadenhutten massacre in 1782.
Congress having stipulated in its grant of land that all the former inhabitants of the three missions, and their de- scendants, as well as Killbuck, White Eyes, and their de- scendants, should have land rent free in these four thousand acre tracts, and all land not thus needed to be let out to white settlers.
In May, 1799, Paul Greer, Peter Edmonds, Ezra and Peter Warner, Jacob Bush, and two others, from Pennsylvania, made settlements, and in the following fall came David and Dorcas Peter, from Bethlehem, being the first white settlers in Tuscarawas County, excepting Heckewelder, Zeisberger, and their co-missionaries.
In November, 1802, twelve Delaware chiefs, on their way to Washington to see Pesident Jefferson, stopped and spent some time with Zeisberger, at Goshen.
In 1803, Loskiel, the great historian of the missions, visited and remained some time at Goshen.
In 1805, the white settlers had so multiplied that a Mo- ravian church was built at a new station near what is now lock numbered seventeen, on the west side of the river, and the same was dedicated by Zeisberger in presence of two hundred people, and called Beersheba.
During this period, missions in other parts of the country becoming demoralized, Zeisberger's health began to fail under the accumulation of his sorrows, and his hearing be- ing impaired, and his eyesight failing, and the infirmities of old age distressing him, he prepared for death, which did not overtake him until 1808, he, however, wishing to be dead.
In 1808, about forty Monsey Indians, heathens, came to Goshen, and in a short time a second party came. Shortly thereafter a boat came up the river, laden with rum, which these Indians getting possession of, carried on such a series of
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debaucheries around Goshen that the missionaries and their converts fled to the hills for safety, while the white settlers grasped their rifles in self-protection and that of the mis- sion property ; Zeisberger aroused himself, called all the Indians together, pointed out the vicious, and ordered them to leave Goshen forever, which a portion of them did, the others remaining.
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